Social Security and Medicare are so popular they are commonly known as the “third rail” of politics. Any politician who touches them gets a nasty shock. The politically smart thing for decades has been to periodically increase benefits and not worry too much about adequately funding these supposedly self-sufficient programs
Congress designates SS/Medicare as non-discretionary spending, which allows even fiscal conservatives to earnestly explain that Congress is unable to touch them, not even to reduce the benefit increases they themselves bestowed in the past. Of course, this is ridiculous since Congress could legally eliminate the programs if it chose to do so (not recommended).
As the population has aged and birth rates have fallen, SS/Medicare have descended into serious financial distress. This year, the programs will spend $69 billion more than they take in. The programs’ trustees recently moved the date for expected insolvency up to 2031 for Medicare, 2034 for Social Security.
Yet there is little acknowledgment from the political class that a problem exists. To acknowledge it creates a mandate for making highly unpopular choices. Even Donald Trump, the would be “conservative” leader, has decreed that no part of making America great again will involve touching our major entitlements. The endless quest for re-election continues to dominate decision making in Washington.
Even beyond entitlements, America has a spending problem. The federal government spends about 25% of GDP but only takes in revenues of 19%. The rest is charged off to future generations. With interest rates returning to normal levels, federal debt service will soon exceed $1 trillion a year, roughly what we spend to defend our country.
Why do we continue to spend so recklessly in times of peace and prosperity? It’s partly our perverse politics, where spenders dare opponents to suggest fiscal reforms and then rip them for bringing it up.
It’s also a mindset. Not long ago, families were considered the primary caregivers for each other. It was contemptible to neglect your own.
Americans today believe they are entitled to have government assume what were formerly family duties. Politicians gain millions of grateful dependents and family structure suffers, but there’s no going back.
Federal decision-makers have adopted an all-purpose solution to the problems that plague us: throw dollars at it. Schools failing? Send money. Semiconductor industry struggling? More money. People still living in poverty? Appropriate even more money. Money papers over our problems but affords no actual solutions.
Nobody even talks about the monetary implications of our ongoing border crisis. Over seven million mostly unskilled illegal immigrants breached our borders. Immediately upon successfully registering their fraudulent asylum claims, they expect food, shelter, medical care, transportation, eventually education, and social services all without a thought of paying for them.
The direct and indirect costs are incalculable, but California already reports annual direct expenses of $21.76 billion while Texas pays $8.8 billion and Arizona $3.2 billion.
Yet Democrats contend only more money can solve the problem. Biden and border czar Kamala Harris claim Republicans are responsible for the border mess because they once blocked further spending increases, even though the money goes to accommodate more illegal immigration. It’s time to end this massive farce and lawfully control the border. Democrats will have to find some less costly way to recruit future voters.
Our response to the COVID epidemic was another giant boondoggle. There wasn’t much to do about the virus. Protect the vulnerable, treat the ill, develop a vaccine, and allow it to run its course.
Instead, we embraced an orgy of spending. Trillions went to infrastructure improvements, solar energy, daycare, schools, businesses, and even individuals, all inexplicably in the name of COVID. It didn’t affect the course of the disease, but our descendants will pay for this spree far into the future.
It gets worse. In 2025, the spending caps on Obamacare and other discretionary items are set to expire as are the low interest bonds the government issued when money was cheap. There will be tremendous pressure to spend yet more just to maintain the spending status quo.
Thomas Jefferson, 250 years ago, extolled the benefits of a “wise and frugal” government. We didn’t listen. We will soon wish we had.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
In a speech following 9/11, President Bush assured us that in spite of this terrorist attack, all humans deep in their hearts long for freedom and brotherhood. It’s a comforting sentiment, but it’s not true.
Radical Islamists openly proclaim their disdain for freedom as another decadent Western value. Iranian street crowds commonly chant “Death to America.” They are deadly serious. Radicalized Muslims think and behave so radically different than we do that we keep dangerously misjudging them and making massive blunders in our adversarial dealings with them (think Iran nuclear deal).
Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a leading Muslim reformer, recently explained in the pages of the Arizona Republic that not all Muslims are Islamists. Some are moderate, even members of secular political movements such as the Iranian Women’s Revolution. But Islamists are the dominant side of the House of Islam, in part due to their massive financing by oil-rich Persian Gulf tribes. This allows them to control Islamic propaganda and education.
