Sunday, October 27, 2013
Cliffhanger Ideology
After watching Frontline's "Cliffhanger", I was struck by how politically insensitive and intransigent Barack Obama was. From the insult to Paul Ryan to the secret meetings with Boehner to Biden revealing those secret meeting to Obama's reneging on his deal with Boehner. And yet, the political explanation for the impasse is that the conservative Republican Tea Party candidates from 2010 were ideological, politically naïve, and not used to governing. But can't the same be said for Obama? Isn't Obama the one alienating and insulting the very people with whom he's supposed to make a deal? Isn't Obama the one asking people to trust him and then violating that trust? Isn't Obama the one making things difficult by asking for much more after deals have been agreed to? This inconsistency stems from the fact that the media, those reporting on these interactions, implicitly agree with and support the President, and whatever impedes his agenda gets identified as "obstructionist" and "ideological".
Afghan Elections
Afghanistan is to elect a new president on April 5th, 2014 at great expense and doubtless some loss of life. But I can't help but wonder if this is really the best use of America's limited political capital, resources, and time left in the region. And these worries, wonders, and questions relate, ultimately, to much more fundamental political issues. You see, the United States went into Afghanistan initially with limited goals and met with tremendous success. However, as the time on the ground in Afghanistan lengthened, the mission expanded. The results were not as expected with the total war for the Afghanistan War, America's longest by the way, fast approaching $700 billion.
From my time working as a counterinsurgency analyst in Kabul, I have questions about the utility of the elections: whether they're worth the time, money, effort, and risk. My senior colleague said that the elections were America's last and best chance to influence Afghanistan for the better. I had my doubts after reviewing what happened during the 2009 elections with the usual violence, corruption, and fraud, especially in the Pashtun regions. The international elections reviewers acknowledged the problems but concluded that they did not impact the outcome of the election. I'm not so sure.
You see, there was initial period of relative calm and trust in Afghanistan around 2003 to 2004 after the defeat of the Taliban, but that period was short-lived. The Taliban started returning around 2005 and their influenced has increased since. Partially driving that expansion has been the perception of increasing corruption of the country's senior officials, that they are more intent on increasing their personal wealth rather than helping the country. Scandals such as abuse at Dawood Hospital, missing funds from Kabul Bank, and drug running by the Afghan Air Force only serve to reinforce this perception
Feelings of legitimacy by the populace are only one aspect of the larger constellation of issues to be considered such as the diplomatic, informational, military, and economic (DIME) interventions that comprise a counterinsurgency (COIN) policy portfolio. It is difficult to ensure that these multiple lines of effort integrate to achieve the overall policy goals. Given the significant levels of money, times, and personnel expended to improve Afghanistan, significant time and effort should be given to the planning of the interventions. For example, policy should be conducted with as much care as circuit and software design. The 2014 Presidential elections fall under this evaluation regime, especially given the shortcomings of elections in Iraq.
Simulation provides the ability to examine separate courses of actions, and a simulation-based comparison scenario study is proposed here. The first scenario would indicate the behavior that was expected by the selected policies. The timeframe should be from the 2009 surge after the elections of Barack Obama that implemented village stability operations (VSO) and Afghan local police (ALP). The purpose of the scenario is to establish the expected results from intervention of the US and its NATO coalition partners. The second scenario would depict what actually occurred to identify how it differed from what was expected. The results of such a study would provide a multi-variate, numerical study that identifies why the policy results differed from those that were expected and how the intervention could have been improved.
From my time working as a counterinsurgency analyst in Kabul, I have questions about the utility of the elections: whether they're worth the time, money, effort, and risk. My senior colleague said that the elections were America's last and best chance to influence Afghanistan for the better. I had my doubts after reviewing what happened during the 2009 elections with the usual violence, corruption, and fraud, especially in the Pashtun regions. The international elections reviewers acknowledged the problems but concluded that they did not impact the outcome of the election. I'm not so sure.
