

Politics





Date: Tue, 25 Jul 1995 00:15:00 UTC



Politics ... <G>



Let's start off with, I have no objection to discussing politics if we can
keep it civil. We're allowed to disagree about very important subjects,
without being forced to conclude that the people who disagree with us
are buttheads? Okay? I don't want to hammer on this but I've seen far too
many discussions of politics turn into flamewars, over the years.



I'm perfectly willing to discuss my political beliefs. Some writers won't,
for fear of offending their readers; I think that's a mistake, though. For
example, I enjoy Niven & Pournelle's novels quite a bit, though it strikes
me as unlikely that the three of us have ever voted for the same candidate.
Anyone who'd stop reading stories that entertain him, because of the
politics of the author, is ... overreacting, let's say.



If you read that last speech I posted, you know the description I've used
for myself; liberal where children are concerned, libertarian where adults
are concerned; and, to add something I didn't discuss in that speech,
conservative as a banker on fiscal issues. Our federal government may or may
not be too large, but what is certain is that, when it spends money it does
not have -- $5 trillion to date -- it is spending too much.




As a libertarian for adults, I think you should be able to control your own
body. This means:




 Have an abortion if you want one.
 Drink if you want to.
 Smoke if you want to.
 Commit suicide if you want to.
 Have elective surgery if you want to.
 Use heroin, cocaine, or any other drug, if you want to.
 Not wear your seatbelt.
 Ride a motorcycle without a helmet.
 Marry whoever you want to, of whatever gender or race.




(Most of these are irrelevant to me; I agree with the social strictures
aginst most of them, excepting abortion and intermarriage. I don't smoke,
don't use drugs (any longer), haven't drunk anything stronger than beer in
years. I wear a helmet when I ride and I use my seatbelt. I think suicide is
generally a terrible solution to your problems. But I absolutely and
without reservation support the rights of adults to do any of the above, no
matter how dumb I might think them, or how immoral someone else thinks them.)



It's your body and your life and you have an absolute right to do with it as
you choose. I am made uncomfortable by late-term abortions, but nobody
carries a pregnancy for six to eight months and then has an abortion without
terribly good reason, usually a threat to the life of the mother. There are
20,000 late abortions in the United States each year, which is not a huge
number given a population of 135 million women or thereabouts. The person
best suited to make decisions regarding those abortions is the woman and her
doctor. The government has no business being involved with that decision.



First trimester abortions cause me no qualms at all. A piece of tissue with
less biological complexity than a frog has no rights, and unless we start
talking about souls, is no more a human being than the egg and sperm that
made it.



I think gays should be allowed to marry. If there is a substantial
difference between a gay couple and a childless heterosexual couple, I'm
unable to see it.



There's a flipside to this; if you as an individual have the right to live
on your own terms, you must have the right to both succeed and fail on them.
Here in New York State -- this appalled me when I moved here -- they have
"Home Relief." This means that able-bodied adults can apply for maintenance
payments (not unemployment insurance, but welfare) if they don't work. I
call myself a liberal, but I'd abolish this in an instant.




As a liberal where children are concerned --



There is virtually nothing I wouldn't be willing to do, to try and make sure
that children have a fair shake in life. I'm in favor of school lunches. I'm
in favor of school breakfasts. I'm in favor of feeding and clothing and
educating the children no matter how much it costs us or how society at
large despises their parents. I'm in favor of free schooling, and in favor
of subsidized college education.



The welfare system in the United States is vile. It encourages long-term
dependency, and in some ways discourages people from seeking work. But it
needs to be fixed not abolished. It should be remembered that welfare
does not exist for the sake of the parents, but of the children; and if we
really want to fix it, I suspect we can find some way to help take
care of the children of poverty stricken families, without destroying the
families, and without allowing the children to hungry, unclothed, or untaught.



The principle argument conservatives advance on this subject is that
government programs have been the cause of the problems these children are
suffering. This is untrue; reading about the lot of poor children in the
days before we had public assistance for them -- food, clothing,
education, health care -- is likely to turn your hair white.



