Robot.Economist's blog

If you don't vote for Romney, let it be for this reason

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 17:31:16 -0700

The much talked-about July/August issue of Foreign Affairs arrived in the mail yesterday. It features essays on foreign policy from 2008 presidential candidates Barak Obama and Mitt Romney.

Both essays were pretty weak, but Romney's was just atrocious. If there is one reason for you to vote against him, let it be the contradiction between his description of the "defining challenge of our generation":

In the current conflict, the balance of forces is not nearly as close as during the early days of World War II and at critical points during the Cold War. There is no comparison between the economic, diplomatic, technological, and military resources of the civilized world today and those of the terrorist organizations and states that threaten it. Perhaps most important is the incredible resourcefulness of the American people and their unmatched education, inventiveness, and dedication. But today's threats are fundamentally different from those we grew used to confronting during World War II and the Cold War. Our enemies now have sleeper cells rather than armies. They use indiscriminate terror rather than tanks. Their soldiers -- as well as their victims -- include children. They count radical clergy among their generals. They communicate via the Internet. They recruit in schools, houses of worship, and prisons. They pursue nuclear weapons not as a strategic deterrent but as an offensive tool of terror.

And his first policy prescription:

The Bush administration has proposed an increase in defense spending for next year. This is an important first step, but we are going to need at least an additional $30-$40 billion annually over the next several years to modernize our military, fill gaps in troop levels, ease the strain on our National Guard and Reserves, and support our wounded soldiers. Looking at military spending over time as a percentage of GDP provides an interesting perspective. During World War II, the United States made huge sacrifices, investing more than a third of its economic activity to fight the war. As we confronted different enemies, such as those in Korea, our investment in defense responded accordingly. Since then, slowly but surely, it has decreased significantly. Through the buildup under President Reagan, it reached six percent of GDP in 1986 and helped turn the tide against the Soviet Union. Yet during the Clinton years, defense spending was dangerously reduced. More recently, although spending has increased, less than four percent of our GDP has been devoted to baseline defense spending. These ebbs and flows stemming from political dynamics have increased the costs and the uncertainty of our military preparedness.

The next president should commit to spending a minimum of four percent of GDP on national defense. Increased spending should not mean increased waste, however. A team of private-sector leaders and defense experts should carry out a stem-to-stern analysis of military purchasing. Accounts need to be thoroughly scrutinized to eliminate excessive contractor and supplier charges and prevent deals for equipment and programs that do more for politicians' popularity in their home districts than for the nation's protection. Congress needs to set stricter lobbying rules and keep a far more watchful eye on self-serving politicians, current and past, in regard to these matters.

So even though we completely outmatch the terrorists in resources and ingenuity, we have to grossly outspend them as well? Seriously, where did Romney come up with this stuff? Whatever happened to taxation and spending being about the needs of the American people? "To be strong" is not a good enough rationale for spending $500-$600 billion on defense annually.

I'd also like to see him try to enforce fiscal discipline on the military and the Congress. Let it be known that fighting the defense establishment can hazardous to the health of your SecDef. The rest of the essay is pretty incoherent and clearly demonstrates that he no grasp on why the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 actually worked when other attempts at bureaucratic reform didn't.

Ron Paul is not crazy

Sun, 20 May 2007 11:47:43 -0700

I try to keep my personal blog focused on substantive policy issues, but I felt the need to cross-post something defending my fellow libertarian, Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX). He made a seemingly controversial statement in the May 15, 2007 Republican primary debate and Rudy Giuliani scored some cheap points off of it. Conservative blogs are predicting that the statement will cost him his chance at the Republican nomination, which is too bad because the congressman's point was not insigniciant to the U.S. Near East policy debate. In fact, the whole exchange with Giuliani was indicate of an important failure of U.S. strategy:

MR. GOLER: Congressman, you don't think that changed with the 9/11 attacks, sir?

REP. PAUL: What changed?

MR. GOLER: The non-interventionist policies.

REP. PAUL: No. Non-intervention was a major contributing factor. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East -- I think Reagan was right.

We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us. (Applause.)

MR. GOLER: Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?

