Indefensible

Speaking as a federal employee* the stories of largesse among the higher ranks of our armed forces really rub me the wrong way.

On one hand we have the cohort represented by General Petraeus marching to cocktail parties with an entourage of 50, decked out in epaulets, medals, and merit badges, screwing their fawning biographers, and biding their time before their fat 50s-era pension matures so they can sell their insider connections to the highest bidder among a sea of mostly unaccountable defense contractors. Or this guy.

On the other hand, there’s the typical experience of a federal employee, represented by me. If I have a meeting downtown I need to fill out a travel form for the five-dollar subway ride a month in advance. If there's a conference, only one person from my office can go, and it can’t be somewhere nice, like Vegas or Key West, or they probably won’t approve it. We have an office fund for the water cooler. Someone fronts the money and we all pitch in 8 dollars a month so we can enjoy our Cup ‘O Noodles with something other than bathroom tap water.

This is not to belittle military service. It’s to say that we are all public servants and should be held to the same ethical standards. Speaking with people I know in the defense community, it’s shocking to hear about the routine abuses of public office by the upper echelons of the military communities. It's even built in to the rules. Many defense contracts work under a cost-plus methodology, where instead of receiving a fixed sum for their work they are paid an open-ended rate for the hours they bill, plus a guaranteed profit, regardless of whether they are massively over budget or generate inferior work. We don't even know about large chunks of that spending (and others) because it's classified. 

Members of Congress routinely inquire into the minutest details about my tiny agency’s half-million dollar grants, looking for any malfeasance they can tout as government waste. It is rare to hear about any elected official providing meaningful oversight to the multi-billion dollar defense contracts, even as defense spending has nearly doubled since 2001. They target us because we are part of the health care safety net. We provide services to poor, politically unimportant constituents. 

Federal spending requires oversight. I get that. My agency doesn’t give a dime to anyone without half a dozen levels of program and grant review, independent audits, and continuous performance assessments. We're scared to death of Congress, but if Congress finds something wrong with my program, we’ll fix it. Meanwhile, twenty percent of federal spending goes to the defense department. Who’s watching them?

*Unofficially, not on Uncle Sam’s time or equipment

Five Things I Learned from the Election

1.      Money can’t buy you love.

Going into this election the pervasive view was that reduced restrictions on political advertising would mean billionaires buying elections. We can’t know what would have happened under the old rules, but after ridiculous billions spent almost nothing has changed. It is also clear that saturating the airwaves day-and-night with one side’s or another’s propaganda has steeply diminishing returns. Ads buy votes, but only to a very limited point. In the end you need a strong movement, a real passion for a candidate, and plans for the country that doesn’t freak most people out.

2.      We may need a constitutional amendment based on national annoyance.

Our nation has reached a point of electoral mutual assured destruction. It is bad for the country to have a four year presidential term, and two-year terms in the House of Representatives dominated for 18 months by fundraising and campaigning. It’s bad for our democracy to turn a spirited civic discussion into the Second Cola Wars. It’s bad for our collective psyches to have to hear political messages day and night for months on end. It’s oppressive, polarizing, and guarantees that our politicians will be working for whoever pays for their campaigns, and not the people who ultimately vote them in. Something has to be done about the length of campaigns, and the spending arms race, whose net result is only beneficial to the influence of advertisers and interest groups.  

3.      Polling doesn’t lie.

I’ve been on both sides of this. In 2004 I remember being sure that the polls were undercounting the young and minority groups who used cell phones or were otherwise difficult to reach. I remember looking at polls and thinking they must be off by 3 to 5 points based on some gut feeling I had that kept me going when winning felt like a mortal struggle. I was wrong then, and the other side was wrong this time. Modern polling is very sophisticated. Taken on a macro level over time, polls predict election outcomes with remarkable accuracy. Last night’s results look almost exactly like the weighted polling averages of many experts, red and blue. In the end I was only surprised by how few surprises there were.

4.      Even the deluded can concede that they were wrong.

Watching the internet and TV chatter since last night it’s striking how the other side has been so real about the policy and demographic corners they’ve painted themselves into. The same people who were so sanguine about their side’s mass appeal and were so absolutely certain about victory completely reversed themselves over the 15-or-so minutes around 11:00 last night. They could have called for revolution. Instead they became sober, contrite realists. It gives you a little faith in reality eventually winning out. It makes me a little less cynical about how the world works.

5.      The other side can be gracious in defeat.

After a brutal campaign Romney gave a magnanimous concession speech, and by any standards his audience was admirably calm and collected. Republicans were shocked by the results, but accepted what they meant without hesitation, and with minimal acrimony. When you scrape away the punditry, propaganda, loud extremists, and bluster of campaigns, what’s left are people of all kinds who are truly decent and absolutely invested in the future of this country. For me, it’s a reminder that most Americans want solutions to our challenges above ideology, and want leaders to work out our differences, no matter who’s in charge. It’s often those with the greatest power and influence who stand to gain the most from an angry, divided nation. We all need to learn that lesson.

How to Follow a Campaign and Not Go Crazy

2004 was a tense time for me. I spent most of that year following RealClearPolitics, Election Projection,  and countless other sources in hopes of divining some prediction of who was going to win the presidential election. Words were parsed, and debate body language was scrutinized by experts. Positions were spun, and so was I. My guy had to win at all costs; I couldn't even imagine how anyone would vote for the other guy. As usual, the whole world was at stake. And my guy lost.

