Quit with all the Bureaucratic Busy Work!

     Writing my last post accomplished a few things for me.  As usual it killed time and kept me from doing household chores while still letting me feel like I did something.  It also highlighted for me something that I've kind of suspected for a while, which is that our government as it was designed by the framework of the Constitution isn't supposed to be doing nearly as much as it does.  A good analogy would be something like how in the private sector there are certain industries- like manufacturing- where the people working in that field are supposed to constantly be moving and doing stuff and if those workers choose instead to sit around talking and eating all the time the industry will suffer as a result because less stuff will get made.  The opposite of those industries are ones- like being a doctor or a 911 dispatcher- where the best case scenario is for the people working in those jobs is to not do much of anything at all because if they can have a boring and lazy work day it's probably because people don't have any need for their services.  Paying assembly line workers according to their productivity and the amount of output they are able to generate is a perfectly reasonable way of doing things- it fits right in there with the whole concept of capitalism as perfection if that's the style of economic policy that gives you a hard on.

     The point I think too many of the die hard capitalist fans are missing is that it is also perfectly acceptable and reasonable to pay people just for being there in case they are needed to do something- even if they end up not needing to do anything at all.  It is this constant and overwhelming desire to increase the productivity of everyone in relation to their compensation that has seriously created some problems as a result of everybody running around trying to make themselves look busy enough to earn their paycheck.  If you've ever worked on an assembly line you'll get what I'm saying, because you'll understand that it helps productivity to do the right action over and over again quickly.  All that happens when you do the wrong thing, because you're trying to look busy while the boss is watching, is you fuck something up.  Then everybody has to stand around doing NOTHING while your screw up gets fixed.

     While examining just what it is that the President is supposed to be doing with his or her time while we're paying them to be the President I came to the conclusion that, at least according to the Constitution, the answer is not much.  Like a doctor or a 911 dispatcher there are plenty of situations in which the President might end up being busier than a one legged man in an ass kicking contest, but in the main it would be perfectly reasonable to expect he or she to be just hanging out in the Oval Office sipping on some tea and reading a book or watching TV.  The things that he or she is responsible for doing during the busy times might influence what they were reading or watching- CIA reports and CSPAN instead of a Tom Clancy novel and RHONJ for example- but either way they could totally be sitting on their ass (wearing pajama pants) and that would be fine.

     The idea of this offends the shit out of people whose experience, skills, and chosen profession require them to be on their feet and moving the entire time they're on the clock.  Even those of whose workday looks exactly like the President's could, but who pay other people to work and move almost all the time that they're paying them for, get incredibly pissed off when they think that someday we could end up with a President who spends almost their entire 4 years in office collecting cash- that we're forced to pay them in the form of taxes- for nothing more than just being there.  This outrage doesn't just apply to the President either, it starts there and extends down to the lowliest government employee, because the idea that we're paying these people full time pay for part time or no work makes the blood boil.  Hence the pressure to either privatize as much of government as possible so that we can pay less by paying these people to only do the work we need done on a contract basis and not pay them when they aren't doing anything, and the pressure to make the people in those positions that can't be privatized DO SOMETHING DAMMIT, even if it's just busy work.  The whole "If you've got time to lean you've got time to clean." philosophy is just stupid if the area you work in is already clean, or if there is another person whose job it is to do that cleaning and your doing it screws them out of being able to work.

     Thanks to all this pressure that is put on government and it's employees to look busy so they can earn their paychecks we've ended up with a government that, at every level, is full of people looking for more shit they can do while one of their bosses is looking in their direction.  Thanks to the requirements for transparency in government there is always the possibility that at least one boss is looking unless those employees are in the bathroom, and even then there is probably someone outside the door timing them and figuring up how much that person is getting paid to take a dump.  In the quest for more busy work, a whole lot of government workers have hit upon the idea to either spend their time generating massive amounts of unnecessary paperwork or perking up their ears and responding every time they hear somebody mutter that "there oughta be a law."

     The amount of paper that has been generated, and the number of laws, restrictions, and do's and do not's that have been enacted to tell us how we're supposed to be doing EVERYTHING- just as it applies within the confines of our borders alone- has got to rival the pile that represents every religious scripture and doctrine ever created, for every religion ever practiced by anyone,  in all of human history everywhere on the globe by now.  Seriously, the US Federal Tax Code runs about 1000 pages longer than the average King James Bible, and that pile of documents only addresses the ways that we as citizens are supposed to meet our obligation to fund the Federal government through the paying of taxes.  The Bible, questionable as I may be about it's necessity and how factually accurate it is, at least serves as a complete list of how followers of the religions that use it as a reference are supposed to think about and act in every single aspect of their daily lives from birth to death.  The Bible does all that and still leaves space for a bunch of entertaining stories to illustrate the value of doing what you're told to do and avoiding the stuff you're not.  The number of people who find the tax code to be a fascinating and entertaining read could probably be counted on one hand with fingers left over.

     The laws aren't any better than the tax code.  We have 535 Congressmen and women, I have no idea how many State versions of Congresspeople, even more County, City, Township, and Special Boards officials whose jobs are equivalent to those of  Congresspeople; all of whom are getting paid to get up and go to work invested with the power to create and enact laws by majority vote that the people who pay their salaries have to follow unless they want to face a penalty of some kind.  A shitload of these people are showing up for work every day and either hearing about or thinking up some version of "there oughta be a law" and deciding to make one up and vote on whether to pass it.  The result is a crazy number of laws that tell people what to do and what not to do- everything from it being illegal to keep an alligator in a bathtub to every man, woman, and child must be covered by a health insurance policy or pay a fine unless they've got a really good reason not to.  I know, I know- for every stupid law there is a stupid person who did or didn't do the thing the law is designed to prevent or promote, but come on.  The list of do's and do not's has grown so long that your average citizen- hell, even your average insanely smart speed reader with a photographic memory- couldn't possibly read, comprehend, and remember all the ones that apply to them.  The best we can do is hope we aren't doing something the wrong way (or at least we aren't getting caught doing it) and react by trying to defend our actions or inaction if we end up screwing up in some way whether we realized we were or not.  An entire, very lucrative, field of study and employment has sprung from the need we have to be able to turn to someone and have them defend us when we run afoul of one of these laws, and a ton of fees and fines are imposed to help pay for the systems run and operated by people who are hired by government (and whose salaries are paid for with our tax dollars) to enforce all these laws by busting us when we break them and imposing a punishment for it.

     I totally get it that the vast majority of all this busy work and the laws and everything else is government trying to help solve problems for us, but I gotta wonder whether they should really be viewing it as their place and their job to solve all those problems.  Especially when they tackle a big problem by passing laws that only address a tiny part of it and don't really solve anything.  Take that gator law for example, presumably it was written to address the problem that could stem from people owning gators that might eat somebody or the problem that gators are wild animals and shouldn't be owned by people at all because it's not fair to the gator.  Does the don't stick em in a bathtub law really solve the bigger problem?  Is the gator less likely to eat people if they get put in a swimming pool instead of a bathtub, or is it okay and more fair to have your own personal pet gator that you took out of it's natural habitat if you let it live in a cement Koi pond?  Even if the only problem that the law was intended to solve was the fact that gators will inevitably outgrow a bathtub, why not let the gator and the person who put them in the tub figure that out for themselves?  Chances are that if they don't work it out wisely, then the punishment imposed for violating the law against putting them in a tub isn't going to be satisfactory to whoever gets eaten by the gator eventually.  As a lesser included offense it's pretty lame and unnecessary.  As the only relevant charge if gator in the tub eats somebody it's really lame, and completely unenforceable if the person who put the gator there in the first place is the same idiot that got eaten.  There probably won't be enough of them left to charge, and even if there is they've got much bigger worries than a piddly fine for improper gator storage.  The fine for that probably represents less money than the line item on their hospital for bandages does.


     I feel like if all these people really feel like they have to stay busy doing something, and we as citizens are going to support this point of view, then they should be divvying up their time to spend part of it reviewing all the laws that have already been passed by their level of government to see if those laws accomplished what they were supposed to and solved the problems they were supposed to solve.  It would be really helpful if every law they passed had a section explaining what it's purpose was- what the problem was that it was trying to solve- and detailed, specific information about how it was supposed to do that.  If it was written clearly why a law was being proposed and passed then it would be a lot easier to figure out whether it was working.  It should be feasible for anyone who is hoping to get a job making or enforcing laws to read and understand all the laws that already existed before they started doing the job, in addition to their other duties.  Instead of just patching existing laws that didn't work to solve the problem they were created to solve the goal should always be to either repeal, repeal and replace, or leave it alone because there isn't a better idea that everybody can agree on right now.  Another important thing is that while the broadest reasonable scope for understanding all the details of a problem should be considered when crafting laws to address that problem, and laws should be passed to address as many of the component parts of the problem as legislators can agree upon, the overall problem should be specific to one basic issue and those issues should be dealt with individually.  Human reproduction is one issue, moving humans around from place to place via a system of transportation is a totally different issue.  They should be tackled separately and independently of each other.

