Rewarding Bad Behavior

It seems like such a simple concept -- if one rewards bad behavior, one gets more of it. Yet our government, under both Democrat and Republican administrations, has continually violated this premise in both domestic and foreign policy. It did not take me hours to come up with the following examples of this lunacy:

- North Korea has, since the mid 1990's been offered all sorts of foreign aid and forgiveness in order to dissuade it from becoming a nuclear and ballistic missile threat to Japan, South Korea and, yes, even the United States. This foreign policy clearly has had just the opposite effect.

- In many American cities and universities, but particularly recently in Baltimore and Berkeley, civil disobedience, rioting, looting, and assault on innocent people has been forgiven as being "maybe" justified ... and the arrested perpetrators released without punishment. Today, even the slightest imagined affront is an excuse to knock over liquor stores, pharmacies and other targets of opportunity.

-There is a rapidly growing threat to the solvency of our Social Security System due to the rapidly growing disability (SSI) population. Now such silliness as AD/HD, fatty liver, anxiety, and even obesity are rewarded. There are agencies and doctors who specialize in qualifying often able-bodied people to hop onto this gravy train. This will eventually topple the Social Security System itself.

- Disaffected Muslims have been encouraged toward radicalization by the silly notion that any serious push-back against these caliphate worshippers would do nothing but encourage them. The notion that Gitmo or enhanced interrogation are recruiting tools for radicalizing Muslims is a perfect example of this pretzel logic. It is obviously the Western World's weak-kneed efforts to eradicate terrorism that has encouraged more terrorism ... not the opposite.

- Iran has baited and buffaloed he United States and Israel ever since the American embassy takeover during President Carter's term. However, relatively stiff sanctions against it had slowed down its obsession to sponsor terrorism, acquire nuclear weapons and develop/test ICBMs. However, under the Obama/Jarrett regime, relaxing these sanctions and enormous financial rewards has reawakened this feral animal.

The list goes on and on: paying welfare mothers to have more children, offering loans to students resulting in higher and higher college tuitions, giving drivers licenses to illegal aliens which opens the doors to their voting, supporting warmists with doctored data allowing them to reward bad science, paying incompetent teachers to not teach ... unfortunately I could go on and on.

How do we squash this nonsense? Stop electing politicians who so behave ... as they want to appease their voters to get reelected ... another example of bad behavior being rewarded. But, in time, their replacements will likely do more of the same. Too many professional politicians are bad apples. It clearly is a genetic defect in the body politic and politicians. And we many voters can't seem to grasp this concept.

Obesity

The American Medical Association (AMA) has just decided that obesity is a disease (see: USA Today Story).  This is a profound declaration and is likely to cause not just a ripple though our society, but a tsunami … considering that it is estimated that 1/3rd of Americans are already obese.  (Full disclosure: yours truly shops in the “hefty” section of clothing stores.)

Now, I am old enough to remember that, in Germany, being overweight was once considered to be a recognition that you had “made it” … particularly for men.  This might be a hint as to why so many in this country are fatties – we are a land of good and plenty and this plutocracy is reflected in out waistlines. Not only are we overweight, but we are also obsessed with getting svelte.  I once was friendly with Dr. Robert Atkins who made his fortune with his weight-loss theories … and is still famous long after he has expired (probably partly due to his being overweight.)  Even after the billions of dollars Americans have spent on diet fads and weight-loss regimes, things do not seem to be getting better.

So how do we fix things?  I don’t think it will be by banning super-sized drinks or by declaring that there are “food desert” areas of our cities or by forcing restaurant to list caloric contents on their menus or by many of the other cockamamie ideas touted by the likes of Mika Brzezinski or Michelle Obama.  Perhaps I too can offer a few silly suggestions:

-         stop making tobacco smokers into piranhas (maybe why Barack has stayed so thin)

-         start making pot smokers into piranhas (the munchies don’t help things)

-         bring back physical education to our school curricula

-         eliminate food stamps (EBT cards) for anyone overweight

-         locate all parking spots at least 100 yards away from the nearest store (or restaurant)

Unfortunately, these are probably not effective solutions (the real ones are too buried in our society’s ethos.)  And if I did have them, I would then be listed in the “Forbes 100,” a compendium of the world's richest people.

But the most insidious result of this AMA decision is that now millions more Americans will now likely apply for Social Security disability benefits (SSI) … in that they have this “disease” … again, an example of unintended consequences.

And what will happen to these people who then go on the federal dole?  You guessed it.

Red Herring

A friend recently sent me an e-mail about immigration reform in which he said: "making the desirable [illegal immigrants] citizens after exacting a measure of penalties is the way to go".  This to me is unrealistic and a Democrat-inspired red herring … which now is unfortunately echoed by many naive Republicans … such as Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham.  Let me expand on the points I have made in a previous blog post (see: Carrying Water in Sieve).

Imagine that you are an illegal immigrant ... you work under the table, you don't pay income taxes, you get many social services: Medicaid, EBT card, Section 8 housing, an Obamaphone, etc. ... maybe even SSI.  You have a driver’s license but don't have auto insurance.  You even can vote and sometimes do.  Now would you step forward and let the government know who and where you are, lose some or all of your social benefits, pay your back taxes and penalties, commit to paying income and Social Security taxes into the forever future, buy auto insurance, learn English, and stand in line for citizenship?

I don't think so.  One can be sure that most illegal immigrants understand economic self-interest and the sorry state of our immigration-law enforcement.

I predict that the only result of the currently-proposed immigration-reform legislation would be that less than 25% of those to whom this reform is directed will actually come forward under its terms.  And I also think that most of its more restrictive provisions will be ignored by the Obama administration (i.e., border security expansion will not be implemented) … and the number of illegal immigrants will dramatically increase from the admitted 11 million today.

A piece of advice … don’t try to feast on a red herring.

Safety Net

Mitt Romney recently said that he is not worried about the poor ... they have a safety net ... and if the net is broken, he will fix it.  Most "pundits" on the left and the right consider this a major gaff that Romney needs to walk back.  I'm not quite so sure.  I believe that the safety net that our European-style welfare economy has constructed is nearly as universal as humanly possible ... and our politicians constantly vie to outdo each other finding even newer benefits.  I recently wrote about how the poor in this country are now getting free cell phones (see: Alphabet Soup).  Now I read that our safety net includes another goodie -- nearly free high-speed Internet access (see: NY Post Article).  Wow!  We middle-class schlubs are paying north of $50 per month for broadband Internet access.  So this reduced fee ($10 per month) then amounts to about another $480 per year of cost forgiveness (this time, courtesy of The Barry) to those who already have a myriad of government benefits.

I would really love to see a definitive financial spreadsheet of all this government largess (Section-8 housing, heating assistance, Medicaid, free school lunches, free cell phones, SSI, cash aid to dependent families, food stamps/EBT cards, free transportation, earned-income tax credits, reduced Internet costs, educational grants, etc. etc.) that a go-getting welfare family does, in fact, receive.  I suspect such a compendium would show few if any holes in the safety net and shock the American public into a movement toward real welfare reform.  Were this to happen, Romney's words may not be so damaging after all.