This Little Piggy …

May 15, 2012

This little piggy went to market,
This little piggy stayed at home,
This little piggy had roast beef,
This little piggy had none.
And this little piggy went…
“Wee wee wee” all the way home…

One of the most popular nursery rhymes in the world is a good catalyst for meditating about the famous / notorious PIIGS countries of Europe.  There were five little piggys, and there are five PIIGS countries.  Each of the five little piggys had a quite different circumstance, as does each of the PIIGS countries.  Perhaps we can figure out how the PIIGS managed to insert themselves into the financial quicksand pit they share at the moment.  A case can be made that the piggy who cried “wee wee wee” is Greece, so the Greeks are under the looking glass first.

In my home town, I am convinced that the Greek-American community comprised a statistical anomaly.  All of the students of Greek heritage that I met in school were very smart, many had musical and artistic talent, and at least one I knew was an outstanding athlete.  My older sister, five years ahead of me in that same school system, had the same impression of her fellow Greek students.  I could have been persuaded that the Greek community in my town defined the upper end of the bell-shaped distribution curve of intelligence.  ( I have to admit that at least one of my Greek-heritage acquaintances labeled me a Grecophile.)  So, what’s not to like about Greeks—and how in the world did they get into their current predicament?

Similar to blaming the Wright brothers for failing to anticipate harmonic oscillation, flutter and transonic aerodynamic anomalies, we could blame the Greeks for their failure to foresee what Alexis de Tocqueville later observed:  “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship”.  Surely those smart people could have figured it out in that couple of millenia between Plato and de Tocqueville.

But human nature hasn’t changed much since Plato’s day.  Just as we can be enticed by a something-for-nothing scam, so can  the Greeks; but it does appear that the Socialist environment in Europe dampens people’s common sense more than elsewhere.  So Greece became a model again—a model for “entitlements”; and Greece proceeded to pump up  its welfare state at a record-setting pace .  Today, Greek workers’ benefits and entitlements are so luxurious that they sound too good to be true.

In Greece, the Social Security systems (yes, systems, plural) provide 90% to 110% of the retiree’s final salary.  Health care, as in most of Europe, is “free”.  Housing benefits abound, vacation and holiday allowances are staggeringly generous, by U.S. norms.  Just to add a little more sweetening, workers receive bonuses at Easter and Christmas; and so on.  Needless to say, it took a few years for Greece to pile the benefits up to their current levels—a pace exceeded only by the Obama administration in the U.S.  One other complication to Greece’s debt crisis is the enormous number of public sector employees, now approaching a quarter of the total Greek work force (a few percentage points worse than the United States).

From our position today, looking back makes the Greeks appear pretty dense.  But we should not forget the context in which this current Greek Tragedy has evolved.  Socialism is the norm among European Union countries.  Of all the EU countries, only one has gotten serious about getting its fiscal house in order (Sweden, essentially reversing its long Marxian nightmare of over-taxing, over-regulating, overly-promising unsustainable entitlements, and overgrowing government).

In addition to its European family tradition of Socialism, Greece has had an active and aggressive Communist Party for many years (a serious U.S. concern during the Eisenhower administration). In fact, it’s amazing that the Greek Orthodox Church has been able to avoid canonizing Saint Marx and littering the countryside with Marx icons.  At this moment one of Greece’s leading Communist politicians is encouraging or demanding that his comrades vote for de Tocqueville’s last sentence in the quote above.  EU economists now describe the situation in Greece with adjectives such as “precarious”, “grim”, and even “hopeless”.

Although we can admire all that is good about Greece, and we can empathise with the Greek people, we are not in a position to continue enabling their addiction to “something-for-nothing”.  Much as a lot of Americans would like to see the U.S. totally bail out Greece, the U.S. is only a couple of fiscal disaster steps behind the PIIGS.  A great many Americans also appear to be addicted to “something-for-nothing”, and the Democratic Socialist Union Party will fight to the death in order to keep all the American slaves in government bondage.

To avoid following Greece into the quicksand, the U. S. must understand the PIIGS lesson and promptly change course, toward economic reality.  Continuing to walk, step by step, deeper and deeper into the PIIGS pit while waiting for a superhero doesn’t seem very promising.  By the way, have you completed your PIIGS Fan Club membership yet?  Join The PIIGS Fan Club Now!

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It’s The Gasoline, Stupid!

May 8, 2012

As we Americans find ourselves maneuvered into high gasoline prices, high prices that seem to be on their way to exorbitant prices, we really need to try putting transportation fuel prices into some kind of a context.

The current fuel predicament arises in part from President Obama’s desire to swiftly move all of us from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources which would also presumably be cleaner for the environment.  It is a rational and desirable goal, and as the world’s energy demand continues to rise, it will become necessary.  Unfortunately, the President has not thought about a transition path that could lead us to that goal down the road.  He continues to believe that if the U.S. government can make gasoline, diesel, kerosene and coal prohibitively expensive, we will all switch to alternatives for electricity generation and transportation before we are bankrupt.  The President’s logic would be OK—if  viable alternatives existed today.

President Obama has applied himself to learning political theories that appeal to him, tactics for implementing those theories, and how to smile and deliver appealing speeches to an undiscerning electorate.  However, a great many of us are wishing he had taken a few science, math or engineering courses—courses where the correct answers are not determined by ideology, opinion polls or judicial interpretation.  A majority of us are embarrassed for the President whenever he states technical “facts” that are so obviously incorrect or wishful thinking at best.  President Obama’s technology illiteracy is not just a matter of embarrassment, though; the cost to all of us is unsustainable.

Our clumsy, government-mandated attempts to reduce gasoline consumption in this country would be laughable if the problem were not so serious.  The best example is the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) requirement put upon vehicle manufacturers by a long-forgotten Congress and President.  Since the 1930s, efficiency of internal combustion engines has improved by about one to three percentage points at best; in contrast, differences in individual driver techniques result in a range of fuel burn of about 30%.  What the politicians have created, then, is a shell game the manufacturers must play—knowing that the net result is higher transportation costs for everyone.  (The only sure way of significantly improving fuel economy is to significantly reduce vehicle weight—with side effects of smaller cars and safety compromises.)

A more recent political sleight-of-hand is the ethanol mandate.  The energy potential of ethanol (when burned, not when swallowed) versus its energy cost of production from corn is only 1.63; other experts argue that the ratio is closer to 1.26.  But the unintended consequences of subsidizing corn-based ethanol are worse than its puny fuel value; the inflation of corn costs are being felt in cattle food, swine food, poultry food, and everything else from corn that is in our food chain.

The future of alternative fuels, however, is not totally bleak at this time.  Transformation of used cooking oils to diesel fuel is cost-effective, but obviously limited in its volume (long term, though, straight vegetable oil extracted from any oil-containing plant appears to have a future for diesel and turbine engines).  But what is needed right now is a strategy to husband our limited and expensive fuels—gasoline, diesel, and jet aircraft fuel (essentially, kerosene)—and use each in its highest and best application.  Another fascinating possibility, for railroad transportation, is a return to steam; convert diesel-electric locomotives to steam-turbine-electric, using coal for fuel.

A promising transition path toward sustainable energy sources was recently recommended by oilman T. Boone Pickens.  In his current-technology plan, we would switch autos and trucks to CNG, compressed natural gas (there are already more than 100,000 CNG vehicles running in the U.S.).  Pickens would also concurrently accelerate the implementation of electricity generation from wind turbines. The rate of CNG conversion and wind-power increase would be dependent on non-trivial infrastructure expansion.  New transmission facilities are necessary for getting electricity from the wind turbine locations to the national grid; and CNG-filling capabilities for trucks and autos are yet to be installed in most existing fuel stations (for personal vehicles, an affordable filling apparatus can be installed in the garage of any house that has natural gas).

In short, the plan Pickens laid out would essentially eliminate the need for gasoline and diesel in surface transportation (with a few exceptions such as diesel-electric locomotives and diesel-powered ships).  It makes so much sense that we are tempted to ask:   had just a bit of the trillions of dollars of stimulus money spent by the federal government in the last three or four years been directed to appropriate tax incentives, how far along in a Pickens-like plan could we be already?

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Jay Carney: “Nothing But The Truth”

April 14, 2012

White House Press Secretaries work very hard to save the President from himself (and herself, in the future).  The most common of these situations is when the President has been caught “overstretching a euphemism” (to those untrained in diplomacy,  “misspoke”,  and to plain folk, “lied”).  Watching Press Secretaries tiptoeing through the reporters’ questions in the briefing room can leave one amused, pained, angry, embarrassed for the Secretary, or all of the above.  Jay Carney, President Obama’s current Press Secretary, appears to have somewhat greater challenges than most.

But what if one of Carney’s children came to recognize that Daddy was frequently not exactly truthful and made a simple wish, “that Daddy would be unable to tell a lie for an entire day”¹ and the wish became true—on the day of the next press briefing!

White House Press Briefing Room

Carney:  “I have no opening statement this morning, so let’s just get started.  Wendell”?

Wendell:  “Can you give us any insight into the President’s complaints about the Supreme Court Justices again”?

Carney:  “Well, you know he’s a student of the Constitution…he studied it like an Army general studies and identifies vulnerabilities of our enemies.  The President knows all the weaknesses of the Constitution, the Court and the Justices, and he has a plan to defeat them all.  Mmn…Chuck”?

Chuck:  “Do you mean the Constitution’s failures to provide for all the assistance and protection that all the underclasses need”?

Carney:  “Yes; he believes the present Constitution was fine for wealthy white slaveholders in the 18th century.  Today, we don’t need any kind of Constitution—our President knows what’s needed, when and how; he can rule the country without any extraneous documents.  Helene”?

Helene:  “But what can the President do if the Court rules against the Affordable Health Care Act”?

Carney:  “He doesn’t worry—the bully pulpit always trumps the black robe”.

Helene:  “Follow-up on”—(Carney breaks in),

Carney:  “Let’s see…Jessica”?

Jessica:  “What specific steps does the President plan to take to lower gas prices”?

Carney:  “He doesn’t plan to do anything!  The country’s gasoline binge is  George Bush’s fault.  Before Bush, we had plenty of gas and prices were dirt cheap.  If the Supreme Court had let Al Gore win, gasoline engine production would have been prohibited in the U.S. by now, and gas prices would be moot.  Uh…Norah”?

Norah:  “Is the President concerned about the tightening of the polls in his reelection”?

 Carney:  “Nah—he sleeps well; the fix is in.  Hmm…Ed”?

Ed:  “Are you telling us there’s going to be an October Surprise?”

Carney:  “I suppose so … yes, there’s going to be a surprise.  Jake”?

Jake:  “Do you know any of the details”?

Carney:  “Not a lot; I only know a few of the secre—uh, details.  I know the secret Chinese campaign contribution of $900 million is being distributed to Democratic operatives across the country.  But I don’t know if the declaration of national emergency and martial law comes before or after the election”.

A commotion ensues at the front of the room, with three White House Staff men tackling Carney, and starting to drag him out of the room by his feet.

Carney:  (gasping, his voice raised a full octave)  “HE TOLD YOU IT WAS GOING TO BE HIS LAST ELECTION…WHAT DID YOU THINK”?  “unintelligible” (his voice trailing, as his body disappears through the doorway.

Wendell:  (standing) “I guess this means the briefing is over”?

(Reporters file out of the room, strangely silent).

¹ If the premise sounds familiar, that’s because it has been the basis for three movies in the U.S., plus films in other countries.

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WE ARE ALL COMMUNISTS NOW?

February 21, 2012

In 2009, not long after President Obama’s inauguration and when he was getting federal government spending shifted into high gear, the Newsweek Magazine of Feb. 16 proclaimed on its cover (in the largest typeface that would fit):  “WE ARE ALL SOCIALISTS NOW“.  Beneath the screamingly large type was a small subtitle, “THE PERILS AND PROMISE OF THE NEW ERA OF BIG GOVERNMENT”.

President Obama has been in election mode for the past year, as have potential Republican challengers.  We would not expect the President to react to the Newsweek proclamation, but it does indeed appear that he is doubling down on his promises of more, bigger and stronger centralized government.  Surprisingly, though, the Republican primary candidates for President have said little about the country’s accelerating march toward European-style, big government liberalism.  Of course they have complained about Obama’s policies and the stretched-out recession; but none has presented much in the way of details on how to reverse course before the U.S. automatically qualifies for membership in the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) group of the European Union.

President Obama has mentioned, in both of his memoirs, his attraction to Marxists.  He also told us that the Hawaii organizer for the Communist Party USA and another prominent Communist were frequent visitors to his grandfather’s home in Hawaii where Obama grew up.  The President’s 20-year membership in the Reverend Wright’s church, which emphasized Marxist “Black
Liberation Theology”, is another implication that Obama does not find Marxist government policies unusual, uncomfortable, or in any way out of the ordinary.

Obama Administration appointees, speaking on the various Democrat-friendly talk shows, have made remarks that indicate this administration believes 60% of the U.S. voters actually want more government assistance, support and control, foreshadowing another easy Obama election victory.

