sovereignty

National Debt: Not Just a “Problem” — A Crisis

April 15, 2023 by tornado Leave a Comment

Here is a chart (click to enlarge!), tracking interest paid by the government on the national debt, since 1990. This fraction of the federal budget also is growing. That’s because the national debt is getting bigger. For other purposes, it may, but for this, it really doesn’t matter which supposed “side” of the debt-bloating duopoly you prefer. Administrations (purple, my addition) and Congresses of both parties have been in place during debt-growth periods, and therefore, increases in interest payments.

Ignore and/or mock those who claim the national debt is not a problem. They are naive, unknowing, shallow, woefully and likely willfully ignorant of basic economics, and are not to be taken seriously.

Why federal debt not just a problem…but a crisis? Among a vast many other things, the proportion of the budget taken up by interest payment balloons, all other aspects get crowded out. As the fraction of the budget that goes to interest gets larger, less and less money will be left over for every other Federal budget aspect. Hard choices must be made. Austerity must be undertaken. That ultimately includes your favorite budget programs, and mine.

Austerity doesn’t win votes, so the can keeps getting kicked, money keeps being printed, inflationary times raise interest rates, the national debt grows larger (raising interest payments even when rates stay the same or fall), and this budget parasite swells up still further.

It’s a vicious cycle that media is almost wholly ignoring. It’s not sexy. It doesn’t involve Hollywood celebrities, British royalty, the “transgender” fad, prosecution of politicians, failure to prosecute politicians, famous pro athletes, whiny Tik Tok influencers, or other titillating clickbait that passes for “journalism” now. And it’s over 30 trillion times more important than all that put together.

The time will come, maybe in my lifetime but certainly in my children’s, when:
* Republicans’ favorite spending targets — military programs, home-district pork, the secret state, endless overseas wars — get crowded out of the budget by debt interest. Then what?
* Democrats’ favorite spending targets — social-entitlement programs, home-district pork, the secret state, endless overseas wars — get crowded out of the budget by debt interest. Then what?
* Bipartisan-supported beneficial and popular functions of government that take up very small budget fractions — air-traffic control, meat inspections, railroad safety, natural-disaster response, national parks, and yes, dangerous-weather forecasting — get crowded out of the budget by debt interest. Then what?
* We cannot afford even basic defense of the nation from foreign attack or takeover. Then what (besides the need to learn Mandarin)?

Those times are coming. Maybe in two decades, maybe in five. When they do, however, and the government no longer can afford to fulfill whatever you think or the Constitution directly mandates is its function, this republic is lost, forever.

I used to wonder why the end-times prophecies of Revelation never mentioned nor even hinted at an overseas superpower akin to what the U.S. has been, far from the Middle East. Between our own malignant moral and cultural decrepitude, and the upcoming fiscal implosion of debt-interest dominance of the budget that self-destroys the nation as anything relevant or powerful on the world stage, now I know.

There are solutions — painful, sacrificial, all-encompassing ones that yes, involve intense austerity — but as long as politicians pander to their bases and want votes, and the populace/lemmings don’t question things in a critical mass big enough to matter, we’ll keep marching toward the cliffs in ignorance of the fall that awaits.

Pray for your children and grandchildren. Even without an asteroid, no matter what happens with climate, regardless of anything going on abroad: tough times are on the way, the likes of which this nation has never experienced.

Brexit: Calm Down, Knee-Jerk Reactionary Fools!

June 27, 2016 by tornado Leave a Comment

Several days ago, a majority of the British people, in a fair and open democratic referendum, and with a margin comparable to the Obama-Romney election here, voted to pull out of the bureaucratic and regulatory quagmire known as the European Union.

I’m not going to pretend to be any sort of expert on the logistic or economic details of the “Brexit” maneuver. Yet I guarantee I’ve read more about it than 95% of the instant-experts on social media, who had no clue about it a month in advance, yet somehow grossly overestimate the meaningfulness of their day-after knee-jerk thoughts thereabout. All I can do is draw some parallels to tendencies I see every day in the news and in the society here, and draw upon experts I do read, most from the homeland of our former colonial overlords.

Brexit, in many ways, was inevitable. Ivory-tower left-wingers on this side of the pond have been casting the vote as “xenophobia” (example). Bullshit. American leftist Bill Maher, of all people, countered nicely: Is it really a phobia if you really have something to be afraid of?

