Sequester: Where The Money Goes

Mad Dog is still trying to track down where we allocate our funds as a people.
These charts are from different websites, government, conservative think tanks, Mother Jones. They seem to reflect subtle differences in how conservatives and liberals see the same numbers. Creative accounting.

Double click on them to make them more readable.

Notable, is how little defense spending takes up compared to other programs in some charts--as low as 14% in some and as large as 19% in others and even in those where it is 19% Veterans benefits are separated from defense spending, which of course is a little irrational. The cost of a soldier's prosthetic leg is a cost of war, not a social security benefit. With all the money we can see spent at the Portsmouth Naval Yard and in Norfolk Virginia and in the districts of the Tea Party Republicans from California to Pennsylvania, it is surprising that slice of the pie isn't bigger. Agriculture and farm subsidies look surprisingly small. "Education" is surprisingly, gratifyingly, large. I wonder what that includes. 

What is included in "protection" is not clear. Is terrorism, the CIA, the NSA in "defense" or in "protection?" Should Veteran's Administration be in "Health" for the VA hospitals or in "Defense?"  Or should it be in" pensions?" If you added up "defense" "veterans" "protection" then the defense slice would be bigger than Medicare.  Presumably, the Republican/Tea party/ Conservative Think Tank types split off anything they can from "defense" to make that slice of the pie look smaller. And they add whatever they can to Medicare and Social Security to make that look larger.

Before we can really understand the debate about whether we need to cut spending or increase income, Mad Dog suspects, we need to actually see what we are spending and on what.

Creative accounting likely plays a subterranean role here.

Wars For All the Wrong Reasons

The war we fought among ourselves from 1861-1865 was a war we had to fight. No avoiding it, and the fact it was as long and destructive as it was was important because we had to exhaust ourselves and realize no institution or States Right notion was worth that cost. Had the Union won quickly, as it could have but for the incompetence of various generals, in 1862 or 1863, the South would not have been as exhausted or convinced of its defeat. That was a war which expunged the bad blood.

And it was a good we joined the  battle against Hitler in 1942. As racist and exploitative as England and France and even the United States were, they could  not hold a candle to what Germany had degenerated into. We were a force for good in the world, even if most of the men who fought in that war did not  know it when they joined. 

They found out later just what monster they had brought down.

But since the end of World War II, we have been in more or less continuous war--with a brief hiatus during the Clinton years.

But in most of the wars since WWII, we found  ourselves in quagmires, unable to even say what winning is. 

President Obama has vowed to end the war in Afghanistan and Mad Dog believes he wants to do this, if for no other reason than its effect on our economy. His administration has voiced, through Vice President Biden, our excuse for leaving--we are not running out on the Afghans; we are handing their country back to an Afghan government which is stepping up to take our place, to keep order and to lay justice on the Afghan people.

Of course, as Americans, we understand a  lie when we hear one. There is no Afghan government. There are only some police who rape young boys, hold unfortunate citizens for ransom, sell American weapons and gasoline on the black market, traffic in heroin.  It's a nasty bunch we are handing the country over to, but then again, we never had it in hand.  It's all "Dope on the Table."  We claim victory and clear out.

As far as Mad Dog is concerned, it cannot happen fast enough. After us, the place collapses, and there is not a thing anyone can do about it. 

It's not even clear there is such a thing as an "Afghan people." As with so many failed states, Somolia, and other African "nations" there is no real nation, just a geographic area populated by warring tribes and religious fanatics. 

The lives we lost  were not in vain, if we believe all that was necessary to track down Osama Bin Laden, and without Afghanistan, without a launching pad into Pakistan, we  would likely never have got him. After the Twin Towers came down, a lot of young American men and women were willing to go to Afghanistan to help track him down and kill him. 

Now we've done it. And now we ought to get out of that part of the world  and we ought to  close Gitmo prison, a cesspool of torture which some Americans have justified because we are not torturing or unjustly imprisoning men on American soil. As if committing a crime off shore is no crime. It's the old, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. If we don't misbehave at home, well then there is no crime.

We ought to Bring 'Em Home, from Afghanistan, from Germany, from Japan, from all those bases overseas and build our economy right here. And we ought to set about the work of shutting down those huge weapons systems communities in hundreds of Congressional districts, where Americans have good, high paying jobs building weapons systems we do not need and cannot afford.  These defense workers have served us well, but as was true after World War II, it is time to study war no more and to close down the death factories. 

Mr. Obama may realize this. If he does not, we might be able to educate him.

Sequester: Do We Really Need Government, Anyway?

