What you can do for your country

Mr. President: We Will Not Increase Debt Ceiling without Spending Cuts!

With the Fiscal Cliff behind us, it is time to focus our country on fixing the economy.  In the last 4 years, in an effort to help the economy, spending has exceeded revenue by $1T each year.  Our National Debt at $16T exceeds our annual GDP.  Government spending can help economic growth at times, but this government spending has not. 

While the President enjoys his victory lap, it is time for the adults to stand up and focus the nation’s mind on our fiscal house.  Like any good plan, simplicity of purpose gets a lot accomplished.  The President does not want to debate “Raising the Debt Ceiling”.  That’s fine, let us not debate it.  Instead, debate how to cut spending.  Not if we are going to cut spending, but how to cut spending.

The Speaker of the House needs to send a simple message to everyone, and not waiver one inch on his core point:

We Will Not Increase the Debt Ceiling Without Spending Cuts!

From there everything is actually easy.  The Speaker should set some simple $ Targets and then ask Congress to develop, through Regular Order, a range of proposals (Crowd Source), they can fashion to meet elements of these targets.  Put each proposal on the web so citizens can see them, comment, rank, score, etc. Expose the waste and the debate.  Make the fight about getting to the target, rather than the debt ceiling.  Redirect the discord towards solving the problem rather than attacking the parties.  Have each congressman rank their preferences.  Run a bit of data mining on who is for what (In Ops Research the Algorithm is called “Knap Sacking” – which is sort of like Money Ball but for budgets).  Build the proper voting coalition.  Approve the bill.

The President could waste 2 months saying he will not accept cuts.  If this process is run in an inclusive manner, after 2 months the President’s intransigence will have lost some measure of goodwill.  Or the President could jump on board and help structure the cuts.  Frankly there is enough waste in the system no one will miss the cuts if they hit a particular parties “Key Issue”.

As for targets, I would set two (all on a 10 year basis, evenly distributed):

• $4T of Hard Dollar spending – these are measureable expenditures on real government operations (Buying things, staffing, etc)
• $6T of Soft Dollar spending – these include transfer payments, CPI adjusters, and other calculations that figure into the estimate of debt

I have run this kind of process for a multi billion dollar R&D budget in a large corporation.  It is a good way to get opposing groups to focus on a solution.  The structure allows the leader to diffuse debate  - “You don’t like the cuts, well why don’t you come help with your ideas”.  Alternately if someone comes in at the end and throws cold water over it, it is easy to embarrass them “We asked you many times over the last two months to participate and you never did”.

Washington may not work in a way that permits this sort of process, but it should.

Income Mobility is America's Source of Greatness - Inequality is Irrelevant

Income inequality is a measure of income distribution, but not of economic health.  In fact, in the United States the poor are more likely to become more wealthy than in other nations.  Policies focused on income mobility are more likely to drive economic growth and improve the standard of living of all income classes.

Cut all Defense, Education, and Security Spending: We still don't Reduce the Debt

We can eliminate the all Defense, Education, Police, and some social security/medicare spending.  We would then just balance the budget.  We still would have to reduce $16T of deficit.

• Budget Graphics (WSJ)
• Obama tax plan would fund government for 8 days
• Make Your Own Deficit-Reduction Plan

What The Federal Government Should Not Do

Large organizations are not good at delivering innovation.  Despite all its various products, Google for example only really makes money on advertisements.  Microsoft only makes money on its office and operating systems products.  GE leverages regulations to crowd out smaller competitors.  Large companies tend to acquire rather than build innovation.

The United States Federal Government consumes roughly 20% of our national GDP.  It attempts to offer services to 300M or more Americans.  Like any big organizations, it does not do this well.  It may not even do one thing well.  It can not even collect taxes well.

We do need a federal government especially for common needs like defense.  The constitution delegated specific functions to the federal government, functions that benefit general welfare (not specific welfare).

In any large operation that becomes unmanageable, it becomes time to break operations apart.  Companies that get unwieldy sell off unprofitable divisions to organizations that can revitalize a product offering.  Federalism established a government duopoly, in which citizen needs are resolved either at a state or federal level.  This forms a robust construct where local governments innovate and federal government scales best practice.  Whether the innovation is a service or social change, the duopoly of federalism dampens the momentum of the majority, to assure common sense and judgment.

