Politics, Government & Public Policy: November 2003 Archives

I posted some information on how to apply for a CCW permit in California, and mentioned an ongoing effort by Jim March to liberalize (in the real sense of the word) California's permit laws; via email, Mr. March sent me a pretty disturbing PDF file that contains clippings from LA Times articles detailing some abuses of the current system.

Celebrities, politicians, and millionaires are the only people granted CCWs by many (not all) of the issuing authorities in California, and it's nearly impossible for "normal folks" to get the permits that are readily supplied to these privileged few unless you're fortunate enough to live in a city with a fair-minded police chief. For instance, anti-gun Senators Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer fight tooth and nail to enact as many national gun restrictions as possible, and yet they both have permits to carry concealed weapons and they both employ armed bodyguards. Apparently there are different standards for the "elite" and for the rest of us. It's obviously important that they be able to defend themselves from criminals, but shouldn't we all have that right? [Corrected; used to say "should we all..." and it looked like I took the opposite position -- MW.]

As I've mentioned before, President Bush is increasing federal spending far faster than Bill Clinton ever did, even when the War on Terror tand other defense-related expenditures are factored out. The new prescription drug entitlement is just another brick in the wall, and even the conservative Washington Times is taking note: "Spending escalates under GOP watch".

Nondefense spending has skyrocketed under Republican control of Congress and the White House, and critics say the outlays will hit the stratosphere with the passage this week of a drug entitlement for seniors.

The Congressional Budget Office reported that nondefense spending rose 7 percent in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, nearly double the 4 percent discretionary spending caps that President Bush insisted Congress honor.

Since Mr. Bush took office in 2001, nondefense spending has leapt 13 percent — 21 percent if spending on the war on terrorism is included.

President Bush seems to be trying to pull our country out of a recession in the same way Reagan did in the 80s: cut taxes, increase spending. But the millenial recession wasn't nearly as severe as the one Reagan faced, and all the indicators show that it's way past over -- it's time to tighten our belts.

Chris Edwards, director of fiscal policy at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the Bush record on spending has been a major disappointment.

"My impression of Bush is that I've never seen him give a speech in which he says government is too big and we need to cut costs," Mr. Edwards said, pointing out that President Reagan vetoed 23 bills in his first three years in office, while Mr. Bush has yet to unsheathe his veto pen.

As I've also said before, we're seeing one of the great disadvantages of a united White House and Congress: everything gets through. No one wants to rock the boat and endanger their own projects, so they just sign whatever's put in front of them. One of the advantages should be that the President gets to appoint judges to his liking, but President Bush hasn't really fought for any of his rejected nominees.

As for the so-called $400 billion prescription drug entitlement, I don't think anyone will be surprised when the projected cost turns out to be low by at least 1 order of magnitude.

Brian M. Riedl, a budget analyst for the conservative Heritage Foundation, said mandatory government spending on entitlements such as Medicare will reach 11.1 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, a record high. That number will climb exponentially, he said, once seniors begin getting government-paid drugs in 2006.

"Congress often underestimates entitlements by a lot," Mr. Riedl said. "By our calculations, it will cost $2 trillion between now and 2030."

That's assuming that the program never is expanded, he said, an unlikely scenario.

When Congress created the Medicare program in 1965, the projected cost in 1990 was $9 billion. The true cost, after several expansions that came with low-balled price tags, was $67 billion, 7.4 times higher.

Entitlements are so hard to eliminate once they're created, because their beneficiaries want to stay on the gravy train -- and eventually they feel entitled to my money. When costs swell, the money will have to be raised somehow, either through conquering more oil-rich nations (kidding) or by taxes.

"We hope that this is not the legacy of the Bush administration," Mr. Schatz said. "We hope these will be aberrations that will be corrected in coming years."

A senior Republican congressional aide said many conservatives on Capitol Hill are hoping that is the case. If it isn't, Mr. Bush and the party will have some explaining to do to their political base.

"There's only so long we can be told [by the White House], 'Just keep waiting for spending restraint,' " the aide said. "Eventually you develop a credibility problem. There's a point where people say, 'We've heard that for five years and nothing's happened.'"

The legacy of President Bush will almost certainly be the War on Terror, but I really do think it's valid to worry about the future of the Republican party. Someone has to dig their heels in for low spending, and if it's not the Republicans then I'm afraid America could still end up like Europe.

SDB has a great post up that explains how the FDA is the root of many American health care problems, from unnaturally expensive drugs to the illegality of some "miracle cures".

