Last night I finally got to meet Mike Lee in person. I had been looking forward to the opportunity for a number of reasons. As long as I have been interested in this Senate race I have been carefully looking at the many candidates (past and present). Even before Mike entered the race I had met almost every candidate seeking this seat and, despite how promising a few of them initially looked, I had found many that I could not endorse and none that I was comfortable endorsing. In fact, by the time Mike announced his intention to run I was almost ready to support him by default (there was only one other candidate I had not completely ruled out by then).

After meeting Mike last night and talking to him, asking a few questions and listening as he answered the questions of a few other people, I came away knowing that this was a candidate I could endorse as completely and freely as I would endorse myself if I were a candidate for some office. Mike Lee is the right candidate for this position. He has the knowledge and the capacity to fill this office well and he is in the race for the right reasons. In fact, as I talked to him I discovered that he is in the race for the exact same reason that I have been so interested in this race for so long.

My plan now is to go out and do everything I can to make sure that I don’t have to try making another endorsement as the field of candidates is whittled down. I plan to still be cheering Mike on in December.

It now seems clear that the only way the U.S. is going to avoid an economic crisis is if the oldsters take it upon themselves to arise and force change. The young lack the political power. Only the old can lead a generativity revolution — millions of people demanding changes in health care spending and the retirement age to make life better for their grandchildren.

He arrives there from this bit of data:

One of the keys to healthy aging is what George Vaillant of Harvard calls “generativity” — providing for future generations. Seniors who perform service for the young have more positive lives and better marriages than those who don’t. As Vaillant writes in his book “Aging Well,” “Biology flows downhill.” We are naturally inclined to serve those who come after and thrive when performing that role.

The problem that he identifies is that:

The odd thing is that when you turn to political life, we are living in an age of reverse-generativity. Far from serving the young, the old are now taking from them. First, they are taking money. According to Julia Isaacs of the Brookings Institution, the federal government now spends $7 on the elderly for each $1 it spends on children.

Second, they are taking freedom. In 2009, for the first time in American history, every single penny of federal tax revenue went to pay for mandatory spending programs, according to Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute. As more money goes to pay off promises made mostly to the old, the young have less control.

Third, they are taking opportunity. For decades, federal spending has hovered around 20 percent of G.D.P. By 2019, it is forecast to be at 25 percent and rising. The higher tax rates implied by that spending will mean less growth and fewer opportunities. Already, pension costs in many states are squeezing education spending.

So his conclusion is that the problem is reverse-generativity and that the only people who can stop it are those who have the most to gain by perpetuation or even accelerating it. Why do I find that hard to swallow?

Along the way he offers this tortured logic for his conclusion:

I used to think that political leaders could avert fiscal suicide. But it’s now clear change will not be led from Washington. On the other hand, over the past couple of years we’ve seen the power of spontaneous social movements: first the movement that formed behind Barack Obama, and now, equally large, the Tea Party movement.

Spontaneous social movements can make the unthinkable thinkable, and they can do it quickly.

. . .

Old people now have the time, the energy and, with the Internet, the tools to organize.

The examples of spontaneous social movements were both driven primarily by younger people. He offers no evidence that this older generation will suddenly stop doing the things that helped them amass their political power in favor of taking the route that their grandchildren are pioneering – especially in an effort that would diminish their political power and rob them of their spare time.

Altruism and performing service is much easier and more immediately rewarding when it is directed at friends and relatives than when it is directed at an anonymous society.

The fact is that it really is clear that change will not come from Washington – it will have to come to Washington in the form of new voices and new leaders who have the ability to look past traditional divisions and traditional ideas and push through some new ideas using new alliances to bring about the kind of transformational changes that could actually avert eh looming economic crisis that virtually everyone agrees is on the horizon.

For some time I have been internally conflicted on the issue of congressional earmarking. Many people, including such diverse characters as President Obama and Congressman Chaffetz, have been vocal about calling for an end to earmarks. Others such as my own Congressman, Rob Bishop, reply that earmarks are not an addition to the total size of our federal expenditures – but simply a direction regarding the spending of money already appropriated. Believers in small government who make that argument say that our focus should be on reducing total expenditures rather than shutting down the earmarking process. Personally, I would like to see an end to earmarking and a significant reduction in total spending. (Earmarks alone are an insignificant portion of our spending.)

Almost 10 months ago I attended a town hall meeting for Rob Bishop in which the issue of earmarks was raised. Afterwards I wrote to Rep. Bishop asking these two questions:

1. If we get rid of earmarks won’t that allow us to focus on the size of the pile of money?
2. While I might prefer that Congress set the priorities for government appropriations rather than the administration, why should the priorities be set at the federal level at all? (except on truly federal priorities like defense spending) Wouldn’t it be better to just appropriate money and direct how much should go to various states and then let the states and municipalities decide which projects deserve the funding?