Driving over the fiscal cliff would stall government programs, but for the Republican Tea Party, this will come as welcome news. 
It is not clear to Mad Dog  how many of the listed losses would be permanent and how many temporary, but here is a partial list of what New Hampshire would lose:
1. Teachers and schools: >$1 million for education aides
2. Clean Air Clean Water: $1.5 million for hazardous waste and pesticide contamination programs
3. Defense: 1,000 civilian employees furloughed--presumably the shipyard or is that only in Maine?
4. Army base funding $1 million
5. Law enforcement: courts, prosecution, police 
6. Public Health: $126,000 upgrading state programs in infectious diseases and natural disasters
7. Stop Violence Against Women program: $28,000.

Comments from citizens suggest there are at least some vocal citizens who say, "Good Riddance" to these programs and expenditures.

From Mad Dog's point of view, the impact on "civilian employees," of the military in this state-- if we are talking about ship yard workers who are hard working, well trained people who re furbish submarines--is the most worrisome. But, truth be told, at some point, America has to shift from a wartime nation to a nation which concentrates on defending against terrorism. Nuclear submarines would not appear to offer much protection against the next Al Qaeda attack. Our shipyard, like so many other defense installations around the country is part of our eternal war machine.  Newport, Rhode Island lost the Navy base there  in the 1970's, and there was a painful transition from military to civilian economy, but it happened,  and ultimately, it was tough love and it worked out better for Rhode Island in the long run. 

Where would all those New Hampshire shipyard workers find work? We ought to be figuring that out right now, before the hammer comes down on that shipyard, as it inevitably will. Working on nuclear submarines must be a specialized career, but maybe some of these men and women could take skills used in boats and sell them elsewhere. It would be wrenching and an upheaval, but if we are ever to shift to a real peacetime economy, it will happen eventually.

Our defense spending, Mad Dog suspects, is not about defense or about making America stronger or safer. It is a substantial government welfare program for the defense workers at the plants and shipyards, and a boondoggle for the corporations who profit from it. Not that we ought to bring home all the submarines and aircraft carriers next week, but we ought to bring them home over a well defined timespan. 

Most of the other  things on this list sound  like programs which may be worthwhile, but, truth be told, they sound less than essential. You know how when there is a really big snowstorm and there is an announcement on the radio that only essential government workers have to report for duty. Well, none of these sound like essential government workers. 
We may love the educational aides who help with disabled children at the public elementary school, but are they essential? Just ask Rush Limbaugh. 

The state and the towns fund education and clean air and water and police and the courts. So why do we need these federal funds?

If air traffic controllers cannot go to work, if we cannot fly out of New Hampshire, that hits home.  

Really, the Democrats have to state clearly exactly what would be lost which is convincing to the average New Hampshire voter on this point: If the federal government shuts down, even partially, you will lose things you really like. What are these things?

If Medicare, Social Security or the Center for Disease Control start shutting down, that's a problem. But we are told these will not be falling off the fiscal cliff.

 If the University of New Hampshire has to cut teachers, if Route 95 and Route 93 cannot be plowed, if national parks close, if security lines at Manchester Airport and Logan slow to a crawl, then we got trouble in New Hampshire.  If Obamacare falters in New Hampshire so people here cannot get medical insurance coverage because of the fiscal cliff, that is a problem.

Of course, in the long run, if we go back into recession and all those little factories in the Granite State have no customers, that will hurt. 

But the Republican Tea Party makes one simply argument: We do not need the federal government. The Democrats have to say why we do need the government.

Mad dog awaits the answer eagerly. He knows it's out there. He just hasn't got it yet.

Fiscal Cliff Follies: What, Me Govern?

Why does no one listen to this man?

Troika: Three Stooges

"House Republicans, on the other hand, want to take everything that's bad about the sequester and make it worse: canceling cuts in the defense budget, which actually does contain a lot of waste and fraud, and replacing them with severe cuts in aid to America's neediest. This would hit the nation with a double whammy, reducing growth while increasing injustice."

--Paul Krugman

"I've cut spending, reduced debt and made government more accountable. More recently, I've experienced how none of us go through life without mistakes. But in their wake, we can learn a lot about grace, a God of second chances and be the better for it. In that light, I humbly step forward and ask your help in changing Washington."
--Television ad by Mark Sanford, for governor of South Carolina. (Mad Dog kids you not. You cannot make this stuff up.)

When you think about defense spending, if you are a Republican, you can think, "Let's keep America safe. Keep our military second to none."  Of course, we spend more on airplanes, soldiers, ships and weapons systems than the next ten countries in the world's combined, so one might ask, "To whom could we possibly be second?" We are so historically first that for the first time in the history of the world, all the other countries, including Germany, have decided they do not need any real military--just let the Americans do it.

