Tag Archives: government

Pause for Commercial

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My book, A Conservative’s Manifesto: A Brief Discussion of some Principles, has been published, and it can be found, among other places, at Amazon.com (paperback, Kindle, or hardcover) and at Barnes & Noble (paperback, Nook, or hardcover). Links also can be found nearby in the column to the right and on the newly added Books page.

The book lays out, in so many words, a set of (modern) Conservative principles that are tied back to the 18th Century Liberal principles that guided our Founding Fathers in developing our American social compact.  I begin with a description of those 18th Century Liberal principles and continue with a description of our drift away from them over the last 80 years, beginning with FDR’s administration.  I also describe a modern Conservatism that is those 18th Century Liberal principles brought forward to today, and I apply those principles to a number of critical aspects of American life: faith, citizenship, the nation, our economy, and our government.  I close by contrasting modern Liberal/Progressive concepts with these modern Conservative concepts and offering a path back to those modern Conservative tenets that made our country so exceptional and so great.

I hope you find it both enjoyable and useful.

A Risk to Federalism

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It always starts from the best of intentions.  The Senate is unhappy with the lack of uniformity of driving laws governing teenage drivers across the States, so it wants to impose national standards.  Specifically, the Senate wants to use a two-year, $109 billion highway bill currently under consideration as the, umm, vehicle for imposing national standards for teenager cell phone use while driving and for teenage driver licensing requirements, among others.  The thinking seems to be that the Feds got away with this concerning minimum drinking ages, so they can do it again in this area.

But the Feds didn’t, entirely, get away with it concerning drinking ages.  In South Dakota v. Dole, the case concerning the imposition of a national minimum drinking age, the Supreme Court ruled (not entirely correctly) that

[T]he relatively small financial inducement offered by Congress here – resulting from the State’s loss of only 5% of federal funds otherwise obtainable under certain highway grant programs – is not so coercive as to pass the point at which pressure turns into compulsion.

Thus, to comply with the Court’s ruling, the Senate’s use of the spending bill—or any other means—to obtain State acquiescence with the Feds’ national standard must be done carefully.

I claimed above that the Court got Dole only partially right.  Under the Federalism structure of our nation, the Federal government cannot (not just may not) force the States, individually or as a group, to do very much at all.  This is clear from Article I, Section 8; Article I, Section 10 [sic]; and the 9th and 10th Amendments.  Mandating national standards for matters that are internal to the States (vis., the rules by which a State’s citizens might drink, or drive, or etc. within that State) is prohibited by our Constitution.  The Court plainly understood this with its Dole ruling.

However.

The Court’s understanding falls short, as demonstrated by that phrase pass the point at which pressure turns into compulsion.  It waffled on where to draw that line.  It had to waffle, because that line cannot be drawn.  It is the nature and purpose of “pressure” to get the target of the pressure to comply.  The first iota of pressure has as much compulsory content as the last iota that pushes to total over that line to a compulsion that even a Supreme Court can recognize.

The President can use his bully pulpit quite legitimately—and Presidents often do, beginning with Teddy Roosevelt—to jawbone with his target audience to get this or that issue handled “his way.”  So can the Senate, or the House, or the Congress as a whole.  There is, though, a not very fine line between remonstrating, on the one hand, and forcing (or “pressuring” for) compliance—compulsion—on the other.  Putting such jawboning into legislation goes far beyond mere argument and becomes an attempt at compulsion, albeit with a cotton glove.

The greater risk is not to our teenagers, or fellow travellers, from their driving habits, but to the Federal nature of our nation from a central government imposing uniformity on things that properly are within the…province…of our States.  That greater risk includes the risk to our teenagers’ welfare.

On the other hand, this might be a fine opportunity for the States to set a powerful precedent.   This might be the place for the States to start saying, “Done and done.  Keep your Federal highway dollars.  We no longer wish to have your Federal hands in our State pockets.”

Voter Rights

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The Obama administration, through the Holder Justice Department, has blocked another voter photo ID law, this time in Texas.  Thomas Perez, DoJ’s Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, insists

According to the state’s own data, a Hispanic registered voter is at least 46.5 percent, and potentially 120.0 percent, more likely than a non-Hispanic registered voter to lack this identification.

Even using the data most favorable to the state…that disparity is statistically significant[.]

Perez also noted that the Texas law allowed voters to show military ID, a US citizenship certificate, a US passport, or a license to carry a concealed handgun, but the state did not provide any statistics noting how many people lack state ID but have the other allowable forms.

I cannot conclude that the state [of Texas] has sustained its burden [of showing law has neither a discriminatory purpose nor effect]

This is echoed by Luis Figueroa, a staff attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund:

The photo ID law would disproportionately affect poor and minority voters, who are least likely to have any of the required forms of identification or the documentation needed to obtain one[.]  It also would hurt students because college or university IDs would not be accepted[.]

