WE HAVE TO FAIL TO SUCCEED

We are a reactive nation. To say we’re not proactive is an understatement. It goes well beyond apathy. If there were a psychological term for psychotic aversion to proactiveness, we’d be its poster child. Denial is the mechanism but doesn’t do justice to the heights we’ve achieved in the pursuit of avoidance and inaction.

Although this less-than-endearing trait permeates all facets of our social fabric, I’m ranting on our perennial economic/financial malfeasance. In 1973, so-called “discretionary” spending was 9.6 percent of GDP, with about 60 percent of that for defense. Today, discretionary spending is 6.6 percent of GDP—and included in these figures are defense spending (which, with the state of the world, I would hardly categorize as “discretionary”). The CBO says that discretionary spending is 35 percent of federal outlays (a pie chart from the CBO pegs it at 26 percent with 8 percent interest). The defense portion is 3-4 percent. The lion’s share, or two-thirds, of our non-discretionary spending is Medicare and Social Security. The Democrats don’t worry about spending, don’t worry about debt, and their entire political strategy revolves around steadily increasing spending and government welfare via dollar redistribution through taxation, borrowing, and printing (otherwise known as inflation). In service of recruiting to their party an ever-larger segment of an electorate nurtured on the government teat and no longer wedded to the concept of individual responsibility, this tactic handily buys votes for power. Now a majority of the electorate not only no longer looks upon government largess as demeaning, which was the norm just a few generations ago, but demands these handouts which inevitably morph into entitlements. Having been indoctrinated to believe that it comes from “rich” people who don’t “pay their fair share,” they are happy with the status quo. But it’s not really a status quo as the spending and size and intrusiveness of government are a moving target in one direction—up—and nary a voice calls for tit-for-tat reductions in spending in other areas; the idea of a balanced budget has long been abandoned. And Congress routinely abdicates its responsibility of even generating one by its mandated deadline; hence, the yearly threat of “government shutdown.” The Republicans as well are not blameless. While they at least play lip service to fiscal and budgetary responsibility, they’re junior varsity progressives, and also regularly overspend and grow government, albeit with less alacrity. There’s no shortage of economists that the Left can lean on to support “government assisted” economic policy. That history has time and again shown the disastrous consequences of this approach is no deterrent; musical chairs on a national level is only an unpalatable game to the one whose chair disappears, until all the chairs are gone. And people have an uncanny ability to ignore the missing chairs until it’s theirs.

Unfortunately, given the above circumstances, any talk of solutions by cutting discretionary spending are nothing more than a political smokescreen, You see, the American people have no appetite for cutting either Medicare or Social Security. In fact, any allusion to this is regarded as political suicide; hence the term, the “third rail” of politics. To her credit, Nikki Haley did discuss this issue early in her campaign; it seems to have taken a back seat, likely on the counsel of her political advisors. But who can blame her?

Medicare has been very good to me, covering the vast majority of my expenses for several chronic medical conditions. Personally, I’d hate to see it go, and I’ll likely pass on before it does. But it will; at least in its current form. Even now, physician have seen substantial cuts in reimbursement for decades, eaten away more aggressively lately by inflation, and something will have to give. In the short-term, I anticipate more monetary legerdemain to engineer some temporizing but inadequate reimbursement increases. But the end of the road exists for government-funded Medicine, Social Security, and our national debt in general. The unstated truth is that we’ve lived “higher on the hog” than the standard of living to which we’ve become accustomed, borrowing from generations to come, and the bill will come due. Those who think that “right wingers” have been singing this tune for years and no economic Armageddon has emerged are wise to remember the analogy of an earthquake fault: You can live near one for hundreds, or thousands of years while it builds tension, until it blows. And I see signs it will happen in my lifetime or shortly thereafter. But the reality is simply that it has to happen, whenever. And my heart goes out to those who will unwillingly bear the burden of our fiscal irresponsibility. Not that they are entirely blameless, for many have chosen to go along for the ride, but they were conditioned to accept this abnormal “norm” that benefited those that will soon be gone.

So Social Security, Medicare, and ultimately The System, will have to fail utterly before it’s fixed, like the junkie that must reach bottom. Keep an eye on states like mine, California, that are the most progressive, as they are the canaries in the coalmine. Will we, as a country, survive in recognizable form? Who knows, particularly in light of the deterioration of our social fabric on multiple fronts. But there is little doubt that the ogre, the second Great Depression, is peaking out from behind the money tree. Happy Halloween.

