The Jacksonian Party

Natural and Unnatural law

2012-01-05T14:10:00.000Z

Between the Moral Law of God and the Civil Law of Man that is guided by Moral Law there is the other realm of law, which is Natural Law. This thing known as Natural Law are the boundaries that Nature places upon us, and in this I do not speak of the philosophical 'nature' (that is what are the characteristics of a thing or person) but the Universal Nature, which is the physical realm of the universe. This physical realm has two aspects to it: chaos and order.

Chaos is represented by the randomness of nature from the lowest levels, upwards. Brownian motion is bounded but chaotic in that it can have limitations upon it (based on volume, media type and temperature) but that what results in the way of motion is unpredictable at any given moment. Chaos creates randomness in events so that there is a factor of indeterminacy involved. This fact is part of Quantum Mechanics and comes from examining how Nature works.

Order is the sudden appearance of direction or higher order stability that resists chaos. The association of atoms in the form of molecules then has a larger scale set of predictable factors to them in the form of physical properties and structure. The capability for an underlying chaotic system to have structure appear is described by the concept known as emergence. When a number of unrelated factors then fall together into a new and unpredictable form of orderly behavior, then you have an emergent behavior that is unpredictable based on its component parts. All of this plays out in a framework within space and time, and these parts of the framework give rise to the effects we see. Part of that framework is chaos at the lowest most level and, from that, the framework will have chaotic things happen within it. Everything must cope abide by that at all other levels that coincide and derive from it.

Nature is, from that, chaotic and emergent to forms of order.

From this order is not the same as law, which makes law a separate realm from chaos, emergent behavior and order.

In Moral Law there is the requirement to acknowledge that we get it from something outside of ourselves and is a requirement for the Order of Man. Can Moral Law be described as an emergent phenomena? This would require answering the question: what is the source of the emergent phenomena? In the Universal sense this is God, that thing that all can know and yet none can fully define. Moral Law, recorded in scripture, also appears (in part) in other cultures as well that do not have scriptural basis for their Moral Law. What parts of this are Universal to Man? And why ask that question at all?

The reason for asking the question is that Man is a rational being (that is able to discern cause and effect, remember them and think about them dispassionately) and seeks to find those patterns that exist across different areas of knowledge to see if they are related. A positive relationship (that is an equivalence of pattern) then points to underlying structure with possible variations that can be examined as to their true universality. A truly Universal conclusion is true across all domains that are encompassed by the hypothesis, while a localized one is that which is true only for a locality. Thus for those things that Man finds across cultures that are equivalent, there can be some examination as to what the source of those qualities are.

The most Universal quality of man is this thing we do known as 'marriage' or the bonding of man and woman to create a family via intimate relationships. Marriage is seen across all cultures in some formulation and across all eras of mankind that we have records for. From that we can put the hypothesis down that marriage is a Universal quality for those beings that are capable of recognizing the need for such a bond and being able to assent to it in a voluntary fashion. Traditions of 'arranged marriages' through matchmakers or other venues is a cultural phenomena on top of the underlying structure of marriage and is created to turn a voluntary and yet wholly necessary need into a stable system of society that is involuntary. Those systems, then, are phenomena based on the underlying premise, not the underlying premise itself as, absent those social structures, the quality of Man to seek marriage would still exist.

To marry is to form a social unit called the family. Doing this then has other requirements with it to safeguard the family. The first of those is self-sacrifice on the part of parents for their children so that the children may survive to continue the lineage and social order of that family. This is not just a mother or father dying to save a child, but goes much deeper into us as individuals to address our negative natural liberties and rights. There is no such thing as a purely positive liberty or right: all liberties and rights are of two parts via Nature so that they are not biased and have no direction to them. By having natural liberty and rights in equal parts (though not, of necessity, equal amounts) chaos is guaranteed expression via both venues. To gain order from these natural rights and liberties requires an assertion of willpower over them when they are exercised. Thus to put aside negative natural liberty of, say, offensive warfare without cause then requires an expression of will on a continual basis by individuals to not use this negative right to exercise this negative liberty to put the family in danger.

Because this is of primary importance as warfare is lethal, it must be agreed upon by all family members and that agreement made specific and stated for all involved. From this we get this thing called Civil Law within the context of Law of Nations. Civil Law is nothing more than the assertion of will over our negative liberties in a way agreed upon by our fellow man so as to not exercise the natural rights associated with them and this adhered to by all with consequences for not following those agreements. The result of such Civil Law is emergent order from the society that is created by these agreements. Because such agreements need to be remembered in their specifics an organ of society known as government is created to be the holder of these agreements about our negative natural liberties. Although there is a Moral Law of 'Thou shall not kill', which is part of a formulation of creation of Civil Law, this is understood to be in the realm of Moral expression in the Civil arena. There is no 'Thou shall not go to war on your lonesome' edict and, indeed, there are individuals that find themselves doing just that without moral or civil justification for their acts. Such individuals have decided not to follow Civil Law under Law of Nations and reclaim their full natural liberty and rights for themselves and are now in opposition to those who follow Civil Law which is part of this thing known as Civilization. This is a reversion to base savagery against civilization, a return to natural man who is full of chaos and unwilling to assert will to get a social order.

Law is the creation of order via the assertion of will and the restraint of use of negative natural rights and liberties. This is true of Law of Nations, that law created by marriage, and for Civil Law, that law that comes from the creation of society for protection amongst families and for family members within the family unit. Moral Law is a bias or direction to Natural Law which itself is without bias and equal in treatment to all within it. Man cannot make Natural Law because we live within Nature and are natural beings. Man can find or have revealed Moral Law as it is that which is outside the realm of Nature, outside the realm of thought and wholly within the realm of the Eternal but can be expressed within the Natural realm.

From these things we find the following Laws:

1) Moral Law can be discovered via revelation or via chance (such as social groups finding that the punishing of those killing within that social group requires a cost to that action to deter it). As such the foundations for a moral outlook are Universally available, although the pathway to that understanding can be indirect as well as direct. If you do not have revelation, then you have trial and error using rational observation to see what the results are for certain action and re-action pairings.

2) Natural Law acts upon all things in Nature and is universal within the realm of Nature. Being within this domain of law means we do not set it, do not create it, and it exists wholly outside of our sphere of influence, Nature provides us with our bodies, our lives, and the physical world which we can manipulate. Nature is uncaring, neutral, and provides much in the way of the physical domain that we don't understand and may never be able to understand.

3) Law of Nations is the unwritten law that Man discovers via the application of Moral Law to oneself for the creation of family. Law of Nations is universal to all thinking beings who have access to Moral Law, which is to say all rational beings that procreate and create families via a bond of marriage or other, similar, dedication. This exists not just within the confines of Natural Law but as a concept separate from Natural Law, making Law of Nations Universal to all rational beings.

4) Civil Law is created by society which, itself, is made under Law of Nations, and is the expression of Moral Law within Law of Nations by a society which wishes to create a State for safeguarding the population against those who would express their negative natural rights and liberties against their fellow man. Moral Law gives founding to direction and bias on those Natural liberties and rights that we have, and when we create a family we find that Moral Law almost immediately from being Natural Beings who must protect our offspring from Nature's creatures that do not so well discriminate their negative liberties and rights than do we.

When man has no ability to write, indeed has no alphabet but does have a spoken language or other means of communication, items from the realms of unwritten law become an integral part of the communication's tradition so that it may be passed on and preserved. Moral Law can be revealed and passed down by word of mouth, Natural Law is always present to present questions and get results and those results are reflective of Nature, Law of Nations to protect family and create the Nation is universal upon first creating family and its form becomes apparent because of that. Civil Law is the last law that is derived from the other laws and it, too, can exist in an unwritten form as a set of customs or practices that those within a given society live by.

There are interesting aspects of Moral Law in this arrangement, in that it is not (of necessity) written down but can be discovered by Man who utilizes both emotions and reason, together, to find answers to problems that arise in society. Law of Nations is that which is about structure, duty, and ordering of power by society due to it being a society and interacting with other societies that hold different customs. Before revelation man utilized chance, which is to say trying things differently until finding something that worked, to deal with problems created between men within society. Law of Nations can only speak of this as a manifestation within society that is stable, it cannot say what Moral Law is but that it is a formulary necessary for Law of Nations to happen fully.

By staying one's hand within a family, by not killing each other, by not stealing from each other, indeed, by not inflicting lasting harm upon the family the expression of Moral Law becomes visible: it is that which guides us on how to create a stable family and society. This requires both reason (as understanding that harming a family member will rebound negatively on oneself) and emotion (to understand that forgiveness for the faults of family members is necessary to have a family, but that forgiving only comes with the atonement by that individual that did wrong by the family). That same staying and continued withholding of it creates the family, as well. When spouses are abusive to their mate, their children or themselves, there is a fundamental violation of Moral Law, and as it is destructive to Law of Nations it is a negative factor for having Nations and even civil society. That is why we have Civil Law so as to penalize such activities and safeguard families from abusive parents: it is to transmit that the family order has a reason behind it, a rationale, that it is positive when upheld and negative to not just the family but the Nation when it is neglected or abused. To not punish these actions by actors is to invite the decay of society and the downfall of it and the Nation that is sustained by the family. Penalties in this realm have been severe on the Civil Law side and for Natural Law the ability to protect oneself and one's family invokes the positive liberty and right of warfare: defensive war for survival and self-protection.

From all of this there are interesting questions that can be posed in the context of Universal Laws, but they are more of interest to philosophers or theologians than to those surviving a daily life. That we can even formulate such questions is a testament to the power of these Laws and that our holding to them can create a long lasting society and the concept of Nation even when Nation States rise and fall many times in the same region.

The actual ability to even ask those questions has required that there be tolerance for asking them, and that has been a high powered, long fought after battle that has spanned nearly all of human history, was first given any written establishment for Nations in 1648, and is still NOT recognized by large swaths of mankind and is being actively fought against within those areas that have it. Yet religious tolerance has become an instance of the highest order of civilization so long as a religion does not dictate to the State and only to the individual, and that society remains open to other religious beliefs that do not seek to impose themselves by negative natural rights and liberty. That is an effect of how a fight for aspects of Moral Law that have the same basis has established a common space for those religions to exist in a secular realm. The secular realm, itself, must be open to religious teachings of all religions that follow the same civil principles of respect and tolerance for believers of other faiths.

To try and exclude Moral Law as garnered by religious faith from the secular space is destructive to that space as it undercuts its very existence: to find commonality across beliefs that can be upheld without imposition of any particular faith upon those who do not believe in it. By holding commonalities to be common requires the robust and civil discussion of Moral Law within that secular space so that better Civil Laws can be found. Do note that even atheists, agnostics or those who civilly practice relatively unusual religious rights are not the holder of this secular space, but participants in it. Those who do not believe in religious basis for the underpinning of the secular space must recognize the origins of that space, their protection within it as a higher form of learning and that, in particular, if it is garnered via mere trial and error via faiths, then it is more precious than any single faith within that realm and therefore MUST be upheld as a neutral space for such civil discussions.

Secular space for government does not mean that such government does not recognize the foundation of the secular space or those things necessary to uphold it: indeed it was formed to protect those practices, not expunge them.

Secular space for society is a recognition and acceptance amongst all members of society as individuals that their practice of faith (or lack thereof) may not put the civil basis for society at risk without penalties and that their ability to practice a faith and even change faiths is upheld by having a neutral secular space that is common for all of society. What you do with your life and within your household shall not undercut that common space that must be open to all arguments and that arguments on Moral Law must first be won by civil discourse, not by secular fiat or by gaming government practices. Indeed when government becomes biased to exclude Moral Law and its teachings from the secular space, or to only allow a delimited set of discussions via civil means, it becomes destructive of the entire society that creates that secular space for religious freedom. The worst of all tyrannies is government deciding which religion is and is not acceptable within the civil sphere and then using the power of government to enforce that. When the State comes to mandate its presence upon the alter, you are then not far away from open warfare as this is a desecration of the advanced civilized understandings of tolerance for religious worship and practice within realm of civil society.

By utilizing the understandings of Laws Natural and those outside of Nature (although available within Nature) and then adding historical understanding of practice and conflict of many Nations, States and societies, the foundations of the framework for the modern world lay exposed and available to all willing to see them. Even if you disagree with how they got there or deny the impetus to make them, the recognition of the self-evident presence of it must be admitted: argue about the source of the foundations as you will, we must accept that they exist, have instance and are there.

To not do so is to invite the decay and collapse of civilization as we know it and to seek savagery not only for oneself but for all of mankind. No good will ever come of that.

The symptoms

2011-12-25T22:14:00.001Z

On 22 DEC 2011, USA Today's Richard Wolf took a look at the demographics of people leaving both political parties.

WASHINGTON – More than 2.5 million voters have left the Democratic and Republican parties since the 2008 elections, while the number of independent voters continues to grow.

A USA TODAY analysis of state voter registration statistics shows registered Democrats declined in 25 of the 28 states that register voters by party. Republicans dipped in 21 states, while independents increased in 18 states.

The trend is acute in states that are key to next year's presidential race. In the eight swing states that register voters by party, Democrats' registration is down by 800,000 and Republicans' by 350,000. Independents have gained 325,000.

First off, when people are fleeing both parties it can be said that they are not fleeing the parties but the two party system. This vaunted concept touted for so long in the United States that a two party system will always find the best means to represent the population (and stifle third parties by undercutting them) is something that should gain allegiance, not lose it, if it worked. A strong political system is one that individuals see as something they should invest time and energy with participation and understanding of issues local and national so as to be informed to get representation in government. Yet just the opposite is happening.

I will repost my commentary from Hot Air on the topic with all the caveats of not doing any spell checking, syntax checking, etc. I will, however, boldface a few key points:

If the two party system is such a hot thing, then why are people fleeing it?

At the lowest level, which is the precinct level, both parties have had problems getting any organization together due to lack of party members. Some precincts are no-shows in State party organizations, others are hollow core precincts with just enough members to get a representative and still others have enough members but not enough interested members to actually care about the lowest level of retail politics. This is how the Tea Party got so quickly into the Republican apparatus: if there had been more members at the precinct level, then the establishment could have held back State level changes. Instead a few States have slowly ousted the old Republican party elites (FL comes to mind, but NH, OH, NV and other State level organizations are also changing over).

This will not stem the tide, however, as the two party system isn’t delivering the necessary governance and meaningful interaction at the lowest level of the parties. Instead both parties have concentrated for decades at the highest level (federal offices) and began to use the State level as just a training area, not as a place to learn effective governance. By shifting more power into fewer hands over decades, the two parties are killing off their roots: people fleeing isn’t a cause of the problem, it is a symptom.

What this means is that the two major parties will become less stable as the number of viable precincts decline. At some point the elites will seek to agglomerate precincts to try and keep any viable structure going, but that will only make the problem worse, not better.

Representative democracy to run a republic requires participation by citizens who are knowledgeable about the issues of the day and willing to make informed choices not at the federal level, but the local level. By putting so much interference of the local level from the federal level via regulations, the two parties (each in the belief that they are addressing ‘national problems’) are destroying the representative democracy required to run a republic. Without strong local say in local affairs, citizens are becoming fed up with the two parties that are now causing the problems at the local level through cronyism, earmarks, favoritism and utilizing non-democratic means (ie. the bureaucracy) to impose power from the top down at the local level.

This system does not work and the rise of the independent charts the course of how badly the two parties are doing. So does turn-out for non-Presidential elections but even the Presidential elections are now suffering: Barack Obama got 52% of the vote, yes, but the voter participation rate hovers at 50%, making a plurality of those who can vote (and a tiny plurality) the deciders in the election. That means that Obama got about 26% of the voting age population to vote for him. How bad is that? Consider the NSDAP in Germany having over 80% turnout and getting about 40% of the vote, meaning it gets in with over 30% of the voting age population voting for it in MULTIPARTY ELECTIONS. That is how woebegone this lovely two party system is: it can’t generate up a plurality that the Nazi’s got in Weimar Germany.

If you want more participation at the local level, then it is at that level that small government conservatism must START and begin addressing the federal over-reach of the last century. Start arguing about every federal program, every federal intrusion, every form, and work with others to fight bureaucratic decisions and go to court over them. You won’t win every one, no, but even a small fraction for things like energy, transportation, and intellectual property can make a huge difference. Once the federal government is shown to be incompetent, officious, overly bureaucratic and incapable of doing ANY of its jobs, things will start to change. Not from the top, but the bottom. Unfortunately that will mean our beloved two parties will hit the shredder, too. They are made for the 19th century, not the 21st. Figure out how to form new, virtual parties that also give link-up and connectivity at the local level and create some brand, new form of politics no one has ever seen before.

Don’t leave it up to the parties: they are stuck on stupid.

Only you can do this. If you dare.

ajacksonian on December 23, 2011 at 3:38 PM

Now the fun part comes just a bit after this with the disqualification of Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich in the VA Primaries. It would be very easy to see this as the disease, itself, but it is only another symptom and it is related to the above. It is very easy to see the shenanigans, infighting, word changing in laws, etc. as the disease, but it isn't that at all. That stuff is a symptom, as well. How can you tell if this is a symptom or a disease? Ask yourself if there was a simple remedy that could have been done, and if so, how would that be performed?

Back again to Hot Air (I am more a commenter than blogger these days) because the above problem is also related to this:

Too bad the Republican district and precincts couldn’t have lent a hand over the summer, huh?

You know ask all the candidates if they would like to have tables at a pancake breakfast or picnic or buffet luncheon in the districts, so that everyone pays a nominal fee for the meal and probably a speaker of some sort to talk about federalism or the constitution… and the candidates could pay a bit more for tables to get people to sign up for the qualification papers.

Geez, wouldn’t a real party that attracte enough people to actually have a functioning sub-State system be a grand thing? Why they could certainly help out by making sure that only party members sign up because they would be, after all, LOCAL.

Maybe there will, someday, be a party that actually concentrates on the local politics FIRST and gets active participation to help change government from the BOTTOM UP so that these higher level figures would have an easier time of it. Because, right now, that sort of party is missing and the gaping hole where it should be has this political label of ‘Independent’. Maybe, someday, these campaigns might just ask for HELP instead of trying to be a one-man-band of electioneering and reinventing the wheel every four years.

ajacksonian on December 24, 2011 at 12:41 PM

If political parties are made to help organize individuals and are, indeed, created so as to offer a suite of options and opportunities for political governance, then the objective of the party is to help ensure the greatest opportunities for diverse opinion at the lowest level of the party. Which is to say that the lowest party level is the one responsible for helping to ensure a lively and appealing climate so that political dialogue within the party can flourish and that is performed by helping candidates get organized when they may not have the necessary experience to do so at locales that are diverse when running for a Nation-wide office (or State-wide office at either State or federal level).

They symptom of people leaving the parties, the symptom of candidates being unable to get signatures at the lowest level are to that disease known as irrelevance. The two parties are not offering solutions at this point, only more of the same old cronyism, and neither party has any interest in breaking up the system to get more ideas and candidates into the system but, indeed, to begin excluding them not from third parties but within their own parties. The centralization of power that has been seen at the federal level is part and parcel of what has been going on inside the two parties for decades. It doesn't come from nowhere, but from the arthritic and calcifying two party system.

If we had a vibrant two party system we would have shouting matches, fistfights and many other indecorous events in our representative bodies because ideas and values would be seen as worth fighting for and not compromising over. When everything is up for compromise, then no values are being represented except that of getting to the 'deal' to be seen as 'doing something', even if it breaks with principles that are strongly held within the party. Representative democracy is not supposed to be about having a 'working system' that slides along ever so easily, but about having a system that does not get in the way of the populace having a hard debate over just what it is the government is supposed to be representing. If the government represented values, principles and ideals it would be hotly debated over, fought over, and reduced in size as hated departments and programs were ended by the one side or the other winning a debate in the population over it, and in any event changes via elections would see severe diminishment in power so as to keep venues for lively debate open inside the Nation. When everyone in government agrees for more government and then utilize the power of the taxpayer purse and writing laws to ensure that the way of those governing is then secured, then civil discourse from the body politic is gagged, bound and thrown in the cellar because that is the end of those seeking to sequester power from the people in unelected bureaucracy.

What is coming next is what I've outlined for The Jacksonian Party: the distributed, networked, locally affiliated, open platform adherence party that actually represents what its members want and is willing to have open and civil discussion about it via the new media. This won't come easily, but the powers in the background are now enabling the people to leave the two party system and what will come will be the Dawn of a New Era. Those running the old era will try to take civilization down with it via promises it cannot keep and by telling the people across this entire planet that they are not worth having around and will not, in any way, see that self-evident rights and liberty are in the individual. They are the establishment within the two parties in the US, the elite in Europe, Russia, China, and the self-destructive Radical Islamists who seek to remake the world and have no understanding of what they are going to get in return. None of the elites understands this world either as individuals or as loosely associated groups: they are operating under the old style 'elites must suppress/repress/rule the mass of individuals'.

They are trying to stop the New Era from happening by destroying economies, civil discourse, and capitalism.

If they succeed the death toll to that success will be fully 2/3 of the population of this planet as nothing else that has been tried in the way of any of the 'isms' works like capitalism does. When results are leveled to be equal, no one sees any reason to succeed via their liberty and what you get from that is not an advancement of culture but a decline into anomie and then, soon, barbarism. Fanatically backed religious ideologies will be hit even harder as the hand of the Gods of the Copybook Headings will hit them even harder as families begin to die of starvation because the much hated materialist goals of capitalism to do social goods via enhancing liberty means they wish to kill of the very people that allow them to survive by getting them low cost food on a global basis. When the food isn't delivered and you can't smite those distant lands because the transportation system has imploded then, as night follows day, you take it out on those who are local to you. Which makes the problem worse, yes, but the kill-off at least means that the food goes a bit further for a short time.

The misguided belief that government can, nay must, regulate everything everyone does from dawn to dusk is not only asinine on its face but unworkable due to the extreme high cost of overhead of implementing and running it. That is the lesson from 'regulating' everything from housing to sunshine: it doesn't work. And as the bureaucracy is isolated from political discourse and yet is wholly infested by political idealogues of the 'we must do something to justify our pay, therefore we must have more power and people in the bureaucracy', it is a prime factor and symptom of the disease. The disease, itself, is: tyranny.

Everywhere you turn is a symptom and they are bemoaned.

The disease is tyrannical government utilizing any tool it can get its hands on to enforce social isolation, to repress speech and thought and to otherwise destroy the very society that creates government. Tyranny is government gone cancerous on the body of the population, and unless it is removed or given such harsh therapy as to kill the mass of the cancer off, society will not survive.

Nor will government in its cancerous form, it will implode from having no society that supports it.

That is what is happening in the US and globally: no one supports this cancerous system and want it gone.

What comes next can either be a polite ushering out of cancerous government by restricting it harshly and understanding the 'good things' it is handing out is poison to the morals, ethics and spirit of individuals, or we will see a Dark Age and Iron Times. The choice is YOURS believe it or not. It isn't in other people's hands unless you hand your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness to other people so as to enslave yourself. If you don't like the government and the system it has created then change or abolish it in a civil way, as that is your right, duty and obligation not just to yourself but your fellow man.

THAT is your Christmas Present, delivered when you were born to you.

If you've lost track of it, I suggest you hunt around the house and find it.

Perhaps it is under all the discarded wrappings?

Best not throw out the gift of liberty with the trash, because you just might need it in the very near future... which is already here, in case that has been missed.

The End in Iraq

2011-12-16T01:21:00.001Z

My thanks to the men and women who have served our Nation in Iraq.

I send my deepest condolences and sympathies to the families and friends of the fallen.

I thank you all deeply for your sacrifice for our republic.

Victory has been hard won, now may others seek to win the peace.

History as teacher

2011-12-03T11:38:00.001Z

I will have to paraphrase a quote for this (I think it may be Heinlein, although H. Beam Piper isn't out of the question for it, either) and it goes something like this:

If you are an expert in a field and your analysis shows that disaster is likely to follow, do you act on it?

This also goes along with the other bit, this one from Glenn Harlan Reynolds which he has stated so many times it isn't funny:

I will believe it is a crisis when those involved start acting like it is.

These both hit in the same direction in that if you see a crisis or disaster coming and you have a reliable set of background(s) to have a decent level of certainty (hitting into the 'pretty certain' which is 50%<Certainty<75%) that it will happen then do you start to act on it and take precautions? My Lady has pointed out to me that I have been blogging about this, in one form or another, since I started blogging and that much of my posting is just about this topic. Forming up the background to get a 'feel' for possibility (that is the universe of all possible things that can happen), probability (that sub-set of things that rise above 0.01% possibility), weighting (level of assurance) and certainty (combining the prior pieces to get to a reasonable set of outcomes that start to fall above the 10% likelihood zone) is not a science, but an art. Analysis varies by an expert, their background and ability to discern what is and isn't probable from all possible events, and then weigh those probable events with a degree of certainty that they might happen.

I have journeyed through politics, societies, warfare, liberty, freedom, death, taxes and human nature over the course of my blogging and that has helped give me a background 'feel' for the course of events. I really don't know a lot, no one can in this world of ours, and I've found myself driven to concentrate on a few, key topics time and time again, and they are ones that are fulcrums for societies, Nations, peoples and even all life on the planet. I really don't worry much about 'is there life on other worlds in different star systems?' as that is a Drake equation function in which we are only in the last couple of years able to fill in one or two of the first numbers in a long series to get the possibility in a rough 'ball park' way. Fun speculation, yes, but surviving our current age is far more important than finding life on other planets. This concept of 'survival' is the key one as, if we don't survive as a species and retain personal liberty, both, then we are finished as an intelligent life form.

While this question has been posed in many ways over the centuries, the most compelling of ways was done by James Burke in his series Connections. In the very first episode we are handed the fall of our society and its material works by a simple question: what do you do when the power goes off and you are stuck in an elevator? This then progresses through a 'worst case scenario' in which something like a Coronal Mass Ejection has bathed the planet for a few days and has wiped out all modern electronics. The power isn't coming back on. Once you get out of the elevator, realize the predicament of the world before anyone else pieces it together, what do you do and where do you go? The answer is that our civilization started out with the ability to plough land, grow crops that would sustain more than just the farmer and his family, and allow excess food to be exchanged for other goods. Before then the world of mankind was in a hunter/gatherer mode, and was nomadic. With agriculture land becomes valuable because of what it can sustain, and good crop land meant the growth of a thriving society that soon could build spaces for relatively non-productive individuals to make a living.

Because the sun is going through a deep minimum cycle and may be in one that has been played out before, there is no good way to say just if a CME will happen, when it will happen, what direction it will go and how energetic it will be. Yet, sooner or later, one will come the way of planet Earth.

Scary stuff, no?

It would help if we prepared for a CME or EMP event(s) by hardening out power and electronics structure, but that costs money, takes time and is a hedge against a low probability event. Something like an EMP induced by a CME is not out of the question and our problem is that we don't know how often a CME of that size is coughed out by the sun in our general direction. This has uncertainty to it, and a lot of it. If these things happened every 10-15 years we would build our equipment and infrastructure with it in mind, but since it may not hit us for centuries... or tomorrow.... we don't. We know that one will, sooner or later, hit the Earth's magnetosphere and atmosphere, but when, how large and how long are all unknowns. You can safeguard some equipment via a Faraday cage (you just knew aluminum foil was good for something, right?) but even if you protect enough to help survive for a couple of years there will be no electronic spare parts. Unless you can make them yourself.

Before the Green Revolution in the 1970's we had expected the carrying capacity of Earth to be in the 4-10 billion range. Before industrialized agriculture, coming in the early 19th century, that carry capacity was in the 2-3 billion range. Pre-industrial agriculture required a very different form of society and lifestyle than we have today, and if a CME induced EMP wiped out modern electronics our current 6 billion people on the planet would see a one year crash into the 1-2 billion range as those who do practice pre-mechanized and early mechanized agriculture aren't in the best of cropland, and in the industrialized world we don't have enough farmers or farmland to sustain current population levels without modern systems.

Another disaster that could do something on this scale, but still leave some industrial capacity for mankind intact, is a caldera event at Yellowstone, National Park. Yellowstone is one of the largest volcanoes on the planet and falls into that category of structures requiring that you need to examine hundreds of miles around the volcano to find out it is actually there. Mt. Toba, being on an island, is easier to find as it blew out a lovely lake and a good part of the island it creates by existing. While Mt. Toba is still in its 'recycle' mode, that is it is still getting mass under it for another eruption and is outside its periodicity for another eruption, Yellowstone is in its periodicity cycle for an eruption and has a decent amount of magma far below the surface to make it a real threat. When it goes it will be a bad few decades on planet Earth until the upper atmosphere aerosols and dust filter out to let a decent amount of sunshine back to the surface. This will, of necessity, created years of bad crops (or years without a real summer) and also impact plankton and sea life in a negative fashion. As the aerosols and dust migrate into the southern hemisphere, no place on the planet will be immune to its effects. And that is if we are lucky and only does a single event, not go into a multi-event mode over a few thousand years of semi-continual eruptions.

This is a certainty to happen within the next 0 to 300,000 years.

Yes, that first number is the goose egg: Zero.

You have a much better chance of getting hit by lightening during a hurricane while having an earthquake happen at the exact same time. Or an asteroid conking you on the noggin and killing you.

It would be really, really nice to be a space based civilization by then, wouldn't it?

Too bad all trends are in the opposite direction for the past 100 years.

The systems that mankind has put in place are what as known as 'brittle': they don't sustain stress well and tend to fracture and break, not bend. When withstanding shock a structure that bends spreads the shock over the structure and allows that force to be distributed. A brittle structure absorbs the shock to its breaking point and then collapses. Getting to space was actually just a theory in the 18th century and basic mechanics for getting to space were worked out in the 19th century, and the first rockets to get up to the edge of space by Robert Goddard showed that this was something that could be achieved. It has been, but done by governments until just recently, and because of the way governments work they are stuck with the problem of doing things in nation-state interest, which is not always in accord with long-term survival.

By prohibiting the citizen opportunities to get to space via a governmentally run system, even though the foundations for a fully space-based system have been available since the late 1960's to early 1970's, as put together by Gerard K. O'Neill's High Frontier team at Princeton, anything that had to get to space had to go through a nation-state government. Private space flight was generally prohibited until just the last decade, and that meant that governments and sponsor corporations saw little interest in better, cheaper and alternative ways to get to space. Something like the use of dirigibles to get high into the atmosphere and then utilize low thrust rockets to increase speed, thus increasing orbital distance, wasn't even thought about until the late 1990's and not seriously thought about until the last 5-6 years. Ditto direct rocketry on private platforms designed by independent companies. By slowly pulling NASA out of the way and opening a commercial spaceport in the US, the US is now the only Nation that may stand on the brink of private space exploration. And because of the economics of getting to orbit, it is actually cheaper to mine the moon, move that material to orbit, smelt it in orbit and build stations in orbit than it is to build them on Earth and get them to orbit. The cost is laying out the minimal infrastructure to do this, which was planned way back in High Frontier.

Even worse is the other things that governments have gotten loaded on with over the last century, like making sure that there is a 'retirement age' and some 'benefits' to citizens. To put it sadly but bluntly: no one promises you a great retirement and stopping work may be the worse idea to getting to a prosperous old age. Because of the nature of national governments, they really can't 'invest' in anything (and the demise of those who DO so is a cautionary tale since the early industrial era). To 'invest' a government must take productive work hour product (known as 'money') from people who actually work for a living and choose which corporations to 'invest' in. This is done not just by direct payment but via 'regulation' which not only uses up citizen taxes to run the 'regulations' but then impinges upon companies who have to comply with such 'regulations' by doing things not related to actual productive work. Instead of holding companies fully liable for health and safety of employees on the job site, the government intervenes to set 'standards'. Because these have a monetary cost to them, larger businesses are better able to comply with these artificial 'standards' by spreading the cost around to all their output than a smaller firm in the same industry. While a small business may be exempt when employing 500 people, the 501st person comes with a huge overhead expansion cost of regulatory compliance for everyone in the company. Thus government not only can support large businesses, it can punish small businesses and ensure that big businesses have fewer up-and-coming competitors.

Notice where survival is in this?

If you don't, and see that adding 'benefits' to citizens via taxation so that a few get the benefits, then you are also experiencing this strange feeling that people who should have been managing their own lives, taking precautions against the future, and generally looking after themselves are in a non-survival mode of thought. That is correct because they are. When government is utilized to shield citizens from the harsh reality of having to actually make a living and figure out if they can ever retire, then government has gotten away from doing the few tasks it was set out to do and now has an expanded suite it was never designed for. A car is a great conveyance on paved roads, just don't try to plough a field with one as they aren't made for that. Yet that is where Connections winds up if you don't have diesel for a tractor on a deserted farm that you were just lucky enough to find after high tech civilization collapsed. You only got there because you were prepared to survive, either outran or outlasted the death of 2/3 of humanity, and now are in absolute survival mode trying to figure out how you will feed yourself, your family and any other loved ones on this deserted farm you somehow got to in your car (that doesn't have a transistorized ignition system or management system but is good old distributor and spark plugs with timing). By having some wherewithal you have actually survived the collapse of government and are now self-governing and find yourself having to restart low tech civilization.

We have seen this sort of scenario before and I will not use the Fall of Rome or any of the interim Chinese Kingdoms/Emperors, or even the rising and falling of the likes of Inca, Maya, Aztecs, Toltecs, etc. There is a precedent for when a large-scale trade system went under (and for its time it was very far reaching, although far less than global), and it crashed due to multiple causes: shifting weather patterns which caused changes in disease location and agricultural output, shifting populations to follow the changes in agriculture and climate, multi-nation alliances, and military struggle. When it started to fall apart they saw the rise of barbarism, mostly at sea because that was handy, but also on land with the mass migration of peoples over a couple of centuries that would displace old populations. Their ships were splendid and carried cargo far and wide, their trade notes are multiple feet deep in some places TODAY, items from as far away as the British Isles, Inner Siberia, India, and Central Africa were traded readily and traders ranged far and wide leaving markings behind. It went down in a bit over a decade and it was the Late Bronze Age that, for all of the distance to Babylon and primitives in the British Isles, it had gone on for centuries and yet we remember it for Troy and one city falling. That city was a trade hub that allowed all this trade to take place easily and those in charge of it, prospered by that trade. An extremely high level of civilization and sophistication was seen due to the wealth increases of trade and many Empires and Kingdoms prospered. Its fall was marked by military venture that was public and then spread to private and then became endemic enough to kill off the trade network. By the end of it the Old Hittite Kingdom was gone, the Achaean Greeks were being replaced by the Dorian Greeks, after Ramses II Egypt barely hung on with bitter fights after sea people ravaged the northern part of the Kingdom, the Israelites found things difficult and the tribe of Dan had to take to ships to survive while others used the turmoil to get back into the Promised Land.

