No Labels and Locally Grown Government
Why Locally Grown Government Matters
Human history has shown that competition makes us better. We don’t become "human" without that innate drive that Darwin defined in the mid eighteenth century. Diversity is good. Science shows that diversity of species is critical for maintaining a healthy sustainable planet. In the age-old struggle between the equally benevolent frenemies, freedom vs. the common good, in situations where the two are in close conflict, the ties must go to freedom. This is the strong message of the brilliant U.S. Constitution. Next to our holy books, the US Constitution is the most important written document in human history. Because, like the holy books, it balances the aspirational and spiritual with the practical needs of humans, while recognizing there is inherently good and evil in all of us. But next to its declaration of "unalienable human rights" that transcend any government, was the strict definition of the scope of federal government's role in nurturing the "common good" of its "citizens." They key algorithm was written in the 10th Amendment, ratified in 1791, which established the mechanism of federalism stating that the federal government has only those powers delegated to it by the Constitution, and that all other powers not forbidden to the states by the Constitution are reserved to each state, or the people. It’s literally elegant computer code that is the kernel of the creation of a massively scalable bottom-up, multi-tiered governance architecture with all kinds of checks and balancing mechanisms to ensure a sustainably growing network. OK, that’s the nerd in me trying to connect some intellectual dots. But like Boon said to Otter at the end of "Animal House" when the Deltas were thrown off campus, and crazy Bluto was rallying the troops," Forget it, he's rolling."
I believe human history also shows that centralized governing structures go through cycles of creation and collapse over time. Sometimes it’s the long-haul millennial empires like Rome and China, or the short haul types like the communist Soviet Union. Even empires and cultures that persist for long periods, experience regular smaller cycles of growth and collapse every 100 years or so. Those that absorb the economic collapses and wars, and learn to adapt, tend to have a longer shelf life. The 80–120-year durations of these internecine cycles of spring, summer, fall and winter, are roughly the length of a long human life. That’s the time it takes for several generations to forget the lessons of the past, guaranteeing that future generations repeat them. For more on this phenomenon, check out the book, The 4th Turning.
At 247 years, the United States of America sits at 120th on a list of 282 empires on Wikipedia list. But the economic and social impact of America and its constitutional model for democracy puts it at the top of the list of empires, in my opinion. But unlike all the other empires, America did not require a centralized pantheon of emperors and gods like Rome, or fealty to one god, like theocratic and communist states. Instead, America has a solid multi-tier architecture that puts most governance as close to the people as possible so that decisions respecting the culture and diversity of a region will be well accepted by the people. One person's definition of common good may differ from another's and they elect their representatives accordingly. Cities and towns, counties, states, federal. Four tiers with every citizen a member of each tier. Things that must be done but cannot be done by cities themselves are elevated to counties. Things that cannot be done by cities and counties alone are elevated to the state level. Finally, anything that cannot be done by the states is elevated to the federal level. The federal government has a constitution that defines its limited power, and the states have similar limited powers over its constituent cities and towns.
The same multi-tier decentralized network design that powers the internet and our ever-increasingly digital reality, also powers our American system of governance. It works because there is no single point of failure in the network. If a Google server goes down in a data center near you, all the search traffic is picked up by another node on the network. The system barely notices it. Unlike the old days of centralized mainframe computing that I grew up with, where there is a single point of failure. When the mainframe server went down, every connected “green screen” went down. If the traffic was big but not big enough to crash yet, the network just slowed to a crawl. Either way, everyone paid the price.
But with a now top-heavy federal government, our country is choosing to go back the single point of failure mainframe era. It seems like the entire economy is now controlled by the Federal Reserve seven-member board of governors. They determine interest rates, print the money that it uses to buy the federal debt our Treasury issues. Those seven people better get it right or we all suffer, like we are now with the highest inflation in 40 years. Whether it is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, disability, unemployment, a subsidized mortgage or student loan forgiveness, most American citizens (and non-citizens), have become dependent on government money.
