Carriers carry the fight.

commentaryjdlewis1 Comment

The Common Problem . . .

is that the only thing more expensive than preparing for war is losing one. As combat lethality grows, so do combat platforms.

Since WW2, aircraft carriers have become larger, more expensive, and more capable. So have pickup trucks. Pickups aren’t going obsolete anytime soon, and neither are carriers, largely for the same reason. No other automobile has the same flexibility as a pickup, and no other combat platform has the same flexibility as a carrier.

Especially in a degraded communications environment following any significant anti-satellite operations by a peer/near-peer adversary, having all the air combat roles filled from one launch site will be a major advantage. A Carrier Strike Group (CSG) is the only combat force capable of doing that from a mobile location, vastly less vulnerable to ballistic missiles, nuclear or conventional. Organically multirole, the CSG is already built to operate on its own high-bandwidth networks. The Air Force is just now getting comfortable with sensor fusion; the Navy has built every major surface combatant since the 1970s to take advantage of it. What do you think Aegis is? Now, the Navy is upgrading their AWACS and strike fighters to data-share with Naval Integrated Fire Control-Counter-Air. If a Navy platform can see it, every other Navy platform in weapons range can shoot it.

A Carrier Air Wing can conduct: persistent intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance; , anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare; suppression of enemy air defenses; precision strike; and electronic intelligence/electronic attack. Add in that the Navy basically invented beyond visual range anti-air warfare with the F-4 Phantom (originally a Navy fleet defense interceptor), then refined it into Outer Air Battle (air-based anti-access/area-denial) with the F-14/E-2 pairing, and you have the entire spectrum of tactical air warfare. Current proposals of “distributed lethality,” putting more anti-ship and land attack missiles on smaller ships, is an excellent way of putting combat power where a carrier isn’t. Air power has three key advantages over ship-launched missiles. What air power can do, that missiles cannot, is extend the engagement envelope along a given threat axis. Smart bombs, no matter how many sensors you strap on, are cheaper than cruise missiles. Air-launched missiles start higher and faster, so have far more capability in attacking maneuvering air targets.

Many critics of the big-deck carrier point to advances in anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities by several nations? Please. The entire point of a CSG is that it performs A2/AD. Everything but the flattop itself is there to stiff-arm the opposing force and keep it a certain distance from the carrier. Having trained to fight in that manner for 70 years, the Navy also has a good idea how to keep someone else from doing it to them. The Navy has been training against saturation missile strikes every day since sometime in the 70s. Navy ships have the powerplants to run kinetic-scale lasers or microwave emitters, as well as electromagnetic railguns. Large Air Force strike aircraft do not, much less fighters. Using bigger and more reliable versions of what is already built, no theoretical physics in play, US Navy ships are already being built to deploy laser-based close-in weapons systems, for missile defense. For a fight against a peer/near-peer adversary more than 5-8 years into the future, US navy platforms could reasonably use railguns to shoot down enemy maritime patrol aircraft from a hundred miles away, or sink fast, missile-armed ships from two hundred or more. Right now, US Navy warships carry Enhanced Sea Sparrow missiles, which allow 4 surface-to-air missile to be packed into one launch tube. An enemy might fire hundreds of missiles at a carrier. One escort could fire back hundreds of defensive missiles. No other combat platform, no other concept of operations, utilizes and counters A2/AD so thoroughly, so US policymakers should recognize A2/AD as a US strength.

The Uncommon Solution . . .

Instead of seeing A2/AD as the death knell of the carrier, military planners ought to recognize it as an opportunity to use the carrier the way it was originally designed. US carriers may not have fought ship-to-ship since World War 2, but every carrier sailor has heard tales of the Battle of Midway, where carriers first proved themselves as the centerpiece of a battle fleet. Using the Carrier Strike Group’s own abilities in A2/AD, the carrier can be deployed against a section of ocean 200 miles by 200 miles, and remove all enemy combat power from that area. Then it can pick another area and do it again tomorrow, but 500 or 1,000 miles away. Vector an Air Force strike package through that area, using the carrier’s air power to protect the larger support planes, and you have a powerful synergy of combat capability.

