Al's Opinions

Yesterday (Friday, August 10) I watched a segment of the news from Japan on Channel 28.  A large part of the half hour program was devoted to how the Japanese government plans to deal with the rising cost of social security and other services for its increasing population of retired workers.  Can you guess?  Very simple.  The government plan is to phase in increases in the consumption tax and probably the income tax over the next eight or ten years to provide the extra money.  There was no talk of reducing the tax burden on the rich or reducing social security benefits.  Social security benefits may have to be trimmed some time in the future, but there was no talk of such changes.  There was talk of reducing "wasteful spending" by government.

How different is the discussion of this problem in our country!  Mr. Romney has just today announced his choice of Vice President: Paul Ryan.  The choice of Mr. Ryan signals that Mr. Romney is committed to the Republican program of reducing the taxes on wealthy Americans and reducing government services to retirees, to persons on Medicare, and other middle class and poorer segments of society.  Mr. Romney has gained the support of Grover Norquist, the Republican Grinch who wants to reduce the size of government to almost nothing.  At least now the voters will have a clear choice of the future path of the country in the November Election.

Labels: Grover Norquist, Japanese approach to social security, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan

By way of disclaimer, I have not read the Revelation of St. John the Divine, the last book in the Bible, and the source of such beliefs as the Antichrist, the rapture, the final fight between right and wrong, and all that.  I have to make up my own definition of the term "Antichrist."  Here it is:

I believe an Antichrist (oh, there must be many of them, like antipopes) is a person who masquerades among us pretending to be the true Christ and telling us things that we, or some of us, believe to be extensions of the teachings of the real Christ.  All the time this mountebank is influencing us to do things that are very harmful and perhaps even fatal to us and seducing us to believe things that are in fact the exact opposite of the teachings of the true Christ.

I have a candidate for an Antichrist who is living among us this very day.  This person is persuading some of us to believe and act in ways that are very harmful to our country and by extension to ourselves and our descendants.  We know that our country has an ailing economy.  Unemployment is high.  Jobs are scarce and becoming scarcer as more and more of them are being moved to China and other low-wage countries.  We have a negative trade balance which causes foreign countries to use the dollars they receive from us for our purchases to buy our bonds.  We know in our gut that the poor economy is the number one problem we face as a nation.

So, what is this Antichrist up to?  He has persuaded a significant fraction of us that the number one problem is the size and the expense of the federal government.  To achieve moral purity, we must put aside all these expensive entitlements, like social security, medicare, unemployment insurance and compensation, environmental regulations, and the like, and reduce taxes.  Taxes are too high, they must come down.  We must go back to the nineteenth century, when there was no income tax and when the only functions of the federal government was maintaining a safe currency, running the postal service, and clearing the western lands of the ignorant and worthless natives who lived there and made problems for the white settlers.

Who is this Antichrist and how has he obtained so much power?  He has power, no doubt.  He has made it impossible for our elected representatives in Congress to address the problems of unemployment and a weak economy.  Instead, they are compelled to quarrel over how to reduce the deficit without raising taxes.  He has caused nearly every Republican member of Congress to sign a pledge not to vote for any tax increase  regardless of any consequences.  He has vowed to reduce the size of the federal government until it is like a baby that could be drowned in the bathtub.

This man has been exposed in television interviews several times.  The most recently aired interview was with Mike Croft last Sunday on the CBS program Sixty Minutes.  I thought Mike did a good job of exposing the man's intentions for all us to see.  The man's name?  Grover Norquist.

Labels: Grover Norquist, Mike Croft, Sixty Minutes

Any number of conservative polemicists have argued in favor of small government, low taxes, and few regulations on business.  Some of the arguments are phrased in moral terms: with small government people will have to learn to take care of themselves and not depend on a large, inefficient, unresponsive government to help them.  Other arguments are specific to the desires of their rich patrons, who favor low taxes and freedom from any public limits on their behavior.  To me the most appealing argument is that large government can become unresponsive to the needs and desires of most of its citizens and, being large, is almost impossible to change.  I say that this is the most appealing argument to me.  Actually I don't care for any of them.

Historically, governments have tended to be either weak or tyrannical.  In neither case the government cared little about and did little of benefit for the "common" people (that is, us 99%).  Roman emperors arranged spectacles to entertain the commoners, such as fights between gladiators or feeding Christians to lions, but did little to make sure that the commoners were well-fed, well-clothed, and well cared for in old age.  In modern times it was Otto von Bismarck who recognized that a stable government depended on a satisfied population, and set about creating governmental institutions to provide health care and other benefits for the whole population of Germany.  By contrast, a century earlier the Kings of France were making sure that wealthy Frenchmen were happy and satisfied.  We know where that policy led.

Small, weak government leads necessarily to a society in which the richest individuals have the greatest power.  They can create walled and gated enclaves in which to live.  They can hire thugs to keep the less privileged away.  They can dictate the conditions and the wages of working people.  The hired thugs guarantee that the workers accept the wages and conditions.  Who wants to be a member of the 99% in such a society?

