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Substantial National Issues


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Orwell's 1984Substantial National IssuesUSA in 2012
Energy - Logical solutions like nuclear power for the long term and transition strategies in the short term are not being actively debated. Decades of energy imports financed by borrowing money from international competitors have created an unsustainable system. Conducting wars to protect supplies underscores the insanity. The current account balance (foreign trade) is dominated by energy purchases. Solving the energy crisis, ties in with environmental and climatic damage being caused by excessive fossil fuel consumption. Democrats oppose nuclear power and drilling while supporting unproven alternatives and efficiency. Republicans oppose price signals but support more drilling. Both offer only anemic support for nuclear. Faint support in the face of a difficult regulatory environment will assure nuclear continues to languish in the U.S. while worldwide hundreds of reactors are being built. In 2010 new horizontal drilling technology combined with frackking opened vast new reserves of natural gas and oil in the U.S. By 2012 the U.S. was producing more oil than it imported and North American energy independence is just around the corner.

Nuclear Weapons - Nearly 100,000 atomic and hydrogen bombs have been built since the Manhattan Project got it all started. 11,000 of these still remain active, while 10,000 more are deactivated but have not yet been destroyed. The US and Russia have been dismantling their arsenals since before the end of the Cold War. The START treaty stands as one of the worlds greatest diplomatic achievements. The nuclear non-proliferation treaty may be the next most important as it discourages additional countries from joining the "nuclear club" currently containing the US, Russia, China, Great Britain, France, India, Pakistan and Israel. The US and Russia have about 5,000 active weapons each while all the others countries have about 1,000 weapons combined. Far too many of these weapons remain in hair trigger status. Any candidate for US President must be committed to and effective at protecting America and the world from nuclear discharge. Other weapons of mass destruction and even conventional weapons like land mines and cluster bombs provide additional challenges for the world. Obama has worked in the Senate on nuclear and conventional arms reduction and continues to make nuclear weapons and materials control a priority. The New START treaty signed by Obama in 2009 limits active weapons to 1,550 each for the US and Russia. North Korea now has the bomb and Iran seems to be working on getting one.

Government Spending - entitlements, revenue sharing "block grants" and military spending dominate the $4 trillion year in federal and state government spending
  1. The U.S. spends as much on defense as the rest of the world put together. With our NATO allies we spend 75% of the world defense budget. Our defense policy has us participating in more wars and occupations than we can afford. If we spent one-third our current $700 billion per year rate, we would still be spending three times as much as any other single country, about the same as the entire EU plus Great Britian, more than China and Russia combined. If we continue to spend ourselves into debt, we'll cut back our defense spending soon enough when the whole house-of-cards collapses. Four years of Obama have seen little in the way of Defense spending cuts but one war is over and the other winding down, perhaps we'll see defense cuts when they can happen without hurting the economy.
  2. Spending the social security and Medicare trust funds to reduce the deficit is practical and reduces interest payments on the debt, but using regressive payroll taxes to support the general fund on an ongoing basis while cutting other taxes is incredible hypocrisy. Obama has done little on entitlements other than shuffling the deck. Social Security is now taking in less than it spends because of Obama's 2% payroll tax cut.
  3. The federal government funds state and local programs like housing, welfare, food stamps, education, roads, police, health care and much more through "block grants" and other forms of revenue sharing.  Many of the grants are identified in legislation as "earmarks." This gives the federal government leverage to control the states in a way that the Constitution prohibits. (For example, federal regulations on highway funds required states to adopt a 55 mph speed limit and later a 21 year old drinking age.) The practice of funneling local spending through Washington is inherently wasteful. McCain claims to oppose earmarks, but doesn't say he would actually reduce spending. This is not on the Democrats radar screen unless as something to be increased.
Monetary Policy, Economics and Inflation - stable monetary policy requires that the money supply grow with the economy.  Trustworthy government  would enact reasonable policies and not let high rates of inflation and currency devaluation be driven by political unwillingness to match spending with taxes. This is a complicated issue and is not being mentioned by either party. Over the past seven years the money supply has grown at least 3% per year faster than economic growth plus inflation. This suggests the government isn't reporting inflation in a trustworthy fashion. Under-reporting inflation disguises all sorts of economic malaise.

