I just got a survey request from my Congressman Tim Bishop. I started to fill it out but it was limited in its responses. Limited to what could easily be tabulated and put into a self-serving graph, but the same limited responses also spoke volumes.
Mexico
Progressives are a funny group when it comes to investing, and I mean real investing, not the phony code word for spending. If they’re the ones controlling the money and especially if the money is not theirs, then investing is fine. If it will compete with one of their sacred social programs and you will directly benefit from it, then bar the door it’s an out of control casino.
Congressman Eliot Engel writes a letter to the editor of the New York Times titled, “Banning Gun Imports.” He was prompted to write because of an editorial in the Times titled “Hypocrisy, Locked and Loaded,” but I’ll address that one later. Here is how Congressman Engel sees it. There is a tremendous illegal drug business in Mexico. It has gotten so big and contentious and violent that thousands are killed every year. His solution to the problem in Mexico? Ban the importation of guns into the U.S.
Democrats, who held an unofficial hearing on Thursday on the now-defunct operation of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, have focused on what they see as a lapse in American laws involving firearms purchases.
Let’s put this to a common sense test. The Mexican drug cartels are an enormous business, raking in billions upon billions of dollars. Their business is so lucrative that they can afford to ship drugs into a particular remote area by plane and because it may be too difficult to fly out of, just burn the plane. Imagine, having so much money that you can destroy a plane as a routine cost of doing business.
Mexico has two long coasts and besides the border with the U.S. has a southern border that is equally porous. So let’s recap, billions of dollars in money, countless routes over which to bring in guns, some cartels have what could be called their own fleet of planes. The Democrats want us to believe that these cartels send people into the United States to to buy guns at retail from the local gun dealer. These cartels would go into a gun shop in Nogales, Arizona to buy a semi-automatic AK-47, paying full retail price, instead of buying a case of fully automatic AK-47s from Yemen at wholesale. We’re supposed to believe that? Why would they do that?
The “Fast and Furious” program was designed to allow illegal purchases of guns from U.S. gun dealers and follow those guns as they are transported into Mexico to find the heads of the drug cartels. One problem was that no one in government on the Mexican side of the border was aware of the program and so the ability to keep track of the weapons was a myth. Some gun dealers reported the suspicious sales to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and said they were dangerous. The government told them to play along. A border patrol agent Brian Terry ended up dead with some of these guns found at the scene.
So what is the point of the sting? Here is an alternate theory. Create these sales to send guns to Mexico. After a while publicize the amount of guns that are involved. Blame the U.S. gun dealers for the problem. Pass more gun control laws to further infringe on the rights of American citizens.
Almost as if on cue, Elijah Cummings (D-MD) released a report calling for more gun control
The report is an attempt by Cummings and other Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to raise the issue of gun control in the investigation of “Operation Fast and Furious,” the ATF program that focused on following people who legally bought weapons that were then transferred to criminals and destined for Mexico.
Let’s see, we have a Democrat president who is strongly anti-gun (“cling to their religion and guns”) whose administration creates this program. When uncovered a group of Democrats launch into a campaign to pass more gun control laws. Coincidence? Ask the family of Agent Brian Terry.
That’s my opinion; I’d lilke to know yours. Please comment below.
The above question could and should be applied to a number of individuals including Attorney General Eric Holder and even President Barack Obama. The subject is a program, run out of the Justice Department, called “Fast and Furious.”
On a report that his challenger from last fall, Randy Altschuler, may be looking at a rematch, Tim Bishop’s team wasted no time throwing away all pretense of what they preach to get back in the gutter to revel in the politics of personal attack.
What Bishop Says
In a speech on the floor of the House during consideration of a vote to repeal ObamaCare, Congressman Bishop had this to say:
“Mr. Speaker, I believe it is time this Congress does what President Obama called on Americans to do last week: approach our debates and our differences with civility and honesty. We appear to be doing reasonably well with regard to civility, but less so with honesty.”
