Photo by cursedthing

We saw the beginnings with the Battle of Wisconsin. The one place were unions were growing robustly was in the public sector, surpassing the private sector for the first time in 2009. But then 2010 happened.

With states’ fiscal situations worsening and the runaway spending in Congress, voters across the country turned to Republicans, or should I say, the Tea Party. Promising to return to Constitutionally limited government and to go to Washington and state capitals, not to start a long new career but to fix the problem, the Tea Party backed candidates wasted no time getting to work.

From Chris Christie in New Jersey to Scott Walker in Wisconsin, they did not flinch from taking on the public sector unions. They knew that the current trajectory was unsustainable. In Wisconsin, the unions descended on Madison and threw everything they had into the fight. Democrat senators fled the state to prevent a quorum from voting on Governor Walkers measures, union thugs took over the state capital building, inflicting millions in damage to the people’s property, tried to defeat a conservative judge so that the law, if passed, could be struck down by the court, and if that didn’t work they tried to recall six Republican senators at the ballot box. All measures failed, Walker’s policies were implemented and job growth in Wisconsin started chugging along.

In other states like Ohio, Tennessee and Indiana similar setbacks for unions were proceeding more quietly. Meanwhile in the private sector, which has only about 7% union representation, the next major showdown is coming to a head.

The United Auto Workers’ contract with GM, Ford, and Chrysler expires on September 14th. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. As written in a previous post, the unions will be sitting on both sides of the bargaining table, as the Obama administration granted them large chunks of GM and Chrysler stock as part of the bailout package, while stiffing the bond holders, and now the unions as labor will be negotiating with the union as owners. And if they drive GM and Chrysler out of business again, who gets stuck with paying for the cleanup? That’s right, the American taxpayer. Why?

Because the Obama administration couldn’t keep their nose out of the automobile business, thinking if their didn’t bring their collective genius to the limited intellect possessed by the average business owners, how on earth could the auto companies ever function? They should have let the bankruptcy courts handle it, but they decided to drag the rest of us into the mess and now we own a stock that is worth about $31 per share that must climb to $52 for us to break even.

So will the unions commit suicide by making unreasonable demands, drive the auto companies out of business and at the same time kill their own investment in their stock? Or, will they quietly get rid of all of their stock before they trash the auto companies and then demand that the government step in again and bail them out?

Get ready to take it in the neck again, America. The most inexperienced president in US history with his most excellent panel of advisers who never worked in the private sector are about to tell the rest of us how it is supposed to all work. Brace for impact, my friends.

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

In the July 4 issue of National Review we have this follow-up on the stimulus.

“In a speech at Chrysler’s Toledo plant celebrating his administration’s ‘successful’ bailout of the company, the president invoked the multiplier effect by pointing out that saving the plant had helped Chet’s Restaurant, a Toledo institution since the 1920s, to stay open. A few days later, Chet’s announced that it was closing; the owner laid equal blame on the current hard times and Ohio’s 2006 enactment of a smoking ban.”

More than two years after the official end of the recession our economy limps along. We are overtaxed, overregulated by busybody governments at all levels, that believe their superior intellect and beliefs should be impressed on the drone populace for their own good. What was that phrase? “Give me liberty…”

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

As the Tea Parties celebrate their second anniversary, some of the volunteers have become battle weary, particularly those who live in blue states and don’t see some of the progress that that have been achieved in red states. To rally the troops the following speech was prepared for one of the Tax Day rallies.

Two years ago, I stood where you are. I was not yet a Tea Party member, but I became one. We have accomplished a lot. We had a great November. On issues, politicians ask what the Tea Party thinks. We impact policy.

But there are concerns. Some of our fellow warriors are battle weary. They work long and hard at their jobs. They take care of their families. They generously volunteer their time to our cause. They don’t see significant progress in blue states like New York. But the tide is turning.