PERCEPTION AND TRUMP’S CHANCES IN A POST-COVID WORLD

A left-leaning friend (yes, some still talk to me) sent me an article citing the evidence that Trump is sun-downing politically. It references the polls that almost universally favor Biden over Trump in the upcoming election, and the real possibility of a spill-over of fortunes to the Senate. While polls (like climate and COVID models) can be completely misleading (witness the 2016 election), the ubiquity of the results raises real questions as to whether the president, and the Republican party, can remain in power.

As is always the case, perception, rather than reality, will rule the day. There’s no question that Trump himself, with the help of derangement-fueled media bias, has sorely, and potentially fatally damaged his chances. It appears that the more he’s in front of the camera, the more opportunity for a faux pas. But let’s look at both sides of the issue.

In the pre-COVID world Trump was able to offset his missteps, while frequent, with large, well-attended rallies populated by enthusiastic fans (the 30% alluded to in my prior rant) which also aided in generating campaign funds, and, according to some political pundits, served to convert a silent cadre of independents. This, of course, no longer exists. Trump’s attempt to get the daily pressers to do double duty, as informer/leader-in-chief and campaigner, seems to have backfired. The main selling point of his campaign, the ballooning economy, has deflated with a prick of the corona virus. So right now it’s Trump versus Trump, and Trump is losing. The question is, will the American public be able to see past this to the other side? The opponent, Biden, is older, has demonstrated on multiple occasions signs of early cognitive failure, likely dementia, and has tracked so far left he’s not close to the man he was. There are allegations of sexual impropriety that will likely never be proved, and will be suppressed by the “mainstream” media but highlighted by the Trump campaign. Ditto for improprieties related to Ukraine and his son Hunter. He is supported by a party that not only engages in policies that favor big government, more regulations, and more debt and are demonstrably antithetical to the business community, while extolling these policies as solutions. The Republican party engages in these same policies, to a lesser extent, while decrying them, and succeeded in at least reducing regulations under the Trump administration.

I’ve never been of the mind that our fiscal trajectory is sustainable, even pre-COVID and post-Trump. I felt his interventions were necessary but insufficient to right the ship, and the robust surge in our economic fortunes would peter, kind of like the course of the virus itself. You don’t assure long-term economic prosperity by buying it with ever-increasing debt and promises of unmet entitlements left to future generations to sort out, if possible. To me, it appeared that the economy was a sick patient given the appearance of robust health with the use of adrenaline and steroids. The idea of fiscal austerity as being essential to continued liberty, a cornerstone of our Founding Fathers’ principles, had fallen by the wayside. Now, on top of all this we have the stress of an acute infection, real and metaphorical as it relates to the economy, piling unprecedented acute debt on the chronic. In the past, we dealt with this by manipulating interest rates, printing money, borrowing, and taxes. Now, interest rates are already low, money is being printed during a contracting rather than an expanding economy, we’ve already borrowed more than we should, much from our enemy, China, and the engine for generating taxes, fueled by rampant and now anemic consumerism, is sputtering now and for an indefinite future. Meanwhile, untold numbers of people who supported the boom with their buying are without sufficient cash reserves for an emergency, or their retirement nest egg, much less wholesale consumerism.

I don’t know that leaders of either party are up to the task of dealing with this crisis, but the choice is clear: Does the country want to change leadership on the basis of an act of God that is decimating the economy, from a man and a party that has demonstrated the ability to rejuvenate the economy at least in the short term, to a man and a party that, based on their expressed policy preferences, can only accelerate economic decline? It will depend on external events but also on how Biden is perceived, if and when the wraps are taken off him. I can’t imagine he’ll do well in a face-to-face debate; expect the Democrats to try and limit his exposure. It also depends on how many more missteps Trump makes, and the course of the virus and economy, both not presently working in his favor. And it depends on how effectively the media can paint Trump as evil, stupid, and racist, with many of these aspersions already “baked in the cake,” as it were.

Perception is everything.

DERANGED

You’re a radical.

I’m a radical.

