Is Democracy Stirring in Egypt?

Since becoming President of Egypt in 1981, Hosni Mubarak has maintained his grip on power through a series of rigged elections, imprisonment of political enemies, and massive government censorship of the press. Despite being considered an "ally" of the United States, there can be no question that Egypt is a dictatorship and President Mubarak is a dictator.

21st Century Jeffersonians, as a general principle, oppose American intervention in the affairs of other countries, noting that these have historically done little good and much evil. But this does not mean we ignore what goes on beyond our shores, and we should always cheer on and provide moral support to those who seek to bring democracy and representative government to their own nations. We saw this nearly happen last year when the people of Iran launched a massive series of protests against fraudulent election results.

In this spirit, 21st Century Jeffersonians should applaud the current activities of Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Peace Prize winner best known to Americans as the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. He has been making statements indicated that he may run for President of Egypt when the next election takes place in 2011. If he did so, it would present a significant challenge to President Mubarak, who, at 81 years of age, is reportedly grooming his son Gamal to succeed him when he either dies or leaves the Presidency.

As a Nobel Peace Prize winner who commands immense international respect, ElBaradei could not be treated by Mubarak in the same manner as other opposition politicians (the last candidate to challenge Mubarak in a presidential election, Ayman Nour, was convicted on trumped-up charges of forgery and thrown in jail for four years). Egypt's economy only keeps its head above water with the help of the United States and Europe, and while they have been willing to close their eyes to Mubarak's dictatorial tendancies in the past, it would be impossible to do so with ElBaradei in the picture. His international profile is simply too large.

The prospect of an ElBaradei candidacy has rejunivated the stagnant political scene in Egypt and Egyptians seem excited by the prospect of a credible choice in the upcoming election. With Mubarak and his security forces having ruled Egypt with an iron fist for so many years, and with elections having been long recognized as fraudulent farces, the Egyptian people are hungry for democracy and a real chance to assert their sovereignty, which, after all, belongs to them by natural law.

ElBaradei seems open to the idea of running for President, but has said he will only do so if there were guarantees that the election would be free and fair, including international observers and equal time for all candidates in the Egyptian media. Considering Mubarak's past record, these requirements seem unlikely to materialize. Indeed, the Egyptian constitution effectively limits candidates for President to a few people selected by the ruling party, so it's possible that ElBaradei would not be allowed to run at all.

Again, it is not the business of the United States to stick its nose into the internal affairs of other nations. But we can hope that Mubarak sees the way history is moving and agrees to a free and fair election in 2011. The ideals of Thomas Jefferson may have emerged in America, but they are equally valid the world over.

Bipartisan Senate Pair Team Up to Tackle National Fiscal Crisis

21st Century Jeffersonians believe that the most important issue facing the United States today is not terrorism, or healthcare, or immigration. Important as those issues are, they pale in comparison with the most critical challenge of all.

The national debt.

As of today, the national debt is $12.3 trillion and rising by about $3.92 billion every day. The enormous costs of our mandated social programs like Social Security and Medicare, the sickeningly bloated military budget and the wars being waged in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the unnecessary waste that is endemic on the federal level have completely bankrupted the nation.

Our current political leadership in Washington, on both sides of the aisle, would like to pretend that this crisis simply doesn't exist, and therefore are continuing to spend money as if it grows on trees. They can only do this, of course, by passing the buck onto succeeding generations. In order to pay for our present extravagance, we are quite literally stealing money from our children and grandchildren.

Jefferson believed that fiscal discipline was one of the two greatest responsibilities of political leadership (the other was avoiding war). He believed that running a government at a deficit was a greater evil than higher taxation. Indeed, he stated explicitly that if government on any level had to borrow money , it had a moral duty to immediately implement a tax to ensure that the debt was paid off within twenty years. To do otherwise was not only poor fiscal policy, but a moral crime.

