As they sit in the warm sun and listen to the celebrity speakers tell them about their bright future a grim reality will set in once the graduation cakes are cut and consumed.

The reality is that, particularly on Long Island, the job outlook is bleak, affordable housing is out of reach, our elected leaders are clueless and whatever opportunity can be found will be found in other parts of the country.

While some of us fight to cut the government leviathan down to size so that is doesn’t suck up the resources that productive people are better suited to employ, those in office are fighting for their own survival and will stop at nothing to hold onto office.

College Loans

As someone paying for their children’s college education, I don’t like paying any more than I have to, but the focus on holding interest rates constant is misguided. College graduates need jobs, not more debt. President Obama and local representatives like Tim Bishop already have piled up enormous debt that our children and grandchildren will have to pay back. Making it more affordable to take on more debt is not a winning strategy. Congressman Bishop used to run a local college, Southampton, that had to be bailed out via a purchase by Stony Brook University. As Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

Bishop Touts Highway Bill

On his website Tim Bishop boasts about his support for the two-year transportation bill. While keeping our roads in good repair is important, a closer reading of what Mr. Bishop says is revealing. The highway bill, “would create or sustain 113,300 construction jobs in New York alone: 61,100 in highway construction and 52,200 in mass transit construction, according to the US Department of Transportation.” There it is: “create or sustain.” Well, Congressman, which one is it? How many jobs will be created and how many will be sustained? Any economist, and almost anyone else for that matter, can count a new job. After all, there is a bit of paperwork associated with filling a new job, W-4 forms, I-9 forms, etc. But there isn’t a soul who can count a job sustained.

Created vs. Sustained

Why is that important that we know the difference? Because if you recall with the great stimulus bill, in Tim Bishop’s district, $105 million dollars was spent on school districts to create seven new jobs. In that case the teacher’s union, a big Bishop supporter, got a lot of money and our children and grandchildren got the bill. So how many new jobs will the transportation bill create? We also know that those highway jobs are heavily unionized and the unions back Bishop. Coincidence?

Perhaps another reason Bishop doesn’t want to say how many jobs will be created  is that he could be held accountable. Remember how that pesky promise to keep unemployment below 8% if we gave Obama nearly a trillion dollars blew up in his face?

A Coherent Policy?

On the one hand Bishop is pushing to drive more people into going to college whether they can afford it or not or whether they belong there or not. On the other hand he is pushing spending on construction jobs. How many of our college graduates are going to take those construction jobs? It’s more government spending coming and going. No spending cuts, just more spending, more debt, kick the can down the road.

What we need is less government and more entrepreneurs; less taxes sucking resources out of the economy and more investors putting money where it will generate the most returns; the realization that college isn’t for everyone and we need skilled blue-collar workers who can operate computerized machines in our factories; lower energy costs so that we can afford to actually run factories. We need to unleash the imagination and brainpower of hundreds of millions of Americans in the private sector and not count on bureaucrats picking and choosing winners and losers based on their left-wing ideology.

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

When you try to manufacture a campaign issue it requires some deception and in the more extreme cases outright lies. This is because the truth doesn’t have to be manufactured. It stands tall on its own.

As Mark Twain said, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” That’s what the left is banking on. So let’s dig a little deeper into the hearings at the center of the controversy.

House Oversight Committee Hearing

Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform, Darrell Issa, scheduled a hearing on religious liberty in the face of the ObamaCare mandate requiring the purchase of contraceptives by all employers regardless of their own religious beliefs. It is customary for the minority party (Democrats at this time) to choose one witness. The Democrats chose Barry Lynn and Sandra Fluke. Byron York of the Examiner provides some detail.

“The Democrats played games with us the day before [the hearing],” says a Republican committee source.  “After days of asking for a witness, they waited until the last-minute, the afternoon before the hearing.  They asked us to invite Rev. Barry Lynn [head of Americans United for Separation of Church and State] and Ms. Fluke.  We said we’ll invite one, per standard procedure.  We formally invited Rev. Lynn, and the Democrats, at 4:30 pm, changed their mind and said they wanted Fluke.  We said too late.  They told Rev. Lynn not to show up the next day.”

Issa explained that Democrats had requested Barry Lynn, that Lynn was invited, and that Democrats then retracted the Lynn request.  As for Fluke, Issa said Republicans had never heard of the Democrats’ last-minute choice.  “I asked our staff what is her background, what has she done,” Issa said at the hearing.  “They did the usual that we do when we’re not provided the three days and the forms to go with it. They did a Google search. They looked and found that she was, in fact, and is a college student who appears to have become energized over this issue and participated in approximately a 45-minute press conference…I cannot and will not arbitrarily take a majority or minority witness if they do not have the appropriate credentials, both for a hearing at the full committee of the U.S. House of Representatives and if we cannot vet them in a timely fashion.”