Fuel The Hype, Or The Heavies?

commentaryjdlewisLeave a comment

The Common Problem . . .

is that alternative fuel programs are largely focused on the same transportation options where previous research has already produced huge gains in fuel efficiency. Trying to change over efficient platforms to alternative fuels is chasing diminishing returns. The focus for alternative fuels should be on large engines with long work cycles, because that produces the largest reduction in imported fossil fuels for the least change by end users. Changing the core of freight transport, trains and tractor-trailers, to alternative fuel would benefit the environment and the economy, improve overall efficiency, and improve national security. In addition, one of the most promising alternative fuel options would be best employed on large commercial vehicles.

In the US alone, rail and heavy trucks consume 32 billion gallons of diesel fuel annually; that’s roughly 10% of the petroleum used in the US. For those who count by CO2 emissions, say hello to 360 megatons per year. The Department of Energy spends billions every year on alternative fuel programs for cars and buses and delivery vans, but not a dime on the largest and most-used vehicles in the country. An 18-wheeler produces 3,000 kilowatt-hours of power in an 8-hour workday; a single freight locomotive generates over 35,000 kilowatt-hours per day. To put those numbers in perspective, changing just 80 semi trucks to renewable fuel is the energy equivalent of building 10,000 homes with enough solar panels to run themselves; switching 400 locomotives over would have the same environmental benefits as closing down an average coal-fired power plant.

There is a good economic case for reducing the use of imported fuels. Every year, the US spends over 100 billion dollars on oil imports; 10 of the last 15 years, the cost has been over 250 billion dollars. Some of that money goes to neighbors and allies, and is largely recovered in mutual trade. Unfortunately, at least one-third goes to entities like the OPEC nations or Russia, which prefer to buy as little as possible from the US. Such nations can inflict significant disruptions on the core of the US economy, with only collateral damage to their own finances. Oil prices go up in times of uncertainty, so they might actually clear the same profit totals while selling less oil overall.

Thermodynamically, it makes no sense to expend energy to move energy to the other side of the world. Yet the modern world does move energy from one continent to another, because it’s cost-effective. The major alternatives all require significant improvements in energy storage or distribution. For electric vehicles, the key number is energy density in the battery. Wind and solar power are intermittent sources, so they need some form of energy storage (or another power plant kept in “spinning reserve,” consuming the very energy supplies alternative energy is supposed to replace). Hydrogen is very good at storing energy; it has 2-3 times the energy density of any common hydrocarbon fuel. In fact, when NASA built the Space Shuttles and picked a fuel based solely on its ability to store energy, they chose hydrogen! The main reason we don’t already use hydrogen for energy storage across the country, and across the world, is that we don’t have a good way to move hydrogen long distances. Instead of trying to make hydrogen available at every neighborhood gas station, start by putting it into commercial vehicles where users plan their routes and select fuel stops before the vehicle is even loaded. In addition, hydrogen storage requires large, heavy fuel tanks; trains and heavy trucks already have large, heavy fuel tanks, and some trucks already use a gaseous fuel. From a mechanical standpoint, a locomotive or 18-wheeler is far better than a car or bus at carrying hydrogen without giving up usable space.

National security actually provides the single greatest reason to shift heavy freight transport to an alternative fuel. The OPEC nations have cut off oil supplies to the US before; given how many of their residents (and how many of their governments) are known to be unfriendly toward the US, it could reasonably happen again. If the ability to move raw materials and finished goods is completely independent of their oil imports, the economy keeps moving with little impact. US foreign policy would be much less tied to events in the Middle East. The reduced demand would cut oil prices worldwide, and reduce Russia’s export balance. With less economic leeway, Moscow would have to cut back on threatening its neighbors, including many NATO members.

