Voter registration just another party driven debate

July 31, 2013

Voter registration debate

As we watch the vitriolic voter registration reform debate unfold it is important to understand it is simply another battle for political control and power between our two political parties. Republican leaders are demanding improved voter identification laws. Their Democratic counterparts, as expected, call for a complete ban on such practices, calling them acts of discriminatory voter suppression.

To even imagine the two political parties are actually battling to prevent, perpetuate, or ignore voter fraud is simply ridiculous.

Have you wondered what actually is motivating each side to engage in yet another divisive debate? I have, and reached the conclusion both sides are motivated by the implications for their parties of the exact same demographic facts.

Let's examine a few:

For the foreseeable future Hispanic will be the fastest growing voter segment in the U.S. Both parties know this to be true. Of course, it is also this knowledge which fuels the immigration reform debate. The Democrats favor legalization of several million illegal immigrants knowing their votes will favor Democrats. And, Republicans oppose legalization for the exact same reason.

Then add to the mix the fact overwhelming numbers of black Americans favor Democrats in every national election.

Next, among all voters, the poorest Americans are least likely to vote. Those who do though tend to vote Democratic.

Last, but not least, the youngest Americans eligible to vote do so at a lower rate than their older counterparts, and unlike their elders, are more inclined to vote Democratic.

When viewed within this set of facts, it become fairly obvious the debate between the Republican and Democrat parties on this issue is simply another example of their ongoing war for political control of our nation.

It would be naive or disingenuous to not admit the young, poor, black, and Hispanic Americans will be the least likely to have the types of ID demanded, and be most affected by stronger voter registration requirements. No matter how proponents might claim it will be simple to obtain identification...voter registration laws will serve to reduce voter turnout among these groups.

It is also worth asking what shortened time frames for voter registration and early voting have to do with anything other than reducing voting access to these same groups.

The Democratic and Republican leadership both know these facts and that's exactly why the fight is on. I find it interesting very little concern is exhibited by either party for what's really best for the majority of all Americans. It's all about grabbing power for each party. All I can conclude is that holding power must ensure receiving a greater share of the money tree from the special interests.

At the end of the day, instead of trying to restrict voting, I wish we would follow the lead of some other nations such as Australia where it is a crime not to vote. We could have used such a law to improve our last national election turnout in which nearly half of all eligible voters failed to exercise that privilege.

Power and control of our nation has repeatedly been shown to be the main motivator for our two primary political parties. It seems to me it's time to get rid of both of them. A party of, by, and for Independent Americans sounds far overdue to me. It all starts with voter registration!

These are my opinions. What do you think?

Mike Tower

Cal Thomas wrong about American healthcare

July 21, 2013

Cal Thomas is wrong about health care

A Cal Thomas column in the Times-News on July 14 focused on the dangers of Obamacare. The apparent initiator for his claims were the opinions provided by a stranger who approached him at his lunch table in a cafe in Scotland, where he was visiting.

The stranger told Thomas he was a former assistant director of finance for a regional health authority that was part of the British National Health System (NHS). He said he had strong warnings for the U.S. about Obamacare. He went on to say that "the NHS is seen as free on delivery to everybody. It is not free."

He went on to talk about the billions of pounds the NHS has spent delivering health care to non-citizens who are not supposed to be eligible for the NHS. And today, as a result of this extra spending, the NHS is facing a 30 billion pound deficit by 2020.

Thomas then goes on to talk about other health care horror stories he has encountered on previous visits to the U.K. He said patients have been reported to have waited up to eight hours in ambulances because no hospital beds were available. Also, up to 20 hospitals across the country may close to avoid financial ruin. And officials there have said 4,000 lives a year are lost because of poor weekend care. Another story he saw in the press there had 1,200 people starving to death in NHS hospitals because nurses were too busy to feed them.

Then he gets to the main thrust of his story: "Why isn't this a lesson for the U.S.? Why do Americans believe government is more competent than the private sector despite numerous examples to the contrary?"

Thomas' new friend closes his comments by saying he would be shocked if we would be willing to scuttle one of the best health care systems in the world, which he admits has some imperfections that can be fixed, instead of moving to one in which government controls a key part, which he predicts will produce similar results to those in the U.K.

Mr. Thomas, have you conveniently forgotten that the supposedly superior U.S. health care system spends twice as much per capita as the U.K.'s or any other developed nation's system? And, in spite of these higher costs, the U.S. system does not provide health insurance for up to 50 million Americans, and our overall health outcomes are not as good by almost any measure compared to any other developed nation. All of whom, by the way, have some form of national health care.

