Outside the Beltway

A few weeks ago Gloria Borger on CNN said “We don’t want to re-litigate that.”  At the time I thought some of us do.

I moved inside the Beltway in 1968.  I came from Madison, Wisconsin, a liberal city in a conservative state.  I remember thinking of Alexandria, Virginia, as the location where a member of the American Nazi party lived.

I moved outside the beltway in 1997.  With the Monica Lewinski scandal and Bush vs Gore in 2000, my ABC Nightly News was almost the same as when I was inside the Beltway.

Outside the Beltway has two parts

:

1.       Inside the US

2.       Outside the US

Inside the US/Outside the Beltway may have litigated along with Inside the Beltway.  Some people, particularly conservatives, may well want to re-litigate lots of stuff.

Outside the US/Outside the Beltway did not litigate along with Inside the Beltway.  Inside the Beltway people tend to forget that.

Meaning Matters More

The Media elite claim "words matter".  My lawyer says that the other side's closing is "just words it is not evidence."  My thinking about that is that the Court's orders are "just words" also.

The Candy Crowley/CNN fact check debate issue is Crowley’s decision to do a bit of on-the-spot fact-checking of Mitt Romney’s contention that President Obama didn’t acknowledge an “act of terror” in Benghazi, Libya, until 14 days after the Sept. 11 attack.

I reviewed the Washington Post article a Google search presented.

I agree with the Twitter comment included at the end of the article:

To say that President Obama called the Libya Attack an act of terrorism on September 12th on the basis of the transcript is like saying that the Gettysburg Address is about baseball because it contains the word score.

My reading of the transcript is that Obama did not call the Benghazi incident an “act of terrorism” in his Rose Garden speech on September 12.  It would have been improper for him to have done this so soon.  Candy Crowley should have known that.  “Terror” does occur in the transcript.  Words matter.  Meaning matters more.  “Terrorism” does not occur.

Words matter but meaning matters more.

But we can never say that

“But we can never say that” was attributed to Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black in an issue of the Wilson Quarterly,  a journal I subscribed to about 1990.  The issue containing Black’s comment was about 2000 or 2001.

Black’s comment was supposed to be about the Law School hypothetical – would you torture someone to prevent 5 million people being killed by a nuclear device?  He said, “Of course we would but we can never say that.”

Recently, a lot of children were migrating to the US.  Hillary Rodham Clinton, being aware of the “we can never say that” guidance said that all the children have to be sent back.   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-child-migrants_us_55d4a5c5e4b055a6dab24c2f

We can never say that lawbreakers will be given amnesty.  Otherwise, we are flooded with illegal immigrants.

Donald J. Trump knows that "amnesty" is a bad thing for our country.  Hillary used to know that we have to say that even unaccompanied children must be sent back.

We may torture or we may grant amnesty but WE CAN NEVER SAY THAT.

Avoiding taxes IS a patriotic duty

Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes.

       -Judge Learned Hand Helvering v. Gregory, 69 F.2d 809, 810-11 (2d Cir. 1934).

Since the Reagan Revolution, conservatives have known that avoiding taxes IS a patriotic duty!

The true measure of a person is not how much their charity deduction is but how much he has avoided in taxes.

Guidance for Do Gooders

The nation exhibits a growing sense of futility as it repeatedly attacks deficiencies in our social system while the symptoms continue to worsen. Legislation is debated and passed with great promise and hope. But many programs prove to be ineffective. Results often seem unrelated to those expected when the programs were planned. At times programs cause exactly the reverse of desired results.

Jay W. Forrester, "Counterintuitive Behavior of Social Systems", 
Technology Review, Vol. 73, No. 3, Jan. 1971, pp. 52-68.

Good Intentions

A search for “good intentions” at www.google.com led to a review of The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice.  The book is by Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton.  The review was by John J. Miller.

Miller states, ”The authors of The New Color Line return with another libertarian polemic, this time taking aim at a justice system that has lost sight of its most important goals.  Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton warn of a ‘police state that is creeping up on us from many directions.’  There's the war on drugs, which makes it possible for federal agents to investigate people simply for carrying large amounts of cash.  There's the crusade against white-collar crime, which has turned the plea bargain into an enemy of the truth.  And there's outright misconduct, abetted by prosecutors more interested in compiling long lists of indictments than ensuring the fair treatment of all suspects.  The Tyranny of Good Intentions is replete with examples of how government treads on freedom through ill-willed prosecution and faceless bureaucracy.  The book's overpowering sense of disaffection sometimes leads to alarmist prose:  ‘We the People have vanished.  Our place has been taken by wise men and anointed elites.’  The authors are swift to suggest that America, barring ‘an intellectual rebirth,’ may yet go the way of ‘German Nazis and Soviet communists.’”