Both Republicans and Democrats regularly accuse the other of creating this crisis. The fact is that they are both equally to blame. When President Bush took office in 2001, his administration and the Republican-controlled Congress took a large budget surplus (which obviously should have been spent on paying down the debt) and turned it into a massive budget deficit by cutting taxes for the rich and launching an unnecessary invasion of Iraq. A year ago, when President Obama took office, his administration and a Democratic Congress embarked on an even bigger spending spree, passing a stimulus bill totalling nearly $800 billion and transforming an already horrible fiscal situation into an absolutely catastrophic one.

It should come as no surprise that the last time the budget was balanced was when one party controlled the White House and the other party controlled Congress. A bipartisan approach to this crisis is essential to solving it, and in that spirit, two members of the Senate from opposite sides of the aisle have come together to lay out an interesting joint proposal.

Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH), the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, have proposed creating a bipartisan commission of 18 members (eight congressional Democrats, eight congressional Republicans, and two representatives from the administration) to study various proposals for lowering the deficit and getting the national debt under control. If 14 of the 18 members could agree on a plan, then it would be sent to the House and Senate for an up-or-down vote, but would need to be approved by a 60% vote in each house, rather than by a simple majority.

Here is an NPR radio interview with the two senators as they discuss their plan.



These two senators should be applauded for their willingness to face the problem fair and square. We should be under no illusions that this proposal will be some kind of silver bullet that will solve the problem, but it's a start. 21st Century Jeffersonians should immediately contact their own senators and tell them to support what Conrad and Gregg have proposed.

President Proposes New Tax on Wall Street Banks

According to this story from the Associated Press, the Obama Administration is considering a new tax on those Wall Street banks which benefited from the taxpayer-funded, government-run Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The goal of the proposed tax would be to recoop any money lost to the federal government as a result of expending TARP funds and to help balance the woefully-unbalanced federal budget.

This is good news, and 21st Century Jeffersonians should wholeheartedly support this proposal. It is only right and fair that these banks pay an additional tax after having been bailed out by the federal government. Furthermore, considering the fiscal crisis, this new bank tax would be a most welcome stream of additional revenue (although, truth be told, persuading the federal government to use the money for deficit reduction is likely to be an uphill battle).

In any case, Wall Street clearly needs to be reigned in, and an additional tax on these banks would be a welcome addition to any new regulations on their activities that may emerge from the current Congress. These people ruined the lives of millions of American citizens, and brought the country to the brink of total econoic collapse, merely to line their own pockets with obscene multi-million dollar bonuses. While millions of Americans were losing their jobs and homes because of the mismanagement and greed of Wall Street, the bank executives were popping open champagne bottles.

These banks only survived because they were bailed out by extremely reluctant American taxpayers. But even after that, we now see the Wall Street fat cats already back to their old tricks again, preparing to pay out billions of dollars in bonuses even before they have paid back the taxpayers. This is something that should outrage every American citizen.

Let's hope President Obama's bank tax proposal is successful, and that a serious financial regulation reform package can get through Congress. Thus far, Obama has been far too soft on the bankers, despite occasional populist rhetoric on the subject. It's high time for him to take the kid gloves off and crack down on them. In a truly just world, many of these investment bankers would be in jail. Slapping them with an additional tax, however, is a good place to start.

What Would Jefferson Think of the Healthcare Debate?

Thomas Jefferson would have been rather stunned by the debate on the future of America's healthcare system currently unfolding in Congress. As a man of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the very concept of a healthcare system would have been alien to him, and it would have taken him some time to adjust to it. Jefferson would certainly have been delighted and amazed by the astonishing progress that has been made in medical science since his time, and would certainly want its fruits to be available to all citizens. Indeed, it could be argued that access to proper healthcare is part of a person's inalienable right to life. But how to ensure it?

After familiarizing himself with the debate, Jefferson would have first pointed out that personal responsibility is the most important aspect to this question, and he would have been dismayed by its near-total lack of mention in the debate. Americans, he would quickly say, would do more for their own health if they simply took a thirty minute walk every day than if they created the best healthcare system in the world. But aside from this, what manner of public policy would Jefferson call for in the healthcare debate?