Thomas must not be on Medicare. It is a version of the dreaded national health care system he warns us against. I do not know a single American who has been unhappy with his or her Medicare services. Do you?

Today in America, about half of all Americans already receive federally provided health care, including Medicare, Medicaid, VA Health Care and Federal Employees Health Care.

I don't think It's actually Obamacare that Thomas is against. After all, it only expands the inefficient private-sector health care the U.S. already has. I think he's mainly concerned the Democrats will gain control of both houses in 2014 and then place all Americans on Medicare — as many feel Barack Obama should have done when he had control of both houses when first elected.

If the plug were actually pulled on Obamacare, and Medicare became the main delivery system for our health care, the financial losses for the insurance and health care industries would be huge.

I actually agree with him that Obamacare is not the best solution for America's health care, but I believe the danger from it comes from continuing to allow our health care to be delivered by the private sector. I love the private sector for most things, but certain public services are more fairly and efficiently delivered by the public sector. America ended up with its broken and unaffordable health care system because of the excessive greed of the private-sector-dominated system that exists today, and that Obamacare only expands.

Perhaps Mr. Thomas' new pal should come to America and see our health care system firsthand. However, he better make sure he can first land a job with an employer that provides health insurance. He sure doesn't want to get stuck here without such coverage!

By the way, can you even imagine the number of jobs that would be created in our country if employers were no longer responsible for providing health insurance? Can you imagine the freedom American workers would have if they no longer had to worry about finding an employer who provides health care benefits?

Can you imagine the positive impact on our national debt if we could cut our health care expenses in half?

We should all be disappointed that President Obama so proudly allows his name to be connected to an expansion of our already broken health care system, when he actually had the power to improve our nation's health care and instead punted to the lobbyists for the special interests who, as usual, will reap the most benefits.

These are my opinions. What do you think?

Mike Tower 

mike41tower @gmail.com

iReader

Illegal immigration no accident

July 14, 2013

Immigration reform fight continues

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a hypocrite is a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings. Frankly, the current immigration reform debate proves our elected from both sides are all a bunch of hypocrites!

Our elected all perform a partisan dance around immigration reform while pretending to be doing their constituent's bidding. The truth is the Democrats simply favor immediate reform because they know future citizenship for these millions, who were allowed to enter our country illegally, will favor their party. The Republicans, who were equally culpable for their entry, reading the same tea leaves, are just as determined to delay the process as much as possible.

To have any doubts about whether or not these millions of immigrants were allowed to enter our nation on purpose...would be both naive and wrong. It was Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) who once said, "In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned".

During the past half century every developed nation in the world, including the U.S., has been experiencing drastically reduced birth rates for its native citizens of close to one birth per couple. Experts all say a culture cannot survive long term once the birth rate drops below two per couple.

In recognition of these trends, leaders of all of these countries, except the U.S. and Japan, developed legal worker permit programs to attract the labor force they knew would be needed to pay taxes required to support their future aging population.

Japan has long avoided any type of immigration, and as a result, many economists believe they are simply doomed to fail as a culture.

In the European nations, the main labor pool available for their legal immigration programs came from Muslim countries. Even though it did provide the labor pool and taxes needed, it has resulted in some very serious cultural integration challenges.

Our leaders decided to purposefully allow illegal immigration instead of issuing legal work permits. Why? Perhaps our leaders decided it would be too expensive to set up another bureaucracy (Hah!) to manage legal worker permits? More likely, they collectively looked back at the prior decades of allowed illegal immigration and decided we already had a proven, inexpensive, and workable immigrant worker system in place. And, after all, they could always later declare amnesty as had previously been done in 1986.

Whatever the reasons were for our leaders choosing to embrace illegal immigration...be assured as FDR made clear...it sure didn't happen by accident.

I once met an economist who had been a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors under Presidents Bush I and Clinton. He told me he had personally participated in discussions at the highest levels in both administrations in which allowing illegal immigration was openly supported. After observing my mouth hanging wide open in disbelief, he finally asked me this question, "do you really believe the most powerful military force in the world could not protect our borders against invasion by unarmed peasants if we really wanted to?".

He also told me it wasn't the initial immigrants we were most interested in...it was their next couple of generations needed to pay the bills for our boomer's retirements.

Over the past three years, I have repeated this accusation to some very intelligent people...including a few D.C. insiders. Not one disagreed.

I'm terribly bothered that those we elect to protect our nation's best interests, while fully knowing these facts, continue to play us as complete fools by ignoring both party's previous culpability, and instead shape the current debate in order to further divide our nation in order to maintain their parties' political power.

