The Agenda of the Next President

Charles Smith writes An Agenda for the Next President

His items are in bold below (he had additional explanation, see link above) and my comments follow.

Here's my reactions, dashed off as quickly as I think your list was... :-)

1. Rescind all Bush-era restrictions on civil liberties.

The problem here is the spying. NSA has the capability, and that's not going away. The phone companies and ISPs clearly know they have to allow the feds to spy with their network, or face all kinds of trouble. The public isn't nearly concerned enough to put a stop to this. If people will line up like sheep in airports, they'll give up their civil liberties in other areas as well. Roll back the laws if you like, but it's going to be difficult to keep the defense establishment from using these capabilities. In case of another terrorist incident, the rollback will seem like a bad idea, even if it had nothing to do with stopping terrorism in the first place.

2. Ban the use of torture.

It's a mistake to rely on ineffectiveness as an argument. People think that torture works, because they can't imagine going through it and not talking. Plus, there's a "24" mentality out there that thinks toughness means torturing your enemies. You'd need a few TV series and movies where the interrogators just talk information out of detainees. Of course, even if it were perfectly true, a lot of people still would consider it unbelievable.

3. Pledge no new taxes on wages/earnings between $25,000 and $150,000.

General tax simplification and a flat tax would put money back into the economy (at the cost of unemployment for tax preparers), without any hit on the treasury. Unfortunately, you are not going to eliminate the home mortgage interest deduction during a housing downturn. Lobbyists will fight simplification tooth and nail if it means losing a deduction for their group during a recession.

4. Overhaul the Alternative Minimum Tax to its original purposes.

Better to simplify the tax code and get rid of tax shelters that cause low tax rates for the very rich in the first place. You are just layering another kludge on top of the mess that's already there.

5. Outlaw tax shelters and prosecute bankers and accountants who have gamed the system to benefit multi-millionaire clients.

Again, you don't fix a messed up, overly complex system by adding more rules and sanctions. Simplify it and then enforce the simpler rules.

6. Announce that the U.S. is not "borrowing and spending" its way out of recession.

The markets will probably enforce discipline at some point or other. Any sudden attack of fiscal discipline risks putting the economy into a tailspin. Cutting spending during a recession is supposedly not the right thing to do. It just reinforces the downturn. The problem is that we don't cut spending during booms, and don't spend on long-term investments that would yield a return during a downturn. Instead we spend it all on consumption.

7. Slash Federal spending by the estimated deficit: $500 billion.

Same comment as above. It might be worth doing, and might feel virtuous, but the ranks of the unemployed will surge. Political suicide as well. Too many people are already dependent on government.

8. Rescind the Farm Price Support Bill.

Again, the time to do these things is during booms, when people can take the hit. Of course, with high prices for farm products, they could probably take the hit now. Do it right away though, before pressure to pander mounts with the next election.

9. Cancel the bloated Pentagon weapons programs and overhaul procurement to follow NASA's "faster better cheaper."

Large, risk-averse, rule bound organizations don't produce cheap products. If you want to change this, you need a new organization. Either a new branch of the existing organization, or a completely new structure. Don't be surprised if the old organization deliberately fouls up the new one though. You'll also have some trouble getting people unless it's obvious the new organization has a future (but that kind of guarantee keeps it from being nimble.) The best way to do this is two competing organizations, both with other business than the government. Aerospace projects are too large and government-specific for this to work well though. In other words, there aren't going to be two Boeings developing two 777's at a time, since it costs too much and the market won't support two of them.

10. Hire a small army of auditors and strip-mine the Pentagon budget.

Political suicide -- there are too many small communities dependent on military spending. Look at the Base Closure committees for an example of that sort of politics at work. It will happen when the choice is between getting out of Iraq or cutting spending.

11. Abolish the Department of Homeland Security.

The question is what new spending came along with the new department. I don't suppose the organizational structure really means all that much. All the component agencies already have layers of management. There needs to be some risk-benefit analysis applied to the spending. Stop turning local police forces into paramilitary units, and stop sniffing shoes at airports. Do something useful with the money.

12. Dismantle the Federal Reserve.

Someone needs to control the money supply. And you have to answer the question "if Bear Stearns failing would have crashed the banking system, what should have been done, if not what they did?"

13. Launch a National Energy Independence Initiative.

Mandates have little short term effect, since people have to replace all their appliances. Run an ad campaign telling people to put all their electronics on a power strip and turn it off when they go to bed. That will get you the bulk of the savings at trivial cost.

The market is already shifting to small cars, probably resulting in the bankruptcy of one or more of the major car companies. Just get out of the way, so you aren't blamed for that.

To most people, high efficiency appliances just mean low-flow toilets and showers that we hate, and fridges/washers/dryers that don't work as well. In any case, there are market solutions. There are tons of small, super-efficient Japanese appliances that could be sold here overnight if there was a market. A $50 savings per year on your electric bill is just not enough to get people to replace appliances that last 10 years.

As for alternative power, just make sure the gains are really positive, not supported by subsidies. Otherwise, you'll get another corn ethanol fiasco. Nukes and oil drilling (also refineries) would be a good idea, but you are not getting them done in California or Alaska. Greenies would probably sabotage plants rather than see that happen. Remember tree sitting and spiking trees to hurt loggers?

14. Prepare for shortages of gasoline, diesel and electricity.

The 70's shortages were caused by price controls as much as anything else, and by panic. If the whole country just fills its gas tank, you get a shortage right there. Just leave this all alone. There would be no shortages if the market were working. Electricity shortages in particular will all be because of government regulation. Don't add to it.

15. Prepare the nation for Depression-era "bread lines."

Food shortages will not occur in the U.S. -- we're a net exporter of food. The third world is where there will be problems. This will be made worse if everyone reacts to worries about shortages by curtailing exports. So stop even talking about it!

16. Overhaul the Department of Agriculture to strip out agri-business and prepared-food corporate influence.

I was watching a bit of some BBC program called "you are what you eat" the other night. The family in question was living on donuts. None of our obesity problems are really due to lack of information, advertising or high-sugar content in meals. It's due to complete lack of exercise, a generally self-indulgent life style, and the greater social acceptance of fat people, even fat kids.

17. Hire more auditors for the IRS and Federal oversight agencies (FDIC, etc.) and enforce the regulations which are already on the books for banks, lenders, accounting firms, etc.

The answer to a failure of the rules is not more rules. It's better, simpler rules.

18. Abolish Sarbanes-Oxley as a waste of effort/time.

Same as above.

19. Reform Social Security to eliminate all payments to people who didn't pay FICA taxes for 25 years.

There is some rule about number of qualifying quarters of income already. I forget how many it takes, but 25 years is too many. That would mean that unless you spent nearly your entire working career as a U.S. citizen, you are screwed, no matter how much you paid into the system. The retirement check should be related to how much you paid, pure and simple. Either that, or a minimum for anyone, regardless of contributions, just to keep people from absolute poverty. I doubt that's possible to administer fairly though, and it would have no political support.

20. Abolish Medicare.

There's already been an effort to shift people onto HMO's, which have a slower growth rate. As you know, everyone hates HMO's and thinks they deserve more health care. Previous attempts to make even minor reforms resulted in senior citizens mobbing legislators. The don't call Social Security and Medicare the "third rail" for nothing. You are going to have to think of something else.

Social Security by itself isn't fatal to the budget. Medicare deficits are projected to be huge due to medical inflation. That $30 trillion figure assumes people are spending a hundred thousand dollars a year on medical care by 20 years from now. If you want to solve that budget crisis, you need to reform medical practice. As you know, I prefer more of a free market, not less.

21. Announce that your primary goal is to leave a nation that is fiscally and environmentally sound for future generations.

These problems will bite us within 10 years, so forget about "future generations." If we can get to 2020, a new system will already be in place.

22. Restore the gold backing to the U.S. dollar.

Money supply needs to grow (and shrink?) with the economy. Gold is a poor substitute for that. It seems to me it also wastes some amount of industrial effort digging up gold just to use as money. And if you suddenly improved the technology (by getting gold from sea water or something), would that mean sudden inflation? I understand the risks of fiat currency, but gold is a relic. You can't set the price arbitrarily at $10,000 an ounce, because gold has industrial uses. All the circuit boards in your computer have gold all over them.

23. Veto every bill from Congress which contains "spending earmarks" until they finally catch on that the era of "earmark pork" is over.

Earmarks are annoying waste, but they are less than a penny on the dollar. If the economy gets as bad as you think, they will all be tossed out of the budget anyway, and it won't make much of a difference. We have bigger problems. Or put another way, in 2011 & 2012 alone, entitlements will grow enough to absorb all the money currently spent on earmarks.

24. Legalize marijuana and other drugs except for meta-amphetamines ("ice").

You'll get crime anyway unless legitimate companies go into the drug business. Marijuana could be produced by lots of home growers, I suppose. In any case, this is the kind of unpopular position that discredits Libertarians with the rest of the public. Better to just steadily reduce penalties/enforcement and look the other way.

25. Overhaul the Civil Service benefits.

Rather than hit this directly, just continue to outsource government functions to private companies that don't pay these kinds of benefits. A lot of that has been done already. As the boomers retire and the civil service hollows out, you have the perfect opportunity to outsource. Just put a hiring freeze in place.

26. Re-institute the Kennedy-era "Fitness for America" programs in publicly funded schools.

This will make no difference, except to torture more fat kids. An hour of gym does not make up for a sedentary lifestyle and lots of rich food. We're not going back to work in factories and farms, and we're not getting so poor we can't afford sugar. Fat is here to stay, until some drug comes along to kill your appetite.

27. "Trust-bust" major media corporations and put some teeth back into the FCC.

The internet has opened the news business to more voices than ever (even yours!) Media consolidation is happening because newspapers, TV and movies aren't as profitable as they were. The problem is on the consumer side, where people just aren't interested in hard news.

28. Reform Immigration.

There are a lot of people who just plain hate how Hispanic the southwest is getting. They feel like foreigners in their own country. They may respect immigrants as individuals, but they just don't want any more. They don't like the idea of preferring educated foreigners either. They will say "what's left for me and my kids, if all the immigrants have Ph.D's? How do I compete with that?" As long as there's a large group of people who feel that way, any immigration reform is going to be a problem.

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