View 713 Friday, February 17, 2012

The web is abuzz. Rick Santorum has a friend who thinks Bayer Aspirin is a contraceptive pill! The horror!

It is an illustration of a generation gap. Recall that in 1953 Arthur Clarke’s Childhood’s End, in keeping with the various theories derived from the voodoo sciences of Freud and Jung about sexual repression, postulated that technology would someday develop a reliable contraceptive pill, and that, together with an infallible means of identifying paternity, would bring about a sexual revolution in which sex would be decoupled from marriage and families. No one would be repressed or suffer from psychological disorders due to sexual frustrations. The human race would enter an new era, and the childhood of the race would end. This was all incorporated into a story with benevolent aliens and flying saucers. A thoroughly New Age story.

In those times, there were two means for contraception: condoms and abstinence, and the only 100% reliable one was abstinence. Condoms were advocated widely but mostly for prevention of sexually transmitted disorders, and they didn’t always work, either for that or for contraception – particularly since it was fairly common to forget the condom in the heat of the moment. The best way for a girl to avoid pregnancy was to keep her knees together. Using an aspirin pill as a reminder to do that was optional. Foster Friess, a wealthy supporter of Rick Santorum, was astonished when he had to explain that joke. It’s another illustration of the generation gap.

In a startling outburst Thursday, the multimillionaire who’s given most to a super PAC supporting former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) for president remarked that universal contraception coverage for women shouldn’t be needed because, “Back in my day, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives.”

“The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly,” he told MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell.

The comment comes by way of Foster Friess, the 71-year-old multi-millionaire former investment manager who’s become the largest donor to the Red, White and Blue fund, which supports the Pennsylvania Republican.

Aspirin is a painkiller, not a contraceptive. It’s not clear exactly what Friess meant, but the seeming implication is that women should just keep their legs closed to avoid pregnancy, instead of using modern contraceptives.

After which the press calls for Santorum, who wasn’t part of the interview and certainly said nothing of the sort, to apologize to women, because Friess used a high school joke about abstinence. What he is to apologize for is not clear.

One presumes the horror is over the notion that getting pregnant or not getting pregnant is a matter of individual responsibility and choice. Or perhaps the implication of a double standard – that chastity is the responsibility of women, not men.

Perhaps the apology ought to be demanded from the universe, or evolution, or from the Almighty for having made men and women different? Men don’t get pregnant and thus have far less to lose from indulgence in random acts of sex. This has been known to nearly everyone on Earth for several thousand years. This may be unfair, but whether by design or by evolution it is built into the structure of the human race. Changing this ‘unfairness’ is likely to be expensive, and it is difficult to discern the source of any moral imperative to do so: why is it the responsibility of the successful to pay for contraception.

Another argument is economic: it is in the interest of the productive and the successful to limit the number of people born to the irresponsible. Population control is important. The rich and successful are capable of personal responsibility, but the masses are not. Their numbers must be controlled or we are all lost. The stupids are outbreeding us, and we must do what we can to limit their numbers. Contraception is a useful and effective means for doing this. Those of a less cynical bent will go further and say that we must all limit the numbers of our offspring. Overpopulation threatens everyone’s quality of life.

Carried far enough this leads to policies like China’s “One Child” regulations. Larry Niven postulates something of the sort in his Known Space stories, in which the militia periodically engage in “mother hunts” for unlicensed pregnancies. In China enforcement is largely in the hands of local Party cadres, who are reported forcibly to have aborted mothers who got pregnant while raising a living child. There are also the usual stories of how high party officials and the rich evade those restrictions, and no one is surprised by that. The rich and powerful will always find ways around such policies. They always have. Eugenicists can even take heart: those smart enough to get away with having multiple children are probably the ones who ought to have them.

Incidentally, the early eugenicists such as Sir Francis Galton did not discourage the lower classes from having children: instead they founded organizations to encourage bright people to marry early and paid young married couples stipends to allow them to continue their education. They wanted the smart and educated to multiply. Galton’s Eugenics Society still exists, now under the name of The Galton Institute.