What does that mean? There are certain long term trends that take many years to establish and thus will take many years, if at all, to reverse. Let me share some of them with you:

• Conservatives are more productive, or should I say more reproductive than progressives. In states carried by Bush there were 3.2 million more Americans under the age of eighteen than states carried by Kerry. That’s a pretty strong bench. Meanwhile, the grim reaper is calling the FDR Democrats who turned 21 between 1932 and 1952. That group has ten percent more Democrats than Republicans. As long as we can keep them from voting after they die, we’ll be in good shape.
• Abortion has consequences – when we go to the polls in 2012, there will likely be 20 million fewer people voting because they didn’t get the chance.  Of that 20 million it is estimated that 5 million more would have been Democrats than Republicans.
• Two thirds of voters in the last two elections were stockholders. Why is that important? Because people who own at least $5,000 in stock are 18% more likely to be Republican than Democrat. Only 6% African Americans with no stock holdings were Republicans while 20% of those with $5,000 or more in stock were. It also educates people to what a lousy investment Social Security is, which finally opens the door to serious reform.
• We are currently being carried on Sirius XM radio to millions of people. That was unthinkable 20 years ago. The main stream media is dying. The new media and the blogosphere are growing.

Look around you. Two years ago when I stood out there I wondered, “What can I do to help?” and I know many of you feel the same way. The answer is three simple steps:

1. 1. Show up
2. 2. Sign up
3. 3. Step up

You have already shown up by being here. Encourage your friends to do the same. Sign the mailing list that our volunteers are circulating among you.When you are ready, step up; volunteer some of your time and your resources. How much is up to you, but every little bit makes a difference. You are the reinforcements. On Election Day in 2012, imagine the House, Senate and presidency led by conservatives. We can then restore our freedoms and make Washington accountable.

So I ask you, will you help finish the fight? Will you add to the critical push? Then let’s get to work.

There have been a number of successes. The long term demographics are trending conservative. Some remarkable victories have happened in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana. This is not a time to ease up, but to call for more volunteers and double our efforts.

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

Ah, the romance of rail travel.  From Murder on the Orient Express to From Russia with Love to White Christmas to Some Like It Hot there is something alluring about a train.  But for all those warm feelings it’s time to recognize that we are in the 21^st century and to leave trains to the movies. 

There have been calls for the great idea of high speed rail that is, in effect, a solution in search of a problem.  It may work well in Europe and Japan, but the United States is not Europe or Japan.  Two things needed to make high speed rail viable are population density and distances between such population densities that are not too close and not too far. We have a whole lot of neither.

Building a high speed rail system is capital intensive.  Between the track bed, carefully engineered to keep high speed trains on the tracks and the passengers comfortable, the rolling stock, and the signaling and safety equipment, it takes a lot of money to build it.  If that investment is to be recovered you need many passengers paying ticket prices high enough to make a profit and low enough to attract those passengers.  Those population centers have to be far enough apart so that the inconvenience of public transportation offsets driving by car and close enough so that the travel time is not too much longer than air travel.  How many of these routes are there in this country that satisfy those criteria?  Precious few.

Consider that part of the country where the population is densest, the Northeast Corridor, extending from Boston to Washington, D.C.  This happens to be one place in the country where rail service works.  Amtrak runs a fast train service along this corner that in 2008 actually made a profit of $41 per passenger on this service, called Acela. 

Let’s compare that to what is being planned for California.  The concept is a high speed rail link running from San Francisco in the north to San Diego in the south, a run of about 800 miles.  The initial segment of the project is estimated to cost $5.5 billion, take five years to build, and will connect Bakersfield to Madera mainly through agricultural regions.  From a construction perspective that should be an easy build with long stretches of open spaces.  Anyone care to wager what how much the estimate will grow?  The total cost is estimated at $40 billion.  If you could achieve the same profit as the Acela ($41 per passenger) and carry as many passengers as the Northeast Corridor in a year (10.8 million), it would take over 90 years just to recover the capital costs, not including any interest charges.  Is that remotely feasible?

