Don't be a girly man

Size shouldn't matter, but lately it seems to.

USA Today reported on Tuesday that US troops in Iraq are forced to spend far more time in combat without a significant break, than troops in previous wars. This in spite of recommendations by army psychologists that troops receive a one month break for every three months in combat, a policy similar to that used in World War II. An Army mental health study reports that 30% of troops are experiencing some sort of mental health problem, including anxiety, depression, and acute stress. This comes from having to be continuously wary of surprise insurgent attacks.

US commanders reject the concern.

They (U.S. troops) are out there consistently every single day. So you have to be mentally and physically tough.

So says Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, commander of ground forces in Iraq, suggesting that anyone who can't handle fifteen months of continuous combat isn't "mentally and physically tough." Odierno's chief aide, Brig. Gen. Joseph Anderson, says they can't afford to allow breaks.

We would never get the job done of securing (of Baghdad) if we went out [into combat] for three months and came back [for one].

What he means is that having a better-rested military force would require more manpower, so troops would be available to replace those taken out for R-and-R. Since the voluntary forces, including the reserves and National Guard are already stretched to the limit, a larger force could only be achieved by means of a draft. The president would much rather quietly subject 30% of his volunteers to lasting mental health problems, than face a public uproar over the true cost of this war.

While this may seem like un-American cruelty to most of us, to the Bush Administration and its supporters it's just part of the job. A significant percentage of the population thinks America is too soft, that it needs to become more muscular and manly. Needless to say, a disproportionate number who think so, are men.

A great explanation of this cultural phenomenon can be found in a book by Stephen Ducat, "The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars, and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity." Ducat shows how recent politicians and their advisors have discovered the importance of being phallic, of behaving as though possessed of floods of testosterone. The public eats it up. The book is a rather graphic but entertaining exposee that uses a framework of masculinity to explain the recent electoral successes of Republican politicians.

The book explores the context of paternalism that we have inherited from the many cultures contributing to our Melting Pot. A possible explanation for the recent ascendance of macho may come from looking at recent changes in America's economic position in the world. Once we were the alpha male nation, unquestionably dominant in the world economy on the strength of our natural resources and level of education. Recently, however, other much larger nations have been catching up. Our "package" hasn't really gotten any smaller, but others have grown, and we're no longer the pride of the locker room.

Like middle school boys who haven't yet learned adult problem solving skills, our leaders are trying to compensate for the loss of dominance by using their fists. They will always attract a crowd of admirers who are similarly stunted.

Democrats so far have tried to compete by displaying their own military masculinity, exemplified especially by John Kerry's jingoistic performance at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. But that isn't the only choice. For one thing, women aren't nearly as impressed with size as men are, and don't need masculine imagery to persuade them in a political decision. For another thing, militarism isn't the only way to demonstrate strength and virility to men. We can attack hard problems such as economic growth, energy, education, and health care using imagery of power, confidence, and ingenuity, showing how we're brave enough to confront these problems while Republicans shy away.

Earn CEO Pay - Without Working!

Don't you hate it when your inbox overflows with something-for-nothing come-ons: like "I earned $20,000 per month without leaving my sofa!" or "You can lose 200 pounds without exercise, and still eat anything you want!" It makes you wonder what idiot would ever respond to these ads, right?

Colorado voters fall for these pitches on a regular basis: "Raise school spending every year without raising taxes!" or "Lower your tax bill every year without affecting services!" Irresponsible pundits such as Doug Bruce and Jon Caldara are the pitchmen for these con games, and voters eat it up. We don't really have a choice.

The reason we haven't had a choice, is something called the "single subject rule." This is a provision of the Colorado Constitution that prohibits ballot measures and legislation from addressing more than one subject at a time. The rule plays a useful role, preventing interest groups from hiding odious provisions inside measures that the voters otherwise strongly support. But one harmful effect of the rule is that it doesn't let us deal with the costs and benefits of government at the same time.

Because of the single-subject rule, we can ask for new services from government but we can't determine how to pay for them. Or we can lower taxes without worrying about what services will have to be cut. This is stupid. You wouldn't run your household this way.

Hey Mom, can I have an M1A1 tank for my birthday?

Sure, son.

(next week)

Dear, I guess you'll need to get a second job to pay for that M1A1 tank I bought for Junior last week.

We all know that if government were to do all the good things we know it can do, the cost would be far more than we're willing to afford. It's one of the basic facts of life, right up there with the Ten Commandments and Murphy's Law. So we have to set priorities. That means if we ask for something from government, we have to give something back, either higher taxes or giving up some other service that's less important. Sometimes these choices are pretty complex. We hire legislators to analyze them for us.

Because of the single subject rule, as well as the short attention span of the average voter, we've failed for a couple decades now to come to grips with the tradeoffs every government faces. It's coming back to haunt us: K-12 education and prisons are eating up the state budget, because of Amendment 23 and tougher sentencing laws. Yet, we've never decided how to pay for them, so the Tabor and Gallagher amendments force the state to cut colleges and transportation. As it stands, it's a great recipe for sending our business climate back to the stone age.

The Denver Post came out today in favor of an initiative by House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, to relax the single subject rule in certain cases so we can tackle this problem. It's going to be a painful process, like taking the worst-tasting medicine you can imagine, to restructure our priorities. But we don't really have a choice.

Tancredo does Paris Hilton

Tom Tancredo is mad as hell, and he wants you to know he's not going to take it. "Mom, it isn't right," he sobs. Congressional Democrats and Republicans have reached across the aisle to write the first enforceable immigration legislation in decades, and Tancredo is furious.