Barry Lynn is both a lawyer and holds a degree in theology. He is an author, radio host, frequent television commentator, and he has held senior positions at the national level for the United Church and the ACLU. I would probably agree little with Rev. Lynn, but you can’t argue he has credentials. Who is Sandra Fluke? She is a law student, not a lawyer; she was president of a college club that advocated “reproductive justice.” How does that fit in with a hearing on religious liberty. It doesn’t and the Democrats don’t care.

When the hearing began, the Democrats attacked the Republicans. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) asked, “Where are the women?” There were two panels that day, which according to my sources is typical when more than four people testifying. The second panel had two women on it. My source also tells me that the witness list was released a week before the hearing so either Rep. Maloney was deceitful or she doesn’t know what is going on in the committee she is a member of.  I am sure if pressed, Rep. Maloney would say, there were no women on the panel in front of me. But it is all part of the big lie, it was done for the cameras and the sound bite.

Since their plan to put on Sandra Fluke failed, they staged their own show.

Steering and Policy Committee

The Steering and Policy Committee is the committee that actually had Sandra Fluke address them on February 23. The purpose of the Steering and Policy Committee is to assign fellow party members to other House committees, and it also advises party leaders on policy. It is chaired by Nancy Pelosi. What does anything that Sandra Fluke has to say have to do with assigning party members to other committees or advising party leaders on policy. Nancy Pelosi policy on ObamaCare was clear, “we have to pass the bill to find out what’s in the bill.” She didn’t do any fact-finding then, and she isn’t interested in facts now. It was all a show, and it was all for what is popularly called the “optics”.

Who Is Sandra Fluke?

Sandra Fluke is an attractive, clean-cut, woman who is poised in this setting. She is thirty years old, and she has been a left-wing advocate, so she provides the right look for the ensuing sound bites. She provides the right optics.

Before going to Georgetown Ms. Fluke researched the University’s health care policies and learned that they did not provide contraceptive coverage. She enrolled anyway and started working to overturn that policy. In her opening remarks she confidently states that President Obama’s policy “adjustment” of paying out of the left pocket instead of the right “addresses any potential conflict.” That’s another lie. It does not address large institutions that are also self insured, but that doesn’t matter, the narrative must go on; the campaign issue must be built. Just steamroll any real concerns of the other side.

While trying to defend ObamaCare her opening exposes the major problem with it when she says contraception can cost $3,000 during law school. President Obama and the woman sitting in front of Ms. Fluke, Nancy Pelosi, told us how ObamaCare was going to control costs. A quick check on the internet reveals that contraception can be purchased for about half of what Fluke says, but if someone else is paying for it, why would you bother to check? It was probably unintentional but she blew a hole in the theory that ObamaCare will save money. It won’t.

She scrupulously avoids talking about her personal behavior but talks about other women and friends. That is the trap Rush Limbaugh fell into by characterizing a behavior to her that she didn’t discuss. It was out-of-bounds for him to do so, and the Democrats, ever anxious to keep the discussion away from the real issues have made this a major focus.

Why didn’t she talk about herself? I don’t care about her activities, but everything she said was hearsay. Who were these other women? She didn’t give their names. How can we verify their stories? Do they really exist? Why didn’t they come and testify themselves? Wouldn’t it be more compelling to have a first hand account. Yes, but consider the optics. What if they were not as polished? What if they felt foolish trying to go in front of Congress to discuss a $10 item?

She talked about the financial burden of buying contraceptives, but said nothing about the financial burden of college tuition which is thirty times more. What do you think is causing these students a financial strain, tuition or contraception?

She talked about clinics being unable to meet the “crushing demand” for contraceptives. Why not set up a charity that progressives can contribute to that would provide more funds? If given a choice if they would underwrite what Ms. Fluke is advocating, would they? Nancy Pelosi is a multi-millionaire. Wouldn’t it help her cause if she wrote a big six figure check to kick it off?

She then brought out the campaign theme that any restrictions on what is decided between a woman and her doctor is “policing her body.” She said that 65% of students were “interrogated” about the need for contraceptives for non-birth control purposes. Maybe it’s time for a brief recap. We are talking about a $10-$15 item. One story she relates is about a woman who finds out at the pharmacy counter that her health plan doesn’t cover her contraceptives and has to turn away. Really? How about not having two cups of Starbucks this week so you have contraceptives for a month? For a $10 item you are going to sit through an interrogation? How about giving up your iPhone for a cheaper model? These are law students she is talking about at a prestigious university and they can’t figure out how to come up with $10? How about asking your boyfriend to help? Why not ask mom and dad? Why raise taxes on some poor guy who is not going to Georgetown law to pay for your $10 contraceptive while he is trying to live from paycheck to paycheck and take care of his own family?

