At CPAC Marco Rubio showed some of the traits that make him a leading candidate for Vice President no matter who the Republican nominee happens to be. He mixed humor and personal narrative.

Rubio spoke with a degree of awe about arriving in the Senate. He wondered to himself, “How did I get here?” But after spending time in Harry Reid’s do-nothing Senate he looked around and wondered, “How did they get here?”

Getting more serious he talked about President Obama’s State of the Union address and how the president scrupulously avoided talking about his record. Why? Well, Rubio explained, for two years President Obama had a Democrat controlled House and a Democrat controlled Senate, which until the passing of Senator Edward Kennedy and the election of Republican Scott Brown to replace him, they had a filibuster-proof majority. So for two years he got everything he wanted and since then, everything has gotten worse.

So what did Obama say in the State of the Union address? He chose to pit Americans against each other. He is trying to sell the American people on a bill of goods that says we are a zero-sum society. That is, for someone to get ahead, someone has to get pulled down. But that is not true, but Obama needs us to believe it so that he can get people to vote for him.

Rubio then related to his own family saying that he felt his father and grandfather were better men than he, but Rubio has advanced as far as he has because he was born in the greatest country in the world.

He then made a telling point. He said that Republicans try to attract followers by arguing who is more like Ronald Reagan. Do you ever hear Democrats argue about who is more like Jimmy Carter?

What is government’s role, he asked? We should have an understandable tax code so that individuals and businesses can make decisions for business reasons not tax reasons. We need regulatory reform. Yes, we all want clean air and clean water but with sanity. We don’t have an energy policy, we have energy politics. While in office for three years President Obama had no plan for Medicare, but as soon as Republican Paul Ryan came up with a plan, he attacked it.

Summing up, Rubio said that President Obama seems to be a really good father; he seems to be a really good husband; but he is a terrible president. I couldn’t agree more.

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

President Obama is trying to walk back from the war he started with Catholics by trying to cram down their throats his dictates that go against their core beliefs. His administration says they are open to work something out. I am glad to hear that. The fix is simple.

The potential fix will not only end the war on Catholics, it will go a long way towards resolving the out of control escalation in healthcare costs. Here it is:

1. Repeal ObamaCare
2. Eliminate the tax deduction for companies to provide health care for their employees
3. Provide a tax deduction for individuals to buy and own their own policies. This would make policies portable, that is, you won’t lose your health care if you lose your job. You can choose any plan that works for you and fits your lifestyle and beliefs.
4. Eliminate government mandates that insurance plans cover elective procedures such as birth control, cosmetic surgery, abortion, sterilization, erectile dysfunction drugs, etc. If an insurance company wants to provide these services to attract subscribers, fine. If an insurance company wants to offer a plan that doesn’t provide them to lower costs to people who will never use the services, that should also be fine.
5. Eliminate third-party payers. Until consumers are actually writing the check they won’t care what the cost is and they won’t shop around. Pay up front, get reimbursed later.
6. Encourage Health Care Savings Accounts. This money, set aside pre-tax, can be used to write the check mentioned in item 5. Coupled with a high deductible plan it can save money and make health insurance like other forms of insurance where it protects you from economic catastrophe, and doesn’t pay for every visit to the doctor for the sniffles.
7. Fight for tort reform. Get the lawyers out of the examining room. Doctors won’t order every test under the sun just to cover their backs.
8. Let’s get serious about stopping Medicare and Medicaid fraud. The amount of money that gets stolen from these plans each year is more than the entire budget of the Department of Justice. Beef up the FBI and stop the theft.
9. Pay attention to your own health. Get healthy. Stay healthy. You shouldn’t need Michelle Obama to tell you what foods to eat. Your health affects you and your loved ones. It is your responsibility.

Let’s get the government busybodies out of our lives. Their policies are causing the problem, they aren’t bright enough to fix it. Just get out-of-the-way. We will fix it ourselves.