The bald fact is defense spending has nothing to do with defense any more. It is a moderately large federal welfare program for the states of Congressmen who have a lot of defense programs in their state. New Hampshire has the Portsmouth naval yard, which keeps nuclear submarines working. It is difficult to imagine the seacoast without the shipyard, and every Congresswoman and Senator has fought to keep it open.  There is never any real thought about whether or not we need nuclear submarines any more. 

From Mad Dog's uninformed point of view, submarines have always seemed smarter weapons than surface ships, but what does Mad Dog know?

Newport, Rhode Island once had a huge naval base which Richard Nixon closed because Rhode Island was a deeply Democratic state and he took special pleasure in sticking his finger in its eye. Rhode Island had spent millions to build the Newport Bridge across the Narragansett Bay tall enough so aircraft carriers could pass under it, and then--poof! No more aircraft carriers. Shortly thereafter the Americans lost the America's cup race which brought millions to the Rhode Island economy. 

Rhode Island should have withered and blown away. But somehow, Newport did just fine without the Navy and the state actually rebounded smartly.

It's always amusing to see Republicans, who are all about free enterprise, the private sector and small government doing back flips to keep those federal dollars flowing to the military bases in their districts. They are all about small government until it means losing government dollars in their own pockets. 

If Mad Dog reads those pie charts correctly, the military is actually not even that big a slice of the federal spending budget--agriculture subsidies are far larger, and you know just how grateful those big agriculture states are to the tax and spend Democrats.  It's really amazing how Democrats cannot even buy the love of rural voters. 

Many Republicans, like the former governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford,are great anti government men, who have never had a real job in the private sector. They have been on the government dole, oh, excuse me, they have been "in government service" all their lives. Sanford had to resign, after he skipped town to hike the Appalachian trial with his Argentine mistress. Now, he is humbly asking the blessing of the God of second chances. Literally, that's in his new advertisements. He is favored to win in South Carolina, where he who eats the most humble pie typically does win. As Francis Underwood has told us in "House of Cards," humility is the coin of the realm in South Carolina, if you are a politician.

So, the government will shut down March 1. That's what the Republicans/Tea Party want. They want to humble the arrogant federal government. 

And the Democrats have not been able to articulate what harm that will do. 

I guess we'll find out.

Mark Sanford Humbly Asks for Your Vote

American Education, Sputnik and New Ideas

Sputnik, 10/4/1957

Soviet Sputnik Stamp

"When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school
  It's a wonder I can think at all."
--Paul Simon, "Kodachrome"


Recently, comparative data among various nations have placed the United States somewhere in the middle of all nations with respect to the performance by students  on math exams and on other exams intended to measure the quality of education in various countries.
The usual sub rosa response to this is "Oh, well, if you exclude the scores of the inner city kids and the recent immigrants, America would be right up there on top."
In fact, analysis of the data shows that even students from the richest, best public American schools place just below the upper 1/3 of all nations, with Singapore, Korea, Finland, Norway, England and Germany all ahead of us.
Of course, we want to know more about the exams, how meaningful they are, what biases may be built into them. The last thing we want American schools doing is "teaching to the test."
In an intuitive way, Mad Dog is prepared to believe American education is simply not competitive, that it ranges from really dismal, if not worthless, in the inner city schools to just mediocre in the best public schools. It may be better in the really elite private schools--Phillips Exeter Academy, Sidwell Friends School, Georgetown Day school, but these schools cannot provide the numbers to lift and sustain our economy and innovative edge.
No better examination of the troubles besetting the lowest level of public education, the inner city schools of Washington, DC, Baltimore, New Orleans and of dozens of big cities exists than the detailed, sophisticated examination provided by the television series The Wire. Conceived and written by a Baltimore policeman who retired and then taught in the Baltimore inner city schools, this thorough going docu/drama revealed the interactions between the various dysfunctional institutions and community forces which ensure the failure of the school system in the inner city: The street culture of drugs and violence which shape the students, the absence of family, the political structure from the mayor's office to the city council to the state assembly, the competition for funds from police, public works and other governmental services which deprive schools of funding, the nature of the type of people available as teachers--all combine to make public education in these deprived, depressed places a farce.

There was a time when this was not true in the economically challenged inner cities. During the 1930's to 1940's the job of a public school teacher was a plum: It provided a reliable income at a level which placed teachers in the upper middle class when unemployment was high, and it came with pensions and benefits which were the envy of the working class. Teachers were smart, respected, on a par with engineers. And they were teaching students who had challenges, for whom English was a second language, but the culture which formed these students had strong families and parents who pressed their children to succeed in school.

