Thugs, Race-Baiting and the Police State

The recent events in Ferguson Missouri are displaying all of the hallmarks of the race-baiting grievance industry. For background (and in case this is being read well after the fact), an unarmed (black) teenager was shot by a (white) cop. These are the bald facts and the races of the involved are in parentheses because I personally don't think they were the driving force of events. Details are trickling out, the most recent (autopsy) that all shots to the victim were in the front, the wound pattern contradicting the "eye-witness" account of Mr. Brown's friend who was with him at the time.

There is pervasive racism in the USA, like there is everywhere else. Naturally, given the afore-mentioned racism grievance industry, any shooting involving an unarmed black man by anyone other than another black man, the vultures will descend. What follows is what I think the facts will eventually bear out in this case.

Michael Brown may have been 18 years old, but he was a hulking 18-yr-old who was captured on video only minutes before the shooting roughing up a shopkeeper and stealing a box of cigarillos. Petty theft and standard assault so far; definitely not capital crimes. Problem is, the cop who shot him didn't even know about this at the time; the initial stop was apparently for walking in the middle of the road blocking traffic.

Last I checked that type of behavior constitutes Probable Cause for a police stop, being at least a misdemeanor. What happened next is speculative, but based on the limited sample of Brown's (anti-social) behavior available it is probable that he threatened the cop in some fashion, and at 6'4" & 290lbs and not alone, that is a clear and present danger to anyone. The friend (accomplice) claimed that the officer shot Brown in the back and that Brown's hands were up and he was running away, which is disproved by the autopsy results. What is consistent with the physical evidence is that Brown was charging at the officer.

At this point however, most of the damage has been done. Days of rioting and looting have resulted in the National Guard being called out and a curfew imposed. In the process leading up to this there have been many discussions of militarized police forces which is also a problem, albeit not the one which precipitated the violence.

The problem is thugs, specifically black ones. Treyvon Martin was a teenager too, but again a big one with an aggressive attitude. Big guys who are "unarmed" are still capable of deadly or crippling physical violence and I have no doubt that if Zimmerman hadn't shot him Zimmerman would be dead or brain-damaged today.  Big thugs of any other complexion are of course just as dangerous, only no-one would riot if Brown were white, even if a black cop shot him.

It comes down in situations like this to "Better tried by 12 than carried by 6", optics be damned. I will yell as loud as anyone about police abusing their power, and there is a lot of that, just not in this specific situation as far as I can tell. Cops in assaulter gear shooting dogs, SWAT teams hitting the wrong houses, reporters and the public being intimidated and arrested for filming police in public areas; these are real problems requiring a vigorous public response. Said response should constitute political action, possibly civil disobedience, but smashing burning and looting is merely opportunistic crime.

This will be investigated, and is being so already. As long as the Attorney General can be kept from interfering (it's happening again) something as close as we can get to the truth will eventually come out.

POTUSeless

Honestly I don't know where to turn right now, the world is spinning out in so many places. It is of course of no import to the grand scheme whether I'm tracking everything or not, but it is a big deal (it turns out) when the USA can't do it.

I am profoundly unimpressed with the current POTUS, but it is not a partisan or ideological attack I make when I say that he is worse-than useless in his current job. "Worse-than" for a number of reasons, but particularly since leadership of the (still) most powerful nation in the world is a zero-sum game, i.e. if he's occupying the top position nobody more capable can be.

The USA has a number of internal problems, being deeply indebted (mostly to their greatest strategic rival) being one of them, but their ability to project power is still unrivalled. Things would certainly be different on the foreign policy front were G.W. Bush still in charge, but since that can't happen (even if it were advisable and I don't suggest that) would things be any better around the world had Romney won the last Presidential election?

Let's start by enumerating the bigger strategic threats to the US and various other distractions, in descending order.

Threat #3: China's encroachment in the South China Sea and environs

In the big picture this is hugely destabilizing to world trade and the economic development of countries in the region. It is also something only the US Navy can be an effective counterweight to. There was a "pivot to Asia" bruited about recently, but again just saying something doesn't make it true. The Chinese aren't playing around here, and if you want to stop them you’d better be prepared to park a carrier task force over the Spratleys or Paracells, etc. in support of the most legitimate national claim under international law. And use it if push comes to shove.