Baltic Amber trade dwindled to nothing. Spice became forgotten save for the few that had taken root natively and were grown. Cities around Greece, modern day Sicily and Italy, many of the islands, the entire coast of Asia Minor were brought low and many burned to the ground and no one has rebuilt at those sites since. The Greek people once had a written script we call Linear-B and there are still piles of it left on coasts around the Med., yet the Greeks lost the ability to read it times got so desperate. Only the great walled city of Tiryens got through, but with much trouble including plague. Troy was rebuilt, but by the time it was actually functioning again it was no longer the center of trade for all of the civilizations around it. No one can say, for certain, how many died, but when you have 30, 50, or 100 cities with anywhere from 10,000-50,000 residents each, and they are all wiped out and the populace barely able to get by on local food production on a rural basis, the numbers must be staggering given the entire population of the planet. It would take 200 to 300 years until trade started to actually get to the minimum of old levels in the new Iron Age. Persia rose and then went too far at the Hot Gates and in a generation there would be a Greek Emperor who would last only a couple of decades until he fell, unable to consolidate that Empire.

The seeds of the Ancient Greeks would sprout far and wide, particularly in that place called Rome, which would, finally, eclipse the old trade web that was by then forgotten to the point of near oblivion. And then forgot the wisdom of Republics and started giving goodies away to the poor so as to appease them and oppress the middle class so the rich could rule. In mere centuries slaves would outnumber the free and then Western Rome would fall, rotten to its core. By then trade was not so dependent on just one city and even the Eternal City could go dark and trade would continue because it was becoming dispersed and diverse.

We now stand at an age of interconnection that, for all its different standards and scale, was only rivaled once before and ours, too, is dependent upon a high technology and civilized peoples to run it. Yet those who expect freebies from government or care from government are not free, at all, and those oppressed by government to its own dictates are less free still. As there was no way to harden the old trade systems so, to, are the lifeblood of our commerce systems unhardened and for all the fineries traded around the globe all it can take is one very bad day and it will come down in a crash. Or rot from the inside as it is already doing as true freedom and liberty are replaced by security provided by government for each man instead of for each Nation. Those who hate the system and call it cold, gray capitalism are lying to themselves and you, for capitalism is the enabler of human liberty and government is that which carries the whip and chains. Those governments that seek to 'control' capitalism become far worse than any gray owner of any company, as the dictates of government are for the government, not its people, and once given the ability to reward and punish, it is the people who suffer and have their spirits broken. We see the new class of warlords as was seen in the Late Bronze Age, called pirates, brigands, armies of thieves, we now call them terrorists and yet their goal is to live and die by the sword no matter what credo they spout.

History teaches us that when Nations depend on trade and have no fallback plan, no hardened way to survive, then all who depend on trade are at the mercy of its fall and that the precarious system will finally fall.

History teaches us that when you see barbarians arise to spread war on their own, with no oversight of any Nation worth speaking of, that you are on the cusp of something that can turn into pure savagery for all involved civilized and barbarian alike.

History teaches us that when individuals are cared for by government which saps money from the productive wealth of working citizens, that it is the unproductive that get rewarded at the behest of the wealthy through the promises of great breads and circuses, and that it is rotten to its very core.

History teaches us that republics need stout defenders from its citizenry at all times who are willing to water the great Tree of Liberty with their own blood and that of tyrants.

History teaches us that no matter how grand the cusp of technology and trade is, that both can be lost in such a short time period as to be breath-taking as your very last breath may be taken by it.

History teaches us that savage man is a threat to all of civilization no matter what the savages say about who they attack it is all who are civilized who are threatened by them, not just those they attack.

History also teaches us that stopping collapse and creating renewal by removing rot and hardening the system via the freedom and liberty of people has never, ever, not once, been tried for any Nation and all others have had their people willing to suffer collapse into barbarous agony rather than raise their hand to halt it and reverse it.

One does not need to be overly intelligent to learn these lessons, nor be extremely deep in understanding as History teaches us via example and we forget that at our peril. They are not nice lessons nor savory ones but, for all of that, they are good lessons to learn.

All one has to do is call themselves a Free Citizen, act civilized, disdain the corrupt enticement of government, not be swayed by the siren's song of power, reach out to be a strength to those you love and your community around you, and then be prepared for the day when you will have to stand for your freedom and liberty with your fellow Free Citizens and defend yourselves morally, ethically and physically against all onslaught. Being civilized isn't about being 'nice' but doing what is necessary, and History has taught me its lessons and now is the time to start changing the path so we can avoid the fate of so many other people's who couldn't be bothered to save civilization, or themselves, and thusly lost both.

There is no greater force for good and civilization than that person that is a Free Citizen.

I am a Free Citizen.

And nothing will sway me from the course of being civilized as I self-govern so that we may have a republic.

The republic is upheld by you being able to self-govern, you being willing and able to care for yourself, you being ready to have, hold and teach the skills necessary to keep local society alive, you being a stout and ready defender of your life, your family, your home and your neighbor, and by you not turning to barbarism not enslaving yourself to any Nation or State to get bread, circuses, medication or hand-out of any sort. Governments that promise health care, retirements, fun and games, free food and on and on always, and ever, collapse under that weight as no government can do these things and survive with any class of free people within it: there are the rulers and the ruled and all else gets crushed between those two.

Republics ask much of its citizens.

Federal republics can only be secured by its citizens stepping up to the plate and saying 'no' to government.

If you have ever wondered why my main blog has many articles on survival of a post-crash sort, DIYism, firearms, sewing, wood working and finishing.... now you know. I do these things not in fear but as a Free Citizen of the Federal Republic of the United States of America. And those who dare to take up that task implied by being such a Free Citizen are the most powerful people on the planet not because we are an army, but we can create one at any moment when our liberty and freedom is in jeopardy. So it was in 1776, so it must remain today to keep our liberties and freedom and pass them on undiminished to our children and grand-children.

Subsidizing stupidity

2011-11-19T15:34:00.001Z

First a look at what happens with subsidies on the effects side, not the 'lets put them in place' side of things. First off is China and gasoline from Chua Baizhen at Bloomberg News 09 JAN 2011:

The government introduced a new fuel-pricing mechanism in December 2008 that tracks global crude costs. A month later, it raised a gasoline consumption tax fivefold, pushing domestic pump prices above those in the U.S. and ending an era of cheap, subsidized fuel. The government has made 13 price adjustments since introducing the system, most recently on Dec. 22.

China has subsidized gasoline use for quite some time and the government has been feeling the effects of trying to provide a 'stable' price point for gasoline to the Chinese public. I had looked at in part in a larger article on the Directivity of China that I put out in FEB 2007 as the subsidies were whipsawing the central government of China.

Consider that when external prices are higher than the internally subsidized prices, then the Chinese government must pay the difference between world market prices and local prices if it wants to keep supply constant. To do that requires incurring debt. This also creates an unsustainable demand for product which, when not having to adjust for market prices, is used as if there was no change in the economic cost of the gasoline. Thus the product loses its 'value' that is its perceived benefit per cost, because prices are artificially low.

If it lets supply float, however, and China is unwilling to pay market prices, then supply drops (long term supply contracts would still keep amounts flowing into China, but only to contract levels) because there is a delta between demand and the amounts supplied on the non-spot market. This creates scarcity of product, although at a given price point. The product is seen as having a set price but has a higher 'value' due to its scarcity and is used less.

Now in the 'salad days' when external prices are below the 'subsidized' prices, the government reaps a net gain either via companies selling gasoline paying more in taxes or, in the case of State purchasers, the government reaping a windfall between low purchase cost and high sales cost. What happens in this scenario, as I outlined, was smuggling, as lower cost gasoline is smuggled in through the Chinese borders and sold at a cost lower than the subsidized, or set, fuel cost. In this case the set price as compared to the market price changes the 'value' perception as well, and the higher 'value' gasoline is that which is smuggled in as it has a lower cost.

It is all the same gallon of gasoline, mind you.

Government interference in pricing structure changes not just the price but the perceived value of the good in question.

This I went over in a 2008 post on Bipartisanship the opposite of good government, which looked at the housing bubble and its bipartisan support, and then the US Senate ignoring testimony on how the world oil market could be gamed as pointed out by the US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural resources by Steve Layton, President and CEO of Equinox Oil Company, part of the Independent Petroleum Association of America. I'll excerpt this part to show how the concept of 'subsidies' works here, as well:

First, world oil prices are essentially set by the last barrel sold. A year ago, Iraq exported about 700,000 barrels/day. In December 1998, it exported about 2.3 million barrels/day. By March it will have another 500,000 barrels/day of capacity on line. Iraq was the only OPEC country to boost its oil revenue in 1998. As other OPEC countries have reduced production to stabilize oil prices, Iraq has become the swing producer of world oil. The swing producer sets the price.

Second, Saddam’s objectives differ from other oil producers. He wanted higher oil prices when he invaded Kuwait – money he needed to build his military forces. Now, he can’t spend money to buy arms. But, he can – by keeping oil prices low – punish his enemies, first by reducing the income to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, and others; second, by driving critical U.S. production to be shutdown and plugged forever.

Third, looking purely at demand and productive capacity, today’s surpluses should not drive prices to their historic depths. We estimate that worldwide production capacity currently exceeds demand by about 4 percent.

This had been exacerbated by problems in some Asian economies but put China in the seat of having the ability to draw in funds under bonds to boost industrial development via changing its investment climate. In a very serious way Saddam Hussein was hurting the US domestic oil production system (that is the independent small producers) and due to consumption drops in places like S. Korea and Japan, allowed the Chinese central bank to reap a windfall between set pricing internally and external pricing that was aided by changes in investing law. The Chinese economy picked up steam and increased its productive capacity and was able to roll over its 5 year bonds in 2002-3 by demonstrating continued production. The problem was that those 5 year vehicles started coming due, again, after 2007-8 and some investors wanted their actual full face value of the bonds paid out.

As I wrote in 2007 China was undergoing the whipsaw from low oil costs to high ones and had to start inching prices up for gasoline then.

Now over to Iran which subsidizes its gasoline and natural gas industries.

Iran faced a major problem at the end of 2007, in that its major natural gas supplier (who supplies 5% of the domestically used natural gas in Iran) was Turkmenistan, which I examined in The shockwaves of 5%, where jihad meets economics. Turkmenistan is a major conduit and supplier of natural gas which has not only normal economic ties, but ones to a Red Mafia outfit that wheels and deals in natural gas (as well as tv stations, hotels, and all sorts of other things). Europe was seeing the need to meet natural gas consumption and was raising the price of natural gas on the global market. Although Turkmenistan doesn't have a direct pipeline to get natural gas to Europe, it has intermediaries that could move it through Russia to Ukraine and then into places like Poland, Romania and Hungary, to sell it at a higher cost.

I have examined Iran's oil system in two previous posts: Iran's Oil Problem and Iran's Oil Outlook.

Facing the multi-million if not multi-billion dollar price differential between fixed contract prices to Iran or fluid and higher prices in Europe, Turkmenistan was seeing potential dollars fly out the window. It conveniently had 'supply problems' with Iran and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas wound up in holding facilities in Ukraine (although anonymously, no one 'claimed' it) and Iran faced a sudden and immediate supply problem for natural gas. Its refineries have not been kept up since the revolution and can supply such a small portion of natural gas and gasoline, that Iran is forced to import both. When sections of Tehran must go cold and dark to make sure bakeries can keep running, the government in Iran suddenly faced a major problem. It caved and paid higher fees and the natural gas flowed again. Presumably the amount siphoned off went to Europe so it was a 'win' for the anonymous holders of the gas in Ukraine, a 'win' for Turkmenistan, a 'win' for Europe and a 'loss' for Iran.

Iran got to this predicament through a multi-fold governmental problem that, primarily, refused to keep up the oil infrastructure in the country. The refineries are the most complex part of the system and they are on their last legs and no one will invest in them as Iran keeps an insane contract policy of charging what it feels like charging for crude oil, without regard to market price. If it needs more billions to run terrorists, it charges more. Gazprom warned Putin about this and China found that their 'investment' wasn't going to get them better treatment or stable prices, so they yanked $10 billion out when they found this out. After that, Iran subsidizes oil and natural gas use.

It is, therefore, priced below market cost and the delta is made up in crude oil sales.

With that said there has been no marginal expansion of the oil fields in Iran (to keep nominal production constant) and the infrastructure is losing oil in the pipelines through poor maintenance (not stolen as in the case in some African countries, just leaking out of the system). Higher world costs helps a bit on getting income, but when gasoline prices go up faster than the rate of crude oil increases (it is a refined or value added product, after all, and has a production cost delta added in), then Iran must pay that cost. Most oil producing nations with refineries are also natural gas exporters as natural gas is a byproduct of refining crude oil. Iran must import BOTH gasoline and natural gas, which tells you what is about to happen to their oil system. They can keep patching it up a bit, but without a major re-investment in new facilities, plus a major production expansion, Iran is facing a huge economic crunch.

What the subsidies do is to put a set, below market price on gasoline and natural gas, which means that it is not gaining a true 'value' perception by the population. They then use it to the maximum of the low price, which is above what can be sustained and more is imported to meet demand. Iran has slowly had to move away from subsidizing both products, because its faltering oil production is not meeting the cost of increased use of both products.

Now lets shift from China and Iran to the good old US of A!

Lord knows we love our subsidies!

We subsidize: home sales, retirement, medical benefits, student loans, 'clean fuels', agricultural products (both raw and refined)... and we get bubbles, lots of economic bubbles... You name it and our lovely Congress probably has a subsidy that comes in many forms: price supports, direct subsidies, rebates on taxes, and the ever lovable 'regulations' to support 'social causes'. This goes far beyond Fannie/Freddie/Ginnie/Sallie, SSA, the M&Ms, ethanol, solar power, mortgage debt, student loan debt, unsustainable retiree benefits plans, IRAs, HSAs, and on and on and on.

Since we have all seen the housing bubble (and, btw, the laws and regulations that caused those have NOT been repealed, which means we can get ANOTHER one any time Congress feels like putting another few trillion on the debt) and, instead, go to everyone's choice for 'why the hell are we doing this?' which is the shifting away of cropland for producing food to producing ethanol. This is done via regulations (mandating a certain amount of gasohol to be sold or ethanol added to fuel), direct subsidies to farmers and some payoffs on the tax side for use via equipment purchases. All of these have created a problem because the US Big Agribusiness (which benefits immensely from this) has done damage to the global market for corn. In particular it has hurt our NAFTA partner Mexico as I go over in Where is the international law with NAFTA? which looked at this phenomena.

Ahhhh... Free Trade! The great panacea! Unless you add subsidies, of course, and then you get unintended consequences as unsustainable and bolstered trade tends to hurt Free Trade. In this case the victims are multi-fold but the main one is Mexico. First off our subsidies to farmers makes our already low cost of production of crops even lower than any other Nation on the planet. No one can compete with crop outputs like those in the US. Don't worry, our government has a solution to that. Mexico, with its relatively backwards agribusiness, soon saw the small and local farming communities having to compete with subsidized corn from the US produced from huge systems and farms that could utilize modern technology to the utmost to cut per acre cost of overhead beyond what any small farm could ever hope to do. Well that was OK in the early days as, hey, those stupid Gringos were opening factories just over the border in Mexico!

Mexican workers flocked to them and the agricultural sector suffered as all those good, high paying jobs in the factories meant people could buy cheap corn from the US.

Those were the days, huh?

Remember Saddam Hussein and last barrel sold setting price from above? Yeah, subsidized crude oil prices to keep prices low, globally. Remember him? Remember what happened in China?

Yeah, Chinese labor was cheaper than Mexican labor so the factories promptly went transnational and moved production to China. All in the name of subsidies: in the US, in China, in Iraq.

And the Mexicans? Well they still had cheap corn and many people went to work north of the border in farms which paid a bit better than the failing system in Mexico.

I'm not painting Mexico out as a 'victim' here: they have their own regulation and subsidy problems with crude oil which add no end to their internal problems. Especially when you get all 'environmentalist' on those topics. Mexico is in no way, shape or form a 'victim' save of its own corrupt system.

What we did in the grand old US of A was up the subsidy for ethanol via various means.

Farmers saw that you could make more, per acre of marginal income, by producing the corn that would be made into ethanol, which isn't a food crop nor a feed crop for animals.

There is a set amount of arable land in the US and when production of a subsidized crop increases it does two things: it reduces the yield of its similar counter-parts (feed corn) and it starts to look to expand its output by putting fallow land to use which raises the price of fallow farmland as it sees a demand increase.

What happens is that feed corn (both for cattle and human consumption) undergoes a price increase as less is produced, farmland property undergoes an increase in valuation due to increased demand, and we produce more of a product that is subsidized to protect it from lower cost producers overseas (mostly Brazilian ethanol but others also produce it cheaper).

In Mexico the price of corn for tortillas skyrocketed in 2006-09.

Elsewhere in the world food shortages started to appear in Egypt, India, and since China has done wonderfully Progressive things with its farming sector it has gotten a Progressive Dustbowl and a decrease in farm labor due to its subsidizing industrial output.

Everyone, and I do mean over 3 billion people, depend on the US of A for FOOD.

The US of A sets food prices like nobody's business because our subsidized Big Agriculture generally outcompetes everyone due to vast acreage put into production and modern farming techniques.

Our educational system, meanwhile, has been concentrating on the humanities and subsidizing those, so we don't produce many new farmers, agronomists, and even folks in the hard sciences and engineering have suffered in output because of subsidized student loans. In the hard fields of maintenance blue collar jobs the US is no lacking a half million welders, alone. This isn't talking about the other jobs necessary to maintain our infrastructure: pipe-fitters, bricklayers, sanitation personnel, road crews, ditch diggers... there are good jobs going begging because of the feeling of 'entitlement' to a good life without having to maintain it via our educational system.

And that elite education costs too much.

Well, it is subsidized, after all, and so you get a bubble economy in it.

If we were still training the maintenance people at a clip to maintain the infrastructure, this wouldn't be a problem for our civilization. Maintenance and marginal expansion would help us get through tough times. Iran doesn't do that to their oil infrastructure and is now paying a price in unrest and having to demonize external enemies for internal problems.

OWS isn't a disease, it is a symptom of rot to the very core of our society manifesting on its skin.

To that we can thank: subsidies put in by government regulation which now strangles every aspect of our economy.

Let go on with a bit from Vladimir Dvornikov's article On "Iron Laws" of Economics and this is not an endorsement of his full line of thought it is an illustration of where we are and he is coming in after talking about minimum wage laws:

[..]

It is important to notice, that the last time the absolute fatalism in the economic area is replaced by a liberal one. "Ironness" of the economic laws is accepted here, but, most probably, not as inexorabliness, but as heartlessness, hardness, and cruelty. "The laws of the market are cruel, but the society, by means of the state, can interfere with its actions, in order to bridle the passions and mitigate the consequences of the spontaneous market". Thus, in the given case, though the objective force of the economic laws is admitted, at the same time, it shows their moral defectiveness, which makes them rather alien and hostile for the majority of the people. Here, the government is offered a little comic role, as a "lubricator" of the iron laws (to keep them from clanking) without, indeed, any hope for improvement. The supporters of the "regulated market ", if I am to understand, are trying to remain seated on two chairs at once, and, as a rule, are falling from both.

The unsteadiness and ambiguity of the moderate fatalism induces the most active minds to pass to the following step - to reject completely the abstract economic laws and to declare government as a sovereign ruler and legislator of the economic life. Namely, the government, here creates and legally fixes "uniform rules of the economic game", which all of it's participants, managing in the given territory, are obliged to observe strictly. Thus, the once almighty economic laws receive the modest role of national customs or peculiarities, which should be taken into account while drawing up of rules of game. But who, tell me, presently may vouch for viability of any cabinet? As a result, the instability of a situation, connected with the changing of political tendencies and tastes of the government on the one hand, and the absence of the firm and objective goals in economic activity on the other, stimulates the most hazardous and vigorous players in "economics", either to bypass, or directly deny the governmental decrees. From here originates, and by it is fed, the powerful and well-organized sector of the "shadow" economy: not paying (in opposition to the "light" one) taxes, or even establishing it's own "rates", with which the state conducts eternal, ruthless, and, in the final account, a fruitless war for incomes.

[..]

The more government regulates the less it can adequately control and no one trusts that control as it sways only to its own wants for power via the forms of politics. The very regulations that are meant to 'uplift' and 'protect' people become the instrument to use against them as the political winds blow. All of those wishing for government to 'moderate' any economic ill then proceed to lobby politically to get that done so yet more falls under sway of government and out of kilter with economics.

Yes there are Iron Laws of economics.

Our entire world has been trying to deny this for decades due to the siren's song of subsidies, promising everlasting good and inculcating everlasting agony. It isn't the only siren sitting amongst the rocks, but it is the easiest to succumb to and once the ship heads towards the rocks then others of its kind are then the focus of attention.

More subsidies!

More regulations!

The loss of freedom and liberty amongst those rocks? Ah, those who listen never tell us about those, now, do they?

The Process

2011-11-03T15:10:00.001Z

From Rudyard Kipling's The Gods of the Copybook Headings:

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

A simple beginning going from water being wet, fire burning us and 2+2=4.

Do note that bound up in these are some of the major tenets of modern Progressivism:

- Handgun control will help everyone... not make us all victims for criminals.

- Loving thy neighbor allows free love... and then you end up loving his wife.

- Birth control, abortion and all those lovely things will free women in the name of population control... and soon the demographics will show that the Nation will not survive.

- A 'social safety net' will 'help' the old and poor... which means you must rob the young and rich to get it destroying the very fabric making up such a 'social safety net'.

- Really there is plenty of money to go around... just print it until the leaves of the trees are worth more than the paper in your pocket.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings are very real in that they are the way in which the world works once man attempts to create society and Nations, for these two go hand-in-hand. Without restraining ourselves by utilizing reason to control our actions, we become savages towards ourselves, firstly, and our fellow man. When this happens man moves ever closer to villainizing the few for personal gain and, by that discontent, upsetting the social order and process which then corrodes society.

With the establishment of reason and willing to love our mates and our children, we create the first bond of society that creates the Nation: we agree amongst those we love to put aside savagery and care for each other not as a collective but as individuals. All our freedom and liberty is within us, no Nation holds any single thing that we do not as individuals and any government created is to look after our negative liberties and utilize them only to protect us.

The personal form of 'wealth redistribution' is called robbery when done by individuals, and taxation when done by governments. We agree to this minor evil to create the few things necessary to oversee those individuals who will not self-govern and become a threat to us all.

The personal form of offensive warfare when done by individuals is called piracy or terrorism or brigandage, when we put together a means to utilize it to go after a common foe we turn it into public warfare which requires a declaration if we are to attack and the reasons to do so. Individuals cannot draft up articles of war as they do not hold themselves to be judged by any other entity, they assume full power for all actions against all mankind. They can win only by pulling all of mankind down to their level, and then a long, long road back to being civilized ensues.

The personal form of restraint of others is called bondage or slavery, while the public form is called incarceration or imprisonment, and it has controls over it to protect the innocent from it.

In all of these things, and many more, government is described thusly by Tom Paine in Common Sense:

Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first a patron, the last a punisher.

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least. WHEREFORE, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows, that whatever FORM thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.

We form society with our fellow man and agreement with him on how to protect each other. This simple means of agreement creates government which is then bound up in the Nation we have already created by ourselves. We create government not to uphold the good but to restrain the wicked. Morality in government is only in that wickedness and predation are kept at bay from our positive discourse and intercourse that creates society. When government becomes the upholder of virtue and promulgator of that which is good, it then is given power to not only restrain the wicked but to punish the good to the dictates of said government which we call tyrannical: that which should be a boon to all is provided the whip and the carrot so that we are molded into what government wants us to be, not allow us to become the best people we can possibly be.

How can government become a pure evil? By men putting aside their desire to practice good on their own and wish to make it something that government does.

In his farewell address George Washington first reiterated what had come before:

Interwoven as is the love of liberty with every ligament of your hearts, no recommendation of mine is necessary to fortify or confirm the attachment.

The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.

Our union is made up by individuals which is stated via We The People. While this is a collective it is not a collective that seeks to abolish individuality so that there is only a collective self, but that which is a collection of like-minded individuals that are willing to look out for each other and seek common governance and to always hold such governance under scrutiny. The collective cannot perform such scrutiny, only individuals have that power and that right to do so.

In creating a republic George Washington then seeks to ask a most pertinent question that had vexed all of those who reviewed history because republics were prone to fail via their very size when grown large:

While, then, every part of our country thus feels an immediate and particular interest in union, all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united mass of means and efforts greater strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations; and, what is of inestimable value, they must derive from union an exemption from those broils and wars between themselves, which so frequently afflict neighboring countries not tied together by the same governments, which their own rival ships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues would stimulate and embitter. Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.

These considerations speak a persuasive language to every reflecting and virtuous mind, and exhibit the continuance of the Union as a primary object of patriotic desire. Is there a doubt whether a common government can embrace so large a sphere? Let experience solve it. To listen to mere speculation in such a case were criminal. We are authorized to hope that a proper organization of the whole with the auxiliary agency of governments for the respective subdivisions, will afford a happy issue to the experiment. It is well worth a fair and full experiment. With such powerful and obvious motives to union, affecting all parts of our country, while experience shall not have demonstrated its impracticability, there will always be reason to distrust the patriotism of those who in any quarter may endeavor to weaken its bands.

Here the warning is against not only differential favors that others would seek to bestow so as to turn States against each other, but to warn that the holding of an ongoing military establishment at the national level is also a threat to the republic and liberty. The form of militia the States utilized were, thusly, a bulwark for the citizenry to express dedication to the union, and a benefit to the union during wars in that the voluntary citizen soldier would be summoned to perform for their nation and their fellow man during times of trouble. States would not have the ability for external military ventures and as the forces were all volunteer operating under guidelines, the States would have no standing army to threaten its citizens.

From this system of making the national government weak in this realm and the States strong, but not overbearing, the nation would have the capability for local self-governance and direct means to hold the national government accountable via the militia structure. The right to keep and bear arms goes far beyond the positive aspect of personal warfare (self-defense) and the derived right of property (defense of property) but here is given a further positive aspect as defending one's State against tyrannical national government.

From Kipling the lash is implied, from Paine it is seen as a necessary instrument and here George Washington points out its positive valuation in upkeep of liberty and republican form of government to allow a wide-scale support of a republic by its component parts. From that the responsibility for national defense lies not in the national government, which only declares or responds to war, nor in the States, that only provide for guidelines and supervision of militia, but with the citizenry that must be armed and know the means and methods of warfare. This describes a pyramid of troops that has a small cadre at the national level, an intermediate cadre that is formalized at the State level and all citizens for defense of the nation at every turn and place. This is just as it should be as those rights and liberty to have a nation start with the individuals and they, therefore, are depended upon to exercise those positive liberties and freedom in defense of the nation.

All ability to have a nation that defends liberty then rests not upon government at the highest level but at the lowest level of self-government. This is the premise of how to make a large scale republic work.

Within the next paragraph the problems that can cause this to fail are then reviewed:

In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it occurs as matter of serious concern that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by geographical discriminations, Northern and Southern, Atlantic and Western; whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief that there is a real difference of local interests and views. One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection. The inhabitants of our Western country have lately had a useful lesson on this head; they have seen, in the negotiation by the Executive, and in the unanimous ratification by the Senate, of the treaty with Spain, and in the universal satisfaction at that event, throughout the United States, a decisive proof how unfounded were the suspicions propagated among them of a policy in the General Government and in the Atlantic States unfriendly to their interests in regard to the Mississippi; they have been witnesses to the formation of two treaties, that with Great Britain, and that with Spain, which secure to them everything they could desire, in respect to our foreign relations, towards confirming their prosperity. Will it not be their wisdom to rely for the preservation of these advantages on the Union by which they were procured ? Will they not henceforth be deaf to those advisers, if such there are, who would sever them from their brethren and connect them with aliens?

The warning against the parochial geographic advantages is not even put just at the State level but that of the districts within States. Here corruption is seen as starting not on high, at the national level, but at the lowest level, that which is most local to you. A corrupt system does not arrive with an instant dictator but through a corruption of normal processes that allow for the corrosion of trust between the citizens and their government via partisan favoritism displayed by those elected to office.

Beneficial government at the national level prevents external gaming of the republican system at the lowest level, but this is no sinecure against the gaming from within. Here, too, corruption is a source of problems:

All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.

However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

Towards the preservation of your government, and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite, not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the Constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown. In all the changes to which you may be invited, remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments as of other human institutions; that experience is the surest standard by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country; that facility in changes, upon the credit of mere hypothesis and opinion, exposes to perpetual change, from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion; and remember, especially, that for the efficient management of your common interests, in a country so extensive as ours, a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is indispensable. Liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian. It is, indeed, little else than a name, where the government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of faction, to confine each member of the society within the limits prescribed by the laws, and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of person and property.

Here the full-blown context of the problem of local government at the district level is played out as it leads to larger scale corruption at the highest level. This is done by factions which we come to call parties political, that seek to divide the common interest into special interests and by that means co-opt a portion of the whole from the whole for partisan gain. Government is via the delegates who are representative of the will of the people, not the actual organs of government. When political faction seeks to make such organs that are not directly accountable to the people and that can be swayed by political faction, then ideology is put before the common good by the minority through the offices of government.

This is what Tom Paine meant when he said "our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer." The co-optation of government by the minority for their will done via the delegated means then becomes a system of unprincipled use of government power against the common good and the common man. From this the corruption spreads from its lowest point, in districts seeking partisan favor and gain for factional supporters, upwards into the national government by seeking the means to put in unaccountable organs that are then swayed by delegates who are partisan.

Cunning and ambitious ideologues will seek to sell factional gain as a benefit to all and establish, as their means, changes to the Constitution. This then changes the power and accountability structure of the Constitution, itself, to be amenable to partisan means rather than the common good. Direct differential taxation was restricted away from federal powers by design, and by design that was changed in Amendment XVI which was promised never to create an income tax above 7% and which, within 7 years of enacting it, this had jumped to 70%. This also removed the check and balance to federal spending by having the States act as intermediaries for collection of taxation apportioned by population size. Similarly Amendment XVII had changed the structure of the Senate away from that of appointments by State government so as to form a State governmental check on the federal government, to one in which the popular vote was substituted so as to remove the balance of State input into the national system. These two amendments, along with Amendment XVIII on the Prohibition of Alcohol, are all amendments pushed by the Progressive movement in America.

These Amendments have garnered the population a tax code filled with favoritism and partisanship, a rubber-stamp Senate for expansion of government bodies and power, and the requirement of some sanity to say that trying to stop alcohol use is too far, but to then say that use of other drugs can be restricted as they are used by a very small faction within the nation. Here the will of the majority is now played upon, beset by regulations and then utilized to demonize the use of medicinal agents that can be abused and are addictive. Yet substances agreeable to the majority that also have those characteristics are left with only minor inflictions of power via taxation upon them. This last is the imposition of morality via the tax code and taxation is, in every instance, a necessary evil only and not a moral good. From such a tool no moral good can arise and only the demonstration that going against morality is punished be derived. Do as you are told or else, not do what is good because it is good, is the maxim and it is used upon children. Adults are moral agents for themselves and society and should know better and see punishment as the only recourse from when they can no longer govern themselves and protect society from their negative liberties. If government could instill morality, then the prevention of the ability to distill liquor would have been a final and ending point to its use and abuse, and yet just the contrary happened.

Changes in government structure and power are, therefore, things to be done slowly and with due deliberation not only at the highest level but at the lowest: not something to be pushed forward in 7 years for political and factional reasons but something to be deliberated for decades, if necessary, to see if the necessary instrument for change is truly government or if it can be satisfied by some other industry by the people as a whole. The positive liberties of the people are far more numerous and far more powerful than the oversight of negative liberties that we empower government to perform. Government, then, is the last and least of our common tools to help society to flourish and to care for the sick, elderly and needy, not the first. Government can only create via the subtraction of power and wealth from the people, while the people who are creative, can generate more power for good and wealth via their industry which is a benefit to all of society and allows others to flourish and prosper. Prosperity is the absence of governmental oversight upon our selves, our bodies, our property and our work which is the manifestation of our liberty.

Having freedom to work, alone, is of little value if government regulates the liberty at all turns and then determines what it is you may keep by your own work and what must be handed over to government as its due. This is an ill when considering taxation, and needs to be restricted. When it is used to determine when you work, how long you work, for how much you can work and what your working conditions are, then you are no longer the responsible actor in your own working life and government has usurped that role. Tyranny does not come stamping in and crashing through the doors, but is invited in as a means to 'help' others by restricting them: the boot to the face forever starts with the helping hand which is also that of the pickpocket of government. Once you gladly accept the petty tyranny upon an employer, you then make yourself the target for the greater tyranny of restriction of all your other liberties because you have handed over the means to do so to government via your personal and factional ideologies that see the restrictions of others as fine and never realize that they also are a restriction upon you, as well.

Would that this was just a particular problem and could be easily solved! Unfortunately George Washington goes on from there to describe just where this arises:

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

Here the cause is laid out for all to see: human nature.

When we create parties and factions along with that comes factional conflict of the civil form. Civil factional conflict is known by many names over time as the faction types and societies change: the War of the Roses, the Praetorian Guards, the Houses of the Hapsburgs, Sultans against Emirs, Emperor against Governors, Stalinists and Trotskyites, National and International Socialists... on and on and on throughout history all the way to Democrats and Republicans. When factional ideology represented by a minority gains power it then rubs the other party the wrong way which has its own minority viewpoint. In theory the common good should be represented but, in fact, both minorities have views of what is right and wrong via the institution of government and then seek to place their own priorities down upon them so as to inflict them upon the common people. This doesn't matter if it is a Sun Emperor seeking to play favorites amongst relatives and Governors or the shifting alliances of Nobles during the 30 Years War or the imposition of Party Machines via the electoral process everywhere from Weimar to Tammany Hall. The result of factional conflict is the spirit of revenge.

Again the corruption of the people starts not on-high but with the petty struggles between parties and factions, so that there is an emotional investment of individuals in their party above the common good. When the seeking of power becomes an end in inflicting one's ideologies upon the public and to punish one's adversaries, then no matter how 'good' the rationale that is put forward it is always, and ever, the welcome of the tyrant to dinner.