Here’s where the problems mount, you could travel the 800 miles by air in about an hour and a forty minutes, whereas a high speed train would probably take around four hours.  One of the towns mentioned in a recent article in the New York Times as being along the route is Corcoran, population 26,000 including 12,000 “guests of the state” at nearby prisons.  Don’t count on them using the rails much.  The distance is too great and the population density is lacking.  But once again, the federal government is in the middle of something where it doesn’t belong providing funding.  Why should the overtaxed citizens of New York and New Jersey pay for a high speed rail system entirely within the state of California?  This about sums it up:

On Dec. 9, California’s rail authority received a windfall of additional federal stimulus money — some $600 million — when Republican governors in Ohio and Wisconsin passed on money intended for their states. California voters approved high-speed rail in 2008, and deadlines are already passing, including a Dec. 31 cutoff for the state to finalize a plan to spend federal money in the Central Valley. Initial spending will span a raft of projects, including designing stations, redirecting nearby roads and acquiring land.

So responsible governors in Ohio and Wisconsin passed on federal stimulus money; rather than return the money to the Treasury, damn it, it was going to be spent by someone!  Send it to California.  In case you hadn’t noticed lately, California is broke.  So tell me again, why hasn’t this project been cancelled?

If the people of California want to build this themselves, fine.  If a private company sees the opportunity to make a profit and wants to build this, go ahead.  But to take tax dollars from one state and give it to another to build another white elephant, is insane.  It is time to get our heads screwed on straight and live within our means.  Between cars and air travel, there are few places you cannot reach in this country.  There is no value in spending billions of dollars to hit a very small niche between the two.

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

Comments submitted in response to a previous post, “The Progressive War on Federalism,” focused on the Electoral College and a movement called the National Popular Vote (http://www.nationalpopularvote.com) bill.  Rather than argue against my point it only seemed to reinforce it.  The objective of this movement, which before this commenter’s contribution I was unaware of, is to abolish, or should I say neuter, the Electoral College and replace it with the direct election of the president.  This movement looks to further weaken the states and move us away from federalism and toward a strong monolithic central government.  Here is my analysis.

The Case in Favor of Direct Election of the President

The commenter and the website for the National Popular Vote (NPV) bill make several points in favor of the change.  In my view it boils down to the following:

1. In the current system, after the primaries, candidates only campaign in a handful of competitive states and ignore the rest where one candidate is either far ahead or far behind.
2. The Electoral College that we have today, was not designed, anticipated or favored by the Founding Fathers
3. This does not abolish the Electoral College
4. It does not require a Constitutional Amendment
5. The power of states are neither increased nor decreased
6. The National Popular Vote bill would end the influence of the “mob” in a handful of closely divided battleground states
7. The current system does not provide a check on the “mob”

This seems pretty compelling.  Most polls show that this idea is strongly favored over the Electoral College that we have today.  However, who is being asked the question?  In the federal system of government that the Founders designed, the people did not have the power to directly elect the president, so asking someone who doesn’t have power if they would like it, is like asking someone who is hungry if they would like some food.  Let me present my case against it.

The Case against the Direct Election of the President

The first argument that somehow having the direct election of the president would compel candidates to actively campaign across the country is stated but not proven.  If the outcome of the election is determined based on who has the most votes, what would compel a candidate to campaign in Montana or Alaska?  There just aren’t that many people in  those states and are we to believe that if a candidate does not show up in a state to campaign that the citizens there are going to stay home and not vote? That is absurd.

The more likely scenario is that candidates will focus on major media markets.  If you take Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., not the cities but the media markets, you will cover about 25% of the population of the U.S.  Add Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Houston, Dallas, and Miami, and you probably don’t have to campaign anywhere else to have a shot at reaching enough of the popular vote to win.  Those in favor of this proposal make no compelling argument otherwise.

The second argument that the Electoral College that we have today was not designed, anticipated or favored by the Founding Fathers is a myth.  They created the Electoral College, they left the method of choosing the electors up to the states.  “The Framers not only rejected the direct popular election of the President, but also left it to the state legislatures to determining how the states’ electors were to be appointed.” (Heritage Guide to the Constitution, p.185).  This raises several points.

If the Founders specifically rejected the direct election of the president how can the supporters argue that this will pass Constitutional muster without an Amendment?  Also the argument that it does not abolish the Electoral College may be true, but it renders it meaningless, which is the same as abolishing it.  If the NPV bill is adopted by all the states, the outcome of every presidential election going forward would be a vote of 538-0.  Anyone who thinks that is more than a rubber stamp is deluding themselves.