What Bishop Does
Jon Schneider, Tim Bishop’s spokesman responded to the report of a rematch with juvenile name calling:
“Randy Outsourcer couldn’t win in a once-in-a-generation year for Republicans,” writes Jon Schneider, the spokesman, using the campaign’s negative nickname for Altschuler. “While Tim Bishop will be able to run in 2012 on his record of fighting House Republican efforts to cut 1,000 jobs at Brookhaven National Lab, Randy will remain a fatally flawed outsourcer with a track record of getting rich by shipping American jobs overseas.”
“Randy Outsourcer”? That is hardly civil nor honest. It is the kind of discourse you would expect in a grammar school lunchroom or schoolyard.
The Facts
Congressman Bishop’s main argument for reelecting him was that his opponent created a successful company that provided services to businesses and some of those services were provided from offshore locations. We live in a global economy, but don’t let facts get in the way. Will Mr. Bishop tell Canon, USA, to close their North and South American headquarters in Melville, which employs 1,200 Long Islanders, because everyone knows outsourcing is bad? Let’s send those jobs back to Japan where they belong! How about SRI, a German manufacturing and engineering giant looking at Long Island; or WiseCon and Surikat, two Chilean companies? Let us not forget all the foreign based auto companies that employ tens of thousands of Americans here in America. Go home foreigners!
But don’t look too closely at Bishop’s record. After all, he voted for the bailout with taxpayer money of GM and Chrysler. After getting our money Chrysler announced the construction of a $570 million engine plant in Mexico. GM for their part quickly announced that they were increasing their offshore production by 53%. These are high paying manufacturing jobs. So what does Congressman Bishop have to say about his proclivity to outsource using not his own money and taking risks on his own, but with our money? I’m still waiting on a response to the letter I sent to him nearly two months ago asking that very question.
Perhaps it is just a lack of understanding of economics. A study by Dartmouth’s Amos Tuck school of business found that for every job outsourced overseas, two new jobs were create here. In a global economy it is foolhardy to try pick and choose among products based on their country of origin. In 1989, I bought a Ford Probe GT. It was built by Mazda, in Canada, but Ford owned 25% of Mazda. So what was it? Who cares? Pursuing this line of thinking will take us back to the days of Smoot-Hawley tariffs that plunged us deeper into the Great Depression, but that shouldn’t be surprising. The progressives, like Tim Bishop, are doing everything else to mimic the Great Depression.
Time for a New Strategy
It is interesting that Mr. Schneider picked Tim Bishop’s current efforts to save the jobs of 1000 workers at the Brookhaven National Labs. He doesn’t mention his votes for ObamaCare, the Stimulus, the auto bailouts. While saving 1000 jobs is admirable, what about the rest of the 700,000 citizens in his district. He just wants to hand them the bill. Since government has no money except that which it gets from its citizens through taxes, every big government program has an invoice that has to be paid. Take, for example, the stimulus. His constituents share of that bill is about $3 billion. He “successfully” brought home $679 million according to www.recovery.gov. That would be like getting a $679,000 house for “free” with a $3 million mortgage attached to it. Are there any takers out there for that deal?
Next time around Mr. Bishop may actually have to run on his record, but let’s leave the taunts and childish names behind and have an adult debate on the issues. The people of the district deserve as much.
That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.
I received an e-mail from my congressman touting his efforts to fight outsourcing. In a global economy, it escapes my why this is a good thing and why we need more businessmen in Congress and fewer professional politicians and academics. So I penned the following response.
I still find myself in awe of our Founding Fathers who created our form of government. The competing ideas that they sifted through to come up with our Constitution and the safeguards in it is wondrous. The designs upon it by the progressives is by equal measure disturbing.
It was the rally we were all waiting for. The left was going to show Glenn Beck a thing or two about how union and community organizers could make things happen. And organize they did; some 300-400 organizations sponsored the rally. While the New York Times said tens of thousands attended the rally they later in the article compared it to the August 28th rally held by Glenn Beck, describing the crowds at Beck’s event as enormous.
Though they hoped to draw an even larger crowd than Mr. Beck, the Times wrote, “Significant areas of the National Mall that had been filled during Mr. Beck’s rally were empty.” Mr. Beck in a broadcast the Thursday prior criticized the rally saying that his supporters paid their own way to attend while for Saturday’s rally the unions and the 300-400 organizations chartered busses to ferry the people to the event, and still they fell short.
The irony was lost on some who attended.