Miller continues, “Yet The Tyranny of Good Intentions is nothing if not well intended; it is full of passion and always on the attack, whether the writers are taking on racial quotas, wetland regulations, or any number of policies they find objectionable.  In a jacket blurb, libertarian icon Milton Friedman calls it ‘a devastating indictment of our current system of justice.’  Roberts and Stratton, although right-leaning in many of their political sympathies, will probably find plenty of fans on ACLU-left--and anybody who cringes at the thought of unbridled state power.  If the road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions, consider this book an atlas.”

Whether you are “right leaning” or “ACLU-left” you must occasionally have noticed that society becomes frustrated as repeated attacks on deficiencies in social systems lead only to worse symptoms.  Legislation is debated and passed with great hope, but many programs prove to be ineffective.  Results are often far short of expectations.  Indeed, government programs often cause exactly the reverse of desired results.  Similar observations were made by Jay W. Forrester in 1971.  A somewhat updated version of his classic “Counterintuitive Behavior of Social Systems” is available at http://web.mit.edu/sdg/www/D-4468-2.Counterintuitive.pdf.

Perhaps one reason good intentions often lead us astray is that the human mind is not adapted to interpreting how social systems behave.  Forrester states that social systems belong to the class called multi-loop nonlinear feedback systems.  Until very recent historical times, it was not necessary to understand complex feedback systems.  Forrester believes that new methods developed over the last 30 years will lead to a better understanding of social systems and thereby to more effective policies for guiding the future.

Forrester’s approach utilizes “system dynamics.”  His approach uses computer models extensively.  One of the founding members of the Operations Research Society of America (now INFORMS), Russell L. Ackoff described large complex problems as messes in his 1974 book Redesigning the Future.  The book is out of print but used copies are available at Amazon.com.  Another book by Ackoff, Ackoff’s Fables:  Irreverent Reflections on Business and Bureaucracy, is available at Amazon.com.  The publisher, John Wiley & Sons, describes it as “’Nothing is as obstructive to satisfaction of human needs and desires, let alone human progress, as bureaucracies.'  So goes Russell Ackoff's philosophy on human development. While relating wry observations made during a long career promoting human development, Ackoff demonstrates how most systems created to foster development actually prevent or retard it. You'll laugh at these war stories, but more importantly, you'll learn how to maximize your own personal development or that of your company by beating obstructive systems.”

The common theme is that “good intentions” are a poor guide to good policy in today’s world.

The first two paragraphs of  Forrester's 1971 paper appear very relevant for today:

This paper addresses several issues of broad concern in the United States: population trends; the quality of urban life; national policy for urban growth; and the unexpected, ineffective, or detrimental results often generated by government programs in these areas.

The nation exhibits a growing sense of futility as it repeatedly attacks deficiencies in our social system while the symptoms continue to worsen. Legislation is debated and passed with great promise and hope. But many programs prove to be ineffective. Results often seem unrelated to those expected when the programs were planned. At times programs cause exactly the reverse of desired results.

We should go slow and try to avoid knee jerk reactions which lead to counter-productive government actions.  

1962 PSAC Report

In 1962 the President's Science Advisory Committee published a report entitled Meeting Manpower Needs in Science and Technology.  The "PSAC Report" declared that the acceleration of graduate training in engineering, mathematics, and physical sciences, especially at the doctoral level, was a matter of urgent national priority requiring immediate action, without which severe shortages of engineers and scientists would occur. Engineering was identified as an especially crucial area. The federal government was to provide the funds needed, through increased research expenditures, provision of training grants, and fostering of new centers of scientific excellence. The country was, of course, reacting to shocks to its prestige caused by the success of Sputnik, and was also riding the crest of the greatest economic boom in its history, and these events simultaneously provided both the motive and the means for a major expansion in engineering graduate programs. Engineering education responded immediately, and the numbers of graduate students rose to unprecedented heights. (Just eight years later, the magnificent declarations of the PSAC Report were negated by a new conventional wisdom—that Ph.D.s were a drug on the market.)

