Fixing the US Defense Budget

Housebreaking the Department of Defense

The Pentagon as the "Perpetual Puppy"

Chewing up shoes for all eternity...every shoe, every day.

Puppy eats elephant. No, really. [image]

Many of the visitors to this blog have at some point been the "proud parents" of a new puppy. What almost inevitably following such a wonderful addition to home life was a tumultuous period of all sorts of "puppy inflicted" damages. However, all through this series of relatively brief ordeals there remained the comforting thought that just as soon as this puppy had time to resolve its teething and pooping problems, it would emerge as a wonderfully well mannered, housebroken adult.

Not so with the now eternally reoccurring, perpetually expanding Pentagon budget. Perhaps even worse, we find ourselves strangely complacent each time an even larger annual bite is taken from the General Fund. With respect to the Pentagon we have -- long ago -- simply become quite "used to the abuse." The analogy to the puppy contains an important point: "we don't simply get used to what the puppy is doing."

Visitors to this blog [and to many other blogs] have already heard plenty about the bloated "National

Notice the effect of the
 2009 stimulus. [NationalPriorities]

Defense" budget which emerges from our Congress year after year. There is no shortage of complaints. Most of them are usually met with vacuous explanations about the "cruelty of fate" which compel us to spend money almost without limit.

Add to this the fact that the tax revenue being directed to military spending also is coming from a new source -- middle class tax payers. The tax burden which supports all these increasing defense budgets now comes from individual tax payers. Previously, corporate taxes provided a much larger portion.

"Darn. This Defense Department budget IS a lot, but there is absolutely nothing else we can possibly do. The rest of the world hates us -- just listen to your radio or television."

Don't forget why the General Fund has made
money so tight. [NationalPriorities]

At any awkward moment when these gaseous justifications falter, the American corporate media immediately rushes forth with another wave of panic and fear mongering. If there is no "clear and present danger" lurking somewhere around the globe, the "news editors" masquerading as "patriots of the Fourth Estate" will desperately snatch practically anything, embellish it robustly and pump it out to the information challenged tax payers to prepare them to eagerly make another "love offering" to the already over stuffed Pentagon and its "hangers-on."

Of course there's no telling where the "final destination" of such "love offerings" might be -- some of them manifest in quite visible results such as F35 fighters, new war ships and the like, but plenty of other "love offerings" seem to simply evaporate somewhere in the bowels of the Pentagon never to be seen again.

MeanMesa is certain that by this time the blog's valued visitors are already cringing at the prospect of a thousand pages of charts and graphs about the Pentagon budget through the years, military budgets of other countries and so on. However tempting that might be, straight out complaints and outrage about the bloated defense budget are not the point to be made in this post. [We'll settle for just a couple more right here to illustrate the size of the military budget. It doesn't take many too completely express this point.]

Reduction in US Defense Spending Following Recent Conflicts [Recent History of US Defense Budget]

Check the labels. These are "Discretionary Spending"
Spending less on the military = spending more on the rest. [image source]

[Note the anticipated impact of the sequester on military spending. This was the result of tea party demand to cut all federal spending other than entitlements required by law to be sustained at legislated levels. Even at the reduced rate which resulted from the sequester, the US military expenditures are so large that they still continue to completely overshadow all the international "competition."]

Now then, any visitor here old enough to tie his shoes knows quite well what should be expected once any talk whatsoever emerges about cutting defense spending. We have all seen such efforts in the past, and we have watched the painful denouement of such forward thinking inspirations as they were patiently devoured by gangs of Congressmen and lobbyists. The "head on" approach has never really produced much in terms of favorable results in recent decades.

MeanMesa suspects that a central obstacles encountered by any plan to "move" the status quo are, at least, two fold:

1. We, as taxpayers, are accustomed to the defense budget gobbling up everything it can swallow -- which is pretty much everything.
2. Just a little reflection on our own behavior during this same time reveals that we can be frightened back into reverting to these crippling, historic rates of defense spending growth. In fact, we have been, curiously, "re-frightened" every time any sort of populous movement begins to politically threaten that "level of growth."

