Time to re-litigate Unfunded Mandates

Unfunded mandates are orders that induce "responsibility, action, procedure or anything else that is imposed by constitutional, administrative, executive, or judicial action" for state and local governments and/or the private sector without providing appropriate funding.

In the United States, federal mandates are orders that induce "responsibility, action, procedure or anything else that is imposed by constitutional, administrative, executive, or judicial action" for state and local governments and/or the private sector.

An unfunded mandate is a statute or regulation that requires a state or local government to perform certain actions, with no money provided for fulfilling the requirements. Public individuals or organizations can also be required to fulfill public mandates.

Wikipedia states:

"As of 1992, 172 federal mandates obligated state or local governments to fund programs to some extent.  Beginning with the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the United States federal government has designed laws that require state and local government spending to promote national goals.  During the 1970s, the national government promoted education, mental health, and environmental programs by implementing grant projects at a state and local level; the grants were so common that the federal assistance for these programs made up over a quarter of state and local budgets.The rise in federal mandates led to more mandate regulation. During the Reagan Administration, Executive Order 12291 and the State and Local Cost Estimate Act of 1981 were passed, which implemented a careful examination of the true costs of federal unfunded mandates.  More reform for federal mandates came in 1995 with the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA), which promoted a Congressional focus on the costs imposed onto intergovernmental entities and the private sector because of federal mandates.  Familiar examples of Federal Unfunded Mandates in the United States include the Americans with Disabilities Act and Medicaid." 

If #BlackLivesMatter and other “in-your-face” protestors were required to fund these protest marches, the market would have some influence on current day events.

Change of Culture Needed at State Department

Acting as the current spokesman for the State Department, former Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby (Ret), disagreed with FBI Director Comey’s characterization that there is a culture of carelessness within the State Department with respect to the handling of classified information.

About 1979, I decided to stick with the operations side of the “ops/intel interface”.  There’s much more money on the INTEL side.  Over the years, I have observed a feeling of superiority among the Special Forces.  They thought they were Special (and above the law).  General David Petraeus was the commander of the Special Forces before he was chosen to lead the surge.

The CIA is under the State Department (not Defense).  Prior to George W. Bush, covert operations were covert.  My views on this are expressed in http://dr2h.blogspot.com/2012/09/covert-operations-should-be-covert.html.

I helped the State Department migrate to “Open Systems” in the 1990s.  Their computer system consisted on Wang computers.  When the US Government had trouble connecting the dots a few years ago, I figured it was because Hillary “pulled the plug” after the Bradley Manning affair.  Our stated objective was to provide all relevant information to the Warfighters in a timely manner.

Kirby announced July 7, 2016, that the State Department would reopen their investigation into Hillary’s emails.

Back “in the day”, Henry Kissinger was photographed reading a Top Secret document and the photo appeared in Time or Newsweek.

Somebody needs to instill some sanity in the handling of classified information at the Department of State and in the Special Operations community.  Nobody should be above the law.

Goals Study 1963 - 1968

Close on the heels of the PSAC Report, the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) initiated the study, Goals of Engineering Education - The "Goals Study" - is probably the most ambitious, authoritative, and comprehensive study of engineering education ever undertaken. However, it suffered the misfortune of having been compiled during the very crest of the growth wave stimulated by the PSAC Report. As a result, it followed the 

prevailing philosophy of the time, used the latest data available (1966), and projected that the growth trends in engineering education would continue; it did so almost precisely at the time that the growth was in fact on the verge of being reversed.

Seven uniformed services

The United States has seven federal uniformed services that commission officers as defined by Title 10, and subsequently structured and organized by Title 10, Title 14, Title 42 and Title 33 of the  United States Code.

The seven uniformed services are, in order of precedence by ceremonial formation:

1. United States Army
2. United States Marine Corps
3. United States Navy
4. United States Air Force
5. United States Coast Guard
6. United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps
7. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Corps

Each of the uniformed services is (except the United States Marine Corps) administratively headed by a federal executive department and its corresponding civilian Cabinet leader.

Obama discovers need for strategy

You have to go through life with more than just passion for change; you need a strategy. I’ll repeat that. I want you to have passion, but you have to have a strategy. Not just awareness, but action. Not just hashtags, but votes.

You see, change requires more than righteous anger. It requires a program, and it requires organizing. At the 1964 Democratic Convention, Fannie Lou Hamer — all five-feet-four-inches tall — gave a fiery speech on the national stage. But then she went back home to Mississippi and organized cotton pickers. And she didn’t have the tools and technology where you can whip up a movement in minutes. She had to go door to door. And I’m so proud of the new guard of black civil rights leaders who understand this. It’s thanks in large part to the activism of young people like many of you, from Black Twitter to Black Lives Matter, that America’s eyes have been opened — white, black, Democrat, Republican — to the real problems, for example, in our criminal justice system.

But to bring about structural change, lasting change, awareness is not enough. It requires changes in law, changes in custom. If you care about mass incarceration, let me ask you: How are you pressuring members of Congress to pass the criminal justice reform bill now pending before them? (Applause.) If you care about better policing, do you know who your district attorney is? Do you know who your state’s attorney general is? Do you know the difference? Do you know who appoints the police chief and who writes the police training manual? Find out who they are, what their responsibilities are. Mobilize the community, present them with a plan, work with them to bring about change, hold them accountable if they do not deliver. Passion is vital, but you’ve got to have a strategy.

Capitalist Democracies

All liberal democratic polities have capitalist economies, but not all capitalist economies have been liberal and democratic.  Nazi Germany and current day China are examples.

Regimes which combine capitalism with democracy have all developed into what economists call welfare-state capitalism..  These states have taken a variety of forms.

The Gosta Esping-Andersen model consists of three regimes:

   A.      The conservative regime is most often found in Catholic countries and stresses job protection and high wages in order to allow a male breadwinner to be the sole support of his family.

   B.      The social democratic regime is found in the Nordic countries stresses government provision of social services and income supports to create a more egalitarian society and allow (some say require) both men and women to work.

   C.      The liberal version is found in the United States and, to a lesser degree, in other Anglo-Saxon countries and tries to offer government support for those who can’t work in the job market.  It generally has looser labor laws that make it easier to hire and fire people.

Lecture 35, Course Guidebook for “Thinking about Capitalism”, Jerry Z. Muller, The Catholic University of America, The Great Courses #5665, 2008, page 143.

I expect Pope Francis to favor the conservative regime found in Catholic countries.  This regime would not be expected to support equality of pay for women.

Bernie Sanders likes the Nordic model,  It requires both partners to work.

Could the American Dream be an Unintended Consequence of its liberal version?

The Dream of Utopian Socialists

Is the title of Chapter 5 in The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L. Heilbroner a Touchstone Book  published by Simon & Schuster.  I have a copy of the revised seventh edition with a 1999 copyright.

With people “feeling the Berne” recently, it seems appropriate to revisit this.  Young people may not have been here before.

I.  Introduction

II.  The Economic Revolution

III.  The Wonderful World of Adam Smith

IV.  The Gloomy Presentiments of Parson Malthus and David Ricardo

V.  The Dreams of the Utopian Socialists

VI.  The Inexorable System of Karl Marx

VII.  The Victorian World and the Underworld of Economics

VIII.  The Savage Society of Thorstein Veblen

IX.  The Heresies of John Maynard Keynes

X.  The Contradictions of Joseph Schumpeter

XI.  The End of the Worldly Philosophy?

        I.