The approval process is so long and so involved and requires such a mountain of data to be collected, that it is massively expensive. The total cost for development and approval can exceed $100 million per drug. And a lot of money can be consumed during the testing and approval for drugs which are ultimately rejected.

Pharmaceutical companies have to recoup that cost, and the money can only come from sales of drugs after approval. That's why drugs which are still under patent are so expensive compared to generics after patent expiration. Generics are priced based on a markup over manufacturing and distribution costs, whereas drugs under patent are priced to amortize the cost of development and regulatory approval, as well as to amortize the money spent on other drugs which were rejected.

The amortization premium paid by Americans is all the greater because most other nations in the world "free ride" on American drug development. (The majority of that development is done here, even by European pharmaceutical companies.) They pay something like the generic price even for drugs still under patent, letting the US alone pay the amortized development cost. When it comes to nations like Zambia and Botswana, I think it's reasonable, but not for nations like Germany and the UK. There's no excuse for them not paying their share of the development costs, and the only reason they don't is that we let them get away with it. If other wealthy nations did not free-ride that way, the drug companies could spread the amortized cost over a larger number of sales and reduce the price we Americans pay.

See my previous entries about the FDA, if you're interested in some specific examples of when the FDA's over-cautious policies have cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

Rush's site has some interesting statistics from a Robert Samuelson column in the Washington Times (which I can't find) on the new prescription drug entitlement our Congress has just tacked onto Medicare. It looks like seniors don't even want it.

Robert Samuelson, who is one of my favorite columnists, is in the Washington Times. He's an economist. He says given all of the excitement you think that passing a Medicare drug benefit would solve one of the nation's pressing social problems. It won't, he says pointedly. But you wouldn't know that from politicians in the news media. They treat the elderly’s problems in getting drugs as a major social crisis. You would know it if you'd read a government survey of Medicare recipients in 2002. It asked this question. "In the last six months, how much of a problem, if any, was it to get the prescription medicine you needed?" The answers were, 86.5%, not a problem. 9.4%, a small problem. 4.2%, a big problem. This a government survey of Medicare recipients! And only 4.2% say it's a big problem! And we are creating the largest entitlement in 40 years to solve a big problem for 4.2%, not of the population, but of the Medicare population. Which is why I have been saying lets fix it for those people - 86.4%, it's not a problem. That's why we're not hearing from them on the phones here calling and complaining at me for standing in the way of something they need. It's not a problem. Prescription drugs are not a problem. It is a manufactured Washington politician problem, to advance the expansion of government conceptually and realistically. Now, let's put some numbers to these percentages, okay? Let me give you the percentages again. Numbers are hard to follow on the radio. Medicare recipient survey, 2002, federal government did the work. 86.5% getting drugs not a problem. 9.4%, small problem. 4.2%, a big problem. Medicare has 41 million beneficiaries. Even 4.2% represents about 1.7 million people. We are creating the nation's largest entitlement in 40 years to serve the needs of 1.7 million people. ...

One thing the government survey doesn't say is whether the problems of this 1.7 million people reflected high drug costs, doctors' reluctance to write scripts or something else. But most people can somehow afford their prescription drugs. Now, in 1999, about 30% of retirees had insurance from former employers. About 20% had government coverage, mainly from Medicaid and the department of veterans affairs. Another 25% bought insurance, called Medigap or had some other coverage. For the very poor without coverage, pharmaceutical companies provide free or heavily discounted drugs. Nobody designed this. It's a flawed and messy hodgepodge that on balance works, though. It works.

My biggest frustration with the Bush administration is its proliferate spending. Does Bush really think old people are going to start voting Republican if he gives them money? Please. I know a good number of older folks, and their political affiliation is pretty well set in concrete. My grandmother wouldn't vote for a guy with an R behind his name if he was running against the Marquis de Sade - D.

But it's too late, thanks to Senator Tom Daschle, who is almost directly responsible for dozens of California dead.

Congress revised the regulations that govern the management of the millions of square miles of federal forest land in the United States, making it easier to thin brush and trees that often create wildfire conditions -- as seen recently in Southern California. Before these changes, environmental reviews and legal challenges could prevent logging and thinning for years (except in South Dakota), even though most responsible authorities recognized the need.

Congress approved legislation yesterday that lawmakers said would reduce the risk of wildfires in national forests by speeding removal of overgrown brush and diseased trees, especially near homes and towns. ...