The partisanship in our federal government is a function of doing too many things.  The task before the President and the Congress is to big.  There are too many issues to resolve.  We do not need more politics, we need the federal government to stop doing so much.  By delegating inefficient government functions, we expand innovation.  Different states can develop new approaches to education, welfare services, and other public functions.  Innovation reduces cost and improves the quality of services.  Innovation generates productivity, that brings people out of poverty and despair.  Effective government becomes an enabler not a drag on the economy.  Reform includes:

• Maintain Core Federal Government functions: The Federal Government is best suited to manage the following:
• Common Defense
• International Treaties and Affairs
• Interstate regulatory frameworks that facilitate trust and quality.
• Manage national assets – public lands, wireless spectrum, etc.
• Rule Making: In the modern legislature, laws are passed, but the rules and procedures are determined by executives in government.  So a 100 page bill turns into 1000 pages of rules set by the executive branch.  As administrations change, the rules are changed depending on the presidents preference.  This creates unproductive friction.  Common rules assume a monolithic set of needs.  What works in Missouri may not work for California.  The Legislature should make the rules, and it should be difficult to change them without legislative authority. 
• Federal Regulations: At times, markets operate best with agreed to standards.  In the early days of railroad it made sense to have different gauges of track until the market could resolve the size, scope and utility of trains and their design.   Overtime, as markets resolve best practice, translating these best practices into regulation allows the market to move innovation into a different level.  For example, once Ethernet and TCP/IP became a standard, innovations by Google, Amazon and Apple could emerge.  Th Federal government has a role in setting in law key common practices to allow the free market to operate.  Examples include trade settlement, check clearing, inter bank transfers.   These laws should emerge as a result of observed success in multiple markets, at the time in which the bulk of states agree that a common set of regulations assures market progression.  The states rather than companies should “Lobby” for such changes.
• Block Grants: Permanently pass all federal programs funded by block grants to the states.  Programs like Medicaid are funded by taxing individuals federally, processing them through the IRS, and then transferring funds in bulk to state government.  The Federal Government, under the guidance of the state should set broad rules to facilitate some aspects of the programs so that a family can move from one state to another.  States rather than the federal government will tax for these programs.  The Feds will reconcile some resources across states if an odd imbalance emerges (Migration after Katrina).
• Departments of Government: In most cases, there is little or no need for the various departments of government (Education, Housing, Energy, Commerce).  In each case they may help establish rules and standards so that a 10th grade student moving from one state to the other can fit into the school system.  Each government role could assist with encouraging best practices. If these are even needed they can execute such a role with 1% of their current budgets. Perhaps all these functions could be rolled into a single Commerce Department focused on eliminating the small barriers between the practices of each state.
• Government Laboratories: In markets that require a lot of R&D, but that the market is fractured, unprofitable or only has a government customer, the Federal government should maintain laboratories.  For example, government is really the only user of defense systems.  Not many other industries need a Nuclear weapon test facility.  FBI needs specific forensic abilities.  NIH provides key services to the states for public care and research, especially for Orphan diseases.  In all these cases, these national facilities should be built with guidance from industry for the general welfare of commerce in the US.
• Social Security and Medicare: We are into social security enough that its hard to get out of it.  Over our lives, we move around enough that a federal backup savings program makes some sense.  The Federal government should continue to maintain it.  All other programs belong at the state level.  Over time they will figure out how to manage the interoperability of these programs across state lines.
• Healthcare: The healthcare system is in flux and going through major innovation waves.  The federal Government should avoid involvement in parts of our economy going through change, because the federal government slows change.  There is a role for some form of High Deductible requirement for healthcare in which we all pay into a plan that covers healthcare costs in excess of 100K in our lifetime.  Administered in a form of social security, it would pay out to private plans, but managed as a joint risk pool across the nation.  This addresses the moral hazard of some choosing not to buy healthcare.  To protect individual civil liberty, allow each of us to “Opt Out” emergency care so that we do not place a burden on healthcare system if we do not want to buy healthcare.
• Other Rules:
• Don’t implement a rule, policy or law at the federal level unless proven to work by a bulk of states at the local level
• Don’t collect and redistribute money

All together this eliminates 60%-70% of Federal Spending.  It moves much of it to States, so it still is an economic burden.  But the states, being close to the “Customer”, will evolve programs to serve people effectively.  If they do not the political process will quickly push for change.  Between the news, twitter, and transparency, best practices will quickly emerge and transfer to adjacent states.  Just as business establishes best practices for commerce, so will governments set best practices at the local level.  In the end it delivers the rhetoric of the federal monolith, but with the efficiency of a company connected to its consumers.

Killing and the Glorification of Killing is Wrong

Sounds obvious, but maybe it isn't so obvious.  Maybe we have forgotten what this means.

The tragedy that took place at Sandy Hook was a horrific act of evil.  Sadly these random violent acts have become too common.  The outpouring of emotions and demands for solutions to prevent these tragedies is wholly appropriate.  Unfortunately, the answers and solutions we seek are not easy.