Or, as Ian Tuttle put it: “They are unable to believe they may be wrong, so their opponents must be irrational bigots.” “Bigot”, of course, is a common, hackneyed, petty, laughable, increasingly meaningless, ad hominem slur, arising from the insular catacombs of a leftism that acts so self-congratulatory when some election result does go their way. No, xenophobia had nothing important to do with it. Instead, authentic, real-world concerns of real people did.

In addition to immigration, and likely more importantly, the issue of globalism was at play. The opposite of anti-globalism is not “xenophobia”. The latter simply is a convenient and patronizing pejorative used by the economic, bureaucratic and (pseudo-)intellectual elite for those they perceive as ignorant, drooling rubes. This is done to elicit head nods from the agreeable fellow members of the herd, as I’ve seen commonly on social media.

Go the globalists: “Clap clap clap…yes they’re xenophobes, clap clap clap, yes they’re xenophobes! Thank you sir, shall we pander to one another some more, and continue with our patronizing, elitist puffery…”

Instead the opposite of globalism is more properly termed sovereignty. Boris Johnson, who actually is English and is immersed in this issue deeply, elucidates this well, as he assures us all from within that the U.K. still is part of Europe, and isn’t going to collapse into a smoldering heap of ashes.

The reasoned people who supported this (yes, they exist!) cast a vote substantially for sovereignty, or if you prefer, against the slow-creep toward one-world governance. And yes, there were young voters who voted for this also; this fact is being swept under the rug. Minority or not, they clearly matter(ed). And yes, there were highly educated people who voted for this; that also is being conveniently ignored. I have read a few of their well-reasoned essays. But if one wants to take the easy road and label this “xenophobia”, it’s apparent the proletariat aren’t the ignorant ones.

Yet for expressing this layered, textured idea, I’ve been labeled “absolutist”. Hardly! Indeed, to dig deeper than that is the farthest from “absolutist”–but instead peels into layers of the onion that aren’t so readily apparent.

One of these is the supposed “regret” bloc that is receiving attention far out of proportion to its size of assorted well-publicized individuals. This is so short-sighted and irrational. If you’re going to vote one way and second-guess that the next day, you should have studied the issue better, or stayed home. Your vote is your word…too late now, grasshopper. That passionate one-night stand is done and you must live with your decision. Such is the case in any election in any nation.

Two days is much too short of a time to determine ramifications. The meaningful consequences of this vote, for better or worse, will unfold over 5-10 years. Rantings of pundits this soon thereafter are worthless drivel (it’s way, way, way too soon!)–much akin to NFL draft-grading before the players have even reported to training camp. That (including the aforementioned buyer’s remorse reactions) is itself reactionary, emotional, shortsighted.

Whither the shock and rage over losing value in the equities and monetary exchange markets? That is a very overstated, short-fused gnat fart when you graph it versus the past seven years’ bull market; if we do happen to go to into bear mode soon, factors far larger, deeper and darker than Brexit will be responsible.

Brexit is a sign simply and foremost of working-class disillusionment with an inertial and bloated bureaucratic establishment, globalist trade policy, unfettered immigration at the expense of domestic jobs and security, and loss of both economic and sociopolitical national sovereignty. It’s very loosely similar to some sentiments behind the Trump phenomenon here–but not necessarily in the way you might think at first.

Instead, it’s a manifestation of democracy as it should work: enough people get sick and tired of what those in power are doing and want to go a different way. Personally I wish that “way” in the U.S., were a truly intelligent leader like Rand Paul or Ted Cruz, and not a conceited, false-conservative buffoon like Trump, who is driving me even farther out of the Republican Party than the reprehensible “RINO” establishment in DC did. But for all his flaws, he (along with the authentically principled, if misguided, Bernie Sanders) has figured out one thing: there is a lot of discontent with the “way things are” out there and an intense desire to knock it down and start over.

In the U.K., the people had their vote. Agree with it or not, we should respect it. Or as more than one Obama voter obnoxiously and pompously stated after 2008: “Deal with it”.