Free speech under attack - time to speak out in its defense

According to The Economist, June 4^th-10^th, 2016, p. 9., free speech is under attack and it's time to speak out in its defense.

Free speech is under attack in three ways:

First, repression by governments has increased.  Several countries have reimposed cold-war controls or introduced new ones.  Russia under Vladimir Putin is an example of cold-war controls.  China under Xi Jinping is an example of introducing new control.

Second, a worrying number of non-state actors are enforcing censorship by assassination.  Reporters in Mexico who investigate crime and corruption are often murdered.  Jihadists slaughter those they think have insulted their faith.  French cartoonists are gunned down in their offices.  The jihadists hurt Muslims more than any others, not least by making it harder for them to have an honest discussion about how to organize their societies.

Third, the idea has spread that people and groups have a right not to be offended.  This may sound innocuous.  Politeness is a virtue, after all.  But if I have a right not to be offended, that means someone must police what you say about me, or about the things I hold dear, such as my ethnic group, religion, or even political beliefs.  Since offence is subjective, the power to police is both vast and arbitrary.

Nevertheless, many students in America and Europe believe that someone should exercise it.  Some retreat into the absolutism of identity politics, arguing that men have no right to speak about feminism nor whites to speak about slavery.  Others have blocked thoughtful, well-known speakers, such as Condoleezza Rice and Ayaan Hirsi Ali from being heard on campus.

Concern for the victims of discrimination is laudable.  And student protest is often, it itself, an act of free speech.  But university is a place is a place where students are supposed to learn how to think.  That mission is impossible if uncomfortable ideas are off limits.  And protest can easily stray into preciousness:  the University of California, for example, suggests that is a racist “micro-aggression” to say that “America is a land of opportunity”, because it could be taken to imply that those who do not succeed have only themselves to blame.

Intolerance among Western liberals also has wholly unintended consequences.  Even despots know that locking up mouthy but non-violent dissidents is disreputable.  Nearly all countries have laws that protect freedom of speech.  So authoritarians are always looking for respectable sounding excuses to trample on it.  National security is one,  Russia recently sentenced a blogger five years in prison for promoting “extremism”, after he criticized Russian policy in Ukraine.  China locks up campaigners for Tibetan independence for “inciting ethnic hatred; Saudi Arabia flogs blasphemers; Indians can be jailed for up to three years for promoting disharmony “on grounds of religion, race…caste…or any other ground whatsoever.”

The threat to free speech on Western campuses is very different from that faced by atheists in Afghanistan or democrats in China.  But when progressive thinkers agree that offensive words should be censored, it helps authoritarian regimes to justify their own much harsher restrictions and intolerant religious groups their violence.  When human-rights campaigners object to what is happening under repressive regimes, despots can point out that liberal democracies such as France and Spain also criminalize those who “glorify” or “defend” terrorism, and that many Western countries make it a crime to insult a religion or to incite racial hatred.

Open letter to Reince Priebus

1. You were making the mistake usually attributed to our generals – refighting the last war.  Barack Obama won, twice.  He has put us into a position where any decent Republican should win.
2. Democrats want the Federal Government to solve all the problems the media identifies.  By having a problem/issue focus, the Democrats are at an advantage.
3. We should limit the Federal Government to roles consistent with the 10^th Amendment of the Constitution.
4. We should limit our platform to areas we can afford.  Homeland Security has replaced the role of National Defense.  Security should be our number one priority.  Rand Paul has a minimalist approach if not platform.  Donald J. Trump has the right enemies.
5. Richard P. Feynman, physics Nobel Laureate, said that an honest politician won’t be elected.  Donald J. Trump has avoided taking positions on several issues/areas.
6. Slick Willy’s advisors, James Carville and Jim Morris, helped old slick always have people’s interest as his #1 or Top priority.  Ole Slick got elected, twice.

The "penultimate retail politician" only won 43.0% of the votes in 1992.

Trump needs Transition Plans

Ron Paul has said there would have to be a transition period (if not plan) for doing away with the Federal Reserve.

