Ten things that won’t change, regardless of who’s elected president.
Sadly (in most cases), I can’t argue with any of them.
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The More Things Change
Ten things that won’t change, regardless of who’s elected president. Sadly (in most cases), I can’t argue with any of them….
It is depressing to read that list… but I think we can work on number 3, it will take time, but we can start working on it. Number 4 is a given, and is a product more of the Global economy and Internet than anything else. Number 5 may need more time but could begin within my parents lifetime, certainly mine. People are still too scared of the Marijuana boogy monster, but it would be interested to see a candidate push for it. If Obama is elected, hopefully he does it in his second term.
Number 6 wouldn’t be too difficult to change, all we need to do is make the money within the military more accountable. A story I always tell is a friend in the Marines that was asked by his boss’ boss to go out and buy 10’s of thousands of dollars worth of stuff at the end of budget periods. Reason? If you don’t spend the budget you get it taken away. We could easily make the money we give to the military more accountable and efficient and free up some dollars. Then you strip back the money spent there and use it for other things. To keep the wolves at bay, you could then increase spending on veterans, to show you really do care.
Number 7 can and will change if Obama is elected. He is the only candidate that has received $0 directly from lobbyists, whereas the other candidates are in the hundreds of thousands.
Number 9: can you imagine someone running for president and stripping away the farm subsidies? They would be done as a politician, that would be the end of their career. The best we can hope for is that candidates slowly and quietly give less and less.
1. America’s relationship with China:
Well you know….if we were to stop pissing away money on the stupid war and go back to the policies of the ’90s, you know when we had supluses, and raised taxes back to the levels of the ’90s…or basically undid every fiscal policy of George II and worked hard at paying off the Debt, then we might. We need to do away with the failed policies of Freedman and Greenspan and go with what actually works.
2. The partisan divide:
I fail to see how this is a problem, this is in fact the goal. The past seven years of Bi-partisenship has destroyed this country and it needs to end now.
3. Dependence on foreign oil:
It will change slowly or it may change suddenly if OPEC goes to the Euro. China will continue to increase its share of the oil pie and the price will continue to go up.
4. The decline in manufacturing jobs:
This was the goal of “Free Trade” and all the NAFTA stupidity, os until we end “Free Trade” this will continue.
5. The flow of illegal drugs:
Nixon started this silliness back when Heroin was the big killer, and he was the only one that came close to “winning” since it was understood that it was a treatment issue and not a punishment issue. Now we have a incarceration industry that make big bucks off all the stupid mandatory sentencing and the equally stupid War on Drugs. Long past time to legalize all drugs, treat them like our fave drugs (alcohol and Nicotine), tax them and move on.
6. Military spending:
Just like how the GOP used the CIA to lie about the USSR’s capabilities during the cold war to keep the big bucks flowing for useless military spending, we now have the GOP using the GWOT to keep everyone afraid, which keeps the Congress not wanting to look weak on terra and more money flows to the Military industrial complex. Nothing will stop the transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich unless someone has the guts to stand up and say “NO” to the bedwetters and fear mongers running this country.
7. The influence of lobbyists:
Nothing will end this until we end Legal bribery and go to publicly funded elections. Money is not free speech.
8. U.S. support for Israel:
Again, nothing will end this until some has the guts to stand up for American principles and basic human rights and cuts all ties to Israel except for what we are obligated to do under treaties. Israel has the third largest stock pile of Nuclear weapons in the World, I think it can take care of itself.
This is the same problem as with our insane policy toward Cuba…stop the madness and deal with Cuba the same way we deal with Vietnam, China, Cambodia, and Laos…
9. Ethanol subsidies:
It won’t stop because ADM and Cargill bribe congress not to stop it. We need to fix the election process so that a bunch of farmers in Iowa do not have so much influence on farm policy verse what is best for the country.
10. The primary system:
Go to a five (or 10, once every two weeks) week rotating geographical based system of primaries/caucus’ and be done with it. Screw Iowa and New Hampshire.
Okay, my weigh-in:
1. America’s relationship with China:
There are two aspects to this: the political and the economic. Each influences the other, but each properly has its own goals and motivations.
