Posted by sjaye on 12/16/10

Last night, the Illinois Policy Institute (those who don't know about them should check them out) crossed ideological lines to team up with Illinois Raise Your Hand, and Democracy for America to sponser a mayoral debate on the topic of Education, which can be watched here.  They invited the top six candidates according to a recent poll to participate.  Rahm Emanuel, the clear frutrunner at this point, was unable to attend, as he is undergoing some fairly exhausting hearings regarding his residency.  Danny Davis was also unable to attend, as he was called back to Washington to vote on some key issues in the lame-duck congress session.

As any resedent of Cook County is aware of, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) does not have the greatest reputation.  Low educational standards here is probably the #1 reason young families move out to the suburbs when they have kids.  The debate covered many important topics, including who the next mayor would appoint for superintendent/ shool board, issues of school choice/ charter schools, school infastructure, union contracts, and how to handle bad teachers.  The candidates were even asked whether or not they support, and would help pass, Pat Quinn's proposed State income tax increase (DeValle said yes, Mosely-Braun said no, Meeks seemed to indicate most likely no, Chio's answer was ambiguous).

In attendence [in the order that they made their opening speaches] were:

• Gery Chico:  Former Chicago Public School superintendent (1995-2001)
• Miguel De1Valle:  City Clerk, former State Senator
• Carol Moseley-Braun:   Former Senator and amasador
• James Meeks:   State Senator and reverend of a black mega-church

Also, for clerification, if nobody reaches 50% of the vote on February 22nd, a run-off will be held in April.  Since both recent polls put Rahm in the lead, but with less than 40% of the vote, it is quite likely a run-off will occur, and a path to winning for any of these candidates could be to get into a run-off with Rahm.

Here are my thoughts on them and their debate performance..

Chico:  He is very good at sounding intellegent and saying things that people already know!  Yes, we have a problem in Illinois.  Yes, the school system is broken.  Yes, we need better teachers and better parents.  These problems, however, are systematic.  His solutions rely on recruiting teachers and hiring the right people.  This was somewhat underwhelming.

DelValle:  If there is a true believer in left-wing ideology, it is him.  From higher taxes, to opposing school voucher programs, to being the only candidate in the forum to bring up senate Republicans attempts to reduce funding for public education, this man pretty much tows the line, with a [Congressman] Guterrez-esque bend, as he talked intensively about ESL programs.  Also, at least 50% of his answers, to all questions, were some kind of a personal narrative.  All in all, the chances of me voting for him are about the same as the chances of Chicago having a 70-degree Christmas.

Moseley-Braun:  I hated Carol Moseley-Braun as a teenager (when she was our Senator), and rejoyced when Peter Fitzgerald took her down in '98.  I never would have thought that I would find her performance to be the most impressive at this forum ... but it was.  Not only does she unequivacally oppose Quinn's tax hike, but she also proposed a moratorium on TIFs, demonstrating an understanding that creating a TIF is taking money away from our schools to begin with.  I still disagree with her on many issues, but this is a Chicago mayoral election, and the best we can do is find a candidate that gets at least a few things right, and leaves Springfield alone (unlike Daley) so that us, and the IPI, can get to work on issues there.

Meeks:  I still appreciate Rev. Meeks' steadfast opposition to Red Light Cameras, an issues Cook County C4L has been active with over the past year.   The way Rev. James Meeks stands out amongst the others running is his activism on behalf of a school voucher program.  He even discussed how to advance this issue with Republican gubinatorial primary candidate Dan Proft a year or so ago.  I was impressed by his understanding of how competition produces better results (one of the basic tennants of free markets).  I believe what he said was "We have Verizon, Sprint, and AT%T .. we got McDonalds, Burger King, Wendys, and they have to make better products."  He also had the best plan for eliminating bad teachers.  He proposed posting where all the TIF funds are going online, better than having them secret like they are now, but still, I would rather have the whole system gone.

