|
One concern of those who drafted the
Constitution of the United States was that representatives should not have
such small constituencies that the office would fail to attract able
candidates. Even so, Chairman of the
Convention, George Washington, called for a minimum constituency of 30,000
instead of the already approved 40,000.
This was his only suggestion regarding details of the Constitution and
it was adopted. THE FEDERALIST, No. 51 states that
“dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the
government.” No. 52 adds “… it is particularly essential that ..” the
representative “… have an immediate dependence on and an intimate sympathy
with the people.” Now, with the congressional districts
having average populations of about
690,000, and with only 524,160 minutes in a year, we face a very
different situation. All Representatives,
whatever their origins, become members of the upper class by virtue of their
salaries and perks alone. The long
sessions and increasing details of
their involvement in nearly all matters of government, keep their minds and
bodies within the confines of the “Beltway” most of the time. National journalists, pollsters, lobbyists,
and congressional staff members, along with legislative “earmarks,” get them
reelected. Meanwhile, it is literally
impossible for them to allot one minute of their time per year to each
constituent. Our representatives should be much more
numerous; they should spend most of their working time in their districts;
and they should have infrequent, but authoritative votes on major public
issues. In order to add that to the
Constitution, I suggest the following:
Proposed Amendment Page 2 |
|
Ivan Parkins |
|
DISASSEMBLE THE HOUSE By Ivan W. Parkins PhD. |
|
To order
Dr. Parkins book, Perspectives For
American Society Contact
info@americanpoliticalcommentary.com |
|
©Ivan W. Parkins 2008, All articles, text, web pages property of
Ivan W. Parkins. Use of any material
requires permission of the author and can be obtained by contacting info@americanpoliticalcommentary.com |
|
About
Ivan W. Parkins: Dr.
Parkins is a retired professor of Political Science from Central Michigan
University. He received his PhD from
the University of Chicago and is a graduate of the United States Naval
Academy. Dr. Parkins served as a naval
officer during WWII aboard the battleship Alabama. He is a recent widower with three
daughters, 3 grand children and 2 great grand children. Dr. Parkins has written extensively, having
authored 3 books and a newspaper opinion column for many years. |
|
Front Page
Archive 2008
Archive 2009 Page
2, Disassemble the House Page
3, RE-RUNS Page
4, Book Reviews# |
|
Liberalism, an Aversion to Facts For more than two
decades I believed myself to be a “liberal”, but that was four decades
ago. Now, the ideas and aversion to
facts, of many people who claim to be liberals seem not to have changed in
those four decades. In 1971, I clipped
from my newspaper a cartoon by Bill Mauldin, of WWII fame. It represented President Nixon as
overseeing a huge flow of funds into Indo-China and promising some petty
support for social programs. Using
budget figures from standard references, I discovered that the
Kennedy/Johnson Administrations had a higher average rate of military
expenditures and lower social spending than Nixon’s most recent year at the
time. I wrote a letter to Newsweek magazine in Feb. 1977, in response to
Lester Thurow’s column (2/14/77). Here
are some excerpts. “Lester Thurow’s column may serve better
to illustrate than it does to explain the reasons for our lagging productivity.” “Productivity is
frequently, and meaningfully, related to the quantity and quality of machinery which a workman uses. Since 1950, the U.S. has lagged behind
the principal democracies of Europe,
and far behind Japan, in the
portion of its product which it has reinvested in new plants and
machinery. At the same time, and while
our military expenditures were
declining, we have more than doubled the portion of GNP which we
invested in education.” “Blaming moneyed and military elites for
America’s economic and social problems would have appealed to me two or three
decades ago. Today, it is far too
popular, and too carelessly done.” About a year later, I
wrote a letter to the editor, U.S. News & World Report (1/16/78) in response to Professor Thurow. “Professor Thurow says, “While no one is
against investment in physical assets, we also need to invest more heavily in
skills, education and other things that build
earning capacity in the future.” Is he really talking about the United
States?” In 2008, the evidence
and my views have not changed greatly.
