A funny thing happened as Congressman Tim Bishop tries to manufacture a campaign issue. The very thing he is fighting about, we learn that the government has been underwriting with taxpayer dollars.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) had a program to train people in Sri Lanka high-tech IT skills so that they could better compete in the world economy. Needless to say, such competition would come at the expense of American workers. As a free marketer, I don’t have a problem with private enterprises investing their own money any where they want to. I have a big problem with using taxpayer dollars to train foreigners to take away American jobs.

My first problem is with the morality of taking taxpayer dollars to help take away taxpayer jobs. My second problem is that I don’t find a right to do that anywhere in the Constitution. To his credit Tim Bishop in 2010 fought to stop the program.

In 2010, Bishop compelled USAID to abandon a high-tech training program for outsourcing industry workers in Sri Lanka, with the agency committing to “conduct a review to ensure the project will not take any jobs away from Americans.”

Note the year. Tim Bishop has been in Congress since 2002. This program came to light as a result of investigative reporting by Information Week magazine, in August of 2010. What else was happening in the fall of 2010? Tim Bishop was running for reelection against Randy Altschuler who started a business and later sold it that provided business services to companies with employees in the US and overseas. Bishop won by a whisker, but the outsourcing angle is his last, best hope for his rematch with Altschuler.

The problem is that Congress holds the purse strings and this program could not have been funded without Congress’ approval. What did Tim Bishop know and when did he know it? If he argues he was unaware of the program the question becomes, is the federal government that Tim Bishop loathes shrinking, too big for Congress to properly oversee? If Tim Bishop did know about it, why didn’t he stop it earlier or prevent it from being funded in the first place?

I am reminded of that famous scene in the movie Casablanca, where Claude Rains professes to be “shocked, SHOCKED,” that gambling is going on in the back room as member of the club’s staff comes out to hand him his gambling winnings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM_A4Skusro

Now it turns out a new program has been launched by the Obama administration (again USAID) to train people in the Philippines to speak better English to prepare them for better jobs, such as in outsourced call centers. This is what President Obama said at an insourcing summit:

 ”My message to business leaders today is simple. Ask yourself what you can do to bring jobs back to the country that made our success possible. And I’m going to do everything in my power to help you do it.”

Really? But is anyone surprised that this president says one thing while doing the exact opposite? President Obama and Tim Bishop bailed out GM, which then immediately turned around and increased offshore production.

Instead of funding the training of people in other countries to compete for American jobs, perhaps the focus should be on revising our tax code so that the US doesn’t have the highest corporate tax rate in the world, which makes it attractive to locate operations overseas in the first place. The tax code also traps profits from those operations overseas so that it makes sense for businesses to expand those operations overseas rather than bring the money back to the US (where it will get taxed more as soon as it arrives) to expand here.

Just more hypocrisy from the big government crowd. They don’t fix problems. They screw the American people coming and going. It’s time for a change.

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

I just got my latest e-mail update from Congressman Tim Bishop and one cannot help but just shake his head. He leads off by mentioning his bogus survey, and tells the reader how (surprise!) people are concerned about taxes. Of course that is when Tim Bishop loses his way again.

You see Tim Bishop is a big supporter of the payroll tax cut. He is also a big supporter of big spending and big government. So let’s examine this closely. What is the purpose of the payroll tax? In the structure of the great Ponzi scheme that it is, the payroll tax goes to fund Social Security checks and Medicare. So a payroll tax takes away revenue from these programs. To put it another way, Tim Bishop is saying, “Let’s raid the piggy bank of today’s retirees and hand the bill to our children and grand children.” They will have to pay more than they did before because not only must they support the baby boomers who are now retiring they will have to make up the shortfall from this cut in funding. Tim Bishop is actually bragging about this.

Class Warfare

He then goes into the class warfare riff, about how nobody likes to pay taxes, that Republicans want to balance the budget on the backs of middle class taxpayers, etc. Okay, let’s talk about fairness. How fair is it that 47% of income earners pay no income tax? How politically dangerous would it be if that number increases to greater than 50%, such that the majority of voters pay no taxes, but the minority is demanded to pay more? Is that fair? Is that America?

