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First we were told we had to pass the stimulus bill because if we didn’t unemployment would rise to 9%. The good news was that there were hundreds of shovel ready project raring to go. Later we learned that “shovel ready was not as shovel ready as we expected.” $800 billion dollars of squandered stimulus dollars later, unemployment is at 9%. But what about a real shovel ready project that doesn’t need taxpayer dollars?

There is a $7 billion project called Keystone XL that will build a pipeline from Canada to bring heavy crude oil to refineries in Texas and Oklahoma. It is estimated it will create 20,000 jobs. It will also help us rely less on oil from the unstable Middle East. The project needs the approval of the State Department because it crosses our northern border. That’s approval, not taxpayer funding. Okay, before all the environmentalists come out of their chairs,

In April 2010 and again this August, State produced multivolume environmental impact statements that concluded the pipeline would have “no significant impacts” on the environment. — Wall Street Journal, November 11, 2011

So in the midst of bus rides and hectoring us that we need to pass this jobs bill now (where have I heard that before?), Obama decides to vote “present”. He has pushed the decision on the Keystone pipeline out 12-18 months until after the 2012 election. He doesn’t want to lose the environmentalists by slipping on a banana. (BANANA – Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything). So expect to hear more about those “do nothing Republicans”. You know, those Republicans who have passed fifteen bills to help create jobs that Harry Reid in the Democrat controlled Senate will not even allow to come up for a vote. I can understand them opposing the Republicans. What I can’t understand is not voting on the bill either for or against. So who is really doing nothing? Say what you mean, mean what you say.

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

It’s no mystery that President Barack Obama believes in social justice. What is social justice? It is basically taking from those who are the most productive and giving to those who are the least productive. This is done through the coercive power of government, not by appeals to our compassion to give to those we believe need a helping hand. That is called charity. Charity is voluntary. Social justice is compulsory.

President Obama also makes no secret that he believe in the European model of socialism. That consists of bigger government, government run healthcare, government run retirement, rich unemployment benefits, higher taxes, more vacation, but it also comes with something that he doesn’t realize.

With unemployment north of 9%, economic growth crawling along when it should have come out of the recession like a rocket, it prompted Robert Lucas, the 1995 Nobel Prize winner in economics to say:

“Is it possible that by imitating European policies on labor markets, welfare and taxes, the U.S. has chosen a new, lower GDP trend? If so, it may be that the weak recovery we have had so far is all the recovery we will get.”

The slower GDP numbers do not only affect presidential polls. It is estimated that due to the recession and slow recovery we are taking in about $400 billion less in tax revenues than we would under a more robust recovery. As I have said many times here and in my book, Liberty’s Lifeline, Obama is repeating just what didn’t work in the 1930s. Lucas explains:

What discomfits him is the similarities in the policy choices that accompanied both delayed recoveries. By 1934, the Depression’s banking crisis had been resolved, “yet full recovery was still seven years away,” he said in the Milliman lecture. GDP stayed more than 10% below trend. “Why?” The answer, he says, was growth-suppressing policies, such as the Smoot-Hawley tariff, cartelization, unionization and, “most important but hardest to measure, FDR’s demonization of business.”

Sound familiar? The financial panic of 2008 was essentially under control before Obama was sworn in. The recession officially ended over two years ago, but in the mean time we spent nearly a trillion dollars on a pork laden “stimulus” bill, lined up another trillion in spending with ObamaCare, we have free trade treaties being held hostage by Obama’s union supporters, and Obama’s anti-business attitude is clear. After Roosevelt’s massive government spending programs at least we had results like the Hoover Dam, new parkways, new parks, etc. Where is our new Hoover Dam that was built by the Obama stimulus? There is none. In my congressional district, the lion’s share of the stimulus went to school districts and the teachers’ unions. Poof, gone. Gone except, that is, for the bill that has to be paid by the rest of us.

Professor Lucus leaves us with this observation:

“If we’re going to move to a European welfare state,” says Prof. Lucas, “we’re going to have to pay a European price.” And that price could be a permanently lower level of GDP per person. The U.S.’s amazing 100-year ride would slow.

Among the many things any such drop in GDP will siphon away is America’s relentless productive vitality. “So much new happens in the United States,” Prof. Lucas says. But will it still?

The American Dream sprang from the freedom of our economy where an idea, hard work, and dedication could pay off big and benefit not just the individual with the idea but all those who use the product or service. In Obama’s world of regulatory and government oppressiveness, most new ideas will be crushed in the crib under the burden of goverment requirements to surrender their wealth to the laggards.

The beacon of hope is to limit Obama to one term before he can make his changes irreversable.