Not me, certainly.  However, Howard Jarvis looked forward eagerly to the creation of such a society.  Today Grover Norquist advocates shrinking government to a size that it can then be drowned in a bathtub.  Mr. Norquist would almost certainly deny it, but it seems to me that he advocates anarchy; that is, no government at all.

We, the 99 percent, need a strong government committed to making sure that the one percent don't simply squeeze us from the paltry share we have of the nation's wealth and other amenities.  The government is strong; unfortunately, it has been taken over by the one percent.  Corporations now have as much legal standing as persons.  (I wonder if corporations can be put to death if convicted of murder?)  We also need strong non-governmental-organizations (NGO) such as unions and associations dedicated to protecting our rights to help us withstand the power of the one percent.

Labels: Grover Norquist, Howard Jarvis, need for labor unions, Otto von Bismarck, power of corporations, the French Revolution

I listened to President Obama's Inauguration Speech this morning. It was a good speech. It lasted about fifteen minutes. It has some memorable lines. I particularly liked the line about the American People caring more about a government that works than a government that is big or small. He promised to make government smaller by eliminating programs that don't work and to make government more efficient by strengthening those that do. He will, of course, start several new programs to deal with the present crises in the economy and the "war" on terror.

Grover Norquist and other Conservative thinkers have dominated the thinking of Republic elected officials for years. They argue that taxes are too high and government is too big. They base these assertions on two beliefs. First, they believe that individuals spend their money more wisely than government. Second, they believe that government is inherently beaurocratic, slow, inefficient, and unresponsive.

These high-sounding philosophical arguments had their start when a business man, many long years ago, wanted government to be small and ineffective so that it would leave his business alone. Business men are motivated to make a profit, and the more profit the better. In the short run you make more profit by using inexpensive, unsafe cutting machines in a factory that makes object out of wood or metal. You make more profit by urging workers to work as fast as possible and not worry about safety. You make more profit by not buying gas masks for painters who spray paint the things that you manufacture.

I was happy to hear that Mr. Obama's primary goal is to make government work better for people, rather than to make it smaller. Take that, Grover Norquist!

Labels: Barack Obama, Grover Norquist, work place safety

I listened to President Obama's inauguration speech this morning. It was a nice speech. It lasted no more than fifteen minutes. It had some great lines and some memorable quotes. The part I liked best was the part where he said that the American People are less concerned about the size of government than about a government that works. That statement encapsulates the ideology, if there is one, of the Democratic Party.

An old Republican mantra is "government is too big and spends too much money." Many conservatives are now spreading the word that George Bush disappointed them. They supported him, expecting that he would make government smaller. Of course, he didn't. He made it bigger, especially to fight his wars in Iraq and Afhanistan.

The idea that small government is desirable and smaller government is more desirable comes from a business man's frustration and anger at having government impose all sorts of rules on how he should run his business. Government supports the right of workers to form unions. Business men hate unions. Government inspects the business itself and imposes rules involving the safety of workers. Cutting machines must have guards to keep workers from cutting off their fingers. Workers who apply spray paint must wear special masks and breathing apparatus to protect them from getting paint in their lungs. Government imposes all sorts of restrictions on business. The business man supports a political party that promises to make government so small that it can't bother him.

It must be said that, even though Bush didn't make government smaller, he tried valiantly to weaken or remove restrictions on business operations.

Grover Norquist and other Conservative thinkers have elevated this business man's complaint about government regulation to a philosophical level. Government is apt to become tyrannical and must be kept as small and non-interfering as possible. One technique of achieving this end is to convince the public that government is inherently inefficient and unable to do anything well. Mr. Bush followed this technique in his staffing of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA was deliberately staffed with incompetent leadership. The result was the fiasco that followed the hurricaine that devastated New Orleans. The original business man who proposed small government also urged inefficient government.

I am very happy that Mr. Obama believes in efficient government, government that works for the people, without concern as to whether it is too big. Take that, Grover Norquist!

Labels: Barack Obama, FEMA, government as an annoyance to business, Grover Norquist, New Orleans

We tend, perhaps incorrectly, to think of ideologies as points on a line. Moderation is a point, or rather a region, near the midpoint of the line. Moving to the left we come to progressivism, liberalism, socialism, communism, anarchism, and so on. Moving to the right we come to conservatism, extreme conservatism, and so on. Someone pointed out to me many years ago that the extremes on this line tend to be very similar. I therefore posit that the line isn't a straight line but rather a circle. Moderation is a point or region on the circle. Diametrically opposite is a region of anarchism.

Both the extreme right and the extreme left in politics abhor large government. The Communists believed that if private property could be eliminated, the state would simply wither away because there would be nothing for it to do. They thought of the state as the protector of property rights, especially those of the rich. Conservatives like Grover Norquist and the late Howard Jarvis also believed in a small state that didn't do much. Ultimately their ideal was anarchy or a stateless society.