Class warfare is just such a means, as it attempts to pit the putative rich against the desperate poor, and yet if the rich are pulled down where will jobs come from? If prosperity for the individual is not protected, then how is wealth generation sustained? And if there is not a diverse economy but one directed to the ends of government, how can that adapt to new events and times without having the benefit of depth of diversity within it that allows for adaptation at the lowest level of concern? At each and every point when the power of government is utilized it is a negative factor as it impedes growth, diversity, and personal achievement and impoverishes all through the restriction of liberty and factional redistribution of wealth to no long term good ends at all.

How are these organs of government turned from those of the common good to such despotic and tyrannical ends? This subject is simple due to the increasing complexity of government that is forced upon it by each faction, in turn:

It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositaries, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern; some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any time yield.

In our time we have seen the consolidation of numerous government agencies into larger ones. The Dept. of Homeland Security is one such, the Department of Justice another, and while the Director of National Intelligence is not created as being powerful it has its ability to direct large swaths of the Intelligence Community both towards foreign problems and domestic ones. Where there were once numerous and restricted agencies and departments there are now larger ones with less well defined purposes and goals. It is this that erodes the distinction between what is legally constituted as a restricted set of powers and what is agglomerated to become something that has no proper Constitutional basis. Government is given very few and special powers that are each of them distinct and defined: when those lines are blurred they become indistinct and oppressive in size, scope and nature. In a prior post I went over this by utilizing a fictional setting created by Fred Saberhagen that described what this means via his Swords books and what it means to have discrete powers that are sovereign. Here is the poem in that series that describes them:

THE SONG OF SWORDS

Who holds Coinspinner knows good odds

Whichever move he make

But the Sword of Chance, to please the gods

Slips from him like a snake.

The Sword of Justice balances the pans

Of right and wrong, and foul and fair.

Eye for an eye, Doomgiver scans

The fate of all folk everywhere.

Dragonslicer, Dragonslicer, how d'you slay?

Reaching for the heart in behind the scales.

Dragonslicer, Dragonslicer, where do you stay?

In the belly of the giant that my blade impales.

Farslayer howls across the world

For thy heart, for thy heart, who hast wronged me!

Vengeance is his who casts the blade

Yet he will in the end no triumph see.

Whose flesh the Sword of Mercy hurts has drawn no breath;

Whose soul it heals has wandered in the night,

Has paid the summing of all debts in death

Has turned to see returning light.

The Mindsword spun in the dawn's gray light

And men and demons knelt down before.

The Mindsword flashed in the midday bright

Gods joined the dance, and the march to war.

It spun in the twilight dim as well

And gods and men marched off to hell.

I shatter Swords and splinter spears;

None stands to Shieldbreaker.

My point's the fount of orphans' tears

My edge the widowmaker.

The Sword of Stealth is given to

One lonely and despised.

Sightblinder's gifts: his eyes are keen

His nature is disguised.

The Tyrant's Blade no blood hath spilled

But doth the spirit carve

Soulcutter hath no body killed

But many left to starve.

The Sword of Siege struck a hammer's blow

With a crash, and a smash, and a tumbled wall.

Stonecutter laid a castle low

With a groan, and a roar, and a tower's fall.

Long roads the Sword of Fury makes

Hard walls it builds around the soft

The fighter who Townsaver takes

Can bid farewell to home and croft.

Who holds Wayfinder finds good roads

Its master's step is brisk.

The Sword of Wisdom lightens loads

But adds unto their risk.

(end of the song)

Each Sword is Sovereign within its domain with only one Sword able to cancel all, but one, itself. There are checks and balances between Swords as there are within powers of republican government: each has its domain that is defined and cannot cross them without losing the cause and meaning of its direct power. Even the most Omni-canceling Sword has, itself, a foil that will take it down as well, so that even the mightiest has counter and there is no counter to that one as its power is only positive, not negative at all. Each negative power must have a domain as, at first, a sovereign power which is part and parcel of national government as seen in Law of Nations, and by republican form which casts separate powers into separate areas within national government.

Unlike other books on law, Law of Nations is a descriptive set of laws, not a prescriptive nor proscriptive set of laws. Law of Nations is universal to mankind by being man and having the ability to set aside negative liberties for common oversight and accept the necessary evil of government that forms the State to uphold the Nation. Because it is universal, every government formed by individuals resides under it without regard to region, time period, ethnicity, religious affiliation, or any other thing. You get Law of Nations by having marriage and creating families, not by having someone administer it to you. Each of the sovereign powers we delegate to the nation is described in Law of Nations which is amenable to any form of government as they all have the same set of powers. All of the Presidents at least up to Abraham Lincoln and, arguably, up to Teddy Roosevelt, understood the concepts embodied by this concept.

Washington sees that these powers are ones that are not just tools but weapons and they, like Saberhagen's SWORDS, can be used for ill within their domain and used by the few to subjugate the many. We can not get rid of these powers unless we become savages and find ourselves willing to kill our loved ones and children for base personal desire. Government is the organ of society that is created to stop this from happening, and yet when that organ turns toxic it becomes the weapon that is the ill to the body as a whole. Once it starts to grow it can become cancerous and over-run the body and, finally, destroy it which requires the regeneration of a fresh body and set of organs by those who remain.

The main protection from this happening? Knowledge.

It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?

Promote then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.

First off Washington performs the cart-horse order agreement by putting the horse, that is virtue or morality, before the cart, which is popular government.

The means of safety against corrupt and factional government? Knowledge dissemination. Here it must be noted that the institutions are not being delegated to the necessary evil, which is to say government, but to those things created by the people to create public opinion. Public opinion cannot be created by government and the people remain free and with liberty as once it becomes the fount of opinion creation those who are in power will bend that opinion system to their will.

Edward Bernays in Propaganda (1928) put it like this in pp. 11-12:

It might be better to have, instead of propaganda and special pleading, committees of wise men who would choose our rulers, dictate our conduct, private and public, and decide upon the best types of clothes for us to wear and the best kinds of food for us to eat. But we have chosen the opposite method, that of open competition. We must find a way to make free competition function with reasonable smoothness. To achieve this society has consented to permit free competition to be organized by leadership and propaganda.

Some of the phenomena of this process are criticized— the manipulation of news, the inflation of personality, and the general ballyhoo by which politicians and commercial products and social ideas are brought to the consciousness of the masses. The instruments by which public opinion is organized and focused may be misused. But such organization and focusing are necessary to orderly life.

As civilization has become more complex, and as the need for invisible government has been increasingly demonstrated, the technical means have been invented and developed by which opinion may be regimented.

With the printing press and the newspaper, the railroad, the telephone, telegraph, radio and airplanes, ideas can be spread rapidly and even instantaneously over the whole of America.

The 'invisible government' are those who promulgate messages and ideology inside and outside of government to sway public opinion. Previously described are political parties to give 'order' to our political choices otherwise we would be left choosing a multitude of people and then have this messy process to narrow down who is to represent us in government which he describes just prior to this:

It is not usually realized how necessary these invisible governors are to the orderly functioning of our group life. In theory, every citizen may vote for whom he pleases. Our Constitution does not envisage political parties as part of the mechanism of government, and its framers seem not to have pictured to themselves the existence in our national politics of anything like the modern political machine. But the American voters soon found that without organization and direction their individual votes, cast, perhaps, for dozens or hundreds of candidates, would produce nothing but confusion. Invisible government, in the shape of rudimentary political parties, arose almost overnight. Ever since then we have agreed, for the sake of simplicity and practicality, that party machines should narrow down the field of choice to two candidates, or at most three or four.

What George Washington describes, however, is just such a political machine and how it comes about and what it does. The concept of 'political machine' is seen as new and progressive in the time of Bernays, and yet describes the machinations of every dictator, tyrant and monarch in history: they each promulgated propaganda to further themselves, their cohorts and their factions from Mayan stelae and temple inscriptions to Egyptian hieroglyphics that always tended to portray the current ruler as the greatest and closest to the deities to the politically directed religious dogmas of the 30 Years War amongst various sects that changed by whoever was in power all the way known to Washington (in whole or in part). Indeed the most depressing thing reading Progressive Era ideas is how backwards they seem when they refer to political machines as modern institutions.

These tyrannical and despotic ideas were given a new set of clothes in the Progressive Era, but the nature of what they were put on soon seeped through them so that their horrific effects could be seen, anew. These are not brand-new ills, just the same old ones visiting us with a different pitch-line supplied to them by those who seek to endow themselves at the cost of the public and to the benefit of the factional, chosen few.

It is this corrosive concept that the few need to herd the many and make basic decisions for them that now is the problem in modern life: not only are the political mechanisms not adapting they are not made to adapt to such rapidly changing circumstances while individuals are. Indeed you are reading this through a system that allows access to either source documents either directly (via online content) or indirectly via purchase link. The Bernays text, itself, has been pirated numerous times so only a bit of searching can help you find it. Do note that this is necessary as the government has been used by partisan interests of corporations to extend the copyright beyond an original 10+10years or semi-modern 16+16 years to now go to life+some years, putting such texts outside of the public domain that Bernays said was insufficient to garner information. If you don't think an author can or should benefit beyond their natural life or a very modest set period of time, then you have the influence of Edward Bernays to thank for that as these are the 'invisible governors' showing their hand.

This then moves me to where the article began and to give the last few lines of Kipling:

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

We are not destined to repeat history if we but bothered to learn it.

On the Duties of Everyman - to Everyman

2011-10-03T13:34:00.001Z

This post is a continuation of the examination of Samuel Pufendorf's On the Duty of Man and Citizen (1682). This post follows the previous section I've looked at On the Duties of Man - To God, On the Duties of Man - To Man plus the overview of why this is important in Three Realms of Law. This work by Pufendorf is, itself, an overview of a multi-volume work he had generated and thought that a primer on that work, suitable for students, would be a vital part of a teaching curricula examining Natural Law. I will continue to do the overview of his logic and keep my usual commentary in abeyance as much as possible so as to follow Pufendorf's line of reasoning so that the outline of it is plain to see.

Like previous posts I will summarize Pufendorf's work. Unlike prior works I will bring in more of his own reasoning system so as to highlight his overview on the Duties we have and why they are important which will require some of my own verbiage and attempt to see if there is any insight I can pass on to you, as a reader. For this I am sorry for any clumsiness on my part as an individual, and will attempt to use reason to guide me throughout.

The Duties of Everyman to Everyman is a critical juncture as it moves from the realm of individual obligations well understood and are placed wholly upon the individual, to those of Man to our society and other men in society. In this realm of Duties there are two major areas to know:

First those duties bound to us by our Creator, which are called absolute duties. These are the duties imposed upon man to bind us to other men. This is a strong binding and is universal, thusly it is absolute.

Second are those duties imposed upon us by custom or otherwise taken up as part of tradition that is advantageous to the creation and maintenance of society. These are called hypothetical duties as they vary from culture to culture, tradition to tradition.

One is constant over all mankind so that we can have societies amongst men. The other is variable upon individual societies and custom.

The first of all absolute duties is our obligation not to harm other men. This is, at once, the most far-reaching and simplest of all things as it requires the mere omission of harming others, which is to say not to act. Self-restraint via the light of reason is to restrain our passions. It is the most necessary duty of man to have society and is the essential and necessary part of forming all societies. As Pufendorf states:

For I can live at peace with a man who does me no positive service, and with a man who does not exchange even the commonest of duties with me, provided he does me no harm. In fact, this is all we desire from mankind at large; it is only within a fairly small circle that we impart good things to each other.

Here, then, is not only the Hippocratic Oath, but our general oath to each other: first do no harm. Our minimal requirement beyond that is essential, however, and it is encapsulated in the idea of 'leave me alone'. This is the most obvious of doctrines that it should be self-evident, and yet we stray as men in this so often that we cause pain and suffering all under the banner of doing good and well to others. That cannot be done for all of mankind nor even society as a whole, but only amongst a relatively small circle of virtuous people who freely partake of positive exchanges with each other.

The obverse of this coin is likewise obvious and should be self-evident:

By contrast, there is no way that I can leave at peace with a man who does me harm. For nature has implanted in each man such a tender love of himself and of what he is, that he cannot but repel every means one offer to do harm to either.

There is no space between the first quote and the second, they are of one paragraph, one thought, and yet both concepts are absolute upon mankind as a whole and upon us as men being individuals. The restraint of doing harm has both positive aspects, when things are not done to others, and negatives, when things that are negative are done to others. As day follows night, this is obvious to all and a necessary pre-requisite to maintain oneself and one's society, yet at every turn in history where there is suffering and pain, both of these are transgressed.

If we are inspired by later summations of the self-evident and unalienable rights that we are endowed with, then we must be able to identify what these actually are. Other parts of my prior examinations have been recapitulations of Pufendorf's work, and yet that passive understanding, while strong, needs some active statement at this point by me.

This necessary Duty is not only upon those things that are endowed to us by Nature, which is to say life, body, limbs, chastity and liberty, but upon those things we get as members of society via human convention and institutions. Thus all our negative liberties and rights, for to have a negative right one gets the negative liberty of its use, must be restrained, which is to say taking things from others via spoilage, robbery, pillage. These are crimes across all societies as these negative activities and utilization of our negative liberties puts at peril the good works of others as a violence by killing, wounding, robbery, theft, fraud and any other thing done by us directly or indirectly as an exercise of our negative liberties.

When we, As a People, speak of those few things given to government to do they are, without exception, an exercise of negative liberties that would put us all at peril from each other if they had no oversight at all. This is not a new concept but a tradition carried on by all societies because they are societies created from marriage and that most basic binding upon us from that simple start of not exercising our negative liberties upon another person who we cling to. From that formulation of society understood at least as far back as Brackton, it is now put forward as a full and essential right with liberty that must restrain us in its use against others beyond that of marriage. We are not at the focal point of later documents, but at a concentration and amplification point here with Pufendorf who follows in the tradition of Brackton and Grotius and will propel this doctrine forward as it is simple, basic, self-evident and part of what we must do as an unalienable right and it comes with an unalienable duty to others.

Those who do harm are to be held accountable for their actions and all punishment and restitution is to be sought from those who do such wrongs. Without restitution to those that have been harmed, there would be no check upon the wicked and no ability of the wronged to make peace with himself or with that individual or individuals that have done him harm. This is all harm not just to a person but their property which has been demonstrated previously as being the means by which we support ourselves and gather together those things we create or exchange to sustain us in this life within nature. Without compensation for those things stolen or despoiled there is no way way to make whole that which has been broken. Simple punishment is not enough as following loss due to the original harm are all part of the original harm, without exception, and are to be considered wholly a part of such harm.

Do note that since this is in the section of Duties of Everyman to Everyman that this is what we must uphold across all mankind so as to have society and to have punishment, recompense, restitution and reconciliation amongst men. Single and simple punishment is not enough standing on its own. Any thought of rehabilitation without restitution and reconciliation is empty and meaningless to those who have been harmed. This is the concept of atonement, literally 'at onement' in which the individual who atones is recognized as doing so and that the individual will not transgress that boundary again.

This is true when one acts alone to harm others and when one acts with others to harm others, the cost and obligation is held by all either in part, if simply acting as a willing actor in such harm, or equally in whole if actively participating in such harm. Partaking of the harm, itself, is the cause for punishment and for seeking restitution against those doing the causing. Of those who do not partake in the causing of harm or doing of harm in any instance, there is no retribution, even when they express joy in the misery of others or seek to diminish the harm caused even if they wished for it before the act, so long as they did not partake of the act there is no cause for punishment.

Next is the concept called conspiracy (again the literal is 'to breathe together' which is to con-spire) in which several men act together to inflict loss or harm. Those who conspire are the cause of the harm and any they pull in that are not understanding of the conspiracy are merely an instrument of it (although liable for any act that is criminal on its own). It is those that are active in a conspiracy that are liable for its crimes so the act of any single individual in a conspiracy is attributable to all within it, and any act of the conspiracy itself are liable to all actors within it as individuals. If only a single individual in a conspiracy is caught then that person is liable for the costs of all the damages of the entire conspiracy. In any crime in which a number of individuals partake that is not a conspiracy, they are each liable for their own actions and damages they caused, not the entire group. With that said if just one within an entire group that are not acting together is willing to pay the damages for all, then they may do so and the rest are not held for those costs.

Here we see that each man is a moral actor within society for his actions and when the utilization of negative liberties by a group that conspires against any individual, group or all of society, then they are seen as utilizing their negative liberties in concert and towards a given end that is not upheld by the law. When one becomes a part of such a group then they are beholden for the ills perpetrated by the entire group. That is what happens when you create a negative version of society against the rest of society: you lose the ability to say that you are an individual by your voluntary participation in such a group, just as in normal society. Do note this is not some version of class or race based punishment, but punishment meted out only to those who voluntarily agree to exercise their negative rights and liberties against others.

In matters of restitution those who commit crimes with malice aforethought are as liable for repayment as those done in ignorance or negligence. In cases where there cannot be oversight or in those where the chaos is so pervasive (as in war) that accidents happen because of such chaos, then restitution may be light. That is also the case where the strictest of oversight is given and, due to no fault of any involved, damage is done. The unforeseen is ever with us no matter how much care we take in events and the more chaotic the events the less care and oversight that is available to even trace culpability, not to speak of restitution.

The next action set pertains to slaves and their owners, with faults attributable to the owner. While this is outdated for its original subject matter, it still pertains to autonomous devices and mechanisms that are set for a task and then either do so but with negative consequences, or fail to do so and in going awry cause damages. In these cases it is the owner of the device involved that is liable for the damages. It is this simple concept that seems to have been lost in modern times, where we try to trace culpability to a manufacturer (who may, indeed, make a bad product) and not to the user who must exercise due diligence in the care and use of such objects and understand their faults and limitations. Can a mere manufacturer be held liable for an item duly sold, therefore transferring ownership to another, with no fault being attached to the owner? As individuals we have the ability and, indeed, obligation to understand what our machines and devices do, to have them checked over and to understand their problems much as the slave owner of prior times had. Only if a manufacturer sells something with knowledge of faults of device before it is sold can they be under obligation for restitution due to presenting false evidence of its reliability and trustworthiness. Due to the complexity of devices involved we also understand that even the manufacturer may not know of faults in their devices, and for that a much lower standard of restitution must be available if they demonstrate they have upheld all other manner of oversight for all known problems. This derivative of slave ownership being now transferred to devices and machines thus creates the concept of 'quality control'.

As it is for slaves so it is for the animals we own and our culpability for their actions is one that goes along with that of slaves. Likewise we are liable for restitution based on similar precepts.

We must understand that beyond liability for simple loss via negligence or lack of oversight, that restitution is as much as we may seek. When there is no malice aforethought involved, simply making good a loss is the best that can be done on this Earth.

When malice is involved the higher standard of penitence is added to reparation, so that there is an attempt to be at one with those injured by admitting to the malice, restoring what balance can be made, and then seeking to never do such things again.

For the injured Pufendorf admonishes:

Anyone who refuses to be content with reparation and repentance, and insists in any case on seeking vengeance on his own account, is merely gratifying the bitterness of his own heart and destroying the peace among men for no good reason. On this ground vengeance too is condemned by natural law, since its only aim is to give trouble to those who have done us harm, and to console our hearts with their pain. It is the more appropriate that men forgive each other's offences, the more frequently they violate the laws of the supreme Deity and have themselves daily need of pardon.

Signpost on the New Era

2011-09-16T23:33:00.001Z

I wrote about the drivers of the New Era in Dawn of a New Era, and will draw out the underlying principles from that to examine how they work asymmetrically in the way things work.

Let's go back to the Old Era in television, specifically cable television. Back in the day, which was the late 1970's, cable tv was going to be the New Era of television! It had good, clean reception, lots and lots of channels (with nothing on to watch), premium content channels like HBO and Skinemax... err... Cinemax, plus 'local access' which was what the Left desired: low cost, low budget, low content places where they could say whatever they want and be watched by their friends. Halcyon days, no? No longer were you beholden to the 3 Letter Alphabet Stations but could get those same stations from other places, too! Joy, oh, rapture!

Ted Turner (with nice little bio at Wikipedia, your black hole for information) got in on that bandwagon after starting out with his father's billboard business and a little UHF channel (remember those?) back in 1963. Then in 1970 he formed up Turner Broadcasting and after that, with his super-station of different content on cable, he made CNN which started in 1980. He formed up CNN with $20 million dollars (which is about $55 million in today's dollars) and employed 200 people. And he had a media empire which would grow and grow in size.

Great stuff, huh?

Now fast forward to... well... this week.

On 12 SEP 2011 Glenn Beck's television network started officially, although they had been beta testing it for a few weeks prior to the debut. GBTV started with: $20 million. Glenn Beck has been a media mogul... ahhh... is he a media mogul? Not really, not in the Ted Turner buying stations sense, no. He does have a popular radio program and when he went to Fox News Corp. he had a staggering demo at 5pm that was outdrawing primetime offerings on other News networks and was neck and neck with Bill O'Reilly at the 8pm slot at FNC. His GBTV has some free content and pay-for content on either a monthly or annual basis.

He has more subscribers than Oprah Winfrey has viewers on OWN [Source: WSJ]:

When Mr. Beck announced GBTV in June, the network had 80,000 subscribers. In the months since, GBTV subscribers have swelled to more than 230,000, according to people close to the network, even though Mr. Beck‘s show hasn’t yet begun.

The audience is far less than the more than 2.2 million daily viewers his program on Fox drew, on average, over its 27-month run, which ended in June after clashes with the network’s management.

But it is more than the average 156,000 people who were watching the Oprah Winfrey Network in June.

Now Ted Turner built his media empire up from 1963 to the late 1970's to get together the money to put CNN on the air, which is a 24 hour news channel.

Glenn Beck worked as a top tv show host for a few years at FNC, started The Blaze (which is becoming the news portion of his new 2 hour show) in 2010, and has had a hit radio program for years. As he recounts it 9/11 caught him wholly unprepared to know what was going on, which caused him to take a deeper look at the problems that were revealed by that attack.

Now it is time to do the signpost checklist to see how the emergence of the New Era compares to the old.

1) Moore's Law – Computing power and access to the Internet were unavailable to Ted Turner at the start of CNN, although computers were used as the network stood up, most of the early stuff was done the old fashioned way, by hand. Glenn Beck's GBTV is all digital, via streaming media and the ROKU box, a handy little device that has dedicated media streams developed by various content providers. Such a device with limited computer capability, memory, display (regular and high definition) and no monthly fee wasn't something you could imagine in 1980. The computer in one way, shape or form is required for GBTV.

2) Metcalfe's Law – The network of the 1980's was satellite broadcast television for CNN. That is descriptive of a one-to-many media, in which one provider (or gatekeeper) contacts many users. It is inherently one-way and only gained any Internet capability in the last 15 years. CNN has to support that system as a legacy network as it is efficient for what it is. GBTV has no legacy network to work with: it is not on the air, not cable and not stuck with a one-to-many content system of set display times for shows. Shows are streaming and on-demand, which means that after they are made you get to decide when to see them. Additionally because it is a networked system on the Internet, feedback can happen in real time when GBTV is active with a live feed, thus allowing faster interaction between the host of the show and the full audience outside of the one in the studio. Neither network is currently using the many-to-many paradigm, save for GBTV's announcement yesterday of developing a media distribution system for college students to post and distribute their content for other users. That is a many-to-many content and distribution system and CNN doesn't have it, while GBTV will have it in a week.

3) Feiler Faster Thesis (FFT) – The FFT is descriptive of a shortened loop for ingesting, understanding and processing news information not via machines but for the user. CNN was on the first cycle of that in 1980, allowing for a continuous content feed that helped viewers get better informed via their gateway about the world. The FFT does not stop after one cycle, but is continuous, thus the requirement for more news from varied outlets allowed the market for news to grow, which meant that CNN had to keep up with that growth or lose market share. It lost market share. From the start of having a television in one's home in the late 1940's to 1980 was a bit over 30 years for the FFT to kick in. By 1995 other 24-hour news channels had started up and the FFT was in force. In 7 years, circa 2002, CNN was no longer top dog in the 24-hour news market. By 2010 it was losing ability to get a top ranked show. Now it is fighting for relevance in niche markets. People are processing the news and analyzing it faster than it can be provided and the ability of symmetrical networks that allow many-to-many capability has begun to marginalized any news source that is run by a gatekeeper. GBTV is not a news show, it is an asymmetrically distributed show on a many-to-many system with minor subscription fee. Since the Internet was opened for common use in the early 1990's, say 1992, to 2011 is nearly 20 years (for rounding sake), and the FFT will be the basis for it until the analysis time because of known content amount by a user dwindles to near instantly. If you can read an article, see its underlying assumptions, question the reasoning and doubt the conclusions and cite why and sources for each of those steps, then you are in the New Era. GBTV is in the New Era, while CNN is struggling to figure out what the New Era actually means.

4) Stephen J. Gould's Observation on Theory-Scale Applicability – Here the idea is that to reach a wider audience requires presence and that presence is King. This applied to the old broadcast networks and cable networks, and now presence is ubiquitous via the Internet. Being there is half the battle now, but content, the old King, is returning with force and it does not require a high priced studio to make. If the ability to give a compelling narrative utilizing authentic presentation media is a winner (and has been for any reality program be it Wild Kingdom or Deadliest Catch) then absolute reality captured by individuals on cellphone cameras or other digital video/audio means will then make for compelling content in the New Era. Content and Presence together make for compelling viewing and the final piece of interaction makes for learning how to live your life and communicate with those that relate to you as you relate to them. This schema can be applied to such things as bacteria as they are ubiquitous, have presence, do communicate with each other (although not via digital means) and are the dominant life form on the planet. Plus they were able to make it toxic to competitors and began an arms race that hasn't ended yet on the small or large scale. This schema for success is scale independent, then, and those following it will succeed (although not a guarantee for each individual, those following the underlying paradigm will generally be favored). CNN is stuck with legacy capability, and lacks many functions to allow it to operate in the New Era. It will fail if it does not adapt. GBTV has a much better chance for success although that is not guaranteed.

5) Disintermediation – Simply put: CNN sees itself as a gatekeeper, GBTV sees itself as an enabler. CNN wants to tell you what the news is, GBTV wants you to figure out what the world means on your own. CNN is an intermediary and not such a good one these days. GBTV is a provider of information and will give you one viewpoint and then ask for help to see if it is one with a high degree of correspondence to actual reality.

6) Emergence – CNN has an editorial staff, a number of writers, and a bias in reporting: that is top-down behavior. GBTV comes from the culmination of experience which has been built up over time via research and synthesizing what works and what does not: it is contingent upon information and factual data and experience, and cannot be said to be directed to any other goal than that and is able to change based on information and knowledge. CNN is authoritarian and agenda driven, while GBTV recognizes that, as they say, the truth has no agenda.

7) Knowledge Web – The creation of CNN was that of a standard, old line presentation system that depends little on utilization of past history to look for present relevance, only the ephemeral present matters. GBTV is about the creation of the links to the past and present so that a living history is utilized to help us understand ourselves and our future.

8) Accelerating Change – This is the realm that examines what it takes to stand up an information system in the New Era. To get to a limited, national audience took 17 years, building a media system, and then investing $20 million into a news broadcast system dependent upon satellite technology. The modern era has that same $20 million but its effective purchasing power is less than half of what it was in 1980, and yet because it utilizes the efficiencies of computer power and networks, putting together of a 'media empire' in the form of a radio show, a news oriented website and then an expanding on-demand and live broadcast system with global reach. The acceleration of change from the early days of television to the 1980's was already fast and apparent as James Burke demonstrated at the time. Since then the predicted acceleration of changes has continued and that has now changed how we view what we do, what media is and expanded the scope of it beyond anything that was dreamt of in 1980. Between the late '40s and 1980 is a full cycle of ingesting the then current satellite broadcast capability to a large audience. From 1980 to the present the reach of all telecom systems have expanded to the point where enough cellphones have been produced so that each and every person on the globe could have one... it they were all working, that is. Media capture capability has shrunk from million dollar studios to tens of dollar cellphones and digital cameras, with some of the software for processing the raw video and audio having the price of free attached to it. Getting skill to use it still takes time, but the barrier to entry has been reduced because of the acceleration of change so that we can not only have it but use it in new and novel ways and in ways that old era systems could never do.

Taken together CNN represents an old era media system, with legacy systems that keep it tethered to a past that is now disappearing before our eyes. Even its next generation competitor, Fox News, is suffering from this malady although it is trying to morph into something that can survive in the New Era. GBTV and other media systems run by individuals and dedicated small groups are the future of New Era media and the first generation of it. They, too, will be challenged by these drivers listed above as the Next Generation of the New Era is already starting to appear. In a decade we will not even know how we could live as we did in 1980.

Or we will be plunged into a global dark age without technology and even literacy threatened, because they will be offered on the burning pyre of those who wish to control others and cannot stand the idea of freedom of thought, expression and letting others live with liberty.

What the future holds depends, as it did when James Burke presented Connections, on you.

And I wouldn't bet that you won't live to have to make the choice between freedom with liberty or tyranny with repression.

Because for all the change, the hearts of man have not changed one single, solitary bit... we just cycle through the decision making process faster now.

So what are the 'entitlements'?

2011-09-14T11:58:00.001Z

An important misdirection on 'entitlements', especially Social Security, is that you are 'paying' into an 'account' that is a lockbox.

Unfortunately, that has never been true.

In Helvering v. Davis (1937) the Supreme Court determined that the 'payments' into SSA were simple taxes. Here is a review of Title VIII that puts SSA into place:

Title VIII, as we have said, lays two different types of tax, an "income tax on employees" and "an excise tax on employers." The income tax on employees is measured by wages paid during the calendar year. ' 801. The excise tax on the employer is to be paid "with respect to having individuals in his employ," and, like the tax on employees, is measured by wages. ' 804. Neither tax is applicable to certain types of employment, such as agricultural labor, domestic service, service for the national or state governments, and service performed by persons who have attained the age of 65 years. ' 811(b). The two taxes are at the same rate. '' 801, 804. For the years 1937 to 1939, inclusive, the rate for each tax is fixed at one percent. Thereafter the rate increases 1/2 of 1 percent every three years, until, after December 31, 1948, the rate for each tax reaches 3 percent. Ibid. In the computation of wages, all remuneration is to be included except so much as is in excess of $3,000 during the calendar year affected. ' 811(a). The income tax on employees is to be collected by the employer, who is to deduct the amount from the wages "as and when paid." ' 80a(a). He is indemnified against claims and demands of any person by reason of such payment. Ibid. The proceeds of both taxes are to be paid into the Treasury like internal revenue taxes generally, and are not earmarked in any way. ' 807(a). There are penalties for nonpayment. ' 807(c).

There is the nub of it: what you pay are simple taxes that are not earmarked in any way. You do NOT pay money into a 'lockbox' and Congress stopped the procedure of having SSA funds go to SSA and, instead, they go into the general funds with Treasury notes going to SSA with promises of repayment of those notes. Basically the 'trust fund' set up in the 1930's was abolished by a later Congress.

Congresses get to do that, you know?

But you still had an 'account', right?

Unfortunately, that has never been the case.

In Flemming v. Nestor (1960), the Supreme Court ruled against any contractual obligation put forward by the US government in SSA. Nestor challenged that he had a 'right' to SSA because it was 'owed' to him by the US government which had pulled his benefits due to him being a Communist Party member.

The SCOTUS ruled that the 'account' was not property and was not covered by Constitutional protections. Indeed it is a payment made by the will of Congress.

So those slips of paper you get when you pay into SSA saying how much you 'have' in an 'account'?

Meaningless.

You pay taxes and you get promises of future support. No promise made by the US government is binding in any way, shape or form. WE BIND government via the Constitution, and within those limits the power we grant is Sovereign in nature.

And that 1960 case brings up one very important point.

Lets say that you were an ideologue who had gotten to the Presidency and needed a useful tool to punish those that weren't supporting you in a re-election campaign. Key or 'swing' districts might see threats of having the individuals getting SSA have their payments reduced or even their 'accounts' severed completely. If they didn't vote the 'right way'. Perhaps start with missing payments due to 'timing difficulties' and then, if that didn't convince recipients to 'change their mind' then start cutting them off from those payments on a more frequent basis.

Now here is the important thing to keep in mind: ANY President of EITHER party could do this.

SSA, then, would be used as a tool against the people of the United States if they did not agree with the politics of their 'betters' in government.

Legally, too.

Be a shame to have those 'entitlements' cut off, wouldn't it?

And the thing is that the government holds this capability on ANY contract it signs up to. It is called 'Termination for the Convenience of the Government' or T4C in contracting parlance. Now for all of those out there who railed and impugned Halliburton and other companies do remember that ANY President can stop contracts with those companies and that if they have no real competitors then the US would be without those functions provided by that company. Which is why, for all of the Left railing against 'cronyism' for Halliburton, President Obama has done nothing about their contracts: their services are unique and necessary to critical missions.

And that is for the military. Of course such a move to remove vital services might get a President thrown out of office via impeachment or the ballot box.

Unless he did it late in a political campaign so as to politicize the topic and rouse his 'base'.

Or punish the 'base' of the 'other side' via threats and intimidation.

Not just with SSA, Medicare/Medicaid but with ANY contract held with the US government in ANY district for ANY reason or NONE AT ALL.

Remember when Thomas Paine called government a 'necessary evil' way back in Common Sense? That is for when government just does the few things it MUST do. When it starts to hand out goodies, then the Evil becomes Pure.

Which is why anyone, with any mental capacity to understand that 1 + 1 = 2, and not 3 for large values of 1, understands why you want a highly limited, restricted government starved of any treats and kept on a damn short leash. This beast has grown so that it is now demanding not just its food, but ours as well, and is near to threatening to bite off the hand that feeds it. I would suggest looking for a large stick and saying 'good doggie' until it can be beaten back to its proper place.

Your liberty and freedom depend on it.

So does your life, if you do the math.

As it was, so shall it be

2011-09-11T04:00:00.000Z

Never forgive.

Never forget.

Thinking off the cuff

2011-09-08T15:55:00.001Z

After the so-called Presidential debates last night, the question of what to do with SSA came up. I mean, the system is broke, broken and a Ponzi Scheme that exists on taxes. So what to do? I took 10 minutes as I was writing to think up a simple plan... I don't claim it to be good, but it does put together a lot of disparate ideas floating around, which at least makes it something different and, hopefully, a start to something better.

Thus at Hot Air I replied thusly and this will be the end of the post:

Doing away with SSA also means doing away with FICA.

We can design a better system that puts all on SSA currently into a budget area where the bonds held by the fund are used and Congress can kick in any amount it can afford to help supplement that. There would be no new recipients coming into that system and the SSA card would be used only for those recipients who wish to stay in the system.