I believe this is an appropriate use of government, and of the federal
government at that. (Whether it's Constitutional is another question
entirely. The federal government does many things that the Constitution does
not appear to provide for ... and since, in theory, any powers not
specifically allocated to the federal government, by the Constitution, are
denied to it, this presents a problem for liberals. The current Supreme
Court appears to want to take a very narrow interpretation of what federal
powers actually are, and in their reading of the Constitution I suspect that
they are correct.)





As a fiscal conservative, I think that our government should pay for itself.
This does not mean running no deficit, ever; in times of recession a small
deficit is not a bad thing. It does mean not running a chronic structural
shortfall.



The reason Ronald Reagan gets slammed for having so badly exacerbated the
problem of deficit spending is that he so plainly deserves it. He campaigned
on the idea that deficit spending was immoral -- that it was spending our
grandchildren's money. And indeed, it's one of the things Reagan believed in
that I wholeheartedly agreed with.



But his behavior as President did not match his rhetoric. The last year we
had a budget surplus in this country was 1969. Here are the budget deficits
since that time, in unadjusted dollars:




Budget Deficits since 1969:


&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Deficit in&nbsp;&nbsp;GDP in&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;Debt as


Year&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;millions
 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;billions
 &nbsp;% of GDP





 1970&nbsp;&nbsp; -&nbsp; 2,842
  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;   985.4&nbsp;&nbsp 0.3%