The argument that this does not require a Constitutional Amendment, which I believe I have refuted, is based on the argument that states can band together in compacts and agree on the all for one selection of electors.  The supporters point to Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution in support of this.  However, this clause states that the approval of Congress is required.  Furthermore in “United States Steel v. Multistate Tax Commission (1978), the Supreme Court declared that state compacts require congressional approval only if they ‘encroach upon the supremacy of the United States.’”  (Heritage, p. 179).  What could be more of an encroachment than the states banding together to effectively nullify the Electoral College without a Constitutional amendment?

Federalism recognized the national government and each of the state governments as sovereign entities.  Therefore the voters in one state determining the electors in another state would also likely draw constitutional challenge.  If all the voters in Texas chose candidate A, but the national popular vote chose candidate B, under NPV the electors from Texas would vote for candidate B against the wishes of the people of Texas.

The Cato Institute studied the NPV proposal and found that about an equal number of states would garner more candidate attention from this proposal as would lose attention.  It looked at the electoral power of the states under both systems.  Under the current system it considered each state’s power as the current electoral votes as a percentage of the total number of electoral votes.  Under the NPV system it looked at the population of eligible voters as a percentage of the total number of eligible voters.  In their analysis twenty states would have greater influence under NPV among them Pennsylvania, New York, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois; thirty states would lose influence among them Wyoming, the District of Columbia, Alaska, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Louisiana; one state, Alabama would be unchanged.  So the argument that smaller “flyover” states would suddenly garner more attention is not borne out by the analysis.

The last argument is a check on “mob rule,” which oddly was the purpose behind the design of the Electoral College in the first place.  The argument against this is best illustrated by a hypothetical example.

Let’s say over the next six years there is a massive migration to California and at the same time NPV is approved in every state.  Maybe California finally gets marijuana legalized and maybe they even declare it a fundamental right that every Californian is entitled to a free pound of the stuff every year.  The migration results in 51% of the population living in California.  Now in 2016, governor Jerry Brown decides to run for president.  On Election Day, everyone in California lights up a spliff and heads to the polls to vote for Jerry Brown.  The vote in California is unanimous.  Elsewhere in the country everyone is shocked at what is taking place in California and votes for another candidate, say, Marco Rubio.  The popular vote is 51% for Jerry Brown, 49% for Marco Rubio.  Rubio carries 49 out of 50 states plus the District of Columbia.  Jerry Brown carries one state, California.  In the system we have today, Brown would get 54 Electoral votes and Rubio would get 484 and easily win the presidency over the “mob rule” in California.  But under NPV, Brown wins 538 -0.

Okay, forward to 2024 and let’s say the population has remained the same as have the voter sentiments, but another census has come and gone so the House of Representatives and subsequently the electoral votes are reapportioned.  If you take 51% of 435, gives California 222 plus 2 electoral votes for a total of 224 electoral votes.  Now the same election is held with Bill Maher running for president from California and Alan West from Florida running against him.  When the smoke clears the results are the same, Maher with 51% of the popular vote and West with 49%.  In the Electoral College, as it exists today, West would win 314 to 224, again carrying 49 out of 50 states plus the District of Columbia, while Maher carries one state.  However under NPV, Maher would win 538-0.  Therefore NPV enforces mob rule rather than preventing it.

The Wisdom of the Founding Fathers

The Founding Fathers designed our form of government out of a mistrust of power.  They designed the system so that the people would directly elect the House of Representatives and they also gave control of the purse to that body.  They designed the Senate to represent the interests of the sovereign states, until the progressives abolished that with the seventeenth amendment.  They designed the system where the Electoral College would choose the president, but left it to the individual states how they would choose their electors.  They designed the system where judges would be chosen by the president with the advice and consent of the senate.

