A 21st Century Military

I've been trying to find something positive in the sequester, and it's been a real struggle to do so, but perhaps there is a bit of good news in what mandatory cuts will do for the military. After funding entitlement programs, defense spending accounts for the largest portion of the federal budget. I support cuts to the military so long as they are done smartly. Of course, the sequester doesn't set us up for smart cuts, just cuts, but there is hope that these cuts could be targeted and make our military leaner, more efficient, and more prepared for the realities of the 21st century.

Among the potential cuts are things I have mentioned in the past like a significant reduction of nuclear stockpiles as well as things I have not considered like restructuring military insurance. Cuts to military programs are good as long as we cut weapons programs that do not impact our national security. So where should we be focusing?

I believe that the future of our national security lies in cyber-safety and in space. I have previously lamented cuts to NASA for both military and scientific purposes, but I am not the only person who believes the future of our security is increasingly tied up in technology. China believes that too, and is taking steps to test their cyber weaponry by hacking into American businesses and governmental organizations. This behavior is wholly unacceptable, and I was encouraged to see that the Obama administration finally warned the Chinese government that these hacking attacks must stop. But this is what warfare may look like in the 21st century, and we must be fully prepared.

Cuts to military spending have the potential to be detrimental and harmful to our national security, but they also have the potential to help us re-imagine what national security will need to look like in the future. If we are smart about reforming our military, we will be sleeker and more nimble, more technologically advanced, and capable of addressing the issues of Chinese cyber intrusion, Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs (Stuxnet, anyone?), and the threat of terrorism.

At the end of the day I want the American Military to be capable of handling any threat that comes our way, but we can save money and prepare our military for the reality of the 21st century. Perhaps the sequester gives us a reason to start making that effort.

If it is Broke, Don't Fix It

One sign of intelligence is learning from past mistakes in an effort not to repeat them. It should come as no surprise then that the Republican Party is either unwilling or incapable of doing this. Despite a message that was rejected by voters in November - and rightly so - Republicans have stuck to their guns on taxing and spending. This makes me both gleeful and gloomy; gleeful because it is likely that Republicans are committing political suicide, gloomy because I wish the Republican would reform itself and highlight its good ideas rather than implode and leave the responsibility of running the country solely to the less-than-stellar Democrats.

In an unsurprising not-turn of events, House Speaker John Boehner, a man truly devoid of fortitude, has declared that the shellacking Republicans received in November had to do with the candidates that ran, not the ideas they espoused. Even if you believe this, the line of reasoning itself makes no sense, since in fact, people voted against the candidates who ran BECAUSE of the ideas they espoused. Typical Republican logic...So Republicans are refusing to budge on the issue of tax increases and spending cuts. Demanding a balanced budget, but of course incapable of getting there because they can neither add nor subtract and they have completely closed off the idea of raising revenue.

At some point we're just beating a dead horse with this "debate." Paul Ryan's most recent "budget" is more laughable than his first. I used to have some grudging respect for him for being willing to make tough choices about the future of entitlements, but that respect is long lost given that those tough choices just make life better for those who already living the good life and worse for everyone else. It does nothing to put America on the path to prosperity unless of course you happen to be an American who is already prosperous. In addition to being another mathematical fallacy, it calls for the repeal Obamacare. This is a bad idea, but of course it doesn't even represent an idea, it represents a political stunt. Democrats still control the Senate and Obama is still president. There is no way the law gets repealed. Rather than trying to put together a budget that represents a compromise and includes the good ideas Republicans could bring to the table, they engage in political theatrics. Theatrics that are likely to do them political harm.

The country is in need of fixing, but Republicans remain uninterested in even making a token effort, and so we are left with a Democratic party that can afford to be lazy and complacent because Republicans are so much worse. I worry for our nation's future because it doesn't seem as though Republicans are intellectually or morally up to the task of even trying to do right by America. If it is broke, don't fix it. That's where we find ourselves.

If Keystone, then Why?

I've come out in favor of the Keystone Pipeline before, and I'll do so again now even though Thomas Friedman disagrees. I don't think the pipeline is a great thing - it certainly isn't either the job creation project or the energy independence tool that I have heard some make it out to be, but it also has its benefits - jobs and cheaper energy chief among them.

But this post isn't actually about the Keystone Pipeline itself so much as it is about all the things we should be pursuing in addition to the pipeline. I'll say quickly that I support the pipeline because I think it will help us wean ourselves off of our addiction to foreign oil - yes, Canada is technically still foreign, but I would prefer to pay the Canadians for their black goo rather than funneling more money towards people who will use some of that money to hurt America. I think the Keystone Pipeline can be an important step towards helping us transition off of fossil fuels and towards a diverse alternative energy grid.

So I found Friedman's piece thought-provoking not because he rejects Keystone, but because, like me, he is thinking about what else we can and should be doing. If we accept Keystone, we accept it as part of a broader package that helps us pursue clean energy independence, not solely on the basis of its own economic merits.