The Obama argument is that there are employees at these religious affiliated organizations who are not, for example, Catholics and who want birth control. Forcing the Catholic church to provide birth control services goes against their core beliefs and is an attack on the church and the First Amendment. By switching from employer-provided health insurance to individually purchased health insurance, the problem is solved. The institution won’t be providing health care insurance for any services whether they approve of them or not, and the individual can purchase any plan they want regardless of the philosophy of their employer.

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

NOTE: I will be reporting from CPAC in Washington over the next few days.

As if sitting on a couch with Nancy Pelosi talking about global warming wasn’t enough, Newt Gingrich seems to have taken a seat next to Debbie Wasserman Schultz, to attack free market capitalism.

The positive, knowledgeable “Uncle Newt” has left the stage to be replaced by his alter ego, “Nasty Newt.” These two personalities seem to be behind the lack of support for his candidacy from those who have worked with him in the past.

Gingrich is now going after Romney on his track record at Bain Capital and like the Obama administration that likes to pick winners and losers, Gingrich has decided what it good capitalism and what is bad capitalism.

“If somebody comes in, takes all the money out of your company and then leaves you bankrupt while they go off with millions, that’s not traditional capitalism,” Mr. Gingrich said on NBC’s “Today” show.

I think what Gingrich is describing is robbery, not capitalism and he should call the police. How does someone come in and take all the money? You are either brought in by management or you buy your way in. In the former case you are a hired hand and you get paid a fee for your services, you don’t dip that hand into the till. If you buy your way in, you own the company and that includes the cash.

When you buy your way in you are putting your own capital at risk which includes losing it. If a company is in a turnaround situation it means there is a problem. If the problem isn’t fixed the company will probably go under and all jobs will be lost. In conducting a turnaround, yes some jobs are eliminated; uncompetitive plants are shut down; the resources consumed by those inefficient plants are put to better use elsewhere. That is capitalism. On balance it creates more jobs than it eliminates in the overall economy, because capital is free to move to where it is most productive. If Gingrich doesn’t like that, well, neither does Obama and we’re trying to get rid of Obama, not just change the name on the mailbox at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

I Like to Fire People

That quote from Romney was taking out of context. The context being ObamaCare. Romney was saying that if our only provider of health services is ObamaCare, we have no choice and health care will not improve. He said if his health care provider was giving him lousy service he would fire them. He likes to fire people who give him lousy service. This is not about firing your own employees. That is always a difficult an unpleasant task. It is no wonder that Debbie Wasserman Schultz took that snippet and is making an ad to imply that Romney likes firing his employees. For proof of Ms. Wasserman Schultz’s intellectual dishonesty here in an appearance with Chris Wallace she tries to say that Romney is a bad guy because people lost their jobs at companies he invested in, but President Obama is not a bad guy for taking taxpayer dollars and investing in Solyndra which went bankrupt costing 1,000 jobs. At least Romney was not using our money for his investments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPAjxij9MZM

So the Democrats are attacking Romney because some people lost jobs in turnaround situations, and Gingrich, Huntsman, and Perry are doing the same. Ron Paul is holding his fire.

The term “firing” is completely different if shown in the full context. Many management books today say you should fire some customers. By that they mean that if a customer takes up more time and resources than they generate in revenue for you, let them go be someone else’s customer. Is that “firing” in the same sense of letting one of your employee’s go? No. Is firing the guy who cuts your lawn because he keeps running over your rose bushes  the same? No.

I am undecided on who I support for president. I have, at various times, considered Perry, Cain, Gingrich and Santorum. But if this line of attack is perceived as a winner by any Republican or conservative, it is more likely to push people into backing Romney. Capitalism is not always pretty, but if Americans want a shot at a better future, capitalism is the system that gives them the best long-term chance at it.

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

Congressman Tim Bishop held an online town hall meeting to hear questions from constituents and give his answers. Perhaps he thought this a safer forum than a live town hall meeting. Last year’s meeting in Setauket did not go well and was soon viral on You Tube.

I will comment on three of the topics from that meeting: the payroll tax cut, regulations, and manufacturing jobs.

