Friday, February 20, 2009

Pork It’s the Meat of Kings …

If you watch this, it will stick in your head for hours, even weeks to come. You have been warned.

I'm sick of the term "pork." It has no definition and its use in political discourse is the last bastion of the unintelligent mind. One man's pork is another man's energy grid. One woman's pork is another woman's pro-life propaganda. It's an all encompassing term to deride what you don't like ideologically. It means nothing real or relative.

"Pork barrel spending" is not the same thing as earmarks. An earmark is a more tightly defined concept whereby Congress overwrites the executive branch authority on allocating funds without ever having to identify who authored it:

Earmarking differs from the broader appropriations process, defined in the Constitution, in which Congress grants a yearly lump sum of money to a Federal agency. These monies are allocated by the agency according to its legal authority and internal budgeting process. With an earmark, Congress has given itself the ability to direct a specified amount of money from an agency's budget to be spent on a particular project, without the Members of the Congress having to identify themselves or the project.

The stimulus package is neither perfect nor laden with pork. And it's here. And it's here to stay. And yes there will be problems arising from the execution of it and yes there will be sterling successes. But the current debate about it reminds me of the intellectual capabilities of ideological teenagers who know absolutely nothing about what they argue about yet they do it so passionately.

I get that conservatives hate it on ideological grounds. You've been heard, it didn't work. No, that doesn't mean you should just shut up, but you are not contributing to the current situation. Pitch in and ensure that the money your state gets (and don't you love the Republicans who wouldn't vote for the bill clamoring for the money) is spent wisely, according to your constituents values and wishes. Do something constructive, please, because constantly referring to the laissez-faire capitalism that got us into the current situation is as annoying as living near the constant noise of an airport.

I'm currently reading a compilation of an advice columnist and I'm thinking I really should be an advice columnist. This isn't hard, at least not based on the letters that get sent in. Does anyone actually know someone who sent a letter to an advice columnist? I've never heard of such a person and wonder if they're like Oompa Loompas? Anyway, I love giving advice and have some for the people who have decided that they HATE President Obama. Not just disagree, but hate hate hate. My advice is based on experience so I know what I'm talking about. I HATED George W. Bush so I have direct experience in hating a president.

Check out. Tune out. Find a hobby other than what's going on at the national level. Seriously, it's the only way you're going to get through the next four, possibly eight years. Hating everything you see and hear the nation's president doing is exhausting. You should check back in around election times, but otherwise, you're going to be perpetually miserable. Stop reading your bubble blogs, tune out of FOX, take up knitting. Watch back episodes of Lost to remember to confuse you. Focus locally rather than nationally. Unless you are in a position to actually impact what's going on at the national stage, you are only setting yourself up for pain if you spend four years railing about Obama. I know. I've been there with Bush. I had to check out.

I-told-you-so's are hollow. They don't make you feel better. Being prescient makes you feel worse, not better. So if you're right, and everything Obama does is a spectacular failure, you won't feel better. I don't feel better that I knew the execution of the Iraq war would be a disaster; that the deregulation of the financial industry and the subprime mortgage debacle would blow up; that ridiculous credit debt would crash us all. Knowing all that years ago and being right doesn't feel better. In many ways, it feels worse because it makes you believe that the nation is stupid and who the hell wants to live in a stupid nation? So if, in your rush of hatred, you are banking on being "right" and relishing the prospect of saying I Told You So, it won't live up to your expectations. It might drive up Rush's ratings, but it do anything for your blood pressure. Just some friendly advice from someone who's been there.


Thursday, February 19, 2009

Pragmatic Morality

Conservatives are all up in arms over what they perceive as the return of the "nanny state" because of the stimulus package. They fear near permanent status of many of the spending programs in the ARRA. Whether they are right or wrong remains to be seen.

A lot remains to be seen over the coming years. Severe economic downturns produce sea changes in mentalities and I am fascinated (both from a positive and a negative viewpoint) to watch and participate it.

On the negative front, I'm worried that the drop in fast food prices will force lower income people to make horrible dietary choices because organics are too expensive. Fundamentally changing our agricultural business model to enable better food might not rise to the top of the priority list and in a generation we'll have even worse problems with yet another round of kids being raised on the poison that inhabits the average American diet. I also worry that many states (as well as the federal government) will raise the "vice" taxes to increase revenue. I actually don't have a personal problem with increased taxes on cigarettes and alcohol (and I consume both), but tying critical projects to consumption of substances that states are also trying to decrease will be problematic.

But on a positive note, I'm already starting to see some of my pet issues get looked at in the name of pragmatic budgeting. Five states are considering repealing the death penalty due to its cost. I am ideologically opposed to the death penalty, but if budget cutting that gets it off the books, I'll take what I can get. Connecticut is looking to repeal its Sunday ban on alcohol sales to increase tax revenues. This puritanical holdover should go the way of the dodo as it always seemed to encourage drunk driving since the dawn of the Sunday football game. And Washington is considering privatizing liquor stores so as not to have to take the cost on the state budget. Why a state would want to run a liquor store rather than just set the regulations has always been confusing to me.

How far behind can the legalization—or at least decriminalization—of marijuana be? The cost of prosecuting pot simply doesn't seem to be pragmatic in these times. For the record, I don't really enjoy pot and wouldn't even if it was legalized. I just think it's a ridiculous substance to prohibit to adults. The only reason I can see to keep it illegal is that it's not currently possible to test whether someone (a driver, an airline pilot, a doctor) is impaired at this moment in time, the way you can with alcohol. But once that can be established, what is the remaining argument against legalization? I'll be very surprised if we don't start seeing this debated seriously as a cost-cutting/revenue-raising issue.

Of course all of these types of issues will give rise to a huge outcry from the social conservatives that bad economic times shouldn't degrade our "moral fiber." And the responsibility of constraining the social conservatives will fall to the fiscal conservatives who claim that Republicans aren't really representative of conservatives. Because all of these small examples are as illustrative of a "nanny state" as are the programs liberals pushed for in the stimulus package. If conservatives want to seriously take back their party, they need to be consistent on all aspects of the limited government they claim to want so much.