Just because you’re here doesn’t mean you get to vote
One of the more bizarre movements lately is the attempt to make it legal for anyone to vote just because they happen  to be in an area – legally or otherwise – rather than requiring them to prove legal residency or, God forbid, citizenship.  

It’s about “empowering” everyone to have an equal say in selecting their elected officials.

Couple of points here.  No, on second thought, there’s only one:  What a load of crap. 

This isn’t about empowering the masses to take a greater role in democracy.  It’s about perverting the election system once again.  It’s about rounding up as many warm bodies as you can on Election Day, driving them to multiple polling places all day, and guiding their hands in every voting booth they hit.  It’s old fashioned big city machine politics.

Only this time it’s not the Irish, the Poles, and the Czechs – it’s the conveniently undocumented.

      It’s long past time for a national identity card with biometrics
Non-invasive technology exists to biometrically record and then conclusively verify someone’s identity. 

So why don’t we extend that technology to everyone here in this country?  Why is the concept of a national identity card with biometrics taboo?

All you have to do for a clue is to look at what’s happening now with the raging debate over photo IDs and voting. 

Several states are trying to make presenting a photo ID a requirement to vote.  Some will even pay the cost of photo IDs for people who can’t afford them.  Still, the uproar is unbelievable, with charges of “plots” to disenfranchise the poor, the elderly, and minorities and rob them of the right to have their voices heard in elections. 

This is probably somewhat baffling to most folks – poor, elderly and minorities alike -- who use a photo ID all the time for all kinds of mundane daily activities. 

Since you already need a photo ID to buy tobacco, liquor, or cold medicine, get a library card, or get on a plane, why is it suddenly an incredible burden to require one for voting?

To most reasonable people, this is a pretty low threshold for such an important privilege; one hopes at least as important as getting a pack of smokes and a beer, or picking up some Advil Cold & Sinus at Wal-Mart, which all demand the same burden of proof. 

So the only people who would seem to be broadly disenfranchised by requiring a photo ID to vote would be people who can’t – or more likely don’t want to – prove that they are who they say they are.  It would also disenfranchise people who maintain multiple identities for whatever purpose. 

There are some exceptions – such as the Amish and others who oppose photo IDs on religious grounds.  But let’s be honest: no one is worried about Amish voter fraud.   Or fraud by women who wear burkhas or veils.   It’s more about people who vote on behalf of the dead – a reliable voting bloc in many major cities – and those who register multiple times, under multiple identities, to vote at multiple polling places on election day.

And frankly, that's why there’s a push on photo IDs to vote – the growing suspicion that elections are no longer won or lost  based on one-man / one-vote, but more on the “Philadelphia politics” principle of “vote early and vote often.”

But if you think the outrage over photo IDs for voting is over the top, just wait for the battle over national identity cards.  It will take on “end of days” proportions, because with a national identity card with biometrics, a lot of mischief that goes on now will come to an end. 

As necessary as a national identity card is today, and despite the obvious benefits to all citizens to improve security and prevent fraud on so many levels, don’t hold your breath. 

Knowing that someone is really who they say they are would appear to be a good thing.  But Federal, and many state and local governments clearly don’t want to know.   Neither do a host of special interests, including churches. 

A national identity card with biometrics is a rational, logical and cost-effective answer to solving problems like entitlements fraud, identity theft, bogus voting, and yes, illegal immigration.  And in a time when we are trying to find ways to offset multi-trillion dollar deficits, cutting billions in waste and fraud alone this way would seem to be a no-brainer. 

Not long ago, a woman essentially kidnapped a large number of mentally-challenged and homeless people across multiple states and held them as virtual prisoners locked in a dank basement with a bucket for a toilet and little food while she collected their Social Security and welfare benefits solely for herself.  She'd successfully conned state workers into believing that she was a legal guardian of some of them.  In other instances she may have assumed their identities for the purposes of illegally claiming benefits.

Apparently nobody had the tools for, or the interest in, verifying who she was.  If they had, they'd have learned she was a convicted murderer who had served time for that crime; someone who had imprisoned, starved, and then beat to death another human being already.  

Just a wild guess here, but had there been an actual verification of her identity at some point, a lot of this might never have happened.    

It's weird that opposition to the simple idea of an absolute means to verify identity is so intense, typically framed as a “human rights” issue for the most emotional impact.   It’s been called the first step toward a Big Brother society, an invasion of privacy, and a hateful concept.  Of course, there are references to Nazi Germany, as well – a perennial top-10 choice for anything to be demonized. 