Without a state there would be no taxes to vex the rich. Whatever services were available to the public would be paid for by fees charged for service. If you want to borrow a book from the library, or even go to the library to read a book or magazine, you would pay a fee. If your house was on fire, you would pay a fee to a fire brigade to put it out. If you got sick, you would pay a fee to the doctor and to the nurses that took care of you.

I don't know of any region that has functioned as a society without a government. In Somalia there is no central government and things aren't very good there. I do know of a society that existed with a weak government in which taxes were low and one had to pay fees or bribes for such services as obtaining license plates for your car. In the case of that society, inflation had wiped out much of the value of the currency. However, government officials were still paid according to the pre-inflation scale. In order to make ends meet, they had to solicit fees (bribes) from people who needed their services.

Communism was tried in Russia. It became corrupt and finally failed. It seems to me that the same fate will overtake any experiment in conservative "small government." Conservative small government lets enterpreneurs do whatever they want. It encourages originality. We have seen recently some examples of originality and absence of government supervision. It is my opinion that small government will lead to corruption, just as Communism led to corruption.

Labels: communism, Grover Norquist, Howard Jarvis, inflation as a cause of corruption, Russia, small government

Some liberal bloggers have commented that the conservative bloggers and pundits have refrained from criticizing the federal government's bail-out of several large financial institutions (Freddie Mac, Fanny Mae, Bear-Stearns, AIG, others). If similar action were taken when a Democratic President occupied the White House there would have been screams of socialism, nationalizing the banks, etc. This reticence has led me to wonder whether there is another way that could have been used to keep the credit industry from collapsing.

Let's consider what the government has done and is doing. Credit institutions were loaded with bad debts. These debts were incurred at a time when most people thought the housing boom would continue indefinitely. Mortgages were written for close to the market price of homes. These mortgages were sold to credit institutions like Freddie Mac who in turn bundled them with other obligations and wrote new bonds based on them. Credit rating institutions gave these new bonds good ratings so that Freddie Mac and others could sell them to other banks. Then the housing bubble burst and many of the mortgages suddenly became worth a lot less. A $500,000 mortgage on a foreclosed house that can be sold for only $400,000 isn't worth as much as it was before the housing bubble burst. Financial institutions were suddenly realizing that their A-rated bonds weren't worth very much and they would have to take a loss. Some big banks would have to declare bankruptcy. Businesses would no longer be able to obtain credit for conducting or expanding their operations. A recession or a depression was about to occur. The government then proceeded to buy the bad debts from the banks that were about to fail. In return, the government obtained controlling interests in the banks. That is, a conservative administration nationalized several large banks and a large insurance company.

Here's my alternative: Since the problem was that the large banks couldn't advance credit any more, why shouldn't the government set up its own credit institution and lend money directly to the businesses and smaller banks that needed the credit? Let the big banks go bankrupt. Let them eat their losses. The cost to the government would be a lot less and the risk very small. Of course, that would have been socialism with a capital S (or $). What Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke have proposed is socialism with a small s, and one that is temporary.

Conservative ideologues such as Grover Norquist must be having bad cases of indigestion at seeing the utter abandonment and collapse of their small-government beliefs.

Labels: Ben Bernanke, Grover Norquist, Henry Paulson, socializing credit

For more details on the past history of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, refer to this article in the Boston Herald. A large bipartisan bloc in Congress (both the House and Senate) want to enlarge the program to include children not now covered but whose parents still are not wealthy enough to pay for complete childhood medical care without having to worry occasionally about paying for it. Mr. Bush threatens to veto the bill if it includes money to add children to the program who are not already in it. His threat reveals the following:

1. He is a determined ideologue who would rather placate the extreme "small government" wing of the Republican Party than the more moderate majority of Republicans and Independents, to say nothing of Democrats. His guiding philosopher in this endeavor is Grover Norquist, not Jesus Christ.
2. He shows how hollow the slogan "compassionate conservative" is. Telling children of lower middle class parents that they can have all the health care their parents are able and willing to pay for is certainly "conservative." It is not compassionate, at least not toward the parents and children who are affected.
3. He argues that enlarging the SCHIP program is a step toward a publicly funded universal health care system and must be stopped because it leads to socialism. (Horrors!)
4. He has compassion for the plight of the poor tobacco companies whose products would be subjected to additional taxation to pay for the additional children.
5. He has compassion for the HMO's and insurance companies who might lose clients if the SCHIP program is enlarged. Parents might abandon their own unsatisfactory HMO or health insurance plan and enrol instead in SCHIP.

There is a lesson for us who voted hopefully for Democrats last year. Even with a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, we are not going to see any progress toward providing access to good health care to those who don't already have it as long as George W. Bush is President.

Labels: compassionate conservatism, Grover Norquist, SCHIP, Universal health care