There is an increasingly nasty battle brewing in the Republican race for the nomination to run against Democrat incumbent Tim Bishop in the First Congressional District in New York.  With jobs and the economy the number one issue across the nation, the petty personal attacks may result in potential Republican voters staying home in disgust.

In an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal titled, “New York’s GOP Never Learns,” Kim Strassel concludes her article by saying, “The effect has been to enrage and divide a New York party that should have bigger things on its mind. Say, winning this fall.” 

Chris Cox is trying to play catch-up to the front runner Randy Altschuler who has been actively campaigning for more than a year.  The difficulty for Mr. Cox is that his positions are not that different than those of Mr. Altschuler.  So, while Mr. Altschuler has been taking on the Democratic incumbent Tim Bishop and Bishop’s lockstep voting with Nancy Pelosi, Mr. Cox has resorted to attacking Mr. Altschuler.  Not to leave his flank unprotected, Mr. Altschuler has been forced to respond and now the race, with two weeks to go before the primary on September 14^th, has degenerated into a mudslinging contest.  There is a third candidate, George Demos, who is lobbing attacks from the rear with little effect.

Each candidate is calling themselves the “true conservative,” and Mr. Cox has garnered the support of the Suffolk County 9-12 Project the self-proclaimed “Largest Tea Party organization in Suffolk County.”  Mr. Cox’s father, Ed Cox, is the head of the New York State GOP.  Ms. Strassel reports that the senior Mr. Cox, backed Steve Levy over Rick Lazio for governor to curry favor with the Suffolk County GOP chairman to back his son.  It is all the kind of backroom political dealing that have attracted a rush of newcomer candidates and put incumbents of both parties on the endangered species list.

The Tea Party Endorsement

What caught my eye was the endorsement of the Suffolk County 9-12 Project and the announcement by Bob Meyer, co-founder.  He gave as one of his primary reasons that, Randy Altschuler was one of those people, “getting rich off the backs of hardworking Americans by outsourcing their jobs.”  That sounds more like Jimmy Hoffa, Andy Stern, or Barack Obama’s class warfare than any Tea Partier I know.  A commenter on the 9-12 Project’s site, Judyann Joyner added, “Randy is credited with the creation of ‘white collar sweatshops in India.’”  Pretty strong stuff.  I don’t know if Ms. Joyner or Mr. Meyer visited the company that Mr. Altschuler co-founded in India, but Business Week magazine did.

“The lights burn day and night in the gleaming glass-and-chrome building that towers over a leafy street in the southern Indian city of Madras. Here at OfficeTiger, 1,500 young men and women peer into computers 24 hours a day, analyzing and processing U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission reports and other documents drawn up by lawyers and bankers on Wall Street. Walking the floor, sometimes even at 3 a.m., is 34-year-old co-founder and co-Chief Executive Joseph Sigelman.”

Just because the office operates 24 hours per day, don’t been conned into thinking the same people are at their desks 24 hours a day.  “Gleaming glass-and-chrome building that towers over a leafy street,” yup, sounds like a hellhole to me.  Business Week added, “Indeed, OfficeTiger is the only successful startup in India’s $5 billion outsourcing industry that is owned and managed by a U.S. entrepreneur.”  So we have an American company making money in India, in what seems to be a rather large and competitive field, and this is a bad thing?  Since when did conservatives turn into protectionists?  But what about the jobs they replaced?  Okay, let’s examine that. 

You have some Wall Street firms that are in a competitive business.  A young entrepreneur comes up with an idea to reduce operating expenses by having an external company handle routine clerical tasks that are not one of the firm’s key competencies, that is, people don’t buy that firm’s services because of their typing skills.  The company outsources and reduces costs.  By reducing costs, they prosper and grow; by growing they create more high skill jobs like lawyers, accountants, financial analysts, IT people, etc.  Perhaps even some of the former typists, because of their computer skills can move of the ladder to spreadsheets, and databases.  Do some people lose their jobs, yes, just as buggy whip makers lost their jobs when the automobile came on the scene.  Okay, let’s shift to India.

In India white collar jobs are created; their standard of living improves; they buy consumer goods like iPods and iPhones and their offices need sophisticated IT equipment from companies like Cisco Systems which grow companies like Apple and Cisco creating jobs in the U.S. We live in a global economy and if we want prosperity and peace, the best way to get there is through free markets.  Even Mr. Cox in the policy section of his website blames government policies for companies outsourcing jobs overseas.  If it is the government’s policies that make these jobs uncompetitive here and Mr. Cox knows it, why is Mr. Altschuler wrong for reacting to it and helping American companies that use these services remain competitive?

After selling Office Tiger to RR Donnelly, Mr. Altschuler started another company in the U.S., CloudBlue, that recycles old IT equipment.  So we have an entrepreneur that has started a couple of companies that have created jobs around the world and that makes him a villain?  Perhaps Mr. Meyer should go back and read some of the quotes on his own website:

“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom.” – Dr. Adrian Rogers

“I have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” – Thomas Jefferson

Mr. Meyer’s key criticism of Mr. Altschuler smacks of the government picking winners and losers.  This business is okay, but not that one.  If your business creates jobs overseas that is bad, but if it creates jobs here it is okay.  Well, Mr. Altschuler has done both and he has firsthand experience doing so, which is what we sorely lack in Washington.  If the strategy of Mr. Cox continues, including creating another party, the TaxPayer party, to run on and split the vote further, Mr. Cox might as well mail his strategy over to the Bishop campaign as I am sure they will find it very useful in the general election.  Not my cup of tea.