There are many advantages to expanding hydrogen fuel use among railroads and heavy trucks. Not only are they the easiest stepping stone to supply hydrogen fuel where it is needed, they would also be among the easiest to change the powerplants to hydrogen fuel. Although fuel cells are more efficient, it is possible to modify an existing internal combustion engine to use hydrogen fuel. From 2005 to 2007, BMW leased cars with V12 engines running on hydrogen, and in 2013 Aston-Martin ran a 500+ horsepower race engine on hydrogen. The more hydrogen is used as a transportation fuel, the greater the economies of scale for hydrogen tech. Diesel itself was almost unknown to the average consumer in 1930; by 1960, almost every locomotive in service used diesel, and diesel passenger cars were available 20 years after that. Anyone who is serious about using hydrogen to replace oil should be trying to follow that same working model.

There is one more historical model to consider. Aviation and aerospace technology have achieved economically unfeasible and physically implausible breakthroughs, from the first flight across the English Channel to the first private spacecraft, because of people seeking fame and fortune. In many cases, the prize money available for a given accomplishment was not enough to cover the costs of research and development, but someone did it anyway. Aviation enthusiasts still know the name of Louis Bleriot, because of the publicity associated with winning large amounts of money. Even those who don’t follow history recognize the name of Charles Lindbergh and his Spirit of St. Louis. How many billions would any of the 7 major freight railroads in the US pay, to have the notoriety of being responsible for the largest expansion in alternate energy history? Many major corporations handle their own logistics; what would Walmart or McDonald’s do for the corporate image of having the greenest trucking fleet in the world? The Department of Energy spends billions of dollars per year on renewable energy and alternate fuels; the world’s wealthiest people have pledged billions more for environmental causes through The Giving Pledge and Breakthrough Energy Coalition. National defense alone would justify spending billions a year for the next decade to reward using hydrogen fuel in heavy vehicles. The technology is available; what the market faces is a chicken-or-egg problem. Hydrogen fuel is only available in a few cities, so hydrogen-fueled vehicles are very much a niche market. Without demand for hydrogen fuel on a retail level, there’s no reward for building hydrogen fueling infrastructure. Railroads handle their own fuel deliveries; set a target for ton-miles on hydrogen power every year, and reward those companies which meet the goal. Then, after 5 years, do the same for semi trucks. Repeat the rollout of diesel fuel, but do it in a matter of years, not decades.

The Uncommon Solution . . .

When the problem is high-density energy storage or long-distance energy transport, hydrogen ought to be the first option to consider.

 

Copyright 2017 by J.D. Lewis

To help future generations, study previous ones.

commentaryjdlewis1 Comment

The Common Problem . . .

is that people fail to examine geopolitics on geopolitical time scales. NATO is not an artifact of the Cold War era, it is a result of the interwar era. In 1914, the Pope warned that conflict between the two great alliances would be “the suicide of Europe.” By 1918, the millions of casualties constituted a demographic bottleneck called the “Lost Generation.” Yet, just 20 years after Armistice, the antebellum maneuvering of World War 2 was trumpeted as “Peace In Our Time” . . . and war only a year out. After the War to End All Wars, the Allied nations placed their faith in international justice and nonviolent coexistence. A generation later, the nations of Western Europe knew better. They had seen two wars settle into long, grinding equilibrium, then watched a latecomer disrupt the balance of power. With the knowledge that long wars just get more people killed on both sides, the statesmen of Europe and America created a power structure where the nation which had proved to be the balance of power in both World Wars would be committed to any new European war from Day 1. The nations behind the Iron Curtain subscribed to the new theory of heavily-armed peace, as well. When the Warsaw Pact was finally formed, it only formalized the existing power structure of Soviet forces under Soviet commanders deployed in the countries which the Red Army had reconquered from Germany. Any future war was to be made short and decisive, and preferably so destructive that compromise and coexistence would be a far better option. In ultimate purpose, NATO took the principles of 19th-century statesmen into the nuclear era, a non-nuclear deterrent schooled in the lessons of Summer, 1914.

