First and foremost, I'm a private citizen with absolutely no background in politics. The closest I've ever come to politics was an introductory political science course in college and some brief time campaigning for Bruce Babbitt approximately two decades ago. To some of you this may not matter. For others it will provide grounds for an immediate disqualification. For most of you I hope my status as a bona fide outsider comes as refreshing news.
I recently turned fifty and live in Cambridge with my wife Rachael, two twins named Angus and Iris, and our pug, Titus. I'm a musician and composer by training, but I haven't worked in the music field for several years. Last, but not least, I'm in reasonably good health.
The State of Politics
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty - Thomas Jefferson
Through much of recorded human history the realm of politics and government has been viewed with a mixture of awe and disdain. It's an understandable attitude since the acquisition of power has, to put it mildly, more often than not, been achieved by less than laudable means. The record of the exercise of power is hardly better, all too often featuring a shocking lack of decency, honor, and fairness. I am, by my own reckoning, hardly a natural politician as I am neither interested nor gifted in the art of being popular. Nor am I the type of person who acts to bolster confidence in an enterprise at the expense of giving a less than flattering report that runs the risk of upsetting the apple cart. Fortunately, we do not need, nor can we afford, elected officials that excel in the practice of public relations on behalf of themselves and our unacceptably flawed political system.
My Appeal to You
If you agree with me that the practice of politics and government, particularly at The Federal Level, has gone badly awry, and that as a result the functioning of government is now primarily a detriment to the nation, I have good news for you. Our ship of state can still be salvaged. The condition of politics and government can be improved dramatically. However, in order to succeed we must reject the usual cast of revolving door political operators that are offered up at seemingly every election cycle. Whether these folks style themselves as Democrats or Republicans, they are all, by definition, captives of our corrupt, nominal two party system.
The Agenda
Given the necessity of profound political reform, I think it makes sense to begin this long, but not exhaustive, legislative "to do" list with the following key items.
1.) Shortened election seasons
One could easily underestimate the degree of harm being done to our society by an atmosphere of relentless political campaigning. Election seasons have become agonizingly long and exorbitantly expensive even as they are increasingly tedious and devoid of substance. By itself, the enormously time consuming nature of campaigns for federal office insures that politics are in thrall to moneyed interests. What's more, an acceptable standard of governmental performance is simply impossible when elections take up so much of our legislator's attention and time. Limiting the intervals in which campaigns may be conducted to nine weeks would mean far fewer funds are required to run campaigns. That, by itself, would act as a great leveler of the political playing field. Shortening the campaign season would also address an insidious development in modern politics whereby we now select and elect candidates on the basis of their abilities as tireless campaigners and fundraisers rather than for their intellect, integrity, and legislative competence.
2.) Term Limits
It is almost axiomatic now to say that the vast majority of incumbents rarely lose hold of their seats. With few exceptions, this benefits no one. Holding office was never intended to be a lifelong career let alone a gravy train for those fortunate enough to achieve the position of a Federal Legislator. But a gravy train is precisely what it has become for those who are well connected enough and/or sufficiently wealthy to run winning political campaigns. In concert with the reduction in the amount of time set aside for political campaigns, removing the possibility of lifelong tenure for elected officials would also erode the pernicious influence of special interest groups and their lobbyists that have a stranglehold on government. Last, but not least, we can expect that another salubrious effect of enacting term limits will be to attract a different caliber of person to government, namely one who is committed to the idea of holding public office as nothing more and nothing less than a public service.
3.) The Popular Vote
With respect to Presidential Elections, the Electoral College system must be abolished and replaced by the popular vote. At one time, the Electoral College had a certain logic operating in its favor, but, in our time, it simply leads to egregiously distorted contests where candidates spend inordinate amounts of time, money, and effort in a handful of key "battleground" states. It is past time to decide Presidential elections by means of the popular vote.
I can't stress enough that the prospects for legislating everything that is to follow on The Agenda rests on enacting items one through three. On the surface it may seem that finding a solution to the government's deplorable fiscal and financial condition is more important than, say, enacting term limits, but without implementing the aforesaid crucial systemic political reforms all the other initiatives on The Agenda stand little chance of being passed. At this point our political system is so badly corroded it will admit very little in the way of constructive change until such time as the system itself is overhauled. Any candidate who has not already openly acknowledged this state of affairs and demonstrably worked to reform the system is, whether they intend to be or not, part of the problem, and does not deserve your vote.
4.) Lower Income Taxes
We can certainly soak the rich, but any honest appraisal of the revenue gained from doing so shows that increasing income taxation on the well to do as a means to improve the U.S. fiscal and financial condition will hardly make a dent. Our tax system, like our political system, should be thoroughly overhauled with an eye toward simplifying what is an unnecessarily complex and counterproductive tax code.
A key part of simplifying our taxation scheme rests on a revenue gathering mechanism that targets consumption and not income derived from the fruits of one's labor. On both moral and practical grounds taxing consumption instead of income-which is a measure of what we produce for ourselves and for the rest of society-is the way forward.
5.) Health Care System Overhaul
What is Obamacare? It is mandated health insurance coverage. Does this sound familiar? It should, since it's what we already have now in Massachusetts. Who does this plan benefit? It benefits insurance companies first and hospitals who generally bear the cost of providing medical attention to those who have little or no means to pay for it. In the meantime, because Obamacare mandates that everyone, regardless of their condition, must be covered, insurers must shift their costs to the healthiest members of society. Thrown into this bad bargain we are already beginning to witness small businesses fold as they are crushed under the weight of onerous new regulations that make the cost of doing business prohibitive.
