The Clear Message

 

I am sure that by now you have heard the results of the Massachusetts Special Election to fill the US Senate seat of the late Ted Kennedy: Joe Kennedy pulled in 22,237 votes!  That was averaged out to 1% of the vote.  Scott Brown, the Republican candidate, claimed victory over the Democratic candidate Martha Coakley 52% to 47%.  The media outlets are calling this a clear message from the people of Massachusetts that they are frustrated with [pick one of the following: healthcare, the economy, President Obama's policies, the Democratic majority, et cetera].  That's a really long message.

This got me thinking: who decides what my message is?  Is my message automatically the primary platform of the winning candidate?  Where does this come from?  I've been asking a lot of people what drove them to choose their candidate and the most common response I get is that they were choosing the lesser of two evils.  Generally, this means that the voter doesn't really like any of the candidates or their platforms, but the one that received their vote was the most tolerable.  What about people voting party lines for whatever reasons they can come up with?


So lets take this example of the Special Election.  I work with a lot of people that lean towards the right and are very passionate about their positions.  It was no surprise to me that they were voting for Scott Brown when I asked them... what was interesting to me was that they all unanimously agreed that Joe Kennedy was more in line with their political view points.  When I pressed a little harder, all of them eventually admitted that while Joe Kennedy was their preferred candidate, they were going to vote Scott Brown because he "had a chance to win."  Of my admittedly small polling pool (tens of people), all of them thought that Joe Kennedy was the superior candidate.  So lets take some liberties here - if even 25% of the people that voted for Scott Brown felt this way and in stead decided to vote for Joe Kennedy, wouldn't that send a stronger message than electing a Republican?

Now it is true that 40% of Scott Brown's votes wouldn't have saved Joe Kennedy... but how many people that voted for Martha Coakley felt that casting their votes for her would save the Commonwealth from the Republicans?  What if 25% of Coakley's supporters actually felt that Joe Kennedy would make a better candidate than Martha Coakley but only voted for Coakley because she "had a chance to win?"  Combined with Kennedy's 1%, that is 51% of the vote.



Obviously I am throwing in a lot of speculation - there aren't any polls conducted that identify the public's opinion of the "better candidate" other than the way people vote.  My point here is that you don't win anything for picking the winning candidate - this isn't a horse race or your fantasy football league.  The truth is that you have a greater chance of seeing the real change everyone is hoping for if you were to vote for the candidate that best fits your personal beliefs rather than the one that has a chance of winning.  As I pointed out in my example: it only takes a small amount of people from both parties to make a real change.  Bottom line: vote for the candidate that best represents your point of view and more importantly understand what it is that you actually stand for.

Health Coverage to All and To All a Good Night!

Unless you have been living in a hole for the last few days, you have heard by now that the Senate has voted to approve their version of the Health Care Reform Bill without any help from the Republicans (Passing the Senate with 60-39... Jim Bunning (R-Kentucky) apparently doesn't care about Health Care Reform).  I'm sure all of the Senators were doing their best insuring that the best interests of all Americans were being accounted for.  Especially Senators like Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) that only voted for the health care bill after an earmark was added to fund his state's Medicare obligation (each state must fund its own Medicare program).  The House of Representatives has a rule in place that prevents trading earmarks for votes, but a rule like that does not exist in the Senate.  There was actually a vote in the senate in 2007 to pass a similar vote trading rule that passed an unanimous 98-0 that would have forbade this type of actions, but it was never actually adopted.  So is the Senate actually acting in accordance with what is best for the common citizen?  According to RealClearPolitics.com, the congressional approval rating is a blistering high of 27.4%.  It seems to be quite clear that whatever they are doing - they aren't doing a very good job.


The NYTimes actually has a good article describing the differences between the two bills passed by the House and the Senate, located here.  There are quite a few differences that will not be easy to overcome.  For those of you in Massachusetts, your vote will mean have an even greater meaning in the January 19th special elections because the vote of one senator can pass or fail this entire bill.  With something this important, you'd think that a compromise could be reached that would satisfy more people.



If the senate was really doing such an awesome job, wouldn't their approval ratings be hire?  If this version of health care reform was really the best thing for the country, wouldn't more people be enthusiastic about it?  Drop an e-mail to your representatives and senators and let them know what you think about the job they are doing.  If you are one of the 27.4% of people that think they are doing great, tell them... they will need a few words of encouragement after the 65.8% of angry people get their word in.

