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An intervention is an orchestrated attempt by one, or often many, people (usually family and friends) to get someone to seek professional help with a serious problem. The term intervention is most often used when the traumatic event involves addiction to drugs or other items, such as spending. Intervention can also refer to the act of using a technique within a therapy session.

If you care about Tim Bishop, if you care about your fellow man, he needs our help. From people who know Tim Bishop they tell me he is a good man, a decent man. But he has a problem. He cannot seem to control his urge to spend, particularly other people’s money.

For those who don’t know him, Tim Bishop is a member of Congress representing the First District in New York. With Washington spending over a trillion dollars a year more than it takes in through tax revenues, everyone needs to pitch in to solve the problem, but the only thing that Tim Bishop has offered as a solution is a single tax break to five oil companies that may, or may not, bring in an additional $3 billion per year, which is about 500 times less than what we need to close the budget gap. More importantly, even this meager offering is not a spending cut, but a cry for more money to spend. We have to get tough with Tim. We need to gather around him, tell that we care for him as our fellow man, but if he doesn’t stop spending cold turkey, we will leave him.

The latest example concerns the US Postal Service. The US Postal Service lost $8.5 billion in 2010. As a cost cutting measure they are looking at closing underutilized post offices. In the 21st century we have tremendous growth in electronic communications, e-mail, online file sharing, cloud computing, even the venerable fax machine is going strong, resulting in a corresponding decrease in “snail mail.” So I wondered, two years ago, why my own local post office was putting an addition on the building? In Setauket, New York, the Postal Service announced that it was closing the post office branch there, one of 3,700 such post offices considered for closure. Tim Bishop to the rescue! We shouldn’t shut down an under utilized post office, after all, look at how pretty the building is! Here is what elected officials at a rally for the post office said.

The legislators said Congress should relieve the Postal Service of a requirement, mandated by the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, to prefund retirees health care costs. The Postal Service pays more than $5 billion a year into a retirement fund for current and future retirees, according to the Congressional Research Service. Bishop told the crowd of about 80 people gathered on the grass and sidewalk in front of the post office to push Congress for action on a bill that would relieve the Postal Service of its prefunding obligation. “Right now the bill’s not moving at all,” Bishop said. After the rally, Bishop said the bill “would provide financial relief to the postal service.” Englebright said after the rally, “The [Postal Service] is overfunding the pension system … it’s an artificial crisis.”

Boy, do those Democrats love calling things artificial crises. When President Obama wanted to slap another $2-3 trillion on top of the national debt and Republicans finally stood up (with Tea Party prodding) and said STOP, it was an artificial crisis. Just tell that to the IRS when they ask you to pay for it. Just send your tax payment in with artificial Monopoly money. Now closing some post offices to stem the hemorrhaging at the Postal Service is another artificial crisis. So Tim Bishop’s solution is to stop setting aside money for postal workers’ retirement. What a great idea! We can fix the problem when Tim’s no longer in Congress. Let’s make that date January 1, 2013.

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

Douglas “Wrong Way” Corrigan was an aviator in the 1930s.  In 1938 he mistakenly flew from New York to Ireland when he was supposed to fly from New York to California, because he claims he misread his compass.  It later turned out that he really intended to fly to Ireland but couldn’t get permission.

What’s Hillary’s excuse?  As the Obama Administration has called the removal of Honduran President Manuel Zalaya a coup d’etat, more attention is being focused on what the law in Honduras really says.  The Congressional Research Service looked into it and had this to say:

“The Supreme Court of Honduras has constitutional and statutory authority to hear cases against the President of the Republic and many other high officers of the State, to adjudicate and enforce judgments, and to request the assistance of the public forces to enforce its rulings.”

—Congressional Research Service, August 2009

So why is Hillary Clinton now attacking the Honduran Supreme Court by pulling the visas of all fifteen members of the court?  The U.S. sided with Hugo Chavez and Costa Rica to reach a “negotiated” settlement that would put Zalaya back in the presidency.  Honduras said, sorry, that would violate our constitution.  He broke the law, we dealt with it according to our constitution, and that’s that.

Mary Anastasia O’Grady writes in the Wall Street Journal:

The upshot is that the U.S. is trying to force Honduras to violate its own constitution and is also using its international political heft to try to interfere with the country’s independent judiciary.

Hondurans are worried about what this pressure is doing to their country. Mr. Zelaya’s violent supporters are emboldened by the U.S. position. They deface some homes and shops with graffiti and throw stones and home-made bombs into others, and whenever the police try to stop them, they howl about their “human rights.”

When will the apology tour end and we start standing up for liberty and democracy?  Is it more important that Hillary have an accomplishment she can brag about than following  the rule of law?  This administration has so much, so backwards it is hard to keep track of it.  They focus all their time and energy doing things they are not constitutionally authorized to do (health care, taking over car companies and banks, funding ACORN), and ignoring their fundamental constitutional duties of foreign policy and national defense.  Let’s hope some pressure can be brought to bear on the Obama Administration to back off before Chavez puts a puppet in place.