Big Government

The Republicans in opposition

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Bill Kristol (corrected thanks to Joe) has an excellent column today on where Republicans could go in the next four years. I have little confidence that the House GOP can bend Obama to their will on the deficit or spending. He is riding high with the aid of the mainstream press and TV. The public does not understand the spending issue, or at least not enough of us do. The Republicans represent the “Eat your vegetables or there will be no dessert” philosophy and that is not popular right now. What do we do ? Here is one suggestion.

He quotes UN Ambassador Pat Moynihan in 1975.

The United States goes into opposition. This is our circumstance. We are a minority. We are outvoted. This is neither an unprecedented nor an intolerable situation. The question is what do we make of it. So far we have made little—nothing—of what is in fact an opportunity. We go about dazed that the world has changed. We toy with the idea of stopping it and getting off. We rebound with the thought that if only we are more reasonable perhaps “they” will be. .”‰”‰.”‰”‰. But “they” do not grow reasonable. Instead, we grow unreasonable. A sterile enterprise which awaits total redefinition.

I feel much the same way. I would have much preferred the GOP to have voted “present” when the “fiscal cliff” matter was before the House. I would like to see them do the same when the debt ceiling issue is voted on. Let Obama have his way but show that we do not agree.

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The Dream(liner) and the Nightmare (of Social Toxicity)

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The FAA has issued an Emergency Airworthiness Directive against the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. The AD requires that the battery system be reviewed and modified as necessary to eliminate the danger of fires such as those that have recently occurred on these aircraft. The changes needed could presumably involve manufacturing processes, sourcing of components, electrical-system design, or some combination of these things.

The FAA’s action here seems to me like simple and reasonable prudence. It is not uncommon for new aircraft types to encounter problems during their early operational days, and the 787 is an innovative plane in many ways, especially in the use of electrical means to replace functions traditionally done by hydraulic systems and by engine bleed air.  (A nice overview of 787 systems here.) There may well turn out to be simple fixes that can be quickly implemented to resolve the issue; on the other hand it’s possible that the fix will involve signficant redesign and will cost Boeing and the airlines considerable money. Purely as speculation, I’d guess that the worst-case result for the study required by the AD would be the mandated replacement of the plane’s lithium-ion batteries with conventional aircraft batteries, at some sacrifice in the plane’s useful load and some redesign both of the relevant control systems and of some interior spaces.

But the purpose of this post is not to talk about 787 technical issues, as much fun as that might be.

After clicking on the Yahoo report about the AD issuance yesterday, I took a look at some of the comments, and a depressing experience it was. Here are some samples:

Makes you wonder if Boeing did not have the FAA inspectors in their back pocket while certifying this airplane “air worthy”? Maybe a few bucks went along stuffing their respective back pockets as well. Good example of certifying government agencies working too close with the manufacturer.

For the FAA to say it’s safe and then ground the planes, all credibility and trust in competence is out the window.

Were they just going to wait until the costs of wrongful death lawsuits surpassed the cost of fixing the problem?

They do lots of testing but just like windows they release it to the public and then we will fix all bugs in the system

Parts made in China

#$%$ batteries made in China and a world-class American airplane manufacturer fell for their cr@p product. Do you think that perhaps Chinese agents were behind deliberately sabotaging our country’s product?

Dream gone bad. Overseas outscourced components on the cheap, assembled by redneck scabs in South Carolina.

Just one more example of the FINE work being produced by wonderful, hardworking and dedicated union workers.

Just more retaliation from Obama for the move to non- union South Carolina.

no one care anymore all the factory workers just go to work to try to make $$$$$ and this it is hard too the pride in making or to build something does not exist anymore!!!!!!!!!!!!

Too bad the GOP helped rich buddies ship all the manufacturing jobs to china? Expertise comes with manufacturing. Burger jobs make poor planes?

Read through several pages of comments like these, and the overwhelming overall impression is one of social toxicity…of people glaring furiously at one another, quick to assume that anything to goes wrong in any aspect of life is due to either malice or incompetence or both. It is a picture of generalized resentment and distrust, coupled with entitled ignorance.