As for the anti-establishment sentiment here, I refuse to support a candidate entirely devoid of integrity, whether “establishment” (HRC) or pretending to be anti-establishment (Trump). I will not play that binary-choice game anymore. Hillary and Bill Clinton (and they are a package deal, remember) are classic corporate-globalist tools (not to mention corrupt as hell), and Trump is simply deranged. Neither gives a whit about the Constitution in full; either would ratchet domestic spying and Constitutional evasion to new levels. I’ll be voting third-party; hence, don’t blame me for whatever happens when either of those two egomaniacal head cases attains the presidency.

Tuesday’s State Election Questions

October 28, 2010 by tornado Leave a Comment

The list of state questions for the election probably is the most variegated I’ve seen, and certainly the most interesting. Here’s a summary of them, with the icons for how I’m going to vote and the reasoning behind it.

744: Amends the state constitution to require Oklahoma to spend no less than the average amount on schools (per student) of the bordering states in any given year. If the average in the other states drops, Oklahoma spending stays constant.

This vote is easy. Two major issues here:

Why should Oklahoma be entirely at the mercy of other states? This is sovereignty issue, and one that puts state sovereignty at distinct risk by setting a bad precedent.

Those who cast this as a vote “for education” are misleading voters using an oversimplified, red-herring argument that’s a bunch of pseudo-populist crap. I’m all for improving education. I’ve got kids in the public schools, and can attest first-hand that their education is insufficiently rigorous, the “A” grades too easy to come by, the emphases on standardized test scores utterly overbearing to the point they dominate curricula. Now tell me: How, exactly, is this going to ameliorate those troubles? Throwing money at a problem doesn’t solve it! Witness the horrible failure of the Kansas City experiment. No…first, Oklahoma needs to get better at the spending it already does. A great place to start would be to consolidate countless redundant school-district bureaucracies and their needless fiefdoms; Oklahoma (only 27th in population among the states) somehow has hundreds upon hundreds of school districts! I’m not about to vote to throw more money blindly at education at the state level until Oklahoma does something obvious and powerful to clean up all the crap in its own educational nest.

746: Requires a photo ID or sworn affidavit to vote.

Another easy vote. This is a positive and proactive measure to help to prevent voter identity fraud that is so rampant in the corrupt cities like Chicago, Baltimore, Houston, St. Louis and others from creeping into this state. How can anyone reasonable possibly oppose this? In any representative democracy, any step that helps to ensure that the voter is who he/she claims, is a good step. Don’t have a photo ID? Get one. If voting is important at all to someone, it’s that important.

747: Term limits for state politicians as follows: 12 years for corporation commissioner and 8 for all these…governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, treasurer, labor commissioner, auditor/inspector, superintendent of public instruction, insurance commissioner.

Some people fall on the side of letting experienced politicians serve if they’re good and let the electorate throw them out otherwise. I don’t. We have positive precedent from the highest office in the land. By amendment, the U.S. president is limited constitutionally to 8 years, in order to short-circuit a disproportionate accumulation of potentially abusive power and influence (i.e., FDR’s Supreme Court packing), to lessen the time window for corruption and deep cronyism to take root, and to run fresh blood (and presumably fresh ideas) through the office. The same logic applies on the state level. We don’t need Chicago-style kingpin politics (e.g., multidecadal strangleholds on power as with Richard Daley Sr. and Jr.) in Oklahoma. If a good attorney general, lieutenant governor or governor has to go, so be it. There are other, higher or national opportunities for their service. You can’t convince me that if a good officer’s term expires, there’s nobody else at least as talented to take their place in a state of nearly 4 million people. One argument against this is that it “prevents” voters from having their say. Rubbish. By adopting term limits, the voters are having their say: we don’t want stagnation in state executive offices.

748: States that the legislature must make an apportionment after each 10-year census. Dismantles the current “apportionment commission” (composed of state executive officeholders) and re-invents a numerically bipartisan (equal Democrat and Republican) to do this in case the legislature fails to do its job. If the process falls to this commission, 4/7 vote is needed to draw legislative districts (apportionment).

This sounds complex, but it’s actually a balanced (not perfect, but acceptable) way to set up a backup option in case the legislature gets mired in bickering and/or chooses not to draw up districts after censuses. I don’t know how often this will be needed, if ever, but the measure does show something uncommon in government: preventative foresight. I like that.

750: Effectively lowers the number of people that would have to sign petitions to propose a law, a state constitutional change or a referendum. How? By making the percentage based on voter turnout for governor elections (held in non-presidential years) instead of presidential elections, when more voters show up.