Karl Marx is frequently mentioned as “the father of Socialism and Communism”.  His actual contribution was an idea for systematizing the political exploitation of two common human weaknesses:  envy and indolence.  Alexis de Tocqueville’s observation¹ about the inherent weakness of a democracy might have been the catalyst for Marx’ thinking, but there is no evidence.  Marx detailed his brilliant idea in a short document published in 1848, “The Communist Manifesto”.  Later in life, Marx developed an interest in political economics, publishing in 1867, “Das Kapital” (and he revised it incessantly until his death in 1884).  Obviously, Marx did not live to see any of his intellectual efforts tried out in attempts to create and run an actual, real-life government.

An inadvertent co-conspirator with Marx in the attempts to turn wishful thinking into an operating government was John Maynard Keynes, a highly educated and respectable political economist.  Keynes’ ideas, like those of Marx, come in and out of favor across time; both have been criticized by a number of world-famous economists over the years.  To someone without much training in political or practical economics, a serious flaw that seems obvious is that both Marx and Keynes apparently believed wealth just existed:  like matter (pre-Einstein), wealth cannot be created nor destroyed, just transformed (as in whose wealth, where, and how used).  During Marx’ productive years no essential economic data were collected or available.  Keynes did not have that handicap; but he compensated by ignoring new data that did not support his economic theories.

Today, neither Marx nor Keynes carries much weight—except with Socialist and Communist true believers and with clever, opportunistic politicians.  But, as we have seen time and again over the last 100 years or so in the United States, emotion frequently trumps logic and reason.  Therefore it is likely that the current owners of Newsweek magazine already have the cover designed for the 2013 issue that will appear after the presidential inauguration.  Utilizing the largest typeface that will fit, that cover will proclaim, “WE ARE ALL COMMUNISTS NOW“.  A good subtitle on that cover would be, “LEARNING TO LOVE BIG BROTHER AND COPE WITH THE POLITBURO”.

Well, Comrades, plant a Renaissance garden, husband your resources, pray that you do not come to the attention of Inquisitor General Holder, and it may be possible for you to survive four more years of Chairman Barack.  But whether the country will survive remains unknowable.

NOTE:

  ¹Alexis de Toqueville, a French scholar and philosopher, made an extensive visit and study of the United States in its early years and later observed, ”A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”  (In more recent history, a Margaret Thatcher quote would be an appropriate footnote to de Tocqueville, “The problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money”).

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Faith In Government

February 4, 2012

The similarities between religious faith and faith in governments is a phenomenon that has intrigued me for quite some time.   When I have attempted to do cursory research on this subject I have found little information, possibly due to my awkward and inept research methods.  But I have received some number of very useful comments / observations as a result of a couple of my blog postings (Taxation Theology and Theology of Governments).  Perhaps I can elicit a few more by again exposing my interest and ignorance in the area.

A reasonable definition of faith might be “a belief that does not rest upon logical proof” or “belief in something that cannot be seen or otherwise sensed”.  Religious faith means to most people a belief in a Supreme Being, a belief in God.  Past a basic belief in God, religious faith can take on many meanings, e.g., Jewish, Christian, Muslim, etc.

Perversely, though, strong as our beliefs may be, we humans have proven over the ages that we are capable of believing anything that we want to believe, whether that belief was arrived at via evidence and logic or is a matter of faith.  It’s fairly common to encounter, anywhere in the media, persons of religious faith,  agnostics, and atheists trying to convince each other of the “truth” of their respective beliefs.  “Proving” to anyone’s satisfaction that God does or does not exist is a most difficult chore; so those discussions and arguments will continue forever.

Belief in one form of government or another also seems to be spread across multiple groups, each with their favorites, and all opposed by anarchists (the “atheists” of government faith).  Many U. S. citizens appear to be governmental “agnostics”; they don’t seem to care much about what goes on in the federal government or in their state government.  But one thing is certain:  it is difficult to avoid those seemingly endless debates and arguments over politicians and governments that permeate the media—especially during our elongated election seasons.

We regularly see spokespersons within television broadcast and cable organizations who are unquestionably partisan true believers of their favorite form of government, exposing the depth of their faith on a regular basis.  Needless to say, those partisans exist throughout the political spectrum; on the Internet, free from FCC license concerns (at least at present), partisanship is more the rule than the exception.  In my opinion, even among professional reporters there are very few who stick to “who, what, where, when and how” facts, avoiding the temptation to editorialize.  The public usually would find it difficult to determine a really good reporter’s political preferences.

How do we arrive at our governmental faith (or lack of it) ?  Here, the parallels with religious faith seem to be most striking, as I noted in those previous blogs (above).  But the category which should yield the most information is the one with which I have the least personal experience:  people who have lived under governments quite different from that in the U.S.  One friend emigrated to Canada from The Netherlands, where the government was classic European Liberal-Socialist.  This friend developed one rule from that experience—don’t trust any emigrant’s outlook until he or she has emigrated twice!  All emigrants are looking for a better place, but they can’t truly judge which is better, their native country or their adopted country, until they have made the relocation twice.

Another friend emigrated from England, a place for which I have great respect, both from reading history and also from several visits which were longer than usual business trips or vacations.  What I learned from my English friend was that we can’t trust our judgement unless we have made that decision and have had the experience of permanently relocating.

A third friend was a fellow employee I met at my night janitor job during college.  He and his wife, both college professors, had escaped from Latvia at the time it was a slave state of the Soviet Union.  Because the Soviets wanted to make sure that any who escaped their clutches would have as difficult a time as possible reestablishing their lives in the west, my friend Petaris could not acquire the documents to prove his tenure at the University of Riga nor his doctoral achievement.  Of course, that meant that there were no college professor jobs for him (but the U. S. oil company that hired his wife, a PhD in geology, was not hung up on credentials and was happy to give her the opportunity to prove she could handle the job).  So Pete and I worked together each night with mops, buckets, scrubbers and polishers—giving me a rare job benefit of learning a little about classical philology (his doctoral specialty and teaching subject) and the country of Latvia.  But what I remember best of the things I learned from Pete is that freedom, personal and economic, is tenuous and can disappear in an unwary and unguarded moment; none of us can really appreciate the fragility of and the value of freedom until after it is gone.

These experiences of my three friends convinces me that most of us in the United States do not really understand the quotation of Thomas Jefferson’s that is engraved in large letters inside the Jefferson Memorial:  “Constant vigilance is the price of liberty”.  A seductive sales pitch for some other form of government, made by an appealing con man, may sound too good to be true; but we frequently let our guard down anyway, suffering the results.  Too bad more of us don’t remember that no Liberal / Socialist / Communist state has ever survived even a third as long as The United States.  But until we know more about how people acquire their views and preferences for some variety of government, we must resign ourselves to the simplistic rationale that it is an emotional decision, impervious to reason and logic.

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President of the PIIGS?