“That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.” – James Madison, March 29, 1792, Essay on Property

But who do you want to believe? James Madison, the father of the Constitution, or Tim Bishop? It is income taxes, not payroll taxes, that go to the funding of the federal government. Tim Bishop attacks any curtailment of income taxes but makes not a peep about curtailment of runaway spending. No, we need to spend more on Solyndra, on bailouts, on Fannie and Freddie, on the Department of Education! We need to tax, tax, tax, he says.

He then attacks the Ryan budget. This is from a man whose party has not passed a budget, as required by law, in the Senate in nearly three years. This is from a man whose party leader, the president, has seen his budget go down in  a Democrat controlled senate 97-0, and he attacks Paul Ryan’s plan? What’s Tim Bishop’s plan? Oh, that’s right, stop the outsourcing of call centers overseas. That will get the economy humming.

He specifically attacks broadening the tax base.

“Base-broadening” is a Washington term for eliminating some of the credits and deductions that help middle-class families own a home, send their children to college, and afford healthcare.

No, Tim, broadening the tax base means getting more people into the workforce as taxpayers. Get it? Broadening the base, not squeezing more out of it. After squandering nearly a trillion dollars on the stimulus that promised us unemployment would not rise above 8%, it has not been below 8% since then. That is the worst record since the Great Depression, but of course that was all Bush’s fault.

It’s time to realize the hope and change experiment is over. It is time to get back to the principles of the founders which make this country great for over two centuries. It’s time to get rid of the politicians who keep throwing sand in the gears in the form of mountains of regulations. It is time to shrink government back to where it protected our rights and liberties rather than took them away to substitute them with the collective wisdom of politicians like Tim Bishop.

Tim Bishop says we need more spending, more stimulus, more debt, no solutions. I say, no more. 2012, the end of an error.

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

Andrew Breitbart at CPAC

The shocking news arrived courtesy of Fox News this morning. Conservative lion Andrew Breitbart was dead. In his pursuit of conservative principles and his disdain for the other side, he was fearless.

He grew up as a secular liberal, but had his epiphany during the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court hearings. He saw how the left was lying and trying to destroy a man with a great American story. After that he became a Reagan conservative with libertarian leanings.

He started working with Matt Drudge helping spread Drudge’s articles across the Internet. He later helped Ariana Huffington create the Huffington Post website. He went on to create his own group of sites including Big Government and Big Hollywood.

I first met him at the 26th Annual Martin Luther King National Holiday celebration sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality dinner in 2011. He was the chosen to be the master of ceremonies because of the firestorm surrounding the alleged use of the “N-word” during Nancy Pelosi’s famous march to the capital to pass ObamaCare. He was being damned as a racist by every main stream media outlet, and CORE would not let that stand.

He didn’t pull punches as he wrapped up his address to the dinner saying “the GOP sucked,” and then this:

The Tea Party needs you, period. Allen West and Tim Scott did not get elected through the leadership of the Republican Party. They got elected because of the Tea Party and I have been to Tea Parties all across this country and the people who move the crowds, they’re not invited to speak, they just show up and they’re the people that possess the crowds, and that is African Americans; and that is Hispanic Americans who understand that this country has been divided along the grounds of race and creed and we have been pitted against each other by this multicultural model that is nothing short of cultural Marxism.

I next met him at CPAC last year where he was trying to get greater focus on a scandal that was bilking the federal government of over $1 billion in bogus payments to fictional farmers claiming they were harmed by the government in the Pigford case. People who did no more farming than having a potted plant in their backyard were being encouraged to apply for a $50,000 settlement.

In April of last year his publicist contacted me to see if I wanted to interview him about his new book, Righteous Indignation. I called him on his cell phone and he asked if I was going to record the call. I said that I would like to, and he asked me to call him back on a better line so the recording would be a better quality, which I did. He was someone who truly understood the details of getting the message out.