As the economy changed in the 1950's, there were better jobs to be had than teaching, and the public schools slipped into complacency.

Until--October 4, 1957 when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in the setting of the cold war and this was successfully sold to the American public as the first knock on the door of American  undoing. The Soviets were graduating ten times the number of engineers churned out by the United States. Something had to be done about our dumb kids! Money and thought and urgency were focused on education and that single event did more for public education than any set of test scores could ever have done.  Of course, cynics said all Sputnik meant was the Soviets had captured more German rocket scientists than we had, but that got lost in the hysteria. The Soviets had engineers and those engineers knew how to make rockets and rockets could carry bombs and the Soviets would launch nuclear attack from the moon.

It was the classic example of the event which could be spun as a new perception, probably on spurious assumption. But it worked for a good outcome: American education became a priority in the 1960's. 

After Sputnik, new thinking about science education probably improved science teaching, at least marginally, and it may have refocused career ambitions of some talented students, and more money flowed to education. 
But money proved to be the least important factor in improvement, probably because it went to the wrong places. What would really have made a difference would have been if enough money were spent on teacher salaries. That's what attracted good minds during hard economic times.
 The best and the brightest did not seek jobs as teachers--some did, but not enough--there was simply more money and more prestige to be had elsewhere. 

So the moment was lost.  The inner city schools, bled dry by white flight, sunk beneath the waves. 
And even the rich suburban schools did not rise to the level of say, English or German schools; they just got more attention. Mad Dog attended public schools in the Washington, DC suburbs, some of the most affluent suburbs in the nation, with parents who wanted their kids going to Ivy League colleges. The problem was the teachers were simply not up to the task. There were some extraordinary teachers, to be sure, but the percentages were against excellence.  And the kids were smart enough to perceive their teachers were only one chapter ahead of them in the textbook. 

The moral of this story is simply that pouring money into schools, whether they are inner city schools or rich suburban schools is not enough. Schools do not exist in a vacuum.  For all his good intentions, President Obama has bought into some pretty unhealthy misconceptions about education, like the idea of judging teachers faced with inner city students by the test scores of their students.  You can judge students who have demanding parents by test scores, but you cannot apply that test to the teachers in inner city schools.
In fact, the test scores of the highly motivated children of tiger mothers likely reflects the efforts of the mothers more than the proficiency of the teachers.

The solutions for inner city schools, or for schools in places like Gaithersburg, Maryland, or Seabrook, New Hampshire will be different. In places like these, the problems are those of the immigrant, or of  parents working two jobs, who have no academic background themselves. The solutions for these schools will have to be very different from the solutions for the rich suburban schools or the solutions for the bombed out inner city schools.

In schools where money is not a problem, the public schools of Beverly Hills, California,  Chevy Chase, Maryland, Winiketa, Illinois, Shaker Heights, Ohio, Westchester County, New York, the problem will be finding academically gifted teachers and keeping the top heavy bureaucracy from getting in their way.

Too much money can actually be a problem in rich counties. In Montgomery County, Maryland dumbed down curricula from a central county education department bureaucracy are forced on teachers who could teach more sophisticated, better and smarter material, if they were allowed to do so. The huge education budget of this rich county supports a gargantuan, bloated administration of non classroom teachers, churning out lowest common denominator lessons sent out from the county seat.

Mr. Obama is right about one thing: It's easier to see the value of a new bridge or a new building than a new and better education.  One is concrete, the other is in the minds of children. But the GI Bill which sent returning veterans to college after WWII, and the support for public education after Sputnik, were investments which paid off, which created not just a middle class but upper classes of doctors, engineers, lawyers and businessmen.  You could not drive a car over it; you could not take an elevator ride to the top of it; you could not move your furniture into it, but the fact you could not see it did not mean it did not matter.

There will never be a perfect school, and certainly not a perfect high school, not in America, where hormones thwart some of the best efforts of teachers. 
But there could be improvements, if the right people were involved.

One last thought: Some years ago Mad Dog gave a presentation at a very spiffy, elite private school for an introductory biology course. The teachers were very attentive and they were very smart and picked up on all the things Mad Dog thought they would miss for sure. But they informed Mad Dog his course could be an "enrichment" course for seniors, not an introductory course for freshman. Mad Dog slunk out of the school, embarrassed he did not know more about teaching. But on reflection, he thought, maybe he was not as wrong and they were not as right as it seemed. Maybe even the best teachers could benefit from hearing thoughts  from outside the education world. If medicine is too important to be left in the hands of doctors, is education not too important to be left solely in the hands of teachers?

