Practical versus moderate or people compromising

 

At first I almost wrote compromised policy, yet doesn’t make the presentation I wanted. This is about public policy and this obsession with people that if Democrats and Republicans get together and either compromise their positions or find a middle ground (moderate) we have better public policy.

I am not saying you cannot achieve strong policy goals through compromise or with a “moderate” bent. I do state that if you look at public policy practically you might create much better public policy.

So many people are trying to find a solution to getting things done in Congress that I think they confuse what you can accomplish by trying too hard to say Congress passes better legislation when the two parties compromise. This can be a fallacy. The nature of compromise in and of itself does not necessarily make something better. It can complete a task or finish a project, yet are you really achieving the best result? I think people have seen so much failure as of late that they are trying to find a route to success without defining what success may look like first.

To me success is what is best for the country as a whole without taking away the freedoms and interests of a minority or groups that do not directly benefit. Yet if you put the general populace first the policy will eventually be beneficial to most if not all. The benefits may not be dispersed equally, however if the results reach the vast majority then you probably have a better policy.

A quick example might be where you lower the taxes on the middle class where they can save more, have money to spend, or able to pay down their personal debt. The wealthy may say what do we receive if the middle class has a tax break and we do not. I use this example because I want to say the phrase trickle up. Instead of relying on big business to pass their tax savings down with all their trumped up logic, the tax break to the general population spreads out and up. Note the word rely on in the above sentence. The whole point of the trickle down theory was that it required the upper echelons to take actions that would filter down to everyone else, such as lower prices or invest in better products to create new jobs, but yet it had to be relied upon by the general populace for the wealthy to share this gain to them. With shifting the tax relief to the general populace they naturally will do one of the three facets listed above. Savings and investments by the general populace creates stability in the economic system, banks benefit because they now have more resources to make loans, the general populace has more confidence in the system and there is a possible reduction in the wealth gap. Less taxes also mean the general populace has more money to spend so businesses benefit by increased revenues. And finally if the general population pays down debt it lessens stress on the economy. Banks and lenders such as mortgages are writing off less bad debt. There cash flow increases and they can loan more money as needed into the economy and can offer more competitive rates to a larger audience.

This example is not perfect, but hopefully can give a snapshot of the difference one policy change can make. The policy though is not based on Democrats and Republicans compromising on tax policy, or some moderate idea, but trying to find the most practical tax policy for the whole country. It is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination and some groups will try to shoot down the logic. Their arguments though are based on where they fall into the economic spectrum. Large corporations see the smallest immediate gain, yet if the whole economy is strong they benefit whether they will publicly admit it or not. Wall Street may not like it because the investment money is coming to them in slow waves as the general populace makes slow incremental increases to their savings, 401ks other investments etc. Wall Street has less of their own money to double down on their own wealth, hence increasing the wealth gap. Yet in the long run, a more practical policy is not based on either a conservative or liberal bias, but more towards the larger beneficial aspect.

And some may say since you are lowering taxes this is a conservative policy. I ask are you sure.

One difference to highlight is offering a practical policy can be compromised a bit to take into account factors not originally considered versus a policy that is compromised by one side trying to accommodate another side. Or they change the goal or initiative and the policy becomes watered down to appease groups trying to achieve a political win. It is the latter that I see many of today’s advocators of compromise trying to achieve. They may think compromise will get us better policy because of the extremes hijacking policy, however are they doing a litmus test of who actually benefits once they make a compromise. Or maybe in today’s world they think of a compromise they wish happened. I do have to admit not much is being done right now.

And many liberals will say the far right are the ones hijacking public policy right now and they are correct, however if you look closely though there are groups on the far left trying to create their own goals that will not benefit the general populace. They are just quieter in their public discourse so if you dig deep enough into what each side is saying a person may find the distinction. I just hope I made it clear. Neither side wants to admit that their ideas lack in merit, yet you have to step back and again do a litmus test to determine exactly who benefits.

And in researching what is needed versus being preoccupied that it needs to have a liberal or conservative bias, you can write, produce and evaluate better policy from the beginning. And of course as an independent conservative, even my public policy I discuss in my posts starts with a conservative frame, yet that does not mean it can be adjusted through analysis and evaluation to be changed to a more suitable practical end result. Policy can be liberal or conservative, it shouldn’t be driven by it has to be liberal or conservative to appease the majority of the moment. I have always said sometimes we need liberal policies and sometimes we need conservative policies. The moment should be a more important driver of the policy needed, not the politics.