"The whole focus of him traveling is to stop this bill. He's going to go wherever he's needed to make the best case to kill this."

So said Tancredo presidential campaign spokesman Alan Moore, explaining why Tancredo has decided to all but drop out of the presidential race. Tancredo says he intends to travel to Republican-held Congressional districts to run against fellow GOP members who favor solving the immigration problem.

The Senate this week is developing a bipartisan bill that will strengthen border security, and penalize undocumented workers and the companies that hire them. After such immigrants pay their debt to society for arriving unlawfully, they will have a path to clear up their status and work toward legal residence, even citizenship if they remain law-abiding. The labor needs of businesses will determine the allocation of visas.

It's not a perfect bill, but considering all the hot air on every side of the issue, perfection is the sworn enemy of the good. It's a solid bipartisan compromise, having even the president's support. It's the best our democracy can do. It deserves passage.

But Tancredo will have none of it. His entire career, based on anger toward immigrants, will come to an end if the immigration problem is solved. His voice is that of someone whose job is about to be downsized.

"This is the whole ballgame here to a large extent," Tancredo said.

Republican Senators temporarily delayed the bill with a filibuster on Friday, claiming that the bill isn't sufficiently cruel for their tastes. But Sen. Salazar plans more work on it next week. He has Archbishop Chaput's support.

"We can no longer wait to address this pressing humanitarian issue," [Chaput] said in a statement. "Delaying would lead to more enforcement raids, confusion, and resentment."

Salazar's challenge is very straight-forward: gradually increase the cruelty of the law until you satisfy enough Republicans to stop a filibuster. So the endlessly patient Salazar will keep introducing gradually more punitive versions of the bill, each time counting up the cries of "amnesty" (a Republican word meaning "excessively humane"). As soon as the number of "amnesty cries" drops below 40, the bill can pass.

Congressman Tancredo entered the presidential race to find a platform to preach about his pet issue, and use his support among Republican voters as a gauge of public support for his petulant stand. His poll numbers, well below the margin of error in every major poll, show the public doesn't have any measurable interest.

Will that stop his quixotic campaign? Probably not any time soon, but eventually fund-raising realities will catch up with him and he'll be back here asking the voters of Douglas County to re-elect him.

But voters in Douglas County aren't so fond of Tancredo's approach to immigration either. To our business-oriented voters, the Senate's approach looks very sensible. The next problem, according to our voters, isn't the flow of low-wage labor to the US; it's the flow of high-wage jobs overseas. Tancredo hasn't got a clue on that issue. We need a Congressman who does.

Preventing Katrina

With the 2007 hurricane season officially begun and forecast to be an active one, it's a good time to reflect on the terrible storm two years ago, Katrina, that showed with the deaths of more than a thousand people just how unprepared we are for security threats right here at home.

We've heard a lot about the Federal Emergency Management Agency and its botched response to Katrina, led by Michael "Heckuva job Brownie" Brown. Aside from being a Bush crony, Brown's main qualification for the job was his leadership as Judges and Stewards Commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association. Lacking any perceptible management skills or vision, Brown saw to it that FEMA was completely unprepared for a massive disaster.

But the untold story is how the situation got so bad in New Orleans in the first place, how a city protected with massive levees and pumps was unable to protect its citizens. The American Society of Civil Engineers this week released its report, "The New Orleans Hurricane Protection Systems: What Went Wrong and Why". The report was commissioned as a peer review by the US Army Corps of Engineers, which asked the nation's main professional organization of civil engineers (of which I'm a member) to select a panel of the world's leading experts on flood control engineering.

Now you might think a report like this would be a dry, technical tome with little political relevance. You would be wrong. The report is carefully worded for sure, but the diagrams, photos, and explanations are easy to understand. Most importantly, the report looks at the institutions that built and operate the flood control system, and exposes the ample lack of coordination, planning, funding, and competence, that led to the New Orleans disaster. The engineering errors, numerous big ones that compounded on each other, are clearly explained, but the subtext is how these errors could happen in a system that is supposed to prevent such errors.

And that's where we find the political lesson. The political world is full of people like Grover Norquist, who think government is useless and should be "drowned in a bathtub." Such people might be entertaining, but they have no responsibility and can say any stupid thing they like without worry about the consequences. Where we go wrong, is when politicians and voters actually listen to them, and think, as Michael Brown did, that government is nothing but a paid vacation.

The political officials, of every party at every level, who built and maintained the New Orleans Hurricane Protection System didn't take their jobs seriously enough and didn't think about the consequences of a poorly planned, incomplete system. FEMA, whose job is to identify and prepare for natural disasters, obviously did neither, nor did the state and local agencies that were closer to the danger. There is plenty of blame to go around, but that's part of the problem: everyone passes the blame and no one accepts responsibility to solve the problem.

New Orleans is one of the nation's largest seaports, located at the entrance to its largest inland waterway system and integral to such vital national assets as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. But even bigger cities are vulnerable to hurricanes, or protected from nearby water bodies by levee and flood control systems, and others have engineered systems to protect them from earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes, and other natural and man-made hazards. Colorado has such hazards and systems. Government is responsible for building and maintaining all these systems.

The lesson from Katrina is that we need leaders who understand the responsibility with which they are being entrusted, and are willing to take it seriously. Often, as in the case of Katrina, the main struggle of politics isn't about Democrats vs. Republicans; it's about those who care vs. those who are willfully ignorant.