The following is a list of things that I believe:
1. Although opposed to the war in Iraq, I believe that we must show resolve now to win the peace there. This means an economic, political, and yes, military commitment for at least the next 10 years.
2. The retirement age should be raised to 65. People are living longer than ever, still have much to contribute when they reach the current retirement age, and are healthier if they remain active. In addition, with more people going to college and advances in medical health, people are starting careers and families later in life now as well.
3. Social Security must be dealt with, and so, though it pains me to say it, kudos Mr. President for starting the debate. Privatization is not the way to go, but should not be ruled out altogether. However, the government should encourage private accounts as an addition to Social Security savings.
4. Military engagements and spending, though not popular, will have to be scaled back. When added to servicing the debt, our budgetary flexibility is almost nonexistent. Cuts must be on the table if we wish to see balanced budgets once again. There's just not enough money (in fact little at all) in the GOP's perennial poster children of waste such as welfare.
5. We should normalize relations with Cuba. We have counted Sadam Hussein, Joseph Mobutu, and countless other brutal men as allies at one point or another and Castro certainly has much better records than they. If we want to spur on democracy in Cuba, nothing will be more crippling to the Castro regime than an influx of American tourists, goods, media, and example.
6. Our healthcare system is the best in the world for those who can afford top-notch treatment. For everyone else it is just all-right at best. We need a drastic overhaul including considering making insurance actually just that, insurance and not a shared payment plan for every time you see a doctor. More importantly, the power of information technology must be harnessed to improve care, make it assessable to more, and to reduce costs in a system that is seeing unsustainable rates of inflation. Preventative healthcare must be a crucial component to health savings.
7. China and India pose a real threat to American economic predominance in the world. Even with NAFTA, it is cheaper for a company to set up shop in China and ship goods to the States by cargo than it is for them to do it just across the border in Mexico and bring them over by truck. In addition, despite consumer complaining, Americans will still choose cheaper goods and services over having technical support and customer service in American English rather than Indian English. What's more, more and more jobs in more and more parts of the economy are becoming exportable and it is nothing but a race to the bottom for the lowest cost of production.
8. Our education system needs to be examined carefully and changed. Math and science needs to be emphasized to a greater degree; the current movement in the Christian Right is standing in diametric opposition to this and scientific progress. The school year and day should be lengthened and teachers unions should be the ones calling for it. They know better than anyone the challenges facing us. As was seen in Milwaukee, vouchers are not the answer, but they also are not not the answer.
9. Detroit should establish itself as the hub of automotives that use alternative energy sources.
10. D.C. should be granted statehood. It is completely antithetical to not allow our nation's capital to have complete representation in our government.
11. The University of Connecticut has the best basketball program in the nation. The women's team is dominant and has ignited a state to cheer for them like only men's teams are cheered for in most states. The men's team has one of the top five programs in the country and will soon be a perennial Final Four team. The football program will soon rise in the college sporting world and little children in Connecticut will enjoy upbringings similar to those in Michigan, California, Ohio and other states where college football is a religion.
12. Drug addiction should not be treated as a criminal issue. It is nonsensical to convict a drug addict, throw him/her into a prison with easy access to drugs and then release that same person and expect him/her to have kicked the habit. As is becoming the case more and more in California, drug addictions should be viewed as a healthcare issue.
13. If you are a strict constructionist, then you cannot stay true to your beliefs and maintain that the 2nd Amendment gives all persons the right to bear arms. I myself, however, do not subscribe to strict constructionism. I believe in the living and breathing Constitution.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Retire the Confederate Flag...
I went the movies over the weekend, surprise surprise, and I saw the previews for "The Dukes of Hazard." Something caught my eye: the Confederate Flag that sat atop the Dukes' car. It has always perplexed and vexed me since I was child why there is such toleration for the Confederate Flag in our country. I have heard all the arguments. The flag represents southern heritage. The flag represents brave men who fought and died under it in the Civil War. The flag is a symbol of the old south. I'm not buying it.