For everyone else you can set up an account to put in money before taxes of not more than 10% of your earned income so as to reduce your tax liability, and put it into an account where, in 30 years, you can take money out tax free for any reason or no reason at all. Children can either have accounts started by their parents, or are allowed to start one with general back-dating for initiation at age 18 or at any time thereafter.

A proviso for those starting an account with an SSA card is that the account has its timer started from the day you got your SSA card: it is considered back-dated to that day. If that is more than 30 years ago you now have a way to shelter income and have a tax free way to recover that income immediately, tax free.

Another proviso is that money must go into an account in any amount annually for it to continue its status. One red cent will do it. There is no requirement for where the funds MUST come from only that funds are PUT IN to the account annually.

This ends the idea of having to hold an investment because what everyone talks about is an ‘account’ that reaches some maturity date – it isn’t the way you invest, that can be in anything, but how long you’ve had the account. And as the retirement age is abolished this gives a good way for those who are older and have a higher general income to put away a bit more of that as they grow older. They can roll other investments into that account so that any with required amounts to take out (the current IRAs) can then go directly into the new account. The old IRAs are allowed to go in tax free and the money comes out, tax free.

All fund vehicles inside the account are considered untaxable, period. While companies and diversified holding organizations do have to pay taxes for any transactions, all benefits put into the personal account are secured from further taxation as income, capital gains or any other income source. Yes you still have to pay sales taxes and other forms of taxation, but that is on the spending side, not the income side.

This does some immediate things.

- First it allows those who whine and complain about an account TODAY to get to make a REAL ACCOUNT that might actually be better and more flexible than SSA because they have held an SSA card for a long time. You don’t get ‘benefits’ from the government, but can shelter a portion of current income from taxation and if you’ve had the card longer than 30 years, you can start spending it. That isn’t wise, of course, but the account remains open as long as you have funds in it.

- Second is that those who wish to leave SSA as recipients and go back to work can then utilize this account to do the same as any other long-term SSA card holder. If you can get a job that pays more, net, than SSA you will then have away to reduce its tax burden to you. This can be ‘means tested’ so that there is a fraction of SSA going to you, based on your earned income and the year that you get more in net income from your work than you do from SSA, your SSA access ends. You have become a full and independent older adult who no longer needs the help of Uncle Sam. Thank you.

- Third is that parents can put money into a child’s account and when that child grows older he or she will have something with a date certain of when they can get to the funds. If started at birth, then you can do that at 30 years old just when that first real house starts to become a necessity. If done at 18, then at 48 you gain access to the account for medical expenditures, advanced schooling for children or other needs. This is actually far better than SSA/Medicare/Medicaid will ever be.

No one can mandate that you put money into such an account, but it is available to you as a citizen. After SSA is removed your account can be started by your parents at any time from your birth day onwards, or by you at 18 if your parents are unable to do so.

And if you start to think that this is a way to get money out of the taxable reaches of government, then you are getting the point to the account. If we mean what we say about having a sustainable economy via investment then this is just the sort of thing you want as it can hold any investment vehicle, cash, or even an entire estate which can then be rolled over without any taxation to children or other account holders. This will put all governments on a short spending leash, yes, and any who wish to expose their earnings to the ravages of legislators can do so. This will cheese of anyone who thinks that anything should be liable for taxes to pay for ‘good things’… and says to them: responsible citizens who can pay their own way should have the risks and benefits of doing so. These people are not a ‘burden’ to the system because their investment and spending will create a new system very different from today’s and a direct pipeline of funds and investment vehicles into a tax shelter for even the poorest of citizens will allow all citizens to learn to take care of themselves.

Don’t just replace SSA and other entitlements.

Make something better that the government can’t ravage to its spendthrift ends.

This took all of 10 minutes to think up.

I am sure you can do better.

ajacksonian on September 8, 2011 at 7:12 AM

Belief in America or Just the Bureaucracy

2011-09-07T00:38:00.001Z

This is a quick take on the plan put forth by Mitt Romney for what he would do as President: Believe In America.

He has the 5 Bills for Day 1... mind you Congress makes and drafts bills, so he is asking Congress to do this for him. Even if his proposal is just wrapped into a bill, it still has to go through normal vetting in both Houses. Of course most Congresses dealing with a new President like to give him something early on, and that will usually be the last of it for what a President gets easily. On to the proposals.

First – Cut corporate income tax rates to 25%. This is becoming a theme amongst the Republican candidates with John Huntsman proposing something similar.

Second – Implement the negotiated free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea. That is a good thing and requires Senate approval, which would go relatively easily with this President who can still take this one away with a sign of his pen and handing it to Harry Reid. That he hasn't has shown President Obama's lack of skill at foreign policy, diplomacy and the treaty ratification process which starts with the President and ends in the Senate.

Third - The Domestic Energy Act, and I will give you its talking point directly:

• Directs the Department of the Interior to undertake a comprehensive
survey of American energy reserves in partnership with exploration
companies and initiates leasing in all areas currently approved
for exploration

Notice that this talking point does not look at the role of the EPA and Dept. of Interior or if they should even exist at this point. If the point had read 'Seeks to disband the EPA, Dept. of Energy, and end the regulatory authority of the Dept. of the Interior on energy concerns and return those to the States' he might have something. As it is he is still working to keep the regulatory bodies around after they have proven toxic to the Nation's economy via over-reach. That these agencies can have such power under ANY President is the problem: if we are depending on good nature and kindness from the Oval Office resident, then human nature will leave these powers open to abuse. The problem lies not with the not granting of leasing permits, but in the US government having any power over them at all. This is odd because of the next point.

Fourth - The Retraining Reform Act, and again direct verbiage:

• Consolidates the sprawl of federal retraining programs and returns
funding and responsibility for these programs to the states

If this is such a great idea for 'retraining programs' then how about for determination of energy exploration? Or why, indeed, does the federal government get involved not only with 'retraining' but 'education' as a whole? For pointed projects for military affairs there should be some funding to support research, but the entire federal array of spending in this realm is something that belongs at the State level. Again, why not abolish the Dept. of Education, end all 'retraining' initiatives and then just cut the budget? The message from 2010 was Stop The Spending, and to this point it hasn't been stopped.

Fifth – A 5% across the board cut to discretionary programs, yielding $20 Billion. Why not abolish the Dept. of Agriculture and get nearly 4x that amount? Toss in EPA, Education, Energy, Labor, choice parts of Interior... that would be a massive re-scope in federal power, of course. That is not what is being proposed.

There are also five Executive Orders that would go out on Day One and those are next.

First – Tell HHS to yield as much authority back to the States for health insurance and prepare to end Obamacare. Say, why isn't that in a bill on Day One?

Second – Rescind all Obama regulations and cap regulation growth to $0 as to impact on the economy. Of course if you got rid of the regulatory agencies which have over-reached you could not only get to $0 growth but get some cash back by selling off the property, furnishings and such of the regulatory agencies involved. That is something a businessman would do – get rid of failing parts of a business and yield any revenue from their remains that he can get. Oh, sorry! I though Romney was a businessman...

Third - An Order to Boost Domestic Energy Production and direct verbiage, again, boldface is mine wherever seen:

• Directs the Department of the Interior to implement a process for rapid
issuance of drilling permits to developers with established safety records
seeking to use pre-approved techniques in pre-approved areas

The federal government has proven to be the PROBLEM in issuing permits, particularly Interior and EPA. How about just asking for those powers and regulatory organizations to be abolished and let the States figure it out for themselves as they have a good set of procedures for near shore drilling and the ability to craft good policy for their State and its concerns? But that would be federalism at work. Can't have that!

Fourth – A Romney hobby-horse is China and seeking sanctions against it for violating our trade agreements with it. He could, of course, just rip up the agreement and be done with it. Mind you, this is a guy who's company (or one of the arms of Bain) was in bed with Huawei which was seeking to muscle in on encryption technology. Yes, his hand-picked man was running the company, but Mr. Romney was the owner of it, so that makes things look a bit interesting as to his beef with China. He could propose a three tier system of Free Trade with Nations that are our friends and that offer protections of the rights of their citizens from abusive government, normal trade relations with any government that is neither hostile nor friendly and offers at least some protections to their citizens, and no trade for those Nations that are hostile to us and seek to abuse the rights of their own people. You know, something simple that makes the position of the US clear and understandable with regards to Free Trade and human rights?

Fifth – And then there is this one, An Order to Empower American Businesses and Workers, and verbiage:

• Reverses the executive orders issued by President Obama that tilt the
playing field in favor of organized labor, including the one encouraging
the use of union labor on major government construction projects

Great as far as it goes. Note that the Dept. of Labor and NLRB isn't addressed in this. He will address one of them later in the additional back-up material. On p.4 he has a Labor Policy area and I'll give that one to start looking at the underpinnings of how Gov. Romney thinks government should be run:

LABOR POLICY
Mitt Romney will protect the worker rights and employer flexibility crucial to innovation, economic growth, and job creation. As president, Romney’s first step in improving labor policy will be to ensure that our labor laws create a stable and level playing field on which businesses can operate. This means he will appoint to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) experienced individuals with a respect for the law and an even-handed approach to labor relations. Rather than seek to impose his own vision for the future of labor law via executive fiat and bureaucratic subterfuge, Romney will take the conservative approach and work with Congress to amend the outdated portions of the existing statutory framework, setting it on a stronger footing appropriate to contemporary conditions.

Specifically, Romney will seek amendments to the National Labor Relations Act that protect free enterprise, free choice, and free speech. The Act must be amended to ensure that it does not allow the NLRB to constrain companies in their investment decisions, as the NLRB is attempting to do in the Boeing case. It must also be amended to guarantee workers the right to receive full information about the pros and cons of unionization and then express their own preference in the privacy of the voting booth. And it must put an end to the undemocratic practice of allowing unions to deduct money directly from worker paychecks and spend it on political causes with which the workers may disagree.

How about just abolishing the damned thing? Not just the NLRB but the Dept. of Labor, both, as the States were dealing with things pretty well before these things were created. And if you want to protect Constitutional rights, then you take the abusers to court, which means States have to make sure that everyone is treated equally, and the federal government has a lovely Congress to make sure that it can be constrained so as not to utilize any discretion when awarding contracts. Wouldn't that be a novel idea? Get rid of abusive agencies, hand power back to the States and then seek to have discretion removed by Congress so that abuse on the part of a President or an Agency can be taken to court. Why, that is almost novel! Do note, that is not what Mitt Romney is proposing. He trusts the power and authority of the bureaucracy and thinks that all it takes is electing good people to the position of President because, you know, we would never elect someone who would abuse that power.

Right?

Oh, wait a sec... that is exactly what his proposal is addressing and he is not dealing with the root of the problem but, instead, trimming the noxious weed back a bit but leaving it in place. If you are noticing a decided lack of distrust of bureaucracies and how they work at the federal level, then you are starting to get a feel for Mitt Romney's proposal.

Let's take a look at the part on 'human capital' right next to the labor policy area:

HUMAN CAPITAL POLICY
Mitt Romney sees two important objectives that America can pursue immediately to build on the extraordinary traditional strengths of its workforce. The first is to retrain American workers to ensure that they have the education and skills to match the jobs of today’s economy. The second is to attract the best and brightest from around the world. As president, Romney will focus retraining efforts on a partnership that brings together the states and the private sector. He will consolidate federal programs and then block grant major funding streams to states. Federal policy will be structured to encourage the use of Personal Reemployment Accounts that empower workers to put retraining funds to efficient use and that encourage employers to provide on-the-job training.

Romney will also press for an immigration policy that maximizes America’s economic potential. The United States needs to attract and retain job creators from wherever they come. Romney will raise the ceiling on the number of visas issued to holders of advanced degrees in math, science, and engineering who have job offers in those fields from U.S. companies. Romney will also work to establish a policy that staples a green card to the diploma of every eligible student visa holder who graduates from an American university with an advanced degree in math, science, or engineering.

I have some bad news for Mitt Romney: the job of President of the United States is NOT about bringing States and the private sector together. Sorry, that is up to the States to decide. But as he is the one in control of the cash stream via Block Grants, why, he gets to do that! Isn't government wonderful? Hand cash over to people and then get to tell them how to utilize it! Why its so... Progressive! And then he will help make individual accounts to make sure the federal government can 'help' individuals. Gee, isn't that swell of him?

I'm all for the part of attracting the best & brightest. Make sure they don't feel as if they are going to get shafted by having to go through all the legwork while illegals get offered some sweet amnesty, ok? And Gov. Romney might want to take a look at closing the borders to the undocumented, illegal workers coming into the US so that Americans don't have to compete at the low end against them.

Now to back up to energy policy on p.3:

ENERGY POLICY
Mitt Romney will pursue an energy policy that puts conservative principles into action: significant regulatory reform, support for increased production, and a government that focuses on funding basic research instead of chasing fads and picking winners. Romney will streamline federal regulation of energy exploration and development so that the government acts as a facilitator of those activities instead of as an obstacle to them. He will create one-stop shops and impose fixed timelines for standard permits and approvals, and he will accelerate the process for companies with established safety records seeking to employ approved practices in approved areas.

Under this robust and efficient regulatory framework, Romney will significantly expand the areas available for energy development—including in the Gulf of Mexico, the Outer Continental Shelf, Western lands, and Alaska. He will also strengthen partnerships with Canada and Mexico to expand opportunities for American companies in the development of those nations’ resources. And he will encourage continued development of unconventional reserves like shale gas and oil that hold enormous promise for expanding the base of U.S. reserves.

You know all of that could be significantly accomplished by getting rid of federal 'oversight' in these areas. And to make things even sweeter he could divest the US government of the land it has grabbed in energy rich areas and hand those back to the States, as well, so that some States can see some active revenue coming from their land via land taxation. And that would mean less cost to Interior as it wouldn't have so much land under its belt to 'administer'. Plus get rid of any potential abuse by an future President to do fun things with manipulating the energy supply of the Nation and put that back in the hands of the States where it belongs.

What I see here in this lovely plan, is a misplaced trust in government power and bureaucracies to do 'good'. The role of the federal government is to apply equal application of the law, not tilt it towards Unions or towards business, but to apply it equally and fairly to all Americans so that any taken to court get a level playing field there. That would mean recognizing that things done locally be it training, education, energy production, anything not handed in the Constitution to the federal government, belongs with the States and the people. That we not only trust in God, but we then place trust in ourselves to hold our government accountable at the most local of levels where our power as citizens is at its strongest. Not with the national government where it is at its weakest.

This plan is written so as to leave the abusive power structure largely in place and continue its drain on the federal government which, in case it hasn't been noticed, is broke. Not just broken, but running so deep in the red that $20 billion out of $1.6 trillion is not just a bad joke but a mockery of fiscal sanity.

Gov. Romney needs to join the 21st century, as these 20th century style 'solutions' are the sort of thing that got us into this mess to begin with. And he does not seem to recognize that these powers are misplaced and open to future abuse if the bureaucracies are left intact. Which they are. These are not 'solutions' of helping the American people by reducing the size, scope and power of government, but of papering over the massive defects of the government and hoping that a little bit of prosperity will lull people back to sleep about the massive problems our government has with its power.

What we have gotten wrong about the war on terror

2011-08-13T11:13:00.001Z

The following is a broad brush analysis paper of The Jacksonian Party.

This is a multi-part hat-tip, first to Instapundit linking most recently to a piece by Abe Greenwald at Commentary Magazine on What We Got Right In The War On Terror. He had also linked to this piece by John Podhoretz at PowerLine which also links to the Greenwald article, but can no longer find that quick link from Instapundit.

To be up front, I am not going to do an analysis of the Greenwald article, because we have gotten many things right in the war on terror. As an example the employment of police methodologies to go after terror cells in places like Iraq was first implemented in that war for finding Saddam Hussein, but has proven an excellent tool for in-group analysis to find out who is connected with whom inside and outside terror organizations. The United States Armed Forces have proven to be the most flexible and dedicated armies ever seen on this planet and have proven a very hard adversary for in-country terrorists in the theaters of war we are engaged in: Iraq, Af-Pak, Philippines, Colombia, Kenya.

Other major pluses include:

1) The use of UAV/UCAV platforms to go after terror cell sustainment and after higher terror organization leadership. Pinpoint attacks to remove supply lines run by small groups and to go after higher level operatives of al Qaeda have proven quite effective.

2) Utilizing SPEC OPS forces to take down 'tough nuts' and to serve as intermediaries to local populations prior to the introduction (or re-introduction) of regular armed forces. Their stories in places like the Kurdish areas of Iraq, Anbar Province, and the border highlands of Afghanistan will not be known for years if not decades, and yet their effects are enormous.

3) Interoperating and cooperating with INTEL organizations by the military so that military forces and the 'shadow warriors' have a means to exchange information and utilize each other's strengths are, like the SPEC OPS forces, stories that will remain untold but their effects to help find the outside and inside actors for terror organizations is one that has proven effective time and again.

4) Moving from 'set piece' military ready for a 'two front major conflict' to an adaptable and responsive military as a system is something that is so overlooked that it isn't even mentioned, and yet the military organization on the ground, today, is not the one we started out with. The legacy of Gen. David Petraeus and the utilization of modern communications and data exchanges by the US Armed Forces have now tightened an entire loop of doctrine, training, and results analysis from years to days. This is a revolution in military affairs, yet little is spoken about it.

5) The very basic thing of recognizing that al Qaeda is a threat and that for all that it is a very lightly funded organization, they utilize their limited resources to great effect. Going after such an organization is not an easy task and yet our Armed Forces have shown us key weaknesses not just in their structure but in their sociology and inability to adapt to even modest differences in tribal cultures. The early imprint of African tribal cultures stuck with al Qaeda through its early years in Afghanistan and then that was still applied to places like Iraq. To this day we still hear of how al Qaeda doesn't work to 'fit in' and, instead, utilize terror and killing to force themselves (often literally) on civilian populations. After being around more than 15 years in three major cultural regions with highly variant views on tribalism one would think that al Qaeda could adapt well, and yet they have not adapted at all.

The list of successes goes on and on.

There is a problem with such lists, however.

What is described is a Grand Tactical vision of success, not a Grand Strategic one. Some of my earliest writings ask for just that: a basic Grand Strategic set of guidelines so we can know what it is we must do to WIN. I put down some of the very basic things that are required for a victory in Goals in the Global War on Terror (25 FEB 2006), and thought them relatively common sense strategic venues that were at once asymmetrical and descriptive of what is necessary to seriously address the problems of Transnational Terrorism. Someone had to at least post something like this because no one was putting that strategic vision forward. And that has remained the case to this day and is one of the most painful things to say because it is blindingly obvious and yet none will speak of it.

Why is this important?

To use the military cliche: 'Amateurs talk tactics, Professionals talk logistics.'

All the lovely Grand Tactical stuff must have a deep seated Grand Strategy with active goals in mind or else, at the end of the fighting, you have won nothing. To fight against an asymmetrical power on the logistics front one must pursue their logistics supply chain. That doesn't start with a jihadi and an AK-47 terrorizing a remote village in Afghanistan, it starts with where the money came from to recruit the jihadi, train the jihadi, transport the jihadi, infiltrated that jihadi in-theater, clothe and feed the jihadi, and then get that jihadi to that village to fire rounds around shouting 'allahu akbar!'.

Your spelling may vary.

For all the lovely tactical kills our Armed Forces have done, there has been very little done on the strategic side. For all of the great talking points of protecting America from attack since 9/11, we have had the Ft. Hood shooting and at least one plot festering against Ft. Dix. We have also had a group from Trinidad & Tobago plot against JFK airport in NY, and the attempted missions to get into the US for New Year's Eve bombings. More worrying still are the jackets found in the US SW desert areas that are from Egypt and indicate al Qaeda training organizations, and as very little has come up from that realm in the way of al Qaeda espionage/financial groups, the concept that the US will remain terror-free is misguided. To this day we still do not do a full 100% cargo inspection verification for cargo ships coming to our shores, and all it takes is one 'dirty bomb' (radiation, biological or persistent chemicals) to ruin the economic balance of the US by removing just a small percentage of critical transportation transfer areas at one harbor.

It is indeed wonderful that we have degraded al Qaeda's operational capability since 9/11! But then it had spent a decade working up to that and the organization still remembers some of its skills necessary to operate with less in the way of operatives and support. Killing off the veteran combatants is a huge plus, don't get me wrong, but for all the documents and such we have gotten to show how they work from the inside, we still have not addressed hemming them in from the outside. This sort of thing works pretty well with organized crime because they must restrict themselves to a very few venues and set of operatives due to their internal trust-relationship system.

Terrorists, however, get backing wherever they can, which includes far more than Nation States, and includes religious tithing, terror taxing, smuggling of illegal goods, trafficking in semi-precious stones and metals, extortion, murder for hire, charity front groups, semi-legitimate establishments in the goods production and retail systems, bank and credit card fraud, tax fraud, wire fraud.... estimates of the amount that a larger organization like Hezbollah gets from non-State sources (mostly Iran) ranges from 40% to 60%. Because we treat many of these venues as merely 'criminal' in nature, we do not apply the Laws of War to them when they are put in place to support terrorist groups. And it is this disconnect that is the main thing we have gotten wrong on the war on terror.

Social Fundamentals

I didn't know it when I started blogging, but the #1 item I kept on coming back to was 'what is terrorism?', and not just in the suicide bomber sense or the religio-/politico-/communist-oriented variety of 'justifications' but the actual activity itself. Here is where the internal opponents of Western culture, namely the political Left, supplied the clue as the main talking point they put forward on terrorism is that it is only a 'tactic'. When you are talking tactics that involve killing people then you are talking 'war'. Yet this was not a conventional style, 20th century war nor even something that we normally saw in the latter half of the 19th century, but something a bit different from the wars we all got stories about. The great deficit of the modern Left is the intellectual lack of curiosity and lack of mental rigor to actually carry their invective and slurs to conclusions and, instead, use them as facile talking points to corrode common education and understanding of what it means to be civilized. We could not forget what terrorism actually is as an activity if we had not had it so often compared to legitimate warfare of the Nation State sort. The lack of traditional, 19th century education of the 'shelves of vital books of civilization' sort, came to an end with the adoption of bureaucratic departments of education that were no longer based solely within districts but put political hands in control of much funding at the State and then federal level. If you cannot have the intellectual honesty to state what form of war 'terror' is a tactic in as practiced by 'terrorists' then, really, you are only spreading ignorance and reinforcing it, not dispelling it.

Up to the US Civil War there was a deep understanding of this type of warfare and what it means due to the Barbary Pirates and the US use of Privateers during the Revolution. The simple upshot of it is that Terrorists are Pirates. Now that does beg the question of: what is piracy? Here is a question that has actually been answered throughout human history and it is revealing that 'piracy' has very little to do with rum, parrots, peg legs, eye patches, or even ships, although ships have served most often as a platform for piracy, there have been many pirate armies (also known under many names like 'army of thieves') that do the same thing on land and have always been treated the same way with minor allowances for the lack of law outside of ships on the High Seas. That is a wider view of terrorism, and it goes far beyond men in robes with AK-47's spraying bullets around hoping to hit someone other than themselves. No, this stuff goes back to the beginning of recorded history and we do have the records to demonstrate just what piracy is and how it is performed and what form of warfare it actually is.

From all of this we find that piracy, terrorism, and all those who wage war outside of the Nation State or sovereign grant are fighting the most horrific kind of war possible: Private War.

Almost all of our great war stories come from that other venue, Public War, of Nations warring on Nations after declaring war on each other. By not examining the more horrific kind of man against all mankind, we have blinded ourselves to the simple fact that war isn't something waged by Nations but comes from the heart of man and that civilized man creates government so as to regularize and restrict warfare, and that by agreeing to those restrictions we are allowed to exercise our positive liberties to a greater extent and build society thereby. Our Negative Liberty we put into the hands of government for self-defense of our society, and we agree not to exercise it as individuals so that we may actually have a family, have a community and create a Nation in doing so. Any who attempt to blur this line, and it is the most necessary line of keeping man civilized that we know, is trying to bring down civilization by equating unrestricted barbaric war with restricted and accountable Nation State war. This first major line for mankind isn't drawn on treaties or maps, but in the hearts of men and when one agrees to not wage war without grant by the organ of society known as government, one agrees to act in a civil manner towards his fellow man and men of other Nations who do not attack him.

If we cannot fix this fundamental and self-evident truth in our minds, then all that has led up to our culture, our time, and our being here will crumble in the face of unrestricted Private War which is accountable only to the Laws of Nature, red of tooth and claw. The fight to retain what is civilized is nearly lost in Western culture and is only strong elsewhere only where it can be enforced by something other than clans and tribes. This is what we fight in the Af-Pak theater, the personal war contingent of strong tribesmen which are called Lashkars. A Lashkar is a group of 3,000 to 5,000 fighters (or more) that are loyal personally to a leader and, usually, his tribe. Our historical equivalents are the Gers, the Gauls, and the Scots amongst many hundreds of cultures in our own past that have practiced this most primitive and brutal kind of war via warlords. That is where the name 'warlord' denotes and it is a proper usage for those not wishing to be held accountable via a governing system but rule by war and terror.

There it is again: terror as a tactic.

'But, but, but... Hiroshima!! DRESDEN!!!' I hear the hue and cry from the Left.

There is a brutal logic to Total War, that is war done by industrialized States against each other and it goes like this.

- An Army or other military force is a representative of the economic capacity of a Nation to field such a force.

- Economic capacity does not start on the battlefield, but the Laws of War trace that capacity back along the supply chain to the producers of those goods for a conflict.

- Any organization or individual taking part in that support is taking part in the war, and the infrastructure to produce war goods is a prime and vital target of industrialized war.

- You warn the population that these places are targets and that civilians should get as far away from those targets as they can for their own safety.

The UK dropped leaflets before they were even properly engaged in World War II to tell the German civilians that if they lived in those cities and areas supporting such war industries that they were in a target zone and should leave for their own safety. The US also did the same there and in Japan. Mind you this is more than similar populations have ever gotten in other wars all the way up to the 19th century and you don't have to reach far back to get to Sherman's march across the South and to the bombardment of armory cities in multiple wars in Europe. That is the irreducible logic of warfare in the modern age and it is brutal and yet fully understandable. In contrast Germany did not do this with the USSR nor did Japan do this with China, Philippines, and other Nations in the region during World War II. The rape of Nanking by the Japanese and the wholesale slaughter of peasants by the Germans in the USSR are likewise representative of the absolute brutality taken on civilians in captured territory who do not have the capacity to wage war or support it which is against all codes of civilized war and those armies had reverted to pure savagery. That is not the case with the various firebombings and nuclear bombings done by the UK and US during that same conflict as that was waged against targets fully engaged in war support.

None of this can be equated to individuals and unaccountable groups willing to strike anywhere, at anytime, with no warning and no just cause and no sanction to their cause. To do so is to dismiss civilized behavior in the brutal arena of war and by putting accountable actors between ourselves and that waging of war, we agree to the limits necessitated by those actors we put in place and restrict our actions to what those actors agree to on our behalf. That is what it means to be civilized, in case it has been missed. Part of the brutality against Germany and Japan was done in response to the unregulated and highly illegal methods used against captive populations by both Nations that violated all sense and sensibility of how to fight legitimate war and achieve its objectives while sparing the innocent. For pirates and terrorists there is no thought of sparing the innocent as the innocent are the target.

Military Fundamentals

If the conflict in Iraq has been 20th century conventional, the war in the Af-Pak theater has been anything but that. In Iraq pulling down a dictator, performing Counter-Insurgency (COIN) and helping the locals to establish a new government system is one that goes on well trodden paths because Iraq has had some background in what it means to be a civilization and culture, even if their country is relatively recent as these things go, their cultural heritage is ancient. That heritage is being part of the cradle of civilization between the Two Rivers and while composed of a very tribal based ethnic system, the habits of being a Nation are deeply ingrained. While still not up to where Western standards were circa 1900... of course we aren't up to those standards, come to think of it... Iraq has the benefit of having civilization start and collapse so many times over 6,000 years that this recent is a mere hiccup in that chain of comings and goings. The only difference this time is that the outsiders are from further away than the Khan's armies and share very little with the Iraqi people as a basis beyond being controlled by Britain for a time post-WWI and, before that, having the Romans march around a bit, and then before that was Alexander. You can sum up most of Western culture there: Alexander, Rome, Britain, United States. At least the people there actually agree that having a Nation is a worthwhile endeavor.

Afghanistan only had brushes with Alexander and Britain and, of the two, the respect for Alexander is still sung about by tribal bards to this day. If Iraq was a limited but recognizable modern war, Afghanistan is something out of the deep past of mankind. The basis for a government in Afghanistan is a tribal based Parliamentary system that has counterparts in ancient times in Scotland, Gaul, and amongst Germanic peoples. In this scenario a Nation is a generalized cooperative effort that takes secondary status to internal disagreements and divisions. Cultures in Afghanistan remain tribal and they fight war on the tribal and Private War basis with minimal accountability for anyone involved in them, which creates long standing disagreements and feuds lasting... thousands of years. While there are some deep feelings of support for the generalized Afghan culture and its heritage, that tends to be both in the artifacts of it and the rivalries still played out amongst the tribes as a living form of testimony to how enduring this semi-civilized state can be. Afghanistan has seen ruling Nations and Empires come... and go... USSR, Britain, Persia, Genghis Khan... and that is just keeping it to recent history.

Fundamentals of warfare account for logistics, first, as there is a stark difference between putting a soldier anywhere on the planet and doing that and keeping him supplied with clothes, food, shelter, warmth, and all the vital necessary parts to run a military operation. Getting a soldier in and out is tactics, getting him there for a long-term mission is logistics. Both Iraq and Afghanistan have logistical problems for the US.

In Iraq it is the problem of having one vital sea access that is tiny, and has a potential belligerent (Iran) on one side of it. There is no overland route that is secure from, say, Turkey to Iraq as the Turks made their displeasure clear about our offensive operations just before they started by revoking the US logistic support to attack out of Turkey. Likewise we can't secure real overland supplies via Israel through Jordan due to the problems in both those lands. KSA is problematical and while it would do nicely for enhanced port use, there is the sticky problem of causing unrest there and increased support for the terrorists we are going against. There is a major crying need for a second supply chain system for operations in Iraq. Still any shoreline that can get you to ocean-going vessels is better than none.

Afghanistan has none. Our supply lines come through two ports in Pakistan which has been semi-bribed to semi-less belligerence, and at times one or both of those supply routes that carry 90% of the supplies for our forces have been interdicted by al Qaeda aligned tribes. The rest comes in by air over Pakistani airspace. This is not a good position to be in, particularly when in a land of warrior cultures who have been warrior cultures longer than all of Western civilization and, indeed, before the Jews differentiated themselves from other Ugaritic tribes. What is totally disheartening is that examples in the past with overland and sea-based supply routes have failed: the Brits and Persians. With a huge overland capability but weak economy, the USSR failed and fell on its sword in Afghanistan. All of the past examples, save one, have had far more robust supply chains than the US has in Afghanistan today. That singular one may point to a road to success, but it is not anywhere close to the road we are on.

That singular, though short-term success, was done by an Emperor putting together an Empire and having it fall apart with his untimely death. He was Alexander the Great and he took out the territory we know as Afghanistan, today, by fighting with a lean force with a long, long, long overland logistical supply chain that went all the way back to Greece but was supported by conquered territories along the way. By the time he got to the region he had a compact group of veteran Greeks and auxiliary troops he picked up along the way from other lands. The Afghan highlands must have reminded him a lot of Macedonia, save with less water and colder climate plus the soaring daytime temps in the summer. With a modicum of forces he fought as the locals fought, save better, by staging night attacks on citadel fortresses on mountaintops with just a handful of men. He did the impossible and not only fought in a way the locals understood but fought them harder and better than they could fight him. In solidifying the supply chain he laid down changes in language that can still be traced across the map today.

The problem with being supplied through hostile territory has a remedy: get a second supply route in place. The United States has tried, and failed, to convince the two regional powers of Russia and China to help us on this, and that is a failure of diplomacy to support our mission in Afghanistan of the highest order. With that said there is a third route to go and that is through Turkmenistan across the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan and then through Georgia to the Black Sea. This would take the creation of a diplomatic approach to weave between Russia and Iran to create a new mixed mode supply system that would parallel that of Alexander the Great who used an overland supply route. This would be a geostrategic move, as well as it would put US interests across supply routes that are plied by the Russians to aid Iran, and yet remain neutral to that support. There might need to be a rail link created between Azerbaijan and Georgia, and some reinforcement of their ports plus that of Turkmenistan, yes, but that would be a benefit to those Nations in supporting us and would give a relatively unhindered trade route across that system that would then open up Central Asia to increased trade with the West. Each of those Nations involved would understand their importance to such a vital link, benefit from it and also know that while each of them hold it hostage that is a mutual system and to keep it open they would require diplomatic ties separate from those with Russia.

Government Fundamentals

No matter what part of the political spectrum you reside in, the lack of understanding that war must be supported is a key concept that has been held by all Nations, at all times save for the US in recent decades. When the Nation supports a war it wins, when it doesn't, then we fail with much blood and destruction and little to show for it. That is not just destructive to other Nations, but it is an abdication by the people of the United States to support the National interests as expressed by their political representatives. In a representative democracy the will of the majority is what governs and it has respect for the minority to hear out opposing points of view and then attempt to craft policy that still reflects the will of the majority and takes into concern the minority. That does not mean that the minority gets its way, but is part of the process of governing in a civil fashion and that the respect shown by the majority to the minority, no matter what part of politics it is in, that the minority will then exercise reciprocity when it is in the majority and the roles are reversed.

In the last 50 years on military and war policy it is the minority that has been lobbying for veto over the will of the majority even when that will is expressed across political lines. Protests for civil rights were solemn, respectful and those doing such marches expected much pain to be suffered by those doing the marching as they were making a moral and ethical comment about society and government. Those protesting wars, however, have moved from one or two mass rallies that were semi-civil to events where costumes, bands, puppets and sloganeering against the majority have been the norm. In that latter part of putting slurs against the majority and then adding that in to protests then makes the protest about the people doing the protesting and not about the object of their protest. The sentiment that is being expressed is not a civil one of wanting to work in an agreeable fashion to see if some sort of accommodation can be made so as to change strategic objectives so as to bring a faster end to the conflict and yet still achieve National goals, but to make the protest about the protesters alone and to put forth a concept that it is their way or the highway. When that is done civil society is corroded as those protesting seek to put themselves above the will of the majority and dictate to the majority just what is 'right', what is 'fair', and what the majority 'must do' to satisfy the minority.