We used to be normal, but we’ve been labeled. There are only two sides: violent, bigoted, militaristic conservatives, friend of CEOs and Big Business, and liberal/progressive unwashed, tie-died communist progressive liberals who want no borders and more taxes from the rich.

The Bush Derangement Syndrome has become the Obama Derangement Syndrome. Bush was a dumb cowboy who dragged us into a war for oil on a specious pretext to benefit his wealthy friends. Obama wants to destroy the country, erase the borders, and make us the Europe of the West.

It’s time we put a stop to it. When we talk in hyperbole, we can’t talk at all. We’ve allowed the far right and the far left to distract us for too long.

No, I’m not going to become progressive. The ideology has become foreign to me. But I don’t believe Barack Obama is itching to destroy America. I believe he’s walking down a road that he believes is best for our country (or perhaps the world), that will ultimately hasten America’s downfall if we don’t reverse course. I believe he’s obsessively political due to his Chicago machine roots and has a narcissistic, arrogant streak. But he’s not Satan. He loves his wife and family and succumbs easily to a misguided charity for the “downtrodden.”

George Bush the younger was not Satan, either. I believe he is best characterized as a naïve idealist. He used the pretext of WMDs in Iraq (which he and the left at the time believed to be a real threat) as an excuse to nation build, with the ingenuous belief that everyone, given the chance, would risk their lives in the name of freedom, as our ancestors did and our brave warriors continue to do today. He believed another democracy besides Israel the in the cauldron that is the Middle East would be a game changer and establish his legacy. Events appear to have proven him very wrong.

We need to move away from stereotypes, see the true radicals for who they are, and start talking. There is a common ground. For instance, many on the left are economically conservative and socially liberal (yes, there is a Tea Party side to many mainstream liberals). We need to reexamine the principles upon which the country was founded and start strengthening them. We need to quarantine the race-mongers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. We need to take hotbed issues that divide us and keep us from solving problems, like abortion and gay marriage, off the national agenda and return them to the states. And we need to stop overspending and leaving trillions of dollars in debt for our children and generations to come.

Radical thoughts, I know.

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY—OR REWARDING BAD BEHAVIOR

Last weekend I had dinner with a friend who is well-read, opinionated (no surprise) and conservative in his political and fiscal viewpoints (again, no surprise). He had an interesting take on our economic and energy future.

Until a few months ago, he, like me, saw no way out of our ultimate economic decline. More recently, he’s come to believe that we’re on the road to become the ascendant power (read: energy) broker in the world. Citing the huge shale deposits in the plains and the advent of fracking, he claims we have not only enough energy to become self-sufficient, but to supply the rest of the world with a competitive energy source for not just decades, but centuries to come. He believes the concern about contaminating the water table so high above the deposits is bogus, and that there is so much money to be made and jobs to be had that political and environmentalist opposition will ultimately be washed away like sand castles by a tsunami. He uses Pennsylvania as an example of a state that is beginning to make inroads on its debt by embracing the new approach while New York’s recalcitrance pushes it further into the red. He claims that Berkshire Hathaway’s demonstrated interest in rail transportation with the purchase of the Northern Santa Fe Corporation reflects their recognition of the changes to come. Where the oil companies used to waste billions of dollars looking for product, in the new order they will know exactly where it is and be able to turn the spigot on and off at will according to market demand. Our massive debt will slowly recede into the annals of history.

If he’s right, no one can argue that a way out of our fiscal catastrophe, a miraculous road to economic recovery, isn’t a good thing. But it comes at a price—the bad news is that we’ll still be relying on potentially polluting, non-renewable energy stores. Contrary to liberal beliefs, we conservatives don’t want to sacrifice clean air and water at the altar of money; we just don’t want the government foisting expensive, not-ready-for-prime-time energy technology on us and picking winners and losers.

The ugliest fallout from this new economic order will be the effect on our values as a nation. If we defer the consequences of growing a big, inefficient government in a debt-ridden welfare state, even for a few centuries, we will not escape the ultimate demise of the liberty our Founding Fathers had hoped to assure by instituting a system based on limited government, charity and self-sufficiency. In Thomas Jefferson’s own words, “A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” And, “If we can prevent the Government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.”

