Robert Marquand, writing for the Christian Science Monitor, has an article entitled “How Kim Jong Il controls a nation”. An interesting description of how Kim Jong Il, from his own purely selfish perspective, has acted in a fairly rational manner and has been skillful in consolidating his power.

Apparently they hung him. He richly deserved to die, and die richly he did — Craig at R&F suggests it cost about $354 billion to bring him to justice (less the occasional “Mission Accomplished” banner and fake turkey.)

Anyway, I hope the questions asked in the wake of Hussein’s execution are not of the “is it good that he is dead” variety, but rather of the “was the cost worth the benefit” variety. I suggest that we paid (and will continue to pay for a generation or two since we’ve borrowed the cost of this adventure) far too much. Hussein and Iraq didn’t pose much of a threat to the U.S. He didn’t promote the sort of radical religion that motivates the likes of bin Laden — that sort of religious belief would have been a threat to his secular power which is all a tyrant like Hussein was interested in. So, we have paid hundreds of billions, lost several thousand soldiers, and destabilized Iraq (opening it up to the kind of religious agitators who do pose a threat) in exchange for removing and killing a dictator we didn’t like but ultimately couldn’t do much to harm us. Nice trade.

I highly recommend a column in the Evansville Courier Press by political science professor Stephen Graham entitled Government can’t avoid its responsibility to Hoosiers.

The Daniels administration views Indiana government agencies with the bottom-line mentality of the stockholders of a private corporation: How much is my dividend check this quarter?

n the words of the governor’s chief budget officer, Charles Schalliol, “If … a private-sector firm can do (government) service better and at less cost, we ought to accept that” (The Star, Dec.15).

The problem is that, in a democracy, government is not merely another vendor in a marketplace of goods and services. And citizens are not just taxpayer-consumers who vote based on the ratio of the dollars they pay in taxes to the dollars of benefit they receive in public services.

The commercial model of government trivializes and obscures the larger purpose of our democratic institutions, which is to inspire the loyalty and self-sacrifice of all citizens and to help guarantee for them the broadest possible equality of economic, social and political opportunity.

The foundation of our democracy is a social contract between the government and the people. Government agrees to protect and promote the rights and interests of all the people. The people, in turn, agree to support the government, not just by paying taxes, but also by participating in the civic culture.

[tags]Privatization[/tags]

The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has published an editorial by Mitch Roob entitled “Personal Responsibility, Health Care Meet.” He cites some grim statistics relative to Hoosiers and health care and also the problem of lack of transparency in health care pricing. Then he goes on to describe the Governor’s health care plan which features an account maintained by the insured with $1,100 in it. There is apparently some kind of sliding scale that determines how much of that is supplied by the state and how much by the enrollee. That account is used to pay the insured’s deductible. If there is money left at the end of the year, and the enrollee meets certain conditions, the person will get some of the money in the account. One of the conditions is that the enrollee must get the mandated preventative care.

Sounds decent, as far as it goes, but Roob can’t be expected to bring up the negative aspects of the plan, if any.

[tags]Mitch Roob, health care[/tags]

At the risk of angering the War on the War on Christmas warriors, but out of respect for the various traditions of folks who might be reading, I want to wish everyone Happy Holidays. Also, I wanted to mention that blogging will probably be very light over the next week or so.

And, remember, Mele Kalikimaka is the thing to say on a bright, Hawaiian Christmas day.

I’m posting this just because I like the original song (“Don’t Take Your Guns to Town), and we watch a lot of Sesame Street around my house. Johnny Cash, with Big Bird, sings “Don’t Take Your Ones to Town.”

Senate Minority Leader, Richard Young, a Democrat from Milltown has announced he is running for Governor in 2008. The Democratic caucus in the Indiana Senate isn’t exactly an auspicious platform, but I’ll be happy to let him make his case.

I’m sort of a glutton for this stuff, but I’m still tired from the 2006 elections. I’m more interested in upcoming legislation, and now that I was looking into Sen. Young’s background, I see that some introduced legislation has been posted. So thank you Senator Young!

I am pleased to announce that I am Time’s Man of the Year for 2006. Oh, sure, read one way — the slavishly literate may even say, “the correct way” — the magazine is referring to a collective “you.” But I prefer to think that Time Magazine was just embarassed at the extent to which its perspective was influenced by one scrappy little Indiana political blog with a fixation on Daylight Saving Time. So, when it said “you,” it created the smokescreen of the collective “you,” when presumably it really it meant “me;” Doug Masson.

Here is what the magazine said. But I will leave it to you, dear reader, to read between the lines:

We’re looking at an explosion of productivity and innovation, and it’s just getting started, as millions of minds that would otherwise have drowned in obscurity get backhauled into the global intellectual economy.

Who are these people? Seriously, who actually sits down after a long day at work and says, I’m not going to watch Lost tonight. I’m going to turn on my computer and make a movie starring my pet iguana? I’m going to mash up 50 Cent’s vocals with Queen’s instrumentals? I’m going to blog about my state of mind or the state of the nation or the steak-frites at the new bistro down the street? Who has that time and that energy and that passion?

The answer is, you do. And for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME’s Person of the Year for 2006 is you.

Because, you know, my fixation on online quizzes: