States rights and tea parties

whimsical tea set graphic borrowed from http://www.yankodesign.com/images/design_news/2008/08/18/avestruz.jpg

September has started off as political blog month, and it might stay that way for a while.  Being a political science major and given that I am considering going to law school once I quit my day job (projected for May 2013), my mind has been whirling with all the current kerfuffle over the appropriate size of government for our country.  This has been exacerbated by the entry into the next presidential race of a person who has made numerous statements about how his state should consider seceding from the Union.

My grandparents retired at an early age to a beautiful island off the coast of New England.  Every few years or so some of the locals would talk about how they should just secede from the Union so they could be left alone.  I always thought that was pretty funny as a kid growing up, and my grandfather loved a good story, so he would go on about it for a while, before moving on to a more kid centric activity like fishing, swimming, clamming, playing cards, or entertaining us by pounding out crazy songs on his electric piano.  Funny thing is, I don't remember what side of the issue he was on, just that his voice got louder and some gesticulations were involved.  He was always a funny guy!

The thing that burns me up about Gov. Perry is that he made those pronouncements in years past about the uselessness of Washington, DC, but now he wants to go there and try and run it himself?  I cannot decide if he is just a hypocrite, or if he really thinks that he can do a better job than the current president.  I think the real answer is that he has surveyed the competition and realizes that he might be able to get the nomination this time around, whereas next time he might have to deal with the Palin juggernaut.

I guess what really started me thinking about this was all the talk about shrinking the size of the federal government, but not harvesting the complete funds savings because you still want those functions to be performed, just by the state rather than the feds.

Having been a federal employee for over 21 years, that just doesn't make sense to me.  Why have all the FEMA expertise split up into 50+ separate pieces?  Some projects are big and fluid enough to require regionalization, from my way of thinking.  And when there is a national structure, you have a greater chance of the program being administered the same in all areas (i.e. more fairly).

It is all a big power struggle.  We don't think FEMA is necessary at the federal level, but we still want all the disaster funding to go to communities that are most in need.  We don't need the EPA to spend all its time making things more expensive for big oil/coal/etc.  Next thing you know we won't need the FDA to make sure that food supplies are safe.  Heck, while you are at it, why don't we get rid of the CDC, FAA, TSA and a few more in the alphabet soup acronym list!!!!

I have worked inside and outside the beltway, and I am offended at the suggestion that federal employees are living off the fat of the land, and really aren't contributing to the country as a whole.  I know that there are some people who will milk the system, but that happens in any organization to some extent.

I think I need to dig up my copy of The Federalist Papers and send it to Gov. Perry.  I would venture to guess he has not read it.  Good old father of the Coast Guard Alexander Hamilton wrote or co-authored most of them, along with James Madison and John Jay.  They were trying to decide how to move forward with this new Union.  How would the needs of the individual states be balanced with this new federal government?

I have included the first two paragraphs of the introduction to get you in the mood for rational political discourse.

"To the people of the state of New York

AFTER an unequivocal experience of the inefficiency of the subsisting federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America. The subject speaks its own importance; comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the existence of the UNION, the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed, the fate of an empire in many respects the most interesting in the world. It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.

This idea will add the inducements of philanthropy to those of patriotism, to heighten the solicitude which all considerate and good men must feel for the event. Happy will it be if our choice should be directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests, unperplexed and unbiased by considerations not connected with the public good. But this is a thing more ardently to be wished than seriously to be expected. The plan offered to our deliberations affects too many particular interests, innovates upon too many local institutions, not to involve in its discussion a variety of objects foreign to its merits, and of views, passions and prejudices little favorable to the discovery of truth."

I am struck by the fact that the focus is on "the public good" and that he exhorts his readers not to let their passions get in the way of "the discovery of truth".   Hamilton believed in a strong central government, and that the implied powers of the Constitution would give this government the ability to fund programs through assuming a national debt; have to agree with him on both those issues.

This Tea Party fixation on the evil of the national debt just puzzles me.  Maybe they are so rich that they can buy their homes and automobiles and other expensive items with cash, but most Americans are not so lucky.  If you can believe Wikipedia statistics (and that is not a given since anyone can go in and alter things to reflect their own view of reality), only 69% of Americans own their own home.  That number is from 2002, so I imagine it could have altered a few points in one direction or other in the last nine years.  Of that roughly 2/3 of the US population, I would imagine that around 80% of those people had to finance that purchase.

Enough insomnia inspired ramblings on this topic.  Gotta go look for my Federalist Papers, and see if highlighter lasts for more than two decades!

Animals and Fear

I listen to a lot of satellite radio; mostly the old time radio of the 1930s-50s.  Unlike most of the music channels, since this station is not one of the big money earners, it actually has a bunch of commercials.  Most of them are extremely annoying, but I do learn things from them now and again.

One thing I have learned recently validates something I heard on public radio this week = there is always a need for long haul truck drivers.  From the number of trucks I see on the roadways, you would not think that this would be the case, but apparently it is.  Probably 1/3 of the commercials on XM/Sirius channel 82 have something to do with the trucking industry.

Another 1/3 of the advertisements involve people trying to sell you gold.  There are all sorts of thinly veiled apocolyptic  warnings about how the financial system is about to collapse.  My favorite one is a slam against Quantitative Easing which includes a phrase something like, "You can print more money but you cannot create more gold!"  That statement bothers me on SO MANY levels.  First of all, you can mine for more gold, but I realize that the supply is finite on this planet.  Secondly, you can also buy something that is more valuable than gold; why are we all so fixated on the shiny gold stuff?  I much prefer platinum or silver.  Thirdly, and most of all, they are playing on people's fears to get them to convert their IRA into gold, buy some gold that they otherwise might put into some other investment, etc.

I understand fear.  I see a great example of it every day when I go down into the basement.

borrowed from http://www.virginiaherpetologicalsociety.com/reptiles/turtles/yellow-bellied-slider/yellow-bellied_slider.htm

We have two yellow bellied slider cousins of this wild fellow shown above, who warm themselves under the heat lamps during the day.  The male turtle, Nacho, tends to clamber off the sunning platform very quickly and dive into the water when he first hears someone come down the stairs into the basement.  He swims at full speed for about 5 seconds until he smashes his nose into the end of the aquarium.

I am pretty sure that he thinks we are a predator, and wants to get as far away as possible, post haste.  His female companion Libre is not quite as smart, but much more food/heat motivated.  She won't get off the nice warm/dry platform until she is pretty sure it is feeding time.

I realize that a certain amount of fear is necessary to keep one safe and dry and fed, but I object to the type of advertising that appeals to that very base emotion.  It can be very negative and misleading, and while I feel bad about getting poor Nacho's heart rate up every morning/evening that I venture down to the basement, I still  need to get the laundry done!