He went to Wisconsin to challenge the protesters who were attacking Scott Walker trying to wrest his state from the grip of public sector unions. He went to Occupy Wall Street to see if this was truly a grass-roots movement, or a

carefully orchestrated effort from the left. Hopefully his untimely death will not delay that film’s release in the next month or two. It took an Andrew Breitbart to make an entrance to the meeting introducing the film in a mask.

He was always a fighter but he was also charming. At CPAC he spoke about being invited by a friend to a Super Bowl party at the home of none other than Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn. He said they were very civil to him and that Bill Ayers was a fantastic cook.

Andrew Breitbart always seemed to be running at hyperspeed. Perhaps God took him from us because he accomplished in 43 years what many others couldn’t complete in 80. He often said that this election was perhaps the most important one in our history. He is counting on us to carry the flag forward. Let’s not let him down. Thank you, Andrew, for the inspiration you gave us to get up and get into the fight.

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

Congressman Tim Bishop continues to push his manufactured campaign issue, with the full union backing of the Communication Workers of America, to fight against outsourced call centers. He calls it a “surgical strike”. I think there are more appropriate names for it.

It’s always fun to listen to someone who hasn’t spent a day outside of academia or government tell the rest of us, a) what the problem is; and b) what the solution is. The first question that I would ask Congressman Bishop is “why is this such an important issue for your constituents?” Answer: It isn’t. There are no major call centers in his district and there are none that I know of that are weighing a move to his district. So why is this his major legislative focus?

He is desperately looking for an issue, any issue, that he can campaign on. He cannot campaign on his record. He cannot campaign on a record of supporting the Obama economic disaster. He cannot campaign on how much the debt ballooned on his watch. So Doctor Bishop wants to do a little surgery and penalize companies who outsource call centers. Since Bishop never held a job that produced anything for a profit he can be excused for not grasping the impacts of his proposed bill.

One of his provisions is to make companies that have outsourced call center jobs overseas ineligible for government contracts. Two of the largest US PC manufactures HP and Dell and they both have call centers overseas. So does Congressman Bishop want the stop the federal government from buying PCs from HP and Dell? Who should they buy them from? Chinese Lenovo, Taiwan based Acer? Japan’s Toshiba? Speaking like a general he says it is a surgical strike. Well surgical strikes are designed to limit collateral damage, and Bishop’s plan is chock full of collateral damage.

Here is how Bishop could really help the situation. First, take a basic economics course. Study how the global economy works and how free global trade helps everyone. Perhaps he should ask his backers at the Communications Workers of America, what they can do to make call centers in the US more cost-effective. Do they have too many work rules in their contracts? Do they force their members to pay union dues to pay for the union to back Bishop and Obama? If their dues were limited to collective bargaining, perhaps employers could afford more call center jobs in the US. Tell Obama we need to slash the corporate tax rate so that companies do not save billions of dollars by locating operations in overseas countries with lower tax rates and then trap those profits overseas so they can’t be brought back to create jobs here.

But that may be too much to ask of Mr. Bishop before November. So here’s a better idea. Step down, and let someone who has actually created jobs take your place.

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

It’s time for Romney and Gingrich to step up their games with the fall in mind and stop slinging mud at each other. I’ll give Santorum and Paul a pass at this point as although they are trailing far behind, they are trying to stay on the high road and true to their beliefs.

Tips for Mitt

It’s time to give up the ghost on RomneyCare. Okay, you were a govenor and states are sovereign and it looked like a good idea at the time. But your efforts to defend RomneyCare while attacking ObamaCare is one of the reasons that many conservatives don’t trust you. ObamaCare is largely resonsible for the birth of the Tea Party, the only birth that conservatives want associated with ObamaCare and Obama probably wishes it was an abortion instead. I think many conservatives would accept you saying, it appeared workable, no one had tried it before, states should be a laboratory for differnt approaches to governing, but this idea really didn’t work, and regardless of whether it worked or not, healthcare is not the constitutional responsiblity of the federal government. Then forcefully reitereate that you will end ObamaCare.