The gun debate is a difficult debate.  I do not own a gun, I am not a member of the NRA, and I will probably never own a gun.  That is my choice.  The reality is that the 2nd amendment of the Bill of Rights clearly states the right to bear arms.  Why did our founding fathers consider this important?  To protect the citizens from the tyranny of government. 

The tyranny of government is as prevalent today as it was at our nations founding.  Oppressive regimes throughout modern history, including the holocaust have killed millions.  Even our own government has targeted and killed its citizenry from events such as the Kent State shootings to several occurrences of police shooting unarmed civilians.  It has happened, and it has been efficiently rationalized away.   And unprotected by our nation's rights, even the current president has blood on his hands of dozens of innocent children killed by drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The reality is, as much as one may disagree with the 2nd amendment, it is part of the fabric of our country, and in 236 years we have been a republic free of tyranny.

The other reality is that there are now over 300 million guns owned by citizens in the United States.  The notion that gun laws will somehow drastically shift the situation is not realistic.  There are a significantly higher number of violent crimes committed with guns in the US vs other nations.  Most of these crimes are committed with handguns.  A ban on assault rifles will not change the situation.  Registration of guns will not change anything because there are already too many guns in the system.  In many cases, mass shootings have been with guns obtained from relatives as was the case with Sandy Hook.

Banning guns would be impossible.  It would require martial law, potentially cause a civil war, and create thousands of Waco, TX replays across the nation.

Even without guns these horrific crimes occur.  In 1927, in Bath, MI, a man detonated 600 lbs of dynamite in a school killing 45 people including 38 school children.  Planned school massacres that have been stopped have often involved an arsenal of IEDs in the form of pipe bombs.

Armed guards outside schools is a logistically and nearly impossible plan to implement.  Certainly they will not guarantee the safety of children. Aside from school shootings, there are already too many instances of bullying and sexual assaults by teachers.  We need to figure out how to protect our children in the school as well.

So what do we do?  We have a cultural crisis.  We have glorified killing through movies, books, and video games.  The poorest of our society in our urban areas have become gripped by violent generational crime but they are so segregated from the rest of society, they have become statistics in the evening news report.  We have become desensitized to killing and violence to the point that we are only appalled when it happens in our backyard vs the streets of south Chicago.

Enough is enough.  It is time for us to collectively say that killing and the glorification of killing is wrong.  We need to take individual responsibility to banish violence from our lives, our family's lives and our communities by standing up and making the simple statement that killing and the glorification of killing is wrong. 

This may be viewed as a naive and simplistic approach, but I would challenge someone to come up with a better solution.  We live in a viral global community.  We have the power to create change today faster than anytime in human history. 

So start today.  Make the declaration that killing and the glorification of killing is wrong.  Try it.  Since the beginning of the Sandy Hook tragedy and all the past horrific crimes and mass shootings, I have never heard a leader, government official, or community make this simple statement. 

Assuming that everyone believes killing is wrong apparently is not working.

Socialism - There's and App For That: benefits.gov

 

Just in case you did not get "Your Fair Share" Government now has an app at benefits.gov so you can find every government handout you earned.

Before Proposing More Gun Control, Take a Conceal Carry Permit Class

If you are passionate about the need for gun control, I recommend you take a Conceal Carry course to understand the mind of honest gun owners. There are two headlines one could write - "Principal kills armed gun man, avoiding harm to students" or "armed gunman kills 26 at school, while victims await police response".

The President is still Polling the issue to determine how far he can go on gun control while keeping conservative democrats in his 2014 coalition. He is a lame duck unless he can change Congress in 2014. Naming Biden to chair a committee is the clearest sign he intends to do "Just enough". The President knows, as clearly documented in government's "Safe Schools" study, that assault rifle bans have zero influence on rampage killings or gun violence.

Though, polling may show enough momentum on guns that the President can implement meaningless legislation taking energy out of the issue, driving campaign donations and vilifying Republicans. If so, he may act quickly and get back to other things. I await the results of the Chicago team's micro segmenting "borg" to understand the systematic calculus we now define as leadership.

Perhaps it is our modern analytic indifference, and outsourcing of morality to ineffectual government, that depletes our humanity such that lost souls chose evil over hope. I am my brothers keeper, not government. The most effective thing I can do to stop the Newtown's of the future is to influence just one lost soul to choose the path of good, and by my example, persuade others to do the same.

• Crime in Europe and in the US: Dissecting the 'Reversal of Misfortunes'
• Guns and Violence: A Summary of the Field
• DOJ: Murders of School-Age Children Down 42%; Only 1% Take Place at School