I will admit that no doubt my views are influenced by the fact that I am black and that all that flag represents to me is that it took a Civil War to free my ancestors. I will inevitably be countered by the weak argument that the war was about states' rights, but this of course was mainly the right to have slavery. So we're back to square one. But were I not a black man, I would still take issue with the flag as it is the symbol of the largest rebellion in the history of our nation. Every soldier who fought for the Confederacy, brave and valiant though he may have been, was a traitor by the very fact that he took up arms against the United States of America. These were the Terry Nicholses and Timothy McVeighs of their day. True, they did not attack non-military persons, but they were fighting to preserve the most evil, cruel and peculiar institution ever known to our nation. So while you might find this rhetoric harsh, upon considering the brutality of slavery, I'm sure you'll agree it is quite reserved. And finally, it amazes me how, for instance, state legislators in South Carolina can preach patriotism and supporting American troops with one breath and sing the praises of traitorous Dixie and the Confederate Flag with the next.
I honestly cannot fathom why the flag is tolerable and so celebrated. The Germans seem not to have any hesitation or equivocation about their feelings for the Nazi flag. Though it certainly was a symbol of a party that reinspired many Germans and many valiant soldiers died under it, this can never overshadow the evil that it represents. That flag is also about tyranny, totalitarianism, intolerance, and the anti-semitic systematic extermination of an entire race of people. Any positive aspects that the Nazi flag might represent can never come close to having any significance when stacked up against all of the bad. This is the same with the Confederate flag. I would not go so far as to ban the item as I strongly cling to freedom of speech in our society. But I would certainly expect that state and local governments would cease endorsing a flag that represents organized rebellion and treason against the US and a belief in the social death known as slavery. I would also challenge every American who calls him or herself patriotic and a supporter of freedom and tolerance to denounce this symbol as well.
If we sat in the a movie theater and saw a trailer for a comedy and the protagonist drove a car with a swastika painted on the hood, we would be appalled and the Anti Defamation League would be up in arms. A public outcry would rise up. But the symbol of the Confederacy is perfectly allowable in our society. Why is this okay? Why is it that southern children can still be taught that the Civil War was actually the War of Northern Aggression (who fired on whom again)? No doubt there are numerous beautiful and wonderful things about the south and its traditions, but the Confederate flag has got to be the least of these. The south and the nation as a whole needs to accept that the Confederacy was wrong because slavery was wrong, and though they were brave, Confederate soldiers fought, at the most basic level, to preserve an inhumane and ungodly society. As the symbol of that final holdout against the winds of change sweeping in progress toward freedom and justice for all, the Confederate Flag has no place in the American spirit only in its museums and history books.
I will admit that no doubt my views are influenced by the fact that I am black and that all that flag represents to me is that it took a Civil War to free my ancestors. I will inevitably be countered by the weak argument that the war was about states' rights, but this of course was mainly the right to have slavery. So we're back to square one. But were I not a black man, I would still take issue with the flag as it is the symbol of the largest rebellion in the history of our nation. Every soldier who fought for the Confederacy, brave and valiant though he may have been, was a traitor by the very fact that he took up arms against the United States of America. These were the Terry Nicholses and Timothy McVeighs of their day. True, they did not attack non-military persons, but they were fighting to preserve the most evil, cruel and peculiar institution ever known to our nation. So while you might find this rhetoric harsh, upon considering the brutality of slavery, I'm sure you'll agree it is quite reserved. And finally, it amazes me how, for instance, state legislators in South Carolina can preach patriotism and supporting American troops with one breath and sing the praises of traitorous Dixie and the Confederate Flag with the next.
I honestly cannot fathom why the flag is tolerable and so celebrated. The Germans seem not to have any hesitation or equivocation about their feelings for the Nazi flag. Though it certainly was a symbol of a party that reinspired many Germans and many valiant soldiers died under it, this can never overshadow the evil that it represents. That flag is also about tyranny, totalitarianism, intolerance, and the anti-semitic systematic extermination of an entire race of people. Any positive aspects that the Nazi flag might represent can never come close to having any significance when stacked up against all of the bad. This is the same with the Confederate flag. I would not go so far as to ban the item as I strongly cling to freedom of speech in our society. But I would certainly expect that state and local governments would cease endorsing a flag that represents organized rebellion and treason against the US and a belief in the social death known as slavery. I would also challenge every American who calls him or herself patriotic and a supporter of freedom and tolerance to denounce this symbol as well.