There were others concerned with the twin problems of overpopulation among the ‘unfit’ and over time eugenics societies transmogrified to the point at which some encouraged and carried out sterilizations of the unfit, the notion being to cull the human herd and remove defective genes from the gene pool. No one admits to such sentiments now, but in 1927 the Supreme Court decreed:

This is a writ of error to review a judgment of the Supreme Court of Appeals of the State of Virginia, affirming a judgment of the Circuit Court of Amherst County, by which the defendant in error, the superintendent of the State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble Minded, was ordered to perform the operation of salpingectomy upon Carrie Buck, the plaintiff in error, for the purpose of making her sterile. 143 Va. 310, 130 S. E. 516. The case comes here upon the contention that the statute authorizing the judgment is void under the Fourteenth Amendment as denying to the plaintiff in error due process of law and the equal protection of the laws.

Carrie Buck is a feeble-minded white woman who was committed to the State Colony above mentioned in due form. She is the daughter of a feeble- minded mother in the same institution, and the mother of an illegitimate feeble-minded child. She was eighteen years old at the time of the trial of her case in the Circuit Court in the latter part of 1924. An Act of Virginia approved March 20, 1924 (Laws 1924, c. 394) recites that the health of the patient and the welfare of society may be promoted in certain cases by the sterilization of mental defectives, under careful safeguard, etc.; that the sterilization may be effected in males by vasectomy and in females by salpingectomy, without serious pain or substantial danger to life; that the Commonwealth is supporting in various institutions many defective persons who if now discharged would become [274 U.S. 200, 206] a menace but if incapable of procreating might be discharged with safety and become self-supporting with benefit to themselves and to society; and that experience has shown that heredity plays an important part in the transmission of insanity, imbecility, etc. The statute then enacts that whenever the superintendent of certain institutions including the abovenamed State Colony shall be of opinion that it is for the best interest of the patients and of society that an inmate under his care should be sexually sterilized, he may have the operation performed upon any patient afflicted with hereditary forms of insanity, imbecility, etc., on complying with the very careful provisions by which the act protects the patients from possible abuse.

The superintendent first presents a petition to the special board of directors of his hospital or colony, stating the facts and the grounds for his opinion, verified by affidavit. Notice of the petition and of the time and place of the hearing in the institution is to be served upon the inmate, and also upon his guardian, and if there is no guardian the superintendent is to apply to the Circuit Court of the County to appoint one. If the inmate is a minor notice also is to be given to his parents, if any, with a copy of the petition. The board is to see to it that the inmate may attend the hearings if desired by him or his guardian. The evidence is all to be reduced to writing, and after the board has made its order for or against the operation, the superintendent, or the inmate, or his guardian, may appeal to the Circuit Court of the County. The Circuit Court may consider the record of the board and the evidence before it and such other admissible evidence as may be offered, and may affirm, revise, or reverse the order of the board and enter such order as it deems just. Finally any party may apply to the Supreme Court of Appeals, which, if it grants the appeal, is to hear the case upon the record of the trial [274 U.S. 200, 207] in the Circuit Court and may enter such order as it thinks the Circuit Court should have entered. There can be no doubt that so far as procedure is concerned the rights of the patient are most carefully considered, and as every step in this case was taken in scrupulous compliance with the statute and after months of observation, there is no doubt that in that respect the plaintiff in error has had due process at law.

The attack is not upon the procedure but upon the substantive law. It seems to be contended that in no circumstances could such an order be justified. It certainly is contended that the order cannot be justified upon the existing grounds. The judgment finds the facts that have been recited and that Carrie Buck ‘is the probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring, likewise afflicted, that she may be sexually sterilized without detriment to her general health and that her welfare and that of society will be promoted by her sterilization,’ and thereupon makes the order. In view of the general declarations of the Legislature and the specific findings of the Court obviously we cannot say as matter of law that the grounds do not exist, and if they exist they justify the result. We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 , 25 S. Ct. 358, 3 Ann. Cas. 765. Three generations of imbeciles are enough. [274 U.S. 200, 208] [snip] [ emphasis added]

The opinion was given by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the most respected justices of all time, and one of the liberal justices who helped change our notion of the Constitution. Holmes greatly expanded the power of legislatures and the powers of government. This particular opinion was widely applauded at the time it was delivered. Note that it does not expand the power of the Federal government; this is purely a state matter.

It is no surprise that the offhand remark about a Bayer Aspirin tablet being an effective contraceptive has sparked such wide attention. It reminds us of a time when people were considered to be responsible for their actions, and for the consequences of their actions; of a time when the power of government to insert itself into people’s lives was quite different from what it is now, and seen to be quite different.