In the 1970s, the US Air Force tried to develop and implement information systems.  Tom DeMarco developed a Structured Systems Analysis methodology.  I liked his approach because that is what physicists do.

The USAF process became

1.       Describe the current system
2.       Develop/chose an architecture
3.       Select the target system
4.       Develop an Implementation Plan

There are a lot of ways of looking at a system.  John Zachman developed the Zachman Framework in the 1980s at IBM.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zachman_Framework  I liked it.  It is not a methodology.  I was shocked to learn that the different views did not have to be consistent.  Frequently, the user requirements are inconsistent.

Projects spent a lot of time on the first 2 steps.  About 2000, Tom DeMarco revised his methodology to shorten the first step.  The second step was the “sexy stuff”.

We need Transition Plans for all the real issues.

Science is right in the middle

Science is almost the opposite of rhetoric.

Science (like truth) is independently verifiable.

Originalism v Living Constitutional Interpretations

With the recent passing of Antonin Scalia, it is a good time to refresh our memories on interpretations of the law.

According to Wikipedia, The term "originalism" has been most commonly used since the middle 1980s and was apparently coined by Paul Brest in The Misconceived Quest for the Original Understanding.  It is often asserted that originalism is synonymous with strict constructionism.

Not surprisingly, that is controversial.

Justice Scalia differentiated the two by pointing out that, unlike an originalist, a strict constructionist would not acknowledge that he uses a cane means he walks with a cane (because, strictly speaking, this is not what he uses a cane means).  Scalia averred that he was "not a strict constructionist, and no-one ought to be"; he goes further, calling strict constructionism "a degraded form of textualism that brings the whole philosophy into disrepute".

Strict construction requires a judge to apply the text only as it is written. Once the court has a clear meaning of the text, no further investigation is required. Judges—in this view—should avoid drawing inferences from a statute or constitution and focus only on the text itself. Justice Hugo Black (1886-1973) argued that the First Amendment's injunction, that Congress shall make no law (against certain civil rights), should be construed strictly: no law, thought Black, admits no exceptions. However, "strict construction" is not a synonym for textualism or originalism.  Antonin Scalia, a major proponent of originalism, said that "no one ought to be" a strict constructionist.

The term often contrasts with the phrase "judicial activism" (a characteristic of The Warren Court), used to describe judges who seek to enact legislation through court rulings.

The Wikipedia article describe three Forms of Originalism

1.      Original intent

a.       Problems with intentionalism

2.      Original meaning

a.       Semantic originalism

3.      Framework originalism

See the Wikipedia article for descriptions of the two "subforms".  There may well be more when you look.  Without going into more detail about originalism, let's switch to a comparison of the interpretations in the title.

Strict (Jefferson) versus Broad (Hamilton) Interpretation

• Strict constructionists: Congress should be allowed to exercise very few implied powers so that government will remain small
• Broad constructionists: Congress should be allowed to exercise many implied powers so that government can take a greater role in shaping events
• Americans have disagreed about this since the beginning; Jefferson (strict constructionist) vs. Hamilton (broad constructionist) was first major political dispute in US history

Almost immediately following the creation of the Constitution, the Founding Fathers split into two opposing camps over the question of how loosely or strictly to interpret the Necessary and Proper Clause.

One faction, the strict constructionists, was led by Thomas Jefferson. Arguing that "that government is best which governs least," the strict constructionists desired a small federal government, one that would leave most power to the states and to the people. Thus they argued that Congress should only be allowed to exercise those expressed powers specifically listed in the Constitution, recognizing few or any other implied powers as legitimate. Jefferson wanted to ensure that government would charge few or no taxes, mostly leaving the people at liberty to pursue their own objectives free from government interference. Only a very strict reading of the Necessary and Proper Clause, he thought, would prevent the government from giving itself more and more unnecessary power over citizens' lives.

The other faction, the broad constructionists led by Alexander Hamilton, argued for a much more powerful federal government and a much broader reading of the Necessary and Proper Clause. Hamilton, unlike Jefferson, wanted to use the federal government to pursue an aggressive strategy of industrialization and economic development. Hamilton's vision called for the government to organize banks, build roads, and invest in other useful infrastructure, all in the interest of transforming the young United States from a country of farmers into a thriving economic powerhouse. But the Constitution did not expressly grant the government the power to do most of those things; only a liberal interpretation of the Necessary and Proper Clause would allow Hamilton's vision to be considered constitutional. Hamilton and the broad constructionists argued that the national interest could be best served by creating a powerful government able to exercise a wide variety of implied powers, all justified by a loose reading of "necessary and proper."

