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.

In his recent telephone town hall meeting, Tim Bishop expressed his support for the continued payroll tax holiday but making it clear that it would have no impact on the Social Security Trust Fund. Money for Social Security would continue to go into the trust fund from other sources. What other sources you might ask? I may have an answer for you.

In an article in HousingWire magazine, the author points out that:

The Federal Housing Finance Agency will increase guarantee fees on single-family mortgage-backed securities charged by the government-sponsored enterprises by 10 basis points effective April 1, 2012, in response to the new funding mechanism for the payroll tax cut extension passed by Congress.

So it seems that the Social Security Trust fund will get its money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or more accurately, from new home buyers. So for a two month extension of the payroll tax holiday that will prevent taxpayers from paying an additional $130 into the Social Security Trust Fund, that everyone expects to get back anyway, new home buyers will have to pay thousands in new fees.

The g-fee increase will remain in effect through Oct. 1, 2021. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the g-fees would offset about $35.7 billion in the costs of the tax cut. Mortgage Bankers Association CEO David Stevens said the increase could mean an extra $4,000 in fees on a $200,000 mortgage.

One of the problems facing Long Island is affordable housing. Our young people are leaving Long Island for areas were there is a larger rental stock that they can start out in, rather than living in mom and dad’s basement, and where they can afford to buy a house after saving a down payment for a couple of years. Apparently for the benefit of a political talking point Tim Bishop votes to slam an already weak housing marking with additional fees. After all who can really call a two month anything sound fiscal policy? Notice there is no spending cut mentioned here, it is an increase in taxes and fees. This is what Tim Bishop was telling his constituents not to worry about in his town hall meeting? What will become of his district, if nobody lives here but retirees? Is that his plan to solve the unemployment problem? Drive enough young people away until the number of jobs fits the remaining population?

The problem is spending. It was only last week that Joe Biden was attacking Mitt Romney’s policies by saying:

“His proposal would actually double down on the policies that caused the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression and accelerated a decades-long assault on the middle class,” Biden added.

Decades long assault on the middle class? I guess he means you too, Bill Clinton. The greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression has been the Obama administration and if he were to get reelected it would finish America off. We have had the worst consistent unemployment since the Great Depression for the entire Obama administration. We have had the worst record of job creation, loss actually, since Herbert Hoover. The National Bureau of Economic Research says the recession ended in June of 2009. Does it feel like it to you? Most recoveries from economic downturns are mirror images of the slump. A gradual recession is followed by a gradual recovery; a sharp downturn is followed by a sharp upswing. Not this time. Just look at the job creation record of Team Obama.

This chart goes all the way back to Harry Truman and Obama’s performance stands alone.  Let’s put to rest the “eight years of failed Bush policy, yada, yada, yada” and face the fact that Obama and his spending, heavy-handed regulations, and insatiable appetite to fix everything by taxing more has put us into an economic winter. Tim Bishop has happily ignored the needs of his constituents to buy favor from the Democratic leadership and their special interest pals. They have done an awful job and we need to turn them out, before they turn us into Greece.

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

Photo by shannonpatrick17

First we were told we had to pass the stimulus bill because if we didn’t unemployment would rise to 9%. The good news was that there were hundreds of shovel ready project raring to go. Later we learned that “shovel ready was not as shovel ready as we expected.” $800 billion dollars of squandered stimulus dollars later, unemployment is at 9%. But what about a real shovel ready project that doesn’t need taxpayer dollars?

There is a $7 billion project called Keystone XL that will build a pipeline from Canada to bring heavy crude oil to refineries in Texas and Oklahoma. It is estimated it will create 20,000 jobs. It will also help us rely less on oil from the unstable Middle East. The project needs the approval of the State Department because it crosses our northern border. That’s approval, not taxpayer funding. Okay, before all the environmentalists come out of their chairs,

In April 2010 and again this August, State produced multivolume environmental impact statements that concluded the pipeline would have “no significant impacts” on the environment. — Wall Street Journal, November 11, 2011

So in the midst of bus rides and hectoring us that we need to pass this jobs bill now (where have I heard that before?), Obama decides to vote “present”. He has pushed the decision on the Keystone pipeline out 12-18 months until after the 2012 election. He doesn’t want to lose the environmentalists by slipping on a banana. (BANANA – Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything). So expect to hear more about those “do nothing Republicans”. You know, those Republicans who have passed fifteen bills to help create jobs that Harry Reid in the Democrat controlled Senate will not even allow to come up for a vote. I can understand them opposing the Republicans. What I can’t understand is not voting on the bill either for or against. So who is really doing nothing? Say what you mean, mean what you say.

