A Reading List for the Educated Voter

A Reading List for the Educated Voter

(And those who wish to be)

Hon. Robert A. Hall, MEd, CAE

http://www.tartanmarine.blogspot.com/

Reprint permission with credit is granted by the author.

Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One by Thomas Sowell

Economics may be called the “dismal science,” but a lack of understanding of basic economic principles by most voters and far too many politicians is the root of much of our current trouble. Politicians often get elected by giving voters things they want in the short term, which ruin the economy in the long term, and the voters fail to make the connection. If you don’t understand economics, you are not an informed voter.

No one explains economics more clearly than Dr. Sowell, whose economics books are in many languages and many classrooms. His research and examples are strong, and his writing both entertaining and easy to understand for the lay reader. His best-seller Basic Economics might be even better, but it’s four times as long. If you want more, read that as well.

Not as readable, but for a good review of economic thinking from Marx to Milton Friedman, New Ideas From Dead Economists by Harvard Professor Todd G. Buchholz packs a lot of information into a short book.

Sowell is well-represented on this list, because I find him both brilliant and excellent at conveying ideas. He was born to a dirt-poor black family in North Carolina, which didn’t have hot water or electricity, supported himself from age 17 on, and worked his way (before affirmative action) through Harvard, Columbia and to a PhD from the University of Chicago. He has taught at several major universities and has dozens of books in print. His autobiography, A Personal Odyssey is inspiring. His columns are achieved on his website: http://www.tsowell.com/.

Race and Culture: A World View by Thomas Sowell

The challenges of race and culture that confront us are not unique to America. Again, Sowell’s excellent research and pertinent examples put these problems into perspective. You will come away with a better understanding and new view of these issues.

His excellent collection of essays, Black Rednecks and White Liberals is also a wonderful book, touching on many of these topics. The “Real History of Slavery” essay is alone worth the price of this book.

A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles by Thomas Sowell

I might as well get my last recommendation for Sowell out of the way. This book is different from many of his others in that he is not putting forth his ideas, viewpoint and opinions here, but presenting a balanced discussion of the foundations of thought for modern liberalism and modern conservatism. It requires a bit more intellectual focus than the books above, but will not be hated by folks of either viewpoint. If you want to understand why those stupid liberals/conservatives think like they do, this is where to find out.

America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It by Mark Steyn

Steyn is a very entertaining and funny writer, though this is a most serious subject. It deals with demographics and the dangerous fact that for most of the western world, including Japan and Canada, the native birth rate has fallen well below the replacement rate of 2.1 lives births per woman. Unless this can be reversed, which seems unlikely, the cultures of Europe and the west are likely to collapse within 30 years. It also means the western social welfare state cannot be sustained, and that Europe will increasingly be Islamicized and in fiscal turmoil. America’s birthrate is right at 2.1, thanks mostly to Hispanics and some sub-cultures like the Mormons. Since economic progress and liberty has depended on western civilization, the implications for future generations are scary.

No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam by Reza Aslan

This is the pro-Islam view by an Iranian religious scholar. In my view, several of the important questions were glossed over, and being Iranian, he leans a tad toward the Shia side of the Sunni-Shia struggle in Islam, but it’s a good, non-inflammatory understanding of how moderate Muslims view their religion. Since the challenge of militant political Islam isn’t going away, you had better understand this religion. (BTW, Islam means “submission” not “peace” as is often claimed.)

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) by Robert Spencer

This is the other side, as Spencer is an out-spoken critic of political Islam and the belief that it is basically a “religion of peace.” If you read this and No god but God, you’ll be pretty well grounded in the arguments. Spencer also wrote The Complete Infidel's Guide to the Koran, The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion and other books that are well researched, which would get his head cut off in any of a number of countries.

The Sword of the Prophet by Serge Trifkovic and A Concise History of the Crusades by Thomas F. Madden are also worth reading. It also helps if you know that Islam attacked Europe well before the much-maligned Crusades. See Tours, Battle of, 732.

Sowing the Wind: The Seeds of Conflict in the Middle East by John Keay

A broad look at an area we will be engaged with for a long time. This is an excellent one-volume history of the Middle East, from 1890 through the Suez crisis in 1956, with an epilog to bring us up to date. The catalog of crime and invasion, contention, execution and insurrection, siege and betrayal of Hashemite vs. Wahhabi, Sunni vs. Shia vs. Kurd vs. Turk, Allies vs. Ottomans, Britain vs. France, Zionists vs. Muslims, and other groups great and small would give a tourist pause, never mind a diplomat or soldier.

A Peace to End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East 1914 – 1922 by David Fromkin is also worth reading, but narrower.

Infidel by Ayann Hirsa Ali.

What is it like to be a woman under Islam? Ali’s autobiography describes her rise from a nomadic Muslim family in Somalia, her and her sister’s genital mutilation at ages 5 & 4, her escape to Holland from a forced marriage, her election as a member of the Dutch parliament, her campaign against the domestic violence and circumcision of little girls on kitchen tables that is widespread among Muslim immigrants in Holland, the murder of Theo van Gogh (grand nephew of the painter) after they made a film together criticizing Muslim violence against women, and her move to the United States after having to go into hiding to save her life. If there was ever a feminist book by a feminist who sought change at the risk of her life, this is it.