It challenges the notion that it is the responsibility of the state to provide the means for contraception. What Foster Friess did not ask but might have is whether, given that it is the responsibility of the state to provide the means of contraception and those paying for it should not quibble because it is in the interests of society that people not have unwanted children, why not take the next step and make use of contraceptives compulsory for all those who have not shown themselves worthy of having descendents? It would certainly make for lower taxes, and for that matter, for a larger treasury to be distributed as largesse to the voters.

I am not fully recovered from my weeks of this virus infection, but I am able to do a bit more work. I regret having to miss BOSKONE (a Boston science fiction convention) where I was supposed to be an honored guest this weekend, but it is clear that I made the right decision in not going. I’m still coughing, and I’d still be far more a burden than an asset – as well as contagious.

My thanks to those who have chosen to subscribe or renew subscriptions during this week’s Pledge Drive. This place operates on the Public Radio model – it’s free, but it needs subscribers in order to stay open. I do periodic subscription drives rather than continuously bugging people about it. I do my pledge drives when KUSC does theirs. That’s this week.

For those alarmed by an announcement that cell phone numbers are about to be released to telemarketers, before you decide to register with the national DO Not Call Federal Trade Commission number 888-457-8378 you might want to check the story. I am no great fan of Snopes (Snopes has agendas I do not share) but they can be useful. It does no harm to register with the FTC Do Not Call number, but it may not do much good, and there seems to be no urgency in the matter. http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/cell411.asp

I bring this up because recently I have been getting emails warning me that I am about to be spammed on my cell phone. You probably have too.

View 713 Thursday, February 16, 2012

Liberalism and neo-conservatism share some key elements; in particular, while their specific beliefs differ, each is convinced that they have the gnosis, the key knowledge that allows them to manipulate society to their benign ends, They also share the notion that when they do take action they ought to be judged on their intentions, not on the outcome. When things don’t work as planned – and usually they don’t – there are always good reasons.

I was reminded of this by a short article by Gene Callahan in the February issue of The American Conservative magazine. Entitled “Know Your Gnostics”, it is a short exposition on the concept of modern Gnosticism, with emphasis on the work of Eric Vogelin.

Back in my professor days I assigned Eric Vogelin’s New Science of Politics as one of the books to be read by my senior political philosophy students. Vogelin thought the world threatened by modern Gnostics, and predicted much from that analysis. As for example, when an economic policy, such as TARP, or the Keynesian economic stimulus program doesn’t work; or when the invasion of Iraq freed the people from Saddam Hussein but did not build the stable democracy of free men, there are always good reasons, and the blame must not fall on those whose honorable intentions failed in their noble missions. These are the men of action, who march in step with the flywheel of history. They are the midwives of the new and beautiful world – and when their actions fail, they must not be blamed. They meant well, and the world didn’t cooperate.

Of course there is another view: that we don’t understand the world all that well, and that our social sciences are mostly voodoo rituals. Neoconservatism grew out the Trotsky interpretation of Marxism, and modern Liberalism has deep roots in Fabian Socialism which was once known as Marxism with a human face – but which was able to overlook many of the horrors of the Soviet campaign to build a great society to transform the human condition. Young people now don’t remember that at one time communism was the hope of the world. Marx truly understood the world, and that knowledge was available to guide the actions of the Party as it sought to make a more beautiful world.

And when things didn’t work, there were always good reasons.

“The gap between intended and real effect will be imputed not to the Gnostic immortality of ignoring the structure of reality but to the immorality of some other person or society that does not behave as it should according to the dream conception of cause and effect.”

Eric Vogelin, The New Science of Politics

Of course Vogelin himself was the first to say we did not have a true science of politics. Gnosticism is alluring, but no one has ever discovered the gnosis; and many of those who, like Lenin and Mussolini thought they had, produced results they would not have chosen.

If you want more examples, you can find them among the architects of our current economic policies; or among those who sent the Legions to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Many have called my attention to this story:

Why are the food police inspecting school lunches?