To be fair, some of this growth of government was needed to accommodate the rapid economic expansion unleased by the power of free markets and free speech. The cost of roads, bridges, airports, regulating interstate commerce, maintaining a judicial system, and fighting wars necessarily meant a larger federal footprint but one that was still relatively small compared to the private sector. The federal government Debt-GDP ratio ranged from 20% to 40% from 1900-1980, excluding wartime periods. However, since 1980 the growth of the unelected federal administrative state has resulted in our current federal 122% Debt-GDP ratio. When you include local and state government debt, it’s 134%. And when you include the liabilities of the mammoth social safety net (70% of all federal spending) on the balance sheet as would be required for any private entity, the Debt-GDP ratio is a staggering 446%. So, Uncle Sam must print more money, further exacerbating already exploding debt and inflation, with the ultimate result being erosion of the value of our currency. That's a scary amount of centralization that is making America look more like a creaky old mainframe ready to collapse rather than a scalable, fault-tolerant, efficient multi-tier network.
Thankfully, like any good network, our system is also self-correcting through its mechanism to amend constitutions, either state or federal. It is a necessarily high bar to do this - usually by a two thirds majority vote of the legislature and/or ratification by the states or by the people. The first 12 amendments to the federal constitution happened in the first twelve years of our founding because there were obvious flaws in the system that had to be fixed quickly to ensure proper running of the network. Unfortunately, it took another 61 years for the 13th amendment and our bloodiest war to rectify the heinous flaw that permitted slavery, and finally permit the promise of America to be available to ALL its people. Even with all its flaws, the bottom-up, fault-tolerant, multi-tier American network grew to raise the living standards of the average Joe and Jane more than any culture or empire in human history. This is a self-evident fact in my humble opinion. The math just works. This is why I wrote my book, Locally Grown: The Art of Sustainable Government.
For all my bloviating about Locally Grown Government and decentralized networks, some measure of centralized control over parts of the network are still essential. Even the decentralized internet has a governing body that controls all the domains on the network. All the. COMs, .NETs and .ORGs domains must be defined in the centralized index, or searches fail. In like manner, centralized empires can have value too. Likewise, without the infrastructure that only a central government can provide, like a common currency and roads, there would have been no empires. Generally, the more the value a centralized government can provide to the average peasant with a pitchfork, the longer it can last. Empires are also both culture destroyers and culture creators. They destroy other cultures to establish the empire, and they seed the growth of new cultures when those empires collapse under their own weight. When the inevitable rent-seeking, double-standard law enforcement and cultural destruction wrought by corrupt leaders becomes so obvious that the peasants can see it, watch out!
In my opinion, our American empire is at a critical moment where the network is unsustainably out of balance. Our Constitution’s load-balancing mechanisms are under great stress. The homeostatic middle ground on which sustainable anything is built, is crumbling both financially and socially. Make no mistake, like any earth-based system whether, biological, geological, or ideological, things will be brought into balance one way or another. It’s like I told my kids when they were little and misbehaving: “Do you want to do this the easy way or the hard way?” It would be super excellent if people made the required leadership changes to restore balance, but if they don't, the balancing mechanism defaults to collapse and all the nastiness that brings. I talk about all these concepts in my five year old book, that is more relevant than ever for helping citizens to choose the easier way rather than the hard way.
Why No Labels Matters
Now that I’ve given you the short pitch on the principles of Locally Grown Government, let’s talk about No Labels. If you pay attention to politics like I do, you’ve probably heard of them because they have been all over the news for several months. I met the No Labels team and several of their congressional supporters in DC about 18 months ago. They are driven by the unexciting idea of finding common ground in government and they have enlisted an impressive group of Democrat, GOP and independent supporters including Joe Manchin, Joe Lieberman, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, John Cornyn, Josh Gottheimer, John Huntsman, Benjamin Chavis and many others. They focus on middle-ground common sense solutions that both sides can agree on. Their companion legislative wing, the House Problem Solvers Caucus, has been instrumental in getting big legislation passed like the recent Infrastructure bill. While I don’t agree with No Labels on everything, I do agree that negotiation and compromise is essential to making any government work. They have rightly defined most of the major issues our country faces in their Common Sense Majority manifesto. As a smaller government conservative, I tend towards less government except in areas where there is federal constitutional authority. That can be a slippery slope that quickly pits the original text constitutionalists versus the living breathing constitutionalists. But that’s where the negotiation comes in. No body gets everything they want which is exactly why it works.
Like No Labels, I am a big fan of finding common ground. Common ground is stable because a large majority views it as common sense. For example, the latest polling shows that 71% of the American people don’t want either Donald Trump or Joe Biden as presidential candidates. And yet, that looks like exactly what we’re gonna get. Two corrupt rich white guys that are both in legal jeopardy who will both be well into their 80’s by the end of the next presidential term starting in 2024. It seems like the two major political parties are grossly out of step with the American people. Both parties must find ways to move beyond their current standard bearers.