Liberty and Civilization: The Western Heritage edited by the philosopher Roger Scruton.

The book is described as examining, “the intellectual and spiritual traditions of our belief in individual liberty, from its Judeo Christian origins on through Enlightenment philosophy.” I found several of the essays, such as one on the little-known aspects of the history of the women’s rights movement, worth the price of the book. (Not that I liked every essay in it.) Valuable to understanding the foundations of our Republic.

Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto by Mark R. Levin

Levin has a reputation as a bomb thrower on his radio program. I don’t listen to talk radio, so I couldn’t say. But this short, concise book is a clear and ringing defense of freedom and individualism. I highly recommend it.

Kicking the Sacred Cow by James P. Hogan

Hogan is a “hard science” science fiction writer, who got interested in controversies in science and researched them for this book. It’s out of print, so a bit hard to get. I’m not a scientist, and I suspect that a many, perhaps most of the alternative theories he explores are wrong. But I was fascinated by the politics, the manipulation, the vicious attacks, and the strenuous efforts to prevent other views from being heard that permeate science, where things apparently get as nasty as any political campaign. You won’t think of science and the lofty proclamations of scientists the same way after you have read this book.

The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek

We are back to economics and philosophy with this classic. I’ll let you skip it if you wish, as it is a hard read, needing a lot of focus, not at all like Sowell. Hayek was writing in Britain in the 1940s, having been driven from his native Austria by the Nazis. He warned the west that tyranny can happen anywhere. Hayek saw little to choose between the National Socialism of Hitler and the International Socialism of Stalin. This is the economic and philosophical case for freedom and for individual as opposed to state economic decision making. For Hayek, the Road to Serfdom is the growth of government.

A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq by Mark Moyar

An excellent history of the type of wars we are likely to be involved in for a long time. A Harvard and Cambridge-trained historian, Dr. Moyar reviews what worked and what didn’t, who were good leaders and who failed the test of insurgency warfare. This will help you judge how we are doing in places like Afghanistan, and what the chances of success are. A review of this book I wrote was published in Leatherneck Magazine.

American History (Updated 3-1-11--I read the book!)

A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror by Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen. At 830 pages, this book requires a time investment, but is well worth it, if you haven’t reviewed US History since college. Or never. It’s a good book to buy for you high school and college students—if you can get them to read it! I have a Masters in History and read history for pleasure, so I picked up many small details I consider to be errors in fact, which hopefully will be corrected in future editions. But they didn’t impact the broad conclusions. The authors are academic historians, and do not gloss over the bad patches, such as slavery and the treatment of the indigenous population (what we used to call “Indians” before PC took hold.) On the other hand, the book was free of the Marxist cant and genuflections to leftist chimeras so prevalent on campus today. They do an excellent job of achieving balance, for example, criticizing FDR for depression-extending economic policies while praising his wartime leadership and diplomacy. Certainly the last chapter on the Bush presidency and the War on Terror will be disputed by the left, but it brings balance to the narrative they push in a sycophantic media. The book is well written and clear, not difficult to understand, which is a benefit. You can read the mixed reviews on Amazon for more details—you’ll be able to discern the world views of the writers!

The United States Constitution

Really. If you haven’t read it, or not lately, do so.  Let me know if you find the phrase “Separation of Church and State.” Also, note that promoting the general welfare is not a power granted to the government. It is the reason the enumerated powers, and no others, were granted to the federal government. I recently picked up, The American Constitution, For and Against: The Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers and it’s in the reading mountain. (Oh, BTW, the phrase “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” isn’t in the constitution either, despite that constitutional scholar Barack Obama saying it was in his State of the Union address. Doesn’t the teleprompter have a proofreader?)

That should get you started. Watch my blog, http://www.tartanmarine.blogspot.com/ for future book recommendations as well as links to the important political stories of the day.

Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam veteran who served five terms in the Massachusetts State Senate immediately after graduating from the University of Massachusetts with a BA in Government. While in the senate, he earned a master degree in history by taking evening courses. He has read (and recommends) all the books on this list, except the one noted.

Change That Would Fix America

Essay: Change That Would Fix America
Robert A. Hall
Massachusetts Senate 1973-83
http://www.tartanmarine.blogspot.com/
Permisson to forward, post, publish or re-print this article is granted.

Candidates for Public office, even incumbents, often promise “change,” without specific details that might cost them votes. This essay is intended to lay out some suggested radical changes that would, in my opinion, greatly improve our Republic, the electoral process and how our government functions. Nothing lasts forever, and I believe that without a radical and painfully restructuring the American Republic will collapse in the not-to-distant-future, following Europe into the chaos and tyranny of collectivism.

Given that these changes would gore a lot of oxen, I think there is almost zero chance of most of them coming into being. The affected special interests will fight them to the death, and it’s easier to defeat a change than enact it, especially when the proposed change does not have a committed advocacy base.