It makes a great story – or at least a great headline:

• Food Inspector Confiscates Kid’s Homemade Lunch
• Preschooler’s lunch rejected by official
• Food police reject preschooler’s homemade lunch… in favour of chicken nuggets
• Food police confiscate 4-year old’s lunch, bill parents
• Preschooler’s Homemade Lunch Confiscated by Food Police
• Nanny state report: NC school officials confiscate preschooler’s homemade lunch

Another version

A North Carolina elementary school forced a preschool student to eat cafeteria chicken nuggets for lunch on Jan. 30 after officials reportedly determined that her homemade meal wasn’t up to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s standards for healthfulness, according to a report from the Carolina Journal.

The newspaper reported that the four-year-old girl brought a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, potato chips and apple juice in her packed lunch from home. That meal didn’t meet with approval from the government agent who was on site inspecting kids’ lunches that day.

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Division of Child Development and Early Education requires that all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs must meet USDA guidelines. Meals, the guidelines say, must include one serving each of meat, milk and grain and two servings of fruit or vegetables. Those guidelines apply to home-packed lunches as well as cafeteria meals.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/14/nanny-state-report-nc-school-officials-confiscate-preschoolers-homemade-lunch/#ixzz1mcE8ofvg

I have other versions, and lots of mail.

I was first told that an official inspected the child’s lunch, found it defective, forbade her from eating it, and instead provided her with a lunch of “nuggets” in the name of nutrition. If this all sounds vague, it is indeed, because the story had no details I could find. I searched but found no definitive account. We are told that the inspector was a “state agent” or a “federal agent”. If Federal there is often detail of which office of the Department of Agriculture except there is a variant in which the agent is from the Department of Education. We not only do not know the name of the agent, but the sex of the agent.

The story went viral, and a number of talk show hosts of different political opinions were outraged, but I still couldn’t find details, although I did get a lot of mail drawing it to my attention. Then, a few minutes ago, I found:

RALEIGH, N.C. — It was a tale of government meddling that outraged radio talk show hosts and a pair of Congress members: A 4-year-old was forced to dump her packed lunch and eat a state-dictated cafeteria lunch of chicken nuggets. Now school officials are blaming a teacher’s error in making sure the child had a nutritious meal.

The incident happened two weeks ago at an elementary school in Raeford, near Fort Bragg. The girl’s parents anonymously tipped off a Raleigh TV station and a conservative blogger after the girl brought home her packed lunch uneaten.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/nc-school-teachers-mistake-at-school-lunch-led-to-upset-calls-of-government-overreach/2012/02/16/gIQAof8NIR_story.html?tid=pm_national_pop

Alas a tempest in a teapot. A teacher or teacher’s aid at a local school was overly zealous, and those who first heard it were eager to find another example of the horrors of the nanny state.

Alas, while this one was blown up, horrible examples are not that hard to find. The bunny inspectors are real – and I note that no budget of any kind looks for silliness to eliminate. The budget is always larger, all the departments get more money, and the deficit grows. And the beat goes on.

I am still recovering from my afflictions. I should be in Boston for BOSKONE, but I am here at home. And I still owe you some mailbags. Perhaps I’ll get up a bit more energy before I go to bed.

Thanks to all those who subscribed or renewed subscriptions. The Pledge Drive continues. This place operates on the public radio principle. It’s free, but you should subscribe if you like it. And I only bug you about it when KUSC, the Los Angeles good music public radio station, has its pledge drive. That will end in a couple of days, so here’s your chance. Subscribe now. It’s easy.

View 713 Wednesday, February 15, 2012

I have a ticket for a flight to Boston for tomorrow morning at O Dark Thirty, but I won’t be using it. I am scheduled to be an honored guest at Boskone, and I was planning to go for weeks, when I came down with this. Yesterday afternoon I decided I was still contagious, and given the way I felt I would be far more a burden than an asset to my friends, so I regretfully informed them I wouldn’t be coming. Given the way I felt all day it’s clear that this was the right decision. I don’t know what this thing is, but it has laid me out. The good news is that I feel better – not good enough that I would contemplate getting up tomorrow for a trip with anything but dread, but better, meaning that I was actually able to get an hour’s work in on clearing off my desk. If that doesn’t sound like much, it’s a positive triumph compared to what I’ve been able to do for the past week.

I want again to thank all those who have responded to this weeks’ pledge drive and sent in subscriptions and renewals. This place operates on the public radio model. It’s free to everyone but it won’t be around if it doesn’t get subscriptions. Taking my cue from KUSC, the Los Angeles good music public radio station, I don’t bug people very often about this, but from time to time I have a week long pledge drive. I do this when KUSC has its pledge drive. They spend a week, all day each day, telling people that it’s time to pay, and if you were thinking about subscribing but hadn’t got around to it this would be a great time to do it, and all the rest of it. So there. I’ve told you, and if you haven’t subscribed, or you haven’t renewed your subscription in a year or two, now’s the time to do it.

