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In 2010, the Inspector General of the US Interior Department made public a report on the federal Minerals Management Service, which regulates the oil industry and profits from leases to it.  In addition to this glaring conflict of interest, MMS has apparently not only been “cozy” with the industry it is regulating, the two have been as one.   One inspector said, “We are all the oil industry.”  In other words, the problem goes beyond bribes. Larry Williamson, the M.M.S. Lake Charles, La., district manager, told investigators, “Obviously, we’re all oil industry. We’re all from the same part of the country. Almost all of our inspectors have worked for oil companies out on these same platforms. They grew up in the same towns. Some of these people, they’ve been friends with all their life,” hunting, fishing and skeet-shooting together. As another inspector wrote in an email, gifts aren’t necessary because he wouldn’t write up his friends.  Indeed, some of the inspectors and oil company managers had known each other since childhood–which raises a question about the inspector-hiring process. It would appear that the oil companies’ managers have been actively involved in the hiring at the federal agency. “We’re all oil industry.” Acting Inspector General Mary Kendall said her greatest concern is the cozy relationships between federal inspectors and oil companies, and how easily inspectors move back and forth between industry and government. For example, the report found one worker conducted four inspections on an oil company platform while he was actively negotiating for a job with that same company. Perhaps the most damning allegation was that some inspectors allowed oil company workers to fill out the federal inspection forms in pencil, after which the inspectors would use their pens to trace the pencil-marks and then sign the forms as it it were their own work.  “We’re all oil industry.”

Unfortunately, MMS is not the only federal regulatory agency to conflate itself with its “clients.”  Like MMS, the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) has conflicting directives: to regulate and promote air travel within the US.  Even though a law stripped the mission of its “promotional” language, a footnote in the statue says that the elimination of the language should not change how the FAA operates because it was done to change the public’s perception.  Even after that law went into effect, the FAA referred to the airlines as its “customers” or “clients,” and stressed voluntary safety measures by the regional airlines in cooperation with the agency.  Sadly, the agency did not stand up for public safety in urging Congress to make the major airlines jointly liable for negligence at their regional partner airlines. Like MMS, the FAA’s problem goes beyond its own structural conflict of interest.  In particular, the FAA is too cozy with its “clients.”  Perhaps working at the FAA is really just a prerequisite to getting a nice job with one of the airlines. Perhaps political pressure from the airlines bears down on the head of the agency from the White House.  In any case, MMS and the FAA are sufficient to suggest that there is a structural problem in the American regulatory system centered on the relationship between business and government.  Such a state of affairs points to a greater need for management of the executive branch of the US Government. Perhaps the President should give more attention to affairs of his branch and less to influencing legislation.  The Congress is not the only branch subject to the influence of industry. In a word, there is too much of a plutocracy (rule by the wealthy) in the US system of governance.

It is natural that the more powerful have their way at the expense of the less powerful. Thomas Hobbes and Friedrich Nietzsche wrote as much. But Hobbes assures us that life in the state of nature can be  ”solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” So we have instituted government, for the purpose of staving off the natural proclivities of power to run down stream.  In regulating business, we are essentially building dams to hold back some of the force of the water. Our dams are anti-entrophic, holding back the inevitable.  Even so, we deem it as worthwhile to forestall the inevitable.  It is unfortunate that so much thinking is necessary to design an effective device that merely puts off the day when the river will meet the sea.  Anything we mortals build is itself mortal, or finite in duration, yet we construct our governmental structures ultimately to stave off death at the hands of the powerful and greedy.  Hence, we create checks and balances so the powerful created by our device do not become the very problem that our device is intended to put off.

In the case of regulating business, the natural state of more wealth to dominate less wealth is the problem as inspectors are so easily coopted by the regulated. In other words, the regulated are more powerful or inticing than are the principals (and principles) of the regulators.  This is perhaps an intractable problem, as the problem itself is occasioned by our resistance to the natural downward flow of power. Perhaps, though, we can at least construct a better dam.  One idea is to make it illegal for regulators to work for the regulated (or to be offered or accept jobs with the regulated as an intermediary) for a long period of time (and getting agreements by other countries to enforce this law on their own books so American regulators can’t simply bypass this stricture by living in Paris or Munich). However, favors have a way of getting around rules, so our dam would likely still have some leaks.  Plugging holes by one regulation at a time is a recipe for regulatory recitivism. We ought to remember this in dealing with the financial crisis of 2008 (i.e., banning particular financial products after they have been implicated, when there are always new ones).

I believe that more thinking is necessary on how to keep the regulators from being dominated by the regulated. I suspect that a viable “solution” might come from thinking about human nature relative to intended and unintended incentives.  Specifically, thinking in terms of checks and balances wherein ambition is pitted against ambition may allow us to achieve a greater degree of protection for the pubic against the greed of the powerful in business. In other words, we might apply the checks and balances in the separation of powers in the US Government to the relationship between the regulators and regulated. To be sure, the regulators depend on information from the regulated, but the regulated depend on information from the regulators as well (i.e., on the regulations). The task before us is to keep these dependencies separate by natural forces rather than by mandates that go against those forces.  That is, perhaps we can use the natural dynamic of power against itself.  This is the key mechanism of American government not only within the US Government, but between that government and those of the several states as well (i.e., federalism).  Perhaps someone will be able to apply this invention to the field of regulation. Otherwise, we can expect more financial crises as occurred in September of 2008 and more oil-rig explosions such as the one in April of 2010.  The profit-interests of private firms is not the same as the public interest, and unfortunately the latter is not as strong as it is dispursed rather than concentrated. Hence the concentrated wealth can buy the representatives of the public interest and thus their agents.  It is essentially about the nature of power to flow down stream.  Hopefully, we will do a better job of directing the river without the water deciding its route.

Sources: http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/05/25/federal-inspectors-took-gifts-traded-porn/ ; http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/flyingcheap/?utm_campaign=homepage&utm_medium=bigimage&utm_source=bigimage ; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/26/opinion/26dowd.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1274889642-3gTN9/LwwDxZ1pT1FF7lVw

In 2009, Congress appropriated $16 billion in earmarks. In March of 2010, that the House eliminated earmarks to for-profit companies. However, enterprising managers soon found a way to get around the restriction. I contend that figuring ways to get around restrictions is the default in corporate responses to regulations where the latter cannot be used for strategic advantage.

