Victor C. Bolles
March 24, 2023
Is Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg trying to indict former President Trump in order to incarcerate him or to assure that he becomes the presidential candidate for the Republican Party? And what is going through the mind of the former president as he announces on social media his coming arrest and arraignment calling on his loyal followers to protest, protest, protest. In this commentary we analyze the impact of the former president’s legal woes and what it means for the forthcoming election.
Quote from the commentary:
Donald Trump knows that his perp walk, with handcuffed hands behind his back, will be the lead article on every TV news show in the country, smeared on the front page of every newspaper, and blasted across every social media platform. And not just across America but all around the world. You would have to pay a huge chunk of money for that kind of publicity.
Victor C. Bolles
March 17, 2023
Where will we all be in two decades? A better question is where should we be in two decades? Seventy percent of American think we are heading in the wrong direction. But what is the right direction? We need to think about where we want to be in twenty years in order to determine what direction to go. And then we need to start going in that direction - starting now. In this commentary, we ponder these important questions and try to discover some answers to guide us.
Quote from the commentary:
In the United States the time horizon for our politicians never exceeds 24 months – the time until the next election. So setting goals to be achieved over the next 20 years for the United States is practically inconceivable (while the Chinese keeping unerringly working toward achieving theirs). We need bold leaders to lay out those goals and get the American people (and maybe even the politicians) unified in working toward achieving them.
Victor C. Bolles
March 8, 2023
The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System have been put in charge of running the US economy. But it shouldn’t be this way. The Fed wasn’t created to run the economy, but only to manage a small part of the economy. The Fed has the tools and the expertise to manage the money and the interbank interest rate in order to assure the stability of the financial system. Beyond that it lacks the powers and expertise to run an entire economy. In this commentary, we discuss the causes and effects of this over-reliance on the Fed to manage the economy and make some recommendations on what steps should be taken.
Quote from the commentary:
Milton Friedman had a different opinion on what central banks should do. The finance and banking courses I studied in college (before the passage of Humphrey-Hawkins) assumed a very passive role for the Fed. The money supply should grow at a rate to accommodate the growth of the underlying economy, not at a faster rate in order to spur the economy. Friedman actually recommended that the Fed be replaced by a computer that would calculate all of the economic data and adjust the money supply accordingly.
Victor C. Bolles
February 28, 2023
Yale professor Timothy Snyder recently did a Ted Talk where he asserted that democracy should be a verb, something that you do. He asserts, “democracy has to be understood as a spirit.” He appears to believe that the more democracy the better. Then why did the Founders include limitations on democracy in the Constitution? In this commentary we examine what Professor Snyder asserted in his Ted Talk and investigate why the Founders had their doubts about democracy.
Quote from the commentary:
“I consider democracy a tool. The Founders did not set out to create a democracy. They sought to create a government that would “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” Democracy wasn’t the goal, but rather a tool or mechanism that would allow them to achieve their goal, which was liberty.”
Victor C. Bolles
February 17, 2023
Despite heightened rhetoric about systemic racism and arguments about disparate outcomes, everybody from ordinary people to superstar quarterbacks are the blurring the lines that define racial and ethnic identity. There is a growing disparity between the world defined by diversity, equity and inclusion activists and the one we see around us. In this commentary we look at the changing demographics of America and discuss how that affects the conversation about race.
Quote from the commentary:
“The point that I am making is that it is getting harder and harder to put a person into a neat little ethnic or racial box. I come from a different era, but my son ‘s wife is Hispanic, and my son-in-law’s brother is married to an Indian. Kids are getting all mixed up genetically. All you have to do is go to the grocery store to see families made up of many races and ethnicities. The number of mixed race couples portrayed in TV advertisements has skyrocketed. They hardly existed at all a decade ago.”
Victor C. Bolles
February 13, 2023
Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore from 1959 until 1990 incorporated the concept of junzi, the Confucian ideal of being a moral person, as a key element in his plan to raise Singapore from a swampy, corrupt backwater into a modern metropolis. Henry Kissinger describes how Mr. Lee accomplished this feat in his recent book on leadership. Twenty-first century America has a lot to learn from Mr. Lee’s accomplishments because we seem to have forgotten how we became rich and powerful ourselves. In this commentary we review Dr. Kissinger’s observations about his friend, Lee Kuan Yew.
Quote from the commentary:
“Mr. Lee believed that only a tightly knit, rugged, adaptable people united by a common national identity could resist internal disorder. The sacrifices that had to be borne to eventually achieve independence and prosperity could only be sustained by a sense of common belonging and shared destiny.”
Can Artificial Intelligence Cure Healthcare?
Victor C. Bolles
January 30, 2023
Healthcare in the United States is a mess. And it is a mess because of people. Different people want different things. And powerful people and the institutions they lead have the ability to enact policies that primarily benefit themselves. All these different people and different policies have resulted in a healthcare system that is costly and inefficient and doesn’t serve anyone very well. But maybe we can take people out of healthcare policy. In this commentary, we investigate the possibility of using artificial intelligence to create a healthcare system that actually works.