REP. PAUL: I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said, "I am glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier." They have already now since that time -- (bell rings) -- have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don't think it was necessary.

MR. GIULIANI: Wendell, may I comment on that? That's really an extraordinary statement. That's an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I've heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th. (Applause, cheers.)

And I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that. (Applause.)

MR. GOLER: Congressman?

REP. PAUL: I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the shah, yes, there was blowback. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem.

They don't come here to attack us because we're rich and we're free. They come and they attack us because we're over there. I mean, what would we think if we were -- if other foreign countries were doing that to us?

The Congressman's statement about al Qaeda's motivations leading up to the September 11, 2001 attacks is only slightly wrong. Ron Paul suggests that our 10-year enforcement of no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq was a motivating factor for al Qaeda when in fact, it was the UN sanctions placed on Iraq. I direct your attention to the August 1996 fatwa issued by Osama bin Laden and published in the London-based Al Quds Al Arabi newspaper:

The youths hold you responsible for all of the killings and evictions of the Muslims and the violation of the sanctities, carried out by your Zionist brothers in Lebanon; you openly supplied them with arms and finance. More than 600,000 Iraqi children have died due to lack of food and medicine and as a result of the unjustifiable aggression (sanction) imposed on Iraq and its nation. The children of Iraq are our children. You, the USA, together with the Saudi regime are responsible for the shedding of the blood of these innocent children. Due to all of that, what ever treaty you have with our country is now null and void.

Iraq is mentioned again in second fatwa he and Ayman al-Zawahiri published on February 23, 1998:

If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.

Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.

So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors. Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.

The 9/11 Commission Report even mentions the subject in Chapter 2 "The Foundations of New Terrorism" (split across pages 48 and 49):

The history, culture, and body of beliefs from which Bin Ladin has shaped and spread his message are largely unknown to many Americans. Seizing on symbols of Islam's past greatness, he promises to restore pride to people who consider themselves the victims of successive foreign masters. He uses cultural and religious allusions to the holy Qur'an and some of its interpreters. He appeals to people disoriented by cyclonic change as they confront modernity and globalization. His rhetoric selectively draws from multiple sources-Islam, history, and the region's political and economic malaise. He also stresses grievances against the United States widely shared in the Muslim world. He inveighed against the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam's holiest sites. He spoke of the suffering of the Iraqi people as a result of sanctions imposed after the Gulf War, and he protested U.S. support of Israel.

I am not endorsing Osama bin Laden's view. Nor am I saying that the 9/11 attacks were invited or justified. My point is that when Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States, he included his rationale and that rationale obviously appealed to some in the Near East.

It is true that Congressman Paul was inarticulate in making his point, but Rudy Giuliani's dismissive response indicated a foreign policy myopia that could be potentially dangerous for the United States. We may see Osama bin Laden's view as morally wrong, but the 19 hijackers on 9/11 clearly disagreed, so much so that they were willing to sacrifice their lives for it. This tendency to dismiss what it disbelieves will only continue to impose a heavy opportunity cost on U.S. strategy. If Rudy wins the election, we can only hope that he reads some Sun Tzu before moving into the White House. I'm thinking specifically about a passage from the Art of War at the end Chapter 3:

So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will win hundred times in hundred battles. If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you win one and lose the next. If you do not know yourself or your enemy, you will always lose.

Hey, at least we understand ourselves... right?

Crossposted from Robot Economist's blog, The Arms Control Otaku.

Bush speech on Iraq

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 18:25:11 -0800

Post your thoughts on Bush's speech tonight here in the comments section. Defensetech.org has posted a transcript of the speech.

To Bush's credit, the speech was a huge break with his previous style. More conciliatory and very detailed-oriented. I wasn't pleased by his rhetorical florishes on terrorism and Iranian and Syrian involvement in Iraq, but I guess you can't expect too much change. My concern is that even if this strategy is a winner for Bush, it is still predicated on weak assumptions, including that the sectarian violence was initiated by Sunni insurgents and the bombing of Askariya shrine. I think the White House needs to get real and admit that the violence in Iraq is mostly political and is slowly becoming mainstream.