2008 was a little better. I was still a bit of a mess by October. The economy was in full astrophysical implosion, and, as usual, the whole world was at stake. Polls went up and down. Debates were had. I trawled my blogs obsessively, and read every experts' exegesis of the tea leaves. Every turn of phrase mattered, but my guy looked pretty good. And he won.

In 2012 I decided to do things differently. The past decade-and-change has been a learning process for everyone who ever had to rely on a newspaper or network TV for their information. Today's media practically comes out of the faucet. Nobody is culturally equipped to deal with it all. Anyone with an opinion can now be labeled an expert, and conventional wisdom can flip at a moment's notice.

There is no way I could be a close observer of this election without losing my mind. So I've established some general principles for survival now, and moving forward. They've really helped me. Maybe they'll help someone else who reads this.

1. Whatever the gaffe, it probably won't matter next week. Campaigns are about fundraising, door-to-door, ads, speeches, baby kissing, and fighting to win the news cycle on an hourly basis for months on end. Does anyone remember anything Newt Gingrich said back in March? One side or another may get some momentary traction out of a given incident, but it is rare that a single moment or turn of phrase will solidify public opinion.

2. Polls are samples. Every single poll brings its own convoluted approach to sampling a small number of people, and then goes on to profess some larger existential truth about our future as a nation. Ignore them. All that matters are the trends. If 20 polls say your guy is winning, that's good. Anything else is mostly meaningless.

3. Hey dog, who's wagging that tail of yours? The media decides the message, and even they disagree. We have no control over pubic perception as individuals. With thousands of media outlets, each variously customized for our biases, competing for our attention, and selling ad space, it's no wonder that it's not the viewer who decides who won a debate. You can't change that. It doesn't matter what I think, only who I donate time and money to, and ultimately how I vote.

4. No matter how expert the opinion, they're often wrong. This is really a corollary to Number 3. People who are actually paid for their opinions aren't paid if they're right. Nobody even remembers that. They're paid to have an interesting enough opinion to keep you watching through the commercial break. Even the people you trust the most are often wrong about what the public cares about. They're subject to the same noise and hive mentality we all are.

5. Life goes on. Don't expect politics to end just because your guy won or lost. Anyone who's paid attention and been passionate about politics has endured crushing defeats. Forget politics. The world is a tough place, but it used to be a lot worse. In the long run it's mostly gotten better. No matter who is president on November 8, the sun will still rise, the world's hardships will remain, and there will still be work to be done.

Viral Democracy

There’s an outbreak of hatred and resentment that is bigger than is generally healthy for a superpower.  There’s widespread hatred towards the decade-long war with no end in sight, even if we don’t agree on what comes next. Almost everybody lives with some resentment towards shadowy, malevolent corporations and sprawling, opaque government. Something Big and Powerful has been eating away at our paychecks and home equity and gorging itself on skyrocketing health insurance premiums and social security checks for someone else. 

We we may be at each other's throats, but we're more connected to one another than at any time of history. Everything is viral. We share our beliefs like social diseases. So much human interaction primes us for an epidemic of belief systems.

We hope for panacea, some political party or ideology to finally break the logjam in government, end the war, pay our nation’s debts while give us the dignity of a good-paying job and a clear conscience. Most of us have only two parties to choose from in this process. It’s not enough choice and there’s widespread suspicion that that the Big and Powerful run it all anyway. Nobody but the daft really likes their polished, cloying options in political parties and a few doe-eyed suckers still hold out hope that their side isn’t quite as sold out as the other.

In times like these, it’s not that people haven’t tried something different. During a war and a recession, Ross Perot combined his own wealth with a certain brand of pragmatic-but-crazy ideas and managed a little under 20%. This time around, Americans Elect employed the best political minds in some vaguely centrist quest for Twitter followers, but they never even made it on the ballot. The lesson is that you can’t go it alone, nor can you crowdsource ideology. To truly go viral, you have to start from some set of ideas. But in this time of free-thinking, frustrated people, each with access to thousands of viewpoints, the possibilities for new majorities are endless, and the demand is greater than at any time in living memory.

The two parties resemble sick, sclerotic, overfed businesses who jealously guard their profit margins and send armies of lawyers after any young upstarts. A third party might assemble a team of personalities and ideals that would win over voters, but the rules of the game (and the players themselves) keep them off the field. Maybe the way is to avoid playing the game in the first place, and not form a party at all.

Call it a Political Interest Network (PIN®) instead of a political party. A few strangers could come together around 3 to 5 seemingly unrelated interests that transcend the political parties and happen to agree strongly with some segment public preferences-- Things like campaign finance reform, energy independence, and ending the Afghan war come to mind. Politicians, experts, and civic-minded individuals can meet in some public space, online or in person, and talk through ideas under the umbrella of an interest group. They can quietly raise money for individual network-affiliated candidates through the partys’ own fundraising channels, or at the grassroots, where nobody is looking. PINs could take great advantage of the political realities of Super PACs and Citizens United.