In Marcy Kaptur’s (D-OH) district, a defense contracting company incorporated a nonprofit organization, the Great Lakes Research Center, at the same address and doing the same work. The center received earmarks of $10.4 million to sell the Pentagon small hollow metal spheres for body armor. Kaptur, who had received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the owner’s family and the company’s lobbyists told the media that the center “met the requirements of the Reform.” If this is true, the reform was in effect nugatory—so one might ask: why did the House go to the trouble unless for the short-term PR benefit? There is a deeper problem in even the appearance of a conflict of interest wherein a lawmaker has a role, whether direct or indirect, in money going to an organization that has contributed to the lawmaker’s campaign. Even if not intended, the conflict of interest should be sufficient as a red-light, yet as long as money is not being used by the company’s owner for personal use, such conflicts of interest are typically ignored.  I contend, however, that both types are equally sordid and hence that we should be on guard for them both.  If I am correct, there is an unduly lax and restrictive attitude in the US toward institutional conflicts of interest. This lapse has in turn enabled corruption in the Congress.

Source: Eric Lipton and Ron Nixon, “Companies Find Ways to Bypass Earmarks Ban,” NYT (7/5/10), 1A.

See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/05/us/politics/05earmarks.html?_r=1&hpw

Given the $13 tillion amassed in US Treasury debt plus all the debt amassed by the American states, the US dollar was losing out in percentage terms to other currencies as the global reserve currency in 2010. To be sure, in absolute terms, there were still more dollars being held abroad than twenty or thirty years ago, but as a report from Emma Lawson of Morgan Stanley shows, other currencies were taking on more of a relative presence.

The Euro had been making the greatest strides in percentage terms, particularly in 2002. The slight downturn in 2009 might have reflected the impact of the financial crisis of 2008 in Europe, though the Greek debt issue had not yet reached a boil (it would be interesting to see the figures from 2010).  In any case, the dramatic drop in the dollar’s percentage terms also came in 2002, before the Iraq war and the bank bailout spending (i.e., the $13 tillion dollar debt). The drop could have been in reaction to September 11, 2001, though it would seem an exaggeration even then to say that the US financial system would be undone by the attack.  Even so, as we know from 2008, irrational exuberance can take hold in even a global market. We ought nevertheless not lose sight of the fact that the number of dollars held in reserves around the world increased. The pie got bigger, and even though the dollar piece became larger, it was a smaller proportion of the pie in 2010.  Even so, the $13 tillion in US Treasury debt, the decision of the Chinese to allow their currency to appreciate to a limited extent, Russia’s call for a mix of global reserve currencies, and the EU’s bailout of the Greek bonds all pointed to trouble for the US dollar as “the” reserve currency. Also troubling was the UN report at the end of June, 2010, which urged that the US dollar is no longer stable enough to be the world’s reserve currency. Ouch! The dollar slid %5 in June. Fortune reports that central banks had been preferring gold to the greenback.

Lawson believed that  ”over time we anticipate that reserve managers may reduce their holdings further.” She is looking at the significance of small percent changes over a short time—and this I see as perhaps susceptable to overblowing small trends. For example, she found that central banks had dropped their allocation to U.S. dollars by nearly a full percentage point to 57.3% from 58.1%, and calls this “unexpected given the global environment.” But was such a change, relative to those shown in the chart, really significant? She argued that other dollars - the kind that come from Australia and Canada - had been benefiting from skiddishness on the dollar. The allocation to those currencies, which fall under “other” in the data, rose by a full percentage point to 8.5%, accounting almost exactly for the drop in the U.S. dollar allocation. She was undoubtedly assuming that the trend would continue, but a look at the chart can demonstrate that even the dramatic changes in 2002 had not continued at such a rate (e.g., for the euro and the US dollar). 

Even so, Treasury’s huge debt could not but undermine the US dollar over the long term. This point ought not to be minimized or ignored under the fiscal pressure to push the US economy out of recession. Even if the US did not admit that the debtload was too high to be paid down one day (the debt then approaching the annual GNP of the US), the market rendered its verdict. Relative the huge debt facing the US dollar (and remember there are huge state debts, such as in California, Illinois and Florida!), the “crisis” facing the euro in 2010 paled in comparison.  As of mid 2010, the euro was still over $1.20. Years earlier, it had been at parity. The media frenzy on Greece's debt in 2010 ought therefore to be put into some kind of perspective, and the impact of the dollar’s public debt not be lost. 

It’s not clear to me that the human mind can conceptualize a trillion, not to mention thirteen of them. Yet we glide over the public debts in the US as though they were sustainable. If the US falls, it will be from within--from consolidation at the empire-level.  Such a fall will likely come as a surprise to most Americans, who in being oriented to external threats tend to miss the gravity of the black hole amassing under our very noses.  To be sure, the additional debt enables us to live beyond our means as a society, and such a condition can be very addictive.  Perhaps the parallel question for us to reflect on is whether Rome fell from within or simply from the Goths.

Sources:
 http://www.businessinsider.com/morgan-stanley-dollar-euro-reserve-holdings-2010-7#ixzz0tBDYFjMd
 http://wallstreet.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2010/07/09/central-banks-start-to-abandon-the-u-s-dollar/

There is something unAmerican about consolidated power.   The financial consolidation even after the financial bailouts of 2008, is now generally known to be dangerous economically.  What we don’t typically realize is that it complements political consolidation at the empire-level of Unions such as the US and EU.  I suspect that many Americans have a baleful sense from the various manifestations of consolidation.  We have a vague sense of a trend that seems to go against what our predecessors have stood for (i.e., against centralized power…going all the way back to George III).   Let’s just say that it is in the interest of big government and big business that we continue to forget this point and continue to chase after various demons.  That is to say, the anti-democratic power that has more influence in our government than even the skeptics realize does not fear the democratic element of one person, one vote, because we are scattered.  Should we ever unite and take back our government, it would be interesting to see what the corporate elite does.  Will they allow us to remain a democratic republic, or will they tell our government officials to give us the impression that we are in control?

The US Senate is “absurd.” So said Katie Connolly of MSNBC in 2010.  She was referring to Sen Shelby (R-AL) being able to singlehandedly place a hold on all pending nominations.  Citing a congressional scholar, Johathan Chait noted that a blanket hold has never been used before. Connolly argued that Shelb was doing it “because he wants a European corporation to build some planes in his state.”  Such a reason would be ubiquitous if not squalid enough in either body of the US Congress, so it is certainly plausable.  One might recall the money Sen. Ben Nelson got for Nebraska by agreeing to the health care reform bill.  In needing all 60 votes from the democrats and two independents, that bill gave us all a reminder of what an international body is like where each member has a veto.  In singlehandedly blocking all pending nominations before the US Senate, Sen Shelby was drawing on this theory as well.  While it is easy to trounce on each Senator (or each state) having a veto, I would argue that it is far less sordid than Shelby’s reason (i.e., more pork).  Because every state in the Union is semi-sovereign (and enjoys residual sovereignty as per the tenth amendment), there is constitutional support for any state represented in the US Senate having a veto on any legislation or appointment.  Because the veto is based on governmental sovereignty (i.e., the US Senate being in this respect an international body—unlike the US House), Alabama can use its veto even for reasons we might find disgusting.