And so the next step is how do we step away from the need to rationalize our compromises and step into policy writing to achieve what is truly needed.

And the irony of this post is I am trying to reach out to a moderate audience. Ha ha ha. Okay not really a moderate audience, but to the vast majority of the country who by nature are generally moderate in their views.

Something even I forget, and Happy Thanksgiving

 

So the better half and I had to go out of town to take care of some family business and on the way back we decided to take the scenic route. We had a wonderful 2/3 of a trip. The last third it began to drizzle so it took some of the luster off the whole trip, however the first part was all sunshine and blue sky.

You forget how beautiful this country is when you take the interstates all the time. I was thinking as we were driving that everyone in D.C. needs to get off their back ends and go see America. It might remind them of the people they should be representing. I know it is too late for road trips back home for Thanksgiving for all our Representatives and their staffs, but sometime soon they need to make it a priority.

They might see parts of the country that make up our agriculture, the solar power plants, the wind farms the oil pumps, and even the road work on the two lane highways. Yes we drove mostly through Texas and all of the above was almost side by side as we drove. You pass a field of cotton, then cattle grazing, a solar field, some oil pumps still going and it was quite an eye opening experience. And all of it with the horizon stretching forever. And this was especially nice with the sun shining.

You pass through many small towns and see the old businesses boarded up and the new chains taking over and wonder what could be done to revitalize local economies. Towns where main street is thriving, but the periphery is old boarded up hotels and restaurants, yet the fast food chains and chain hotels thrive. You see buildings of unknown businesses falling apart. At one time each of the towns had their own economy, yet either through various recessions or changes in the local economy it has slowly disappeared to be replaced by the various corporate entities that populate suburbia. These towns are losing their character. These are the descendants of the people that made this country great and yet they are the visible signs of the wealth gap in this country. People that use to own local businesses have children that make minimum wage in the corporate world.

And you know their educational opportunities are slowly disintegrating as the town loses its economic base. Those corporations are not reinvesting in local infrastructure. All those profits are going back to Wall Street. Schools in these towns are ignored in state capitals and then you read about the school voucher system in Texas and wonder what it all means for the children of farmers and the energy laborers. Will they be able to have the wherewithal to rebuild their towns? If the family is struggling, if the opportunities are working for out of state profiteers, if the schools are rotting, what does this mean for the future of what use to be the backbone of this country. Yes I am being somewhat idyllic, however we need the caregivers of our open spaces and producers of what we eat given the opportunity to thrive. If we let the corporations run everything, they will run everything into the ground then move on. If profit is our country’s only goal then when the well run dries what happens next? Death, depletion, desertion, despair for large portions of our country do not make for greatness.

And if you stop and do grab a bite to eat, or get gas you find they are the same wonderful people you might want them to be. They are friendly, cheerful on the outside, but when it is slow in the convenience store you can see in their eyes the fatality of having no future. The children still behave as children, laughing, talking running in and out, yet you worry what happens when they turn 18. What do they do next? I think it was fortunate that not too many Wal marts dotted the landscape, yet they were there slowly sapping the money out of the town to make billionaires even richer while the worker bees struggle to pay for housing and food. A few do well, especially the people who owned land and were able to hold onto it. They had the oil boom, now it is windfarms, but they are the minority. They lease the land and take in their royalties, but their money is spent either at the chain restaurant or they go out of town to buy what they need such as brand new trucks or other luxuries that they alone can afford. The car dealerships are scarce, the repair shops are non existent, an occasional real estate company has a sign, there are no farmer markets, no grocery stores, just the Dollar General, where the market isn’t big enough for a Wal Mart, which is an overpriced substitute for basic necessities.

Yes, it is Texas but the price of gas in these towns is much higher than the truck stops on the interstate. And honestly some of this is because the markets are not big enough to support large businesses, but that same small market at one point had an economy and people thrived, hair was cut or styled by local people, furniture was bought or was available in one town for a few, sundries existed so people could do their sewing or craft work that was actually needed and wasn’t just some hobby for people at church.

So what can be done to bring back strong local economies, give people an opportunity to thrive again, and why does Washington ignore so many of our own?