Bush to sign off on new 'hybrid' nuclear pork

Mon, 08 Jan 2007 11:23:19 -0800

I know its been a while since my last post, but I have been buried under paperwork and deadlines since I was nominated for the Presidential Management Fellows program two weeks ago. My apologies.

Apparently, the Bush administration will announce plans to move forward with the Reliable Replacement Warhead:

The effort, if approved by President Bush and financed by Congress, would require a huge refurbishment of the nation’s complex for nuclear design and manufacturing, with the overall bill estimated at more than $100 billion.

But the council’s decision to seek a hybrid design, combining well-tested elements from an older design with new safety and security elements from a more novel approach, could delay the weapon’s production. It also raises the question of whether the United States will ultimately be forced to end its moratorium on underground nuclear testing to make sure the new design works.

[snip]

The two teams competing to design the weapon, one at Los Alamos in New Mexico, the other at the Livermore National Laboratory in California, approached the problem with very different philosophies, nuclear officials and experts said. Livermore drew on a single, robust design that, before the testing moratorium, was detonated in the 1980s under a desolate patch of Nevada desert. The weapon, however, never entered the nation’s nuclear stockpile.

The Los Alamos team drew on aspects of many weapons from the stockpile and pulled them together in a novel design that has never undergone testing.

A winner of the competition was to have been announced in November. But federal officials said they had a hard time choosing between the two designs, calling both excellent.

Really? I'm a little skeptical that the Bush administration has put off this decision for months just because both designs are so 'excellent.' Call me cynical, but I smell pork:

“There has not been what I would consider a real partnership,” said Philip E. Coyle III, a former director of weapons testing at the Pentagon and former director of nuclear testing for Livermore. “In some respects, it’s unprecedented.”

Ray E. Kidder, a senior Livermore scientist who pioneered early arms designs, said the hybrid approach appeared to be based more on the politics of survival for the laboratories than on technical merit.

“It’s spreading the wealth,” he said. Federal officials, Dr. Kidder added, “tend to do that fairly rigorously so as to keep the labs alive. To foreclose the possibility of closure, they try to divide the work load.”

That seems right. If the Bush administration won't bankroll two RRWs to keep our state-funded nuclear weapons labs running, why not just split one design between the two. What a great idea! I'm sure nothing bad will come of designing a new nuclear weapon around the employment needs of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. Its not like these things need to be usable or at least serve a military purpose...

Pricing resource extraction

Wed, 27 Dec 2006 07:45:53 -0800

Tom Firey at Cato-at-Liberty has an interesting post on reforming the way the government offers mineral rights and extracts royalty payments:

Reading the article, I thought about a question that my colleague (and boss) Peter Van Doren has often asked: Why do we have federal royalty payments at all? Why not, instead, use the initial mineral rights auction as the sole source of government revenue from extracting oil or gas?

A switch to auction-only taxation would yield much more money to the federal government up-front, as oil and gas companies would bid heavily for the leases. (I’ll be agnostic on whether the government receiving more money is a good thing.) An auction-only process would also be much more transparent and would do away with the “gaming” of royalty payments. And, perhaps most importantly, an auction-only process would better align oil companies’ incentives with consumers, vis-a-vis the current system.

[snip]

This system gives a decided advantage to oil companies that are willing to “game” the royalty system. Those firms can outbid competitors, because the gamers know their royalty payments would be lower than the other firms’ payments would be.

To get rid of the gamers’ advantage, the feds need only scrap the royalties scheme. That would force oil companies to bid heavily during the lease auction, where cheating is much more difficult. The brilliant feature of an auction is that it forces all parties to reveal exactly how much they value the product that is up for bid.

That feature would do away with the need to incentivize firms to tap into expensive but worthwhile unconventional gas and oil. Suppose there are two gas reserves up for auction: one an easy-to-tap reserve on government land in Wyoming and the other a similar-size reserve in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Extraction firms would bid heavily on the Wyoming reserves, but they would also bid (albeit not as much) on the Gulf reserve if they thought it worthwhile. No explicit incentive system would be needed — the firms would simply reveal to the auctioneer their own estimates of the Gulf reserve’s value.