The Uncommon Solution . . .

Geopolitics is best studied on generational timescales. When nations set policy, it is best done with an understanding of the previous 50-100 years of decisions and options in that area of government activity.

Copyright 2016 by J.D. Lewis

Now that everyone has had a week to find their center

commentaryjdlewis2 Comments

The Common Problem . . .

is that people get beside themselves over elections, whether their preferred candidate came out on top or under the curve. The US has survived contentious elections before. Most people do not depend on the implementation of a political agenda for their day-to-day existence. In civil society, there is a general agreement that police forces and fire services and post offices and road construction, things which everyone in the society can directly benefit from, are fair game for the government to do. That degree of non-dependence, of actually sharing the benefits of government with all citizens, is the core strength of a free society. Free markets do not suffer from what engineers call “single point of failure.” In a centrally-controlled, planned economy, one report with incorrect information can impair all the critical decision-makers for an entire country. The core strength of the Western World for the last 400 years has been that the average person does not need direction or permission from a higher authority for any aspect of their regular activity.

The Uncommon Solution . . .

Get up, go carry out the tasks of your normal day, and live your life without waiting for permission from someone who doesn’t even know you.

Copyright 2016 by J.D. Lewis

Ignoring history hurts everyone.

commentaryjdlewis1 Comment

The Common Problem . . .

is that people keep thinking they have outsmarted human nature. In the financial sector particularly, the “experts” keep thinking they have found a solution to the limits taught by 5 millennia of painful experience. All economies are barter economies. Advanced ones simply have a commoditized, granular unit of exchange called money. Instead of exchanging product for product, they exchange value for value; by decoupling value from the product, money integrates time as an aspect of the economy. Where Marx went wrong was to view time as an independent store of value, the determining factor in the value of labor. Time can never have commercial value unless some other exchange of value is also in progress. Quality of work, innovation in new products or practices, the effects of the mind, are where value comes from. Debt, interest, investment, can only exist with an agreed unit of exchange. Resources in their natural state have a latent value, but they provide no direct impact on the economy. Transferring the future value of undeveloped resources requires an agreement about the nature of possession, as well as a unit of stored value. That’s why inflation is destructive to economies, because it reduces the stored value represented by each unit of money. Interest, rent, and equity returns are the return on time value, because they represent a deferred exchange of value. The use of money as a unit of exchange means people can exchange partial value of a product, temporary use rather than full transfer of ownership.

The Uncommon Solution . . .

When someone with letters after their name says they have overcome or are willing to ignore history, expect their “new and improved” idea to self destruct. Sooner or later, history and human nature combine to return everything to normal.

Copyright 2016 by J.D. Lewis

Pick a perspective. Not permanently.

commentaryjdlewisLeave a comment

The Common Problem . . .

is that people see qualitative vs. quantitative reasoning as a permanent choice. The reality is that both are necessary tools to be an effective thinker. Yes, there is a need for quantitative analysis. Balancing a checkbook, analyzing business opportunities, ranking athletes and sports teams, these all require using numbers to find the answer. For optimizing, for organizing, for defining the details of a problem. What the purity of numbers giveth, it also taketh away. Numbers lack context. The classic math homework of reading problems is all about the combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis. Before you do the math, you must decide what numbers are important. You finish the problem by using quantitative analysis to address the details.

Many people will argue that everything must be measured, numbered, and counted because of computers. Computers work in numbers, after all. Yet the Holy Grail of computer science for the last 20 years has been to equal the human mind in qualitative analysis. Boolean logic, the foundation of computer science, organizes relationships between values according to 5 criteria: and; or; not; not and; not or. These relationships are defined by whether or not they are true; by how large a margin is immaterial. Most software code is organized into statements of Boolean logic; computer hardware, from the fastest video card to the $5 thumb drive in your pocket, is built from logic gates that operate according to Boolean relationships. What Western society has skipped for the last century or more is the qualitative analysis to start the problem. Select the desired outcome, then define how to reach it.