Nonetheless, at the time of this posting in September of 2015 we see the results of cutting most of the other "normal" government expenditures to the level of a bone chilling austerity. There is little to be gained from posting a litany of everything that is falling apart because the US government has essentially abandoned the reasonable needs of every citizen who doesn't employ a lobbyist.

We are all driving on roads and bridges which are falling apart. We are sending our children to public schools which are falling apart. Even with the ACA the nation's medical status remains precarious. The economy has been transformed into a third world chaos where most Americans are living on credit. Most young college graduates are carrying a five or six digit student loan debt. The list can be extended almost ad infinitum.

The MeanMesa Plan - NOT a "Head On" Approach

Well, at least not an exclusively, traditional "head on" approach.

Before anything else, an important disclaimer must be added at this point. The plan IS NOT entirely MeanMesa's, at all. A caller to the Thom Hartmann Show -- one of MeanMesa's favorites -- proposed this last week. [The Thom Hartmann Show, KABQ 1350 AM, Albuquerque, 10 AM to 1 PM, weekdays]

This great caller offered the proposal that the US defense budget should be "politically" set as a percentage of the over all federal expenditures for each year. She went on to suggest that the budget levels of other important federal expenditures be "tied" to the defense budget in the same way.

Terms are important. By the use of the term, "politically," MeanMesa means that the percentage of the federal budget allocated for the military would become a highly "political" factor in the policy and corresponding campaign platform of candidates for the White House and the Congress. Further, by use of the term, "important," MeanMesa means "important" to tax paying voters living in the country -- roads, bridges, school, health care and so on. Of course national security is important to American voters, but the division of discretionary resources [below] pretty well maps out how important we consider these various matters to be. The huge amount of resources dedicated to military spending reflects the "decision" we've made as we compared the importance of military spending to the other categories shown on the chart.

When we "face facts," the question being posed here is whether or not this giant military budget is THAT important? Remember, we are not comparing this military budget to no military budget at all. We are comparing the size of the respective budgets to determine if this distribution of resources is really consistent with what we want and need.

Now it's time to insert a nice collection of charts and graphs. [Blogger happens to be in a failure state right now, so MeanMesa's apology for the awkward formatting.]

The President's "2015 Discretionary Spending" Budget

Check the labels. These are considered discretionary. [NationalPriorities]

This chart [above] shows the size of the military budget compared to all the other allocated budgets to handle the "other important" matters to be paid for by the government.

The Proposed 2016 Budget includes actual cost figures.
[NationalPriorities]

It is interesting that all these smaller "Discretionary Spending" items turn out to be precisely the budget areas which draw the most criticism and complaints from Americans dissatisfied with roads, bridges, health care, Social Security and the rest. The task at hand is to decrease the size of the military allocation and redistribute the savings from the reduction to the other categories.

But how could anything like this ever survive its perilous journey through the Congress?

That Congress has already very clearly demonstrated its complete lack of interest is directing tax money to issues which actually matter to tax payers. That Congress is working for someone else, and the identity of that "someone else" is no longer much of a mystery.

Even the designation of certain expenditures as "Discretionary" represents an out dated paradigm waiting to be fractured. For example, who considers domestic infrastructure maintenance to be a "discretionary" budget item? Certainly not the Americans paying to repair their cars after hitting a bottomless pot hole.

The United States has a long list of "things" it must do, but -- as is seen in these pie charts -- all it seems to actually be doing is expanding a military capability which is already too big to even be useful and...caring for a particularly vicious crop of extremely well connected, extremely ill tempered, utterly rapacious billionaires. [Billionaires who also happen to own every word not uttered by the entire domestic media, lock, stock and barrel.]