December 10, 2011

The PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) countries of Europe continue their economic slide, well past the tipping point and closer to the abyss than ever.  In spite of European Union bail-out efforts, combined with attempts to convince the profligate Socialist governments that they must rein in their unaffordable entitlement programs, little or no progress has been made on solving the underlying, core problem.

Recently, a number of the EU member states have managed to get the International Monetary Fund and its chief contributor, the United States, to contribute (“loan”) more money to try to prop up Italy, along with whatever a few of the EU members can scrape up.  As big a deal as it is to U.S. taxpayers, it’s just another drop into the fire bucket to be poured onto the European Socialist conflagration.  That whole effort may really be just to shame Germany, France and the United Kingdom into deeper financial participation in this unprecedented firefighting exercise.

The root of the problem is, of course, half one of human nature and half one of the known vulnerability that all democracies share.  The human frailty, which we all recognize even if we believe it is impolite to mention it, is our desire to get something for nothing.  Of course, all politicians―even the most dense and inarticulate―know that votes are purchased with promise capital.  Moreover, even that stupidest politician knows that the very best lure is something for nothing and that an ongoing vote-buying program is best of all.  Politicians also well understand that feasibility or deliverability of the promise is immaterial; we want to believe that we will get something free, with no strings attached.

That other part of the cause is a characteristic of democratic governments.  Alexis de Toqueville, a French scholar and philosopher, made an extensive visit and study of the United States.  It was de Toqueville who observed, ”A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years”.  No one has yet discovered a procedural method of avoiding this pitfall; but the United States has managed so far to last only a tiny bit longer than 200 years.

Barack Obama began campaigning for the office of President of the United States around 2002, and in 2008 he succeeded in being elected.  In large part, Obama’s appeal was his promise to be “a President of all the people”.  His “hope and change” slogan resonated even with some number of reasonable, educated and knowledgeable voters.  Over the years since he was elected, however, that promise seems increasingly in doubt.

President Obama seems to be stuck in a rut, ever since his 2012 reelection campaign season began in 2010.  His repetitive speeches are more strident and angry; his nice guy attitude is nowhere to be seen.  The only vestige of the old Obama is his prowess in raising campaign contributions.  He has been delivering Marxist class-envy speeches, filled with trite cold-war-era Soviet phrases, at every fund-raising stop on his current campaign trail.  It seems that Obama would feel comfortable only in a European Socialist government setting.

Obama’s legislative accomplishments also appear to be copies of the European Socialist initiatives that have led those progressive governments into imminent financial peril.  The President has refused to consider any but the most trivial reductions in government spending, and he is obsessed with increasing income taxes.  Taken together, the President’s speeches and his legislative agenda indicate that Obama is more of a President of the PIIGS than he is a President of the United States.  Perhaps it would be best if he abandoned the 2012 U.S. election and instead looked into organizing the PIIGS into their own union, with Barack Obama as its head.  PIIGS voters would undoubtedly be receptive to promises of more and more government largesse.

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Communist In Capitalist Clothing

November 23, 2011

Most of us can visualize “wolf in sheep clothing”:  a wolf somehow draped with a sheepskin to conceal his real identity, with the intent of sneaking up on the unwary flock in order to enjoy a sheep dinner.  In a similar manner, one would think that most of us could visualize “Communist in Capitalist Clothing” and also understand the Communist’s motive.  But in practice, it appears that many of us humans remain clueless as the predator systematically absconds with our life, liberty and happiness.

One of the current reasons for our lack of vigilance is the success of those who have worked diligently to reinvent definitions of Pragmatism, Liberalism, Marxism, Socialism and Communism to make them more ambiguous and confusing.  I know a person who seems to actually understand the minute differences between those approaches to governing; once he volunteered that the label “Marxist” for a politician frequently should be, more accurately, “Marxist – Leninist”.  Although I respect those who have managed to learn these small details, I suspect that most of us don’t see two cents worth of difference across the whole lot.  Collectively, all of those labels refer to a form of government that is all about “coerce and control”, with abhorrence of even a small decision being made outside of the government.

Socialism, the blanket term, was an inadvertent side effect of the industrial revolution, the greatest improvement ever in the lives of ordinary people.  As the standard of living rapidly and dramatically improved in the industrializing western nations, people naturally looked back at the progress they had made from their feudal subsistence past.  As always, after things have gotten better, this retrospection generated anger at those undefinable forces or people considered responsible for that miserable past.  This angst was the catalyst for vast numbers of people to fall prey to Marxist propaganda, believing in its fairy-tale vision, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”.

At Thanksgiving time in the U.S. we should remember the earliest experience with failed Socialism in the new world.  The Plymouth Colony began with what we call Socialism today, only to watch it progressively fail to the point where the colony was in serious danger of starvation and extinction.  Governor Bradford, in a brave act of political leadership, mandated a return to the form of economic activity familiar to the colonists—what we call Capitalism now (and it worked so well that Bradford declared a holiday after a fall harvest “to give thanks…”).  The colonists literally learned, or relearned, that there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

But is the U. S. at present meekly acquiescing as a pack of Communists in Capitalist clothing pull our country down into the same black hole that Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain are currently spiraling into?  No Socialist government in history has ever survived even a third as long as that of the United States.  Are we going to cheer our entrance into Socialism and bankruptcy at the same time?  Will we continue to idolize and support the chief wolf in sheep’s clothing, gorged with his easy plunder already and still agitating the pack to binge on everything, down to the last remaining morsel of the flock that used to be the United States of America?

Will we wake up to the same unbelieving morning after the election as have Poland, the United Kingdom, Greece, Italy, and most of the struggling European Union member states?  Will we, too, have to learn the unacceptable cost of the free lunch?  Is the eventual victory of the President Of The Communists inevitable?  Do we have sufficient remaining optimism to believe in the possibility of electing a genuine President Of All The People?

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Barack Obama, Alchemist In Chief

November 7, 2011

Individuals who have convinced sufficient Americans to vote for them to be President usually have carried adequate-to-outstanding academic credentials.  President Obama is no exception, having a Bachelor’s degree, plus a Juris Doctor’s degree (from Harvard, no less).  But a great many of us are wishing he had taken a few science, math or engineering courses—courses where the correct answers are not determined by ideology, opinion polls or judicial interpretation.  President Obama’s technology illiteracy is not just a matter of embarrassment; the cost to all of us is unsustainable.

We humans, like a lot of other animals, learn through experience.  As those experiences have been recorded for posterity, each new generation of researchers, as the saying goes, stands on the shoulders of those who came before.  In ancient times, long before the seeds of modern science were planted, alchemy was accepted as a legitimate scientific pursuit.  The best-known purpose of alchemy was its goal of converting base metals such as lead or tin into noble metals such as gold and silver.  That goal eluded its searchers for millennia, but it was thought to be possible, awaiting only a “right stuff” thinker who could accomplish what had proved impossible for so long.

