politics – Page 10 – Hopeful Romantics

Time for a Mandatory Government National Service

It is time for the federal government to institute a national service. That is a service where it is mandated that younger people are drafted to service the public good for two years. This is not a military draft, mind you, but a system where college graduates can first apply their skills for the general benefit of the American Citizenry, and where high school graduates and dropouts can learn trades and other ways of becoming productive members of this society.

In my plan, people will have a choice regarding which service they care to enter. They can devote their newly learned business acumen to joining others in repurposing our neglected factories and manufacturing plants in the Rut Belt and Eastern Seaboard. Rather than rely on imports, we can once again rekindle our manufacturing ability that initially made us the dominant country in the world. A reconstituted effort in manufacturing would alleviate some of our natural deficit and reliance on trading partners we would rather not owe money.

Young people can use their cutting edge technological and business skills and combine them with seasoned business executives, many of whom are currently out of work in this dreadful economy, in redeveloping factories for domestic production and manufacturing. This would put the laid off factory workers back on the job and rekindle the economy in blighted parts of the nation. We would be servicing our fellow Americans and not just the bottom line.

Other younger folk can work with seasoned veterans in rehabilitating our infrastructure and developing alternate energy sources. They could work on environmental cleanup. They could work in healthcare where personnel are needed to serve our sub-income and even middle income citizens. They could work in legal areas and provide legal assistance to people in need. In short, they could work to improve the general health and economic well being of this nation, and not just a corporate bottom line.

Those who have such an affinity, can be drafted into military service. This is becoming essential. While an all volunteer army has its merits, and a professional army is a better performer, certain drawbacks to the notion of our volunteer army are starting to reveal themselves. Not the least of which is our shortage of troops and the constant reliance on our National Guard. This has caused the degrading of performance, despite all best efforts, as troops are cycled over and over again back into combat duty without adequate rest. Our troops are just exhausted. Should a real war erupt, where we need hundreds of thousands of combat ready troops we may find ourselves lacking.

Additionally, there have been those who have attempted to instill in our military the type of religious fervor that has no place in any government institution. It is one thing to have your beliefs, as we are all entitled, but when those beliefs are eclipsed by evangelical elements who all but enforce the doctrine of their own religious this is in direct contradiction to both our constitution and the wishes of our founding fathers. There are such incidents reports at the Air Force Academy and on Army bases around the world.

A drafted army would go a long way in ameliorating such religious fervor. People who are drafted for two years, would embrace the long honored military tradition of wanting to go in, do your tour of duty, and then go home. They will bring to the party, or the military, in this case, not only secular perspectives but the perspective other other religions. They will not look on their military duty as a religious crusade to smote the infidel but to protect and defend the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic.
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While I am not overly worried, history has dictated that an all volunteer army can become a mercenary army that is loyal principally to the people that lead it and feed it. This is a far cry from a good thing. Additionally, when civilian soldiers are involved, Presidents and political leaders are less inclined to commit troops for useless and misguided wars. Can we say Iraq? When there are civilian soldiers, there is a much greater chance of public outcry and the sort of protests that finally ended the Vietnam debacle. Simply put, people seem less concerned about an all volunteer army as they are when it is their family members that are part of a citizen army. In all, we should consider the long run ramifications our army.

What would a government national service do? Besides all the do gooder, stuff, it would serve to bring this country together. Despite all national media, the information on the Internet, cell phones, texting, and everything else, we are probably a more disparate nation than we have been in half a decade. Technology hasn’t served well in bringing us together. We are segmented and alienated from each other.

Since changes start with the young, it will behoove us to have a national service that not only augments our efforts to regain our national economy and sense of pride, but to share viewpoints on a person to person, intimate level. In short, it would benefit us all to see how the other half lives. MBA’s would be less eager to create the sort of business models that would leave a good segment of this country suffering as a result. Instead of a good portion of the country being numbers in a chart, they would be real people with real needs, hopes and dreams.

People would share in their efforts to rebuild this country. Sharing promotes camaraderie and is a boost to general morale. We would get to know each other again. We would get to work together. By starting this with younger people, acceptance and understanding would be infused into our culture, rather than forcibly spoon fed by the media and public school system. Mutual cooperation for the greater good would be for real rather than theoretical.