For Islamists, the sole purpose of life is complete submission to the will of Allah, as interpreted by their imams and scholars. Unfortunately for the world, what Allah wants is nothing short of complete domination, the establishment of a hegemonic caliphate and the subjugation of all non-Muslims.
Thus, the life of an Islamist is an unceasing war or “jihad” in pursuit of this ultimate goal. No boundaries are acknowledged in this quest. Kidnapping, beheading, rape, murder of innocent civilians, including their own, torture and atrocities of all kinds are not even deemed regrettable but are applauded.
These Islamists don’t fight wars for traditional reasons. They don’t battle for independence, territory, resources, or national pride. Their single goal is annihilation or subjugation of their enemies, which the Quran defines as all non-believers, especially Jews.
The problematic response of America and the West to this religion-based violence is appeasement and accommodation. We can solve our differences with talks! Surely if they understood how much we are willing to concede to bring matters to a peaceful conclusion, they would work with us.
Bad idea. To the Islamist warlords, appeasement is merely a sign of weakness. It’s a green light to ramp up the aggression.
Anthony Blinken’s trip to the Middle East to beg for a cease-fire was a telling fool’s errand. It undercut our ally Israel, which is in a bilateral existential war with radical Islamists. It gives Hamas a chance to rest, recruit, and rearm. Moreover, it has zero chance of bringing about a more immediate or favorable resolution of hostilities.
Our current American leadership appears incapable of comprehending the potential mortal danger we are in. They want to believe the “bad” Muslims are only a tiny minority. They think that if we can only defeat Hamas or Al-Qaeda or whatever terrorist organization is currently rampaging, they will surrender and all will be well.
It’s not just Hamas or Hezbollah or Iran we are fighting, but an entire global mindset, a medieval anti-western ideology of evil. For each specific foe we defeat, there are always others to replace them. Jihadists actually welcome martyrdom because it assures hero status and a better afterlife.
Americans need to understand also that an important part of jihad – the imperative to eventually kill or convert – is subversion from within. Millions of immigrant Muslims worldwide have no intention of assimilating. They are taught that their duty is not to learn the ways of their new country but to infiltrate their culture and demand accommodation.
They are seeing some success. Young Americans who are the product of our inept educational system deny that Israel has the right to defend itself. Nearly half agree that the horrific war crimes of Hamas were justified. Tens of thousands fill the streets chanting for the elimination of the Jewish state. The students weren’t born with this mindset. They learned it from radicalized authority figures.
We Americans deserve to be proud of our history as a fair, compassionate member of the international community. But being a good neighbor shouldn’t require suicide.
We may not wish to be at war with Islamism, but they’re waging deadly war against us. Meanwhile, Americans fret about climate change and Islamophobia. Time to wake up.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
Arizona State University President Michael Crow believes we are in such danger that we should amend the U.S. Constitution to empower the government to deal more expansively with climate change. Dr. Crow’s view that constitutional protections of our liberties should be eliminated when they become inconvenient wouldn’t square with the founders’, but his estimate of the dangers and required remedies for our changing climate are quite mainstream.
“Net-zero by 2050” has become an article of faith among our corporate and academic elites, no longer requiring proof or intellectual defense. The notion that we must eliminate all carbon emissions by mid-century if we want to save the planet is the organizing principle for environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) investing. In 2022, it was mentioned more than 6,000 times in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The SEC has helpfully proposed climate disclosure rules to help investors “evaluate the progress in meeting net-zero emissions and assessing any associated risk.” Skeptics are sidelined as “climate deniers.”
But mounting scientific evidence suggests that net-zero is wildly impractical and probably not even achievable. In September, the Electric Power Research Institute, the research arm of the U.S. electric power industry (which would seem to be naturally inclined to support proposals which increase reliance on electricity), released a sober report on the practicality of net-zero.
Their study concluded that “clean electricity plus direct electrification and efficiency…are not sufficient by themselves to achieve net-zero economy-wide emissions.” Translation: it can’t be done. No amount of wind turbines, solar panels, battery power, fossil fuel, or other available technologies will achieve net-zero by 2050.
Furthermore, even “deep carbonization”– drastic reductions in atmospheric carbon levels – is an impossible dream. With natural gas and nuclear generation forced to the sidelines, that would require options like carbon removal technologies, which would cost a quadrillion (million billion) dollars, which would…well, you get the picture.