The focus should be on defeating the out of control spenders in Congress who got us into this mess, not fighting each other to the death and let the incumbent waltz back into office.  The time is now.  Mr. Cox should focus on what he would do as a Congressman that is better than Tim Bishop and Mr. Altschuler.  If he can’t articulate that, he should drop out.  He is not going to win a lot of support by throwing mud at his fellow Republicans.

Note: In the spirit of full disclosure I have done some volunteer work for the Altschuler campaign

We currently have a commission investigating how to deal with our ballooning deficit and Brobdingnagian debt.  In the past we have had a commission on military base closings and I am sure there were others that don’t immediately come to mind.  Why do we need them when Congress and the President have the necessary power to make these changes?  Cowardice.  It may be a harsh charge, but that is basically it, no one wants to go on record making tough choices, but if they can get an unelected bipartisan commission to make a recommendation that Congress can vote “all or none” then there are plenty of political fig leaves to go around.

“Well, I didn’t vote for that one, I voted for this one, but it was an all or nothing deal so I couldn’t separate them out.”  We pay these people $174,000 each in base pay and they punt the hard choices to a commission.  Why?  Because they see their primary job as keeping that $174,000 per year job, something that gets easier once you are an incumbent, so long as you don’t make a major mistake, like a hard decision for the benefit of the country.

If you look at the Constitution, the powers granted to the federal government were few and defined, as Madison put it in Federalist No. 45.  With such limited and defined powers, the federal government should focus on a limited number of items and deal with them directly.  But the size and scope of the federal government has grown enormously and the current administration wants to grow it even more enormously.  So don’t look for any tough choices.  Look for more and more commissions to deliver up “solutions” that the weak kneed members of Congress can vote up or down for.  This is gridlock by design.

Once you move most government functions to the federal level, how can anything possibly be accomplished?  How do you pass a law that benefits New York and doesn’t harm Alaska?  How much do Alaska and New York have in common?  Perhaps that is why most major pieces of legislation coming out of Congress run into thousands of pages?  Look at it this way, if a bill of twenty pages is applied differently to fifty states, you soon have 1,000 pages.  But what the Constitution says is that there are a few enumerated powers given to the federal government and everything else is left to the states and the people.  Let the people of Mississippi pass a law of twenty pages that suits the people of Mississippi and let the people of Idaho pass their own.  This will bring about the ability for the other 48 states to look at these two examples and decide for themselves which one would work better in their state or choose a completely different path or none at all.  But if it is all at the federal level you can yell and scream and jump up and down on your Congressman’s desk for all that matters and he can say, “Gosh, I’m just one of 435 members here.  I agree with what you are saying, but…”  If  the issue is at the state level you have more clout and at the local level even more so.

But what we have is a government whose spending is out of control.  We have a commission that will not report until after the mid-term elections and as sure as I draw a breath, their report will be full of new taxes including a Value Added Tax (VAT) to bring buckets of tax revenue to put out the spending conflagration.  Sure there will be some spending cuts, mostly in the discretionary areas that don’t add up to much of the budget anyway, but probably make for good media coverage.

We need to shrink the monster.  We need to take away from the federal government those responsibilities that are not spelled out in the Constitution and let the states and their residents decide how to handle the rest, if at all.  If we don’t take these steps, the gridlock we see today will continue.  The only difference will be that our Congressional representatives will be making over $200,000 a year before long to do what would get them fired in the private sector.

I received an e-mail from my Congressman telling me how he was on top of the situation in the Gulf:

“I am a member  of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, which is at the forefront of an aggressive (sic) Congressional response to BP’s oil spill.  Last week, I voted in Committee to approve a comprehensive legislative response to environmental and economic liability issues raised by the spill.”

As I had written about previously (The Regulators are Dead, Long Live the Regulators), this was just one more case of government failing us but then rushing out more legislation and control so it won’t happen again.  If government was doing its job, it shouldn’t have happened in the first place.  So I wrote back to the Congressman.

 Dear Congressman Bishop,

I read with interest your e-mail to me about the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, which you say is at the forefront of an aggressive Congressional response to BP’s oil spill.  Excuse my skepticism but this sounds like one more “we’re really gonna fix it this time,” response to the failure of government to do what they are already empowered to do.

You say the Oil Spill Accountability and Environmental Protection Act of 2010 “will ensure that responsible parties will be responsible for 100% of the oil pollution cleanup costs.”  If I am not mistaken it was the Congress that passed a law limiting the damages from an oil spill to $75 million, which created a moral hazard that perhaps encouraged BP to cut corners.  But wasn’t it BP who voluntarily waived the $75 million limit and has promised from the start that they would pay the full costs, thereby helping Congress remove the egg from their collective faces for including the limit in the first place?  Don’t get me wrong, BP has a lot to answer for but at the same time BP applied to the government regulators for several waivers of safety tests and requirements that the government granted.  If government had been doing their job, perhaps this would never have happened in the first place.