Call it the new, lemon scented, reconstituted WPA of the Roosevelt years. Call it the Peace Corps for the homeland, or Vista with Teeth. Call it whatever you want. But do it soon.

When You Wear Pants In Sudan

I have also quoted Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Ali for the less informed Ali grew up in the draconian circumstances of her native Somalia where she was forced to endure genital mutilation and the ignominies of an arranged marriage. She managed to flee to the Netherlands where she became a political activist and criticized Islam. Among other things, books, papers, etc., she wrote the screenplay and appeared in the controversial film, by Dutch director, Theo Van Gogh. Van Gogh faced harsh criticism for his film and was ultimately assassinated by a religious zealot. Subsequently, Ali received numerous death threats. She lives in seclusion under the protection of the Dutch government.

Anyway, among her writings, the quote I so remember is that “The West refuses to recognize the obvious.” This statement in stark in its simplicity and so very true. It brings to bear Western History in the 20th Century where strategies of appeasement and distraction threatened the collapse of civilization as we know it. And once again, we are confronted by similar challenges.

I am reminded of all this because of the recent instance where a a Sudanese court fined a Sudanese woman $200.00 for wearing pants in public. A woman wearing pants in the 21st Century? Who could imagine such a thing? Surely the woman, Lubna Hussein, a notable journalist, is no shrinking violet. She is an educated woman who tested the law and understood the ramifications of her act. The penalty could have included jail time and the traditional forty lashes. Some places just love their traditions. I guess it is one thing to sing Happy Birthday, and quite another to deliver forty lashes for wearing pants. But in this case with the world watching, the judge expressed his leniency by merely handing down a fine.

Islamic law calls for women to dress modestly. In countries where Islamic law is in fact the law, the laws should be obeyed. We would expect the same here. Or do we? But in Islamic countries, traditions and laws are such that any real interference other than lip service results in invasions and nation building, and we have seen throughout history where that gets us.

I really find it hard to take issue that these laws are preserved with only a smattering amount of protest that is often mitigating by social pressure and outright fear for one’s well being. Nevertheless, it is their country and their laws, and it is up to their people to compel changes, if they so see fit. There are, after all, issues of sovereignty.

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We fake it. We pay lip service to ideas that we really can’t stand. We pretend that draconian issues require our understanding and we try to engage those who willfully and wantonly reinforce this culture. Simply put, we have given these practices enough credibility that cultures who practice the subjugation of women can somehow behave that way within Western borders.

We read periodically about men living here who kill and beat their wives because of the perceived shame they bring the family. We read about the guy who destroyed his TV because it was showing a woman’s bare legs. We pretend this is understandable and that those whom emigrate to the West and fail to adopt to Western culture are somehow practicing their ethnicity. Yeah, if it means following certain dietary customs. But it is not okay when men, especially men, can’t get used to the idea that their women have a greater freedom of movement in the West. That we can in fact criticize damn near anything with relative impunity, based on our constitutional rights.

We are the product of the Age of Reason. It is often forgotten here. We cling to our own arcane traditions, or what we believe are traditions, ignoring the thoughts and practices of our founding fathers. We praise them, vaunt them, but we really don’t have a clue or sense of the age they came from. But nevertheless, it was The Age of Reason. The Age when people quested after science, a logic.

So while we are unified as human being in one world, we are not unified by a single set of beliefs. And while we can tolerate the beliefs found in other nations, we don’t have to accept them as our own, make excuses for our own way of thinking, or pretend we are more equanimous than we actually are. We aren’t. We prefer what we have to what others have. We want to practice as we see fit and wear our pants around our heads if we so choose it. We don’t care for restrictions about religion. Hell, we don’t have much tolerance for dress codes. We like our women in blue jeans.

Hey, it’s obvious.

Texas Secession Just Won’t Succeed

I used to live in Texas. I lived in Austin, and I lived in Houston. I served, if that is the term, in the Army Corps of Engineers, defending Houston from the floods occurring from the torrential downpours and the sudden rising of the rivers, bayous, and sloughs. It was a different era, back when. But I enjoyed that period of my life and my time in the Lone Star State.

Two things always struck me about Texas. The first, and most important, is how easily Texas is misrepresented. Its artists and intellectuals are often overlooked. The average Yankee does not think of Texas as a particularly literate place or a place where you have passionate supporters of the arts. Texas moderates and liberals are ignored as the focus the responsible conservatives and the unpredictable extreme right wing fringe. All right, call them nut jobs.