Finally, the report concludes that living in a net-zero world may not be all that great. Supply chains operating only on electricity and the reliability and resiliency of a net-zero electricity grid could be highly problematic.
The response to this nonpartisan and obviously consequential report was silence. There has been essentially no media coverage. No climate activists rushed to dispute the methodology nor challenge the conclusions.
This is a significant tell. You could assume if the eco-activists were genuinely concerned about our climate future, they would have some interest in responding to this major challenge to their assumptions. But they ignored it to cling to their groupthink.
Yet other indications that the transition to renewable fuels is already off the tracks keep coming. The government-certified North American Electric Reliability Corp recently issued its 2022 Long-Term Reliability Assessment. NERC concluded that fossil fuel plants were being removed from the grid too quickly to meet electricity demand, putting us at risk for energy shortages and even blackouts during extreme weather.
But wait, there’s more. PJM Interconnection, a large grid operator in the Northeast, recently released projections indicating it will soon lose 40,000 MW, 21% of its generation capacity. The looming plant closures are mostly “policy driven” by onerous EPA regulations and mandatory ESG commitments.
Renewables, although lavishly subsidized to replace the lost electricity, consistently underperform and will be able to produce, at most, half of the electricity lost. Meanwhile the government is perversely mandating electric vehicles, appliances, and whatever.
Finally, the repeated assertions of settled science were unsettled by 1,609 scientists and professors worldwide signing a “No Climate Emergency” declaration. The document was issued by Climate Intelligence or Clintel, a nonpartisan self-funded, independent organization of scholars whose only agenda is “to generate knowledge and understanding of the causes and effects of climate change and climate policy.”
They point out that there is no basis for claiming an upcoming existential crisis. Carbon dioxide is not primarily a pollutant but a necessary basis for life. Moreover, there is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying natural disasters. Panic is dangerous, with the potential to plunge us into perpetual poverty.
They charge that climate science has degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on “self-critical science.” Historians of the future, reflecting on our era of hyper-politicized science, will undoubtedly agree.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
American school children are taught that they are being raised in a democracy, where elected officials pass the laws, bureaucrats administer the laws, and government workers dutifully carry them out.
That’s a crock. Americans at this time are mostly governed under rules generated by an unelected bureaucracy, the so called “dark state.” Worse, personnel and financial matters are controlled by the workers themselves through their government unions. The rest of us are left out of the loop.
It was in the 1960s, at the height of the “rights” revolution, that 38 states and the federal government first granted government unions the right to collective bargaining. Curiously, government workers already had civil service protections, and there were no abusive work conditions needing reform. Government employees were considered to have a moral duty to protect the public interest, not bargain against it.
Since the door was cracked open, there has been a relentless torrent of workers’ rights and benefits. In every bargaining cycle, workers win so many concessions from the bosses they elect that government managers no longer really manage. Unions do.
There are consequences. Baltimore schools have received heavy criticism for having 23 schools last year without a single student proficient (i.e., barely adequate) in math. Baltimore is hardly alone. Chicago had 37 schools last year with zero students proficient in either math or English and many other urban school districts have similar records of failure.
Normally, administrators faced with a crisis of this magnitude would radically overhaul their operations and personnel. But because of union controls, political leaders, school boards, and administrators are essentially powerless to make meaningful changes. In Illinois, an 18-year study found two out of 95,000 teachers were terminated for poor performance. The dismissal rate in California, the home of multiple failing districts, is even lower. In fact, almost every teacher is rated as excellent.
The disastrous closing of the schools during COVID and the attendant learning loss were also totally union-inspired. Long after it was well known that children were at minimal risk from COVID, intransigent unions refused to return to the classroom. The educational damage callously inflicted on our school children is a national shame.
Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd, igniting racial riots worldwide, was a known bad actor with multiple complaints in his record. But the police chief lacked authority to terminate or even reassign him. Union-imposed “due process” for police typically precludes interviewing the officer until he views all witness statements, then multiple hearings and reviews, and finally a chance for reprieve from union-selected arbitrators.
The process is so daunting that many supervisors don’t even try to address bad behavior. Of the 2,600 complaints against Minneapolis police officers in the prior decade, just 12 resulted in disciplinary actions, none of them severe. This inability to discipline rogue officers is a major contributor to the undeserved poor public image plaguing many police departments.