The old saw, “money can’t buy happiness,” carries a great kernel of truth. If my friend’s assessment of our economic future is accurate, it may buy us something almost as important—time. Whether we use that time to return to our roots or continue down the same, well-trod path to fiscal dependency is up to us.

THE WORLD AFTER CAPITALISM

The current slow, inexorable drift toward progressivism, or “socialism light,” will end—eventually. As I (and Charles Krauthammer) have said, something unsustainable will continue until it can no longer be sustained. Based on our fiscal behavior, we may not get to see the full evolution and implosion, though. It took about 70 years for the Soviet Union to fall and I don’t think our quasi-capitalist economy will last long enough in light of current circumstances.

Even before the bust in 2007, however, I anticipated an inevitable drop in our standard of living. Ignoring the debt (something we’ve always been adept at), we still face the challenge of competing in a global economy with an uneven playing field. Americans have hard-fought rules that prohibit unfair practices and exploitation (i.e., minimum wage laws and safety standards to name a couple) that increase the cost of production here relative to the international workplace. While there has been some effort to discourage domestic consumption of goods from foreign “sweatshops,” it’s clear from the migration of jobs overseas that the benefits of  lower prices are being offset by fewer workers here earning enough to purchase them. I don’t see an easy way out of this conundrum until our standard of living falls and that of the international worker rises, a homogenization of wages, so to speak. And that will take time.

There is another elephant in the room. As a fan of science fiction, I often speculated on the effect technology would have on the economy. Already we’ve seen examples of consumer items that can be made cheaply and last for years—or decades—for a fraction of what it would cost to produce the technology they replace. A good example of this is the LED lightbulb. While the price hasn’t fallen enough for most of us to shell out the tens of dollars per bulb to replace our incandescents and fluorescents yet, it illustrates the principle. If you make something without built-in obsolescence, you either have to charge a lot of money, regardless of what the cost of production is after R&D and overhead are recouped, or you go out of business. And more and more of the manufacturing can be done robotically, so the employment opportunities keep diminishing. There may have to be an entirely new economic model to deal with this. A fascinating three-part article dealing with the interplay of technology and jobs can be found here.

I’ve also tried to speculate how this new economic model might be implemented. Perhaps the greater scope and number of service-related and software-related jobs would absorb some of the slack. Still, with less work and more free time, more leisure-, music- and art-related industries will crop up. The problem is figuring out how the distribution of wealth will be adjudicated. In unfettered capitalism it’s decided by the marketplace, a system that, eventually, reliably defines worth. It also has the benefit of conforming with the natural human desire to be rewarded proportionally to one’s effort (although arguably we’re in the current mess because too many have come to feel entitled to rewards for little or no effort). Socialism goes against the grain of human nature; hence its ultimate, inevitable failure as the takers outstrip the producers. The Star-Trek saga regales us with a world of plenty without money, but they never make it clear just how this worked. They imply a gratifying change in human behavior that, idealistic as it is, I don’t see coming in the next 400-600 years (sorry, Captain). Good and evil, the yin and yang of our nature, in the aggregate hasn’t really changed much over the past 10,000 years. We’ve just found ways to devise more efficient means to self-destruct.

So, in the world after capitalism, I haven’t a clue as to what will grow in its place. Perhaps some hybrid that will better fit a changing world. The only certainty is that there will be hard workers struggling to keep what they earn and thieves and socialists (in some view two sides of the same coin) trying to take what they don’t.

There’s a certain comfort in predictability, isn’t there?

I DON’T CARE

I’m running for president.

In my mind, that is. I’m campaigning on a platform of “I don’t care.” It’s what I want to hear from a presidential candidate, perhaps for the same “missing something” that keeps the Republican electorate from settling on one of the remaining contenders. I’m mounting the podium now.

