Welfare State

Entitlement Nation—————————————

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

“Didn’t have no welfare state. Everybody pulled their weight. Gee, our old LaSalle ran great. Those were the days.”

– “All in the Family”

I was a depression baby, born in 1930. Herbert Hoover was president. The Model A Ford was still popular but few could afford one, let alone a LaSalle. If you had a car, you usually didn’t bother to lock it because no one in our working class neighborhood would even think of stealing it. We didn’t bother locking our doors or windows, either. Few families owned their homes. No one that we knew had health insurance. When you were sick enough, you called the neighborhood doctor who made a house call for $5. If you came down with a dread disease like cancer, your prospects weren’t great.  There were few luxuries; no TV or home air conditioners. As kids, we considered ourselves fortunate to get 15 cents a week for a Saturday matinee double feature, plus a cartoon and a Lone Ranger episode. Many fortunes and jobs were lost following the 1929 stock market crash and everyone knew neighbors and relatives who were struggling. Those were the days, alright. They were difficult days but they were formative, if you survived.

 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt replaced the much-maligned Hoover in 1932 and with him came the New Deal. Economist John Maynard Keynes popularized the notion that government spending could help avoid depressions and Democrats proceeded to lay the foundations of the American welfare state. Social Security provided a safety net of old age insurance starting in 1935. The Works Project Administration (WPA) provided construction jobs for many of the unemployed. All these good things were administered by a vastly enlarged federal government and they came, of course, with a large price tag.

 

But the depression still droned on and didn’t end until we mobilized for World War II. Living was good during the war except, of course, for those fighting it.  When they returned home they received the thanks of a grateful nation along with many richly deserved benefits under the GI Bill. By then, Americans were beginning to expect more of government, and so government grew to accommodate them and win their votes. We were now the world’s leading economy and we could afford anything, we thought. President Lyndon Johnson launched his Great Society and war on poverty and the welfare state grew. So did taxes, but not enough to pay for the Vietnam War and the ever-increasing federal benefits. Few questioned how we could pay for all this except a few conservatives but true conservatives like Barry Goldwater were out of style until the 1980s. There were Republican presidents, but Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford were basically moderates who went with the trend.

 

Ronald Reagan broke the pattern in 1980 and demonstrated that lowering taxes could actually stimulate the economy, that profitable businesses meant more jobs and that a rising tide lifted all boats. All this was derided by liberals as “trickle-down economics” or, less charitably, as “voodoo economics”. George H. W. Bush broke his pledge of “Read my lips; no new taxes” and became a one-term president, giving way to the moderate, pragmatic policies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who added a costly prescription benefit to a growing list of entitlements Then along came Barack Obama and the entitlement state blossomed. So did the federal debt which doubled during his two terms and now stands at about $20 trillion. Most honest people knew in their hearts that we were encumbering our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren with an enormous debt that would probably be beyond their ability to repay and that there was something immoral and selfish about that but few were willing to give up any benefits. We’d become addicted to them. Politicians that ran on cutting back or eliminating them did not prosper at the polls.

 

The inevitable day of reckoning, of course, will come when the interest rate to service that debt rises to a point where it crowds out all of our discretionary spending including defense and infrastructure. The interest on that debt already accounts for 6% of the federal budget. That day of reckoning may come sooner rather than later when our massive debt becomes downgraded to junk and lenders seek much higher rates of return or just stop buying our debt altogether. That will mark the end of America’s reign as the world’s preeminent military power and leading economy. I won’t be around to see it, but I grieve for those who will, including my grandchildren.

 

There are still things we can do to delay that day of reckoning, perhaps indefinitely. We can raise the retirement age for Social Security and Medicare. We can subject all earnings to Social Security withholding. We can reduce Medicaid spending to cover the widows, orphans and truly disabled people that it was originally intended to cover. We can seek other modest changes that can help save these programs. Or we can just kick the can down the road until we run out of road and discover that all roads end eventually.

August 27, 2017

 

America On the Decline

Is America Losing Its Luster?—————————

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

                Since World War II, the United States has been the world’s strongest military and economic power as well as its most admired nation and the undisputed leader of the western world. It has also been a magnet for scholars, entrepreneurs and the world’s huddled masses. That, however, all may be changing.

