HELP THE POOR

He’s just a little guy, four feet eleven inches tall, but he packs a very big academic and political punch.

Robert Reich is the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. He was Secretary of Labor under President Clinton. Time magazine called him one of the10 most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written thirteen books, several of which were best sellers. The founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause, he has recently produced a motion picture entitled “Inequality for All.”

I saw him last night on TV, chatting with political activist and movie producer Michael Moore.

What intrigued me most about their discussion was their agreement on the proposition that dialogue between citizens of different political persuasion is necessary and possible, assuming everyone has a sense of humor.

I like to think I have a sense of humor, and I certainly represent a different point of view from those two fellows.

So here goes.

Professor Reich says in his blog:

That’s why it’s so important to (1) raise the minimum wage at least to its inflation-adjusted value 40 years ago — which would be well over $10 an hour, (2) extend unemployment benefits to the jobless, (3) launch a major jobs program to rebuild the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, (4) expand Medicaid to the near-poor, (5) enable low-wage workers to unionize, (6) rehire all the teachers, social workers, police, and other public service employees who were laid off in the recession, (7) exempt the first $20,000 of income from Social Security payroll taxes and make up the difference by removing the cap on income subject to the tax.

He doesn’t say it, but I think it fair to assume that the Professor advocates that all these things be done by the national government in Washington D.C.

(1) Minimum wage. Two points. The national government has no constitutional authority to legislate a nation-wide minimum wage. Supposedly, Congress can dictate a minimum wage for companies engaged in interstate commerce, but that only complicates the problem. The constitution leaves the matter of wage and price controls to the individual states, and that is exactly where it belongs. The United States of America does not have a single seamless economy. The cost of living in Mississippi is different than it is in New York. So are the prevailing wages. The people have much greater influence on state government than they do on the national government.

  (2) Expand unemployment benefits. Again, this is an economic program that should be addressed by the state legislatures, not the national Congress. No one thinks that unlimited unemployment benefits would be a good thing. Pretty obviously, unlimited benefits would disincentive potential workers and weaken the work ethic of many people. The idle poor, like the idle rich, are not likely to spend their time doing things likely to benefit the common good. And, of course, there is always the underground economy. People getting unemployment benefits can cut lawns and paint houses. With no withholding or social security taxes, they provide cheap labor, which is not likely to be affected by minimum wage laws. Has no one ever thought of paying unemployment benefits to employers who agree to take on the unemployed?

(3) Reich would restore the Rooseveltian WPA program. No need, I suppose to have a shovel ready program if the folks with the shovels aren’t particularly enthused about using them.

(4) Medicaid belongs in the states. A national mandate to expand Medicaid is not only unconstitutional, it is unwise. Maybe Medicaid should be extended in West Virginia and contracted in Wyoming. One size fits all socialism isn’t working and won’t work. And, by the way, how does the web site for RomneyCare function in Massachusetts?

(5) Low wage workers already have a constitutional right to unionize. I’m sure the professor has something else in mind. Like nationally financed community organizers?

(6) Re-hire laid off government employees. I’m all for it. The way to do it is to make all taxes paid to state and local government a credit against national taxes. Let’s stop sending money to Washington and then begging the lobby financed politicians to give it back.

(7) Nolo contendere. Although I do think folks at every level of earning should be encouraged to save for their old age.

Professor Reich seems to be a reasonable fellow, despite his preference for national socialism.

My problem is that I remember that NAZI was an acronym for national socialism 70 years ago.

DECAPITATING WASHINGTON

Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 17 of the Constitution of the United States says that the Congress shall have the power “to exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever over such District (not to exceed ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States …”

Virginia donated 39 square miles and Maryland contributed the other 61 square miles. And so the District of Columbia was born. In 1791, it was named the City of Washington, in honor of the first President.

In 1801 the so-called Organic Act, organized the District into two counties and officially ended the Maryland and Virginia state citizenship of the inhabitants.

In 1846 the folks on the Virginia side of the Potomac persuaded their legislature and the Congress to undo the deal they made in 1790, and give the 39 square miles back to the Commonwealth. All that was left of the District of Columbia was the 61 square miles donated by Maryland.