It could start small, winning a few statewide races and growing a small caucus in some minor legislature or city council that one party or the other needs to win. Like a virus, it can get larger and replicate by using the existing, vulnerable infrastructure, working the RNA of a concrete set of ideas into caucuses and committees in both major parties, slowly building a brand around your people and ideas, allowing for change and making compromises. Sell subscriptions to politicians who want access (or immunity).

To avoid dangerous virulence, my ideal PIN would adopt bylaws from the outset that restrict the influence of industries, government officials, associations, and powerful individuals. It will need to have experts in political organizing, money, communications, and other aspects of a movement, all while retaining connection to the core set of popular principles the network agrees on, and being responsive to people’s interests. At some point, PINs will become voting blocs independent of the parties, and possibly new parties themselves. They can't do that by killing the host.

There are some ground rules to consider. For me, I’d want it so that no individual or group will have control over where it goes. Its founders will have to accept the high probability that the network will go in directions they strongly disagree with. The PIN that is interested in campaign finance, energy independence, and ending the war might also develop a position on abortion or health care. A politician or an individual might subscribe to more than one PIN, depending on their rules.

Viruses mutate. No matter what rules are established at the beginning, the PIN might become a political party in its own right, end up co-opted by some special interest, or disappear entirely. The point is that with a third, or a fourth, or a fifth party, each with its own distinct set of issues. To actually get things done they’ll be forced to compromise on the job, instead of the zero-sum fight to the death of the modern two party election. Who knows? People might even stop thinking of themselves as Democrats or Republicans, and instead think of themselves as subscribers to beliefs.

At the beginning, at the local level and among a group of people who know one another to respect their views, we don’t have to agree on everything-- Just enough to create a network around a few easy ideas that straddle the party divide. Hurricanes can start with sneezes.

It Ain't Over

I heard from someone down South today. They were crossing into South Carolina from Georgia. Over the South Carolina line, the American flags were flying at half-mast. Nobody important died. It was in mourning for yesterday's Supreme Court's decision on the health care bill.

After two years of inflammatory rhetoric promising the certain end of freedom should this bill be enacted, many, many people believe it. For a long time, this belief could be sustained on the hope that the court would find it unconstitutional, or that congress would devise some way to pull the plug. But the reality is setting in that the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land. With less than a year and a half from its main provisions taking effect, if you don't like it, it's time to get specific about what you don't like. It's not going away on its own.

As a nation we accept the general principle that our individual freedoms are circumscribed by our legal frameworks. We believe in the system. This law isn't perfect, but it now belongs to all of us. The bill was passed and it's no longer up for debate on constitutional grounds. Griping about the death of freedom is all well and good, but if you really want to do something about it, it's time to call your congressman and demand reforms.

Let's look at the individual mandate. It's a provision in the Affordable Care Act that compels people to retain health insurance coverage, or else pay a tax amounting to no more than 3.5% of personal income. It's also the least popular part of the law that people know about. The mandate is essentially a tax is managed by the IRS, but the money goes directly to a fund to help pay for other people's insurance premiums. Unlike other taxes, the IRS doesn't have the authority to impose criminal penalties for non-compliance. If you don't have insurance, all they can do is garnish your tax refund, and if you can demonstate financial hardship, the tax is waived altogether.

Is this the death of freedom? If so, then we need to talk about the tax benefits I enjoy from being married, or massive deductions in mortgage interest that forego from not owning a house. Even though I want to be a married homeowner, I don't want the government telling me I should be. I question the social value of those rules, but I'm not about to take up arms. It's just not that big a deal. The tax system is riddled with incentives and penalties. If you don't like them, call your congressman and demand reforms. Start a web site. Get a dozen people to call and they will listen. You are not powerless.

But consider this: Young people can now stay on their parents' plans until they are 26. Uninsured people with pre-existing conditions (like my mom) can now get good insurance for cheap. Insurance companies can no longer have lifetime limits on benefits, and cannot turn away sick kids. They have to spend 80% of your premiums on actual health care, or else give you a rebate check. In 2014, if you don't have coverage, you will be guaranteed a decent plan that costs no more than 11% of your annual income. The government will pick up some or most of the tab for families of 4 making less than $90,000 a year. And it's paid for.

If you don't like those provisions, by all means, call your congressman. If you didn't know them by now, and you didn't like the Affordable Care Act, then maybe you should rethink where you stand and who you trust. 

This isn't the system I would have designed, but for me there is only one non-negotiable abstract principle: universal health coverage is a human right. If there is another way achieve that goal, I'm all ears. More specific to our realities, if there's another way to incentivize the healthy people we need to buy insurance, I'll listen. Seriously.

But I have no more patience for the partisan blowhards and their abstract claims to liberty. If people can't be bothered to inform themselves on what they like and don't like about the bill, they forfiet their right to complain. If they choose to ignore the good and overdramatize the bad, then they are not acting in our nation's interests. If they have real concerns about the bill, I'm listening. We all should.

If our leaders still can't come to the negotiating table after two years of near-existential political warfare, lost court battles, and unending bad faith, then they should be replaced. It's well past time.  
  