Apparently my questions were not even worthy of a form letter – I received no acknowledgment, let alone an answer.

In his State of the Union address last week President Obama (once again) called for greater transparency in the earmarking process. In response, Senator Jim DeMint rightly reminded us that:

We can see earmarks as plain as day now, but big spending politicians are unashamed. . . We should permanently end the earmark favor factory, but if the President won’t do that, he should at least impose a moratorium on this waste until we balance the budget.

Putting all that together I realize the truth that the primary problem small-government proponents want to address with earmarks is total spending and that while transparency is generally a good way to keep things running more appropriately even sunlight does little to deter earmarking – because it is considered an appropriate method to ensure you “get your fair share.”

Somehow after reading Sen. DeMint’s response the whole issue crystallized in my mind and I understand what’s really going on and what needs to be done.

Earmarks are not a large portion of the budget. Removing the amount of money spent on earmarks from the budget while allowing the earmarking process to continue would do virtually no good. Worse than that, it’s impossible because there is more to the earmarking process than the amount of money that gets earmarked out of the overall budget appropriation. Earmarks are a catalyst that changes the way our society looks at government spending.

The first and most repulsive change of thought is demonstrated by the lobbyists who are lobbying not for ideas, but for funding. These are the lobbyists who aim to get kickbacks from Congress for their clients. With earmarking in place it is possible to go directly to Congress and convince people far removed from the project to spend money from other taxpayers on a specific priority. This may be in contradiction of the desires of the local population but even if it is not it is never beneficial to the nation at large – even though the nation at large is footing the bill.

The second and more damaging (in the long term) change of thought that the  earmarking process promotes is that it encourages the perception that the Federal government should be involved in local decision making – even when those local decisions have little or no impact on the nation at large. Suddenly the people in New York and California have almost as much influence as the people of Pleasant Grove, Utah when it comes to making decisions about what will be displayed in a city park in Pleasant Grove, a city that few of the residents of other states would even be able to find on a map – let alone ever visit. This change of perspective reduces states and cities to nothing more than administrative subdivisions of the federal government. This is a fundamental shift away from the federalism envisioned by the founders of our nation and, in my opinion, is a very dangerous shift to perpetuate.

While abolishing earmarks will not immediately reverse these two changes it would remove the catalyst for them and greatly improve the chances of countering their influence. Without earmarks there would  be a massive reduction in the value of many lobbyists. Those who are promoting ideas would still be around, but none could come promising a financial return on investment in the form of appropriations from Congress. Without the constant influence of such lobbyists there would be a chance to reduce federal expenditures – especially in local projects. This in turn would make it possible for people to stop trying to inflate local interests into items of national consequence.

(I’m probably not the first to figure this out, but we need to articulate it better.)

While candidate Mike Lee acted like a senator on the issue of confirming Ben Bernanke for another term as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Bob Bennett acted like a marionette under the control of the mystical wizard of Washington D.C. With a short press release and a predictable vote, our “Senator” Bob Bennett plainly demonstrated the cancerous logic that is rampant among Washington insiders. Here is how he justified his vote to confirm Ben Bernanke:

I reluctantly cast a vote in favor of Ben Bernanke because I do not want to give President Obama the opportunity to put someone who shares his leftist views in charge of the Federal Reserve. I am aware of the mistakes that have been made at the Fed while Chairman Bernanke has been there, but I fear an alternative would be worse for the country’s economic future.

So our elected Marionette is simply trying to save us from having the president nominate someone else. Cute. Perhaps he should have engaged his brain and realized two simple facts – first, if Bernanke was not confirmed by the senate there is little chance that President Obama would have name a more extreme nominee (the natural reaction would be to nominate a safer pick); second, considering the makeup of the Senate (not to mention the final vote tally) opposing Bernanke would have been unlikely to prevent his confirmation but at least it would not have demonstrated approval for his performance (a vote to confirm sends that message more strongly than any press release about your supposed reluctance to cast the vote).

In contrast, Mike Lee (who ought to be replacing Bennett within a year) demonstrated what senatorial advice and consent should look like. Mike issued a statement opposing confirmation for Bernanke and giving solid reasons for that opposition:

“It is clear that during Chairman Bernanke’s term, the Federal Reserve has played a significant role in creating and perpetuating policies and strategies that have contributed significantly to the most difficult economic environment our country has faced in a generation.” Mike Lee continued, “To confirm the Chairman to a second term would be both a tacit approval of his actions during these past few years, and an endorsement that ‘business as usual’ is acceptable. That is something I am simply not willing to do.”