So if each Senator (who represents his or her state as a political body even though he or she is elected by the citizens of his or her state) having a veto makes the US Senate “absurd” (and I join with those who are frustrated by it), we might want to consider the consequences that would be involved in depriving the political members of the Union of their vetos in the General Government (ie., Washington).  We could expect an acceleration in the consolidation of power in the General Government at the expense of the state governments—resulting in one size fits all in a heterogenous empire-scale Union (i.e., empire).  Any state government objecting to Washington taking over yet another domain of power would be powerless to stop that train without breaks running down the tracks toward a central state.  Meanwhile, that train would be able to pass more legislation through the US Senate, further accelerating its speed.

Some time back, I asked Sandra Day O’Connor of the US Supreme Court why she wasn’t objecting to the US Government going beyond its enumerated powers.  She replied to the small group that Congress was acting like a state legislature.  Disgust was palpable in her voice.  In a sense of futility, she added that it takes five on the US Supreme Court to have a majority decision (meaning that a majority would not go along with her on the enumerated powers matter).   You might be wondering what is wrong with Congress acting like a state legislature. The problem is that the US is in scale (and its make-up) commensurate with an empire by today’s standards.  In other words, most of our states are equivalent to countries.  You just can’t (or shouldn’t) run a combination of countries as though it were one country.  For one thing, a combo is inherently diverse.  Also, its center is further from the people.  It means less democracy or republican principles of representation because there are far fewer US Reps and Senators than state Reps and Senators.  Also, the US Government is designed as an empire-level polity.  Whereas the states’ Senates represent citizens (just as the states’ assemblies do), the US Senate (unlike the US House) represents political entities (the states) rather than US citizens.  In other words, both US citizens and US states are members of the US.  The US Government isn’t fashioned like a state government because the Union is a combination of such states (whereas a state is not a combo of republics in turn).

So we ought to be very careful about kneejerk reactions to fix the “absurd” US Senate.  To be sure, holding up appointments to get pork is squalid even by a pig’s standards, but turning the US Senate into a state senate would drastically alter what the US are.   Even though we use “the US” as a singular noun, the entity itself and its government were formed and designed with it as a plural noun (the states) in mind.  The US constitutional convention delegates invented modern federalism to suit this new genus of an empire: the Union.  The EU has since come into being along similar principles because it is of the same genus.  To treat either the US or EU as though it were commensurate with one of its states would be to treat something other than what it is.  That can only lead to a downfall.   So perhaps rather than change the US Senate to fit our understanding, we might alter our understanding to fit what the US are. This would entail taking the pressure off of the US Senate by returning most of the domestic legislation to the state governments (where there is more democracy).  Consider the coherence in having the US Senate  mainly involved in foreign policy (and regulating between the states) and having a filibuster (which is close to the principle of international organization).  That is, the state governments meet in the US Senate technically on an international basis. Moreover, the U.S. Constitution forms a hybrid between or composed of international and national governance.  This unique situs fits with the empire-scale of the United States, especially as they have expanded to fifty. 
Treating the US Senate as a state legislature…legislating on everything from healthcare to education…is a gross departure from this coherence.  It is indeed absurd—only we have the arrows reversed.  It is our use of the US Senate that is absurd—not the Senate’s principles (even though they can be abused, such as by Nebraska and Alabama). Treating the US Senate (and the Union) as other than what it is can only lead to the fall of our empire…our Union of States. To be sure, every empire that rises must fall.  So why write?  I’m merely trying to stay the fall a bit, but the outcome is certain.  In the meantime, let’s not help it along.  This will take more humility and much less presumptuousness in what we think we know about our system of public governance.  With more humility, perhaps more of us will be content to get involved in our state governments.  As it is, we overlook them and advocate changing the US Senate into our own image of what it should be, presuming the extant Senate is "absurd" (perhaps it is sheer hubris to make such a summary judgement?).
Source: http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2010/02/05/need-more-evidence-the-senate-is-absurd-look-no-further.aspx

In 1928, the Senate stopped the bill that would have given WWI vets their bonus then rather than in 1946.  Mass protests for weeks by thousands of vets on the U.S. Capitol may have swayed the U.S. House, but the Senate was undaunted: passage of the bill would be economically disasterous .   Such a scenerio is exactly what the delegates in the U.S. constitutional convention in 1787 would have predicted.  They designed the House to reflect the passions of the people, and the Senate as a check on such passion where it is intemperate.   Looking back at Shays’ Rebellion in Massachusetts, the delegates feared excess democracy.  No supporter of the Senate, Madison nonetheless points out that “a numerous body of Representatives were liable to err also, from fickleness and passion. A necessary fence against this danger would be to select a portion of enlightened citizens, whose limited number, and firmness might seasonably interpose against impetuous councils” (Madison’s Notes, p. 194).

However, the delegates also designed the U.S. Senate “to represent the wealth of the Country” (Pinkney, in Madison’s Notes, p. 198).  Col. Mason claimed that “one important object in constituting the Senate was to secure the rights of property” (Madison’s Notes, p. 200).  Does being wealthy make one temporate or enlightened?   Madison observes that “wisdom & virtue” are among the objects of the proposed Senate (Madison’s Notes, p. 195).  Does being wealthy mean that one is apt to stand up for virtue?  Does wisdom come from having inherited or earned wealth?

As if these two purposes etched in the design of the U.S. Senate are not sufficiently disjoined, the delegates also intended that the Senate represent the State governments so as to proffer them a means of defending their turf against encroachment by the U.S. Government.  Senators were selected by State governments before the ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913.  It was debated in the convention whether popular election would give the senators a sufficient incentive to protect their respective State governments.  The delegates concluded that it would be insufficient, and history has proved them right–as the governments of the States have steadily lost power to the expansive U.S. Government.

So, the U.S. Senate was designed as a check on the excess democracy possible in the U.S. House, to protect the interests of property, and to represent the State governments and protect the balance of power so crucial to the viability of federalism.   It is not clear to me that these three functions are mutually-supporting or even compatible.  I don’t see evidence in Madison’s Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of any consideration of the assumed compatibility.

Just as any human institution is apt to subtly morph if it endures for a sufficient time, the U.S. Senate has changed through the centuries.  As a result of the 17th Amendment wherein U.S. Senators are now popularly elected (by State), the U.S. Senate is more democratic–hence more like the House.  The six year senatorial term is a buffer, to be sure. However, re-election is never too far off to be absent from a given Senator’s political and legislative calculation.   Hence we are unwittingly leaving ourselves vulnerable to our own excesses.  Are we assuming that our passionate, spur-of-the-moment, collective impulse cannot be reckless and ultimately not in our own best interest?

I have already pointed to the implications for the State governments, and we have seen their eclipse through the last century.   What about the protection of property?  How does this mix with the more-democratic “structural tendency” in the Senate?   Are Senators more oriented to the upper-class voters while soothing the rest as if we too are being represented?  In other words, is there a sort of duplicity built-in to this combination?

