Qutbdate

Bill has added another chapter to his ongoing analysis of Qutb. You can access the latest installment directly here, or use this index to all of his Qutb's post to find earlier entries (the Qutbdex?)



(note, Bloggers' archives seem to be misbehaving. For now, to get to the Qutbdate, go straight to the Ideofact home page and scroll down).

smaller government is not always good

It's axiomatic that corporations are amoral (note, I did not say "immoral"). If they see a way to avoid paying their share of taxes, for example, then they will. And while Democrats may be sometimes characterized as "tax and spend", the GOP is equally characterized as "spend". The one guarantee of GOP control is that the federal givernment will have less money, but only the highly gullible will believe that this will result in less spending (after all, GOP senators dine on pork as vigorously as do their Dem counterparts).



With this in mind, the Slate article on the impending deficits is worth reading for this excerpt:

Meanwhile, it's difficult to read the shift in congressional control as anything but a green light for tax avoidance. Buried amid the campaign talk yesterday was a New York Times article in which outgoing Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Charles Rossotti lamented that his agency is unequipped to deal with the growing army of wealthy and sophisticated tax cheats. "Basically, demands and resources are going in the opposite direction," said Rossotti. "This is systematically undermining one of the most important foundations of the American economy." What's more, the Bush administration had prohibited Rossotti from telling a congressional hearing that the IRS couldn't do its job with the funds it had.



All those who think that Bush will replace Rossotti with a pit bull and then grant him the resources he needs to pursue tax cheaters aggressively, raise your hands. (The deficit the administration helped create is the perfect excuse not to bolster watchdog agencies like the IRS and the SEC.)



With the corporate scandals having proved irrelevant at the polls, the Republican-controlled Senate now has little incentive to crack down on companies or individuals going offshore to avoid taxes, or on accounting firms constructing sketchy tax shelters. Already, corporations have been paying a declining share of taxes�a mere $144 billion last year. While the profits they report to investors have risen steadily, the income taxes paid by corporations have fallen. In 2002, the corporate income tax raised 22 percent less than it did in 1997.

Expect to see more tax cheats and Enrons in the near future. With a defanged SEC and IRS, it's unavoidable. Without givernment oversight and regulation, there won't be an honorable or ethical playing field.

metapolitics

Jim Henley has two excellent meta-analyses about the election. The first is an analysis of whether voting really is helpful (the answer might surprise you) and teh second is an analysis of the electoral motives underlying the Republic itself. These are both thoughtful pieces that could be strong seeds for discussion. Since Jim doesn't have comments on his blog to host such a reflective discussion, I volunteer my own :)

GOP self-analysis

I've blathered about how I think Mr John Derbyshire is the greatest, but of course NRO has its dark side as well. That dark side is personified for me by Jonah Goldberg. Therefore, it's significant that I find his post-election column not just grudgingly well-argued, but almost brilliant. It's essential reading, and I will also post it to the UNMEDIA mailing list (note, you can access the list archives without subscribing. I encourage all readers to browse)

With great power comes great responsibility...

Dwight Meredith has summed up in a few elegant paragraphs what I was about to try and write in much more painful detail:

By winning control over both the House and the Senate, Mr. Bush controls the agenda and has the power to muscle his policies through the legislature and into law. On issues such as Homeland Security, prescription drugs, balanced budgets, economic growth, tax policy, faith-based initiatives, corporate reform, accounting reform, Social Security privatization, crime, social policy and others, Mr. Bush has been given the power to govern. With the power comes the responsibility. Those issues and others are now Mr. Bush's and the Republican Party's responsibility.



It is now Mr. Bush's job to grow the economy, balance the budget, reduce crime, improve the culture, end partisan sniping and protect us from terrorism.



Mr. Bush came into office after a campaign in which he ran as a "compassionate conservative." He promised to change the tone in Washington and end the partisan bickering. With control over both houses of Congress, Mr. Bush is in a position to dictate the tone. He will choose whether or not the tone remains vituperatively partisan.



Mr. Bush�s control over the agenda enables him to demonstrate that he is the more moderate version of 1990�s Republicanism that the �compassionate� portion of compassionate conservative implies. He must now choose whether or not to govern in a bipartisan, compassionate way.

Since I am not a Democrat, I have no real regret about the outcome of the 2002 midterm elections. In accordance with the instanalysis by the pundits on TV, radio, and the blogsphere, I saw no difference between the policies of the GOP that I opposed and the appeasement of those policies by the so-called "opposition" party.



Of course, election analysis is partly a mirror into the self - Steven Den Beste saw it as a referendum on Iraq, for example. But fundamentally, the why doesn't matter. The point is that the GOP is in control, and I for one am curious to see how it turns out.



If Europe is the bastion of liberalism unchecked, then America could easily be the bastion of conservatism. Just as it is patently unfair of conservatives to label Europe "socialist" (invoking memories of communist Russia), it is equally unfair to label America "fascist" (invoking memories of Nazi Germany) after the GOP assumes total control in January. I consider Europe to be a useful data point at one end of the scale, and now America will give us the other needed to establish a trend.