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

Photo by wstera2

Obama has a jobs plan, or so we are told. He will unveil it after he returns from Martha’s Vineyard. I hope it is a little more detailed than his budget plan to cut $4 trillion that no one can find by meticulously searching the Oval Office. I don’t even know what is in the plan and I have a better one. Stay in Martha’s Vineyard, Mr. President. Set a goal to play eighteen on every PGA sanctioned golf course in the country. Don’t you have some friends and family in Hawaii that miss you?

If we can just keep you out of Washington, so we’re not grappling with your non-leadership, leadership, things may not get a whole lot better until November 2012, but at least they might not get worse. Anyway, isn’t that your new campaign theme, “Just Imagine How Bad It Could Have Been! Vote Obama”?

Take North Carolina for example. Boeing opens a factory there to build its 787 Dreamliner. It hired 5,000 workers and they are ready to go. Then along comes our helpful friends in Washington from the National Labor Relations Board. They say, “Oh, no, this is retaliation. Boeing asked the unionized workers in Washington state for a moratorium on strikes and the union reasonably said they wanted Boeing to promise to never manufacture anywhere but Washington state and Boeing refused. How DARE they?!” So not only did Boeing add 3,000 jobs in Washington state, somehow opening up another factory in South Carolina, a Right to Work state, is retaliation. In an economy crawling along with unemployment stuck at north of 9% Washington is killing 5,000 jobs. When our intrepid leader, President Obama was asked about this he boldly proclaimed that the NLRB was an independent agency and his hands were tied. The President of the United States meekly says he is powerless against a panel of five bureaucrats.

If you asked some of those pesky evil Tea Party freshmen over in the House of Representatives who haven’t spent their entire lives in government service, they would probably say, give us a shot at it. First, we will drain their budget to $1; second tell Boeing to go ahead and make the NLRB’s day; and then sit back and see what action the NLRB will take with $1 in the petty cash drawer. Next step would be to legislate the Department of Labor out of existence, and the NLRB along with it. There are plenty of agencies in the individual states to take up any slack.

Other Award Winning Jobs Moves by the President

As we watch oil rig after oil rig sail out of the Gulf of Mexico to friendlier climes, the Obama administration’s mismanagement of the BP oil spill fiasco adds to the misery. Thousands of jobs were lost or put on hold. Trouble in the Middle East, disruption of oil production in Libya, we should increase domestic oil production but roadblocks to that keep getting thrown in the way. No, green energy is the answer as we watch another heavily subsidized solar energy company file for bankruptcy sending more workers to the unemployment line.

The American people are still waiting for GM stock to his $53 per share so we can break even on this wonderful investment. So how does Washington help? Let’s start by punching a bigger hole in the deficit by subsidizing the Chevy Volt to the tune of $7,500 per car in tax credits. Oh, that’s bad. No, that’s good. Chevy can’t sell them, so there won’t be much in the way of tax credit damage to the budget! Instead, the Obama administration comes out with new CAFE standards to require car companies to produce cars that get 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. If that doesn’t drive a stake through the heart of GM and Chrysler and saddle the American people with more debt, nothing will. With a $2,000 per car disadvantage over their foreign rivals GM and Chrysler are not going to be able to make small, light cars capable of this standard competitively. Well at least we’ll put those workers on unemployment slowly over the next 14 years.

How much more punishment can this economy take until we put President Obama on permanent retirement? So, please, Mr. President, I would rather you work on your golf handicap than give our economy more handicaps than it can handle.

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

Photo by Sillgwailo

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz wrote an open letter to his fellows CEOs about the current economic situation. (Howard Schultz CEO Letter) In it he calls for action. The letter and Mr. Schultz are interesting both for what they say and what they don’t.

Over the last few weeks and months, our national elected officials from both parties have failed to lead. They have chosen to put partisan and ideological purity over the well-being of the people. They have undermined the full faith and credit of the United States. They have stirred up fears about our economic prospects without doing anything to truly address those fears. They have spent a resource even more precious than the dollar: our collective confidence in each other, in the future, and in our ability to solve problems together.