The Electoral College was a way to protect the voice of small states from the tyranny of the majority.  What the progressives want to do is to follow up what they did with the seventeenth amendment.  Instead of having fifty-one election districts for president, represented by the states and the District of Columbia, they want to have one election district consisting of the entire nation.  Why not then abolish the state boundaries and the states themselves?  State capitals can then become district offices of the federal government carrying out the directives that come down from Washington. 

This is not the great country our Founders gave us.  It is moving this country to a omnipotent federal government where the individual has no voice of consequence and no liberty either.

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

As we approach the mid-point of his term we, once again, hear President Obama with another scheme to create jobs.  This time he really, really means it.  For a mere $50 billion we can build roads, rails and runways and we can create an “infrastructure bank” to boot.  I guess the government wants to get into the banking business now that they have swallowed up two thirds of the domestic auto companies and passed a law to take over health care.  But, hey, who are you calling a socialist?

The infrastructure bank has supporters: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ed Rendell the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania and Michal Bloomberg the Democratic, Republican, Independent mayor of New York, but they want it to support more projects such as water and clean energy projects.  But here’s the really good news, according to the New York Times “They say such a bank would spur innovation by allowing a panel of experts to approve projects on merit, rather than having lawmakers simply steer transportation money back home.” We get a brand new panel of experts to tell us morons what is good for us! 

How about this idea, get the Federal government out of the roads, rails and runways business.  Unless the road is part of the Interstate highway system, and that means interstate, the feds should stay away from it.  If a road within a city needs maintenance, that city and its citizens should pay for it, not taxpayers elsewhere in the country.  That’s how the whole process got screwed up.  You build my road, I’ll build your road and nobody will know who pays for what, until we find out we are $13 trillion in debt.

One of the good ideas Jimmy Carter had was to deregulate the airlines.  Airlines became competitive and prices came down.  The problem is that air travel consists of three components: the airlines, the airports and air traffic control.  Complete the process, deregulate the airports and air traffic control.  If you do that, airports can charge different prices for takeoff and landing slots.  No more will we see thirty-two flights all scheduled to take off at 7:30 AM from one airport.  Private investors would also have an incentive to build a state of the art air traffic control system. 

By the way, what happened to all those “shovel ready” projects from the first stimulus plan?  Did we actually finish building all the turtle crossings that this country needs?

On another front, Obama continues to tinker with the mortgage market rather than getting out of the way, letting housing prices find their bottom and then going from there.  George Mason economist Anthony B. Sanders said in the New York Times, ““Housing needs to go back to reasonable levels.  If we keep trying to stimulate the market, that’s the definition of insanity.”  Even Democrats are piling on:

“The administration made a bet that a rising economy would solve the housing problem and now they are out of chips,” said Howard Glaser, a former Clinton administration housing official with close ties to policy makers in the administration. “They are deeply worried and don’t really know what to do.”

Who would have thought that a president and vice president with no executive experience prior to taking office would not know what to do once they got there?  After all everyone knew that Obama was a really nice guy with an even temperament, what went wrong?  Now we hear that Fannie Mae wants to back mortgages with nothing down.  But not to worry, this time they are actually going to require the lenders to check to make sure the borrower has income. I feel better already.

Since this administration seems to like experts how about listening to these experts:

“We have had enough artificial support and need to let the free market do its thing,” said the housing analyst Ivy Zelman.

Michael L. Moskowitz, president of Equity Now, a direct mortgage lender that operates in New York and seven other states, also advocates letting the market fall. “Prices are still artificially high,” he said. “The government is discriminating against the renters who are able to buy at $200,000 but can’t at $250,000.”

It’s time for President Obama and his administration to get his boot off of the neck of the economy.  Ours is the strongest most resilient economy in the world, if you set it free.  All of the tinkering and the anti-business threats have pushed employers to the sidelines.  The uncertainty over the economy has led businesses to take a wait and see attitude.

The rhetoric the Democrats have been trying to muster to save their skins is that “eight years of failed policies,” yada, yada, yada.  The reality is that this recession started one year after Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid took over Congress.  This recession started in the last year of the Bush administration, not the first seven.  This recession has lasted nearly twice as long and counting under Obama than it did under Bush, and it shows no sign of changing anytime soon.  A recent poll in Ohio by Public Policy Polling asked respondents who they would prefer to see in the White House right now and the results were George W. Bush 50%, Barack Obama 42%; what does that tell you?