. . .

“Simply replacing Bernanke may not be sufficient, but Chairman Bernanke must be held accountable for the Fed’s actions. It is time to send a clear message that ‘business as usual’ is not acceptable, that transparency is mandatory and that everyone is accountable, now and in the future. This is the first in a series of important steps which must be taken to ensure the integrity and reliability of our monetary system.” (emphasis added)

Bennett failed to demonstrate any responsibility for the senatorial task of advice and consent. Instead he chose to throw up his hands and issue a statement about how sorry he was to vote against the wishes of his constituents and even his own better judgment. Worse yet, he did so on a vote where voting his conscience would not have made a material difference except to be honest about his position.

A couple of days ago I heard Jason Lewis on the radio talking about how socialism does not create wealth (after Obama’s “where opportunity is absent government must create it” comment it’s obvious that some people just don’t understand that fact) and that the only way that socialism can seem to work is if there are people in society selfishly creating wealth to be redistributed. While Jason started going on about how much better natural self interest is for society than synthetic altruism (my terms, not his) I began thinking that the right to be charitable is one that we must each earn in life.

As an example,  I cannot donate a million dollars to help the relief efforts of Haiti. No matter how much I might want to I simply don’t have the money. There are other people who, through some combination of hard work and chance, have amassed a million dollars or more of money they don’t need for themselves and they can choose to donate that much money to help in Haiti. They have earned the right to make a decision about whether they will do something that generous, but I have not earned that right.

As I thought about it I realized that  while we must earn any goods we might wish to be charitable with the choice to be charitable is one that anyone may make with whatever quantity of goods and skills they have acquired, whether they are objectively wealthy or not. The real catch between socialists and capitalists is that, unlike capitalists, socialists believe that it is possible for some person or group of people besides me to decide how charitable I should be with my goods. The socialists believe that the force of government should be used to enforce a minimum level of charity from each person in society whereas the capitalists think that each person in society should be free to make their own decisions about how charitable they should be with their possessions. Interestingly it is that capitalists that give more to charity than the socialists.

Back in October I wrote about the dangers of a crisis mentality and tried to show that the abuse of crisis was not a one-party trait. I see that Will Wilkinson did a better job of showing that this month in Let the next crisis go to waste:

The Aughts began in crisis when the second plane hit the second tower on Sept. 11, 2001. The Bush administration, loath to let a serious crisis go to waste, managed to parlay the nation’s alarm and credulity into an ill-conceived invasion of an entirely unrelated country, wasting over a trillion dollars and many tens of thousands of lives, all while losing control of the fight in Afghanistan and failing utterly to bring down Osama bin Laden.

Bush’s botched attempts to capitalize on crisis—the ugly aftermath to which Obama is heir—might have made an alert leader wary. But instead, Obama set up shop in the Oval Office and proceeded immediately to use crisis as (Emanuel’s words again) “an opportunity to do things you’d think you could not do.”

Rather than acting as a prudent guardian of the public good in a time of economic turbulence and hardship, Obama and the Democratic Congress have hurried to check the boxes on their partisan wish list precisely when the nation most needed a restorative break from transformative ambition.

When Obama was campaigning he promised change – the only change we got was that the president was officially affiliated with a different party than before. His opponents during the campaign were vocal about the fact that they could not believe he would deliver the promised change. Since his inauguration some of those who supported him have found that they no longer believe in the change he promised. We were promised an end to “politics as usual.” Instead some left wishing for the politics of the 90’s – nasty as they were – rather than the politics of today. As Mr. Wilkinson put it:

This marriage of incompetence and craven opportunism is so much in the familiar spirit of the age that one must conclude that the age itself remains unchanged.

The “crisis as opportunity” mentality can lead to only one thing – criminal behavior. It is the same mentality that leads to looters during the L.A. race riots of the past and the Hatian earthquake of the present.

I have concluded that regardless of whatever other rhetoric a candidate may offer in the future the biggest change I want to see will be a candidate who promises to treat a crisis as a crisis and not as an opportunity.

One statement that someone made was that when the tax on unprepared food was eliminated the stores simply raised their prices accordingly so that the savings went into their pockets rather than taxpayers. That didn’t strike me as accurate, but even if it was accurate it is no excuse to reinstate the tax – the stores would let consumers absorb the taxes on the now higher prices rather than lower the price to accommodate the tax.