 

According to a recent Pew survey, in seven out of ten European countries, including Germany and the United Kingdom, the world’s fourth and fifth largest economies, respectively, China is now considered the world’s leading economic power. The study also indicated that the percentage of people with a positive view of the U.S. has shrunk to less than half while the percentage of people with a positive view of China has risen to 47%.

 

Chinese students continue to flock to U.S. universities and they continue to outperform American students academically. But fewer of them are remaining in America after graduation.  The percentage of Chinese students opting to return home after graduation has risen to 80%, presumably because of better job opportunities there but quite possibly also because of what many of them report seeing as turmoil and uncertainty in American government and gang-related violence and drug usage in the cities and around urban campuses.

 

These trends are somewhat surprising, given the freedoms that Americans enjoy compared with the restrictions on free speech in China. But this, too, may be changing. Many foreign students report being shocked at the constraints on free expression on American campuses with speakers being shouted down or even denied access to the campus by student demonstrators, in spite of America’s free speech traditions. They also express surprise at our crumbling infrastructure, aging, inadequate public transportation systems, lack of respect for police and other authorities and a diminishing American role as an a world leader.

 

China’s remarkable economic growth rate in a very short time, has, on the other hand, catapulted it to second place among the world’s economic powers and its economy is still growing much faster than ours. While poverty in the largely agricultural interior is still widespread, the robust economy is lifting millions out of poverty each year. Air quality in its sprawling eastern cities is notoriously poor, but the bustling major metropolises of the east contain marvels of technology and impressive architecture. China should be viewed as a rival and a competitor, not an enemy. Both nations need each other and competition is healthy. But if this is a race for bragging rights, we are falling behind and China is pulling ahead. Americans have become accustomed to being number one, but that may change, too.

 

Is America losing its luster? One might think so after reading James Piereson’s “Shattered Consensus” (New York: Encounter Books, 2015), describing the rise and decline of America’s postwar political order. Piereson discusses the political turmoil that exists in the United States as a consequence, he says, of economic stagnation, unsustainable growth in government and entitlements, the national debt and other factors. At the same time, he writes, the widening gulf between the two major political parties and the entrenched power of interest groups makes it increasingly difficult to negotiate the changes needed to renew and revitalize the American economy.

 

Political polarization is paralyzing American government to the point that little gets done. Moreover, political correctness, identity politics and the culture wars make it difficult to even talk about some of the problems. Piereson notes that we have recovered from past crises throughout our nation’s history and we can certainly do so again but it may take a major upheaval to shock the country into reshaping the American political process. At present, that process appears to be broken.

 

Do America’s best days still lie ahead? The Chinese are convinced that theirs do. Our European friends, apparently, are not sure about ours.

August 22, 2017

China Is Key to North Korea Problem

The North Korea Problem————————–

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

We now know that the most recent launch of a North Korean ballistic missile could have reached any American city in the western continental United States, had its trajectory been adjusted. With nuclear warheads attached, North Korea’s unpredictable young dictator, Kim Jong Un, can hold American cities hostage to his demands. His missiles already target U.S. forces, ships and bases in South Korea and Japan.

 

This is a situation that we have said for decades could not be permitted to happen and yet we have permitted it. It is proof that America’s 30-year strategy of dealing with this growing threat has been an abject failure. That strategy has consisted of negotiations, sanctions, warnings, and more negotiations that always end in American concessions in return for North Korean promises which not only have not been kept but which the North Korean leaders had no intentions of keeping. They always made it abundantly clear that they would never give up their objective of becoming a nuclear power.

 

We have, in short, been played for fools and now we have no military options that would not result in a bloodbath. The administrations of Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton and a succession of feckless secretaries of state share the blame for allowing this dangerous situation to develop.

 

President Donald Trump has promised that he will “take care of” the North Korea problem. With or without China’s help, he said, “it will be taken care of”. But how? Mr. Trump has made other promises to solve problems that have not “been taken care of”. His staffers responded to the question of how by saying that Mr. Trump “does not want to broadcast his decisions, but all options are on the table.”