Payroll Tax Cut

Congressman Bishop came out heavily pitching the extension of the payroll tax cut, from the normal level of 6.2% to the current level of 4.2% and even to go lower to 3.1%, for at least another year. He made the startling claim, quoting some experts that if the payroll tax cut wasn’t retained it would cost 400,000 jobs. It must be from the loss of all that spending power generated from a 2% cut in the payroll tax. I am sure pizza parlors will be devastated, as the weekly savings to a typical family will be about the cost of a pizza pie. The other statistic was that if the payroll tax was cut further to 3.1%, 750,000 new jobs would be created. Interesting. Raise the tax by 2% and 400,000 jobs would be lost, cut it by an additional 1.1% and nearly twice as many jobs would be created. Like prior predictions of how government intervention would affect jobs, we are supposed to believe that employers will start hiring if the cost of hiring a new employee  is reduced by 3.1% for just one year, before going back up. Only those people who never worked in private industry, like Bishop, Schumer, Obama, would believe that.

Bishop insisted that these cuts would have no impact to the Social Security Trust Fund. Considering that there is nothing in the Social Security Trust Fund other than a bunch of IOUs from Uncle Sam’s other pocket, he may be correct on that front, but he said that the cut would be paid for cutting spending elsewhere. Not surprisingly, he didn’t say where exactly “elsewhere” was.

Throughout the call, Bishop’s press secretary was conducting a dopey poll. To paraphrase, “If you are in favor of the payroll tax cut that will put $1,500 in your pocket, press 1, if not, press 2.” Who wouldn’t press 1? What would the results be if he asked, “If you are in favor of borrowing $600 from China that your children and grandchildren will have to pay back, so that we can give you $1,500 today, press 1, if you think more borrowing and debt is a bad idea, press 2,” I think the poll would turn out quite differently.

Regulations

A caller who owned a small construction company asked about all the regulations and paperwork that businesses had to deal with. Bishop said that President Obama had things well under control forming a commission to “zero base” all regulations and hundreds and hundreds of regulations have been taken off the books. In the Wall Street Journal today there is an editorial titled, “Regulation for Dummies,” that paints a very different picture.

To answer the most basic question—has regulation increased?—we’ll focus on what the government defines as “economically significant” regulations. Those are rules that impose more than $100 million in annual costs on the economy, though there are hundreds if not thousands of new rules every year that fall well short of that.

According to an analysis of the Federal Register by George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, the Cabinet departments and agencies finalized 84 such regulations annually on average in President Obama’s first two years. The annual average under President Bush was 62 and under President Clinton 56

As the graph clearly shows the number of “economically significant” regulations under Obama has skyrocketed. This is what is causing the uncertainty that is hindering employment. How can this be curtailed? A bill just passed in the House of Representatives called the “Regulation from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny Act (REINS)”. This would require any of these economically significant regulations to be sent to Congress for approval before becoming being enacted. What the process is today is that Congress can vote against regulations, but that can be vetoed by the President. If the regulations are coming from the president, wouldn’t you expect him to veto it? This turns it around so that the Congress has to approve the regulations, if they don’t, there is nothing for the president to veto. The Democrats say this is a Congressional encroachment of the Executive.

“The REINS Act would undermine our ability to protect children from harmful toys, prevent asthma and lung ailments resulting from pollution, and ensure that our small businesses can compete fairly in the marketplace,” House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer added. “At the same time, it would force Congress to play a larger role in the regulatory process, leading to even more gridlock in Washington.”

Surely he forgot to mention killing bunnies in there somewhere. But let’s look at the process: Congress passes a law; departments in the Executive branch write regulations to carry out the law Congress passed. So why is it an outrage that Congress reviews economically significant regulations to see if the Executive is actually implementing what they passed? Tim Bishop voted against the REINS Act. This is another case of Democrats focusing on piddling regulations while saying “hands off” the really impactful ones.

