Recommended: The Flight From Reality

Robert Samuelson has another important article today in the Washington Post: The Flight From Reality. Samuelson points out that while Democrats and Republicans battle over their (relatively minor) issues, neither party is paying any real attention to the truly critical problems that face us as the nation ages (making Social Security and Medicare as they stand now economically unsustainable in the long run), as the continuing flow of unskilled immigrants keep our poverty levels high (whereas we are turning away the skilled immigrants we really need to keep the economy healthy), and as structural issues in the job market (like increasing automation) are hollowing out the middle class.

I would add to his list the looming worldwide social and economic disruption that will come over the next few decades from climate change, and perhaps as well the increasingly poor education that Americans are getting (that keep them from being functional and productive  in an increasingly technological and complex world).

Recommended: Democrats are in denial. Their party is actually in deep trouble.

Matthew Yglesias has an important article today in Vox: Policy and Politics.  It is entitled  Democrats are in denial. Their party is actually in deep trouble and it is well worth reading. Yglesias points out that although the Democrats have controlled the White House, that is almost the only thing they control in the nation's political system - they don't control either chamber of Congress, and the majority of state governors and state legislators are controlled by Republicans - and Republican control has been increasing even during Obama's terms in office (and perhaps because of his terms in office).

So although the liberal media talking heads have had a field day making fun of the current Republican disarray in the House, and the fact that Donald Trump currently leads in the polls for Republican presidential candidates, in fact the Democrats are in far worse shape nationally without even considering Hillary Clinton's continued troubles.  If the Democrats somehow manage to retain the White House in this upcoming election, there is still little chance that they can advance much of their increasingly left-wing agenda.  If they lose the White House they are almost completely locked out of government at the federal level, and in a majority of the state legislators.  

I think much of the left-wing agenda, while emotionally appealing, is economically unsustainable, but I am not happy to see the Democrats in such trouble, because their weakness allows the more extreme right-wing to advance its agendas without effective opposition or debate.

Recommended: The Right Way to Lose a War: America in an Age of Unwinnable Conflicts

Up through World War II America had gained decisive victories in almost all its wars. Since World War II America has essentially failed to win all but one of  the wars it entered  (the first Gulf War is the exception). This is in part because these were all different kinds of wars from the traditional big army meets big army wars at which the American military excels – these are guerrilla wars or insurrections, far from home. And we haven’t learned yet how to extricate ourselves from these when we unwisely get ourselves trapped in them.

Tierney., who also wrote the excellent book How We Fight: Crusades, Quagmires, and the American Way of War (2010), proposes a rational way to approach the problem of disengagement from a war we have no realistic chance of winning (or at least are not willing to commit the lives, time and money needed to win), summarized by “Surge, talk and leave”.  This is a book I wish our political leaders would “read, learn and inwardly digest”, and soon, before they waste more lives in a fruitless effort!

More in gun control

Given, as I argued in my last post, that it is probably not possible to get guns out of people’s hands in this country, what can we do that would help the situation? Well, the NRA bumper sticker “Guns don’t kill; people do” is accurate, so let’s stop focusing on banning certain types of weapons – after all one can get killed just as dead with a cheap handgun as with an “assault weapon”, whatever that is. Let's focus instead on people - on the gun owners and users.

It seems to me that automobiles offer a good model. Automobiles, handled carelessly, can cause a lot of damage and kill people.  So we require that autos be registered and inspected, and we also require that drivers be licensed and pass a test.  We also (in most states) require owners of automobiles to carry adequate liability insurance as a condition of car registration, and we hold owners of cars liable when they cause damage, injury or deaths – sometimes to the tune of millions of dollars.

So suppose we required that all guns be registered annually, for an annual fee that covered the cost of administering the program. Suppose also that on first registering any firearm the owner had to provide a sample bullet and casing, fired at the registration office (so they can’t bring in a fake one), so that there was a record of the ballistic fingerprint  that could be used to trace any bullet fired from that weapon back to the weapon and owner. Registration would also require proof of liability insurance taken out against that weapon. Owners would be expected to protect their weapons at all times - a weapon stolen because it was inadequately protected (locked in an approved  gun safe, for example)  while not in use would make the owner liable for any damages that weapon does.

Suppose similarly that we licensed all gun owners and/or users, for an annual fee that covered the cost of administering the program. Licensing would require taking and passing a course in gun safety, and a periodic refresher course.  Those who cannot pass a background check for criminal records and/or mental problems cannot be licensed.

Now, possession of an unregistered firearm would be a serious felony, and besides criminal charges they would be barred from ever owning or being licensed to use a firearm (since they would have been convicted of a felony).  Possession of any firearm, registered or not, when not licensed would similarly be a serious felony, and besides criminal charges they would be barred from ever owning or being licensed to use a firearm.

Criminals, of course, will ignore this, but the law already makes criminal sentences stiffer if a firearm is involved.

For law-abiding gun owners this allows them to own and shoot as many guns of as many varieties as they like, provided all their guns are registered, but does require them to be licensed, trained, and fiscally responsible for any damage the weapons might do, whether in their possession or not. People who want to own high-capacity automatic weapons might find that their insurance costs are higher, but then their liability is higher as well.  Insurance companies will have a strong incentive to assure that the people they insure are well trained and careful about protecting their firearms.

This wouldn't be an easy law to write. Are air guns and BB guns included? What about home-made guns (since there are plans on the web for using a 3-D printers to make a gun)? What about guns stolen while being transported (say, from one's airline luggage)? It will take some work to make a consistent law, but it would be worth it.