 1971&nbsp;&nbsp; - 23,033
  &nbsp;&nbsp; 1,050.9&nbsp;&nbsp 2.2%

 1972&nbsp;&nbsp; - 23,373
  &nbsp;&nbsp; 1,147.8&nbsp;&nbsp 2.0%

 1973&nbsp;&nbsp; - 14,908
  &nbsp;&nbsp; 1,274.0&nbsp;&nbsp 1.2%

 1974&nbsp;&nbsp; -&nbsp;  6,135
  &nbsp;&nbsp; 1,403.6&nbsp;&nbsp 0.4%

 1975&nbsp;&nbsp; - 53,242
  &nbsp;&nbsp; 1,509.8&nbsp;&nbsp 3.5%

 1976&nbsp;&nbsp; - 73,732
  &nbsp;&nbsp; 1,684.2&nbsp;&nbsp 4.4%

 1977&nbsp;&nbsp; - 53,659
  &nbsp;&nbsp; 1,917.2&nbsp;&nbsp 2.8%

 1978&nbsp;&nbsp; - 59,186
  &nbsp;&nbsp; 2,155.0&nbsp;&nbsp 2.7%

 1979&nbsp;&nbsp; - 40,183
  &nbsp;&nbsp; 2,429.5&nbsp;&nbsp 1.7%

 1980&nbsp;&nbsp; - 73,835
  &nbsp;&nbsp; 2,644.1&nbsp;&nbsp 2.8%

 1981&nbsp;&nbsp; - 78,976
  &nbsp;&nbsp; 2,964.4&nbsp;&nbsp 2.7%

 1982&nbsp;&nbsp; -127,989
  &nbsp;&nbsp; 3,122.2&nbsp;&nbsp 4.1%

 1983&nbsp;&nbsp; -207,818
  &nbsp;&nbsp; 3,316.5&nbsp;&nbsp 6.3%

 1984&nbsp;&nbsp; -185,388
  &nbsp;&nbsp; 3,695.0&nbsp;&nbsp 5.0%

 1985&nbsp;&nbsp; -212,334
  &nbsp;&nbsp; 3,967.7&nbsp;&nbsp 5.4%

 1986&nbsp;&nbsp; -221,245
  &nbsp;&nbsp; 4,219.0&nbsp;&nbsp 5.2%

 1987&nbsp;&nbsp; -149,769
  &nbsp;&nbsp; 4,452.4&nbsp;&nbsp 3.4%

 1988&nbsp;&nbsp; -155,187
  &nbsp;&nbsp; 4,808.4&nbsp;&nbsp 3.2%

 1989&nbsp;&nbsp; -152,481
  &nbsp;&nbsp; 5,173.3&nbsp;&nbsp 2.9%

 1990&nbsp;&nbsp; -221,384
  &nbsp;&nbsp; 5,481.5&nbsp;&nbsp 4.0%

 1991&nbsp;&nbsp; -269,521
  &nbsp;&nbsp; 5,673.3&nbsp;&nbsp 4.8%

 1992&nbsp;&nbsp; -290,403
  &nbsp;&nbsp; 5,973.2&nbsp;&nbsp 4.9%

 1993&nbsp;&nbsp; -254,670
  &nbsp;&nbsp; 6,294.8&nbsp;&nbsp 4.0%

 1994&nbsp;&nbsp; -234,758
  &nbsp;&nbsp; 6,641.2&nbsp;&nbsp 3.7%
Note: 1994 figures are estimates.




[The 1994 figures are] inaccurate; as the year turned out I believe the 
deficit was significantly lower than 234 billion dollars, somewhere below
200 billion dollars. I don't have the exact dollar figure available.



During the four budget years that can properly be ascribed to Jimmy Carter
(1978-1981) the deficit, as a percentage of GNP, is 2.7, 1.7, 2.8 and 2.7
percent, respectively. His average deficit during his presidency was 2.475
percent of the GDP.



But when Reagan takes office the picture changes. In 1982, the first fiscal
year that actually starts out with a Reagan budget in place, the budget
deficit explodes. The budget deficit for the next five years, as a
percentage of GDP, are 4.1% of GDP; 6.3%; 5.0%; 5.4%; and 5.2%.



Indeed, they are four of the five highest deficits since the end of the
Great Depression -- from the man who campaigned against the sin of deficit
spending. (The fifth largest deficit ever? Bush's, in '92.)



Reagan's average deficit, across his first four years, by the way,
to compare to Carter's, is 5.2% of GDP -- more than twice Carter's rate.



An interesting anecdote to finish this all off. In 1988 at the Republican
National Convention, Reagan, attempting to defend his abysmal deficit
spending record said that the irresponsible Congress was actually the body
that in the ultimate analysis approves all spending (perfectly true), and
they were to blame for having been fools enough to have passed all his
budgets. (He didn't say it exactly like that, of course.)



Only problem with that is that every single budget ever passed by Congress,
during Reagan's term ... was smaller than the budget Reagan had submitted.



The argument's been made, by the way, that the increase in the debt came
principally from the explosion of entitlement programs. There's some truth
to this, particularly in recent years -- but not in Reagan's case. Between
1981 and 1983 the deficit nearly tripled -- it ballooned from 73 billion to
207 billion. Entitlement growth did not cause this; it did not come within a
hundred billion dollars of causing it. It was tax cuts and spending
increases, from a man who had promised to balance our federal budget.



One of the most interesting things about this entire mess, right now, is
that we have balanced the budget. Indeed we have ... subtract what we pay
on interest on the Federal debt, and we're running a surplus, and have been
for several years. Therefore ... the interest on a debt run up principally
under two "conservative" administrations is presently the totality of the
federal budget deficit.



The federal debt in this country is principally of Republican design. Kudos
to the current crowd of Republicans, particularly Gingrich; if they won't
accept responsibility for the debt (not in a million years <G>) they are at
least taking the necessary steps to deal with it. (I have a sneaking
admiration for the Republican Party and its tacticians, despite the fact
that they'd never have me as a member, and I'd never join. They built up a
huge deficit, blamed it on the Democrats, got away with it, and are now
excoriating the Democrats for not taking care of it -- which, of course, the
Democrats aren't, with one or two minor exceptions. It's chutzpah, the whole
thing, but it's also working.)





Here's a big part of what's wrong with America:



Between the end of World War II and (roughly) 1970, the GNP grew at a rate
of 3.4 percent per year. Disposable income grew at a rate of 2.3 percent per
year. In one chart I find (in adjusted 1962 dollars) an improvement as
follows in family income:




 In 1929, 51% of the population earns less than $3,000; 34% earns $3,000-
   $6,000; 3% earn between $8,000 and $10,000; and 5% earn more than
   $10,000.
 In 1947, only 30% of the population earns less than $3,000; 40% earn
   $3,000-$6,000; 7% earn $8,000-$10,000; 9% earn more than $10,000.
 In 1962, 21% earn less than $3,000; 31% earn $3,000-$6,000; 11% earn
   $8,000-$10,000; and 19% earn more than ten thousand.