     Which brings me to my next point;  Anybody who is eligible to serve in government or work in a government job is a grown ass man or woman.  Bribery and trading favors has a place in getting children- or adults who are lazy or stupid- to do something that they don't want, or see the sense of, to do, but it has no place in governing and making rules that people you're supposed to be representing and advocating for have to follow.  Either you're there to make decisions and impose rules that are in the best interests of the people you represent or you're not.  You don't get to say for them that you'll give up this thing that is in their best interest in exchange for something else unrelated that is even better for them.  You vote for the things that are good or neutral for most of the people you represent and against the things that are bad or unnecessary for them.  If you really don't know which is which, here's a thought- ask them.  If they know the answer themselves they'll probably be more than happy to tell you.  If your vote combined with all the others isn't enough to get the result that you want then you go back to your constituents and tell them that you're sorry, but the support just wasn't there for it that day and you'll try again next time.  Frankly, if a whole lot of people are voting no because the thing being voted upon is unnecessary for the people that they represent then that problem ought to be kicked back down to a lower level of government to address, but that's something for another day.

     Related to that last point about bribery and favors is this point- getting reelected or getting to stay in your position has zero to do with the job that we pay government workers to do.  Sure as shit with elected positions the public is going to be judging you based upon the job you're doing and the votes that you're casting, but that doesn't mean that you get to cast your votes in a way that is beneficial to the people who can give you the most money for your next campaign or create opportunities to cast votes that will be popular with a lot of voters whether they are successful or not if the laws are unnecessary or don't actually solve any problems.  Wasting time on trying to make laws that one set of your constituents want imposed on another set just to win the votes of people who care about something that isn't a problem for them is not what you should be collecting a paycheck for, especially if you know that legislation has no chance of passing or being upheld as constitutional.  Introducing and voting on legislation that awards special perks to a portion of your constituency at the expense of another portion in exchange for votes or donations from the folks you're favoring is bullshit too if it doesn't address a real problem and contribute towards fixing it in a way that works for all the people you're supposed to be representing.  If it is a problem that can't be solved to the satisfaction of everybody involved then you should probably be kicking it back down to a level where it can or letting it work itself out.  At the very least you should be erring on the side of supporting the side that benefits or does no harm the most people rather than the side that will reap the most benefit if that side is in the minority.


     To be quite frank, we're now over 200 years in to this experiment on a system of government that is supposed to be "by the people, for the people." and a lot of things have changed since it started.  The limitations imposed by distance and poor methods for government officials to communicate with the people they are supposed to represent have been addressed in a big way by advances in technology.  With the advent of just the internet we're no longer confined by a reality that requires us to elect or hire the person we think will be the best for the job we're asking them to do and then send them off hoping they don't screw it up before the next time comes along that we can tell them what we want by casting our votes.  A vote is a simple yes or no, it gives the elected the power to tell us what they think we want or should want to hear, and our only available response that we know they have to pay attention to is a one word answer.  That supposedly implies that we either totally agree with them or we don't agree with anything that they said.  In theory our ability to write, call, email, and send lobbyists to continue and expand the narrative with them while they are in office is supposed to ensure that their behavior is responsive to our needs and reactive to our wishes, but the power to control the information about what they are basing their decisions and actions upon is left completely in their hands.

     There just isn't a good reason for this when the possibility for them communicating more regularly and directly with each of us exists.  Within one more generation there will be almost no one left who is not familiar with how to use a computer, or social networking, or navigate a website and exchange communications via email or take a multiple choice poll.  We're almost at the point where we can really start to gauge what it is that people want their representative government to be doing for them and measuring how much support there is for different courses of action.  We're close to being ready to judge for ourselves whether most of the things that our is government taking upon itself to decide for us are things that majority of us want to have decided for us, and what level we want them decided at.  We were never supposed to be treated like children that government was responsible for parenting, and it's time for us to start being included in the discussions about ourselves in a meaningful and impactful way.  Even though we're not all completely ready to do this, it's time for our government to start preparing for the day that we are and letting all of us know that it is coming, and that we should be getting ourselves ready to participate.

I could run for President.

     My 35th birthday is coming up soon, and I haven't quite decided how I feel about that yet.  For the most part I don't think I really have to form a solid opinion about it because it's going to happen no matter what I think about it.  Still, it is a bit of a milestone birthday, so I figure I ought to at least acknowledge this one.  Since I can't decide whether I want to celebrate the fact that I'm getting older or not I thought maybe I should celebrate something about this anniversary of my birth that definitely is a positive thing.  Turns out that there aren't a whole lot of guaranteed positives to turning 35, but I did come up with one- I could run for President if I wanted to!  It's a stretch, I know, but seriously it's always good when you have one more option available to you regardless of whether you want to use it or not.

No way in hell would I ever run for President of course- from everything that I've seen it looks like the President has to spend entirely too much time wearing pants for that to be a dream of mine- but I can go ahead and indulge in some fantasies about what I would want to do if I were to suck it up about the all the time pants thing and run for/win the job.  I mean, come on, I'm a total politics junkie so it's inevitable that I've got at least a few ideas.  Probably a scary amount of ideas that will turn this into a book that nobody is every going to read instead of a blog post that no one is ever going to read.  Maybe so many ideas that I'll get bored with thinking about them all and trying to type them all out, and I'll give up and leave this unpublished when I move on to something else.

So, let's see.  How to go about this in an organized fashion?  I could just make it a listicle with cute pictures and a slide show or something with an eye towards making it funny, but that's not really my style at all.  I don't even know how to do the slide show thing, nor do I have any interest in finding out how to.  I could just start typing and see what comes out, but past experience has taught me that can lead to some really weird and convoluted results.  I suppose I ought to figure out just what I think the President's job is supposed to be and then go from there.

Luckily there's this handy dandy reference guide called the US Constitution that I can use as a jumping off point.  Here's a link in case anybody wants to read it, but I'm not going to add the text of the whole thing cause it's pretty long and I'm verbose enough on my own:  The Constitution.  Specifically it's Article II that deals with the President, and I will take a minute to summarize what his or her job is according to this most important of documents.  Let me start by saying that most of this is stuff the President can do, not necessarily stuff they have to do.  First, the President is in charge of the military, except for the National Guard because they belong to the individual states, unless the Guard is needed for something outside of the country, in which case the President becomes their boss too.  Second, he or she is given the authority to make the heads of different departments share their opinions about the stuff their department handles with him or her.  This implies that there are supposed to be different departments that handle stuff, but it's a little unclear as to what any of those departments are or whether they actually fall under the control of the President.  It almost sounds like the departments are supposed to be run independently and make their own policies as long as they keep the President up to date on what they are doing if he or she wants to know.  Third, the President gets to issue pardons and reprieves to people convicted of violating Federal laws.  So he or she can hand out get out of jail free or let's pretend this never happened cards.

The Constitution starts a new paragraph here, so I think I will too.  Next up the President is supposed to make treaties with the leaders of other countries and then ask members of Congress whether 2/3 of them approve of the terms in that treaty.  Fifth, the President is supposed to appoint people do jobs like Ambassadors and Supreme Court Justices.  He or she can also fill government jobs that are supposed to be filled by Congress or somebody else temporarily if the job is left unfilled when Congress or whoever was supposed to fill it heads off on vacation.  Sixth, the President has to report to Congress at least once a year about the State of the Union and offer his or her suggestions as to what Congress needs to be working on while they meet.  Seventh, The President has to receive representatives of other countries who want to meet with someone for the purpose of doing business with the United States or discussing how to deal with issues that affect both countries by taking actions inside or outside of the US.  Eighth, The President gets to order Congress back into session to keep working if there is something that they really need to be doing that they've dropped the ball on because they can't come to an agreement about it.  There's something mentioned near the end of Article II about granting all the officers commissions, but I have no idea what that means really beyond the fact that it's a military thing.

Wow, after reading through that it becomes really clear that the guys who decided on the wording of the Constitution really were regular people.  They really were just trying to cobble together a new system of government that would work with everything that was already going on in our country, rather than trying to create a brand new plan to create the ideal society and form of government.  Which sucks for all of us cause we've spent all the time since trying to fix the stuff that was already wrong and attempting to figure out what those guys meant by the stuff that they wrote in the instruction manual.  Nice try guys, but way to be a bunch of slackers!

Turns out that maybe the pants thing isn't the only reason that I probably don't want to be President.  Just going off of the job description alone instead of what different people have interpreted and expanded it to mean over the years it doesn't look like it's a job that's up my alley.  Far from being the most powerful person in the country, it looks like the President isn't supposed to be doing much of anything.  I honestly could get in a lot of pants free time if I were to get elected and just stuck to what the Constitution says I have to do, but I wouldn't get a hell of a lot of control over anything that goes on here in the country I was supposedly the leader of.  That makes sense when you consider what the founders were trying to accomplish by setting up the whole system of checks and balances- it wasn't supposed to matter what the President or any one person thought unless most of the people they were making decisions for agreed with them.  It wasn't supposed to be easy for things to be changed if the people they were being changed for didn't want them to be.  The whole clusterfuck of government was supposed to work slowly and inefficiently if there wasn't a demand and support for it to work quickly.  Sounds like the President was mostly there as the face  we showed the rest of the world whenever we had to participate in things that took us beyond our own borders, and  acting as a human repository for information about how things were going.  The job seems to have been intended to be mostly about studying and advising based upon what was learned from that study rather than doing anything.  He or she really ought to be pretty bored most of the time as long as we aren't at war or in a huge crisis or something.  If they quit all the appearances and campaign related stuff they'd probably even have time to personally read all the different reports and write the treaties and things themselves.  Now the job is starting to sound pretty cool again, cause I'd love to be able to read and write stuff everyday for $400K a year.