Hmm….  So, on the basis of speculation that nefarious ends might occur at some time in the future—a speculation that Texas failed to disprove—and on the baldly asserted but wholly unsubstantiated claim of inconveniences, Texas’ voters’ ballot choices will continue to be exposed to invalidation through the voter fraud that a photo ID law would have greatly mitigated.

Moreover, what Perez apparently chose to ignore, is the ease with which a voter photo ID is, in fact, obtainable—and how many groups (vis., disabled, elderly) are exempted from the requirement.  And the consequences of showing up at the polling station without such an ID: voters who arrive without one of seven acceptable forms of photo IDs issued by the state or federal government would be given a provisional ballot.  That ballot would count if the voter then brings an approved ID to the registrar’s office within six days of the election—including an ID obtained after casting the ballot.

Congressman Lamar Smith (R, TX), House Judiciary Committee Chairman, has the right of it:

Voter ID laws help ensure the integrity of our elections and protect the rights of lawful voters.  If citizens are required to show ID in order to open a bank account, cash a check, drive a car or board a plane, how much more important is it to show ID in order to exercise one of our most valuable democratic rights?  This is an abuse of executive authority and an affront to the citizens of Texas.

Smith also noted that the Texas law to which Obama and Holder object was based on an Indiana law that has been upheld by the Supreme Court.

Finally, recall that this is the same Progressive administration that withdrew from two cases of voter intimidation—after confessions and guilty pleas had been obtained.  It’s clear that this is an administration that condones voter fraud, that wants votes diluted by illegal voters.

Freedom, Competition, and Education

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It seems that Georgia wants to improve its educational system, but those wedded to the status quo like the way things are and are trying to block the improvement.

Under current law, local school boards have veto authority over whether charter schools could be licensed in their districts.  That’s like letting existing neighborhood grocery stores decide whether or not a new grocer could set up business in their neighborhood.  Predictably, the school boards routinely rejected charter school applications.  In response, the state created the Georgia Charter Schools Commission, and that body began approving charter schools over the local boards’ objections.  The state’s Supreme Court ruled that illegal, and in turn, the state legislature now is debating an amendment to the state’s Constitution that would allow the state to create its own K-12 system, parallel to the local systems, and using the same pool of Georgia taxpayer funds that the public school systems use.  This will be, essentially, the GCSC process written into the state’s constitution, if the amendment gets through the legislature and onto the November ballot, and then is voted up by the Georgia voters.

The Professional Association of Georgia Educators objects to this.  Tim Callahan, PAGE’s Director of PR, Membership & Publications, had this to say:

The Georgia Constitution says local boards control where local dollars go, so if a charter school only gets state approval and not local approval, no way can they receive local funds.  They can only receive state funds.  The people who are putting this constitutional amendment on the ballot are trying to do that in our Senate right now—are really trying to do a run-around the Supreme Court ruling.

Let me see if I understand this argument: a constitutional amendment, which by its nature addresses the state Supreme Court’s concerns, is a run-around of the State Supreme Court.  Have I about got his argument surrounded?  How, exactly, does this represent a run-around?

State Congressman Ed Lindsey (R, ATL) offers this response:

Charter schools are part of an overall tool in the tool box for education reform.  It, along with the myriad of other programs, is extremely important in terms of giving parents and students a greater choice in what is the best education for a particular child, and it encourages education achievement and success along the way.  It creates innovation.

It’s come down to this, as Lindsey also points out:

In the education reform battle, often times things boil down to a turf battle, and that’s what we have here.  We have some local school systems that are worried that by virtue of having state charter schools that some of their turf is getting interfered.  But it’s about the children and the choice.  It’s a control issue, and it always has been.

Competition is an excellent means of improving the quality of the children’s education.  One effect of competition is a more efficient allocation of taxpayer money, because if schools aren’t producing quality students, they don’t need to continue collecting that money.  Certainly, it’s in our interest nationally, and in Georgia’s interest and in the interest of the local communities, to have an education system that produces well-educated students capable of critical reasoning, but that interest mandates no particular structure to the system.  Competition will spur the necessary improvements—with a beneficial side effect of that improved funds allocation.  What is there to fear?

US and China’s Strategy

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Last week, Stratfor Global Intelligence published an assessment of the People’s Republic of China’s emerging strategy for dealing with the outside world.  In sum, there are three basic tenets to the developing strategy:

  • Paramount among them is the maintenance of domestic security.
  • The PRC’s industrial base, by design produces more than its domestic economy can consume, so the PRC must export goods to the rest of the world while importing raw materials.
  • The third strategic interest is in maintaining control over buffer states.