Today the average person thinks of alchemy as a play toy of the incorrigible ignorant.  Although essentially true, that’s not a totally fair assessment, since alchemy was one of the seeds that lead toward modern science.  One alchemy-like problem we see today is the achievement of controlled nuclear fusion, like the controlled fission used in nuclear power plants.  But, unlike the efforts of those early alchemists, research that some day might lead to controlled fusion (the holy grail of energy sources) is being conducted by the world’s top scientists with supercolliders, supercomputers, and all of our modern research tools.

President Obama does not seem to understand that the alchemy of the middle ages cannot be made to work, in spite of his rhetoric and his desires.  It appears that his ingrained ideology and ignorance of (or contempt for) physics, mathematics and engineering makes him an easy target for confidence men.  It is painfully evident that our President believes that almost instantaneous elimination of fossil fuels is achievable via political fiat.  The President is not alone in his beliefs; many in his administration have the same fuzzy beliefs and the same contempt for those “little people” of science who can’t seem to understand what is wanted of them.

So we see billions and billions of our taxpayer dollars being donated for seed money in economically questionable renewable energy initiatives.  A recent winner in our energy folly lottery is the late lamented Solyndra company that filed for bankruptcy in early September.  At this point there is no evidence of any wrongdoing on the part of Solyndra, aside from poor management and possible lack of due diligence.

Poor decision-making and overconfidence are seen from time to time in totally private initiatives, those with no taxpayer money at risk and no political favor rewards (see Diogenes and Technology Breakthroughs).  Such examples just remind us that there is risk inherent in all business ventures.  Venture capitalists understand risk management very well, but still they continue to finance new startups regularly.  However, when the venture capital is taxpayer money (which belongs to no one) due diligence has, or should have, a completely different definition.

The use of tax monies to finance business startups is generally regarded as inappropriate, but there may be room for debate on that subject.  However, no debate should be required about risk management where public moneys are involved.  Most of us believe that investing taxpayers’ money in the finest, invisible, fabric from which to make the President’s new suit should be held up to considerably more scrutiny than its counterpart private investment.

But worse than questionable investments of our money is the President’s belief that if he can starve us of electricity from coal-fired plants, we will be forced to turn to wind or solar.  Unfortunately, our President doesn’t understand or believe that there is no replacement in sight for the electricity currently derived from coal.  Or perhaps he thinks we won’t mind the absence of power at night, when solar cells produce nothing and wind turbines produce little.

We voters are a little late in vetting our President’s technology awareness and competence (and also vetting his candidates for appointment to positions related to technology).  Our recourse at this point is to do our best to make sure that potential future Presidents do not have significant technology blind spots or contempt for technologists.  It would help if we could demand more technology familiarity from the media; technology-challenged reporters and anchors seem to be the norm.

My suggestion is to support candidates for President only if they are on a technology level of George Washington or better (or Thomas Jefferson, or Benjamin Franklin, or…).

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Social Security: The Ponzi Scheme That Wasn’t

October 27, 2011

Rick Perry stirred up a hornet’s nest of media pundits, from both the left and the right, when he casually said that Social Security was a Ponzi Scheme.  Partisan pseudo-reporters, non-thinking political commentators and other dullards quickly formed their defensive square and screamed, “That’s not true; a Ponzi Scheme is illegal!”   And they are technically correct.  Any law duly passed by the House and Senate and signed by the President is legal (although the Supreme Court may subsequently declare it unconstitutional).

But what if Rick Perry had said instead, “Social Security works exactly like a Ponzi Scheme, such as that of Bernie Madoff”.  What would the leftist partisans and their fellow travelers say if the statement were phrased in that manner?  What reference could Rick Perry and others who agree with his view turn to for justification?  How about the Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC.

On its web site the SEC provides this definition of a Ponzi Scheme:  “A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors“.  This is exactly how Social Security works.  There are no investments providing returns.  There is no actual “Social Security Trust Fund”; it is just an accounting collection of IOUs from all of the various government agencies that have spent almost every penny of Social Security payroll withholding not actually paid out to beneficiaries.

So Social Security is technically not a Ponzi Scheme, but only because what would otherwise be an investment fraud is allowed under U.S. law.  Those who blurt out emotional responses need to hold their indignity in check long enough to think about the real issue.  How can an unsustainable, Ponzi-like scheme be reformed into an enduring program to ensure an adequate retirement income for the largest number of workers?

The path toward a solution begins with a problem definition, which was skipped by the well-intentioned people who brought us the “temporary” Social Security program intended to assist workers who had been economically crippled by the Great Depression during their most productive years.  One critical part of a problem definition is articulating the desired goal that the solution is to create / enable.  The goal is simple:   enable every income earner to establish and make regular contributions to his or her personal retirement income plan that is actuarially adequate; provide strong incentives / disincentives to assure that the maximum number of earners faithfully follow through.

Realistically, that “maximum number of earners” who faithfully follow through will be significantly less than 100%; seventy to eighty percent will  be a more likely number.  Human frailties have no bounds, and there will be innumerable reasons why individuals reach retirement age with far less than enough income.  This remainder will fall into the welfare social safety net, and although there may be a little grumbling, we are not going to let those seniors starve in the dark.

What would make such an imperfect private retirement plan good for our country?  Today Social Security operates not just like a Ponzi Scheme but also operates like a welfare system:  a very large fraction of beneficiaries will take out much, much more than they ever paid in. Those retirement funds (withheld from our paychecks plus an equal amount paid by our employers) are not invested across our working lifetime and therefore grow not one penny larger; all the additional money that taxpayers must supply amounts to plain old welfare.  Reducing that welfare burden by even 50% would be a win for all Americans.

Would there be any losers?  Of course!  The progressive politicians who have been so successful in scaring the ignorant fraction of Social Security beneficiaries and the almost-senile fraction will be forced to come up with a believable rationale why nothing should be changed.  Those politicians will be quite unhappy when they have to earn the votes required for their reelection.

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Taxation Theology

August 31, 2011

The correlations between theology and government are striking.  At one extreme are those hard-line politicians who promote government as the peoples’ religion.  An opposite extreme may be represented by anarchists advocating atheism.   In between, we see many other parallels between the faith of individuals and their perception of ideal forms of government.  But nowhere is the correlation higher than in citizens’ beliefs about taxation.  This phenomenon is most often called taxation theology.