Health By Bureaucracy

Just a quick one today.  I'm sure you've heard the news about the Federally appointed task force that decided that the current breast cancer screening procedures are too thorough sighting the high cost of each test and individual turmoil caused due to false positives (detecting breast cancer where there isn't any).  Thankfully the Obama Administration won't change their existing policy on this go-around... its like they have a critical bill moving through the Senate that is trying to give them control over what type of medical treatment is really necessary or something.


Seriously, though:  a government task force appointed to come up with the balance between cost, your own personal feelings, and your health?  Isn't this just like the government telling me what is healthy instead of me talking it over with my doctor?  I thought this was something only evil corporations were capable of: identifying what sort of treatments or preventative measures I need by a calculated cost-benefit analysis.  Why would you fight for something like this?


Here is my chance to poke a few more holes in the FDA, also.  Have you heard the story about the FDA looking to take action against highly caffeinated alcoholic beverages?  First off, who hasn't tried a Vodka with Red Bull - secondly, what is the point of making pre-mixed drinks illegal when the whole fashion was started with people mixing their own drinks?  If MillerCoors isn't allowed to sell their Sparks because it is dangerous, what is to keep people from mixing their own again?  Is the FDA going to go into a house party and arrest people for mixing drinks?  Which is really dangerous - the alcohol or the caffeine or both?  If everything is dangerous, let's just bring back prohibition and add caffeine to the list of banned substances!


It is impossible to implement enough laws to protect people from their own ignorance.  If it is dangerous to mix alcohol and caffeine, then education is the way to solve it (remember that party saying, "beer before liquor, never sicker - liquor before beer, in the clear").  It is the same with preventative health measures - these issues should be solved between a patient and their doctor.  These are the two most qualified parties that poses the most relevant information - not some bureaucratic task force.

Social Security

As you may recall, I asked Mike Capuano at an Open Mike event his view of the constitutionality of the federal government passing some form of universal health care in a previous post.  During the first few seconds after he was getting over his apparent shock, he told me that health care is absolutely constitutional because if it wasn't, then Social Security wouldn't be constitutional either.  My response was quite simply, "Well - yeah."  Enter: US Supreme Court case Helvering vs Davis (May 1937).  The Supreme Court upheld the Social Security Act as constitutional.


I was planing on going in to how this ruling was incredibly controversial and came shortly after President Roosevelt stacked the Supreme Court with the Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937.  I was also prepared to dive deeper still into the meaning behind the phrase "general welfare" in both the US Constitution's Preamble and in Article 1 Section 8 from different view points (including direct opposition to James Madison's opinion from Joseph Story's Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States) that reinforce the theory that general welfare relates to the United States as a whole and not helping individuals off the streets.  Instead, after a brief conversation with a friend, I decided to look at the belief that it is the federal government's job to help individuals through personal hardships.

Clinging to the phrase "general welfare" in the constitution as meaning "helping poor people" is a week argument.  There are numerous texts that indicate "general welfare" applies to things like interstate roads so that the post office can efficiently deliver your mail without having to take into account different state's traffic laws, navigation standards and the placement of light houses and buoys for ships, and regulating trade between the United States and other countries.  These examples hold true even between differing opinions on how restrictive "general welfare" is on the laws Congress can pass.

So what leads people to believe that the government is required to look out for its citizen's well-being?  Where is it stated that anything the government does is always in the best interest of its people?  What proof is there that government programs are more effective at helping people than private charities?  Who decided that the government knows what is best better than me, my family, my friends, or my community?

The loudest voice in Massachusetts right now for the universal health care plan is arguably Mike Capuano who during his Open Mike event proclaimed that we the people should do our due-diligence when selecting a US Senator because he is the government, and the government can not be trusted.  If I can't trust the government, by admission of representatives of that same government, then why am I to assume that what they are doing is in my best interest?  Shouldn't I be able to trust them if that was the case?