In addition, each party would analyze how the recommended changes would have affected its fortunes in the past few and the next few elections, and the party that would do worse would fight the change, regardless if it was good for the country. (I have not attempted to make such an analysis, wanting only to lay out what I thought would be positive for the Republic, absent political calculations).

Unfortunately, there is not a strong constituency for reform. The groups that battle the hardest in the political arena do so for power, money or, usually, both, not the future good of the Republic.

That said, here are my views of how we could greatly improve the functioning of our Republic and preserve a future for freedom in America.

Nominating Candidates for President

Since the Presidency is a national office, our current system of nominating candidates certainly does not provide “equal protection under the law.” A voter in Dixville Notch, NH, has ten thousand times the power in this process of picking a president as a voter in California. That is neither reasonable nor democratic. Since elections for President are national, and elections for the House and Senate are for a national body that impacts every American, the rules for getting elected should be uniform across all states, by constitutional amendment, to guarantee equal protection of the law.

Presidential Primary Elections

We need what is called the Graduated Random Presidential Primary System, or The American Plan (sometimes known as the California Plan), which is designed to begin with contests in small-population states, where candidates do not need tens of millions of dollars in order to compete. You can read more about it here: http://fixtheprimaries.com/solutions/americanplan/

This would introduce greater fairness and competition into the system, and mitigate the power of name recognition and big money, giving other candidates a chance to impress voters.

Only members of a party should be allowed to vote in that party’s primary. I don’t believe that Democrats or Republicans should be allowed to vote in the other’s primary, where they are likely to make mischief by voting for “poison pill” candidates. Independents could vote in a Party Primary by registering as a member of that party—but they couldn’t vote in the other party’s primary for at least four years.

Unfortunately, ignorant voters do not understand why they cannot votes for some Republicans and some Democrats at primary time, as civics is no longer taught, and they do not understand that a primary is for members of a party to select the party’s candidate. People who are not members of a party have no more right to tell the party who its candidates should be than people who are not members of a church have to tell the church who its pastor should be.

Convention Delegates

Delegates should be elected by Congressional District, rather than winner take all in each state. This gives unknown candidates or local favorites a change to garner delegates and get national attention. Delegates should be required to be residents of the congressional district. Delegates would be legally bound to the candidate on the first vote at the party’s convention. After the first vote, if no candidate received a majority of the votes and was nominated, they would be released to vote for any candidate they chose.

Third Parties

Any party which received, say, 5% of the national popular vote in the last presidential election would automatically be included on the ballot in the Primary System, unless they failed to run delegates in 75% of the Congressional Districts. Other parties which wished to run in the November election would need to file signatures in each state equal to, say, 1% of the votes cast in that state in the last election. I’m not locked into those percentages, but there needs to be a way for third parties to have access to the ballot, though with a high enough threshold that you don’t have 500 kooks putting their name on the ballot for President in every election.

Alternatively, independent or minor party candidates could gain ballot access by putting up a reasonably large deposit, which would be forfeited if they didn’t receive 5% of the vote. This system is used in some countries to allow ballot access, but not clutter the ballot with non-serious candidates.

Electoral College

I would not do away with the much maligned Electoral College. Without it, corrupt city machines (yes, I’m thinking of Chicago) could control the entire election, rather than just the votes of one state. Without it, close elections like 1960 and 2000 could mean nationwide recounts, lawsuits and leave the presidency in doubt for months or even years, to the detriment of the country.

But I would make two changes to the Electoral College. First, I’d do away with electors. A state’s electoral vote would be certified by its Secretary of State or chief elections officer just like any other vote. This eliminates the specter of a rogue or corrupt elector changing the outcome.

Secondly, I would award two electoral votes to the candidate who won the state, and I would award the others to the winner of each Congressional District, as Maine and Nebraska do now. This would put every state in play and mean that the parties couldn’t write off any state. Republicans could win votes in California, Democrats in Texas. Campaigns would be much more national.

Elections

All voting should be done on computers, and every election should require a candidate to receive 50% plus 1 of the vote in order to win. This can be done by what’s known as the “Hare” system, which I understand is used in Australia.

In this system, it doesn’t mater how many candidates there are. You vote with a number one for your first choice, two for your second choice and so on. If no candidate is the first choice of 50% of the voters, the candidate with the fewest number of first place votes is eliminated, and those votes are automatically apportioned to the other candidates based on who received the number two vote. And so on, until one candidate has a majority.

This ensures that a candidate despised by a majority does not get elected with 30% of the vote. It stops the political game of one candidate putting in straw candidates of the same race, ethnicity or gender of the main opponent to split the vote. It allows voters to vote first for their preferred candidate, even if she or he is behind in the polls, because doing so doesn’t help a candidate you really dislike. As I write we just had a primary for governor in Illinois, with something like six candidates in my party. The winner had around 21% of the vote. One of the candidates I thought was really bad was high in the polls. A couple of candidates I really liked were low. In that situation, do I vote for the person I think would be the best governor, or for the least worse of the leaders? On the Democrat side, a candidate for Lt. Governor won with 26% of the vote. He is a Chicago pawnbroker with a domestic violence arrest in his past, and was forced to withdraw, meaning party insiders, not the voters, choose the candidate. (The guy who came in number two is a black state Representative, and the Democrats don’t want another black on the ticket.).