The second thing that struck me in Texas is how it seemed any more traditional Texan can proudly boast with or without any prompting that when Texas seceding from the Union, in that War of Northern Aggression, better known as the American Civil War, it never officially returned to that Union. There was never a formal agreement, just acknowledgment by proxy that Texas was once again a part of the United States.

The impromptu Texas historians will wax on how Texas can print its own money if it wants and make laws that ignore or override Federal statutes. It is only by choice, they say, that Texas remains in the Union. Otherwise, should it decided and its Hasta La Vista, Baby, for the Lone Star State.

Okay, for decades this bit of rhetoric was mere conjecture. It was a mark of pride, that rugged individual spirit that allowed Texans to conquer the range, drill for oil, and construct sub-divisions on every foot of that formerly open range the blowhards still reminisce about. It was talk. It was the talk of guys with belt buckles the size of serving dishes and women with beehives and bras that stood in rugged defiance to gravity. It was harmless. Anyone who was forced to listen, nodded “Yeah,” and then went on their happy way.

Not now. Now there is actual talk of secession. That’s right, in case you hadn’t heard, and few haven’t, there are Texans making noises about leaving the Union once and for all. I would say these are unbalanced Texas, but one of the initial advocates or, more than likely, big talkers was Texas’ Governor, Rick Perry. Rather than accept that dirty federal bailout money, Perry threatened to lead Texas into a new era of independence. Rather than deal with the creeping tide of socialism, Perry proposed he pick up the Lone Star State and move it all the way back to Texas.

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Conservative politicians such as Kay Baily Hutchinson called for “more enlightened leadership in Texas.” She termed the secessionist issue “silly,” and said the party leadership is lacking and requires immediate change. Hutchinson also announced she was planning to run for Governor.

With all that being said, and with Hutchinson being a stalwart in Texas politics, you would think the secessionist nonsense would die down. It hasn’t. If anything it has grown stronger. It has provided living proof that nut jobs will gather around anything without forethought of consequence or the ramifications. There is now the Texas National Movement. There is a website, Texas Secede. There are any number of numb skulls thinking this is actually a solution to the economy and well being of the State and not merely a means of adding to the woe and dissolution.

What seems to be forgotten here is that the federal government already provides the State of Texas with a ton of money. The money is allocated for health and human services. There is federal money for education, for business development. There is federal money for the interstates and other road. There is federal money for the Texas National Guard. There is federal money for the legal system, for law enforcement, for fueling the Governor’s car as he prepares to embark on this intrepid journey.

The federal government has provided Texas in the year 2008 to 2009 with over $50 billion in funding. One could argue that this is money from the federal socialist program that would corrupt good old Americans who wish to live independently. But the sad fact remains that in the year 2006 to 2007 the federal government had the audacity to deposit some $49 billion in the Texas coffers. A dastardly move if there ever was one.

So for the blowhards and nut jobs that keep talking about secession, they should give this a moment’s thought. They should think about the money they would be losing and then concern themselves with maintenance and upkeep of their roads, communications systems, education systems, law enforcement, and military that, at least in part, anyway, fall under the federal purview. The Texas Nationalists what fate would have in store for a state too short sighted to realize the error of its ways.

I would not be the only one to predict that most people in Texas are far too sane to secede from the Union. Most thinking people do not to wish to return to a bygone era that is best left as a bygone era. Clearly, most Texans have attained a level of maturity to recognize a really bad deal when they see it. As for those who actually believe secession is a good idea, there is a lot of space still remaining in Texas. Obviously, in some cases that space rests between the ears.

Will Democrats Screw Up Healthcare Reform?

There is a darkly humorous scene in the film, The History of Violence, where the main gangster, played by William Hurt, arranges for the murder of his brother, played by Viggo Mortensen. One of Hurt’s henchman is to sneak up behind Mortensen, wind the garrote around his neck and strangle him. But the tables are turned, and Mortensen escapes.

“How can you f**k that up?” exclaims and exasperated William Hurt. He then shoots the henchman to punctuate his case.

This is how I feel about the Democratic Party and its attempt to reform healthcare. I am aware you can argue intelligently for healthcare reform and variations on that healthcare reform, or you could against it. There are credible opinions, for sure. There are options that may be worth considering. But that is not what I am talking about here. That on one hand is too simple and argument and too mired in knee jerk doctrine to warrant my adding my two cents on the matter.