The central idea of No Labels is to dispense with the political monikers and focus on common sense solutions to our big challenges that most Americans will support. What a breath of fresh air. They are trying to run a unity presidential ticket in 2024 comprised of both a Republican and a Democrat. Something like what we saw in a recent town hall in New Hampshire with former GOP governor John Huntsman and Democrat Senator Joe Manchin. No Labels is already on the ballot in five states and hopes to get on all 50. They plan to stage a convention next spring after the primaries when they’ll see if a better nominee emerges in either party. If that happens, No Labels will bow out. If the race is Biden-Trump again, No Labels would run a centrist unity ticket. Sounds like common sense to me and a recent No Labels poll shows that a strong 59% majority of Americans would consider a moderate independent third-party ticket.
So, it’s unfortunate that the Democrat Party establishment is doing everything it can to prevent No Labels from getting on the ballot on many states. Along with their media allies and mega-donors like MoveOn.org, the party believes a third-party candidacy would draw more from the Democrat base of support than from the GOP. I wonder if the Democrat establishment would feel the same way if the GOP nominated someone other than Trump? Someone highly qualified with a record of success as a governor like Nikki Haley, or Ron DeSantis or someone like Doug Burgum who built a successful multi-billion dollar company and was elected governor in North Dakota? The answer to that question would clarify whether their rabid animus to No Labels is Trump-specific, or really directed at any political opponents. I think the Democrats are using the former as cover for the latter. The Democrat establishment has now established a super PAC, specifically dedicated to thwarting No Labels, with former Speaker of the House, Dick Gephart as chairman. Shame on you Dick.
To put this all into context, here’s an excerpt from one of the regular emails I get from No Labels, in this case, from founder Nancy Jacobson, who just happens to have been a classmate of mine at Syracuse University.
“Recently tapped to lead the new anti-No Labels super PAC is former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, a decent and well-respected leader. Perhaps Gephardt was unaware of what he was signing onto: A year-long ax-grinding campaign intended to smear the founders of No Labels on a deeply personal level and undermine at all costs a movement of voters who want many of the same things that he wants. Or perhaps he was unaware of the shady characters that he was aligning himself with – like Rick Wilson and the Lincoln Project.
Shortly after assuming his position, Gephardt said on NBC News that it would be “un-American” to try to prevent No Labels from accessing the ballot. “We shouldn’t do that,” he said. And he’s right. But that’s exactly what his allies are doing. They are filing lawsuits and running interference to try to prevent No Labels from gaining ballot access. Move On sent a thuggish letter to secretaries of state asking them to “investigate” No Labels’ ballot access work. Gephardt knows this is wrong, and he shouldn’t cooperate with it.
These tactics are intimidation at best and obstruction at worst. According to the very statute Jack Smith cited against Trump – 18 US Code Sec. 241 – it is a crime for “two or more persons” to conspire to “injure, oppress, threaten or intimidate” anyone “in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution.” And organizing voters for the ballot has been upheld as protected speech under the First Amendment.
In other words, to stop Trump, they are willing to become Trump. Most frustrating of all, they aren’t even stopping him. Their stubborn insistence that No Labels will help Trump is unsupported by facts. They have no idea who No Labels might give their ballot line to – it could easily be someone who appeals to the millions of Never-Trump Republicans. Karl Rove wrote a column in the Wall Street Journal to that effect just yesterday, arguing that a No Labels ticket could ruin Trump’s chances at reelection.
The insistence of these Democrats that Biden will fare worse than Trump against No Labels betrays an insecurity and lack of faith in Biden’s candidacy, particularly its ability to appeal to the middle. It’s quite telling. To confuse and scare people, they take the allegations a step further by claiming that No Labels is intentionally working to elect Trump. They have known No Labels for 14 years. They know its founder and leaders. They know it is not a pro-Trump group and yet they say it anyway. That’s called lying. This isn’t just arrogant; it’s anti-democratic. They know better. Dick Gephardt, in particular, knows better. He knows better than to sign his name to the below-the-belt personal warfare that is the hallmark of Rick Wilson and the Lincoln Project. They just ran a six-figure ad campaign on CNN and MSNBC attacking not the ideas behind No Labels, but the people. Wilson is known for nasty negative tactics like his infamously disgusting attack ad against the late war hero and Senator Max Cleland.