Ultimately, much of this resistance has very little to do with protecting our rights to privacy and more to do with protecting elected officials’ re-election efforts and preserving funding and power for entrenched special-interest groups. 

In addition, no politician wants to take the risk of alienating Hispanic voters, dead voters, vacant-lot voters, or being accused of being discriminatory to other minorities – legally dead or alive – by demanding valid documentation for anything.

But mostly it’s about avoiding the reality of who is entitled to benefits and who isn’t. 

A great example is the recent census exercise.  The government wanted to know when you went to work and when you got home, and the number of bathrooms in your house.  But it was afraid to ask you if you were a U.S. citizen. 

Several cities now prohibit even asking if someone is a citizen.  The Feds and the cities would rather not know.  That’s because government dollars for programs are often allocated to cities and states based on population; schools get state and Federal dollars based on the number of students they have enrolled.  The bigger that number, the more dollars you get.  If you started disallowing some of those numbers through identity checks, funding would drop.  The gravy train would end for many programs. 

That’s why we can’t get to a national identity card.   It’s all about money.  And power. 

      There’s only so much money in the world; the more you print, the less it’s worth
A currency is only worth what it’s worth by comparing what it buys to other currencies.

A stronger dollar means it takes more of someone else’s currency to buy things priced in dollars and fewer dollars to buy things priced in another currency.  So a stronger dollar also means fewer dollars buy more foreign goods, making those cheaper to U.S. customers, but also making U.S. products more expensive around the world.  

A weaker dollar is the reverse; U.S. goods are cheaper around the world, and foreign goods are more expensive here. 

That’s about it. 

However, if you simply print more dollars – as we are doing now – each dollar is worth less, so it takes more dollars to buy practically everything here and abroad because of our integration into the global economy.  

This Econ 101 primer appears to be lost on our politicians and those who report on what those politicians are doing.  While our government prints more dollars, making each one worth less and eventually driving prices up, it’s also selling promises of dollars in the future through bond sales.  

The only way the Feds can obtain more dollars – without printing them – is primarily through taxes, tariffs, and sales or leases of government-controlled assets.  Oh, and by “borrowing” them from other funds like Social Security.   That’s what the big debate over the debt ceiling was really all about, once you get past the posturing on both sides:  raising the ceiling gave the government the ability to borrow more money, mainly from abroad, when it can barely cover the interest payments on the debt it already has. 

      There really are two groups of Americans
The divide is not between Republican and Democrats, or the rich and the poor.  Or the young and the old.  Or workers in the private sector and those in the public sector. 

It’s a more fundamental division. 

One side generally accepts the rules and moves to change the rules if they disagree with them, believes there is a right and a wrong, and takes responsibility and feels remorse if they commit a wrong.  The other side believes that gaming the rules is not only acceptable but admirable, it’s okay to ignore rules they don’t agree with, right or wrong depends entirely on the situation, and you are only responsible and should feel guilty if you get caught. 

 When someone beats the system on a technicality, one side senses injustice; the other side cheers. 

With such disparate perspectives, there’s no common ground for one side to engage the other – they cannot understand the other’s views and they might as well be speaking different languages, or on different planets. 

The only thing that brings both sides together – albeit briefly – is a common threat, like a natural or man-made disaster.  Even then, that bond is always fleeting, because while one side will be seeking solutions, the other will be seeking someone else to blame. 

      “Tax the rich but don’t tax me” doesn’t work
There will never be enough money coming in to satisfy everyone who wants something from the government.  Intuitively, we all know that.  But politicians and the public will always want something more for free.  And also someone else to pay for that free stuff.     
 
Most of us know that “the rich” are already paying the lion’s share of taxes – as they pretty much have for decades.  A lot of politicians and the media like to point out that 60% of the public is in favor of the rich paying even higher taxes – their “fair share,” according to some. 

However, the real problem is not that the rich aren’t paying enough; it’s that so many Americans aren’t paying any Federal income taxes at all. 

That’s not because people are poor, but because Congress has created so many tax credits, exemptions and other breaks to reduce taxes effectively to zero for up to 47% of all taxpayers; in fact, the majority of those tax breaks go to the middle class. 

Meanwhile Congress continues to spend more than the Feds collect in revenue primarily because politicians love to bask in the glow of giving free stuff away to their constituents, as well as to appear to be “doing something” about a problem by throwing money at it. 

So both sides – revenue and spending – have to be addressed.  Increasing revenue is always easier for politicians to deal with – just raise taxes – but on whom?  Right now, the target is the “rich” because it’s always easier to demonize them than to face reality.