I rank this one in last place for strategic threats, but it approaches zero if you decide to let the Chinese run the area. There are hundreds of millions of people on that region who would rather that didn't happen, for whatever that's worth.

Threat #2: The Islamic State, formerly Sunni Iraq and eastern Syria

ISIS/L has metastasized into a regional jihadist vortex, drawing in violent Muslim extremists from around the region and increasingly around the globe. They are firewalled in the north by the Kurds and nervously watched from all other points of the compass, the Shia government of rump Iraq and Iran doing the closest thing to heavy lifting right now.

The US didn't want to get involved in Syria, and I don't fault that since we are seeing with the looting of military stores in Mosul a Salafist organization with American military equipment, something widely predicted should the US arm the Syrian rebels. Turns out it happened anyway since the US backed the wrong horse (Maliki) in Iraq.

No however is the time to start whacking those jihadi moles. It's not a free-fire zone but the next best thing which is a great chance to kill a whole lot of assholes the world could really do without. This would be light on boots on the ground but could be used judiciously in support of limited goals, e.g. securing the Jordanian and Kurdish border areas. You support the outposts of civilization in the region but learn the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan and eschew the nation-building part of it. Killing them there prevents them from coming here.

Threat # 1: The Border

Central America is coming apart and people in desperation are sending their children north to the US in belief (well-founded if not technically accurate) that they won't be deported. Obama is trying hard to bury his head in the sand over this one, but with 350,000+ immigration cases backed up in US courts and upwards of 60K unaccompanied minors this year alone fetching up along the Rio Grande things are well out of hand.

Bleeding hearts who would abolish the border (another pesky "social construct" to be wiped out no doubt) have zero grasp of basic math, but let me put this in the starkest terms I can. There are TOO MANY PEOPLE IN THE WORLD. Specifically, there are too many people in the world with lower standards of living than we (working and middle class Westerners) have, about 5 Billion of them. They can't all come to the developed countries or those countries will cease to function as developed countries, and the whole world will look like Nigeria (failing state) or worse.  Think the L.A. from Elysium without the space habitat.

What to do? Start with enforcing the immigration laws already on the books. Then, dismantle the "War on Drugs" and send all those resources into Central America to clean out the root causes of the panic immigration. Bugger going after the drug distribution networks, just shoot-on-sight anyone on the streets with a gun. Go after the guns and kill with extreme prejudice any of the gang-bangers who want to fight it out. The US can put together intelligence cells to track insurgent groups better than anyone else, and I can make a case that stabilizing Central America (and ceasing to fuck with Mexico) would do more for the medium to long-term security of the US than the Middle East, possibly even China..

Distractions

1. Ukraine is setting into a counter-insurgency phase and at the moment (some rumours aside) the Russians have backed off. As I hypothesized a while back, Putin has taken the low-hanging fruit (Crimea) but realizes that the Donbas is more trouble than it's worth. This keeps things on NATO's radar, but it is now mostly a European problem.
2. Africa. There is a persistent Ebola (variant) outbreak in West Africa which deserves having an eye kept on it, and the continent is still awash in jihadi groups (AQIM, and Boko Haram the most visible) who need pruning.
3. Afghan elections/final drawdown/status of forces. Karzai's out, but the squabbling commences over alleged fraud and run-offs.

The big and the small all require leadership, the sort that believes in what they're doing. Since Obama only objective was to dismantle US power projection he's largely managed that, but it doesn't really get troops or the population rallying around the flag for some dirty work overseas, or even in your own back yard.  Romney is looking prescient for his attitude toward Russia, even if I disagree on the threat Russia really presents to us.  More of a mystery is domestic politics, but we know Romney knos how to run things so I really think he was the President the US needed, but instead they got the one they deserve.  Do better next time America, for you own sake as well as the world.

 

Poles getting the shaft?

I just have to wonder if the Poles would have this (realistic) attitude had Mitt Romney won the last US election:

Poland's Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski called his country's ties with the US "worthless", a Polish news magazine says, giving excerpts of a secretly recorded conversation.

Mr Sikorski called Poland's stance towards the US "downright harmful because it creates a false sense of security", according to the new leak.

He has not denied using such language.

According to the excerpts, Mr Sikorski told former Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski that "the Polish-US alliance isn't worth anything".