If we sat in the a movie theater and saw a trailer for a comedy and the protagonist drove a car with a swastika painted on the hood, we would be appalled and the Anti Defamation League would be up in arms. A public outcry would rise up. But the symbol of the Confederacy is perfectly allowable in our society. Why is this okay? Why is it that southern children can still be taught that the Civil War was actually the War of Northern Aggression (who fired on whom again)? No doubt there are numerous beautiful and wonderful things about the south and its traditions, but the Confederate flag has got to be the least of these. The south and the nation as a whole needs to accept that the Confederacy was wrong because slavery was wrong, and though they were brave, Confederate soldiers fought, at the most basic level, to preserve an inhumane and ungodly society. As the symbol of that final holdout against the winds of change sweeping in progress toward freedom and justice for all, the Confederate Flag has no place in the American spirit only in its museums and history books.
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
How to Make Prison Privatization Work
Perhaps one of the worst public policy mistakes that is currently plaguing America is privatization of prisons that has led to the rise of the Prison Industrial Complex. How our society has fallen into this pitfall is easy to see: it merely has been viewed like any other contract that governments give out to the private sector. There are very troubling issues that lie in the incentives for the Prison Industrial Complex - now an extremely powerful lobby - though. If we think about it, when a person is convicted of a crime, there is an ideal time which that person should serve, which of course is debatable. However, parties should not have interests in seeing people put away for longer than is merited and provides for the most desired outcomes for society. The PIC has incentives to see tough sentencing and longer stays because more people in prison for longer periods of time means more and more money for that industry. Society, however, ideally uses utility and justice as it measuring stick for prison sentences.
But there is a free market remedy that can have great benefits on business, prisoners, and most importantly society. State governments should move to give contracts for prison to companies using recidivism rates as the comparative measure. Currently, it is in the Prison Industrial Complex's best interest for prisoners who are release to commit crimes again, so that they will come right back for more revenue. However, if having comparatively lower rates of recidivism were necessary to their business model, recitivism rates would necessarily come down, which would mean less tax-payer dollars spent on prosecuting and incarcerating repeat offenders. More importantly, it would mean that far fewer people would become victims. Prisoners who were in prisons with strong performance at recidivism would have higher chances of leading productive lives when they left which would benefit themselves, their families, and their communities.
Lowering costs by steering contracts to the private sector has created bad incentives. It also has given a false sense of cost-saving. In fact, costs may very well be artificially higher because of the Prison Industrial Complex's incentive for more criminal acts and longer stays. This can be fixed though. Governments owe it to citizens, to tax-payers, to former-victims, to not-yet-victims, to prisoners to demand more of the private sector.
But there is a free market remedy that can have great benefits on business, prisoners, and most importantly society. State governments should move to give contracts for prison to companies using recidivism rates as the comparative measure. Currently, it is in the Prison Industrial Complex's best interest for prisoners who are release to commit crimes again, so that they will come right back for more revenue. However, if having comparatively lower rates of recidivism were necessary to their business model, recitivism rates would necessarily come down, which would mean less tax-payer dollars spent on prosecuting and incarcerating repeat offenders. More importantly, it would mean that far fewer people would become victims. Prisoners who were in prisons with strong performance at recidivism would have higher chances of leading productive lives when they left which would benefit themselves, their families, and their communities.
Lowering costs by steering contracts to the private sector has created bad incentives. It also has given a false sense of cost-saving. In fact, costs may very well be artificially higher because of the Prison Industrial Complex's incentive for more criminal acts and longer stays. This can be fixed though. Governments owe it to citizens, to tax-payers, to former-victims, to not-yet-victims, to prisoners to demand more of the private sector.
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