Posted on 03/15/2014 5:49:12 AM PDT by Kaslin
The biggest fallacy in politics is that we need "another Reagan" or more "Tea Partiers" in Congress if we want to save the country. Granted, either would certainly help, but America's structural problems are much bigger than any personnel issues we have in D.C. Even if you're an extremely talented craftsman, you're going to have trouble building a house if the only materials you're allowed to work with are sand and straw. It wouldn't matter if Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and Kevin Durant were all on the same basketball team if they were only allowed to put three players on the court at a time. If you're trying to build the world's largest farm in the middle of the Sahara Desert, it probably isn't going to matter if you have state of the art equipment.
We have the ability to fix every problem that's confronting us as a nation, but until we stop making cosmetic changes and start addressing the underlying, intractable issues that are ruining the country, we're unlikely to make a lot of progress.
1) Insufficient Turnover In Congress: Because of gerrymandering, political polarization, and a lack of term limits, Congress has turned into a stagnant pond. In most states and districts, that notorious Third World dictum (One man, one vote, one time) has become the rule. Unless a politician upsets his own side's interest groups or gets caught up in a major scandal, an election to Congress is likely to last until a politician is ready to retire to a beach somewhere. Career politicians produce bad outcomes for the country. Members of Congress make draconian laws because they don't expect to have to live under them as citizens. Additionally, politicians who view being members of Congress as their "jobs" are likely to feel very comfortable selling out the country to special interest groups because they contribute to their campaigns and it benefits them personally. As a practical matter, we've gotten to the point where there's not much difference between most members of Congress and nobles from 500 years ago who ruled because of their family names and given that, it's no surprise that many of them "rule" just as poorly.
2) A Broken Education System: The primary goal of our education is not to educate our students; it's to sustain the teachers’ unions and fatten the bank accounts of the college professors and administrators at our universities. This is why the education establishment hates private schools, school vouchers, and charter schools, even though they do a better job of educating students than our public school system. It's also why, as Mike Rowe likes to say, "We are lending money we don't have to kids who can't pay it back to train them for jobs that no longer exist." In a time when low-skill jobs are being replaced by automation and sent overseas, the quality of our high school education is inferior in most ways to what it was a couple of generations ago while the price of our college education has skyrocketed. In a world where the economy is increasingly centered around high-skill jobs, our education system is a recipe for decay.
3) Unsustainable Spending: It is quite literally impossible to pay off the debt our nation owes along with the commitment we've made to our own citizens via Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security unless inflation dramatically reduces the value of our currency which would erode savings, drive cost-of-living expenses into the stratosphere and generally decimate the economy. Meanwhile, taking even the mildest steps to safeguard the future of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid has proven to be almost impossible in the current political environment. As a practical matter, this means our country is headed towards bankruptcy or runaway inflation so bad that we might as well be bankrupt. The tragedy of this is that there is no issue more important to our nation's future, but that has been said so often that most people's eyes glaze over when you talk about the subject. Sadly, our nation will probably have to start going over the falls before everyone agrees that we have to start paddling in the other direction and by then, it will be too late.
4) Our Immigration Policies: An ideal immigration policy would be based on merit, would focus on adding highly skilled immigrants, would be easily adjustable, wouldn't change the demographics of our country and would be simple and inexpensive for law-abiding immigrants. Our current system meets none of these requirements. Instead, we have a system that for all practical matters favors a law-breaking 17 year old from Mexico with a third grade education over a British neurosurgeon or a German engineer. Moreover, at times like these, when so many Americans are out of work, it's worth asking whether it makes sense to be bringing in any new citizens. That's not a slam on immigrants because we have a lot of hard-working entrepreneurs who came here because they saw America as a land of opportunity; it's an acknowledgement of the most basic fact of immigration: the whole purpose of it is to benefit people who are already American citizens. Bringing in uneducated ditch-diggers who'll never pay income tax doesn't benefit most Americans. Intentionally changing the demographics of the country doesn't benefit most Americans. Rewarding lawbreakers who come into the country illegally doesn't benefit most Americans. Bringing in more than a million a new immigrants a year when there are less people working today than there were seven years ago doesn't benefit most Americans. Immigration could be America's greatest strength, but our poorly designed system makes no sense. No business could survive if it brought in the same number of new employees every year, regardless of qualifications or need, then added everyone who could sneak into its lobby onto the payroll. Long term, our nation isn't much different than that business.
