This should be very interesting to see how Hillary Clinton fares as Secretary of State in the Obama administration. Clinton has proven herselt to be a very able politician. Despite any clashes during the primaries, she and Obama have never been far apart on their policies and goals for gorvernment so I don’t see any unmanageable friction. Aside from any ideological differences I have with Clinton, my major worry with her candidacy was her status as a lightning rod within the political community. I would not expect that to be as big an issue with the position of Secretary of State, but it looks like we’re going to find out.

This morning I was surprised to read the assertion (written in 1994) that many students who were too young to remember Vietnam are confused by the protests against that war. I am among those too young to remember Vietnam but I’ve never felt confused about the protests - it was a war we were fighting poorly and without decent justification.

As I learned some more details about the war my perspective changed. In 2004 I was unimpressed to learn that John Kerry would volunteer to serve in Vietnam and then be a vocal activist against the war after returning home. As I learned a few more details about what was happening in that war I am no longer surprised. (Not that it changes my opinion of his presidential potential.) In fact, I wonder that anyone could serve there and not protest the war when they got home.

My conclusion here is that while I did not feel confused about the protests before I did not really understand them. Considering how recent this history is it is a sad statement that students would have such a poor understanding of what took place at a time when half of our current voting population was already old enough to recognize what was happening all around them.

I read a chapter today that was intent on destroying the myth of American egalitarianism and our "classless" social structure. I almost laugh at the idea of a society without classes based on the amount of time we spend talking about the middle class (and how to get in or out of it). I also believe that nobody who has lived even one decade of their adult life in the United States can still believe the myth of American egalitarianism. If we have a meritocracy (as we often claim) then it is one where the greatest merit is being born into a family that is well off economically.

One of the problems I have with all discussions of social classes and social inequality is that they are all based on assumptions about the desirability of eliminating social class and a definition of class that is based primarily on economic factors. I understand that economic factors are used to define class because money is used to enforce social position and because class structures tend to coalesce around different strata of economic situation. While that makes sense, my problem is that those who discuss it imply that redistributing the wealth would break the class structure - and that it would be a positive change.

I believe that there is nothing wrong with having different social classes so long as those classes are not strictly enforced, in other words I don’t view it as a problem so long as people are allowed to change classes. In other words, a system that distinguishes classes but treats people of different classes with equal respect and equal rights is perfectly acceptable to me. (This does not mean that I will argue that our society embodies such a system.)

I also believe that inequality of wealth and income is not inherently undesirable. It again comes back to a question of whether people with differing levels of wealth or income are treated equitably. If the inequalities are achieved through dishonesty or manipulation that indicates a problem. This is true whether we are talking about individual wealth or whether we are talking about corporate market-share (thus the reason to be wary of monopolies).

I think the greatest thing we can do with regard to education on the issue of social classes is to tell the truth - that classes exist - and to work to ensure that we eliminate  preferential treatment of one class over another (that goes for any kind of class, whether economic or otherwise) and manipulation intended to dishonestly profit.

If we would accept the existence of classes and then work to remove those negative elements that generally tag along with the class system people could feel empowered and we could have a true meritocracy where people advanced among the classes based on their personal strengths and fell based on theri own weaknesses.

Maybe I should call this a "pre-announcement" but I wanted to let everyone know that I am setting up a forum where anyone who is interested in talking politics is welcome to help shape my political thinking. The forum exists but will be taking real shape as I have time to shape it to meet my needs. I will have forums based on the governments over me and will not object if others want to create forums for other states, counties, cities, etc. I also plan to have forums on specific topics where we discuss the topic independent of a specific political entity. Feel free to register now.

I would heartely encourage anyone who reads and comments here to participate and help me shape my perspectives on isses I have not, and in some cases will not end up writing about on this blog. I admit that I start this with the selfish aim of taking advantage of the wisdom of this crowd, but I hope that it can become a useful resource for other as well. I will be encouraging people to participate here from groups that i get involved with such as a party or a citizens group (I hope to be involved in more such groups as I was before I moved).

It seems that both parties have been parroting this message all through the 2008 campaign. While they are absolutely right that we can do better, I am not talking about 2008, the Bush administration, or any other recent phenomenon. As I have been reading Lies My Teacher Told Me I am seeing a glaringly obvious pattern to our nations history. Despite the fact that we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world (and we have been for two centuries even with our myriad faults) our history seems to consist more of opportunities lost and blundered chances for real greatness than it does of human excellence. It feels like this greatest of nations has been pushed to the pinnacle of world achievement against our underlying efforts to sink to the depths of human mistakes.

Our biggest blunders are universally centered on the human elements of our interactions with other nations and within our society. Since Europe first laid claim to this continent the Europeans refused to interact with other nations on equal terms. History books continue to perpetuate that crime by minimizing all non-dominant cultures. Thus we approach our endeavors from the perspective of dominance. I believe that mindset of superiority or cultural hierarchy encourages us to pursue homogenization.