I am not expecting a true liberty candidate to be on the ballot.  I am trying to pragmatically assess all of the candidates so that I can make the best vote possible.  If we can elect someone that will get rid of or reduce the TIF system, or someone that will remove some red light cameras, or someone that is serious about cutting beurocracy, without doing any worse in other areas, it will be a small victory for liberty at the local level.

Posted by sjaye on 11/17/10

Without a doubt, getting people who sign up for this site to become active and stay active is always a challenge.  Some of the factors that determine how successful an organization is in developing an active membership base are beyond anyone's control.  For C4L, we are facing several challenges that may cause some members to disgngage.

• Although we were successful in getting over 310 Co-Sponsers for H.R.1207 (Audit the Fed), the bill still did not pass, and the Fed is still free to undergo more quantitate easing.  It is frustrating to see a lot of effort be put forth and no meaningful effect.  I fully admit to becoming somewhat discouraged by how this all went down
• The change in congressional personnel and rise of the Tea Party movement may cause some people to believe their efforts on behalf of liberty to be unnecessary
• A more individually minded group of people is always more difficult to lead.  The common phrase goes "The problem is getting Libertarians to do something all together is a lot like herding cats."

While little can be done about members disgenging for those reasons, one area where I have become quite confused about is communication.  Specifically, how action items and events are communicated to one another.  The problem facing C4L is in many ways the same problem that is facing our generation as a whole.  How does someone who is promoting an event, whether it be a meeting, a protest, or visit to a state senator, go about informing everyone in their area about the event?  Likewise, how does someone who wants to get involved find out what is going on in their area?  In the Chicago area, we have this site with it's calender feature, google groups and google calender, meetup groups, facebook, twitter, email, and other blog sites.  Not only are some events communicated through some avenues and not the others, but often times the manner in which certain types of events are communicated actually changes over time.  If this is confusing for me, someone who is relatively connected to the other C4L members in my area, imagine how confusing it might be for some people who are less involved or new.

What I believe is needed, is one centralized location, that all members have access to, where events are posted and listed, which does not change over time.  I believe Illinois Review to be the best example of this.  On that site, anyone can quickly see what is going on throughout the state.  I belive the best place for this would likely be this web site.  Likewise, one standard technique for getting an event posted is also needed.  Obviously, this would be through the County and State Coordinators and/or specific people delegated that authority.  However, this process should not be difficult, and whoever is in charge of maintaining the State or County calender should be able to respond to any member's request that an event be posted fairly promptly.  When this centralized location is established as the place to go to find out what is going on, every member should be made aware of this, and all new members should be informed upon joining that this calender lists all of the events/meetings going on in this particular state or county.

Finally I want to clerify two things..

• I am not calling on anybody to abandon meetup, facebook, blogs, or any other mechanism currently used to promote events.  I am just saying that there should be a place (suggestion being this website) where they are ALWAYS posted, so that any member knows they can ALWAYS find out what is going on by going to this one place.
• I do not mean this blog to be a criticism of our current leadership, and really hope that nobody is offended- that was not my intent.  I am just simply proposing a solution to something that I see as a problem.
• I am also not claiming to be an expert on any of this, and am open to any discussion or criticisms of my ideas.

Posted by sjaye on 06/22/10
Last updated 06/22/10

With the 2010 elections drawing closer, primary contests on both sides of the aisle being settled, and voter anger still running quite high, there is no question that the Republican Party has the opportunity to return to the majority in congress.  There also appears to be little doubt about the GOP's desire to return to the majority in congress.  In the house of representatives every member stands for re-election in every 2 year cycle, and there is a greater possibility for the number of GOP seats to grow.  The concensus seems to be that the GOP has about a 40% chance of returning to majority status in the house.  In the Senate, with only 1 in 3 seats up for re-election, and the size of the current Democrat majority, the Republicans would have to either sweep every competitive seat, or pull off a suprise or two in order to return to the majority.  The odds of a GOP senate majority after this election appear closer to 10% at this point in time.

With most of the speculation on political blogs being about individual seats, specific races, and candidates, it is pertinent to ask the following questions;  What would a new Republican majority mean for the state of the Republic?  Are we ready to trust them with a new majority?  Have they learned their lessions about why they lost their majorities in 2006?