The measure would limit appeals and environmental reviews so forest-thinning can be completed within months rather than years. The combination of dry underbrush and legal opposition had turned some Western forests into tinderboxes, supporters of the bill said.

"Lawsuits and red tape have led to inaction, and inaction has led to millions of acres that are destined to burn so hot and move so fast that communities have no choice but to evacuate," said Rep. Richard W. Pombo, California Republican.

What's really interesting is that Senator Tom Daschle has opposed all such revision for years -- as a sop to environmentalists -- except for special legislation he slipped into a spending bill in 2002 that exempted his home state of South Dakota from the regulations.

The fallout from this year's forest fires [Note: this was written in 2002, and is referring to fires in Nevada -- MW.] is accomplishing wonders -- such as the sight of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle running into the protective arms of the Republican-controlled Forest Service. Quick, someone get water to revive the Sierra Club.

Last week, Mr. Daschle slipped language into a spending bill that would exempt his home state of South Dakota from key environmental laws. "The fire danger in the Black Hills is high," said Smoky the Bear, er, Mr. Daschle, and this legislation will "avoid costly, time-consuming lawsuits" and "get the forest thinned and property protected."

Well, knock us over with a chainsaw. We are thrilled that the nation's top Democrat now agrees that environmentalist obstruction is behind today's Western fires. And far be it from us to question his motives. But a few uncharitable folks are pointing out that South Dakota Junior Senator Tim Johnson is fighting for his political life against GOP Congressman John Thune.

This spring Mr. Thune tried to insert a similar South Dakota cleanup measure into the farm bill -- hoping to pre-empt deadly fires. But Messrs. Daschle and Johnson, at the bidding of environmentalists, let it die. Now that fires are raging back home, however, Mr. Johnson is taking a political beating and so the pair are trying to convince voters it was their idea all along.

That was written in 2002... it's too bad Senator Daschle didn't exempt California as well, or we might not have had dozens killed and thousands of homes destroyed last month. So-called "environmentalism" kills people.

"Singles Seek Financial, Legal Perks Offered Marrieds" says this FoxNews article; it mentions a lot of the standard issues with cohabitating couples and same-sex couples &c., but none of those apply to me. What I'd like to comment on here is the fact that single people are essentially forced to subsidize the families of married people, which I think is economically unfair.

Singles get smaller capital gains breaks when they sell a house than married couples, and spouses don’t get taxed on inherited estates. Also, according to Coleman, married persons get paid more on average for the same job during the same length of service when spousal health benefits are factored in.

"We need to encourage employers to create single family workplaces, provide cafeteria-style benefits," he said. Under such a plan, health care money not used for a spouse or child "could go toward an elderly parent, or maybe [toward] putting a domestic partner on the plan."

Or better yet, just pay me cash for the healthcare costs of the wife and kids I don't have.

William Doherty, a professor of family social science at the University of Minnesota, said the complaints sound a bit foolish and selfish.

"The single person in the workplace is resenting the fact a parent gets time off to tend to a sick child. Give me a break," he said.

Yeah, that's right! Why should I give you a break? Are you saying it's fair that someone gets extra time off just because they have a kid? That's totally incidental to the workplace, and it's fundamentally unfair to people without children who'd also like a personal day.

But Doherty said not all relationships should be treated equally under the law.

Marriage is not a lifestyle choice, but a "public commodity," critical for the survival of the human race, he said, adding that it deserves special supports and incentives.

"If there is no next generation, we are gone, we are dead," he said.

If there's no next generation, I don't see how that affects me. It sucks for the non-existent next generation, I suppose, but why should I care? Anyway, it's absurd to think that people will stop having kids... and if they can't afford them, maybe that's a good reason not to have them.

People with kids get child tax credits, public education, and public healthcare, all at the expense of people without kids. People with kids are a greater drain on our common infrastructure, and kids are destructive and disruptive. If anything, people with kids should pay more taxes.

However, since I hope and expect to have kids of my own one day, my complaints are mostly hot air. I don't think the current system is fair, but since most voters have kids there's no way it's ever going to change. Eventually I'll have kids too, and then I won't want it to change either. Still, it's an obvious socially-motivated redistribution of wealth, which I'm generally against.

Let's say Michael Jackson is completely innocent of all the charges against him: he's still shown some of the most phenomenally bad judgement I can imagine. There's four great examples in this single article.

Number 1: Nutso conspiracy theory.

"These characters always seem to surface with a dreadful allegation just as another project, an album, a video, is being released," Jackson said in the statement.