You see, there was initial period of relative calm and trust in Afghanistan around 2003 to 2004 after the defeat of the Taliban, but that period was short-lived. The Taliban started returning around 2005 and their influenced has increased since. Partially driving that expansion has been the perception of increasing corruption of the country's senior officials, that they are more intent on increasing their personal wealth rather than helping the country. Scandals such as abuse at Dawood Hospital, missing funds from Kabul Bank, and drug running by the Afghan Air Force only serve to reinforce this perception
Feelings of legitimacy by the populace are only one aspect of the larger constellation of issues to be considered such as the diplomatic, informational, military, and economic (DIME) interventions that comprise a counterinsurgency (COIN) policy portfolio. It is difficult to ensure that these multiple lines of effort integrate to achieve the overall policy goals. Given the significant levels of money, times, and personnel expended to improve Afghanistan, significant time and effort should be given to the planning of the interventions. For example, policy should be conducted with as much care as circuit and software design. The 2014 Presidential elections fall under this evaluation regime, especially given the shortcomings of elections in Iraq.
Simulation provides the ability to examine separate courses of actions, and a simulation-based comparison scenario study is proposed here. The first scenario would indicate the behavior that was expected by the selected policies. The timeframe should be from the 2009 surge after the elections of Barack Obama that implemented village stability operations (VSO) and Afghan local police (ALP). The purpose of the scenario is to establish the expected results from intervention of the US and its NATO coalition partners. The second scenario would depict what actually occurred to identify how it differed from what was expected. The results of such a study would provide a multi-variate, numerical study that identifies why the policy results differed from those that were expected and how the intervention could have been improved.
On Democracy (1)
I've been rereading possibly the greatest book in the world, On Democracy by Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers (1983), but I did not always think this was the case. The genius of the book is its prescience in that it presages political events and trends that I did not think were possible upon first reading in the fall of 1990. However, just the back cover is quite revealing:
The traditional guns and butter tradeoff continues, but the millions added to health, education, and social-welfare programs have become a drain on the economy. And the chief progressive himself, Barack Hussein Obama, is the one leading the attacks on personal freedoms whether it is the IRS scandal, the spying scandal, or his attempts to silence the press. And yet, the progressive don't seem quite as angry and vocal when the culprit is Obama rather than Reagan, which indicates that the real goal wasn't to address these problems so much as to use them as leverage to wrest control the levers of government power. And now that those levers are in the hands of progressives and these problems from the 1980s are all much worse, in place of open debate, we instead have denials, attacks, obfuscations, and transparent plays for more time. So in the words of Cohen and Rogers, "a pervasive cynicism , frustration, and distrust of the political system characterizes life in contemporary America." As the song says, "everything old is new again."
America's economy is in turmoil. Millions of workers are unemployed. Record number of businesses have gone bankrupt. Once powerful core industries are in decline. The government spends billions of tax dollars on nuclear weapons and cuts millions from health, education, and social-welfare programs. In place of open public debate, we have special-interest groups, corporate political action committees, decaying political parties, attack on conventional freedoms. A pervasive cynicism, frustration, and distrust of the political system characterizes life in contemporary America.I mentioned prescience earlier, and the question here is whether this description that was targeted against 20th century Reagan conservatism actually doesn't apply better to 21st century Obama progressivism. In which era was the economy in more turmoil, more workers unemployed, and more businesses going bankrupt? The late 80s, after Reagan has shaken off the economic doldrums leftover from Carter's failed progressive policies, are remembered today as a time of economic plenty that led into the Clinton years.
The traditional guns and butter tradeoff continues, but the millions added to health, education, and social-welfare programs have become a drain on the economy. And the chief progressive himself, Barack Hussein Obama, is the one leading the attacks on personal freedoms whether it is the IRS scandal, the spying scandal, or his attempts to silence the press. And yet, the progressive don't seem quite as angry and vocal when the culprit is Obama rather than Reagan, which indicates that the real goal wasn't to address these problems so much as to use them as leverage to wrest control the levers of government power. And now that those levers are in the hands of progressives and these problems from the 1980s are all much worse, in place of open debate, we instead have denials, attacks, obfuscations, and transparent plays for more time. So in the words of Cohen and Rogers, "a pervasive cynicism , frustration, and distrust of the political system characterizes life in contemporary America." As the song says, "everything old is new again."