Even so, I'm not terribly interested in foreign policy or military strategy so President still isn't my bag.  I'm more interested in dealing with the issues that are affecting me and my neighbors here at home so I should probably stick to just writing about how I'd like to see things running in my own personal version of Utopia and hoping somebody else hits upon the same ideas or reads mine and decides to run with them.

Fiscally Conservative Socially Liberal Progressive Pro-Choice Atheist Socialist Libertarian Democrat.

     The other night I wrote a post about the use of labels in politics, and then I decided that I would expand on that tonight by trying to label myself.  I wanted to do it because I spend a lot of time being irritated and frustrated when other people try to label me based upon what they think they know about my views on various political issues after reading something I've posted about a specific issue, or a small part of an issue.  I don't so much mind being labelled as I mind being labelled incorrectly because some idiot makes the assumption that because I believe something about one thing I must automatically subscribe wholeheartedly to a much larger theory or ideology.  That is rarely if ever the case.  In reality my political views and opinions on different unrelated political issues run the gamut and make me one giant walking contradiction.  I strongly suspect that most thinking people are a lot like me in that respect, and that's what bugs the shit out of me when it comes to the fact that our government is almost exclusively run by two dominant political parties instead of by a diverse collection of authentic individuals whose opinions and voting patterns are all over the map.  I don't feel like I'm getting very good representation for my taxation with the way things are running right now.

     One thing that I can't complain too much about is the fact that our government is so dysfunctional as to barely manage to do anything at all these past few years.  I'm honestly a fan of that, cause I'm more in favor of non intervention whenever it's feasible- at least until all the evidence is in.  The idea that the goal of government at every level is to keep coming together and passing laws and Doing Stuff like that's the only thing it was designed to do makes me cringe.  Hey, just because something is possible does not necessarily make it wise or even better than doing nothing at all.  This type of thinking usually has me falling in line with and nodding along with the Libertarians who scream about us needing a government small enough to fit in- whatever.  I think that our government is bloated, our lawbooks are seriously in need of editing, and oh my Aunt Jemima our tax code needs to be rewritten in plain English.  Every time I hear about a 1000 page bill that was introduced in Congress I want to go walk through a forest apologizing to all the trees.  Don't confuse me with a tree hugger though, cause me and the plant life have some major differences that go way back.

     I will go so far as to say that we ought to be taking an awful lot of care not to screw up the environment.  While I wouldn't cry over a Cockroach Holocaust I do appreciate the fact that humans won't have the option of buggin out and retiring on another planet anytime soon so we've got to try and make what we have last for a while.  Not shitting where we eat is a very good policy for everybody to embrace, and if we need a little kick in the pants from The Man then so be it, cause I don't want my kids or grandkids to be stuck swallowing some other idiot's shit in a hundred years.  Last time I checked the planet didn't have a bank account that we could deposit payments into, so it's important to remember we're not actually buying all those resources that we're using- we're just borrowing them- so we don't get to break stuff we can't repair.  Not to say that the planet needs us to repair it, I suspect it's perfectly capable of repairing itself, but it's likely to kill us all off before it really gets down to the business of doing it.  That would suck cause at this moment I don't really feel like dying, and I don't want to sentence all my possible descendants to a horrible death either.

     Truthfully I don't even like calling myself a Democrat since I have so much antipathy towards the two party system, but I'll go ahead and own that one since thus far I can count the number of candidates from other parties that I've voted for on one hand.  A couple of them I voted for multiple times, but still.  On this one I walk like a duck and quack like a duck, so let's face it I'm at least a fucking water fowl of some kind that's spent a lot of time around ducks.  I do want to make it clear that a good chunk of my Democratic votes have been less for the candidate I was casting the ballot for and more my way of making sure the other guy got fewer votes than it took to win.  I don't so much have a problem with most Democrats individually as I do with big groups of them led by other Democrats like Nancy Pelosi.  That chick is way too into stomping around sticking her nose into shit.

     My latest political "crush" is Bernie Sanders, and it burns my ass that he's flying the Democratic banner after years as a real life Independent.  So far I haven't heard anything the man has said that sets my teeth on edge, and that's a pretty impressive feat cause I am a total reactionary hot head.  I keep that in check by making sure to avoid acting on my first impressions whenever possible, because after the initial blowup I usually examine the situation and find out that I live somewhere in the middle ground.  I don't see a whole lot of black or white, but there's an awful lot of gray in my landscape.  Most of Sanders' Socialist stuff I can definitely get down with, which seems totally contradictory with my Libertarian small government side, but that's probably because I have my own ideas about what socialism really means in the context of a country like ours.

     I imagine that if he were to ask me, I'd have some tough questions for Sanders about just how he plans to go about paying for all the ideas he has for his Socialist policies.  It's possible that he already has answers to those questions that I could find on the internet somewhere, but it's still early enough in the game that I'm not in a big hurry to go looking for them.  For the moment it's enough that I like him a hell of a lot better than Hillary and I haven't heard enough good stuff about his other competition to knock him off of his pedestal yet.  I'm definitely Progressive enough to want to see some big changes in some of our policies, even if I'm not a huge fan of more laws restricting our freedoms as individuals.  I'm enough of a cheap ass to qualify as Fiscally Conservative because I want to know for damn sure how we're going to pay the bills for stuff without whipping out the credit card.

     Thanks to the Atheist label it ought to go without saying how I feel about the legislation of morality.  Its totally possible to be moral and good with or without the influence of religion, but it really comes down to a matter of mind yo business and leave me the hell alone to mind mine.  Go ahead and ask if someone wants your opinion or your help, but if they tell you no then back the fuck off.  This should apply to individual citizens and to government as far as I'm concerned.  Whether you're certain that you're right and someone else is wrong or not the passage of time and examination of the end result is always going to be the best judge of that.  Legislating in the hopes of preventing moral decay has a colossally bad historical track record since as far as I can tell a whole bunch of different societies have tried it a whole bunch of different ways and Utopia still hasn't popped up anywhere.  If it had then I'd be in favor of buying plane tickets for all the people who wanted to bail on the US to go live there instead, but I'd probably still stick around here.  Another point worth mentioning about the Atheist label- I don't go in whole hog on the Big Bang Theory or even the entire Theory of Evolution.  I don't say either of them is completely true or completely false, because the fact that I'm an Atheist has nothing to do with having an opinion about them either way.  Being an Atheist just means I don't buy the God Theory in any of it's various forms.  That one I reject, the others I'm ambivalent towards because in reality I'm not a huge science geek.  I took the classes I had to take, I've read some stuff that interested me during my lifetime, and beyond that I don't think about it much because I don't care.  I've got stuff to do while I'm alive and pondering the mysteries of the universe isn't real high on my list of priorities.

     My number one biggest pet peeve when it comes to people trying to legislate morality has got to be hands down the whole abortion debate.  It's unfathomable to me that it should even be a debate until after we've debated the bigger question of whether anybody owes it to somebody else to do everything they possibly can to preserve a life.  Generous and selfless as I may sometimes choose to, or feel guilty enough, to act- if I really thought that the entire purpose for my existing was to help a brother out whether I felt like it or not I'd be checking out at that moment.  The Koolaid would be getting swallowed and I absolutely wouldn't want to live on this planet anymore.  That's just truth.  No matter how much of my time and effort I end up expending for the benefit of others I get through the day by knowing that I'm here either for my own benefit or just by random happenstance, not because I'm a vessel for carrying the species forward into the future or a servant to the needs and whims of other people.

     I think I covered all of my labels at least a little bit, except for maybe the Socially Liberal one.  That's the one I wear when I'm arguing with people about equality for all and things like gay rights and not treating black people like shit.  I'm not sure this one fully deserves it's own description, because it's more of an extension of the reasons that some of the other labels fit me.  I mean, yes, I do strongly believe that there isn't any major difference between any of us that justifies not everyone being treated the same, but I probably wouldn't be in favor of things like Affirmative Action and Gay Marriage if not for the fact that those things came along as patches to fix things that prior generations of Americans fucked up big time.  I'd have much rather seen government get out of the business of marriage altogether than see the right to get married expanded to include gay couples because I don't love the idea that a huge amount of law-an entire subset of our court system- was made up out of thin air just to get government involved in a relationship between two individuals even before either of them considers asking for an outside opinion on their relationship.  I get that there are benefits to the individuals in a marriage, but I'm less on board with the idea that government has a compelling interest in promoting the institution.  As far as Affirmative Action goes, I hate the fact that it was even necessary, and I'd much rather see minority groups judged in direct comparison with each other and everyone else than see them given extra credit in order to be deemed eligible to compete.  The jury is still out on whether Affirmative Action actually did anybody any favors or not.  I do hope I live to see the day that minorities really are viewed as equal to their majority counterparts though.  That would be very cool.

