DAILY TOL: Tree of Liberty

Tomorrow I may be a CommonSensicrat™ just to keep things even.

First I’d like to thank Tol for giving me the opportunity to post on his site.  I don’t know how often I’ll have something to say, but I will certainly try to keep it well reasoned and pithy.

Today I’m writing about the Left-Right divide.

My lovely wife is a rabid conservative and one of her best friends is a left of center Democrat.  They love each other dearly but do tend to snipe.  Today I was struck that their sniping was more pointless than usual because they were actually on the same side of the issue.  However, the ideologues that owned their labels were, as usual, quite far apart.

This issue at hand was President Obama’s response to the increasing carnage in Iran and how those on the ideological left and right chose to react.

My wife, let’s call her Kate, correctly pointed out that Obama and many on his left were rather tepid in their support for Iran’s protestors.  Where was the outrage from the bastions of liberal thinking, asked Kate?  They cared more for the President’s poll numbers than for their ideals.  Her friend, let’s call her Edwina, took offense because many of her left of center friends had been openly supporting the Iranian protestors and encouraged a strong American show of solidarity.

In this case, both women were right…and wrong.

The disconnect arose largely because of semantics and context. Kate defines “The Left” as the vocal minority of talking heads and members of the permanent political intelligencia. In contrast, Edwina’s view was informed by left leaners in her personal circle. The Left establishment has power and doesn’t want to risk losing it so they are dipping their toes in an issue that represents great risk to their power if it ends badly. Their sin lies in a willingness to place politics above a clear moral choice involving the grave matter of life, death, and freedom.

The Right establishment does not have power and covets it, so they encourage ‘bold” action because, for them, there is much to be gained and little to be lost. Their sin is merely a dark reflection of those on the Left. The greater sin, IMO, lies with the establishment Left in that they espouse core beliefs that, in this case, they willing forgo to achieve political advantage.

In short, Edwina’s left-leaning friends have been acting on their ideals because those ideals are more important that US politics. Good for them!!  CommonSensicrats all.

The establishment Right has been saying the correct things in too strident a fashion and for all the wrong reasons.

The establishment Left has been doing the wrong things for all the wrong reasons, chief among them is fear and an unwillingness to do something the Right suggests, even when it’s correct.

To those that would defend Obama with the Hungarian example or simply the “meddling” defense, ignore that great swath of land called, “middle ground.”

There is no reason why our country couldn’t have said from the outset, “America stands now and forever with those who seek to obtain and protect Freedom. Our hearts are with the Iranian people in their peaceful pursuit and our eyes are on the Iranian Government with the expectation that, as a society of laws, it will respect and honor the wishes of its people.”

I am Thomas Paine and I reject the notion that our country is Red or Blue.  I reject the notion that ideologues who blather within their coastal echo chambers speak for me or can define the beliefs of my friends and family.  Let them excoriate each other while the wise among us note that they exist on a mobius strip of ideas where extremes of Left and Right are but a hair’s breadth apart, driving our nation to ruin.

I reject it all and I reject them…in favor of Common Sense.

Mark your calendars because today I am coining a new term that will soon sweep the nation.  I’ve coined terms in the past only to see them widely adopted without acknowledgement.  No more…I’m planting my verbiage flag today.

Bubbleheads

These creatures come in two primary varieties, Professional and Amateur.  Each of those varieties have a two minor variants, Democrat and Republican.

I don’t so much mind the professional bubbleheads because their job tends to make them that way.  Limbaugh, Hannity, Mathews, Olbermann, Maddow…bubbleheads all.  In short, they live in their ideological bubbles surrounded by like-minded bubbleheads all constantly nodding to each other.  I guess that really makes them Bobblehead Bubbleheads.

It’s when you and I join the Bobblehead-Bubblehead ranks that I really get irked.  Are we that intellectually lazy that we have to tune in for someone else to give us our opinions.  “Oh, thinking is just too hard,” we must be saying to ourselves, “Let me tune in to Chris Mathews for some spot-on analysis of the issues.”  What’s the point, folks.  Can you not predict what Chris “Obama makes a thrill go up my leg” Mathews will say about any issue?

Free your mind, Neo.  I swear, if I ever run for office…and God help you all if I do…I would hold regular Opposition Townhall Meetings, where the price of admission is to completely disagree with what I believe.  If we truly want to move our country forward, we first must have vigorous debates.  In times like these, the most intellectually honest of us should be seeking ideological whiplash by reading about an issue first in the Weekly Standard and then Daily Kos.  Watching it first with Olbermann and then with Hannity.

If you are a liberal, put down the Chris Mathews crack pipe a minute, take a long pull off the Sean Hannity pipe and see if you feel like your head is about to explode.  If it does, that’s good, it means your brain still works and you can stop being such a bubblehead.  Use these professional bubbleheads to challenge your assumptions not validate them because such validation is a foregone conclusion and turns your brain to jelly.