Using vulgar language, he compared Polish subservience to the US to giving oral sex. He also warned that such a stance would cause "conflict with the Germans, Russians".  

Poland of course has centuries of experience on the shit-end of the Russian stick and will be grateful for any meaningful support against that threat.  It is a sign of the dire state of US policy toward Russia (and NATO; hell. everywhere) that the Polish Foreign Minister holds this opinion, but twice-bitten, thrice shy.

I don't believe that Russia needs to be "contained", as they are no longer a threat to whatever Western Civilization is.  It could be in fact argued that they are a bulwark against what it's turning into, but I won't go down that rabbit hole.  Russia is a regional power with certain prerogatives and the Americans are hypocritical to treat them any other way.  That said, invading your neighbours to consolidate the "volk" and/or reconstitute your Cold War-era glacis of western-border satellite states is not on, but the two things need to be kept in their lanes.

Back to the central point, the Poles are on the front line of any Russian revanchment of the USSR and history suggests (screams, really) that this needs to be taken seriously.  I have talked before about having "lines" and any members of NATO are behind ours.  In this context it includes former Warsaw Pact countries and SSRs (Poland, the Baltic States, Czech Republic, Roumania, Bulgaria) who are most exposed to, and painfully familiar with, anything Russia might do.

The Poles' concern is a practical one hinging more on deterrence than anything else, and it wouldn't have come up during W's time in the White House.  As Mr Sikorsky notes, the current US policy/posture has virtually zero deterrence value while aggravating the Russians and Germans simultaneously.  The Germans need Russian gas too badly to kick up much of a fuss about anything not on their doorstep and "demonizing" Putin and the entire country over the latest activity in Ukraine isn't useful to getting relations back on track.

There is a lack of subtlety in North American diplomacy vis a vis Russia and I admit the situation is tricky.  The carrot and the stick both need to be used judiciously, and that means letting your allies KNOW that you have their back while at the same time letting the other side know (when appropriate) that there are benefits for "good" behaviour.

Russia is NOT a threat to us as world communism was.  They are a regional issue, and our friends there require assurance that we take it seriously, which involves concrete action and appropriate language.  It also might require a Striker Brigade moved to Poland.  Canada is doing what it can (short of pulling the stops out for a war) but the US is the big dog in the ring.  When your allies have lost faith in your willingness to back them up you can imagine what the opposition must think.  In any event, Poland learned the value of Western promises in 1939 when action was (is?) at best too little, too late. 

That (Big) Bird has Flown

I have been quite remiss in keeping this up-to-date, but you get what you pay for as always and I'm back, so let the rejoicing begin. With that out of the way, I have not managed to whip up a sense of righteous indignation/outrage about anything of late but I do have some observations on recent events and these follow, maybe (no promises) even in some coherent fashion.

At this point it has been universally recognized that Mitt Romney clobbered "The One" in the first candidates debate last week, and I really wish I didn't understand why so many people were surprised by this.  Take a look at Romney's accomplishments vs Obama's and you'll see the difference between someone who gets (real) stuff done and someone who talks a good game.  At least, until the latter doesn't when faced with someone as smart as him (surprise!) who has an actual plan, or at least direction.

Some online poll says that I agree with Romney's positions about 85% versus something like 12% for Obama so full disclosure on which way I'm leaning on the faint chance that it wasn't blindingly obvious.  Also irrelevant since I don't live there and won't be voting for anyone, but I will say it here (and I'm not alone) that America needs to dump Obama's crew if they are to have any chance to get back on their feet.  There is no magic bullet that will do it, but the axe has to swing around the bureaucracy quite a bit, and PBS is but the leading edge of it.

If domestic issues bore you (though they shouldn't, since you live "there") we have vast room for foreign policy improvement from the last 10 years.  I use 10 years to encompass not getting out of Afghanistan in 2002 and the invasion and occupation of Iraq (for no material or geopolitical gain) from 2003, not to mention the mess Obama made to compound all of that.  Following the "triage" approach I advocated in the last blog entry one needs to know one's enemies, and no amount of ignoring people who want you dead will change how they feel; just ask Lara Logan, she should know.