Sneddon dismissed Jackson's claims, saying the investigation had been underway for months.

"Jackson himself, I believe, has said this was all done to ruin his new CD that was coming ... like, the sheriff and I are really into that kind of music," Sneddon said.

What really needs to be said? Even if some kid wanted to hurt Jackson's career, why would the police go along with it and actually file charges if they couldn't find any evidence during their 14 hour search of the Neverland Ranch? Who even knew he was coming out with a new album? Maybe I'm just way out of the loop, but I sure didn't. Only a celebrity could come up with an egocentric explanation like that.

Numbers 2 and 3: Strange bedfellows.

It has been a tumultuous year for Jackson, whose talents as an entertainer have been eclipsed by his bizarre personal life. In February, he spoke in a British television documentary of sometimes sharing his Neverland bedroom with young boys.

?!?!?!?!!??!! Why would you do that and risk looking like a child molester, if you weren't actually a child molester? Why would you want to, and even if you did want to (for non-molestational reasons?!), why would you actually do it, knowing how it would look? And then, why would you go on TV and admit it like it was no big deal?! I can't possibly use enough question marks and exclamation points here to properly express my flabbergastedness.

Number 4: Superbaby.

In November last year, Jackson stunned fans in Berlin by dangling his barefoot baby from a hotel balcony.

I can't believe this wasn't some sort of crime. What if he had come to the balcony with a gun shoved in his kid's mouth? This incident is even more completely insane than the previous 3, and that Michael Jackson didn't even notice shows that he's criminally dangerous and should probably be locked up. What's to stop him from jokingly crashing his car into a hospital or laughingly taking a few potshots at a school?

I like some of his old songs; I even feel sorry for whatever mental problems he has that inclined him towards all the radical surgery he's put himself through. But look. At some point, I've got to stop feeling sorry for the millionaire Peter Pan and start getting concerned that he's a criminally insane lunatic.

Maybe he is insane, and he really can't control his behavior, but that's all the more reason to lock him up. Maybe his traumatic celebrity childhood is to blame -- who knows? Who cares? He may have a great excuse, but that's no reason to let him keep menacing the world.

Update:
Here's a new twist. Let's say your kid was dying of cancer and you had no way to pay for the treatments. Michael Jackson comes along and says he'll pay for everything, and your son will live... but you have to let him molest the boy later. Sure, in reality there may always be other sources of charitable funding, but a desperate parent may not know enough to find out, and may be really short on time. Even if you're against the idea and would rather let your son die, what if he insists on taking the chance?

Sometimes I crack myself up. Ahem.

Dan Weintraub points to an interesting essay by Glenn Ellmers, the main thrust of which is that the California legislature needs some serious restructuring -- to which I couldn't possibly agree more. Mr. Ellmers suggests tripling the size of the Assembly (from a mere 80 members to 240 members) and making the Senate a true Senate, with representation by county rather than be population.

I would support both these ideas; unfortunately the Senate proposal has already been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in a series of judgements known as the "reapportionment cases" (Baker v. Carr & Reynolds v. Sims). These rulings determined that although inequality was purposefully built in to our national Constitution and Republic, each state was required by that same Constitution to apportion its state legislature seats strictly according to population. Apportionment by county is now forbidden, thus denying states the same structural protections that our nation enjoys from the tyranny of the majority that pure democracy tends towards.

Beginning with a series of cases better known as the "Reapportionment cases," the "Federal Analogy" was denied to the States and the Court instead demanded that "The seats of both houses of a bi-cameral legislature must be apportioned on a population basis (Reynolds v. Sims)" and demanded that there should be "One person, One Vote." For justification the Supreme Court twisted the so-called "Equal Protection Clause" of the 14th amendment. The Equal Protection Clause simply means that everyone is entitled to equal protection under the law and were thus entitled to "One Person, One Vote." But, as Justice Harlan's dissenting voice pointed out, the equality clause has nothing at all to do with the States power of choosing "any democratic method they pleased for the apportionment of their legislatures."

Further, as we learned, "One person, One vote" was not built into the United States Constitution. Instead it was unequal representation that was built in. The dissenting opinion of Justice Frankfurter demonstrated this knowledge when he wrote that equal representation, "has never been generally practiced. . . It was not the English system, it was not the colonial system, it was not the system chosen for the national government by the Constitution, it was not the system . . . practiced by the States . . . [and it was not then] practiced by the states today."