Check out the clip below where Chris Mathews couldn’t control himself for even 30 seconds when Bobby Jindal came out to deliver the GOP response to President Obama’s address to congress.  He just had to exclaim, “Oh, God…”  I’m pretty sure Mr. Mathews wasn’t actually being visitied by God which leads me to say, “Mr. Mathews…you, sir, are a Bubblehead.”

A few days ago I wrote about my belief that our government is incenting personal irresponsibility.  One of our readers evidently created a link from my post to their Facebook and I ended up getting quite a bit of e-mail, the vast majority of which was quite positive.  I’d encourage those that sent e-mails to memorialize their thoughts as comments, good, bad, or indifferent.

In that post, I anticipated certain characteristics of President Obama’s, then forthcoming, Housing plan.  Unfortunately, many of the aspects I feared are present in his proposal.  I’ll rehash a bit of that here, but for a different purpose than presented in the original post.

First, I’ll start with the premise that I believe it is patriotic to do what is in the best interest of the country.  If you disagree with that premise, you certainly won’t find much common ground in this post.  That said, regardless of where one stands along the Liberal to Conservative spectrum, I believe most of us agree with this premise.

That being true, it follows that fostering one’s ideology in service to a political party can hurt the country and thus be unpatriotic.  In such situations, having the virtue of intellectual honesty becomes indispensable.

Here is a quick example and then I will tie it back to the Housing proposals.  First, I think it was quite nice that Tol gave a nod to Daily Kos and its founder in his first post, but I think that site very often places winning before country.  I scan the front page Diaries at Daily Kos regularly and Kos regularly keeps folks updated on the MN Senate race, but I have never read a cogent post against Al Franken.  Two issues:  First, just on the face of things, is it reasonable for everyone in a community to believe that Al Franken would be a better Senator than Norm Colman.  Al Franken?  Everyone? I’ve done considerable research on both men and I simply don’t think a strong, let alone, absolute argument can be made for Franken.  He seems to be the choice of those who want to “Win” rather than do what is best.  Ok, but more important than any one man or one election is the electoral process itself.  If the people of MN want Franken, they should get Franken.  However, they seemed to first have chosen Colman and under recount now may have chosen Franken.  I’ve done a fair bit of research here as well and there definitely seems to be multiple standards applied to what constitutes a valid vote, depending on where in MN it was cast.  I could well be wrong, but on Daily Kos I found no such discussion but plenty of gloating and plenty of what appeared to be win-centricity.

I understand the genesis of this passionate group-think from folks who, perhaps, felt disenfranchised and disillusioned after the last eight years, but principles are things you should embrace most tightly when tempted to discard.  Regardless of label, vigorous debate is good and homogeneous thought is, at best, pointless.

Allow me to tie this back to Housing via some personal disclosures.  A couple years ago I moved my family for medical reasons, selling a house and purchasing a new one.  I had been in the old house for a while and accumulated some equity.  When establishing the new loan, I used all that equity as a down payment.  I made this decision over the advice of my mortgage broker who suggested I max out the loan to value on the house, which would free up that equity to buy new cars, a family vacation, or “something nice for my wife.”

Well, financing cars, vacations, or something nice for my wife over 30 years struck me as wrong so I opted for a smaller loan, smaller house payment, and more equity.

Less than a year after buying the new house, I received an unsolicited appraisal showing that it had appreciated by around 40% and was offered a home equity loan for all that appreciation PLUS some of the original down payment I had made.  We still had the same old cars so could have swapped them out for even better ones than those suggested by the original mortgage broker, but my principles hadn’t changes so I declined.

Since that point, about 35% of that 40% appreciation has vaporized and had I followed conventional wisdom, I would be nearly upside down on my house, with huge payments and a risky job market.

Whose fault would that have been?  Predatory lenders are, well, predators but temptation is as old as Adam and we have to take responsibility for the apples we eat.  Or do we?

Under this week’s proposal people can “transition from home ownership” (the new euphemism for foreclosure) without affecting credit ratings.  Those that continue to make payments are eligible for $1,000 from the government.  Bankruptcy judges can reset mortgage terms. And on and on…

Forcibly removing families from their homes evokes a visceral reaction in me.  I hate the idea.  It makes me angry and it makes me deeply sad.  Angry at the lenders.  Angry at those too weak to resist temptation thereby placing their family’s well being at risk.

And yes, righteous anger, as one of the vast majority who has acted responsibly and has sacrificed to try and ensure their family’s safety.  Some may say, that it is sour grapes because the Joneses are driving around in their new Lexuses while their mortgages are being reset.  No, it is that the government’s actions will cause via deflation and later inflation, me and my family to literally pay for the poor judgement of others.  $1,000 to people who stay current on they payments?  Since when did doing the right thing become behavior subsidized by the vast majority who have been doing the right thing all along.