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

Actual Unemployment vs. Stimulus Sales Pitch

It was a very close race, one of the last decided in the country. Out of 180,000 plus votes the final margin of victory was just under 600 votes. In that election Tim Bishop successfully managed to hide from his record and instead he took advantage of a late Republican primary that was hotly contested and pounced with a campaign of personal attacks on his opponent that was just enough to carry the eight weeks until Election Day. His opponent, Randy Altschuler, wants a rematch and it appears the race will be decidedly different.

Bishop’s campaign theme, oddly enough, was that Altschuler was an entrepreneur who created jobs both here and abroad. Only he conveniently left out the part about jobs created here.  In the middle of an economy with high unemployment and a woefully inexperienced administration in charge, it seemed an odd point of attack, but what else did Bishop have? Could he brag about his vote for ObamaCare? He needed a police escort to get him out of a town hall meeting where he tried to explain that vote. Could he brag about the stimulus? We were told that without the stimulus unemployment would rise to 9% while implementing it would cap unemployment at 8% (see chart above). Bishop dutifully voted with Nancy Pelosi for the stimulus and unemployment soared. Most people would conclude that the administration was wrong and the stimulus actually made things worse.

In his Congressional district, the share of the $787 billion that was borrowed for the stimulus from places like China that will have to be repaid by his constituents is roughly $3 billion, however the amount of stimulus dollars that came to the district is between $600 – $700 million. In effect, Congressman Bishop voted for a stimulus program that failed and saddled his constitutents with an additional $2.3 billion in debt to pay for stimulus dollars given to other Congressional Districts.

Mr. Bishop’s ignorance of basic economics explains a great deal of his misguided policies. In defending his bailout of the automobile companies, he says that if he hadn’t done that, we might have had one million more people unemployed. This is economic hogwash, as I point out here and in my book, Liberty’s Lifeline. The left clings to what is called static analysis. What does that mean? It means that no matter what happens people won’t change their behavior.

Picture yourself standing under an umbrella in a rain storm. If someone takes away your umbrella what will you do? You will probably seek some other form of shelter as soon as you can. That is dynamic analysis. You lose your umbrella, you immediately look for a substitute. The left believes that you will continue to stand there in the rain and get soaked. That is static analysis. Under static analysis, the government works. Under dynamic analysis the free market works. Static analysis says that if you raise tax rates, you will collect more money and if you lower tax rates you will lose money. Free markets have proved that lower taxes increase people’s incentive to produce and therefore increase total revenues. Static analysis says that if there are one million people employed by GM, Chrysler and their suppliers, if GM and Chrysler go completely out of business, one million people will be unemployed. Free markets say that people still need transportation. If GM and Chrysler go out of business, poeple will buy from Ford, Toyota, Honda, et. al, and those companies will need to increase production to meet the demand from former GM and Chrysler car buyers. Therefore they will need more employees which they can find from the pool of people just laid off from GM and Chrysler. Will it be all of the former employees? Probably not. Will it be the disaster that Tim Bishop says he prevented? No. But Tim Bishop who spent his entire adult working life in academia or government doesn’t understand this. And since he doesn’t understand economics he has and will continue to vote for bad ideas like the stimulus.

Tim Bishop says he is fighting high gasoline prices with his “Big Oil Welfare Repeal Act.” On his website introducing the bill he says that he is fighting $4 a gallon gasoline prices with this kind of bill. A few lines later on the same web page, he says the bill will have no effect on gasoline prices. So why is he wasting Congressional time with such a measure when we are facing national bankruptcy? Simple. It fits into a nice thirty-second sound bite that he can feed to the public when he runs for re-election, letting them believe he is doing something serious when he is not.

To give you a sample, here is the latest from Tim Bishop’s spokesman, Jon Schneiderman.

Randy Altschuler would rather launch baseless attacks than give a simple yes or no answer whether he supports the Republican budget to end Medicare as we know it. Maybe Randy can go to Brookhaven National Lab and talk to the 1,000 workers who have a job today because Tim Bishop fought the Republican budget, and tell them where he stands on the issues.”

So there you have the crux of Bishop’s weak reelection strategy. Questioning Bishop’s record is a baseless attack. With a budget deficit of $1.5 trillion that Tim Bishop helped create by voting with Nancy Pelosi 97% of the time and Bishop is fighting to keep spending high? The Democrats have no plan of their own (Obama’s budget was defeated in the Senate 97-0) on how to cut spending and that is a defensible position? Medicare is broke. Tim Bishop voted to cut $500 billion in Medicare funding with ObamaCare and now reforming the system before it goes bankrupt is a bad idea? As far as Brookhaven Narional Labs, we all feel for people who lose their jobs, and there are plenty of those stories to tell. But the folks at Brookhave National Labs are government employees, and the govenment in in dire financial shape. So Tim Bishop fights to keep spending high to save 1,000 government jobs, hands the bill to the rest of his 710,000 constituents who must deal with this administration’s disasterous economic policies and he thinks this is leadership?