At the highest level, I believe in democracy, but when it comes to specifics I think it's important that the freedom and liberties of minorty groups be protected as well, which is why I vastly prefer the republican form of government to the purely democratic.

The Governator

Maybe it's just me, but...

In response to my previous post on this topic, and historian Fred Kagan's Opinion Journal article, commenter Owen Johnson wrote the following analysis and gave me permission to post it in its entirety.

---

Since the mid-80’s I have been deeply involved in the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs, network-centric warfare, asymmetric warfare, IW and IO, and all the rest. The groups I worked for and the teams I lead were primarily responsible for evaluating these concepts and assessing and projecting the threat posed by potential adversaries — both States and "non-state actors" — to our military when operating according to these principles. We were widely considered to be among the preeminent experts on these matters in the US Defense community.

I therefore read Mr. Kagan’s article with interest, and while his history is quite good, the conclusions he reaches based on it are, to me, mostly puzzling. I can’t help but feel Mr. Kagan has been reading a different literature on the "RMA" than I ever did, and understands it a different way. Indeed, he says: "The problem with the current vision of military transformation, therefore, is not that it relies on the concept of a revolution in military affairs, but that it does not properly understand that concept."

I would contend that the shoe is actually on the other foot. Of course, it is easy to be confused about this, as all of these concepts were — and I suspect still are — highly contentious and ill-defined, no matter what has been said in various "authoritative" government publications. As always, there is a disconnect between what the thinkers think and the doers do, but never was it so great as in the so-called RMA during the 1990s. I suspect Kagan has read too much into what he’s read and what the military leadership has been saying it wants to achieve, and not enough into what is and has been actually happening. Much of what he writes does [sort of] apply to the military of the Clinton years, when weak leadership and concepts like "force preservation" were allowed to take precedence over concepts like "winning". These factors perverted much of the debate on evolving military doctrine and clouded what it did not pervert. But the actual effect they had I think has been overstated. And I’m not sure Mr. Kagan appreciates the change that the debacle of the Kosovo Campaign made in the operational military, and how those changes were reinforced by the lessons of 9/11.

Nor do many of Kagan’s historical "lessons" apply under the conditions obtaining today and for the foreseeable future [which is about 2030]. His conclusions are redolent with the thinking of several generations ago. It appears he doesn’t appreciate exactly how our doctrinal writings and debates were and are absorbed and interpreted by our real and potential adversaries, be they the Chinese, the [then] Soviets, or Al Qaeda. There has been a longstanding joke in my profession that we have fully crippled the Chinese military by selling them so completely on the RMA — the joke within the joke is that this is substantially true. Nor are the Chinese alone in this predicament. Much of the world believes some astounding things about the US military, crediting us with things we can’t do while blithely unaware of what we can do; being utterly confused by the conflicts within and between US doctrinal debates and political debates; confusing commentary with policy and policy with operational doctrine. In short, we do things in a particularly noisy, messy, and apparently disorderly fashion, giving our adversaries — and sometimes our allies — ample scope to read all the wrong things into what they see. Thus, the history Kagan quotes can be misleading when applied to the current conditions; it rather appears to me that we have confused Kagan almost as much as we have confused the Chinese and the Russians.

Overall, I don’t think Kagan appreciates the very profound differences not just in technology [which is probably wider than he allows] and in the way that technology is employed, but most importantly in the way the US military has learned to think and operate. In some very important ways, the US military has been changing the rules of warfare faster than the other guys can learn the old rules. By the time they think they understand what we’re doing, we are doing something different and surprising. This isn’t "NCW" or "RMA" or even "IO" [though the Russians in particular claim it is] — it’s mainly good ol’ seat-of-the-pants adaptation and flexibility, fed by a technology development cycle that produces innovations roughly twice as fast as the rest of the world can assimilate them. Kagan does not understand this; in fact he turns reality on its head by arguing that; "Since technology inevitably becomes less expensive as it proliferates and as time goes on … the situation for America's would-be adversaries will only improve in this regard."

Yes, it does improve in an absolute sense, but the point Kagan misses is that it has, for more than 20 years, been improving faster here. Buying technology and capitalizing on its capabilities, especially in a military sense, are different things, and is not something that can be exported. This one reason that the militaries of the world are substantially father behind us now than they were during the first Gulf War, despite all the technology we have sold them.