This seems a little shady and disingenuous to me. By lowering the number of voters needed to force referendums, constitutional changes or bills, it disproportionately empowers a tinier minority. Like it or not, the fact is that we live in a nation of majority electoral rule. A shrill, persuasive few should not be given undue opportunity to ensnare the many in unwelcome (to a majority) processes.

751: Requires that official state actions be done in English or native tribal languages.

Slam dunk…yes, yes, a thousand times yes! Waves upon waves of immigrants came to this great nation since the 1700s. All until recently have self-motivated into learning one new language to ensure common communication and sharing of understanding. That language is English. This measure is not “xenophobic”, it is common sense. I’m disappointed that such a proposal even would be needed; but apparently it is, thanks to a growing tide of selfish, arrogant and closed-minded resistance of many newer immigrants to learn our common language. This measure actually does allow the inclusion of American Indian languages in state business too, which is of debatable merit…but not enough to detract from the bill. Is non-English official business a problem now in Oklahoma government? Not yet; and this prevents it from becoming one. Did I mention that I like preventative foresight?

752: Adds non-lawyer members to the commission that picks judges for vacancies.

I’ve been torn on this one, but have tilted YES. On one hand, lawyers ostensibly are best-qualified to gauge the competence and experience of other lawyers or judges to fill vacancies. I get that. Yet cronyism has a long and dirty history in this state; and the potential for that seems to loom large with a body like this. Also, who oversees this commission with overruling power balance? Nobody that I can tell. Therefore, the next best thing is to put non-lawyers on it for a perspective outside the insular legal world, a “fresh set of eyes” on the process, so to speak. It’s about accountability.

754: Forbids any constitutional change that would force the legislature to fund state functions based on
1. Predetermined constitutional formulas,
2. How much other states spend on a function, or
3. How much any entity spends on a function.

In short, this prevents Oklahoma from being forced by its own constitution to base its spending on that of other states or on rigid, preset math. This also is a state sovereignty issue, and I fall squarely in the camp of not hog-tying state spending based on outside states or other entities. It does bother me slightly that this is a permanent, amendment-proof measure, unchangeable forever in the event citizens of 1,000 years from now massively decide that it’s crap. That said, the advantages outnumber that disadvantage.

755: Makes state courts stick only to state or national law in deciding cases. Forbids foreign law or Islamic “Sharia law” from being used in court cases.

Once again, a thousand times yes! Another clear sovereignty issue and foresighted preventative measure, this time judicial. Look, this is not France or Indonesia or Iran or any other nation, it is Oklahoma of the USA. Foreign law has no place — none! — in the Oklahoma court system, and deserves exactly zero time or consideration therein. We don’t live under the Venezuelan constitution or whatever passes for one in Libya or Vietnam. This ensures such nonsense cannot creep into Oklahoma justice. Furthermore, it protects women of all faiths, and Islamic women in particular, from even the remotest possibility that the misogynistic inequities, abuses and brutalities of strict Sharia law would be forced upon them without their consent. Think it can’t happen in the civilized world? Think again. Here is a good explanation of the court system under Sharia, and a vividly illustrated editorial. Need I show more? Maybe it’s not a problem here (yet), as opponents like to say. That’s beside the point. “Trust us, it’s nothing to worry about” is the message from opponents. Well, I don’t trust them. This measure prevents that problem in this state, period.

756: Forbids the state from forcing people or employers to participate in a health care system, and officially allows private insurance. Federal law, as in the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause, could override this.

Another sovereignty-based measure that I support. It also ensures citizens the freedom to chose their health care options and not have one forced upon them by Big Brother, as the feds have done (and may yet be repealed). This is where the libertarian in me sprouts forth. Maybe the majority of voters here will approve this in a backlash against “Obamacare.” If so, good.

757: A rather mundane and esoteric measure that takes 15% (instead of the current 10%) of surplus money from the previous year (if there was a surplus) and tosses it into something called the “Constitutional Reserve Fund.”

A reluctant YES. I’d like for the purpose and oversight of this fund to be stated clearly and specifically in this measure, and it’s not. On the other hand, setting aside surplus for any sort of rainy-day fund is a good thing, as is increasing the share that doesn’t get spent or wasted.