I think it is acceptable to be trading (heavily) with China, even while we politically contend against them. That said, we need to get our economic house in order; the trade imbalance with China is a symptom, not a cause, of the problem, and needs to be addressed (see BD’s notes). At the same time, refusing to speak out on China’s human rights problems for fear of irritating them betrays our own political principles; making ourselves China’s adversaries solely on economic grounds makes us no different from them.
2. The partisan divide:
I think there is room for partisanship while at the same time not demonizing the opposition. The “the other side not only is wrong, but evil” meme not only hurts, in the long run, partisan efforts (by making every issue a great moral crusade that must be fought for/against at all costs), but makes genuinely appropriate bipartisan efforts more difficult by making it “morally” unacceptable to compromise — either one must take a diametrically opposed position or utterly capitulate.
Too much “bipartisanship” (especially of the capitulation kind) isn’t a good thing, since it effectively means a virtual one-party rule. I do like a high friction coefficient in my government. But I don’t think anyone is served by making each bill a Ragnarokeian Last Battle Against The Darkness. That just cheapens the real cases of something Truly Bad being proposed.
3. Dependence on foreign oil:
There are no quick fixes. There are no painless fixes. There are no cheap fixes. Whether the situation slowly changes or abruptly changes, it will be costly and painful. To the extent that government can lay the groundwork for such changes (fundamentally beginning with the whole “oil” part of it, rather than focusing on the “foreign”) I welcome it.
4. The decline in manufacturing jobs:
In general, this was both inevitable and, in the long run, I think it can be a *positive* thing. But the short-/mid-term pain of this is something that, as a country, we need to pay up for, even, as a country, we’ve benefited from the Wal*mart prices. Ending “free trade” isn’t the answer; being realistic about the costs (and making labor and environmental reforms part of the deal) is.
5. The flow of illegal drugs:
Unfortunately, like the War on Terror, the War on Drugs has become a fear-driven moral axiom, which makes reforming it (in either case) very difficult. There needs to be some serious paradigm shifting on this one, away from interdiction / incarceration and into treatment and making selling more costly. There are no easy answers here, except to fess up that trying to seal the borders and jail every pot user hasn’t been at all successful in dealing with the problem.
6. Military spending:
I agree with BD that the GWOT has become the New Cold War to justify ever-larger military budgets. At the same time, inter-service rivalry to stay relevant in the GWOT has gotten even more ridiculous. I also agree that the best thing that could be done here is (a) seriously reexamine and refocus our strategic goals and the force balances necessary to support them, and (b) shift a goodly chunk of those monies from the Weapon System of the Month to increased spending on the human side (VA and military salaries/benefits). Get (and retain) good people, and you’ll have an effective military to use all those keen new toys.
Doing any of those things, alas, is going to mean bucking the defense industry, the congresscritters who benefit from big programs in their districts, the multiple military establishments, and the fear-mongers. Prognosis not good.
7. The influence of lobbyists:
I disagree with BD that “money is not free speech” (in the sense he means). The danger is not the spending of money, but the secrecy of its spending. Improve visibility of that, make it an issue, and let the voters decide.
8. U.S. support for Israel:
I don’t denigrate US support for Israel as much as some, but I think that support needs to be more nuanced, needs to have some teeth in it rather than just being knee-jerk, and needs to go hand in hand with appropriate support for others in the region. This can change, I think, with the appropriate candidate and attention.
9. Ethanol subsidies:
Between big agribusiness and major midwestern voting blocs that see it as printing money on their behalf, ethanol subsidies are the next evolution of our nation’s crazy-ass agricultural subsidies. Except that they are under the ironic banner of environmental goodness while being anything but. No easy answers here.
10. The primary system:
The fundamental problem here is Constitutional — nominating elections are handled by the states and the parties, not by any central federal control. I agree that we should try to come up with some sort of rotating system as BD describes, to put a bit more sanity on it.
On the other hand, this year’s processes indicate that the system isn’t necessarily broken. And I think, though the parties have been unwilling to buck the Iowa/New Hampshire priority, that will crumble in the next two Presidential cycles, and there will have to be some sense to come out of it to avoid a single national primary on December 1 of the previous year.
That all said … there is (demographic anomolies aside) something rather laudable in the Iowa/NH pairing being a longer, more personal style of campaigning until we get into the “if it’s Noon this must be Cincinnati” style of jet-set campaigning that things then turn into.