First off, healthcare is not what I consider a philosophical issue. Abortion. Same sex marriage. These can be philosophical issues. Not healthcare. People get sick. People need healthcare. Many people don’t have healthcare. Even more can barely afford the healthcare they have. I pay a fortune every year in healthcare. I pay more for healthcare than a fair amount of people make as take home pay, annually. And every January my premiums go up. Last January it went up 40-something percent. That’s a big increase. I have no idea what will be extorted from me this January. And I am lucky. Why? Because I am in a group, so I am not confronted with the big, bad bugaboo, preexisting conditions.

As for our “choice.” That’s almost funny. Our choice is to face rejection for different procedures or fight like hell for months on end with the health insurance people. Luckily, we have good doctors with whom we have established long term relationships. I can only imagine how it would go down if our doctors just got here last Wednesday and had no personal investment in our general well being. And that is what most people are facing.

So we need healthcare. And we need healthcare reform. What gets me is the Democrats and the remarkable way, to paraphrase William Hurt, they managed to f**k this up. How when you have any number of options to clarify your healthcare initiative do you choose to lead with your chin? In fact this desultory attempt at convincing America that healthcare reform is necessary and is being implemented with the best intentions is so lame, so lacking in clear information, that the Democrats risk having any meaningful healthcare reform being kicked down their throat. They could lose their advantage in both houses of Congress in the forthcoming elections. They could face disaster and render what should have been a shoo-in eight year Presidential term into a four-year Jimmy Carter extravaganza.

Amazing. It is so amazing that one friend of mine believes the inept way the Democrats, in general, and the White House, specifically handled this healthcare initiative, they must have a secret plan. They must be sandbagging the opposition. They must know something that we don’t, but like any secret weapon they are only waiting for the right moment to unleash it on their opponents. I can understand why he would think that way. Hoping against hope that they are not that incompetent. Unh uh. Not happening.

We have done nothing during the past couple of decades or so if not turn every smart strategic act, politically, socially, and otherwise into some slick term that is used to identify its application. We are homogenized that way, very precise with all of our modeling, studies, surveys, statistics, pigeonholing. There is little allowance for random and unpredictable action. There is little allowance for gullibility that can border on insanity. But things do fall randomly, and even the most cogent proposition can lead to chaos. And, indeed, the road to hell has often been paved by good intentions.

Among the first things you learn in media management is to conceive of your message. Keep it concise, make it clear, and be damn sure the language is such that the average Joe Public out there can grasp what you are getting at. Introduce your message way ahead of time. Test market that message. Take it for a spin. Kick the tires, looking under the hood. If it’s a clunker, modify it in a hurry.

Repeat the message as if it was a Sunday prayer. Make sure all your primaries, secondaries, and surrogates understand that message. Make sure they can translate it, repeat it to large crowds and as a talking head on news shows. Like any good sales pitch, preach all the good stuff in easy language. Don’t allow for confusion. If you have too many facts, realize you are not in a fact finding nation. Reduce those facts to the three or four things that will resonate with the crowds. And if all that fails, hire a brilliant guy like Frank Luntz to make sure you can stay on point and deliver your message.

In the case of the Democrats, they believed people were hurting in a bad economy and would be open to change in their healthcare system. They probably would. The Democrats believe that there is a matter of moral consciousness, that there are far too many people without healthcare. Very true. The Democrats believe that economically speaking we are in big trouble with our present healthcare system, and in the very near future with costs soaring more and more people will not have a viable healthcare plan. No argument there.

But so much for beliefs when they translate to message that is supposed to lead to action. Democrats have approached this vital initiative, believing because it may be so you won’t have your ass handed to you by the financial interests concerned with preserving the private healthcare system just the way it is? We’re talking big bucks adversaries who have no interest in reform, really, not when they are raking in the money. And some of that profit goes to a fair share of legislators, local, national and statewide, in the lovely guise of campaign contributions. Maybe so. But certainly these campaign contributions, which total in the tens and maybe hundreds of millions, are not crossing palms to encourage reform that would detract from the bottom line. These campaign contributions, all right, you can call them bribes, are being paid out to keep things just the way they are, or close enough.