Plainly, during this period, the average earning power of families improved.



But the trend stops dead in the early 1970s ... earning powers do not
improve; they decline.



For the following stat I couldn't find figures more recent than 1990, but it
seems relevant enough. These are in 1990 adjusted dollars:



In 1977 the top 1% of the country's families had an average income of
$281,383 dollars; by 1990 it was $548,970. It had improved 95.1 percent.



In 1977 the lowest 20% of the country had an average income of $8,531
dollars; by 1990 it was $7,725. It had declined 9.5 percent after
accounting for inflation.



The next 20% of the country, charting between 20% and 40%, suffered
an actual decline of 4.2 percent in real earnings between 1977 and 1990. 
This means, by the simple math of averaging 9.5 and 4.2, that the incomes
of forty percent of the American public declined 6.85 percent
between 1977 and 1990.



To summarize ... 1977 was not the high water mark for earnings of the
poorest 40% of American families; that looks to have been hit in the late
60s or early 70s. And I do not believe that earnings have improved for lower
class families since 1990; if anything the number of people dropping below
the poverty line has increased in recent years. So remember --



The numbers I have here cover 1977-1990. If we increase the range (I intend
to when I dig up better numbers) to cover 1967-1994, I firmly expect to see
an actual decline in family incomes of somewhere close to 10%, for the
bottom 40% of American families. Add in the fact that this comes in the face
of a huge increase in the number of working wives and mothers, and the
true desperation of our situation becomes apparent.



"Good jobs at good wages" is the oldest and most worn-out of political
cliches. But the lack of them is at the heart of the rage and injustice in
the United States today.





Another stat worth looking at:





Military Spending, 1993:


 USA: ....... &nbsp; $277 billion 
 Japan ...... &nbsp; $ 40 billion 
 France ..... &nbsp; $ 36 billion 
 Britain .... &nbsp; $ 35 billion 
 Germany .... &nbsp; $ 31 billion 
 Russia ..... &nbsp; $ 29 billion 
 China ...... &nbsp; $ 22 billion 
 Italy ...... &nbsp; $ 17 billion 
 Sau. Arab. . &nbsp; $ 16 billion 
 S. Korea ... &nbsp; $ 12 billion 
 Iraq ....... &nbsp; $&nbsp; 9 billion 
 N. Korea ... &nbsp; $&nbsp; 2 billion 
 Iran ....... &nbsp; $&nbsp; 1.2 billion 
 Syria ...... &nbsp; $&nbsp; 1.2 billion 
 Cuba ....... &nbsp; $&nbsp; 1.2 billion 






The U.S. outspends every country on that list, combined, by a total of
24.4 billion dollars; figures are from Harvard's Russian Research Center.



Clinton and the Republicans all agree that we're not spending enough money
on the military right now. How this can be is impossible for me to
understand. With the collapse of the Soviet Union our principle needs are
for a rapid response army. This could be provided for substantially 
less than we're now paying.





Finally, on the subject people actually asked about --



The Bosnian conflict has no good solutions. The good solution would have
been to make the Bosnian Serbs understand and believe, two or three years
ago, that they would pay a heavy price for agression against the Bosnian
Muslims. This would have required more than "peace keepers," though; it
would have required NATO or the U.S. to intervene, which neither was willing
to do. This is the problem with democracies; they always work in crisis
mode. They're generally incapable of planning, of paying a small price now
to avoid a larger price later. (Later is any time after the next
election.)



 Peter said:

   Taking a phrase from
   my favorite conservative, Rush Limbaugh, "the military exists to 
   kill people and break things". They cannot both be "humanitarian" and 
   effective.  Any global peacekeeping force would have to resort to force 
   and violence and--yes, terror--on a scale equal to or exceeding those 
   whom it is fighting.




