When the unions and their progressive supporters hit the streets in Madison, Wisconsin the news cameras didn’t have to look high and low to find the Hitler posters, they could probably spot them from a hundred yards off, but honestly, who didn’t think there would be Hitler posters at a left wing rally? But in a effort to modernize, somebody found a newspaper and saw there was some unrest in the Middle East and voila, we had comparisons to Hosni Mubarak and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. So Governor Scott Walker, we are to believe, is acting like a dictator not a democratically elected governor working through a democratically elected legislature? Hmmm, I wonder how the public sector unions got the “rights” they ferociously cling to?

Wagner and Kennedy

In 1958, New York City mayor Robert F. Wagner was running for reelection. He had a little problem, though, and that was the fact that all five Democratic county leaders were opposed to him. Not only did that make getting reelected an uphill fight, he realized that he might not even be the nominee of the Democrat party. He needed a bold stroke of political genius. He found his stroke with the point of a pen. He penned an executive order giving public sector employees the ability to unionize. Were the public sector employees in some sort of danger that they needed additional protections? No. They were already protected under civil service provisions. This was purely a political power play designed for the sole purpose of getting Mayor Wagner reelected against the wishes of the leaders of his own party. Sounds a little bit dictatorial, no? One man creates the first public sector unions for the purpose of getting himself reelected. Let the public be damned with the long term consequences. He would be long retired before that piper had to be paid.

President John F. Kennedy won the presidency by the slimmest of margins. Some have reasonably argued that voting shenanigans in Chicago threw the election his way. President Kennedy saw how well things were going for the Democrats in New York after Wagner’s executive order. He also didn’t want to face another tough election. What could he do to put a thumb on the scale? In 1962, President Kennedy picked up his pen and wrote Executive Order 10988, that gave federal workers the right to organize. Again, no public outcry that public sector unions were needed, no act of Congress; one man, exercising executive power, dramatically changed the direction of public worker compensation that we are now buried under. Sounds somewhat dictatorial, no?

In Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker is trying to use the democratic legislative process to pass a law, changing the scope of the collective bargaining abilities, not eliminating them, and somehow that earns him the comparisons to Middle East dictators. What does that tell you about the intellectual honesty of the left? Likes the states, it’s bankrupt.

The Unspoken Truth

The unions in Wisconsin have said they agree to the health care contributions that the governor has demanded, they have agreed to the retirement contributions that the governor has demanded, so it is not about the money it is about breaking the unions. I wish that Governor Walker would come clean and explain exactly what the goals are.

 Without the changes in collective bargaining, sure the unions will give in now, but they will still have all their political power. Meaning that in the next election, they can once again come out in force to elect their future bosses and then negotiate to restore everything they gave up. It is not only about the money today, it is about the money in the future as well. As long as unions can take money from their members, use it to elect politicians who will give away the store to them as payback, any concessions today are only a short term fix. Governor Walker is trying to effect a permanent fix. He wants to bend the cost curve downward so that Wisconsin can attract businesses to the state and jobs. With jobs and a growing economy the states fiscal health will be restored. With the changes in collective bargaining, compensation in the public sector will not continue to outgrow private sector compensation that pays the salaries and benefits of the public sector. Is that fair? Ask a taxpayer and then ask a union member.

Right to Work

If the place of unions is so glorious in the tradition and success of the American economy, why are unions so desperately afraid of Right to Work laws? Why do unions need the coercive power of the state to force people to join unions in some states? Sounds more like Iran than America, no?

When I was in college I took a summer job with UPS. UPS was a union shop, which means they can hire union or non-union workers but after a set period of time the non-union workers have to join the union or lose their jobs. In the period that I was there, I and the guy I was teamed with developed a reputation as hard workers. Whenever a tractor trailer came in with just a few minutes left before the transfer point closed for the night, we were typically asked to be the ones to unload it because we could to it faster than anyone else. My work performance got me a raise in the short time I was there. But after about two months the foreman came to me and said it was time to join the union. Again, this was a summer job that I would be leaving to go back to college regardless. But there was no give. Rather than join, I quit, and finished out my summer at another job that appreciated a hard worker.

Where Right to Work laws are in play, an individual cannot be forced to join a union. If unions are the mother’s milk that the left claims they are why does the left oppose Right to Work laws? Why should an individual be forced to join a union as a condition of their employment?  If unions are so wonderful, why is union membership in the private sector plummeting? What happened to our steel industry? Our ship building industry? Our auto industry? Tell me again where the dictators are and where the democracy lies.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours.  Please comment below.

There was the Empire State Building: the world’s tallest building at 102 stories taking just over 13 months to build, opening on May 1, 1931.

There was the Hoover Dam: 726 feet high, holding 6.6 million tons of concrete, holding back the mighty Colorado River, taking less than two years to build. It was started in 1931, completed in 1933 and turned over to the Federal Government in 1936, two years ahead of schedule.

There was the Golden Gate Bridge, a four year project completed in 1937, the longest span suspension bridge in the world at the time.

They all happened during the Great Depression the last time our economy was as bad or worse than today.  If one stops to view these projects through the prism of social impact, think about where American values were then, versus what we are being told about what is valuable, or should be valuable or what we are supposed to believe is valuable to us now.  These projects and others like them positively changed the landscape of America for generations to come, opening vast horizons of untapped American human and natural resources to growth and opportunity.  And some were even publicly funded.

The president Tuesday night pined for the good old days of jobs in factories, (sort of) forgetting the paralyzing grip that big labor unions had on the ability of American companies to adapt to a rapidly changing world economy.   The internet and automation he said were to blame for our manufacturing decline.  Really? I remember all the steel mills in Pittsburgh closing when I lived there in the 1970’s before computers were widely used in American industry, and before Al Gore even  invented the Internet.  A bridge built by PennDOT right over top of an American steel mill was done using Chinese steel.  Before the personal computer had even been invented, most of the steel mills in Pittsburgh were shuttered and rusting. The same virus spread across other industrial regions of the country creating what is widely now known as “The Rust Belt”. The president’s adaptation of history is misleading at best.

Typical of big government liberals, President Obama became almost misty eyed at the prospect of tapping a huge as yet undefined pool of private money drained from its productive citizens into the government sewers and spent on favored social development projects in the name of either public works or the beautiful catch all, “infrastructure”, urging us to tap into our innovative spirit.  He lauds our past innovative accomplishments, most of which were achieved many years ago, cars, airplanes, computers and the internet. Since 1963, twice as many U.S. Patents were issued to foreign applicants as American applicants.  He calls us the nation of Edison and the Wright Brothers. Mr. President, you’re a century late.  While Italy may be the nation of Marco Polo, Ralph Lauren has created more jobs using his name than you have by invoking the name of Thomas Edison.  It’s not that computers and airplanes are not contributing to economic activity. The problem is, Microsoft and IBM probably couldn’t get out of the box in today’s stifling tax and regulatory environment. Norman Augustine, former chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin, very recently said we have lost our competitive edge and the situation is even more “perilous” than it was five years ago. His words, not mine.  Can anyone address this problem honestly while ignoring oppressive government and government protected organized labor? What has NOT been invented because of this self inflicted strangulation?

It is time to stop channeling dead people who invented things in the last century when there was no income tax, no government red tape or environmental garrote around the neck of new businesses, and just get the hell out of the way and unleash the true American spirit of innovation, the one that existed when the government was not there to help us.  The American people are tired of government help that doesn’t, and government investment that isn’t.  The new vocabulary of investment and infrastructure should not include wind energy, moonshine gasoline (biofuel) and other ephemeral social engineering projects. Start drilling for oil today. We are not getting off oil any time soon. Break the backs of the Middle East hostility against us because they no longer respect us. Hit them where it hurts and let’s get competitive in the world of real ideas.  If we want a Sputnik moment, let’s endeavor to be 100% rid of foreign oil by the end of this decade, and let’s do it competitively.  That means domestic oil production. Imagine the independence we would feel when gas is under a $1.00 a gallon and none of our money goes overseas. 

Stop pretending that teachers unions are not harming education, and labor unions are not draining our national will to excel.  Get back to the basics: protect our borders and our citizens at home and abroad, steward our currency and money supply, and shepherd our economy by unleashing the potential American dream for all its citizens, instead of favored unions and corporations who achieve such status by toeing your politically correct line.  We don’t need a Sputnik moment, we need a Reagan moment. Then leave us alone. We’ll take it from there thank you very much.

 Please add your comments below

After watching some of the Sunday talk shows and hearing the tough talk from House Democrats and learning more about the tax bill getting loaded up with subsidies it’s time for Republicans to put their hands up and slowly back away from this putrid mess.

Let the Democrats fall on their swords and allow this huge tax hike to go into effect on all Americans living or dead.  Yes, I said dead.  Today, the estate tax is zero.  In the tax compromise it was agreed to increase the tax to 35% on estates over $5 million.  Chris Van Hollen, Democrat from Maryland says that is not good enough.  With righteous indignation he says the tax should be 45% on estates over $3.5 million.  (The estate tax is currently scheduled to return to its old level of 55% on estates over $1 million.)

There are a number of subsidies for ethanol that are expiring but have found their way back into the tax compromise courtesy of Charles Grassly (R-Iowa, I’m only a fiscal conservative with your constituents) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa, I’m for the little guy unless a huge greedy corporate agri-business wants me to jump for them, then I ask them how high).  Even Al Gore says ethanol subsidies are stupid and he only supported them to get elected president.

 ”One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for President.”

It’s time for the new Republicans to do a gut check.  While Obama asks the outgoing Blue Dogs who got shellacked for voting along with Nancy Pelosi, to take one more for the team, perhaps the Republicans should wait for the vote to close up shop and go home for the holidays, spend time over those holidays reflecting on why they were elected and come back to Congress in January and pass a real tax package that takes any expiration date off the existing rates, and makes it retroactive to January 1.

In the Senate the Democrats will still be in control and may be ready to rumble.  If they are, the Republicans should put up a giant scoreboard somewhere highlighting the 23 Democrat members of Congress up for reelection in 2012 and .  In case you haven’t been paying attention they are:

• Daniel Akaka, Hawaii
• Jeff Bingaman, New Mexico
• Sherrod Brown, Ohio
• Joe Manchin, West Virginia
• Maria Cantwell, Washington
• Benjamin Cardin, Maryland
• Thomas Carper, Delaware
• Robert Casey, Jr., Pennsylvania
• Kent Conrad, North Dakota
• Diane Feinstein, California
• Kirsten Gillibrand, New York
• Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota
• Herb Kohl, Wisconsin
• Claire McCaskill, Missouri
• Robert Menendez, New Jersey
• Ben Nelson, Nebraska
• Bill Nelson, Florida
• Debbie Stabenow, Michigan
• Jon Tester, Montana
• Jim Webb, Virginia
• Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island
• Joe Lieberman, Connecticut
• Bernie Sanders, Vermont

The Republicans should be able to dip into this well of votes to pull over some of them on any issue, if President Obama continues his far left safari in search of socialist utopia.  If the Democrats want to go down swinging, let them.  But there comes a point where you have to realize the cards you are holding are better than the other guys bluffing and just call him on it.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours.  Please comment below.

I still find myself in awe of our Founding Fathers who created our form of government.  The competing ideas that they sifted through to come up with our Constitution and the safeguards in it is wondrous.  The designs upon it by the progressives is by equal measure disturbing.

The progressives envision a national government that they can dominate and that, in turn, will dominate us.  There is no activity over which they do not feel they can or should control.  Private property is a panacea, to keep the masses from open revolt, but they really believe that all wealth that is generated belongs to the government except for the portion they permit us to keep.  If you think that statement is unimaginable consider this.  How often do you hear, concerning the current debate over the Bush tax cuts, that we cannot afford them for the rich?  Think about it.  They say our government cannot afford to allow certain citizens of this country to continue to pay the same level of taxes in 2011 that they pay today.  That the government somehow has to pay for a tax cut, that actually isn’t even a cut but rather a continuation of what has existed for the last ten years.  How is getting less than you want a cost? If you awake on Christmas morning and do not find the present you have been hoping for under the tree, do you say, “Man, that’s gonna cost me?” Of course you do not.

A Massive Federal Government

Think about the many federal departments and agencies that exist today for which you will find no authorization in the Constitution: Education; Agriculture; Housing and Urban Development; Energy; Health and Human Services; Transportation.  Did they not have education in the eighteenth century? Are we more agrarian today than we were in 1789?  If not, why do we need a Department of Agriculture today, but the Founders didn’t see a need for it then?

The progressives are fighting for the continual concentration of functions at the federal level where the voices of the people are faint, but the voices of the special interests are robust and clear.  The branch of the federal government that is closest to the people is the House of Representatives.  But ponder how small your voice is in that chamber.  You are one of some 700,000 in your congressional district; your congressman or woman is one of 435 in the House of Representatives.  How do you get your voice heard at the federal level?  And yet Congress will tell you what kind of light bulb to buy or what kind of toilet you must flush.  Is this what our founding fathers envisioned?

The Bloody Revolution

To establish our country they fought a brutal revolution; a revolution where 50% of the mortal wounds were caused by bayonets.  Now that’s up close and personal.  It is not something they entered into lightly and a reading of the Declaration of Independence will tell you that they pledged their lives when they signed that document and their death warrants as well.  If captured by the British they surely would have been tried and executed for treason.

In designing our form of government they were very suspicious of strong central power and authority, having just thrown off one.  They did not trust government.  As Jefferson said, “When governments fear the people, there is liberty.  When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”  Here is a simple test, do you fear the IRS or does the IRS fear you?

The Founders designed the Constitution to have strictly enumerated powers given to the federal government with all other powers retained by the states or the people.  They did not design a democracy, but a republic.  In that republic they built numerous checks and balances to prevent the accumulation of power. It has been the goal of the progressives to remove those checks and balances and put in place the tyranny that fears no people.

The Structure of the Federal Government

Among the balances they put in place was that the people would directly elect the members of the House of Representatives.  That is the body of government closest to the people.  If you recall the wording of the Tenth Amendment it speaks of the federal government, the states and the people.  The Senate was to be appointed by the state legislatures to represent their interests.  The president was to be elected, not by the people, but by the Electoral College.  Lastly, judges were to be appointed for life by the president with the advice and consent of the senate.  Why did they do this?  One reason is that they believed that if a proposed law had the backing of the majority of the people (House of Representatives) and a majority of the states (Senate) then it was probably a good thing, otherwise slow it down.  The fewer the number of laws, the greater our liberty.

The Progressives Attack

The progressives began their designs on the Constitution with the introduction of the income tax through the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913.  By allowing the government to tax incomes the government could now afford to greatly expand. However, to be able to expand it had to have the consent of the states, which was not likely to be granted.  So two months after the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment, the Seventeenth Amendment was ratified.  The Seventeenth Amendment called for the direct election of Senators, rather than having them appointed by the state legislatures.  The individual citizens picked up two more votes in the federal government, in most cases an even weaker voice than their Representative, and the states were shut out.

Do you think things such as unfunded mandates could pass in Congress if the states still chose the members of the Senate?  Social Security? Medicare? The Department of Education? The Department of Housing and Urban Development? And on and on?  Think of some of the more radical members of the Senate.  Do you think Al Franken would have been appointed by the Minnesota state legislature?  For many years in New York, the State Assembly was under the control of the Democrats but the State Senate was under the control of the Republicans.  The governorship passed back and forth between representatives of the two parties.   However, New York’s two Senators are Democrats and win reelection easily because of the concentration of Democrats mainly in New York City.  Could Hillary Clinton have moved into New York and immediately become its newest Senator with a Republican governor and Republican controlled State Senate? She was elected Senator from New York before she even moved out of the White House.  So instead of representing their state legislatures, Senate candidates focused on the population centers of their states to appeal directly to the people and to get elected and reelected.  The states were reduced from sovereign entities to subsidiaries of the federal government.

The Supreme Court

When Franklin Roosevelt was president he tried to pass his massive socialist programs but found that the Supreme Court was striking down many of his programs as being unconstitutional.  Roosevelt wanted to pack the court by increasing its membership from nine justices to fifteen.  He argued that the justices were old and over worked.  So he wanted to appoint a new justice for every existing justice that was seventy years or older.  His plan failed.  But when he broke with George Washington’s precedent and that of every president who followed him of serving no more than two terms, he was eventually able to appoint every justice to the Supreme Court.  So he got his way, it just took longer.

The Supreme Court can be considered the collateral damage of the Seventeenth Amendment.  The Justices of the Supreme Court are appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate.  However once the Senators became directly elected by the people things changed.  Would a distinguished jurist like Robert Bork be treated as shamefully as he was by the lie filled speech of Ted Kennedy if Kennedy and Joe Biden weren’t doing the work of the pro-abortion lobby?  Would Clarence Thomas be subjected to the electronic lynching he faced if not for some Senators pandering to their special interest groups?  What we now have are potential Supreme Court justices who have learned that if you don’t want to get “Borked” keep your mouth shut during your confirmation hearings.  So we don’t know who we are going to get until a lifetime appointee is on the bench and then it is too late.

The 2000 Presidential Election

Who can forget the 2000 presidential election?  The Democrats still say Al Gore won, not because of Florida (he lost the election there, he lost the re-count, he lost the re-re-count) but because he won the popular vote.  The debates raged, why do we have an Electoral College?  The president should be elected by popular vote only. 

The argument follows the one made previously about the direct election of senators.  The Electoral College forces presidential candidates to campaign everywhere because everywhere counts.  There are at least three electoral votes to be had in every state.  The Founders were very concerned about balance.  They did not want the president just to be elected by the people of New York, Boston and Philadelphia, the large cities of that time.  Today, if the Electoral College was abolished the election would focus on the media  and population centers of New York, LA, San Francisco, Chicago and the large cities because that’s where it is easiest to get the message out and that is where the majority of the people are.  The progressives would put up pretty much the same candidates as they do today, perhaps more to the left.  This is their home turf and power base.  Instead of traveling around the country they could concentrate their time and money in a few large cities.  The Republicans would probably field candidates of a far more moderate stripe to not get hooted off the stage in New York.  Let me illustrate.

Electoral College vote Bush-Gore 2000

The Democrats claim Gore won in 2000 because he won the popular vote.  He lost in the Electoral College by five votes.  If you look at the breakdown of the states Gore won versus Bush, Gore took the Northeast, the Great Lakes area and the West Coast.  With the exception of New Mexico, Bush took everything else.

Let’s dial it down a level and look at who won at the county level.

Bush-Gore 2000 Winners by County

If you look at it at the county level, you could drive from the east coast to the west coast without entering a single county that Gore won.  You could do the same driving from Canada to Mexico.  But if popular vote was the metric, the man who won 80%-90% of the land mass of the United States would have lost.  Why should you not have a say, if you don’t live in a major population center?  It is not like Bush won in an Electoral College landslide and it is not like Gore absolutely trounced Bush in the popular vote.  The purpose of the Electoral College is to act as another brake on the tyranny of the majority.  

Where Do We Go From Here  

We are presently at a crossroads.  We have an electorate that is more knowledgeable, more aware, and more engaged than at any time in my memory.  We can continue to go down the socialist path toward a massive central government that takes all of our liberties for a measure of sustenance, or we can turn the tide and demand our liberties back.  

Let us begin by repealing the Seventeenth Amendment.

Did you hear the news on broadcast television what Al Gore said about Ethanol?  Neither did I.  You have to dig a little further to find news that goes against the progressive grain.

“It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol,” Al Gore told a gathering of clean energy financiers in Greece this week. The benefits of ethanol are “trivial,” he added, but “It’s hard once such a program is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going.”

Politics Made Me Do It

Lest anyone believe Mr. Gore has deep knowledge or convictions regarding the truth of the green positions he holds, rather than an opportunity to enrich himself with billions, consider this.

 ”One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for President,” Mr. Gore said.

One opportunity trumps another.  If green was Mr. Gore’s path to the presidency then follow it.  When that didn’t pan out, well then push it to enrich himself.  Am I being overly cynical?  If Mr. Gore was a true believer; someone who believed what he says down to the marrow of his bones, he would not build and energy guzzling mansion for himself and Tipper, or himself and himself, as he and Tipper have parted. 

He used to justify it by saying it was okay because he bought carbon credits to offset his Brobdingnagian consumption.  But from whom does Mr. Gore buy his carbon credits?  He buys them from a company called Generation Investment Management, a London based company.  And who is chairman of Generation Investment Management?  None other than Al Gore. So, Al Gore is a good citizen of the earth because he takes money out of his left pocket and moves it to his right pocket, all the while lambasting the rest of us for our energy irresponsibility.

Ethanol began sucking at the government teat under Jimmy Carter.  What a surprise that a Democrat would think of this.  So we subsidize the production of ethanol because ethanol cannot stand on its own from an economic perspective.  The result is an increase in the production of ethanol due the subsidy.  This, in turn, increases the demand for corn as a feedstock for the ethanol production, which drives up the price of food. Corn is used not only as a food for human consumption, it is used as feed for cattle, chickens, and as a source of corn syrup as a sweetener.  Why not use more sugar, you might ask?  Because we subsidize sugar and slap tariffs on foreign production so that we pay double the world price for sugar, but that’s for another story.

So while Al Gore is moving his money between his pockets to prove what a great guy he is, we are getting hit in our left pocket by funding the subsidies and our right pocket for higher food prices.  Isn’t that great?  But there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon.

A fifty-four cent per gallon corn energy subsidy is due to expire at the end of this year.  Senators Jim DeMint, hero of the Tea Partiers, and Tom Coburn support letting them die.  Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley (R, Ethanol) looks like he’s spoiling for a fight.  Bring it on.  It’s time we let the free market help dig us out of the hole the Progressives put us in.  Sugar, are you listening?

In his resignation letter, Hal Lewis, writes nostalgically about his sixty-seven year association with the American Physical Society.  He paints the picture of the early years as being a pure love of science and no real chance to become wealthy in the career choice of a physicist.  All of that has changed and there is no more glaring example of that than the expert with no scientific training, Al Gore, leading the parade.  Here is part of his letter.

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

Pretty strong words.  I believe the distinction has to be made between global warming and man-made global warming.  The earth does warm and it does cool, but the scam surrounds how much it is being caused by man and how, without drastically changing the way we live, we are doomed.  The models these scientists use to predict our disasterous demise, are severly flawed and to make multi-trillion dollar policy decisions based on them is the epitome of irresponsibility. 

Some have predicted that Al Gore could become the first green billionaire.  As a free market believer, I have no problem with someone creating a product or conceiving an idea that makes them rich.  But the Gore campaign relys heavily on his background, which is in big government.  Use the power of the government to take the wealth from those who created it and funnel it to those in his camp with Mr. Gore taking a healthy share.

It’s time to return to real science and real research.  Let’s focus on building accurate models before we crash the economy, jousting with windmills.

Two disparate news items this weekend got me thinking.  The main stream media is all abuzz with Chelsea Clinton’s wedding, even to the point of throwing the term royalty around.  It is estimated that the wedding will cost $3-$5 million, although Sally Quinn of the Washington post puts the bill at closer to $1 million.  The comparison was then made to the cost of Jenna Bush’s wedding, a mere $100,000.  This became fodder for The Joy Behar Show.  Comedian Judy Gold leaped at the opportunity to take a shot at Bush, “Yeah, well, if he could have found a way for us to pay for Jenna`s wedding, he would have done that, okay, he likes to spend other people`s money.”  An interesting perspective on other people’s money that I will return to later.

The other news items was an article in The New York Times, by Bob Herbert titled “A Sin and a Shame,” lamenting that corporations are hording cash and not hiring people and it is all so unfair, in fact, sinful.  This is while this government is spending huge amounts of money that someone will have to pay back, massive new programs like ObamaCare that we are still uncovering what that will cost, and enormous tax increases about to kick in on January 1 when the Bush tax cuts expire.  Perhaps they are hording cash for a reason?  Perhaps they are not hiring because they don’t know what any new employees will cost under these new programs, or for that matter what their existing employees are going to cost?  Perhaps it is because the latest economic reports show GDP shrinking and if that continues why would you start hiring if your business is going to slow down with the rest of the economy?

We have two very divergent views of the economy today.  One view is held by those who actually work in the private economy and the other view is held by those in the ivory towers of government, which brings me back to the weddings.  I really don’t care what the Clintons or the Bushes spend on their daughter’s weddings.  It’s their money.  But perhaps it is instructive to look at where that money came from.

George Herbert Walker Bush, Jenna’s grandfather, was born into a successful family.  His father was a banker and a Senator.  But after getting out of the Army after WWII he went to Yale and upon graduation, moved away from that family and settled in Texas to start an oil company.  He went into private business and put his own money at risk.  What that means, to those who never took that chance, is you may be successful and make a lot of money, you may be successful and make a little money, you may fail and lose your money.  Chances are greater that you will lose than win, but that is the American Dream.  If you lose, you have to start over by trying to earn and save up what you lost to try again, if you have the guts and drive.  Bush succeeded in forming Bush-Overby and later with Zapata Petroleum.  He became President of Zapata for ten years and then Chairman for another two, before going into politics.  By then he was a millionaire in his own right.

George Walker Bush, Jenna’s dad, attended public school in Midland, Texas, where his parents had settled.  He went to private school after the family moved to Houston.  He later attended Yale University and became the only president to get an MBA which he did, from Harvard.  Like his father, he went into the oil business starting several independent oil exploration companies.  He later bought a stake in the Texas Rangers baseball team for $800,000 and was instrumental in building the team’s attendance.  He later sold his stake for $15 million.  Then he went into politics.

The two Bushes know risk, know about taking chances and became millionaires on their own before going into politics.  They also learned lessons about spending money and doing so prudently. 

Bill Clinton went into politics almost immediately after getting his law degree.  He was Attorney General and then Governor of Arkansas.  As governor he had a governor’s mansion.  He ran for president and upon winning traded in his governor’s mansion for the Executive Mansion, aka the White House.  He had been on the government payroll and living in government provided housing almost his entire working life.  The sweat of the people in who paid their taxes paid him.  After leaving office, Mr. Clinton was able to write books about his experience and make speeches commanding six figures a pop.  His wife did pretty much the same.  They lived off the people and ended up very rich.  They didn’t create a product or service, they didn’t create jobs, and they didn’t meet a payroll. 

I can hear the screams from the left right now, “What do you mean he didn’t create a job or meet a payroll?”  Try this test.  If Bill Clinton’s opponent was elected rather than Bill Clinton, would there still be a government payroll and government jobs?  If yes, Bill Clinton didn’t create them.  If either of the Bushes didn’t create their companies would there be jobs at those companies or payrolls?  No.

What about some other famous politicians who tell us what to do?  Let’s look at Al Gore.  Here is another individual that spent the bulk of his career in government.  He was a member of Congress, a United States Senator, Vice President and presidential candidate.  Today he is very rich.  It is said he may become the first “green billionaire”.  If he went into his current endeavors before a life in government, would the story be the same?  Or is it because of his name, reputation, and connections that he made at the public trough, that he is wallowing in riches, and telling the rest of us to reduce our carbon footprint while his mansions consume ten times the energy of his neighbors?

Charlie Rangel spent most of his life in government.  He rose through the ranks and now has a waterfront condominium in the Dominican Republic, writes the tax laws but does not observe them, and is a wealthy man.  Conservatives don’t believe in rent control or rent stabilized apartments, but Charlie does.  After all, how can poor and middle income people afford to live in places like Manhattan if greedy landlords have their way.  So Charlie Rangel who makes $174,000 per year, plus his chairmanship pay, has not one, not two, not three, but four rent controlled apartments.  Is he poor or middle class?  No, he is the political class.  He took three adjoining rent controlled apartments and had them joined together, while the fourth apartment served, illegally, as his campaign headquarters.  What about the poor and blue collar workers who could live in Manhattan if three of your four rent controlled apartments weren’t being horded by you?  Let them eat cake.

John Kerry is in the news for trying to avoid $500,000 in taxes on his new yacht.  Here is another individual who spent his entire working life in government.  He can tell the rest of us to pay more taxes while he garners favors spending our money. He is the richest man in the Senate but with prenuptial agreements with his wife he only lists personal assets of between $400,000 and $1.8 million and joint assets with his wife of $300,000 – $600,000.  So how does he buy a $7 million yacht?  I am not suggesting anything nefarious, it’s obvious his wife paid for it, but do you think he is in touch with someone trying to make a payroll in the private sector?  You pay taxes; John Kerry has advisors to figure out how to avoid them.

So those evil corporations started by those evil men like George Herbert Walker Bush and George Walker Bush, know the value of a dollar.  They know we are not out of the woods yet and so to protect the jobs that their companies still have they are not hiring but are building their rainy day funds.  Perhaps Bob Herbert should ask why his employer is shedding jobs left and right.  Perhaps this is his safe way of doing so, but on the other hand the New York Times is hardly hording cash.  Its circulation is crashing because people like Bob Herbert are so out of touch with the rest of America; no one wants to read his rants any longer.

So perhaps Bill Clinton spends millions on Chelsea’s wedding because he didn’t learn the value of a dollar.  He lived of the government for many years and then just held out a basket and it was miraculously filled with more money than he can count.  George Bush spent $100,000 on a wedding because he knows how hard it is to earn a dollar.  What we need is less of the political class telling us what to do, and then handing us the bill and more entrepreneurial Americans who risk their own money, watch it like hawks, create jobs and generate wealth that they then reinvest in America.

Best wishes to Chelsea and Marc.

There was a commercial not too long ago where a young man looked out his window to the village green where a bundle of money had just fallen.  He calls his wife/girlfriend over to show her.  She suggests running down and getting it, but he says, no, let’s wait.  Next you see a frizzy headed guy down on the green who screams, “MONEY!!!!”  In seconds, people came out of the woodwork and scoffed up all the money while the young couple looked on.

The image of that commercial popped into my head as I considered the job summit being led by President Obama.  To me, the young couple represented the government pondering how to direct the economy to achieve this specific goal or that.  The mob on the green was the free market.  While the government dithers over what kind of legislation to write, which special interest groups to pay off to pass it, how to develop incentives to get private industry to do this or that, if they would just cut taxes and get out of the way, the free market would get to work creating jobs where they are needed, not where some bureaucrat thinks they should go.

Uncertainty

The biggest cloud overhanging this economy is uncertainty.  The Obama administration is slamming through enormous changes: a $787 billion Porkulus package, cap and trade, health care.  Businesses look at this combined with the accumulation of massive government debt, tax increases rather than cuts (yes letting the Bush tax cuts expire is a tax increase, not just the expiration of tax cuts as Speaker Pelosi tries to spin it) and they don’t know what hiring that extra employee is going to cost, let alone what it will cost to keep the employees they already have.  So they don’t hire until the dust  settles and they can calculate the impact.

“Tax incentives for job creation are “worthy of further consideration,” he said, while adding that the administration is also set on making a big push in the area of green jobs.” – President Obama at Jobs Summit

“Worthy of further consideration”?  Since conservatives have been calling for tax cuts for a year now, this kind of statement in Obama-ese translates thusly, “I have to make a nod to the right, to acknowledge that I heard them, but it ain’t happening.”  Couple that with the “big push in the area of green jobs.”  We are in the midst of the scientific scandal that the “settled science” of man-made global warming could be the greatest hoax since Bernie Madoff, and Obama wants a big push in the area of green jobs.  What if that area collapses because the urgency that Al Gore has been screaming about is no longer urgent?  It’s government planning on the order of Soviet five-year plans or Mao’s Great Leap Forward programs.  It harkens back to Jimmy Carter’s giant Synfuels project that was going to convert coal into oil, until oil prices fell and the project imploded, but not before billions of tax dollars were poured into that rat hole.

How Simulating!

If you listen to Joe Biden, the stimulus plan is working better than expected.  But let’s take a closer look.  As of about three weeks ago only $120 billion of the stimulus money had been spent. (So why is Congress looking at another stimulus with over $600 billion left to spend in the first one?)  Of that money, 80% went to the Department of Education, Health and Human Services, and the Department of Labor.  What about all the “shovel ready” projects?  Only about $4 billion has gone to the Department of Transportation.  Feel better?

Jobs Summit Attendees

So who is meeting with President Obama at the jobs summit?  Well first let’s look at who was not invited:

• U.S. Chamber of Commerce — they have butted heads with Obama over health care and climate change policies
• National Federation of Independent Businesses

I don’t know about you, but I think they might have an idea or two about how to create conditions that let the free market create jobs.  As for the attendees:

• Service Employees International Union (SEIU) officer
• President of the American Federation of Teachers — a union of workers in a government run monopoly
• United Food & Commercial Workers International Union
• CEOs of some Fortune 500 companies

How many jobs do unions create, not occupy, create?  Think of the auto industry, steel industry, public K-12 education, the Postal Service, and government in general.  Do they bring images of thriving, vibrant, engines of job creation?  Or is the image more of the basket cases of the U.S. economy?  This is not a slight against the union workers themselves, but rather of their leadership who create so many restrictions on job rules to artificially create the need for more jobs.  There motto is: why have three people do the work, when you have five do it?

As far as big business is concerned, let me dispel the thought that conservatives and big business go hand in hand.  In many cases big business looks to cut deals with the government to protect their industries and markets from upstart companies.  They have gotten big and lethargic, rather than nimble and vibrant.  Small businesses create about 80% of the jobs in the U.S. and they didn’t have a seat at the table.

So was the jobs summit about creating jobs or just jive talk?  If you want a real jobs summit see what American Solutions was hosting in Cincinnati, Ohio and Jackson, Mississippi.  They actually discussed ideas that would work.

From being the foregone conclusion as the first woman President of the United States in 2008 to a marginalized, snarky misrepresentative of the United States, it time for her to realize, the band stopped playing and everyone has gone home but her.  It’s time to call it a day and resign.

Keep Your Friends Close and Your Enemies Closer

Proving, once again, he is the master of hardball politics, Barack Obama dangled the Secretary of State job in front of his vanquished rival.  She took the bait.  No more would she be a force in the Senate able to challenge Obama at the first stumble.  She was now part of the problem, not a potential solution.  Once ensconced at Foggy Bottom, she thought she enhance her image by holding the most prestigious post in the Cabinet.  But she again underestimated Barack Obama.

He proceeded to divvy up foreign policy among many advisers, undercutting Hillary every step of the way.  She’s no fool, she can see it and it is eating away at her, to the point where she is becoming a gaffe machine to rival Joe Biden.

She’s No Condoleezza Rice

Upstaged by her husband in North Korea, negotiating the release of the journalist hostages, she was asked what her husband thought about another matter while in Africa.  In a similar situation, Condoleezza Rice, would have handled that with aplomb and not become rattled. But here is Hillary’s response.  Hillary Snaps.  Smacking down a questioner on the world stage?  Well that will surely “correct” our image as the Ugly Americans.

The Apology Tour Continues

She goes on to make a speech in Nigeria and wants to emphasize that there is no place in the world for corrupt elections.  A very good point to make, that few could argue with.  But what does she use as an analogy?  She openly suggests that Jeb Bush fixed the 2000 Presidential election for his brother.  Of all the analogies of corrupt elections that she could have used, let’s see, Iran?  Cuba?  the old Soviet Union? she points to the oldest democracy in history and suggest that we are as corrupt as any third world dictator.  Hillary Compares U.S. Elections to Third World Corruption.  Disgraceful, absolutely disgraceful.  Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who endorsed Hillary to take his Senate seat, must be turning over in his grave.  He used to staunchly defend the United States at the UN and here his protege is saying we are no better than the worst of them.

In Honduras, the rule of law is being followed to prevent a Chavez style dictator from taking over that country, and who does Hillary and the Obama administration support?  The Chavez puppet.  What about standing up for democracy in our Hemisphere?  It is time for her to go.

The Gore Thing in 2000

Let’s get this straight one more time.  On election night 2000, Gore lost Florida.  He lost the recount.  He lost the re-recount.  He lost the re-re-recount.  He lost the official recount.  He lost the private recount sponsored by newspapers.

Their count showed that Bush’s razor-thin margin of 537 votes — certified in December by the Florida Secretary of State’s office — would have tripled to 1,665 votes if counted according to standards advocated by his Democratic rival, former Vice President Al Gore.

“In the end, I think we probably confirmed that President Bush should have been president of the United States,” said Mark Seibel, the paper’s managing editor. “I think that it was worthwhile because so many people had questions about how the ballots had been handled and how the process had worked.” — CNN

If Democrats and their radical supporters want to salve their wounds with this myth, live the fantasy.  But don’t smear this country with these lies while acting as our chief diplomat.

Remember the stimulus package that had to pass immediately or we would face economic catastrophe?  Recently released data from the Commerce Department show that the economy was recovering before the stimulus went into effect.  Unemployment has risen above what the Obama administration said it would if the stimulus passed, but oh well, Congress approved and the president signed the legislation to spend $787 billion of your money.

The Next Boondoggle

Now President Obama is trying to ramrod through the Cap and Trade legislation that will put another enormous burden on taxpayers and we have to do this now, immediately, imperatively, or south Florida will be under water and polar bears will be extinct.

A 98 page report from a veteran in the EPA garnered this response from his boss, Al McGartland:

“‘The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision,” he wrote, according to the e-mails released by CEI. “I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.’ ”

Who is the EPA working for?  Is this a government of the people or of the statists?  So because they won the election, the policies of their most extreme supporters must be put in place, no matter how large the bill or how effective the policy.  If it is a sham, too bad, they want it…they shall have it and you get stuck with the bill, the loss of liberty, and them telling you how to live your life.

The Problematic Report

Here is the essence of the report , written by EPA scientist Alan Carlin,  that the EPA finds so damning:

Carlin compiled a 98 page report that pointed to some inconvenient facts that call the connection between CO2 emissions and global temperature into doubt, at a time when the President is pushing “urgent” carbon emissions regulation through the Congress. From FOXNews.com:”Specifically, the report noted that global temperatures were on a downward trend over the past 11 years, that scientists do not necessarily believe that storms will become more frequent or more intense due to global warming, and that the theory that temperatures will cause Greenland ice to rapidly melt has been ‘greatly diminished.’ ”

But hey, on the other side of the ledger you have Al Gore and he has a Nobel prize and an Academy Award, so who are you going to believe?

The global warming threat may be in the process of being debunked but the fiscal threat from the Obama Administration will cause far more damage if we don’t take urgent steps to stop them.