So, Mr. Obama, keeps your hands were we can see them and slowly step away from the economy.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal, newly elected Republican Congressman from Hawaii Charles Djou called Birthright Citizenship a GOP Achievement.  And to think I was happy to hear Mr. Djou was elected in an unusual special election where he ran against two Democrats simultaneously.  They split the vote and he won.  Birthright Citizenship is not a GOP achievement it is an accomplishment of judicial activism, pure and simple.  Mr. Djou says, “The Citizenship Clause of the Constitution’s 14^th Amendment provides that a person born in the United States is automatically a citizen, regardless of the race, ethnicity or citizenship of his parents.”  Where the hell does it say that? 

The Amendment actually reads, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”  These, so called conservatives, like the first part of the clause but seem to go ignorant or blind at the second part.  If you are a Constitutional Originalist, you look to the meaning of the Constitution first in the actual text, then to any information that you can glean from what was discussed at the time of its passing.  This is a case where that information could not be any clearer.

Senator Jacob Howard of Ohio was the author of the citizenship clause of the 14^th Amendment.  He said:

 “[E]very person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States.  This will not [emphasis added] , of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.  It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are not citizens of the United States. “

How much clearer could “not include aliens” be?  Aliens are outside the jurisdiction of the United States and are subject to their home country.

Linda Chavez, who presents as her conservative credentials that she served in the Reagan and Bush administrations, points to English Common Law as the basis of the Birthright Citizenship.  Since under Common Law you are immediately and forever a citizen of the place of your birth.  However, with the Declaration of Independence we did away with that custom of English Common Law.  Under Common Law, you could not renounce your citizenship, and if we are still under that law, we are still all Englishmen.  It was also one of the causes of the War of 1812.  The British did not recognize our process of Naturalization.  They were stopping our merchant ships and taking off sailors they deemed to still be English citizens and pressed them into service in the Royal Navy.  The concept that Ms. Chavez is arguing supports Birthright Citizenship is from feudalism, where the serfs belonged to the land.  They received the lord’s protection and in return gave their lord a lifetime of service.

At the time of passage of the 14^th Amendment, whose purpose was to grant citizenship to the freed slaves, the debate was whether it would also confer citizenship on the American Indians.  Under Mr. Djou’s logic and Ms. Chavez’s they were born here, it was automatic.  But it wasn’t.  Not because of discrimination but because they were members of their tribes which were considered sovereign nations.  The United States signed treaties with them.  In the Supreme Court case Elk v Wilkins the court ruled:

“Indians, born within the territorial limits of the United States, members of and owing immediate allegiance to one of the Indian Tribes, an alien though dependent power, although in a geographical sense born in the United States, are no more born in the United States and ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ …than the children of subjects of any foreign government born within the domain of that government, or the children, born within the United States, of ambassadors or other public ministers of foreign Nations.”

That was the law until 1898 in the Supreme Court case United States v Wong Kim Ark, where the majority used the Common Law argument to ignore what was written in the text of the Amendment, what was discussed at the time of the Amendment by the author of the Amendment and its supporters and the prior Supreme Court case.  This is judicial activism at its baldest.  In the dissenting opinion by Chief Justice Fuller he made it clear:

“when the sovereignty of the Crown was thrown off and independent government established, every rule of the common law and every statute of England obtaining in the colonies, in derogation of the principles on which the new government was founded, was abrogated.”

The American Revolution did away with that definition of Birthright Citizenship under the Common Law.

So along comes Lindsey Graham, who can’t decide if he is for open borders or against them, so his suggestion to amend the Constitution to end Birthright Citizenship sounds somewhat hollow.   It is also irrelevant.  Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution clearly grants the Congress the power “To establish an (sic) uniform Rule of Naturalization..”  This does not require an amendment, just a simple clarifying law that Birthright Citizenship does not exist in the United States.