 

Really? Apparently not all options, at least according to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who promptly declared that the U.S. is not North Korea’s enemy. Well, you could have fooled me. He also said that we do not seek regime change. But of course we do, or at least we should. The very problem has been the regimes of the Kim family of ruthless dictators who have always considered the U.S. their enemy. Has Mr. Tillerson been consulting with his predecessors, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry? Negotiations simply have not worked, except for the North Koreans. Negotiations have bought them precious time to develop and improve their nukes and missiles and now they have us over a barrel. Has Mr. Tillerson learned nothing about the limits of diplomacy from his half year at Foggy Bottom?

 

Here’s a dose of reality. We cannot permit our cities and our deployed military forces in the Far East to be held hostage to an unpredictable young dictator who may not even be a rational actor, who doesn’t think twice about having opponents, or even relatives who he deems a threat to his power, murdered and who starves his own people in order to afford weapons of mass destruction which he repeatedly threatens to use. There are now no good military options that would not risk a nuclear catastrophe and massive loss of life even from conventional weapons. If Mr. Trump thinks such an option is still on the table, he’s even more dangerous than I thought.

 

Negotiations, sanctions and concessions have not worked and more of the same would be a fool’s errand. Kin Jong Un will never willingly give up nuclear weapons which are key to his retaining power. His regime must go and be replaced by one whose goals are peace and prosperity for the long-suffering North Korean people and peaceful reunification of the peninsula. China is in a far better position than we are to facilitate regime change in Pyongyang. It shares a lengthy border with North Korea and provides about 90% of its imports, without which its population would likely starve at an even faster rate than they already are and turn against the regime. But China hasn’t done nearly as much as it could to avert what even Beijing acknowledges is a crisis that could quickly spin out of control.

 

China might be persuaded to act, however, if we advise them, politely but ever so firmly, that failure to take effective action resulting in regime change in Pyongyang will (not might) result in our renouncing the one-China policy, extending diplomatic recognition to Taiwan and providing it with all the military aid it needs to defend itself including nuclear weapons if necessary. We might also encourage the Japanese to develop nukes, adding to Beijing’s worst nightmare. If it works, China can then take all the credit for defusing a dangerous situation.

August 13, 2017

The Not-so-Grand Old Party

The Once-Grand Old Party———————————–

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

There are certain immutable laws of political life that may help explain the colossal failure of Republicans to repeal and replace Obamacare as promised in spite of having won the White House and both houses of congress over eight months ago. One is that any entitlements and benefits, once granted are virtually impossible to rescind or reduce. Another is that career politicians are primarily motivated by self-interest and the desire to remain in office.

 

Both of these principles were in evidence as the Republican-controlled Senate blew what is probably its last chance to enact the healthcare reform they successfully campaigned on. The failure demonstrated once again that many, if not most, politicians will promise or say anything to get elected. It also demonstrated that success in campaigning is not a predictor of success in governing. Making campaign promises is easy. Making legislation is hard, especially when the party supposedly in power is itself hopelessly divided along ideological lines and some of its members refuse to compromise.

 

Failure to replace the Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama’s primary achievement and legacy, will just about ensure that it will morph into single-payer health coverage for all Americans. That’s because the half-baked plan cobbled together behind closed doors by a select group of Democrats, without any Republican input, whose hundreds of pages few Democrats even took the time to read, and which had to be enacted before its contents could be fully understood, will continue to collapse as premiums rise, providers and insurers bail out and Medicaid expands to cover nearly everyone instead of the poor widows and children it was designed for. The single payer, of course, will be America, which will then become the world’s newest welfare state and you, the taxpayer, will foot the bill which will be HUGE.

 

The tax increase necessary to pay for “free” medical care for all will not just target the rich but also the already heavily-taxed middle class. A single-payer plan will be a major step toward achieving the cradle-to-grave security state sought by far-left liberals so that we can be just like the socialist democracies of Europe where over half of everything citizens earn goes to the nanny state. Perhaps we could then join the European Union.

 

In theory, it appeals to many. Why not eliminate the middleman, the profit-hungry health insurance companies. In practice, it would turn out to be not so appealing as demand for a “free” product inevitable exceeds supply and care is rationed with long waits for expensive procedures.

 

The nation is already over $20 trillion in debt and climbing with little hope realistically of ever paying it back but that’s not the first concern. That would be the mounting cost of the service on that debt which will consume more and more of the budget leaving less and less for discretionary items like defense and infrastructure. And what happens when the Chinese, Japanese and other investors stop buying our debt instruments when they are downgraded to junk?