Quote from the Commentary:
“the Congressional Budget office projects that healthcare will make up almost a third of our economy by 2035, converting the country into a gigantic hypochondriac incapable of self-defense let alone global leadership.”
Victor C. Bolles
January 23, 2023
Gotchas, paybacks and vendettas do not make for a legislative agenda. They may appeal to the Freedom Caucus, but most Americans want Congress to address the important issues that affect their lives. Not raising the debt ceiling is another act of political theater that will not solve our public debt problem but only compound it. Speaker McCarthy needs to develop a plan to address perpetual deficits and unsustainable levels of public debt. In this Commentary, we look into the causes of continuing deficits and what it will take to put America’s fiscal house in order.
Quote from the Commentary:
The problem is that governments resist innovation and reform in favor of stability. But stability brings with it entropy. People become inured to current benefits and want more, people prefer benefits over work and government service becomes drudgery instead of a calling. The social welfare state is constantly in the process of becoming the DMV.
Victor C. Bolles
January 12, 2023
Last year I published a commentary (Urgent Priorities, December 30, 2021) on the urgent priorities that America had to confront in the year 2022. Since many of those priorities were addressed very ineffectively or were not addressed at all, I was tempted to simply republish that commentary again this year. But the world is dynamic, and conditions change so I felt that America’s urgent priorities had to be updated to reflect those changes. In this commentary we will discuss the unfinished business of 2022 and the priorities of 2023 and beyond.
Quote from the Commentary:
“There are priorities that affect all Americans, rich and poor, black and white, young and old, whatever. We live in a complex and dangerous world. While our country is rich and powerful, it is not invulnerable. We cannot ignore the events happening around us and we need to be able to influence those events or be prepared to suffer the consequences.”
Victor C. Bolles
December 27, 2022
On a recent podcast, professors Glenn Loury and John McWhorter were discussing how slaveowners had used techniques to break a slave’s bond to their past (their history, their language, their religion, their culture) to make them easier to control and dependent on the slaveowner - a process called natal alienation. But this process seems very similar to the role of the government in the modern welfare state, replacing familial and community bonds with the tendrils of state control. In this commentary we look at how the welfare state undermines the values needed to escape poverty.
Quote from the Commentary:
“But as famously noted by Thomas Sowell the black community made slow but steady progress despite Jim Crow laws, segregation and separate but equal schools. Progress that is, until Lyndon Baines Johnson decided to help them. There has been scant economic progress for blacks since the start of the War on Poverty. But any economic progress has been more than offset by the breakdown of the black community.”
Victor C. Bolles
December 8, 2022
Many people may need public assistance from time to time but the structure of the American welfare state encourages behaviors that perpetuate impoverishment and increase the need for taxpayer paid welfare. The only beneficiaries of the US welfare state are the politicians, the welfare administrators and their union. The poor remain poor. In this commentary we look at the impact of the welfare state on poor people and how government programs make sure they stay that way.
Quote from the Commentary:
“It is very clear that the enormous American welfare system benefits politicians and public employees much more than the poor. The current welfare system actually promotes behaviors that make welfare necessary. These malignant behaviors arise from a rejection (mostly by the left) of the idea that America is a force for good and that Western civilization promotes behaviors that enhance the social contract of society and promotes innovation and economic growth.”
Victor C. Bolles
December 1, 2022
Labels can be confusing, especially when they keep changing. They are more like brand names than descriptors of political philosophy. When a candidate says “I am a strong conservative” or “I am very liberal” it is hard to tell what they really stand for. But they need to stand for something. In this commentary, we investigate the differences between labels and principles.
Quote from the Commentary:
“The dictionary defines a liberal as a supporter of a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise. But the same dictionary also defines a liberal as a supporter of policies that are socially progressive and promote social welfare. You can see how a person could be confused. I usually classify myself as a classical liberal, which means I follow the first definition.”
Victor C. Bolles
November 23, 2022
Cultural changes have come to Central Texas in the form of competing Christmas/Holiday parades in the rural town of Taylor. Change is inevitable but not all change is good. In this Commentary we look at some ways that the people of Taylor can manage the onslaught of demographic, technological and cultural change.
Quote from the Commentary:
I can understand why the city of Taylor would not want to sponsor a parade that excluded any group of citizens (there could be legal consequences). But I can also understand why the Taylor area ministers would not want kindergarteners and toddlers wondering what a twerking drag queen has to do with Christmas. They might turn to their parents and ask, “Mommy, is that one of Santa’s elves?”
and the Red Ripple
Victor C. Bolles
November 11, 2024
An endorsement from former President Donald Trump was magic for his chosen candidates in the Republican primaries, but the results of the 2022 mid-term elections have shown that his endorsements are toxic in the general election. Mr. Trump plans to make a major announcement on November 15th that is widely expected to affirm his candidacy for president in 2024. He can probably win the nomination with the support of his base, but his run for a second term is doomed to fail and is likely to drag down other Republican candidates across the country – handing the control of government to the Democrats. In this commentary, we discuss what Mr. Trump could do, however unlikely.
