Maybe it’s just me. Perhaps not having lived in the rarefied air of academia or politics, I have a more roll up the sleeves, get some dirt under the fingernails approach to what a job entails. Today it seems that politicians like to get in front of the cameras, fire off a sound bite and then go do something more interesting.

President Obama puts our troops in harm’s way and then jets off to Brazil to be photographed doing the samba, and saying he wants to be first in line to buy more foreign oil, this time from Brazil. Didn’t he just say that he wants to cut our imports of foreign oil by one third? Shouldn’t we be drilling here rather than lining up new suppliers?

We have a myriad of problems that include spending, the crisis in the Middle East, North Korea, unemployment, the budget, and yet the president has found time to play sixty-one rounds of golf, at last count. Who’s minding the store?

Newly elected Delaware Senator Chris Coons got on television to lament that he is holding a job fair at his Delaware office and if the government shuts down Friday night, he won’t have any staffers to run the job fair. This is very, very bad. Er, excuse me, senator but your job is to pass a budget not to be the local employment office. Cancel the job fair, as I am sure there are plenty of government and private agencies that handle that, and get back to work doing what you were elected to do.

In a similar vein, Congressman Tim Bishop is scheduled to kick off his 2012 reelection campaign this Sunday so that he can plan on continuing to pick up his $174,000 salary for failing to pass a budget. I am sure his quick retort will be that he is in the minority and therefore powerless to move those stubborn Republicans. But it was his failure a few short months ago when he and Nancy Pelosi were in the majority to pass a budget resolution for the first time since budget resolutions became standard practice. They also failed to pass the appropriation bills to fund the government until the end of the fiscal year in October.

A cynic might look at it as a designed power play. “Look, we’re going to get clobbered in 2010, so let’s not vote on a budget or spending bills and it will be a twofer. One, we won’t be held accountable for voting for higher spending and that may save a couple of seats in November 2010; two, it will dump this mess in the Republicans lap and if we hold the Senate we can force a government shutdown and blame them like we did in 1995. Then we can coast back into power in 2012.” Of course, you would have to be a cynic to believe that, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you?

In the midst of the current budget crisis we hear an announcement by Harry Reid that their staffs will be working through the night, and the politicians will be back in front of the microphones tomorrow.

I worked a number of years in Information Technology, specifically in the credit card business. I can remember sitting at my desk on New Year’s Eve 1999. Perhaps the biggest New Year’s celebration of a lifetime and I was at my desk. Why? Remember the Year 2000 software bug? Well, we had to be ready to respond instantly if anying we worked endless hours to prevent slipped through. Nothing did and around 3AM or so, we started to head home. On the day after Thanksgiving, known as Black Friday, in the retail world it was “all hands on deck” to make sure that things worked and if there were any hiccups, we were on top of them immediately. Although I was a VP, I was there on the floor with the first line folks. The same went for any major software releases. If a critical decision had to be made we were there to make them. That’s the way it was done. We didn’t make pronouncements and go play golf. We were there onsite. But that is in the private sector, where things like profits and losses matter, accountability is real, and lifetime employment is unheard of. We could be fired any day, not just one day every two, four or six years.

We have a right to that accountability from our political leaders. Instead of raising funds for the next run for office, these politicians should have their salary cut off and be dipping into their savings to pay for the skyrocketing gasoline prices that are a result of not exploring for energy here, and instead destroying the dollar. Instead of doing their jobs, those on the left are ramping up their slime machines to give every reason under the sun why they can’t possibly cut any spending. There was some Congressman on the news talking about how wonderfully efficient Medicare is and how those evil Republicans want to put that in the hands of private insurers, horrors! It is common knowledge that between $60 – $100 billion is STOLEN from Medicare every year. How is that for efficiency? As I point out in my book Liberty’s Lifeline Steve Kroft of Sixty Minutes reported that stealing from Medicare pushed aside cocaine as the major criminal enterprise in South Florida.

2012 is coming and everyone one of these hand wringing, overpaid, do nothing, politicians should be bounced out on the street, if they don’t want to step up and transform Washington in to an efficient and accountable government.