Aside from closing the barn door after the horse has escaped, I see no mention in your e-mail about holding Congressional hearings to ask the Obama Administration why they have not yet suspended the Jones Act and accepted the offer of help from twelve countries in the cleanup effort. When asked, Thad Allen and Carol Browner offered the weak excuse that no one asked them for a waiver.  Why did the administration stand in the way of Louisiana building sand berms to stop the oil from reaching the coast because of environmental reasons?  From an environmental disaster standpoint, doesn’t the oil gushing in the Gulf trump other concerns?  We seem to have multiple agencies operating in the Gulf and each one is getting in the way of each other and no one in the administration is taking the lead to clear the red tape.  Why is that Congressman?

Instead of talking about preventing avoidable disasters in the future, why don’t you find out why this avoidable disaster was not prevented by the regulations we have on the books and by the agencies in charge of doing so?  For once, perhaps you can wait until those facts are known before you rush out to craft more legislation to fix a problem like you did with the financial services industries when it will be months before the Angelides Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission has finished its investigation. 

Government that works is more important than signing ceremonies for ill considered legislation that is rushed and voted upon but unread by our representatives.

Sincerely yours,

William R. O’Connell

 I am sure there will be a signing ceremony and tough talk about how we’re really putting an end to this wild unfettered market, but if you trace it back this disaster had government leading the way.  It forced the oil companies to drill in deeper water; it created a moral hazard by capping their liability for any spills to $75 million (which BP waived and accepted responsibility for the full costs); the regulatory agency in charge both collects royalty payments from the oil companies and assesses penalties for failure to comply with regulations; and that same agency granted BP several waivers to take shortcuts before the well failed.  But don’t worry Congress is really going to get tough now.

I received an e-mail from Congressman Tim Bishop to tell those on his mailing list that we are better off this tax day.  Having stood with thousands of fellow Tea Party protesters, a very polite crowd I might add, I don’t share his mirth.  So I penned him the following reply:

Dear Congressman Bishop,

 I received your e-mail today with the subject line, “Better Off This Tax Day”.  That is a statement I find both bold and curious.  It is a statement that you seem to share with President Obama who was surprised that the Tea Party gatherings were not organized to blow him a kiss and say “thank you.”  I would like to address some of the points in your e-mail.

You begin by saying, “There is bipartisan agreement that tax cuts help spur economic growth…”  Well, yes and no.  I agree as do many conservatives that less taxes are good for both our liberty and our economy.  But to be truly effective, the tax cuts have to give the individual the greatest freedom to use their money as they see fit, after all it is their money being given to the government and not the other way around.  Tax cuts are least effective when used to encourage people to engage in some specific activity the government wants them to do.  In other words, the tax cuts should go toward growing the economy, not getting politicians re-elected.

As you know, the unemployment rate stands at 9.7%.  A year ago President Obama told us, in the strongest of terms, that it was imperative that we pass a $787 billion stimulus package.  If we did not pass that package the unemployment rate would rise to 9%, whereas if it was passed the unemployment rate would peak at 8%.  That’s $787 billion to restrain the unemployment rate by 1%.  Conservatives disagreed that this would work.  It didn’t work.  Not only was the unemployment rate not capped at 8%, it went above the “do nothing” case of 9%.  Now we have $787 billion dollars that we have to pay back and it got us exactly nothing, other than the new Obama administration “metric” of “jobs saved” which no one outside of the administration or Democratic party knows how to measure.

Let me take a moment to address some of the specific tax breaks you are touting.

• Making Work Pay tax credit – this works out to about $8 per week for a taxpayer.  Where I live in the district, this won’t buy a pizza.  If I team up with my wife, it may.  So pardon me if I don’t get too jazzed up about this.
• The rest of the tax breaks are all great if you have income to take them against.  The problem is 9.7% unemployment and you and this administration seem to be working on anything but putting people back to work.

Tax cuts that actually spur the economy and create growth and jobs are tax cuts at the margins.  Cut the marginal tax rates for everyone, even the evil rich people who pay 70% of the total taxes.  Congressman as much as you hate to read this, when people in the upper income brackets get a tax cut, they do not put the money under their mattress.  They spend it or they invest it, both of which lead to job creation.  When jobs are created, people have income and they start spending and then maybe some of the tax cuts you are boasting about will be meaningful, but until then they are just brochureware that is something that looks nice in your campaign literature, but is otherwise meaningless.

Instead of doing what worked in the 1980s and 1990s, this administration insists on doing what didn’t work in the 1930s.  It’s time for this administration to propose something that might actually work and then you may see bipartisanship in support of that proposal instead of bipartisan opposition.

After receiving one too many e-mails, post cards and other marketing pitches to extoll the virtues of ObamaCare, I felt compelled to send the following letter to Congressman Tim Bishop.

Dear Congressman Bishop,

 Judging by the e-mails and mail pieces the marketing program now begins.  To tell the 50%-60% of Americans who adamantly opposed ObamaCare, now that it has been signed into law, what good medicine it really is.  Before I point out the areas on which we disagree, I would first like to call for a sense of honesty in the debate on healthcare.  I applaud you for such honesty where you say on your glossy postcard that it was prepared, published and mailed at taxpayer expense. I challenge you, however, on your opening sentence.