Dividing the pot, but not the paradigm.
[NationalPriorities]

The entire $1.5 Tn "Discretionary Spending" [shown above] becomes the "orange area" of the total spending proposal [shown to the right]. Note that National Debt interest represents roughly one fifth as much as all discretionary spending in the budget proposal.

The fascinating division of the "pie" explains that legislatively mandated expenditures are items such as Social Security and Medicare payments while the division [and size] of "everything else" is decided by the Congress. This is a problem, and it is explicitly the "problem paradigm" mentioned before.

Since practically the first days of the nation the Congress has enjoyed "full access" to all these "discretionary parts," and for decades these parts have represented the "private Congressional looting grounds" from which literally dynastic wealth has been relentlessly extracted from the tax payers year after year. Although the paradigm is, indeed, historic, the rate of extraction has never been as high as it is currently running -- not even in the era of the Robber Barons.

Discretionary, Interest and Mandatory budgeting
 sections detailed and  shown all together.
[NationalPriorities]

When we look at the entire federal budget as proposed by the President, it is tempting to complain that Barack Obama has accomplished very little in his efforts to change the dimensions of the "juggernaut" is many significant ways, but this would actually be rather unfair. In reality this President has managed to make a few very positive "minor adjustments," but the sheer budgetary inertia of the monster -- coupled with ravaging greed of a Congress being paid very well to maintain it in this state -- has made making more substantial changes almost impossible.

So, what's left for tax payers? How can anyone possibly "bend this curve?"

It turns out that we have to solve this the same way that we solve other things -- by making it politically necessary to solve it. There are no lobbyists working to restore the things that American voters have lost to the looting frenzy of the oligarchs' Congressional austerity monkeys, so we will have to accomplish this the old fashioned way -- at the polls.

Smashing the "Money Always Wins" Political Paradigm

Tricking voters becomes even cheaper when

 it no longer requires the purchase of bread and circuses.

Sadly, perhaps, the first thing we think of when we contemplate the "winning at the polls" idea is that the folks who are now consistently winning at the polls are, in fact, winning primarily because they have so much money to "invest" in it. All of that "investment" money only works for them because it is able to "deliver" election victories. This is another paradigm which must be completely smashed if the democracy is to be restored.

Happily, it can be.

The necessity of actually winning an election represents the last bastion of the democracy that hasn't been undercut by all the money and media of those fantasizing the final, complete usurpation of the democracy. Now it's high time to show the billionaires that "two can play that game."

[Sanders has officially shown us that this is how we can meet the challenge facing us. Now, we have to breathe this approach into every Congressional District and Senatorial campaign in the country by 2016.]

The primary reason that billionaire money can be so effective has everything to do with what is being demanded by voters as they consider which candidates to support. They are, very clearly, not demanding nearly enough. MeanMesa has listened to the endless blather offered up by the current crop of well financed GOP candidates. It is almost entirely gaseous rhetoric about "liberty," "security," "greatness," "prosperity" and so on, and it -- emphasizing the notable exception of what Sanders is doing -- is devoid of policy proposals or even flimsy political platforms which provide even a hint of "what might happen" if this or that candidate is actually elected.

How can the demand for more concrete policy proposals be returned to these political campaigns? How can voters demand that politicians "get specific" about their intentions if elected? 

The MeanMesa "Pie Chart" Solution

Redirecting campaigns to the politics of democracy

Because the outcome of electing a specific candidate to run the government -- whether in the White House or the Congress -- is determined largely by the spending decisions which will be made once in office, spending decisions must become a central element in the campaigns. However, spending decisions can become incredibly complex -- so complicated that campaign promises about them [if there even any made during a campaign] -- are intentionally avoided when election politics is "running hot."

Yet, it is precisely these spending decisions which have the most influence on the voters as an elected official's term wears on after the election. Why not make these decisions the "pivotal axis" of the campaign?

Contemporary political "debates" are hardly debates at all. Most of the time they become "cameo appearance opportunities" annotated by laughably vacuous discussions of, you guessed it, "liberty," "security," "greatness," "prosperity" and so on. But, if voters demanded that political campaigns be centered on proposals concerning discretionary spending, those "debates" might suddenly grow teeth.