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So now President Obama is the one delivering the healthcare message. Sort of. Finally. This tactical decision only comes after the Republican leadership and the private healthcare industry takes the Democrat’s discombobulated message and turns it on its fanny. But the damage has been done. People love to buy into groundless information, it would seem. Thanks to the Democratic stumble step, a fair percentage of this country believes the Democrats are planning to kill grandma and the government is climbing into your underwear.

No matter that in the Bush administration, civil rights were abrogated, voluntarily surrendered, and intruded upon without so much as a peep from this crowd. No matter that we are still taking off our shoes in the airport and being forced to carry a gnat’s worth of shampoo on a seven day business trip. Forget you have nineteen different agencies listening on your phone, monitoring the books you read and checking out your toilet paper for secret code. It’s the healthcare reform that will ruin our country. In fact, in some circles the message has been so distorted that some ardently believe it is a copy of Nazi policy.

Amazing. Again, let me repeat. There are intelligent ways to debate healthcare reform. There are civil and cogent perspectives that should be heard. There are people out there, on both sides, who are actually trying to be heard. But they cannot be heard above this ridiculous din of lunacy and ragged incompetency that has predicated this mess.

I watch not with shock, but a whole lot of dismay as the princes and peasants with pens and pitchforks descend on these alleged town hall meetings, to rant and rave, show their guns, and try to shout down what are far too many excuses for legislators who are tongue tied and brain twisted by the level of adversity and near-violence. With the notable exception of Barney Frank who offered the appropriate response to one programmed lunatic who termed the healthcare plan a play taken out of Hitler’s National Socialists, most other Senators and Congress Persons seem grossly incapable of dealing with adversity.

Yes, adversity. It does still happen in a world where we believe everyone should be safe. In a world where our more naive believe American citizens will not be subjected to any abuse, in spite of the more obvious atrocities in the world around them. These are the people who believe reason prevails. Well, like anything else, miracles included, sometimes it happens that way, and most often it doesn’t. Sometimes, if you want to reason with someone, you have to hit them with a two by four in order to get them to listen.

I am not suggesting actual violence. I can see already what would come of it, what with the nut jobs out there who are carrying their guns to Presidential rallies. I believe in gun ownership. Really. But I also believe that anyone carrying a gun within the proximity of a president or elected official is not confronting a rights issue. That person is confronting a security issue. It is dangerous in theory and even more dangerous in practices. It is incredible to me that this should be allowed to occur. It is amazing that any doofus carrying a gun to a political rally isn’t hauled off to the rubber room for a quick stay with the shrink of his choice. C ‘mon, people, haven’t we all seen “Taxi Driver?”

But I digress. The fact remains that the Democrats have muffed the healthcare initiative. They have screwed up. Now they are playing defense. A smart defense is a good offense. A good offense is one that works. If you want to get it passed perhaps it is best to forget bipartisan efforts, group hugs, and marshmallow roasts. Tear a page from the old Democratic Playbook when such pols as Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn were not afraid to twist arms in their own party. Even Bill Clinton did that.

Tell your supposed Blue Dog Democrats, cute name, that if they don’t climb on the train here, they can forget about any National Party support in 2010. Tell him there were be no funding, no marquee value personalities showing up in support. There will be no support of any kind. Nothing. Hell, if this healthcare initiative fails, as the Democrats must realize, and the Republicans certainly do, they will be losing congressional seats anyway. They might as well lose the seats that didn’t do them any real good.

In other words, cowboy up and show some boldness. Do like the Republicans do. When they get in power, they have an agenda, and they follow it in lock step to see that agenda is realized. They don’t mess around, getting caught up in the facts or apple bobbing in their own confusion. The Republicans don’t apologize. They don’t hem and haw. They have a message, and they stick to it. They don’t want to hug. Whether their policies are right or wrong, they are there to do their job, and that is exactly what they do. Give them credit where it is due.

But not the Democrats. They mistake confusion and mixed messages as freedom of choice and personal expression. They believe like every obnoxious television series that everything will right itself in the end. It doesn’t. It often gets worse.

So, Democrats, if you are really concerned with healthcare reform, then act the part. Get tough. Be direct. Get your message straight. Get rid of a thousand page document. Tell the public the public option is Medicare, but only if you are younger than 65, then you have to pay for it. That’s it. If you like Medicare, then this is your chance to buy it. Simple. To the point. No confusion.

Am I making myself clear?