With the domination of liberalism in Europe, there have been many unintended consequences. For example, the rise of the violent unassimilated immigrant population, directly caused by the combination of the welfare state and the heavily taxed anti-business environment, which make it hard for the unemployed to get on their feet, encourage them to sit at home and seethe, and discourage risk-taking that leads to entrepreneurship and enterprise and re-channeling of the energy of the human spirit into constructive rather than destructive pursuits.



Likewise, the heavy emphasis on international consensus has led to a dilution of sovereignty, leading to less local control over the affairs of people. The rise of the EU and the perceived self-importance of the UN when it comes to social and economic policies are direct outcomes of this. The average European has very little avenue of exertion over their local socio-economic environment. The decisions and referendums of the voters there are easily obliterated by remote decree of unelected committees.



While welfare and business regulation and international agreements ARE important, and play a necessary role in the function of our society, they are not sacred cows. Liberals need to understand this. What was achieved on Tuesday was a separation of variables, allowing for a social experiment whose results will lead to real data. I think it's healthy and I look forward to it (as do some intellectually honest Liberals like my friend and fellow blogger, Matthew Yglesias)



Some of the Good Things that I think we will see - total English-language immersion for immigrant schoolchildren. Stricter welfare programs, and strengthening-by-necessity of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to take on social work that is neglected in the federal budgets (overall, social work performed by true believers is preferable to that done by bureaucracies , even if the latter outspends the former by 10-1). Simplification of the tax code.



There are many things I disagree with, of course. I think we will see weaker unions, higher federal deficits, rising inflation. There will be weaker government oversight of the corporate world, leading to more merging anti-consumer behemoths like Clear Channel, AOL-Time-Warner, and HP-Compaq, and more ethically-challenged smoke and mirror companies like Enron and Worldcom. We will probably have school vouchers implemented at a national level, which will lead to further worsening of public schools. It's likely that there will be some privatization of Social Security, which would fundamentally alter the very nature of the program, because it replaces the original concept of government-guaranteed retirement security with a individual-level burden of risk and uncertainty. Though, the plus side is that it might kill Social Security off entirely, which is good for people my age (28) since it's unlikely there will be any money left for me by the time I retire.



And, of course the moderate wing of the GOP (forgot about them, did you?) now gains enormous power. The control of the Senate is only by a two seat margin. This is an enormously good thing. And I for one an excited to see how this changes the dynamics of the GOP internally.



It boils down to the central lesson : with great power comes great responsibility. I am eager to see the face of the new America.

Ramadan il-Moazzam 1427

O Allah! This is the month of Ramadan in which descended the Qur'an as a guide to mankind and a criterion to separate truth from falsehood. O Allah! Bless us in the month of Ramadan, and give us Your help and accept our ibadat, for You have power over all things.

There is no god but Allah. We seek Your forgiveness. O Allah! Grant us Paradise and save us from Hellfire.

Ramadan mubarak, and remember my family and myself in your duas.

Does not bode well for 2004

This trio of articles is especially alarming, taken together. I fully expect Republican interference strategies, invented in 2000 and honed during this election, to proliferate to other swing states in 2004 as they emerge from the Floridalab.



Polling precincts ready, but long lines seem likely (Miami Herald)

One ominous indication: Experts timed Miami-Dade voters Monday and calculated that the average person needed 20 minutes to work through the ballot, according to Linda O'Brien, spokeswoman for the Miami-Dade Police Department.



If that holds true today, only three voters per hour will use each machine -- causing major congestion at polling places.



''We'll see what happens,'' said Dave Love, a Broward precinct clerk. ``Last time was bad, and I don't know how they could have fixed everything.''

Can South Florida get it right? (St. Petersburg Times)

Miriam Oliphant, the embattled Broward elections supervisor, also cited the long lines and suggested in a letter to Gov. Jeb Bush that he extend polling hours on Tuesday, as he did on Sept. 10.



Campaigning in North Florida, Bush said: "We're just not going to extend the voting hours." The lines were expected, given the length of the ballot, he said. "That's democracy."



Bush also acknowledged the sensitivity of the situation, being asked as the state's chief executive to make a decision that could hurt him at the polls but leave him open to charges of partisan tampering. Ordering an extension of the poll hours in heavily Democratic Broward would aid his opponent, Bill McBride . "It would put me in a difficult position, no question about it," Bush said.

This is reminiscent of the problems plaguing the September 10th primary elections:



Voting Problems Persist In Orlando, South Florida (Tampa Tribune)

In one precinct in a predominantly black Miami neighborhood, voting didn't begin until 11:45 a.m., nearly five hours after polls opened. Officials estimated about 500 people left without voting.



``Nobody has been able to vote in this district, period,'' said Delbra Lewis, who attempted to vote three times by late morning. ``I've been here since 7 a.m. and I haven't been able to vote.''



A precinct at a senior center in Jacksonville opened 90 minutes late because poll workers didn't realize they were supposed to turn on machines themselves. Dozens of voters left without casting ballots.



Another polling station near downtown Miami was down most of the day, finally opening shortly before 5 p.m. Carlton Howard said he was turned away three times before it opened.