The irony is that the 14^th Amendment was created to make it more difficult for future Congresses to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which said pretty much the same thing as the 14^th Amendment and it was changed with the stroke of the pen of an activist Supreme Court.  Perhaps we need to consider the idea of Mark Levin in that perhaps we need to have a legislative veto of Supreme Court decisions.  If the role of the Supreme Court is to interpret laws written by Congress, why not let Congress with a two-thirds vote, explain what the Supreme Court misinterpreted?

There was a commercial not too long ago where a young man looked out his window to the village green where a bundle of money had just fallen.  He calls his wife/girlfriend over to show her.  She suggests running down and getting it, but he says, no, let’s wait.  Next you see a frizzy headed guy down on the green who screams, “MONEY!!!!”  In seconds, people came out of the woodwork and scoffed up all the money while the young couple looked on.

The image of that commercial popped into my head as I considered the job summit being led by President Obama.  To me, the young couple represented the government pondering how to direct the economy to achieve this specific goal or that.  The mob on the green was the free market.  While the government dithers over what kind of legislation to write, which special interest groups to pay off to pass it, how to develop incentives to get private industry to do this or that, if they would just cut taxes and get out of the way, the free market would get to work creating jobs where they are needed, not where some bureaucrat thinks they should go.

Uncertainty

The biggest cloud overhanging this economy is uncertainty.  The Obama administration is slamming through enormous changes: a $787 billion Porkulus package, cap and trade, health care.  Businesses look at this combined with the accumulation of massive government debt, tax increases rather than cuts (yes letting the Bush tax cuts expire is a tax increase, not just the expiration of tax cuts as Speaker Pelosi tries to spin it) and they don’t know what hiring that extra employee is going to cost, let alone what it will cost to keep the employees they already have.  So they don’t hire until the dust  settles and they can calculate the impact.

“Tax incentives for job creation are “worthy of further consideration,” he said, while adding that the administration is also set on making a big push in the area of green jobs.” – President Obama at Jobs Summit

“Worthy of further consideration”?  Since conservatives have been calling for tax cuts for a year now, this kind of statement in Obama-ese translates thusly, “I have to make a nod to the right, to acknowledge that I heard them, but it ain’t happening.”  Couple that with the “big push in the area of green jobs.”  We are in the midst of the scientific scandal that the “settled science” of man-made global warming could be the greatest hoax since Bernie Madoff, and Obama wants a big push in the area of green jobs.  What if that area collapses because the urgency that Al Gore has been screaming about is no longer urgent?  It’s government planning on the order of Soviet five-year plans or Mao’s Great Leap Forward programs.  It harkens back to Jimmy Carter’s giant Synfuels project that was going to convert coal into oil, until oil prices fell and the project imploded, but not before billions of tax dollars were poured into that rat hole.

How Simulating!

If you listen to Joe Biden, the stimulus plan is working better than expected.  But let’s take a closer look.  As of about three weeks ago only $120 billion of the stimulus money had been spent. (So why is Congress looking at another stimulus with over $600 billion left to spend in the first one?)  Of that money, 80% went to the Department of Education, Health and Human Services, and the Department of Labor.  What about all the “shovel ready” projects?  Only about $4 billion has gone to the Department of Transportation.  Feel better?

Jobs Summit Attendees

So who is meeting with President Obama at the jobs summit?  Well first let’s look at who was not invited:

• U.S. Chamber of Commerce — they have butted heads with Obama over health care and climate change policies
• National Federation of Independent Businesses

I don’t know about you, but I think they might have an idea or two about how to create conditions that let the free market create jobs.  As for the attendees:

• Service Employees International Union (SEIU) officer
• President of the American Federation of Teachers — a union of workers in a government run monopoly
• United Food & Commercial Workers International Union
• CEOs of some Fortune 500 companies

How many jobs do unions create, not occupy, create?  Think of the auto industry, steel industry, public K-12 education, the Postal Service, and government in general.  Do they bring images of thriving, vibrant, engines of job creation?  Or is the image more of the basket cases of the U.S. economy?  This is not a slight against the union workers themselves, but rather of their leadership who create so many restrictions on job rules to artificially create the need for more jobs.  There motto is: why have three people do the work, when you have five do it?