There is no free lunch, Sandra. If you don’t pay someone else has to. You can say Georgetown can afford it! Maybe so, but they have to find a way. What do you suggest? Raise tuition? Lay off a maintenance worker or a receptionist? Cut back on scholarships, so that you don’t have to come up with $10 on your climb to the 1% club once you get out of Georgetown.

Fair and Balanced?

Where are the other women, Leader Pelosi, who don’t agree with Sandra Fluke. Why didn’t you ask fellow Georgetown student Angela Morabito testify? Because lies don’t like sunshine and fresh air.

The lie has been crafted. It’s about policing a woman’s body. It is being packaged. It is being taken on the road at The View, she has been on NBC news three times, and she received a phone call from President Obama. Are you going to be taken by the lie?

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

As the Democrats bid a tearful farewell to using abortion as a winning campaign issue, they need to manufacture a replacement. So they have come up with contraceptives and how those mean Republicans want to restrict a women’s access to them. It’s a lie and they know it, but hey, elections are at stake.

Some say it began with George Stephanopoulos’ bizarre questioning of Mitt Romney on a state’s right to ban contraceptives during one of the presidential debates. Some say it goes back further to a Virginia Senate race between Tim Kaine and George Allen. The problem for Democrats is that they used to run on an abortion platform and public opinion gave them a ten point edge on that subject. The polls have shifted and now it is a ten point loser. So what’s a liberal to do? Well, people still favor birth control, so let’s make it look like Republicans are against that! Brilliant!

The trick is how to do it. How about putting a Trojan Horse in the middle of ObamaCare? Have ObamaCare require contraceptives even by the Catholic Church. Conservatives and Republicans will object and voila, we have a campaign issue. But what are we really talking about?

Access to Contraceptives or Free Recreational Sex?

The First Amendment to the Constitution states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;…

If it is the Catholic Church’s fundamental teaching that artificial birth control is immoral, Congress is forbidden by the Constitution to pass any law that interferes with that. But the main stream media and the left are trying to twist this into the Catholic Church, conservatives, and Republicans trying to deny a woman’s access to birth control. But let’s examine what they are really demanding.

What is the purpose of birth control? It is to allow the enjoyment of sex without the fear of the natural purpose of sex, procreation. Okay, so it is not about marriage, it is not about family, it is about fun. The left wants no restrictions on a woman’s access to recreational sex. As a believer in individual liberty, my personal views aside, that’s fine. But don’t make me pay for it! If a woman and her partner cannot afford the $10 for a month’s worth of recreational sex, don’t pick my pocket for it. Get a second job if you have to (we’re talking about 90 minutes per month at minimum wage). Is ObamaCare going to pay for my wine or my green’s fees so I can drink a glass of red for my heart and play a round of golf for exercise? Both of those activities provide better health benefits than sex, and if the two sex partners don’t know themselves that well it can be down right dangerous for them between disease and violence.

The Wrong Direction

Instead of declaring free recreational sex as a right, perhaps it’s time to look at the incontrovertible evidence. President Obama is obsessed with income inequality and yet he goes against the formula for addressing it.  The evidence shows that the formula to get out of poverty and stay out is:

1. Graduate high school
2. Get a job, any job, and stay employed
3. Get married before you have children.

Yet what is this president’s program?

1. Favor teachers over students. Fight school vouchers, fight Scott Walker in Wisconsin trying to get public sector unions under control including teachers.
2. Add crushing regulations and massive spending on to an economy where the official end of the recession was almost three years ago. It doesn’t feel like it because of all the baggage this administration has loaded on it. At the same time in Reagan’s first term, the economy was growing at over 8% compared to this president’s 1%-2%.
3. He gave one good speech on a father’s responsibility, but his signature program ObamaCare is promoting free recreational sex and he and the rest of the Democrats are campaigning on it.

Obama has a better formula, tax the most productive among us. Ever feel like we are living the Decline of the Roman Empire. We may have one last change to stop the train wreck this November.

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

Congress passed yet another extension of the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits. The Republicans did it to take the political issue off the table for the election. Tim Bishop and the Democrats passed it because they think it is good governing.