This change also gives third parties and independents a chance (meaning both the Democrat and Republican Party establishments will hate it). If you like the Conservative party candidate or the Green Party candidate, you can vote that way without thinking you are helping the hated Democrats/Republicans, because the winner will need 50%, so your second choice will still count if your first choice is eliminated.

I have had trouble explaining this system over the years, though it seems dead simple to me. If you don’t understand it, e-mail me and I’ll write out an example, rather than take the space here. Trust me, it works fine.

Congressional Districts

We should require every state to set congressional districts by an independent commission, using a computer model which does not take party registration or voting history into account. I understand Iowa does a pretty good job on this, so there are models that consider the people, not the parties. Gerrymandering is one of the curses of our democracy. This will result in better representative and more competitive elections.

Term Limits

I’ve come around to the view, advocated by many including my brother Tom, that we should limit Presidents to one six-year term. Than Presidents can spend six years fighting for things they believe are right for the country, without an eye on re-election, and not spend tax dollars buying votes for their next campaign.

I also believe we need term limits for members of Congress. The power they have to raise fund and the creation of a permanent political class are not good for the country. There are many possibilities. I’d favor changing both senators and house members to having four-year terms, half elected every two years, with a limit of four terms in each body. Thus if the voters really like you, you can spend 32 years in Washington. That would be pretty generous, but would increase turnover, and competition as House members ran for the Senate.

I’d increase the restriction on lobbying by both former members and by former staff members to four years, making them spend a term outside Washington.

Campaign Finances

There is probably no observer who doesn’t think that our system is broken, or that the amount of money poured into campaigns isn’t a national disgrace. The bitter joke is that we have the best politicians that money can buy. Members of Congress spend a large part of their limited time in Washington raising money for the next election, because if they don’t, they will lose to a challenger who is out there doing the same thing. I ran successfully five times for the Massachusetts Senate, and the most I spent on a campaign was $19,000 in 1974—and $4,000 of that went to the caterers for a couple of fund-raising functions, leaving $15,000 for ads, buttons and signs.

Every effort to fix the system runs up against the rock of the First Amendment, because buying a political ad is certainly an act of free speech. Years ago I thought we might control costs by forbidding TV stations from selling political ads, as we do with cigarette ads, since the airways belong to the people. But cable TV and the Internet have made that pipedream moot.

Worse, when we pass campaign finance restrictions, we disadvantage the honest candidate who tries to play by the rules running against a sleaze ball who is willing to circumvent them. Restricting the money that goes to candidates only means that it goes to outside groups that the candidate can disavow, that have even fewer inhibitions about running ads that lie and smear, since the candidate they are supporting has deniability.

Some have argued that candidates should not be able to take funds from outside their district or state. But, again, that restriction only diverts funds to outside groups.

Since I want to uphold the First Amendment, already under assault on university campuses and by groups who want to outlaw anything they decide is “hate speech,” here’s where I am now:

Any person or organization, including a union or corporation, should be allowed to give as much money as they want to any candidate to spend on the campaign. BUT before the money can be deposited in the account, the amount and source must be entered on line into a database accessible by anyone, so we can see where a candidate’s funding comes from. The same rule should apply to all groups attacking or supporting candidates, if we can make that stick against a constitutional challenge. If the money goes to the candidate, it makes the candidate responsible, not some attack group like MoveOn.org or a conservative 527 group.

Hiding the source of a campaign contribution should be a corrupt practice with stringent penalties. No more non-English speaking Chinese immigrants reported as “giving” 20% of their annual income in some bundled contribution.

Since they are going to find a way to spend it anyway, let’s smoke them out in the open. Then the voters can decide if they like who is buying the candidates, and vote accordingly.

And we can think of campaigns as economic stimulus programs, as really rich folks like George Soros spread their wealth around the economy.

Is this a perfect solution? Not even close. It’s just the best I can think of.

The Congress

A few years ago, a book entitled The Broken Branch (which I recommend) detailed the deterioration of the legislative process in Congress, which started under the 40-year Democrat majority and was acerbated by the Republican Majority starting in 1995. Since then, the new Democrat majority starting in 2007 has only made the situation worse.

Here are some changes needed to improve the process:

--The President must be given a line item veto on budgets. No more should he or she be able to avoid responsibility for earmarks, pork projects and excessive spending by claiming a need to sign the budget as a whole, even with bad things in it.

--A list of all earmarks for individual House and Senate should be circulated to every member, and each member would be required to sign off supporting or opposing each earmark and that signoff list should be public record. An earmark that doesn’t get 50% approval in the process could not be included in the budget except by a roll call vote in both branches. No longer would a member in New York be able to duck responsibility for a pork project in California. The same process should be required for each line item which increased spending over the previous year by a percentage greater than the CPI increase for the year. If a politician agrees to let a colleague buy votes through spending, the constituents should know it.