MeanMesa would be far more interested in two competing candidates "debating" about whether military spending should be 55% or 35% and whether education spending should be 10% or 5%. The voter watching such discourse being conducted between opposing candidates would have actual specifics about exactly what could be expected in the months and years following the election.

What political campaigns might look like
 if they were based on spending policy. [MeanMesa]

Further, if the winning candidate once installed in office, proposed budget decisions significantly contradicting these campaign pledges, a serious explanation might be required.  That's right -- an elected candidate would become accountable once in office.

It would be nice if the opposing candidates could agree on how the "four portions" would be defined, but even if they couldn't, the mere fact that this candidate selected these portions and the other candidate selected those portions would reveal more than a hundred hours of the silly "debates" ever could. However, this post is about military spending.

In the first chart [at the beginning of this post] we can see the effect of the 2009 stimulus on the crippled economy as it emerged from the Bush II Autocracy's looting binge. The diversion of billions of dollars from the currently bloated military budget -- for example, a diversion into education and infrastructure as suggested in the graph [directly above] -- would stimulate the US economy beyond the wildest dreams of most Americans while investing tax money into areas which would actually improve the standard of living -- not to mention the creation of millions of jobs not in the military industries.

For heaven's sake! Peace might break out!

[MeanMesa wishes to compliment the source providing all the research for these charts. You can visit the sites here: 

https://www.nationalpriorities.org/analysis/2014/presidents-2015-budget-in-pictures/ and 

https://blogs.lclark.edu/hart-landsberg/2015/02/09/the-federal-budget-in-pictures/]

History's Test: Modern Education

A Quick Visit to the Enterprise

Not the air craft carrier, the space ship

Indulge MeanMesa for a paragraph or two.  We can benefit from a short visit to over view a few scenes from an episode of Star Trek, in this case, from the "New Generation" series.

While Captain Picard and half a dozen children are in the turbo lift, something happens to the ship.  The Captain is injured and disabled, and the turbo lift is stuck between decks.  The children, little boys and girls attending school aboard the Enterprise in the story, are all around ten years old.

After a few minutes of dramatic acting, it is clear that the Captain is hurt too badly to solve the problem.  He asks the children if they have any ideas which might help.  A ten year old boy in the group offers [roughly] the following:

"We can reverse the polarity on the turbo's main drive coil by withdrawing the power feed injector and re-routing the main drive circuit bus.  Then we can divert the low voltage lines from the turbo cabin's passenger control bank, and feed it into the retractor mechanism to free up the lift and restore the turbo function."

[By "roughly" MeanMesa quickly admits to not having the precise script.  However, that is not the point to be made, here.]

Can we get there from here? (image source)

 We can enlarge our perspective to include an even greater body of technology at work in a day to day process.  Although the sets for an episode of Star Trek is usually contained within the ship,  Of course, there are other ships just as complex technologically as the Enterprise, but there are also farms and factories.  

In fact, according to the script, there are worlds -- many worlds.  The government behind the Enterprise isn't called the Federation of Planets for nothing.

Every tiny glimpse of such a civilization, regardless of where one might be standing at the moment, would reveal sophisticated, complicated, complex technology everywhere, performing every imaginable sort of work.  Of course, there would be computers, but connected to those computers would be a dizzying array of other equipment.

A "federation" of 23rd Century planets filled with people would require a great deal of work just to keep going, and, if the vision of Star Trek is an even somewhat reasonable estimate of future conditions, more than an elite few would need to be able to operate, program and repair all that machinery -- many more than an elite few.

More than an elite few would also be required to continue designing and creating even more sophisticated machinery as things went along -- again, many more than an elite few.

In fact, for the worlds of Star Trek's "Federation of Planets" to work, hundreds of millions or billions of people would need to be "educated" in a way quite beyond what we might think of when we said that word in 2013.  Those millions of people operating, and perhaps more importantly, understanding those billions of machines would not have found the ten year old's suggestion at all remarkable.