You begin your piece by stating, “On March 21^st, we stood up to big insurance companies and passed health care reform.”  Really?  How is using the full coercive power of the federal government to unconstitutionally force millions of Americans to buy the products of these big insurance companies, whether they want to or not, standing up to them?  I’ll bet Wal-Mart wishes you would get tough with them and require all Americans to shop there on Thursdays.  Are you next going to get tough with GM and Chrysler by passing legislation forcing us to buy a Malibu or a Ram pickup truck?  Of course you will probably smack them around and make them comply with tougher CAFE standards, but hey, that’s what big government is for, no?

I am still waiting to find out how spending $1-$2 trillion dollars results in reducing the deficit by $143 billion in the first decade.  This may be presumptuous but I have a suggestion on how to lower the deficit by $1-$2 trillion.  Repeal ObamaCare and start over.

Nothing in this legislation actually goes to the root cause of reducing the cost of delivering health care.  It’s all giant shell game about hiding whose pocket the money is coming from to really pay for the same old broken system.  Here are some of the “benefits” you point out in your mail piece:

•  Free Preventive Care Under Medicare – this eliminates co-pays and deductibles under Medicare. This doesn’t reduce what it costs medical professionals to deliver preventive medicine, it just lowers the price to consumers.  Economics 101 says when you decreases the price the demand goes up.  By eliminating co-pays and deductibles, someone has to make up this modest difference.  It is either the medical professional who has to eat the cost, driving up rather than reducing the cost of preventive care, or it will be subsidized by the rest of us through taxes.  You are betting that if every senior gets preventive care, more expensive treatments will be avoided later.  The real question is: how many seniors are not getting preventive care because they don’t have a $20 co-pay and of that group, how many turn out to have a serious disease that could have been prevented?  This is a much smaller group than all seniors.  You cannot make seniors go to the doctor for preventive care if they don’t want to, whether it is free or not. 
• Free Preventive Care Under New Private Plans– When I had my own small business, I provided our employees with healthcare.  I chose a plan that provided free preventive health care.  When I left that business and went out on my own, I tried to buy the same plan privately.  It had a high deductible, HSA account, and free preventive care.  Such plans are available, but not in New York unless you have poverty level income.  The marketplace has these plans available.  Government regulations prevent me from buying them.  Why do we need to spend $1-$2 trillion to give me a plan that the marketplace already provides if government will just get out of the way?
• Ensuring Value for Premium Payments – This is where you require plans to spend a certain percentage of premium dollars on medical services.  How does this control costs?  If the underlying costs increase 100%, does it make us feel warm inside that the 100% increase in premiums that will follow will go 80% toward medical expenses?  It’s still an increase in premiums of 100%.

 Let me stop analyzing your mail piece here.  Doctors are threatening to leave the medical practice because of this legislation which will lead to rationing. This plan does not address the underlying problem.

There is a simple way to reform health care by controlling the underlying cost of delivering medical care, rather than mandating more and more coverage and expense paid for by someone else.  We all pay in the end.  Here is a simpler way that does not cost $1-$2 trillion dollars but may take some of that courage you boasted about in your opening sentence. 