In 2006, the Republicans lost majorities in both houses due to voter dissatisfaction about costly wars, out of control deficit spending, and incompetence in response to natural disasters.  Sound familiar?  Well, on all three fronts, things have only gotten worse.  We sent more troops to Afghanistan, our deficits now dwarf the ones we had in '06 by a 5:1 ratio, and the Government reposnse to oil spill is percieved as even worse than the response to Hurricane Katrina.  So, have the Republicans learned their lession, and hear the message of the voters?  The answer to this appears to be mixed at this point in time.  It does appear that the Republicans are talking about fiscal discipline, and nominating candidates that want to phase out social programs rather than expand them!  If the GOP regains a majority and doesn't fight hard for reduced Federal spending, they will be soon extinct- forced to make way for a new small government party in America.  However, with respect to the other issues, particularly the costly wars, it still appears that most candidates and Republican leaders desire to continue down roughly the same path as they did five years ago.  Sure, the GOP has made room for non-interventionists in the party, but at this time it still appears that the pro-empire building wing of the party outnumbers those that desire the non-interventionist foreign policy of our founders.

In the short term, a new GOP majority in congress would put the brakes on Obama and the Democrat's ambitious plans to greatly expand the role of Government in our lives and make us into a true all-out welfare state.  They may even succuessfully get some spending cuts and deficit reduction enacted.  However, given that Obama did not materialise as the non-militaristic president many hoped him to be, it is easily concievable that a GOP congress and the Obama administration agreeing to declare another war, with the only opposition coming from the likes of the Pauls on the right and people like Russ Fiengold on the left.

In the long term, if the GOP was to regain their majorities in congress without a real change in their stance on empire building, there is little likelihood they will change their stance on this issue any time in the next decade.  This is something to consider.  From a C4L perspecive, I would like to hear your thoughts on this:  Do we take this partial reform of the GOP and help them win back congress in order to stop the big government agenda of the Obama administration, acknowledging the greater difficulty in enacting foreign policy reform in the party?  How much harder will it be to pressure GOP congressmen to support resolutions like HR 1207 or changes to the Military Commissions Act when they regain the majority?  What other factors, such as the coming period of inflation, may make spending cuts and/or another war more or less likely in the coming years?

Posted by sjaye on 05/28/10
Last updated 05/28/10

At first it seemed somewhat strange, two years ago that is, whenever any of my Obama-loving friends would express some level of "respect" for my support for Ron Paul, Bob Barr, Chuck Baldwin, etc.  The same people who had been vicioulsy attacking anyone who supported Bush, or McCain, had refrained from even arguing with me- even though I had long recognized that my views were MUCH further away from theirs on all matters that were fastly becoming more and more important- given the state of the economy. 

However, after pondering for a while, I realized that their express of "respect" for the libertarian point of view had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that they had compared and contrasted libertarianism (or paleo-conservatism, true conservatism) with neo-conservatism.  It had everything to do with what they percieved as the bigger threat to getting Obama elected and his policies enacted. 

Sure, there were some Obama fans that genuinely thought our political positions to be more reasonable than the one promoted by Bush/Cheney.  I am under the impression that this group is primarily comprised of people who were lead to believe that Obama would truly be an anti-war president who would repeal parts of the PATRIOT Act, etc.  Many of them have become disillusioned with him, and either joined us, a different independent anti-war group, or entered the political wilderness.

Amongst the people that are still true believers that Barak Obama was the great hope and savior of an America gone astray, 25-30% of the population if you go by the percentage that still "strongly approve" of his handling of the job, respect for our political positions in 2008 can be equated with Republicans respecting Ralph Nader in 2000 or 2004; seeing him as not a real threat, and possibly an asset since he would "take votes away" from their main opposition.

