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The Case for Pragmatism

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A bizzy day calls for a repeat.  This one is especially timely, originally from two years ago.

You probably have a better idea about how to do something. But will it work? You’ll never know until you try. When you do give it a go, you may find that getting there requires a lot of compromises along the way before your dream is realized. Or, perhaps, you’ll simply give up – blaming your own inability to make it happen or blaming the world for being so darned unfair.

Both experiences are simply part of human nature meeting reality. We’re all idealists at heart, at least in a certain sense. Only a few people have the skills necessary to make those dreams a reality and much of the time they have to keep their eyes on the prize. A dream is one thing, but getting there requires wide-awake attention.

That is why an open, democratic political system can’t live by rigid ideology alone.

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Outrage

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Every day we are bombarded with information – far more than we can handle thrown at us from a perspective we don’t understand. The most common response is outrage – disbelief that this could possibly happen.

Every day we find ourselves in situations we don’t understand – things that are going crazy around us.. The most common response is outrage – disbelief that this could possibly happen.

The officers responsible for the death of Jamar Clark on 15 November was one of these incidents, and the reports and (lack of) legal proceedings comes at us in much the same way. Everything about this makes no sense if you look deep enough into it yet everyone has an opinion about it. Let me tell you the simple, clear facts that we can be sure of:

Jamar Clark is dead. Any city that has been through this and wants to be known as “civilized” has to make sure that this does not happen ever again.

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Fed Futzes, Fuses Financial Fracas

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Janet Yellen – is there anything she can’t do?

In a speech to the Economic Club of New York the most powerful person in the world, elections be damned, called back the need for continuing “ramp up” in the Fed Funds Rate. The stock market rallied as the happy days of last year returned and everyone had reason to believe that free money was on the horizon.

Funny, they don’t cheer like that for Bernie Sanders.

What is going on? Are we not going to raise rates this year after all? Has Yellen started channeling her inner Greenspan by saying as little as possible in the maximum number of words?

No, this is what we have to expect. It’s really all about China, which is to say all about currency conversion, and the much-hyped “dual mandate” of the Fed that’s really a much more complex triple mandate or more. And we all, sadly, have to stay tuned to find out what it really means.

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A Smaller Government is a Peaceful Government

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A long weekend needs a repeat – this one from a year ago that leads into some of the reforms that should be talked about through the election cycle much more than candidates wives and mistresses.  Back on Wednesday with more about reform and what has to happen when (if?) grown-ups are in charge again.

“Get government off our backs!” It’s a chant we’ve heard a lot of over the last few years, usually in the deep, gruff voice of those old enough to remember the heyday of our parents and grandparents. It’s a call to a simpler time when there was less government, less taxation, and more to go around. At least, that’s the story we are told.

But an analysis of the size of our Federal Government as a share of the economy shows that while it is a shade bigger than it used to be, it’s way below its maximum. There are peaks in Federal Government size which fit not to an increase in social benefits or productive spending, but the very expensive line item that has been pricey enough to bring down governments and cultures for centuries – war.

In short, it’s time for the progressive left to embrace “smaller government” of a kind and to show that world that peace is not idealistic but practical.

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How? the System? Works?

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If you’re paying attention to things like the Arizona primary, you probably wonder what could possibly go wrong next. This cluster-eff of an event featured 60 polling places where 200 were normal, creating miles-long lines and many hours of wait just to vote.

Of course, if you’re a cynic, you might say that the attempts at voter intimidation worked perfectly.

But that’s the strange miracle of an election cycle that has been so incredibly surprising that nothing, absolutely nothing has gone by the script. The systems we have are being strained to the point where we have to ask why we have them in the first place. The cynics? As always, it’s easy to point out places where our Democratic-Republic was deliberately designed to be less than open. Systems, as we know them, are hardly designed for today’s world – that much is true.

But today we have light shone on nearly everything in ways we never have before. The main reason that every gear in the machine of democracy seems more broken than ever is at least in part because we never knew how ugly it was before. And that’s reason enough to get ourselves to the point where the system is fixed.

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