1. Eliminate 3^rdparty payer.  If you invite me to dinner and you tell me that you’re picking up the tab and I am handed a menu with no prices on it, look out!  It’s gonna hurt.  Americans are smart consumers.  They will spend hours researching a car or flat screen TV before buying, because it’s coming directly out of their pocket.  They play a role in how much they pay.  That’s how markets work.  We do not have a free market in health care.  The way to do this is with high deductable insurance plans and Health Savings Accounts (HSA).  If you take the lower cost of the premium for the insurance piece and add the amount to fund the HSA, the costs are about the same as the premium alone on a traditional plan.  I went from a $10,000 annual premium for a traditional plan to a $5,000 premium cost for a high deductible with a $5,000 contribution to the HSA account.  If you want to help people with deal with the high deductable, help them fund the HSA accounts, but keep the buying decision in their hands.  Trust me, they will ask questions, they will shop around, because it’s their money and the less they spend, the more they keep.  Many HSA accounts have a provision to roll money over into an IRA if the account grows large.  This will take guts to implement because the public will have to be educated that they will come out ahead when they have the liberty to make their own choices.  You seem tough enough to ignore the will of the people to implement what you feel is good for them, why not implement something that will actually work?
2. Implement tort reform.  Not an experiment here or there.  If you want to show how tough you really are, stand up to the trial lawyers who fill Democratic coffers.  Implement the system they have in Britain.  No contingency fees and loser pays.  Maybe I’ll stop seeing commercials on my TV that promote a new drug, followed by a come on from a law firm to call them if you actually took the drug because, “you may be entitled to compensation.”  I have no problem with a person getting compensated when they have been harmed through the fault or negligence of a company.  Human life is not perfection.  We are all different.  Some of us can eat three eggs a day and never have a heart problem, others may look at a pat of butter and feel pains in their chest.  Lawyers shouldn’t get rich because humans are not perfect and companies can be bluffed into paying these extortionists rather than defending the case on the merits.  Lawyers  should get paid for the time they put into a case.  OB/GYN doctors are leaving the practice in droves because they cannot afford the malpractice insurance premiums.  Doctors are practicing defensive medicine ordering every possible test for fear they will be asked later, if a patient gets worse, why they didn’t order that other test.  When you add the cost of malpractice insurance on top of the cost of additional tests and procedures, it doesn’t get cheaper to deliver health care and you are not necessarily delivering better health care.  Let the doctors practice medicine, tell the lawyers to stop running a lottery.
3. Buy insurance across state lines.  As indicated previously, the plan I want to buy is available, but not in New York.  The market sees a need for such a product, I want to buy such a product, the government says no.  You want me to believe that now if we spend $1-$2 trillion the government will solve my problems.  Get the government out of my way, thank you very much.
4. Have more tailored insurance policies.  Why, as I approach the golden years, do I have to buy a health insurance policy that covers pre-natal care? In vitro fertilization? Sex change operations?  When I buy automobile insurance, I have about a dozen choices in every category about the kind of coverage I want.  How much deductible?  Do I want rental car reimbursement?  Roadside assistance?  Yet when choosing a health care policy, if I have a choice at all, it is a total package, take it or leave it.  Who decides what has to be included?  Is it me or the government regulators?  If I want to have free preventive care, fine let me choose that and adjust the premium accordingly.  If I want to pay the co-pay for free preventive care, give me that choice.  If we had more choices, as in a free market, costs will go down.  If the government says, everyone must take this, there is no competition and costs climb.
5. Control illegal immigration – If emergency room costs are driving up health care costs for all, and illegal immigrants use the emergency room as their primary care provider then it would follow if you controlled illegal immigration you would drive down health care costs.  Milton Friedman, the great economist, believed in open borders.  However, he also said you can’t have open borders and a welfare state.  It doesn’t work.
6. We need to have Medicare reform.  When Medicare passed the government projected that hospital coverage would grow to $9 billion by the early 1990s.  It actually grew to $66 billion a 700% error in their projection.  We hear again that we are going to crack down on Medicare and Medicaid fraud and this time we really, really mean it.  Estimated at nearly $100 billion per year in waste and fraud, why can’t this be done without spending $1-$2 trillion?

 What you and this Congress passed is a disaster.  If the projections on this monstrosity “miss” by 700% like they did on Medicare, where do we go for a bail out?  Who is going to bankroll that one?  Your children?  Your grandchildren?  The six items I laid out cost next to nothing, why not try them first?  You can always go back later and say we need to do more.  But with ObamaCare, it could be a runaway train that no one can stop.  It is a giant shell game.  It doesn’t address the underlying cost of providing medical care, it only hides whose pocket is getting picked to pay the bill.

Sincerely yours,

The marketing juggernaut is just getting warmed up, but instead of standing fascinated while your Congressman plays 3-card Monty, ask him or her the tough questions.  Ask them calmly, respectfully, and don’t let them dance.  If they dodge your question, ask it again.  If they don’t… fire them in November.

Who doesn’t love a freebie?  Who does not get a thrill of good fortune by finding money in the street, no matter how insignificant the amount?  We may not believe in the Tooth Fairy, but many of us believe we have a rich benevolent uncle, Uncle Sam, who is willing to lavish upon us his wealth if only we would ask.  The sad truth is that Uncle Sam is not rich, but penniless and is running a ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff blush.

Health Care for $20

One of the major reasons that health care costs are rising out of control is that no one is minding the store.  While Washington twists itself in knots to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic of health care, we have little to no say in how our health care dollars are spent.  Our health care “insurance” system is not really insurance.  Insurance is meant to protect us from a financial catastrophe.  Going to the doctor for a checkup is not a catastrophe.  Paying a $20 co-pay for that checkup is like finding money on the street.  There is no way anyone can get a physical exam, except by a hooker, for $20.  It is a good idea to get a physical checkup every year?  Yes, then pay the bill and ask what you are paying for and make sure you need it.  You take your car in for service don’t you?  Do you file an insurance claim when you do?  Can you get it done for $20.  Let’s get real.  What we have is called third party payer and when someone else is picking up the tab, do we care what it costs?  Really?  But someone is picking up the tab.  Look in your other pocket, because you are.  If you are generally healthy and you get your annual checkup, your insurance premium (here in New York at least) will probably run around $10,000 per year.  But, hey, you only paid $20 for that physical!  What if you paid the full amount for the physical, say, $500.  What if your insurance premium was cut to $5,000 because you would pay most routine medical costs out of your pocket and what if you could put the $4,500 left over ($10,000 original premium, minus $5,000 current premium, minus $500 cost of checkup), into a tax free account that can be used for future medical expenses or retirement if you don’t use it?  If you are a young person and stay healthy into your mid-40s, you would have accumulated over $90,000 in your medical savings account and you still have catastrophic insurance coverage and the government stays out of the picture.

Retirement for Free

Like many well intentioned Government programs, Social Security, enacted during the Great Depression, seemed like a good idea at the time.  When enacted there was about 15 workers paying in for each recipient drawing out.  Today there are about a little over 3 workers paying in for each beneficiary.  Bernie Madoff would blush at the audacity of it.  On top of that the money that is paid into Social Security can only be “invested” in Treasury Securities so the return is lousy, but safe.  People reacted to Social Security by saving less because the government safety net was there.  Had people been encouraged to save for their own retirement, they would not be leaving their children this legacy of a ticking time bomb.  So today, many young people feel the government’s hand in their pocket when they look at the FICA line on their pay stub, but don’t believe they will ever get a penny back.  Nice concept.