Next, Kagan suggests we are vulnerable to a kind of doctrinal leapfrogging: "Much of America's tested doctrine has been published, much can be deduced from the CNN coverage of America's most recent wars. Once again, America's enemies can start from the position of proven success that the U.S. armed forces achieved, and build from there."

What history really tells us is: no they can’t, because they build more slowly than we innovate. And the people best positioned to be able to build as Kagan suggests are those we are very unlikely to go to war with [e.g. Britain and Australia; Japan and Germany, if they finished rearming.] This may change over time, but that time is measured in decades not years; if we were to stagnate today, the rest of the world might catch up in 20 to 30 years. But we are not stagnating yet.

Nor do I think Kagan well understands the point of what Rumsfeld’s so-called "transformation" really is. At this pint, I’m not sure I understand it perfectly myself, as I left my profession in early 2002 and have been somewhat out of the loop on DOD policy since then. But I suggest that it isn’t as unbalanced as Kagan thinks. It’s not about our military doing "one thing superbly well" and therefore "presenting [the enemy] with only one threat to defeat". It is about doing whatever it wants to do very well and very quickly, whether that be by land, air or sea. It about maximizing flexibility and initiative and striking power, not about air-power vs ground or sea power, or PGMs vs infantry vs armor.

Finally I can’t close without mentioning two of Kagan’s statements that he uses to buttress his points; the first of which I don’t recall being the case and the second of which I find almost bizarre. I mention these not to nit-pick, but because they cast a disturbing light over Kagan’s reasoning in general.

The first statement is: "During the Kosovo operation Slobodan Milosevic withstood the American air attack right up until it became clear that a ground attack might follow--and then he surrendered." I was rather in the thick of the assessment of that conflict, and I don’t remember that. I recall exactly the opposite — that Clinton absolutely ruled out ground forces and that Milosevic "surrendered" because he largely accomplished what he’s set out to do [he thought] and decided it was a good time to give in, fully expecting to remain in power for a long time to come. His mistake was underestimating his internal opposition, not Clinton or NATO. Those of the US military I talked to, or read opinions from, viewed the campaign as an embarrassing debacle, due to Clinton’s blunders and General Clark’s mismanagement.

The second statement is: "America is suffering badly now from having an army that is too small." This sounds like a sop to the antiwar press; how exactly are we "suffering badly" from the size of our army? [It is the Navy that is most severely undersized but we are not suffering from that yet, although we might someday and naval personnel certainly are right now.] Yes, there have been casualties in Iraq, but the fact of the matter is that Americans in Iraq are being killed at roughly the same rate as they are in Oakland, CA. When the casualty rate in a war zone approximates that of a mid-sized city, either the city is very very bad, or the war is going extraordinarily well. And while leftist commentators and Baathist sympathizers sincerely want America to be suffering badly, I see no objective evidence of this whatever. Thus I’m surprised that Kagan, whom I take to be neither a leftist nor a sympathizer, would say it. It smacks of a long and disingenuous — almost dishonest — reach to support a his conclusions by any means, including dragging in a left-wing canard without evidence or elaboration. This is not something I would think a man sure of his arguments would have to resort to.

Now I’m not myself convinced that Rumsfeld’s vision is perfect, or even the best possible, but I think he understanding is much sounder than Kagan’s and I assert that the situation itself is much better than Kagan paints it.

In response to a post over at One Hand Clapping about electoral vote shifts due to population migration, I commented that I expect President Bush to win in 2004 by a "landslide".

Joel Thomas said that although he thinks a Bush victory is likely, he doesn't think it'll be a landslide; he predicted a 6-10 point win for Bush in the "popular vote".

He may very well be right about that spread, but I wasn't thinking of the "popular vote" -- which I put in quotes because it's not even a real thing. There is no popular vote for President, there are only 50 state-wide elections to select electors, who then cast their votes for President. When I predicted a landslide victory for GWB, I was thinking of the electoral college, where I think he will receive more than 400 votes. I would consider this a landslide, just as Reagan's 1980 victory was a landslide -- 489 electoral votes and wins in 45 states is tremendous, even though he only received 51% of the "popular vote".

Preeminent military historian Fred Kagan has a long and excellent piece that details some of his concerns with Donald Rumsfeld's vision for the US armed forces. Until I read this, I was a supporter of Rumsfeld's policies (not that I'm an expert on such matters, although I play one on TV), but now I'm not so sure. I imagine the victory in Iraq will teach our defense officials some of the lessons Mr. Kagan points to, and I'm glad there are so many smart people thinking about the subject.