More Thoughts on Abortion

     I know it seems like I spend an unhealthy amount of time worrying and arguing with people about whether women in the US should have the right to have an abortion, since I've never had one and probably never will.  I just can't seem to walk away from this issue and say that it doesn't affect me so it's not my problem or my fight though, much as I might feel like that is exactly what a lot of the people speaking out on the other side should do.  Maybe because I have daughters, or maybe because I do still have an operational uterus so there is always that slim chance that it could apply to me one day, and damn wouldn't it suck if the whole mess got decided in a way that limits my options while I was ignoring it.

     Here in the US we have a really good thing going on the whole freedom front.  Sure there have been a lot of encroachments over the years when people who've believed that to govern meant to dictate and control managed to get some legislative power, but the fresh start we got has given us a pretty unique take on the rights of individuals.  If we ever get to a point where we get it through everyone's thick skulls that each individual is exactly the same as every other individual in the amount of freedom they are supposed to have then we'll be pretty impressive.  Unfortunately we aren't quite there yet, because we've still got some antiquated notions about some people being more "peopleish" than others to get past.

     That's the idea that I'm back here spouting off about abortion because of.  What's really bugging me about this whole debate is that it boils down to everybody is equal, unless you are a woman and you happen to get pregnant.  At that moment, laws prohibiting abortion cast women into a role of being less than a free and independent person because she also happens to be a convenient carrying case for another potential person.  Then her right to only think about herself and act in her own best interests is thrown out the window in order to protect the best interests of the person who has taken up residence inside of her body.  The idea of that goes against every single law that we have on the books concerning the interactions between individuals.  Pro-life supporters speechify about how every single individual is guaranteed the right to a life, but the reality is that under none of our laws is anyone guaranteed that right if the cooperation of another person is required to achieve or sustain that life.

     If you read the constitution and examine all the parts where individuals are mentioned, you'll see that we are given rights to be treated a certain way by our government, and certain responsibilities to live up to in how we behave towards our government and it's representatives.  Absolutely no mention is made about what we can expect from or owe to each other.  As far as the creators of our government were concerned that really wasn't their business.  A process for creating laws to punish unwanted behaviors was created, and that is what government has done since.  No matter how many laws have been passed in the interim by government at any level, almost none of them penalizes not giving a fuck about your fellow citizens in a way that applies to every individual, man, woman, and child.  The only power granted to government that implies a legislators role is to shape the morality of our society is the power to act in the interest of the General Welfare, but that means to create laws and policies that are beneficial to citizens generally, not individually.  It cannot be construed as an interest in ensuring every life conceived results in a life born and lived for a while because there isn't a clear benefit that our society as a whole derives from that.  Will all the pregnancies resulting in births be good for us overall or bad?  No way to tell- we can't even say definitively that all the babies the have been born are more good than bad for our society.

     All of the laws that pertain to preserving the right of individuals to life apply equally to all citizens.  No one, from the smallest child to the oldest adult, can choose to kill another person just because they want to.  Every person who does so has committed the crime of murder.  Whether our government, through the use of our criminal justice system, chooses to hold that person responsible and punish them for that crime is up to the people who act as representatives of our government, and a lot of different defenses for having committed murder are recognized as being either justifiable or not worth prosecuting.  If a two year old child shoots his mother in a Walmart he is not going to be charged and imprisoned for a crime, but the mother's death will still be considered a homicide.  If a man with the mental capacity of a five year old rapes a woman he may be found not guilty by reason of diminished capacity and released into the care of someone who is tasked with making sure he doesn't end up in a situation that might lead to him doing it again to someone else, but the woman is still a victim of rape.  If a woman shoots her husband to stop him from beating their child to death she might be judged not guilty because she was defending the life of another person, but it doesn't change the fact that she knowingly murdered her husband.  Just because an action has a victim doesn't automatically mean that the person who took that action is judged a criminal in a court of law.  Adversely, we have a concept known as a "victimless crime" where a person is punished for a behavior that is viewed as having a negative impact on the general welfare of all the people in our society even if no specific individuals suffered as a result of the actions the criminal took.

     We recognize that there are situations where it is justifiable for one individual to inflict harm upon or even end the life of another without there being a need or reason for government to prohibit or punish that act.  Some things are recognized as being so "sacred," so integral to an individual's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that a person is authorized to take whatever action they see fit in order to protect them.  Castle Laws, Stand Your Ground Laws, and the like even go so far as to extend this protection to objects such as a house, a car, or a spot of ground in a public place.  The individual right of each person to do whatever the hell they want within the confines of their own personal space is held as supreme over any other right.

     Space does not get any more personal than the inside of one's own body.  Freedom from unwanted intrusion into ones' own body is recognized for every single competent adult in the country without consultation with or permission from anyone else.  Except for the freedom to insist that your body belongs to to you and you alone when it comes to pregnancy and abortion.  Then all of a sudden, the rights of the unborn child must be considered, must be paramount, must be protected regardless of the wants or needs of the person whose body surrounds them.  Suddenly there is a person that must be thought about whose rights are more important that anyone else's- at least for 240 days or so.

     Does this really make sense and fit with the rest of our laws and policies concerning an individual's right to life?  I honestly don't think that it does.  To support that idea requires a suspension of disbelief more intense than is necessary to sit through any 1950's era Creature Feature screening.  To believe this to be not only true but to be right means that you have to wholeheartedly and without a doubt believe that for exactly 240 days out of every person's life they are so special as to be exempt from not only the laws of our country but also the laws of nature.  The moment they are delivered from the womb they revert back to being simply equal to everyone else, but until then they should be a protected class of citizens who are granted extra rights and have no responsibilities to anyone.

     You may have noticed that I did refer to a fetus/unborn baby/whatever as a person in the last paragraph.  I did that because for a lot of people whether or not life begins at conception, viability, birth or somewhere in between is the crux of the whole debate over whether abortion should be a legal medical option for pregnant women.  I understand that for some people do honestly believe and strongly agree with the assertion that life begins at conception. Personally I don't necessarily agree with that belief, but the great thing about freedom is that I don't have to and neither them nor I can force the other person to change our minds.  To me it doesn't matter whether life begins at conception and it is in fact a separate and distinct individual "living" and growing inside that womb.  The fact that cannot be disputed and isn't up for debate is that the woman that womb is inside of is a person, and the womb in question is absolutely 100% a part of HER.  Just as her leg, her brain, her heart and her blood are hers.  The person inside of the womb may very well NEED to stay there in order to survive, but the woman that the womb lives inside of does not NEED anything from the child, or even from the womb itself.  She derives absolutely no benefit whatsoever from having the womb unless she wants to grow a child inside of it, and draws no benefits and a great deal of risk from the process of a child growing inside of her if she chooses to allow that to happen.

     The real crux of the debate is whether laws prohibiting abortion, either aimed at the woman seeking an abortion or the doctor performing it, are constitutional.  Right off the bat these laws don't pass the sniff test because they cannot be said to apply to everyone equally.  The argument that they do apply equally to all women, or all pregnant women, or all doctors who perform abortions doesn't hold water because that argument is trying to turn one piece of fruit in a basket into an apple so that it looks different than all the other oranges.  The question isn't whether women have the right to have an abortion or whether doctors have the right to perform them, it is whether women have a duty to protect the life of anyone other than themselves.  If women are judged as having the legal responsibility to do that for one person- the potential child within their womb, then why just that one person and not all people?  Why just pregnant women and not all people being held legally responsible for acting in whatever way preserves the life of all other people for as long as humanly possible?  This is the question that has to be answered, and it has to be answered in the same way that we answer the bigger question of whether we really want to legislate a moral obligation to do something for someone besides ourselves?

     Any time government inserts itself into the personal lives and decisions of individual citizens, either by telling us that we cannot do something or by forcing us to do something, the slippery slope is brought up in the debate surrounding whether that intervention is warranted.  Sometimes the dire eventualities predicted are reasonable and sometimes they are not, it all depends upon how similar the situations being described are.  But definitely, to me, the question of whether or not a woman should have to get permission from the government to end a pregnancy, and whether or not she can be punished for ending one, is one that cannot be answered by asserting that the government has a duty to protect the life of her unborn child without beginning a slide down an incredibly slippery slope.  That answer says to me that the role of our government is to protect and preserve the lives of every citizen even if it requires compelling other citizens to sacrifice of themselves in order to achieve that goal.  If our very bodily organs and systems are deemed under the control of the government, either the federal or state, in order to meet the needs of another person then we're all looking at some very big problems in the future.

      The relationship between mother and child is not special in that it is without comparison.  Biologically it is one "person" who lacks something that another person has, and requires access to that thing in order to survive.  A fetus must, at least for now, have a uterus to grow inside of, and that uterus must form a placenta to which the fetus can attach in order to draw nutrients from the blood of the person that uterus is a part of.  Needing something that can only be found inside the body of another individual is not a life threatening medical condition that is exclusive to developing human babies.  There are people all over the country who need blood, bone marrow, and organs in order to continue living.  The procedures for collecting that blood, bone marrow, and several of those organs are no more invasive or life threatening to the potential donors than pregnancy, labor, and delivery are to women.  Why force women to provide a path to life for fetuses because they are people who deserve a chance to live, and not force everyone to donate blood, bone marrow, and a lung/kidney/part of a liver to other people who need them because the  recipients of those donations deserve a chance to keep living?  Why not at the very least force everyone to release their organs for donation upon their deaths, when they will suffer no risks or consequences from doing so?