Worse, still, are the politicians who seek to co-opt such self-serving organizations to their own political ends. At some point protesting against war is lost and protesting to support pure political, not national, goals is put in its place. Only when both political parties are in disrepute do protests evince any sincerity, but even in those cases the co-opting of them by political factions continues so that the message by them is then harnessed to other messages which the protesters are seen as supporting by their silence to those other messages. Supporting an end to a conflict is an end in itself, not a means to 'global peace' or a mask to hide 'global revolution', and yet we see little to none of the sincere protesting and much of the willingly co-opted to have their message diluted away by those seeking political ends alone. At that point those doing such protesting are no longer supporting a representative democracy but are putting forth that they are an elite structure who see themselves as more able and fit to rule than the majority is to govern. This message has been reinforced by glib and patronizing snippets of quotes from larger texts taken out of context of original document meaning and that has been slowly inculcated into the school systems of the Nation via political operatives working on the same platform as those co-opting the original movement. That is neither honest nor in support of the ideals of representative democracy to run a diverse Nation State and is, instead, trying to place down fundamentals of an authoritarian or totalitarian state against the wishes of the majority.

War is a serious business as it is something on the Public side that requires open support and acknowledgement of the Nation State even when you disagree with the policy in question. When attacked the population is to acknowledge that it has been attacked, to seek redress against the attackers and then prepare for war. Not be told to go shopping. The political elite has made war optional for itself since the 1950's. First it has gotten politicians to put in exemptions into the previous draft so that those going to college or otherwise involved in certain affairs of life that are not open to the many save via deep finances, are given a waiver on being drafted. Those people feel they should be exempt from the common burden of warfare. The remedy in a Nation of free people, is to make military service voluntary and doing that during the Cold War required a fast and hard restructuring of the military system that must still retained cohesive capability during that transition period. As the Armed Services of the United States had done this after two previous conflicts with widespread conscription (US Civil War and World War I) the lessons of those eras were retained at the War Colleges and a properly re-scoped and yet capable force took a mere decade to cohere. As the service is voluntary, it takes commitment, courage, skill and knowing you won't get paid much for the privilege and for the sacrifice you offer to your Nation.

The elite establishment then worked to isolate themselves from that by throwing off ROTC recruiters from campuses and not offering military recruiters spots at job fairs.

Pacifism is not sustainable due to the nature of man, which comes from the Law of Nature and what it offers is not a viewpoint on the morals and ethics of war but now gains a following that seeks to denigrate war and then be unable, like prior generations of pacifists, to support their Nation during wartime by offering their bodies and time to the Nation, often for the hazardous privilege of medical experimentation or as in-theater combat medics. That is a deep and honorable way to be a pacifist and shows a moral and ethical commitment to the Nation while retaining complete adherence to one's beliefs. Modern pacifists are, sadly, just anti-war and seeking to excuse themselves from any commitment to their Nation by not volunteering themselves for the same sorts of hazardous experiments that are still available to further the cause of helping mankind against disease which is a common enemy to all peoples. Instead of commitment to Nation they are told to go shopping, become more isolated from the Nation and let their 'betters' handle things for them... so that they can then protest the very few willing to sacrifice their time and lives for the Nation and make it a worse place to come home to instead of a better one.

In that elite class which spans across political, economic and even military lines, there has been a loss of understanding that wars must have this thing known as objectives. These are the concerns that sets the Nation to war and are the point of making war. A clear and succinct set of objectives are necessary for successful war-making so that the Nation removes threats to it in a long-range fashion. To go after these objectives requires a grand strategy which are the major goals that must be gained militarily to meet the requirements set by the objectives. The grand strategy dictates war doctrine, which is how the war is to be fought and the venues it must be fought in to gain the objectives.

A very simple thing to ask, then: what are the objectives of our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan?

The answer lies within the Congressional Authorizations for each of those conflicts and therein lies the problem. For Iraq, alone, there are 23 points (if memory serves) that need to be addressed as objectives and some of them, like removing terrorist influence inside Iraq, are so nebulous that they cannot be achieved. A President, who is Commander in Chief, is to then boil these Congressional objectives down to a grand strategy with the help of his military advisors, so as to put down a hard set of goals that can then be achieved so that when they are met the war is over. It is then his duty to tell Congress what can be achieved and what can't be achieved, and he will carry out what can be achieved and leave further debate on those that can't be achieved up to Congress.

We the People of the United States have not gotten that from two Presidents.

That is an abysmal failure in our government and the elite class, both, in that they cannot understand the fundamentals of war and why we go to war. This is true across the Western World at this point in time.

The horror of not knowing the difference between Public and Private war is extreme and deep.

Not knowing the functions of legitimate Public War is to invite the public to become barbarians, directly, and accept war as a thing to be done for any reason or no reason at all so as to follow the leadership of a blind and self-serving elite. An elite who don't understand that it requires a civilized society to have such a large number of elites and that if the society goes down around them, then their status as elites, their money and, indeed, their very lives don't matter any more. That is a direct outcome of elite propaganda, protestors and transnational movements that co-opt those venues and spread ignorance that is self-serving to its goals. The ignorance isn't just in the general population but in the elites, as well, as they are members of society and they are not exempt from the trends and direction of education as the educational systems are compromised on a wide scale in the Western World.

Is war a horror? Without a doubt but there are differences between Public and Private war and legitimate and illegitimate Public War that have been known for centuries and before the founding of the United States. We no longer teach this stuff. And yet that is the basis for having personal relationships as we must understand that we must put aside personal violence to live in a civil society and then use our will as a people, when necessary and no other venue is open, to have redress of grievances against other Nations addressed on the field of battle. War isn't the last resort nor is it the first, but it does fit in the top 5 after negotiations fail and then one last attempt is used to have an opponent see reason. Put it at about #3 for all practical purposes as good faith must be shown and turned down more than once, but by the time you get past 3 times you have lost the will to actually have a functioning Nation. Soon you will stop teaching your children about what Public and Private War are and the differences between legitimate and illegitimate Public War.

So after 10 years from 9/11 are we actually getting some things right in the war on terror?

Yes, undoubtedly.

It is unfortunate that we aren't doing the necessary things to make plain and clear that all those achievements have an objective in mind. And if you are going to actually mean what you say about fighting terrorists, then it doesn't stop with al Qaeda and that organization isn't even a waypoint to the larger set of objectives if you mean 'war on terrorism'. To fight terrorism you must have a society that understands what it is, why it is illegitimate, why it is a danger to all Nations and then have plain and simple laws available to deal with these enemies of mankind that cannot be misunderstood via pages of verbiage but made plain in one to two sentences, which include the penalty for doing it. Unfortunately we are not serious about this war, and because of that no matter what the achievements are, we are on the path away from victory because we do not mean what we say, because we can no longer understand what it is we are saying.

The Day After

2011-07-28T12:24:00.001Z

The following is a personal outlook paper by the founder of The Jacksonian Party.

With all the debt limit finger-pointing, yelling, screaming and such going on it is hard to take these supposed 'leaders' Upon The Hill seriously. We hear words of 'default' and 'Armageddon' plus 'Doomsday' bandied about. So what is it, exactly, that is going on?

First the government has allowed itself to spend approximately $4.4 trillion dollars this FY of which $2.4 trillion is deficit to be added on to the debt. Congress has previously set a debt limit, decades ago, to help keep tabs on spending so that everyone has to agree on the basis for new spending. That debt limit is coming and has actually been here, save for some Federal Reserve and Treasury accounting tricks. The tricks, smoke and mirrors are just about cleared out, now, and we are getting to see the problem without them.

If you back a 'compromise' then please set in your mind that you want a federal government that spends approximately 1/7th to 1/6th of our economic productivity in accrual of debt we can't pay now. While that has usually been bought by foreign investors, the Federal Reserve has been pumping money into the system to get that debt and has been the largest buyer at the last couple of debt auctions. Their hope is that either this blows over, or they are left controlling the purse strings of future federal spending.

Nice folks, huh?

Second if you back 'compromise' you are kicking the can further down the road to larger, more intrusive government that eats up more of our economy and, in the end, must do away with 'entitlements' as economic activity to sustain them falls through the floor. Who will invest in a people who can't get a government to spend within its means? Or seek to have a large part of its population unproductive by choice? That isn't working out so well for Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland... or the UK and France, for that matter. That is the future ahead for more spending on our shores if you support a 'compromise'. You will live to see that.

Now what happens when the debt limit is reached and there is no compromise?

First even Turbo Tax Timmy, the man who can't figure out his taxes but is the head of the Treasury, admits that we will continue current debt maintenance. Left and Right that is admitted. If we DIDN'T do that it would be a DEFAULT. The US will not default on its debt as that is the reason the federal government was CREATED in 1787: to take care of Revolutionary War debt that was breaking up the States in the old Confederacy. If the federal government can't do the #1 primary job it was CREATED TO DO then it must go through civil means to allow We The People to figure out something that WILL make good our promises to others. I expect that would happen via elections and a Constitutional Convention in which States that spent themselves broke will not get much of a hearing from solvent States, either. So the debt will be paid because, for the first time in over a century, it is not clear that Progressives and Liberals will be able to sway the outcome of a Constitutional Convention. They don't like that, so they want our debt payments to continue.

From the approximately $2 trillion the US government takes in, about $600 billion (or $0.6 trillion) is in debt payments. You have about $1.4 trillion left to spend! I bet you could run a government on that....

What gets paid for next?

Well Obama is the Executive and in lean times Executives get a bit of a say in things for cutting back when the money isn't there. Remember, Congress unwisely put up an unsound budget and it is now up to Obama to cut spending back to meet revenue.

Stop that laughing!

He has no choice in this.

His first real choice will be between 'entitlements' plus the Constitutionally mandated cats & dogs (DoD, parts of State, a bit of the Interior, US Mint, USPTO, Government Accounting Office plus various other items mentioned in the Constitution which I tend to lump together as 'cats &dogs') or the other discretionary areas plus some entitlements plus the cats &dogs. The cats & dogs will take a haircut, probably around 20%, which doesn't free up much money.

Here is the deal: if Obama wants to have all the discretionary parts of government that are non-entitlement continue to work (like Labor, Education, Energy, EPA, FCC, FAA, IRS receipts offices and so on) then those will be fighting for money with the 'entitlements'.

Now after decades of fearmongering we have the visage of the most Progressive and Liberal US President in our generation having to cut government. First, think of that on its own and take a look at the holder of the Office of the President of the United States. He has no choice.

If only Nixon could go to China, then only Obama can cut government.

What will he do?

Well he could go against everything that every Democrat has said for over a generation and cut entitlements! That would be seen as a basic betrayal of The New Deal and The Great Society... by one of the most Progressive and Liberal Presidents in our generation. That is an abyss to step into for him as it is his name that will be on that, not that of Reid or Boehner.

So we can take it for granted that at most we will see a bit of trimming around the edges of 'entitlements' which will, itself, be a watershed moment.

That leaves between $60 billion and $100 billion dollars left to fund EVERYTHING ELSE outside of 'entitlements' and the cats & dogs. He can go the 'skeleton crew' route and keep an executive staff in each, but no other functions. All the regulatory stuff goes into limbo for as long as this 'stand off' lasts. There are some places that would eat up all of that and want more, like Agriculture that consumes at least $700 billion per year... it would be hard to keep on anything but a few top people there for $100 billion a year, so you can bet that baby will close down to allow shifts to other, more politicized entities, like Dept. of Justice. DoJ is not a cat or dog, but a discretionary organization that didn't exist before FDR. Before that Agencies and Departments were responsible for bringing their own prosecutions. Keep DoJ open and you don't have much left for anything else.

The spending, basically, stops for a large part of the discretionary part of government outside of the 'entitlements'. See how that works?

Outside of this what else happens?

A major part of this is the Treasury no longer holding debt auctions as there is no new added debt to auction. That is about $2.4 trillion not getting soaked out of the global economy, or $1.8 trillion discounting the amount the Fed. holds. The Fed might auction some of its recently purchased debt off, but that is just the 13 largest banks in the US trying to dump US debt which doesn't look all too hot on the banking front. It is like shooting yourself in the head to get rid of a headache: not so smart. Still they don't hold enough to go past a single normal auction... sooner or later US debt stops soaking up investment money.

That freed up money then will be invested elsewhere as the surest way to make money is to invest in productive industry.

Now if most of the Interior and EPA go to the point they can't process forms, industrial firms will look to the States, point to the track record of the company and ask the State if they can do drilling in off-shore waters. After a couple of months of non-processing of forms (in other words going back on a good-faith forms processing concept) the States will find themselves asked if they want productive energy sector jobs to open up. Without the federal government there to process forms, responsibility drops down to the State level. States have their own safety requirements and they are still open for processing forms. My guess is the day after the first debt non-auction, the States will hear from the energy companies. Maybe sooner.

If the Dept. of Labor isn't there, then no one will be backing its paperwork for businesses, loans and such. OSHA goes with that. A lot of those regulations are part of industrial standard work, at this point, so they will be kept up with or without an enforcement arm for awhile. Put in a few months of non-government and industry will begin to realize that there is no one telling it how much to pay people. Fun, fun, fun! The States do have regulations on this, of course....

The EPA has been trying to reneg on coal agreements, sequester land from energy exploration and, generally, trying to stymie energy production in the US. Without them the States get to decide as the federal government doesn't OWN any of that land but is allowed to USE IT by the States. Right there in the US Constitution that the federal government can only use land with the agreement of the State involved. States will begin pulling land back as the federal government really can't stop them from doing that, even with the EPA. Wonder why they haven't done that?

Consider something like BATFE which got scooted over to DoJ save for the IRS interest in the revenue part which is 'A' or Alcohol which is alcohol tax stamps. That 'A' part will remain open, more or less, to collect money on those stamps... actually it probably goes straight to collections. On the 'F' side, which is Firearms, the IRS has interest in the tax transfer amount on fully automatic weapons ($250 per transfer) but not much else. As no one is there to enforce the making of new weapons of that type it is possible that 6 months into not funding BATFE you will see a new market for these weapons arise with a base price of construction, plus materials, plus $250. And as no one is there to federally license manufacturers, and no one can stop individuals from manufacturing arms, and the 2nd Amendment has similar language in nearly every State Constitution... well we might see the end of the cutting up of old military full auto weapons and the direct importation of them. Mind you, before 1976 this is what it was like in the US, and we didn't have an FA shooting spree then and we won't have one if this happens, save for criminals who can ALREADY get their hands on such things. Private security firms may handle something like background checks to ensure that felons don't get their hands on weapons and if the States really want the federal instant background check they can pony up a bit of cash to run that part of the bureaucracy.

What doesn't happen in all of this is interesting.

Anyone who has federal securities continues to get their interest payments. A lot of retirement funds have them. These large institutional investors will see that 'the full faith and credit of the United States' is still good. So will the bond rating services. Do you downgrade a spendthrift who mends their ways, stops spending on frivolities and keeps on paying down their debt? I wouldn't as that person is making good their promises and mending their ways. Why would the US get a downgrade for doing the exact, same thing?

A lot of federally dependant jobs add to the unemployment situation, which might go up a full percentage point. Sucks, that. But there isn't a federal government to suck up investment dollars, either. Hmmm.... why there will be businesses without regulatory overhead, without mandates, without worries about credit... who knows what they will do when there is some CERTAINTY that they will not be PUNISHED for hiring people via new REGULATIONS? If and when that money comes off the sidelines the 'crisis' will end as unemployment drops and economic activity picks up. As soon as everyone realizes that the federal government is the problem and that you can get by without it, then why, on Earth, would you want to bring all that back?

It is that last part that is the worry of the political and economic elites. They are living in the 20th century and now see that Americans would be more than willing to chuck all the centralized controls in the 21st century. Anyone saying that a 'moderate' solution to continue spending into pure insolvency is very immoderate to do so. We have hit our credit limit and can turn back and not be Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, the UK, France... why that might be a GOOD THING, no? That is how much the equations have changed in the last few years: the old 'moderates' are not in the middle, just addicted spendthrifts who can't say 'no' to more spending.

Of course this will be messy.

It will be painful.

You will have to be prepared for it.

I've been saying that for awhile now and am getting prepared even as we speak.

Not to march on the streets, but to help my fellow citizens through the tough times ahead.

If you aren't doing that, then your hours to prepare are few.

Because the day after debt limit Doomsday is not Armageddon, not global meltdown, but the beginning of the first day on a path to freedom and liberty. I see that day coming much, much, much faster than I ever expected it. Yet I have done the prudent and cautious things as the survivors will step with Prudence who is one of the best women I know of to walk with as she always warns to pick your steps and be prepared for bad days. It is better to be prepared and never need those preparations as you can sleep well at night and be unafraid of the future. I can't sleep soundly due to physiology, at this point, but I have no fears.

In a crisis will you be yelling, screaming, finger pointing and waiting for someone to save you who may never come?

Or will you be prepared to help your fellow man through hard times?

I will join with those doing the saving, may you never need my help as it isn't free and you will be expected TO help TO BE helped. No free rides to salvation, sorry.

Positivist bias in the two party system

2011-06-22T11:23:00.001Z

One of the so-called 'features' of the US political system is that it has a 'stable' two party assemblage. That is to say the system of open politics in the US, in which there are no government established parties, boils down to a two party system over time. I remember that in social studies courses this was posited as a 'good thing' as it led to a general 'middle of the road' sort of government that would 'get things done' and be 'stable'. That attitude grew out of the Cold War which had a Superpower confrontation between rival Nation assemblages (USSR/Warsaw Pact and the US/NATO) that required non-traditionally high levels of government spending in the form of the the Defense Department having to keep a large standing military organization ready to strike back at any incoming Soviet attack. A 'stable' government was to be cherished, then, as an all-out nuclear assault would have led to a massive redistribution of atoms from that of civilian population centers into vaporized and irradiated atoms floating in the air. So if any political ideology got in place that put the 'balance of power' at risk it was seen as a very, very bad thing.

Thus we got: two parties now and forever!

The way the two party system did this was also posited as a 'good thing'. Whenever a new political movement came into being that threatened to actually get enough people to register as a political party (and what is up with that, anyways? I thought we were free to form our own parties without having to register them anywhere) or even just get close, one of the two parties would adopt some verbiage and programmatic planks from then new arrivals so as to cut short the founding of a new party. By putting party 'muscle' behind these minoritarian agenda planks, the two party system would be 'safe' from major 'changes'. Of course the political party apparatus endorsed this as it tended to concentrate political power into the hands of the few (that is the party elites) and cut off the oxygen supply to upstarts looking to get into the political action. To that end elected officials from the two parties enacted laws that put population minimums on registering a political party (ahhh... makes sense, no?) and then sought to undermine, undercut and marginalize any new political movement by co-opting key positions of the new movement.

On the flip side if you firmly believed in the concepts you were backing as the key positions of a political movement and a larger entity endorsed those and you really, and for true, wanted to see those things you backed 'get done' then you looked at the motley assemblage of the party 'backing' those ideas and saw all the other special interests that YOU would have to support if YOU supported the party in question (and it was one or the other of the parties, now, wasn't it?). And if the party that was trying to co-opt your political movement had planks from other minority organizations that had become embedded into the party structure, your choice was to swallow your pride and your ethics and vote for the party, or to continue on the journey without major party support. Also you tended to find that a large number of your friends in the nascent organization decided it was easier to co-opt their values to get one or two good things done than to stick to the actual underlying philosophy of whatever it was being pushed (that is if you were lucky enough to have one).

The two parties couldn't get this done without the willing help of their organizations to get changes into the political system via way of Amendments, as well. Luckily the two parties had established themselves in the Statehouses as well as in Congress and that pretty much wrapped up 'getting things done' for changing the Constitution. I go over this in a previous article, The 10 years that changed America. Via a process of marginalizing new entrants to the political scene, co-opting agendas and programs, and then shifting the system to loosen the grip of local politics at the federal level, you got a system where political apathy becomes the norm. 'Activists', recognizing a good system they can game, then pop up touting one agenda or another so as to willingly get co-opted into a hodge-podge of special interests that became the two political parties.

But 'stability' was kept, right?

If you looked from the outside you would see some semblance of 'stability' yes, and that was the only front that mattered when nuclear holocaust was just minutes away. On the inside of the United States, however, there were major changes taking place to the internal political structure as it had not transitioned from the 19th century 'throw the bums out' mindset and had changed to a 'throw the bums back in again' mindset. Here is what that looks like in a graph set I've used a few times now:

Courtesy: thirty-thousand.org

Up to the late 1890's the turnover in Congress was approximately 70%. That is to say 30% were re-elected. That flips over completely in the Progressive era and is rarely reached thereafter with 1904, 1912-1916, 1922, 1934 being the exception to the 70% getting thrown back in idea that became entrenched in the political system. The idea of a 'stable' political system via incumbent return is a 20th century Progressive-era phenomena, not one rooted in the Cold War nor in our history. While there have been two parties throughout almost all of the time the US has been around, the actual representation capability shifted at very high rates via elections. So long as there was turn-over in the political class seeking election, representation was maintained and politics became vital. When representation does not shift at high rates (and the society was growing, mind you, both in size and diversity) there is political stagnation and party entrenchment.

The reason this is 'positivist', that is that it seeks to add positive powers to the federal government, is that the concept of programs had also changed from the 19th century from one of abiding by State powers (they were the signatories to the Constitution, after all, and held the keys to the government they agreed to) to one of marginalizing State powers. I go over this concept in When change is not progress and the process of shifting that focus from State-based entities to one of central regulatory authority of the federal government is both subtle and radical at the same time. The concept of using program-based agenda items to win elections via the redistribution of money and power took hold in the early part of the Progressive era with Anti-Trust regulations that sought to 'break up the trusts' that were concentrating power and money in the American economy. Of course busting those trusts still left the power and money in the same hands, but the company names and means through which to do so had changed: it was now necessary to start co-opting political parties to secure wealth and power. Thus the Federal Reserve was born as an organization created by the largest banks in the US to protect themselves from Anti-Trust regulations and to start grasping at the political power that guided the Nation. Too bad the only thing they know how to do is devalue currency, huh?

Nice how that works, isn't it? You regulate something and then they throw their power and money into lobbying so as to start writing the regulations. It becomes real hard to tell the difference between the politicians, the regulators, the regulated and where, exactly, any piece of legislation actually comes from because the actors all shuttle between those jobs. Usually on your dime. Then comes lovely ideas of being 'nice' and establishing a 'retirement age' so as to get the older, more productive and higher wage earning workers out of the economy and pay for that system by taxing the younger, less well off, and trying to raise a family working class. Government can't 'invest' so it runs Ponzi Schemes, instead, up until the money gets radically inflated by their banking friends trying to gather value at the National level... but at least everyone will be broke, your money without value and no one cared for because it isn't worth working! Then we are all equally slaves to the system!

That is what passed for 'stability' on the inside of the US circa 1970 up to the end of the Cold War when the 'impossible' happened and the USSR vanished in a puff of smoke and having a legislature that was equally in bed with industrialists and organized crime. At least they had the brains to include the criminals, directly, and get some useful capability from them. Don't mind the new color of red from the non-cooperative ones who got in the way. Not that something like that is coming to the US of A where 'Activists' push agendas that industry gets behind so as to expand government and create crony jobs that benefits the industries in question so they can pay a pittance to the 'Activists' as a leaving on the bedside table one they are done using them. No THAT would never come to the US of A, don't mind the labor union bosses meeting constantly with the President to maintain their illegal stake in companies that were 'rescued'! That's not 'criminal' that is just redistributing the wealth and shafting the average taxpayer.

At least the average taxpayer is well armed, and getting better armed by the minute. It would be a crying shame if the Dept. of Justice violated international law by funneling arms to transnational crime syndicates to destabilize our neighbor to the south and use that as a justification to vilify the small businessman who runs a gun shop. Why that could NEVER happen HERE.

Right?

It isn't like there are vocal 'special interests' in bed with politicians, industrialists and banking organizations that are seeking to devalue the dollar and then extract a massive tithe for doing so via official means and by implementing huge bureaucratic organizations that will be filled up with 'Activists' and lobbyists, and burden the entire system with their overhead while reducing productivity to a pittance. I mean that is so STABLE, isn't it?

Right?

Just accept the ratcheting up of government programs and never, ever, utilize the quaint 18th century idea that they should ever, just once, be re-authorized on a regular basis, say every 5 years or so. That is just so... actually it sounds pretty insightful as a way to limit government, come to think of it. Someday maybe we will have that in America...

And that is the problem with the positivist viewpoint of government always doing more via political co-opting of small political movements: it stifles larger movements and entrenches the special interests who are sucking at the taxpayer's hard earned money at every turn. When I started this blog I suggested that the federal government needed a RESET button (not to be confused with the overload button handed to the Russians by Hillary Clinton). The positivist view of government administering rights and liberty is one that enshrines government as the keeper of those same rights and liberties... not you. But without you there would be no government. Thus the actual holder of all rights and liberties is the individual, not government. That is what I have been going over and continue to go over: the fundamentals.

If you don't know the fundamentals, then you are lost and without a compass.

Too bad there are these idiots in the expedition throwing the compasses away, huh?

And what you get when your fellow citizens lack a moral compass isn't pleasant nor civilized. They start to think people should be ruled because they see their hideous reflection all about them... instead of realizing that it isn't their fellow citizens that are the problem, but that person in the mirror who has become a savage. Now comes the time to remind these people that being a citizen means that you seek common governance equal for all, no carve-outs, no special interests and no special rights for anyone. Savages won't like that and getting them to be civilized can often be quite messy because that means they must govern themselves, first, and that is always and ever a painful thing to do.

All agree or none shall pass - Part 2

2011-06-08T11:28:00.001Z

This is a follow-up article to All agree or none shall pass which is a look at the structure of the US Constitution as put forward by Nicholas Rosenkranz on The Subjects of the Constitution. The follow-up article on The Objects of the Constitution by Nicholas Rosenkranz was linked to by Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit on 26 MAY 2011.

By establishing the SVO system of sentences (that is Subject, Verb, Object) Mr. Rosenkranz has put forward that the Subjects of the Constitution are part of a logical understanding that actions (that is Verbs) that are being done apply to something (Objects) and are performed by someone (Subjects). To find out who the Actors or Subjects of a clause or Amendment are in the US Constitution it is necessary to see what the Object of the Verb is which then tells you the Subject of that clause or Amendment. As this is being applied to a federal structure type of government it is possible to implicate more than one Subject to a Verb acting upon an Object: a federal structure requires division of power and checks and balances amongst branches so as to establish a form of government that does not devolve down to a single branch or individual.

Finding the Subject performing an Verb requires that any reader of the Constitution understand the Object that the Verb is being applied to, so as to understand what the implications are in the Verb and Subject being described are. To do this requires an examination of the internal structure and consistency within the US Constitution, itself, so as to see how powers (Verbs) are apportioned to different actors (Subjects) to do something (to an Object). Even within the general Articles of the Constitution there is an apportionment of powers both stated and unstated but present by implication, that reach beyond the branch of government being discussed. This is done so as to set up the balance of powers systems within the Constitution (and there are more than one power balance system involved), and to discern who is being talked about one must look at the phrasing of clauses and Amendments so as to properly place who gets a power and who is the counter-balance to it. As there are three branches of government in the federal system (Legislative, Executive, Judicial) and divisions amongst the States and the federal government, and the States having their own republican forms of government that do not mimic the federal system, the types of power that are apportioned must often be directed to the holder of that power type rather than a formulaic system that equates, say, the President directly with a Governor as each State apportions powers differently

As part of the review of the Constitutional structure, Mr. Rosenkranz continues with the examination of powers via the clauses and Amendments and utilizes prior SCOTUS case history and other judicial review documents to see who gets to do what via the way a clause or Amendment is phrased and ties in with other, similarly worded, clauses or Amendments. This is to perform a logical coherency check on the system to see if there is an underlying theme of how phrases are stated and what the understanding is for each power grant in terms of scope and limitations. The clauses and Amendments fall into the category of active voice (Congress shall make no law...) which directly addresses an actor, and passive voice in which an actor is not directly named, but has a restriction on an action, instead. The lineage of the passive voice is a long one and, for Common Law heritage, can be most directly traced back to the first article of the Magna Carta (boldface mine, unless otherwise noted throughout):

(1) FIRST, THAT WE HAVE GRANTED TO GOD, and by this present charter have confirmed for us and our heirs in perpetuity, that the English Church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished, and its liberties unimpaired. That we wish this so to be observed, appears from the fact that of our own free will, before the outbreak of the present dispute between us and our barons, we granted and confirmed by charter the freedom of the Church's elections - a right reckoned to be of the greatest necessity and importance to it - and caused this to be confirmed by Pope Innocent III. This freedom we shall observe ourselves, and desire to be observed in good faith by our heirs in perpetuity.

Compare this to the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights for the US Constitution:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The Magna Carta utilizes the passive voice in that it does not state who the people are that cannot limit the English Church's internal operations. It is a very broad declaration that pertains against the whole of the English government and all of its sub-parts. For not stating who has done the restricting in the past, the first article puts forward that NO ONE can restrict it in the future and that it is to be run by its own internal election system from that point onwards. This both establishes the Church of England for the Nation and yet removes it from the power of government, at the same time.

Amendment I of the Constitution is an active voice and narrowly crafted restriction as it names its actor: Congress. It hits at the point of the federal system in that Congress, using Legislative powers, makes law that is then enforced by the Executive and presided over by the Judicial. By making the crafting narrow so as to restrict the making of law by Congress, the other branches can gain no foothold nor have any say over the realm of religion as there can be no basis in law for it. Congress cannot create or establish (or disestablish) a religion or prohibit the free exercise of religion. Do note that if the people, separately from Congress and the National government, wish to make a National religion outside of the power of government, they are free to do so as Congress gets no say in that as those are the unenumerated powers that are retained by the States and the people.

Both prohibitions work to restrain the power of the government, but the passive voice restraint is universal in tone while the First Amendment is narrow in scope although broad in its implications in that the federal government is restricted from doing these things via the organ of Congress, but says nothing about the States who had as their purview the establishment of State church recognition at the time of the Framing.

To see this in the purely passive form on a similar subject, there is this from the Magna Carta:

(38) In future no official shall place a man on trial upon his own unsupported statement, without producing credible witnesses to the truth of it.

(39) No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.

(40) To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.

And from the Bill of Rights:

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Again passive voice in both is an injunctions against unlawful searches and seizures of someone's person or property, which is an Executive power, and that their liberty shall not be violated without having probable cause, which is the production of credible witnesses before seeking out an individual for searches and seizures. The exceptions for the Magna Carta includes those of from judgments by juries '...the lawful judgment of his equals...' and '...by the law of the land', which is the Legislative arm of government. Amendment IV has an injunction against the Executive to perform '...unreasonable searches and seizures...' indicating that there are reasonable ones that must be backed by a Warrant issued from the Judicial branch for law made by Congress. In the absence of law or judgment, there can be no violation of the right against unlawful searches and seizures which is a passive voice restriction that binds the Legislative branch to make 'reasonable' laws, the Executive to ensure that it has good information before going after individuals, and the Judicial is made a part of this in the Magna Carta via court decisions and in the Constitution via the necessity of seeking a Warrant.

This lesson of the passive voice being an involving one because it does not clearly state who the actors are and requires an understanding of who gets these powers within a Nation are ones that any British citizen would know to some extent as this was part of the Common Law system. The hidden structure within the Constitution is supported by the repetition of phrases amongst clauses and Amendments that point to a common understanding of the functions of the powers of government within the object of the Constitution, which are those powers that the Nation has, as a whole. That a Nation has concerns that are different than those of States (that is sub-units that cannot make treaties and have other National concerns) is something that is well understood in the Founding and Framing era coming after the works of Grotius, Pufendorf, Montesquieu, Hobbes, Blackstone and de Vattel that all address the limits of National power.

From these examples done outside of the scope of Mr. Rosenkranz's article, it is possible to see how the English language has been utilized not only in the instance of the US Constitution, but thematically across time from at least the era of the Magna Carta. The structure of sentences dealing with National powers is a form of 'originalism' that goes beyond the power context of the document as a whole or even in its major sections, but allows for an in-depth understanding of clauses within sections, that tell much about the structural underpinnings gained from the utilization of the language to imply actors in the power arrangement without explicitly stating who they are.

Stepping from this to the interior cross-structural elements of the Constitution, the utilization of multiple instancing of phrases on topics then puts into play an understanding of linkages within the Constitution and its Amendments. For this I will start with one Mr. Rosenkranz utilized which centers on the analysis done in Barron v Baltimore. This analysis centers around the Takings Clause in Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution:

No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

This is a passive clause and when asked 'to whom' does it apply, it is clear that the passing of laws is up to the Legislative branch of government as that is the organ of government that passes laws. Now this language is replicated in Section 10 which applies to the States:

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.

This clause is a complex one, so it is necessary to concentrate on the structure as it pertains to the Takings Clause in Section 9 which I have put in boldface. The 'No State shall...' is addressing the States (singular) and then listing prohibitions, which the 'pass any Bill of Attainder...' part highlighted is the one to examine. Here the verbiage is similar to the restriction upon Congress, but is put on the States. Given that passing laws is a Legislative power, it can be inferred that the restrictions upon the State Legislatures or that set of organs of government that are vested with the Legislative power. Because each State has a different arrangement of powers, so long as they are republican in form, it is not possible to say that a State may not transfer a power to a different organ for passing these sorts of laws. So no matter which part of State governments get this power, they are restricted from using it to create a law pertaining to a Bill of Attainder or ex post facto situations.

Similarly the first article of the Magna Carta tells what may not be infringed in the manner of law leaving the implied context that although Parliament is normally the place for such laws, it is possible that the Sovereign may choose other bodies to do such things. Those bodies, having that power, are also similarly restricted. While the subject of 'States' are explicit in Art. I, Sec. 10 of the US Constitution, the reference to which part of State government is restricted from doing these things is not explicitly stated.

Reading from the same clause is a restriction on another part of State governments with the 'enter into any Treaty, Alliance or Confederation' restriction. To whom does this apply at the State level?

In the main body of the Constitution, the only power in this regard is the Senate assent to a Treaty, but this is in Art. 2, Sec. 2:

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur;

This is an active voice clause 'He shall have Power...' is directed at the Executive branch of government, which is vested in one individual: The President. With that power is a restriction requiring the Advice and Consent of the Senate by a 2/3 majority of those present. From this the restriction upon the States is to the Executive branch of State governments, namely Governors. By utilizing a passive voice and generally addressing the States, the Constitution allows for a broad set of restrictions on the States as these powers that they are restricted from having are vested in the federal government. Instead of an explicit listing of 'No State Legislature shall...' or 'No State Governor shall...' the writers of the Constitution decided that a summary listing of powers that the States are restricted from having would then imply which organs of each State would face that restriction. The blanket restriction of this clause removes uncertainty as it has no exceptions, no other mentioned or implied action that can be taken to allow these items, nor any way a State may do them while remaining in the United States. The categories of power and branches that enact them for the States are embedded within the clause, itself.