 

The Uncommon Solution . . .

Quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis are tools. People need to know which one is appropriate to the answer they are trying to find. The problem comes when one or the other becomes someone’s worldview. Qualitative analysis is rooted in Platonic philosophy, the study of the ideal and abstract; quantitative analysis arises from Aristotelian reasoning, reaching a specific conclusion on the basis of the empirical and concrete. Concrete observational is an intermediate stage in cognitive development. Continued progress requires moving beyond that stage. After 2000 years of practice, Western society should have some margin of superiority over the ancients in terms of how to use information.

Copyright 2016 by J.D. Lewis

Fix the problem, not just the follow-on.

commentaryjdlewisLeave a comment

The Common Problem . . .

Is people who base their decision-making and problem-solving on correcting the immediate symptoms, and never progress to the cause-and-effect reasoning necessary to address the actual problem. Tarping a leaky roof prevents any more moisture from coming in and causing further damage, but it only fixes the symptom of stuff getting wet. It does nothing to solve the problem, that something bad happened to the roof and it needs to be repaired. Boarding up a broken window will prevent any more damage, but no one has fixed the problem until they have fixed the window.

The developed world sends aid to developing countries, but there is no investment in solving the problems that created the crisis in the first place. There is eternally an emergency, where someone is waiting for the charity cavalry to ride in with pallets of food and bags of clothing and crates of shoes. Yes, you first prevent further damage from the immediate problem; the next step is to prevent further damage from the problem recurring again. Developed nations rarely need emergency food aid 2 and 3 times in a generation. The industrialized world, despite the habit of consumptive consumerism,  typically doesn’t run out of resources on a national level. Western Civilization is far better than most other cultures at addressing the lowest levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Safety and security and food and shelter are all necessary precursors to a stable and healthy existence. The industrialized nations of Western Europe, and the former British colonies allied with them, and a few other nations which have followed the same path of economic growth to raise standards of living, all consistently have more resources than any of them actually need. Human progress depends on the presence of that excess. Only civilizations with surplus are able to help other civilizations.

The solution to national, and even continental, poverty lies in discovering how socioeconomic and demographic shifts relate to the growth of an economic surplus, and the ability to trade that surplus to other regions for raw materials. If we are going to avoid the mistakes of economic colonialism or outright mercantilism, then we have to focus on the internal changes. Fortunately, a man named Walt Whitman Rostow already publicized the answers as a theory of social development he called the “Demographic Shift.” Improvements in health care, clean water, a lower incidence of childhood diseases, all cause a significant drop in the death rate. For a number of generations, the birth rate is vastly higher than the death rate and the total population rises sharply.  The social and economic incentives to have as many children as possible diminish. Before the shift, it might require having 5 to 8 children to ensure that 2 or 3 lived to adulthood, to maintain the size and strength of one’s own kin group. After the shift, people do not need to invest as much of their resources into raising children; in fact, raising more than 3 or 4 children results in an appreciable portion of those invested resources moving away from home, seeking available housing and employment. People voluntarily reduce how many children they have, and the per capita birth rate drops until the population roughly stabilizes. Birth and death rates are lower, but the total population is much higher than before the demographic shift.

From Rostow’s work, we know the mechanism to affect the social portion of socioeconomic progress. We can determine the economic side for ourselves by use of simple logic. If the food supply grows faster than the population, you have surplus food. Some agricultural workers naturally shift into the broader workforce, and the surplus food allows more of those workers to benefit from economic specialization. Only people with surplus food have the time to stack bricks and make a city. Cities have the population density necessary to support artisans and merchants and traders. Value shifts from young, strong laborers to semi-skilled and a large number of skilled workers. They both create demand for new and additional products, and provide the labor necessary to successful economic development and investment. This large population creates demand for large industry and heavy agriculture. The resulting large tax base means funding for roads, bridges, and public utilities. Those utilities may be as simple as a well and a mill, or they may be the power and water and telecommunications of a major 21st-century city.