     The answer to those questions is that it is not the role of our government to force us to make moral decisions.  It is neither the role of government to punish us for making immoral decisions no matter what rationale leads to those decisions.  As private citizens we are not obligated to care about or extend any kind of aid to anyone, we get to be totally selfish if that's the way we want to be.  Changing that because a portion of our population- even if that portion is a majority- feels that it's the moral thing to do and therefore ought to be the legal requirement edges really close to that line between being a democracy (or a democratic republic) and being a theocracy.  It ought to go without saying that reinventing our government as a theocracy is a really bad idea for all but a very small handful of people, because in a theocracy only 1 religion gets to set all the rules according to their agreed upon interpretation of what the right way to live according to their religion, and everyone must conform explicitly to that interpretation and the laws that stem from it.  I doubt that even Kirk Cameron could manage to avoid punishment for breaking some sort of a law if the leaders of his church became the government tomorrow.  If you have ever felt burdened and treated unfairly because another person or your government has made you do something that you did not want to do that you did not see the necessity of being done, and if you are one of those people who feels a moral obligation to do whatever you can to ensure that our laws protect the unborn's right to life, then stop and think about the hypocrisy of your own thoughts and feelings in relation to what you're asking women be required to do.

     Is there any justification for requiring women to carry a pregnancy to term outside of religion?  In short, no, not unless you are going to require all people to do whatever they are able to give the gift of life to anyone they are physically capable of giving it to.  The fact that pregnancy is a natural consequence of having unprotected sex goes out the window when you counter with the fact that there are natural and man made methods of relieving a woman from the burden of suffering that consequence.  Most actions that humans take have a natural consequence, and we don't prohibit anyone from utilizing medicines, treatments, procedures, or taking other actions to avoid or counteract those consequences even if it means involving another person to assist them somehow.  Playing with fire in an irresponsible manner doesn't preclude someone from being able to call upon the fire department to put out the fire and save them from a burning house.  Sure, putting out the fire could be seen as necessary to protect the lives and property of innocent people around the wrongdoer, but the natural consequence would be to at least let them go ahead and die in the fire they started if they can't get themselves outside.

     If carrying a pregnancy to term is punishment for bad behavior, then what behavior is it punishing- the sex, the fact that it was unprotected, the fact that it resulted in a pregnancy that was not actively being sought, or is it just the fact that a woman dares not to want to be pregnant and give birth to a child?  Do a majority of the people want laws outlawing sex unless it is expressly intended to result in procreation?  Do we want to hand over the authority to seek out and arrest people who are having sex for reasons other than procreation?  Is the crime in having sex without preventing pregnancy through the use of effective birth control?  Again, do we want to give government the authority to investigate who is adequately protecting themselves from pregnancy during every sexual encounter and to punish those who are not?  If the thing we want to discourage by prohibiting it is getting pregnant without planning to then should every male and female who contribute to a pregnancy's existence be interrogated as to whether they intended for it to happen, and face charges if their interrogators don't believe that they did?  Maybe women should begin being questioned monthly as soon as they begin menstruating as to whether they wish to become pregnant and have a child that month and then fined for every month that they answer negatively or be forcibly inseminated if they claim that they do wish to.

     None of what I suggested above should ever be considered a legitimate role of government by anyone who honestly believes in the right to freedom that we are guaranteed by our constitution.  Laws as intrusive as those I have described hypothetically would never be upheld as constitutional if they were written and enforced against someone like Thomas Jefferson or Mitt Romney, or even Sarah Palin.  Anyone like those people, subjected to those types of laws would fight their way all the way to the Supreme Court to see that type of injustice stricken from the laws of our country, and they would win.  Every single living person in our country is supposed to have the same assurance that their rights will be respected by our government, and that if it were them fighting all the way to the Supreme Court to overturn laws like these they would also be assured a win.

     Ultimately it does not matter whether a person is a person from the moment they are conceived or not.  Our laws that govern the actions of people who are not actively acting as authorized representatives of our government aren't there to protect anyone from being unlucky and unable to live without someone else's help.  The government can grant itself the authority to extend help to those in need whenever or wherever it is physically possible to do so, but it does not and cannot require a private citizen to take on that role for no other reason than because it is the nice or "morally right" thing to do.  In the case of people who die as a result of their mother choosing to have them expelled from their womb they were just unlucky enough to have chosen the wrong womb to take up residence in.  It's irrelevant whether the mother made a poor choice that resulted in their being able to be conceived and implant in her womb, the fact still remains that it is hers and she isn't obligated to share it with them just because they need her to.  If there were a way for the rights of both people to be protected by virtue of the mother having the option to transfer the fetus to someone else then refusal on her part to do so might reasonably be punishable by law, but until that is an option the rights of the fetus cannot be judged as being more important than the right of the mother to say "No, I don't want another person in my body."

Big Brother Elections

     In my last post I drew a comparison between our elections process and the Miss America contest.  I'm more than a little disgusted by the fact that this was a reasonable comparison to make, and that there isn't a clearer difference between the paths candidates take getting elected to political office and the paths traveled by contestants participating in and winning beauty pageant.

     Depressing and demoralizing as it is, it's impossible to overlook the fact that the American public is addicted to a certain type of competition, the kind where a big group of people are thrown together in a totally unrealistic situation and forced to battle it out with their fellow competitors while overcoming ridiculous obstacles until someone emerges victorious.  It isn't really even an exclusively American quirk, people everywhere at every point in human history have demonstrated a desire to be entertained by watching other people compete, and the nastier it gets as the competition goes on the more people are enticed to watch.  Whether you're a sports fan, a political junkie, or just a fan of beauty pageants we all love seeing the gladiators and lions fight it out in the arena.

     Accepting the truth that this is just how people, and voters, are got me thinking about whether it would be possible to turn the campaign trail into a reality show that not only satisfies the public desire for a dramatic winner take all competition, but also forces the candidates to live up to the challenge that running for office ought to be about.  That sent me down a rabbit hole where I had to face some of my own stupid guilty pleasures while I recalled all the silly reality tv competitions and series that I've spent time watching over the years.  I'll admit that I am a little bit embarrassed about how much I've cared about the goings on of the characters on some of those shows, but I will not divulge just which shows I've been an avid fan of because I would like to preserve my dignity.

     Obviously some of the more popular iterations of this genre aren't a good fit for something as sacred as our government no matter how frivolous it has gotten lately.  A Real World or Fear Factor type show wouldn't really be the best platform for showcasing the candidates abilities to govern.  I did finally hit upon one show that I think could be adapted to accomplish the goal and still provide the riveting entertainment that we crave so badly.  Big Brother Elections has potential.

     For anyone who managed to miss the show while it was still on the air, the basic concept was that a bunch of random people were isolated in a house together for the duration of the show, had their every move observed by cameras (except in the bathroom) and the footage was aired live in real time on the internet and in compilations of selected scenes each week.  They were also given challenges to complete as individuals and teams and viewers got to watch and see how they did.  Each week, if I recall, viewers were given the opportunity to vote for their favorite cast member and the contestant with the fewest votes was taken out of the house.  Eventually only two were left and viewers voted for a winner between them.

     This has some serious potential when you think about it as a means of getting voters excites and giving them and opportunity to learn about the candidates.  When you think about it, the way our campaign process works hasn't really been updated since the very first elections were held following the adoption of the Constitution (even before that because the idea of electing government officials wasn't a brand new concept developed by our Founding Fathers, it was just a tried and true concept that they tweaked a bit.)  Way back in the day the whole idea of voting for candidates, and even the idea of a representative government at all, we pretty novel for most of the newly established voting public.  Time, distance, and lack of technology demanded that candidates running for office get out and hit the trail the way that they do because otherwise most of the voting public would know doodly squat about them and why they deserved to get elected.  Someone who wanted a shot at an elected position didn't have many options other than to physically go to the voters and repeat over and over again the list of reasons they should be elected.  Low literacy rates and lack of the means to disseminate information on a wide scale meant those repetitions needed to be spoken aloud and in person to every voter willing to listen and possibly be swayed by the candidates words.

     As time went by and technology improved candidates have adopted things like tour buses and air travel, mass mailings and robo calls and the internet to widen their reach and get their words to more voters, but they haven't dropped the habits of repeating the same things over and over again to different groups in different places throughout the campaign.  They are still traveling around trying to make sure they get shake as many hands and kiss as many babies as humanly possible, like those are really the things that they should be doing to convince people they are the best person for the job.  If anything, the words they spout now are even less backed by substance and good ideas than the ones that politicians like Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Roosevelt spouted during their time on the campaign trail.  The whole process has devolved into a never ending series of sound bites, memes, and attack ads with most of the candidates time being spent begging for more money so they can add another stop to their tour or shoot another ad that doesn't really say anything.

     In this day and age it is damn near impossible in the US to find a person who doesn't have at least some kind of access to mass media in one form or another as well as the ability to read or listen to a summary of a message that is delivered via mass media.  There is no legitimate reason for candidates to be out gallivanting across their state or the country visiting voters in person during the campaign process, other than to charm those voters into giving them money.  Our Constitution does have a single word in it that even implies that it is the job of citizens to give individual politicians or political candidates money.  In fact, I'm pretty sure there is something in there about the right to vote and participate in the process by electing politicians being free.  The time for candidates to travel and meet with voters is BEFORE they declare their intention to seek an elected office, while they are making the decision about whether they are really qualified and do represent the views of people other than themselves.  Then they should be getting out there and talking to the people they might someday represent, getting to know them and learning about the issues that affect them, giving them the opportunity to influence the potential candidates beliefs and ideas about things they may not know a lot about.

