Failure of western democracy, tensions between the US and China, the Arab Spring and other major global events.
All this mishigas is happening in part because the United States is in fact very secure, which leads many people to think it doesn\’t need a strong central state. They are therefore willing to countenance steps that they would not consider if the country were really facing a serious external danger.
~ Stephen M. Walt
Read more at The Surest Cure for America's Political Insanity | Stephen M. Walt.
Ben Heard and Prof. Corey Bradshaw highlight the environmental and economic damage caused by pursuit of nuclear-free power.
Had Australia deployed a modest nuclear program starting in 1965, to build slowly to around 20% of electricity provided (as done in the USA), over 876 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e) would have been avoided to this day.
…..In the OECD, three yes, only three countries have achieved success in all but eliminating fossil fuels from electricity supply. They are France, Sweden and Switzerland Finland will soon join them. All did it by embracing nuclear power generation. These nations deliver reliable, large-scale electricity supply with less than 1/10th the emissions of Australia. France in particular delivers the cheapest electricity in Western Europe, and is the second-highest net exporter of electricity in the world…..
Read more at Pro-nuclear greenies? Thinking outside the box with Pandora's Promise.
Organizers submitted more than the 100,000 signatures needed to call a referendum on Friday……..Under Swiss law, citizens can organize popular initiatives that allow the channeling of public anger into direct political action. The country usually holds several referenda a year.
Read more at Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult | Reuters.
Reuters Shanghai:
China on Wednesday said the U.S. government shutdown had exposed “the ugly side of partisan politics” in Washington and expressed concern about its effect on the world economy.
An editorial on the state-run Xinhua news service, considered a channel for Beijing’s official views, said: “The United States, the world’s sole superpower, has engaged in irresponsible spending for years.”
“In the view of the latest political failure, a replay of the 2011 summer drama seems likely, which is certainly a concern for U.S. foreign creditors,” it said.
“With no political unity to redress its policy mistake, a dysfunctional Washington is now overspending the confidence in its leadership,” the editorial said.
Chinese leaders must be both puzzled and perplexed by the current spat between Congress and the Senate. How can a government which considers itself a beacon of democracy — and which advocates democracy to emerging nations — exhibit such disfunctional behavior? Separation of duties between the President, Congress and the Senate — designed to safeguard the nation from excessive concentration of power — have evolved into a recurring political logjam. Both major parties are guilty of burdening future taxpayers with public debt, in order to buy off existing voters, and kicking the can down the road — avoiding unpopular political decisions that are in the long-term interests of the nation. Failure to address unsustainable welfare spending, for example, has allowed unfunded liabilities to balloon to more than $70 trillion by 2012.
Weak political coalitions have also led to unstable government and a short-term focus in many Western democracies. These issues are completely foreign to China’s Central Committee.
The Central Politburo Standing Committee (“PSC”) of the Communist Party of China is a committee of 7 members appointed by the Chinese Communist Party to run the country, with Li Jinping acting as General Secretary. No political group has the power to block decisions of the Committee, allowing them to focus on long-term goals rather than short-term considerations. Ascendancy of the PSC is one of the major contributing factors to China’s phoenix-like rise from the ashes of decades of political turmoil.
I am not advocating that we abandon democracy and revert to a one-party state, but we need to address the weaknesses in our current system and adopt some of the strengths of others. An outstanding example of this is the Swiss system where a similar central committee is democratically elected, based on proportional representation. All parties are represented on the 7-member Federal Council and decision-making is collective. Council members serve one year terms as the largely-ceremonial head of state. The strength of the system is its stability, with only one change to the composition of the 7-member Council over the last 50 years. This enables members to focus on long-term goals rather than on short-term political concerns — one of the reasons why the Swiss economy is one of the most stable and successful, ranked 8th in the world in terms of GDP per capita according to the IMF.
Powers of the central committee are restrained by a vibrant direct democracy where citizens regularly vote on national referendums. The power of voters to overturn their decisions maintains a strong check on the central committee throughout their elected term and would also curb the influence of special interest groups, another abscess on butt of many democracies.
While most recognize the need for change, a major obstacle is the power of vested interests that are likely to impede progress at every turn. Only a major ground-swell of popular support could sweep them aside. In a way we should welcome crises like the current impasse, as further cracks in the dam wall of public opinion. When the wall breaks, hopefully we can build a better system…..if we have learned from our past mistakes.
Read more at China: US Shutdown Exposes 'Ugly Side of Partisan Politics'.
On a hill overlooking the Susquehanna River, two big wind turbines crank out electricity for Kroger Co.’s KR +0.02% Turkey Hill Dairy in rural Lancaster County, Pa., allowing it to save 25% on its power bill for the past two years.
….From big-box retailers to high-tech manufacturers, more companies across the country are producing their own power. Since 2006, the number of electricity-generation units at commercial and industrial sites has more than quadrupled to roughly 40,000 from about 10,000, according to federal statistics.