Apparently the current US administration's assertions that the assault on the Benghazi consulate was "spontaneous" never convinced many people (and none who paid any attention).  This, especially including the murder of the US Ambassador and other US nationals on what is under international law US soil, is grounds for some major payback; indeed wars have been started for less in a less pussy-footing age.  What has Obama done?  Sent the FBI who spent less than a day investigating, and no time at all running the terrorist fucks to ground and killing them with smart bombs and Spec Ops guys.

I have always asserted that there is no point having a big stick unless people believe that you will use it.  The way to make them believe is use said stick to kill people who mess with you.  This will make your enemies think twice and your friends multiply when they see that you both can and WILL protect them.  Instead, the Obama legacy to America's already dismal foreign policy is to lose what influence they had, even a year ago, in the Middle East.  Just ask Hosni Mubarak; oh wait...

Since everyone (whose opinion matters) likes a plan versus mere complaints, here's what I think the US has to do to get back on its feet:

1. Cut all aid to countries which are not actively helpful to US/Western interests;
2. Pull all major ground forces out of everywhere in Asia and the Middle East;
3. Leave a "trip wire" in startegic areas; intel-gathering locations with robust defence and enough offensive punch to punish anyone who whacks the hive. Back this up with Carrier Task Forces, weighted toward the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
4. More work for these Carrier groups, keep Chinese territorial aggrandizement in check, particularly in relation to the legitimate territorial claims of China's neighbors.  The second-biggest (but the biggest practical one) stick in the arsenal had better be good for something other than hoovering up taxpayer dollars.
5. At home, chop, de-fund and repeal as necessary to trim the bureaucracy and cut red tape which holds  back economic progress and energy security.

Practically I see the establishments on either side of the US political landscape keeping any useful changes from being made, the proliferation of special-interest and NIMBY groups having made any decisions on the simplest of projects virtually impossible.  I see Romney as a better choice than four more years of Obama (and it increasingly looks like O sees it that way too!) but I'm not so naive as to think there's a magic bullet.  Well, "enlightened despot" has the best chance, but that's the rarest of beasts, and not on the menu in the States anytime soon. 

Speaking of threats to Consular staff...

Some disaffected Copt in the US has made some anti-Islam video (I can totally see where this came from) and people are dying again:

The US ambassador to Libya is among four Americans killed in an attack on the US consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, President Barack Obama has confirmed.
Unidentified armed men stormed the grounds on Tuesday night in a protest over a US-produced film that is said to insult the Prophet Muhammad.

I can't say this is a big surprise; the "democracy" we've enabled in Libya is an armed free-for-all. You will note the lack of embassy attacks while Qaddafi was running the place. I'm so glad we helped bring things to this point; I guess we can hope that it gets better, but things are looking pretty Mad Max for the near future.

Egypt has done a similarly ineffective job of defending the US embassy, thankfully without lethal result, and the Muslim Brotherhood (in its' English Twitter feed at least) has condemned the attack. The problem as always is with hard-case Muslims, of which there is a nigh-inexhaustible supply in places like Egypt. The offending video was put on the Internet (what isn't?) and it's not like it was beamed from space onto the sides of the Pyramids and to the mobile phone and TV of every Muslim in the world. Even if it was, that is merely a nuisance not exactly "eye for an eye" stuff.

Canada cut ties to Iran for a bunch of reasons, but one of them was a belief (based on the storming of the UK embassy late last year) that Iran was not serious about protecting consular territory and staff. It looks like we can put a few other places in that category, although to be fair these things sometimes catch host governments by surprise. I won't give Iran the benefit of that doubt, as they have a bit of a track record of storming embassies...

Particularly disgusting in this case is the declaration of the US Embassy in Cairo apologizing for "the abuse of freedom of speech". The inside dhimmi threat of "our" people kowtowing to "radical" (read: observant) Muslims is FAR more dangerous than any number of rioting protesters in foreign lands, even armed ones. The loss of an embassy and/or staff is a tactical loss, but at least serves as a litmus test of who our friends really are. When Western governments start apologizing for violence against THEM, that is a disaster.

Fortunately in this case Hillary has come out strongly against the Cairo Embassy "statement" so things at least aren't any worse in the big picture than they were before the attacks. It is interesting to speculate on whether there would have been such a strong repudiation had the White House not been in the middle of an (actual) election campaign. As I write this I expect (as do many others) that the latest paroxysm of Islamic rage over something stupid is not yet spent.