Quote from the Commentary:
“In the mid-term elections after Barrack Obama was elected president, the Republicans gained sixty-four seats in the House and five in the Senate. In this midterm election, it looks like the Republicans will gain ten or twenty, at most, in the House, and maybe none in the Senate. Some tsunami.”
Victor C. Bolles
November 7, 2022
Joe Biden and the Democrats have a problem with profit. Not just the “outrageous” and excessive profits that the oil companies are reaping now. All profit. Because they think profit comes from exploitation. But profit is much more than that. Profit is a great motivator and change agent, and the Democrats fear the power of that motivation. In this commentary, we examine the power of profit and why governments seek to control it.
Quote from the Commentary:
So why does the progressive left (along with most of academia) hate profit? Like other people, they hate what they fear. They hate profit because they can’t control it. The Chinese Communist Party realized that they needed the profit motive to create a prosperous modern country. But they fear profit and are now trying to get their people back under control by wringing profit out of their economy.
Victor C. Bolles
October 31, 2022
The proponents of the Woke progressive-left agenda appear resistant to logical argument and react with outrage at any criticism of their movement. They reject analyses based on empirical evidence and doubt that the scientific method can discover objective truth. They react with fury at any criticism of their movement. This resistance perplexed me until I came to the realization that the Woke movement has more in common with a religion or cult than it does an ideology. In this commentary, I discuss some of the things that led me to this conclusion.
Quote from the Commentary:
“But these critical theories that make up the woke agenda are all based on the same faulty foundation of Marxism. Marxism has never worked, and all these new adaptations try to cure or cover up the empirical evidence of Marxism’s and socialism’s failure. Critical Race Theory rejects empirical evidence and the use of the scientific method to search for the truth. Instead, it substitutes narratives, lived experiences and personal truths, claiming science is just another part of the racist system that oppresses blacks and other minorities.”
Victor C. Bolles
October 24, 2022
Noble Prize winner Daniel Kahneman explained in his book, Thinking Fast and Slow, that the human brain can be viewed as being divided into two separate brains, the fast thinking instinctual brain that we inherited from our hominid ancestors and our slow thinking cerebral cortex that sets us apart from those ancestors and all other animals. Politicians on the left and right direct their campaign ads to the fast thinking side of our brains, but it is our slow thinking brains that are the solution to our current divisive politics. In this commentary we look more closely at this phenomenon.
Quote from the Commentary:
“You Republicans reading this (commentary) are probably smirking about how gullible Democrats are to be so easily duped by cunning leftist politicians. But wait a minute! Everything I have said about Democrats applies equally to Republicans.”
Social Justice is Incompatible with Democracy
Victor C. Bolles
October 18, 2022
Many people think social justice is synonymous with democracy, that you can’t have true democracy without social justice. But they are wrong. The Soviet Union fought for social justice but there was no freedom or democracy in the USSR. And Mao fought for social justice but there was no democracy in Communist China. In this commentary we discuss how the fight for social justice is taking us down a dark and dangerous path.
Quote from the Commentary:
“They use nice sounding words to hide their true motives. Who can be against diversity, equity and inclusion? Those are very nice sounding, even uplifting objectives. But they are merely cover for identity politics, wealth redistribution and multiculturalism.”
Victor C. Bolles
October 6, 2022
As exploding pension costs cause state and local governments to cut back on services, citizens are fleeing rising crime, failing schools and increasing taxes leaving only the most vulnerable residents to shoulder the financial burden and their worsening predicament. These financial burdens have been created by public sector unions working in collusion with the politicians who gladly accept their political donations. In this commentary, we examine this growing problem and make some recommendations for reform.
Quote from the Commentary:
“Over the last ten years in Chicago, funding for pensions increased 239% while funding for city services only increased 18% over the same period. And 19% of the Illinois state budget goes to pensions instead of services. This scenario is repeated ad nauseum all across this country.”
The Difference between Democracy and Liberty
Victor C. Bolles
September 30, 2022
Pollsters report that American citizens are very worried about the state of our democracy in the run-up to the 2022 mid-term elections. It is true that left-wing and right-wing extremists are trying to manipulate democracy to meet their own partisan ends. But part of the problem is that many people do not understand how democracy relates to our liberty or how the Founders tried to limit democracy and well as government. In this commentary, we look at how too much democracy can be a threat to our liberty.
Quote from the Commentary:
“It seems un-American, if not downright evil, to say that we should put limits on democracy. But that is precisely what the Founders of this country set out to do. Some of the limits they placed on full democracy were wrong-headed, but some were pure genius.”