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“Sustaining” your Way to Serfdom as a Grand Strategy

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Originally posted at Zenpundit.com

Friend of the blog, commenter L.C. Rees, likes to point out that one of the most important part of a grand strategy, particularly one that is maintained despite evidence of being a geopolitical failure, are the domestic political effects that work to the advantage of the faction supporting it.  In my view, grand strategy usually has a political or cultural evolutionary component and, human nature being unchanging, Rees’s cynical observation has merit.

Last year, a couple of JCS aides/field grade officers wrote a grossly  overpraised paper that was pushed by Anne-Marie Slaughter, Thomas Friedman and assorted worthies, that purported to be about a new grand strategy with which America could navigate the world. Mostly it centered on a preference for an America being run by a vaguely EU-like, technocratic, regime under the rubric of “sustainment”, in which the authors wisely folded in a number of  shibboleths popular with the corporate-liberal upper class who write large donation checks to think tanks or make their living in public policy and academia.

The talk of this nature died down when the election cycle began, but the themes were recently revived by the New America Foundation’s Grand Strategy Project whose director had an op-ed in Foreign Policy to reintroduce this agenda to the chattering classes now that the pesky voters are out of the way until 2014:

A New U.S. Grand Strategy  

….Walkable  communities:  The first pool of demand is homegrown. American tastes have changed from the splendid isolation of the suburbs to what advocates are calling the “five-minute lifestyle” — work, school, transit, doctors, dining, playgrounds, entertainment all within a five-minute walk of the front door. From 2014 to 2029, baby boomers and their children, the millennial generation, will converge in the housing marketplace — seeking smaller homes in walkable, service-rich, transit-oriented communities. Already, 56 percent of Americans  seek this lifestyle  in their next housing purchase. That’s roughly three times the demand for such housing after World War II.
If only Bismarck had included some “walkable communities” for Prussia, Europe might have avoided the tragedy of World War I.
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Our Broken Frame of Reference on Government Spending

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When I first traveled to Door County in Wisconsin I visited the various lighthouses and was given a tour by local historians. One of the points that stuck with me most of all was that these lighthouses essentially were one of the few elements of the Federal government that were locally present in the region.

Today our government is ubiquitous at the Federal, State and local level, especially here in Chicago where Cook County is one of the largest counties in the country, with massive hospitals and criminal court facilities.

I wrote about government influence and how it is all around us in posts aptly titled “We’re Barely Capitalists” here and here based on some (semi-humorous) local insights. It would be difficult to find substantial portions of the economy anywhere in a place like Chicago that wasn’t heavily influenced by government spending and allocations.

This article in Business Insider reviews recent job growth and notes that 40% of it was subsidized by government.

Consider our economy right now: about 17% of it is health care; about 6% in terms of GDP is education; and with some overlap, 15-20% is what we call government consumptiongovernment activity, not just transfers. At all levels of government, including state and local. Add those all up, take out the overlap, and it’s a pretty big chunk of the economy, like 20-30%. Those are all sectors where there are massive subsidies, massive distortions of incentives, a lot of bad policy; and it’s hard to measure value.

State and Local governments are poised to grow in 2013, according to this Bloomberg article.

After slashing their workforces by about half a million in the past five years, state and local authorities will add employees in 2013… Their payrolls in the fourth quarter will be 220,000 larger than in the same period for 2012.

Bloomberg then goes on to explain how this state and local government job growth is funded; by Federal US deficits at the trillion dollar+ level that then are passed down to the State and Local levels.

States get about one-third of their revenues from Washington. The agreement Congress hammered out to avoid more than $600 billion in automatic spending reductions and tax increases –the so-called fiscal cliff — spared states from cutbacks, at least for now. (states received) approximately $519 billion…in aid last year.

Don’t forget that, in addition to the US Federal debt and borrowings, the state and local governments are also deeply indebted. Not only are we borrowing to fund current needs, we are also accumulating pension and medical obligations that are truly enormous and growing, especially here in Illinois where recent pension reforms failed to get off the ground.

Our frame of reference on all this government spending and debt, however, is skewed by our comparison group. We continually compare US spending levels to the “Industrialized Powers” which include Western Europe and Japan. Comparing the US to these countries, many of which are economic “basket cases”, is not relevant for a forward looking appraisal of countries where our actual economic competition is coming from – we need to look at China, India, and other rising powers that represent the future.