It’s time that Bishop and Schneiderman start talking about and defending Tim Bishop’s record and what he thinks we should to to get the economy moving again. He squeaked into office in 2010 and things have gotten worse since. In stead of spending time crafting sound bites that can patch over his poor record in Congress it is time to get our country back on the path to success and get Washington out of micromanaging out lives.

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

How many times are we going to hear asinine comments like the following from Zack Burgess at the Philadelphia Tribune?

After Monday’s debates it seemed at times as if the GOP was focused on bashing the president vs. dealing with the problems that face the country. At this point I would like to hear from  presidential scholars, people within the GOP and the Democratic party about how the next nominee from the GOP will run their campaign. Does the GOP have a plan? Or will their platform be solely based on bashing the president? It really didn’t look as if they had an answer for high unemployment, a stalled economy  and soldiers bogged down in Afghanistan. And believe me, I’m not taking the president off the hook, but I want to know about the  GOP and where they seem to be going, because right now it doesn’t look like they have a clear strategy or answer…besides bashing the president. Is this strategy going to work? Most times it doesn’t. Your thoughts. Zack Burgess Enterprise Writer The Philadelphia Tribune

Let me try to explain it so that even Zack Burgess can understand it. The problem, my friend, is in Washington not out among the everyday folks. The Republicans, unlike your fellow travelers, do not think they are smarter than 340 million of their fellow Americans such that they can command and control the economy, like some Soviet politburo which, by the way, couldn’t do it either. This economy is recovering, far more slowly than it should, not because of Obama’s policies but in spite of them.

This administration has thrown more monkey wrenches into the economy than I thought existed. The housing market? It is still in the tank because the administration is trying to micromanage everyone’s mortgage. Get the hell out of the way, let the market find a natural bottom and it will resume its historical 3.5% per year growth rate. Unemployment? Stop throwing program after program on small and medium businesses so that they have no idea what it will cost to hire the next employee. That includes ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, cap and trade, card check, QE2, subsidies for green energy, Chevy Volts. Stop throwing away money on stimulus that did not work, and if you don’t believe me, ask your president what a shovel ready project is. The stimulus was one big, massive, porkulus bill to pay off supporters with taxpayer dollars, e.g., public sector unions. Remember, in selling the stimulus program we were warned that if nothing was done, unemployment would rise to 9%. So, by that very definition the stimulus program made the problem worse than if we did nothing.

President Obama is the most inexperienced person ever elected to the office. He is so clueless he thinks ATM machines are the reason we have high unemployment. Shall we return to to using quill pens?

So here is what the Republicans stand for. We are spending too much money. Stop it. We are putting too many programs on small and medium businesses such that they cannot calculate the cost of hiring, so they are not hiring. Stop it. We have public sector unions who are bankrupting state and local governments and it cannot continue. Stop it. Businesses have trillions of dollars overseas that they don’t want to bring back because if they do, a very large chunk of it will go right into the government spending machine. Stop it. We have program after program in Washington that has no basis of authority in the Constitution (Article 2, Section 8). Stop them.

Mr. Burgess seems to believe that if you don’t like his massive government program, you have to show him your massive government program. He doesn’t seem to grasp the idea that massive government programs are the cause the problem. It wasn’t deregulation that caused the financial crisis, it was everyone following the government’s lead to have every Tom, Dick and Harry own a home whether they could afford it or not, and if you stood in the way, the government was going to steamroll you, paint you as racist, or otherwise destroy you. The government took the lead and Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and others dutifully followed along.

The plan and the strategy of the Republicans is to cut government down to size. Limit it to the authority granted by the Constitution, stop running ponzi schemes that would make Bernie Madoff blush, and get spending under control (see Paul Ryan plan). I guess what confuses people like Mr. Burgess was that all seven candidates at the debate seemed to agree on this. The idea is to grow this great economy, not try to micromanage it by picking winners and losers.

As former New York City mayor Ed Koch once famously said to a reporter who kept asking him the same question, “I can explain it to you. I can’t comprehend it for you.”

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

Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a great oration with his “I Have a Dream” speech that moved millions of Americans to action. Howard Dean gave a puzzling oration with his “I Have a Scream” speech that moved millions of Americans to laughter and derision. Tim Bishop flops at oration with an “I Have a Scheme” remarks that will leave hundreds (he’d be hard pressed to reach millions), scratching their heads.

“After losing a district won by John McCain in 2008 and Carl Paladino in 2010, some thought House Republicans would take a step back. But, like a bad riverboat gambler waiting for his luck to change, they have doubled-down,” Bishop wrote to his supporters.

What the hell does that mean? I know that riverboat gamblers are a questionable group, but where does that put Tim Bishop?