I'm all about auctions and competitive bidding - it is the easiest and most cost effective manner of pricing services and products for public procurement. The inverse of auctions - competitive grant-making - has worked out pretty well for government efforts to subsidize research through the National Science Foundation. I'm surprised that Silicon Valley and the Dulles Corridor haven't jumped on the opportunity to handle contract auctions for the government.

I have one word for budding digital innovators out there: "gbay"

Will Wilkinson's on Rawls in the bigger picture

Mon, 11 Dec 2006 19:09:29 -0800

I've never been a huge fan of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice, but Will Wilkinson's most recent post on Cato-at-Liberty has definitely reignited my interest:

I agree with Rawls (and Hayek, and many others) that a just society is a species of a well-ordered society. An optimally well-ordered society is one whose members positively affirm and are motivated to comply voluntarily with its principles of association. A society that fails to do as well as possible for the least well-off is unlikely to gain the endorsement of the least well-off, who will then have little reason to voluntarily comply with its fundamental rules, and this can have a devastating destabilizing effect on the social order. An unstable society–one out of dynamic equilibrium–is not well-ordered, and therefore cannot be just. (That’s one reason I think the fiscal imbalances of Social Security and Medicare are more than a mere practical problem that needs to be fixed, but a serious matter for our viability as a just society.) Additionally, it strikes many reasonable people, including me, that a society that fails to do as well as possible for the least well-off manifests a lack of respect for those people. If there was an irreconcilable conflict between liberty and a well-ordered society, one that that is truly, as Rawls put it, “a cooperative venture for mutual advantage”–if liberty truly was not to the advantage of some people–then it seems to me that people who do not find advantage in such a system of liberty would not be unreasonable to reject it. And in that case, I am afraid that liberty would be incompatible with a well-ordered society and therefore justice.

Is this the theoretical basis for the Freedom Democrat perspective? It certainly is for this Freedom Democrat. I'm very suspicious and skeptical of taxation and government spending, but I'm willing to accept both concepts if they lower transaction costs and maintain public stability.

I think Austrians like Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Ludwig von Mises went too far with their economic idealism when they claimed privatized security is better than public security institutions. Their dollarized security production measure may prove true in an abstract sense, but its applicability to the real world is dubious at best. Security is an incredibly risky commodity, so it comes with a high price tag. In the larger context of society, what happens to those who cannot afford to provide for their own security? Do they peacefully disengage or violently rebel? What additional costs does the behavior of security 'have-nots' impose on the security 'haves'?

As our experience in Iraq proves, maintaining public order and stable society requires more than just the protection of negative rights. Sometimes you need to sugar-coat the notion of peaceful participation in the public quarter for various political, sociological and historical reasons. Similar to the latest evolution of democracy theory, its not just about the nominal components (elections, rights) or even the substantive components (transparent institutions, impartial governance), there is also a critical element of public investment (willingness to follow the rules and not resort to extract procedural means).

The 'people power' movements that have plagued the Philippines, Thailand and Mexico are prime examples of nominally and substantive democracies breaking down because due to a lack of public investment in the democratic process. The protestors in the street that once brought down dictatorial regimes are not obstructing the work of legitimately elected governments by forcing early elections. Sure, they have the right to do so and in some cases should, but such actions come at a cost of government legitimacy.

Wilkinson has used Rawls to make a similar argument about society and politics. Social Security and Medicare are just two ways the government bribes those who sit on the fence between engagement and disengagement with society. It may not capture all of them, but he makes the tacit argument that it brings in enough for a libertarian pragamtist to justify the cost. I think the last paragraph in his post was a powerful criticism that can be leveled against many libertarians:

