{"id":21447,"date":"2014-11-09T23:56:15","date_gmt":"2014-11-10T07:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jerrypournelle.com\/chaosmanor\/?p=21447"},"modified":"2014-11-09T23:56:15","modified_gmt":"2014-11-10T07:56:15","slug":"after-the-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jerrypournelle.com\/chaosmanor\/after-the-election\/","title":{"rendered":"After the Election"},"content":{"rendered":"

View 850 Sunday, November 09, 2014<\/p>\n

\u201cI have observed over the years that the unintended consequences of social action are always more important, and usually less agreeable, than the intended consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n

Irving Kristol<\/p>\n

\u201cTransparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.\u201d<\/p>\n

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009<\/p>\n

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The election is over, and the Democrats lost. The Republicans did not win \u2013 at least the Establishment Country Club Republicans did not. It is unclear as to who did win, but note that Al Franken, who won a Senate seat by recounts and the mysterious discovery of some ballots in the trunk of a car \u2013 <\/p>\n

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Al Franken May Have Won His Senate Seat Through Voter Fraud<\/h3>\n

It’s time for real voter registration reform.<\/h4>\n

As the Wall Street Journal’s<\/em> John Fund<\/a> reports, Minnesota Democrat Al Franken\u2019s<\/a> narrow, 312-vote victory in 2008 over incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman may have come as the result of people being allowed to vote who, under existing law, shouldn\u2019t have been.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.usnews.com\/opinion\/blogs\/peter-roff\/2010\/07\/20\/al-franken-may-have-won-his-senate-seat-through-voter-fraud<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

cruised to victory this time against a fairly typical and nominally attractive Republican candidate. Franken was able to spend a lot of money on his election. Minnesota is better off economically than many states. Franken has a minimal legislative record (well, the Senate hasn\u2019t originated or voted on many bills in a while), but he did vote for Obamacare. You may draw from this election any conclusions you like, but the notion that the country has decisively rejected Democratic rule is not likely true. The New Hampshire election is another instance: the Democrat did not lose. So while it is true that the Democrats were dealt a great loss, it wasn\u2019t universal. In places where they spent enough money and kept their ground game \u2013 getting out the vote \u2013 they managed to come through.<\/p>\n

The Republicans now have a chance to show that they can actually govern, get the nation out of the economic stalemate \u2013 It\u2019s the economy, stupid! \u2013 and deal with foreign affairs, but they have that to do. That includes an economic recovery that is not just on the stock market.<\/p>\n

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The Ebola crisis is not ended, but we could be on a path to control it while we develop an effective vaccine. I have no estimate of how long that might take. Presumably we have better technique now than Jonas Salk had, but on the other hand we have more regulations.<\/p>\n

The obvious place to fight Ebola is in the plague zones. Better hospital conditions may raise the survival rate, which is at present only 30% of those who contract the disease and get treatment; the rate is likely much lower among those who don\u2019t get to treatment centers.<\/p>\n

While it is true that quarantines cannot indefinitely protect the United States from Ebola, quarantine techniques can certainly lower the probability of an uncontrolled outbreak here. Insisting that those coming from plague zones limit their contacts for three weeks on return from a plague area is reasonable. Those who want to go treat people in plague zones must simply reckon on being quarantined when they come back. If that is unacceptable, don\u2019t go.<\/p>\n

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Robert McDonald: Cleaning up the VA<\/h3>\n

http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/robert-mcdonald-cleaning-up-the-veterans-affairs-hospitals\/<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I was impressed by Secretary McDonald, but I believe too little emphasis was given to the difficulties of his job: he needs to fire 1,000 VA officials, and so far he hasn\u2019t been able to fire any. Some have been placed on administrative leave, which is in fact paid vacation while accumulating pension benefits; but he has not the power simply to clean out this mess.<\/p>\n

VA officials falsified records to show their superior performance and thus win bonuses. It is not clear that civil servants ought to be paid bonuses for doing their jobs, and the actual performance of the Civil Service system \u2013 as opposed to holding political officials responsible for the performance of their departments \u2013 is good reason for questioning Civil Service vs. \u201cthe spoils system\u201d which preceded it. Civil Service was originally intended as job protection from political superiors, and with that protection came an absolute prohibition on taking part in political activities: not only could superiors not demand political donations, but civil servants weren\u2019t permitted to give them even if they wanted to. Their \u201ccivil liberty\u201d of political activity went away with acceptance of a government job. This was eroded over the years to the present system in which civil servants in the IRS, the VA, and other agencies have great political power through their unions. Unions of government workers are a fairly recent innovation: originally civil service laws protected them, but unions were not allowed. It is still no clear why supposedly non-partisan government works protected by civil service laws need or should have unions. But that\u2019s another matter.<\/p>\n

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Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free. <\/p>\n

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View 850 Sunday, November 09, 2014 \u201cI have observed over the years that the unintended consequences of social action are always more important, and usually less agreeable, than the intended consequences.\u201d Irving Kristol \u201cTransparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.\u201d President Barack Obama, January \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-view"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jerrypournelle.com\/chaosmanor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jerrypournelle.com\/chaosmanor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jerrypournelle.com\/chaosmanor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jerrypournelle.com\/chaosmanor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jerrypournelle.com\/chaosmanor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jerrypournelle.com\/chaosmanor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21447\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jerrypournelle.com\/chaosmanor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jerrypournelle.com\/chaosmanor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jerrypournelle.com\/chaosmanor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}