Everyone knows that politics is not beanbag. It is a full contact sport, but just be careful with taking things out of context to twist their meaning. There should be enough differences between you and Gingrich, to present your plans and let the people decide. Keep it clean, no hitting below the belt.

Tips for Newt

It’s time to put on your big boy pants. If you think Romney is tough, wait until you get in the ring with Obama. He will have no compunction about lying about your record. If your excuse for not doing as well in the last two debates is that you never stood next to someone on the same stage who lied about your record, you have a rude awakening coming. If most of your supporters are salavating to see you debate Obama and this is all it takes to knock you off your debating game, throw in the towel now, please!

You need to come clean on what you did for Freddie Mac. Obama is still blaming the economy on the Bush years and the terrible mess he was handed, the center of which was the housing meltdown. If you don’t put on the table exactly what your role was and what you were paid to do, Obama will have a field day saying, “For the past four years we have been trying to recover from the housing crisis, and do you really want to put someone in the White House who caused it? De we really want to go back there?” Newt, you have to get this out now and put it behind you if he can.

It’s Obama and the Economy, Stupid

If we don’t get Obama out of the White House, ObamaCare will be permanant. If you thought Obama had socialist leanings before, imagine what they will be if he no longer has to face the electorate? If the past three years haven’t been painful enough, what will happen with a Republican Congress and an Obama presidency? Obama will try to run on a “do-nothing” Congress this fall but that’s a tough sell with the Democrats in Control of the Senate, but if the Republicans take both chambers and Obama stonwalls for two years, he can make that argument in 2014, “It’s a Republican Congess and we are stonewalled. I need a Democratic Congress to work with.” We may see a reverse landslide to 2010. Let us not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. This should be an easy election to win, if we don’t screw it up ourselves.

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

Don’t pay attention to what you are hearing from Obama’s supporters. What they really want may be the opposite of what they are saying.

Let’s start with some basic math. Forty percent of Americans self-identify themselves as conservative, twenty percent as liberal, leaving forty percent in the middle. For a conservative to win, they have to hold their base (40%) and pick up twenty-five percent of those in the middle (25% of 40% equals 10%). That will give them fifty percent of the vote. Liberals, on the other hand, need to hold their base (20%) and pick up seventy-five percent of those in the middle. The last time the Republicans nominated a true conservative, Ronald Reagan it was two blow-out victories. Liberals will argue that the time before that Republicans picked Barry Goldwater and it was a blow-out the other way. This is true, but I believe there were some mitigating circumstances. First, if Goldwater was elected he would have been the third U.S. president in less than three years. America might not have been ready for that. Then there was the famous Johnson ad suggesting that Goldwater was ready to start a nuclear war.

What is different since then? America is ready for a new president, as they were when Jimmy Carter was in office. The is no threat of an all out nuclear war, although there are nuclear dangers. Last, I turn to a famous quote by Winston Churchill, “If you are twenty, and you are not a liberal you have no heart. If you are forty, and you are not a conservative, you have no brain.” We are a more conservative country now.

Mitt Romney

I believe Obama would prefer to run against Romney. Conservatives do not embrace Mitt Romney. So right out of the gate, he is at risk of losing part of his base. To succeed he has to pick up more of the middle. In an Obama vs. Romney match-up, don’t think the race card will not be played. It will be done in a subtle way. For example, the main stream media will probably run more stories about race in America, inequality, unemployment among minorities, suggesting it is racially motivated. If enough white guilt can be kept alive, Obama gets another shot. In a debate, Obama can go right after Romney and say I based ObamaCare on RomneyCare, and don’t deny it. Romney is immediately on the defensive. Obama will try to narrow the differences between him and Romney. As the governor of a blue state, Romney had to take some positions  to get elected. Obama will highlight those. If he can make the case of who do you want to vote for, the honest upfront liberal, or the pseudo liberal in Republican clothing, it will be another Obama-McCain match.

Rick Perry

Rick Perry has stronger conservative credentials, but has lost support over his immigration stance. That means an even tougher hill to climb, capturing more of the middle with stronger conservative credentials than Romney. The other negative is that Perry’s debate performances have been dismal. I don’t think Obama will have a hard time pushing Perry’s hot buttons in a debate and if he can bait him into an outburst, Perry’s done.