Last, it’s evident that even libertarian Cato Institute policy analysts do not share a common fundamental comprehensive moral theory or political philosophy. There is a great deal of pluralism within our ideological unity. As Rawls notes in his second great work, Political Liberalism, disagreement over fundamental moral conceptions strikes with a vengeance in American society at large, and accommodation of such broad, intractable pluralism is at the core of the liberal project. Only small enclaves or deeply illiberal police states can sustain social order on the basis of a single dominant conception of the moral good. Workable liberal societies do, however, require a broadly shared public philosophy based in what Rawls called an “overlapping consensus” of diverse comprehensive moral views that is compatible with most of them, but leans too heavily on none. One of my own major aims is to promote the viability of classical liberalism as just such a public philosophy–one that does not require utopian near-unanimous social agreement on controversial moral claims like “all coercion is immoral,” “taxation is theft,” or “God created us with natural rights to property,” for example, but which is fairly consistent such views, as well as many others based in very different moral assumptions. I’m convinced that this is the best way forward if classical liberalism is to have a shot at becoming a viable public philosophy in a cosmopolitan, pluralistic societies like ours. But I wouldn’t believe this if it wasn’t for Rawls, which is one reason I hold him in such high esteem, despite my strong disagreement with many of his ultimate conclusions.

Exactly. An individual may be able to hold a theory as personal truth, but theory is relative in society. Imposing one's beliefs on others requires social and political hegemony on a level even the U.S. hasn't been able to achieve its vast resources, (formerly) good reputation and popular values. Guerilla warfare theorists from C.E. Callwell to T.E. Lawrence to Mao Zedong have been making this point since the birth of the modern era, but man's overconfidence in his own capabilities always seems to blind us to this simple fact.

Beware of German's bearing idealistic theories, they've caused Nazism, Communism and started two world wars...

Republicans chained to the South

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 08:45:45 -0800

I know Logan has brought up the topic of Southern politics and Tom Schaller's Whistling Past Dixie before, but I wanted out how "in vogue" this topic has become recently. The Lexington column from this week's Economist asked this rhetorical question about the GOP: "A national party no more?" Harold Meyerson's column in today's Post also jumps of the bandwagon.

All of this new attention on the Republican-South connection has got me thinking about a few things:

1. How much can one lean on the midterm election results as proof of this notion of GOP regionalization? Sure, most of the House and state legislative seats that changed hands in November were outside of the South, but that says little about total composition. Only 17 of the 49 Republicans in the Senate come from what are traditionally termed "southern states." The South may be a regular strong hold for Republicans, but there are plenty of purple districts out there that change hands relatively frequently.

2. Meyerson's pot shot at Walmart being a southern business model that has invaded the rest of the country is dubious. What about the business models of other southern success stories, such as Whole Foods Market? Would Meyerson dare speak ill of WFM founder (and left-libertarian) John Mackey's emphasis on the social responsibility of business?

3. Do demographic trends support the Whistlin' Past Dixie thesis? I know the western states and the sunbelt have been experiencing a population boom recently, but what about the South? Is the GOP's hold on the South permanent considering the disparity in fertility between white and Hispanic Americans? Will Bible-thumping white southerners be able to transpose their culture and values on the rising Hispanic population in the South?

My participation over the last few months has been low because of a brutal semester at George Washington. Thankfully, the semester will come to a close Friday afternoon, which means I should be churning out more posts on libertarianism and foreign policy soon.

Debating the conscription issue

Wed, 22 Nov 2006 06:58:53 -0800

Undoubtedly, the hottest question on everyone's mind in and around the Pentagon has been: what to do about Iraq policy? Many Americans are waiting with baited breath as the respective solaria of James Baker and General Peter Pace finish thrashing out their policy proposals.

Personally, I am with the key theme emerging from Gen. Pace's group: Regardless of how you feel about the war, the only way to stablize the situation in Iraq is to flood it with enough ground-pounders to completely replace the Iraqi security apparatus. The Iraqi government needs to be given enough political space to allow its sectarian groups divide up their state. This begs the question of whether America has the political will to commit even more blood and treasure to fix the mess we made. Despite my feelings on matter, the answer to that question is up to the American people (in the form of elections).

The second hottest question in defense circles has been: if we choose to go for the hard fix in Iraq, do we reinstitute military conscription to cover the manpower requirement? Representative Charles Rangel has put forward another bill to restart the draft and promises he is serious this time.