Sen. Liljenquist mentioned that people don’t tend to buy luxury items in down economies. When combined with the fact that our expectations fo government tend to increase in down economies I saw why governments tend to grow endlessly – there is generally an inverse relationship between our demand for government services and our ability to pay for them. When times are tough we demand more and politicians do their best to oblige us. When times are good we tend to expand government in areas that were not previously considered crucial by eating into any taxes that exceed our recession-limited budgets. When times become lean again the once-discretionary programs are viewed as essential and demand greater sacrifice from citizens to maintain the programs that would have been considered outrageous in the previous downturn.

From this perspective it makes more sense to favor regressive or at least “fair” tax schemes where those with the least ability to pay also have a vested interest in the tax rates so that they are less likely to get extravagant when times are generally better and so that the tax revenue is generally more stable. It is simply foolish to base our most essential services on revenue sources that are unavailable when the services are crucial.

I’m not trying to argue that luxury goods should be tax-exempt, but if they form the basis of our tax revenue for essential services we will always be in for gut-wrenching decisions whenever their is a dip in our economic outlook.

After the town hall meeting I attended on Wednesday I have been thinking about pension plans generally. The state of Utah is looking at changing their pension offerings for new employees to save the state from future financial ruin. I have seen other companies go through that process already. As a nation we have seen the cost of defined benefit pensions contribute mightily to the downfall of GM and Chrysler as well as having a hand in the struggles throughout the airline industry not so many years ago.

As I thought about all these examples I realized that even a fully funded defined benefit pension program is a gamble for any organization. Employees like the security, but it is an inherently risky proposition to offer such a plan.

I decided to look into the history of pensions and as with so many other systemic problems we face, the problem of widespread pension offerings really took root as a result of a poorly conceived government intervention, namely wage freezes during WWII where companies began exploring new ways to compensate workers besides simply using salary as compensation. Notice that this is also at the root of our dysfunctional employer-dependent health insurance boondoggle. The fact that both of these crippling trends were incubated by government wage interference and nursed along afterward through favored status in our tax policy should be a major red flag against further socialist economic moves by our government – no matter how good it might look now there is bound to be a crippling downside that will rear its ugly head later.

Almost as soon as the meeting was opened up for comments and questions from those in attendance it became very clear that a majority of the people there were public employees who were not very thrilled with the work that Sen. Liljenquist has been doing to change the pension program for state employees. They expressed their disappointment with the directions he was going and their concerns with the future ramifications of the changes the he is advocating.

He listened calmly over and over but as he spoke it was very evident that he had put a major investment of time and energy to arrive at the best available solution. He politely but decisively explained why the changes were necessary and what he was doing to protect current employees and the fiscal future of the state.

I don’t know if many people at the meeting were swayed as he spoke, but I very much respected how he tackled this difficult issue head on and did not bend to the myopic perspective of some vocal constituents by choosing the irresponsible option of punting the decision to the future.

Nearly three years ago I publicly wondered where I fit politically. Since then I have solidly concluded that the Republican party is the best fit for me, but now I have found a term for my general political view – I’m a Whole Foods Republican who Michael Petrilli describes as:

independent-minded voters who embrace a progressive lifestyle but not progressive politics. These highly-educated individuals appreciate diversity and would never tell racist or homophobic jokes; they like living in walkable urban environments; they believe in environmental stewardship, community service and a spirit of inclusion. And yes, many shop at Whole Foods . . .

What makes these voters potential Republicans is that, lifestyle choices aside, they view big government with great suspicion. There’s no law that someone who enjoys organic food, rides his bike to work, or wants a diverse school for his kids must also believe that the federal government should take over the health-care system or waste money on thousands of social programs with no evidence of effectiveness. Nor do highly educated people have to agree that a strong national defense is harmful to the cause of peace and international cooperation.

I appreciate diversity and would never tell racist or homophobic jokes (at least I hope not). I would love to live in a walkable community so long as I didn’t have to move from my current neighborhood (if I had to move for some reason I would look for a walkable community). I believe in environmental stewardship even if I oppose the overt political power grabbing of the environmental lobby. I believe in community service and in the need to be inclusive but I could not even identify the nearest Whole Foods location (at least, until I looked it up).

These are some of the very issues that caused me to ask that question and my positions have not changed even if I have found that I can make my political home within the Republican party (which is really what I was questioning back then).

The key is not simply that the Republican party needs to embrace the educated, somewhat progressive, Whole Foods Republicans – people who understand that a “progressive lifestyle” can be achieved without the ill-conceived ideas that are promoted as progressive politics – these Whole Foods Republicans, like myself, must embrace the Republican party and make it their political home because those who embrace the party are the ones who have the chance to shape the party.

If they show that they stand for what the party espouses the Whole Foods Republicans can rid the party of the military adventurism influence and the residual image of homophobia that hamper the implementation of the solid core values that have been a strength to this nation for centuries.