One of the key sticking points in the healthcare bill that is to emerge from negotiations between the House and the Senate is whether it should include the so-called Public Option, a program to be offered by the federal government to compete with private insurance plans. The House bill includes it, while the Senate bill excludes it. Its proponents say it is the only way to ensure proper coverage for a large segment of the American populace, while its detractors say it would lead to a collapse of the private healthcare system altogether.

Jefferson would almost certainly oppose the Public Option, because he opposed virtually any measure that increased the power of the central government. He clearly saw that every increase in the power of the central goverment made the people less free, and enacting the public option would certainly be a massive accumulation of goverment power. Even if the federal government had the very best of intentions, it would be a blow to the self-reliance of the people and, therefore, to their freedom.

But Jefferson equally understood that the government was not the only threat to the liberty of the people, and he would have opposed private health insurance companies when they sought to rob Americans of their right to healthcare. The image of private companies denying coverage to citizens because of their past medical history would have struck Jefferson as immoral and unacceptable. He saw the government as the protector of the rights of the citizens, so it seems clear that he would have supported those provisions of the bill which prohibit private health insurance companies from discriminating against citizens based on their past medical history.

In short, Jefferson would have opposed the government becoming a provider of healthcare itself, but he would have supported reasonable government regulation of private healthcare companies to ensure that they couldn't deny Americans their right to health insurance. He would be rational enough to recognize that there had to be some government involvement in the healthcare system, but he would have striven to make sure that this was limited as much as possible to local and state governments, and that federal involvement was kept to an absolute minimum.

Both the House and the Senate versions of the bill prohibit taxpayer money from being used to pay for abortions, and Jefferson would have approved of this. While it's impossible to know what Jefferson would have thought about abortion in general, he certainly would have opposed a person being compelled to pay taxes to support a practice he or she found morally repugnant.

Jefferson, as a rational man, would also ask us to look at the multitude of examples provided by the experiences of other nations and see what miht be emulated in an American environment. What does the healthcare of France do well, which we might do as well? Or Germany? Or Japan? The all-too-common American practice of ignoring what works well in other countries would have dismayed Jefferson, especially on such an important matter as this.

And finally, Jefferson would have been kept up at night by the thought of how much the final bill that emerges from Congress was going to cost. While always in favor of low taxes, he would have approved of the measures in both versions of the bill to pay for the expense through increased tax on higher-income earners, because he firmly believed that deficit spending was a greater evil than taxation. Still, he would call on us to do everything in power to minimize the cost to taxpayers, while still ensuring the provision of affordable healthcare to every American.

Between the House and Senate versions of the healthcare bill, it's rather clear that Jefferson would consider the Senate verson to be superior. But he would still consider it too expensive and call for additional revisions to reduce cost and curtail the involvement of the federal government. To the greatest extent possible, Jefferson would want decisions regarding healthcare to be kept local and personal.

This does not mean that Jefferson would want to maintain the status quo on healthcare. Believing as he would that access to the fruits of medical science is an inalienable human right, he would recognize that the current system allow private companies to deny this right to Americans and that this wrong needed to be righted.

Why We Must Protect the Financial System from the Hamiltonians

This column in the New York Times by Frank Rich is an absolute must-read piece. He begins by pointing our, quite correctly, that the damage done to the United States by those responsible for the financial crisis that sparked the 2009 "Great Recession" was, in a certain sense, greater than that which might be caused by an Al-Qaeda terrorist attack. From this, he makes the obvious point that we must guard against a repeat of the recent looting of the nation by Wall Street executives just as assiduously as we would guard against another Al-Qaeda terrorist attack.