The drive is beautiful, the scenery breathtaking, the rounding of a bend to see more and more, the cattle eating lazily near the fences by the side of the road, a horse galloping by, the field full of cotton or other deep green crop, (couldn’t tell what it was, but there were quite a few fields of this really deep green, and it wasn’t too tall either) fills the land between the towns. And yet the towns are losing their luster, their hometown feel, their people so what becomes of not a nostalgic era, but of the livelihoods of so many who choose not to live in a big city. Does Washington think they do not matter?

Yes it would be a fantasy to believe that all of a sudden thousands of pretentious lawmakers take it upon themselves to do a bit of fact finding on the future of large swaths of our country. Unfortunately it is necessary. Instead though they take the lobbyists money and campaign donations to stay in power. Their stench stays in Washington to appease Wall Street and a few others, but what would make the country great again rots away with a different kind of stench. The stench of economic decay. And at some point it will be too late and the greed of the uber wealthy will not be able to sustain any economy as it sucks dry the people it has built its wealth upon.

These small towns are the first to go. They have survived hard times before, yet as corporate greed takes over their economies the well will run dry and many beautiful locales will be like the withering structures of a bygone era that now appear on the roads in and out of town. Main street still has some continuity going, but if you actually drive the speed limit through town it is way too easy to see the dye cast for their lack of future.

So as you enjoy your Thanksgiving dinner and even though this is bleak I do hope I haven’t ruined it. I just want to remind you that we still can be a thankful nation, but it takes action and understanding. Why give up on something that was so integral to our country’s growth? We should be thankful for what we have, have had and what we can have, and not lose sight of the whole of our country and what everyone brings to the table.

Cheers

A lay person’s discussion of the difference between agnostic and atheist; and further thoughts

 

I by no means am a theologian, apologist, or even moderately educated in religion, however I do have some thoughts on this subject that have consumed by brain on occasion. And tonight is one of those occasions so for my benefit I am attempting to write them down. I do this because it consumed by thoughts for a bit this evening and I want to see if I can expound on them to see if I can make sense of this madness permeating my thoughts. Also I do feel that general comparison do not get to the heart of the problem and also really address that if you believe which is worse.

So to start some basic definitions or explanations, an agnostic according to one source (Oxford definition)  is a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God.

And I stress it is important to note the last sentence. I will come back to this point.

Atheism or atheists is in some cases broken down into various distinctions. Generally most people will define atheism has the belief there is no God. One resource not identified in my internet search says there is implicit atheism and explicit atheism and goes on to identify positive and negative atheism. This might be much for my thoughts tonight, yet I did want to mention that some identify more to atheism than I want to travel through.

And the definition of agnostic mentioned above is generally how I view it and so my off and on internal ramblings and arguments have stuck with this approach. Atheism though I have always viewed as more of an active approach to the belief in God and that their active approach I treat differently than the viewpoint that discusses the various distinctions mentioned above.

To me an atheist believes in God, that person is fighting that belief. Now at what level is where it gets murky. Or may I should phrase it an atheist is the active disbelief in God, however to disbelieve are you not denying existence and if you are denying existence then the act of denial is fighting against acceptance. Now even to me this argument does appear somewhat circular, however bear with me as an amateur writer to get to my point. I truly believe this thought and I cannot think of a better way to phrase it at the moment. Yet to fight against something means you are fighting it. So if you say no God exists, why does it matter to you to vocally denounce it. Unless there is something that is driving you to deny the existence.

I think people forget the fallen angel, Lucifer, the evil one or however you want to identify this entity not only believes in God, but is on a campaign to destroy God. Yet this is not the same as an atheist, but this entity may play a factor in why an atheist is an atheist or at least for some. Some atheists just may not want to own up to the fact that if you believe in God you must follow God. And most people that believe in God or the Judeo Christian world knows how hard it is to follow God. No small feat to live according to the teachings of God. Throw in the concept of faith and mysteries and your brain is mush in no time.

Let me get back on topic. An atheist can be what is described above as an implicit atheist or “the absence of theistic belief without a conscious rejection of it” (again there is a reference here, but I don’t have it and it is referencing another work. My apologies for the lack of thoroughness here). I do not believe though based on this reference that there is an implicit atheist. To me an atheist may be a person, but that person is a verb also. Their atheism is an action. They are creating action or wanting to create an action within someone else. This exact same argument can be made for a Christian, which tends to put an atheist as a person trying to convince someone there is no God. And here we are again. They are denying something, yet you have to believe it to exist to convince others not to believe in it.