Washington always had a largely African American population. In 1862 Abraham Lincoln signed the Compensated Emancipation Act that ended slavery in the District. In 1868 Congress voted to give black males the right to vote in City elections.

In the early twentieth century, gains made by blacks in D.C. were reversed. Segregation returned with a vengeance under Woodrow Wilson, a situation that persisted into the 1950’s.

The Twenty-third Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ratified in 1961 gives the residents of the District of Columbia the right to vote for President of the United States. It gave the District 3 votes in the Electoral College, equal to the smallest of the fifty states.

By Act of Congress, the people of Washington are allowed two non-voting members of the House of Representatives. The citizens in the District have no voice in the Senate.

In 1957, Washington became the first major city in America to have a black majority population. In 1963 it witnessed the famed “I have a dream” speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In recent years, the black majority has decreased somewhat, as a multi racial gentry restores some of the older neighborhoods.

In 1978, Congress passed and sent to the states a proposed constitutional amendment that would have given the District senators and congressmen equal to a state. That amendment failed after getting only 19 state ratifications in seven years.

The District of Columbia is an unfortunate anomaly in our federal republic. Like a lump in the mattress, its presence is annoying and not entirely avoidable. The Founders of our nation never intended Americans to be ruled by a coterie of elite managers living in Vaticanesque isolation.

More that 600,000 people live and work inside the beltway. They are the clerks, the staffers, the middle managers, the bureaucrats who run our national government. For them, Uncle Sam is the end all and be all of American political power and authority.

Increasingly, Americans are reawakening to the importance of state sovereignty in matters of domestic governance. Massive, top-down national social programs like affordable health care that is neither affordable nor desirable health care, are causing Americans to look more and more to their state governments for effective answers.

It seems to me that an important first step in dismantling the ubiquitous national nanny would be to eliminate the isolated island of imperial importance that fosters the aura of omnipotence in our nation’s capital.

My suggestion:

The 23^rd Amendment is hereby repealed, and all lands ceded to the United States for the seat of government are returned to the Commonwealth of Virginia and the State of Maryland respectively.

The Pentagon is in Virginia. There is no reason why the White House can’t be in Maryland. And no reason why the people of Washington should have more to say about who is President than the citizens in 49 of the 50 States.

VETERAN'S DAY

VETERANS’ DAY

Originally Armistice Day celebrated the end of the First World War, November 11 is now known as Veteran’s Day, a time when the nation pauses to remember and celebrate the sacrifices our men and women in uniform have made through the years.

I was never in the service. Too young for WWII, and a draft exempt father during the Korean War, I slipped between the cracks of the selective service lottery.

If called, of course, I would have gone. Not overjoyed, to be sure, but duty is duty. You do what you have to do.

I often think I missed something. My older brother was in the navy and my younger brother went into the army. Both drafted. Both gained a lot from the experience.

I was never a fan of peacetime conscription. Always sort of thought impressing citizens to bear arms was a rather extreme decision which needed to be grounded on rather serious reasons.

Musing about it today, I am not so sure.

The founders of our nation had a healthy distrust of standing armies. They even limited appropriations for an army to two years. They believed in citizen armies – militia – that could be called up when needed. Citizen soldiers who come forward to meet the challenge and then return to their homes and their private affairs.

That was what happened in 1917 and 1943. The last of those citizen – soldiers are dying these days. Their stories enrich our traditions and ennoble our history.

Today, we have what is called a volunteer army. The problem with recruiting a volunteer army in 2013 is the vagueness of the mission. In 1943 the enemies were Hitler and Hirohito. They could be cartooned. They could be hated.

The need to go to war was personalized and volunteers came forward. The draft wasn’t celebrated, but it was accepted because Americans understood the stakes.

Now compare how Americans felt about the draft during Viet Nam. Draft protesters effectively swayed public opinion. There were still many young men who went to war, fought courageously, suffered injuries and died because they were drafted and they did their duty.