The simple answer is not just higher taxes on the rich; there aren’t enough “rich” to make that much of a difference, even if you took 100% of their money. 

The honest answer is that everybody needs to pay more taxes, as long as Congress keeps spending more and more. 

      A “moderate” is just someone who mostly agrees with your political beliefs
If you’re a Democrat, a Republican who shares your beliefs is a “moderate”; if you’re a Republican, a Democrat who shares your beliefs is a “moderate.” 

Nobody is “extreme” except the other guy with whom you most disagree; then “far left” liberal and “right-wing” conservative become terms of contempt.

There is bias in all media – some to the left and some to the right – which is why conservatives howl at anyone who describes The New York Times as a “middle-of-the-road” newspaper and others howl when Fox News presents itself as “fair and balanced.” 

In most cases, the media know their audience demographics well, what their audiences want, and they deliver it, because viewers and readers bring ratings and circulation, which mean ad revenue, the manna that sustains their enterprise. 

So that’s how you can see a Republican that other Republicans despise for not following the party’s orthodoxy called a “moderate” by the NYT, MSNBC, CNN and others.  And a Democrat other Democrats despise for not following their party’s orthodoxy called a “moderate” by The Wall Street Journal and Fox News.

Most politicians at the Federal level are shameless whores  
Honest whores only sell what is theirs to sell.  Politicians sell what is not theirs to sell, and they do it in return for a pittance – they will support legislation wasting millions in taxpayer dollars in exchange for a $5,000 campaign contribution. 

That makes them not only shameless whores, selling any vestige of dignity and self-respect  for money, but also shameless whores with no business sense – a deadly combination in whose hands to place the running of our government.  

Republicans and Democrats both pander to special interest groups for the money they need to wage their campaigns.  The same groups then get to help shape their respective platforms and policies in return. 

While the needs of the special interests are served – often at great expense to the taxpayers – the resulting platforms and policies leave most Americans cold. 

That’s why self-described Republicans are only about 29% of the voting public; self-described Democrats are only about 31%. 

People unaffiliated with either party – independents – decide elections. 

So even after Republicans and Democrats have sliced and diced the electorate along party, racial, ethnic, gender, gender preference, economic, age and religious lines for maximum advantage, they still need to appeal to independents to win anything. 

And therein lies the problem: 

Like most Americans, independents want some of this and some of that and none of the extreme stuff; neither party is willing to change what they promised their special interests, much less turn off their more extremist wings who dominate the selection of candidates.

The result is that most modern elections are now decided by people choosing between the least offensive candidates representing each party, rather than choosing someone they really feel will actually represent their interests and the best interests of the nation. 

We settle for mediocrity, and the system remains unchanged. 

The last election was more about government spending than taxes

      Most people are okay with the amount of Federal taxes they now pay.  Certainly they don’t want them to go up, but that’s not really the issue. 

People are far more upset about how their taxes are wasted on what they perceive as useless programs and projects, especially those that seem to have no purpose except to appease some small constituency or some legislator’s buddies or district. 

Now “pork” is in the eye of the beholder; one man’s pork is another’s fulfillment of a need.  However, there’s a general perception that it’s way out of control.

One view is that the only way to stop the most egregious misuse of public money is to cut the flow of it to the government – essentially starving it into submission.  This strategy will never work as long as the government can print more money and sell more bonds. 

Another strategy is to “shrink” the size of government, which is promoted as a way of cutting costs and improving efficiency.  No one wants to admit this, but shrinking the government also inherently means cutting government jobs across the country, including those in legislators’ own districts… something unattractive to both parties.  For the Republicans, it adds to unemployment and makes them appear heartless and insensitive; for Democrats, it means a loss of public sector union jobs, an important political base. 

It also means cutting programs and agencies, which are the foundation of political empires and the back door ways of achieving political goals without the nuisance of public approval. 

A lot of Democrats are eager to cut defense spending, until they see that it means closing bases in their state, or reducing employment in their local industries.  Republicans are eager to cut departments they disagree with – like the departments of Energy, Education, and the EPA – but there are political consequences to cutting those, too. 

Nobody wants to cut the largest areas of expense – entitlement programs – although some are open to changes to restrain their growth.  Few currently in office are prepared to take the hard steps to reduce government spending, pork projects and earmarks and the population knows it. 

The revolution in the last election that threw out many long-term politicians was a message sent by voters that they may be ready for the hard choices, but hope different people will make better decisions on what to cut and where.