BESTIAL POLITICS AND AMERICAN DREAMERS

The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit

that carries any reward. ~ John Maynard Keynes

The Democrats will never ever be able to convince voters that increasing their taxes will lead to their or the public's benefit. The Republicans' decades-long push to lower taxes has simply been too successful and too resonant. Despite their public bitching, moaning, and unseemly whining, the Dems' logic-based arguments to promote tax increases (pretty much exclusively focused on taxing rich folks) as a necessary item in the public sector's fiscal relief, is a doomed cause. Why? Because of the American Dream and the underlying motivations of many non-rich voters.

The disappearing "middle-class" voter may possibly understand that raising taxes on the rich could help him/her (by providing more government funding for programs that they benefit from), but these same voters hold more dear their strong belief/faith that they are part of the "American Dream," and in due course they themselves can become "rich" if only allowed to by getting the government off their backs. They don't want tax increases because they eventually would have to pay them when they become rich and because all government programs are wastes of money.

The Dems have never bothered to mount an effective counter to this underlying, powerful motivator of the anti-tax movement. The Dems rightly argue that in general government programs are needed, necessary and are in the public interest, and these programs require funding from tax revenues. That's quite true. But the Repubs' on-going "starve the beast" tirade (with specific, but in reality exceptional, examples of waste and mismanagement) against Big Government is far more emotionally stirring – the Repubs exceptional examples prove the rule for why a faithful American Dream voter should always vote against tax increases, even if it's not in the voter's current self-interest. Other than emotion, how else can you explain the illogic of proto-typical American Dreamers shouting, "Get the government out of my Social Security?"

When it comes to a political third-rail of asking people to pay more taxes, specificity (and emotion) always trumps generality (and logic). Is the Repub argument duplicitous and hypocritical? Absolutely. Oh well, but anti-tax voting remains emotionally satisfying to folks who desperately wish they too will somehow, sometime achieve the American Dream and become rich – just like The Donald. Unless the Dems come up with a simple, unified, emotionally-resonant counter-argument against "starve the beast," they will never overcome the anti-taxers' broad appeal.

What could the Dems do? They could be as extreme as the Repubs by taking long, deep breath, swallow hard and say, OK we "see the light," let's agree to starve the beast, and publicly give the Republicans absolutely 100% of the credit for undertaking sweepingly harsh cuts to government expenditures and see how popular that really will be. This dramatic approach is mentioned in Adam Nagourney's New York Times Magazine article about California Gov. Jerry Brown; "… the only way a majority of Americans might reconsider [increased] taxes is if they experience the full brunt of spending cuts, not only in California but also in Washington.'People have never experienced cutting like that before,' Brown told me. 'That will create turbulence.' What Brown is proposing is to demonstrate just how disruptive a radically smaller government would be.”

I believe fully implementing the Repubs' all-cuts, "beast" strategy would not only be turbulent; it also would be painfully disruptive. The pain would have to be felt by citizens over an extended time period (not just 1 or 2 years) to cause significant change in voting patterns.

And pain would be felt because of the "We'll show those ungrateful voters something…" response by public decision-makers. When faced with voter disapproval about existing govt budget priorities (e.g., refusals to increase taxes), each and every govt "decision-maker" and/or bureaucrat always follows up and creates the most pain by making cuts to "vital" services (e.g., library hours, police and fire services on the local level, education spending on the state level, or health program spending – including the pittance spent on Planned Parenthood - on the federal level) rather than undertake a small amount of thinking and actually reduce waste and bureaucracy connected with non-vital public payrolls and programs that account for far more money than the "vital" ones they're all too ready to cut.

The Dems would have to uncharacteristically espouse a completely unified message that the affected voters' personal hurt (principally the so-called "lower 90" – meaning families outside of the top 10% of income/wealth holders) is completely due to the Repubs. This could be a challenge, since the Repubs are quite experienced at being deceitful and would surely portray the public tumult as being caused by the Dems.

Would the tumult be worth it for the Dems? Impossible to say, but based on the unyielding fiscal intransience of the Repubs (and Dems to a lesser extent), it may be worth serious consideration. If raising taxes is impossible, change the political game by declaring a victory and see what happens.