• Tim Bishop voted for the massive stimulus bill that left a steaming pile of $3 billion in debt on his constituents doorstep (based on what percentage his district pays of total income taxes x the total stimulus bill), and in return we got what? As of today 28 May 2011, his district received $693 million in stimulus funds which resulted in 428 jobs (Recovery.gov website). According to my calculator that works out to $1,627,113 per job. Who got the bulk of the funding? The school districts, to protect teachers’ union jobs so they can come out and thank Congressman Bishop by voting him back into office.
• Tim Bishop ran for reelection almost exclusively on tarring his opponent for being an entrepreneur who started a company with offices around the world that did back office work for U.S. businesses. Bishop said outsourcing was bad, very bad. Bishop then voted to bail out GM and Chrysler and then Chrysler takes our tax dollars and builds a $570 million engine factory in Mexico. Can you say hypocrite? Personally, I believe we live in a global economy and work should flow to where it can be done most efficiently. The Wall Street Journal reports on a study by Dartmouth that shows that for every one job outsourced overseas, two jobs are created here in the U.S. So not only is he a hypocrite for running for reelection on an anti-outsourcing platform and then uses taxpayer dollars to outsource high paying union manufucturing jobs, he is ignorant of economics to boot. Lose, lose, lose. So, who’s the riverboat gambler doubling down?

Mr. Bishop continues:

“The Republicans insist the problem with their budget isn’t the substance, it’s the messaging. And just today, they put forward a ‘jobs plan’ which is nothing more than a warmed-over massive tax cut for millionaires which will blow an enormous hole in the deficit that their economic policies created.”

Let’s see, Mr. Bishop has been in office since 2002. In 2006, Nancy Pelosi took the Speaker’s gavel and at that time our national debt was $8 trillion going all the way back to George Washington. By the time she turned the gavel over to Mr. Boehner, the national debt stood at $13 trillion. Can Mr. Bishop, who voted with Nancy Pelosi 97% of the time by the way, please explain how anything the Republicans could propose could “blow an enormous hole in the deficit that their economic policies created”? Where was Mr. Bishop when all this alleged chicanery was going on? Scrubbing down the paddle wheels?

Not leaving well enough alone he wraps up with:

He added: “I have no doubt that in 2012, my opponent will look to make the same tired arguments against me. With your help, I will continue to fight for policies that are going to create jobs and boost our economy.”

The same tired arguments? Create jobs? What jobs? Any idiot could create a job with $1.6 million. Boost our economy? It’s two years since the recession officially ended and still the economy is lousy. Bishop spends too much, the unemployment rate in his district remains at 8%; and he and his fellow Democrats have no plan. The Ryan plan was passed by the House but lost in the Senate 57-40. That vote was followed by one on the Obama Budget II with went down in flames 97-0. Not a single Democrat senator wanted to attach their name to the president’s budget. At the same time, the Senate democrats have not put forth a budget of their own with Harry Reid even saying:

“There’s no need to have a Democratic budget, in my opinion,” Reid told the Los Angeles Times last week. “It would be foolish for us to do a budget at this stage.”

Foolish? The country’s fiscal house is engulfed in flames and Harry says it would be foolish to look for a fire hose.

Tim Bishop’s scheme is to keep a low profile and hope nobody notices what an awful job he is doing, try to make colorful references to characters out of dime store novels, and call actually having a plan a tired argument. Mr. Bishop, I’ll tell you what we are tired of, and it is not about plans to get us out of this mess.

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



Vice President Joe Biden, the man President Barack Obama put in charge of the stimulus spending because, “nobody messes around with Joe,” met with Congressional leaders to talk about the budget for the remainder of this fiscal year. Jingling in his pocket was an additional $6.1 billion in change as all the Democrats had to offer, after the Republicans forced them to agree to $4 billion in cuts to get a two week extension from shutting down the government.

It is not serious, it is even hard to be generous in calling it ridiculous. Why are we in this situation? Because Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid didn’t even bother to put together a budget in their last year in total control of the government. So the Democrats are willing to cut current year expenditures by $10.1 billion while the Republicans put $61 billion in cuts on the table. The Democrats say that is far too drastic. Really? $10.1 billion amounts to 0.28% of federal outlays. Get serious! I have been in many situations in business where the word comes down from the top to find and cut 10% from the budget and do it now. If the federal government was being run like a business that would mean finding $355 billion in cuts and still let the federal government spend 90% of what they originally planned.

The difference is that if the business is up against the wall, they either cut or go out of business. They will cut expenses, sell unneeded assets, or assets that they can get more money for than they can produce themselves. If the government doesn’t cut what will happen? The taxpayers get screwed either way. Either they pay more in taxes or they pay when the economy collapses, but what Obama and Biden think we really need is a faster train to get Joe Biden back and forth to Delaware.