A power mapping into the States can be performed by showing the different functions in the clause:

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.

The items marked in red are Executive functions while those in green are Legislative functions. These function areas come from the formulation of republicanism used by the Founders in the Articles of Confederation and by the Framers of the Constitution, both of which had demarcations between Legislative, Executive and Judicial functions as part of the structure of government. The structure of a republican form of government is not set in stone, and from Ancient Greek and Roman times through to the time of the Framing, the positives and minuses of republics were understood. Republics are stronger than Confederations which had been seen as a failure as a system time for the Ancient Greeks as they are more of a passive structured alliance system with sovereign States able to act independently within the alliance with outside Nations. By centralizing a number of functions to a single government, the ability of sovereign States was limited, but not dissolved.

When the United States was first Independent it was as a Confederation. The load sharing of debt could not be centralized in that form of government and while the southern States found that with their thriving plantation based agricultural system was able to handle the debt load, the poorer family farming northern States could not due to smaller amounts of distributed output. In the north the Confederation was breaking apart with uprising against confiscatory taxes leveraged by politicians that mainly represented the few bit cities which then tilted in favor of the merchants and against the rural farmers. Changing to a republic meant a new Constitution to dissolve the old Confederation, so as to centralize the debt load so that the States as a Nation, not as States, paid off the Revolutionary War debt. In a very real sense America failed in her first governmental system due to debt, the republic was founded in debt and with one exception under President Jackson, America has always been in debt. Getting out of debt was a relatively easy thing to do: staying out of debt has proven impossible for this form of government.

One of the minuses of republics that was well known at the Founding and Framing is that they work best with small and compact geographical regions with more or less homogenous populations. In their era the examples of the Swiss, Dutch and City of Venice were well known and each typified the examples of the Greek and Roman republican systems for being compact geographically, with similar cultural and ethnic backgrounds. The reason a Confederation was chosen is that the United States were seen as too geographically spread and having major ethnic sub-populations that brought different forms of society together, even while they were colonies. Each of the colonies had their own form of republican government with strong variations from Georgia to Pennsylvania to Connecticut to Rhode Island. The necessity of changing to a republic was worrying as central governments tend to become distant from those they govern when geographical size overwhelms the homogeneous nature of the republic. Multi-ethnic and cultural republics have proven to be very few and far between, and not stable. Rome transitioned from republic to empire before Julius Caesar in many ways with the government subsuming more private functions and handing out goods and services on an unequal basis. The strength of a republic is also its weakness and it takes a good people who hold the values of republicanism to heart to hold a republic together.

The language of the Constitution reflects this understanding of the form and nature of governmental power at the level of the Nation and the internal workings of Nations as States. By utilizing a federal form of republic, that is one with restricted allowances on what powers are granted to the National government, the concepts of checks and balances was put into place via the understanding of how they worked not just under British Common Law, but using the examples of republics past and present.

When crafting sentences and clauses, as well as the Articles of the Constitution, the Framers took pains to understand exactly which powers they were dealing with (sovereign external or internal powers) and to proscribe those powers explicitly via statement and implicitly by the way republics utilize such powers amongst different branches of government. An understanding of the federal form of government created at the Framing has a pre-requisite of understanding what a republic is and how one works as sovereign and representative power of the Nation in question. Because of the SVO formulation of English as a language, those underlying power allotments are to be taken into consideration when approaching which actions (Verbs) are given to which actors (Subjects) and applied to which parts of the power structure (Objects). The flexibility of the English language to have passive and active structures, and change the SVO ordering (although not the internal logic of the SVO order, itself) means that all parts of a sentence must be in accord with the underlying understanding.

All parts must be known and agree with the structural outlay or else it may not be understood and none of the power structure shall pass muster for the federal form of republic.

The fictional citizen

2011-05-13T16:43:00.001Z

What a strange title for a blog post, no? What is a fictional citizen? Why do they exist? And are they better or worse than being a real citizen?

So many concepts that go with fiction, aren't there? But there are very real fictional citizens and, no, they aren't hiding in shadows or scurrying across borders or any of that sort of thing. These are ones that have been known for ages, and tend to be despised by the modern Left for the 'power' they wield. Ah, the criticisms: that a carte blanche is given to these fictional citizens and that they run roughshod over everyone! Day in and day out I hear the complaints of the Left about these fictional citizens and yet, for all the moaning, griping and complaining, no one ever bothers to find out exactly what the actual, real problem is with them and how they might be dealt with. So, as a person used to reading fiction and even trying my hand at some derivative fiction, plus running role playing universes in which I get to run the rest of the universe while players play at being people in such universes, I will give that a shot.

In this instance the fictional citizen is made by law and is thusly a legal fiction.

We call these legal fictions by a few names: companies and corporations.

Hitting on the word corporation it hints at how we get the 'citizen' part attached to these legal functions. You are a corporeal citizen, that is an independent individual that has flesh and blood attached to you. However one of the words we use when individuals die is to 'discorporate', that is you are no longer attached to your corporeal form any longer. You are not incorporated into it, in other words.

When a legal fiction is incorporated, that is all the necessary legal papers are drafted to create the corporation, it then becomes a 'corporate citizen', a concept I am quite sure most have heard of at some point in their lives. Now these fictional citizens have somewhat different constraints on them being merely legal incorporations and not individuals incorporated with a body, which is corporeal existence. Legal fictions can hold property, then can hold funds and goods, they can be owned by one or millions of people, they get their own special tax code, they get all sorts of things we don't leverage upon real citizens because they are fictional constructs that we create to do business.

There are things they can't do, in general, like get up and walk around. Their headquarters may move, yes, but that is done via a different process than you, as an individual, getting up from your chair and walking around. Corporations may process air through air handlers for their offices, but they cannot breathe. Only by allowance from Congress can they keep and bear arms in combat, although they can make armaments that is only for sale not for corporate use. Corporations cannot vote in elections, another area of difference between you, as an individual, and a corporation as a fictional entity. While they may exchange funds or goods with another company and found a new company, that is not the same as having sex and giving birth to a child, which is biological in its origin, not created by forms filled out and slips of paper passed around to be signed and counter-signed.

Some similarities are striking, however, in the way we see corporate citizens. They have the right to freedom of speech, which the Left moans about greatly, but they are also beholden to the same limits on speech for slander and libel. They have freedom of worship, as there are religious based incorporated entities often associated with charities. They can petition government, which is another problem the Left has with corporations, that and their ability to contribute to political campaigns. A search warrant is required to search a corporations' properties, and they are protected from unlawful search and seizure of their property and goods.

Then there are the ways that these incorporated citizens are actually superior to corporeal citizens. They have no life expectancy, and can (in theory) live forever. As they exist as incorporated entities, they can change their place of corporation and gain corporate citizen rights in other countries without being seen as having a dual allegiance problem. Individual corporations can gain much power and money, over time, and generally wield influence when petitioning a government beyond the ability of a normal citizen to do, which is the nub of the grief from the Left on this topic, I believe. And they can be scofflaws and still exist, which is a major bonus for a company that makes enough profit to shrug off fines and lose individuals who do wrong for the company's benefit.

The major problems and grief that associate the Left on their problems with corporations tends to be the power accumulation bit, along with the making money from wrong-doing part.

Do they ever address these problems?

No.

Not a hint of how to solve the problems, just complaints. Lots of complaints.

To help out the faint of heart I will suggest a couple of things to 'reform' our concept of legal fictions while still keeping them as a viable option.

As almost everything the Left complains about revolves around power and undo influence of corporations, the question must be asked: how do they get so much of them?

The answer is astonishing: they can exist forever and remain free even after wrong is done for them by individuals.

Can these be addressed without losing the concept of the 'corporation' as a viable social tool?

Yes, they can.

First is a 'Three Strikes and You're Out' law. We do this for repeat offenders that are actual people, so why not apply it to corporate citizens as well? Any company that accumulates three felonies (federal, State and they are cumulative) then gets immediately discorporated so as to never reform again. It gets broken down and sold piecemeal at auction, its intellectual property is put in the public domain, its records are kept by the State for review, and the company vanishes from the marketplace. After its debt is paid off then the remains are divided amongst the shareholders as cash. It doesn't matter if its a local mom and pop store that was dealing drugs on the side or some huge behemoth. Transnational companies will find that after they have lost their corporate holding in America, they can't get back into the country as a company: their overseas goods can still be sold here, but they cannot return from the dead. And as the 'Strikes' penalty accrue to the parent company, that means any organization that they have any role in operating would be barred from starting up in the US, and the requirement for third parties that are separate entities would be the only way for such companies to sell their goods and services in the US market. Americans could still purchase from overseas suppliers, of course, and take on that third party role for themselves as citizens, not corporations.

Yes a corporate death penalty, simple, isn't it? Now lets extend this concept one more step.

Second is a life expectancy for a corporation set by law. Between your entering majority and leaving this life is in the neighborhood of 60 years, of which a good part of that is spent accumulating the necessary goods and wealth to have a good life, perhaps raise a family, and generally ensure your continued existence via your use of liberty and freedom. Thus the prime time of your life is about 40 to 50 years long. Why should a corporation last longer than that? If you want to pass some goods and cash to your children you can have a corporations made at your death to do so, and they get that as a great start to their lives! Isn't 40-50 years long enough to actually do something with a company? And wouldn't it be a benefit to the marketplace to have no long-term giants standing around, but to have them finally die off after a given period of time? The time span must be one that is set in a way so as to make it something that the average physical citizen can understand as a concept: forever doesn't seem right due to the accumulation of wealth and power of such entities, but 20 years is way too short. By setting a definite expiration date for a company much good can be done for markets and society, while allowing corporations to do what they were made to do, achieve that and then end with that achievement as something that can be pointed to and understood... without the company still hanging around.

Like your death the company does get to give away its assets after its debt is paid off. Those are the physical assets, only, and intellectual property goes into the public domain. Intellectual works originated in a company and held by a company only last as long as the company does, even if sold or traded away, they go the way of their originator. This will, finally, get rid of companies lobbying to have copyright extended past a person's death which one or two powerful companies with great influence on this topic have done to distort the original intent of 'limited time' for materials under copyright.

Together these two concepts start to 'level the playing field' of competition in the marketplace as incumbent corporations in a field have a definite life span so that the worries about a monopoly are addressed and anti-trust law can be taken off the books as by the time a company gets enough sway in a market to try and act as a monopoly, it is also tending to be past the early part of its life and has a ticking clock against it. Those seeking the benefit of creative destruction in the marketplace to churn it, now will have a maximum beat of that churn: the life of a given company.

Enacting the second would require giving a period of time to existing companies: say the half-life of the new life expectancy or the life expectancy minus the amount of time they have been around, whichever is greater.

The Three Strikes law would be a clean slate, but be enforced immediately upon its becoming law, so that any ongoing cases will count against corporation, while past ones would not.

Thirdly is in the area of speech, particularly political speech. We, for some reason, see fit to limit donations from corporeal citizens. The concept is to apply those limitations to incorporated citizens, exactly as they are to actual citizens, save that it would apply to all parts and segments of a company. In principle there should be no reason to see the speech rights of a company as different from that of an individual in any venue.

These three concepts dealing with corporation life span and speech would do much to address the abuses of companies over the long-term. Bad corporate actors like Enron will still be made, that is a part of the human condition, nothing can change that save better accounting requirements for public disclosure. These are the main three that would address the problems of the Left and bring corporations to be something that we don't expect to be around as continued beings. Remember, you can still have one made on your death date to help your children along for a period of time, but at some point that, too, will go away.

By these changes a major shock would be given to the US economy: businesses that are huge (Boeing, Ford, Fannie, Freddie, the Federal Reserve, IBM, GM, GE) would have expiration dates coming around in a couple of decades. Things we don't think of as corporations, but are legal fictions as entities would also face this: private libraries, hospitals, private universities, charitable organizations, political parties, advocacy groups, PACs. What this means is a major re-thinking of how we run our society and addressing our own temporary existence by first having to deal with the expiration of companies. Within two decades major institutions, good and bad, would evaporate off the landscape leaving vast market areas open for new entrants.

The requirement to discorporate fully, pay off debts and give any remains to shareholders or those that own the company, means that those institutions have to be re-made, re-purposed, re-designed, re-configured and, generally, require people to ask if they really WANT a replacement for it or can get support to make a new version of it. I am sure that some long-lasting niches would find themselves barren of incorporated individuals as they have actually served their purpose and it isn't worth trying to re-make them. Others, like the entire venue of education, would be re-made by totally new start-ups willing to compete on the playing field of providing value for the money in the way of a good education. Banking would have a huge turn-over, and the financial system of the US would break down... not in the 'collapse' sense, but in the 'break down into smaller, more agile pieces' sense. With the end of large banking institutions and other financial institutions, there would be major upheaval in those markets, yet where needs are vital there would be new entrants ready to step into and step up to the challenge.

Political parties would find that they had to re-start afresh, that old parties used to doing things one way would be gone from the landscape and new successors would be formed by the people to take their place. Gone would be the certainty of Red and Blue, Left and Right, This or That: the two-party system exists solely due to the incumbent parties able to keep new entrants out, thus politics has stagnated in America and power has concentrated into the hands of the few and that has depressed electorate turnout to 50% or less in the Congressional election cycles. In a couple of decades there would be no Republicans, no Democrats, no Socialists, no Communists, no Greens, and even the smaller parties that have been around for decades would soon find a death date approaching. I am sure that some would try to continue on the parties under a different name, but they would have to be totally re-situated, get people to enroll in them, get support, find candidates... and compete at the local level with anyone else trying to start a party.

* * *

The above are ways to creatively address problems and offer solutions that do not 'break' the capitalist system nor make it into a crony system of preferred companies getting rewards while those that are not preferred getting penalized by government. Are they good methods to employ? I cannot say for certain, but they certainly are much further along in addressing 'problems' in the political landscape and should wipe the very reason for those problems to exist right off the map while retaining all the good features of the capitalist system and penalizing the bad actors immediately and removing the accumulation of wealth and power via a regularized form of known and understood methods that will cause churn in the marketplace without being upsetting to the market as a whole.

Attempts to tinker capitalism into 'playing nice' has meant high government overhead in the form of regulations, and those very regulations tend to be in favor of large corporations able to lobby government over a number of legislators and legislative sessions. Smaller companies have a major problem with regulations that impose pre-conditions at size levels as being anti-small business and a barrier to entry to becoming larger. This is not only a penalty but a non-market based pressure imposed upon the marketplace so as to reward larger entities over small ones by securing the larger entities from competition. Soon they become 'too big to fail', and yet they do fail due to size and lack of competition to cause innovation in such large organizations. By placing a known, exact life span on all companies, big and small, the carpet protecting big companies is pulled out from under them and all new entrants to becoming large must face up with the barriers erected to protect large companies, thus leveling that playing field for all players as the cost of becoming large is a set, known quantity.

The 'Three Strikes' system is perhaps the easiest of all parts of this to do as it is something that is known and understood by all of us: recidivists need a major penalty applied to them, and since these are not flesh and blood entities the ultimate price can be paid more easily to stop these actors from ever acting again. A company with a single 'Strike' against it finds that their ability to expand is only slightly hampered as expansion requires a trained workforce able to uphold corporate ethics with regards to the law. Yet a company can continue on past that in a relatively easy fashion, although parts that it attempts to shed have the 'Strike' attached to them, also. There is no way to cleanse an organization of that save via discorporation and breakdown: death is the final end for such problems. So selling off portions of a company as subsidiaries means that those parts have a separate load of burden upon them. Remember if this is done without a final expiration date, then that portion could continue on forever with that single 'Strike'. A company purchasing it, however, is faced with the moral dilemma of having to purchase that company and either keep it wholly separate, or accept its 'Strike' by fully incorporating it during any reorganization that dissolves the company into the larger structure. This would be a new category of business ethics and how to deal with bad actors in the marketplace, and yet it would only be a major hamper on a business that already has two 'Strikes' against it as they could never reorganize the smaller unit into the larger one.

While this sort of system may seem to advantage the adversaries of companies, that is activist groups pushing lawsuits, it must be remembered that those organizations, themselves, fall into the same category of law for the 'Three Strikes' provisions and that 'targeted' companies can run themselves in an ethical and law abiding fashion and escape a 'Strike' by turning in bad actors before they are found by outsiders and reimbursing those that have suffered due to the actions of that individual from the corporation. Self-policing and turning oneself in to authorities with an admitted misdeed has always gotten lower penalties as the individual involved recognized their culpability and is seeking to make amends and restitution to society and to those they harmed by the action of turning themselves in. That behavior MUST be rewarded by lowering penalties and seeing that the company does not and will not allow itself to benefit by the actions of the few bad actors within it. Corporate ethics go from being a joke and 'its all about money' to not only a worthwhile pursuit but something that companies will seek to enforce in a meaningful way by turning such bad actors in when they are found. An outside organization cannot inflict harm where a company polices its own actions well enough to find bad actors before 'activists' or law enforcement. This is what is known as being a 'Good Corporate Citizen'.

In some ways the first two concepts can be seen as an either/or situation, as they both begin to address bad corporate actors with the ultimate end to corporations: the first against the bad actors and rewarding those that act in an ethical manner by lowering penalties to the company (not the individual) and the second by putting a life span on all companies. If both were put in play there might be some trend to companies willing to do wrong as they don't expect to be around that long. We already have that problem as we can see the Enrons and Madoff's of the world are more than willing to throw ethics overboard in search of pure gain. Nothing can be done to stop such actors in life, save to penalize them harshly. That is part and parcel of being human and no set of laws made on this Earth can address them from doing such things, only set into place a system that discovers them, faster.

Companies nearing the end of their natural life might be inclined to behave in an irresponsible fashion as they don't have much time left. Yet for their corporate history they have avoided 'Three Strikes' in total and will either have a good set of corporate ethics (to be admired and upheld to all corporations as 'how to do it') or they will be in the precarious position of one or two 'Strikes' bringing their sudden demise. If the ethics of a company go so rapidly downhill so as to cause those, then they will be unlikely to remain around for long as their ethics suck to begin with and they won't be around long enough to lose all touch with their founder's ethics, as that founder just might still be around to run the show or criticize it from the outside if he or she has sold it off. That would be a major warning sign and red flag in the business community that the corporation is losing touch with its initial purpose and should be scrutinized.

In many ways these are self-reinforcing laws that put upon companies the same requirements as individuals have in corporeal life: people who lead good lives don't tend to go bad when they get older and set in their ways, and those with bad intents tend to run into problems sooner rather than later. There will always be people like Bernie Madoff, and only good corporate accounting standards can help to show Ponzi Schemes up for what they are, there is nothing to stop those who wish to 'cook books' from doing so. What can be done is to make the penalties steep, very steep, for such actions and the effects of them cumulative.

The final part, of speech, is one that helps to extend our ideas of exactly what being a 'citizen' is all about in the way of exercising our liberties and freedom. If the 'threat' to society, as the Left would have it, is from corporations being big and overwhelming with speech and money, then the problem is not with the speech or the money, but the means to accumulate same. Money is not speech: it costs nothing to go out on the sidewalk and rant. Similarly it costs very little for a company to hawk its wares on the sidewalk with a bullhorn or to get a name space on the Internet to set up shop: your overhead is minimal for such, too, so that is a level playing field with minor barriers to entry. Money spent to get a message out doesn't help if the message is muted on television, the ads blocked by software, or just 'tuned out' by the recipient audience.

Newspapers make money not through subscriptions, but through circulation of advertisements, and a few new entrants to newspaper markets that are not subscription based are becoming major competitors by having circulation of news to entice people to pick up the papers on their way to work. If you don't pick up the paper, you don't help the company, if you do pick it up you help them: the choice is up to you if you want to get an advertising vehicle at your own cost or for free. Free does not guarantee that people will actually read the ads, just that they will be in a media in the hands of individuals in which it might be presented before them. Money doesn't get you access, and even if it does get widespread distribution, that doesn't mean that people will actually pay attention to it or LIKE the message. No one is forcing individuals to GET THE MESSAGE no matter HOW MUCH you pay to distribute it. Money is not speech, nor speech money, although some after-dinner speakers can command a hefty sum, needless to say, but they are effective speakers which is a both a gift and a job that one can study for.

At the end of this I find the parallels between how we treat legal fictions as citizens and real citizens to be an interesting one. If the concept is extended to something like 'income' then could we replace all corporate taxes with a single, flat income tax? The question of 'what is income?' then moves from an academic question to a real world one. Is it just being paid by an employer? If so then it is not a 'sales tax', and would be leveraged on any contracts that have set payment amounts on a regular basis to a company to provide a good or service: the company is working for someone, it is being employed by them.

Thus not all contracts would be 'employer-employee' basis as something like a contract to provide an indefinite quantity of an item over time could not guarantee that any would be purchased, therefore the risk is on the 'employee' not the 'employer'. Goods made for sale with no pre-existing contract are then not made for anyone specific but made for society, in general, and available for individuals to buy. That is certainly not an employer-employee relationship. Nor are items that do not meet up to a contract set of standards for sale, but are generally safe, useful and functional for general sale. A contract to supply security services at a home or business would be an such a relationship between employer (those procuring the long-term services) and the employee (those supplying such services). Hiring someone to do something on other than the purely short-term (less than a week, say) creates that relationship necessary to define 'income'. From that sales of items are not, of necessity, employee-employer relationships, and most fit into the indefinite quantity, indefinite delivery type of contract where the amounts and timing can only be generally defined and, therefore, revenues are not a guaranteed constant. Employing a roofer for a few days isn't a long-term contract, employing people to keep your lawn up over a year is. Temps while 'employed' are only temporary or go through a third party for a longer-term relationship, so the direct actor is the Temp Agency, not the one needing the services.

So if we look to extend an 'income tax' idea it would have some ramifications on how we do business with businesses, as service contracts to the home (for cable TV, telephone, Internet, power, lighting, water, sewage, etc.) ARE long term contract types of this sort. You are employing an entity (private or public) to provide long term services in a very real sense. You are the boss. That might make your take on why a public utility should have a monopoly change, greatly, as such things as education for children are ALSO employee-employer relationships especially when specific and identifiable taxes for same based on school districts or other direct tax funding are utilized. Government acts as the intermediary, but the service is a monopoly one and you, as the boss, should have some say on if you want a monopoly service, or not... that is done via this thing known as 'elections' to change 'laws'. But once you see yourself as the employer (and have the headaches of employing someone befall you) then you begin to take a different look on exactly what 'income' is and how it is garnered, and what overhead we place upon it in regards to the viability of such work.

The concept of creating more 'real' citizens and accountability has limits when dealing with fictional entities. The lack of actual questioning of what those limits are and what they mean to us, as individuals, shakes up how we view ourselves, how we utilize our liberty as individuals and with other individuals to form fictional entities, and what the actual driving ideas behind such concepts are. While the original complaints from the Left are those of the Harpy, the underlying concepts are vital ones that we take for granted and, by doing so, lose sight of what it is we do in life and why we structure certain things the way we do as individuals and a society.

On the Duties of Man - To Man

2011-05-07T11:52:00.001Z

This post is a continuation of the examination of Samuel Pufendorf's On the Duty of Man and Citizen (1682). This post follows the previous section I've looked at On the Duties of Man - To God plus the overview of why this is important in Three Realms of Law. This work by Pufendorf is, itself, an overview of a multi-volume work he had generated and thought that a primer on that work, suitable for students, would be a vital part of a teaching curricula examining Natural Law. I will continue to do the overview of his logic and keep my usual commentary in abeyance as much as possible so as to follow Pufendorf's line of reasoning so that the outline of it is plain to see.

In the post-Westphalia tradition of Europe (and America) the concept of the 'Separation of Church and State' is one that is done for the benefit of the Church which had become a key part in State power. The 30 Years War revolved around the question of which religion was to hold sway over Europe and the Nobles and States of that era followed differing religious beliefs and then imposed those on the people of their holdings or States. When a realm went from Roman Catholic to Protestant, there would follow the forced change in religious outlook from the top - down. This would include grabbing the material wealth of the religious doctrine that was in disfavor and the persecution, and often execution, of those who would not convert over to the State's new religious outlook. With 15% of Europe dead by the end of the conflict, the Great Peace of Westphalia would impose restrictions, agreed to by treaty, upon all those taking part in the Treaty. While the Roman Catholic Church via the Vatican did not take official part in the Treaty, Roman Catholics could and did help the formulation of it. This treaty would break apart the links of State and Church so that States could not repress or suppress any of the three forms of Christianity then extant in Europe: Roman Catholicism, Protestantism and Calvinism.

During that conflict two major writers put forward their different conceptions of how they saw the work of Nation States and religion: Thomas Hobbes and Hugo Grotius. Samuel Pufendorf examined their works (and many others, needless to say) and would then be the first writer in the post-Westphalian world to blend the outlooks of both Hobbes and Grotius while taking into account the Treaty which would forever change the course of Europe. Many of the ideas formulated by Pufendorf have resonance with prior works in the Greek and Latin world, and also with those in the Anglo-Saxon tradition like Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England. From the philosophical basis of reasoned examination dating back to Plato and Socrates, then putting in the Latin and Church traditions plus those of the Protestants, and blending in examinations of laws, states and religion, Samuel Pufendorf would be one of the first to present what we would call a 'liberal' view of the world by positing that God is not enough, nor is having a State and that there is a third realm which is Creation in which we must all exist that is separate from both God's moral law and the law we create via the State. This is Natural Law which is ever present in our mortal life, restricts us in our views, and otherwise shows the physical instantiation of God's Will. Being part of that Creation we must take it into account as it speaks of God's Will in a way that is not contained by Scripture nor can it be dictated to by the State. When we examine our Duties as Man and Citizen we cannot leave out this thing called Natural Law as it is a vital part of what allows us to have States so as to be Citizens.

With that, I now proceed on to our Duties to Man.

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The duty of Man to oneself starts with the very simple and self-evident truth that self-love is something that we are born with. We use our natural gifts and talents from the Creator to our own good and self-interest, thusly we care about ourselves and love ourselves to do those necessary things. If we did not have that self-love we would assuredly perish. There is no need to impress obligation of self-love from any other venue: you have it as a given at birth.

From the Creator also comes the self-evident truth that you do not wish your natural gifts to perish and that they must be used so as to contribute to human Society so as to seek the preservation of such gifts over time. Having such gifts and not recognizing that you have them is your shame and loss, but when taught that you have them those doing the teaching are right to punish the pupil for not recognizing their own gifts and utilizing them It is one thing to neglect one's gifts through ignorance, another to purposely ignore them when those willing to show the vital use of them are at hand.

We do this because we, as individuals, have two parts to us - the soul [anima] which drives and controls the physical body via the intermediary of the mind [animus] which is our direct government of our body. It is the mind which must encompass Society, not only look after the needs of the body, and it is to that part of us that our ability to become a contributing and vital part of society is held. Our soul directs, the mind then does the work of following those orders as best as possible within the realm of what can be done via the body. All morals and ethics are decided upon by the mind, in accordance with the soul so as to give the body the greatest chance to survive and prosper. With that said our physical needs cannot dictate to us as that then creates gluttony, sloth and the creation of passions not directed clearly towards our self-betterment and may actually be contrary to it and our contact with Society. A strong spirit resists such temptations so as to become a better man, and those who give into them become less of themselves as they do not recognize the true direction of their self-evident obligations to themselves and Society.

Your life is given from the Creator and you are set for your time in life until the Creator requires you to leave it. A man can choose a course in life that will shorten it, in doing hard labors and constantly tiring himself to the benefit of himself and Society a shorter life may ensue. A citizen may willingly risk his life for others, so long as there is benefit to that and is not just adding to a general slaughter to no good ends. With your life in your hands you must weigh and balance those times when sacrifice, even the ultimate sacrifice, on your part is of benefit to your Society which is the holder of those things which you have given to it in the way of yourself. There is no obligation for such sacrifice, no words saying that you must give up your life for your fellow man, no one can decide that for you: only you can do that for yourself.

To throw away one's life is a violation of Natural Law in all instances. It does not matter if it be due to personal misfortune, pain and suffering, throwing oneself into a lost battle to die or putting forward an empty show of faith, they are all the same. No one profits from your death and Society mourns the loss of skills and fortitude necessary to continue on your life for its allotted time on Earth. We can learn fortitude and strength from the suffering of others, that it is possible to confront such pain and anguish and survive and even come out the other side of it a better man. For those with illnesses that will have no end, their example to us of how to live with such things is far, far more important than taking the easy way out for if they can suffer and cling to life until its bitter end, then that demonstrates the power of that life and our own life can benefit from that so as to steel ourselves for lesser travails than theirs. As horrific as suffering is, and it wouldn't be suffering if it wasn't horrific, it does have a larger context in life and as a demonstration to others of the value of such life within the context of Society. The greatest gift of the suffering isn't to die, but to live and show us how to lead with perseverance through all lesser times in our own lives.

From this, when the acts of another man put our lives in danger we have the obligation and natural right of self-defense to put ourselves out of danger while seeking to do as little harm to those who attack us as possible. Self-defense when another takes a risky course of action to attack us or threaten us then invokes our duty, obligation and right to life, and there is no misdeed in carrying through with such self-defense.

Exercising self-defense has the negative effect of injury or death upon your attacker, yourself or both, and this cannot be denied. While all life is to be cherished and protected, the concept of reciprocity of civility is a requirement for social discourse. That is that a peaceful and friendly manner is to be reciprocated between people so as to have a civil environment. As your safety as an individual is part of that sociality, there is no law that prevents one from defending himself from harm. When one seeks to do harm to another or harm is being perpetrated upon you, the right to self-defense becomes a bulwark of civil discourse by upholding civil standards. To not do so is to put at peril the good things provided by nature or industry and leave them open to despoliation. Any attempt to remove the means of self-protection of individuals would be the death of the human race.

With those things said it must always be sought to mitigate the use of force via defensive action, by securing oneself so that an attacker's fury will have had a chance to wane. Along with this is the prudence of not taking umbrage to minor slights so as to cause them to escalate into provocation and this is to be done if at all possible.

Defense of self includes defense of one's property as any who would violate one's property have already demonstrated no restraint on their actions. To those ends defense of your property with violent means is allowable in the natural state and in the civil state for immediate purposes. It is also allowable to chase those who have violated your property in the immediate extent. In the natural setting you can do so until you have tracked down the individual, while in the civil setting this requires the recourse of the Magistrate and seeking the civil means of law to track such people down. In the natural setting you can find change of heart and repentance from the individual who has done harm to your property, and you may accept that. In the civil instance this is for the process of law to decide guilt or innocence. In either instance it is mandatory to take away the tools available to such individuals to do harm again: that is either on the civil or natural state, it is mandatory that those who are judged guilty or who have repented of their ways have the tools of their ways removed from them.

The right of self-defense is against both those things done by malice and those done by error, thusly there is no right to kill another and submit to being killed due to error. If you are mistaken for another and harm comes your way, your right to defend yourself is paramount, no matter the cause of the infliction of harm.

To defend oneself from harm by putting up innocent safeguards that will protect you from harm is part of your natural duties towards yourself against your fellow man. Arming oneself, forming alliances, erecting fences and walls to protect yourself are all parts of what nature bids us to do in our self-defense and there is no wrong in doing them. These works cannot be used to justify attacking another to conquer them and despoil their goods by force. This is true no matter how powerful a neighbor is.

Upon seeing that a third party intends harm against another, your first duty is to yourself, save if you have treaty with another to protect him. Again this is man in the natural state, not the Nation State with civil government and law that is being talked about. Still, a powerful third party that seeks to conquer or subdue a neighbor can rightly be suspected of wishing to cause you harm after subduing your neighbor. When you see that plans are laid for violence against you by a third party, you have the right of self-defense by force and seizing the initiative before such plans come to fruition so long as there is no hope of friendly warning dissuading him from such plans. Defense is not merely avoiding blows, avoiding harm, nor evading your capture as the right of attack in your own defense before being attacked when the plans against you are clear then allows you to stop such plans by force.

In our civil states it is not allowable to attack a government when it is planning to do harm to a third party that plans harm against a fellow citizen. It is always to be sought to bring such potential assailant before a common Magistrate so as to have his plans addressed in common. You are not allowed the pre-emptive attack against a third party as a citizen in the civil state, and only once attacked is your right of self-defense to be called upon. When such violence is visited upon one in the civil state it is your self-defense that allows you to take any measures, up to killing another, to protect yourself. When such threat is neutralized by being driven off, by the death of the assailant or by you finding safe haven, you are not to continue the engagement but to get the office of civil government involved so as to address the matter.

There is no obligation to always seek the milder form of self-defense as, when one is attacked, the mental turmoil that ensues will change the evaluations of what is, exactly, to be done. One might leave a place of safety to confront an attacker, one might not run when they are in open sight of an aggressor as to turn and flee is to invite falling or being attacked in the back. Thus, even if there is relative safety with neighbors nearby, the mental state may not allow that to be an option. One may also appear in public when they know that they are at risk of attack, the right of self-defense still holds in that case as well. In the case of duels, however, there is no safe haven to self-defense as it is a purposeful event chosen by the individuals involved, thus the innocence of self-defense cannot be brought into play.

In defense of his limbs a man is allowed the same as in defending his life.

In addition female virtue is also guaranteed the same capability as self-defense. No greater offense against a woman can be imagined than to take her against her will and force her to raise the child of her own blood for an enemy.

As property is a necessary part of living, those who attack our property are attacking our life in a very real sense. We cannot preserve our life without our worldly goods, and those seeking to deprive you of them are attacking your life. In the state of nature we can repel and hunt down such people, while in the civil state we appeal to the civil government for help of recovery but retain the right of self-defense against burglars and robbers of all sorts.

To move on from self-defense are those who have attacked others. They are barred from self-defense until critical conditions are first met. He must be repent of the harm he has caused others and give guarantee that he shall do no future harm to others. That being offered such repentance if he shows savagery in his heart by refusing such and obtaining vengeance at his own hand.

Self-preservation is so high a natural duty that is seen as exempt from the common laws. 'Necessity knows no laws'. There is no power, no authority, not God nor civil government that can impose an edict so strict upon us as to compel us to face death for them. Because of this we give exception to laws that have put individuals in danger by following them and recognize that there is no compelling reason for a man to follow a law, no matter how well intentioned, that forces him not to obey self-preservation.

As examples a man may sacrifice an infected limb to save his life.

-On a lifeboat we draw lots if there is not enough food to go around, and those that will not abide by this are tossed overboard instead of letting common fate decide the ends of each.

-If thrown into a hole with deep water and you can swim and the other cannot, and he clings to you and drags you down, then you are within the right of self-defense to release yourself from his grasp.