Herman Cain

I think Herman Cain is who Obama’s team fears the most. Conservatives are embracing Cain, so he seems to be in the best position so far to hold the base. The race card is out of play. Cain has been working on getting his positions down on policy, but when gets it, he knows his material. He does not need a teleprompter to deliver a speech. He has executive experience like Romney and Perry, but not in government. Which could be a bad thing, or it could be a good thing. The bad thing is that government experience helps in knowing what levers to pull. The good thing is that you don’t accept that’s the way it has always been, you ask why? If no one can give you a good reason, stop doing it. That could be huge with today’s bloated government. I have no concerns about a one-on-one debate between Obama and Cain.

The Abortion Issue

There is a big kerfuffle over what Cain said in response to a question on abortion. He said it was a personal decision. Here is the actual clip;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPKYYDefMV4

Cain makes a couple of points and Piers Morgan tries to set the usual trap. Cain clearly and emphatically says he is pro-life. He also talks about the federal government’s role in abortion since, after all, he is running for a federal office. Abortion is not in the Constitution, either for or against. There is no Constitutional right to kill your child. Prior to the disastrous Roe v. Wade decision, it was left up to the states, which is where it should be. So Morgan goes for the trap, find a difficult personal dilemma, put your guest in that role and try to get them to contradict himself. Cain didn’t bite, but he fell short in his explanation. What he later explained he meant by a personal decision was that when faced with such a dilemma, you are going to follow your beliefs, talk about it with your family, maybe get spiritual counseling, but the last thing you will probably do is a Google search on what the law is. As Reid Buckley wrote about his family in An American Family: The Buckleys,  “The solidarity that our parents fostered in their children was remarkable. God, Family, Country…and in that order.” You do what you believe is right and sort out the consequences later.

The Media

The media is attacking Cain because he is the front-runner and they see him as a big threat to Obama, mainly because they will lose the race card, their favorite tool. After all what can Janeane Garafolo say now? What can they attack the Tea Party about? Obama will be forced to run on his record, his healthcare, his immigration policy.

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

Just when you thought Joe Biden couldn’t get any lower he finds a new bottom to scrape. In an act of desperation to save the sorry state of this administration Joe Biden introduces rape and murder as justification to pass their latest job bill and implies that if you oppose the jobs bill you are in favor of more rape and murder.

First of all, police, firefighters and teachers are not employees of the federal government. They are employees of and paid for by local government. So any money that comes from Washington to help pay their salaries will at some point end and then what? Either the state or locality comes up with the funding to maintain those positions or they have to lay them off. The Republicans accurately called that measure temporary.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxxotkX9ZOo

So Biden says increases in crime that have happened in Flint, Michigan, specifically rape and murder will increase if the Republicans continue to oppose this second stimulus package. It is not temporary to the crime victim, Biden says.

Let me provide Vice President Biden some scenarios, not hypothetical, but a true stories.

Sherry Rives, of Bear Creek, North Carolina, emerged from her shower to see a knife-wielding man coming towards her. When he threatened to rape her, she ran into her bedroom and got her 9 mm pistol. The two wrestled for the pistol and Rives was wounded in the thigh. She then gained control of the pistol and shot her tormentor several times, forcing him to flee. She then locked herself in the bathroom and called police. When police arrived, they found the would-be rapist dead with four bullet wounds to the chest. The woman’s father said she kept the pistol in the house for protection and she knew how to use it.– The Herald, Sanford, NC, November 12, 1997

The burglar ransacked 81-year-old Alberta Nicles’ Muskegon, Michigan, home before waking her up and ordering her around the house to search for money. Ending up back in her bedroom, the intruder–a suspected crack addict with a long history of criminal activity–removed the widow’s pajama bottoms and was preparing to rape her when she informed him that she knew where there was some money. Her assailant let her up and followed her to a closet where the woman instead retrieved her late husband’s .38. She turned and shot her tormentor to death. Nicles then went to a neighbor’s home to call police because her own lines had been severed by the intruder prior to his breaking in. “This was not just a random breaking and entering. …He was planning on taking advantage of the vulnerability of an elderly person. …She was clearly acting in self-defense,” Muskegon County Prosecutor Tony Tague said.– The Chronicle, Muskegon, MI, January 2, 1997