The pursuit of homogenization causes equality to trump liberty. Instead of valuing the right of people to make choices and receive the consequences for those choices we begin to devalue all choice by attempting to make the consequences of all choice lead to the same outcome. The only possible result for that type of system would be to destroy everything of value. Trying to enforce an equality of outcome takes the shine off of anything with real intrinsic value. Without that shine illuminating things with real value we lose the incentive to choose that which has value because, whether the outcomes are the same or different, it is always easier to chose the lower road. If the easy way and the hard way end in the same destination many more people will always choose the easy way.

We have all heard the adage that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. What we need to realize that those who fail to teach history - to whitewash it and pretend that it consists of a natural progression - are steadily preventing the real progress that could be made.

If this seems like an underformed idea - that’s because it is. I am trying to synthesize a lot of information and I am still putting it into words and putting it into context. What I know is that, similar to the issue of the cost of health care and how to reduce it, most of the problems we face as a nation are larger, more complex, and more deeply rooted than we care to believe. As long as we do not see the whole problem we are at least as likely to make the problem worse with our solutions as we are to make it better.

The call for Lawyers to join health-reform efforts was a not so subtle reminder to me about how "free" our health care market is currently. We can’t really pretend that the cost of services or the services rendered are determined by patients and providers. In fact, they are not even determined by a combination of patients, providers, and insurance interests.

Malpractice lawsuits, whether as threat or reality, skew a provider’s treatment decisions to the legal safe side, members of the Legislature’s Health Care System Reform Task Force were told Tuesday. That approach, in turn, adds to the amount of redundant testing and is a significant but so far unaddressed factor in the reform process.

The cost of malpractice-insurance premiums for providers also is rising rapidly, Rep. Gregory Bell, R-Fruit Heights, and an attorney, told fellow task force members.

We have developed a pricing and practice environment based on a staggering concoction of laws, medical knowledge, middlemen, and advertising. Patients may demand unnecessary services or medications based on what they hear from advertisements. They may also have unreasonable expectations regarding how flawless our medical system is or should be - in other words, they may feel entitled to compensation for unavoidable tragedies. Governments step in to define what "unavoidable" means by specifying standards of practice which may bear little connection to medical necessity. Insurance companies can, by choice or accident, inflate the costs by demanding standards of practice and levels of compensation that can’t possibly take into account all the factors that should define the practice of health care and the commensurate compensation for care.

Care must cost more when malpractice insurance rates rise. Prices will increase when the salaries and profits of insurance companies must also be covered in the process of receiving health care. Checks against unnecessary care will disappear when those receiving care are not sensitive to the costs of individual procedures. Medical decisions will be skewed when manufacturers provide kickbacks to doctors and advertise their wares directly to customers who have no medical background.

While we use the Brass Serpent (the Nehushtan) as the symbol for the field of medicine we might find it convenient to use the Hydra as a symbol of the cost of health care.

Hydra - photo by Craig Stephen

Somehow we need to slay this monster but while the sword of government may have a place in the battle it is not sufficient to complete the task - by itself the sword of government makes the monster more dangerous.

No, this is not an announcement that I will be blogging for a living.

I have been doing a lot of reading lately. Besides any moral/religious reading (C. S. Lewis etc.) in the last month I have read:

• • Atlas Shrugged
  • Why We Whisper
  • Lies My Teacher Told Me
  • (with others on hold at the library)

As I read all these things I have lots of thoughts worth blogging about and I have come to the conclusion that I am missing some good opportunities because of the "Book Report" mindset. I have avoided blogging about things I am reading when I am still in the middle of a book. By the time I get to the end I am starting a new book and there is too much in any of those books to remember and synthesize it all (at least in the time I have to write a post). I decided this morning that I will try to avoid that mindset and just blog about thoughts and ideas that I have from my reading without trying to digest the whole book first. If I write about Atlas Shrugged it will be far from a book report because I have returned that book and don’t intend to re-read the 1200 pages in order to cover the many ideas more fully. On the other hand, I have not yet returned Why We Whisper and so I will probably go back through those 100 pages to gather the ideas that stoked my thoughts the first time around (the same applies to Lies - except that I own that one).

Also, I have started contributing as an author at the KVNU - For The People blog . I won’t cross post everything I write there, but I now have a section in the sidebar showing things I have written recently on other sites.

I am a strong supporter of our government. I obey the laws (even little ones like speed limits and seat belt laws) and pay my taxes without complaint and without seeking any tricks to minimize those taxes. Supporting the government, however, does not mean that I trust the government when they ask for expanded powers. I oppose the efforts of courts, congress, or the President to increase their powers in any area of society. In the financial sector that lack of trust has proven to be a sound policy recently. As September turned to October I wrote six different times opposing the bailout . All over the news and in many blogs people were saying that we should hold our noses and accept that plan because it was necessary. Now I am finding it ironic that some those same people who support the government managing more of our lives are unhappy as they see the mismanagement of the "necessary" bailout funds.