It simply is not sustainable.  With each action that rewards irresponsibility, some additional fraction of Americans will throw up their hands, succumbing to the siren’s call of eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow the government will cure my hangover.  When we pass that tipping point where our countrymen simply vote themselves bread and circuses, collapse and/or revolution becomes inevitable.

This seems self evident to me, but if I am wrong show me where.

It angers me nearly beyond words that Ideologues like those at Daily Kos do not even discuss this.  Surely most of them pay their mortgages and live within their means.  Surely being progressive doesn’t mean advocating irresponsible behavior that they must then pay to correct.  I don’t care what side of a reasoned argument someone comes down on, but have the argument…Please!!

In its absence, I can only assume monolitic agreement occurs because they want their party to Win more than they want their country to win.

President Obama paraphrased scripture in his inaugural when he stated that it was time to put away childish things.  I quite agree.  Self-centered irresponsible behavior subsidized by one’s neighbor and placing party before country are two childish things whose time never should have been.

The law of unintended consequences is one of those immutable things that generally creates havoc with even the best laid plans.  When looking at the recently passed $800 billion spending package, I think there are few who would argue that it was a well laid plan, so the previously mentioned law is only heightened in its affect.  As a brief aside, I really like the Obama Administrations commitment to additional transparency, as evidenced by their commitment to having new legislation published 48 hours prior to a vote.  I like that even more than the promise not to have lobbyists serve in senior positions.  I’m less excited and more than a little disillusioned that over the past three weeks both promises were broken on multiple occasions.

But back to the point of this post.  I’m a bit on the horns of a dilemma.  What does one do when faced with the very real prospect that doing the personally responsible thing is not the best thing for their family?  I honestly believe that the recent “stimulus” legislation and the upcoming housing legislation will place people in that situation.

I don’t really have answers here, but do have some personal experiences to relate on which others may ruminate.  All the examples below are real situations that either I or those around me are dealing with.  As with most things I will post in this forum, I don’t see them as partisan but rather ideological.  IMO, People often ascribe a party to ideology when they shouldn’t.

Example 1:  Stay at home mom reluctantly re-enters the workforce to help cover a child’s college expense.
Governmental Consequence:  If this mom stayed home, their family could qualify for grant assistance under last week’s bill.  In addition, under a similar provision in the upcoming housing bill, her family could qualify for a reduction in interest rate, mortgage principle, or both.
Question:  Why not just stay home and let the government pick up the bill?

Example 2: Family 1 has on multiple occasions, deferred the purchase of new cars to keep debt and cash flow at what they believed were responsible levels.  Their neighbors, Family 2 have replaced both vehicles within the past two years and have done so with cars priced 40k+.  These neighbors are now faced with reduced bonuses at work and are having difficulty making mortgage payments.
Governmental Consequence:  Under proposed housing bill such people are considered under distress and eligible for having the terms of their mortgage reset by the courts.
Question:  Why shouldn’t Family 1 roll the dice and enjoy new and safer cars every couple years and if things go south, just have the government reset their mortgage.

Example 3:  Wife 1 is working in a job that she tolerates but is not her passion.  She is the primary breadwinner so works diligently at here current job while exploring other options.  Wife 2 believes she is entitled to have work that fulfills her completely, so quits her current job.
Governmental Consequence : Under current law, if someone quits their job or is fired for cause (stealing, violence, etc) they are NOT eligible for unemployment benefits.  Under the bill passed last week, employees CAN receive unemployment benefits even if they voluntarily quit their job for a compelling reason.  A list of compelling reasons is not provided by the legislation and instead a “reasonable” test is used.  I’ll insert some personal bias here in positing that most people could come up with a “reasonable” explanation for why they quit their job.
Question:  Given that unemployment benefits have now a) been extended through December 31st, b) been enhanced with 60% subsidized COBRA insurance during that time, and c)  been increased in monthly payout, why shouldn’t Wife 1, follow in the footsteps of Wife 2?  Going back to my first example, why shouldn’t that formerly stay-at-home mom just quit her job.?  By doing so, she did she would get:

• College grant for her child
• Refundable tax credit for her family to cover incidental expenses not covered by the grant
• 60% subsidized COBRA insurance
• 10 Months of enhanced unemployment payments
• More time with her family

So I am back to where I started?  Why should any of us live responsible and thrifty lives?  Why not buy that new car?  Why not put that new TV on your credit card?  Why not quit that job you don’t really like?

Someone help me out here, ’cause I’d like a new car, perfect job, and a home theatre system.  After all, aren’t we entitled to that?  

I will close with a quote from my namesake, the founder of the Democratic Party:

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.