Broke versus Poor: Don't Confuse the Two

Being broke is a financial problem, and being poor is a social one. They're clearly related, but they're not the same thing. People learn from the older people around them, and if you're born into a place where all the older people are getting into trouble or going nowhere, then someday when you're older, you'll probably be a lot like they were. You will probably be poor, and so will the newest batch of neighborhood kids, who like you, won't have any better ideas. Poor people have poor options, so they make poor decisions, and their kids end up poor too. Even if you shower poor people in cash, most of it won't really change things. It's the cycle of poverty, and like most things cyclical, it's nothing new, and it's not so easy to end.

Among people who think about the broke-poor relationship, there are two main schools of thought. On one hand, there are many examples of people who were broke and ended up making millions. Immigrants, hard workers, and the odd genius. We all love these stories. Conservatives tend to think that they prove that any poor person can achieve if they just put their mind to it. By extension, anyone who doesn't is lazy and not worth their time. On the other hand, there's the story of the poor sap who never quite has enough money to make things work and ends up in jail for posession. We all feel for these guys. Liberals tend to think that they prove that it's because he was broke that he didn't succeed. They ignore his crappy upbringing, or think that it's just a matter of money and everything will change and he'll raise kids better.

Conservatives often think that if people's mindsets will change, they will be able to work out their finances and prosper under the rules of the game. Liberals think it's a matter of material deficiency, and that the rules are stacked against the poor. Both have a point, but both are missing something essential. For conservatives, culture is an excuse for people's bad behaviors, and a means of absolution from their fates. For liberals, money and programs are all that's up for negotiation. Culture is a taboo subject. For all of us, we misunderstand, excuse, or ignore society's cultural pathologies at our peril.  

What can be done?

There's aid from the government or charity. It can help people who are broke. When done right, like when it pays for school, keeps people healthy, or helps them along into a career with some dignity and decent pay, it can be really effective. This is where society organizes its social and economic goods. But it's not very good at changing the communities that young people grow up in. Even if people are given all the money, resources, and opportunity society can provide, their culture will remain mostly unchanged. Some people even say it will be made worse.

There's community activism. It can help people who are poor. Local leaders, church pastors, hometown-kids-done-good, and others can make good role models and maybe change the lives of a few others coming up. This is where culture and behavior can be modified. But it is limited in scope by money, subject to personality, midguided ideas, and plain old corruption. We hear stories about someone making a difference in their communities, but we rarely hear about those communities changing, and too often, we hear about someone taking whatever money there is, and running. Or worse, running for city council.

There's business. Most people would gladly take a decent-paying job with a chance at advancement over a monthly welfare check or a wad of cash from standing on the corner all day. This is where people can get real, sustainable material help. The problem is that usually there are few of these jobs in poor areas. It's not because business is evil or people are lazy. This is because the workforce of poor (but not necessarily broke) people is often uneducated and unreliable, so only the worst jobs become available to them. There's plenty of wealth out there. It's well-organized and even today still leads to prosperity for most people who can get into a career. But that's probably not going to happen if you're poor, and business has little to say about how to change the cycle of poverty.   

For the first time in a while, I have real hope, even if it's from somewhere weird. Last night I caught an episode of Undercover Boss. It was on TV while we ate dinner; something to pass the time. At first I thought it was just another mindless reality show meant to distract the audience between commercial breaks, and maybe it is, but I saw something I'd never seen before.

The "Undercover Boss" was an executive from Subway posing as a Sandwich Artist. One of the places he went was to a church in a poor part of Buffalo which had its own Subway franchise on the premises. The church got people working there at the same time as providing all the services, mentoring, and social exposure that you get out of a good church. The employees got good jobs and more training, the church owns the franchise and makes a little money, and people work with a chance of becoming someone. The government provides incentives to businesses who want to affiliate with a social organization, and uses the organization as a conduit for aid programs. It doesn't have to be a Subway, and it doesn't have to be a church. This idea could be replicated in 10,000 different ways with 100,000 social institutions and millions of young workers as beneficiaries.

Entrepreneurs, corporations, franchise holders, and others can work with churches and local governments to expand into new markets, paying people more, profiting, increasing aggregate demand for the products they sell, changing people's lives, and making our country the place it can and should be. But we'll all need to work together and be honest about the nature of our nation's social and material shortcomings.

Being poor and being broke are not the same thing, but poverty is some synergy of the two. To really change poverty, we need the engines of government, civil society, and business working synergistically too. American ingenuity can fix these problems. All the pieces are there. We just need to rethink how we put them together. We need to stop confusing poor with broke.

Stop Calling People Stupid

Yesterday in Salon, a professor of political science wrote an article titled, Can Liberals Cure Stupidity? 

Today, Clive Crook at Atlantic Monthly pointed out an exchange between a New York Times editor and Bill Maher. The New York Times editor said, "If it's Kansas, if it's Missouri, no big deal. You know, that's the dance of the low, sloping foreheads, the middle places, right?"

In private conversation I've heard many well-meaning lefties, many of whom are involved in political causes, and actively employed in improving the social welfare of the poor make similar comments. It's not enough to stop saying that people are stupid. It's time they stop thinking that way altogether.

I recommend a two part approach for liberals curing stupidity.

Step one: Stop calling people stupid. If someone doesn't know what we want them to know that's our problem, not theirs. And a lot of them vote regardless. Make it for your guy.

Step two: Look in the mirror. Who's stupider? The smart guy with all the facts who can't convince anyone of anything, or the idiot who can sell bottled water to a fish?

I really don't care how smart someone is (or thinks they are). I've known plenty of smart people who have done really, really stupid stuff. I've known plenty of dumb people who have gotten way, way ahead in life. Intelligence is not a good measure of success in life. It doesn't make a person more or less moral. It doesn't solve any of the world's problems on its own. What does?

Well, for starters, if the problem involves getting people mobilized behind a cause (like an election), knowing how to talk to those people, maybe even getting to know a couple of them personally might help. Listening without judgment to the way people view the world might help form a message that gets them on your side.

I'm routinely amazed when someone involved in something like global health talks about changing the breastfeeding patterns of African women by first understanding their culture, and then switches gears to refer to their own countrymen as ignorant and beyond saving. It should be easier to talk to people who look like you or speak your native language, but using the same humble, patient approach locally rarely occurs to these people. The same principles at work in Kibera or Conakry also apply in Kentucky and Kansas.

I am tired of people blaming Fox News and multinational corporations for people voting against their interests. Until someone convinces them otherwise, they're just our interests, not theirs. This is nothing new. Rich people have always been powerful. Powerful people have always stayed that way by influencing others.

In today's media war, monied interests on the right influence others by paying people to craft very, very effective messages. At least they stopped paying for mobs with billy clubs. If liberals want to influence others, they shouldn't cede any ground in the "fly-over" states. They shouldn't concern themselves with being outspent if they're so sure they're right. They should have a little faith in their own beliefs. They should stop theorizing, take a road trip away from the coasts, get off the interstate, and start talking to people.

The bottom line for me is that in this world there are no noble savages and no ignorant rednecks; only people who are just trying to get by the best they can. There are no messianic saviors or evil geniuses; only people who want to have some influence over what happens. And there is no way to get people on your side by calling them stupid.

Rendering Unto Caesar

The bible says a lot of things about a lot of stuff. It tells you how to stay clean, what to eat, how to treat slaves, when it's acceptable to work, kill, or have sex. Among many other things, it's a handbook for daily living in the bronze age. For example,

Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is an abomination.
--Leviticus 18:22

A couple of centuries ago, people started separating biblical law from the laws that govern us collectively. Communities, families, and individuals can still follow biblical laws all they want, but the rest of us don't have to, and things like slavery or killing, are decided through systems we can all mostly live with, regardless of what bible we read. We did this because couldn't agree on stuff like,

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
--Romans 1:26-27

We removed the bible from day-to-day law because battles between churches had become an existential threat in the late middle ages. Between all the crusades, inquisitions, and reformations, fields laid fallow, people fought, starved, or succumbed to pestilence, and civilization itself became a shaky proposition. Something had to change. People started looking at how things worked under Greek and Roman democracies, and came up with some new ideas on how to run a society. Some mixture of nostalgia, rationalism, and raw necessity created our modern legal institutions.

Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's.
--Matthew 22:21

Jesus seemed to know all this was coming. He spoke plainly about how there are matters that are between oneself and God, and then there's the day-to-day like taxes and civic order that are Caesar's problem.

Today homosexuality is viewed largely as a matter to be settled between oneself and God. People might eventually end up in hell, but very few of us believe that anyone should be killed, jailed, or exiled for it here on Earth. Even a few decades ago this wasn't the case. Ask Oscar Wilde or Alan Turing. But when all that is left to discuss are the matters of taxation and civic order, it is also unavoidably Caesar's problem. Children, marriage, and spousal rights are all things that Caesar has to deal with.

For my money, this issue was resolved in Oscar Wilde's day, around the time we instituted civil marriages. Today's marriages are usually done in two parts. First there's the age-old religious part (or the new age part with crystals and bundles of sticks). Second there's the part where the official tells the happy couple that they are married according to the laws of whatever state, territory, province, oblast, prefecture, department, or arrondissement they're in. For things like taxation and civic order, the first part is optional. It's the second part that counts. 

It's often overlooked that civil marriage was a common conservative rallying cry in the late 19th century. Catholics saw a threat to the church's authority. Protestants believed that they'd lose control over social norms. And they were right. Today I can have a wild night and get married at Caesar's Palace by Elvis Himself. The next morning I can walk down the street and get divorced just as easily. But I don't want to do that. I don't want to marry a man either. Doesn't mean I shouldn't be allowed to.

Things change. Gay marriage seemed absurd to most people less than a generation ago. God might be eternal and unchanging, but social acceptance of homosexuality, and more importantly same-sex family units, has changed rapidly. And yet, aside from some people's personal misgivings, nobody has been able to demonstrate any harm in two men or women living together, raising kids, sharing resources, or being buried next to one another at the end of it all. The state should not involve itself in people's moral choices, even if it did at certain times in the recent past. Today, few of us would stand for the government having some checklist determining who has the right to marry. Even if we did, none of us could agree on what would be on that list.

In the long term, the argument over who can be married and how was lost when Caesar (and Elvis) got involved. Ever since the enlightenment, Caesar has been the authority we depend on for resolving civic matters. Caesar weighs in on stable households, rights of survivorship, taxation, and visitation.  But Caesar has no authority over one's relationship with God, and thus no authority over one's decision of whom to live with, love, and marry.