In particular, I think Rep. Rangel has made an intriguing point - a conscripted military would create "national ownership" of military conflicts and would serve as a bulwark against adventurism. As much as my left-libertarian views eschew conscription as an excess appropriation of private resources (individual liberty) for public use (war), preventing elective war is definitely a noble goal. In a way, conscription would be feeding the national war machine just enough to tie it intimately with the public. The public then serves as a check on the system that discourages military adventurism.

I would like to see what my fellow bloggers think about this issue, but I will lay out a few of my own thoughts. Outside of the obvious political philosophic issues at hand, I favor an all-volunteer force for a few reasons:

1) Conscription only becomes cost effective at high troop levels than what we normally need. Currently, we have about 1.4 million men and women under arms. Economists generally think a draft begins to achieve economies of scale at around 3-4 million troops, which is far more than we need in the long term.

2) Concerns about the "poor, brown face" of an all-volunteer force versus a conscripted force are overblown. Even if we reinstated the draft, who do you think would be able to obtain more deferrals and exemptions, the children of rich suburbanites or the poor denizens of the inner-city and countryside? I bet basing recruitment on the power of the all-mighty dollar will yeild a more racially and economically representive outcome than basing it on the power of state policy.

3) More importantly, since when do issues of race and economic background have anything to do with the military? The military's mission is to defend the country, not socially-engineer the nation. Sure, the military has had a significant impact on the society, especially on racial integration, but I would submit that is more circumstance than intention.

4) The military might become more effective if it was reorganized to reflect the realties of post-modern war. For example, about half of the 140,000 troops currently in Iraq are frontline infantry or armor troops. The armed services are under the impression that technology can solve most of their manpower woes, but have been unable to prove that belief. Instead of creating a tech-heavy, man-light force, they inadvertantly built a force that is both hardware/platform-heavy, manpower-intensive. As a testament to the power of West Point and legacy of Dennis Hart Mahan Army officers are still better engineers than planners.

The list goes on, but I allow my fellow bloggers to jump in.

Should we prepare to eat our hat?

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 12:41:16 -0800

This Post article about the House Dems' post-election agenda is scary:

Democratic leaders dispute the accusation and have been talking up Six for '06. The plan would allocate billions of dollars to build up the military, subsidize student loans and bolster port security. It would raise the minimum wage, make college tuition payments tax-deductible, repeal oil-company tax breaks and expand incentives for personal savings accounts, among many other provisions.

The program would prohibit the House from approving new spending or tax measures that widen the budget deficit. It would do that by restoring budget rules requiring that all future spending increases and tax cuts be offset by equivalent tax hikes or spending cuts.

Their Six for 06 platform really highlights the sharp differences between Freedom Dems and the party leadership. Sure, Nancy Pelosi's cadres have demonstrated a genuine concern for the federal budget deficit, but they clearly have no interest in slowing or halting budget growth.

REAL SECURITY AT HOME AND OVERSEAS - Reclaim American leadership with a tough, smart plan to transform failed Bush Administration policies in Iraq, the Middle East and around the world. Require the Iraqis to take responsibility for their country and begin the phased redeployment of US forces from Iraq in 2006. Double the size of Special Forces to destroy Osama Bin Laden and terrorist networks like al Qaeda. Rebuild a state-of-the-art military capable of projecting power wherever necessary. Implement the bipartisan 9/11 Commission proposal to secure America’s borders and ports and screen 100% of containers. Fully man, train, and equip our National Guard and our police, firefighters and other first responders. Honor our commitments to our veterans.

BETTER AMERICAN JOBS - BETTER PAY - Prohibit the Congressional pay raise until the nation’s minimum wage is raised. End tax giveaways that reward companies for moving American jobs overseas.

COLLEGE ACCESS FOR ALL - Make college tuition deductible from taxes, permanently. Cut student loan interest rates. Expand Pell Grants.

ENERGY INDEPENDENCE - LOWER GAS PRICES - Free America from dependence on foreign oil and create a cleaner environment with initiatives for energy-efficient technologies and domestic alternatives such as biofuels. End tax giveaways to Big Oil companies and enact tough laws to stop price gouging.

AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE - LIFE-SAVING SCIENCE - Fix the Medicare prescription drug program, putting seniors first by negotiating lower drug prices and ending wasteful giveaways to drug companies and HMOs. Promote stem cell research that offers real hope to millions of American families who suffer from devastating diseases.

RETIREMENT SECURITY AND DIGNITY - Stop any plan to privatize Social Security, in whole or in part. Enact real pension reform to protect employees’ financial security from CEO corruption and mismanagement, including abuse of the bankruptcy laws. Expand personal savings incentives.

Some of their "tax and spend" approach may be out of a genuine concern for looking tough in terms of national security (i.e. increase spending on the military and port security). Honestly, in today's climate, I can't blame them for taking the "throw money at the problem" approach - its an easy way out of a tough discussion.

The majority of their platform is simply unacceptable given today's fiscal and political crises. With a entitlement crunch looming out around 2015, how do they possibly expect to cover the cost of additional market-distoring tax deductions and shelters for the long term? This is aside from important facts: For example, further subsidizing undergraduate and graduate education through grants and tax deductions will only put further pressure on colleges across the country and lower the average quality of a four year degree.

After all the pomp and circumstance surrounding kos's "libertarian Democrats" formulation, are we setting ourselves up to eat our hat after next week's election? We've spent the last few months making the case that libertarians have a home with Democrats and could gain a foothold if they only tried.

House Dems are liable to fall into the same trap that has ensnared the current Republican leadership - building a voting base through targeted government handouts. Patrons will always come back demanding more and the whole system falls apart when you have to sacrifice the demands of one group for another.

What do the Freedom Dems think? What would you put in a rival FD "Six in '06" platform?

Freedom Dem Homecoming

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 21:06:58 -0700

I will be in Williamsburg this weekend for homecoming at the College of William and Mary. This will be my first vacation in about a year (woohoo!)

With luck, I will be back Sunday morning with some a few foreign policy items for our dear readers.

Libertarians in the headlines

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 21:11:56 -0700

Looks like the Cato study done by Davids Boaz and Kirby made it on the desk of The Economist's U.S. staff because the most august British newspaper a piece about libertarians in America:

In a new study from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank, David Boaz and David Kirby argue that libertarians form perhaps the largest block of swing voters. Counting them is hard, since few Americans are familiar with the term “libertarian”. Mr Boaz and Mr Kirby count those who agree that “government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses”, that government, rather than promoting traditional values, “should not favour any particular set of values”, and that “the federal government has too much power”. Using data from Gallup polls, they found that, in 2005, 13% of the voting-age population shared all three views, up from 9% in 2002.

The boys at The Economist are pretty libertarian or libertarian-friendly themselves, so this shouldn't be too surprising. Its not often that I see very much ink about us though, so any exposure is good exposure in my book.

XBox Dads

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 20:43:43 -0700

Nothing sayings your group has arrived politically like an arbitrary label. Bruce Reed churned out the first to apply to the generation of tech-savvy libertarians that blog on this site: Xbox Dads (btw, it should probably Xbox 360 Dads for now Mr. Reed). Does this mean the process of elected officials systematically whore themes to our issues has begun? Do we need to start writing campaign checks and show up at some canned-for-media average joe "meet and greet" events?

Will video game platform brands divide us like American automobile brands did in the 1950s? I'm a Playstation man myself, but I harbor no particular ill-will towards Nintendo or Microsoft (yet). Also, is open source/fair use humor like YTMND the future of entertainment? We will accept a blonde James Bond?

Most importantly, is that unreleased "crazy Italian lady" Xbox 360 ad funny or just a little sad?

Two words people

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 16:43:23 -0700

Fantasy Congress. Yes, it is true. Thank the genius of a few Claremont McKenna College students for the most hilarious, yet intriguing fantasy game to date. I'd be afraid to end up in the Roll Call or CQ Daily leagues, they must be brutal - although I think our resident Congress-watcher Logan would probably fair well.

The Internet is truely a sight to behold and worthy of its uppercase I.