     By the time a candidate has declared themselves worthy of seeking votes they should be ready to start earning them by demonstrating that they have a firm grasp of all the issues their future constituents care about and a definitive plan for how they will behave in office if they do get elected.  We don't need to meet them and be charmed by them at that point, we need to see them at work and that work should be thinking about and telling us the answers to our questions without the opportunity to shade their answers according to what they think is most likely to win our votes.  Government in general and campaigning specifically is plagued with the problem of too much compromise.  This isn't baseball where the best outcome is achieved by everyone working together as a team, and if it were then we ought to be electing politicians as teams rather than as individuals.  When we cast our vote for a candidate we are telling them that we want them to go to work and do what they said or we believed they would do.  Is that always going to mean that they manage to get the job done?  No, because there are a whole lot of people who voted for other candidates because they wanted them to go and do the exact opposite of what we wanted our guy to do and sometimes those people's views will be the ones represented successfully over ours.  Sometimes there just won't be enough support for anything to get changed at all, but if politicians are really representing the people who voted for them then that is an indicator that the voters weren't ready for anything to change.

     Anyways, after those messages, it's time to get back to the show.  In my little fantasy, all the candidates who are hoping to be considered get quarantined together for the duration of the campaign season.  Right off the bat we get to cut down on the length of the campaign season cause there is no way anyone in their right mind is going to want a Senate seat badly enough to live in near isolation for 16 months or so.  We'd be looking at a campaign season that lasts from maybe the week after Labor Day up until the first week of November, which totally fits in with the attention span of your average citizen.  They all declare themselves at the same time, and they all move into the "house" (The house can be an island, a deserted army barracks, a ranch, whatever, as long as it's closed off from the rest of the world.)  I suppose you could have more than one house for candidates from different parties or representing different stances on the major issues, but it's not necessary.  In all honesty it wouldn't be a bad idea to throw ideologically opposed candidates together in close quarters and see what happens.  No campaign staff, no advisers, no lobbyists, just the candidates and their stuff.  Definitely the live streaming of the video on the internet stays, because there is certainly a portion of the voting public that wants to see whether the candidate is somebody they could picture themselves hanging out with, plus it cuts down on their ability to paste on a fake persona just for the purposes of charming voters.  The competitions and challenges could be a series of debates about all the major issues, and there's no reason not to keep the whole vote from home by telephone or tweet thing too.  I don't think removing unpopular candidates from the house is really necessary or wise though, I'd favor leaving them in and letting the vote tallies serve as polling data to track which issues and positions on those issues people are most concerned with.

     Throughout the campaign and the show I think that the candidates should be allowed access to the internet and sent questions by viewers and voters that they have to answer.  All of those communications should be public, and candidates shouldn't have any access to media or data regarding how their answers are being perceived by the public at large beyond what they can see for themselves on their twitter or facebook feeds.  Private communication with friends and family should be allowed, but in the same way that those communications are handled when they take place between a military member or prisoner and the outside world, which means subject to review by an authority with restricted information redacted.  I'd also like to see all the bills that are currently being voted on by the current holder of the office the candidate is seeking being given to the candidates and letting them vote on it while they're in the house so people can observe them doing the job- reading the bill, researching (on their own) any questions it causes them to ask, and deciding whether they support it or not.  Of course those votes won't count unless the candidate also happens to be an incumbent, but it doesn't hurt to make them show us how they'd handle the real thing.

      At the end of the show- Election Day- the viewers and all the other voters should go to the polls and the candidates should stay in the house until all the votes are tallied.  Big reveal when the winner is announced, bring them all out to where their families are standing by waiting, and ta da!  We have a winner!  Voters in the polls get a ballot with all the candidates names on it, and cast their vote based upon whatever criteria they desire whether they watched the show or not.  Candidates can still identify themselves by party, but I suspect that when you take the candidates away from the party for the length of the campaign season that will be less of an influencing factor.  Candidates will start getting elected either on merit or by virtue of sheer luck as voters play eenie meenie mienie moe with candidates they didn't bother to learn anything about (not much difference there.)

      That sums it up, now I've got to get busy pitching this idea to all the different elected officials and networks.  Wait, scratch that.  This shouldn't be a network show at all, it should be aired on PBS!

Labeling in Politics

     Being an active follower of and participant in the political process sometimes requires a person to spend time not only thinking about all the various issues that get discussed and policies that candidates and elected officials are influencing through legislation, but also thinking about which political labels apply to you as an individual and what those labels truly mean.

     Labels are a way of sorting things into groups that share common characteristics, and the purpose that they are supposed to serve is to simplify the process of sorting things out.  Labels can be used to sort objects, by grouping them according to different criteria depending on what you plan to do with them after they've been sorted.  You might label and sort your silverware drawer so that every time you open it hoping to find a spoon the spoons are all right there ready to be grabbed and used.  Labels can be used to sort people, grouping them according to a common characteristic depending on what you want them to do as a group.  You might arrange a family by height in order to make sure that everyone's face can be seen in the family portrait.  It usually makes sense to use labels in order to break up a task that would otherwise be overwhelming, but I'm starting to wonder whether the use of labeling in our political process is really simplifying anything at all.

     One label that I admit applies to me, especially in relation to politics, is Idealist.  I strongly believe in the fanciful notion that it is my right and my civic duty to vote for whichever candidate best represents my views and my interests because my vote contributes to that person being handed the power to influence what laws are passed that will influence the way I must behave and be treated, the type of experiences I can expect to have in different situations, and the variety and quality of public services and institutions that my tax dollars will be used to pay for.  Whether our natural resources are wisely used and preserved for my and future generations use, whether my country is at war with another, whether I am allowed the freedom to do anything that I can think up it being a good idea to do- all of these things are affected by the actions that our elected officials take while carrying out their duties in office.  It's a big deal.  The question is whether all the labels and identifiers that get thrown around during campaign seasons and throughout the course of political debates big and small really make it more likely that I, as a voter carrying out my civic duty, is being helped to make the best decision and cast my vote for a candidate who does represent my views and interests.

     Since labels are useful in sorting big things into manageable groups of small things, do they really make sense in the political process from the voter's perspective?  Just how big is the group of things we're supposed to be sorting?  If you're talking about candidates for an office the group is traditionally very small in relation to the number of voters who are being tasked with casting votes.  The group of candidates is minuscule in comparison to the larger, diverse group of people whose views and interests are supposed to be represented by the candidate who wins the election.  It could be that the labels are meant to group the issues that politicians votes will influence policy and action on.  That is a pretty large group when you consider the sheer number of things that elected officials can decide to promote or prohibit with laws and money, so it makes sense to group similar issues with labels in order to help voters decide among candidates.  Oddly enough though, the group that it seems to me the labels are really meant to sort is voters.  After all, we're the biggest group, so sorting us into nice neat little categories is extremely helpful- for the candidates and politicians.

      Labeling voters, to me, seems to do the exact opposite of what labeling is supposed to accomplish.  Rather than helping us identify a candidate who honestly believes what we believe about different issues and intends to vote and act as we would ourselves in their position, it empowers the candidates and politicians to say what they think we want to hear.  It also limits our choices because it improperly groups together candidates under labels that really have nothing to do with what they believe or intend to do about many of the things they will actually be tasked with doing if they get elected.  The worst of these labels are the ones used to identify a candidate's party affiliation.  The words- Republican, Democrat, Independent, Green- don't tell us much of anything about what a candidate believes, and they really only tell us that regardless of what they say they will do the thing we can most likely count on is that they will do whatever their party leadership and platform directs them to do when an issue comes before them in the form of a bill.  Even the platforms of these parties don't give us much specific information upon which to base our decisions about whether a politician thinks the way we do and would vote and act as we would.  The platforms are somewhat specific about a few very controversial topics and extremely vague about the vast majority of things that will likely come up and require action of some sort after a politician is firmly ensconced in office.  By dealing in generalities and applying broad nonsensical labels to voters the field of candidates gets winnowed down to a choice between two or three candidates that no one can really predict the future actions of.  This leaves voters in the position of acting like hostage negotiators more than it does giving the opportunity to make an informed choice to elect someone who represents them.

     After the useless party affiliation labels come the ideological labels like Conservative, Liberal, Progressive, Socialist, Capitalist, Pro-Life, Pro-Choice, Big Government, Small Government.  These labels are still primarily applied to voters rather than the candidates we are trying to decide between.  Politicians adopt these labels and apply them to themselves as buzzwords to avoid clearly stating their positions on all the different types of decisions they might actually be responsible for making in office.  None of these labels is an accurate description of any individual's beliefs about any issue, let alone their beliefs about all the issues.  When you study what these words are generally accepted to mean before considering candidates in the context of the labels they adopt you come away with a general idea of how a candidate might lean towards acting on a wide variety of issues, but no clear understanding of what that label and those words really means to them.  Interpretation is very important, and the Merriam-Webster definition of any of these terms doesn't have a whole lot to do with what anybody actually thinks of when they hear or say them in relation to politics. Progressive literally means progressing in stages, or changing, so to call someone a Progressive just means they like changing things.  Does that mean they like changing things to make them better, or just because they have no attention span and like change for the sake of change?  The label doesn't tell you.