My point boils down to this: the government (by its own admission) can not be trusted blindly.  We the people do not have the capability to live out our lives with all of our daily responsibilities and at the same time watch everything the government tries to do - anyone would go mad trying to.  The only way to ensure that your best interest is met is to have direct control over every aspect of your life that is important to you (retirement, health care, personal savings, charity, etc).  For those less fortunate, the immediate community (family, religion, work groups, neighborhoods, towns, cities, counties, states, ect) should feel a responsibility towards those people and help out.  It is a statistical impossibility that the government could ever come up with a program that is capable of helping everyone without hurting anyone.  It is also abundantly clear that even when government programs begin with the best moral intentions, they quickly degrade into slowly-moving, out-dated, bloated bureaucracies whose effectiveness degrades until they ultimately burden the nation more than the initial problem they were created to solve.  The second the government makes a decision for you, your freedom to make the choice for yourself is abolished.  Case in point: I can no longer choose where 6% of my salary goes to because the federal government decided I don't know how to save for my retirement (thanks, Social Security).  What a wonderful burden to have lifted from my back... I should consider myself lucky if I get back exactly what I put back in... wonderful investment strategy - THANKS, government!



So why then is the government left on this high moral pedestal?  Why is it treated with any less skepticism than the "evil corporations" or greedy old "elitists"?   I'm leaving this post with more questions than answers, but this is where I am at this point.  I am absolutely dumbfounded that people will argue for a plan like government health care on the basis that the government's only intention is to help its citizens only to freely admit that the government is full of corruption and self interest on any number of other programs.  If you can definitively identify for me why the government deserves our unyielding trust or what compels the government to act only in the best interest of the people... you get a prize.  Drop me a line in the comments.

Joe Kennedy for Senate 2010

Next year, Massachusetts will be holding special elections to fill the US Senate seat vacated by the late Ted Kennedy.  I found that it was actually really hard to find a single source of news that listed all of the candidates... but leave it to the internet swarm to step up and fulfill my needs.  Wikipedia has a really awesome list of candidates that you can check out.  A short Google search for each candidate can expose their platform for your consideration.  I took a look at all of them and settled on my winner.

The Democratic candidates are for the most part pushing hard to maintain Ted Kennedy's reputation of "winning at all costs."  When I visited Mike Capuano's "Open Mike" event, he stressed his approval of passing Social Security and Medicare "without a single Republican vote."  I feel as though people like this only serve to drive the wedge in deeper to further polarize the country which is absolutely not what we need at this time.


The Republicans are similarly polarized in the opposite direction.  The leading candidate, Scott Brown, is still pushing his anti-gay rights agenda.  Really?  Come on, man - Massachusetts has lead the charge on gay rights - so much so that it sued the federal government about discrimination against homosexuals!  How do you expect anyone to believe your commitment to bipartisan cooperation if you are so far out in right field over something this state feels so strongly about?


This leaves the independents (according to Wikipedia): William Coleman and Joe Kennedy.  William Coleman is a "common man" from Worcester... so common in fact that he doesn't even have a campaign website.  I can't find any information about his platform, his stance on issues, or even if he is still in the running.  FAIL.  After that monstrous blunder, my hopes weren't too high for Joe Kennedy (no relation to those Kennedy's).  As you have no doubt determined, I believe that Joe Kennedy is a phenomenal candidate.


Joe is a Computer Scientist by training, but has more recently held managerial positions and has held seats on the board of directors for several companies.  More importantly, his views are what some people would describe as "socially liberal and fiscally conservative."  He is for same-sex relationships and cutting government spending.   His view on health care reform is to make available to everyone Personal Medical Savings Accounts which are tax-free (those not able to save money into accounts would be able to claim all medical spending for tax write-offs) and to end government regulation which stifles free market (FYI: for the last 40 or so years, health care has NOT been a free market).


I've got my candidate for 2010... who are you voting for?  Tell me who and why in the comments.

The Alternatives

Lots of people today are at odds with the main stream political parties.  Voters in the middle, or Restless and Anxious Moderates (RAMs) according to the Washington Post, are becoming more and more prominent with some estimates upwards of 80% of the population saying they would consider an independent candidate in the 2008 presidential race (regardless of their declared party affiliation).  From my point of view there are several issues that people find themselves at odds with one party or the other, so they label themselves as "Fiscal Conservatives and Social Liberals" or similar.  I'm sure you have heard of some of the other political parties because of candidates like Ross Perot (Reform Party), Ralph Nader (Green Party), and Ron Paul (Libertarian Party).  Thus the subject of today's entry: your alternatives.