-If shipwrecked and you find a plank or means to save yourself, but not another, and proceed to do so, and the other swims out to you threatening your survival, you may repel him.

-If an enemy chases two with intent to kill both and the only means of escape requires destroying the means to get to you, even if that means the other is killed, then you are to do so as your life would be forfeit otherwise.

It is also permissible by necessity to cause injury to another to escape death. If pursued by a stronger man intent on harming you, and you flee down a confined alleyway and another person, innocent of the conflict, blocks the way, you are allowed to knock them down if they do not take the warning of your action or words as proof of your necessity. You may very well cause harm to this person, but necessity allows such to save your own. If that person blocking your way was an innocent or cripple, then at least the pursuer would have the necessity of jumping over them and exposing himself, briefly, to the pursued. And if the blocker is doing so wilfully, then he may be knocked down and flattened directly as they have courted their own disaster.

The poorest beggar, who has nothing left to sell, cannot sell his works or be hired, who gets no recompense from begging nor friends to succor him may seek to gain sustenance from those who have an overabundance without committing the crime of robbery, so long as there is intent to pay back such sustenance to those it is taken from. From that it follows that the wealthy are by the limits of humanity, to help the poor and destitute as they are his fellow man. Still a man is to try all other ways so as to sustain himself then falls under not only necessity but the perfection of obligation of doing no harm. It can only be done to those not liable to fall into similar dire straits due to that loss and the obligation to make amends via full restitution is perfect and must be done. If they cannot make a free gift of aid due to their circumstances, then your obligation is not to put them into the same peril you are now in.

Finally the necessity of destroying the property of others to save our own may only be done if there is no way to save the other's property and its value, to the other, is less than the value of your property to you. In attempting to move or otherwise find means to save the property of another due to the imminent destruction of your own, when that loss is made you are to seek to give restitution to the one who has lost property. If both properties are at risk and sacrificing some of another's will save yours from perishing, then the loss you are to make up is pro rata as you have saved both from ultimate harm by doing injury to another's property. That is the basis of maritime law, and it serves on land as well as at sea for such events.

* * *

As with the previous section, I will not be commenting upon this section, save to say that the basis of what we understand our obligation to ourselves to be from natural law, and then under civil law, is something that is obvious and cannot be denied. This is not due to the nature of civil society, but due to the nature of man, and as man is a being of Natural Law, and always will be no matter where we are in this mortal realm we are within the mortal realm and thus not transcendent of it.

After this comes the duty of every man to every man.

Demographics are destiny

2011-04-14T16:08:00.001Z

There is a problem with the 'entitlement' programs that go beyond the loss of liberty by exchanging what should be a citizen's concern, that is caring for the elderly, sick and poor, for a government program. That is bad enough, to put your personal citizen's responsibility into the hands of government and expect one of the least efficient actors in any Nation (that is government) to provide the care of the most efficient (that is charity). Even beyond the degrading aspects of pushing those who are old or ill into the welcoming hands of red tape bearing bureaucrats is something even more fundamental that has been a problem with these programs for decades.

The problem?

Demographics.

When I speak of demographics, I go beyond just the easy to identify 'Baby Boom' generation that is a budget buster in all regards to 'entitlements'. That is simple calculation to see how many will survive to get those 'entitlements' and then look at the workforce to support them. As bad as this generations long Ponzi Scheme is, and it is horrific beyond all counts, it is based on a concept of a set age for receiving benefits. That age has now been adjusted for SSA once, and the proposal by Rep. Paul Ryan and others would seek to move it even higher. And yet that flies in the face of demographics. Which part of demographics, in particular? Life Expectancy.

In a previous review of this topic in Insurance, assurance and prosperity, I examined the underlying demographic trends of the 20th century prior to SSA and then past its enactment. When looking at the capability of SSA or other entitlements to be 'sustainable' it must be acknowledged that there is an active worker to recipient ratio that changes due to the number of people in each category. Life expectancy, if it remains stable, then allows for a determination of the average age of death for an individual citizen, so that half the population reaches that age and 'entitlements' are only provided for the remaining half (this concept works for all the 'entitlements' that are age dependent).

Thus if there is an increase in life expectancy, the 'expected' ratio of those utilizing an age-based entitlement will expand as more people live beyond the set age limit. This was a phenomena not unknown even in the 1930's and the 20th century had seen only one serious time when life expectancy dropped globally, and that was due not to war but the Spanish Flu outbreak post-WWI. Here are two graphs encompassing that data:

US Life Expectancy

Source: CJ Seymour, The Coming Great Depression

Global Life Expectancy

Source: Working Paper on Inequality and Mortality: Long-Run Evidence from a Panel of Countries
By Andrew Leigh and Christopher Jencks
Harvard University

Creating any system based on providing money or services to an elderly population then must take into account the change in the number of elderly over time. Will it be steady, decrease or increase over time?

Progressive politics sells itself on 'steady-state' analysis in which nothing changes in underlying particulars. Thus when doing a forecast of taxation increases Progressives do not look at how behavior will change to avoid such taxes, which is a part of human nature. Income from increased taxes never reach expected amounts and, quite contrarily, often go down per percentage point added in comparison to previous tax percentages. On 'entitlements' the feel good idea of there always being a set number of elderly misses the point that there is no set number of elderly in a growing, thriving society, and that to keep a demographic balance requires there to be no social, medical or family-type changes, so as to maintain the set ratios of the enactment of the 'entitlement'.

Another factor when looking at increased life expectancy is the change in the amount of time each person spends in the labor market to provide work to pay taxes to 'sustain' the entitlement. Here I will take a paragraph from my previous work:

Clearly this is not 'insurance' but some sort of 'assurance' by the government. Insurance is payment to plans that will pay out if something happens: you are paying in the bet that something will happen to you, and the insurer takes such payments in the bet that they will not. Those that live in the modern, industrialized United States have some great expectation that they will live to see 'retirement age' and then live for a decade or even two after that. If one lives to be 85 or so, 20 years can be expected at the end of not doing much in the way of work. Add that to the 18 years or so of education to get to High School level, and nearly 40 years of one's life is spent not working at a job, about 45%. Compare that to the 20 years spent (approx.) and retiring at age 63 and that is only 20 years or 31% of one's life spent in learning and 'retirement'. At this point in time, via SSN, the Federal Government is mandating that an individual, to be eligible for payout from the system, is to spend 14% more of their life in leisure than their grandparents. Great work if you can get it, which you can in the US.

Currently it is not as bad as 85 years, but only 78 years (via the CDC using 2007 figures). So the 'adjustment' to put in place circa 2030 of 70 years of age for SSA doesn't even match the original program's matching of life expectancy back in 1937. Thus demographics will kill SSA even with a slow change to a 70 year old use system as there will be a large percentage of the population living past 70 that will overburden the system.

Here there is an additional factor to consider in and that is the delta change in life expectancy over time. Which is to say: how many years does it take to up the life expectancy on average by 1 year?

If you answered that as 6, then you are looking at the beginning of the 20th century, and if you answered 4, then you are looking at the end of the 20th century. The delta change, that is the change to the rate of change, is increasing over time. So a static analysis applied today using a 4:1 ratio means that by 2030, a mere 19 years away, we will have added 4 years and change on to the life expectancy. Thus the average life expectancy will be about 82 in 2030, and broken out by sex that will put women in their mid-80's and men in their late 70's, unless that break-out changes over time, as well, with improved health care for men.

Politicians hate demographics because it impacts population based programs in a major way over time. Yet all projections are done either using static analysis or set change rate analysis, and none are done with behavioral changes or dynamically increasing change rates over time. Thus no matter how much anyone 'wants' government to 'help' on 'social security' it will fail not due to the meanness of any political party or due to the lack of competence in running such programs, but due to the pure population dynamics reflected in demographics.

Part of the adjustment to living longer and having a better chance of surviving child birth and a child surviving past age 5 is to have a smaller family size. That part of demographics begins to reduce the expected increase in overall population size as fewer children are born due to their high survival rates. All the way into the late 19th and even early 20th century it was a common occurrence for a child to die at birth or before reaching age 5. After the introduction of large scale sewer systems, public health systems to clean up water supplies and antibiotics (plus treatment of childhood diseases) that began to change and was remarkable throughout the 20th century that contrary to the population boom expectations and dire consequences, the demographic lines for population expansion globally were starting to plateau out.

Here the entrance of India to becoming a modernized economy and China modernizing and instituting a 'one child policy' started the shift from youngster oriented world demographics to middle-age demographics with Europe and Japan shifting to old-age demographic types. Family sizes in Europe plummeted from highs of 5 children in the poorer countries early in the century to lows of barely 2 children in those same countries by the end of the century. The more 'developed' parts of Europe were seen as slowly losing their native populations starting in the early 21st century. In the US this changed from a 3.2 children per family to 2.6 children per family, which is enough to maintain and even marginally increase population size over time, but not enough to get back to the early century's 4-5 children per family in the US. That latter was the era which SSA was cast, so by post-WWII the demographics to sustain the program were already in jeopardy.

Thus there are two vectors at work which are not amenable to politics save in a negative way, which is to say destroying the public health infrastructure and forcing large families via edict, that are only indirectly related to economics but drive the economics of programs like nobody's business. Increasing life expectancy happens when general health conditions for a population improves and this is more due to public health initiatives (clean water, sewage treatment and vaccinations) which are relatively low cost and easy to do. The upshot of those initiatives, however, is a better understanding of diseases, how they change and spread, thus leading to better treatments of them. That gets you a more capable medical system, overall, which is somewhat higher cost but able to extend life past the onslaught of early childhood diseases and then geared towards the diseases of the elderly. Due to these factors and grand-parents living much, much longer lives, the breakup of the 'nuclear family' happened not so much due to 'liberation' movements but due to the grand-parents able to live longer, healthier lives and care for themselves better, longer.

In theory these should be the relatively rich segment of the population, able to better prepare through their mid-adult life with a smaller family and increase marginal savings so as to grow their investments over time. That is the case with many elderly, but with SSA as an 'entitlement' that they 'paid into', savings started to actually decrease over time. The government forcing a 'retirement age' (and that is only upon the non-wealthy who can retire whenever they want or NEVER as the case may be) and then put 'means testing' on getting medical 'entitlements' meant that a system of gutting the savings of seniors to get 'entitlements' started via enforced 'retirement' when many were still able to contribute in meaningful jobs up to their last day before 'retirement'. Plus the idea was that they had an extra decade or more of life still ahead of them... supported by younger, poorer working families.

This brings up some salient questions:

1) Is there any way to actually have such an 'entitlement' system at all? Not one that depends on age as a determining factor, especially old age, no. At some point early in this century we will pass the 3:1 ratio for adding an additional year on to life expectancy and after that it will be 2:1. Thus for every two years of time you get an added year of life expectancy. When that ratio reaches 1:1 you have near immortality. Barring a total collapse of civilization or even a partial collapse of the Nation State system and impoverishment of the wealthy, this isn't changing any time soon. Either of those events would set humanity back a couple of generations and see a massive decline in global life expectancy as the technical infrastructure to address public health and diseases go into decline or collapse.

2) Is the concept of 'retirement' even valid given the trends? No. Gerontocracies, that is governments run by the aged for the aged, is a trend in parts of Europe (Germany, France, parts of Scandinavia) and a force in Japan and Russia. These countries are facing a greater than 1:1 worker to elderly ratio, and anything that raises the number of elderly as a proportion of society then obviates any 'retirement' concept: there are too many non-working people to sustain society and the economy. That is a broad over-generalization, of course, but even when factoring in automation and productivity increases, the consuming of high productivity items will also tend to keep pace with output per person, and the number on the old age side then factor in as a major consumer of all goods in the economy.

3) Is the concept of 'old age' viable any more? To a degree, yes, so long as the keys to stopping the degradation of DNA in cells isn't found, it will continue to be a generally viable concept. What is interesting is the amount of work going into that 'Holy Grail' of generalized ageing, and our understanding of ageing as a 'disease' is slowly taking root. If the government can keep from ruining the economic system, it is possible to see a 'cure' for this 'disease' within the span between now and 2030. As a disease ageing is generalized, wide-spread and pandemic: everyone gets it. Thus there must be keys to it that are, strangely enough, easier than going against an auto-immune disorder like MS or Type I Diabetes or Lupus. As ageing was not seriously approached as a 'disease' in the 20th century, the early discoveries in the 21st that do see it as a 'disease' hold much promise. And that 1:1 ratio is not all that far off, even for the middle-aged in our modern times. Until that 'cure' is found, the general degradation of an individual's body can be put off (that is life extended) by working on secondary problems and maintaining a generally healthy life, longer. Better diet assuredly played a major role in the change rate of change for life expectancy.

4) How can we address the cost of health care that is ever spiraling? The cost of health care, that is the physical addressing of needs, office space and even most medications have remained affordable for decades in the US. What has changed is the health care 'system' with the intervention of the government in the 1960's with Medicare and Medicaid. These two systems do not pay off to the cost of procedures and medications. The 'discount' that seniors get is a cost-shifting via government to practitioners and hospitals which then must raise costs elsewhere. Even more interesting is that each time this question is posed it can be compared to treatments available in 1970-72 and, adjusting for inflation, the medications of that era are very cheap and the procedures once rare, then (like open heart surgery) are now widely available and relatively cheap. The cost is in the provisioning system for these items, not in the skills or equipment to do them, or even the cost of medication production for that era-specific suite of medications. Of course better, faster and even cheaper ways to do heart surgery have arrived, as well as medications that could not even be dreamt of in the 1970's. You are, today, getting more effective and, thusly, more cost effective medications and procedures today, than your counter-parts did in the 1970's either as inflation adjusted costs or real costs. The delta in health care is the provisioning via 'insurance' and from the government, both of which add on overhead, accounting costs and burden to the system in order to get 'discounts' that then get cost-shifted through the entire system, raising costs. To remove the inflator of overhead and accounting, it is necessary to remove the middle-men who add cost but no value to the system. In this the pure 'outpatient, seen on demand clinic' is now appearing at a very low cost per visit to address this need that government and insurers cannot meet.

5) What happens to the 'social safety net' in this new age of increased life expectancy? It vanishes. When your effective 'old age' passes 80, you are no longer in any real need of a 'social safety net' as you should be spending your adult life learning how to work and to adjust to ever changing working conditions. This means that concepts that have been cherished as part of the Progressive agenda, like a minimum wage, become unsustainable as one cannot put any real 'floor' on wages when a person is expecting to work for decades. Upwards achievement at some aspect of work related life, given 5-6 decades of working life, means that there is no floor that is meaningful to an individual: we will all be seeing that life is long and that no one can extend your childhood for decades at a time. This is not a mean-spirit concept, one that seeks to impoverish the young as we are already doing that via the 'social safety net' and set-age systems that don't work, which then cost-shift debt from the old to the young. Once the ceiling is removed, that is 'old age' becomes a concept that is not very related to life expectancy, then there is no reason for a 'floor' economically: very few people are so incompetent as to have NO viable work skill that will allow them even a modest advancement throughout life. Even so, for those there is this thing known as 'charity', which is fellow citizens helping each other with the lowest of possible overhead cost, directly. Only those who are mean of spirit and hard of heart say that they cannot trust their fellow citizens in times of need. Look at Japan's recent earthquake and tsunami and ask yourself: would you help your fellow man at such times? If so then why on Earth are you not doing so NOW? It is not your fellow man that is hard of heart, but you who ask such a question and contribute nothing to charity and doubt the good will of your fellow citizens at every turn.

In summary the concepts of demographics are vital moving forces in society, as they effect more than just population size or even cohort size and type, but extend deeply across time to change the nature and outlook of individuals within society. Semi-valid concepts from the late 19th century cannot cope with modern, dynamic analysis of demographic changes, and even those that came to be in the 20th century that did not address demographic changes, are now put seriously at peril by them. Japan went from a young, vibrant but militaristic culture in the beginning of the 20th century to a pacifistic, ageing culture in the late 20th century: their entire nature as a society had changed in profound ways that influenced their demographics. Such changes in society also play parts in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America and everywhere technology helps to improve public health even modestly. The basics of clean water, sanitation, vaccination and wholesome food are huge movers in demographic profiles: in Ancient Rome the demographics changed significantly when these public works were put in and the Nation went from a Republic to an Empire.

Some ideas we have from the past of old age are in rapid flux, and yet our governmental systems are lagging and badly, unable to adjust to the changes even in a single decade, not to speak of five or six of them. The ideas that came with old age, that of some 'retirement' are more a product of politics than any reality: in the past people before the Progressive era made their own retirement whenever they could, and that was not dictated to by government. Today the original employees of Microsoft made millions, often billions, of dollars and many retired... only to find retirement dull and that they wanted to make new careers and businesses for themselves. The rich can retire whenever they want, which is why we have the 'idle rich' as a fantasy. In reality the rich go from business to business, or simply re-invest their money in new companies, new ways of doing things, and into our society by doing that. Yet, today, a car is car, no matter what the cost, and the value of a roof over one's head is stable, no matter how impoverished or rich the trappings are. You can only live in one house at a time, drive one car at a time, and only take in so much entertainment at one sitting: the rich have more options, but are not necessarily leading richer lives for all those options. And many of the 'rich' are small business owners, taking little pay for themselves so they can support their company. Yet their 'income' via the business makes them 'rich', even though they have a modest house and car, they may employ tens, hundreds, thousands or more people. It is the rich, investing in companies large and small, that created the tools and means necessary to bring us an affordable, decent life. They are only villains when they use their power to gain favor to no longer be treated equally by government: those companies must go as they are predators on the body politic and society, no matter what 'good' they do they erode the moral character of the economy by their ends.

And when your life is extended past 80 years of age, and an 80 that is well kept and vibrant, who is to say that you won't be amongst the 'rich'?

Why ask government to punish you through taxes when you can build society via charity and providing jobs and actually doing something worthwhile with your life? You will still have weekends for the golf course.

Simplicity budgeting

2011-04-08T11:46:00.001Z

The following is cross-posted from Dumb Looks, Still Free on 15 FEB 2011.

With the latest White House budget put out by President Obama, there is little in the way of actual spending cuts or regulatory reform going on, and much in the way of increasing spending and taxation. This as the government nears its debt limit ceiling.

Again.

The lack of 'Hope & Change' in this budget for FY 2012 has been noted by many on the Left and Right, and that the Administration lacks the ability to actually show that anyone in the Administration understands the ramifications of the 2010 elections are plain: Stop The Spending. Yes, Stop The Spending is meeting Stuck On Stupid.

Interestingly enough the budget process for FY 2012 (not the FY 2011 work that is due soon) will be different than what has been going on since the 1960's, as outlined in this Politico article by Jake Sherman & Jonathan Allen on 01 DEC 2010:

House Republicans are devising a plan to simplify spending decisions by considering government funding bills on a department-by-department basis in the new Congress, according to Republican insiders.

The move would facilitate cutbacks in government programs and, GOP aides say, enhance oversight and accountability for individual agencies, fulfilling promises made by Republicans on the campaign trail and in their Pledge to America. But it would also threaten to complicate an already tattered appropriations process on the House floor and in negotiations with the Senate, which is why the mechanics of the transition are still under discussion.

In a speech to the American Enterprise Institute earlier this year, Speaker-designate John Boehner (R-Ohio) outlined the idea that he, Republican transition chief Greg Walden (R-Ore.) and rank-and-file Republicans are now working to implement.

"Let's do away with the concept of 'comprehensive' spending bills. Let's break them up, to encourage scrutiny, and make spending cuts easier. Rather than pairing agencies and departments together, let them come to the House floor individually, to be judged on their own merit," he said at AEI more than a month before the midterm election. "Members shouldn't have to vote for big spending increases at the Labor Department in order to fund Health and Human Services. Members shouldn't have to vote for big increases at the Commerce Department just because they support NASA. Each department and agency should justify itself each year to the full House and Senate, and be judged on its own."

This is the way budgeting used to be done before the Cold War got into full swing: Congress decided the budget for each part of government separately. The unitary budget process creates a huge ball of wax and the 'take it or leave it' form of governing, in which much bad can be packed into a bill that covers the entire federal government. It is a way to hide spending and force 'compromise' not only amongst parties in Congress but with the President. It is also highly irresponsible as each part of government should receive a separate review and be divided from other agencies to see if it is carrying out its duties in an effective manner consistent with its enabling legislation and the Constitution.

Doing it this way, piece by piece, affords opportunities for savings, reductions or changes in the way an agency works, and a review of an agency each and every year in a way that unitary budget process requirements do not meet. By allowing pork to be packed into a unitary budget, good oversight and control of the fiscal side of government, by Congress, is over-ridden by political needs to 'get things funded'. Congressionally Directed Actions put in by individual Congresscritters means that those items are not properly budget for in the Operations & Management portions of those agencies getting such funds. All accounting for those funds must be done on the set operational budget that does NOT include the earmarks. This stretches staff and reduces proper Congressionally mandated oversight on spending and puts a direct line by individual Congresscritters into government departments. By removing the opportunity for political abuse of the unitary budget process, the actual abuse is expected to diminish.

Beyond that salutary effect, however, there is something even better with this process: cutting budgets of individual departments or agencies, or even requiring that they schedule to reduce their overall size or disband completely. This form of budgeting to remove an agency is rarer, still, as Congress so rarely does this as to make such times noticeable, as I pointed out in another piece. That is the formal 'tell the agency it is time to tidy up and go home' form of Congressional budgeting. There is the other form when no spending is coming forth via the budgetary process to fund a department or agency: shutdown.

With the unitary budget process that is an all or nothing affair: either the entire government is funded or it isn't. That is a game of 'chicken' with the government held hostage to it. Thus an 'across the board' cut to all departments becomes an all or nothing affair if you use this process. When you go to piecemeal budgeting, then you get individual parts of the government segregated out for funding. This is a powerful legislative tool as it can serve very well in the hands of those seeking to remove power from government via the expedient means of not funding those parts with the power. Congress is obligated to fund very little of the federal government: servicing the debt, DoD, salaries in the three branches, the Mint, USPTO, parts of Commerce and the IRS, a piece or two of Interior, government archives, duties related to the border on immigration and naturalization as well as the orderly processing of goods individuals at the border, a postal system, plus any necessary buildings for those activities. Those are the mandatory parts of the budget, per year. Everything else is discretionary, and I do mean EVERYTHING including 'entitlements' as individuals have no contractual right (via Megan McArdle) to expect anything from SSA, Medicare or Medicaid:

Well, sort of. The first thing to point out is that legally, changing social security benefits would not be default, because (as the Supreme Court has already ruled), beneficiaries have no legal, contractual right to their benefits. They enjoy them at the sufferance of Congress, and Congress has the perfect right to change them. Doing so will not affect our status as a borrower adversely in the eyes of people we actually borrow money from. Indeed, it might enhance it. The first thing a lender wants to know is not whether you are a good person, but whether you are likely to repay the money they lend you; they are interested in the former only insofar as it implicates the latter.

During the Johnson Administration the system lost its 'lock box' with 'account' concept as all funds were available from SSA to the general fund by putting Treasury Bills in their place for future promise of payment. So servicing the debt includes those bills held by SSA. More importantly is that all the 'entitlements' are at the sufferance of Congress and are, thusly, discretionary spending.

Putting 'entitlements' to the end of the line after the mandatory funding parts, and then dealing with the rest of the discretionary budget, first, allows for a few things to be done.

First, austerity packages to federal departments and agencies can be created and passed by the House to demonstrate that it 'gets the message' of 2010.

Secondly the Senate is put into a position of a House unwilling to bump spending up for anything and it is the Senate then faced with the 'pass it or lose it' deal. This is so because a House can clearly say that in not passing a spending bill for something like, say, the EPA or Dept. of Agriculture, that the Senate clearly is in the 'clean sweep' mode and just wishes to do away with them. Then the House thanks the Senate for its fiscal responsibility and does NOTHING further on that department or agency. It passed what it had to pass and the Senate is free to pass that. Really, who is going to 'lobby' for the Dept. of Education beyond the Teacher's Union? Who will actually be HURT if the Dept. of Agriculture goes under? Monsanto?

Third the Senate, faced with either austerity or nothing, passes austerity and puts THAT on the President's desk. He has the exact, same choice as the Senate: if he wants a part of government to go away, he can simply not sign the bill. And get THANKED by the House for his fiscal rectitude.

Yes, games will be played on the 'if you agree to pass this bitsy program then I will pass/sign that bitsy program' but that would only be with the Senate. The House can say that austerity is the rule from here on out, and get used to it.

The group of Republicans following the Tea Party elections of 2010 offer enough of a block to be able to block parts of the budget as they have already demonstrated on things like the Patriot Act. This puts Democrats in the nasty position of having the 'chance' to show up the fiscally responsible House members by joining with the few remaining fiscally irresponsible Republicans to try and pass a 'bi-partisan' budget that is not responsible.

Mind you that is a career ender for 2012, which would see a return of those following their constituents and an angry populace voting out the irresponsible House (and Senate) members.

By doing it this way the line gets clearly drawn about who is serious about fiscal responsibility and who isn't.

And because 2012 will be looming, angering the voting public really isn't such a hot idea and that may even sway the irresponsible ones just a smidgen.

Then you tackle 'entitlement' reform... because everyone, up and down the line, will see that you are serious about cutting spending EVERYWHERE which will include 'entitlements'. Be a shame if the Senate or President didn't want to fund those, no?

A rule of thumb that is wrong

2011-03-29T15:27:00.001Z

You know the old saying from the Middle East:

'The enemy of my enemy is my friend'.

It is pretty straightforward that the people vexing your enemy are helping you, right? Really you need to support that, don't you?

Unfortunately they aren't 'on your side' as they are going after their own cause and agenda and not yours, so while the vexation may be fun to watch, these doing the vexing are in no way, shape or form a 'friend' to you.

Now logically stated is the following:

The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy.

This one is not only correct but has a corollary to it on what the strategy is for your enemy and his enemy:

Let's you and him fight.

This is the happy strategy of minor nations throughout history that have two major nations lusting after wealth, territory, and other things tangible or intangible in the minor nation. This was done by Vienna during the two Ottoman invasions that threatened the city. Since the local military was dwarfed by the incoming Ottoman armies, the plea to get a larger, regional power to defend Vienna went out. Poland was a relatively large power for that era, as the area we call Germany was still a lot of squabbling Principalities, and while the Poles may not have had any great affection for the Viennese, they knew that if the Ottomans got Vienna they would be able to stage attacks to devour the Germanic Principalities and actually threaten Poland.

Poland changed that around in the 1920's and got defensive alliances with France and the UK against Germany, so that if Poland was invaded then France and the UK would have to bail her out. Germany used a hoax to make it look like Poland had attacked Germany, but no one as fooled by that and the invasion of Poland started the official start of WWII, since fighting between Japan and China had been ongoing for years, by then, and Japan as an ally of Germany the attack got a globe spanning war. This is the diplomatic variation of 'Let's you and him fight' as the Polish army and defenses were sub-par to say the least so that horse mounted cavalry had to face off against tanks.

The US used a version of this in the Iran/Iraq war of the early 1980's, by supplying both sides of the fight with arms: Iraq openly, although not with a lot of material, and Iran clandestinely in the Iran/Contra deal which saw a limited amount of very effective weapons against tanks get sent to Iran which had very little in its arsenal to compare to them. Henry Kissinger summed it up as a war in which we wished both sides would lose. That is one of the most quintessential variants of 'Let's you and him fight' that has been seen in the modern era.

So, if applied to a present-day case, like Libya, what would the response of the US be to rebels going against He Who's Name Can't Be Spelled Correctly?

The first few days of dithering is indicative of having no policy for such events when our enemies are attacked by their enemies. The old Bush Doctrine was that we were the supporters of those seeking 'democracy' in the Middle East, but that was not immediately deployed. Instead the idea of wanting 'regime change' in Libya was used when it looked like the rebels were going to win the thing. The President said that He Who's Name Can't Be Spelled Correctly must go.

Ok, good enough on the old sorts of concepts: we didn't like the guy and would like to see him gone.

Then the Carter Doctrine of 'dithering' was deployed.

He Who's Name Can't Be Spelled Correctly rallied his supporters, paid off lots of mercenaries and thugs to fight for him, started bombing anyone in rebel held cities and generally was acting the part of a brutal dictator... because he IS a brutal dictator.

At that point the US has a wide array of options.

- We can say that the leader of Libya had ordered attacks under no auspices of normal Nation State war against US military personnel in Germany (plus German civilians) and had taken down a US commercial aircraft over Lockerbie, Scotland which was an act of Piracy, as Congress has extended the coverage of the Laws of the Sea to US commercial air carriers. We could point out that US policy has not embraced Libya's leader, that we have not forgiven him and that he was no longer seen as a valid leader of any Nation but a Pirate with a Piratical State under his control and that we considered him and any cronies still with him and supporting him to be Pirates. That there was no government of Libya that we recognized and would welcome people in Libya to form an interim government that we could help.

- We could use our clandestine offices to try and get a hit squad into Libya as we no longer saw the Unspellable One's rule as legitimate and that he was a threat to us and had attacked us in the past. He wanted personal war, and we are obliging.

- We could seek the help of regime personnel who had fled after the rebels started their campaign, put a 'government in exile' together with a very sketchy constitution or other ruling document, hire some mercenaries to help them get those who wanted to fight in shape, and landed a government with tiny force to broker with the rebels to bring them into an official government fold.

These are effective ways to deal with such threats from official delegitimization of the current regime to a bit of clandestine work to get rid of the lynch pin of the regime, its leader, all the way to doing the old fashioned 'right thing' and getting a real government of ex-government officials together, giving them some backing and getting them on the ground so that there would be an official group to then plea for military and commercial aid.

See how that works?

What did we do?

We froze the leader's bank accounts. About $30 billion in cash in the US.

We looked for a 'blockade'. How that would work with wanting to supply rebels and such makes your guess as good as mine. Blockades have timetables of years to decades, not hours to months, to have an effect, by the way.

We thought about a No Fly Zone, passed on that until the French and UK got together on it to 'protect the rebels' and also to stop any damage to the oilfields in Libya. If you did the first you could get some help on the second, so we decided to join up! Then we would lead! Then we wouldn't lead! It was multinational! We were going to do it all! We were going to hand it all off to some political talking group! Then we would hand it off to NATO! We were only taking out regime air assets, save for the tanks and such we started to go after as a 'coalition'.

This is not a 'doctrine': it is incoherent.

The address the President gave last night is not a doctrine, either, it is a mixture of statements and feel good phrases that are meant to be applied everywhere, but only really apply to Libya, unless they don't apply at all. It isn't being applied to the similar circumstances in: Ivory Coast, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain, Jordan, and even the uprisings in China, come to that.

In theory all we want is the Unspellable One out of power, perhaps with a nice permanent vacation in Venezuela, Land of the Tyrants.

With announcements that al Qaeda is part and parcel of the rebels, with a leader who actually fought against the US in Afghanistan, we now know that we have two enemies fighting each other in Libya. Something we should have gotten word about from our ever less-than-capable INTEL Community, say, about 3-5 days into things, not 3-4 weeks later and only then by the actual leader's own transmissions.

What was the right strategy that anyone, with an ounce of sense in their heads, could see when our enemy has an unknown enemy that really isn't seeking big favors and promises us NOTHING if we help?

Do we even have a dog in that fight? Mind you that is way, way, way before the revel leader announced he was trained in Libya to fight for al Qaeda against the US and Coalition Forces in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Just taken on purely face value, with the knowns of the time, do we really want to support the enemy of our enemy if they have given no indication of how they feel towards us? It is possible to get worse than the Unspellable One, you know? The current regime in Iran points to that. As did Saddam Hussein. And the Magical Kingdom of Mr. Kim in NoKo. The Congo. Somalia. Parts of Detroit and Chicago.

When your enemy has an enemy, and he has not said anything about being friendly to you, then he is just your enemy's enemy.

They really should fight it out amongst themselves.

That is not 'isolationism' but pure, unadulterated common sense.

Let's you and him fight. We will figure out what to do once you two have gotten things settled.

We might even send arms to both sides if we find them both hostile to us... stranger things are happening, you know?

What is a Nation State?

2011-03-20T11:54:00.000Z

The following is an opinion piece by The Jacksonian Party.

This is pretty simple, no? Everyone has a good idea of what a Nation looks like, in form, even when that form varies from the early City States to the modern Nation State, we can definitely put our fingers on a few salient points that define Nations.

First off is that they have a declared government. This can be anything from a Warlord putting his cohorts in place with an iron fist all the way to people on a small speck of land banding together to use a representative democracy to run a republic. Either way a known set of people who work within a confines of a geographic area, with a people in it and an orderly system of government are key points in the Nation State business. The Nation has accountable actors who act in the name of the people of that territory.

Second is that many Nations are born in blood from previous regimes that did not reflect the will of the people or who were deposed by invading armies or from the turmoil of an upset order that fell apart. Peaceful change is to be sought at every turn, but not every ruler or government is willing to recognize the will of the people to get rid of them. Thus fighting usually starts before an actual new government can get in place.

There is a critical juncture between the First and the Second and that is the ability to get help from the outside if you are fighting to depose a government.

Note that governments are only imposed after being on the losing side of a war: the winning side gets to dictate terms. Coming to power with no governmental structure means you have no orderly means of actually running the Nation, even temporarily, until a new government is set up. That is why many of the mechanisms of the prior government live on for months or years after the defeat of the prior regime: they are necessary to keep things going. Hated? Most likely. Necessary? By and large, yes.

To take two examples:

- In the American Revolution the build up to 1776 via prior incidents put forward a group of representatives willing to stake a claim for a new government. They declared independence and the very next thing they did (beyond circulating the declaration) was put a new government in place. That was the Articles of Confederation, which was the interim government that allowed other governments to back the new government. Thus Poland would send us our first Light Cavalry and France would later give us troops, arms and cash to help against the British. All that time fighting was going on, but a recognized chain of command from the new government to Gen. Washington was established. It didn't work that well, but it did work and the form of accountability was put in place.

- In Iraq after OIF the government of Iraq dissolved. Not by order, that was the after-thought, but by the civil service leaving their places in government and leaving a mess behind. The loss of control meant a loss of order and looting ensued, as well as a general uprising against the old regime. There would be long, long months to getting a local interim government put in place to help settle things down and then the agenda to get a new constitution passed would involve more months of bloodshed as scores were settled and outsiders attempted to thwart the standing up of the new government. That interim government was responsible for the obligations of goods and services, so it gained recognition outside of Iraq from Nations wanting to have commerce with Iraq and support it. That has been a messy route, yes, but necessary as letting the locals control their own destiny after deposing a genocidal tyrant unable to stick to his war-time treaty was no longer acceptable.