In my opinion, the U.S. Senate can represent the State governments while simultaneously serving as a check on the intemporate excesses possible in the U.S. House.  Property is sufficiently represented in the U.S. Government as a whole, given the small number of elected and appointed officials relative to the entire population.   I would look to the commensurate European Council in the E.U.   The Council not only represents the State governments, the chief executives of the States (or their ministers when specialized topics are decided) sit on the Council.   It is a viable check on the European Parliament, which is commensurate with the U.S. House (i.e., elected representatives by the people of the EU).   We could do better by emulating the European Council.

Accordingly, I recommend that the governors sit in the Senate (which would meet periodically…with the governors’ respective staffs doing the leg work), with the relevant members of the States’ cabinets meeting on specialized topics.   This might seem confusing, but it works in Europe.  Essentially, officials in the respective State governments would meet in a common council.  50, not 100 members.  The latter number is too numerous for a council.   Because governors are elected, democracy would not be shirked even as the Senate would be a viable check on the excesses in the House (because the governors acting in a council are “two degrees” from the voters while the U.S. Reps are only one).   To be sure, the Senate would not be meeting every day, but meeting periodically to decide the major points.

The Senate representing the State governments would distinguish the Senate from being a replica of the House.  Do we really need two Houses?   Strictly speaking, proportional representation applies where citizens are being represented.  In contrast, in an intergovernmental council each government is a member–a person, as it were–regardless of how much each weights (e.g., different populations, territorial size, or wealth).  The European Council deviates from the “intergovernmental council” model because the number of votes assigned to the governments is influenced by its population.  I don’t see why the Senate would no longer be an intergovernmental council just because the votes are proportional; the key would be that governments would be voting, so the one vote per government could be relaxed.  Because proportional represention is the rule in the U.S. House, the big States can protect themselves.  So I don’t view the one vote per government in the Senate as problematic in terms of the Congress as a whole.  In general terms, the more we can distinguish the two bodies of the Congress, the more we enrich our system of government by taking advantage of the unique contributions from different forms of polity.   If there is a downside to proportional representation,  a Senate not partaking of that method would automatically be a check (and vice versa, of course).

One might argue that federalism gets in the way of solving problems that are simply too important to go unsolved.  In short, the argument is that federalism impedes progress on important issues. State to state differences should not be tolerated, he argues, where important needs are involved. “Resources and die-hard beliefs in the role of local government vary too much from state to state” for us to trust State government to deal satisfactorally with grave problems.   I suspect this view is widely held today.

In response, I would argue that the choice of a governance system should only partly be determined by the ease by which particular problems are solved.  In designing the U.S. Government to include a separation of power between the three branches, the delegates in the constitutional convention of 1787 were looking to thwart the solution of problems by the Union’s general government.  In addition to fearing tyranny from a consolidation of power into a few hands, they believed that the functions of that government should be limited because the state legislators are closer to the people, and thus better as republics.  Rather than being problematic,  differences between the States (generically), or republics (more specifically), are natural.  Given the scale involved in many of the States alone, how could a Union of many such republics be anything but inherently diverse?  To ignore the differences and impose one solution on all is artificial and likely to build up pressure for eventual dissolution.  Such pressure can unwittedly be built out of ignorance.   So “ease in solving problems” may actually be antithetical to the criteria we want for designing our system of governance spanning a continent. I would argue, moreover, that it is short-sighted to re-orient a system of governnance to the whims of what is best for handling particular problems of the day.  To subject long-term viability to the vissitudes of the day is to subject one’s posterity to ruin.

One could also point out that federalism is a historical means to forming the Union and is therefore antiquated (as the Union is now formed).  Some of the delegates to the constitutional convention would argue that they had to put up with the continued existence of the States simply due to the politics (i.e., the intractability of the delegates defending their respective States).   Certainly Hamilton would have preferred to do away with the States—replacing them with administrative districts of the federal government.  I believe that a significant number of Americans today share Hamilton’s view.  If this sentiment is dominant among the citizens, we should give serious thought to a constitutional convention for the purpose of replacing federalism with consolidation, officially through an amendment.  Even though I believe that this option is not compatible with having a republic at the Union level, if a super-majority wants to change our system of governance, it should be changed (assuming a “constitutional moment” of reflection and debate on the proposal).

I do not believe that federalism was merely used as a political means of achieving agreement on the creation of a general government.  As I have written in another post, the diversity spanning an empire-scale polity can be accommodated by federalism.  Some large States are sufficiently large in themselves that they have diversity that could justify a federal system.  Consider, for example, California and Illinois.  Each of these republics is sufficiently diverse in its provinces that federalism could accommodate the different cultures and bring legislation that is more fitting and less compromised for all concerned.   That new States have been added to the Union since its founding—some of the last of which being quite different culturally from the others (e.g., HI and AK)—means that there could be even more diversity within the Union today than when it was founded (assuming that transportation and communications technology has not totally overridden the diversity inherent in the territorial scale of empire).  Paradoxically, the need for federalism could be more pressing today.  I have already argued that republic principles may be stretched too thin at the empire scale.  This, plus the matter of accommodating diversity within the empire, strongly points to the utility of restoring federalism. 

Finally, someone could say something like,  ”I believe in the power of each State, but I have NO confidence in the people” running the State governments.”  This point may resonate with the extant condition of state government today in the United States. That is, the eclipse of the State governments has almost certainly had an impact on the quality of the representatives the State level.  Do the best and brightest really want to work in a legislature that has been reduced to considering by and large local government issues?  What sort of person would agree to campaign for a rather impotent position?   The situation now is markedly different than in the revolutionary period, when the preference of the best and brightest of the politicians was to serve their respective countries.   Even as late as 1860, General Lee felt obliged to fight for his native Virginia—turning down Lincoln’s request that he fight for the U.S. Government.   So presumably were a balance of power restored such that State governments would have real power over the issues that really concern us, we might find the quality of our State reps improve.  We might have better candidates to choose from, and we might take more interest in their campaigns.  So I would argue that the enervated conditon of State government today should not be taken as indicative of how such government would look were it restored to a balance of power with the U.S. Government. For example, were the National Governor's Association given a formal role in determining American foreign policy, we might see better candidates running for governor.

