Brief Thoughts: Should We Have A Constitutional Convention?

Welcome back folks, to another look into my mind on politics.  I intended these ‘Brief Thoughts’ posts to be a daily, or near-daily, thing, and now that I’m all settled into my internship for the summer, I’ll make a shot at meeting that schedule.  Of course, an interesting article from the Huffington Post the other day makes it easy.  Apparently, a Rhode Island state legislator introduced a resolution to call for a Constitutional Convention.  In the Constitution, there are two ways to amend it: a Convention, called by 2/3 of state legislatures, and a vote of 2/3 of the members of the House and the Senate.  The second method has been used for all of the 27 Amendments that have been added, meaning the Convention has never been tried in our history.

So why should we do it now?  As is obvious, America is at a crossroads: we need to deal with the deficit and such thorny issues as climate change, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and illegal immigration among others while meeting the fiscal and policy obligations under the various entitlement programs we have.  I haven’t even touched reforming the entitlements, campaign finance, and other hot button social issues.  Further, there are several proposed Amendments that have been languishing because Congress has been unable to push them through years after they were introduced; the Equal Rights Amendment being perhaps the most prominent one.  As a nation, we need to take a good long look at the Constitution and seriously consider adding the Equal Rights Amendment or possibly even the line-item veto for the President, just saying.

However, a straight-up Convention is the wrong way to go about doing it.  It may be effective at getting a number of Amendments up for consideration at the same time and directly expressing the will of the people immune to influence by the special interest groups, but it is by nature unpredictable.  When the Founding Fathers wrote the Amendment-by-Convention provision into the Constitution, they almost surely intended it to be a civilized affair in the same vein as the original Constitutional Convention, not the raucous, chaotic, and noisy mess it would almost certainly be if it were held today.

In addition, a risk with any proposed Convention is that outlandish Amendments, or worse, downright harmful ones, could gain enough traction to be adopted.  If Congress didn’t move at the glacial pace of 27 Amendments ratified over more than 220 years of our history, ten of which were passed at the same time, it would be the ideal way to ensure the proposed and adopted Amendments were in the best interest of the country.  On the other hand, we all know about the influence of lobbyists on Congress; the last thing we need is someone slipping something into the Amendment on behalf of some special interest.

I think the best solution is a mix of the two, in effect a moderated Convention.  Capture the energy of a popular Convention, but have it moderated by a balanced panel of individuals who are respected by a large cross-section of American society, or maybe the most senior members of the House and the Senate, with members of the other branches of government represented as well.  Admittedly, that would not guarantee the Convention was free of an agenda, but whatever happens some respected group of individuals moderate the Convention in order to preserve what we already have at the minimum.

Brief Thoughts: Just Who the Hell is Alvin Greene?

Oh, South Carolina, just when we thought you’d given us all the political scandals you could muster, you just keep them coming.  One of the more interesting developments out of the primaries last Tuesday was the shocking win of Alvin Greene over heavily favored former state lawmaker Vic Rawl.  Okay, so upsets happen all the time; what’s so special about this one, you ask?  Where do I start?  According to the article, Alvin Greene is unemployed, making me wonder how he found the more than $10,000 required by the state to be on the ballot in the first place.  In addition, from what anyone can tell, Greene did not campaign anywhere, and yet managed to garner more than 100,000 votes to secure the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate.  Ladies and gentlemen, here we go again.

Of course, scandals of this caliber are nothing new in South Carolina.  This last year has been particularly good for scandal aficionados; as you may remember, a little more than a year ago disgraced Governor Mark Sanford gave us the wonderful little euphemism “hiking the Appalachian Trail” for sneaking off to visit one’s mistress.  Remember Rep. Joe Wilson’s outburst during President Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress?  He’s from South Carolina too.  This year, more allegations of infidelity surfaced in the run up to the GOP gubernatorial primary.  Nikki Haley ultimately won her primary, but the dust-up in which a blogger accused Haley of having an affair with him.  Much has been said about that scandal, and since this is meant to be one of my shorter posts I won’t go into all of the…er saucy details of it.