Socioeconomic progress requires at least 5 channels of simultaneous development. Most foreign aid efforts focus on 2 or at the most 3. Even the most minimal of health care starts with ready access to water free of diseases, contaminants, and other hazards. The next step up can be “injuries, infections, and infants” or “accidents, bacteria, cholera, and diarrhea,” but that consistent access to health protection does more to drive the demographic shift than the other 4 combined. Secondly, people need a stable supply of calories and nutrients. There are literally dozens of techniques to improve agricultural yield without impairing other local resources. These address water use, soil protection, adding nutrients, deterring pests and diseases, crop selection, and pairing livestock with crops to localize the nutrient cycle. Once families have the spare food to spare hours, the next step is education. People who understand how their new tools work, who can maintain them and build more, are literally holding a renaissance in their minds. Widespread literacy is the staircase from the medieval world into the modern age. However, none of this is going to move past tent cities without major buildouts of supporting infrastructure. A modern nation depends on pipes to move water and sewage, electrical supply so schools and homes have light to read by and hospitals can run their equipment, roads and bridges so people and goods can move freely, and so many other large projects that make the rest possible on a national scale. That fourth channel of infrastructure leads into the fifth, investments. Who has access to the infrastructure, and who is responsible for repairs? Replacements? Expanding the system to meet needs 10, 20, 50 years in the future? Someone has to have both a sense of ownership and a legal ownership over the project. A lot of that will initially come from outside sources, but if it done as business partnerships with local communities and regional groups, the local population and local economy will gradually build an ownership position. As local workers gain experience, they can start their own services companies to maintain and repair the infrastructure.

 

The Uncommon Solution . . .

Don’t create more root problems by only treating the symptoms. Make a change that makes a difference, and do something to keep the problem from recurring. Base crisis response on relationships with local institutions like schools and churches, and community leadership, that were there before the crisis and will be there after the crisis. Use what is already known about how nations grow and develop organically, then fast-track the undeveloped world to a modern quality of life.  It took Western Civilization about 400 years to go from normal, everyday people being peasant farmers to factory workers or store clerks, living on a paved street and their children likely to survive a broken arm without being handicapped for life. Even with the best plan and highest funding, no society is going to make that jump in 40 years. Five generations instead of fifteen? That sounds like a goal worth pursuing. Make that the focus of foreign aid and large charities.

Copyright 2016 by J.D. Lewis

Numerical solutions do not fix human problems.

commentaryjdlewisLeave a comment

The Common Problem . . .

Is that people immediately define a problem in terms of exact measurements and precise definitions. They skip over looking at the problem on a human scale, and matching the context of the original problem. For centuries, scholars have tried to match the description of Atlantis, given by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. He says it was equal in size to Libya and Asia combined. Obviously, anything as large as a continent should be easy to locate, even from the debris of catastrophic destruction. Perhaps any search for Atlantis should back up from the quantitative pattern-matching and fully examine the context of the information given.

First and foremost, how far south does Plato mean when he says “Libya?” How far east is his definition of Asia? Secondly, this is Plato we are talking about. He not only literally wrote the book on metaphysics, he defined the concept of the concept. Are you 100% comfortable assuming he was referring to physical geography? He would more likely refer first to the economic footprint or area of cultural impact. If he in fact meant “from Libya to Asia (Minor)” then a dominant power in the eastern Mediterranean is a distinct probability.

Many people argue that no location in the Mediterranean could be the origin of Atlantis, because Plato specifically says it is beyond the Pillars of Hercules, typically associated with the Strait of Gibraltar. However, many places in the ancient world were identified with Hercules; specifically, Heraklion in Crete would be the most likely candidate. The tale of Atlantis is ascribed to one Kritias, whose name is derived from Crete.