In closing, I want to note that being in a large Union that is inherently diverse does require a certain amount of tolerance for regional differences.  “Not trusting” a State’s people who have a different understanding of government or who feel a different way on a problem is not consistent with having a Union.  That is to say, we won’t last as a Union if a dominant faction in one region imposes its ideology on States in other regions spanning the continent.  A certain humility is necessary.  Of course,  a Union has certain bed-rock common principles (in our case, representative democracy, for example) that delimit certain behavior and laws (e.g., holding other races in slavery).   The problem is the slippery slope wherein one uses “common principles” to impose one’s own ideology and the natural diversity spanning a continental Union is not accommodated.   The people of a republic will naturally want out if their way of life is imposed upon without justification.   In short, being in a Union requires having a sufficient tolerance that can admit that not every State is going to solve your important problems in the way you want.   I suspect that this Union has lost too much of this tolerance (contributing to divisive partisanship at the federal level).   One size fits all over a polity spanning across a continent (and beyond!) is likely to involve bitter partisanship because people view the approach as all or none.   To be sure, there may not be sufficient tolerance anymore among Americans to allow for a viable system of federalism.  Moreover, federalism itself is not perfect, so debate on it could lead to a decision by the popular sovereign to make the United States officially consolidated.  In my view, however, such a debate is urgently needed, for otherwise the American people will continue to live a consolidated lie under the rubric of federalism on parchment.

A constitutional moment engaging the citizenry is urgently needed with respect to the system of government in the United States. In short, the citizenry should decide, as a people, whether to revert back to a federal system or to make the political consolidation that has ensued official. If the latter, Alexander Hamilton's suggestion that the states be districts of the US Government, whose energy he thought could not directly extend to the outer reaches of the empire (i.e., into the wilderness of states distant from the seat of the U.S. Government). This was Hamilton's view in the U.S. Constitutional Convention; his writings eventually published in The Federalist Papers were meant to sell the proposed constitution rather than to give his own proposal. His own view may have come to pass, though through incremental Congressional encroachment on the turf of the governments of the several states and concurring U.S. Supreme Court assuaging (or enabling) doctrines.  I submit that this process of change over many years has eventuated in a gap between the system of governance as it is and as it is to be constitutionally.  Whereas some people argue that we must revert back to the constitution following a "strict" construction, I believe we the people, as a people, should commence a constitutional moment of heightened attention and debate concerning whether we want centralized consolidation (i.e., no states), decentralized consolidation (i.e., states as districts), or federalism (which entails dual sovereignty and a balance of power between the general government and the governments of the states).  I believe the latter is the best suited for an inherently diverse empire-scale political union, but that the people reach a decision is the imporant point now.  For otherwise, we will continue to live a lie--to claim to be a federal system while actually being consolidated: essentially flying with miscalibrated instruments. 

Actually making a decision on the type of political system is better than having the system inadvertantly change as a byproduct of whatever issue is being legislated at the moment. If the latter habit continues, I suspect that the United States will continue along the trend of consolidation at the expense of the State governments, with Congress, the U.S. President, and the U.S. Supreme Court gaining more and more power without sufficient checks on their abuse of power.  Progressives could look back on Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court allowing President George W. Bush to essentially declare war on Iraq and command the forces, while conservatives could look back on "Obamacare" applying to every state. Being concerned about the government of the Union having too much power is or ought to be an American proclivity. So too, the need for a decision on what type of political system the United States should have bears on every citizen, regardless of party.  This is what a constitutional moment is, after all; the people itself rising to discuss the system of government itself without being distracted by partisan issues of the day. To be sure, such a moment requires self-discipline among the people and responsibility in the media, so to keep on topic.

I find myself wondering why I even make the arguments.  It would take so much energy and agreement just to get to a constitutional moment wherein the citizenry as a whole become engaged in revisiting the governance system itself.  We are so easily distracted, and do we, as a citizenry, really care whether our government is federal or consolidated?   It might be that most of the citizenry is ready to say good riddence to federalism.  If so, then so be it.  Let’s at least make a decision.  If we as a people are incapable of making such a decision, it might be asked whether we are capable of democracy itself. It would be ironic if we were preaching democracy to the Middle East while not embracing popular sovereignty here at home.

A European leader, Angela Merkel, noted during a speech to the U.S. Congress in 2009 that, with the Lisbon amendment ratified, the EU “will become stronger and more capable of acting, and so a strong and reliable partner for the United States.”  The amendment deals with the EU’s governance, adjusting its political processes and institutions so as to streamline governance.  For example, there would be a President of the European Council and a Foreign Minister of the EU. Furthermore, not every State would have a commissioner in the EU.   The state governments’ chief executives would appoint the President of the European Council (whereas the President of the U.S. Senate is the elected Vice President of the union).

Because democratic principles are more difficult to apply at the empire-scale of the U.S. and E.U., it makes sense to have the representatives at the state level appoint the federal offices.  This is a basic principle of confederations, which have typically been at the empire-level. This may well seem strange from a contemporary American standpoint.  However, we could also be criticized for being vulnerable to the excesses possible in representative democracy spread too thin.  After all, the state offices are elected.  If we don’t trust them to make such appointments, we shouldn’t have elected them in the first place.  It seems to me that the Europeans have a more measured and prudent stance concerning the structure of their multi-level governance system in this regard.   Even so, the Europeans tend to have trouble coming to grips with the division of governmental sovereignty already extant in the EU federal system.  For example, already 67% of the EU competencies (enumerated powers) are by qualified majority voting, and therefore represent a significant shift in governmental sovereignty from the state level to the EU.  Apparently ignoring this state of affairs, Klaus of the Czech state claims that “the Czech Republic will cease to be a sovereign state.”  The already-existing extent of qualified majority rule in the EU means that Klaus’ state government is already no longer a sovereign state.   So problems on both sides of the Atlantic are evident.   Perhaps by studying each other’s systems, both can be strengthened.

Sources: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4853565,00.html ;  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/world/europe/04europe.html?_r=1&ref=world

Micheal Bennet, who represented Colorado as a U.S. Senator, told a journalist in 2009 that the possibility of losing his seat  in 2010 should not hold him back from voting for health-care reform even if it were unpopular in Colorado.   Voting in line with the best interests of his fellow citizens would evince a degree of political integrity that I suspect few in the biz have today. However, might a representative be wrong and his or her constituents right about the long term best interest? Is a U.S. senator necessarily smarter or more capable of insight? Lest Bennet be criticized here for failing to have represented his constituents, one might take a look back at Madison’s Notes to the constitutional convention. 

The US Senate was designed or intended to represent the State governments and to serve as a check on the US House, whose members are supposed to vote according to the ephemeral passions of their constituents.  The difference between taking a long term view and voting on the basis of the mood at the moment can be seen by contrasting an election every  six years from one every two. The different lengths of the respective terms in office is no accident, my friends.  So it turns out that if the U.S. senator tells his constitutents that he is voting contrary to what they think is best now, he is acting as the office has been designed.  Those people who are wont to criticize such a senator tacitly presume that they cannot be wrong about what is best for themselves—which is exactly why a check on them and the US House is needed. Of course, where the best interest of the electorate differ from that of the state government, a U.S. senator is in a real pickle, as he or she is charged with representing his or her state as a polity and to resist current pressure from the citizens therein who are his or her electorate.  It is possible that there is an internal inconsistency in the aims of the U.S. Senate, particularly where providing a check on the representative democracy in the U.S. House is at odds with the interests of the state government.  Perhaps the U.S. Senate should be redesigned so as to be oriented to one principal function.  In terms of federalism, this would have to be providing the state governments with a direct involvement in the general government of the union. However, what would then serve as a check on the proclivity in the U.S. House to mirror the momentary passions of the people?