The Democrats say that if we cut the budget it will cost jobs. Even Ben Bernanke in testifying before Congress this week said will slow the economy and cost an estimated 200,000 jobs. Did he use the same model that said if we spend a trillion in stimulus money that the unemployment rate will not rise above 8%? Now, two and a quarter years after the stimulus money was squandered the unemployment rate finally dipped below 9%. It failed. The projections failed, Meanwhile Bernanke keeps printing money and devaluing our currency. It’s time to take a different approach before the government owes more than it is possible to cover the interest on, let alone the principle.

This is a very, very serious problem, that requires serious people to stop playing with half measures and games of chicken around shutting down the government as a political ploy. We keep hearing that the American people don’t want to cut programs, but at the same time the American people know how bad the spending is out of control. That leads me to believe they are not being asked the right questions, but rather the questions a clever pollster formulates to get the response he is looking for.

Real cuts, serious cuts are needed to bring the budget into balance and start shrinking the debt not just the deficit. And it needs to be done now.

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

For years Daniel Patrick Moynihan, one of the most thoughtful and erudite public servants we have had, published a document New York and the Federal Fisc that described the flow of dollars from New York and the great imbalance on the return trip.  Steve Israel seems to have taken up that mantle but his votes in the House are baffling.

In an article published in Newsday today titled, “Rep. Israel: Poorer states take NY’s share,” he has this to say,

“Nobody should be paying more than they get,” Israel said. “The unfairness should not be based on where you live. That’s what really drives me crazy. It’s not necessarily the numbers; it is the discrimination against states like New York” that have more high-income earners.”

That statement opens up at least three contradictory positions that Steve Israel has taken and indicates how out of touch the progressives are with the majority of the American people.  Let’s look at the three issues:

1. Redistribution of Wealth – is it a good thing or a bad thing?
2. Why send money to Washington if it is only going to send it back, albeit with a healthy chunk of overhead removed?
3. If New York is discriminated against because it has high income earners – is increasing taxes on high income earners by making permanent the Bush tax cuts a bad thing or a good thing?

Redistribution of Wealth

Steve Israel votes with his party 98.7% of the time.  We all remember what Barack Obama said to Joe the Plumber, “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”  He has voted for the very policies he complains about.  Let’s do some quick math.  Steve Israel voted for the $825 billion stimulus bill.  The stimulus, according to Recovery.gov, brought about $249 million into Mr. Israel’s district.  But based on the relative wealth of his district, his district pays about 0.4% of the nation’s individual income tax.  To make the number’s easier, if we assume that the stimulus borrowing will be repaid exclusively through individual income taxes, that means Mr. Israel’s district will have to re-pay $3.3 billion of the stimulus debt.  So he voted to send $3.3 billion to the rest of the country in return for $249 million for his constituents.  So what’s his argument?  His wound appears to be self-inflicted.

Round Trip Ticket for Your Tax Dollars

Mr. Israel has a 100% rating from the National Education Association, the teacher’s union.  Mr. Israel is part of the federal government.  Nowhere in the Constitution is the Congress empowered to do anything about education.  Education has always been a local matter.  We have local school boards who run the schools, and the bulk of our property taxes go toward funding the schools. 

But we also have a Department of Education.  So what do we do?  We tax the same people who pay for schools through property taxes and state taxes and we send that money to Washington.  The Treasury takes a cut to pay for the added resources it needs to manage this revenue.  The Department of Education takes a cut to pay for their overhead, and then the money is sent back to local school districts as federal aid.  Why not abolish the Department of Education and keep 100% of those tax dollars locally to pay for schools rather than eighty cents on the dollar for the privilege of having the geniuses in Washington handle our money and tell us what to do?  On top of that, what guarantee do we get that a further portion of our tax dollars are not going to pay for another state’s education instead of ours?  If we don’t give the money to Washington in the first place, they can’t give it to someone else rather than returning it.  It is lunacy. 

The article then describes this bizarre exchange:

Israel said “the fairest” situation would have each state receiving the same share of federal funding that it pays in federal taxes. He was asked if states should just keep all their revenue instead.

“It’s priorities!” he said. “The federal formulas need to be changed. It’s not as simple as saying it should be 1-1; it’s the formulas that need to be changed.”

It’s the formulas?  Why in the world would you send tax dollars to Washington and then expect to get an equal amount back?  Why send it in the first place?  If Washington kept to the powers enumerated in the Constitution, most of this discussion would be moot.  The Founding Fathers created the federal government to deal with mostly national issues concerning defense and foreign nations. In carrying those out I want the military to decide where to place their forts, arsenals, naval bases and not to make sure that we have the same amount in every Congressional district. 