     There's no denying the fact that not every citizen takes their right to vote seriously and invests the amount of thought and research into choosing candidates the process deserves.  We probably won't ever get to a point where eligible voter participation comes close to 100%.  With the sheer volume of issues and agendas the percentage of voters who will see a candidate who completely mirrors their beliefs about every detail elected into office is infinitesimal.  Some people are always going to be one issue voters because we all get through life by prioritizing things in a hierarchy according to their importance to us, regardless of whether those things realistically have any importance in our daily lives or not.  Treating every voter like we're all too stupid to put serious thought and research into the decisions that we make, and cheating those of us who are ready and willing to do our share of the work to ensure the outcomes we wish to see in the arena of politics by giving us nothing more to work with than ridiculously simplified labels, has resulted in our elections and political process being nothing more than a shallow popularity contest.

     It's fine to have the Miss America contest be nothing more than a ridiculous popularity contest where the winner is judged not by the content of their character or any particular talent, skill, or intelligence.  It's okay for the crown to be awarded to the candidate who demonstrates the most charisma and likability and looks the best in a swimsuit.  It's fine because after that contest is over it doesn't really matter who the winner is, to anyone other than the winner.  Who cares if the winner really wants to see an end to world hunger, her sash does not imbue her with magical powers that will enable her to do anything about it.  The best case scenario once the lights go out and everyone goes home is that she'll spend all her prize money buying food for hungry people, but even if she did we'd all be left wondering why the contest organizers didn't just spend the money doing that themselves rather than wasting the time it took to have the contest and give her the cash to do that with.

     Politics, and the elections that make it all possible, should focus on nothing more than the popularity of the ideas candidates have and the popularity of the actions we entrust them to take.  As interesting as their backstories may be, and as much as their prior ideas and actions may be viewed as indicators of how they will perform if elected, all of those details pale in comparison to the specific details of how they really feel about all the different issues and how they claim they will vote on legislation that relates to those issues.  I believe that we're getting screwed by a lack of transparency in the elections process and in government itself. I personally want to know what these people really think- for themselves- and I want to see the proof of how they are putting their ideas into practice after they get elected.  If their ideas are not popular enough with voters, and their actions don't match their words, then no amount of money or charisma or favors and promises should be able to get them elected or keep them in office after the expiration of their terms.

     Generic feel good speeches to packed stadiums full of potential voters and attack ads aimed at discrediting opponents add no value in helping voters make their choices wisely.  Identifying the questions that voters want their candidates to answer, researching the history of all the different issues, and taking the time to develop an informed opinion before delivering a detailed cogent response to those questions is not an impossible task.  That is what candidates should be doing, and it is a much better use of their time and ours than running around all over the country shaking hands and kissing babies or shooting 30 second ad spots is. It is long past time for politicians to stop focusing their efforts on collecting the easy votes from the masses by spouting buzzwords that will sway even lazy voters and smiling for the camera.  It is time for them to start appealing to voters who think by giving us the truth about their ideas and intentions and letting the cards fall where they may.  If a majority of voter can't be drawn to support your truth then you don't deserve to be in office because you succeeded in spinning the best lie.

Free For All Market Policy on Wages

     I just ran across a comment below an article where someone was making the argument that minimum wage laws should be outlawed.  Not a brand new concept, I know, but reading it reminded me that I've been stewing over a blog post about economic policies in general so I decided to bounce on over here and write it out.

     The point of this person's comment was they every person should get to decide for themselves what they are willing to pay to get a job done, and every person should also be able to decide for themselves what they are willing to accept as payment for doing that job.  Pure free market ideology as it applies to wages basically.  Do away with the minimum wage, things like industry standards and union bargaining and let each potential employer duke it out individually with each potential employee.  As this person took the time to point out, if someone is willing to work for $5 an hour they should be able to do so- oh how empowered the wage earning group would be in that scenario.

     It's shocking to me that people aren't able to see the fatal flaw in this ideology, but apparently they really don't because I see the same old tired argument over and over again.  I suspect that the people who envision this  "perfect system" are either retired/independently wealthy, or they are oblivious to the sheer number of people around them who are just as capable of doing the jobs they now have so they don't have a clue what type of impact this kind of change would have on their own ability to earn.

     Even if you ignore every other policy that somehow ties in with employment, there is still one major stumbling block when considering the adoption of this type of policy for determining how wages are decided upon.  The number one resource that any area has, almost anywhere on the planet today, is PEOPLE.  The vast majority of those people are capable of performing at least one task that has value beyond simply sustaining themselves and securing the means for their own survival.  Every single one of those people is a potential employee for someone else.  This is where the laws of supply and demand truly come into play, because there is truth to the theory that overabundance of a resource or commodity decreases it's value when it comes time to sell it.  This is the reality that has allowed the minimum wage we do have to stay as low as it has in relation to what it actually costs the employees earning it to participate in our economy and pay the costs associated with meeting their basic needs.

     What happens when there is a glut of labor, and wages are set based upon what employees are willing to accept, is that all of the available jobs get filled by people who have their priorities straight.  By this, I mean that the person getting hired is the one who is willing to do the job in exchange for just enough to cover the cost of what they absolutely HAVE to have- food, water, shelter, clothing, just enough transportation to get to and from work and get around to procure the other necessities.  This guy- Mr. I'll do it for $5- has his priorities straight because it's all about focusing on need for both sides, he needs $200 a week to stay alive, his employer needs the cheapest warm body available to stand here and do that for 40 hours each week in order to turn out a product that he can sell to people who can be swayed to believe that having that product is a necessity for them.  The employer doesn't care whether his employee has enough money left over to also become his customer, there's a glut of suckers out there he can market to in order to build a customer base just like there was a glut of people for him to consider hiring.

     Granted, the pool of potential employees grows smaller the more skill the employer needs them to have in order to get the job done, but it never grows so small that there aren't more applicants than there are positions.  In the rare instance that it does, wait a few months or years, and someone will come along who has gained the experience or knowledge that they lacked the first time around and they'll be ready to try and convince an employer to fire the guy that's doing the skilled job and give it to them instead.  True, these more highly skilled workers may not be willing to work for rock bottom wages, but that's only because in addition to the needs Mr. I'll do it for $5 has, they also have to earn enough to pay off the costs of learning how to do a harder job.  They aren't charging a premium for having to work harder, or think more, or deal with more stress- those ideas are bullshit because when all the low paying, mid paying, and high paying jobs have already been filled by the lowest bidders anyone can be motivated to take whatever it is they need just to pay for the musts.

     That's the rub right there.  Our entire economy revolves around people working to build or provide stuff and services, and all of those goods and services fall into two distinct categories- needs and wants.  Often confused, the lines between the two get a whole lot sharper when scarcity becomes a factor.  Take away things like unions, minimum wage laws, and policies that protect workers from being fired for no reason other than someone being willing to do their job for less and what results is a scarcity of JOBS.  Never mind wages, we already don't have enough jobs to match with all the people we've got available to fill them.  Sure, employers complain about not being able to fill positions, but that's because they are either hoping to fill them with cheaper imported laborers who are just grateful to be here, or they are offering wages that the people qualified to work in those positions would lose money by taking when they factor in the costs of losing their welfare benefits and paying for things they don't need (like childcare and reliable transportation) in order to stay at home unemployed.

     With the scarcity of jobs that would ultimately result from creating a free for all market on employee compensation, every potential employee's priorities are going to get reset very quickly.  The line between needs and wants would become really clear, and everyone who faces competition for the job they have or hope to get is going to stop spending as much of their earnings on wants.  It wouldn't take very long at all before everyone who works for wages, rather than pays them, began apportioning their paychecks to cover food, shelter, water, transportation, savings, and nothing else.  We'd have to because there is absolutely no job in this country that there aren't at least two qualified people to fill, so the risk of the other person being willing to do the job for less would be omnipresent.  In a generation or less our economy would be in a death spiral due to the fact that the sales of unnecessary goods and services would plummet, leading to more job losses, and more people desperate to take one of the few remaining jobs away from the people who are still employed by offering to do it for less.
   
     Nobody who is in the position of paying someone in exchange for something else wants to pay more than the absolute lowest price out there, whether that price is wages or the cost of a tomato.  Things like quality or convenience can sway someone to pay a premium when there is plenty of money to pay out of, but it doesn't go far enough to convince someone to pay $20 an hour to an excellent employee when there is an adequate employee willing to get the job done for $5 an hour.  Paying four times the price to get a slightly better version of anything isn't transacting business, it's doling out charity.  The reality is that there is always someone who could adequately do the job who also happens to be willing to do it for $5 an hour.