The argument that began with Jefferson and Hamilton split George Washington's government, leading to the formation of the very first American political parties—Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans opposing Hamilton's Federalists. And the argument has continued, in one form or another, all the way to the present. Should the government be large and strong, able to exercise powerful influence over many areas of American life? Or should it stay small and restrained, leaving the people free to manage their own affairs? Does the Constitution require sharply limited government, or does it allow government to gain broad new powers as needed to deal with new challenges as the world changes?

It all depends on what your definition of "necessary and proper" is.

The strict constructionists have won plenty of victories over the years. Jefferson won the election of 1800 by promising to limit the size and scope of government. The Supreme Court enforced a very narrow reading of the commerce clause from the 1870s through 1937, blocking many federal attempts to regulate economic activity. However, the general trend in American history has been toward the broad constructionist view. In times of war, economic upheaval, and other crises, most people have tended to favor granting the government wide powers of action; over the decades, those gradual expansions of power have led to a government much larger—and an interpretation of the Necessary and Proper Clause much broader—than anything Jefferson or Hamilton could have ever imagined.

Unfortunately, today one can find statements such as:

"Almost all of us now accept that the federal government has a huge array of implied powers—powers to impose environmental rules, labor regulations, educational policies, and a hundred other kinds of interventions into American life, even though those powers are explicitly mentioned nowhere in the Constitution. Perhaps our definition of 'necessary and proper' will change again in the future, but for now, there seems to be a broad consensus in favor of broad constructionism among most Americans."

http://www.shmoop.com/legislative-branch/strict-constructionism-broad-constructionism.html

Cut Off his Drones

The Department of Defense is a relic of the Cold War.  Then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld led a Transformation of our Armed Forces. 

His successor, Robert Gates, could find no assets that would be useful in the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill crisis.

The mission could not be accomplished by drones and there was a total lack of general purpose (Army) command and control expertise.

President Barack Obama has used drones excessively in the not existing war against terrorism.

Who is qualified to be the Commander in Chief?

Wesley Kanne Clark, Sr graduated at the head of his class in West Point in 1966.  He retired as a 4 star general (O-10) from the Army May 2, 2000.  By most reasonable criteria, he was qualified to be CINC.

Colin Luther Powell (born April 5, 1937) is an American statesman and a retired four-star general (O-10) in the United States Army. He was the 65th United States Secretary of State, serving from 2001 to 2005, the first African American to serve in that position.  During his military career, Powell also served as National Security Advisor (1987–1989), as Commander of the United States Army Forces Command (1989) and as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989–1993), holding the latter position during the Persian Gulf War.  By most criteria, Colin Powell would be qualified to be a CINC.

John Sidney McCain III (born August 29, 1936) is the senior senator from Arizona.  He was the Republican presidential nominee in 2008.  McCain followed his father and grandfather, both four-star admirals, into the United States Navy, graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1958.   He became a naval aviator, flying ground-attack aircraft from aircraft carriers. In October 1967, while on a bombing mission over Hanoi, he was shot down, seriously injured, and captured by the North Vietnamese.  He was a prisoner of war until 1973. McCain experienced episodes of  torture, and refused an out-of-sequence early repatriation offer. His war wounds left him with lifelong physical limitations.

He retired from the Navy as a captain (O-6) in 1981 and moved to Arizona, where he entered politics. Elected to the House in 1982, he served two terms, and was then elected to the Senate in 1986, winning re-election easily four times, most recently in 2010. While generally adhering to conservative principles, McCain at times has had a media reputation as a "maverick" for his willingness to disagree with his party on certain issues.

Wesley Clarke (and later Donald Trump) did not see how experience as a POW was of great benefit for being the CINC.

Marco Antonio Rubio (born May 28, 1971) is an American attorney and politician and junior United States Senator from Florida.  Rubio previously served as Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives.  He is a candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the United States, in the 2016 presidential election.

Rubio is a Cuban American from Miami. He is a graduate of the University of Florida and the University of Miami School of Law. In the late 1990s, he served as a City Commissioner for West Miami and was elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 2000, representing the 111th House district.