The Bush Tax Cuts

Steve Israel has a voting record on tax policy:

• He voted against retaining reduced taxes on capital gains and dividends (Dec 2005)
• He voted against making the Bush tax cuts permanent (April 2002)
• He voted for raising taxes on those making over $250,000 (Dec 2010)
• He received an 18% rating from the National Taxpayers Union meaning he’s a big spender (Dec 2003)
• He received an 83% rating from Citizens for Tax Justice, meaning he supports progressive taxation (Dec 2006)

How do you square these positions with the complaint that New Yorkers send more tax revenue to Washington than they get back?  He voted for those very policies.  He wants to raise taxes on the wealthy and then complains that New York sends more to Washington because we have wealthy people living in New York. Exactly where does Mr. Israel think those tax revenues are going? 

Solving the Problem

The problem may actually solve itself.  Because New York also has high state taxes, high property taxes, high city taxes, and high sales taxes, those wealthy folks might move to Texas or some other state.  Then Mr. Israel and his fellow progressives can finally be in the enviable position of begging Washington to send more money to a bankrupt New York than New York sends to Washington in tax revenue.

That’s my opinion. I’d like to know what you think.  Please add your comments below.

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’” – Ronald Reagan

Our friends on the left scoff at such words as those above, but the longer they are in power and providing “help”, the more they get tied up in knots.  Let me walk you through an example using Congressman Tim Bishop as the key player.

Executive Pay

Tim Bishop voted several times to allow shareholders to vote on executive compensation.  SEC reports available to the public include compensation information about their executives.  The shareholders have the right to vote by selling their shares if they do not like what the company is doing, or they can vote against management’s recommendation on candidates for the board of directors.  Where in the Constitution does it authorize Congress to get involved in the compensation practices of a private company?

After voting to give billions of dollars to companies through TARP, Congressman Bishop was outraged that executives at AIG were supposed to get bonuses.  Did he consider that before giving away billions in taxpayer dollars?  Did he think to make that conditional and have the companies agree to it before handing over the funds?  No.  Instead, he said contracts should be ignored.

“Contractual obligations notwithstanding, we must hold AIG accountable for its excesses.”

The Stimulus

As part of the stimulus package, approximately $105 million went to public schools in Congressman Bishop’s district.  These schools recorded seven new jobs created on www. recovery.gov. When asked about this a spokesman in the Congressman’s office said the language in the stimulus bill also covered jobs saved.

Between 2000 and 2009 the public school student population in New York State fell by 121,000, yet during the same period 15,000 more teachers were hired in the state.  So why do the taxpayers have to bail out teachers to the tune of $105 million dollars?  Isn’t that an excess the teachers should be held accountable for? Why couldn’t they cap their salaries?  Was it because of their contract?  That didn’t seem to matter much to Congressman Bishop when private industry was involved, but when it is taxpayer dollars, he doesn’t seem to care.

Teacher Compensation

Then the story comes out in Newsday, that the recently retired Brookhaven school superintendent received $462,084 in compensation while that school district got $4 million in stimulus money.  The superintendent’s compensation in the Mount Sinai school district was $402,944 while that district received $2.7 million in stimulus money.  As a comparison, the salary of the President of the United States is $400,000.  Where is the Congressman’s outrage?  I called his office to find out, but no one was available for comment.

Public vs. Private

Why is a Congressman so eager to tell private companies what they can or cannot do with regard to compensation?  If a private company gets that wrong, they could ultimately go out of business.  But with a government run monopoly, like the public school system, not a sound of outrage is heard.  Could it be because the teacher’s union came out in force to get Congressman Bishop reelected?  The teachers’ union signs contracts with school districts that are driving property taxes through the roof, and the Congressman slaps an estimated $12,000 in debt on every household in his district to pay for the $825 billion stimulus program that pays off his supporters.

The Teaching Profession

The teaching profession used to be a noble profession of dedicated people. There are still many dedicated teachers.   However, teaching never used to be a high paying job, relatively speaking.  So if a person went into teaching they did so because they loved it and they derived a great deal of personal satisfaction from it.  Some teachers still do.  But over time the unions drove up compensation for teachers and also fought for smaller and smaller class sizes, not because smaller class sizes were proven to be more effective, but because that would create more teaching jobs with dues paying members.  It would also require that school districts, to fill those positions, go deeper and deeper into the candidate pool to fill the jobs.  And the deeper they went the less qualified the candidates were.  So now we have a lot of blasé, high paid, teaching staff that have not improved the education of our children and schools that have driven many dedicated teachers out of the schools and into other professions.

Many, many hardworking middleclass people struggle to be able to afford to pay their property taxes so their public employees can pull down six figure incomes and so that school superintendents can receive compensation that would make many entrepreneurs blush.  The difference is that the entrepreneur has to get up running every day, or he may lose everything he invested in his business.  In our public education establishment we have rubber rooms where people who should have been fired long ago, keep getting their extravagant pay, contractual salary increases, build up their pensions and do absolutely nothing while they wait, sometimes years, for a hearing to see if they should be terminated or not.