As far as big business is concerned, let me dispel the thought that conservatives and big business go hand in hand.  In many cases big business looks to cut deals with the government to protect their industries and markets from upstart companies.  They have gotten big and lethargic, rather than nimble and vibrant.  Small businesses create about 80% of the jobs in the U.S. and they didn’t have a seat at the table.

So was the jobs summit about creating jobs or just jive talk?  If you want a real jobs summit see what American Solutions was hosting in Cincinnati, Ohio and Jackson, Mississippi.  They actually discussed ideas that would work.

For all the Bush bashing that has gone on since September 11, 2001, it is a pretty sure bet that when he leaves office on January 20, 2009, part of his legacy will be that he kept us safe for the last seven years.  The fundamental difference between the polices of the Bush administration and those of Clinton and Carter was that Bush saw it as a war, Clinton and Carter as crimes.  On a war footing, you take the battle to your enemies with the objective of destroying them.  On a law and order footing, you investigate the crime after the fact, arrest suspects, give them their Miranda rights, put them on trial, and if you are lucky, they may spend some time in jail.

Law and Order

In 1979, where it all started, Iranian “students” took over the U.S. Embassy and held it for over 400 days.  Jimmy Carter tried to negotiate a settlement, sponsored a botched rescue, and saw the hostages finally released his last hour in office.  The Iranians didn’t want to be holding American hostages when Ronald Reagan was president.  Reagan would have seen the taking of the U.S. Embassy as an invasion on U.S. soil, which is what our Embassies are.  He would not have tolerated a ragtag bunch of radical students occupying U.S. soil.

From that, and Somalia, Osama bin Laden saw the U.S. as a paper tiger that would cut and run if hit hard.  Clinton’s law and order approach can be seen in the response to the first World Trade Center bombing and the constructing of a “wall” between the CIA and the FBI.

War Footing

President Bush saw the attacks on the U.S. as a war.  He mobilized the country and struck back hard.  By going on offense rather than hanging back playing defense, he has kept the enemy pinned down in Iraq and Afghanistan, while simultaneous rooting them out aggressively wherever they went.  Those captured on the battlefield were sent to Guantanamo, where they were interrogated and held.  Lawyers in the U.S. began to complain that these prisoners were being held without being charged and that was unconstitutional.  Again, that is seeing it from a law and order perspective.  On a war footing, the enemy that is captured on the battlefield is held until the end of hostilities, like we held Japanese and German prisoners during WWII.  If it takes 50 years until the war is won and hostilities ended, then they should be held for 50 years.

Rooting Them Out

In trying to prevent another attack at home, Bush also aggressively sought to disrupt their operations.  Part of that process was to intercept their communications and learn what they were up to.  This caused an uproar over eavesdropping on Americans without a warrant.  However, the program was designed to intercept international phone calls, even if one end was in the U.S.  For example, if an Al Qaeda terrorist is captured or killed on the battlefield but their cell phone is recovered and their cell phone has an address book in it, the administration would set up all the numbers in the address book to be monitored and calls listened to. The purpose was to keep all Americans safe.

Many on the left believe that people in the Bush administration should be prosecuted for this practice.  They call this activity criminal.

Who Are Your Enemies?

President Bush tried to prevent our enemies, those who wished to kill as many of us as possible, from doing us harm.  He knew our enemies to be deadly and ruthless.

And then you have Joe Wurzelbacher, aka Joe the Plumber.  Joe the Plumber had the audacity to ask Barack Obama a question about how Obama’s policies would affect people like Joe.  Pretty dangerous stuff, no?  Since that chance encounter, Joe the Plumber has been investigated by six Ohio state agencies.  Did you see the ACLU representative on the evening news demanding what the Obama campaign knew about this and when they knew it?  Did you see Chris Matthews slamming his hand on his desk and saying, “This is AMERICA, not the Soviet Union!  We don’t investigate citizens because of their political beliefs.”?  Did you hear Senator Dick Durban rise in the senate to decry what happened to Joe the Plumber and compare it to the Nazis, the Soviet Gulags, and Pol Pot?

Neither did I.