The outsized influence of unions has a single source: their ability to financially influence elections. Public unions in America collect about $5 billion in compulsory dues annually or $20 billion per election cycle. So, for example, newly elected Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who will head the “management” team in union negotiations, received over 90% of his campaign funding from public unions, assuring the talks will go smoothly.
The captive New York legislature passed 21 bills to enhance public employee benefits in 2021 alone. In California, union-mandated rules are so lax that last year, 3,600 state employees received $100,000 each in overtime pay, very little of it legitimate overtime. In Illinois, a state that would declare bankruptcy if it were a private enterprise, Governor J.B. Pritzker settled his political debts with a 19.28% raise for 35,000 state employees.
Put simply, government unions have used collective bargaining and campaign cash to seize effective control of government and run it for their own benefit. A Republican government can’t work if authorities selected through the democratic process don’t have the ability to do their jobs.
We need to find fearless leaders who will have the guts to take on the unions and once again restore government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
At the end of the Cold War in 1989, the common understanding was that, with the emergence of the United States as the world’s single superpower, an era of order and peace would ensue. The perpetual struggle between nations vying for hegemonic dominance was over.
America had won, and the world was better for it. Compared to Nazis, Communists, Islamists, and others seeking control, America, as the world’s leading democracy, was clearly the least self-seeking and most committed to the common welfare.
It hasn’t worked out that way. Unfortunately, over the ensuing decades, Americans have elected a series of manifestly unqualified leaders. Two undistinguished leaders of small southern states, two scions of a well-respected family with limited leadership instincts, and a leftist “community organizer” who had been an inconsequential member of a state legislature, but who orated well and wore great suits.
We most recently elected a lifelong politician with a reputation as an incompetent plagiarizer and a weakness for outrageous lying and corruption. At this writing, he seems set for a rematch in the next election against another incumbent who must be one of the most incurious, entitled, and self-absorbed people to ever achieve high office.
Elections have consequences. America’s record of electing mediocre-at-best leaders has created a world very different from 1989. America’s standing in the world has sharply declined. Competition and chaos once again dominate international affairs.
America’s leaders no longer understand the critical importance of peace through strength. Instead, they seem to believe that successful statecraft is based on accommodation and concession. In a nuclear world, acting forcefully with enemies is just too risky. Better to make nice with autocrats and hope not to rile them up.
So, we get the contrivances of “leading from behind” and “red lines” which disappear when needed to obscure the lack of resolve. Autocrats just read the concessions as weakness. Allies learn to not depend on us.
For example, by 2010, the U.S. was on the verge of a lasting victory in the Iraq war, which had been brokered by the Bush administration. But Obama, in his eagerness to respond to America’s war-weariness, botched the job.
He needlessly interfered in an Iraqi election, destroying the fragile coalition that had contained the terrorists. Then he mishandled the withdrawal of U.S. troops, ignoring the agreements that had been forged with the Iraqis. The result was the collapse of American goals in Iraq and the resurgence of Islamist terrorism. A new organization called ISIS was inflicted on the world
In August 2021, President Biden ordered the immediate evacuation of troops and personnel from Kabul to end the Afghanistan War, based, he said, on the advice of senior U.S. military officers and information that a collapse of the Afghan government was highly unlikely. But no such advice was actually given.
Instead, Biden’s haste to end the war without proper preparation squandered 20 years of American blood and sacrifice. Thirteen U.S. service members were killed in a terrorist attack, hundreds of Americans were abandoned, and our trusted interpreters and local advisers were left in the lurch.
Military weaponry worth billions was simply abandoned as the Taliban once again assumed de facto control of the country. Sharia law and Islamist oppression of women resumed. Biden to this day insists he did nothing wrong.
America also regularly folds like an accordion in hostage negotiations. The deserter Bowe Bergdahl and basketball star Brittney Griner were both exchanged for pennies on the dollar in strategic value.
Recently, our negotiating geniuses agreed to swap five higher-value Iranian military personnel for five American civilians—and we even sweetened the pot by releasing $6 billion to the Iranians, which could only be used for humanitarian efforts.
Whoops! The Iranians immediately announced they would use the funds for whatever they pleased, including enriching uranium ore to near weapons-grade levels. State Department spokesman John Kirby explained that the deal was “the best we could achieve.” The impotent superpower was humbled once again.
In a democracy, voters get what they deserve. Our leaders’ obvious mistakes are ours for electing them.
America needs to elect leaders who are principled, competent, and decisive. Our next chance is coming up in 2024. It could be our last.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