One of the oldest shibboleths is the fact that the US doesn’t have a “single payer” health system, like the (broken) comparison group listed above. However, if you get sick in China, Brazil, India or other rising countries, there is a (small) safety net but you essentially have to pay substantially extra or have connections in order to get what we’d consider to be modern and effective medical care.

Another point of comparison is greenhouse gases and various environmental practices, such as use of “green” power. Our broken “peer group” countries like Spain invested heavily in massively subsidized wind generation, as I document here, which recently collapsed the moment that these subsidies evaporated (which correlated with the country essentially going broke and being re-floated by the EU central bank. China and India continue to invest enormous amounts in coal power, since it is so effective and plentiful and is needed to power their growing economies.

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Hubris

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Hubris is a Greek word that signifies overweening confidence that leads to a big fall. It is a common component of tragedy. The Wiki article seems to get lost in ancient Greek references and, having read a lot about Greece and Greek history, I don’t think they are on target.

In its modern use, hubris denotes overconfident pride and arrogance; it is often associated with a lack of humility, though not always with the lack of knowledge. An accusation of hubris often implies that suffering or punishment will follow, similar to the occasional pairing of hubris and nemesis in Greek society. The proverb “pride goes before a fall” (from the biblical Book of Proverbs, 16:18) is thought to summate the modern use of hubris.

This is a bit closer to the definition I prefer.

I think we are about to see a grand spectacle of hubris on the part of the re-elected president. The Washington Post describes the outline, as if it was a done deal.

The White House is weighing a far broader and more comprehensive approach to curbing the nation’s gun violence than simply reinstating an expired ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition, according to multiple people involved in the administration’s discussions.

A working group led by Vice President Biden is seriously considering measures backed by key law enforcement leaders that would require universal background checks for firearm buyers, track the movement and sale of weapons through a national database, strengthen mental health checks, and stiffen penalties for carrying guns near schools or giving them to minors, the sources said.

To sell such changes, the White House is developing strategies to work around the National Rifle Association that one source said could include rallying support from Wal-Mart and other gun retailers for measures that would benefit their businesses. White House aides have also been in regular contact with advisers to New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I), an outspoken gun-control advocate who could emerge as a powerful surrogate for the Obama administration’s agenda.

Nowhere in the article does it acknowledge that the enemies of gun bans include, in addition to the NRA and the “gun manufacturers,” a majority of the people. This is why second terms are so well know for trouble for incumbents.

The gun-control push is just one part of an ambitious political agenda that Obama has pledged to pursue after his decisive reelection victory in November, including comprehensive immigration reform, climate-change legislation and long-term deficit reduction. Obama also faces a reshuffling of his Cabinet, and a looming debate over the nation’s debt ceiling that will compete for his time and attention in the coming months.

In addition to potential legislative proposals, Biden’s group has expanded its focus to include measures that would not need congressional approval and could be quickly implemented by executive action, according to interest-group leaders who have discussed options with Biden and key Cabinet secretaries. Possibilities include changes to federal mental-health programs and modernization of gun-tracking efforts by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The election victory was less “decisive” than the White House and the political left seems to believe. It is no surprise that they are looking for ways to avoid Congress. Now that we know how the EPA evaded the Freedom of Information Act with secret e-mail accounts, nothing should surprise us.

I was going to go to the gun store today but got bogged down in running errands and will have to go tomorrow. The nearest one has a good price on Colt 1911 model .45 calibre pistols. Since the proposed actions by the Obama folks are aimed at banning “military-style handguns,” I guess I had better hurry.

One potential strategy would be to win support for specific measures from interest groups that are normally aligned with the NRA, according to one person who works closely with the administration on gun-related issues and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity.

For instance, this person suggested, Wal-Mart and other major gun retailers may have an incentive to support closing a loophole that allows people to bypass background checks if they purchase firearms at gun shows or through other types of private sales. That could result in more people buying guns in retail stores.

I think Wal-Mart is too smart to get into bed with this administration but maybe not. Certainly, Obama is no friend of non-union Wal-Mart. The same applies to gun retailers who can’t keep enough guns and ammunition in stock. I think they know who their friends are. If not they will learn quickly.

Finally, At the White House meeting, Stanek said, “the vice president indicated that there was a very short timeline for him to get back to the president with his recommendations because the American public has a short memory.”

Yup. Get that unconstitutional law going before anybody wakes up.