The Book of the Shadows

The media tends to have a lot of unforced errors - stuff they're more than capable of getting right but they can't avoid getting in their own way. You put politics into the mix and they can't seem to avoid going for the easy pot-shots, banding about their faux masks, and the like. Such is the case with the Clinton wealth matter of the last few days.

One of the most bandied about terms you'll hear, particularly in politics, is "accountability". As such, I pose a simple pair of questions; what is accountability, and do we need to rethink what we consider accountability to be?

Irrational fear and hatred is usually dangerous. That is what has beset the IRS, and the dangers are not being fully appreciated. It's a little lengthy, but you should read this article from Forbes and MSN .

Freedom of speech is one of the central tenets not only of our democracy, but of just governance in general. But it is limited. Is that right, and what are those limits?

The Cold War never ended, it just took a different form.

No this isn't about the new Godzilla movie coming out next year, although it is looking quite amazing so far. This is about a sort of mis-characterized debate that has gone on in our government for a long time; big government versus small government.

This time of the year can often be very magical. A bit of a mini miracle occurred this year, however. Congress did its job and got a deal on the budget.

Esquire magazine conducted a survey whose goal was to determine the political leanings of the American community. Such surveys have been done in the past, and have established the popular assertion that the country as a whole is “center right”, meaning we as the American public are mostly independent, but lean towards the conservative side of the spectrum.

The Republican Party is a party in need of friends. They don’t have many right now. They have a number of loyalists among their members and voters, and they have their opponents in the Democrats. They even have outright enemies all over the place. But they don’t have a whole lot of friends. Perhaps the long talked of revolution in the Republican Party is finally at hand.

Tuesday was election day. It wasn't big E, big D, Election Day, but it was still a day for some people to go out and vote. I'm not gonna get into the politics of who won and who lost. But I do have something of an idea that might make it a little more meaningful when we do have the little E and D election days.

You will not likely see me say much in praise of Iran. Given the present topic of this post, I will not get into the weeds on that issue either. Congratulations, however, are a matter of due course when someone has done something praiseworthy. Iran held national elections Friday. With no reports of widespread voter fraud, no brutal crackdowns on opposition, no reports of people being turned away from the polls, and very high voter turnout, it would seem that Iran's presidential election went off without the kind of violence and controversy that marred their last presidential elections in 2009. What's more, the lone moderate in the race was able to claim victory. It's too early to extrapolate this beyond simply that; a fair and proper election took place. Internal and/or external politics will reveal themselves in time. But for now, congratulations to the people or Iran on carrying out a "clean" election and on the election of your new president, Hasan Rowhan...

As a political scientist I don’t really find any form of government necessarily boring. In fact I’m probably a bit unconventional in my approach to the viability of various forms of government. But as I began working on my creative writing hobby, I realized a few things that are retrospectively simply obvious. First, most fiction stories of note take place in worlds with non-democratic governments. Second, democracy is boring. The second point reinforces the first. That is, the boringness of democratic governance leads to the writers of fiction stories to instead pursue more interesting governmental systems, thus using a government that isn’t a democracy, or at the very least only vaguely resembles a democracy. Democracy is driven by the most boring endeavor in the history of mankind – bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is the system by which operations are set to happen. In the abstract, everyone hates it and tends to say they can’t understand it. But it’s a simple concept. It ...

I find myself looking back on the events on Tuesday in New Jersey. I listen to the news and read a few articles on the web about President Obama and Governor Christie being together touring the Jersey Shore and looking at the repairs being done. They have a few photo-ops of the two men at game stands chatting, giving each other high fives. Then the president gives a speech where he touts the area, talks about all the good that has been done between the federal, state, and local governments to fix the damage since Hurricane Sandy, how the federal government will remain invested in helping residents and businesses recover. A lot of the talk post the event was not about the actual event. It wasn't about what was done in Jersey, or what is left to be done. It is mostly about whether Republican Gov. Christie will be helped or hurt by being seen "paling" around with the Democratic Pres. Obama. It is the continuation of the same talk that came around when the two elected offic...

In my last post I noted that there was a need for individuals to think about the question How Much Is Enough. The point of the post was that devoid of any desire or need for legislation, individuals should think, both for their own benefit and for the general social welfare, about how much wealth they really need to accumulate and how they will go about doing so. Today I want to speak briefly about policy, particularly as it relates to the tax code and the interplay of corporations in that paradigm. The other day, May 21, Apple CEO Tim Cook went before a Congressional committee to testify. It wasn't part of any high-level investigation or anything of the sort, but they wanted to know how it was Apple over the past few years avoided paying taxes on a very large sum of money, somewhere in the neighborhood of $44 billion. For days leading up to this testimony the media seemed almost fearful that Apple would get raked over the coals with accusations of being railroaded and f...

This is something I've often found myself personally thinking about. I've thought about it in varying contexts, personal wealth, tax policy, but precisely I wonder about it as a personal matter. It's a touchy subject I find, probably because those I discuss it with tend to be politically minded and immediately jump to some idea of socialism, thereby becoming defensive thinking I'm pushing some idea of government regulation. I'll be clear at the forefront, not every idea that is advocated from a political outlet is a matter of policy. I do not think this is something that should be legislated. But I do think it is something that needs to be thought about by the public at large. So, the question is how much money is enough money? I contend that millionaires and even more so billionaires are themselves not needed in a functional society. I am speaking of the individuals. However, there seems to be a need for the idea. We learn throughout our lives that our go...

There is always a need, when something goes wrong, for tough questions to be asked, and for people to be held accountable. This is a fundamental component of the US Congress. It is their Constitutional mandate, to serve as an oversight body. However, the Congress is very poor at doing their job. It's not a matter of not knowing what is going on, or knowing how to do anything to fix the problem. It is rare that they make it that far in their thought process. Which is sad. I look at this matter through the prism of the current IRS scandal. I will admit that I was one of those who at the outset was very critical of the IRS. I was appalled at the idea of the IRS targeting specific groups for undue scrutiny. However what differentiates me from many Congress, and what I hope differentiates most of the sensible people in the country from Congress, is the fact that rather than allowing their views to evolve through the exposure to new information, they dig in - or rather they cli...

What makes a scandal? What builds a conspiracy? The past week, and to a broader extent the last several years for the Obama administration, have been marked by allegations of scandal and conspiracy. There is the IRS targeting of conservative groups over 501(c)(4) applications, the Justice Department tapping phones at the AP for a leak investigation, the continued back and forward over Benghazi, the closing of Guantanamo Bay Prison, the Boston Marathon Bombing, gun control, Fast and Furious, the healthcare reform, bailouts and tax policy, you can even go back to the whole birth certificate thing, and there are a number of others I haven’t mentioned or don’t know a lot about. But I don’t want to re-litigate the matters of those past scandals/conspiracies, or prejudged the ongoing ones. What I want to do is put forth my understanding of the source and lifecycle of conspiracies. The first thing I believe is that conspiracies are rarely ever new, and are never susceptible to...