It appears that many or most people develop their taxation theology in a manner consistent with the path they followed to arrive at their religious faith.  For many, family tradition sets people on their initial direction of development.  For others, group associations such as jobs, labor unions, schools, and churches are a major causative factor.  Curiously, political associations do not seem to be the causative factor in individuals’ taxation theology (although there is usually a strong correlation between politics and taxation faith; more about that later).  Age appears to have a minor influence; younger individuals (who have probably not paid any personal income taxes yet) tend to adopt a more liberal-left taxation theology and to be more indifferent about taxes in general.

Once an individual’s taxation theology is more or less set, that person rarely questions his or her deep-set opinion.  This seems to be true of most of us, irrespective of our tax denomination—flat tax, fair tax, progressive tax, confiscatory tax, etc.  However, it appears that changes in financial circumstances can trigger some introspection:  “I didn’t realize until lately that taxes consume more than half of my income!”, or “I have enough income and wealth now that taxes are no concern”.  Obviously there are more in the former category than the latter; but indifference to taxation by some wealthy people might have a negative effect on the rest of us.

One fact that is directly related to taxation theology is rarely mentioned:  fifty percent of us in the United States do not pay any income tax.  Does this tell us anything?  Because the House, Senate and President control how much income tax any of us and all of us pay, the answer is “not much”.  However it provides us with a context that may help us to understand how there can be so many opinions about income taxes.  Those of us who pay little or no income taxes might be expected to differ in our tax theology from those who pay anywhere from a fourth to more than a third of their incomes in federal income tax alone.

Some of the tax denominations have arrived at a point where they espouse a combination of class-envy and poison-the-well:  “If you have more than I do, give me the difference.   If you won’t give it to me, then throw it down the government well so no one can have it”.  Other denominations appear to be more egalitarian—a single flat tax for all, with no hidden add-on taxes / withholding (e.g., Social Security, Medicare, etc.).  There are also a few groups of heretics who believe that the government is obligated to prove that each and every expenditure of tax monies is prudent, necessary and useful (even taxation theology has its weirdos).

One example of the correlation between political persuasion and taxation theology is those people of the OPM persuasion, dominant among the most ardent denominations.  To the best of our knowledge, members of the OPM denomination are all associated with the left-liberal political spectrum.

OPM theologists frequently quote scripture in public, usually from the Book of Marx.  Their favorite verse seems to be “The top one percent of income producers don’t pay their fair share of taxes”.  This  scriptural passage actually has a slight correlation to current tax reality—the top one percent at present pay only slightly more than half of all personal income taxes.  But OPM believers are usually reluctant to engage in a debate on how much income tax is appropriate—sixty percent, eighty percent, ninety-five percent?   OPMers must not have heard that the United Kingdom at one point had a top tax rate of one hundred two percent, 102%; otherwise they might have an answer ready to use.

In spite of the range of taxation denominations, it is likely that the balance of power among taxation theology denominations will depend, surprisingly, upon where the taxation agnostics come down.  Tax agnostics generally show more resistance to politicians’ emotional appeals, but they do respond to calls for being “fair” in spreading the pain of taxes.  Perhaps they believe in the mathematics that prove the same tax rate yields a larger amount of taxes collected from upper income earners than from low income people.  They also generally believe that even the poorest of us should pay at least a few dollars per year.

It will be interesting in November 2012 to see which denominations are most heavily represented at the polls.  Will the current, irrational U.S. income tax law continue to be safe, for one more interval?

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Debt Limit Drama, In Retrospect

August 17, 2011

It’s been two weeks since the curtain rose on The Great  Debt Limit Drama; one of the major political parties has settled on its gleaning strategy; and the media has digested it, with only a low stomach rumble persisting.  The Propaganda Division of the ruling party is drawing down from regiment size to a few precautionary battalions.  Those on the out are still analyzing, trying to figure out who was on what side of this Tet Offensive.  Has the media turned a military defeat into a political victory, as in that other Tet Offensive?  It may be years before a General Giap appears on the scene to give us the straight story.

For those of us who are willing to admit that we are not politically omniscient, we are left with the meager visible facts.  One more time, my nascent opinion rests on a pitifully small number of facts.  The worry, which a number of sideline observers have voiced publicly, is whether the facts in that small quantity were salient and causative factors.

The way it looked to me:

1.  The debt limit “compromise” bill was passed by the House and the Senate and subsequently signed by the President into law.

2.  One of the credit / financial rating agencies rather quickly downgraded The United States from an AAA rating (its highest) to AA+ (one step lower), and added a financial Negative Outlook attribute for good measure.

3.  The amount of the increase in the debt ceiling is sufficient to allow the U.S. to keep borrowing until well after the next presidential election.

4.  Social Security checks went out on schedule, no military personnel missed a paycheck, medical providers received their Medicare / Medicaid payments, the millions of federal employees and contract personnel got paid, and Old Faithful had sufficient energy to keep erupting on schedule.

Now it’s down to somewhat lesser facts:

5.  The President publicly repeated over and over that failure to increase the Debt Ceiling would cause the U. S. to default on its bond holder interest payments.  At a later point he changed the wording to “default on its solemn obligations”.

6.  The President publicly stated a number of times that he “could not guarantee that Social Security checks would go out”  if the Debt Ceiling were not increased.  A few times he said the same for Medicare and Defense Department personnel payments.

7.  The Treasury Secretary also kept publicly iterating his stock disaster warnings, similar to the President’s.

8.  Some number of months before the Debt Ceiling deadline, the Treasury Secretary assured us in a televised interview that “there is no chance of a credit agency downgrade”.

At this point we segue to other minor facts, plus a few “what-if” speculations:

9.  Neither the President nor the Treasury Secretary ever publicly mentioned that the expected monthly income of the United States is sufficient to pay (a) bond holders, (b) Social Security recipients, (c) Medicare claims, and (d) Department of Defense payroll, with tens of billions of dollars left over.

10.  Neither the President nor the Treasure Secretary ever mentioned that there is no legal barrier to prioritizing federal government payments, allowing bond holders to be paid first (about $40 billion out of the expected $165 – $200 billion monthly income).

11.  Did the Treasury Secretary, or other Obama Administration official, ever privately tell the credit rating agencies that there was no danger whatsoever of default and that Administration rhetoric was just “political leveraging”?  It’s unlikely that we will find out.

12.  Did the President really take the Treasury Secretary’s “no downgrade” assertion at face value, without polling other knowledgeable people on his staff?  If so, perhaps he should turn to a better source (like the Tea Party?).

13.  There seems to be general agreement among media pundits that scaring “the old people on Social Security” continues to be an effective Democratic Party tactic.  Is the apparent diminished capacity epidemic among our senior citizens for real?

14.  Did the Republican leadership do a Charlie Brown, falling on its hind side when Lucy (AKA Democrats) yanked the football away from the tee at the last second—again?  Undoubtedly all those Lucys are still giggling.