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Systems Thoughts on the Government Shutdown
In reading about the fall 2013 federal government shutdown, a few points need to be made. First, the personalization and demonization of the Tea Party is an emotional and media-driven response to a much larger, more powerful, and systemic set of issues. These were addressed well by Brit Hume, who said that the Tea Party was a response by conservatives who felt that the Republican party had betrayed its purportedly small government and Constitutional roots. To back up this critique with some data, I pulled this chart of Federal Government Debt as a percentage of GDP:
Federal Government Debt as a Percentage of GDP
There are a couple of things to note. While debt appears to hit zero around 1980, the scale starts at 30%. Debt grows quite rapidly during the Reagan/Bush I years in a less-than-conservative fashion. Then it basically declines during the Clinton years, only to grow again slightly during the Bush II years. What's I found astonishing however was the debt explosion during the Obama years. Charles Krauthammer was criticized this week for saying that Obama was uninterested in debt reduction, but this graph provides strong evidence for this that no amount of campaign verbiage and spin is going to be able to counteract. The graph shows not a continuation or slight increase of the Bush debt but an astronomical, order of magnitude increase that I found quite surprising.
Politically and economically, the Reagan debt increases were able to be overcome through economic growth. However, through a combination of factors, those days of high-economic growth are gone. Cheney and Bush II tried to maintain them through globalization, but it seems that those gains have played out. It remains to be seen how Obama intends to pay off this astronomical debt increase, but as the Obamacare exchanges clearly point out, Obama's strength appears to be rhetoric and winning elections not planning and technical execution.
What ultimately drives this spending and debt is the political-economy relationship between elections and standard of living, what during the Clinton years was captured by the phrase, "It's the economy stupid." The majority of people will vote for politicians who deliver the most wealth to their constituents. When that wealth comes derives the public coffers, then the government has set itself upon an unsustainable course. This dynamics is captured by the following pseudo-quote from Alexander Fraser Tytler:
"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
- From bondage to spiritual faith;
- From spiritual faith to great courage;
- From courage to liberty;
- From liberty to abundance;
- From abundance to selfishness;
- From selfishness to complacency;
- From complacency to apathy;
- From apathy to dependence;
- From dependence back into bondage"
While the Tytler quote conveys a germane and valid insight, it is in fact a misquotation from and condensation his Universal History (1839). Nevertheless, to my eye the government debt graph provides empirical evidence for the political dynamic described by Tytler because the majority of voters support politicians who deliver the most wealth. If we follow the money, then it should be easy to determine how those benefits from the public treasury are distributed, unless of course those we entrust to take care of the public treasury have an interest in hiding and obfuscating those payments, a favorite DC game. Were this the case, then we would expect entitlement spending to be growing rapidly, which is what Nate Silver's analysis shows. This dynamic is at the center of the Tea Party critique and the current elite defense.
Rapid Growth of Entitlements Drives Government Debt (Silver 2013)
What's really happening is this. So many of the political and media elites depend on these government payments for their livelihoods and status that they will do anything to maintain the status quo. The ability of DC elites to view these payments in a critical and disinterested fashion has disappeared long ago. The Tea Party thus incurs the wrath of these elites by pointing out the illogic and long-term unsustainability of this system from which so many benefit.
To conclude, this more systemic context and perspective casts Obama's challenge to "win an election" in a more cynical, self-serving, and tragic light. Elections are fine so long as they are a fair competition of ideas, but when the competition it so significantly tilted - as the government debt chart shows - then something other than fairly contested elections are happening.
Friday, October 18, 2013
Jedediah Bila and Government Employment
Saw Jedediah Bila speaking with Stuart Varney on Fox yesterday (17 Oct 2013) and really appreciated her energy, passion, and articulateness. When she talked about government employment trends, I wondered if a little more data could help and found this analysis by Dennis Sevakis - http://constitutionalley.us/2011/09/10/the-incredible-shrinking-federal-workforce-not-so-fast/ - which features an extensive quantitative analysis of government employment rates.
The analysis runs from 1940 to 2010 and features several breakouts and perspectives. While the government employment growth remains steady with retrenchment primarily after 1940 (post WWII) and 1980 (major recession) over the analysis, between 2000 and 2008 government employment has been very much in a growth mode. Most interesting is Sevakis' last paragraph, which I quote in its entirety:
"From a political standpoint, what I find most interesting is the recent rise in the percentage of government workers. After peaking in the mid-seventies, the percentage of government workers generally declined for the following 25 years. For the last 10 years, since the beginning of the Bush II administration, that trend has reversed and been upward overall. So, when I hear comments about the Obama Administration being merely a continuation of Bush policies, s’pose I should concur. That troubles me. Not because of what that says about Obama, but rather, what it says about Dubya’s presidency."