I have been thinking about the logic of providing free birth control pills and other such stuff to women as part of the Obamacare package, and I don’t really understand. The story is that the Obama package provides for preventive health care, and birth control pills are justified under that. This apparently presumes that pregnancy is an illness. It’s an illness that happens only to women, but given the existence of the human race it’s a fairly common condition at one or another point in a woman’s life. That doesn’t sound much like an illness.

I suppose the logic is that unwanted pregnancy is the illness to prevent. It’s certainly true that unwanted pregnancy is a life changing experience, and having an unwanted baby can be a disaster for any family. Of course there are plenty of instances in which it turned out not to be a disaster at all; you can find those stories in both fiction and non-fiction. But yes, unwanted pregnancy often has bad effects, and thus I suppose could be classified as an illness, and something to be prevented.

The question is how it should be prevented, and that gets us into religious matters. Clearly the simplest way not to get pregnant is not to engage in sexual intercourse. That really works, and we were at one time told that if all the girls were taught that in school, and made aware of all the mechanics of sex, the number of unwanted pregnancies would go down and down. It may come as a surprise to many readers, but for most of the history of this Republic, right up into the 1950’s and beyond, sex education was considered a family matter, and the public education authorities didn’t supply it, Moreover, it wasn’t considered polite or proper to talk about sex, and girls were brought up to enforce that as a social taboo.

Now all that didn’t work perfectly, but when I was in high school teen-age pregnancy was rare. It was more common in certain parts of the city than in the middle class areas where I lived, but it wasn’t all that common even so; and a good part of the time the result of an unwanted pregnancy was a fairly hasty marriage. There weren’t that many illegitimate children. There were enough that it worried social scientists, who thumped the drums for sex education as the remedy. There were classes involving condoms and cucumbers, because in those days condoms were the only real contraceptives. Condoms were pitched to both men and women, not only as protection against unwanted pregnancy but also as protection against sexually transmitted diseases. The Army gave out pro-kits to soldiers since it was a lot cheaper to give them condoms and antiseptic wipes than to treat the various STD’s they might come home with. Officers and non-coms were urged to make sure men thought about the subject, and one story that was always told was that you could be in a combat zone with no possible contact with women and sure enough in the morning report the sergeant would have to tell the company commander that Private asdfasdf had a fresh dose.

In his 1953 novel Childhood’s End Arthur Clarke wrote of a future in which there was reliable contraception and an infallible paternity test. This ended the sexual taboos, there were no more unwanted pregnancies, and mankind evolved to a new state of being. We invented the reliable contraception and paternity tests, and they certainly changed the social order, but not in the manner that Sir Arthur described. Moreover, the number of unwanted pregnancies went up and up, and the paternity identity capability didn’t do a lot to change things either.

In any event, Obamacare mandates that women be given free conception prevention stuff, which generally means pills. One may be certain that there is some lobbying going on: those who make the pills certainly want to sell them. So contraception prescriptions are now a mandated entitlement, and you get them free. Or women get them free. Men don’t need them.

Oddly enough, there doesn’t seem to be anything in the Obama health care bill mandating free condoms for me, although it’s certainly easier to show that using a condom will not only be an aid in preventing pregnancy which may or may not be an illness, but also STD’s which certainly are and can be transmitted in both directions. The Army didn’t care so much about soldiers getting girls pregnant – in those days the remedy for that would be a transfer of the soldier to someplace far off – but it certainly did worry about a fresh dose of clap.

Of course once we start thinking about preventive medicines we can come up with lots more. Toothbrushes and toothpaste certainly prevent some fairly severe conditions that would be costly. What are not toothbrushes and toothpaste given as a free entitlement? Once we concede that someone else is responsible for paying for our health care prevention aids, and we are not our selves responsible for our actions – after all, there is a sure fire way to prevent unwanted pregnancy – then what are the limits? What is it that we are NOT entitled to? Perhaps every school child should be given tofu and broccoli for free? Actually, there appear to be places where that is argued quite seriously, but there’s a problem getting the kids to eat the broccoli.

