Having posted extensively about health care on this blog, and being motivated to improve government by the dismal work I saw going on in Congress, I took it upon myself to run for Congress in 2010. I knew that I couldn't philosophically be a Democratic candidate and the Republican party apparatus already had a favorite. Therefore, since I am an independent person anyway, I ran as one.
With the tiniest bit of research, it is easy to discover that independents do not get elected to the U.S. House. Thus, I knew from the outset that expecting to win would be delusional on my part. As a result, I directed my efforts to setting forth items for the voting public to consider as essential to good government. My primary campaign tool was my campaign web site (which is now gone).
My other aim was to visit the election process from the candidate's side of the ballot and learn more for myself about how campaigns and elections really work. Just how hard is it to run for national office? I succeeded more with this task than getting the issues before the public. Here's what I discovered.
It's not that hard to get on the ballot. In my case, it took 25 registered voter signatures on a petition form. The election people were very friendly and made a big point of saying to get extra signatures because not everyone who thinks they are registered really is. It does take some personal courage to ask people to sign your petition. You do need to think about your campaign finances. If you keep your spending and your fund raising each under $5,000 you do not trigger the reporting requirements of the Federal Election Commission. Go over those amounts and you are in for a mountain of disclosure about your personal and campaign finances. I opted to stay well under the trigger. But, as you will see shortly, if you do, you will never win.
As an independent 'You don't get no respect.' All the press coverage and speaking invitations go to the two major party candidates. I suppose if I had pushed, I might have gotten on some platforms with them because some other independents did. The League of Women Voters (praise be upon them) invited me to two of their forums, a Tea Party group to one, and a college radio station to one. Chambers of Commerce ignored me despite the fact that I belong to one outside my district and am a small businessman. Go figure.
Voters buy the brand. It seems to be a foregone conclusion that independents have nothing to offer, or what they are offering is too extreme to be electable. Voters, therefore, pay attention to the two main candidates after the primaries are over. If you want to get elected, you must go through one of the two parties to get there almost without exception. Despite the recent push by the Tea Party, there is no organized alternative to the Democrats and the Republicans.
Money buys office. I am sad to say this, but it takes loads of money to get your message out. Whether it is flyers, roadside signs, or TV ads, unless you are willing to be a heavy spender, you aren't in the race. That translates into something else. It means that either you invest your personal fortune (e.g., Meg Whitman in CA), or you raise lots of contributions or both. In the former case, only the rich can run for office. In the later case, only the well-connected, or the soon-to-be-beholding can run for office. Translation: national public office is out of the reach of the average person (local office is not). We might like to pretend it is not, but the presence of 170 lawyers in the U.S. House would suggest the odds are against it.
You gotta have an ego. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Serious campaigning requires a lot of time and energy. You've got to want the office and you've got to believe you are the best person for it. Plus, you've got to take some hammering from the opposition. In my race that never got out of hand, but in some other local races it was disgustingly nasty. Really low ball stuff. If you beat your spouse, cheat on your taxes, default on your loans, or toss trash out your car window, plan on it coming out. The one good thing about being a lowly independent is that no one cares enough to dig and dish dirt on you - not that there was any, mind you.
Voters are concerned with the immediate, press-fed concerns of the day. It does not matter that the current hot buttons like immigration, term limits, etc. are not as serious as longer term issues like oil shortages and fiscal failure of the government. The voters get hyped up over pet peeves and popular concerns. Some of the ones who get hyped get active and this election that took the form of the Tea Party. The energy was great and some of the concerns well founded, but worries about 2nd amendment rights (gun control) and a return to a late 1700's government really did not serve the forward progress of the nation. The big issues of tomorrow just don't catch on compared to the popular issues of today. The one big exception this election was fiscal responsibility. What I project this to mean is that we will have government by crisis and not by foresight. The mounting debt, Social Security and Medicare, oil supplies and prices, global warming, etc. which are major long-term issues won't be acted upon until it is literally too late. That's so scary even I don't want to think about it.
When you run for office you become popular with two groups. The first are the election sign printers. You'll get postcards aplenty from them. The second are all manner of organizations with surveys they want you to fill out. Many of these are poorly-concealed attempts to force you to either adopt their position or look like a jerk. The one good one was from VoteSmart and I answered it.
It may turn out that you are no dumber than the other guys. If you are a novice seeking office, you might think that your competition has a head start on you regarding the issues. Think again. If you do some research on important topics, you can stand tall when you talk. As an example, the Democratic candidate did not seem to know the difference between the annual deficit and the accumulated debt of the government. This wasn't his first time running for the seat. (In all fairness, I never put the question directly to him, but his remarks suggested this was true.)
I'll leave it at this for now. Maybe I'll have more reflections later. Pose a question in the comments if you are curious about something specific.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
In Debt in a Big Way
By now, most of us know that debt is a problem for our country. The first obvious sign was when the savings rate dropped to zero in 2005. That meant consumers were spending more than they were making. The trend had been downward for quite some time. The dip below zero was the cough of the canary in the coal mine. (For non miners, canaries were used to test for lethal levels of ordorless gas in mines - if the bird died, it was time to get out quickly.) The drop in the savings rate was accompanied by the rise in people taking on mortgage debt they could not afford. That led to the really big crisis in the housing market and the subprime loan disaster with its consequent foreclosure binge. The effects of that are still lingering despite government attempts to help home owners renegotiate mortgages. After one year in operation, about 0.2% of the $75 billion to help that happen has been deployed in the market. So much for government help for homeowners.
In the press lately is the government's debt level. It has been escalating dramatically. It was driven upward in the Bush years by ill-conceived tax cuts and two "off-the-books" wars. To the new administration's credit, they have moved the cost of war back on the books where it belongs. The debt continued to grow with the TARP program to bail out the banks who help bring us the mortgage fiasco (egged into it by Congress and the Community Reinvestement Act provisions and administration). Most recently, it has been further compounded by the stimulus bill, aka, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Add to this a decline in tax revenues from the deprecession and the deficit situation worsens. In the past ten years we have gone from a budget surplus to continually escalating government deficits. The national debt has tripled from $4 trillion to $12 trillion. Sadly, the trajectory upward looks to be continuing.
The federal government is now feeling some of the pressure that state governments have felt. Many state governments are required by their state constitutions to maintain a balanced budget or a surplus -- no deficit spending. As a result, they must cut expenditures (services) or raise taxes. The newly elected governor of New Jersey is on a crusade to do this with a venegence necessary to save his state. California seems to keep dancing around its equally hard facts of fiscal life. Many states have survived the last year or so due to the stimulus funds provided to them by the federal government. This is so brutally ironic that it seems unthinkable.
The states cannot run a deficit. The feds can. The feds create a deficit and give the money to the states. This is back door deficit financing for the states. It is beyond absurd. All this money needs to be recovered at some point from the taxpayers. It matters not if it comes from state or federal taxes with the exception that the different taxation systems may redistribute who ultimately pays the lion's share.
The ultimate meaning of all this is that the government has been living beyond its means just like the overmortgaged homeowners were. The size of the debt is about to become like the little puppy who grows up to be the 150 lb dog that pulls the owner down the road. The government's answer is to keep on running deficits. All this does is postpone the inevitable and guarantee the payback will be bigger and harder tomorrow than it is today. More and more it appears our choice will be between a depression today or an all-out collapse in the not-so-distant future. This is not a problem for our grandchildren, it is our problem now.
Tack onto this the huge amount of the budget consumed by Social Security and Medicare and the problem expands even more. The influx of baby boomers into these two programs will place demands on them they are unable to meet financially. This becomes an economic perfect storm. The government cannot practically fund these programs at their current levels for the incoming recipients (even without the added pressure of current and future deficit spending). Given the lack of retirement savings rampant in the USA, it looks like the next 30 - 40 years will see the return of "poor old folks" who move in with their children to survive. We will go from "boomerang kids" to "boomerang grandparents."
The book, "Comeback America" presents a good picture of what is happening to our debt and what can happen to our country because of it. It will be painful to reign in spending, but many Americans must radically change their view of government from the omnipotent overseer and benefactor of the populace, to a barebones protector of state security, personal freedom, and facilitator of fair-handed commerce. We simply cannot afford the government we have because we have been buying it on credit.
In the press lately is the government's debt level. It has been escalating dramatically. It was driven upward in the Bush years by ill-conceived tax cuts and two "off-the-books" wars. To the new administration's credit, they have moved the cost of war back on the books where it belongs. The debt continued to grow with the TARP program to bail out the banks who help bring us the mortgage fiasco (egged into it by Congress and the Community Reinvestement Act provisions and administration). Most recently, it has been further compounded by the stimulus bill, aka, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Add to this a decline in tax revenues from the deprecession and the deficit situation worsens. In the past ten years we have gone from a budget surplus to continually escalating government deficits. The national debt has tripled from $4 trillion to $12 trillion. Sadly, the trajectory upward looks to be continuing.
The federal government is now feeling some of the pressure that state governments have felt. Many state governments are required by their state constitutions to maintain a balanced budget or a surplus -- no deficit spending. As a result, they must cut expenditures (services) or raise taxes. The newly elected governor of New Jersey is on a crusade to do this with a venegence necessary to save his state. California seems to keep dancing around its equally hard facts of fiscal life. Many states have survived the last year or so due to the stimulus funds provided to them by the federal government. This is so brutally ironic that it seems unthinkable.
The states cannot run a deficit. The feds can. The feds create a deficit and give the money to the states. This is back door deficit financing for the states. It is beyond absurd. All this money needs to be recovered at some point from the taxpayers. It matters not if it comes from state or federal taxes with the exception that the different taxation systems may redistribute who ultimately pays the lion's share.
The ultimate meaning of all this is that the government has been living beyond its means just like the overmortgaged homeowners were. The size of the debt is about to become like the little puppy who grows up to be the 150 lb dog that pulls the owner down the road. The government's answer is to keep on running deficits. All this does is postpone the inevitable and guarantee the payback will be bigger and harder tomorrow than it is today. More and more it appears our choice will be between a depression today or an all-out collapse in the not-so-distant future. This is not a problem for our grandchildren, it is our problem now.
Tack onto this the huge amount of the budget consumed by Social Security and Medicare and the problem expands even more. The influx of baby boomers into these two programs will place demands on them they are unable to meet financially. This becomes an economic perfect storm. The government cannot practically fund these programs at their current levels for the incoming recipients (even without the added pressure of current and future deficit spending). Given the lack of retirement savings rampant in the USA, it looks like the next 30 - 40 years will see the return of "poor old folks" who move in with their children to survive. We will go from "boomerang kids" to "boomerang grandparents."
The book, "Comeback America" presents a good picture of what is happening to our debt and what can happen to our country because of it. It will be painful to reign in spending, but many Americans must radically change their view of government from the omnipotent overseer and benefactor of the populace, to a barebones protector of state security, personal freedom, and facilitator of fair-handed commerce. We simply cannot afford the government we have because we have been buying it on credit.
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