micromux

Counting Your Vote

In Florida, there has been an ongoing problem with our voting system ever since the 2000 presidential election. It seems the first attempt to fix this was the proliferation of electronic voting systems that would ostensibly eliminate the questionable punch-card results. While we should be able to avoid the dreaded hanging chad, it appears Congress wants to augment the Help America Vote Act to require some kind of paper trail.
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Universal Health Care

Most developed countries offer a form of universal health care, the only real exception to this is the United States. Today, Barack Obama offered another solution to universal health care for Americans, but will this succeed where others have failed?
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The Price of Education

Our educational system is in dire need of repair. Over the past thirty years we have more than doubled our per-pupil expenditures, and we now spend an average of $8,996 per child compared to to 1971 when we were spending an average of $4,479 (Stupider in America). Unfortunately, we are graduating fewer students today than we did thirty years ago so money has not improved our ability to teach.

The fundamental problem is a lack of competition. While there are some excellent public schools, these are only available if you live in the corresponding school district or if you have managed to obtain a coveted school voucher. Thus our public school system is a virtual monopoly, with the only real competition coming from private schools that very few people can afford.

Perhaps the system should provide more selection. What if students could pick the school they want and the $8,996 per-pupil was attached to the student? This is what they do in Belgium and they have some of the best educated kids in the world. Allowing students to select their school would eliminate the public school monopoly, any school that could not attract students would be forced to downsize or go out of business altogether.

There is another facet to this dilemma, the teachers union protects the salaries we pay our educators and prevents schools from eliminating inept employees. The problem with this is that teachers in public schools are working for the taxpayers, so the union is ensuring the public school monopoly can be maintained for as long as these kinds of schools are chartered in the US. There is no reason for a union to protect the jobs of civil servants, the taxpayers have already agreed these jobs are for the public good and will guarantee cost of living increases.

As a result of all of this, our children are at the losing end of an educational bureaucracy. We should continue to experiment with charter schools and in the near future take some of our large urban school districts uniformly to a voucher system where students can pick the schools they want. If we can foster a competitive atmosphere where only the good schools survive then our children will be better educated.

State of the Union

President Bush gave a State of the Union speech that could easily be misconstrued as rhetoric from a re-election campaign pulpit.

Unfortunately, by focusing on platform issues and defending his military actions, the President failed to demonstrate a clear vision of leadership. It seems evident he is overly concerned that his military engagement in Iraq is unsatisfactory and likely unwarranted, and consequently the crucial domestic issues (civil rights, economic recovery and health care) are ignored.

As a result of the PATRIOT Act, our telephones and electronic communications were made susceptible to roving wiretaps. While there are provisions of the act that help law enforcement, it is unacceptable that our civil liberties and right to privacy can be so violated. President Bush would strongly like to see the PATRIOT Act renewed before it expires in 2005, but Americans should ask themselves how safe they feel with a law that allows us to detain over 600 “unlawful combatants” at Guantanamo Bay without any legal recourse. While President Bush is taking action here, he is ignoring our civil liberties in the process.

It is encouraging that Bush wants to keep taxes low by returning a portion of our taxed money, it is incongruous that we can do this while a 4 percent increase in discretionary spending is allowed. Coming from a year with more than a 12% increase in overall discretionary spending, Bush better be very clear on how he plans to reign in this spending frenzy. Our financial solvency is important, but we can’t do this while we continue to fund pork and make significant increases for domestic programs. His budget will be an important milestone, but since he has been unable to restrain discretionary spending on any of his previous budgets it seems unlikely that it will have any standing significance.

Health care is being ignored almost entirely by the President, he spent his time congratulating Congress for passing legislation in this area and provided no leadership.

Finally, his concern about the sanctity of marriage is not something to consider as an amendment for the constitution. It is not an inalienable right that marriage must be a union between a man and a woman, while it is acceptable that laws can be passed in this regard it is totally unacceptable that this should be proposed for amendment.

The McCarthyism of September 11th

This history of war has been traditionally a bi-partisan effort, where there are at least two distinct sides fighting against each other. Unfortunately, the history of the war against terrorism is slightly less well defined.

The litany of finger pointing at various terror cells and terrorist organizations is almost as pervasive as the number of standing ovations in the President’s State of the Union. It seems like this is an almost insurmountable task, in fact it is so daunting that one might wonder where it begins and where it ends.

In the late 1600’s, medical science was unable to determine the cause for an apparent illness in Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams. Since humans are prone to arrive at definitive conclusion, it was determined that these women were under a satanic spell. As a result, Abigail ultimately confessed to practicing witchcraft and was summarily put to death.

It then became commonplace to accuse certain women of witchcraft. The selection pattern is lost in the pantheons of historical social bias, but clearly these women were picked because they were perceived as a threat by certain members of a male-dominated society.

Then we had the McCarthyism of the Cold War, when it was possible to accuse virtually anyone of being Communist. Once you were branded Communist, it was a bad thing and in most cases meant the end of your personal and professional life.

How do we know when picking terrorists has reached the scale of McCarthyism? How do we know we are not re-inventing the Witch Trials?

There are clearly unpleasant factions that exist in pockets all over the world and that are planning to wreck terror on our lives. The events of September 11, 2001 are clear evidence that this loosely-knit organization does in fact exist. However, we need to temper our disdain for terrorism and avoid branding every potential threat with the terrorist moniker. If we retool our military and strategic alliances for the sole purpose of hunting terrorists, then we also risk possibly branding any discord as a terrorist threat.

Other countries should be free to disagree. In fact, they should be free to fight antagonists in their own land. We can’t expect to understand the complex histories of every culture and civilization, as such they also would not expect us to come in and tell them how to resolve their differences. Obviously, if the organization represents a clear and imminent threat to the sovereignty of America then we should plan to prevent them from ever taking such action. Otherwise we should let these countries discover themselves.

We can certainly help with our expertise, provide funds for countries to restructure and present guidance with our incredible leadership capabilities. However, we should not pick fights with every country that we think might have bad guys in it. By the same token, other countries may not approve of the mass-murderers that are housed in American prisons. In fact, what about all the criminals that US police haven’t captured yet?

Other countries could certainly miscontrue the Humbert Humbert’s of the world that happen to reside in the United States to be an immanent threat to their safety. Let’s not give them another excuse to attack us. Does this mean they should declare war on America?