So begins Mr. Schultz’s letter. A failure to lead and partisan and ideological purity are the root cause. There seem to be good doses of that going on in Washington. Mr. Schultz has a two step solution. He continues:

First, we aim to push our elected leaders to face the nation’s long-term fiscal challenges with civility, honesty, and a willingness to sacrifice their own re-election. This means not kicking the can anymore. It means reaching a deal on debt, revenue, and spending long before the deadline arrives this fall. It means considering all options, from entitlement programs to taxes.

That is a pretty bold start to actually push our leaders to put country ahead of re-election. For the first time that I can recall there are actually politicians who are saying the same thing, the Republican Tea Party freshman. They have said they were sent to Washington to fix the problems and that is what they intend to do whether it means getting reelected or not. The same sentiment among the Tea Party goes for not kicking the can down the road. It practically sounds like Howard Schultz is a Tea Party supporter, or should be. Is he? More on that later.

This is what so many common-sense Americans want. That is why we today pledge to withhold any further campaign contributions to the President and all members of Congress until a fair, bipartisan deal is reached that sets our nation on stronger [sic] long-term fiscal footing. And we invite leaders of businesses — indeed, all concerned Americans — to join us in this pledge. {emphasis mine}

Common-sense Americans? Concerned Americans? Fair and bipartisan? Isn’t it years of bipartisan spending that got us into this mess? Where was the outrage when the Democrats controlled both the White House and Congress and were spending like there was no tomorrow? The closet group to what Schultz is saying is the Tea Party, but rather than try to rally support behind them, he pulls back to a bowl of bipartisan mush. Why? I guess than can best be answered by asking who is Howard Schultz?

Howard Schultz

Howard Schultz is the CEO of Starbucks, a very successful company. But a search of political contributions in the Federal Election Commission data base will turn up that Mr. Schultz, over the last fourteen years has given $116,700 to political candidates or organizations, of which $115,700 went to Democrats and $1,000 went to Republicans, namely John McCain in 1999, which may have been more an anti-Bush contribution than pro-McCain. Who were some of those he gave to?

• Max Baucus
• Maria Cantwell
• Bill Bradley
• Hillary Clinton
• Tom Daschle
• John Edwards
• Ted Kennedy
• Patty Murray
• Barack Obama
• Chuck Schumer

Just about a who’s who of the biggest, and most liberal spenders in recent Congressional history. So when he preaches fairness and fiscal responsibility, is it sincere or just a crony capitalist trying to save the presidency of Barack Obama and raise enough taxes to turn the spending spigots back on. Howard Schultz is apparently an unapologetic liberal Democrat. In his letter there is not one specific program he mentions that should be cut, just the “everything should be on the table” platitudes. As far as his pitch to withhold contributions, based on his history I would applaud him to keep on withholding them regardless of what Congress and the President do.

His Second Suggestion

He then kicks off his second pledge.

The only way to break this cycle of fear is to break it. The only way to get the country’s economic circulatory system flowing again is to start pumping lifeblood through it. That is why we today issue a second pledge. Our companies are going to hire. We are going to accelerate growth, employment, and investment in jobs.
We do this because we want to set in motion an upward spiral of confidence. We are not waiting for government to create an incentive program or a stimulus. We are not waiting for economic indicators to tell us it’s safe to act. We are hiring more people now. We invite leaders of businesses across the country to join us in this pledge as well – and to bring their stakeholders into the effort. Confidence is contagious. The best thing we can do now is to spread it.

Instead of letting business people follow their assessment of the marketplace, the hell with it, just start hiring. This had a familiar ring to it. And it was Herbert Hoover who was doing the ringing.

“Hoover’s wage ideas sounded good to some. And they were indeed the opposite of federal policies in the last downturn. But they did not really make sense: to force business to go on spending when it did not want to was to hurt business. And in some areas — wages, especially — the president’s policy was dramatically counterproductive. As the crash continued, profits began to drop. Yet businesses could not adjust: if they wanted to be good citizens, they had to keep their pledge to Hoover and sustain employment and wages. The president was, essentially, requiring that companies take the hit in profits instead of employment.” — The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes, p. 93

It seems to me that it could not be possible for a group of people to try harder to recreate the Great Depression than President Obama and his supporter have done. Between the runaway spending and now this idea from Mr. Schultz, if we make it to 2012 it could well be amazing if we don’t have another Great Depression. It’s time these people took a hard look at what they have put in place and how damaging it has been. It has been tried before and failed miserably with the employment practices under Hoover and the spending under Roosevelt. If we are to get out of this hole we have to stop digging deeper and start filling the hole back in. We can start by repealing ObamaCare and placing a two year moratorium on new regulations. Once certainty returns to the marketplace businesses will start hiring again. We do not need Mr. Schultz’s stimulus plan of unnecessary jobs any more than we needed President Obama’s. It didn’t work, neither will this.