A Stockton, California, real estate agent put an end to an attempted rape, after a man posing as a potential home buyer attacked her in a model home. Crumpling to the floor, the realtor drew a .380 from her purse, forcing the man to flee. Pursuing him outside, the woman fired several shots at the man, missing him as he jumped in his car. She halted his escape by shooting out one of his tires and with the help of some nearby construction workers, held the thug for police. The would-be rapist is being investigated in connection with a similar 1993 attack on a female real estate agent. — The Record, Stockton, CA, February 18, 1995

Those of us who defend the Second Amendment have a saying, “When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.” I would like to ask Vice President Joe Biden where in each of the scenarios above the victim, or potential victim, could stop the action, call 911, and then wait patiently with their attacker until the police arrive? I would guess that Vice President Biden would say, gee that’s a tough situation, you should probably submit to the rape so that you are not killed, of which there is no guarantee, and then call 911 as soon as you can afterward.

Joe Biden has been an outspoken supporter of gun control. He doesn’t grasp the fact that police rarely stop crimes, they investigate crimes. It is the deterrent effect of certain punishment that may prevent crimes. What can stop a crime in progress is a citizen with the right to carry a gun. Other than that it is picking up the pieces. So to come full circle in the analogy, by his advocacy of gun control Joe Biden is responsible for more rapes and murders than anyone who votes for this new round of stimulus. I could, once again, say shame on Joe Biden, but what would be the point?

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

photo by kevin dooley

Tim Bishop is frustrated. He says so in an e-mail to constituents. When you have subsisted in Washington by spending other people’s money while making it appear you are Santa Claus, you get frustrated when the spending spigot is shut off. He laments that the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives has not “advanced a real agenda”. Really? The House passed a budget. How are Tim’s Bishop’s colleagues in the Senate doing with that? With the nation sinking under $16 trillion in debt, about $6 billion of which was added since Tim Bishop went to Congress, the Republicans passed “Cut, Cap, and Balance.” Tim Bishop voted against it, and his colleagues in the Senate wouldn’t even vote on it. Just what does the term “real agenda” mean to Tim Bishop?

Tim Bishop voted against a bill that would halt new EPA regulations on cement companies until the matter was studied further. Tim Bishop voted billions of dollars for “shovel ready” projects that President Obama later snickered weren’t so shovel ready (another revelation for the most inexperienced president in our history). Who knew? Now if I am not mistaken, as an engineer I believe a fair amount of concrete would be needed in most construction projects. So again, we have Tim Bishop in a fight with himself. He calls for more infrastructure spending, and then opposes delaying new regulations on cement companies, cement being one of the primary ingredients in concrete. What a concept; let’s spend boatloads of money on construction and make construction more expensive at the same time so that we get the least amount of bang for our buck.

Tim Bishop voted against a bill that would require the economic impact of EPA regulations be evaluated. If it is okay to require an environmental impact statement on construction projects, why not require an economic impact statement on EPA regulations? Tim says that would be bad.

If that is not enough, he closes his e-mail by asking constituents to send him ideas on how Washington should get more involved. This is from the Congressman who had to intervene on behalf of Long Island wineries to get Washington to speed up on the approval of the shape of their wine bottles and their labels. This we need more of? If you look at the Constitution, half of what the federal government does is not in there and should be shut down.

Tim Bishop voted for the stimulus that will have to be paid back. Based on the fact that his district is wealthier than average (let’s chant together, “Tax the Rich! Tax the Rich!”), we will end up paying about $3 billion of that tab while the district got about $600 million in funds. That means that Tim Bishop voted in favor of a program that will provide about $3 billion in funding somewhere else at a cost of around $600 million to those citizens. This has typically been the case in New York. Our heavily Democrat congressional delegation keeps voting for bigger and bigger government that New Yorkers have to pay far more for than they ever receive in benefits and they wonder why New Yorkers are moving elsewhere? (Hint: that’s why we are losing two Congressional seats). How dumb is that?