God will know His own

Just when you thought things were screwed up enough in South Asia:

(Reuters) - An Islamist leader who had a $10 million American bounty placed on his head this week has been helping Pakistan de-radicalize militants under efforts to stabilize the strategic U.S. ally, a top Pakistani counter-terrorism official said on Friday.

Of course I have no idea how sincere this guy's effort to get heads out of religiously-brainwashed asses is, but taking the statements of the Pakistani government at face value, this situation seems sufficiently absurd to be plausible.

I know that doesn't seem like the best way to make a case for it, but that how things roll in the Global Something On Guys We Don't Like For Some Reason Or Another (GSOGWDLFSROA). I will forgive you if you don't see that acronym sticking, but I think it sums up the current state of play pretty well.

A key thing to remember is that even in the best-case that this is legit, "de-radicalizing" to the Pakis is not the same as it would be to the Yanks. To the former it means that some of the would-be jihadis will get jobs or at least stop attacking their own people. To the latter it would mean that they stop targeting Western troops and interests in that part of the world and beyond. It doesn't take a genius to see that "a" does NOT equal "b".

So? Past and current American practice is to shoot first and ask questions later (though ironically not when their own troops need that fire support in combat) so even money has a Hellfire with Hafiz Saeed's name on it despite whatever anyone else says about him. He may have it coming, but it is at least possible that killing him will be counter-productive on the strategic level. Oh well, I can always hope to be pleasantly surprised and that some investigation will be done before they lock on. On va voir.

Declaration of War, the Short Form

For years now (predating this blog even) I have railed against the Americans' lack of sense vis a vis National or Strategic interest. This is manifest from everything they have done in the last 20 years. I say that time period, as during the preceding 40 years you could argue that the questionable regimes they propped up or overthrew were within the overall strategic design of containing Communism. When that collapsed under the weight of it's own inefficiency the Yanks started looking around for causes to replace it.

In fact the rot started before that, at the time slightly disguised as a way to stick it to the Soviets. The lack of consideration for unintended future consequences in shipping hundreds of millions of $ worth of cash and weapons to a barely (if at all) civilized group of raiders in Central Asia was truly breathtaking, but at least it was in the context of containing the Red Menace. Replacing them with the Green one wasn't the plan of course, but...

The article in The Atlantic which I linked to addresses the lack of long-term thinking that goes into the way America (and NATO by extension) fights these days. This is certainly fair, but I think it misses the bigger picture. Instead of planning as if you'll still be there in five years, ask yourself why wherever/whatever it is would be worth, in blood and treasure, getting locked up in it for years on end.

Let's imagine that the Americans broke Afghanistan's government ten years ago, laid a beating on Bin Laden's goons and then let the locals sort each other out. The whole thing as far as we're concerned would be over by spring 2002, mission (actually!) accomplished. Instead, we're here over ten years later staring down the barrel of the whole place doing exactly what I've said we should have let it do in the first place when NATO finally pulls the plug after 12-13 years in 2014 or so.

It's not a tactical problem, it's a strategic one. The trick lies in finding places that we might be able to help, not failed basket case states that will act as nationbuilding tar pits. Afghanistan? Fucked. Kosovo? Shouldn't have gotten involved, it was another "stick-it-to-the-Slavs" exercise which should have died out when Yeltsin came in. Iraq? I think we all know how big a mistake that was by now. Libya? Sure Qaddafi was a dick, but a bit of pragmatism in our foreign policy would have been in order there in view of what has happened. That one at least I am willing to wait out a bit before passing judgement, but my crystal ball has Tripolitania and Cyrenaica (at least) making a comeback...

What you want is a basically sound country with a bad government; that's a simple fix. Note however that "simple" and "easy" are not the same word; if it was easy the people would do it them selves. My example for this is Zimbabwe, albeit fixing it would require some old-school colonial-style administration while you build them a functioning government. South Sudan is another possibility, but the grand prize is Iran.

You may have noted that whenever I mention attacking Iran, it's always the Revolutionary Guard and other bulwarks of the Islamic regime, not the country itself. We can get on just fine if we clear the decks for them to have a more reasonable crew in charge of the place. There would be nary a boot on the ground, save some operators making contact with the opposition, certainly no "ground troops".