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

Photo by Nilexuk

“While Washington has been absorbed in this debate about deficits, people across the country are asking what can we do to help the father looking for work,” Obama said. “That’s part of the reason that people are so frustrated with what’s been going on in this town. … Our economy didn’t need Washington to come along with a manufactured crisis to make things worse.” — President Barack Obama, August 2011

President Obama likes to look to history, going as far back as 2008, to explain ad nauseam the mess he was handed. So let’s take a longer look at his performance among American Presidents.

“Whether it’s retail sales, manufacturing, all of the indicators show that we are in the worst recession since the Great Depression,” Obama said on ABC. The result is that all Americans will feel the effects of efforts to put the economy back on track, he said. — January 2009

Is that true? According to the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Business Cycle Dating Committee, the recession that began in December 2007 was long compared to what we have been used to. It lasted, and I say lasted because it officially ended two years ago, eighteen months. The prior two recessions were less than half of that. Looking at history, between 1865 and 1885, there were three recessions that lasted more than 32 months and since 1854 there have been twelve recessions that have been as long as the “Great Recession.” Is it that President Obama’s leadership just makes it feel longer and more painful?

But what about job growth? Let’s look at the performance of presidents since 1890, which time includes seven recessions that were at least as long as the “Great Recession.” Looking at it in terms of the percentage change in job creation, and focusing on their first two and a half years in office to be comparable with President Obama’s tenure, who were the five worst presidents and how do they stack up?

1. Herbert Hoover – no surprise here. His first two and a half years were at the beginning of the Great Depression
2. Barack Obama – the only other president during this time with negative job growth. ObamaCare, TARP, bailouts, stimulus, massive regulation, Dodd-Frank…do you see any connection here?
3. Grover Cleveland
4. Woodrow Wilson – who many credit with starting the progressive ball rolling: income tax, creation of the federal reserve, direct election of US Senators
5. Dwight Eisenhower

The progressives are sure to shoot back as they always do with “imagine how much worse it would have been, etc., etc….” Consider this. Government spending has increased by 3.1% of GDP under President Obama. In 1900, federal government spending in total was only 3.1% of GDP. We have no job growth and President Obama is lost in the midst of all the clues history holds for him. If only he would open his eyes to the truth and close them on his failed ideology.

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

A hat tip to Kevin A. Hassett’s piece in National Review, “One for the History Books,” August 15, 2011

Texas governor Rick Perry announced on Saturday that he was running for president. In his teleprompter free speech he drew more distinctions between himself and Barack Obama.

His foreign policy seems to be based on alienating our traditional allies, while basing our domestic agenda on importing those failed Western European social values. We don’t need a president who apologizes for America. We need a president who protects and projects those values.

We all witnessed President Obama’s world apology tour shortly after taking office. The tour made those on the left feel all warm and fuzzy, while making those on the right hot under the collar. No longer would we have cowboy presidents throwing America’s weight around and causing the rest of the world to dislike and even attack us. He traveled to Cairo to bash the United States of America. Once you do that, you can’t walk it back. His replacement can, but he cannot. So what has his pro-world, anti-American view gotten him?

In a recent poll by Zogby, President Obama’s approval ratings in various countries around the Arab world are:

• Morocco 12%, down from 16%
• Egypt 5%, down from 9%
• Jordan 10%, down from 16%
• UAE 12%,down from 22%

But the real kicker is that President Obama’s approval ratings in the Arab world are now lower than President Bush’s ratings when he left office in 2008. In my book Liberty’s Lifeline, I write about the concept of “the strong horse,” President Obama is not a strong horse, President Bush was.

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

It’s no mystery that President Barack Obama believes in social justice. What is social justice? It is basically taking from those who are the most productive and giving to those who are the least productive. This is done through the coercive power of government, not by appeals to our compassion to give to those we believe need a helping hand. That is called charity. Charity is voluntary. Social justice is compulsory.

President Obama also makes no secret that he believe in the European model of socialism. That consists of bigger government, government run healthcare, government run retirement, rich unemployment benefits, higher taxes, more vacation, but it also comes with something that he doesn’t realize.