My fellow Americans: I’m tired of the bickering. I’m tired of the complaining. Not just among my fellow candidates, but the American people. Yes, I know the government is corrupt and its members have been poor stewards of our money. Yes, I know much of Wall Street has been debauched by crony capitalism. But we have forgotten the elephant standing in our midst: We are their masters—they work for us. And we’ve allowed them to pay us off with our own dollars, buying votes by redirecting our own wealth. While producing nothing they accrue their power and blind us to our own: we, the citizens of the nation, are responsible for putting and keeping them in office. We’ve permitted a permanent ruling class to flourish at our expense, working under a set of rules that is illegal for us and not only legal, but “ethical” for them, because they decide their own ethics. We’ve allowed them to print and borrow dollars so that we may live at a higher standard of living than we’ve earned, while they squander much of the rest, and pass off the debt to future generations, our children and their children. Then we rail at them for their irresponsibility, but we don’t fire them because they pay us not to. We accept an archaic, convoluted tax system that has been tortuously constructed to award winners and losers and give the ruling class even more power, and convince ourselves we don’t have the power to change it, because that’s the way it is, or because it’s scary and risky to make a change, or because we benefit from the dole. We’ve grown our government to such a large part of the economy that we’re afraid to cut it back, even knowing a tree must be pruned yearly to bear fruit for the next.

I don’t care if we have to move into a trailer for a decade while the foundation of the house is retrofitted so it doesn’t collapse. I don’t care if we have to steer the ship into ice-encrusted waters to avoid going aground. Yes, people will be poorer for a while, because we’ve been richer than we deserved. Tragically, people will be sicker and die sooner for a while, because we’ve been profligate with our spending in ways that we shouldn’t have. I do care that a nation built upon the greatest set of values in mankind’s history return to those values and survive. We are now General Motors, with no one to bail us out. Will the world be better with a nation like China at the helm? I think not.

As our sun sets, God has provided an example for us as a warning, a small Mediterranean nation, floundering, unable to change. Is this to be our future? Has more than half the nation been lulled by the mantra of social justice, government payouts that will dull the sword of swift change we need to save ourselves? I hope not.

Many people will say I’m insensitive, a barbarian. I care not about the poor, the weak, the sickly. They’re wrong. The gun has already been loaded, the hammer cocked. We do what we must at whatever price to fix it, or suffer the final consequences of failure, with its even greater cost. People will say I’m slitting my own political throat by proclaiming what no other candidate will—that we, the people have a hand in what is befalling us. They’re right.

I don’t care.

WELCOME TO THE SANDBOX

We’re told that if the “super committee” (a misnomer if ever there was one) appointed by Congress fails to come up with a plan to right our listing economy by next week, automatic, Draconian cuts will take effect. Of course, in typical ruling class fashion, they don’t take effect until 2013, coincidentally after the presidential election. But life is full of coincidences, isn’t it?

Reports are that the “supermembers” (my term—remember you heard it here first) are no closer to reaching consensus than on day 1, and this should come as no surprise to us. Ideology always trumps common sense. Like children squabbling in a sandbox, the left has drawn a line in the sand—no increased taxes on the rich, no cuts. The right panders to its ideological base: no increase in taxes; show me the cuts. While they wallow in this sandy quagmire they ignore that it’s actually quicksand, and it’s taking us all under.

In the early ‘90s Canada faced a similar debt crisis and a liberal government reversed it with a policy of spending cuts and tax increases with a ratio of seven-to-one, as summarized in a brief analysis by the National Post. While these analysts are pessimistic about the success of such an approach in our much bigger, and the world’s much sicker, global economy, I posit that the alternative, wallowing, guarantees failure. An intervention along Canadian lines is our last, best hope for a turn-around. Like everyone else (except most of those unfairly benefitting), I favor closing tax loopholes and “making everyone pay their fair share”, but this will barely shave a sliver off the deficit gap. While I don’t think tax increases are especially wise in dealing with what is predominantly a spending rather than a revenue problem, it is abundantly clear that an approach similar to Canada’s is what is needed to resolve the political/ideological deadlock. And we’ll need cuts to at least 2005 spending levels. We’ll need to preserve funding to critical services like our national defense, (although we can probably shave 15 or 20% off from waste, fraud and inefficiency alone), and we need a balanced budget amendment and overarching tax reform. We have to demand tough spending cuts to justify tax increases, not in a milksop 1:1 fashion.

Each day more dire predictions of what is to come float across the media. Today, polls were quoted stating the favorability ratings for the Congress are lower than for polygamy and pornography. As an electorate, we’re the employers. If our employee-leaders can’t do the job, we need to throw them out. Let’s stop allowing them to bribe us with our own debt.