Source: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/11/22/freshman-dem-passing-health-care-reform-worth-losing-my-seat/

Fourteen times a thousand times a billion.  Such a number can only be known abstractly to the human mind.  A person is not apt to see 14 trillion widgets and thus fully realize how many that number signifies.  Just in an abstract sense, however, the number can be understood represent debt that is beyond sustainability.   If not, then exactly how much signifies the threshold over which any additional debt will never be paid back? At the beginning of 2011, the U.S. Government's debt was at about $14 trillion.

Consider the following from The New York Times when the debt figure was just $12 billionin 2009. “With the national debt now topping $12 trillion, the White House estimates that the government’s tab for servicing the debt will exceed $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion this year, even if annual budget deficits shrink drastically. Other forecasters say the figure could be much higher. In concrete terms, an additional $500 billion a year in interest expense would total more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” As much as the interest expense is expected to be (and the implied difficulty in paying down the debt, let alone covering its interest expense, it may be even harder before long.  According to The New York Times, “Americans now have to climb out of two deep holes: as debt-loaded consumers, whose personal wealth sank along with housing and stock prices; and as taxpayers, whose government debt has almost doubled in the last two years alone, just as costs tied to benefits for retiring baby boomers are set to explode.”

While the deficit-spending is perfectly understandable in the context of a financial crisis and otherwise likely economic depression, such spending has hardly been saved for such times.  In fact, it has been part of “normal” US Government budgeting.  What the newspaper doesn’t mention is that even in the late 1990’s when the government was running surpluses and the economy was booming, only part of the surfeit was used to reduce the government’s debt.  At the time, Bill Clinton’s administration used the “rationale” that the boom that had been going on since the mid-1980s would go on for another fifteen years from the late 90’s.   Even had that forecast been realistic, I’m not sure that all of the government surpluses together could have eliminated the public debt. 

In any case, fiscally the US Government has been out of balance for decades.   What might be the cause?  Two candidates come readily to mind.  The American culture is a rather self-consumption-oriented society wherein spending beyond one’s means is not a matter of moral disapprobation.  In other words, the problem may boil down to a “gimme, gimme, gimme” mentality—a lack of maturity, really.  Secondly (and relatedly), representative democracy itself may itself favor spending over taxation to cover it.  Any normative constraint that might operate at the individual level may not exist at the institutional level where representatives are effectively rewarded for bringing home the bacon and punished for raising taxes.  Although it could be argue that the representatives should be more responsible nonetheless (as their goal ought not be simply to be reelected), we can point to ourselves, the American citizens, as the force behind the unsustainable fiscal situation.  We don’t have to endure incumbants who have spent in deficits, but we do.  The US House incumbancy rate almost guarantees that once someone is elected, he or she can be virtually assured of being re-elected in two years, und so weiter.    The problem, in other words, lies within us.  Too few of us value self-discipline in ourselves.  We are unwilling to call other people on their profligate credit-card spending, and we refuse to vote out of office those representatives who have voted outside of a financial crisis for an unbalanced budget.  Consider how different a people we would be were to insist at the ballot box that our representatives actually make a contribution to paying down some of the debt (again, not during a financial crisis) each year during their terms.  How different we would be if we held our officials accountable for more than scandal.   How different we would be if we “just said no” to the credit card companies and went without the plastic (using debit cards that could be used only on positive balances and having a savings account for emergencies).  If we look at the US Government as unsustainable, what we are really saying is that we, ourselves, are fundamentally flawed as concerning being adults.  The problem, in other words, transcends finance and politics.  We are living beyond our means.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/business/23rates.html?_r=1&hp

The New York Times Sunday Magazine (11/29/09) ran a feature on Joe Biden as the Vice President of the United States.  Besides his experience and knowledge from having been a seasoned U.S. senator, Joe Biden is a man genuinely content in his own skin, and, it might be said, genuinely happy.  This, perhaps more than anything else, is vital to high level public official because sound judgment is important in those jobs. Ruling is not simply about how much one knows, or even how much experience one has; it is fundamentally about feeling at ease in who one is.  Ultimately, a positive vision springs from one’s state of mind and innate values.  One need only contrast Joe Biden with Richard Nixon, for example. Foreign policy comes up for both, but their tempraments could not be different.

My question is this: to what extent is our “Electoral College as popular election” geared to selecting the best candidate for president?  If the most popular is apt to be a people-pleaser, how comfortable is he (or she) likely to be in his (or her) own skin?  Furthermore, is the most popular necessarily seasoned with experience?  In short, if our current mechanism for selecting the president is oriented to privileging the flavor of the day, is this really the way we want to pick our presidents?    When we see a people-pleasing president cave to the business interests for support because popularity is not a sufficient basis of legitmacy, should we really be surprised?   What I see is a seasoned and knowledgeable vice president who is generally happy and getting along with people at the White House and in Congress, yet he did not do well at all in the popularity contests (i.e., the primaries).   I suggest that we have it backwards if we assume that Joe Biden is best as vice president because he did not fare well in the electoral contest.  As a case in point, he has been urging restraint in acquiescing to the pressure to add troops to Afganistan.  He wants a narrow focus, rather than a sensationalistic “surge.”  I suspect that he would stand up to big business and the military were he president because he wouldn’t need their approval to be content in his own skin.  Were he president, I suspect he wouldn’t need a second term.  Could that be said of a person who relishes popularity?

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/magazine/29Biden-t.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=joe%20biden&st=cse

Rick Perry, when he was the Republican governor of Texas running for re-election, said his primary opponent, Senator Kay Hutchison,  was spending tax dollars too freely in Washington.  That is to say, she is too Washington. He claimed that she didn't get what he called, “Texas values.”   Then, he added something really telling—something that went beyond his contest. “Washington’s one-size-fits-all approaches simply don’t work. They want more control of your dollars and your life, and they want it now. We surrender that to them with peril.”  His statement is worthy of our reflection even long after Perry's re-election.

Why doesn’t a one-size-fits-all approach not work in the United States?  Perry was essentially pointing to the empire-level nature of the U.S. general (or federal-level) government, which is to say that there are republics within the Union.  Hence the Texas governor used the word “surrender.”  Ordinarily, one-size-fits-all is the nature of a government’s legislation; a law is not meant to differentiate between individuals.  On the empire level, imperial legislation should take into account the different political entities that constitute or are members of the empire, even if the legislation applies directly to people.  In short, the governor was subtly pointing to how the US Government differs from that of Texas. President Obama's health-insurance law was vulnerable to being declared unconstitutional precisely because in urging that the U.S. Congress expand its authority to include a mandate to purchase health insurance, the President neglected the empire-level situs of the U.S. Goverment--a level that is not the first "go to." 