DOD RE-SIZING

When I think about improving the effectiveness of federal government spending, I first think about the Department of Expense, er, Defense (DOD). DOD expenditures accounted for 21% of total Federal government spending (and 53% of "discretionary" Federal spending) in FY2010. In addition, US defense expenditures represented 43% of total global military spending in 2009; in 2011 US DOD spending will be greater than the combined sum of the next 6 largest nations' defense expenditures (China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France and the UK). In 2011, DOD's total budget is $741.2 billion. [By design, this number isn't completely "transparent", unlike other federal agencies. Wikipedia cites the DOD budget as $663.7B, others state it as high as I've cited above – what's $77.5B among friends.] That's an astonishing amount in both absolute and relative terms.

Who's kidding whom, this astounding sum can surely be cut by at least 10-15% without much real consequence – say in 4 ways: by stopping all vainglorious weapons' development and purchase to conduct future wars against past enemies that no longer exist, e.g., the USSR; by reducing 10-15% of all active-duty and reserve military personnel – including top brass – (across each of the services); by eliminating 10-15% of all active military bases; and by unifying the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force into a single force (just like Canada successfully did years ago). Such re-sizing will undoubtedly produce huge howling by people with much brass and ribbons on their chests. Oh well, if they didn't howl, I'd assume the re-sizing wasn't big enough.

Do I think we should get rid of the DOD? No; a properly-functioning, responsive, non-omnipotent, non-omnipresent DOD is an essential part of our government.

However, I believe that the astronomical size of DOD spending is ultimately not in our nation's interest. Because of its size, the US has effectively (almost necessarily) adopted an all-war all the time foreign policy – how else to justify this huge expenditure. Why, because the DOD is large enough to do it. Like sheep, the public passively consents when the generals and admirals (G&As) say, "OMG, here's another pre-eminent threat we now need to destroy (the latest being Libya's madman president) to preserve our national security; and not to worry, we'll get it done quickly. By the way, since we're now fighting 3 (count 'em) wars, we need more money, not just the $700+ billion we got this year." Of course, that "quickly" will turn out to be just as quick as Iraq and Afghanistan.

The only way to stop this damaging, not-so-pseudo imperialism is to meaningfully cut the DOD's resources – by that I mean cut not only its budget and the number of worldwide bases, but more importantly also reduce the number of men and women (and G&As) in uniform; there are 2,278,895 people (including reserves) in the US armed forces. These cuts will have the benefit that we can't even feasibly contemplate fighting multiple wars at the same time all the time, which is a national policy strategy that endangers our international relations, reputation and political and fiscal future.

The military-industrial complex isn't really so complex. Our top-to-bottom increasingly disconnected all-volunteer professional military (as contrasted to a military mostly comprised of draftee citizens that was the norm until post-Vietnam) sees unending fighting as its only viable and natural function (other than defending its political position and budget) and its justification for existence. Thus, that's what the G&As do with increasing impunity – they advocate for continuous armed conflict. As Jonathan Stevenson in the May issue of Harper's puts it, "The United States has moved toward a quasi-imperial model of security, whereby open-ended military deployments keep the homeland [allegedly] safe by effectively pushing its boarders outward." Stevenson contends that because of its size and influence, the military has in effect co-opted President (and Commander in Chief) Obama's power to exercise civilian control over strategic/military policy. His article is entitled, "Owned by the Army."

Should this re-sizing of DOD resources be undertaken? Absolutely, if for no other reason than to benefit the 99.3% of US citizens who aren't wearing a military uniform. Realistically however, can the DOD budget and seemingly unlimited mission be significantly reduced and narrowed? Regrettably, it's very unlikely, mostly because DOD has emerged over the years since its costly Vietnam fiasco as the core determinant of US international policy, despite what the Secretary of State might say. [The State Dept's FY2010 budget was less than 8% of DODs.] Somehow the costly Iraq and Afghanistan fiascos don't yet count as negatives (for those of us who live in the 50 US states anyway). Very few politicians want to be labeled as an anti-American coward whose interest is in weakening the USofA. Tragic, because the DOD is unjustifiably big, and failing in its principal mission of defending our nation from real foes by continuing to conjure up more-or-less phantom ones (e.g., the Russian "missile gap") they need to confront to justify the military's too large existence.