Sevakis' conclusion, while troubling to him, actually squares with my opinion that the Obama years are a continuation of the fiscal irresponsibility established during the Bush years. This of course helps to explain the current split within the Republican party (which actually has deep roots) and the energetic debate over the recent government shutdown. Finally, it is instructive to compare the growth of government jobs with those in the civilian sector, which have dropped off precipitously since Obama entered office in 2008 per the graph below:
(Government Employment in thousands,
The analysis runs from 1940 to 2010 and features several breakouts and perspectives. While the government employment growth remains steady with retrenchment primarily after 1940 (post WWII) and 1980 (major recession) over the analysis, between 2000 and 2008 government employment has been very much in a growth mode. Most interesting is Sevakis' last paragraph, which I quote in its entirety:
"From a political standpoint, what I find most interesting is the recent rise in the percentage of government workers. After peaking in the mid-seventies, the percentage of government workers generally declined for the following 25 years. For the last 10 years, since the beginning of the Bush II administration, that trend has reversed and been upward overall. So, when I hear comments about the Obama Administration being merely a continuation of Bush policies, s’pose I should concur. That troubles me. Not because of what that says about Obama, but rather, what it says about Dubya’s presidency."
Sevakis' conclusion, while troubling to him, actually squares with my opinion that the Obama years are a continuation of the fiscal irresponsibility established during the Bush years. This of course helps to explain the current split within the Republican party (which actually has deep roots) and the energetic debate over the recent government shutdown. Finally, it is instructive to compare the growth of government jobs with those in the civilian sector, which have dropped off precipitously since Obama entered office in 2008 per the graph below:
(Civilian Employment by Percentage of Total Workforce,
:Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Keep Reading
People wonder why we should keep reading the Bible. When I taught Sunday school to high schoolers, I had them re-read the same passage we read in church. You would have thought I was torturing them, "But we already read it, why do we have to read it again?" I told them because we were going to discuss the readings. I don't think I ever got them to really understand that there were multiple levels of meaning, and that there was something to be gained by re-reading and reconsidering Bible readings, but this past week I rediscovered that lesson reading John 12:
Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. 3 Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them[a] with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, 5 “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii[b] and the money given to the poor?” 6 (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) 7 Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it[c] so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.8 You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”
I grew up in northern California, and every time somebody tried to do anything, some politician would say, "What about the poor." It was ludicrous. Try to build a luxury hotel, and some low-level city council member would say, "What about the poor." Even as a kid this struck me a strange, and I began to realize that this was more about status than real concern for the poor. The city-council member probably thought, "This guy has more money than I do, but I can make him squirm and extract my pound of flesh."
Rereading John 12 I realized how old this status one-upmanship game is. I knew this story primarily from Jesus Christ Superstar, and especially the line, "You will always have the poor with you." But what I never even remember reading was the parenthetical phrase, "He said this not because he cared for the poor, but becasue he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it." I believe most of the concern for the poor expressed today is not real concern but misdirected ambition and pride.
Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. 3 Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them[a] with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, 5 “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii[b] and the money given to the poor?” 6 (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) 7 Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it[c] so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.8 You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”
I grew up in northern California, and every time somebody tried to do anything, some politician would say, "What about the poor." It was ludicrous. Try to build a luxury hotel, and some low-level city council member would say, "What about the poor." Even as a kid this struck me a strange, and I began to realize that this was more about status than real concern for the poor. The city-council member probably thought, "This guy has more money than I do, but I can make him squirm and extract my pound of flesh."
Rereading John 12 I realized how old this status one-upmanship game is. I knew this story primarily from Jesus Christ Superstar, and especially the line, "You will always have the poor with you." But what I never even remember reading was the parenthetical phrase, "He said this not because he cared for the poor, but becasue he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it." I believe most of the concern for the poor expressed today is not real concern but misdirected ambition and pride.
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