I kind of like Rush, fwiw. I listen to him with some frequency, and he
amuses me fairly often. And he's right on this one -- the military is not a
good option for humanitarian missions -- "peace keeping." A mission in
Bosnia, if engaged in at all, should be/should have been a "peace enforcing"
mission; i.e., they should have been sent in, at the beginning of this
conflict, to draw a line in the sand, and then kill people and break things,
if necessary, to prevent this conflict from spreading. "The problem with
democracies," he intoned....



If we'd done that then, we wouldn't be where we are now.



Short of that level of commitment, which virtually no one was or is willing
to make, the arms embargo which has crippled Bosnian Muslim resistance
should be lifted, and the Muslims should be allowed to defend themselves.
Are the Muslims "nice" people? Probably no nicer than the Bosnian Serbs.
Does this mean the Serbs should be allowed to slaughter them?




   A puzzling declaration from one who understands what it would actually 
   take to "keep the peace"--i.e., people like Mohammed Vance.




I'm not proposing that we "keep the peace," merely that we stamp out brush
fires where appropriate. This was a brush fire when it started. In cases
where the "global community" can't, or won't, play cop, we can at least see
to it that the victims have guns and rockets and will make things unpleasant
for the agressors. It's what we did in Afghanistan ... which is free today,
and it was fighting against the might of the Soviet Union.



 John said:

   Is it better to have many petty wars by thugs and genocidal fanatics
   than to have an organized, well-intentioned group putting a stop to such
   madness?




I do in fact support this, on a small level. The "peace keepers" we have now
would do adequately, if we would treat them as soldiers, rather than as
police. Police do not belong in war zones.



On a large level there's no chance of it happening, anyway. Neither we, the
Russians, the French, etc., would tolerate a real Peace Keeping Force such
as portrayed in the CT novels.



That well-known conservative, Robert Heinlein, said forty years ago that we
were going to have either a world government, or nuclear annihilation. In
the long run, over the course of generations, I think he's right.



What sort of "world government" is a very different question. A common
currency, lack of trade barriers, and an light peacekeeping force all strike
me as sensible ideas that need involve no loss of sovereignity for the
United States. Done badly this is a terrible idea, but it need not be done
badly.



 Peter said:

  Maybe there are ways we could have a truly beneficent
  peace on earth without a fundamental transformation of humanity.




Nope. There's always going to be killing -- or at least in our lifetimes.
The issue is whether we can limit that, and if so, what's the best approach.



 John said:

  World government though agreement by the majority of the world's nations,
  done in a slow and careful manner, is likely to be a much more pleasant




That would be my hope. It was Heinlein's.






If you read, or have access to, the Sunday New York Times Magazine, there's
an absolutely invaluable series of articles about the growing (and utterly
immoral) gap between the wealthiest and poorest Americans. In particular,
the article by Lester Thurow, "How Much Inequality Can a Democracy Take?",
parallels very closely an article I've been researching for half a year,
called "Who Got the Money," which examines the shift in earnings and wealth
since 1970 in the United States of America. In (very) short:



"The middle class is scared, and it should be. The supports for its
economic security are being kicked out from under it."



Take note of that verb -- "kicked out." In an era when both Democrats and
Republicans agree that the budget has to be balanced (it does), it's a
disgrace of the first order that Archer-Daniels Midlands and other
corporate giants are keeping their 40 billion dollars a year in direct
subsidies, essentially uncut, while seniors, students, and working families
are being required to help shrink the deficit. A $245 billion dollar tax
cut is presently planned by the G.O.P. -- 90+ percent of which goes to
people making upwards of 75K a year. At the same time we're slicing the
hell out of a safety net that actually used to work, once. The Earned
Income Tax Credit, which Ronald Reagan once accurately described as an
antidote to welfare, is being slashed -- and at the same time large
corporations are walking with another 140 billion dollars, annually,
in tax giveaways -- not subsidies, but tax breaks that keep them from paying
anything like the highly theoretical corporate tax rate.



The economic background is absolutely chilling. Since 1970, in constant
dollars, median earnings of American families have declined 11% --
after taking into account the massive influx of women into the
workforce. At the same time the top 1% of wage-earning families has more
than doubled, in constant dollars, its yearly take, from the mid-200K
range to roughly 600K. They have purchased our government, they have
purchased our legislators, they have money-managed the electoral system
so that someone who is not wealthy, or at the very least beholden to
those who are, will find it very difficult to get elected to any meaningful
electoral post, anywhere in the United States. I am not partisan on this
issue; the Democratic Party is little better in these issues than the
Republican. (If any.)