In this world, anything is possible. The U.S. might win a future war relying solely on air power, for the first time in history, with no American or local ground forces involved and no meaningful threat of their deployment. That possibility cannot be excluded. The Rumsfeld vision of military transformation, however, does not pursue that as a possibility; it relies on it as a certainty. By focusing all of America's defense resources on the single medium of air power, Mr. Rumsfeld is betting America's future security on the conviction that the U.S. armed forces will be able to do every time what no military to date has ever been able to do. In doing so, he is greatly simplifying the task of those preparing to fight the U.S. by presenting them with only one threat to defeat.

Update:
TM Lutas discusses net-centric warfare, and has a good reason for why he thinks the US can maintain a permanent advantage over the countries we're likely to fight against.

I just want to take a quick moment to point out that Ralph Nader is mistaken.

MADISON, Wis. - Former Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader (news - web sites) called Democrats "chronic whiners" for continuing to accuse him of spoiling the 2000 presidential election for Al Gore (news - web sites).

"They should realize that the retrospect on Florida concluded Gore won Florida," the consumer activist told the Wisconsin State Journal on Saturday. "It was stolen from the Democrats. And they should concentrate on the thieves and the blunderers in Florida, not on the Green Party."

As CNN (and many other news organizations) reported in 2001, George W. Bush would have beaten Al Gore in Florida under any reasonable recount scheme.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A comprehensive study of the 2000 presidential election in Florida suggests that if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed a statewide vote recount to proceed, Republican candidate George W. Bush would still have been elected president.

The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago conducted the six-month study for a consortium of eight news media companies, including CNN. ...

Using the NORC data, the media consortium examined what might have happened if the U.S. Supreme Court had not intervened. The Florida high court had ordered a recount of all undervotes that had not been counted by hand to that point. If that recount had proceeded under the standard that most local election officials said they would have used, the study found that Bush would have emerged with 493 more votes than Gore. ...

Suppose that Gore got what he originally wanted -- a hand recount in heavily Democratic Broward, Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and Volusia counties. The study indicates that Gore would have picked up some additional support but still would have lost the election -- by a 225-vote margin statewide.

Here's a nifty tool you can use to keep track of how your Senators and Representative vote: VoteNote.

Each week (that Congress is in session) you will receive:

- Key votes by your two Senators and U.S. Representative.
- Links to send e-mail to your members of Congress using pre-addressed forms.
- Upcoming votes for your review and links to offer e-mail input before they vote.

All you need is your zip code (to locate your Representative), and an email address. I signed up, and I can't wait to see how my three leftist delegates are representing me!

Found via batesline.com.

Everyone knows that Republicans are greedy and hate the poor, while Democrats love them and want to help them... right? Well, not according to The Catalogue for Philanthropy's "Generosity Index 2003". As Opinion Journal notes,

In news sure to depress those for whom Republican stinginess and antipathy for the less fortunate is an article of faith, the Massachusetts Catalogue for Philanthropy has just released its Generosity Index 2003, which ranks states not just by how much their residents give per capita but also by how much they give relative to what they earn. As OpinionJournal.com reader Gabriel Openshaw pointed out to us, the resulting index shows that the top 20 states all went for George W. Bush in the 2000 election--while 15 of the 20 least generous went for Al Gore. Maybe, he suggests, the difference is that those in red states are more generous with their own money while those in blue states are more likely to be generous with other people's money.

Michael asked me to talk about the iraq debt situation, which by some reports could measure as large as $350bn dollars. To me, the solution seems pretty straightforward - they need to be largely, if not completely forgiven.

The only argument I've heard against the forgiveness of the debt is that it will set a bad precedent for future lending to other iffy regimes, such as perhaps china, or any place that may make a future transition to democracy, but I feel that iraq is an extremely unique case due to over a decade of economic sanctions and the nature of its regime. But there is an important point, in that there are no international rules for this sort of thing. The paris and london clubs will write down or reschedule payments on iraqs debt for sure, but they will base it entirely on the iraqis ability to pay, not whether or not they should have to. Perhaps, as I said, iraq is too unique to set a precedent of any kind, But rules do need to be set, internationally, regarding loans to recognized bad regimes, perhaps as part of UN sanctions, stating that loans debt will not carry over to any replacement government.