Messages from space on the nature of war

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 09:48:45 -0700

I don't know about my fellow bloggers, but I am a closet sci-fi nerd. I have also been a huge fan of Edward James Olmos since his Miami Vice days. Naturally, I have been avidly watching the most recent iteration of Battlestar Galactica since season one (so has Armchair Generalist John Sigger). Recently, Slate has written a a few articles on the show, one by Spencer Ackerman on recent allusions in the show's third season to the U.S. experience in the Iraq war:

There is little end to BSG's Iraq parallels. In the first episode, after the insurgency begins, the Cylon council debates how to respond. One Cylon, disgusted with his colleagues' sentimental fears about losing hearts and minds, bellows, "How did you think the humans would greet us? With—oh, never mind." We know, from Dick Cheney, how to fill in the blank: "With sweets and flowers." The cameras record Cylon occupation raids on unsuspecting human civilians with the night-vision green familiar to any CNN viewer. And the reasoning of the Cylons is horrifically familiar: They would prefer not to be brutal, but they won't accept the failure of a glorious mission.

The show would be intolerably ham-fisted if the Cylons were mere ravenous engines of destruction. But on New Caprica, we see the Cylons justifying their occupation as an attempt to bring a peaceful end to the horrific wars of the past. They seek to enlighten a warlike human race, introducing them to the Cylon monotheistic faith—based on love—that they believe will provide ultimate salvation. In Episode 2, which airs tonight, Cylon Number Three, one of the robotic leaders, has an extended discourse with a human doctor operating on a wounded Cylon. When she suspects him of letting the Cylon suffer, Number Three smears her finger on the doctor's artificial-bloody smock and delivers a brief treatise on racial harmony: "It's a very funny thing. This stuff all looks the same." Can't the humans just see that they have a better option than the destruction of the past? Why can't they accept it? Well, now you know how Iraqis feel about you.

The big question that arises from the first few episodes of this season of BSG is whether the resistance is worth it. For all the show's admirable treatment of the moral complexities and the uncertainties of insurgency, its answer is an unequivocal yes. The Cylons believe themselves to be righteous, but they are monsters. They are infinitely more powerful than the humans, yet live in fear that humanity will "nurse a dream of vengeance down through the years so that one day they could just go out into the stars and hunt the Cylon once more." The Cylons occupy New Caprica, impose their will in place of any elected human leadership, round up and torture those who resist, and then do not understand why the humans refuse to accept their promises of benevolence. It often seems as if the whole motive of the creative talent behind BSG is to make you feel uncomfortable about being an American during the occupation of Iraq.

Ackerman asks whether the show is making a tacit case for defending the insurgency in Iraq. By asking that question, he has clearly mixed his metaphor with the wrong example. If anything, Battlestar is paralleling the American experience in Vietnam than the current experience in Iraq. Opposing the U.S. occupation may have been a strong motivation for the initial year-or-so of violence in Iraq, but that has since been subsummed by inter-sectarian strife. To equate even the initial violence wholly to occuption opposition is suspect bcause it was probably exacerbated by local and foreign jihadists.

Ackerman also fails to distinguish between the understanding one's opponent and being sympathetic towards one's opponent. As Gaius Baltar points out in the first episode of season three, arguments of "national resistence" does not justify suicide terrorism. It polarizes the politics of the occupiers by opening up the questiong of "eye for an eye" retaliation (i.e. attacks on or within the general populace). It also atomizes the occupied population by forcing them to into pro and anti suicide terrorism camps.

Battlestar's take-home message isn't that terrorism is defensible or that suicide bombers should be pittied. If anything, the show demonstrates a few points that I have made on this site before: A common purpose of terrorism is to be derisive and exacerbate mutual misunderstanding. Suicide bombers may be misguided or exploited, but they are responsible for their own decisions. Terrorism is ultimately linked to tangible political causes, even if terrorists appropriate loftier rhetoric.

Battlestar-geek or not, feel free to weigh in.

Army + North Korea = Busy

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 10:51:17 -0700

Two events have conspired to make this week pretty busy for me: First, the Association of the U.S. Army is having its big annual meeting and trade show. Second, the defense science community is scrambling to opine on the meaning of the bum nuclear explosion set off by the North Koreans.

I will probably interject a comment here and there, but don't expect a major post until this weekend.