In other words, the Democrats forgot or minimized the enumerated powers aspect of the limited imperial-level government (the British imperial crown had similarly been limited in its imperial powers--essentially regulating interstate commerce and defending the empire). In Sandra Day O'Conner's words, "Congress has been acting like a state legislature."  Had the President urged Congress to make money available to states in which all of their citizens are covered, I suspect his objective would have been sufficiently satisfied in a way that would be consistent with what the U.S. is/are. I say sufficiently satisfied because in a Union of republics or countries, the innate diversity of states means that just as one size doesn't fit all, not all of the republics would decide to cover everyone. Hence, tolerance among the others is part and parcel of being in an empire-level political union. Where such tolerance is in short supply, one risks having one's prize Congressional legislation declared unconstitutional.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34402323/ns/politics-washington_post/

Just as the US Senate was to take up the matter of Ben Bernanke’s re-appointment as Chair of the Federal Reserve in 2010, Time magazine came out with its announcement that he is to be its person of the year.  According to the magazine, “when turbulence in U.S. housing markets metastasized into the worst global financial crisis in more than 75 years, he conjured up trillions of new dollars and blasted them into the economy; engineered massive public rescues of failing private companies; ratcheted down interest rates to zero; lent to mutual funds, hedge funds, foreign banks, investment banks, manufacturers, insurers and other borrowers who had never dreamed of receiving Fed cash; jump-started stalled credit markets in everything from car loans to corporate paper; revolutionized housing finance with a breathtaking shopping spree for mortgage bonds; blew up the Fed’s balance sheet to three times its previous size; and generally transformed the staid arena of central banking into a stage for desperate improvisation. He didn’t just reshape U.S. monetary policy; he led an effort to save the world economy.”  Not to be outdone in service to the Chairman, CNN furnished its own reporters, who gave credit to Bernanke for these measures.  Interestingly, however, even though one reporter admitted that Bernanke had said in 2007 that the subprime market and its derivatives would not threaten the financial market and the banks, she attributed the fault there to the imperfections in the market rather than to Bernanke himself in being wrong.   So, he gets credit for cleaning up the mess (ignoring the foreclosed homeowners) but not the blame for being wrong about the contagion (and not urging regulation of the derivatives).  He could have urged the regulation of derivatives (he is a smart person), and once the crisis occurred, he could have tailored his response to the homeowners facing foreclosures that could have been stopped. For example, the Fed could have created dollars to subsidize the inordinate rates on the variable rate subprime mortgages (i.e. those bank assets would not have been toxic and the banks’ balance sheets would have been fine…two birds with one stone…rather than doing the bidding of one of the parties).  To be sure, if the Fed is inordinately friendly to banks because of the power they have in selecting their regulators (the NY Fed Chair’s appointing committee consists of bankers), then Bernanke might have simply been playing the good politics for staying in office.   “Our ships must all sail in the same direction; otherwise who can tell how long you will…last…with us.” (The Godfather, part III)  Bernanke is a player from the perspective of the real power behind the throne: America’s financial elite.  That elite literally owns the media companies. So what I want to point out here is that the timing of Time’s announcement and the asymetry in CNN’s laudatory coverage of the Chairman just as the Senate was about to consider his re-appointment led me almost instinctually to  be convinced that coincidence was not the driver here.  The Chairman undoubtedly had some powerful friends in the media who were giving him a publicity offensive, or campaign, just in time for the Senate debate on whether to appoint him.

Through all the admiration of this person of 2009, it should be remembered that he did not urge the regulation of sub-prime derivatives issued or held by the banks regulated by the Fed.  He was wrong about the subprime housing bubble being contained.  And he failed to protect homeowners sufficiently.  If the media was being used by the Fed Chair in his re-appointment campaign, it could be that what we are fed by CNN, Fox, MSNBC and the main network newscasts is not really as neutral or beyond their control as we think.   News as a campaign.  News because it is in some powerful actor’s vested interests.  While there is certainly coincidence in life, an alignment such as I have outlined here is far too transparent—or at least it ought to be.

The subtext here is that we, the American people, have become too much the pawns even as we think we are not.  The illusion of popular sovereignty is that we are in control.   I don’t think we have any idea of the extent to which we are manipulated by the powers that transcend our elected representatives and their appointees.  It is no wonder that real change does not get beyond the interests of the real power in America, whose interest is in the status quo or at best in an incremental change.   Essentially, we have allowed the anti-democratic power to concentrate to a degree that is dangerous to a functioning republic (i.e., a representative democracy).  We should not be surprised to find that powerful actors are operating at a subterranean level where transparency is intentionally lacking.    How do we get it back, you ask?  Hah!   We would have to see it first—realize its extent and depth—and I’m not holding my breath that enough people will wake up to see the light.

Too many of us are ensconced in Plato’s cave, taking what the puppets say for reality.  As Jack Nicholson said in A Few Good Men, “You want answers? YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!”    Even if we could stomach the emetic manipulation behind the scenes that is directed to us (and even our representatives—when they aren’t doing it themselves), we would have to be able to see it—and it is so well hidden.  We can only grasp at straws…confluences that seem like more than coincidences.  As a member of the black caucus of the US House (surprisingly) said to a reporter of Frontline on the TARP program passing the House just days after it had been voted down by that same body, “You have no idea how powerful the anti-democratic forces are here.”    You and I get only glimpses.  The puppets seem more real so we believe in them.   Please don’t take my thesis to be that there is one huge orchastrated conspiracy; rather, I’m simply suggesting that our system of representative democracy does not seem to be able to sufficiently constrain the invisible powers that are pulling strings without being accountable to the public power.  It is my ardent hope that the people will look beyond the status quo in voting for candidates—perhaps getting back to citizen representatives who do their duty then return to their preferred occupations—that we would elect people sufficiently principled and not desirous of a life in power to be willing to take on the financial power.   Do I think it will happen?  Sadly, no.  I’m sorry, but I just don’t think we have it in us…or we don’t have enough of what it would take to confront that which is in us that favors comfort and sleep.   In the story of the rise and fall of empires, the United States is not exempt.  The culprit, as with most things, lies within.   It is ultimately about what kind of people too many of us are.  Such a thing is very, very difficult to change, let alone see.  Decadence tends to be invisible to itself.