This is how I would do things, but I don't set policy for anyone. What I can say is that whatever I did I would assume that my kids would be dealing with it after I'm gone, and pick my battles accordingly.

Obama and Other Peoples' Money

Nothing really new here, but what I really want to get at here is the whole idea of "fair share'.

In a combative set of remarks, the president vowed to veto any package that cuts into Medicare without raising "serious revenues" from wealthy Americans and corporations. He effectively dared Republicans to follow through on their no-tax-hike pledge as the deficit committee works under a strict timeline to find at least $1.2 trillion in deficit savings by Thanksgiving.
"We can't just cut our way out of this hole. It's going to take a balanced approach," Obama said. "It's only right that we ask everyone to pay their fair share."

Emphasis mine. First, ask this question: why does the government constantly need more money? There are a few reasonable answers, mostly involving inflation; the rest are all about the growth of bureaucracy and thus the size of government itself.

Next, define "fair share" in society. This is not commonly questioned, and most people (2/3 of Americans according to some poll I glanced at) support fleecing "rich" people. I "quote" the word rich because that's slippery these days too, and for tax reasons the definition will be arbitrary.

Put these two concepts together and it leads you in the direction of asking what people are expected to pay for, and (hopefully) why? Is my misfortune yours, and if so, what are the limits on that? People get (rightly) bent out of shape when some connected business people get bailed out by government, meaning by your tax dollars. Of course, in the US right now we have something different, businesses being saved for the unions employed there, but this elaborate vote-buying scheme still uses taxpayer money.

If you work in the ever-shrinking private sector, do you want your taxes going up to preserve bloated union salaries and benefits which have driven work out of your country and damaged your prospects? A bit less evocative than the Robin Hood-esque desire to despoil the rich, but no more "fair" than bailing out magnates.

All over the world, the Socialist state is in trouble, and has been for years. It has been proven that the welfare state is not sustainable (you'll eventually run out of other peoples' money), but Obama seeks to imprint that on the US. Here in Canada the fight continues, but we have realized that we must periodically purge the Public Service to prevent the service creep that would bankrupt us a la Greece.

I'm not sure what I think is fair, but flat-rate taxes combined with consumption taxes on non-essentials comes close. Say a minimum 5% and maximum 25% Income tax rate and a 15% VAT; rich people tend to spend more and can better afford to lose 25% of their income, but how fair is that?

If you make a household income of <$100K (most people) you don't have a lot of margin these days, and there is limited blood in a stone. Thus the temptation to squeeze the better-off, but what are they being asked to contribute to? Infrastructure, Public Health (as opposed to Health Care), Research and Defence are common goods, certainly, but do rich people use them any more than anyone else? Next, health care; do rich people have preference in a Public health care system? I bloody hope not, and if not why should they pay more for it? It's "rich people" paying for the best available treatment which advances medicine, not the stretched Public system, but that's not on most peoples' radar.

In case there was any doubt, I am significantly less than rich and have no vested interest in the top marginal tax rates, but the underlying principle at work here concerns us all. That principle is Expectations.

What is reasonable to expect of government services? Canada is founded on "Peace, Order and Good Government", which is pretty vague but not fundamentally different from the Preamble of the US Constitution:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

People get the (democratic) governments they deserve, so I suppose the People are the arbiters of "fair". Of course, the way these things work, a mere plurality of votes will establish who's in charge, so a LOT of people will be potentially discomfited by decisions as the rest are swept along by dangerous simplifications. The second and third-order effects of tax and policy decisions are never the concern of the short-lived government, but they should concern you, the tax-payer, as you'll be living with the (mostly) unforeseen consequences when the chickens come home to roost.

Debt, equity, and the virtuous Joneses

The linked article is longish, but it deals with certain economic and social fundamentals of the USA. Uncle Sam being my neighbouring elephant I can't ignore his thrashing about, and there are some things which have wider application.

The basis of any real democracy is the Middle Class. Starting from there it follows that what strengthens the middle class strengthens democracy, what weakens it has proportional deleterious effect. The modern economic age of the middle class followed WWII with the economic expansion and near-universal lifetime employment, or at least the expectation of it. It's pretty obvious that those days are over and that there has been a seismic shift in our consumer society; what is not so obvious is where it's trending now.