Technological Illiteracy

With not too much a "stretch of imagination," we arrive at a rather unsettling conclusion.

The processes of "education" being employed today could not possibly "educate" the millions or billions of Federation citizens to the level required for the civilization to function.  Our modern system would fail in two important aspects.

First, although it might be conceivable to educate a student to the far advanced level required for expertise in a number of very narrow areas of technology, but for that student to be functionally "acquainted" with a wide set of technological applications would be out of the question.

Second, the time required for a student to become thoroughly "educated" in even a few narrow fields of technology -- either fundamentals or applications -- in the current scheme amounts to decades.  The cost of such an education continually expands as the course work becomes more and more advanced, and the curriculum becomes more and more exclusive the higher the student advances.  There is neither time nor resource for broadening expertise with "out of specialty" course work.

We can easily think of these issues at the university or graduate levels, but we will also have to start thinking of the same issues at high school, junior high and elementary school levels.

Anticipating a future similar to the one we can glimpse in Star Trek episodes, we have a very bad feeling that we're really not meeting the challenge at any level.  Further, that "challenge," while it may be the case today, will not be judged in the future on any metric devised by educators or politicians.  Instead, we would watch a gradually increasing series of technological disasters as society enviously embraced the advantages of advancing technology but failed to produce citizens capable of operating it.

New Mexico, home for MeanMesa and Short Current Essays, is a contemporary example of this.  Jealous of the modern processes in other, more educated states, New Mexico has rushed precariously into the duplication of these technologically advanced societies without a population of workers with the fundamental literacy required to actually provide the staff to run them.

The examples are heart breaking, but quite immediate.

Convicted murderers are released from prison after mistakes running State record keeping software.  New Mexico drivers with a dozen DWI arrests continue to have prosecutions dismissed from a failure to schedule testimony by arresting officers.  Failure to collect property tax -- for years and after all kinds of property development -- is routinely "discovered" amid the chaos of records in an assessor's office. 

Technical manufacturing businesses that promised "local hire" percentages in incentive contracts find themselves unable to fill positions with "local labor."  Still, UNM, the State's premier university, already suffering a precariously doubtful academic standing, mindlessly divert millions from teaching resources to the athletic department.

The high school graduation rate for Albuquerque is in the 55% range.

This list of examples could be increased to an alarming length.

Perhaps most discouraging of all, this social catastrophe is comfortably accepted as a calamity without remedy.  Not only is there no promising plan to remedy it, there is no particular interest, either.

Interestingly, there is essentially no denial that our world is advancing to an exponential adoption of new technology. It will be neither a sudden discovery nor an entirely unexpected development when we find ourselves mortally reliant on the technology while unable to direct or operate its function.

The two propositions contradict each other -- they are paradoxical.  It is a paradox demanding constant service -- even among those ostensibly "wise enough" to know better.

Education Required to "Operate the Human Race"

While we have been discussing technological literacy,that is, the knowledge require to operate a civilization based on advanced technology, there is another side to what is required.  The information or wisdom of this "other side" has everything to do with furthering our collective experience as humans.

Without this, the technology itself will destroy our future -- and, probably, us, too.  We've come close enough to this in the recent past.  Thankfully, during that last episode -- nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction -- the mass of populations constituent to the folks with their fingers on the button had an understanding of this other kind of literacy adequate to dissuade their leaders.

The technological capacity to construct intercontinental ballistic missiles was, in that past encounter, balanced by knowledge originating in the likes of humanities, poetry and philosophy.

We face the consequences of a similar illiteracy today.  The voices currently defining the nature of "necessary" economy, "necessary" conditions and standards of living and other awkward contemporary "necessities" validate their models with highly technological justifications and priorities.

This headlong rush to "necessary" economic and social "efficiency" is countered by the voices placing greater value on "operating the species."  This natural inclination to demand a balance between the sides contemplating our path forward is the fundamental basis of the modern conflict.