But many others didn’t, and we got a taste of how difficult it is to wage an unpopular war.

I am now beginning to wonder whether Universal Military Service might not be a wise course for our nation. To maintain a large volunteer standing army is to risk reliance upon mercenaries. Professional soldiers are needed to train and command draftees, but professional boots on foreign soil are not, or should not be the goal or the norm of American foreign policy.

George Washington warned against foreign entanglements. It was wise counsel. Most of human history is a chronicle of wars. Famous battles. Famous victories. Famous defeats. Heroes and villains. And great empires gained and lost.

There was a lot of talk in the early part of the last century about America’s manifest destiny. Now historians chortle about the Pax Americana.

I’m sorry, but I don’t think there has been a lot of Pax in the Pax Americana.

We have been at war pretty much since my puberty, and that was a long, long time ago.

I think it’s time to bring our soldiers and sailors home from all over the world, teach our young people how to soldier if they are called up, and see if we can’t find some kind of peace time normalcy in our homeland.

There are enough bad guys in the back alleys and boardrooms of our nation to keep us in battle mode.

And if that doesn’t satisfy he blood lust, there’s always Monday Night football.  

BOEHNERCARE

The recent government shut down has been widely blamed on the Republicans. It is said that the tunnel vision of the Tea Party caucus was the fly in the ointment.

I have to say they have a point. Like it or not, ObamaCare is the law of the land. Just refusing to fund it without repealing it is a contradiction.

Had the budget passed both houses without Obamacare funding, there would, no doubt, have been a flood of lawsuits by creditors who contracted with the government in good faith, then didn’t get paid.

Of course, I wouldn’t mind sitting at the defense counsel’s table when the goofs who built the Obamacare web site sue to get paid. But that’s another story.

No, the de-funding strategy was ill advised.

But it didn’t have to be. Speaker Boehner should have insisted that the Tea party caucus come up with an alternative health care plan, something consistent with Republican free enterprise principles. And something simple enough to fit on one sheet of paper.

Hindsight, to be sure, but here’s an idea. There’s still time to do it. It’s a simple, free enterprise solution to provide affordable health care for all Americans.

The wealthy and the solvent working folks who are happy with their insurance – both the coverage and the cost – can be ignored.

The elderly who paid taxes for a lifetime to fund it, are getting Medicare. The poor who qualify for Medicaid, and can’t afford any insurance are already covered by Uncle Sam’s single payer system.

The big middle ground of younger people who can’t afford to buy the health insurance they want or ought to have are the ones who need attention.

The Republican solution should be to charter a national insurance company and charge it with the duty of writing insurance policies that everyone can afford.

Capitalize it at a billion or so – well less than the cost of ObamaCare – and cut it loose in the open market to provide the kind of insurance people ought to have at a price they can afford to pay.

It’s called free enterprise. Set the company up with a self-perpetuating thirteen member board of directors, the initial members of which to be designated by the President.

Let the company balance its budget anyway they want. Let them require any kind of coverage they decide on. Abortions and maternity care for men. Prostate cancer coverage for women.

Whatever they want to do. No coverage for surgery after age 80 (or less). Mandatory final illness committees.Whatever.

In the free market they can sell whatever they think will attract customers to whomever they want.

Smokers, drinkers, the obese and the addicted. Tight rope walkers and asbestos factory personnel. Pre-existing conditions and current symptomology. Doesn’t matter.

Premiums would be calculated on two factors, the recommendation of the actuaries and the means and priorities of the customer. Affordability is a very personal, individual matter.

If the company errs on the side of giving too much coverage for the premiums charged, it will go broke. Just like any other business.

It will, of course, have one ace in the hole.

It will be too big to fail. Like the Post Office. And like Freddie, Sallie and Fannie.

CIGARETTES

I used to be a smoker. Pack a day, maybe two.

I always said it’s easy to quit smoking. Heck, I did it almost once a week.

Back in 1974, I got serious about it. Went on retreat with the Jesuits and prayed fervently for three days, while I torched my way through about two and a half packs.