Tim Bishop doesn’t have a clue, and doesn’t appear to be looking for one. It is time for a change.

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

President Obama Speaking at Solyndra

Congressman Tim Bishop has not been able to keep from spending, no matter what. The Postal Service has an $8.5 billion deficit, and Tim Bishop is out there fighting to keep an unneeded post office open. We are trillions of dollars in debt and he comes out blasting the Tea Party, because they want Congress to not waste anymore money on green boondoggles like Solyndra.

At issue is a Continuing Resolution, that is, a bill to provide temporary funding to the government. At the heart of the issue is that the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) has run out of money, so there is an issue of whether to give them $3 billion more or $6 billion more. In addition the Republicans want to cut funding for such green projects like Solyndra, which just declared bankruptcy after getting a $500 million taxpayer-funded loan guarantee. How heartless can those Tea Party people be to not want to send good money after bad for progressive boondoggles? But of course we should listen to Tim Bishop. After all he has been such a trusted steward of our money so far, right?

The above chart shows how much debt limit has been increased by Congress to keep the government functioning, since 1940, when it was almost zero. Tim Bishop was sworn into Congress in January of 2003, from a point where it had leveled off, the line almost goes vertical. That is eight trillion dollars in additional borrowing in just ten years in office, and he has the utter gall to say the Tea Party’s calls for restraint are unwarranted? Somebody has to do it. If Tim Bishop and Nancy Pelosi had not spent trillions of dollars that the government didn’t have, maybe we wouldn’t be quibbling over $3 billion.

Waste and Fraud

It remains to be seen if Solyndra was a massive fraud or the Democrats thinking they are really investment bankers and venture capitalists rather than elected officials, but we could have used that $500 million rather than waste it. But Bishop objects:

“Even worse, the Republican bill calls for much of that sum to be funded by cutting federal loan programs that have encouraged new job creation by U.S. automakers and clean energy manufacturers.” — e-mail message from Tim Bishop to his constituents.

$39 billion in stimulus dollars have been earmarked for green energy jobs. So far, $19 billion has been spent and 3,500 jobs have been created. That’s $5.4 million per job, people, do you think we can do better than that in the private sector? But what is a “green job?” According to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, if you drive a hybrid bus, it’s a green job, if you drive a gas-powered bus it is not a green job.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1scrqqWpFlM

As one pundit put it, Washington is the only place where the circus never leaves town. This is what Congressman Bishop decries that Republicans are trying to cut. Do you think your hard-earned money is being well spent?

There is a report out today that the federal government paid about $600 million to federal workers who are DEAD! The Justice Department buys muffins for a meeting that cost $16 each! Medicare and Medicaid routinely have $60-$100 billion per stolen, and Tim Bishop has no suggestions how to cut, and even takes the time to write his constituents that, “I am sick and tired of this divisive posturing we have come to expect from the Republican Tea Party Caucus.”

I have a piece of news for you, Congressman, in case you have not been paying attention. The last Democrat who thought it would be a great idea to attack his opponent as beholden to the Tea Party was a guy named David Weprin in the 9th Congressional District of New York special election. In a district that was 3:1 Democrat registered voters, he lost big. Many Tea Party members from the heart of your district traveled on their own time and at their own expense into Brooklyn and Queens to get out the vote for Bob Turner. If you think it is a winning strategy to attack the Tea Party, I have three words for you. Bring it on.

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

Photo by Mike Licht, nationscapital.com

Often overlooked in the class warfare that President Obama is unleashing on America so that he can continue spending, is how business is being strangled by regulations. Every time the government fails to protect our rights and freedoms because it is too busy trying to micromanage our lives, and as a result some calamity descends upon us, the answer is always more regulations. Nowadays, that will typically mean thousands of pages of new laws that turn into tens of thousands of pages of new regulations and those who never met a payroll wonder why we are stuck at 9% unemployment.