Having said all that, it would be easy to argue that our problems derive primarily from education, that is, that education, somehow, would mitigate the conflict.

Not the kind of education we are conducting currently.

Public school or torture chamber? (image)

Disabuse yourself from any imaginary image of modern education you may have -- especially if it one which implies a process which will -- autonomously -- gradually correct itself.  The current process measures its own success in ways disturbingly similar to the disastrously artificial metric directing its efforts classrooms.

In fact, contemporary education will not only not solve this dispute, it is a primary contributor to it.  By this, MeanMesa is referring to both kinds of education -- the technical and the humane. In a social culture which MeanMesa has frequently described as one of "intellectual tyranny" the humane has, unnoticed, slipped into the role of "secondary model."

It is not.

The Paradigm of Stupidity

The ten year old in the turbo with Captain Picard didn't concentrate his studies on turbo lift mechanics.  We can assume that all manner of things are taught in the Enterprise's class rooms, yet, there he was -- quite well equipped to propose a mechanical "fix" to a situation which would have paralyzed Princeton's physics department for a decade.

To validate the title for this section, we'll need to take a hard, cold look at the education paradigm we've gradually created.  Just as is the case with very many "modern" things, we see a "free form" dinosaur creeping toward an unknown goal, moving with the inevitable inertia inevitably enjoyed by anything obsessively seeking validation from hundreds of years of questionable past performance, a crushing void of imagination and a statutory annual domestic budget of billions of dollars.

In the larger picture it has been the consistent intention of humans to value the accumulated knowledge and experience of the species and to feel absolutely compelled to share that history generously with the young.  While there may have been many incentives to expand the human understanding of just about everything, one principal motivation has been precisely this almost organic impulse to guarantee that future humans know continuously more than previous humans.

The necessary acceptance of the profound responsibility of educating the young has atrophied amid competing priorities.  The old species-wide determination to be creatures with a perpetually improving grasp on all things, all knowledge, all thought and all possibilities has ebbed, a victim of shifting values which seem committed to permanently obliterating the historic passion.

Now, we find this "chicken arriving home to roost."  The educated elite have dutifully provided the technological advances we've craved, but that craving has clearly overshadowed human "species fundamentals" with alluring trinkets.  Although now obscured in the mad rush toward even more technology, both the technical and the humane have been consumed by the allure of voracious, intermediate applications.

The "arriving chicken" may be most visible in our growing inability to balance our infatuating new toys with more mature "duties" incumbent on our basic natures, but those other areas of humane interests have accompanied that descent.  The population of humans participating in such necessary creative efforts has declined to reveal an increasingly minuscule elite class with the background fundamentals, creativity and resources to create.

The great remainder of humanity is relegated to consuming -- and occasionally, fighting over -- what has been created.

Education has been transformed in a predictable way by the collateral transformation of the basic values which have driven it historically.  The success of the process of education has been coarsely married to a new, competitive metric as if all those interested in the task were interested only in preparing consumers capable of utilizing the constant arrival of the "latest creations."

The education industry has succeeded in crushing the innovative spark with which humans have accomplished so much in our past.  The industry has also refined, groomed and mastered its new credentials of self-judgement, effectively promoting the new idea that no one else can correctly evaluate the "great success" of the "modern technique."

Considering the results, it is a well educated version of the ancient adage concerning the Emperor's new clothes.

MeanMesa will return to this topic in a future post.  It is high time for a frank discussion not on the nature of education, but rather, on the nature of knowledge.  Specifically, we can no longer avoid the physical difference in a person before and after he has learned something.  If just a few nagging technological issues can be resolved, there will be a free offering, too!