So what comes next? Friedman lays out some ideas, I have touched on others, and there are plenty that neither of us have mentioned - and some of which I have no familiarity with - that deserve merit. But the concept I like most - and one I read about recently in Jared Diamond's book Collapse - is the idea of natural infrastructure, investing in the ecosystems with which we were endowed and which can be sources of clean and sustainable energy and economic development if maintained and allowed to flourish. In Collapse, Diamond talks about how the US has failed to manage some of our natural parks and forests to help prevent forest fires, and how those nations that do manage their natural resources well gain a competitive advantage over those that do not. He uses the example of the Dominican Republic and its much poorer island cohabitant Haiti to illustrate this dichotomy. Though the DR does not strike us as an economic powerhouse, it is remarkably much better off than Haiti primarily as a result of good ecosystem stewardship.

When we talk about our nation being blessed with natural resources, we're usually talking about the shale gas reserves or offshore oil that is helping us towards energy independence. What we should also be talking about are all the other natural resources we don't normally include in those conversations, and how to successfully maintain them in a mutually beneficial, symbiotic way. Our natural infrastructure will be incredibly important to our country's future, and while I hope President Obama moves forward with the Keystone Pipeline I want that to be merely the first step in helping us move towards clean energy independence ultimately makes that very pipeline unnecessary.

Building the Next Crisis

The stock market has hit record highs, corporations are making money, surely we have finally started to turn it around and will certainly be out of the economic doldrums any day now, right? Even today's job report was encouraging. Maybe, despite the sequester, which may still come back to haunt us, we are finally starting to cement the turnaround. Maybe.

Lurking underneath the positive news is the fact that the recovery is still fueling the growing income disparity between the few and the many. Most of the wealth generated by the recovery to date has gone to corporations, very little has found its way to workers. While corporate profits skyrocket, workers remain jobless or their incomes do not keep pace.

For all the talk we hear from both parties about building the middle class, there is no evidence that either party is particularly interested in doing that, and there is little evidence that the middle class is benefiting from the economic recovery. In fact, it seems that we are only exacerbating one of the problems that we should have used this crisis to address - the massive gulf in wealth between the wealthy and the rest. While corporations profit, little money goes to their employees and with jobless numbers still so high and consumer spending still sputtering, little of the money being brought in by corporations will go to hiring new workers or increasing output.

So in essence, we are only building towards the next crisis. The disparity in wealth is no foundation for a successful economy, let alone a successful country. It is harmful to our future prospects when those who strive to produce goods find themselves increasingly unable to purchase the very products they help create. This income disparity not only decreases consumer purchasing power, it reinforces the idea that not everyone has a stake in the American economy, which in turn undermines our faith in our own systems, deincentivizes participation in those systems, and therefore encourages people not to work hard as they see that it is unlikely they will be rewarded for that hard work.

If the prosperous future we all long for looks anything like the current economic recovery we should be nervous. Between the sequester and the stock market's vast outpacing of wages and hiring, America's economic recovery looks to be flimsy and ephemeral. 

Scrunched and S'questered

So it happened. I really don't even know how I can write a blog about this to be honest. I'm not sure what there is to say. We have officially shot ourselves in the foot, maybe done worse than that. It will take some time to tell just how bad an idea the sequester really was, but it was a bad idea designed not to happen. It was supposed to force us to make hard decisions, but even staring at a self-created worst-case scenario in the face couldn't force our politicians to take real action on budget issues.

It doesn't really matter who is to blame, the fact that this happened reflects the total dysfunction of our political system. We might be better off refusing to re-elect ANYONE who currently holds a seat in Congress during the upcoming election cycles than submitting ourselves to this kind of behavior again. These people fly in private jets, so none of them will be forced to spend more time waiting in longer airport security lines in the coming months. If the current group and their ongoing behavior is the best democracy can produce we might be better off trying something else. It's truly embarrassing that this happened.

And it's bad. Embarrassing and bad. I won't go into details about all the services that will be cut; the President spent the last few weeks making that case over and over in an attempt to get Republicans to compromise. What I will say is that the spending cuts that were just forced upon us do nothing to help our long term fiscal outlook and everything to hamper our economic recovery. We wasted the opportunity to do something real and instead did something that will reverse whatever positive trajectory and momentum the economy was gaining.

I wish I could find some silver lining here, but I really don't think there is one. Our politicians didn't only fail, they abdicated responsibility for trying. This was worse than failure. Failure requires effort. And the complete lack of effort has disastrous results that will be felt in the coming months all over the country. And despite all those cuts, nothing at all substantial has been done to fix the structural spending issues facing America.

All Americans should be frustrated and embarrassed. If this is the path that we have chosen by virtue of the people we elect, the future will be bleak indeed.