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Our Tory buddy, Daniel Hannan, MEP, has a nice prescription for the American right that is worth pondering.Hannan: Yes, Europe has swung away from socialism. But it’s important for Americans to realize where Europe is starting from — it is quite normal on this side of the Atlantic for governments to take 45 or 50 percent of GDP in tax. So Europe’s swing to the Right and the U.S. swing to the Left still leave America less socialist than Europe.
None the less, the swing is significant for this reason. Voters are now way ahead of their politicians on the issue of tax and spend. While the political parties dance about trying not to use the word “cuts,” the electorate has clocked that reductions are urgent. The recession is forcing everyone to make economies: every business, every household. Do we really need two cars? Is there a cheaper mobile phone package? Can we get a better deal on insurance? They can see that it is possible — necessary indeed — to cut spending, but that such cuts need not have too deleterious an impact on our quality of life. And they simply can’t understand why the same logic doesn’t apply to the government. It is outrageous to exempt the public sector from the shrinkage of the economy — i.e., to tax the wealth creators even more in order to cushion the rest.
One of the reasons we Tories are leaving the EPP, and forming a new alliance of Euro-skeptic parties, is to make these arguments. We will put together a coalition of Atlanticist, free-market conservative parties that believe in national independence and parliamentary democracy. In doing so, we will break the monopoly in Brussels. Because, I stress this again, the “swing to the Right” was, in many cases, a swing to pantywaist Christian Democrat parties whose politicians, in the U.S., would be bang in the middle of the Democratic Party.
Advice for American conservatives? Only this. The Republican Party’s success depended on its becoming a popular party — that is, a party that was for the people against the governing elites. Half a century ago, it was a party of big business and old money, and it kept losing: it was in permanent opposition in both houses, and tended to win the presidency only when it fielded a non-partisan Ike-type candidate. Then it changed: it embraced localism, small government and states’ rights. It went from being a New England, preppy, country club party to being a Sun Belt, anti-Washington mass movement. And you know what? It started winning.
My worry is that, in recent years, the party has gone into reverse. It has become, as in pre-Goldwater days, the party of federal spending, budget deficits, external protectionism (the steel tariffs), overseas garrisons, the denial of states’ rights (the gay marriage amendment) and, latterly, bailouts and nationalizations.
I speak as someone who has a more uncomplicated loyalty to the GOP than to my own party, and I desperately want it to start winning again. But that means getting back to basics: to the basic idea that informed the U.S. Constitution, namely that decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the people they affect.
Hat Tip Andrew Ian Dodge.
Via The Economist, lighter than air; now more than everSPYING is a sophisticated and expensive business—and gathering military intelligence using unmanned aircraft can be prohibitively so. Predator and Global Hawk, two types of American drone frequently flown in Afghanistan and Iraq, cost around $5,000 and $26,500 an hour respectively to operate. The aircraft themselves cost between $4.5m and $35m each, and the remote-sensing equipment they carry can more than double the price. Which is why less elegant but far cheaper balloons are now being used instead.
Such blimps can keep surveillance and ordnance-guiding equipment aloft for a few hundred dollars an hour. They cost hundreds of thousands, not millions, of dollars. And they can stay in the air for more than a week, whereas most drones fly for no more than 30 hours at a time. They are also easy to deploy, because no airfield is needed. A blimp can be stored in the back of a jeep, driven to a suitable location, launched in a couple of hours and winched down again even faster.
Makes you wonder if anyone ever thought about putting a "ISR Blimp Kit" next to the FireScout on the back end of a LCS?Persistent ISR; you've got it.Remember the SECDEF quote from yesterday?At least 20 countries use blimps—both global military powers, such as America, Britain and France, and smaller regional ones, including Ireland, Pakistan, Poland and the United Arab Emirates. Many are employed in Iraq. In November 2008 Aerostar International of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, began filling a $1.8m order for 36 blimps to be deployed by the American armed forces in Iraq. But Afghanistan may prove a bigger market. That is because it is difficult to pick up satellite signals in the valleys of that mountainous country. As a result blimps, adjusted to hover at appropriate heights, are often used to relay data to and from satellites.
As politicians around the world seek to cut public spending, the attractions of blimps are growing. In January America’s defence secretary, Robert Gates, told the Senate’s armed-services committee that the Department of Defence would pursue greater quantities of “75% solutions” that could be realised in weeks or months instead of “99% exquisite systems” that take more than a decade to develop. Barry Watts, an analyst at the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a think-tank in Washington, DC, says America’s air force has been criticised for not providing enough aerial data to “insatiable” ground forces. Blimps, Mr Watts reckons, will help them sate that appetite.
Nice. Wouldn't mind a larger version for BAMS either .... but AeroStar can't fight the lobby efforts of Northrop-Grumman I bet.
Why don't I get these ..... advice and comments. Yes, we have them .... and no, I don't have to make this racist stuff up.
Your tax dollars make it happen.
Yea, I wish.Anyway - I can't believe I missed this from JAN. Right from the "Revolutionary vs. Evolutionary" file - SECDEF has learned the lessons of PPT and vaporware methinks.A real fancy way of saying, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.""I will pursue greater quantities of systems that represent the 75 percent solution instead of smaller quantities of 99 percent, exquisite systems,"
Of course, that could mean deploying a "slick" LCS - but LCS is not his baby. It isn't his fault we have a Frigate sized, Tiffany priced gun boat to deliver SOF teams, but hey; if you need to ploy a field and don't have a tractor, then you might as well use the BMW in the driveway.The attitude of 75% vs. 99% though is one that if taken forward towards shipbuilding may help the future.Now, if we could just get him to tour a few Continental shipyards ....
Not sure of the ceremony. FADM Nimitz on the podium and N2S flyby.
I am a long time fan of John Derbyshire. Just the title tells you his next book is worth pre-ordering.Zen.