Putting Government Back in its Box

The recently concluded election was an expression that government has gone too far.  It is out of control, spending recklessly, passing laws unread, committing our future generations to mountains of debt and then saying, that it is not enough. We need to spend more.  We need to tax more.

We have to start at the top, with the federal government.  With the Constitution as our blueprint, we have to shrink the government down to the powers enumerated therein.  Whatever is left over, belongs to the states or the people, as the Tenth Amendment so clearly says.

At the state level we need to repair our state governments.  New York’s state government is dysfunctional.  Repealing the seventeenth amendment would once again give states a seat at the table, and provide a check against a federal government run amok.  Drive each function and responsibility down as close to the people as possible so that their voices will be heard and have a greater impact.  I have a mayor of my village of 1,300 residents and I have a president of 340 million of my fellow Americans.  With whom do you think I have a better chance of a face to face conversation to discuss a problem?  However, if all functions are elevated to the federal level, everything becomes one way with the government telling me how to live my life and  if I object saying, “I can’t hear you over the din of 340 million people.”

It’s time to end the hypocrisy where the government meddles in private businesses and yet enables government agencies to steal from us with abandon.  My only prayer is that the newly elected representatives in Washington don’t lose their nerve.

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.  – Unknown (often attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville)

An article in The Hill newspaper titled “Teachers union expands playing field for midterms” describes how the teachers’ union is getting out supporting certain candidates.

In the face of a difficult election climate for Democrats, the teachers union added 25 congressional districts to its get-out-the-vote (GOTV) effort last week. It’s running radio and television ads in the Pennsylvania and Washington Senate races, as well as in Rep. Tim Bishop’s (D-N.Y.) district.

It’s payback time.  As part of the stimulus package that Tim Bishop voted for, over $105 million went to public schools in his Congressional District and, according to www.recovery.gov the web site tracking all things stimulus-wise, it added a total of seven jobs.  That’s not a misprint folks, seven new jobs.  That comes out to about $15 million per new job.  In the midst of unemployment close to 10% we spend $105 million to create seven jobs?  But wait a minute, it’s not just jobs created, it’s also jobs saved.  Right, right, I keep forgetting that.  The mysterious “jobs saved” metric that no one knows how to measure.  Okay, I’ll play along.

We are talking about teachers jobs here.  In New York State, according to the Empire Center for New York State policy, we spend $17,173 per pupil per year.  The year over year growth in that spending was 7.5%.  What was inflation during that time? It was 1.6%.  What is the compelling reason that we need to increase spending on education 4.7 times the rate of inflation that includes a 6.3% growth in teacher’s salaries and a 9.1% growth in their benefits?  Well, we need to save these teachers or who will teach our kids, right?

Between 2000 and 2009, in New York State, according to the Wall Street Journal (April 12, 2010) we added 15,000 teachers to the public school system, while at the same time the student population fell by 121,000.  Fewer and fewer students but more and more teachers.  It seems like there are plenty of teachers to go around, no?  But what about classroom size?  We have to make classes smaller so that our kids can learn better!  Sadly, no.

But while state legislatures for decades have passed laws — and provided millions of dollars — to cap the size of classes, some academic researchers and education leaders say that small reductions in the number of students in a room often have little effect on their performance.  — New York Times, Feb. 22, 2009

So tell me again, why it was necessary to pass a stimulus package and give $105 million to schools in Mr. Bishop’s district?  Well, that seems to bring the story full circle.  Mr. Bishop votes to take the public’s money, to bribe the public (the teachers) so that the teachers will come out in force to support the caring Mr. Bishop and help him keep his job.  One hand washes the other.

The only problem is that the stimulus money, at some point has to be paid back.  For the amount of stimulus money that came into Mr. Bishop’s district, $300-$400 million, his constituents will shoulder around $3 billion of the $825 billion in the stimulus package. The average household in his district now owes around $12,600 in debt to pay for the stimulus.  It is against the law for individuals to make a campaign contribution that large to a candidate, so it’s a pretty slick way to get around it, don’t you think?  And besides, you have to ask people to make a campaign contribution and they have to agree to hand it over.  This way…

The recession officially ended before the first stimulus dollar hit the streets.  Now, over a year later, the unemployment rate is 9.6% and our GDP growth is limping along at 1%-2%.  But, hey, those teachers are doing swell.  When you see them on the campaign trail for Mr. Bishop over the next four days, be sure to thank them for all they have done.

Election Day is Tuesday, November 2, 2010.  Be there.

Tim Bishop has one reason that he consistently gives for sending him back to Congress and that is that his opponent, Randy Altschuler, started a company and Bishop claims it outsourced jobs overseas. 