With unemployment north of 9%, economic growth crawling along when it should have come out of the recession like a rocket, it prompted Robert Lucas, the 1995 Nobel Prize winner in economics to say:

“Is it possible that by imitating European policies on labor markets, welfare and taxes, the U.S. has chosen a new, lower GDP trend? If so, it may be that the weak recovery we have had so far is all the recovery we will get.”

The slower GDP numbers do not only affect presidential polls. It is estimated that due to the recession and slow recovery we are taking in about $400 billion less in tax revenues than we would under a more robust recovery. As I have said many times here and in my book, Liberty’s Lifeline, Obama is repeating just what didn’t work in the 1930s. Lucas explains:

What discomfits him is the similarities in the policy choices that accompanied both delayed recoveries. By 1934, the Depression’s banking crisis had been resolved, “yet full recovery was still seven years away,” he said in the Milliman lecture. GDP stayed more than 10% below trend. “Why?” The answer, he says, was growth-suppressing policies, such as the Smoot-Hawley tariff, cartelization, unionization and, “most important but hardest to measure, FDR’s demonization of business.”

Sound familiar? The financial panic of 2008 was essentially under control before Obama was sworn in. The recession officially ended over two years ago, but in the mean time we spent nearly a trillion dollars on a pork laden “stimulus” bill, lined up another trillion in spending with ObamaCare, we have free trade treaties being held hostage by Obama’s union supporters, and Obama’s anti-business attitude is clear. After Roosevelt’s massive government spending programs at least we had results like the Hoover Dam, new parkways, new parks, etc. Where is our new Hoover Dam that was built by the Obama stimulus? There is none. In my congressional district, the lion’s share of the stimulus went to school districts and the teachers’ unions. Poof, gone. Gone except, that is, for the bill that has to be paid by the rest of us.

Professor Lucus leaves us with this observation:

“If we’re going to move to a European welfare state,” says Prof. Lucas, “we’re going to have to pay a European price.” And that price could be a permanently lower level of GDP per person. The U.S.’s amazing 100-year ride would slow.

Among the many things any such drop in GDP will siphon away is America’s relentless productive vitality. “So much new happens in the United States,” Prof. Lucas says. But will it still?

The American Dream sprang from the freedom of our economy where an idea, hard work, and dedication could pay off big and benefit not just the individual with the idea but all those who use the product or service. In Obama’s world of regulatory and government oppressiveness, most new ideas will be crushed in the crib under the burden of goverment requirements to surrender their wealth to the laggards.

The beacon of hope is to limit Obama to one term before he can make his changes irreversable.

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

The above question could and should be applied to a number of individuals including Attorney General Eric Holder and even President Barack Obama. The subject is a program, run out of the Justice Department, called “Fast and Furious.”

The intent of the program was to allow the illegal purchase of guns that were destined to Mexico with the hope of tracing them to Mexican drug cartels and winning some battles in the war on drugs. What happened was that Washington lost track of the guns once they crossed the border into Mexico until the guns were recovered at crime scenes in the U.S. where some border patrol agents were killed.

The progressives claim that there is widespread illegal gun sales to criminals that must be stopped and here you have a case of Washington and the Obama administration actively promoting such illegal gun sales. How far behind this should we expect new legislation curtailing or banning the sale of firearms? Those who are responsible for this program, whatever its ultimate aim, that resulted in the deaths of US Border Patrol agents should be found and held accountable, no matter how high up in government they may be.

Congressman Darrell Issa of California is leading an investigation and it appears the stonewalling has begun.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHkaRU9EoVM&feature=player_embedded

Where are gun control advocates Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) and Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) on this subject? Are they too busy tinkering with what American citizens are allowed to own, to bother with the illegal actions of the government they are a part of?

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

Actual Unemployment vs. Stimulus Sales Pitch

It was a very close race, one of the last decided in the country. Out of 180,000 plus votes the final margin of victory was just under 600 votes. In that election Tim Bishop successfully managed to hide from his record and instead he took advantage of a late Republican primary that was hotly contested and pounced with a campaign of personal attacks on his opponent that was just enough to carry the eight weeks until Election Day. His opponent, Randy Altschuler, wants a rematch and it appears the race will be decidedly different.

Bishop’s campaign theme, oddly enough, was that Altschuler was an entrepreneur who created jobs both here and abroad. Only he conveniently left out the part about jobs created here.  In the middle of an economy with high unemployment and a woefully inexperienced administration in charge, it seemed an odd point of attack, but what else did Bishop have? Could he brag about his vote for ObamaCare? He needed a police escort to get him out of a town hall meeting where he tried to explain that vote. Could he brag about the stimulus? We were told that without the stimulus unemployment would rise to 9% while implementing it would cap unemployment at 8% (see chart above). Bishop dutifully voted with Nancy Pelosi for the stimulus and unemployment soared. Most people would conclude that the administration was wrong and the stimulus actually made things worse.