Finally, the geography of the area around Crete matches the description given of Atlantis’ concentric rings of land and water. Cartographic projection in the Classical era was, at best, inexact and most commonly outright propaganda. For an author whose name is synonymous with abstract thought, the geography could not fit more perfectly. Start with the island of modernly known as Santorini. Thira, in the Sea of Crete, bounded by the island of Crete and the islands off the Attic region of Greece. Expand across the Eastern Mediterranean, take in the narrow passages separating Italy from Sicily and then North Africa, and finally look at the Mediterranean as a whole. Add the final layer of the nations in the Mediterranean basin, and the area Plato describes does indeed extend from past Libya to the far boundary of Asia as it was known in the Classical era.

 

The Uncommon Solution . . .

Even a logical problem makes more sense in a human context. To solve human problems, the problem itself must first be placed on a human scale before the abstract numbers have any meaning.

Copyright 2016 by J.D. Lewis

Education is Free. You get what you pay for.

commentaryjdlewisLeave a comment

The Common Problem . . .

Is that back-to-school time in many of the largest urban school districts represents more harm than good. What is the point of requiring students to attend in a school district where the pregnancy rate is higher than the literacy rate? What is the point of forcing young people into an environment where they are more likely to witness a violent crime than to graduate? As a nation, we spend more time discussing refugees from failed states than we devote to providing refuge from failed schools.

Ignore test scores. Look at graduation rates, at literacy rates in high schools. Compare them to the crime rates for the same demographics. Identify the schools that have failed for years, for generations in some cases. They have failed their student populations. They have failed the neighborhoods they are supposed to serve. They have failed to deliver on the resources spent to build and run them. These kids would learn better math skills making change at a burger joint. They already do get more practice in literacy skills via social media than they do via school. Letting good kids get out of bad schools and build a work history earlier only adds options for the working poor in the urban core.

Every school would be a more productive learning environment if certain students didn’t show up. For the schools in worst trouble, make that an option. Don’t waste resources forcing kids into an environment where they deliberately interrupt someone else’s opportunity to learn, to have better options in life. If the school population was made up of only students who had someone at home emphasizing the importance of education, how much more time would teachers have to teach? How many frustrated students who drop out with a GPA in the “C-” or “D” range would instead graduate?

 

The Uncommon Solution . . .

Free public education is supposed to be universal in industrialized societies. In the cases where it is very public that education is not happening, give people the option of a free education for their children, and the freedom to enroll them in the school of hard knocks.

Copyright 2016 by J.D. Lewis

Counted votes which still don’t count.

commentaryjdlewisLeave a comment

The Common Problem . . .

Is that large population centers politically outweigh the surrounding areas. Cities like Los Angeles and Chicago vote very differently from the rest of their respective states. The result is that millions of voters are effectively disenfranchised, when it comes to Presidential elections. In the case of California, this results in millions of disenfranchised voters in the largest, most powerful state in terms of electoral votes. The first solution typically proposed is to do away with the Electoral College entirely, and go to a direct election by popular vote. The problem with this proposal is that it ignores the purpose of the Electoral College. By distributing the voting representation across geographic separations, it ensures anyone elected President has a broad base of support across a large portion of the country. Even when the system seemed to fail in 1860, the states which elected Lincoln had such an advantage in population, in development, in every measurable aspect of power resources, that the Union victory in the American Civil War was practically guaranteed.

So, how can we solve the problem of disenfranchised voters without sacrificing the advantage of national harmony that comes from the current system?

 

The Uncommon Solution . . .

Any city with a census population larger than the least populated state should have its electoral votes divided from the state in which it resides. Both the state and city get to round up their total of electoral votes, resulting in one electoral vote added per city which is divided from its state.

Copyright 2016 by J.D. Lewis