"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
by Smitty (via BlogProf)
The BlogProf has video of the Secretary of Education saying “My Commitment To LGBT Students Is Unequivocal”. Really:
Yet another creepshow aspect of this administration. I shall ensure that my offspring enjoys both better education and protection from the likes of this fellow.
Update: linked by Lisa Graas.
by Smitty
Read this NRO post by Andrew McCarthy on the War Powers Act. Truly interesting Constitutional thinking.
What makes the WPA constitutionally problematic, though, is mostly its legislative veto provision, which purports to enable Congress to direct the president to withdraw forces by a joint resolution. (See this 2004 CRS analysis, here.) Joint resolutions are not binding law because, under the Constitution, law can only be enacted if the president signs a bill passed by both houses of Congress, or if Congress overrides a presidential veto of that bill by the required super-majority. (As Rich points out, the veto-override is how the WPA was enacted in the first place.) Putting aside the knottier question whether Congress has the authority to order a president to withdraw forces (i.e., could Congress constitutionally direct a president to withdraw forces by overriding the presidential veto of a bill directing him to do so?), Congress certainly cannot direct a president to do anything by a mere resolution.
Where I would like to see the conversation go is historical. If the decisions stretching from the Constitution to today are taken one at a time, you find yourself giving the people in power the benefit of the doubt; it is at least possible that you’d have done the same in their shoes.
Step back, though, and consider the thrust of American history since the National Security Act of 1947. Do we seem increasingly embroiled in war because human nature has become more warlike, or is it just because we have a hegemonic arsenal laying around?
This is an increasingly crucial set of paradoxes in the American psyche, at least for me:
On a personal level, coming clean about a screw-up is typically the least-worst approach. This does not mean that getting better is painless, just that honesty minimizes the pain.
Yet ours is a political system that does not reward honesty.
So the question moves to whether we find another sweet liar to move these problems down the road, or whether the economic reckoning flattens us, obviating the question.
I love my country, but, based on the historical evidence, I do not think it can produce leadership clever enough to do anything more than mark time until some economic reckoning forces the question. We’ll have less control, when ‘it’ happens. But our capacity for analysis only kick in retrospectively. And then, like some Tommy Boy, we’ll have a montage, and recover. It’s who we are; it’s what we do.
by Smitty
Angley at Big Peace links an Air Force times article about overhauling military pay.
This writer is both a fiscal conservative and a military retiree, so I am torn over the issue, but this article is not about advocating for anything. Instead, I will make a prediction. Military members will accept whatever retirement overhaul the DoD and Congress make, and they will do it without grumbling. The United States military member is the ultimate public-sector employee, but unlike public-sector unionized employees who recently have faced pay and benefit cuts, military members will not stage mass protests, legislative sit-ins, and self-indulgent pity parties.
I got into a lengthy discussion with an Air Force Major of about a dozen years active duty the other evening. While holding the corresponding Navy rank, I’ve spent half my twenty years in the Reserve. He was adamant that he get the full pension when he retires. “They can’t take that away,” he said.
Fine, I countered, but here we are, sitting in Afghanistan, willing to make the ultimate sacrifice if necessary. Why is the wallet so dear? I allowed that, if losing my Reserve retirement (which I explicitly do not include in retirement planning) was necessary to preserve the long-term economic health of the country, then the Reserve retirement is not too important. Whatever I do receive will essentially be a discount on my income taxes, anyway.
Now, that is a subjective assessment. In no way am I speaking for anyone be little ol’ me. Veterans who are wounded, or survivors of those who paid ultimately, will be completely protected, I hope.
Nevertheless, my purpose in sacrificing some amount of liberty, especially in the form of time, is to defend and expand liberty. I hope the people of Afghanistan experience some net increase in liberty as a result of the efforts here. And I hope that I will enjoy increased economic liberty at home. It makes no sense for any retirement system, military or otherwise, to crash the U.S. economy. Those of us who can should consider cheerfully stepping up and make the necessary sacrifices. Won’t be my first short haircut, if it comes to that.
Hopefully that godforsaken Social Security system will get whacked, too, anti-liberty beast that it is.
by Smitty
I would argue that the effect of the imperial Federal government over the last century has been to de-legitimize itself:
The CBO calls this approach “fair-value” accounting because it treats the federal government’s actions just like the actions of any other market participant, taking into account the market risk of guaranteeing a mortgage.
Typically, federal accounting does not do this because it is argued that because the government can print its own money, its risk is zero.