Manufacturing Jobs

Another caller asked the Congressman about manufacturing jobs. He patted himself on the back for helping to bail out the auto industry. He said if he and others hadn’t done that that hundreds of thousands of jobs would be lost. I addressed the implausibility of this in an earlier post. In that post I argued that if GM and Chrysler went bankrupt and even if they didn’t come out of it leaner and meaner, people still needed transportation. They would buy Fords, Toyotas, Nissans, Hondas, etc., that are currently built here in the U.S. Those car companies would need to increase their purchases from suppliers and those who formerly supplied GM and Chrysler would be well situated to supply the remaining car companies. The argument that we don’t manufacture here anymore is a myth. On a dollar volume basis, we still manufacture more than any country on earth. A few miles from where I am writing this, in Georgetown, Kentucky, is the largest Toyota factory outside of Japan. Due to a free trade agreement with South Korea that the Democrats blocked for years, that Toyota plant will begin exporting about 6,000 Camrys a year from Kentucky to South Korea.

One of the reasons we don’t build more here is our lousy tax code. Fix it. A reason there is not more manufacturing in Mr. Bishop’s district on Long Island is high electric rates. Factories run on power and power on Long Island is expensive. One of the reasons for that is that government approved the building of a $5 billion nuclear power plant on Long Island, and then when it was ready to throw the switch, they changed direction and said it couldn’t open. So Long Island rate payers had to find and buy electric from other sources and pay for the mothballed plant that produced nothing. Once again, the government helping us out.

But Tim Bishop has a solution. He wrote a bill to ban offshore call centers from federal contracts or loan guarantees for five-year. Nothing like micromanaging a corner of the economy while the rest of it burns. Why not look to the root cause? Tax structure, too much regulations, ObamaCare, out of control government spending. If Congress would fix those problems maybe companies wouldn’t look offshore to set up call centers.

The Budget

Tim Bishop also touched on the deficit and debt. He said we need to cut spending, but he never said what he would cut; he said we needed to control entitlement spending, but he didn’t say how he would do that; and he said we needed to add revenue, but he knew exactly how to do that, tax the rich. Here’s how I see it. The government got us into this mess by spending too much money, they should get us out of it by spending less money. Asking for any more tax revenue is just shirking their responsibility for which they are paid handsomely, and passing the problem on to us. Who couldn’t solve the problem with enough money?

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

With the economy in shambles and his campaign sound bites and early interviews as president coming back to haunt him, President Obama has ramped up the class warfare rhetoric. Let’s put the lie to these strategies.

The Payroll Tax Cut

The issue here is that President Obama wants to help the middle class and he claims the Republicans do not. The famous payroll tax cut puts about $8 a week in the pocket of individuals. But everyone who pays the payroll “tax” expects to get every dollar back, and then some, after they retire. So what is really going on here? The government forces you to participate in the Social Security system. It offers a lousy rate of return compared to alternatives and if you die before you start collecting, everything you paid into it is gone. Your heirs get nothing. If Obama believes in cutting back on payroll taxes, why not convert everything to private accounts and eliminate the tax altogether? Let people save for their own retirement. Let them put more away in the good times, and be able to scale back in the bad times.

The Republicans are not opposed to Obama’s plan, their only requirement is that we cut somewhere else in the budget to make up for the shortfall. This is nothing new. Former Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning raised this very point nearly two years ago, when the Democrats held both houses of Congress. In this enormous government can’t we find anything to cut? Find the cuts and the Republicans will sign on. If not, this is just another case of piling debt on our children and grandchildren, because they will have to make up the difference when we retire.

Taxing the Rich

This week we saw former senator and former New Jersey governor, Jon Corzine testify before Congress to say how sorry he was that he couldn’t find over a billion dollars of his customer’s money. But since he resigned from MF Global he doesn’t have access to any of the records to help in the search. Is the Justice Department beginning a criminal investigation?

Has anyone been charged with a crime for what happened in the fiscal meltdown of 2008? Has anyone collected more campaign cash from Wall Street than Obama? So is it unusual to conclude that President Obama, other than giving speeches, is perfectly fine with Wall Street ripping off the American people, as long as he can rip off the most successful people in America and claim he is looking out for the little guy. Let his pals get boatloads of government money to bail out their companies so they can keep getting richer and then say he wants to tax them more. Is it any surprise that a lot of rich Democrat supporters are coming out and saying they are all for paying more. Who wouldn’t?