15.  Did the Republicans learn any lessons from the attempts to scale the Everest mountain of U.S. debt?  It does appear that a sizable percentage have come to believe that it is not possible for our country to continue spending trillions more per year than the country’s income.

16.  Did the Democrats learn any lessons from the country’s unfettered credit-card spending?  The rhetoric of Democratic leaders indicates no!  But could it be that our President is smarter and more clever than most of us give him credit for?  Might he be just executing tactics from Alinsky and Marx, taking advantage of de Toqueville’s excellent hint about voting the treasury in a democracy, as keys to his Grand Strategy, whatever that might be?  If the debt escalation continues as at present, all of us will know for sure in five years or less.

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Governmental Aphorisms

August 17, 2011

We humans have had forms of government longer than we have had writing.  So it is not surprising that quite a number of aphorisms about government have accumulated.  Three of the small fraction to which I have been introduced come to mind fairly often.

One bit of government truth is possibly the best-known aphorism in the category, while being at the same time the least-heeded.  Thomas Jefferson observed, “That government which governs least governs best“.  However, a nineteenth century “philosopher / economist” later composed siren songs advocating governing most and governing everything; sadly, a large percentage of 20th  and 21st century politicians have fallen prey to those deadly tunes.

Another bit of Jeffersonian truth is prominently engraved in the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty“.  It is clear that he meant vigilance of our own government and not of imminent invaders.

Alexis de Toqueville, a French scholar and philosopher, made an extensive visit and study of the United States and later observed, ”A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”   Alexis de Toqueville’s perceptive quote remains timely, especially during the last seventy years:  is the U.S. now running on borrowed time (as well as borrowed money)?

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New U.S. Civilian Medal

August 15, 2011

The United States has created over the years a large number of military decorations which recognize service and personal accomplishments while a member of the U.S. armed forces.  The government has also created many awards, bestowed by various agencies of the government, for sustained meritorious service or for significant contributions to the country.  But in spite of all the awards defined, it appears that there is a niche area of significant civilian performance that has been overlooked; I’ll throw out a suggestion for that area.

For military personnel, the best-known decorations are those for gallantry and exceptional performance under fire.  At the top, of course, is the Congressional Medal of Honor.   The Service Cross Medals of the Army, Navy and Air Force are somewhat less well-known.  Most of us have heard of the Distinguished Service Medals of the various branches of the military.  Probably most people are familiar with the Silver Star Medal, which can be awarded to a member of any branch of the military for valor in the face of the enemy.  Past the Silver Star are quite a number of other awards for meritorious service, personal accomplishments, and unit awards for various branches and for many different situations of service.  Of course, one of the best-known awards is rarely, if ever, desired by its recipients—the Purple Heart Medal for being wounded in action.

In the civilian arena the best-known awards are the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold and Silver Medals.  But there are also very many other civilian medals for service within the huge number of government branches and agencies.  In fact, there are so many awards it’s difficult to understand how the important niche mentioned above could have been missed.

The reason that there are so many civilian medals and decorations is that it is important to recognize excellence and consistency of individuals in an almost infinite combination of circumstances and types of meritorious performance.  In general, awards for different actions in different situations cannot be compared, nor would we want to try.  For example, how could we compare National Park Rangers to those who issue passports—both perform important functions that many of us need.  Perhaps that is why one high-impact performance area might be overlooked.

High-impact seems to be a warranted description of performance that directly affects 60% of the entire United States budget, year in and year out.  In addition to its monetary impact, this performance area has also been a major factor in the success of at least one political party for at least 80 years.  One bit of irony is that while there is no official civilian medal authorized, the media manages to publicly honor individual performance in this area from time to time.

A few of our elected Representatives and Senators also point out instances of people who have performed “above and beyond”.  Such ceremonies usually do not include or identify the principals involved, probably because of privacy concerns.  However, these elected officials do bring to light the collective impact of these honored persons upon the national budget and national self-esteem.  But no action has yet been initiated to officially define appropriate medals and awards for these civilian stalwarts.

It is about time for Congress and the President to define a civilian award appropriate for individuals whose service is clearly distinguished from that of ordinary civilians in this area.  What the country needs is a Ward of the State Medal, to honor meritorious service in soliciting, obtaining and consuming state largesse.  Undoubtedly President Obama and quite a number of Senators and Representatives would support such an effort.

I should mention that at first I believed that I could meet the requirements for this new medal.  I thought my service in a couple of the covered areas might have qualified me for not just the basic medal, but possibly even an Oak Leaf Cluster.  I am an official, card-carrying participant in the National Ponzi Scheme (A.K.A. Social Security) who has successfully completed my Payroll Confiscation Phase and arrived at my Government Largesse Phase (I thank the specific 2.6 or so American workers from whose paychecks my reward is deducted each and every pay period).  Membership in the National Health Scare Scheme (A.K.A. Medicare), however, might not actually warrant an Oak Leaf Cluster (and I have to admit that my participation has been sporadic and lackluster due to good health beyond my control).

Upon reflection, I realized that I am not fully qualified for the medal because of my continuing doubts about these programs.  Social Security is about the same age as I am, but for some unexplained reason I came to realize at an early age that it amounts to a government-approved version of Charles Ponzi’s (and later, Bernie Madoff’s) business scam.  I am also forced to confess that I never truly believed that Medicare was “insurance” nor that it had very much to do with “health care”; I was just too lazy or too preoccupied to stand on the rooftop and scream at the top of my voice.  I like to believe that, had my unlikely career entrance into a niche of business problem-solving come about a few years earlier, I would have been prepared and taken action to present the logical reasons, to anyone who would listen, why Medicare was doomed to eventual financial disaster.  I also wonder if my great-grandchildren would ever want to show their friends “Great-Grandpa’s medal from The Great Socialism Upheaval”.

However, I don’t want to  rain on anyone’s parade; my negative and somewhat cynical outlook should not deter our government from presenting Ward of the State Medals to the millions of well-qualified and deserving citizens and countrymen, as well as the tens of millions who will soon also be qualified.

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PIIGS: Blame Not George Bush, Blame Karl Marx

August 5, 2011

PIIGS ALERT:  The European Central Bank, commenting on the high probability that Italy (the world’s eighth largest economy) will need a Greece-style bail-out, said (paraphrased):  “At this point there is nothing we can do for Italy, Portugal or Spain”.

In the absence of sustained handouts from the European Union, the PIIGS countries are faced with very difficult economic decisions.  Italy, whose Socialist “Noble Experiment” preceded  that of Russia by about ten years, has apparently pushed the progressive government envelope beyond the ability even of Other Peoples’ Money to save.  Silvio Berlusconi,who may be just keeping up appearances, denies that Italy will need a bail-out.  In fixing the blame for Italy’s situation, the Prime Minister has not invoked the name of George W. Bush; perhaps he believes that U.S. President Barack Obama has used up that excuse.  Or perhaps his experience with increasing doses of Socialist Workers’ Paradise has provided him with a wisdom that has evaded a number of European politicians.