Note: A day after CNN covered the announcement, the Senate finance committee debated and voted on Bernanke’s re-appointment. See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34463144/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/

 Source: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1946375_1947251,00.html#ixzz0Zs8WgpV1

The New York Times reported on February 9, 2011 that President Obama was "proposing to ride to the rescue of states" that had borrowed billions of dollars from the federal government by continuing to pay unemployment benefits during the economic downturn. His plan would "give the states a two-year breather before automatic tax increases would hit employers, and before states would have to start paying interest on the loans." Many of the states began the recession with "too little money in their unemployment trust funds," and they "quickly ran through what little they had as unemployment rose and remained stubbornly high month after month. With their own trust funds depleted, 30 states borrowed $42 billion from the federal government to continue paying unemployment benefits." These state were facing an estimated $1.3 billion in interest payments to Washington due in the fall of 2011. To make up for the loss of this interest income to the federal government, the President’s proposal would raise the minimum taxable wage base of $7000 to $15,000 in 2014. "The rate of the federal portion of the unemployment taxes would then be lowered, so the proposal would not raise federal taxes on states that do not owe the federal government money. But it would speed the rate at which states that do owe money repay the federal government, and allow states to collect more unemployment taxes to rebuild their trust funds if they do not lower their tax rates." By February, 2011, eighteen states had already raised their minimum taxable wage base to $15,000 or more, according to the National Association of State Workforce Agencies. Iris Lav, an advisor at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said that the unemployment system as “a constellation of problems that need to be solved. . . . The near-term problem is the economy . . . and both the interest payments and the principal repayments are cutting into employers, and it makes great sense to postpone them. The larger question is how you get states to solvency.”

Analysis:

The proposal itself makes sense from the standpoint of getting thirty states out of a tight fix. The debate on whether taxes should go up in 2011 or 2014 ought to be dwarfed by the larger structural faultlines, which are only hinted at by the President's proposal to ease up on States in trouble in the unemployment compensation system. In other words, the necessity of having extended unemployment's term to cover the length of the recession following the financial crisis of 2008 itself implies higher taxes (or debt). Whether the states' borrowing for unemployment is covered beginning in 2011 or 2014 can be debated (e.g., avoiding recessionary tax increases during a recession vs. the higher deficits), but we ought not allow it to divert attention entirely from the larger structural faultlines that are intimated by the President's proposal.

First, the "rescue" is limited to that program; neither the Federal Reserve nor the U.S. Government would come to the rescue of the states concerning their deficits and debt. Moreover, that the U.S. take on taxes limited the ability of state governments to tax in sufficient amounts to cover their expenditures is not touched. Furthermore, that the U.S. Government would be rescuing states intimates the dependence of the latter and the overwhelming power of the former. Perhaps the "cooperation," or intermixing, of the two systems of government in the unemployment system is problematic because it gives the U.S. Government a way to dominate states. According to Jacobs and Karst, “It is the preservation of the balance between the central authority and the constituent states that is the essence of federalism.” Yet, “In the American federal structure the central authority is stronger." Rescuing thirty states evinces this imbalance, and thus the failure of the United States to preserve the essence of federalism. Maintaining at least one autonomous domain for the states is not sufficient for a viable federal system; balance is essential or the two systems of government will not be able to act as a check on each other. Debating whether to raise taxes in 2011 or 2014 would mean once again ignoring our failure to preserve our federal system; it would mean blindly sitting by once again while the political consolidation of a diverse continent proceeds full throttle ahead to a "one size fits all" and the resultant building pressure, which is apt to explode one day. 

Second, the unemployment system itself, being limited to helping the unemployed for discreet periods often shorter than a given recession, is not addressed fundamentally. In other words, the X weeks feature of being on unemployment compensation treats "convenient" things like food, rent and utilities as though they were optional commodities that could be skipped after the Xth week on unemployment. The nature of unemployment is rooted in survival, which if one believes in human rights, including life, is properly unconditional. The basic structural problem with the unemployment system in the U.S. is in turn a symptom of the inability of the private sector to bring the U.S. population to full employment. That is to say, relying exclusively on business to bring us to full employment is problematic, again from the standpoint of survival as a human right. To be sure, the recognition of survival as a human right implies higher taxes than are necessary in simply treating survival as a matter for the state of nature--as in Paul's dictum that those who don't work don't eat. This broader debate is typically ignored as we debate incremental changes in policy, even if those changes have implications in terms of the broader faultline.

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/us/politics/09states.html?pagewanted=1&ref=todayspaper

Jacobs, Francis G. and Kenneth L. Karst, “The 'Federal' Legal Order: The U.S.A. And Europe Compared A Juridical Perspective,” in Integration Through Law: Europe and the American Federal Experience, Mauro Cappelletti, Monica Seccombe, and Joseph Weiler, eds., Vol. 1, Methods, Tools and Institutions. Bk. 1, “A Political, Legal and Economic Overview” (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1986), pp. 169-244, p. 171.

In December, 2009, Abdullah II, King of the state of Jordon,dismissed the prime minister and replaced him with a palace aide and loyalist, dissolved Parliament and postponed legislative elections for a year.   For all the defects of a representative democratic system, it is far superior to autocratic rule, especially by one.   It is natural for people to resist preemption. “The nature of humans is they want democracy,” said Ali Dalain, an independent member of the Parliament that was dissolved. “One person cannot solve all problems and cannot make everyone happy, so people must share in determining their fate.”   These quotes are revealing from the standpoint of human nature and political theory.    In reading “one person cannot solve all problems,” I thought of the imperial US presidency—not only at the expense of the governments of the republics within the US, but also of the Congress.   The health-care insurance reform legislation, for example, is said to be Obama’s, even though he is in the executive rather than the legislative branch (having only a veto, which can be overridden, in the latter).   It would seem to me that the Speaker of the US House and the Majority Leader of the US Senate ought to have their own agendas—that the Congress should not simply be led by the president’s agenda.   Foreign policy is perhaps the one area where the Congress ought to defer—but only in terms of agreeing to consider what the president has negotiated abroad.  Had the UN climate talks in Copenhagen produced a treaty in December, 2009, the US President would have asked the US Senate to consider it.  Were the Senate to routinely ignore the President’s negotiations, it would be very difficult for the US to negotiate internationally.   In terms of foreign policy, however, one person does not hold a monopoly of wisdom or truth.  So in general, we could take a lesson from Jordon, even as we pride ourselves on our having a representative democracy rather than a monarchy.  I think perhaps we discount too readily the vestages of one-person rule in the US.  A unified long term vision is nice, but stepping back to see and enunciate it is different than deciding what it shall be and imposing it. 

In terms of the American presidency, there may even be a bit of hero or idol worship that has held on from ancient king-worship, as if eons of practice etched it in the human genome.  It is evinced not just when a president is sworn in, but also when he gives the State of the Union address—should I capitalize this?   Honor in the office, it is said, but the president is just a man.   The media obsesses on his every move, including what he is doing on vacation.  This obession gives us the illusion that we know the person.  Who is that behind the curtain anyway?   Do we really know, as we watch the screen? 

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/world/middleeast/23amman.html?ref=world