Welcome to the Third Degree: Tough, Brief, Weekly Interrogations on matters public and private that force thinking and response. This Sunday we target: Do List

  • Given so many, vexing, national problems, are oft-used political tactics, obfuscation, willful inattention, cover up or, to buy time, establish one or more commissions and hope the news cycle will hype it or kill it ?
  • With the November election, has the country issued a directive, a commission, for another approach to fixing problems?
  • Is it recognition that major organizational surgery is needed to cure the disease of too much and too invasive federal government?
  • Is it scalpel or chain saw time?
  • If up to you, what’s on the do list ?
  • Write it out; how long a list before you tire of the effort?
  • Does the Preamble, favored language of The Third Degree, provide comprehensive gradation of macro level things to do?
  • Do economy and opportunity override all other priorities? Really?
  • Is availability of abundant, cheap and resilient energy essential to most items on your to do list?
  • Is there room on the list for the global warming/climate change kook agenda wanting over a trillion dollars a year to make noise but no difference other than vulnerability?
  • In peace and war, is speed of result key?
  • Does the Sir Francis Drake or Spanish Armada approach appeal?
  • Swift, darting and risky versus ponderous plotting, plodding and still risky (despite words like deliberate, thoughtful, non-escalatory, etc.)?
  • Will the lobbyists have a field day recalling that term originated with President Grant viewing the supplicant horde (nice word) in the lobby of the venerable, Washington, Willard Hotel?
  • Can we expect the wringing of hands, wild charges and words anew, the gnashing of teeth and opinion faking as news whipping the winds?
  • Whose do list is it anyway?
  • And to address just one enormity, does the best bi-partisan commission report in generations languish after July release to the White House and Congress?
  • Do the results of that sterling Commission on National Defense Strategy bring laser focus to choices avoided but now coming due?
  • Is the nine-page executive summary riveting and the total 92 page report a pathway of national need?
  • How do we pay for it?
  • How do we not pay for it; shouldn’t it be on everyone’s do list while commissioning exploitation of asymmetry and using a high cost/low cost mix of capability, renewed will and speed?

Socrates reminds: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” The answers and actions are yours.