Obamacare does nothing to address the key problem plaguing those who rely on it, namely the crushing expense associated with any and all medical care. Why are the costs of everything from medication, to doctor's office visits, to minor medical procedures, to CAT scans and MRIs, to major surgery, so exorbitantly expensive? In a word, monopoly. Monopoly pricing is what desperately needs to be reigned in where it is not simply abolished. Suffice it to say that it is not merely the banking and financial services industry that have our D.C. political class doing their bidding at our great expense.
6.) Reduce The Size of The Federal Government
This United States has lived far beyond its means for over a generation, enabled in large part by the dollar's role as the world's reserve currency. (More on that later) As events in Europe have shown, we are not, by any means, the only nation in the west that has run out of rope, but we are arguably the most egregious example of squandered opportunity and abuse of privilege the planet has ever seen. It's time to adjust to the new reality.
A.) We can start that process by means testing all social safety net programs such as Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. With regards to eliminating monopoly pricing in the health care industry, doing so will reduce the costs of unfunded programs like Medicaid and Medicare tremendously.
Overgrown military establishments are, under any form of government, inauspicious to liberty-George Washington
B.) National Defense needs to be redefined to mean precisely that, national defense. Rhetoric notwithstanding, U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq have nothing to do with defending our nation against enemies abroad. Means testing the military as one might social safety net programs probably isn't possible, but we can still have rigorous standards by which we determine what is and is not a legitimate expenditure on behalf of national defense.
C.) I believe that, given the United States' increasing ability to service its own energy requirements, we would do better to reduce, and, in some cases, eliminate our investments in time, money, and manpower in places where we are neither wanted nor needed by a majority of the inhabitants. I advocate we reduce the national security apparatus, which includes relative newcomers such as Homeland Security, in tandem with a U.S. military exit from, for example, Iraq and Afghanistan. Achieving this goal will allow us to our reduce military outlays by hundreds of billions of dollars a year.
7.) Shut down Too Big To Fail Institutions
The so called To0 Big To Fail banks are, for all intents and purposes, insolvent institutions. The Too Big to Fails (or, if you prefer, Too Big To Bail) are, save for being backstopped by The Federal Reserve who enable the TBTFs to exchange their non performing loans for cash at par, zombies. These They park the cash they receive from The Fed in U.S. Government debt and engage in proprietary trading that in case after cases has been shown to destabilize the markets in which they trade, distorting the pricing of the goods those markets are meant to serve. The TBTF institutions traditional business model, namely one of acting as an intermediary between borrowers and lenders has been abandoned and, to understate matters, they serve no useful purpose. Concurrent with closing down the TBTF banks, Glass Steagall, which was legislation that created a necessary firewall between banking and brokerage operations should be reinstated.
8.) Monetary Regime Change
Ron Paul, and those that who stood with him in his drive to audit The Fed, were, in essence, acting for the purpose of addressing severe dysfunction in our nation's monetary system. However, though the actions of The Fed do indeed warrant far more transparency than has been forthcoming, The Fed's dealings are not the primary locus of this nation's monetary ills.
The U.S. dollar has acted as the so called world reserve currency since World War II when representatives from the soon to be victorious nations convened in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire to work out the post war monetary order. Suffice it to say that the history of the global monetary system since Bretton Woods is long and involved, and, most pertinently, for our purposes, it is dying.
It has had at least one near death experience already, when, in 1971, President Richard Nixon, by executive order, closed the gold window to foreigners wishing to exchange their dollar currency holdings for gold. Nixon's act completed what President Franklin Roosevelt had begun during his first term in office, when, he, also by executive edict, made it illegal for U.S. citizens to possess gold coins and bullion.
Despite repeated attempts by U.S. authorities to marginalize the role of gold, it has remained, for a host of very good reasons, a prized asset for billions of individuals around the globe who wish to preserve purchasing power. And despite U.S. monetary authorities longstanding hostile posture towards gold, it is worth pointing out that The Treasury and all of the planet's key central banks, never stopped holding substantial quantities of physical gold. Actions do indeed always speak louder than words.
As events in Europe have demonstrated, currency and sovereign debt are no place to save. The U.S. needs to acknowledge what is already manifesting and sensibly prepare for a world where the U.S. dollar and U.S. sovereign debt have, at best, no special status. I regret to observe that the worst effects from this development are still in front of us. Despite my tone of warning and just so there is no confusion, I do not advocate a return to a gold standard. Fixing gold's price in currency was and will be an abysmal failure for anyone that tries to go down that ill advised path again. After all, if the dollar had ever been able to replace gold's function as a store of wealth then Nixon wouldn't have had to default on U.S. gold obligations.
With that in mind, we would do well to recognize that the forty years that have passed since Richard Nixon attempted to reduce gold's role to a non functioning, effectively, dead asset, represent an outlier. Physical gold has a long and successful history of functioning as both a refuge for those who want to save their wealth from the ravages of massive, systemic instability, and as a reference point for the pricing of all things that have economic utility. I fear that we, as a nation, may arrive at this understanding the hard way, and we will only see the Treasury's supposed gold hoard of eight thousand tons mobilized after all those who hold dollar and dollar denominated assets have lost massive amounts of purchasing power.
To be continued