President Obama says you can have billions of tax dollars and I just want a kickback in the form of higher taxes so that I can keep spending recklessly. However, ask anyone of these guys to write a check to the Treasury voluntarily, and they all balk. Why? Nobody gets any credit for donating their money to the government. They want the government to take it, not just from them but from every successful business person.

An Economic Winter

If President Obama gets another term, we may face an economic winter from which we may never recover. If the last three years were painful, the next four could be even worse.

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

Drawing by DonkeyHotey

Rather than do their job, Congress and the President designated a super committee to do it for them. The committee failed miserably.  But what exactly were they shooting for?

Since we are talking about Washington, you have to listen carefully lest you believe they are actually trying to accomplish something significant. Since President Obama took office, annual deficits north of $1 trillion are commonplace. The committing was working on cutting $1.2 trillion, so that would fix the problem, right? Wrong. That $1.2 trillion they they were unable to come up with was over ten years, not next year. But it’s okay, they have a fall back plan. If this committee of $174,000 per year public servants and their staffs couldn’t reach an agreement then automatic cuts will come into play, half against defense spending, half against non-defense spending.

The stalemate was along familiar lines. The Democrats wanted massive increases in taxes, the Republicans were opposed to any tax rate increases. That last point is important because Republicans put on the table more revenues through closing loopholes, but it was not enough for the Democrats.

Citizens to the Rescue

I was in Washington last June with a group of Tea Party leaders who gathered to discuss our future plans. At that gathering the idea of a citizen’s debt commission was hatched. Why not have everyday citizens put together their thoughts on spending cuts and see what they could come up with? Nominate a core number of individuals, and then hold a series of town hall meetings around the country to discuss what Washington should stop doing to help balance the budget. In addition, set up a web site where citizens could vote on some of the proposals and decides between alternatives. For example, the alternative of repealing ObamaCare compared to any other spending cut in a one-on-one comparison (e.g., repeal ObamaCare or cut the Department of Education) ObamaCare lost 93% of the time. Similar comparisons were made and citizens voted on them.

The result was a report from the Tea Party Debt Commission. No increase in taxes and savings of nearly $10 trillion. That is not a target to be reached through future haggling. Those are identified spending cuts. This committee of volunteers (not $174,000 per year politicians) did what the super committee could not. They came up with the goods, the super committee folded like a cheap lawn chair. Here is the Tea Party Debt Commission report (Click here).

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Washington

With the report completed, Senator Mike Lee arranged to host a meeting where the Tea Party Debt Commission could present their findings in the Capital building. I talked about the ideology of taxes versus no taxes, here is where the arrogance comes in. As Senator Lee is about to convene his meeting, he finds that the microphones that were going to be used were confiscated. Why? New York Senator Chuck Schumer, Chairman of the Senate Rules Committee said that holding mock hearings was against Senate rules. Here is Senator Mike Lee, trying to understand why the First Amendment isn’t allowed in our nation’s capital.

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

So, our august legislators couldn’t come up with a measly $1.2 trillion, which by the way doesn’t cut spending, it merely slows it down some, and a bunch of citizen volunteers came up with a plan, in the same timeframe, ten times as large that actually does cut spending, actually does balance the budget, and actually does start reducing our nation’s debt. Yet, our elected representatives, our employees, didn’t even want to hear what that citizen’s committee found and wanted to do whatever they could to prevent others from hearing it.

Turn them out. In 2012, if they don’t want to hear what we have to say, how can they possibly be representing us? Senator Schumer is one of those individuals who thinks he is smarter than everyone else (after all he scored 1600 on his SATs), and who has spent his entire adult life in government. Although Senator Schumer is probably a very wealthy man by now, it’s time for him and those like him to experience the private sector first hand.

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.