Payroll taxes are for a very specific purpose, to fund Social Security and Medicare, the two entitlement programs that are growing at a dangerous rate. So, hey, what better idea than to take money away from them. Let’s look at it very simply.

Suppose there was no Social Security and instead everyone had individual retirement plans and were contributing the same amount to those plans that they currently pay into Social Security. In tough times, maybe you scale back those contributions, but you fully realize that there will be an impact down the road. Either you will have less money when you retire, or you will have to contribute more when you are back on your feet to catch up. That is living in a responsible world. But Tim Bishop doesn’t live in a responsible world. He lives in an entitlement world which means he hands out goodies to buy votes and when later comes, he won’t be around to answer for it. He will be too busy admiring some post office that got named after him for his dedicated service.

The payroll tax is basically robbing from Social Security. There is no choice involved. If you had your own plan you would have the liberty to decide if you wanted to cut back on contributions to your retirement or not. Some would, some might not. There is nothing being discussed in Congress to increase the payroll tax once the Obama administration stops killing the recovery. Again, if there were private plans, you could decide to pay more into the plans when you are working again. There is nothing being discussed in Congress to decrease future benefits to make up for the shortfall in contributions. Once more, if you had a private plan those would be options you would be at liberty to choose among. Instead we have this from The New York Times:

Democrats could count far more policy victories in the bill: the payroll tax break will not be paid for, large changes that Republicans sought to the unemployment insurance program were not realized, and the program was extended far beyond what the opposing party sought.

Did you get that folks? It is a victory for Democrats that we don’t pay for this so that the Social Security problem that President Obama so scrupulously avoided in his latest budget fantasy just gets kicked down the road. What we really need to do is kick Tim Bishop and the rest of his Democrat colleagues in the House and the do-nothing Democrats in the Senate under Harry Reid out of Congress. Let’s replace them with grown-ups who will make the tough choices to get us back on the same track for the good of the country rather than their personal self-interest.

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

President Barack Obama has a new budget. So it’s time to suspend reality and listen and nod your head and pine for four more years.

President Obama promised in 2009 to halve the deficit by the end of his first term. The last fiscal year budget deficit under Bush was $482 billion. In the four years of Obama’s first term it has yet to be less than $1 trillion. As former New York City Mayor Ed Koch used to asks his constituents, “How’m I doing?”

So while Obama’s new budget promises another trillion plus deficit, but don’t worry he will cut $4 trillion in spending over the next ten years. Never mind that even if he is reelected 60% of that timeline is beyond his control. It should also be pointed out that $4 trillion over ten years is only $400 billion a year, which leaves another $600 billion to be added to the national debt each year.

If that is not smoke and mirrors enough, that $4 trillion includes $1.5 trillion in tax increases. Why does this president and his backers insist that we have to take more money from the production of America’s citizens to cover his spending, rather than cutting his spending to fit within the available revenues?

For his first two years in office he worked with a Democrat controlled Congress. He got everything he asked for and everything is worse. We have staggering debt despite his promises to cut the deficit in half, unemployment worse than when he took office despite his promises to that his stimulus would cap unemployment at 8%, we have ObamaCare striking right at the heart of the First Amendment and he basically says, “get over it.”

Enough is enough. The experiment failed. It is time to cut this man loose and start working to repair the enormous damage he has done.

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

Rick Perry at CPAC 2012

At CPAC this week, Rick Perry visited the Blogger Lounge and while there spoke briefly about the Keystone Pipeline.

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

While President Obama is planning on raising taxes and spending another trillion dollars more than the government takes in for yet another feeble attempt at a government led job recovery, private industry jobs are ready to go, but he has killed it and China stands to benefit. Sure he will tell us that he is only delaying the decision until after the election to give time to study the issue in greater detail.

Similarly, he is bragging now about opening more acreage to oil drilling after he put a moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, waiting until the oil rigs sailed into the sunset in search of more favorable countries, so now he can blame the oil companies for not drilling.

But getting back to the Keystone Pipeline, the argument of the environmentalists is that this pipeline will jeopardize a large drinking water aquifer in the mid-west. But this map proves otherwise.

Ogallala Aquifer Map

If you click on the link to enlarge the map you will see that the Ogallala Aquifer is already criss-crossed with many pipelines today and that the proposed Keystone Pipeline passes over the upper corner of the aquifer but otherwise goes around it.

This is purely Obama desperately trying to hold some kind of coalition together. But as in the recent battle with the Catholic Church over ObamaCare and contraception, he has supporters on both sides of the issue, a no-win situation. In this case it is the environmentalists on one side and union construction workers on the other. He continues to build upon his record and that record is a disaster for America.

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

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.