Ideal Candidate

The following is a wishlist I put together early in 2004. It still seems to apply today:

Taxes & Spending: Taxes are bad, m’kay? Spending money you don’t have is worse, m’kay? Sadly those two simple realities seem to escape the folks in the District when one party controls the Executive and Legislative branches of the government. I don’t mind going a little in the red when necessary (e.g., beefing up security post-9/11, and hunting for Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan), and I don’t mind the government spending a little extra to grease the wheels of the economy, or to provide support for Good, Big Projects that can’t realistically be supported by individual states or the private sector (e.g., the Interstate system, scientific research, providing a safety net for folks who run into bad luck…) I want leaders who can apply some common sense when asking for and spending taxpayer dollars.

Faith-based initiative: I don’t actually have a problem with the idea of government-funding of charitable organizations run by religious groups as part of providing the aforementioned safety net…in theory. The more help, the merrier, right? However, I do want such funding to be blind to the religion behind the organization. I don’t want non-religious organizations to be denied equal access. And I don’t want my tax dollars to go towards proselytization. I don’t have a lot of faith that those criteria will be met under the current leadership.

Corporate welfare: This is another item that I don’t actually have a problem with in principle, but I question how it’s being applied in reality. If funding to provide incentives for businesses to take actions that will have a net positive impact to society is available, great! However, such incentives should be limited, narrowly focused, and tied to measures to verify that the intended benefit to society is actually occurring. Why am I left wondering whether our current leadership provides incentives as favors within the old boys’ club?

Security & terrorism: I’m all for giving investigators more effective tools to do their jobs. However, if those new tools will infringe on civil liberties, they had better be limited to specific goals, for a very limited amount of time, and subject to judicial oversight.

Foreign affairs: Yes, I’m wishy-washy here too. I agree with the idea that protecting ourselves from an imminent threat is a good thing, even if we do not have the support of the international community in doing so. I agree with the idea of sending in troops to dislodge an official who is sponsoring mass murders when that country’s ordinary people are unable to do so. I guess that puts me in a “pro War” camp.

I’m not happy about being in that camp. I’m not happy about how we ended up in Iraq. There were several compelling reasons to depose Saddam. We probably should have done so back in Gulf War I. A decent case could have been made a long time ago to go in with the troops (how many bodies have been found in mass graves?)

However, for the administration to have to resort to exaggerating the alleged threat from Iraqi WMD’s and pretty shaky alleged ties between Saddam and Osama for political expediency…that not only merits a defeat in the ‘04 elections, but also a recall.

Education: Isn’t education supposed to be a local matter? I don’t mind expanding the range of educational options available, and to try to avoid the establishment of a two-tier education system (for the have’s and have-not’s). I don’t mind seeking some accountability of school funding. However there is a point where the bureaucracy created is detrimental, rather than helpful. Some of the stories I’ve heard about unintended consequences of No Child Left Behind are scary. Accountability is one thing, but federal micromanagement of local affairs is another.

Health care: I get worried when government folks start talking about expanding their role in health care. Yes, we have a problem with medical cost inflation. Why not address that by moving more of the research costs into the public domain, where profit demanded from invested capital is less? I’d like to see some measures taken to limit some of the more ludicrous lawsuits and awards that drive part of the costs of med-mal insurance. (Of course, actuaries know that the current inflation in med mal is as much the result of bad business decisions made in the 90’s by some insurers as it is the three-ringed circus that is the American legal system.)

I dislike the idea of expanding government-provided health insurance just as much as I dislike the idea of nationalizing health care. In both cases, you’re opening the door to too much government interference in our private lives. If the feds are primarily funding health care, it’s going to be mighty tempting to institute some cost controls, e.g. mandatory annual physicals, criminalization of bad habits (smoking, drinking, snack foods….).

Providing incentives to expand the availability of private health insurance sounds like a much better idea.
Oh, and prohibiting certain classes of research (e.g., cloning, cannabis) just because of cultural prejudice is just plain dumb.

Social Security: Ponzi scams are bad, m’kay? Our little pyramid scheme is going to collapse unless some changes are made (e.g., adjusting qualification age to reflect changes in lifespans, adjusting contribution rates, imposing sanity on COLA calculations), unless Americans start having more babies to beef up our future workforce, or unless we start importing a lot of labor to add to the SSA’s coffers. The longer we wait, the more painful the solution will be. There are only so many times postpone until after the next election.

On the question of investing payroll tax / SSA funds in the stock market - I worry about unintended consequences of having a flood of capital of that size into the market.

Drug Laws: I have no clue here. I don’t like the idea of legalizing pot, but I also don’t like the idea of kids, teenagers, and college students possibly having their lives ruined with a criminal record for youthful experimentation. I’ve heard horror stories about how the penalties for drug-related crimes are out of whack with other crimes. With the amount of money involved in the drug trade, shouldn’t our leaders be finding ways of making it less profitable?

Oh, and making sick people suffer just because the meds that might make them better come from a “devil weed” is dumb.

Trade: I like free trade. If we want to protect domestic industries, or keep jobs from moving around the world, shouldn’t the government be considering changing the profit mechanism, rather than erecting outright barriers? For example, I’d love to see domestic companies obliged to U.S. payroll tax on the folks staffing their overseas call centers, if their US customer’s calls are really being routed to those call centers. Let’s have free trade and some creativity people!

Gun Policy: I don’t own one and have no desire to use one due to my religious convictions. However, my secular side has no problem with people owning guns for self-defense and sport, provided they know how to use them. I do, however, question the alleged right of private citizens to own purely military hardware. (Do you really need an AK for deer hunting?)

Abortion Policy: I want “pro-life but pro-choice” people in power. I find abortions for convenience to be morally equivalent to murder. I don’t have a problem with abortions necessary to protect the health of the mother. The decision of whether an abortion is necessary is one best left to a mother, her doctor, and any others they wish to involve. The government needs to butt out here.

Environmental Policy: I know that I’ve come off as a pretty capitalistic person above. I’m also a green person. Costs to the environment are being seriously undervalued in government decisions these days. I’d like to see that fixed, but not by being dominated by junk science.

Civil Liberties: Just because the Constitution doesn’t extend civil liberty protection off US soil or to non-citizens doesn’t mean that human rights don’t exist. Politicians from both sides of the aisle are failing to notice that privacy is a human right too. If we’re going to have big databases of personal information, people ought to be able to opt-out, or at least be able to easily see what information is being collected on them, and to fix any errors. Europe’s got a better clue in this regard.