If gay marriage was in any way disruptive to civic order, then this would all be debateable, but it's not. Churches can marry whomever they choose. Some churches won't marry couples outside of the faith. Some won't marry couples outside of their race. For my part, they should feel free to abide by whatever bronze age rules they find just. But the state cannot.

Marriage has been rendered unto Caesar. All hail Caesar. The gay marriage war is over.

Guns and Butter: If They're Worth It, We Should Pay

If there's one thing we've learned from the past decade-or-so of economic history, it's that credit is tricky. On one hand it enables people, businesses, and nations to do things they never could do otherwise; things like buying a home, covering a new restaurant's start-up costs, or building rails and roads. On the other hand, it lets people buy homes they can't afford, extends money to bad ideas, or funds unending war.

Like most things, credit isn't good or bad. It's just a form of power that can be used to fund good ideas or bad ones. Like most forms of power, unless you have rules to how it's allocated, you run the risk of mass-foreclosures, corporate implosions, and yes, unending war.

All of us, from the personal to the multinational, need to redefine our relationship with credit. One of the maxims of self-help financial gurus is to allocate your paycheck towards specific things. A couple hundred dollars for groceries. A fund for a vacation, another for a new TV, etc. Maybe something for retirement if there's any left. Credit cards should be for things you can realistically pay off, and they shouldn't be paying the rent every month. We have all learned these lessons one way or another. Easy credit reduced our impetus to maintain a household budget, or for that matter, for our employers to pay us more.

Of course the government isn't a household. People can't just decide to earn more or less money, like the government can with taxes. And most people don't have hoards of others offering little-to-no interest loans into perpetuity, like the market for US T-bills. If the government doesn't have enough money to do the things that people elected it to do, it can raise taxes, find things to cut, or barring all else, it can borrow. Like households, we made conscious, collective, deeply negative choices in how we've handled our budgeting. That's politics.

People demand things like Social Security, Medicare, and Defense. In fact, that's over 60 percent of what we spend. We demand these things, and since the borrowing is so cheap, nobody wants to pay for them. But there is a difference. Social Security and Medicare are budgeted for. We have dedicated payroll taxes for each of those programs. In effect, Social Security and Medicare work like that household fund to buy a new TV. Most of us accept that some of our money will be put away so we can have basic security one day. We make no such sacrifices for defense. If we want a war, our generals yell "charge!" and we pull out our American Express.

In order to have the lifestyle we're accustomed to as a nation, we probably need to earn more money than we are now. Since the whole "small government" idea goes against what most people actually want, we probably need more in tax receipts. Fine. If we went back to the rates in the nineties, most of our problems with debt would disappear. But the underlying problems of profligate spending without sacrifice. If debt is cheap, and war is a profitable activity that always seems to have enough volunteers, then where does it end? How can we determine as a nation when we've had enough? Why the hell are we still racking up tens of billions of dollars a month in bills for a decade-long jaunt through nowhere, Central Asia?

I'm not arguing here that war isn't worth it. That's a separate discussion altogether. I'm saying that, like retirement and health care, if it's worth it, we should pay. Here's what I propose:

A war tax. If congress declares war, there should be a levy on all consumption to pay for it. Every time anyone goes to a cash register, they will be reminded that we are at war, and that we must all sacrifice something to do so. When there is peace, the tax goes away. Of course there are major details to hammer out. What percentage would the tax be? What's the difference between a war and a conflict? How do you keep the Pentagon from burying its costs behind the line items? What if we need to devote 50% of our GDP to another world war? But the overall principle is sound.

The principle could be part of a larger legislative package. If people really want Social Security and Medicare, they should either pay the taxes necessary to cover their growing expenses, or demand changes to the programs. There are real choices we can raise the rates of the payroll tax, or raise its income threshold beyond the paltry cap of around $106,000, so people who earn more contribute the same proportion of their incomes as the rest of us. We can also cut back on benefits. We can still have the argument over how big government should be, but war should be part of that. If people want war, they should be taxed for it, and we should debate whether it's worth it. 

Leave the general income tax for discretionary spending and debt service. Use credit to make public investments with clear returns, or help out in recessions. Write this all into law and be done.

There's a time and a place for war, and there's a time and a place for credit. But there are few times or places where war should be paid for with credit. There is a clear moral hazard in giving Carte Blanche to a large segment of industry to spend however they see fit in the name of defense. 

Credit is neither good nor bad. War is usually good and bad. Even the most just wars are a whole lot of bad for a little good. Even the most generous credit or the most just war is bad when they're without a clear end in mind. We need to be reminded of that.

The Gun Issue

US Constitution, Amendment 2: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

These lines are the legal basis behind Americans’ unfettered access to firearms, and their freedom to carry and use them for hunting, fun, intimidation, paperweights, or to operate in the gray area between self-defense and vigilantism.

When an unarmed teenager is killed for mouthing off to a member of the local neighborhood watch, we might ask whether such an organization should rightly qualify as a well regulated militia, or whether that teenager’s family believes that rights to carry and use weapons with minimal justification, conscience, or consequence, will contribute to the security of a free state. But the answers aren't so easy.

One way or another, our nation’s founders left us with vague instructions on how to handle the gun issue today. Can I form a militia and enforce the peace as I see fit? Who regulates me? If my right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, why can’t I protect my neighborhood with a rocket propelled grenade? It’s been well over two hundred years since the Bill of Rights was signed and ratified. Its authors and their intentions are dead and gone. So is Trayvon Martin.  