Bring Home the Bacon!

What’s the measure of a good Congressman or Senator?  Bringing home pork for the district, no?  If you are like me, you get flyers every year or several times per year, touting how Congresswoman Jones obtained federal funding for that pier at the amusement park.  With 435 Congressmen you can count on this, for each $1 that your Representative brings home $434 leaves the Treasury for each of the other Congressional districts and probably more, depending on the power and seniority of your Representative.  Guess who’s paying for that Turtle Crossing in Florida?  that bridge to nowhere in Alaska? that airport in Johnstown, PA that no one uses?  That’s right, you are.  What if we decided locally if we really needed a pier at the amusement park, and if we did, pay for it ourselves?  Then we could let the people of Florida decide if they want to build a turtle crossing, the people of Alaska decide if they wanted a bridge to nowhere and the people of Pennsylvania decide if they wanted an airport that no one used.  Then we could cut federal taxes by an equal amount to keep them out of mischief and help us pay for these projects if we really wanted them.

Let’s Get Organized

There was a time in our history where labor unions performed a valuable service.  In those times when many industrial jobs were unskilled or semi-skilled, employers could dismiss someone on a whim and replace them within the hour.  Unions gave those workers some counterbalancing power and fairer treatment.  Today, we have a much more sophisticated economy and workers have more skills and mobility.  Union membership has declined accordingly, in the private sector at least.  Why is union membership still growing in the public sector?  What is different about workers in the public sector that they still need unions?  Are we suggesting that all government workers are unskilled?  Why do teachers need a union?  Are they not skilled such that they could sell their services to the highest bidder?  Why do unions fight merit pay for teachers?  Why are school principals, the de facto CEO of the school and who in New York easily make six figures, unionized?  Do you get an idea why our K-12 public school system is trailing the world in performance?

In Michigan, privately owned small businesses that provided day-care services suddenly discovered that they were part of a union and union dues were being withheld from their government contractual payments.

Ms. Berry owns her own business—yet the Michigan Department of Human Services claims she is a government employee and union member. The agency thus withholds union dues from the child-care subsidies it sends to her on behalf of her low-income clients. Those dues are funneled to a public-employee union that claims to represent her. The situation is crazy—and it’s happening elsewhere in the country.

Ms. Berry, runs “The Berry Patch” a private day care center she operates from her home catering to low income clients.  The money that was once paid to her, now goes to a union that does little for her.  She is “self employed and wants nothing to do with the union.”  Don’t you think we need more of these tactics in America?  Card Check anyone?

Going Postal

And let’s not forget the Postal Service.  As postal rates are again scheduled to increase on January 4, let’s look at this paragon of efficiency, that is actually authorized by the Constitution.  In 2008, the Postal Service lost $3 billion, and the Postmaster General John Potter pulled down $800,000 in compensation including $135,000 in incentive bonuses.  What do we have to pay this guy if he actually breaks even?  Also, let us not forget this is also a very heavily unionized operation.

Don’t Worry, You Won’t Feel a Thing

During World War II, FDR needed to raise more revenue to pay for the war.  Fearing a backlash, his team hit upon the idea of payroll withholding.  Knowing the potential backlash that would result when taxpayers had to write that big check on April 15th, he rightly figured that if he took a little bit each week, he could take a lot more in total.  Statists in Washington have never looked back.  It’s like the tax that was imposed on telephone service to pay for the Spanish American War that is still in place today.  Instead of picking our pockets every week, what do you think most Americans would say about the size of the federal government if they had to write one big check on April 15th?  There would be no tax rebates, because there would be no tax withheld.  Do you think Americans would force Congress to sharpen their pencils and scale back the size of government?

Help is On the Way

Ronald Reagan said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help!’”  But perhaps the best example of how far from our founding principles our government has strayed comes from Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut as she spoke during a House End of Year Wrap Up Session:

“This House–we understand, we’re there,” she said.  “You can count on us because we believe that it’s our moral responsibility to make sure that you and your family need our help.” 

I don’t know about you, but I don’t need the House of Representatives making sure I need their help.  I need as little interference as possible from them.  Their meddlesome intrusions in our lives is killing what made this country great.  It is a point we cannot make often enough.

There is panic in the ranks of the left this Halloween.  In today’s Times, Frank Rich, does his level best to whistle past the graveyard, but the fear is clear.  He astonishingly titles his piece, “The G.O.P. Stalinists Invade Upstate New York.”  I guess they feel the Hitler moniker has lost its zest, so the leftists resort to calling those on the right, Stalinists.  Their disorientation could not be more palpable.

What has them in such a tizzy?  It centers around the special election in New York’s 23rd Congressional District.  The local Republican party bosses chose a candidate, Dede Scozzafava, who would never be mistaken as a conservative, although Mr. Rich actually called her, “a mainstream conservative by New York standards.”  That’s like saying David Letterman is chaste by liberal standards, as if these things are measured on a relative scale.  But that’s the way liberals and statists think.  If your neighbor is more promiscuous than you, then you must be celebate.  If you want to make Nancy Pelosi a moderate, move her to Cuba.