After Mr. Greene won the primary and burst into the national spotlight, he hasn’t yet inspired confidence in the electorate or national Democrats, who seem to be quickly and rather publicly distancing themselves from his campaign.  In fact, Representative Clyburn, also of South Carolina and the House Majority Whip, has called for an investigation into the election, and who can blame him?  Now, he’s not the only one calling for an investigation; according to a new report from the Huffington Post, groups are quickly lining up calling for one.  Early on Monday, government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, echoed the calls for an investigation, with South Carolina State Democratic Chair joining in as well.  It would be all fine if the only reason Greene was being investigated was for not filing his paperwork, but there’s more.

A day or so after the primary, the article goes on to explain, the Associated Press found that Greene had been charged with showing porn to a college student, and his military discharge was “involuntary” according to the New York Times article.  Indeed, the charges alone should be grounds for him to step aside.  Not only do they raise even more questions about him, do we really want someone like that in Congress?  While many senior Democrats are wondering if he’s a Republican plant in the race, it seems that Senator DeMint is headed to an easy re-election this year.  Perhaps that’s the point: DeMint was worried, so they got Greene into the race. With every part of him not quite fitting the profile of a typical candidate for higher office, eyebrows should be raised.  It is possible that Greene is legitimate, but honestly, what are the odds?  Then again, this is South Carolina…

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Brief Thoughts: Defense Spending Reform Takes Shape

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is going to make a serious attempt at squeezing savings out of the Department of Defense and how it would be a great example for the rest of the government if it were to work.  Of course, it is hard to gauge the potential effectiveness of something that is only a rough outline; hard details are always a better indicator both of how effective the proposal could be and of how serious Secretary Gates is about doing it.  Back then, the SecDef had cited an urgent need to find about $10 billion in savings over the next several years due to shrinking funding bills from Congress as the sense of urgency fades and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down.  Tonight, we have the details of his plan.

According to the New York Times article, the program Gates has envisioned is even more ambitious than previously thought.  Originally, he was interested in $10 billion in savings throughout the Pentagon/.  Now, we learn that number has grown to be $7 billion just by 2012, and expanding to $37 billion annually by 2016.  While we have gotten used to seeing hundreds of billions of dollars being thrown around by Congress lately, especially for Defense, $37 billion in savings and spending cuts every year by 2016 is a lot of money, especially considering we are dealing with one of the most legendary examples of entrenched bureaucracy.  What Secretary Gates is proposing is not so much a new program, but a complete change to the organizational mindset.

If anything, tonight’s article confirms that Robert Gates is truly the man for the job.  Not only is the plan more ambitious than everyone thought initially, but the Secretary of Defense is fully aware of the size of the project he’s decided to take on.  To encourage the various chiefs of every little department, directorate, command, etc, to make cuts and adjust priorities, he has included a powerful incentive.  According to the New York Times, every dollar saved on the management side will be reinvested in the combat side of the branch it came from.

Excellent play: cutting defense spending is widely unpopular, because everyone automatically believes “oh noes they’re going to give less money to our troops!”, but the fact is that when people hear Department of Defense, they tend to think “armed forces” instead of one of the world’s largest, most inefficient bureaucracies supporting the armed forces.  By casting it as reforming the management side of the Department of Defense, Secretary Gates can attempt to defuse some of that criticism that is bound to come from all sides and give his plan a chance to work.

However, management is but one target of the reductions.  According to the article, the Secretary is targeting his own staff and departments that report to him, as well as the usual target for Defense spending cuts: programs in development that are grossly over-budget and may not even be that beneficial to the nation’s arsenal.  Unfortunately, those three targets for cuts and efficiency improvements manage to get on the wrong side of just about everyone in the military-industrial complex.  As I noted a couple of weeks ago, if there is one thing that will kill Secretary Gates’ plan, it is the bureaucratic inertia.  With the details of the plan comes the prospect of doing it through a dialogue with everyone involved, but if there is one thing that will prevent bureaucratic inertia from overcoming the attempt, it is old-fashioned military discipline.