One Final Ranting Session Plus An Explanation

All right, by this time MeanMesa visitors have grown tired beyond their normal tolerance of a constant flow of postings directed at the outrageous propaganda campaign the neo-cons have waged as they pursue their nightmarish fantasy of destroying the Presidency -- or, at least, mortally wounding it until they can replace the man in the Oval Office with someone who is the right color.  Here we will present a third, final sample of what is being promoted as reckless campaign fodder for this nation wrecking undertaking of theirs.

What could be the purpose served when MeanMesa just seems to continue to harp on the same topic?

Purpose?  There is one.

 First, however, let's take a look at this final example.  It is yet another toxic email from the Freedom Works people, and it is presented here in full.

Wake Up, There Is Work to Do!

Dear Chad,

I almost didn’t get up this morning. I didn’t want to. If you feel like me today, you are physically and emotionally exhausted after a grueling 15 month battle against the Democrats’ hostile takeover of our health care. The tactics they employed to get it done were unlike any I have seen in my 25 years in Washington. Lies, threats, payola, willful ignorance, duplicity, and smears: we saw it all this past week as Nancy Pelosi did whatever it took to pass multi-trillion dollar legislation that will increase the size and reach of government in ways unseen since LBJ.

The taxes will be devastating to economic recovery, hitting capital, small businesses making as little as $200,000, and lower income individuals (with a tax of over $2,000 dollars should you refuse to buy their mandated product) with equal disregard for fairness and economic consequences. The spending in this bill is astronomical, totaling $2.5 trillion in the first 10 years of full implementation. The health insurance industry will become a big, faceless, grossly inefficient government-controlled utility. It, not you, will determine your plan, how much you will pay for it, and the services and treatments that you will receive should you get sick. ObamaCare: harmful tax hikes, massive deficit spending, less health care for those that need it, and no patient choice.

The American people rejected this scheme a long time ago. They rejected it at the August town halls last year, and when they marched – one million strong -- on September 12th. They rejected it again – Republicans, Democrats and Independents alike -- by electing Scott Brown in Massachusetts, denying Harry Reid the key 60th vote he needed to pass ObamaCare on a party line basis. They rejected it again yesterday, with polls showing consistent majorities against it.

For all of these reasons, I almost didn’t get out of bed this morning. I’m tired. But then I started to think about everything that still needs to be done, and my adrenaline surged. As the great moral philosopher Warren Zevon once said: “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” So I got up, had several cups of coffee and wrote down just a few of the things to still be done:

First, we need to keep fighting this legislative battle to the end, and that means fighting Senator Reid’s desire to use “reconciliation,” an expedited budget process requiring only 51 votes, wholly inappropriate for passing a new entitlement program of this magnitude. Senate Democrats refused to meet with the parliamentarian before the House vote this weekend, because Republicans have found problems that make enacting the promised House changes problematic under reconciliation rules.

The American people reject the use of this procedural gimmick for such a massive and unpopular bill. Over 300,000 have already signed our petition site, NoHealthCareReconciliation.com, opposing it. The Republican Study Committee has compiled comments from our petition and published them, demonstrating the superior wisdom of the American people broken out by congressional district, on this matter. Control of the Senate is now in play, and we need to turn the pressure up more on this important vote.

Second, we need to take the battle for health care freedom to the states, where there is a movement catching fire to refuse ObamaCare, state by state. This past week, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Idaho joined a number of other states that reject the unfunded costs, the onerous mandate and the very principle of taking health care choice away from individual patients. This needs to become a 50 state effort, and we will be asking every governor and every state legislator where they stand, and to take a vocal stand against a federal government takeover of health care. This year's tax day protests are a great opportunity to make our voices heard once again, in massive numbers.

Third, we need to take this battle to the Supreme Court and repeal the individual mandate, which is the figurative gun to the head of every American enforcing this government takeover. Most serious legal scholars believe that it is unconstitutional. While the Commerce Clause allows for federal oversight of interstate commerce, the federal government may not mandate that every citizen, because of their mere existence, buy the product of a particular industry. If it could, it is a quick and slippery slope towards mandating other purchases, like a government-defined healthy diet. What’s next, a Jenny Craig mandate and federally-enforced gym memberships? This big, creepy step towards Big Brother violates our Constitution, and we must stop it.