Both instances have timing involved - in America the revolution had basically started before independence was declared, yet in Iraq the government was removed by it being attacked and then dissolving in its very offices when defenses broke down. Getting an interim government up was critical to both Nations, and they were Nations as they were they were considered sovereigns either by declaration (in the US) or recent custom (in Iraq).

In general it is not wise to support any uprising, rebellion or set of actors looking to overthrow a regime that does NOT put down their system of government, who is accountable and the territory they will oversee with consent of the governed. That is why the US needed a government to survive the early months of its war with the mother country, and why the insurgents in Iraq were seen as puppets of foreign powers: the accountability system is the 'sniff test' of a Nation.

If you don't have it, you reek of barbarism.

You, as an individual, may not like certain Nation's governments, but that is for the people in the Nation to work out, not for you to help 'decide' from the outside. I don't like despots, tyrants, dictators, and warlords overmuch, but if the people they are over can't figure out how bad they are and get rid of them, then there is little that I can or should do for them from the outside. Sympathize with their plight? Yes. Beg my government to intercede? No. Opposition is one thing, interceding where the locals can't buy a clue is something else, again.

That now brings up Egypt, Libya and other fun places with insurrections going on, like Tunisia and even China. What should the US policy be?

Well, how about requiring the locals to get serious, first off? Insurrection, rebellion, revolution are all parts of changing a government you don't like, but the ballot box should work as well. If you don't have elections and the government will not recognize that the people are the sovereign actors of the Nation to create a Nation, then you get the bloodier, nastier way of doing things. That is all understood. So what, exactly, do these upstarts want to replace the old system with and what is the territory they will be held responsible for, and who is doing this stuff?

That gets to the crux of the matter, that junction between First and Second: if you don't know what you want or who is being trusted to run the show then why, exactly, should anyone on the outside recognize such a rebellion as in need of 'help'? You may not like the dictator, despot, tyrant, regime, warlord, etc. in charge, but if those in opposition won't stand up for something other than being anti-regime, then you aren't likely to get a good outcome. Quite the opposite as that is how such notorious regimes usually start: rebels without a clue beyond wanting power.

Thus in Egypt the people had a general uprising against the regime and it, finally, stepped down and handed running the show over to the military. Now there are drafts for a new constitution coming about, with a more or less legitimate interim regime in place. Its strange that those wanting the regime change couldn't say, exactly, what they wanted to replace it. It is one thing to have a government deposed by outside forces who then get to figure out what to do and quite another when you take to the streets without a clue as to what you really want as a form of government. That path to mob rule isn't pretty and usually lasts until a dictator or junta can kill its way to power and get some cronies to be strongmen for the new regime. And if that starts to sound like the old regime... well... if you don't know what it is, exactly, you want then you are unlikely to get something to make you 'feel' better in this realm.

In Tunisia the dictator has fled, but what of the government? It is in disrepute but a newer system hasn't really come about, yet. For such a well educated people they should be able to figure out the cart - horse order of things.

Things are less well formed in: Yemen, KSA, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan and Syria.

Iran has the Green Movement (not an environmental movement) but that seems stalled on the verge of doing things and its leaders are being rounded up by the thinning old regime.

China is cracking down and paying people to stop the insurrection's communications. Good luck on that, I tellya.

Libya has the problem of rebels who were very successful and were even rumored to be putting a constitution together. They really, and for true, should have done that.

Why?

It could be announced as part of foreign policy that the old regime was no longer recognized as sovereign and the new regime was. Money, arms, supplies and all the rest of it could flow from Nations recognizing the new government and then blockade the old one. What took months back in 1776 now takes minutes to hours. Rebels with a constitution, putting on identifiers and generally having a recognized chain of command means they are serious about getting a new government in place, even on an interim basis, and can be supported.

They didn't do that.

We can't recognize them as a government as they aren't one.

See that part about what happens when you are clueless about what you want to do once you win after fighting? That is where Libya is. Egypt, at least, has a government that knows it is interim. Libya has a government under the old regime, and the rebels are unable to figure out that they need a new form of legitimacy to get things rolling their way.

Rebels without a clue.

Putting the cart before the horse.

Helping the clueless when they demonstrate they are clueless usually doesn't end well for all concerned.

I don't like He Who's Name Can't Be Spelled Consistently.

I have no good feeling about the current rebels, at all.

Wanting to get rid of a tyrant is all well and good, but could we have the guarantee, in writing, that you actually do have an idea of what it is you want afterwards? Otherwise this is just your standard tyrant swap during a coup.

Put up and demonstrate your morals and ethics, and your willingness to be held accountable.

Or don't.

The first gets you a new government, and that can have a bloody end, but at least you are willing to stick up for your fellow citizens and a better way of doing things.

The latter is tyranny for tyranny, despot for despot, and coup after coup.

Thus America's answer should be: put up a government, draw your line in the sand, be held accountable, put on uniforms and then we will think long and hard about supporting you as you are showing you are willing to do the hard work of creating a better government after the show is over.

That is, however, sane and rational.

I'm not expecting that any time soon, and we will rue the day we gave up being civilized for transient ends.

The simple self-evident

2011-03-11T20:04:00.001Z

The following is a pure opinion piece.

Yesterday was the last day for complaints.

You have been warned.

There are a variety of the 'self-evident' truths that we learn in our life that tell us much about the nature of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These are not 'rights' nor 'freedoms' but the consequences of actions that we all must understand and live with. Most of them are cliches as they are well known and used as 'rule of thumb' or something we can readily identify with when looking at a problem. Yet few actually apply these to their daily lives and overall outlook in life, even though they are self-evident truths.

What sort of truths are these? Here are a few that one can live their life by:

- Neither a borrower nor a lender be. Biblical but a good rule of thumb for life as when you are in debt you are in sorrow, and when others owe you then you are constantly wondering if they will ever pay you back. Do without the heartache on both sides and you will live a better life and be happier with the results of what you do. That does mean buying fewer things, in life, and not going into debt. And there is a simple truth for that and easily learned.

- Outgo must be lower than income by a wide margin for you to survive. It is a corollary to the first truth, but a vital part of understanding what the role of debt is in your life. If your debt burden is more than you can pay off, you will be forever indebted to others and they will call much of the tune in your life. In all instances paying your debt burden down and off is a first priority after food, shelter and a means of income. Pay off on the principle of loans early, and you will lower the length of the loan and, thusly, pay it off faster. Wherever possible use the funds you have stored from not being a borrower nor lender to purchase big ticket items with cash on the barrel-head. You will not be a part owner and partially in debt, but the full owner and the burden of ownership rests with you, solely: it is your responsibility.

- Idle hands are the Devil's workshop. Today the devilishness is in the games and frivolity with which we can populate our lives. Yet for all of the fun of killing the Boss on Level 39, you have accomplished little with your time, save to have some transient and somewhat addictive fun. Avocations are those things of interest that require you to do and think about them so as to gain information, improve your skills and otherwise better yourself and those around you with what you can do. If you can do for yourself, you need not ask others to do for you, and that means you cut expenses and live a better and richer life. The feeling of accomplishment from doing for yourself something that is vital is enduring: you can look and say that you are self-supporting.

- If you want something done right, do it yourself. This is a corollary to the previous self-evident truth, but is far more subtle. It is a subtle mis-statement of the actual meaning and should more rightly say - Do it yourself and you will work to be satisfied for yourself. This means it is done right in your estimation, even if half-assed by that of an 'expert' that does not matter as you are the one with the accomplishment of achievement to your own satisfaction.

- You are your own worst critic. You had better be or you will not live long. Those who are always satisfied with not striving to achieve more and better never do achieve either and become a burden to themselves and those around them. Thus your self-criticism is one of the highest and hardest things to deal with in life as when you fail yourself, there is no one there to forgive you but yourself. Those who cannot do that never improve their lot in life and soon come to expect others to do for them, because they hold no value in themselves of what they do. That is why we praise the efforts of others, even when they do not achieve great results: their effort will be re-doubled with modest praise as they know it is earned and that they can see the flaws in what they did. Those who criticize harshly, continually, without ever giving praise have a mean spirit towards themselves and their fellow man and seek to demean and belittle others without ever, not once, attempting to make a better world through their own work. It is easy to be a critic. It is much harder to strive to build a better life for yourself and others, and the ever-mean critics only seek to destroy your efforts.

- Stop to smell the roses. Then get back on the path and keep walking. We appreciate nature for its natural beauty, given to us as a bounty of creation. We invest time to preserve it as best we can while doing better for ourselves, and lingering to afford too much praise on what is free in life can warp our perspective of what is of great value given naturally and what is of value for our investment of time in it. Your time with the rose will not make it a better rose, and if all you do is praise the rose, then you are becoming lesser for such praise, not more in life.

- There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. From Robert A. Heinlein and a self-evident truth. Someone pays for that lunch in the time and effort to get it there, and your attendance to it is by no means free as it depends on someone else. When you come to expect that which is free from another, then you are indebted to them and no longer thinking of how you can get it for yourself without someone else providing for you. You are not entitled to the generosity of others, you are expected to earn it by making yourself a better person while your body is sustained. That free lunch is there for a reason: to keep you alive to find a way so you don't need it. That gift is a great burden to you to give back once you do achieve a better life as that is a burden we must all share. When you are given a fish to eat, it is time to take fishing lessons or you will soon be enthralled to the provider of the 'free' fish.

- If you cannot live with yourself as you are, no one else will. Except for those seeking to 'change' you to fit their role in life for you. Self-love is far harder than loving God or, indeed, loving any other person as you must live with yourself on a continual basis. The easy self-love makes you a narcissist as you come to see perfection in all you are, the never given love makes you miserable as you never allow yourself to see your good side: it is only the love in moderation with the fair assessment of what you do achieve and understanding that it is not up to your best but is still good that gives you the strength and courage to admire others without fawning. Once fair to yourself, harsh at times but fair in that harshness, how can you not help but be generous to others who have better skills than you and see those seeking to better themselves as on a worthy path?

- Life is for the living. Failure is an option and a pre-requisite of life. What you are not good at teaches you humility and the necessary lesson that to achieve in that realm you have failed in will take much, much, much hard work on your part. No one succeeds in all things thus be wary of those of who it is claimed otherwise. Your experience at achievement and failure is the teacher of wisdom for you, if you can but accept that the lesson is good even when you do not achieve your goals. When you fail you are put to the test to see if you can fairly evaluate yourself, your skills, your outlook and then pick yourself up from such failure to be a better person in understanding your limits. And failure first time is not a guarantee of permanent failure as you may not have all the necessary skills and abilities to do what you wish to do. Even the very best, those with the pinnacle of human skills will have bad days, off hours and poor judgment in those areas of expertise, especially when they advance beyond what they can easily do. To achieve in life you must be able to accept life's lessons, fairly evaluate them for yourself and then figure out your path from failure and success.

- The helping hand up cannot be forever expected. If failure is a prerequisite to success and being a full person, then you cannot expect that you will always have someone or something to cushion the blow to you. Parents guide children, help them understand that failure is not a personal, moral fault but one of skills, ability and fortitude. Those necessary lessons in learning and play become fewer as a child grows up and when the child learns the larger lesson of self-reliance and the ability to shake the dust off of themselves after a failure, they are then operating in the realm of adults. Adults must learn that there is no 'safety net' for them that does not come at great expense to others and that when this expense is not given freely you then feel entitled to always be a failure. A culture of entitlement is anathema to adults as it does not allow individuals to grow and become functioning members of society. The responsibility to those who fall rests upon each of us, not all of us, and it is our charitable heart that up-lifts the fallen with a hand up to a better life, not the hand out due to a serf. We do not denigrate our fellow man with a hand out, but offer the friendly hand up and offer to help them so they can succeed in life. Those without a charitable heart are the most evil on this Earth, save those wishing to coerce others to cover their responsibilities for them: forced 'charity' is not charity at all, but pure and utter evil as it takes from those who would give freely to their own causes and forces them to endorse causes in which they have no choice. Every tyranny coerces in the name of 'charity', and beware all those who say that charity does not begin at home but in your wallet for they care not about your home but only about your wallet: of you they care little, and it is your works of liberty they seek without your input.

- Anything too good to be true usually is and anything promised to always be there and never end, won't. Every scam that offers something for nothing pulls in the gullible, those known as the target of the scam: The Mark. To those wishing to defraud, everyone else is The Mark. In a large scam the last person to realize they are The Mark of the scam, is The Mark. As we all know, everything has its season, its time, its beginning and its ending, including our universe. Thus nothing lasts forever, no fiscal system is guaranteed to produce always good results, and anything that requires the next generation of a scam to pay for the previous generation of it will fail. Thus the promise of a 'social safety net' that requires an 'inter-generational agreement' fails by demographic movements known for decades. Attempts to 'help' the system are merely attempts to make it last just long enough to get pay outs to those currently paying in. If forced giving to a 'safety net' is evil due to its coerced nature, it is made deeply so by the false nature of it as the point where it can be sustained reaches a maximum and then fails, catastrophically. And The Mark are those paying in who can see that this will not work for them and that there is no way it ever will. The promises were false, the nature of the scam evident since it was started, and the idea of you actually getting some 'retirement' funded by everyone else is too good to be true. Like all good scams The Plants who claim it will work are in on the scam: they are seeking to make it last long enough to get them into a payout position.

These are self-evident truths we know, in our hearts, as we see them in every day life. You cannot force someone to do good, only restrict them in doing harm to their fellow man and society. The necessary evil of restricting those seeking to harm the innocent is still an evil and the very best we can seek is equality of protection and the administration of blind justice to all citizens regardless of income, class, status, skin color, religion or any other thing. As it was said of our Nation before it was a Nation, when we were under the Unwritten Constitution, government is only a Punisher and that is its role for us. It can only do 'good' by inflicting harm upon others: financial, moral and physical harm each, in turn, has been justified to make all outcomes in life 'fair'. Yet life is, itself, very fair, as no one can thwart death and it is equal to all mankind without favor nor fervor, visiting each in their turn. There are no permanent fortunes as there is no permanent life, and any financial empire will, through mismanagement and greed, fall on its own or be pushed by competitors who can out-compete it. That is the nature of all things built by man.

Our quest to a more perfect Union is one that is ever forming anew, and there is no permanence to society as the necessary good of one generation may be seen as an evil by the next. Of the few truths we hold self-evident, we are each born with the blessings of Our Creator to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and they are inalienable to our very being. We accept that the pursuit of happiness is a quest, not an end-state, and that to our dying breath if we are very lucky then we will still be in pursuit of happiness, even if that means a horrible death in a far off corner of our world to protect our fellow citizens from harm. Far better that death than the to be a peasant and slave to government only wishing for a next meal and then cursing government when it does not provide it as you have forgotten that you are to provide for yourself. Freedom and liberty for our fellow citizens is worth dying for in its defense, which is why tyrannical regimes have such poor armies and always lead to cruel and bitter ends... no matter the victories it gains, it has lost the soul of its people and there is no glory in that at all.

To live free or die means you must do for yourself and are willing to live with your works and yourself. It is the hardest way to lead a life. Yet it is the only way that creates a life worth leading full of freedom, liberty and the responsibilities you gladly accept to help your fellow man so as to create the greatest good of a better society for all, with malice towards none. Those who viciously deride and attack any segment of a civil society deserve to be shunned, disdained and to rant to their dying breath about the injustice of the world that they only want to make worse to their own ends.

Into your care is given the heart of liberty.

Only you can protect it from tyrants.

These two go hand-in-hand.

Stumbling on principle, recovering by hard work

2011-02-13T14:11:00.001Z

The principled stand against abortion is excellent: human life begins at conception.

That is an ironclad concept that only runs afoul of citizenship conferred at birth and the awful ruling from the SCOTUS on Roe v. Wade on the right to privacy issue AND the viability issue.

By being unable to take the multi-track approach against abortion as a three-pronged encirclement maneuver, we have wound up with the horrors of Dr. Kermit Gosnell (link to a NY Daily News report, but there are hundreds of reports out there) which may be multi-State in its scope, and the problems revealed on Planned Parenthood (Andrew Breitbart's Big Government for that).

The counter-attack on Roe has been single vector and has not utilized any of the Leftist playbook strategies against things like smoking. Wait? Playbook strategies?

Why, yes: making smoking to be socially unacceptable has been a long-term procedure in the health care area that has taken a relatively self-destructive habit going back centuries and slowly changed the perception of it on a social basis. If there was that sort of capability to go against abortion to reinforce and push forward against the main avenues of attack that got us to Dr. Gosnell and Planned Parenthood as has been used against smoking, we would end up with far fewer abortions and the shunning of it over time.

The Leftist push via the SCOTUS and then expanding on that locally by the rather sparse certification for abortion clinics and NO review of them has been an absolute abandonment of the primary principle (human life begins at conception) on the secondary avenues of privacy and viability which have been conceded, absolutely and totally, to the Left. In the last decade some push-back on MINORS has happened, but that has been the extent of it, and has been thwarted by the SCOTUS 'privacy' finding.

So what to do?

The first venue of counter-attack is to use both the logic of the ruling and follow it through to conclusion, much like the Left does painting all smoking as habitual and lethal which is a reductio ad absurdum so the Right will be on firmer ground because it uses the purely logical approach to the law.

The second venue is regulation and it dovetails with the first.

I have outlined this in The Limits of Our Creation as a logical point and will expand upon that here. First things first is the going over of what should be done with the decision at the State and local levels by following the natural logic of 'viability' to its conclusion, and I will draw upon my previous verbiage here:

In looking at Freedoms, Rights and the People I started looking at the actual framework of the issues involved and then a whole lot more in When do your rights start? Now in this I do *not* try to figure out when someone is or is not a human but *when* there is a passing point *into* Citizenship. Now why did I do that? Because it is imperfect, of course! Far, far less than ideal but... it does head towards the common ideal of Citizenship and upholding all rights and all responsibilities. Citizenship is a damned important thing in this Nation and the Supreme Court has created a two-tier system of 'Due Process' that actually violates the outlook of the Constitution for one form of justice for All of the People. Here is what it boils down to:
1) The SCOTUS has put a 'viability test' on when an abortion may be performed,
2) What does 'viability' measure? It measures the ability to be sustained outside of the mother or host.
3) What happens when an Individual is outside the mother or host and sustainable? They are 'born'.
4) Being born of Citizens of the United States within a State of the United States or within limits set externally by Congress for such things under its Immigration and Naturalization powers makes one a Citizen.
Short, sweet and to the point: viability is a measure of Citizenship.

Thus when a fetus is 'viable' it is a citizen as it has passed that threshold (totally and absolutely temporal, bound in the material world) in which the life can be sustained without a direct umbilical cord attachment to the mother or host and can then develop normally outside of that host. At that point the full citizenship rights are with the fetus as it now gets absolute and full legal protection including the right to privacy and safe conduct within its host or via secondary means at a cost to the State or via designated charities willing to do this work.

To be clear: abortion when a fetus reaches 'viability' is murder, not manslaughter. All involved to make that happen are conspiring to commit murder. That means the 'patient', doctors, people who review tests and procedures, their clinic and its leaders... get where this is going? The only way this could ever drop to manslaughter is via ambivalent evidence, which means that all involved did NOT get enough evidence to prove the fetus was NOT viable. If States can start turning this into manslaughter on principled grounds, then more power to them. The long-standing traditions of 'quickening' being the first sign of life and birth being a major event, however, cuts both ways, which is why we have 'viability' language in the SCOTUS decision.

Citizenship is conferred from birth via States, not the federal government. You are born in a State that is part of the United States, not the other way around as the State is the one that did the joining to the Nation, not the Nation absorbing the State via conquest. That's why the birth certificate deal is such a big thing: it demonstrates you are a citizen by birth, not naturalization nor immigration which are federal areas. Via Amendments IX and X the ability to confer citizenship via birth rests with the States and the people as the un-enumerated powers they reserve for themselves.

From this the first venue of attack outside of the primary holding the line is: push States to adopt viability language for the conferring of full citizenship rights and protections to fetuses, adapted so that as the state of the art improves in embryology and pre-natal care, that viability line can move down with those advances.

The second venue of attack via regulation is more numerous but has an immediate dovetail to the first outcome. The other method of determining the viability of a fetus comes from impregnation. This centers around the act known as sexual intercourse. These acts have dates and times when they happen, plus places and individuals involved. The second way to determine viability is to have individuals responsibly know who they have had sex with and when that happened. If a woman or host wants an abortion, the record keeping puts down hard lines of development of a fetus by a given point. Simple exams including ultrasound can determine if these dates jibe with the given development phase of the fetus. Multiple sex acts will give a range of time, yes, but the establishment of minimums and maximums for fetal development will help to determine viability questions much faster.

How is viability determined? My guess is the regulatory language would include three independent reports on the status of the fetus from unconnected physicians and labs. One might be a State organization (Health Dept. perhaps). Further the doctors and clinic involved in the abortion must review and sign-off on all of those reports within a given period. In all cases the abortion MUST happen before viability is reached and ALL leeway is given to the fetus as the arts and methods of determining fetal development will always have a ragged edge to them. Finally the fetal remains are sent for an autopsy at the cost of the patient and clinic to confirm viability status and get genetic material so that in case there is any question the father can be identified if not done so already.

What else can be done via regulation?

Mandatory 'snap' and unannounced inspections of the premises of clinics to ensure that they are up to all hospital standards for the patients and procedures involved. In the Gosnell case it has been revealed that beauty salons get more oversight than do abortion clinics. Why anyone on the Right has let this go un-addressed is beyond me. Bringing the full panoply of inspections, licensing, certification, re-upping these things, making sure staff are up to snuff, clean and sanitary working conditions... all of this will start to winnow out the abortion providers by putting a barrier of entry into the market by making it more costly to run such an establishment along the exact, same lines as a hospital. No one, in their right mind, can argue against this.

With State and local health departments on tap for determining viability, there is also the question of knowing the patient's age, which must be taken into account. To date clinics and doctors involved with this procedure, a medically invasive one by design, have been given shelter from this. By putting a State based citizenship concern into play, that will now end as the health and welfare of all involved in abortion procedures falls into the State venue. Statutory rape is still rape and no amount of 'consent' or 'privacy' should ever enter into this question as the law is clear. States can and do vary on age of consent, and if those supporting under-age abortions are so hot on the topic, they should be forced to argue for pushing the age of consent down. Clinics that hide such material are in a conspiracy to do so, and a conspiracy to cover up statutory rape should have some rather harsh penalties added on to it.

Schools should be covered on the conspiracy to aid and abet statutory rape language when they hand out condoms or otherwise 'help' in the reproductive situation of minors under their care for the school day. Thus no distribution of condoms or other prophylactics to those under the age of consent, otherwise the discovery process that illuminates such help places those doing the distributing in that conspiracy category: nurses, schools staff, school principals, and even the school board for not properly doing mandatory oversight of such distribution programs. Negligence of children under the care of local governments is less acceptable than that of abortion clinics. Education is one thing, encouraging, aiding and abetting is something entirely different.

These simple ways of addressing abortion start creating the inroads to changing the social attitude about it.

First they will be a defined procedure with safeguards and costs involved. This will drive home that an abortion is not something done on a whimsy or as an alternative form of 'birth control' but something that is destructive, invasive and has risks attendant to it. This is done through State and local regulation, but requires an attitude change to remind people that there is no such thing as a free lunch in the medical community. Also put abortion clinics under all malpractice law... if you want to see tort reform and limitations on pay-outs, putting these people under those venues will start that off, nicely.

Second making adults responsible for their sexual activities puts a different light on those activities after the 'sexual revolution'. That revolution did not withdraw the laws of biology, only changed a few circumstances, and the social implications of using 'sexual liberty' unwisely should have costs involved with it as well as fun. By putting the accountability back into sexual activity starting with abortion, the entire climate of what is and is not acceptable for society comes into play, and it is an area that the Left has had on their own for far too long. Teen pregnancies, single parent households, and absent fathers is an outcome of 'sexual liberty' without any accountability... and do note that with fathers also having to keep track of who they have sex with as a back-up source plus genetic testing, they are as on hook for the outcome of an abortion as much as the mother or host. This one is part of personal practice, but can be backed by regulation so it is made a part of regular expectations of those seeking abortions.

Third the venues for getting 'viability' sooner are huge. Investment in better pre-natal care, better embryology, better technology and techniques to sustain life outside the womb or transfer a fetus to an alternative host offer many and vital ways to push ever further back the time of 'viability' closer and closer to conception. This will have many side-benefits of children born healthier and with diseases and disorders addressed in the womb to remove birth defects or other systemic disorders and try to address them before they can happen. With the knowledge we have garnered from adult stem cell use, we can examine fetal development and seek to address auto-immune disorders before they happen and correct other genetic deficiencies long, long before birth. The energy into holding the line on life beginning at conception also means we see great value in the first few weeks and months after conception and are willing to invest in charities and for-profit institutions to research this critical time of development. These are important areas as they will also begin to close off the other reasons for abortions: genetic disorders, systemic diseases and other problems that would either kill the fetus or create life limiting conditions after birth. This can be done through existing funds, charities and corporations, or creating new ones specifically devoted to these issues.

Fourth is a follow-on to the third and that is the slow removal of the need for IVF clinics by addressing fertility problems via other biological means. If the 'pro-life' movement is serious about life beginning at conception, then the 'murder mills' are the IVF clinics that can autoclave thousands of fertilized ovum in a few hours as their clients no longer need them. In an hour or so of time more in the way of potential life can be removed from the board at an IVF clinic than at an abortion clinic in a year. Or longer. As we cherish life I can see why IVF clinics get a pass from the 'pro-life' crowd... but by their own logic they should be major targets in this battle, as well. For a principled way of looking at things, not addressing this is an opening to being blind-sided and must be closed off.

What this comes down to is a thorough re-working of the 'pro-life' agenda to expand it and make it pro-development and pro-health with both of those being proactive concerns from the need to remove the horrors of abortion. When the major excuses and reasons NOT to follow the SCOTUS decision are removed and the decision enforced, in full, with the full regulatory authority of States and localities, the issue of 'privacy' for those of the age of consent can be maintained while the custodial accountability (particularly of courts stepping in with children against abusive parents in this venue) can be sustained. By putting the courts on hook for their decision about minors and families in the way of judges stepping in, those judges then become accountable actors in the abortion situation and should be addressed and treated as such.

This issue of what life is cannot be driven solely by emotion, because that leads to yelling, screaming, threats and even violence. By adding reason (even to an unreasonable decision) the outcomes of reason can be created to temper our emotions and harden them into concrete steps to take so as to make a better society via our actions. If this route had been taken in the years immediately after Roe v. Wade we would see far fewer abortions, greater advances in pre-natal care and technology, and the pushing back of viability closer and closer to conception so that abortions are slowly wrung out of the system across the board in all forms. Instead the principled Conservatives let the Left choose the emotional battleground and agreed to fight on that ground, and start losing and ceding vast swaths of society to the Left based on purely emotional fights.

Now that the sentiment of society is turning, that sentiment must not be lost and must be given avenues of concrete and substantive action to take so as to advance this cause. It will also mean a personal willingness to understand that you, as an individual, actually are responsible for your sexual activities and accountable for them in all instances. That has been a vital battleground that must be taken back to firm up society into one that is life supporting and tolerates as little in the way of abortions as possible and is attempting to remove the need for them through technology, techniques, principled empowerment of understanding the vitality of life and the best route of putting your money where your principles are at. If those principles are right and good, then investing in them in concrete terms will yield a better society and better future.

When you do that you then have a reasoned and passionate approach, tempered to a hard core that will convince others that this is a worthwhile way to live and sustain society. Don't just protest: have the portfolio of investments and means to sustain your argument with you and the rationale for doing so. For any argument won purely on emotion can be lost just as easily to more emotion, and that is not the way to build society. The principle is excellent, but the execution has been on the ground of the enemy's choosing and it is time to stop doing that and choose a different set of venues and weapons to go with. Stop fighting defensively and go on the offensive in ways that cannot be countered easily.

Put down the placards, start in with the emails and phone calls, and get organized in your locale to pick up the vital concerns of regulating and putting in place the safeguards for life that are currently taken for granted and, thusly, not there. This means working at the State and local level to address issues close to you and find those willing to help you organize beyond your location and come together on this vital concern.

Just like the Tea Parties did.

Moral principles, sustainment of society and using government to enforce the secular requirements of those can build a Nation stronger via the promulgation of those morals from people willing to go all-out in all venues to win the day. The Left has won in many areas because no Conservatives have shown up with the right tools nor prepared the battleground. That can change the moment you change from seeing this as just a principled moral issue and one that goes far and wide beyond just morals and engages everything we do as a people. That means fewer tactics, placards, yelling, screaming, and more engaged debate and backing your moral principles with your time, effort, money and love. Together they will forge something that will not be broken. Right now they are scattered and a number of things left undone that could be done... that does not rest upon me, but upon you.

Why is Egypt a vexing problem?

2011-02-04T12:12:00.002Z

If you've read the newspapers there is this bit about President Obama that does illustrate a major problem with the Leftist thesis (such as it is) for government. This from 31 JAN 2011, ABC News:

As the situation on the ground in Egypt continues to evolve, the White House is constantly recalibrating its public statements, with President Obama and administration officials now issuing carefully worded statements that lean more into the notion of a significant change in Egypt’s leadership. After speaking with the leaders of the UK, Turkey, Israel and Saudi Arabia over the weekend, President Obama issued a statement saying that he supports “an orderly transition to a government that is responsive to the aspirations of the Egyptian people.”
Those words, which closely track comments made on Sunday shows by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, represent the U.S. more publicly demanding that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak either embrace democracy or cede power to someone who will.
These words represent a change in tone and substance from President Obama’s Friday night remarks that he told President Mubarak “he has a responsibility to give meaning” to words “pledg(ing) a better democracy and greater economic opportunity”….”to take concrete steps and actions that deliver on that promise.” They represent a clear departure from the words of Vice President Joe Biden, who on Thursday told the PBS NewsHour that Mubarak was an “ally” and disputed the notion that he’s a “dictator.” Mubarak, indeed, has been extremely helpful to the US in helping to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians, in opposing Iran’s nuclear program, and in recognizing the new Iraqi government.

Is there some reason to have situational ethics on this question of backing a government? Is it truly not to the best to accede that a nation is governed by the rule of law? Or is it required that we can only help a nation if the situation is 'right' or 'to our interests'?

This is a basic premise that we, as Americans, should know by heart, and yet through decades of Presidents putting forward situational responses, we now have a President who has problems even speaking the words 'due process of civil law'. Of course he came in with 'Hope & Change' to make civil law 'better' and more 'socially just', which means putting the law aside and having a government ruled by men who don't care much what a law actually says.

A people who adhere to equality of application of the law expect that it be applied dispassionately upon all classes, races, creeds, rich, poor and believers of all religions as the due process of law will determine who is innocent and who is guilty without respect to any of those things.

Those peoples who adhere to a government ruled by men with their distant adherence to law only when it suits their goals wind up with tyrannical regimes that rape women and girls, suppress basic liberties, and impoverish the many via the role of government to enrich the few who run the government. These are authoritarians, totalitarians, rogues, despots, dictators, and any government that feels it is above any law, whatsoever, and fit to rule society as the men in power see fit.

The United States is founded on the concept of equal application of the law via civil means that are well defined and adhered to. Hiring better lawyers can help some guilty parties, yes, but that is no reason to scrap a system that works well for the overwhelming majority of people so as to address the few that game the system. Scrapping that is to punish the many, the bulk of society, to get the few playing games with the system. And in some instances if you are the leaders of Enron or Bernie Madoff, it doesn't how much you pay out for lawyers, as justice still gets served, blindly.

With our understanding of a civil society creating a civil system that is equally applied to all, in all circumstances, in all aspects of law, what, then, should our response be in Egypt or, indeed, in any land seeking to depose a tyrant, dictator, autocrat, or other similar creature?

It is pretty simple.

1) The American People stand up for all peoples of the world to have a voice in their government via civil means and to not have that suppressed by ANY government run by ANY ONE, without respect to how rich or how poor they are, nor in any other respect to their position in life. Yes, that is a sane and rational basis for foreign policy.

2) The United States government rests upon the civil process of the transfer of power via normalized elections in which parties each are given the ability to speak, have votes for their members recognized, to have those votes counted in the tally of all votes. This requires having all members of society who are deemed of majority age, not insane or ineligible due to criminal acts, to not be intimidated while casting a secret ballot the contents of which is only known by the person casting the vote in the particular, and not to have that vote tied to a particular individual when counted so they have anonymity of the secret ballot.

3) To those ends the United States pleads with any dictator, despot, oligarchy, or any other authoritarian or totalitarian system to create the environment of freedom of expression in political thought, to listen to the people of their Nation as they give input to how they are governed, and to not exclude any party, no matter how vile, from the political process as suppression of that freedom of expression is anathema to a free people and a curbing of fundamental, unalienable rights due to each person born on this Earth.

4) The United States pleads with all protestors to adhere to civil means of protest, to support the civil transfer of power via known election systems, and to demand a change to any election system which discriminates against any of their fellow countrymen as stated in (2). Equality before the law is the greatest justice that can be brought against those that have corrupted a civil system to their own ends for it is a form of justice they have denied to everyone, and the equality and equanimity of its application to such leaders is something that requires civil restraint.

5) The United States mourn all those in the quest for the liberation of their fellow countrymen from any system which does not guarantee fundamental human liberty of freedom of speech, religion, self-defense, the press, and having their voices heard in their government. Those who die in this cause are the lifeblood of the Tree of Liberty, as is the blood of tyrants and despots unwilling to release their grip on power and who are then forced to release their grip on their lives. Those who temper their emotions to bring equal application of the law to all within their Nation are patriots, and those who seek to thwart or pervert those ends to any partisan end are traitors to the cause of human liberty for all mankind.

There, pretty simple.

State once, apply to all Nations, equally, without exception, without favor nor fervor.

And make our foreign policy payments favor those Nations that seek greater liberty for their people and who befriend us in this great cause.

All others need to read those five points and understand why they receive no favor, no fervor and no cash or goodies. Plus to be a 'friend' they must actually start to loosen their grip on power and establish equality of justice and uphold unalienable human rights for their population.

Mind you, this would shake up our foreign policy establishment no end, this concept of supporting absolute human rights and not 'social justice' which is all relative and has no real ground to stand upon because of that.

Then America could get into the business of encouraging all tyrants, dictators, despots, etc. to reform their system and themselves so that they are no longer part of the system, and what is left is a system that has equality of application to all members of society.

But then that takes morals and ethics from those we elect to govern us.

No wonder we are in such sorry straights these days.