We all can see what has happened in the Middle East, Isis gains, Iraqi Soldiers run away and the battle between the Sunni and Shia camps rages across the area. United States Policy has moved to an even more confused state, if that’s possible. We ship arms to the Shia led Iraqi army that promptly leaves them on the battlefield for Isis as they run away. So we are in a slightly roundabout way arming Isis. We are negotiating the timetable for Iran to go nuclear but giving some support to Saudi Arabia in Yemen. We attack Isis in both in Syria and Iraq while arranging training for rebels to fight Iran’s ally Assad. There may be a brilliant strategy behind all this but unless we are missing great genius, the U.S. has the confused and lost the trust of everybody involved.
Policy
Where do you find the Answers? Try Milton and Rose
We, of course, expected cries of war mongers about our position on Iran, but we stand by it. The alternative is far worse. On the other hand, people who might agree with our stand on zero tolerance for rioters in Baltimore or anywhere else, still ask what would you do about the underlying problems that lead to these protests? In order to provide answers we have to move from commentary to actual policy proposals. To do so, we need help from some notables both living and dead. The first one we turned to was President Obama who when faced with a long entrenched policy he felt was at a dead end said ” I do not believe we can keep doing the same thing for over five decades and expect a different result.” While he said in reference to Cuba, the point was well taken. Instead of doing the same unsuccessful things decade after decade, it just might be worthwhile to head in a different direction. Baltimore like many other of our cities have had one party rule for decades. That means a certain political philosophy has governed the decisions and the general direction that have brought them to their present deplorable state. Democrats who ruled all these years, adhere to a big government creed that goes back to the great depression. Then It received its economic gravitas from John Maynard Keynes who proposed that government action could ameliorate the negative aspects of the business cycle. After his passing, like minded economists such as John Kenneth Galbraith expanded on this government primacy philosophy to a system where government was the supreme arbitrator between Capital, represented by Big Business, and Labor represented the unions. On the level of cities like Baltimore this has come to mean unaccountable positions for public employee unions, such as the police and teachers unions. They provide the money and reliable voters to for democrat politicians to prevail. The cost is unfunded pensions and an inability to fire bad or unproductive employees. Businesses close to City Hall get contracts, zoning and tax breaks in return for their support. How else can you explain more than 2 billion dollars Stimulus money not making any notable difference in Baltimore’s major problems in education,employment and overall economic growth. Only the politicians, crony capitalists and unions seem to made out. Freddie Gray’s Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood just continued its downward spiral. John Maynard Keynes was never without contemporaries who pointed to a different path forward. Chief among them was Friedrich von Hayek, who saw this government dominance as leading us down “the Road to Serfdom” in the book by that name. Later the Neo–Keynesians moved us further down this road, but also had opposition and one who stood out was Milton Friedman along with his collaborator wife Rose. From Ronald Reagan to today’s majority of the Nations Governors, his smaller government individual centered way forward has offered an alternative to the philosophy that has brought Baltimore and similar cities to their present dire circumstances. In light of this we may do well to ask what would Milton and Rose do? Even though both he and Rose are gone, they left us with starkly different policy proposals from those practiced in these faltering cities. Education, employment and and how a city achieve economic growth were all tackled by the Friedmans. It was Milton that said “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” Continue reading
We’re Confused about Indiana
We have to admit, we didn’t really follow all this photographers and bakers and gay wedding controversies as closely as we maybe should’ve. Silly us, we thought this was a personal service case or by extension personal servitude problem, but this somehow is bound up in religion and gay rights. When you get into an argument it may go off the rails if the wrong principles in invoked. A photographer refuses to render his personal photography service to a Gay wedding on religious grounds and loses under a state anti discrimination law. Take Gay and religious freedom out of the case entirely. A asks B to provide a good or service which requires a future meeting of the minds. B refuses by saying they are not a good fit. End of story. Professionals have done this forever. For whatever reason your heart isn’t in it and you can’t provide your best product or service you bow out. That protects both A & B from shoddy or worse outcome. Professionals have always had the right to not take on a client without providing any reason. “Just not a good fit” suffices. Judges most of whom were in private practice know this and should extend this logical choice to everyone.