Later in 2000, Rubio was promoted to be one of two majority whips, and in 2002 was appointed House Majority Leader by Speaker Johnnie Byrd. He was elected Speaker of the Florida House, and served as Speaker for two years beginning in November 2006. Upon leaving the Florida legislature in 2008 due to term limits, Rubio started a new law firm, and also began teaching at Florida International University, where he continues as an adjunct professor.

Rubio ran for United States Senate in 2010, and won that election. In the U.S. Senate, he chairs the Commerce Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard, as well as the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Transnational Crime, Civilian Security, Democracy, Human Rights and Global Women's Issues. He is one of three Latino Americans serving in the Senate. On April 13, 2015, Rubio announced that he would forgo seeking reelection to the Senate to run for President.

Barack Hussein Obama II ( born August 4, 1961) is an American politician serving as the 44th President of the United States, the first African American to hold the office. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney and taught constitutional law at University of Chicago Law School between 1992 and 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004, and ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary for the United States House of Representatives in 2000 against incumbent Bobby Rush.

In 2004, Obama received national attention during his campaign to represent Illinois in the United States Senate with his victory in the March Democratic Party primary, his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July, and his election to the Senate in November. He began his presidential campaign in 2007 and, after a close primary campaign against Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2008, he won sufficient delegates in the Democratic Party primaries to receive the presidential nomination. He then defeated Republican nominee John McCain in the general election, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Nine months after his inauguration, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Barack Obama had no military experience before taking office and has been a terrible CINC.  His current Secretary of Defense, Aston B. Carter is doing a good job.  Illustrating that appointees are important.

Carter served as US Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy during President Clinton's first term, from 1993 to 1996, responsible for policy regarding the former Soviet states, strategic affairs, and nuclear weapons policy. He was Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics from April 2009 to October 2011, with responsibility for procurement of all technology, systems, services, and supplies, bases and infrastructure, energy, and environment, and more than $50 billion annually in R&D. He was then Deputy Secretary of Defense from October 2011 to December 2013, serving as the chief operating officer of the DOD overseeing more than $600 billion per year and 2.4 million civilian and military personnel, and managing global 24/7 operations. He was confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate for both the number-two and number-three Pentagon positions.

Carter's academic credentials are respectable.  Carter received a B.A. in his double-major of Physics and Medieval History from Yale University, summa cum laude, in 1976. He then became a Rhodes Scholar and studied at the University of Oxford, from which he received his doctorate in Theoretical Physics in 1979. He worked on quantum chromodynamics, the quantum field theory that was then postulated to explain the behavior of nuclear reactions and the structure of subatomic particles. He was a postdoctoral fellow research associate in Theoretical Physics at Rockefeller University from 1979 to 1980, and a research fellow at the MIT Center for International Studies from 1982 to 1984.

Carter taught at Harvard University, beginning in 1986. He ultimately rose to become chair of the International & Global Affairs faculty, and Ford Foundation Professor of Science & International Affairs, at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Carter is author or co-author of 11 books and more than 100 articles on physics, technology, national security, and management.

The United States Senate should ensure that either the President or the Secretary of Defense (National Command Authorities) is qualified to be CINC.  Barack Obama II nor Chuck Hagel were.

A Trump Cabinet

1.  Ashton Carter for Secretary of Defense.  It is good to have representation from the other Party in the Cabinet.  Obama retained Bob Gates.  Carter is new and has the smarts to be good.  He understands the Iran Nuclear Deal.  General David Petraeus is said to being considered for this post.  I have great respect for the job the General did with the Surge but I think Carter would be better for SECDEF.  Gen Petraeus should make a great National Security Advisor.  He is smart and should be better than LTG Flynn.

2.  Ben Carson for Surgeon General

3.  Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush for Secretary of State

4.  Senator Jeff Sessions for Attorney General

5.  Carly Fiorina for Secretary of Treasury.  Need a heavyweight here.  

6.  John Kasich for Secretary of Interior

7.  Ted Cruz for Supreme Court nominee.  He could be Roosevelt's Hugo Black.

8.  Mike Huckabee

9.  Bobby Jindal

10.  Rand Paul

11.  Marco Rubio

12.  Rick Santorum

13.  Sarah Palin

14.  George Pataki