On Sunday, we went to dinner with the Bones, and I told Duane how my appeal to the Almighty had not been heard. He understood. Wanted very much to quit, too.

So we made a bet. $100.

I got through the next day until dinner time, then I called Duane and asked for a mulligan. He said c’mon over. I did and smoked one of his wife’s menthol brand.

That was the last cigarette I ever smoked.

Looking back, I don’t know how or why we ever did it. It’s an awful smell and a damn nuisance. And expensive. Can you believe $14.50 a pack in New York?

I don’t think anybody should smoke. I suppose you could say that I don’t approve of it. Don’t want anybody smoking in my car or in my house.

Still, I believe that smokers have their rights. Like anybody else. Of course they can’t smoke where the law forbids it. In restaurants and courtrooms. The States have their laws.

But smokers aren’t politically aggressive. They don’t go around telling everybody that they smoke cigarettes. They don’t hold rallies or carry signs to advertise that they are smokers or demand that their choice to smoke be somehow celebrated as the equivalent of my choice not to smoke. And they have never called me a ‘smokeophobe.’

They haven’t insisted that children be taught in grammar school that smoking is a normal, legal activity, and that smokers should be accepted as readily as non smokers as friends and associates.

Still, they don’t like to be told that they shouldn’t smoke. Or to hear that it’s not what people’s lungs are made to do. Or that most people find it unpleasant, unattractive, unwise.

But they don’t make a fuss about it.

They just go out on the porch or in the parking lot and light up.

Smokers have the right to smoke, and tobacco companies have the right to manufacture cigarettes. Of course, if they get sued for causing cancer, they have to pay the judgment. But that’s part of the cost of doing business.

The rest of us don’t have to approve. Mayor Blumberg, can’t regulate the length of a cigarette or the number of puffs you can inhale, but he can urge people not to smoke.

And Michelle Obama can tell us it’s unhealthy. Her husband might even quit and ask the American people to follow his good example.

It’s a free country, but even in free countries, there is such a thing as social grace. Some things just aren’t done by people who want to be part of the mainstream.

Over the centuries, right and wrong, good and evil, do and don’t have been largely the province of religion. And local communities.

The more local a regulation is, the more minute it can be. The village can regulate things that the federal government cannot.

Unhappily in our day the ease of mass communication has led to the attempt to legislate “political correctness” in every nook and cranny of the nation.

Just because you have the right to do something shouldn’t make it morally or legally wrong for me to express disapproval.

After all, it is a free country, isn’t it?

THE SENATE

The United States Senate is supposed to represent the States. That’s why it was created. Part of the compromise between big States and little States in Philadelphia in 1787. The House of Representatives speaks for the people; the Senate speaks for the States.

Mighty important deal they cut. Under the Articles of Confederation, each State got one vote. Period. Rhode Island was just as important as New York or Virginia. Which the folks from the big States didn’t like. So they compromised and decided on a bicameral legislature. Two houses. Both had to agree or nothing would happen.

Still, the small States weren’t quite happy. What if, in the future two-thirds of the States were to propose and three quarters of the States were to ratify, an amendment which said the little States wouldn’t have an equal vote in the Senate?

Yeah. What if? So there was another compromise. They added these words to Article V:

“Provided…that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.”

That seems pretty straight forward, but there’s one little hitch. Section 3 of Article One of the Constitution says that there shall be two Senators from every State. The result is that whenever a State has two Senators from different parties, their votes cancel each other out. In other words, those States have no actual say in what happens in the Senate.

Here are the current numbers:
   There are 17 States with two Democratic Senators.
   There are 14 States with two Republican Senators.
   There are 17 States with one Republican Senator and one Democratic Senator.
   There is one State with one Republican Senator and one Independent.
   There is one state with one Democratic Senator and one Independent.

So what happens when the Continuing Resolution reaches the floor of the Senate? If, in fact, Article V of the Constitution were to be enforced, and each State given “equal suffrage” in the Senate, nothing would happen.

Even if the two Independent Senators were to vote with their State colleague, there would still be 17 States without a voice in the ObamaCare v Shut Down the Government debate.