A really bad example is saying that wonderful t bone steak you want to eat does not exist. I take the plate away and you no longer see it so why would you think you are going to eat it. And the way I phrased this sentence is important. To me atheists are wanting you to not believe in God because you cannot see, feel, touch, smell etc… God. There is no truth to a physical presence of God or none that can be identified or ascertained.

I work backwards here and as a teenager and long before I knew of St. Augustine I had a internal working knowledge of something St. Augustine said: “what you understand can’t possibly be God” As a teenager I struggled with religion, yet I believed in God. I didn’t articulate this as St. Augustine did, however I felt there was more to God than what I saw on TV from the tele evangelists or some of the churches I had attended. Church to me kept trying to define something that couldn’t be held essentially as if it could be held. And they worked hard at it. Now honestly I wasn’t catching onto the faith based arguments, and or maybe I couldn’t comprehend them. Which goes back to what you understand can’t possibly be God because God is beyond our comprehension. You hear God’s word, but until you realize where it derives or who is God is beyond our imagination. Some people try to manipulate your imagination and in doing so fail God.

And again back to topic. So why the big to do about the difference between agnostic and atheists tonight. For some reason I started thinking about which is worse, being an agnostic or being an atheist and surprisingly to me at the moment, yet the more I thought about it the more I felt I am correct. An atheist on the surface appears to be the worse of the two if you are a believer, however, remember I said they believe in God, they are trying to convince themselves and you not to believe. Hence their belief is misguided and can be addressed. I am not saying it will be easy because atheists can be true believers or in the case true non believers, so they tend to be entrenched into their believes. Yet, the argument is already in their brain so once past the entrenchment, another argument can be presented.

An agnostic has no belief. There is no argument, there is no denial, there is no existence or no reason to even contemplate the existence. The thought comes, the thought goes. Outside of curiosity or moving towards atheism an agnostic doesn’t care. And the not caring is the more dangerous aspect. Can you change a true (non) believer, possibly? Can you motivate someone who doesn’t care? Much harder. If the entity above is lazy then an agnostic is a best friend. An atheist for this entity takes constant work to keep them in line.

Just what this madness is about sometimes unsnaps a few synopsis.

And let’s move onto another topic that drives me mad. God is not liberal or conservative. These are man made constructs. So it irks the heck out of me when we get into the discussion of liberalism and conservatism in the Church. Does the Pope teach the faith, the magisterium, the sacraments, or is the Pope saying Jesus is not divine, not the Trinity, there is no apostolic tradition or any other tradition of the Church? That is how you tell if you the Pope is teaching and living the faith. If you do not agree with the Pope about certain people he is trying to reach out to and it pushes your acceptance of others, yes the Pope might be moving socially liberal points, but the Church does not become liberal because the Pope pushes buttons. If the Pope now says a marriage in the Church between two people of the same sex is now a sacrament then this Pope has strayed from the belief and should no longer be Pope. Adam and Eve defined marriage and is now a sacrament to further your communion with God. The Pope can say certain people need to be heard as people since it is our role as a Christian to reach out to those that need God in their lives. It is not our role to define whether a bishop or Pope is liberal or conservative as teachings of the Faith. Remember as Christians we are to love, even those that insult us, step on our toes, live a lifestyle not of our faith, and yes the proverbial enemy. We are not to judge. One of my favorite points in the Bible is after the people are told those that have not sinned throw the first stone the next moment is the people leave and the oldest are the first to leave. Yeah I ain’t young anymore so I can certainly understand where that is coming from. More importantly we are not God, we cannot judge. We can hold fast to our believes, our faith, our teaching, yet being liberal or conservative is not part of the Church. We pray for each other, not label each other. And if you ask me, if you are labeling either way, maybe it is time you spent some time with God, not man.

Finally to Bishop Barron. I have all the respect in the world for you and have enjoyed what you have done to further my knowledge of our faith. However this certified yellow check idea is horrible. How can we know the saints if we assume only certain people know the word of God? Hope you think about it. Goes back to the argument above, if the Pope loses it, who are we to trust unless we can identify the Pope or a Bishop has lost their way. And I am not talking about me, this post is definitely one man’s opinion, yet who is to say one person may come along that knows more or more specifically taught more than all of us. Would Moses get a yellow check?

 

Happy birthday Mom