Ground Shift

What has Mr. Rich and his cohorts nervously clearing their throats, is that the uprising against the entrenched statists, led by the Tea Parties, actually delivered results.   Ms. Scozzafava is pro-abortion, pro-same-sex marriage, pro-Obama stimulus package, pro-card check to make it easier to form a union without a secret ballot election, and supported by ACORN.  This is what Mr. Rich calls a conservative, “by New York standards.”  What sticks in his craw is that the election was a win-win, for him and his friends.  Elect the Republican or the Democrat and it doesn’t matter much, they both hold the same basic views.  Then along came Doug Hoffman.

Doug Hoffman threw his hat in the ring on the Conservative Party line.  By this Saturday, with support pouring in all across the country from true conservatives, Hoffman was in a dead heat with the conservative and the Republican Scozzafava was fading fast.  So she decided to suspend her campaign, and Mr. Rich and company hit the panic button.

So how does Mr. Rich frame his argument?  Well he starts by saying Hoffman has no grasp of local issues.  Uh, the position is United States Congressman, not city alderman.  He well understands the issues at the national level and how the policies of the Obama Administration are bankrupting the country.  Those policies will negatively affect the people in his district.  But leave it to Mr. Rich to scoff at Hoffman, because he doesn’t know how much pork barrel spending the district needs. A true patriotic Congressman, like John Murtha, finds a way to build an airport in the district that nobody uses and hands the bill to people in other districts like, well, New York’s 23rd.  He’s going to Washington to fight those who are bleeding the Treasury dry.  So Mr. Rich fights that by calling Fort Drum, home to the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division, a “pork-dependent military base.”  Hmmm…the last time I read my copy of the Constitution, it specifically required providing for the national defense.  I couldn’t find in my copy where it required building airports no one needed so that John Murtha could get re-elected in perpetuity.  I understand it is a fine distinction, but I would have thought someone employed by the New York Times would be able to make it.

Frank Rich’s Happy Talk

Mr. Rich oddly calls the developments in New York as good news.  With a recent Gallup Poll, showing that for every self-described liberal there are two self-described conservatives, Mr. Rich says the ideologues that brought about the events in New York’s 23rd, may then start picking off other conservatives and destroy the party.  Does he mean conservatives like Arlen Specter, Lincoln Chaffee, Olympia Snow, Susan Collins, Charlie Crist, oh my!  With 73% of GOP voters saying that Congressional Republicans have lost touch with their base, this is not good news for Mr. Rich and company.  What he believes is that a small cabal of conservatives will put unelectable candidates on the ballot that voters will reject and the Democrats will gleefully reap the rewards.  In reality, the GOP leadership has for too long put weak candidates on the ballot that Democrats easily beat because the Republican base cannot get excited about them.  McCain is a war hero and worthy of our admiration, but just look at his signature legislation:  McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy.  He was not a conservative on many fronts. 

Nixon was a conservative, Ford was not.  Reagan was a conservative, Bush 41 was not and  Dole was not.  George W. started more conservative than not, but then drifted to become a big spender.  McCain was not a conservative.  Do you see a pattern here?  Conservative Republicans win.

With Obama’s approval rating going down in a virtual straight line, Mr. Rich confidently proclaims that the only politician Obama has to fear is Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan.  By all means, Mr. Rich, you keep telling your pals that.

As the Obama Administration decides on the next block of liberties to be lifted from our lives.  Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel gave his assessment of the financial industry:

“The industry is already back to their pre-meltdown bonuses,” said White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. “We need to make sure we don’t slip back to risky behavior where the institutions have all the upside and the taxpayers have all the downside, which is why we need regulatory reform.”

Couldn’t the same be said of the government?  Members of Congress and this politburo of czars and commissars get paid ridiculously high salaries, have expense budgets, gold plated medical benefits, and a nice pension plan (the upside) and we taxpayers have all the downside.  We get one chance every 2, 4, or 6 years to choose between the incumbent and, realistically, one challenger.  And if the incumbent can skate by that one day, as Congressmen have done 85% to 98% of the time in the last 22 years, they are essentially untouchable for the next 2, 4, or 6 years.

Through the power of taxation they can take as much of our money as they want with a stroke of a pen, and what can we do about it?  Write our Congressman?  I wrote my Congressman on an issue of concern and I got a response that I thought was greatly flawed it its argument.  I wrote back a point-by-point critique of his letter and what did I get?  The exact same letter as the first time around with only the date changed.

They can take our money and give it to whomever they want, even if it against our core moral beliefs.  Are you opposed to abortion?  Too bad, the government will take your money and give it to Planned Parenthood.  Show me where in the Constitution the Congress has the authority to pay for abortions.  You save your money to buy a new car so you can also save on gas?  Well, what about your neighbor who is still driving a clunker?  Shouldn’t you now by him a car too? No?  Well, you just did, courtesy of the Obama Administration.

Joe Biden said, with regard to paying more taxes:

“It’s time to be patriotic … time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut.”