So I do wonder: why the great emphasis on contraceptives for females? Why is that an entitlement of such great importance? Are free condoms next? And how long until you must eat your broccoli under pain of being paddled in the principal’s office?

Perhaps my afflictions have caused me to take leave of my senses? Sometime I think so.

Today’s Wall Street Journal has a short article “Killer drones are science fiction” that takes an operations research approach to the situation: we don’t need automated drones because they won’t be any more useful or effective than what we have now.

“The key is to understand that regardless of whether a military strike is conducted autonomously or with human involvement, it is not an isolated act. The actual launching of a weapon onto a target is one step in a sequential process that the military refers to as the "find-fix-track-target-engage-assess" chain.”

The author looks at each of those stages and concludes that the decision to engage doesn’t take much time compared to the others; humans are useful in some of the other stages of the process; QED. It’s not a bad non-mathematical OR argument.

“Ready for another rotten highway bill?” asks Jim Demint in todays Wall Street Journal; and he explains why the bill is very likely to be rotten, and why there’s little possibility of anything else.

Of course the real question is why are highways a federal matter to begin with? When Eisenhower proposed the Interstate Highway system, it was largely proposed as part of a national defense system, and although it is forgotten now, part of the justification was the this would make it possible to build a large number of civil defense shelters – bomb and fallout shelters. At one time every major Interstate Highway intersection would have a shelter built into it. The Soviet Union went mad, and declared that the US was setting itself up for a first strike on the Soviet Union, and civil defense was actually an act of aggression against the USSR. Of course the USSR had civil defense as compulsory training for all its citizens, and built and designated fallout shelters, but they didn’t talk about that much. In any event the civil defense aspects of the Interstate system were abandoned (although some “demonstration” shelters were built in various parts of the country); but the highways were a federal matter because of their national defense necessities.

That’s no longer needed. The easiest way to handle the highways is to leave them to the states, or let the states form authorities and regional compacts; leave federal taxes out of the system. Of course that won’t happen, so yes, prepare for another rotten highway bill, in which money is put into a “trust fund” and then spent on something other than highways and all will be built by Union labor (Davis Bacon Act, a primary means of financing the Democratic party) and the beat goes on. And on.

General Motors, which is now owned by the UAW having been taken from the stock and bondholders, is now about to cut pension benefits – for white collar salaried workers. The regular union workers will still get the same defined benefits pensions that drove GM into what should have been bankruptcy in the first place.

And the beat goes on.

I’ve said this often enough, but it’s still worth repeating: the easiest way to get some economic growth going is to exempt more people from the regulations that prevent small businesses from hiring more workers. Double the exemptions, and see how the economy grows. That is, if your business is exempt from various regulations because it has 10 or fewer workers, you will have powerful incentives not to hire and eleventh worker. If Congress simply make that number 20 or fewer, those at the limits of growth will very likely hire more. There are similar regulatory exemptions at other numbers of workers. Double all those numbers. Watch the economy grow.

It might even start an American economic miracle. And how much harm could it do? We’re in trouble.

Our nation’s fiscal situation is perilous. At $15.3 trillion, our national debt (as measured by the Treasury Department) has already overtaken our national economy, which at the end of 2011 came in at $14.95 trillion (according to the Congressional Budget Office). Bipartisan compromises on spending got us into this mess, and we’ll never get out of it if Republicans don’t offer a fiscally responsible alternative to the out-of-control spending that Democrats endorse.

We should devolve the federal highway program from Washington to the states. We can dramatically cut the federal gas tax to a few pennies, which would be enough to fund the limited number of highway programs that serve a clear national purpose.

In return, states could adjust their state gas taxes and make their own construction and repair decisions without costly Davis-Bacon regulations and without having to funnel the money through Washington’s wasteful bureaucracy and self-serving politicians.

In order to avert a fiscal catastrophe in the near future, we’re going to have to get a lot more serious about curtailing unnecessary federal spending. These highway bills—both Democrat and Republican—are anything but serious.

Mr. DeMint is a Republican senator from South Carolina.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204795304577223421060960612.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

I owe you some mail bags. I’ll get to them shortly. This debilitating cold/flu (Yes, I had my flu shots as did Roberta) have taken all my energy, and I don’t like doing short shrift mail with essentially no comments. I am recovering. It’s a lot slower than I thought it would be.