Even worse is the on-going tragedy of these millions of immigrants and their families who have been forced to live under the dark shadows of constantly being threatened with deportation. I have often wondered how many of us, had we been born in such poverty, with no hope for our family's future, wouldn't have done exactly what they did? After all, our leaders made sure the borders were mostly unprotected, and those who proceeded them had eventually been offered the opportunity for full citizenship.

Interestingly, most of us are actually descendants of earlier generations who came to this land of promise for these exact reasons.

It was likely the easily predictable behavior of these mainly Christian immigrants with strong family values, which our leaders counted on when they purposefully decided to allow them to enter the U.S. through the back door.

History has proven our elected will choose expediency over legality nearly every single time. Heck, maybe we shouldn't blame our elected for lying to us, after all, if they dared tell us the truth we would have--oh yeah--we would have done nothing!

We certainly should focus on the word "illegal". However, I think we need to more appropriately attach that word to the generations of our elected who were the real perpetrators. I believe the appropriate charge would be criminal entrapment.

Remember...nothing political happens by accident!

These are my opinions. What do you think?

Mike Tower

American dream's demise caused by normal human behavior

July 7, 2013

Human behavior sinking America

I have spent much of the past few years trying to understand the causes of America's declining future.

While attending undergraduate and graduate business schools, I took a few courses in the social science called economics. As I recall, the fundamental underlying basis for economics is the belief all rational humans, when buying or selling, make most economic decisions based on what economists refer to as self-interest.

In other words, in every economic exchange, the principals on each side consciously or unconsciously ask themselves, what's best for me? What most humans don't often do is make economic decisions based on what's best for anyone else. For example, as consumers, we will usually choose to purchase the least costly product which satisfies our perceived needs...even if, as a side effect, our actions might eliminate jobs for other Americans. Those humans acting as suppliers will provide what consumer's purchasing actions show they want, also even if it costs American jobs. This does not make humans who behave this way wrong or bad...in economic terms it is predictable and normal human behavior.

If we apply this normal human behavior to America's current problems, it seems clear we have three different human constituencies, all behaving rationally in economic terms, who are responsible for our ever-worsening economy:

First, for decades, our individual federally elected leaders from both parties, in pursuing their self-interests, have increasingly succumbed to doing the bidding of the powerful special interests. They have mostly abandoned their responsibility for protecting the best interests of the majority of Americans, and instead, most from both parties, now do what is best for the wealthy special interests in exchange for the campaign funding needed to retain power by remaining in office.

Second, we have seen millions of American jobs transferred to lower cost labor markets, and even more are being lost daily to automation. This has been driven by the actions of individuals in charge of American-based companies seeking to satisfy their own self interests. Successful companies' leaders, owners, and even consumers of their products benefit. Who are the losers? Obviously, companies who fail to compete, and individuals who lost jobs. Adding to the pain, many workers, while fortunate to still have jobs, suffer from long term stagnant wages caused by a steadily increasing over-supply of labor. This stagnation in wages then stimulates consumers further to buy the least expensive products available. And the cycle goes on and on.

Third, American consumers, as mentioned earlier, are also responsible for our nation's poor economic condition. Daily, in rationally pursuing our own self-interests, we consistently choose to purchase low cost products made outside our nation. We generally make little effort to search for similar American made products, even though we know it might help fellow Americans keep their jobs.

Interestingly it's also the side-effects of this same normal human behavior which usually leads to the failure of Communism and Socialism. In these economic systems, individuals are expected to provide whatever level of labor they are capable of (from each according to their ability), and everyone then shares in economic output based on needs (to each according to their need). History has repeatedly shown, when humans stop being personally rewarded for giving their best efforts, most will stop doing so, and the system eventually fails due to wants exceeding production.

So, who's mainly to blame? Of course, all three groups share responsibility. However, of the three groups, only one consists of individuals who have taken an oath to serve the best interests of our nation and the vast majority of our citizens instead of their own. If an economy exists primarily to serve the best interests of a nation's citizens, and a government exists to do the same...who else can we really blame?

It should be clear to all, America did not end up in such deep trouble accidentally. Our nation's future is in great jeopardy primarily because the past few generations of the 536 we have elected, and who took individual oaths to govern for the best interests of all Americans, have failed miserably to live up to their responsibilities.

Frankly, I grow weary of repeatedly calling for firing all of them. It seems we are perpetually doomed to cling to our party labels and fight among ourselves instead of working together to find solutions. Those we elect to serve then play on this partisan anger and continue to collectively work for the same special interests. It seems to me the special interests and our politicians have the game figured out. Are most of us really just too dumb to get it?

These are my opinions. What do you think?

Mike Tower