In a New York Post article yesterday, Raymond J. Keating informs us  that the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, where he serves as chief economist, just released their Small Business Scorecard for the 111^thCongress.  The scorecard rates members of Congress on a wide range of votes (27 in the Senate and 22 in the House) that cover such things as workplace regulation, ObamaCare, government spending, tax policies, energy legislation, and bailouts.  Overall, he tells us the New York delegation scored just 11 percent on the scorecard, the sixth worst of the fifty states.  The two members of the delegation that scored well are Peter King, and John Lee.  On the other hand Tim Bishop failed to vote even once with small business on big issues.  A big fat zero.

But isn’t Tim Bishop an expert on jobs?  It appears to be the only issue he is running on.  He doesn’t mention the rest of his record, at least not on any ads that I have seen or heard.  He seems to be very confident proclaiming on who, what, where, when, and how to create jobs.

In another article in 27east news, the difference between Bishop and Altshuler is contrasted.  Mr. Bishop says of his opponent, “He was a very successful businessman, and every single thing he did was legal. But given the way he made his money, there are certain things you don’t get to do, and one of them is be a member of the United States Congress.”  Really?  Wow, where is that in the Constitution?  According to my copy of that venerable document, the requirements for Congressman are as follows:

1. Twenty-five years old. Check (Mr. Altshuler is 39)
2. Seven years a citizen of the United States. Check (Mr. Altschuler was born here)
3. When elected, be a resident of the state in which chosen. Check (Mr. Altschuler lives a couple of blocks from here, on Long Island)

What hubris Mr. Bishop demonstrates that he requires a higher standard than the Constitution to serve in Congress.

Mr. Altschuler denies that Office Tiger, the company he and a classmate founded, resulted in American Workers losing their jobs.  He says that Office Tiger bolstered other companies by providing mostly new services, not by replacing existing operations.  But Mr. Bishop says that is “impossible to believe”.  Perhaps Mr. Bishop can believe an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, on Tuesday, “Obama and the Politics of Outsourcing.’  In it, William Cohen points to a 2007 study by Matthew Slaughter, an economist at Dartmouth’s Amos Tuck School of Business.  The comprehensive study looked at the hiring practices of 2,500 U.S. based multinational companies. 

“He found that when U.S. firms hired lower-cost labor at foreign subsidiaries overseas, their parent companies hired even more people in the U.S. to support expanded overseas operations.  Between 1991 and 2001, employment at foreign subsidiaries of U.S. multinationals rose by 2.8 million jobs; during that same period, employment at their parent firms in the U.S. rose by 5.5 million jobs.  For every job “outsourced” to India and other foreign countries, nearly two new jobs were generated here in the U.S.”

He also found that the jobs in the U.S. were higher-skilled and better paying.  So it would seem that Mr. Altschuler was probably helping create two new jobs at his client’s companies in the U.S. for every person he hired overseas.

Mr. Bishop on the other hand voted for TARP and the stimulus bill.  Unemployment, we were told would rise to 9% unless we did something, but held to 8% if we acted quickly.  Mr. Bishop acted quickly and now the unemployment rate is 9.6%; sounds like doing nothing was the better option.  Mr. Bishop also voted to bail out GM.  In a Washington Post article entitled, “Under Restructuring, GM To Build More Cars Overseas” we learn that the percentage of cars that will be built in low-wage countries will increase from 15% to 23% over the following five years.  So doesn’t that make Mr. Bishop a pretty big outsourcer?

Mr. Bishop goes on to tout that his district is the recipient of $433 million in stimulus funds. That created 315 jobs (according to Recovery.gov)  at about $1.4 million per job.  What a bargain!   But he doesn’t like to talk about the debt that is linked to the stimulus.  By my calculation Mr. Bishop’s district pays about 0.37% of the personal income taxes in the U.S. If you take 0.37% of $825 billion it comes out to about $3 billion of the stimulus debt that the taxpayers of his district will have to repay.  That’s about $10 of debt to pay back for every $1 of stimulus received.  Anyone who likes that deal, I have a bridge I’d like to talk to you about.

Mr. Bishop’s entire career has been in academia and in Congress.  He sounds a bit like the sex therapist who has never had sex.  Sure he’s read the books and knows the theory, but he’s never done “it”.  Do you really feel confident he knows what he is talking about?  It seems as if whatever Mr. Bishop says you should do (borrow and spend on stimulus, TARP, GM bailouts) and what you shouldn’t do (start companies, hire people, create products and services and make profits) you’ll be fine if you do exactly the opposite.

So when you next hear Mr. Bishop’s tired commercial about Randy Altschuler outsourcing jobs, stand up and cheer.  If Mr. Bishop says it’s wrong, it’s probably the right way to go.