The CBO says that even though the government can print money – technically by issuing Treasury bonds – this merely transfers the risk to the taxpayer, who will eventually have to pay off the bonds issued by the government.
The government has to operate off of a reality-based economy. Sure, it can wink at reality, and has. But look at the habit that has been formed:
“As of March 31, 2011, the GSEs reported a fair-value deficit of approximately $187 billion,” the CBO report stated. “Adding to that the $130 billion in net payments already received from the Treasury implies a fair-value cost to the government of about $317 billion in obligations incurred through March 2011.”
Whoever wins in 2012 had better drive for more integrity than has been seen from previous administrations. Also, the people have to demand that integrity.
Fannie and Freddie should be among the first two casualties in a bloodless, anti-recreational-bureaucracy pogrom. Their existence flies in the face of the 10th Amendment; let the states sort out the housing for their citizens as required.
While not the sufficient, load shedding this particular bit of federal over-reach is necessary to restoring federal legitimacy. Also, coherent accounting.
by Smitty (h/t Vanderleun)
Truly, I wish that sexuality could remain private. Certainly not a federal political matter. But since the month of June has to find itself turned into a public celebration of something that, in my opinion, has no business being public (hetero or otherwise), the thought of having a month devoted to my own personal pecadillos sounds kind of interesting.
Is the world ready for some kind of bagpipe-driven, zombie apocalypse orgy of falsehood? Pecca Fortiter, said Luther. Let’s start by taking Luther out of context, shall we? Let’s just drive our culture off the cliff, Thelma and Louise style, full tilt boogie, right into hell. I mean, let’s just crank up the volume on the sin so badly that lesbians, gay, bisexuals, and transgender folks are stunned into a silent Puritanism by comparison.
I bet if we get sufficiently wierd, the President will award us two months.
Because that would be cool.
by Smitty (via Insty)
Props to SECDEF Gates. He has done an outstanding job. But I don’t think his analysis went far enough.
Gates spoke of “institutional obstacles in the Pentagon — cultural, procedural, ideological — to getting done what needed to get done” and the need for “fundamentally reshaping the priorities of the Pentagon.”
He insisted that the defense budget “is not the cause of this country’s fiscal woes,” but conceded that “as a matter of simple arithmetic and political reality,” defense cuts “must be at least part of the solution.”
The situation at the Pentagon is the Iron Triangle meets the Iron Law.
The United States is still, nominally, the hegemon, of the Western world for forty years and the full monty for the last twenty.
While not specifically disagreeing with any points the SECDEF has made, one wonders what substantially different course he proffers. If the U.S. is not the hegemon, then who? The full Ron Paul approach seems abrupt, but what alternative makes sense?
A line drawn from the National Security Act, through the War Powers Resolution of 1973, through two Gulf Wars, to the latest saber rattling in Libya traces an unhappy arc.
In his memoir “From the Shadows,” written after he left the CIA directorship in 1993, Gates likened the U.S. national security apparatus to a giant ship that changes course only with great difficulty and much less sharply from one administration to another than suggested by political rhetoric.
The good news about the DoD is that the national defense is clearly a Constitutional task. Yet, the U.S. government appears to be collapsing into an imperial federal government.
The 2012 candidate who deals most honestly with the situation and articulates an alternative path that sees the U.S. gradually unwinding its foreign entanglements will be a potent candidate, indeed.
What am I saying? Don’t we all figure that the game of globalized musical chairs is going to have a sudden, ‘unexpected’, disastrous turn Real Soon Now?
And on that cheery note, I’m off.
If you want a perfect example of how the Left pushes for more liberal press coverage, this is it: Eric Alterman accuses new-minted New York Times columnist Frank Bruni of being too soft on Bush.
It is not good enough for Alterman that Bruni is, and always has been, a reliably liberal member of the press corps. No, in Alterman’s universe, the job of reporters is to act as partisan attack dogs against Republicans. And so if Frank Bruni doesn’t fulfill that Alterman-approved role, he will be treated as the enemy.
There is something vaguely totalitarian in this attitude, and I think it is not an accident that the target of Alterman’s bullying is The First Gay Columnist in the Whole Dadgum History of the New York Times™.
by Smitty
Why, pro-state cancer. Ba-dump bump *tsh*.
Seriously, I am enjoying the worst bandwidth challenge yet to my blogger-fu. I have paid for three different Internet providers here, all providing roughly equivalent dis-service.
The better news is that I’ve passed the halfway point on the deployment.
Everybody, please continue to support Stacy’s mad quest for blogospheric hegemony in my absence.