I don’t really care if someone wants to have a collection of guns, make a big stink about liberty, and kill the occasional deer. It doesn’t bother me if someone thinks they’re safer with a gun under their pillow. I have no business uninvited in their bedroom anyway. I don’t really think that we can or should roll back centuries of culture and case law based on some obtuse re-read of the Second Amendment. But we can and must interpret that text to maximize the freedom of all; not just those who choose to own a gun and parade it around.

In the interpretation of the American Bill of Rights, we accept limits, and we carve out new rights. There’s no right to privacy in the constitution, but there is a cultural and legal expectation of some level of privacy in our lives. Medical records are confidential, but purchasing patterns are not. There’s nothing in the Second Amendment that restricts someone from owning any sort of arms, as long as they’re part of a well-regulated militia, but I don’t see heavily armed citizens patrolling our streets with high-powered military surplus. We invent new rights and new limitations as they are needed. When interpretations of rights are taken well beyond their logical extremes, as is the case with Stand Your Ground laws, it’s time to reconsider. That’s not the death of freedom. It’s saving freedom for other kids to walk home from a convenience store at night without the risk of summary execution by a fellow citizen.     

Like other areas of life where we engage in risky behavior at a potential cost to others, responsible gun ownership is possible. Most of us drive heavy steel vehicles at high speeds, arms-length from one another, barely a sneeze or a distraction away from disaster every day. It’s not a right. We could leave it to the professionals, or stick to horsedrawn speeds. But it’s something people really want to do in spite of the risks. So we establish speed limits, traffic laws, safety features, and cultural expectations. When somebody is negligent or malicious, they face dire consequences. 

I have no interest in taking away someone’s collection of firearms any more than I’d want to take away people’s cars. But like cars, I do believe that people should have licenses they must be reasonably qualified for, that the products should be regulated for safety, that there should be limitations in their use based on the freedoms of others not to be shot, and that the law should come down hard on people who betray the trust we maintain in one another. There’s nothing for or against any of that in the constitution. It’s just the right thing to do. For Trayvon’s sake, and for all of us.  

The Health Care Peace Process: A Two System Solution

The factions have drawn their battle lines. One side wants to wipe health reform off the map, replacing it with a hazy market fundamentalism popular only among their intellectual classes and the plurality of people they can fool on their side of the border. Depending on who you ask, their idols are anyone from Hamas to Reagan.

The other side had the tactical advantage and used it to win a pyrrhic victory a few years ago, crushing the enemy with brute force and the Senate budget reconciliation process, all at great cost to their standing in the public eye. For some in their ranks, the long-term plan is total occupation of the health system under one monolithic state-run payer. Depending on who you ask, their idols are anyone from Chairman Mao to FDR.

Each of us approaches this conflict with our own biases and beliefs. I know I do. But all of us will suffer greatly if we don't engage in some sort of peace process and move on. Medicare can't go on expanding faster than the economy, payroll tax receipts, and premiums. Those of us with private coverage are getting tired of $1500 deductibles and payers who, despite the glossy rhetoric, don't really compete for our business or advocate for our health. Many of us run the risk of bankruptcy. Many more forego needed care, and none of us are getting what we pay for.

Barring unilateral annihilation of one side or another, there will be a two-system solution. We will have a mix of public and private payors interacting with patients and providers to produce something akin to real, coordinated care provision. Without some unimaginable legislative nuclear option, Medicare and Medicaid will remain, and private insurance will fight alley-to-alley insurgent warfare to remain an entrenched, profitable piece of our health care system.

Many on the left hope to expand Medicare and Medicaid to cover all ages and needs. Some would like the government to have a total monopoly on health finance. A few are indifferent to the tradeoff of expensive treatments for the desperate few in exchange for cheap coverage for many. Many on the right believe that the free market can provide care to the publicly insured more effectively than any public program. Some believe that health insurance should be a matter of personal preference no different than buying a car. A few believe it's fine if some of us take the bus, or walk, or limp, or crawl. People who pay attention on all sides know there must be a peace process leading to a final status that allows everyone to get on with their lives in a way that neither bankrupts the country nor ourselves.

What are the contours of such a process? Before we can even talk, we have to agree on what we're talking about. For me, the only term for negotiation should be the acknowledgment that there is a future for both the public and the private sectors in the territory of the health care system.

The current status is that Medicare and Medicaid provide coverage for the poor, elderly, and disabled. Health reform has made it so that almost everyone else will be covered by private insurance plans with some help from government subsidies. Skirmishes and periodic wars around the role of the state will continue to break out. Territory will be gained and lost. People, governments, businesses, and families will continue to live with uncertainty of endless war over 20 percent of our economy.

Both sides have real grievances. We have employed all matter of dirty tricks and arm twisting to get us where we are today. Budget reconciliation was used to pass the non-negotiated, unfunded drug benefits under Medicare Part D. It was also used to pass health reform. But something looking like a final status is emerging on the distant horizon.

The latest GOP budget abolishes health reform's private health insurance exchanges for the general population and replaces Medicare for the elderly with benefits that function almost exactly the same as  what they have fought tooth-and-nail to repeal for the rest of us. For any agreement to happen, they'll have to acknowledge that their own ideas for private insurance will apply to all of us. Democrats have long advocated for a "public option" to rival private insurance providers, or even replace them altogether. If they want to make peace, Medicare will be their bargaining chip.