These are sequential interests; that is, each depends on the one prior, and internal security is, as Friedman writes, paramount.  Internal security in a nation of vast wealth and wealth mobility differences between, in China’s case, the coastal regions and the interior depends on keeping the people employed.  (On a related side note, it’s useful to recognize that these differences are exacerbated, among other things, by growing cultural differences between a coastal region that trades externally and so is exposed to the influences of the West and of the Republic of Korea and Japan on the one hand, and an impoverished interior, on the other, that still is “old-school” and is seen, also, as existing to supply those coastal regions with goods for export trade).  Thus, a need not only for export customers exists, but relevant to this post, a need for ensuring China’s sea lane security.  That third imperative is driven by a need to protect the population of core Chinese—Han China—which is concentrated in those coastal regions and the eastern third of China that is near those coastal regions.  Among other buffer states, the PRC count Tibet, and they would like to count the Republic of China sitting off the southeastern coast on Taiwan (which, by the way, sits on the northern mouth of the South China Sea and the southern mouth of the East China Sea).

As alluded to above, sea lanes for trade are important to Chinese economic, and so domestic, security.  Overland trade routes are both physically fraught with danger, given the terrain that must be crossed and the distances involved, and politically fraught: the countries that control that land aren’t entirely sympathetic to Chinese interests.  Those sea lanes, though, must pass through the South or East China Sea.

Mainland China has historically had difficulty depending on others for its own sustenance, originating from China’s view that it sits at the center of Heaven and so has no need of outside cooperation—the cooperation should move in the other direction.  This position has gone through a number of evolutions but remains essentially the same: we’ll go it alone, thank you very much; you’re welcome to come with us if you wish.  The view of not depending on others also is smart: what others might give, they can also take away, and then where would a dependent state be?  So China looks to securing, itself, its sea lanes, rather than depending on the British, and for the last 80 years,  the US—to maintain freedom of the seas.  China looks, though, not for freedom, but dominance over its seas as the optimal means of maintaining security.

Unable to engage the US Navy in a direct confrontation, though, China is developing other means of countering our Navy; although Friedman suggests that those alternate means are flawed.

While China has a robust land-based missile system, a land-based missile system is inherently vulnerable to strikes by cruise missiles, aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles currently in development and other types of attack. China’s ability to fight a sustained battle is limited.  Moreover, a missile strategy works only with an effective reconnaissance capability.  You can’t destroy a ship if you don’t know where it is.  This in turn necessitates space-based systems able to identify U.S. ships and a tightly integrated fire-control system.

Friedman is right that this alone is insufficient, and he points out that China also is looking for sea ports in friendly (or at least “tradable with”) nations that are on the other end of some of those sea lanes.  China is paying, for instance, for most of or the construction of a sea port in Gwadar, Pakistan, as well as looking for similar accesses to ports in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and elsewhere.  But having anchorages on either end of the sea lane doesn’t address the security of the lanes themselves.

It’s easy enough, the thinking goes, to effect a blockade of China by sitting on the outside edge of the two Seas, but until those anti-shipping missile sites have been taken out, even at that range, the blockading ships would be at risk.  (I discount the reduction in risk from the ships being mobile targets: even given the relatively slow flights of cruise missiles, ships are even slower; besides, en route and target area guidance systems—even on board ones—aren’t that hard to do anymore.)

For our part, the US is in the beginning stages of implementing a major strategic change and moving to emphasize the Pacific, and in particular the PRC, and deemphasizing Europe and the Atlantic.  DoD is intending to realign our military so that, for instance, 60% of our Naval assets will be focused on the Pacific and China, vice the current 52%.

But what does this mean in practical terms?  DoD, under President Obama’s instruction, is reducing its ship total from 285 as of last September to 220 by 2020, including a reduction from 11 carriers to 8, 53 attack submarines to 40, and eliminating altogether our guided missile submarines.  Worse, the average age of our Navy’s ships will be allowed to increase from its current 14 years to 19.  From a back of the envelope estimate, that “increase” of 52% to 60% of the Navy’s assets concentrating on the Pacific results in an actual reduction from 148 ships to 132.

It also ignores another part of the equation: while we’re busily becoming a threat (in Chinese eyes) to China’s nearby sea lanes, what about China’s more distant sea lanes—the ones that pass through the Indian Ocean, the North and South Atlantic, the Panama Canal?  And what about our own, more nearby sea lanes—those traversing the same North and South Atlantic Oceans and the Panama Canal?  And the Indian Ocean, which is important to us not only for commerce, but to support our allies and friends in the Middle East, western Asia, eastern Africa?  And to get to our allies and friends that form the rim of the South China Sea and to support our own Navy operating in theater?

So the question for the Chinese, and for our administration, comes down to this: in the event of a conflict between the PRC and the US that gets serious enough that we’d need to consider a blockade, what happens next?

China will look at the conflict between us and northern Korea and between us and Iran over whether either of those two should possess nuclear weapons (and in one case, then destroy, utterly, a life-long ally of ours), and it will decide to press ahead with its actions and run a US blockade, at gunpoint, if needs be—even with their inferior navy.  Indeed, given our administration’s repeatedly demonstrated penchant for shaking its finger very firmly at our adversaries and then accommodating them, on what basis would China take our Navy’s still superior capability seriously?  When have northern Korea or Iran—or Israel recently—taken our capabilities seriously?  What is the value of military superiority, or capability of any sort, when there is no will to use it, and China, northern Korea, Iran, and now Israel know that?