In the end it all comes down to debt and the management thereof. This bit struck home for me:

The transformation of Americans from a nation of savers and entrepreneurs in the era of the family farm to a nation of consumers in the last eighty years was a fateful one. Our ancestors thought that debt was shameful and a burden; we’ve come to think of cheap debt as part of our birthright. The American Dream as we’ve known it entailed a lifestyle based on permanent debt. The growth of the American economy depended on growing debt at every level from federal Keynesian stimulus to credit card and mortgage debt.

"Shameful" is a bit harsher than I see it, but embarrassing is close enough for government work, and "burden" is bang-on. The choice faced by most people is to have more stuff and wonder (I hope) how to pay for it all but look good to their peers, or to have less gadgets and fail to keep up with them, but not have the sword of Debtmocles hanging over their finances. Most people are sheep, and even the ones that aren't don't want to lose what status they have, so they all buy new cars and plasma TVs and their kids get the newest iPhone.

Few of us are immune to this, and even I am only resistant to it. What separates me (and presumably you, my readers) from most people is that I think about how it all works and ties together, and I DO NOT assume that it'll all sort itself out no matter what I do. Yes, that nasty, non-PC word: Consequences.

Thinking is not doing of course, and you'll only get as far as you're willing to go. Much could be accomplished by once again making a virtue of restraint, but the Economists would have a fit contemplating the impact of that on our current economic model. If people stop buying things the economy takes a tumble (happens; think of those reports on "consumer confidence") and I don't pretend to have a solution to that.

There's the rub of course. We are officially encouraged to buy things, primarily national, but things in general, to keep people employed (in China?) and sales tax revenue rolling in. Building houses employs a lot of people, so buy houses too. That last bit is handled much more responsibly in Canada than the US, but the basics are the same across the 49th //.

We can't of course blame the government, as it's a tiger created by our fevered dreams of cradle to grave security and services, but those expectations will not allow us to dismount. In the end the whole thing comes down to Expectations, and those need to change.

Our standard of living is already decreasing, a thing in itself which is directly counter to what we were raised to expect. I've ridden this hobbyhorse from the direction of energy costs, but it's bigger than that. Our system is as prone to entropy as any other, and what we're trying to keep afloat has run out of steam. Unless there's some fundamental change we're all going to have to get used to a lot (or at least a bit) less. For the record, even the most charismatic politicians are Change, not change, e.g. superficial; replacing our entire economic model is almost beyond me to envision, but I'm open to reasoned suggestions...

Too smart for our own good

I have threatened to write about Energy Policy, but before I get into the nuts and bolts of that (superficially at least) I want to say something about ideas and ideology.

I regard myself as a conservative, but this does not mean that I am a slavish follower of Rush Limbaugh or Anne Coulter, or to be more local, believe that Stephen Harper can do no wrong. Conservative, to me, means someone who likes what is proven to work and adopts new things because they will work too. Not "should" work, WILL work; chances need to be taken from time-to-time, but not with everything, and not "just because" or for the sake of Change.

The worst possible reason to do anything is for Good Intentions. This I see as the key dividing line between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives will do something to achieve a set goal, liberals are prone to big picture stuff that runs counter to typical human interests or responses. It's also a key reason that liberals commonly attack their opponents as not being very intelligent. Sarah Palin is an excellent current example of this. Sarah is no Rhodes Scholar (aside: I wonder how many of the lefty recipients of that even know who Cecil Rhodes was and what he stood for?) but neither is 99.99% of the rest of the population.

True disasters are the province of the 99th percentile of brainiacs, so a MENSA card is not in my books a prerequisite for political office. You do need to be clever enough to develop and defend your ideas, but an IQ of 125-140 will allow you to do that as long as you're willing to work a bit harder than the more "gifted".

Sarah looks great on TV, but does she really have the "optimal" brain power for the job she may or may not be seeking? I have no idea (I honestly suspect "no") but she DOES connect to a lot of regular people. The elites hate her of course, but she strikes me as a practical sort for the most part, and politics needs more people who want to make things work and less lawyers who want to change things. One thing I am certain of is that Sarah Palin could not be more of a disaster in the White House than the much "smarter" Barack Obama.