Why does this happen? I believe there are two reasons. The first is the expansive view of the Constitution that many progressives hold. There is very little that they believe the federal government is not allowed to do. Most of our law schools are also espousing the concept of a “living, breathing” Constitution, meaning that what the Founding Fathers wrote is quaint but its meaning must change with the times. The graduates of those law schools eventually make it to the bench and even the Supreme Court. The problem is that if you take that view, the Constitution is meaningless.  If you can say the Constitution meant this in 1792, but those same words mean something else today, you no longer have a Constitution.  As Jefferson wrote,

“Our peculiar security is in possession of a written Constitution; Let us not make it blank paper by construction. –Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Wilson Cary Nicholas, Monticello, September 7, 1803.

The progressives are doing exactly what Jefferson said we should not do, turn the Constitution into blank paper, by contriving different meanings from the words than the authors intended.

The second problem is that the function of the Congress is to write laws. They don’t enforce them, that’s the role of the executive branch. So their knee jerk reaction to a problem is to write another law, regardless of whether the previous law is not working simply because it is not enforced.

So what are the checks on this runaway regulation? Congress keeps churning out more and more regulations that are choking the economy, and the Supreme Court has let them wander far afield of the Constitution. There used to be another check on runaway federal power, but that was eliminated with the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution.

When the Founders created the concept of the United States, they envisioned a president elected by the people, a judiciary appointed for life, and a Congress split into two chambers. One of those chambers, the House of Representatives would be the branch of government closest to the people. The other chamber was to represent the states. If you recall it was the states that created the federal government, not the other way around, and the states wanted to have a say in that government. To do so, senators were appointed by state legislatures, and as such, if they wanted to remain in that role they were to represent the interests of the states to the federal government.

The Seventeenth Amendment changed it so that senators would be directly elected by the people. Knowing human nature as I am sure you do, would senators continue to care what their state legislatures wanted or would they start to pander to individual blocks of voters? So with the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment the states were shut out of a direct say in the federal government and were reduced to becoming lobbyists.

If you think of some of the more partisan senators, from both sides of the aisle, do you think they would be appointed by their state legislatures? Do you think there would be any such thing as a federal unfunded mandates? Do you think there would be a Department of Education?, Transportation? Housing and Urban Development? EPA? Most states already have similar departments at the state level. What senators, appointed by their state governments, would pass these laws? Very few, I would venture to say.

Regulations in Action

Consider where we are today. Early in the Bush administration, concern was raised about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and their solvency. Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank said they were fine, and Dodd filibustered any attempt to rein them in. The financial industry blew up and what do we now have? The Dodd-Frank Act that layers on massive regulation to the financial services industry and many banks are just sitting on money rather than lend it.

In 2001, Enron went bankrupt taking billions down the drain with it. The principals of that firm ended up with long prison sentences. The accounting firm that audited the books went out of business, but somehow that was not enough. Massive new regulations were needed to make sure it didn’t happen again. In the following video, listen to Bernie Marcus, one of the founders of The Home Depot, which employs 350,000 people today describe what it would be like to start that company today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjRIM1LFWRM

In an economy that is in desperate need to create jobs, a company that eventually created 350,000 jobs could not get off the ground today because of regulations. How many more Home Depots are out there? How many companies have said, the hell with it, let’s stay private, even if it means curtailing growth, going public is not worth the cost nor the headaches.

Our government is killing us, economically. It cannot slake its thirst for more tax revenues; it cannot stop spending;  it cannot resist telling us something else we should do for our own good; it cannot help trying to craft the perfect law and regulation that will prevent all harm from befalling even the most naive among us. It cannot be done. But unless and until we unwind the coil of regulation that is choking us to death; unless and until we perform liposuction on the laws that are crushing us under their weight; unless and until we return to Constitutionally limited government and fiscal responsibility and personal responsibility, the terms Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness will be redefined to Subsistence, Subservience, and Preying upon each other. Which America do you want to live in?

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