Drug War - This ruinous bipartisan policy has saddled millions of citizens with pointless criminal records, put millions in jail and cost hundreds of billions of dollars. It has created a substantial underground population of Americans who live outside the law. The erosion of civil liberties both for those who use and those who don't is incredible. The money sustains chaos across Latin America. Using the Commerce clause of the Constitution to justify the drug war is the height of hypocrisy. The drug war continues to be a major factor in defacto racism / classism and selective law enforcement. Medical marujuana has now been legalized in 18 states and D.C. Production and commerce in medical marijuana has created a dilemma for federal enforcement. In 2012 Washington and Colorado legalized possession of up to an ounce and are working on legalizing commerce over federal objections.

Health care - Prices are skyrocketing. When 15% of Americans can't afford health care and millions of families face bankruptcy arising from a personal health care crisis, something is wrong. If you can pay, America's system is the best. America spends more than twice as large a percentage of its GDP on health care than do other economically developed countries. The way we regulate health care in America is equivalent to allowing only Mercedes Benz or better automobiles on the road. When companies can no longer afford to compete globally and pay for their employee health care, they drop benefits or move offshore. Other developed economies across the world depend on single payer systems with private backup. Affluent individuals come to America when their national systems disappoint them. In America we provide socialized medicine for our military and a single payer system for the elderly and low income children. Government interference with a person's decision to terminate their own lives seems oddly opposed to Constitutional guarantees.  Obamacare (PPACA) passed in 2009 and was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2012 then affirmed by the national elections of 2012. It solves the affordable access problem but fails to address rapidly rising costs.

Education - Public education in the cities is in crisis. For fifty years the crisis has been developing and deepening. While some mistakenly label single payer medical systems as "socialized medicine" what we offer in the public schools actually is "socialized education." The factors of production are owned and operated by the state! Students just don't learn in our public schools. What they do learn is how to live with authoritarian treatment by elders and bullying by peers. How does this prepare them to be citizens of a free country? We spend more per student on public education than we spend in comparable private institutions. Public schools have a far worse educational outcome than private schools. Charter schools straddle the difference by allowing public money to follow students to public schools. Vouchers would let the money be used anywhere and radically change the landscape. Vouchers face union and minority opposition. "Choice" is the code word used to describe alternatives to conventional public schools. Government grants to colleges encourage universities to raise their tuitions to consume the available funding. Under-performing on education is one sure way to undermine our long term competitiveness as a nation. The No Child Left Behind testing solution has failed. States continue to try vouchers and choice. Kahn Academy embraces computer based education.

Partisanship, climate change, civil liberties, racism, obesity, immigration, voter suppression, voting fraud, ignorance, apathy, media concentration, international relations, globalization, chemical poisoning and many more important issues round out the list of things our leaders should be talking to us about but are not. The candidates and the media focus far too much on the horse race and on sensational scandals and gaffes.





  • National security : From the beginning, Sen. McCain :: Continue reading...
  • Politicization of Government : When FEMA proved it was incompetent in the aftermath of Katrina and the Corps of Engineers displayed decidedly defensive characteristics during the investigations of the levee failures, pundits began asking what had gone wrong with our government. The best government that money could buy was showing incompetence that could not be ignored. :: Continue reading...
  • Tax Plans - Obama v McCain : Americans fear higher taxes. Older conservative voters often discuss the taxes that they fear a Democratic President will levy on them. They fear that Democrats want to enact social progams that will redistribute wealth. They profess to prefer the way free markets distribute the wealth. :: Continue reading...


  • Presidential Battleground States The Debates


    Created : 5/28/2008 2:34:12 PM Updated: 12/20/2012 7:57:12 AM

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