I propose a two-system solution:

Eligibility to Medicare is opened to all lawful residents of the United States. Its plans and premiums are managed on the health insurance exchanges like any other. The tradeoff is that seniors, the poor, and disabled will be no exception. States will continue to contribute to funding health plans for the poor, but will no longer be required to run their own Medicaid plans. A general fund will be established for all premium subsidies and will be devolved to the states according to need.

The employer tax exemption for health benefits is abolished, and the new revenue will go to premium subsidies for those who need them. Employers will drop coverage, leaving individuals to seek it on their own in the exchanges. People will choose between Medicare or any qualifying private plans on the market. If one plan or another doesn't work for them, they can switch once per calendar year.

If needed, the Medicare payroll tax rate on the employer side should go up in order to compensate for the expanded public role in the system, but the program will be mandated to operate under a balanced budget to ensure that it does not outcompete the private sector with the cheap sovereign debt it has access to as a federal entity.

We will all live in one land under two systems. Insurance will be bought and sold in state exchanges, regardless of how old we are, or how much money we have, and everyone will pay to ensure that care is affordable for all. Everyone will need to sacrifice something they held sacred. Our health care system's problems are solvable by rearranging the pieces that are already in place. Peace and its dividends are possible, but we must first decide that peace is worth the price to our side, and trust the other side to do the same.

Maybe someday, but not this year. Not with these leaders.

There Ought to be a Law

Politicians are in the business of making laws. At election time, we choose the candidate who we think will make the fairest, cleverest, best laws. We all want our politicians to serve our personal interests. Anyone who is civic-minded enough to bother voting probably even has some notion of the greater good. But if our interests, personal or public, are handed over to lawmakers, then all we get are changes in the law.  


We all know that the social fabric depends on a great many other things than just the law. After all, we don't murder and steal, even when the police aren't in sight. But when it comes to the collective expression of what is good, right, efficient, or intelligent, the only thing we all share is law. The only working system we have to come to an agreement as a city, state, or country is our government; our democracy is the only guarantor that we will have a say. 


Being so limited in a mutually agreed-upon toolbox for civic decisionmaking, we see few options for doing things differently. As the psychologist Abraham Maslow said, "It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail."


People do seek alternatives to hammers and nails. Libertarians say that there should be fewer laws and people will figure it out for themselves. Religious fundamentalists find complex reasons to say that their moral teachings are everybody's law. The collectivist Left protests, agitates, and unionizes. And none of us agree on a damned thing, so we end up where we started, at the ballot box, electing people whose only authority and expertise is making and modifying laws. 


We depend on criminal and civil penalties when in other times and places, custom would have sufficed. We all feel some loss. We all sense that there was a more cohesive, instinctual way of being before life got so complicated. We pine for handshakes and eye contact. We yearn for town hall meetings. We wish that people just knew better. But they don't. We don't.


Still, our system of government mostly works, even if nobody comes away happy. Contracts are honored. Streets are swept. Children go to school, workers work, and life goes on. Even as a populous, highly heterogeneous, and individualistic society, the things we must do together somehow get done. We make the most out of a crude instrument, but maybe things could be better.


We clash mightily we turn our hammers to sticky moral decisions. What sort of laws are best to reduce teen pregnancy, or drug abuse? What about abortion, immigration, or gun violence? How about school drop-outs, obese smokers, or the common slacker? What kind of law can we really agree on? Prohibition taught us the limits of outright bans of vice, but we come back for more every time. Some people want to ban abortion. Others want to tax sugar like cigarettes. Some want to drug test welfare recipients, while others want to ban all guns. We all have pet social issues, and some of those issues are highly divisive; some are even matters of life and death. But does there need to be a law for everything? Is there some other mechanism by which people can decide to change things? 


How can we expand our toolbox beyond the hammer of the law? One place to look is in the success stories that have emerged out of lawless, dysfunctional places. Decades ago, public health and foreign aid programs began to give up on things like mandatory immunization programs and moralizing about vice. They started to sit down with people and craft the messages that change personal decisionmaking. 


In Sub-Saharan Africa, where HIV has ravaged communities for decades, society itself changed attitudes towards condoms and voluntary testing, demanding more from their leaders. In India, where corruption has long crippled basic public services, civil society organizations began to demand more from their institutions, regardless of what the parliamentarians in New Delhi did. 


The Middle-East has seen a massive turnover in how power is allocated, and what sorts of say people have in their own lives and personal expression. Today, tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Moscow to protest an unfair ruling arrangement. They don't want laws. They want fairness, security, and opportunity. 


Here in America and across the West, something big is changing too. People are waking up and demanding not only better government, but better societies. The excesses of capitalism will likely be remediated as much by public shame as they will be by oversight and regulation. It's only just beginning here.


Social media, interest groups, and individuals are making real progress on our greatest collective challenges, from poverty and crime, to simple gluttony. Through spontaneous organization, we are regaining the social powers that were lost somewhere in modernism. We don't always need to wait for our lawmakers to agree. Sometimes, when people are organized and determined, we just do it ourselves.