By REBECCA SMITH and CASSANDRA SWEET
Read more at Companies Unplug From the Electric Grid, Delivering a Jolt to Utilities – WSJ.com.
Retired General Carter Ham, former head of U.S. Africa Command, speaks out against across-the-board spending cuts at the National Association for Business Economics in San Francisco:
“My least-favorite saying on the planet is to ‘do more with less.’ You don’t do more with less, you do less with less,” Gen. Ham said. “You have to figure out what’s most important.”
One solution would be to give federal agencies the flexibility to find savings where they can, rather than mandating how they make the cuts, he said. The government also needs to have frank discussions about how to reduce the military budget and shift priorities to address current and future threats.
~ From Sarah Portlock at WSJ online.
Read more at Retired General to Economists: Economic Stability Drives National Security – Real Time Economics – WSJ.
Jeremy Shapiro at Foreign Policy discusses the role played by Qatar in the Middle East, their expansion of Al-Jazeera into the US, and their support for the Muslim Brotherhood:
On the face of it, Qatar has been one of the United States’s most valuable allies in the Middle East over the last decade. Qatar hosts a large U.S. Air Force base in the Persian Gulf and has often provided political and financial support for U.S. initiatives in the Middle East. Indeed, Washington has often encouraged Qatari activism to legitimize U.S. diplomacy, including its political support at the Arab League of a potential U.S. strike against Syria.
But Qatar’s role in the United States’s Middle East policy is far more problematic than is commonly recognized. The tiny yet ambitious Gulf emirate has sought to use its immense hydrocarbon wealth to finance and arm civil wars in Libya and Syria, to support Hamas in Gaza, and to mediate disputes in Sudan and Lebanon. Its interest sometimes align with the United States’s — but too often, they do not. The launch of Al-Jazeera America, the news network its government owns, should redirect attention to Doha’s goals and means……
Read more at The Qatar Problem – By Jeremy Shapiro | The Middle East Channel.
James R. Holmes at The Naval Diplomat describes how the function of drones has evolved from artillery spotting to armed UAVs capable of waging war without direct human intervention. Whether armed, or merely used for surveillance and accurate delivery of independently-launched (naval, aerial or land-based) weapons, the low cost of drone warfare raises the prospect of an unending conflict:
…..Two, Clausewitz urges senior leaders to let the value of the political object determine how many national resources they expend to obtain that object, and how long they expend those resources for. Professor Byman appears to define success — again, whether drones work — partly in terms of how much drones cost the United States and its allies. Drone warfare is cheap relative to keeping expeditionary forces on the ground, projecting force inland from the sea, or otherwise prosecuting operations via traditional, resource-intensive methods. But flip the relationship around. By Clausewitzian cost/benefit logic, holding down the magnitude of the effort may let Washington continue with drone strikes more or less indefinitely, even if U.S. leaders are only tepidly committed to the endeavor. A forever war, even an inexpensive one, is an unsettling prospect.
Read more at Present at Creation: How I Pioneered Drone Warfare | James Holmes – The Naval Diplomat | The Diplomat.
Marian L. Tupy argues that free enterprise is the best cure for poverty:
According to the World Bank, global poverty is declining rapidly. In 1981, 70 percent of people in poor countries lived on less than $2 a day, while 42 percent survived on less than $1 a day. Today, 43 percent live on less than $2 a day, while 14 percent survive on less than $1. “Poverty reduction of this magnitude is unparalleled in history,” wrote Brookings Institution researchers Laurence Chandy and Geoffrey Gertz in a recent paper. “Never before have so many people been lifted out of poverty over such a brief period of time.”
Read more at Bono: Only Capitalism Can End Poverty | Cato @ Liberty.
Randal O’Toole writes that economic mobility is unrelated to urban sprawl as suggested by Paul Krugman:
The Equality of Opportunity Project found that economic mobility is low throughout the South (except Texas), not just in Atlanta. But the differences in the unit measured — the percentage of children in the bottom fifth of incomes who end up in the top fifth — are small, ranging from 4 percent in Atlanta to 11 percent in San Jose. Moreover, what differences there are appear to be unrelated to sprawl: Chicago, a fairly dense area, is almost as low as Atlanta, while Pittsburgh, a fairly low-density area, is almost as high as San Jose.
The study lists a lot of factors that seem to correlate with low economic mobility, but none of them are related to population density or sprawl. The most important factors appear to be tax rates, racial residential segregation, K-12 school quality, and the percentage of single-parent families. The South scores particularly high on racial residential segregation and low on K-12 schools, which together go much further toward explaining its relatively low economic mobility than urban sprawl.
The factors that affect economic mobility or equal opportunity are fairly obvious but worth repeating:
The first three are within reach of positive government intervention, but I suspect the last — broken family ties — is the most pernicious and difficult to reverse.
Read more at Sprawl Does Not Reduce Economic Mobility | Cato @ Liberty.