DOWNSIZING

Today I get to play Nostradamus and predict the future, always a hazardous enterprise. My method? A magical crystal ball I keep under my bed. Kidding aside, there is already enough “magical thinking” in Washington and even on Main Street for us all, so I’ll base my predictions on the fundamentals—and they don’t look good.

It seems to me that, with a few notable exceptions, conventional thinking still rules the day. There is talk of “recovery” and now “winning the future,” but I see only a glimmer of hope in terms of the mandatory, and difficult steps needed to effect such a change. A lot of rhetoric is out there about cutting spending, but when the President speaks to a “freeze” at current levels, I roll my eyes (actually curse under my breath; but this is a family-oriented blog) and realize nothing has changed. Freezing spending at current levels, while putting a lid on runaway increases, simply locks in the wanton behavior that helped get us into this mess (and no, I’m not laying it all at Obama’s feet). Other than a few voices, I’m waiting for a serious call for reducing spending to 2008 levels or, even better, 2005 or 2003. With the bloated government workforce, there will be a lot of economic pain, but only an echo of what is to come if we continue to head down the road we’ve built (with your hard-earned tax dollars).

I’ve mentioned before how I’ve heard that 1600 baby-boomers a month are entering Medicare. This week Neil Cavuto cited our national debt service at $4 billion a day—yes, a day! I hear that the “discretionary spending” that everyone’s so hot to reduce amounts to only 12% of our budget, with national defense, servicing the debt, and health care as well as social security making up the bulk of our obligations. Now, we can’t default on servicing the debt or we’ve declared bankruptcy as a nation. With the Islamic fundamentalist threat growing in the world and the U.S. in the crosshairs, there is only so much cutting we can do in that arena (although some could make cogent arguments for a very different U.S. role in the warzones). So it’s inevitable that cuts in medical care and social security are coming. Before that happens, I’d like to see, as a sign of sea change, some of the unnecessary programs in Washington cut, such as the Departments of Education and Energy, even if that is a drop in the bucket. It would send the message, “Yes, we know, we’re in crisis.” And we are: the greatest free nation the world has ever known is in debt to the largest dictatorship the world has ever seen—China. Ultimately, we’re selling our freedom for flatscreen T.V.s.

How will this all shake out? One acquaintance believes that when the collapse comes (assuming we don’t radically change course, and that appears less and less likely), we will evolve into a system of more local, micro-economies. Barring Armageddon, this seems a likely progression—a return to a  smaller, more personal world, still linked by the Internet. And maybe a return to the extended family?

One can only hope.

Next: More on the world of the future

BIPOLAR GOVERNMENT

I don’t think that the extraordinary success of the United States has been an accident. It’s been the product of a value system based on freedom and merit, and the good fortune of having some very smart founders that were gun-shy went it came to powerful, authoritative governments, having suffered under the dictatorial behavior of the British monarchy. They devised a system intended to limit the scope and practice of a centralized government, hence the careful crafting of a constitution that is prohibitive with the “checks and balances” we all learned about in grade school. What seems to be forgotten, is that we are not a democracy, but a republic, and this was by design. The problem inherent in a true democracy is well illustrated by the statement “democracy is three wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.” Often ascribed to Benjamin Franklin but likely a misattribution, it makes the case succinctly and elegantly.

Some would argue (particularly on the left) that the ongoing economic crisis is evidence that the current system is failing, and cite the excesses of the private sector as the cause. Of course, this argument doesn’t take into account the collapse of almost every socialist regime, or the fact that socialist policies in this country favoring unions and public sector jobs, and meddling in financial systems such as the mortgage industry through quasi-private companies such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, have hybridized the current system. In other words, we’re bipolar, in a state of politico-economic confusion.

Many Americans, both on the left and the right, have come to the conclusion that the government must reduce its spending, as the current paradigm is unsustainable. But when faced with specific programs, particularly those that they benefit from or are philosophically wedded to, the response is often, “You can’t cut that—it’s too important.”

I don’t see how this country can work its way back to the success we’ve been historically accustomed to without reverting to the sound fiscal policies of our forefathers, which did not include amassing debt for our progeny to pay for programs to increase our standard of living artificially today. The government must take its lumps, and I have some very specific recommendations as to what could be done to reverse our impending decline (which, I expect, will be dutifully ignored). But first, in my next rant, to be fair, I need to flog the private sector.