--Bills should be required to be published on the Internet, with full public access, three days before they are voted on or amendments offered. Once the amendment process is completed, they should be on the Internet three days before final passage. No more “vapor bills.”

--Congress should not be allowed to exempt itself from laws it passes that apply to the country or citizens at large.

--We should prohibit bills that have not had public hearings from being substituted for other bills to avoid the regular process.

--We should require that amendments must be germane to the legislation. That is, they should not be able to attach an amendment on abortion or guns to a bill on National Parks, avoiding the process. Nor should they be able to use a bill as a “shell,” wiping out everything in it and substituting a completely bill that has not gone through the legislative process with hearings.

--Let’s have real transparency. No excluding the press, the public or members of the other party from meetings between legislators or legislators and executive branch officials about the contents or details of legislation.

--We need to find a way to tie spending to taxes. Right now, politicians are rewarded for spending money, but punished for raising taxes to pay for it. I knew a long-serving member of the Massachusetts Senate who never voted for a tax increase, or voted against a spending increase—except for judges’ and legislators’ pay raises. Then she would make a big deal over these small cost items in the press, and saving the taxpayers money. (But she always took the pay raises!) A lazy press let her get away with it and she was re-elected for years. Tying them together would require a much-needed simplification of the tax code along the lines of a flat tax or the “fair tax” proposal.

And, yes there should be an exemption for war—if Congress declares war. And there is no reason Congress cannot declare war against non-state actors, such as Islamic Jihadists or Mexican Dug Cartels.

The Size of Government and the Deficit

We need to reduce the size of government, if our government is going to survive. It is almost impossible to do, because of the political clout of government unions, particularly with the Democrats. But unless we do, we will be Greece in a decade or two at the most. Here are the painful solutions:

--It should be made illegal for government employees to unionize. All such unions are conspiracies against the taxpayers and fiscal stability. In the end, they will destroy themselves by destroying the government, the way a morbidly obese person destroys himself by eating.

--The number of employees of the Federal Government should be reduced by 2% per year until the total is reduced by 20%. Only combat troops would be exempt as long as we are at war. (And Congress should declare war against Islamic jihadists who want to destroy us and our freedoms.)

--Federal spending should be limited to 15% of GDP by constitutional amendment, being reduced 1% a year until we hit that target. This is going to mean cutting, rather than increasing entitlements. And, yes, there will be cuts I won’t like either, given that I’m close to Medicare and Social Security. But the country must survive.

This will produce perhaps-violent protests, heavy lobbying and howls of out rages from those affected, which will be a majority. Everyone wants lower deficits and lower taxes—but not spending cuts that impact them! But the alternative is eventual fiscal collapse.

Unfortunately, any member of Congress who really votes to balance the budget has to face the voters with his opponent saying the Congressman is for higher taxes and against the poor, children, education, women, defense, public safety, teachers, scientific research…..so you cannot get re-elected by the public that says it wants balanced budgets if you are really for them.

The Courts and Crime

We need to pass comprehensive tort reform, including caps on non-economic damages, which will bring down the cost of healthcare, bringing drugs to market, and almost everything else. A system that creates multi-millionaire trail lawyers like John Edwards while spending ever-increasing parts of our GDP on the Litigation Industry favors only the lawyers. We lead the world on the % of GDP spent on litigation—this is not sustainable. Read this report: http://www.triallawyersinc.com/kstreet/kstr01.html

We need a system where in civil actions the loser pays, to reduce frivolous legislation.

Lawyers should be paid at an hourly rate, as I understand is the case in most countries. Taking a percentage of the “take,” which leads to lottery lawsuits, should be outlawed.

Attorneys who bring cases ruled to be frivolous should have their licenses suspended.

In criminal cases, expert witnesses should be selected by the court, not by the opposing parties. Currently the testimony tends to favor the side paying the bills, leading to dueling witnesses and confusion for the jury. Every defense attorney knows a psychiatrist who thinks everyone is crazy, every prosecutor knows one who thinks no one is nuts. It is the system that is nuts.

Lawyers should be licensed by the state, like every other professional, not by their union, the Bar Association.

We badly need sentencing reform. Recently a corrupt politician in Chicago was sentenced to a year and a day. If the sentence was just a year, he’d have had to serve more before being eligible for parole. And, yes, it makes no sense to sentence a black person using crack cocaine to ten times the sentence given a white person using powder cocaine.

No one hates drugs worse that I do. I’ve never even tried marijuana or any other recreational drug except alcohol and I’ve seen up close and personal the destruction druggies bring to themselves and their families. If I could push a button and kill every drug dealer in the world and destroy the drugs, I would. But I can’t and must deal with reality. We need to decriminalize the use of drugs, and have the government license sellers. The vast sums spent on courts, police and prisons could be diverted to treatment programs. But along with this reform should go draconian penalties for unlicensed sale of drugs (other than marijuana), perhaps as sever as the death penalty for a third offense—three strikes and you are really out! This reform would break the back of organized crime, from the mob, to the Mexican cartels to the Crips, Bloods and Latin Kings.

