Category: Politics

Absolutism

I read an article from the NY Times stating: ‘Mr. Trump suggested that all Muslim immigrants posed potential threats to America’s security and called for a ban on migrants from any part of the world with “a proven history of terrorism” against the United States or its allies’. I know there’s a lot of interpretation in journalism, and I was curious what he actually advocated.

One quick Google later, I found the speech text on the candidate’s web site:

    “When I am elected, I will suspend immigration from areas of the world when there is a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe or our allies, until we understand how to end these threats.”

If this is what the man actually said, then there’s no third-party misinterpretation to blame. “Areas” of the world is vague, but I get not using legally accurate terms in campaign speeches. Linguistic and legal nuances are not exactly gripping (and sometimes get ridiculed a la what-the-meaning-of-is-is). But where there is a proven history of terrorism against the US, Europe, or our allies??? No delta-time qualification in there, so the Irish are right out? Bonus, though, is he inadvertently sorted a huge portion of South/Central America with this generalization too. For the most part, it’s been decades there too, but “fuera yankis” and all that.

Actually, I’d find the proposal far less incendiary if he said “the immigration system is absolutely a mess. I propose stopping all immigration for six months while we figure out how to do this properly.”. Years ago, Microsoft had a run of significant bugs and took a coding holiday to perform a code review. Similar thing — yeah, it’s disruptive to shut down our business for some period of time while we make sure we’re doing the right thing … but it’s more disruptive to continue doing the wrong thing.

Problem is that what Mr. Trump probably means is more apt to be banning immigration from any country some arbitrary individual / board decides seems like it could be dangerous (or just to be safe – any individual immigrant who looks like ..). Which would be frighteningly institutionalized racism.

Multi Party System

I’m eternally hopeful that a viable third party will emerge from the chaos that is the American political landscape. Movements with sufficient momentum (e.g. the tea party who think taxation with representation is just as bad as taxation without) get absorbed into one of the two traditional parties. And while I am still certain a viable centrist party would provide a truer picture of American’s actual will, the Republican primaries serve as warning against dividing the electorate among dozens of parties.

In the UK, there are hundreds of parties. A good dozen of them are represented in Parliament. But there’s no national vote for Prime Minister – if no party garners a sufficient majority in Parliament, then parties agree to work together (a coalition government) until a sufficient majority is created. And failure to abide by the agreement can force a PM out of office. Unless a plurality of Britons chose to elect the same party, the most extreme views of any party are tempered by the views of their coalition partners.

In the US, however, there is a nation-wide vote for head of the Executive branch. What would an American election look like with a dozen viable political parties? The Republican primary has shown us – last cycle and again this year. The lesson from last cycle is that a dozen people researching and publicizing the worst about each other diminishes them all. If half a dozen people spent six months digging into every single action or interaction you’ve had in your lifetime and assembling a worst-of list … I doubt anyone would look good. But this year the lesson is more dangerous — splitting your electorate in so many pieces allows an individual who is not the majority’s preference … a charismatic individual, an individual with divisive enough views to appeal to a “their” segment and  a small fraction of other voting segments … to win the election. If 120 million people vote in the presidential election, but split their votes across a dozen parties, someone could win with thirteen million votes. 89% of voters don’t want the person in office, but there they sit.

I still wish for a viable centrist third party, but many party systems are probably best left to Parliamentary systems.

Great again?

We’ve been seeing a lot of political ads and campaign rallies – and I am constantly struck by Trump’s slogan. Make American great again. I know there are people who dispute it because “we’re already great”. Whatever, never been a big fan of exceptionalism in any country. What I want to know is … to which “great” time period does he want us to return? Just before Obama – embroiled in two military offensives that were doomed from the start? The 90’s – wait, that was Clinton. 80’s – run away deficits and a nuclear arms race? The 70’s with the oil embargo? The 60’s – well, they’ve got good music, good drugs … but they’re also about as close to nuclear annihilation as we’ve ever been, a president who was assassinated, and a lot of racial turmoil. The 50’s – not the TV fantasy, but the reality – Brown v Board of Education was a good step, but the actual desegregation process was ugly. Outside of schools, it isn’t like Rosa Parks sat down and ended segregation. Women – well, we were allowed to vote, but didn’t have a lot of options that provided economic independence. Maybe back to before women could vote? Or how about when people could be legal possessions? Maybe he thinks we went wrong breaking away from England and we should request our colony status back?

His slogan, at least to me, has an a priori assumption that you are a white dude. Old white dudes gave up a lot — more voters mean less power per vote, more people vying for jobs means it is harder to get a job, independent women mean you need to be more cognizant of your partner’s needs. Young white dudes didn’t get to experience the “great” before, but I could see wanting to return too. But, seriously, half of the country isn’t a dude. Some other significant percentage isn’t white. Maybe you’ll get lucky and a large proportion of white dudes will show up to vote. But how can you govern an entire country when your entire platform is focused on the needs of maybe 40% of the population?

Federal Spending – And Opportunities For Savings

Whenever I hear debates about reducing the federal deficit, I think of the saying “penny wise and pound foolish”. It means making efforts to save pennies without watching the larger amounts — someone who drives a H2 fifty miles to work each day but foregoes a cup of coffee to save a buck.

We want to reduce the federal deficit; but we cannot touch military or social security and Medicare spending. And Medicare is 15% of that 28% for “Health And Human Services”. If we start our savings plan by declaring over 50% of our spending off-limits, we are either looking at HUGE cuts in the remaining not-quite 50% or we’re going to fail before we’ve even started.

We could abolish entire departments — say HUD, EPA, NASA, Education, and Labor — and eliminate all foreign aid and only reduce our total federal spending by 9%. Now 9% of 3.4 trillion dollars is still a lot of money (although an interesting academic experiment is to get a group of people together and discuss what you’ll cut in the federal budget. You may find yourself saying, with all seriousness, that we’re only looking at ten million dollars. It isn’t worth the time we’re taking to discuss it.).  But we could reduce Health & Human Services, Social Security, and Defense by 3% each and save the same 9%.

Looking at discretionary spending, the picture becomes even sillier. This means we’re ignoring obligatory payments like social security and Medicare. Defense and homeland security is 54% unto itself!

Whenever someone tells me they won’t cut entitlement programs and won’t touch military spending (or will increase it!), but they’re still going to balance the budget without raising taxes … I assume they are outright lying. Wishful thinking that incomes will increase and thus increase government revenue is sound budget planning. I know the Republicans dislike the CBO because they don’t include “revenue increases we think will happen” as income … but until you start to see those returns, I don’t think you can stake your financial solvency on them.