Fourth, we must stop Nancy Pelosi’s arrogant abuse of federal power by Taking America Back. It is now clear that Democrat control of both the legislative and executive branches is the problem. They will not bend to the will of the American people, they will not reach across the aisle, and they have neutered every “Blue Dog” Democrat that once claimed to know better. The fiscally conservative activists that have worked so hard to stop ObamaCare represent a genuine “50 state strategy” for freedom, fiscal responsibility, and now, political accountability. We are already organized in all of the battleground House districts and all of the Senate battleground states. We must make November 2nd, 2010 a grassroots referendum on ObamaCare and all that it represents.

Fifth, when we take back Congress, we must use the momentum to repeal ObamaCare wholesale, or piece by piece. Remember how the legislation is structured: the taxes kick in quickly, but the benefits don’t start for four years. That gives us two congressional cycles and a presidential election to get health care right. By “repeal,” I mean offering a real health care reform plan that puts patients in charge, allows market competition to work, and breaks up the new government health care oligarchy.

Finally, and most important, we must all ensure that the millions of freedom-loving activists who arose from their homes these past 15 long months out of their concerns for the fiscal future of America become a sustained community. This grassroots community, bound by shared principles and connected through relationships and electronic networks, is our only hope to change the arrogant culture in Washington this year, next Congress, and after. As Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison: “The People…are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.”

So wake up! We have work to do.

Sincerely,

Matt Kibbe

President

FreedomWorks.org

Now, all the parts of this email which have been made bold represent matters which should never be able to be presented as anything even resembling fact.  They are not confusions or incomplete arguments, they are outright lies.

In fact, anyone who has paid even a modest attention to the what information is available will be impressed by the fact that these are not subtle misrepresentations, they are outrageous claims which are one hundred eighty degrees opposite the material facts.  This is the nature of the drivel being relentlessly pumped into the electorate by the "patriots" on the right.  The frenzy reveals just how frightened they are.

The neo-cons are in the process of losing everything of value in what's left of their movement.  The number of American voters who will actually vote based on such misinformation dwindles by the day.  When the right wing's hyperbolic claims about the health care bill causing the end of the country are gradually beached like dead salmon in the spring, even more of their base will be staggering around in an ideological hangover.

MeanMesa isn't inclined to even put forth an effort to discredit all this muck -- it is flowing now like the high tide at flood Brutus calls to Cassius.  

There does, however, remain the matter of the point.  

What is the point?

All these posts about "ranting and raving" show us something.  The message has much more to do with education than with politics.  None of these cheap, trailor park schemes could have moved a single gram of dog poop had the receiving class been educated enough to see through them.  

In fact, had that education been accomplished in these uninformed voters, an interest in events would have also increased, and, with that increased interest, the naivete would have been seriously lessened.  The neo-cons from Mr. Rove to the little pimp who tried to soil ACORN are absolutely banking on this carefully fostered lack of information to ever possibly sell their toxic wares and win elections.

We've seen that during the last eight years.

Here we are speaking of education beyond the purist sense.  Literacy in math and reading may be one thing, but the capacity to understand the reality of current politics can't be divorced too far from the hostilities of the debate.  Our democracy depends on informed voters to search out their interests in the political "kick boxing."  Dumbies, once inflamed out of their right minds with lies such as the ones in the letter above, just show up with a sledge hammer, then covered with blood, blame the opposition for "ruining the game."

Having endured these introductory postings about an uninformed electorate, MeanMesa will move on to the "pay layer" of the central point of all of this.

EDUCATION REFORM

Please join us for that!

Understanding Education

Still Not Satisfied After All That Studying?

Avoid trying to gain too much from texts with titles including the word “training.”

Instead, pause. Try to remember everything you know about knowledge, everything you have learned about learning.

“Training” justifies its effort in the future. “Learning” is complete in the moment.