5) An Overly-Progressive Tax System: America doesn't have the highest taxes in the Western world, but it does have the most progressive tax system in the Western world. As a practical matter, what this means is that we have large numbers of Americans voting on whether others should pay more taxes in order to give them things. This is a recipe for disaster because it penalizes the most successful Americans, makes it more difficult to get ahead, discourages investment and job growth, and encourages massive spending in order to produce very marginal benefits. Put another way, "if you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can be pretty sure of getting Paul’s vote." Meanwhile, as we've learned during the Obama era, even after Paul ends up with Peter's cash, he'll still be screaming that he's not paying his "fair share." That's not a recipe for a happy society, a growing economy or a small, efficient government.
Well...spot on article there. Have almost nothing to add, except I might have said the five problems are: Liberalism, Liberalism, Liberalism, Liberalism and Liberalism.
It may be a subset of the Congress problem, but we now have regulatory agencies producing laws. Those agencies have been taken over by anti-growth, anti-human agendas. That is the largest reason businesses have moved off shore. We need to eliminate probably half to all of the alphabet regulators.
His article is a total Non sequitur. I can’t figure out it’s purpose or what he’s really trying to say, that we don’t need party unity to advance our political party’s agenda?
#1
A government that does not follow the US Constitution.
Yes, we basically have an entrenched, unaccountable, shadow government “governing” by regulatory decree with virtually no supervision by Congress.
Well at least reign in and change the notion of regulatory action. That’s how these 3 letter agencies get away with what they do. Congress has enabled them, not the President.
A government that does not follow the US Constitution.
WINNAH!!!
Retreating rather than fighting the culture and education war has done serious damage.
Taking your kid out of public school is great but ultimately meaningless if you don’t remain engaged in the public system. I don’t even have kids and I attend a fair number of school board meetings and NEVER miss a vote on school issues.
Bump
the turnover problem is getting epically worse now that the wives and children of politicians who spent their entire lives in office are taking up the family business of screwing America!
I mean Hillary? What the heck! Are we going to have to put up with Mooochele running one day and Chelsea Clinton?
This has GOT to end!
A second structural issue, and very related to the first. . .the decline of the family overall and, specifically, within the African-American segment of society which presently suffers a near 75% of all African-American births being outside the commitment of marriage. It's impact on the economy and crime is soon to swamp a nation teetering on the edge.
Third, is the rise of Progressive political philosophy which is predicated upon the intentional severance of the principles of the Declaration and its necessary relation to the Constitution. Congress is divided because it is the clash of two value systems: Progressives (of both parties) seeking to turn society over to be run by "experts" vs. those (like Ted Cruz and other Tea Party supporters)who want to run the country based upon its founding principles and ideals.
There are plenty more. . but these are the ones I would add to the list.
In a word, Congress has capitulated. Can’t or won’t do it’s job, and “the people” are left holding the empty bag.
The Republican Party needs to become known as The Hoax Busters.
Climate Change.
Obamacare.
Common Core.
Solar Energy... for starters.
Ah yes, the four branches of government;
Executive
Legislative
Judicial
Regulatory
A very large problem which neither party is (for different reasons) addressing, is American jobs are disappearing. Or more specifically not disappearing, they are being sent to China (and other places, but China is a huge part of the problem)
This is a very big, very real problem, and neither party is addressing it. The problem with sending American jobs overseas is, that eventually America will stop functioning.
The Republican Party badly needs to get off the ball, and lead a return of American jobs.
Now.
1. The first thing you do is stop referring to education as a "right," and start kicking out any kid who is tagging, vandalizing, starting fights, being defiant, not trying, not showing up at all, or otherwise creating trouble.
The classrooms are full of nasty little creatures who can't or won't learn and are absolutely determined to level the playing field by making sure no one else learns either. By high school many of them have dropped out of their own accord but by then the damage is done, and most of their classmates have spent 10 years in a system struggling to cope with the lowest common denominator, among teachers whose expectations have been lowered to such an extent that being able to read at 6th grade level puts a 9th grader in "Honors English."
2. Go back to actually flunking children briskly in grade school. It'll create a bottle-neck in 3rd grade, but so be it. We'll graduate far fewer children, but the ones we do will actually be educated, not just possess a piece of paper that half of them can't read, but that proves they (and their teachers) "did their time" together.
Undocumented Democrats in the GOP are a big problem. They are happy to play for Team Dem against a conservative agenda. GOP leadership is happy to let them freelance because it undermines conservatives. I don’t see how you fix that problem with the current GOP leadership.
Pogo would say, “We have met all the five enemies and they are us, us, us, us and us.”
An excellent article.
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