The men and women responsible for the disaster on Wall Street that has unfolded over recent years- and they number in the thousands- have escaped any meaningful punishment. Sadly, this is not surprising. Thanks to the armies of lobbyists the Hamiltonians employ on Capitol Hill, Congress has never passed any meaningful legislation prohibiting the unscrupulous activities the Wall Streeters that lead to the economic crisis (and, lest it be forgotten, ruined lives of millions of American citizens).

Adding insult to injury, of course, was the fact that American taxpayers were forced to shell out the money to save the massive Wall Street financial institutions, even as the executives have continued paying themselves billions of dollars in obscene bonuses.

Thomas Jefferson would not be at all surprised by the financial crisis that has unfolded over the past few years, and he would point out the fitting irony that it was caused by the greed and unscrupulousness of men and women working within a few hundred yards of where Alexander Hamilton was buried. The struggle between Jeffersonianism and Hamiltonianism did not end in the early 1800s, but continued to rage even in our own day. Indeed, the contest is as fierce as ever.

Film Recommendation: Food, Inc.

In Jefferson's time, the greatest threat to liberty came from overbearing governmental power, first from the British and later from the Hamiltonians. If he could take a peek into our own time, however, he would see the unrestrained greed and arrogance of corporate power to be just as great a threat as that of government. Indeed, it often seems that those two go hand-in-hand, working together to reduce the American people to a state of dependence.

Nothing would terrify Jefferson more than the control multinational corporations have over the nation's food supply. In his time, more than nineteen out of twenty citizens were independent farmers entirely self-sufficient in terms of food. In our time, independent farmers have virtually vanished as a segment of society. Only about two percent of Americans today are farmers, and most of those have been reduced to the status of servants of the big multinational corporations.

It might seem infinitely more convenient for an American citizen to go to the grocery store to buy a loaf of bread than for him to grow it and produce it himself, but the unseen costs are astronomical. By allowing something as fundamental as our food supply to be taken out of our own individual control, we have perhaps gained a bit of comfort, but only at the price of freedom. Even worse, we have little or no idea how the multinational food corporations are producing the food itself.

A wonderful documentary, Food, Inc., hit the theaters last year and is now available for rental. Better than any previous documentary on the subject, it lays out the facts of how the big multinational corporations have taken control of the nation's food supply, how they disdain the health and safety of our citizens in pursuit of profits, and how their lobbying of the federal government allows them to avoid any meaningful regulation which might help protect the American people. Directed by Robert Kenner and featuring authors Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (In Defense of Food), this movie cannot be recommended strongly enough.

Watch the trailer below.



Find this movie and watch it whenever you get the chance. Better yet, invite a bunch of friends over and watch it together while eating a meal made from ingredients purchased entirely at the local farmer's market.

Obama Administration's Efforts to Improve Science and Math Education Would Be Better Left to the States

President Obama announced today that the federal government will be allocating $250 million to improve training for science and math teachers throughout the country. While believing that the President is well-intended and agreeing with him that the international rankings of American students in math and science need to be improved, 21st Century Jeffersonians should view this effort as a misguided assertion of federal power and yet another erosion of the principles of federalism.

The Constitution does not delegate any powers to the federal government in the field of education, which is an issue that should be left entirely to the states. In the last half century, especially since the establishment of the Department of Education in 1980, the federal governmnt in Washington has encroached continually on the independence of state governments in matters of education. Different states have different requirements, and the idea that a congressman in Vermont understands the needs of a student in Oregon better that the local schoolboard is simply ridiculous.

Furthermore, while $250 million may be a very small sliver of the overall federal budget, every single one of those dollars makes the disastrous fiscal situation of the federal government that much worse. It can easily be argued that the money would have been spent in reducing the deficit.

Wherever federal money goes, federal control will inevitably follow, even with the best of intentions. State and local governments should be working hard to improve the quality of math and science education (and, indeed, education in general) because that is part of their duties to their citizens. But as failed efforts like the No Child Left Behind Act have amply demonstrated, interventions by the federal government into the education system usually produce little or no good and a great deal of trouble.

Thanks, Mr. President. But no thanks.