It seems that Congress is the special group in the world that can convince us to let them have more of our money based on how poorly they use it. Perot Charts reports that Theresa Ghilarducci, professor of economic-policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York testified testified in support of a plan that would "modify" 401K’s. Components of the plan include the following:

• • All workers would receive a $600 annual inflation-adjusted subsidy from the U.S, government but would be required to invest 5 percent of their pay into a guaranteed retirement account which would be invested in government bonds that would accrue 3 percent per year.
  • The current system of providing tax breaks on 401(k) contributions and earnings would be eliminated.

This is extremely frightening considering that the 5% that you would be required to "invest" (at only 3% return) on a $25,000 salary is $1250 For that you would receive a $600 subsidy. This might appear helpful to those who make very little money, but the benefits of their savings are insignificant compared to their needs at retirement and come at a very high price for everyone who just lost their tax savings that encourage them to save in a 401K, not to mention the disincentive that this would be to business who have provided tax free matching for 401K accounts which do much better than 3% returns 90% of the time. Overall savings in the country would decline under this plan.

Is it any wonder that my support of our government does not include my trust. We should all support our government no matter who is in power, but support means that we watch them instead of trusting them. It means that we hold our leaders accountable for what they do. For me, it means that every chance I get I will encourage them to give power back to the people and the states. I like that 10th amendment - too bad it gets worse treatment than the other 26.

I have always tried to maintain a very civilized and respectful tone here when discussing issues that are sometimes charged with emotion in the public arena. I have been reading the book Why We Whisper and I began to recognize that my efforts to be civil had resulted in my speaking a dialect that is not native to me - secularism. I recognize that my effort not to shout had resulted in a timid whispering of my opinions for which I would not like to be known. The result is that is that my declared stances are weakened by an often apologetic tone when I take a position on some issues. I have determined that I can no longer do that. From now on I will be more willing to state my positions without apology and without an effort to articulate my position using secular terminology.

I still intend to be civil in manner, but by abandoning the secular terminology I will not avoid taking positions that are considered politically incorrect. As I have in the past, I will still be open to changing my positions in the future when I have been convinced of an error but I will try to avoid situations where people might mistake my true position based on my whispered stances and open declarations of uncertainty.

I appologize in advance to any of my readers who might perceive my writing as becoming more partisan than it has been in the past. I don’t know where this will take me, but I know that I cannot bear to think of myself as one who whispers the truth as if I am afraid to offend anyone or afraid that my positions may come back to haunt me in the future.

In addition to this change to a less wavering voice, I have also determined that it is time for me to find a party to affilite with in order to become more engaged in the political process as a participant rather than just as a pundit. I am still in the process of deciding what party would most closely align with my goals because I intend to make a difference in shaping the way we actually conduct the business of government. I do not intend to participate only in order to say that "I’m a delegate" (or whatever level of participation I actually  achieve). In other words, if I were a delegate, I would be active in shaping the party platform and holding elected officials accountable to that platform not simply attending and casting a vote at the convention.

There must be something about the conclusion of an election that brings up the subject of term limits. I wrote about it a couple of times a year ago and have said nothing about it since then. Now the Standard Examiner has an article saying that It’s time to reignite the debate over term limits . The article talks about previous efforts to enact term limits in the late 90’s. In the comments section for the article Tired Old Argument says:

Term limits basically says, we don’t trust the voters to make a good, informed decision.

What Tired Old Argument forgets is that in a republic, such as the one we live in, the very structure of government says that we should not trust the voters to be able to be adequately informed for most major decisions - that’s why they are supposed to delegate the task to their best and brightest (which is who they would elect in theory). It turns out that our history suggests that knowing when to replace their elected representatives is among the things that voters are not very adept at doing.

This years numbers are instructive on this point. Congress has been mired with approval ratings hovering near 10% for most of the last year. Logically this would suggest that we would have a high rate of turnover when elections come amidst such an approval rating. In fact, approximately 90% of our elected officials are returning to Washington (this is not counting those who are returning as lobbyists or in appointed positions). What is even more telling is that of the 6 of the 10% who are not returning to elected office retired voluntarily. When 90% disapproval results in 95% retention that suggests that the voters are not very adept at replacing their elected officials.

As Reach Upward so astutely articulated in last year’s discussion:

. . . it may be good to toss even great statesmen because the office is more important than any person that may hold it.

(I will be quick to point out that Reach had no committed position on the issue of term limits at that time.) I would love to hear from anyone on where they stand on the issue after our elections this year.