Life in prison for three felonies—the current version of “three strikes” laws—often results in ridiculous situations, like the taxpayers paying to keep a guy who swiped a pizza. But I’d keep it for three violent crimes, or crimes involving use of a fire arm. And for a gun crime, I’d make the first offense punishable by five years, no parole.

Energy

We have the worst of all worlds in energy policy, as the Right and Left create energy gridlock that only favors Saudi Arabia. Energy policy is held hostage by all the lobbyists, from the Seirra Club to the Oil Companies.

Here’s what we need to do:

--We need to invest in research and development of both new and renewable sources like wind, thermal and solar power, and in abundant existing sources, like making coal clean, and mining it safely. As energy costs rise, all these start to make economic sense.

--We need to stop supporting things like ethanol, despite the farm lobby, as it’s a poor net gain on energy, and starves poor people around the world by raising the cost of food.

--We need to fast track new nuclear plants so that 30 years from now we get as much of our power from nuke plants as France does today.

--We need to fast track development of domestic refineries, so a storm in the Gulf of Mexico doesn’t put us at the mercy of foreign producers for weeks.

--Oil will be necessary to the world’s economies for many decades to come, whatever the fantasies of dreamers who think we can go back to a per capita energy usage of the 1880s. We need to explore for and develop domestic oil supplies, including drilling off the coasts and in ANWR and develop the technologies to reach things like shale oil. The US loaning money to companies for offshore drilling in Brazil, so they can then join the countries milking us, is nuts. So is watching China drill off the Florida coast on leases from Cuba, so we can wreck our economy sending them dollars for energy, then borrowing them back to fund domestic spending. (Though China is growing so fast, they may not sell us any of that oil they get in the future from off our shores.)

Almost none of this has any chance of being adopted. The opposition would be fierce, and the support tepid for most of these changes. So the next generation or three will, I believe, have to go through the pain of a fiscal collapse and loss of freedom as an increasingly-powerful government tries to hold things together by forcing people to “do the right thing” against their wishes.

Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam Veteran who served five terms in the Massachusetts State Senate. He blogs at www.tartanmaqrine.blogspot.com.

Weasel Words: an essay

Reading the recent column on “Magic Words” by the brilliant economist Dr. Thomas Sowell put me to thinking about the subject.

Words have power. The power to inspire. Men have fought and died for words, from soldiers and heroes to gang members ready to kill over being “dissed.” Words have the power to hurt, as any teen outcast or rejected suitor can tell you.

And a facility with words can bring you fame, fortune and power, as President Obama has most recently made manifest.

But words often do not have precise meanings. And, in fact, it is often the successful political candidate who finds words which inspire voters’ support, by meaning whatever the hearer wants them to mean.

Precise words get politicians in trouble. It’s widely assumed that President George H. W. Bush’s famous, “read my lips—no new taxes” pledge cost him re-election, when he was forced to agree to a tax increase proposed as part of the budget by the Democratic-controlled Congress. It remains to be seen if President Obama’s campaign pledge that voters earning under $250,000 wouldn’t pay a penny more in taxes if he was elected will be hurt by his more than doubling the cigarette tax, which hits poor folks the hardest, and thus is a “regressive” tax supposedly hated by liberals (until they need money for pet projects).

So a great part of the political art is to find words that inspire voters, but which mean whatever the hearer wants them to mean. This helps you hold disparate coalitions together, at least until after Election Day. Barack Obama successful tied his campaign to two of these words, “hope” and “change.”

We all want “hope,” so it’s a great word. But we all hope for different things, of course. According to the results, 55 million of us were hoping that John McCain would be elected President. Obama didn’t do much for that hope.

And “Change” is a constant. The only way to lose on that one is to promise no change, because the world changes willy-nilly around us, with increasing celerity, wanted or not. It’s pretty powerful if folks are unhappy with what has happened recently, though the voters are rarely paying enough attention to understand who or what caused the things they are unhappy with. One might say that if it wasn’t for the nescience of voters, few politicians would get elected.

No electorate in the world wanted “change” more than the Germans in 1932. And they got it—good and hard!

What are some other weasel words without precise meanings, which sound wonderful to voters?

Fair: We all want to be fair, but what does fair mean? Suppose four guys go out to lunch, and split the check four ways. Is that fair? Suppose one had a tuna sandwich, and another had lobster? Then maybe it would be fair to say that each pays for what he eats? But suppose one of the guys makes $100,000 a year and the others make only $50,000. Would it be fair to say the one who makes the big bucks should pay twice what the others do, regardless of what he eats, because he makes more? You probably wouldn’t think it was “fair” to ask your friend to pay for your meal, though an increasing voting bloc feels it is very fair to ask other people to pay for things they want.

Let’s take another example. Suppose 100 adults with jobs live on your street. And you get together and decide that it would be wonderful if you had a new playground that would cost about $10,000. So you vote and the new playground wins.