 

European members of NATO with cradle-to-grave benefits struggle to devote 2% of GNP to defense. America may someday join them as military budgets shrink and the cost of entitlements grows. Is this the prelude to the end of America’s reign as the world’s greatest power and economy?

 

Republicans have demonstrated that they know how to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The party leaders are unable to exert the leadership and discipline necessary to get promised legislation passed. They have defaulted on their promises to the voters for which they will likely pay a heavy price in the 2018 mid-term elections. And they will deserve it.

August 8, 2017

 

Banning Transgenders From Military Service

Transgender Ban on Military Service Is the Right Call————-

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

President Donald Trump’s decision to bar transgender persons from serving in the military, while it will anger members of the LGBT community and their supporters, is the right decision for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it was, he said, reached after consultation with senior military officials although it reportedly caught Defense Secretary Jim Mattis by surprise. They are the best source of expert advice on the impact such service has on military readiness and morale, which should be the paramount issue in this debate. Too often, policies are imposed on the military, without such advice, by civilian politicians with little knowledge or understanding of military culture or requirements. Mr. Trump has made it clear that as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, he will respect the experience and judgment of his uniformed advisors.

 

The singular mission of the U.S. armed forces is to defend the nation and, when necessary, to fight and win wars. They have no other mission, least of all to serve as vehicles for the implementation of social inclusion policies. Particularly in these times of severely constrained resources and increasing international threats, the services, including every soldier, sailor, airman and marine, need to remain focused on the mission. The Obama policy decision eliminating the previous ban on transgender service has resulted in considerable additional time, effort and expense in dealing with their integration, treatment and special needs that the services can ill-afford and which is far out of proportion to their relatively small percentage of the population.

 

For example, a Department of Defense handbook providing guidance on the implementation of the policies regarding transgender persons in the service includes 71 pages of guidance covering over three dozen topics involving such matters as medical treatment, provisions for “transiting” genders, new “modesty” policies covering shower and berthing facilities and appropriate terminology to use. This is supplemented and largely replicated by directives and policies issued by each military service.

 

Concerns and questions regarding one’s gender identity almost certainly produce anxieties in that person. This is a problem the services are not well-structured to deal with. There is enough anxiety in military service to begin with without adding more. Military life under most conditions is arduous Privacy is usually at a premium, particularly in warships and submarines and on the battlefield it is virtually non-existent. But these problems were faced with the integration of women into non-traditional roles including service on navy warships, a program for which I advocated and helped manage. Those insisting that transgender persons have a right to serve will claim that the same arguments apply to this issue but they shouldn’t. The main reason that integrating women into operational roles worked was less attributable to a need to achieve sexual equality in the military and more a response to the personnel needs of the service. With an all-volunteer military, we simply couldn’t afford to exclude half the population from service eligibility. Similarly, with the elimination of the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy permitting gays to serve openly, the size of the gay population, the needs of the services and changing attitudes regarding sexual orientation among millenials argued for a policy change.

 

These programs worked as well as they did essentially because they became the law of the land and the services saluted smartly, as they always will, and implemented them. The implementation, however, was not without significant problems and expense. The services do not need more problems and more expense as a result of politically- correct inclusion policies forced on them by civilians without military experience against the recommendations of experienced senior military advisors. The armed forces have no immediate requirement for transgender persons to serve that I am aware of that would justify the expenses involved in their service.

 

There remains the argument that to re-impose the ban would be discriminatory. But there is no inherent right to serve in the military. The military’s hiring practices do not and cannot mirror civilian employment practices. Military service is not just another job and has no civilian parallel. By necessity, the military services discriminate in hiring with regard to age, weight, physical condition, physical disability, health, intelligence, aptitude and criminal and drug use history. In fact, over half of Americans of service age are not eligible to serve because of one or more of these factors.

 

While I believe that the relatively small number of transgender persons who are currently serving honorable should be allowed to continue serving, I support the president’s order banning future accessions. Any further DoD expenditures on transgender Issues including medical expenses related to gender change procedures should cease.

 

(Kelly, a freelance writer based in Coronado, is a retired navy captain who commanded three San Diego-based ships and a navy laboratory. This column originally appeared in The San Diego Union-Tribune. )