Duckworth vs Ayotte: New Hampshire Can Do Better

By some estimates, one in five veterans have received a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. Have you? 
I do not have PTSD, but if I watch part of a movie like “The Hurt Locker” or when I spend time around Blackhawk helicopters, I will close my eyes that night and live an entire day in Iraq, flying my missions. I remember the smell and the feel and the heat and everything about it. Then I wake up in Illinois, and I’m exhausted.
--Tammy Duckworth, The New York Times Sunday Magazine


Reading the interview with Tammy Duckworth, the Congresswoman from Illinois, Mad Dog had to reflect upon who we have representing us from New Hampshire. Senator Shaheen and Representative Shea-Porter are solid citizens, but then there is that other United States Senator, the Tea Party darling, Kelly Ayotte.

Ms. Duckworth flew a Blackhawk helicopter in Iraq and lost both her legs, below the knees. She speaks frankly about her experience and does not trade on it as if it were some "back story" to use the  Washington speak phrase. In fact, she is famous for having remarked she felt as the politicians trooped in to be photographed with people like her at Walter Reed  as if she were a part of a "petting zoo," providing photo ops for some politicians.
 But she also says Paul Wolfowitz, the Republican neo conservative, came by at nights and on weekends, and Bob Dole, the Republican Senator, sat on the floor with her and told her stories about his war wounds. She surprises you.  She does not sound as if she is saying things for effect. She sounds, to use another Washington word, "authentic," which is to say you never get the feeling she is playing you.

That is exactly not the feeling I have from Senator Ayotte. She has endorsed every right wing extremist the Republican Party has placed beside her, from Sheriff Arpaio, the Arizona Gestapo wannabe of Maricopa County, the man who marches prisoners, before they are convicted of anything, down the street in pink underwear.  When asked about her endorsement of Arpaio, she chose her words carefully and said she admired his work.  And Ayotte should know better: She was a prosecutor. 

If New Hampshire Democrats have one priority over the next two years, it ought to be tracking Ms. Ayotte, recording what she says and noting with whom she is jumping into political bed, and then making every effort to roust out this Tea Party extremist.  She has that sweet face and she is very careful about what she says. She has learned the Washington game well, a quick study, which makes her a rising star among Republicans.

But she is the legacy of the  wave of irrational disgruntlement which swept Tea Party candidates like Frank Guinta into Congress in 2010.  We are stuck with her until 2016. 

But then, we need to incise that pus pocket and drain that wound.

Somewhere, in New Hampshire, we have to find our own Tammy Duckworth. 

Here is the link to Rep. Duckworth's interview in the Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/magazine/tammy-duckworth.html?_r=0

Why President Obama Should Not Travel to Israel

Mad Dog would like to make it a matter of public record he read Exodus as an impressionable twelve year old and imagined himself as Dov Landau, and spent much of his youth looking for the real life equivalent of Karen Hansen. So Mad Dog claims his bone fides as a person conditioned from early childhood experience to sympathize with Israel and the reasons for its founding and the suffering of those who sought to build a new life after the horrors of Germany, Poland, occupied France, Denmark and the Nazi holocaust.

Having said all that, Mad Dog is currently reading about James Garfield, the second American President to have been assassinated, of four.  There have been at least 14 assassination attempts on American Presidents and several against President Obama we know about from a brief internet survey.

Of all the places on planet earth where Mad Dog would forbid President Obama from traveling here is the list:

1. The Middle East from Iran to and including Egypt.

2. Somalia

3. Venezuela 

4. Columbia

5. Mexico

6. North or South Korea

7. Texas

8. Arizona

9. South Carolina

10. Mississippi

11. Anywhere in Georgia outside of Atlanta

12. Alabama.

13. Anywhere with a higher proportion of rednecks and guns than listeners to NPR.

In the internet age, there is simply no reason for Mr. Obama to step out from behind the bullet proof glass and shake hands with citizens.

He can do that after his next 4 years in office.

We need him to complete his term. As Mad Dog has advised, Mr. Obama should spend plenty of time outside of Washington, D.C., embarrassing Congressmen where they live, but he ought to confine these visits to places where there are at least as many sane people as lunatics.

The Middle East does not need Mr. Obama to be personally present. Jimmy Carter brought the Egyptians and Israelis to Washington. If anybody in Israel or Palestine or Lebanon or Syria or Egypt really wants American advice, they can travel to America to get it. Our intervention in that part of the world should be restricted to Skype and the occasional drone strike (fully vetted.) We do not need to step into a dog fight to prove we love dogs.

Now, if I can just get Barack Obama on the phone.