What the hell does this have to do with energy policy? Any planning will be done by the government of the day and ideology plays into it. Sarah Palin's "drill baby, drill" is about keeping the lights on, something that conservatives tend to be big on. Obama has hobbled domestic energy production and intends to do as much more of it as he can through cap and trade, etc. His positions are ideological (thank you, big brains), not practical

Sixty percent of Canadian voters are not happy about the Conservative majority government we currently have, but this government will ensure that nothing overly progressive happens to our economy, and that is both the basis and necessity for establishing a sustainable cheap energy future. Anyone who doesn't support that outcome is either too stupid to have a worthwhile opinion or too "clever" for our/their own good.

Conservatives know that there are no free lunches, and liberals/socialists expect someone else to pay for theirs. With the latter group neutralized for the time being, hopefully some productive work can get done. What I think that means is (probably, what do you want for free?) next.

Cheese Heads and the future of Democracy

I have been watching the situation in the Wisconsin legislature for the last week or so, and as small-time and parochial as it may seem in the context of the current upheavals in the Middle East, I feel that it is far more important to the trajectory of democracy in the world than whatever happens on the North African coast.

The short version is that the State of Wisconsin (like most of the rest of the USA) is broke, and has to make cuts; lots of them. The (Republican) governor Scott Walker has recognized that the expense of public employees is one of the biggest drains on the treasury and wants to remove their ability to engage in collective bargaining.

Your reaction to that (under the circumstances that there isn't enough money to pay all these people what they expect to be paid) will sort you into either the Right or Left camp. All over the world we have run into that sticky point for Socialists that Margaret Thatcher warned about; we have pretty much run out of other peoples' money. If you are the source of that money (taxpayer) you will have a different idea of how this should play out than the recipients of it will.

This is standard Big Government/small Government stuff. What makes this situation important for the future of the liberal democratic system is the nature of the legislative opposition to the bill; the opposition went AWOL and called its' partisans out into the streets.

This sort of things happens all the time in tin-pot republics the world over: don't like the results? Protest and say that your opponent cheated, is illegitimate, etc. thus paralyzing the political system. This is what the 14 Democratic state senators from Wisconsin are doing by hiding in a neighboring State. By being absent and across State lines, they are preventing a quorum and subverting the will of the electorate by preventing the functioning of the legislature.

This could not happen in Canada or many other places, but the quirks of the US constitution which enable this farce throw the political stability of the most powerful nation in the world into question. This is that "Shining city upon a hill" that is supposed to be the beacon of liberty throughout the world?

Back to the aspiring democracies in the Mediterranean and the mid-east most likely next post (still very fluid; Qaddafi still hanging on as of today) but we ignore the current mob rule in Madison Wisconsin (of all places) at our peril. For want of a nail...

Oh, treasure the use of the weaseling phrase that never quite says what you mean...

I didn't think I had much to say about the ongoing Sotomayor foolishness in the US, but never say never...

In fact, today's post has more to do with the spinelessness of politicians than the judicial activism that runs unchecked in the US (see the post by Steve Setzer about 2/3 down the page here), although that too is something that is of concern to anyone who claims to believe in representative democracy.

In a letter to supporters, the Georgia Republican said that his words had been "perhaps too strong and direct" last week when he called Sotomayor a reverse "racist," based on a 2001 speech in which she said one would hope the rulings of a "wise Latina" with a breadth of life experience would be better than those of a white male without similar experiences. Gingrich's remarks created a furor among Sotomayor's backers and caused problems for GOP figures who have been pushing to bring more diversity to the party.

Gingrich conceded that Sotomayor's rulings have "shown more caution and moderation" than her speeches and writings, but he said the 2001 comments "reveal a betrayal of a fundamental principle of the American system — that everyone is equal before the law."

 

"Too strong and direct" eh? If that's what you really think and you want to make any claim to being a leader, or at least someone with actual principles, bloody well say it. I've seen left-ish defenders of Sotomayor talking about "context", but it's a red herring. She said what she said, and he said what he said. I have no respect for anyone who won't back up what they say, or if necessary, admit it was stupid/uninformed, etc. Qualified retractions are embarrassing and disingenuous, because it means that you're not willing to take the heat for what you really think.