I've seen lots of people define their political party based on the few issues they feel are important to them.  For instance: some people would label themselves as Democrats because they believe people should have equal rights to marriage... others would label themselves as republicans because they believe abortion should be made illegal.  What about all of the other positions those parties take?  The Democrats believe the government should take care of everyone and watch over them where the Republicans believe the government is evil and all of its spending should be cut to nothing except war (I'm exaggerating here to make a point of skewed opinion, not a presentation of facts).  While it may be true that it is impossible to find a political party where you agree with EVERY facet of their platform, but do you fall neatly into either the Republican or Democrat columns?


As I hinted at before, there is a plethora of options for political parties in the US, so I'm not even going to try to tackle every one.  Instead, I am going to focus on the two parties that have captured my attention the most: Libertarians and Constitutionalists.  When I first began my dive into political alternatives, I was drawn quickly to these two parties because my emerging political issue is personal rights.  These two parties agree on several issues including the wish to return to a government strictly bound by the Constitution, the promotion of individual freedoms, and they both have similar economic policies.  They also both agree on the issue of health care reform: the government is constitutionally prohibited from regulating health care.


The deciding factor for me was written in the preamble for each party.  The preamble is the party line from which all of their policies can be derived from - with it, you should be able to identify exactly how the party would vote on any given issue without having to look at their issues page.  The Constitutionalists believe that this country was founded not by "religionists", but by Christians that believe in "our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."  They seek to return to American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations and to limit the government within its Constitutional boundaries.  This to me said that the party as a whole can selectively persecute because of religious beliefs (though not through legal means because the Constitution prohibits that).  It seems difficult to me that a country with such a strong foundation favoring one religion over another can remain tolerant of other religions (I'm thinking of the UK right now which is going through problems with their Muslim population and much of the Middle East which is trying to work through its problems with Christians).


The Libertarians on the other hand emphasize individual rights and the elimination of the use of force or fraud to achieve goals.  They don't even mention religion in their preamble except to say that they believe it is wrong for the government to promote or attack any religion in particular and that people are free to follow any religion they wish so long as it doesn't infringe on the personal freedoms of someone else.  It just makes sense to me.  Since I have learned about these platforms, I get a little confused when I see people arguing for something that would infringe on other people's rights or freedoms.  Some examples I run into all the time are things like farm subsidies, health care, and government regulations.  Things like the health care debate strike at the very core of the Libertarian platform.  According to the Libertarians: the government is already too involved and needs to get out; Subsidies (farm, foreign trade like NAFTA, and energy) are all bad for the people; and government regulation does more harm than good.  Look it up.  Understanding that there isn't one party that fits all, issues that deal with the core party line should certainly align with your values.


The first thing you should do now is read up on your favorite party... go to your search engine of choice, type in your political party (like "libertarian party") and the first hit will be your party's website.  You should then be able to navigate around their website to find their Preamble (here are links for the Constitutionalists, Democrats, Libertarians, and Republicans for a start).  Do you agree with your party's platform?  If not... why would you support them?  Find a party that agrees with you.  It isn't always easy to make a decision... but we've got some time... the next vote for the US House and Senate is November 2, 2010.

Blind Leading The Blind

Today a friend and I went to see Mike Capuano give an "Open Mike" talk in our town.  Mike is currently a US Congressman representing the 8th Congressional District of Massachusetts and running for the open Senate seat vacated by the late Ted Kennedy.  I wanted to ask his opinion on the Constitution and the current healthcare reform.

First, I want to talk about the event itself.  This was my first time ever going to see a politician talk and it was quite an event.  The talk was scheduled to start at 11:30am and was hosted by a local tavern down town.  My friend and I arrived early so that we were sure to get in (about 11:10am).  There were a couple of folks already there chatting amongst themselves and one came over to us shortly after we sat down.  At first I thought nothing of this guy coming over to chat - there were only 5 people at the tavern at this time that didn't work there, so he seemed like he was just trying to be friendly when he asked us if we were residents of the town.  Then he asked why we were there and if we were political activists.  Woah - what?  Right from townie small-talk to political activism?  As it turns out, most of the people that showed up (I'm estimating 80%) were advocates from some group or another trying to get the Representative to hear their pleas.  By the looks of it, everyone knew everyone else because they were all activists for some group or another.  The first gentleman we spoke with was advocating to escalate the war in Afghanistan and pull troops out of Iraq - another person we spoke with was advocating to end the "military industrial complex" (do people really talk like that any more???) - and someone else was advocating for gun rights.  I felt a little out of place.  The few people that weren't activists were town leaders from state representatives to the chief of police.