The strict timetable and order that 2/3 of the reductions found must be in the form of actual cuts give the program a great chance.  Taking industry heads, members of Congress, and all the various stakeholders within the Department of Defense straight on is a risky gambit, but it is one that must be made.  However, if Secretary Gates can pull this off, why not make it a model for the rest of the government and implement with the same discipline that the military can?

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Brief Thoughts: The Deficit Needs to be Dealt With, but So Does Unemployment

As part of the changes I’m making this summer to the blog, I’m adding a new type of writing, Brief Thoughts, which is obviously intended to be, well, briefer than a normal post.  The reason behind this is that while yes, I love writing the longer posts and I have a lot to say about the issues of our time,  I recognize in this fast-paced world we live in that a lot of you might like something more bite-sized to digest while waiting for that YouTube video to load, or in a commercial break during your favorite show.  Okay, that may be overstating the briefness of this new type of post, but you get the idea.  In the future, look for those two words in the headline of a post for one that you can read, comment on, and get back to your show while having only missed the car dealers screaming at you.  In keeping with the spirit of it, I’ll jump right in to tonight’s post.

Today, we saw a repeat of what happened the last few months with regard to the special extensions to unemployment benefits; on Tuesday, millions of Americans will, once again, see an interruption in their unemployment checks thanks to Congress balking at extending the measures that were intended to only be temporary.  At least this time, there is a justification for the time delay that had the House of Representatives voting on it after the Senate had already gone home for the Memorial Day recess.  Unfortunately for those Americans who need those checks, a Congressional recess for a holiday such as Memorial Day is, of course, a full week off.  Anyway, the rationale for the delay this time is the realization among legislators in both the House and the Senate that we need to do something about the deficit.  It is great to hear that Congress has finally found religion on deficit spending, but they are going about it the wrong way.

Sure, the bill passed, and the Senate is expected to take up- and pass- their form of this legislation immediately following the break, but the resistance to new spending has created issues for the newly-unemployed.  Here’s the gist of the effect of the provisions that were killed in the name of fiscal responsibility: if you just lost your job, do not wait a minute longer to start getting your unemployment benefits.  According to US News and World Report, those Americans who have already used their six months of state-provided benefits will start losing access to their Federal benefits.  More damaging is the fact that the House has also voted to cut off the popular subsidy intended to help with paying for health insurance.  That’s right folks, the COBRA subsidy is no longer accepting new beneficiaries; fortunately those already on it will keep it.  While these are the major red flags in the new bill, there are more spending cuts involved.  Further, the Huffington Post reports that Speaker Pelosi has definitively ruled out a Tier 5 to Federal unemployment benefits; once you hit 99 weeks, that’s it.

Okay, I could understand these measures, especially with the debt crisis in Europe bringing our own national debt to the forefront.  However, there are better ways to address the deficit than kicking those who are already down.  The US News and World Report article reveals something that should be disgusting to just about all of us.  The special interests got their handouts in the form of tax breaks to NASCAR tracks, biodiesel producers, and other industries; what ever happened to the “no more earmarks in 2010″ pledges we heard on both sides of the aisle earlier this year?  I agree with the need to encourage alternative fuels, and biodiesel is one of the more promising ones, at least until someone manages to invent a better alternative, but to give them the subsidy at the same time as people’s unemployment benefits are getting cut?

Let’s not even go into the NASCAR tax break; whoever got that piece inserted deserves to lose his seat in November.  How many jobs does that create?  Further, that sport is not even that interesting until the final 15 minutes of a race anyway!  This recession has tested the limits of the social safety net established during the Great Depression and over the following seventy years, especially since we have more and more people reaching the 99 week limit, simply because there aren’t that many jobs out there.  If Congress seems so out-of-touch with the harsh reality of millions of Americans desperately looking for work many months after they lost their jobs, why not give a few Congressmen, and maybe some Senators, a taste of those difficulties?

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