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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAbg_Zat54I

Christine O’Donnell and Chris Coons sat down for a debate at the University of Delaware and Ms. O’Donnell remained calm and cool and delivered thoughtful, conservative responses to the moderator’s questions. At times it seemed that she was outnumbered with the two moderators joining Coons against her, but she held her own. Coons on the other hand was snarky and condescending, what you might expect from a bearded marxist. It seemed that Coons felt O’Donnell was another one of the unwashed masses that shouldn’t have been on the stage with him. I think she cleaned his clock.

The full debate can be found on the Internet and it runs about an hour and a half for those so interested.

There was a time when people came to our shores to find a better life.  To escape persecution and poverty and to build a better life for their children was their goal.  They found Lady Liberty lifting her lamp beside the golden door.

What happened next was that people assimilated.  Their children went to school with other children and learned to read and speak English.  Their names may have sounded different but before long their voices didn’t.  Sure, New Englanders sounded different than those from Mississippi, but they sounded very much like their neighbors.  They became Americans.

I just finished reading Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen’s historical novel, To Try Men’s Souls, which is the story of the George Washington crossing the Delaware on Christmas night, 1776, and attacking Trenton.  Trenton was guarded by Hessian mercenaries, who were some of the most elite soldiers in Europe.  It was a mismatch beyond belief, but in a last ditch effort, their password that night was “Victory or Death,” and with the element of surprise, they prevailed.  In one passage it mentioned American soldiers of Dutch and German extraction shouting to the Hessians to surrender, in German.  They were probably closer to the Hessians in culture and blood than to their fellow Americans from Boston, but they considered themselves Americans and were willing to die for their country.

The Balkanization of America

Today, we are mired in multiculturalism.  I remember the story of an Hispanic man loudly protesting to his local school board regarding bilingual education to which he was opposed.  “You’re teaching my son to be a janitor!” he said, “I want him to learn in English, so that he can get a job with a future!” 

We should not lose track of our roots.  It is right to celebrate where we came from.  One of the great things about New York is the different neighborhoods and parades that teach and celebrate about where we came from, which is good.  But if carried to the point where we no longer assimilate; where we remain pockets of groups with their own identity and politics, we are in grave danger of ceasing to be America.

During World War II, what if people of German heritage refused to fight against Hitler or for that matter felt a greater allegiance to him than to America?  Some did.  They were tried for treason. What if they were protected instead?  What if their differences were looked at with admiration rather than suspicion?

Fort Hood

Commentators in the news are twisting themselves in knots trying to disassociate Major Nidal Hasan’s slaughter of 13 Americans from his jihadist proclivities, despite evidence of outright hostility toward America and contact with a radical imam.  It is politically incorrect, to speak of his religion.  The Army Chief of Staff raises concern about negatively impacting the military’s record of diversity, if we focus on anything but a lone gunman who snapped.

But what if there is a larger plot?  What if there is an effort on the behalf of some Muslims to purposely not assimilate, to infiltrate the military and become a fifth column within?  Multiculturalism makes it far easier for this to occur because if everyone looks different, no one stands out.  On the other hand, if everyone assimilates, those who speak, act, or plot against America become more obvious.  Again, imagine multiculturalism in the United States in 1943.  You might have whole communities that were German to the core, did not like non-Germans among them and quickly spread the alarm when a stranger approached.  How much easier would it have been for Hitler to build a network of saboteurs?

Kill Multiculturalism Before it Kills Us

We must reinvigorate the idea of assimilation.  Speak any language you want at home; dress any way you want; practice your faith as you please, but where government is involved, we should be treated equally. We should speak one common language for all official business.  If not, where do we draw the line?

In Minnesota in 2007 a public university coffee cart was banned from playing Christmas Carols, but public money was being used to install foot baths to accommodate Muslims before prayer.  After the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and now another terrorist attack at Fort Hood, we have to be able to tell the good Muslims from those out to kill us.  We must have true peace loving Muslims, become true Americans.  We have to engender that we are Americans first, like those early Americans of Dutch and German decent, and not have divided loyalties particularly where the “other loyalty” insists on killing us infidels.