Around 11:20 the staffers for Mike's campaign came in and started posting signs all over the place.  It was a game to see how many "Mike Capuano for Senate" signs they could put in the little room we were all in.  We asked one of the staffers working near us what how she got involved with the campaign and her answer was a little interesting.  She was going to the Kennedy College and after the death of Ted Kennedy, she became more interested in politics.  She chose to work with Mike's campaign because his office was located near her home in Cambridge, MA and because he seemed like a good guy.  When we pressed a little more, she said the she agreed with some of his political views, but that she really liked him because he seemed like a good guy.  This was a common theme among the people at the event: they were mostly there to support Mike Capuano because he is a good guy.

Representative Capuano showed up around 12:10pm and things kicked off shortly after that.  Before anything could begin however, Mike walked around the room to everyone that was there and shook their hands to thanked everyone for coming personally.  He gave a very well delivered speech (without notes or a teleprompter) talking about how his orphan grandfather came over from Italy to live the American Dream (I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but you get the picture).  His strongest point seemed to be that you were voting for him because of his moral standings and judgment - not his political positions (because you won't agree with him on every point).  He was also very open that when voting on an issue of great importance to himself, he would vote towards his conscience even if it meant voting against his constituents.  He was very proud of his decision to vote against the Patriot Act even though he thought most of his constituents would have wanted him to vote for it.  He thought that if he was consistently voting against his constituents that he would be voted out of office.

There was a brief question and answer session after his speech.  There were a couple of things that I thought were interesting including his stance on immigration, a public option for health care, and education.  He felt that the immigration policy could be boiled down to economic policy - If the US economy is good, then we can accept a lot of immigrants and if the economy is bad, we can refuse a lot of immigrants.  The immigrants that are here should have available to them a path to citizenship... but the immigrant criminals should be deported.  Mike's stance on a public option was a little vague because he said that he hasn't heard any good options from experts yet.  He basically said that he gets one option for health care as a US Representative: Blue-Cross Blue-Shield.  He would support a public option that offers more choices.  I don't think the people there saw the connection that your bountiful choices would be between your employer's coverage and the government option.  Wonderful choices.  Mike also stated that there is only two ways to limit the cost of health care: a government-controller health care system or competition.  He doesn't believe the country is ready for a government-run health care system, but he thinks that it would be the best way to solve the current problems.  His stance on education was simply that the schools weren't receiving enough funding to implement No Child Left Behind and that all of the problems could be solved by increasing funding for education.

Here is my interpretation of his views: Immigrants are a drain on our economy, so we will only let them in while the economy can support them (except the smart immigrants... they will help are economy).  A public option health care will allow people to choose between the one choice they have now and a government option... but the government should really control the cost of health care.  Our schools are failing students because they don't have enough money, so just throw more money at them and everything will be fine.

I wasn't able to ask my question during the Q&A session, but thanks to the bold actions by my friend, I was able to ask Mike my question one-on-one.  I asked Mike to explain to me how any federal decision on health care fell within the powers mandated to it by Article 1 Section 8 the US Constitution.  Mike's response was that it was entirely within congress' powers because the Constitution outlines powers granted to the states and whatever powers weren't granted to the states fell under federal control... then he said that he respectfully disagrees with my opinion that Congress was overstepping its powers and was ushered off to his next appearance.  I feel like I've done a lot of reading regarding the powers of the federal government outlined by the constitution and never have I found anyone that even suggested that the US Constitution applied limits to state powers.  The US Constitution was created to protect the people from an oppressive government and to protect the states rights outlined within their own constitutions.  I've linked this blog many times to the direct text of Article 1 Section 8 which begins with, "The Congress shall have power to..."  That deffinetly sounds to me like the beginning of a list of powers that The Congress has (not what powers the states have and absolutely not "these are a few of the powers of the Congress, but they can make more if they feel like it").

Mike Capuano seems like a nice guy.  He spoke very clearly and passionately about things he believes in, and he really wants to help people.  In his own words, he wants to help people and he doesn't know any other way to do it other than through his work in the Federal Government.  I guess he doesn't care for charities or community help organizations because clearly they aren't doing any good.  The event was interesting to see, and I think I might go to a few more if my schedule allows... but Mike Capuano will definitely not be getting my vote.