Take a look at your next paycheck. I urge you to do this -- take your
"social security" tax withholding, and double it. (Your employer matches
that amount.) Take that and add it to your federal income tax. (It's all
income tax -- the social security "trust fund" isn't; there's nothing in
that fund except an I.O.U. from the U.S. Government to itself. When they
say they're taxing you to pay for social security benefits, they're 
lying -- social security taxes are simply another source of revenue.) 
Take your doubled SS tax and income tax, and add in any local state and 
city income taxes. Add in property taxes. Add in sales taxes. Add in gasoline
and cigarette taxes.



Now ... the GOP has ranted long and hard on the subject of taxes; so, for
that matter, have Democrats, though less effectively or believably.
Income taxes. It's highly probable that your federal income taxes
haved eclined slightly since 1980. If you're in the top fifth of wage earners
in this country, this has been a substantial benefit to you.



For the other 80% of us (I say "us" -- I've been in that top 20% a couple
times; other years I haven't; this is the life of an artist/consultant,
income is highly variable) -- for the other 80%, what you've seen happen
is that your slight, and by god I do mean slight, cut in FIC has been more
than offset by the monster increase in every other kind of tax you've had
to pay.



It's been a good time to be rich, though.








Date: Thu, 23 Nov 1995 04:10:32 -0500

 
Rafial Otaku wrote:
 
  Wendy Kassal wrote:
   
   Daniel Keys Moran for President!!
   Who's with me?
  
  ---
  I'd vote for him.  D'you realize what that would do to his
  writing output though?
 



I looked very seriously about running for Congress in '96.
Unfortunately(?), my district is represented by a pragmatic Democratic lady
I rather like. Assuming no major changes between now and '96, however, I
damn straight am likely to run somewhere in '98. I'm a great 
public speaker, and I've studied the issues at great depth; I think I'd
make a hell of a candidate, in the old, mean liberal style.


 
This would require me to find a working-class district represented by a
fundamentalist, anti-abortion Republican; given the class-war campaign I'd
run, I think that's the sort of district where it would play best.


 
I'd have a hard time running against a libertarian Republican -- we might
not disagree enough; and I'd have a hard time running against a moderate
Republican in a wealthy district. We'd find stuff to disagree about, no
question, at least fiscally, but the rich white people in such a district
(who vote) wouldn't find me a comforting presence, and probably
wouldn't elect me.


 
Republicans in working-class districts, though, better watch out, come '98.
I'm looking around.







   IMVeRHO, I don't believe this is gonna fly too well.  What
   congressfolk by and large do is preach to the choir. You've go to find
   the people singing your tune somewhere, covince them that you are one of
   them and get a few breaks. Studying the issues is archaic and
   meaningless.




There are, believe it or not, good politicians. They're the ones who are
willing to lose while defending what is right. I have arguments that I
think most voters have not been exposed to (I'm a politics junky and I
don't hear many people making the arguments I would make, at any rate.)



Losing an election is not the same thing as losing -- not that I would go
in without a very good chance at victory. And a traditional "liberal"
community is precisely the wrong place for the sort of campaign I'd run
anyway; I'm not a liberal on all sorts of issues. What I am is
somebody who thinks that working families have been assaulted unmercifully
in this country, for 25 years.



Date: Mon, 27 Nov 1995 20:42:19 -0500


Jeff Evans:

   But really, to be fair, for the first time in a very long
   time have we here in the USA had a VP that actually does something and
   thinks a bit creatively.



I like Al Gore. I corresponded with him back when he was merely a Senator;
I offered to work on his campaign in '92 if he were willing to run for the
Presidency. Unfortunately his son had been involved in a near-fatal auto
accident, and he wasn't willing to undergo the strain of a Presidential
campaign at the time, which is unfortunate. I expect he'd have won, and
would have done a better job than our current President.