Democrat Tim Bishop recently sent an e-mail to his constituents blaming Republicans, although they only hold the House while Democrats hold the Senate and the White House, for being against bipartisanship. So what does Tim Bishop do when the opportunity for bipartisanship presents itself? He cements his far left credentials by voting against it.

Three free trade agreements, with Colombia, South Korea, and Panama, passed the House by wide margins (262-167, 278-151, 300-129, respectively). They passed the Senate by similarly large margins (66-33, 83-15, 77-22, respectively). President Obama supports the passage of all three. So, Tim Bishop, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid hung tough in their fight against a strong bipartisan measure.

Proponents of the trade deals, including Mr. Obama, Republican leaders and centrist Democrats, predict that they will reduce prices for American consumers and increase foreign sales of American goods and services, providing a much-needed jolt to the sluggish economy.  — New York Times, October 12, 2011.

The House also passed a measure that would provide expanded benefits for workers who lose their jobs to foreign competition.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton hailed the deals Wednesday as an important victory for American foreign policy. And she said she expected that the South Korea pact alone would create 70,000 American jobs. “By opening new markets to American exports and attracting new investments to American communities, our economic statecraft is creating jobs and spurring growth here at home,” Ms. Clinton said at a Washington event.

Perhaps instead of having to fight Washington so that Long Island vintners can get their wine bottles and labels approved, Tim Bishop should encourage the US Trade Representative to promote those wines to Columbia, South Korea and Panama. How about Tim Bishop doing something useful rather than spending money we don’t have, loading debt upon his constituents to pay for government spending elsewhere in America, trying to prop up a bankrupt postal service, and asking constituents how we can make Washington bigger and more costly and get more deeply involved in our lives. Please, Tim, don’t help us any more.

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

Photo by jatraveler

I just finished reading a great new book, EntreLeadership by Dave Ramsey. It is mainly a business book but he has a great chapter on delegation called “Mastering the Rope — Delegation: The Best Way to Build a Business Bigger than You.” He stresses the importance of getting delegation right and it points to why we are in the mess we are with President Obama at the helm.

Ramsey uses the metaphor of a rope. He starts by applying the concept to raising children. “Visualize that I have a rope attached to you, and the more worthy of trust you have proven yourself the more I will lengthen the rope.” It is a similar process with people you hire. Ramsey writes, “When you delegate to someone improperly you will make a huge mess and add more drama to your life than you can stand. But when you properly prepare your organization’s culture, hire and keep only the right people, build unity and loyalty, recognize achievement…then delegation will become the joy of your life.” Ramsey learned a number of these lessons over twenty years in business, some of them learned the hard way, by screwing it up first, and figuring it out second.

So how does this apply to President Obama? Think about his signature “achievement”, ObamaCare. After formulating the concept he not only threw it over the wall to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, he threw the rope over the wall too. Pelosi and Reid put it all together while Obama golfed and made speeches. What came back was a three thousand page hideous monster, that everyone on team Obama had to drag across the finish line. Even Pelosi famously said, “We’ll have to pass it, to see what is in it.”

Since Obama never spent a day in the private sector, it is not surprising that he had no idea how to delegate. If you are one of the minions surrounding him, you are not going to be apt to tell him either. You want the responsibility and the rope, so that no one is looking over your shoulder.

Obama started as a community organizer. What does a community organizer do? He finds an issue and then fires up a bunch of people to chant slogans about the issue, march in large numbers to a designated place at a designated time, and the community organizer demands compliance with his solution to the issue. There is no delegation. The masses aren’t given any responsibility. The organizer just needs their numbers. It is similar to what we are seeing with the Wall Street protests today. Grab a video camera and go ask them what they stand for and what they want to change, and most of them won’t be able to tell you other than spouting slogans and bromides.

So President Obama has no idea how to delegate, and as Ramsey predicted Obama has made a huge mess and added more drama to all of our lives than we can stand. Not quite, “No drama, Obama.” Dave Ramsey learned a lot of his wisdom in the trenches for twenty years. We don’t have twenty years for Obama to figure it out. We can’t afford one more year, even though we will have to. But we don’t have to go any farther than that.

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.