As for the argument for forgiveness have eveything to do with iraqs ability to develop economically - they would be crippled by the reckless spending of an obviously screwed up government. And the limbo situation that exists now, with no definitive answer on the loan forgiveness, is killing new investment in the country - expedient forgiveness would definitely help the transition. If the situation is similar to anything in recent history, it would be Germany after WWI. Then, Keynes and others argued for debt forgiveness for similar reasons; You all know what the lack of debt relief ended up like. Without debt forgiveness I am hard pressed to believe the new iraq will succede.

Drudge links to a nice article on The Hill (which gets a permalink) that discusses the lessons that the Democrats are taking away from their recent gubernatorial losses. In my opininion, DNC chief Terry McAuliffe deserves far more blame than he's getting, and few of the Democrats quoted really seem to have a handle on the issues that are costing them elections.

"Terry McAuliffe is out there on his own agenda, which does not involve the South," said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the only black member of his state’s congressional delegation.

"It does not involve African Americans to the extent that they need to be. There are some real organizational problems at the Democratic National Committee that need to be corrected if in fact this party is to ever regain a majority status in Washington."

That's for sure. The main problem is that McAuliffe is most likely in bed with the Clintons [eek, an apt and disgusting metaphor -- ed.] and doing his best to prevent any Democrat other than Hillary from winning the Presidency. Either that, or he's totally incompetant. It's hard to tell based on what I've seen of him, since he's pure rhetoric and spin whenever he's on TV.

McAuliffe goes on to say that there was nothing anyone could have done to protect the states they lost, and his supporters blame state and local organizations for failing to raise money and get out the votes.

As for California?

California’s Oct. 7 recall had been a "perfect storm," they said, combining voters' widespread antipathy for Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger's (R) fame and fortune, and many conservatives' support for a centrist over a right-winger to make it impossible for Democrats to hold onto the governorship.

Lots more blame gets thrown around in every direction, but I think Senator Zell Miller (who I really like) might be onto something:

Last week, Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.) endorsed President Bush and lambasted his party for turning its back on the South. Miller maintained that national party leaders could not campaign for Southern candidates because it would hurt the candidates' odds.

He's certainly right that campaigning in the South by party leaders such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle would have hurt the candidates -- and why is that? Could it be because there's a huge disconnect between the party elites and the party members?

This disconnect is starkly evident in the choice of location for next year's party convention: Boston. Massachusets is heavily liberal, and there's little political benefit to be gained by holding the event there.

In contrast, consider that the Republicans are holding their convention in New York, the most liberal city in the country, but one which has elected Republican mayors and which might just be possible to sway to the right in the aftermath of 9/11 (and the Democrat's reaction to it). If the Republicans can even up the votes in New York City, then it may be possible for them to win the whole state (update New York is somewhat conservative), and virtually guarantee a Bush victory in 2004. If Grey Davis had been recalled and Arnold elected before the convention was set, I bet they would have held the convention in Los Angeles -- taking a risk to put a huge piece into play.

Senator Zell Miller has a new book coming out titled "A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat", and the Washington Times posts three excellent excerpts:
1. How Democrats lost the South
2. 'Able Democrats, but left-wing all the way'
3. In pursuit of an American Churchill

Senator Miller was twice elected governor or Georgia and served there from 1991 - 1999 (after serving 16 years as lieutenant governor). He was then appointed to a vacant Senate seat in 2000 and has served there for the past 3 years. He has said he will not seek election in 2004 when his term expires.

I respect Senator Miller a great deal, not only because his positions are closer to mine than are most Democrats', but because he is a rational, intelligent gentleman who doesn't pander and manipulate for political purposes. He has been a strong supporter of the War on Terror and of President Bush, and has even announced that he's going to vote for Bush in 2004 because of his disaffection for his own party.

I recommend reading the excerpts above, and the book sounds quite interesting itself. I suspect that Senator Miller speaks for a great many Democrats who have started seeing their party in a new light over the past decade. The Democrats would serve America well by following the lead of Senator Miller rather than Howard Dean, and the real story of 2004 will not be the immediate presidential election, but rather the party dynamics that will either splinter the Democrats and allow them to be reborn, or will give their radicals enough of a mandate to cling onto power for 4 more years.

Howard Dean is certainly free to oppose President Bush's policies, but I object to his spokesman's characterization of that opposition.

Dean spokesman Jay Carson said that while his candidate violently disagrees with Bush on most things, "He agrees with him that his younger days were his younger days - and he's going to leave it at that."

I don't think it's appropriate for any presidential candidate to "violently disagree" with the leader of our country. Although I'm sure the term was used figuratively, I think that Mr. Dean should rein in his people a little bit.