Recently, I noticed that one of America’s oldest great fortunes had
been liquidated, for many millions. I
estimated that it was about 250 times as large as I expect my estate to
be. I also checked and found, as I had
expected, that the largest recent fortune, earned by a person much younger
than I is about 400 times as great as the older one was. Soaking the rich with
taxation makes more sense as hate and revenge than it does as economic
policy. As long as voters
believe “economic facts” quoted by celebrities without checking them against
THE STATISTICAL ABSTRACT OF THE UNITED STATES or another reliable reference,
our economy and our country will suffer. Ivan Parkins- February
24, 2008 |
|
COMPREHENSIVE HEALTH CARE X 2 Comprehensive
has two meanings with regard to health care.
The one most often addressed is a comprehensive system of paying for
care. Who pays, and how? Must all join? Will terms of payment be sufficient to
attract the necessary professional and other care-givers? Those are the easier questions. Some of the
more difficult questions are what is comprehensive care? Immediate treatment of serious accidents,
and to control communicable diseases would seem to be obvious. But, who will have how much authority to authorize cosmetic
surgeries? When , if any, limits
should there be for individuals whose habits are the chief cause of their
illnesses? Are sex-changes to be
included for all applicants? One likely
outcome of a single-payer system (nationalized health care) is some reduction
of incentive for the care-givers, and consequent shortage of services
available. The actual
comprehensiveness of services available to an individual may be determined by
waiting lists. Ten-month lists for
maternity services, or a few days for an infected appendix, can solve some
problems, and save money too! I. W. Parkins 3/2008 |
|
WARS
AND THEIR COSTS The America that I have
known will one day be remembered for its military achievements, especially
for how effectively we managed costs to ourselves. World War II was, in
many respects, the greatest and most costly in world history. America entered late, suffered over 400,000
fatalities, spent almost 40% of its gross product for three years, and
emerged one of the victors. We were
then able to nourish the recovery of many other combatants, both allies and
enemies. Because we entered the war
from depressed economic conditions, much of the economic cost was absorbed by
the full employment of recently-idle labor and industrial capacities. A decade later, America
again was at war, in Korea. That cost
us nearly 40,000 lives, and at the peak, 13% of our gross product. It prevented a totalitarian conquest of
South Korea, a nation now free, friendly and prosperous. In Vietnam, after
expending over 50,000 lives and product at a rate that approached 10%, we
withdrew. That choice was a political
one, not a military defeat. There, the
subsequent cost in lives to our former allies was more horrendous than
anything that we ourselves have suffered.
The high cost to America’s political unity and social order is still
evident. For most of the last
half of the twentieth century we were engaged in a cold war with the Soviet
Union. Except that the wars in both
Korea and Vietnam were related to our contest with the Soviets, the cold war
was nearly fatality free. It did,
however, require us to maintain high military outlays. We prospered in spite of those
expenditures; the Soviets were unable to keep pace and their system
collapsed. Now, we are at war with
radical Islamists. They declared it;
they attacked us at home; they vow to destroy us. Our military costs, in lives and in
treasure, are moderate when compared to those during most of my
lifetime. Our response remains
incomplete. |
|
The graph
to the right , by the Office of Management and Budget, demonstrates that in
the 1990’s a very large part of the Clinton Administration’s savings came
from national defense. Those savings
have made the war in Iraq more expensive than it might have been had an
earlier level of military, and intelligence, spending been maintained. If you look
at similar graphs for the period of the Vietnam War, you will find that, at
it’s most expensive around Tet, 1968, military spending rose only slightly
above the previous decade of Cold War spending. Much of
national defense costs are for maintaining, training,
and improving the readiness capabilities of our forces, whether at home in
peace or abroad in some limited conflict.
Especially, in the earlier battles of WWII we paid in extra lives for
our lack of readiness. The old saying
that, “if you want peace, you should prepare for war” has merit. The Swiss and Swedes have done well at it,
but only recently. During WWII our
Navy relied heavily upon the 20mm and 40mm machineguns of Swiss Oilercon and
Swedish Bofors armament companies. Both
the Swiss and Swedes had violent histories in earlier centuries; both
maintained high states of preparedness; and both avoided active involvement
in WWII. The United States is
far too large a player in the world to expect such easy choices. I.W. Parkins I owe an apology to THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, from which I
took the "War on the Cheap" graph.
I misinterpreted the Journal's
attribution to OMB; that was for dates and GDP
figures only. The graph belongs to the Journal. |
|
And the WALL STREET JOURNAL |