How do the people in Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota feel about the issue?

No one will ever know. They have no voice in the United States Senate.

I don’t want to sound critical of James Madison, George Washington and their colleagues, but…

But wouldn’t it have been wiser to give each State either one Senator or three Senators?

If there were one from each State, only a third of the Senate would be up for election in any year.
Pretty tough for the voters to clean house. If there were three, one elected every two years, every State would elect one Senator every two years, assuring that the Senate would more accurately reflect current opinion.

And while we are at it, maybe we should repeal the 17th amendment.

All in favor, say Aye.

Here is some suggested language:

The Senate shall consist of the present 100 members, their successors, and an additional 50 Senators who shall be chosen when this Amendment is adopted as provided by law for the filling of vacancies, and whose terms shall expire in the next succeeding year when the terms of neither of the other Senators from that State shall expire. All voting in the Senate shall be by States, and each State will have one vote.

Senators shall be chosen as provided by State law. The 17th Amendment is repealed.

MORE ABOUT SYRIA

Frankly, I don’t know where to begin.

Pope Francis, the leader of three billion Catholics around the world, has pleaded with the United States not to attack Syria.

He is joined in this plea by the leaders of all the Chirstian churches in the Middle East: The Caldean Catholic Church, the Patriarch of Antioch, the Syrian Catholic Patriarch, the Maronite Patriarch, the Greek and Russian Orthodox Patriarchs, and countless lesser Christian leaders.

Bear in mind that Christians are persecuted in the Middle East. Christians comprise about 10 percent of Syria’s population. Most are Coptic Catholics.

Franciscan Father Francois Murad was beheaded by Jihadist rebels on June 23rd. Bystanders cheered and took pictures.

Now it is reported that the rebels attacked the Christian village of Maaloula. A nun there is said to have phoned the Associated Press to say that priests were killed there on Wednesday of this week.

Why would Catholics, who are brutally persecuted in Syria want the U.S. to stay away?

Hard for us, who have been imbued by both Presidents Bush and Obama with the idea that everyone in the world yearns to live in a Hollywood version of freedom and happiness, to understand.

The fact is that the first axiom of liberty is home rule. Nobody wants foreign boots on their soil.

When push comes to shove, they would rather be killed by their own people than by the strangers who do not speak their language.

The Irish said it well in song:

‘the stangers came and tried to teach us their way, And cursed us just for being what we are. But they might as well go chasin’ after moon beams. Or light a penny candle from a star.”

American public opinion is dead set against the administration’s “surgical strike.”

The President’s people assure us that it will be a quicky. Just a few hundred million dollars worth of tomahawk cruise missIles. No American lives at risk.

Just a few unavoidable, “collateral damage” civilian deaths.

Just to show the world how tough we are.

In my last blog, I mentioned the military-industrial complex and quoted President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

If you are looking for an explanation for the Obama War in Syria, you need look no further than the roster of the Board of Directors of the Raytheon Corporation, which makes (and profits from making) Tomahawk cruise missIles.

There you will find Warren Rudman, former United States Senator from New Hampshire, Admiral Vernon E. Clark, appointed by Defense Secretary Gates to lead the military investigation of the Fort Hood massacre, which returned the brilLiant diagnosis of ‘workplace fatigue,” John M. Deutch, former Deputy Secretary of Defense and Director of Central Intelligence under President Clinton, Linda Stuntz, Deputy Secretary of Energy in the Clinton admnistration.

And how about William Lynn III, the top lobbyist for Raytheon Co. in our nation’s Capital?

Here’s a guy who was picked by President Obama and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates for the position of deputy secretary of Defense.

This in the face of an executive order setting new ethics rules which banned lobbyists from serving in the government’s administration.

Lynn’s new job?

Running much of the day-to-day operation of the Defense Department and handling many key budget and procurement decisions.

Having a lot to say about the future of the missile defense system and the contracts with Raytheon Corporation which makes the Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Secretary Gates pushed hard for the appointment of Lynn, despite the ban on hiring lobbyists.

Maybe he thought Lynn could get us a discount.