Then you have to vote how much each person should chip in to buy the playground, and the vote goes like this:

Five of the adults are charged a total of $6,000 for the playground everyone will use.

Another 45 of the adults have to get together and chip in an additional $3,700.

And the last 50 adults have to pool their resources and come up with $300 between them. Is that fair? (That was the US tax code in 2006.)

Well, President Obama and his Social Democrat Party said no way is that fair. Those five people have to come up with a lot more money than just $6,000, so the 45 pay less, and the 50 who were paying $300 now pay nothing.

Under that help-the-rich guy George Bush and the Republicans in 2006, 5% of Americans—those with incomes over $153,000, paid 60% of the taxes, while the bottom 50% of Americans paid 3%. (IRS figures.)

Once more than 50% of the public pay nothing, what is to stop them from voting to take everything from those who pay more? And all in the name of being fair.

Rich: While we are on the subject of money, what is “rich”? The old joke is that an alcoholic is some one you don’t like, who drinks more than you do. For the most part, “rich” is, “compared to whom?” Compared to Barack Obama and John McCain, I’m poor. Compared to Bill Gates and George Soros, I’m dirt poor. Compared to a college student living with four other students in a one-bedroom apartment, I’m very rich.

College students, in fact, are among the poorest adults, but will often end up in the top 25% of incomes later in life. Only a small percentage of Americans who are in the bottom 25% at any time will stay there their entire lives, and many move to the top 25%.

And compared to hundreds of millions of people living in third world countries, most of the “poor” in America are rich beyond their dreams.

According to Candidate Obama, the “rich” are the top 5%, who he thinks, contrary to IRS numbers, are making over $250,000 a year. It was quite brilliant. Promise 95% of the people that if they vote for you, you’ll make the other 5% pay for everything they want. That he didn’t get 95% of the vote one attributes to older voters who learned math and had a feeling of déjà moo (I’ve smelled this BS before).

Still, as Oscar Ameringer said, “Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.” So I suppose politicians will continue to get elected by attacking the “Rich”—whoever they are.

Justice: Do you believe in justice? Of course, we all do. The problem is that none of us really know what “justice” is.

Young thugs out for a joy time of breaking windows, torching cars and looting stores like to chant, “No Justice, No Peace.” Not that they are eager to see justice done for those whose property is destroyed. But it cloaks their vandalism in the guise of a noble cause, so they can enjoy destruction while feeling good about themselves.

And “Social Justice” is politician speak for “I’ll take his property or money and give it to you, because he doesn’t deserve to have all that while you have less.”

Is justice giving an accused criminal every possible chance to defend himself? Sure. How about every possible legal maneuver to drag out the proceeding for years? Ah, maybe. How about if dragging out the proceedings for 10% of the criminals means the courts are so clogged that the other 90% get to go free or plea bargain their sentences down? How about if the technicalities of giving the accused 100% justice, to the Nth degree, puts a murderer back on the street—and you are the next victim? Has justice been done? Does not more “justice” for criminals mean less justice for victims? If the courts act in a way that gets you, an innocent person, killed, has justice been done?

I think there is so little of what I call “justice” for the decent, law-abiding folks in today’s world, that the only thing stopping the rise of vigilantism is that those decent folks have been raised to be law abiding. But the popularity of movies like Gran Torino and songs like Beer for my Horses means a lot of the folks who are the foundations of this country feel there is too much “justice” for the thugs, gang-bangers and parasites, and too little for them. So vigilantism may be coming. We’ll see if it brings “justice.”

Reform: I’m certainly for reform. In fact, when I upset an incumbent state senator named Joe Ward by nine votes out of 60,000 back in 1972, “Government Reform” was one of the three planks I ran on. I bet you are for “reform” as well. In fact, almost any change a politician promotes is said to be a “reform.”

Here in Illinois, due to bi-partisan corruption, they’ve reformed government so many times, that we taxpayers can hardly afford anymore reform.

Were the issues I supported reforms? Alas, reform, like pornography, is in the eye of the beholder. One of the “reforms” I supported was reducing the size of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 240 members to 160. The idea was to reduce cost, make legislators more visible, increase the prestige of the individual Representative, and make the legislative process more efficient and streamlined. That it was hated by the professional politicians, 80 of whom (mostly Democrats), were going to lose jobs, was no small part of its appeal. That the public strongly supported it, and my opponent had voted against it (thus defeating it by one vote in a confused legislative situation) made it an especially handy club for me to bludgeon him with.

But, if I were in the Commonwealth today, I could offer a new “reform.” Let’s increase the size of the Massachusetts House from 160 to 240 Representatives. It will make the individual legislator closer to his constituents. It will give more opportunity for minorities to have a voice in the house. It will provide a broader range of experts in the legislature to speak to increasingly-complex subjects. Give me a minute, and I’ll think of a few more reasons why going the other way would also be a “reform.”

So, think carefully when you hear some candidate like me propose a “reform.” Every change a politician suggests is pictured as a reform. After all, Rod Blagojevich ran as a “reformer.”