     The best we could hope for in a scenario where there were no such things as a minimum wage or laws designed to promote and protect employees being hired and retained at wages higher than those demanded by Mr. I'll do it for $5 is a dual economy- one that exists and is participated in by wage earners and a separate one that revolves around meeting the needs and wants of those lucky enough to be above having to work for a paycheck.  Truth be told we're at least halfway there already, because there are huge swaths of our population who spend their money on nothing but the cheapest food, housing, and other necessities our economy has available for sale.  These people are not buying the products advertised on television, they aren't buying anything at all other than the things that they absolutely cannot live without, and if we were to take away all of the safety net programs, charitable organizations, and socialized services that we do have this segment of the population would be indistinguishable from the population of a third world country.  The bulk of our economy revolves around providing an enormous list of (a few) needs and a whole lot of wants to people whose earnings, savings, and inherited wealth or profits allow them the luxury of buying in all their various shapes and sizes.  $5 an hour for people with no other means of support will pay for at the most three hots and cot, water to drink and clean themselves with, and enough mobility and health care to keep them on their feet so that they can keep showing up at work.  Anything beyond that will be produced exclusively for purchase and use by people whose income cannot be threatened by someone willing to work for $5 an hour, which would eventually be about 1% of our population.  Everyone else would be fighting for the privilege to produce as much as the 1% was able and willing to consume in exchange for $5 an hour and living off the charity they were willing to dole out when all the jobs were filled.

Contradictions

All of the controversy that exists- surrounding religion, politics, science, religion in politics, and science as it applies to religious beliefs- does more than just provide for entertaining and thought provoking dialogue between people who don't have enough else to do with their time (like me).  It also highlights that there is at least one more thing we as Americans can count on besides death and taxes.  We can count on the fact that every single one of us is in some way a walking contradiction.  We all, if we think, hold contradictory beliefs simultaneously and quite often believe in them with the same amount of conviction.

I don't think that this is something that we have to strive to change within ourselves or our society all that much. Rationalizing and reasoning away the similarities between our contradictory beliefs is what allows us to maintain our existence at even the most primal level.  We start from a place where avoiding pain- whether it results from hunger, thirst, or physical injury- is worth doing and then immediately begin inflicting pain on others in order to avoid experiencing it ourselves.  Without the ability to rationalize our right to supremacy over other people, places, and things we would have no choice but to sit passively and wait for death or divine intervention to sustain us.  Any action we take establishes our place in a hierarchy of our own choosing and we begin fighting for supremacy over the forces exerted by every other person, place, and thing around us which stands between us and what we need or want to use in order to sustain ourselves.

I'm pretty sure I just summarized and restated Darwin's theories on Survival of the Fittest right there, but I'm gonna go with it because that's a pretty good segue for introducing the topic that loosely inspired me to write this post.  That being the decision made by TVLAND executives to stop airing Dukes of Hazzard episodes on their network.  I saw that news while surfing the net and avoiding the pain of folding laundry today and it brought me up short.  It was actually kind of funny cause I can just picture myself sitting here with a confused expression on my face.  I think I actually vocalized my initial thoughts about it, with a "Huh?" that would do a dumb blonde proud.

It's not that I don't understand the point, or at least the point they were trying to make.  I've caught all the other news stories about the controversy surrounding that flag that's painted on the General Lee recently. Personally I probably have just as much desire to see that symbol eradicated from our nation's collective history and conscience as the average homophobe has to see rainbows go back to symbolizing Judy Garland before the Gays fell in love with her and adopted her and her little rainbow too as their own.  I really do get it that for a whole lot of people that this flag stands for hate rather than heritage.

What I don't get is the value of supporting and promoting the censorship of individuals (or the companies they own and by extension the products they create) rather than letting them speak their piece and ignoring them if you don't like what they are saying.  To me that smacks of taking your right to establish your own supremacy too far.  Eradicating a symbol rather than overwhelming it and giving it new meaning or rendering it obsolete by convincing people to stop supporting the ideas it represents is a completely different thing.

We as Americans, equal under the law and entitled to participate in our government in a variety of ways, have the right to influence the actions of the government that represents and governs us.  South Carolina bowing to public pressure from it's citizens to withdraw their support of this symbol is an example of us working within the bounds of our individual rights to affect change.  Exerting that same pressure on individuals and companies to bring about the same result is reasonable too, but less excusable if it means you're applying that pressure upon people and companies you'd never have anything to do with if not for the fact that you don't like their stance on a certain controversial topic.

Hmm.  That last sentence was a bit of a personal epiphany for me.  I started this piece because it seemed to me that my opinion about the TVLAND decision was contradictory to my opinion about NBC's similar recent decision and my opinions about the rights of business owners to refuse service to gay customers or birth control to their employees.  With one sentence I've either zeroed in on the real, narrow parameters of my personal belief or I've managed to rationalize my own contradictory beliefs to my own satisfaction. Impressive.

According to my spanking new belief, the executives at TVLAND and NBC don't have to check their rights to freedom of speech or to act in accordance with their own conscience at the boardroom door.  Unlike the government they speak for themselves and for the people who freely choose to associate with them as business partners and customers.  If they choose to allow their actions to be influenced by others then that's great, but the influence should really only matter if it's coming from people who are affected by their actions.  If I don't ever plan to watch TVLAND (face it, I really don't) regardless of what shows they air then it's not up to me to influence them to take programs off the air that other people do want to watch.  Even if something that I don't like is depicted in one of those shows.  It's also not up to me as the consumer to try and influence the programming NBC chooses to air, it's up to them to choose programming that entices me to watch.  If they make the decision to cut ties with a particular personality that I can't stand then bonus, but for me to exert pressure on them to do so without any plan to reward them for the action they take at my request is ridiculous (I still wouldn't tune in to watch a program like the Miss Whatever it is Pageant even if Bernie Sanders was behind it.)

Naturally, I have to go on to explain how my new (old but redefined in scope) belief applies to the pressures both legal and social that are used to influence individuals and businesses when it comes to "religious freedom" and discrimination.  Still no question in my mind that refusing to sell someone a cake for their gay wedding or attempting to stand between them and the insurance company that provides their major medical policy in order to deny them access to birth control or abortion is discriminatory, but there is a question about how much right people should have to act in a discriminatory manner towards other people, whatever the reasoning behind it.  My problem with individuals and the companies they form behaving in a discriminatory way has always been tied to how much control they are able to exert over the actions of those they discriminate against by hampering their ability to access something they need or are entitled to have the right to purchase if they want to.  In my view we have a tier system, or should have, of how much you have to give up your right to discriminate in exchange for gaining control over people.

The top tier is for government in all it's forms.  Flat out no way do you get to behave in a discriminatory manner towards people whose only option to avoid you and that discrimination is to move somewhere else. Number one principle upon which our entire country was founded is that everybody is equal and deserves the same treatment in the same circumstances.  If you as an individual cannot set aside your beliefs in order to treat people the same then you don't get to profit off of funds collected from those people or hold a position of control over them.  For at least the length of time that you're in that position of control your beliefs don't count.  Everything the government offers must be available to everyone equally in accordance to their need for it, and everything the government restricts needs to be equally restricted for everyone based upon whether their actions qualify them for the restrictions.  Not only can government not discriminate, they can't promote discrimination by awarding special rights and privileges to businesses and individuals based upon criteria that aren't germane to what the right entitles them to do (i.e. laws that restrict licensing of wedding officiants to religious persons or voting privileges to those whose driver's licenses are issued by the district they can prove residency in.)

The next tier would have to be people who individually or through ownership of a business control access to absolutely necessary resources.  Food, water, shelter, medical care, and the ability to move freely about in pursuit of these items.  Access to employment to earn the means to purchase these items.  Everybody gets an equal shot at purchasing the necessities of life for the same price as everyone else who is trying to buy the same things, and everyone gets an equal shot at trying to land a job that is advertised publicly.  Once hired, everyone is entitled to equal pay for equal work.  Penalties imposed by the government if you get caught restricting access to or refusing to sell a necessary resource to, or hire an applicant for, or pay an employee less because of who they are rather than what they were giving or offering in exchange for the resource, job, or paycheck.

Beyond that it's a free for all.  Everyone is free to think what they want to about everyone else, and act accordingly as long as they keep their hands and feet to themselves.  Say whatever you want and be prepared to hear what other people have to say in response.  You are only limited by how much or how little you are able to inspire other individuals to reward you for your efforts, be they words or actions or objects you produce.  If you want to go into business selling cakes only to straight white Catholic couples then do that, but be prepared to get called out if you're not upfront about it and deal with the consequences if someone publicizes it and the result is that people stop wanting to buy from you because they think you're a bigot.  Be prepared to deal with being called a bigot.  If you only want to hire people who agree to think and act like you do then deal with the restriction that you've got to find a way to advertise your open positions only to them and deal with it if that limited pool doesn't give you the workforce you need to run your business successfully.  Recognize that you can't advertise widely for candidates and hire based upon skills then try to force changes in your employees thoughts and actions that have nothing to do with their job and that you are not compensating them for.  Understand that you have the right to refuse to extend a benefit based upon your beliefs, but no right to stand between your employees and their right to know about and accept that benefit from another source when their beliefs prompt them to do so.


We're all walking contradictions.  We all to some degree hold beliefs that are in conflict with each other.  Getting through the day and living with ourselves and with each other requires constant compromises between acting according to one belief or another.  We do it because absolutely nothing is completely black or white when viewed in the context of all the different forms that thing can take.  That's how people end up being pro-life and in favor of the death penalty at the same time, or in favor of free speech while wishing there was a way to silence all the speech we don't want to hear.  We all end up having to pick our battles and dealing with the consequences by not getting everything we want because there isn't enough time in a life to beat every opponent.