Karl Marx has been described as a “philosopher”, an “economist” and a “political rabble-rouser”.  But he may have thought of himself as a “physicist”.  He believed that wealth, like matter, could not be created nor destroyed—it just exists (remember, he wrote “Das Kapital” before Einstein was born).  Any money problems, then, can be solved simply by redistribution.  In the zero-sum wealth game in his mind, redistribution of wealth would make everyone happy.  Politicians the world over have found Marx’ argument essential to getting elected, and reelected, and reelected, and…

Prime Minister Berlusconi may actually be faced with convincing his electorate that governments, like most families, must learn how to live within their means.  Those of us who have kept up with the bellwether PIIGS member, Greece, do not envy Mr. Berlusconi his job.  The small, timid reductions in Greek government extravagances were quite similar to the recent debt limit tiptoeing in the U.S.; Greece  has made it this far only because the European Union and the International Monetary Fund had sufficient cash in hand.  But the European Union is almost as broke as the U. S.  So in Italy, push may really come to shove; the country has enough political parties to form armies of opposition to having to earn their own way.

As tempting as it might be to excoriate George Bush, Mr. Berlusconi will more likely come down on Saint Marx, the patron saint of Socialists.  The Prime Minister can point out that other sacred stars of the Socialist galaxy, such as John Maynard Keynes, have been advising Socialist governments around the world to keep the faith, that the bread, peanut butter, and jelly will come out even if only enough time is allowed.  But the truth keeps popping up all over the leftist world:  it only works when there is a sufficiency of other peoples’ money to pay the progressive bills.

As the PIIGS’ economic drama plays out, we may actually hear, “Karl Marx caused this whole mess”!  Will leftist politicians in the U.S. hear those words?

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What’s in a (Political) Name?

August 1, 2011

I’ve looked at all the calendars in our house, scanning the small print below the numbers, where holidays, meteorological points and moon phases are noted.  Half of our calendars were purchased for the interesting and pretty photos and illustrations and the remainder were free (advertising) communications from various vendors.  It is interesting to see and compare the holidays and significant observations in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom.  But none of our calendars noted the important date I was trying to recall:  “U. S. Political Season Begins”.

Most of us can sense when a seasonal change approaches, just by observing the ambient conditions—like when a full moon is near or an equinox is close.  Surely the increasing volume of political sniping and occasional full-scale volleys of political party artillery indicate that there is an imminent change at hand.  Names of political parties and names of politicians associated with those parties are invading the airwaves and our thoughts.  This flurry of political activity brings to mind Shakespeare’s famous line, “What’s in a name” (as I recall, things did not end well for the principals who prompted that discussion).

Names of political parties don’t seem to change much across time—at least not in the U.S.—Democratic, Republican, Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian, Socialist, Communist, and so on (depending on which state you vote in).  The two parties that have dominated the field since the middle of the 19th century are still named “Democratic” and “Republican”.  Perhaps the professional politician class is so jaded that they believe you and I can’t handle a name update more often than every 150 years.

I have been suggesting for a while that it is past time for the Democratic Party to bring its name up to date, to better describe its constituents, goals and directions.  In many countries the political equivalent of our Democratic Party has been named the Democratic Socialist Union (DSU) Party for some time.   Surely we can keep up with the DSU’s of the world.  The name change might also trigger a move to the Liberal Party by the more conservative members of today’s Democratic Party.

In very recent years the Republican Party has resembled, according to its voting patterns, the Conservative Party of several parliamentary democracies in western Europe.  Unfortunately, the name “conservative” has already been taken by a political party accredited in a number of our states.  Unless the liberal members of the Republican Party happen to move to other parties with more closely aligned philosophies, the conservatives in the Republican Party are stuck with the existing name (even though seventy percent or more of our electorate have no idea what a “republic” is).

The Libertarian Party should, since the 2010 congressional elections, be well positioned to grow in members and prominence.  It might be able to overcome its longstanding reputation for lackluster performance; but will Americans tolerate a party whose name has five syllables?  With the telephone texting stampede in progress, sentences and paragraphs (and cogent streams of thought) are going out of fashion.  It appears that we only need an alphabet of 16 or 17 letters, and we try to avoid “long words” of five letters or more.  Five syllables just won’t do.  In addition, we old-timers have another problem with the name “Libertarian”; a lot of us don’t know the difference between Libertarian and Libertine.

The Communist Party USA (CPUSA) probably needs a name change more than any other political organization in the U.S.  Although it has been around for almost a hundred years, it is not accredited in very many states.  This apparent popularity problem could be the result of political ambiguity and baggage left over from Stalin and the old U.S.S.R.  An aggravation to that baggage was CPUSA’s mindless distribution of Moscow’s official Communist Party Line and approved propaganda—stilted English and all.  But the several Marxist political party aliases of the past (Progressive,  Socialist, Liberal, Communist, Fascist, etc.) may make finding a new name more difficult.

Now is not the time for the Liberal Party to consider a name change, what with the current opportunities to absorb politically disaffected members from other parties (see comments on Democratic and Republican parties, above).  Fortunately, it has been long enough since the left co-opted the term “liberal” that there are very few people alive today who can remember that its original meaning was what we call “conservative” today.

The Socialist Party also should move very cautiously with any contemplated name change.  Like the Liberal Party, it stands to gain a substantial number of divorcees from the Democratic Party and a few from the Republican Party.  One positive factor in the Socialist Party’s favor is the efforts by the U.S. mainstream media, and its allied Internet fellow-travelers, to rehabilitate the name “Socialism” in the U.S. and the West.

The Conservative Party may be in a position to absorb a major portion of the current Republican Party (unless the liberal Republicans make a preemptive move en mass to another party).  One blot on the Conservative Party escutcheon is its inseparable association with the United Kingdom’s parliamentary democracy—confusing to most U.S. voters.

New political party names, as opposed to recycled party names, have considerable potential, considering the U.S. electorate’s fickle nature and short attention span.  One would think that an actual party named the “Tea Party” (as opposed to a nickname for a grassroots political effort) might do well.  Another party name with popular appeal would be the “Obama Party“.  If a group of advertising agency copy writers were enlisted to come up with new names, the U.S. could end up with more political parties than Italy!

What’s in a political name?  I don’t know.  But it’s apparent that there can be mindless magnetism in those political names.

RELATED RAMBLINGS:

America’s Political Party

The Rehabilitation of Socialism

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