Affordable: We all believe that people should have “affordable” housing, “affordable” healthcare, “affordable” heating and “affordable” food.

And they do. If you are living in some shelter, even a tent, or are one of five students in a two-room apartment, and are paying for it, you have “affordable” housing. And you have “affordable” healthcare—that is, as much as you can afford, and are willing to pay for. If you are eating, you have “affordable” food—you afforded it, didn’t you.

What “affordable” means when a politician says it, is that he is going to give you more of something you want more of, and make someone else pay for it!

There are exceptions, but most folks would like to have a home that was a bit bigger, nicer and in a better location than the one they have. And once that larger, nicer home is “affordable” for you, it’s not too long until you start wishing that something a bit larger was “affordable.”

I read that between 1970 and 2005, the average size of a new American home increased by 50%. Garages used to be one car, then two, now a lot of middle class housing is built with three car spaces. Most people didn’t have air conditioning in 1970—I was 36 when I lived in my first air conditioned home, because I moved to Florida.

If you have a family of five, living in a non-air-conditioned, three bedroom, 1,200 square foot home without a garage, which you can afford, doubtless you’d like the taxpayers to make a 2,500 foot, 4 bedroom home with AC and a garage “affordable” for you at the same cost. And so it goes.

As Dr. Sowell has often pointed out, cities where the politicians have promised to make housing more “affordable” through rent control, like New York and San Francisco, have the most expensive housing in the country. Builders want to make more money to “afford” more things for their families. So they shift building investment dollars to luxury apartments and condos, not covered by the controls, from standard apartments.

And it was the demand to make housing “affordable” by forcing banks to give loans to people who couldn’t pay, through the Community Reinvestment Act, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that was the first domino in the current economic downturn. All that really helped poor folks, right? Maybe by making everyone poor through a housing bubble and 401k collapse.

Healthcare: Okay, you say, you've got me here. Everyone knows what healthcare means, right? Sure. But what are the parameters? Any honest economist will tell you that the cheaper a desired good or service is, the more the demand for it is. And if it’s free, the demand goes way up. (Why don’t teenagers turn off the TV and lights, or shut the door when they come in? Because electricity and heat are a “free good” for them—they aren’t paying the bills.”)

As healthcare gets cheaper, people use more of it. Which is why insurance companies want deductibles and co-payments.

I want my employer to have a doctor in our office, who will be available at a moment’s notice if I feel ill, give me a physical once a month, run a CT & MRI every three months and dispenses no-cost prescriptions to me as needed—or as desired. Ridiculous, you say? Why would you say that? It certainly qualifies as good “healthcare” and did not candidate Obama say that “Healthcare is a Right”? So, I only want my rights here. And I want it to be affordable—I want someone else to pay for it.

With a nod to Maggie Thatcher, the problem with “affordable” is you eventually run out of other people’s money to pay for everything you want to be able to afford.

Freedom: Let’s end with this, because conservatives like me tend to throw “freedom” around more than liberals. Everyone is in favor of Freedom in principle—just not in practice. The problem is, again, defining freedom. Sowell says it boils down to the right to do something other people don’t want you to do, and that’s probably as close as we can come.

So liberals don’t want you to have the freedom to own guns, and while they claim to be big supporters of the First Amendment, Freedom of Speech is banned on liberal run campuses, and left leaning countries in Europe (plus Canada) because speech that offends some group is banned as “hate speech.” The UN wants to ban “defamation of religion” at the behest of Muslims—who you can be sure will go on saying the vilest things about Jews and Christians in their own countries. It has gone so far that in some places, a non-Muslim can be charged with hate speech for accurately quoting the Qur’an and the Hadith. Dare you say that Muhammad had sex with his youngest wife when she was nine? Nope, hate speech, though it’s reported in the Muslim holy works (the Hadith) and is the basis for allowing 45-year-old men to marry nine-year-old girls in many Muslim countries.

Conservatives don’t want Gays to have the freedom to marry each other, or people to have the freedom to read anything they consider pornographic. (And liberal feminists as well, on the last point.)

Of course, every society puts restrictions on freedom to protect the rights of others. One can’t murder someone with impunity. Or so we hope. In the old days, blacks could be murdered with impunity by white racists in many areas, but thankfully, those days are over. Now, in our enlightened times, black children can only be murdered with impunity by black gangbangers in areas where intensive policing is prohibited by charges of racism. That no doubt makes a huge difference to the victims.

That some restrictions on freedom are clearly necessary to protect others gives those who would restrict freedom the cover to decide what is best for others. Conservatives fighting the freedom of Gays to marry, or the freedom of people to see X-rated movies are doing it “to protect society” as are liberals trying to ban guns. And let’s not get into the struggle between the freedom of a woman to control her own body and the freedom of a child to be born.

I generally come down on what I believe is the side of the greatest freedom. But when any of us says “Freedom,” as with other words that sound wonderful, the devil is in the details.

Or, as Lincoln might have said, “With the right weasel words, you can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time—and those are pretty good odds on Election Day!”