In his Congressional district, the share of the $787 billion that was borrowed for the stimulus from places like China that will have to be repaid by his constituents is roughly $3 billion, however the amount of stimulus dollars that came to the district is between $600 – $700 million. In effect, Congressman Bishop voted for a stimulus program that failed and saddled his constitutents with an additional $2.3 billion in debt to pay for stimulus dollars given to other Congressional Districts.

Mr. Bishop’s ignorance of basic economics explains a great deal of his misguided policies. In defending his bailout of the automobile companies, he says that if he hadn’t done that, we might have had one million more people unemployed. This is economic hogwash, as I point out here and in my book, Liberty’s Lifeline. The left clings to what is called static analysis. What does that mean? It means that no matter what happens people won’t change their behavior.

Picture yourself standing under an umbrella in a rain storm. If someone takes away your umbrella what will you do? You will probably seek some other form of shelter as soon as you can. That is dynamic analysis. You lose your umbrella, you immediately look for a substitute. The left believes that you will continue to stand there in the rain and get soaked. That is static analysis. Under static analysis, the government works. Under dynamic analysis the free market works. Static analysis says that if you raise tax rates, you will collect more money and if you lower tax rates you will lose money. Free markets have proved that lower taxes increase people’s incentive to produce and therefore increase total revenues. Static analysis says that if there are one million people employed by GM, Chrysler and their suppliers, if GM and Chrysler go completely out of business, one million people will be unemployed. Free markets say that people still need transportation. If GM and Chrysler go out of business, poeple will buy from Ford, Toyota, Honda, et. al, and those companies will need to increase production to meet the demand from former GM and Chrysler car buyers. Therefore they will need more employees which they can find from the pool of people just laid off from GM and Chrysler. Will it be all of the former employees? Probably not. Will it be the disaster that Tim Bishop says he prevented? No. But Tim Bishop who spent his entire adult working life in academia or government doesn’t understand this. And since he doesn’t understand economics he has and will continue to vote for bad ideas like the stimulus.

Tim Bishop says he is fighting high gasoline prices with his “Big Oil Welfare Repeal Act.” On his website introducing the bill he says that he is fighting $4 a gallon gasoline prices with this kind of bill. A few lines later on the same web page, he says the bill will have no effect on gasoline prices. So why is he wasting Congressional time with such a measure when we are facing national bankruptcy? Simple. It fits into a nice thirty-second sound bite that he can feed to the public when he runs for re-election, letting them believe he is doing something serious when he is not.

To give you a sample, here is the latest from Tim Bishop’s spokesman, Jon Schneiderman.

Randy Altschuler would rather launch baseless attacks than give a simple yes or no answer whether he supports the Republican budget to end Medicare as we know it. Maybe Randy can go to Brookhaven National Lab and talk to the 1,000 workers who have a job today because Tim Bishop fought the Republican budget, and tell them where he stands on the issues.”

So there you have the crux of Bishop’s weak reelection strategy. Questioning Bishop’s record is a baseless attack. With a budget deficit of $1.5 trillion that Tim Bishop helped create by voting with Nancy Pelosi 97% of the time and Bishop is fighting to keep spending high? The Democrats have no plan of their own (Obama’s budget was defeated in the Senate 97-0) on how to cut spending and that is a defensible position? Medicare is broke. Tim Bishop voted to cut $500 billion in Medicare funding with ObamaCare and now reforming the system before it goes bankrupt is a bad idea? As far as Brookhaven Narional Labs, we all feel for people who lose their jobs, and there are plenty of those stories to tell. But the folks at Brookhave National Labs are government employees, and the govenment in in dire financial shape. So Tim Bishop fights to keep spending high to save 1,000 government jobs, hands the bill to the rest of his 710,000 constituents who must deal with this administration’s disasterous economic policies and he thinks this is leadership?

It’s time that Bishop and Schneiderman start talking about and defending Tim Bishop’s record and what he thinks we should to to get the economy moving again. He squeaked into office in 2010 and things have gotten worse since. In stead of spending time crafting sound bites that can patch over his poor record in Congress it is time to get our country back on the path to success and get Washington out of micromanaging out lives.

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