THE SIMPLICITY OF DAVE’S PLAN
A common reaction we’ve received to Dave’s Plan to reform the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is that it’s just too complicated. Why mix retirement and other savings plans in with medical care reform? Actually the point was to simplify both by reestablishing the link between savings and expenditures. In the U.S. as with many other countries we don’t save as much as we should. This leads to problems as populations age. In the not too distant future entitlements for the retirees will crowd out most other Government spending. That of course will prove to be impossible. For instance, we just might need a national defense. Australia looking at a similar future has already opted for a mandatory 10% savings plan. It isn’t that we don’t have people participating in retirement plans. According to the American Benefits Council, defined contribution plans such as 401ks had 74 million active participants and that was in 2010. In that year total employment was 138,641,000. Employer health plans cover the majority of Americans. Obviously, we have a good base. All we are proposing is the accounts be held by Individuals with employers and the self-employed making the payments directly into Personal Benefits Accounts (PBA). Add a Catastrophic Health Policy to the PBA and everybody having one and we have the basics. We kept the ACA’s popular features of making the policies non-cancel able and children being able to stay on their family policy till 26. The ACA Subsidies and Medicaid payments based on age group experience would be deposited directly into qualifying PBAs by the IRS when their tax forms are processed, just as we do the Earned Income Tax Credit. With the PBA’s constant inflow of funds and growth, adding a Medical Credit Card completes the package. Continue reading
SSSHHH! MORE MIDDLE EAST POLICY ON THE QT
For the first time in more than half of century, we have a chance to have a Middle East Policy based on the actual realities on the ground and our own interests and values. The cold war and the West’s dependence on Mideast Oil forced us to overlook the fact that underneath a thin veneer of modernity, the area was actually moving backwards towards an imagined Muslim World that never existed. To curry favor with the various states we made alliances with leaders such as Sadat and Mubarak in Egypt who were less than democratic. Monarchs from Morocco to Iran were supported. As we did elsewhere in the world, we adopted alliances based on the enemy of my enemy is my friend policy. Just like our World War II alliance with Stalin’s Russia, we chose what was perceived to be the lesser of evils. Unfortunately, this forced us to overlook things that were abhorrent to Americans and/or policies that would be dangerous to the world. Beyond the basic lack of freedoms, two areas we went along with, much to our future distress, were the endless life of the Palestinian Refugee Camps and the continuing march of Muslims towards extreme forms of their religion.
At the end the 1948 Arab-Israeli Conflict, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was established to provide relief for 652,000 Arabs that fled the Israeli areas. Today UNRWA provides education, health care and social services to the 5 million Arab refugees in 58 registered camps. Over the same period approx. 850,000 Jews left Arab countries, the vast majority going to Israel. None of these people or their descendents live in refugee camps, even though there were cultural differences between the Jews from the middle east and Africa and other Israelis, they were welcomed and integrated in Israel. Why didn’t the Arab Nations also welcome and integrate their fellow Arabs? Only Jordan granted citizenship to the Arab refugees living there. While Palestinian refugees have worked in other Arab lands such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, Arab League instructions bar Arab States from granting citizenship. Without citizenship, the refugees have been at the mercy of a change of winds in host countries. For instance, Kuwait expelled Palestinian Refugees after the Gulf War. Why wasn’t the fate of these poor trapped people handled differently? Where was the U.S? Instead of helping these people find new homes throughout the Arab World, we were paying the biggest share for UNRWA to maintain these camps. We never put real pressure on the Arabs to do right by their brothers and sisters. And they are their brothers and sisters. Palestine was never a separate Arab Country. It was always a part of a bigger entity. Surely, Palestinian Arabs are closer culturally to others in the Arab League, than the Jewish Middle East and African Refugees that went to Israel. The Arabs other than Jordan shunned their humanitarian responsibilities and we felt it was in our interest to actually support this financially.