That all, however, has changed, and is no more evidenced by the vicious attacks on Rand Paul by the Media (I'd provide a link, but there are too many to really keep track of).  Maybe it was the Tea Parties, maybe it was Ron Paul winning the CPAC straw poll, maybe it was the foothold some of us have gained in the GOP and our ability to communicate a clear alternate message on the economy that makes sense to a broad swath of the American people.  However, I think it is safe to say that the "left" has finally realized that it is us, the small government, constitutional minded political faction, and not the war happy Bush/Cheney era so-called conservatives that are going to be representing the greatest threat to their plans to re-make America in the image of the European welfare states.  This is why they are now focusing their attacks on candidates like Rand Paul, trying to distract the American public from his message with alligations of racism, despite the fact that criticism of his foreign policy is still coming from the GOP.

** Disclaimer, I generally don't like political labels such as "left", "right", "conservative" etc. as I feel they generally limit public discourse by giving some grounds to dismiss ideas. **

Posted 05/28/10 Paul Hogan Middle Village, NY

Great post, thank you. The fact that the MSM is creating a debate about legislation that was passed forty years ago is a pretty good indicator that they are getting nervous. That whole left/right paradigm is about as genuine as a pro-wrestling match; it's entertaining but it is totally scripted and more and more people are beginning to realize that. These 20-Watt conservatives like Sean Hannity are hoping for a resurrection of another Bush administration but the Tea Party and libertarians are beginning to dash those hopes. The political status-quo is coming to an end; it's something that's dying and it needs to die. Hannity, Limbaugh, Rove & Gingrich see Obama's failure as their success, they thought they were as good as elected. Rand Paul's victory threw a stick in their spokes and this isn't the "conservative victory" they were hoping for. Libertarianism is getting a foothold, it's not going to happen overnight but it isn't going away either. Rachel Maddow, Sean Hannity, Liberals and Neo-Cons are losing credibility by the day and it's about time.

Posted by sjaye on 02/02/10

Much discussion regarding Barak Obama's estimated $3.8 Trillion 2011 budget is focused on which agencies are going to see budget increases, and which agencies will be cut.  For example, this budget scraps NASA's amitions to return to the moon, reduces (albeit slightly) EPA funding, but increases funding for education as a part of a No Child Left Behind revamp [Source].  However, missing from much of the mianstream media and political pundit discussion of this budget is just how large the budget is!

In 2011, deficits are expected to soar to near $1.6 Trillion.  This estimate even includes optimistic estimates of economic growth, including a 40% decrease in expenditures for the Labor department, based on this assumption from the above link .. "The Labor Department would see a major drop in spending for its unemployment insurance programs. That's because the administration forecasts an economic rebound and expects fewer people to claim unemployment benefits."

As atrocious as the 40% increase in spending for the Treasury department is (which amounts to about $190 billion), what all Americans should stop and think about is the full number in the budget - $3.8 Trillion.  If you divide this number by the current US population estimate, 308.6 Million, you get $12,313.  RIght now, President Obama is proposing that our Federal Government spend $12,313 per person.  My question to you, everyday Americans is; Do you feel like you need over $12,000 worth of Government services?  While politicians will talk about nibbling around the edges of this mamoth budget (witness Obama's joke of a spending freeze that only applies to 20% of the budget), I would very much like to hear someone justify why $12,000, or even $8-10 thousand worth of Government is necessary in our lives!

Posted 02/02/10 Doug.Bach Wheaton, IL

But no one wants to give up THEIR piece of the pie. Very interesting to see the big picture - thanks for the post, Stephen.

Posted 02/02/10 C00kieM0nster Oxnard, CA

Share/family of 4 = ~$48K. Share/working person (~150mln in labor force) = ~$25K US median household income in 07 = ~$50K. Watching the long slow train wreck of Sovereign Bankruptcy? Priceless.

Posted 02/02/10 abjectivist Springport, MI

Hey, I'm not worried, those greedy rich people don't have to pay for my health care now, so they will be more than willing to keep ponying up for the rest of us under performers. I mean how else can they ease their guilt?

Posted 02/04/10 peters Munich, Germany

What a simple number, and how much does it say, if properly applied. Kudos for it!