I believe strongly that reasonable people can disagree and still be good, decent people. That’s what No Labels is all about. If these Democrats don’t support what we’re doing, that’s okay. If they want to work to oppose us, that’s okay too. But battle us on the ideas. Do it above the board. Meet with us in person to discuss this, as we have offered to do.
Integrity is when actions and words align. The reason so many voters have lost trust in our political establishment and rallied around No Labels is that, too often, our leaders are caught saying one thing and doing another.”
Recently No Labels published a chart that spells out exactly where they stand on the BIG challenges facing us today: Social Security, government debt, immigration, energy/climate, free speech, voting, woke culture, abortion, guns and education. The chart shows the “Common Sense” description of the challenge, the No Labels solution framework for that challenge, and what Trump and Biden have said publicly about, or what their record has been regarding that challenge. Let’s use immigration for an example. The Common Sense definition is that “America is a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants.” The No Labels solution framework is, “Secure the border, attract hardworking taxpayers and protect the Dreamers.” Trump has said, “Why do we want all these people from shithole countries?” In contrast, President Biden’s open border policy has resulted in the most illegal border crossings in U.S. history, along with drugs and human trafficking that goes with it.
Immigration is an incredibly complicated issue and neither Trump nor Biden have it right. Like tens of millions of others, my grandparents came here from Italy, worked their asses off, and made good, as they added to the rich culture that is America. I mean, what would America be without Italian food and The Godfather? You don’t have to go back too far to see that we are all descendant from immigrants. Only the native cultures can claim to be indigenous. Even my wife’s family who arrived on the Mayflower more than 300 years ago are immigrants. The diversity of immigration makes us a stronger nation and powers the innovation that has made America the shining city on a hill. Plus, with the current debt levels, a mammoth social safety net in country that is having many fewer children, we need the bodies paying the taxes. This is just common sense. I’m not going to go thru all the things in this chart but for those of you listening to this, I have a companion blog post on my website www.jimfini.com. I urge you to read it in full.
As a small government, free-market conservative, there are plenty No Labels policies to disagree with. I mean, there is no compromise on Free Speech. That is central to our Constitution. I don’t need a government curating the information I am allowed to consume or “protect me” from what they decide is unacceptable. Same with guns. But there is a lot that I do agree with No Labels on like education. For those of you who have been reading or listening to my stuff for a while, you know that I am passionate about education. Not the union-controlled adult-centric public-school kind, but the free inquiry, student-focused charter school kind. Here, No Labels and I are on the same page. Same thing with energy policy. Anyone with the slightest familiarity with science and math know that there is absolutely no way that America and the world can afford to ditch fossil fuels. No number of windmills, and solar farms are gonna provide the power that we depend on for our living standards. I don’t deny that we are in the midst of climate change and that a chunk of it is likely being accelerated by humans. However, earth’s geological history shows that the climate has changed radically many times over 4 billion years as our ever-changing continental land masses collide and separate.
Humans have walked this earth for a statistically insignificant amount of time and yet we have the hubris to think we can control the earth’s climate. That’s rich. We are one asteroid impact or super volcano eruption away from mass extinction and all that human sacrifice living off a diminished wind and solar powered energy grid will be wasted. Our resources are better spent learning how to adapt to the environmental change as humans have done since we crawled out of the forest. Especially when China is building two new coal-fired power plants per week, and the rest of the world is running away from the zero-carbon utopia. In Europe, the epicenter of the zero-carbon movement, they have experienced enough economic decline and are reversing their position on fossil fuels. In fact, the only known solution for a scalable zero carbon footprint is nuclear energy. But climate fanatics don’t want that either. Cognitive dissonance of the highest order. Put me down as a supporter of the No Labels “All of the above” energy policy.
In wrapping up, I would like to say to all my conservative friends who want to win in 2024, go the polls for the GOP primary and vote for one of the several qualified candidates, not named Trump. To all my liberal friends who want to win, go the polls for the Democrat primary and vote for anyone not named Biden, though I wish you had more choices. And if it does end up being Trump vs. Biden in 2024, consider whomever No Labels offers as a bi-partisan unity ticket. To my liberal friends, you must admit that a moderate unity ticket is far preferable to Trump. Same goes for my conservative friends and Biden. But whatever is decided in 2024, let’s have faith in the American people to sift thru the propaganda, see the truth, and graciously accept the decision so we can put the 2016-2024 horror show behind us.