It’s not a perfect system, but it seems to me it would be a workable one, and perhaps (barely) palatable to the American gun-owning public.  It is, after all, not much different than what we already do with automobiles.

Effective gun control

Now that we seem to have twice-daily shootings at schools and colleges around the country, a number of people, including Hillary Clinton and President Obama, are proposing various gun control measures – like banning assault weapons (pretty much a no-op, since “assault weapon” is a poorly-defined marketing name, and most semi-automatic rifles wouldn’t fall under that category), requiring dealers at gun shows to do background checks (dealers are already required to do background checks on any sales, whether at gun shows or in stores, so that is another cosmetic suggestion), and preventing domestic abusers from buying guns (but domestic abuse isn’t one of the categories currently carried in the national database).

All these proposals sound great, but in fact they would likely have little if any effect on the current gun violence – they just let politicians sound like they are doing something. If they had all been enacted, most of the recent mass shootings would probably still have taken place.

In fact nothing really is going to have much effect on the gun problem until one (or both) of two things happens:

(1) drastically reduce the number of guns Americans hold (currently estimated at 270-300 MILLION guns) by either confiscating them (that isn’t likely to fly politically in this country) or a massive compulsive buy-back (which probably wouldn’t fly either, and would cost an exorbitant amount), and /or

(2) Imposing civil and criminal liability on gun owners and gun dealers whose allow their weapons to be stolen or “borrowed” and used in crimes. There have been three killings in the past few days by young children who simply went into their house and picked up one of their parent’s guns – meaning the guns weren’t in a locked gun safe or locked with a trigger lock.  If those parents had been liable for massive civil fines – losing everything – for that carelessness, they might have been more careful.

The problem, of course, is that option (1) is probably politically impossible.  If the government tried to confiscate everyone’s guns it would probably spark serious civil unrest and rebellion in parts of the nation, and it would be political suicide for any political party that tried it. It would simply confirm the right-wing fears that the government is out to establish a tyranny.

Option (2) just might be possible if enough people got behind it, but of course there will be serious opposition from powerful lobbies, like the NRA and the gun dealers and manufacturers. Still, a serious financial liability might make at least some people be more careful with their guns.  It probably still wouldn’t have much effect on the occasional disgruntled postal employee or bullied teenage loner who wants to go out taking some of their supposed tormentors with them.  

Liberals (who don’t own guns) want to address this problem, and I agree with them.  But the proposals being suggested to date by political leaders and hopefuls are just political wishful thinking at best, or cynical campaign sound bites at worst.

Putin does it again!

Once again Russian President Vladimir Puten has managed to outfox and blindside the Obama administration with his quick and decisive move to put Russian military forces in Syria to bolster the Assad regime, and his moves today to begin bombing, not ISIS as he claims, but rather the American-backed forces fighting the Assad regime. No doubt he feels he can get away with this because of the history of indecision, waffling, and strategic confusion displayed by the administration since the beginning of this Syrian civil war - not to mention the indecision, waffling, and strategic confusion the administration has shown in the Ukrainian situation.

It is clear that President Obama and his advisers are out of their depth here, not least because they are apparently ignoring the advice of the military commanders (who predicted, for example, that his pitiful plan to train a few thousand Syrian rebels wouldn't work - they never got but a few hundred signed up, and those were all but wiped out in their first encounter with ISIS).

It would be nice if I thought any of the current presidential contenders would be any better at this. I don't.

My personal filters for presidential candidates

I have my personal filter for potential candidates for president of the United States.  For what it is worth, here it is:

A) I want someone who has actually governed before, actually met a budget and negotiated with a legislature and dealt with the sort of problems a government faces.  That means, in effect, I want someone who has at least governed a state before.  Reagan, Carter, Clinton and George W. Bush had all been governors.  Bush’s father, H. W. Bush had not been a governor before becoming  President,  but he had been Vice-President.  Obama had not been a governor or had any significant legislative experience before,  and it shows.  He still has absolutely no idea how to negotiate with Congress, not even with members of his own party.

This filter alone eliminates Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Hillary Clinton, Carly Fiorina  and Bernie Sanders, all the current front runners in both parties.

B) I want someone who is not a scientific ignoramus. I don’t require that they have a doctorate in a field of science, but that at least they understand the value of the scientific method and have some respect for widely-held views in the scientific community.  In particular, I have no interest in voting for anyone who, despite the overwhelming consensus among climate scientists, still believes climate change is a fraud.

This filter eliminates a number of those with governing experience, including Jeb Bush (governor of Florida) , Mike Huckabee (governor of Arkansas) , Mike Pence (governor of Indiana), and Rick Perry (governor of Texas).  Scott Walker (governor of Wisconsin)  and Bobby Jindal (governor of Louisiana)  are unknowns – they keep dodging the question.  It also eliminates Ben Carson, though he was already eliminated above.

C) I want someone who doesn’t have a religious agenda to force their own religious views on issues like abortion and gay marriage down everyone else’s throats.  That eliminates most of the remaining Republican contenders who haven’t already been eliminated by (A) and (B) above.

Notice that I haven’t even dealt yet with policy issues of substance, like fiscal policy or foreign affairs or immigration policy, and yet we have already eliminated almost everyone in the field.

Of the candidates currently in the field, the only contenders who look like they might possibly pass these three filters are Chris Christie (governor of New Jersey, but currently only a blip in the polls) and Vice President Joe Biden (and he hasn’t even decided to run yet).