Who are the most famous tax cheats you know of today:

• Treasury Secretary — Tim Geithner
• Former Senate Majority Leader — Tom Daschle (D)
• House Ways and Means Committee Chairman — Charlie Rangel (D)
• Withdrawn nominee for Chief Performance Officer — Nancy Killefer
• Labor Secretary — Hilda Solis
• Trade Representative nominee — Ron Kirk

It seems paying taxes are optional once you join the political class, but for the rest of us?  Just try it.

Cutting it Down to Size

It’s time to cut government down to size.  It has gotten too big and too arrogant and has its fingers into too many of our pies.  We have got to follow the Constitution and eliminate that which is not included in the powers granted by it to the federal government.  Once we do that, we can probably send Congress home for half the year.  The more time they spend in session, the more trouble they get us into.

Can anyone offer us a deal to give us cash if replace our Congressional Clunkers?  How about the health insurance companies?  They’d probably kick in, since they are Congress’ new whipping boy.  Oil companies, coal companies?  They get bashed every time Congress screws up and bans nuclear power, offshore drilling, ANWR, and coal as the price of oil climbs.  Banks who didn’t take TARP money?  Well Congress wants to set their salaries now.

Congressional Mileage

How much liberty per dollar are we getting for the money guzzling Congressmen and Senators who pull down $169,300 per year (more for committee chairs, and Speaker Pelosi who weighs in at $217,400)?  And this doesn’t begin to count their expense budgets, gold plated health care, etc.  I’m sure we could get much better mileage from a smaller government and a Congress that only meets half a year.  I’m willing to bet that the longer Congress stays in session the more trouble they get us into, while consolidating their power and feathering their own nests.

Here’s the Plan

Let’s set up a fund.  We’ll let Goldman Sachs run it, as they seem to know how to turn a buck. Anyone can contribute to the fund, no limits. For every Congressman who voted for the Stimulus, Cap and Trade, and the Health Care disaster and is run out of office, the fund will pay out a percentage of the fund to everyone who registered and voted.  The percentage will be calculated as the percentage of these clunkers who are retired out of Congress.

Think about it.  If you are a voter who really, really believes that the Stimulus, Cap and Trade, and the government takeover of our health care system is a good thing, you will vote to re-elect the members of Congress who voted the same way.  However if you don’t, then perhaps you need a little personal stimulus to cross party lines, or set aside ideology, and vote the bums out.  It might even help improve voter turnout.  And why not?  If ACORN can get illegal aliens and dead people to vote for their candidates, we need a way to fight back.

What do you think?

Congressman John Conyers made this remarkable statement regarding reading a bill before voting on it?

“I love these members, they get up and say, ‘Read the bill,’” said Conyers.

“What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”

Here’s the video:  Why would I read health care bill John Conyers.  These people are paid $169,300 a year and they are voting on legislation that will alter 1/6 of the American economy and they don’t know what they are voting on? Who demanded that this be done in two days?  Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama.  If it takes them six months to read the bill, then TAKE THE SIX MONTHS!!! We wonder why there is so much government waste and fraud?  It’s really quite simple.  All the crooks and lobbyists are reading the bill very carefully, every page, probably 2-3 times.  Why?  Because as soon as it is passed they will know exactly where all the loopholes are, where the best opportunities for fraud are, so that they can rip off the taxpayers for billions, while Congress says, oh well, we better make the program bigger and put in more regulations and enforcement.

How much money do you make?  In your job, what would happen to you if you did your job without following instructions and did so willfully?  If you were a nurse and administered medication without following instructions what would happen to you?  If you were a fireman and rushed into a building without following safety procedures that are there to protect your fellow firefighters what would happen to you?  What is the fundamental job of Congressman, if not writing laws?  And they can cavalierly say, they don’t read what they are voting on?

Why does Texas have such a booming economy?  Could it be their legislature only meets once every two years?  Could it be they are required by law to complete their business in 140 days?  Could it be the legislators are only paid $7,200?  Think about it.

In the beginning days of 1789, Congress was paid only $6 a day, which would be about $75 daily by modern standards. But by 1965 members were receiving $30,000 a year, which is the modern equivalent of about $195,000.

Currently the average lawmaker makes $169,300 a year, with leadership making slightly more. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) makes $217,400, while the minority and majority leaders in the House and Senate make $188,100.

John Adams made $6 per day, $75 per day in today’s dollars.  Nancy Pelosi makes $217,400 per year.  Whom do you admire more?  If that doesn’t make you ill, you are made of sterner stuff than me.

Code of Hammurabi

When I was in engineering school, I was introduced to this part of the Code of Hammurabi, an ancient Babylonian king:

• If a builder build a house for some one, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built fall in and kill its owner, then that builder shall be put to death.
• If it kill the son of the owner the son of that builder shall be put to death.

It was intended to drive home the point that as engineers we should take what we do very seriously as someone may get killed if we get careless.  What could be more careless than what Conyers said.

I have said this before, the bill that created the Interstate Highway System, was only 29 pages long.  Our tax code is horrendous and incomprehensible, the stimulus bill is a disaster, Cap and Trade is another unread boondoggle, and health care is following.  And for this we pay these people, or should I say they pay themselves since we don’t vote on their salaries, more than four times the national average?

Read the 10th Amendment folks, we have got to take back our government and cut it down to size.