Phot by Amanda M Hatfield

Congressional members high tailed it out of Washington after passing a debt limit agreement, but Democrats Steve Israel and Tim Bishop wasted no time in holding a press conference at MacArthur airport on Long Island to blame Republicans for a crisis they created.

“They’re now injecting ideology into our runways,” Rep. Steve Israel, D-Dix Hills, said of Republicans in the House. “They’ve allowed Congress to return home without reauthorizing critical FAA airport safety.”

Wow, that sounds pretty serious. Those Republicans are at it again working hard to make America unsafe.

“Ask yourself if there’s a single company in this country that would solve a $16 million problem at the expense to their corporation of $1.2 billion,” said Bishop, a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. “No, the answer is absolutely not.”

Tim Bishop, a man who has spent his entire career in academia and government is now an expert on what private businesses would do in a given situation. But as we have all learned by now, that when Democrats lips are moving and they are calling people terrorists (which you know are never real terrorists), hostage takers, racists, etc., etc. that they are probably covering up the real issue.

The Two Real  Issues

As you have probably guessed by now the issues are not safety and they are not about foolish fiscal management. The issues are a Democrat union power grab and wasteful spending. First, the union issue.

The House passed an FAA funding bill that the Democrats in the Senate, led by Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, stopped cold, and then, of course, blamed the Republicans. The labor issue was described by the New York Times as follows:

The House also passed a long-term F.A.A. bill that included a measure to repeal a rule of the National Mediation Board, which oversees union and labor issues in the airline and railroad industries. The new rule, which passed after President Obama appointed two of the board’s three members, reversed a 76-year-old rule and made it easier for unions to win a representation election. Under the old rule, workers who did not vote were counted as “no” votes; under the new rule, only those casting ballots were counted.

So we have a labor rule that had been in place since 1935, on how union representation elections would be conducted. President Obama appoints two far left members to the National Mediation Board and they reverse the rule. Unions represent only about 7% of workers in the private sector but they are bedrock supporters for the Democratic Party. While Obama tries to refashion America in his own image, the Democrats blocked this bill for that reason and somehow it is the Republicans who are the villains.  The Republicans keep doing what they were elected to do, they keep passing legislation in the House; the Democrats do not seem to pass anything and they block whatever legislation the Republicans pass. Who do you think is the problem?

Wasteful Spending

The other issue concerns funding for a program called Essential Air Service (EAS). EAS, by law, was supposed to expire twenty three years ago, but Congress keeps it alive. It was created after Jimmy Carter deregulated the airlines in 1978 as a way to ease the impact on rural airports by subsidizing them over the ten years after deregulation. The budget for EAS has grown from $50 to $200 million. This program should be eliminated. Those heartless Republicans wanted to cut $16.5 million from the program. The Republicans said that in the overall scheme of things it’s not a lot of money, but we have to start somewhere. Tim “I haven’t found a program I can cut” Bishop naturally jumped in to call the move foolhardy. Well, just what is the EAS?

Essential Air Service

This program subsidizes air service to 140 airports around the country. Here are some examples:

• An airport in Lewiston, Montana. In 2007 it reported that it averages 0.6 passengers per flight. In other words, for every ten flights, six of them had ONE passenger and four of them took off EMPTY! You, my fellow Americans are paying for this.
• Three airports in Kansas in Dodge City, Garden City, and Liberal (no pun) are all within 75 miles of each other and yet we subsidize all three
• Chuck Schumer’s favorites in Messina, Plattsburgh, Ogdenburg, and Saranac Lake are about as close to the large airports in Montreal and Ottawa as Stamford, Connecticut is to JFK airport in New York.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., issued a typical defense of EAS, which supports service to six airports in New York. “There is no question about it,” he said. “Access to air travel is good for businesses, good for jobs, and good for the financial health of the community.”

The politburo has spoken. The central committee of the Democrat party has decided which airports are important and which ones are not, the free market be damned.

Okay but what about places were there are no alternatives such as the 45 subsidized airports in Alaska? In Alaska there are no Interstate highways. The Alaska Railroad only runs from May to September, and air travel is the only transportation available to some remote areas. Surely these places deserve the subsidy. Do they?

In Alaska there is something called the Alaska Permanent Fund, which was created at about the time the North Slope opened up to oil exploration. It collects about 25% of the oil royalties and invests it for Alaska and Alaskans. As of 2008 there was about $28 billion in that fund. There is also the Permanent Fund Dividend which is an annual payment from that fund to Alaskans and in 2010 it paid out $1,281 to every Alaskan who was eligible. If 45 airports, that benefit Alaskans, are in need of a subsidy, why not use this fund to subsidize it instead of using the taxes of someone in New Jersey? The same should go for other states. It’s called the Tenth Amendment. If we eliminate this program, as Congress said it should be eliminated after 1988, we could save $200 million. If we can’t agree to save $200 million, how are we going to save $2 trillion?

Circling back to Mr. Bishop’s remarks, “Ask yourself if there’s a single company in this country that would solve a $16 million problem at the expense to their corporation of $1.2 billion,” it is chutzpah at its highest. The FAA is losing $1.2 billion in tax revenue during this shutdown because Tim Bishop, Steve Israel, Chuck Schumer can’t stand the idea that their union power grab or their automatic pork would be curtailed. As a result jobs are on hold, construction projects stopped, because they won’t even allow a $16.5 million cut, let alone my suggestion to eliminate the whole $200 million. To hold a press conference to blame anyone but themselves is absolutely shameless, but then where is the news in that?

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

Photo by BlueRobot

A contentious battle has concluded today with the passage of the debt limit deal. It was a hard fought battle where no one is entirely happy with the outcome. Before we leave this field of battle, we should take stock of the accomplishments and the players involved.

President Obama

President Obama is damaged goods. His poll numbers have been falling due to the economy and he was disengaged in the debt limit debate until the very end. He has angered the left, the right, and the center. According to Scott Rasmussen, the only reason his approval rating is not lower is that he still has strong, albeit reluctant, support from Democrats. The economy is not likely to improve with him at the helm and the silver lining of the flaws in the debt deal, is it won’t help him on the economy although he managed to push another round of this past the election.

Vice President Joe Biden

Gaffe machine Joe Biden went beyond the gaffe by saying the Tea Party was a band of terrorists. Terrorists? Biden and the main stream media get all clutched up when it comes to calling real terrorists, terrorists, but easily call patriots and a large percentage of Americans, terrorists. It is a badge of dishonor he will carry for a long time.

Senator Harry Reid

Senator Harry Reid has proved, that while an adept parliamentarian in using procedures to try to play Goliath against “David” John Boehner, he just can’t get it done. He couldn’t or chose not to pass a budget for over 800 days. President Obama’s own budget went down to ignominious defeat 97-0 in his chamber. He didn’t bring Cut, Cap, and Balance up for a vote in the Senate because to do so would be lose-lose. If he brought it up he would have to defeat it. If he defeated it, many of the  twenty-three Democrat senators up for election in 2012, would  be on record for more spending and against sound fiscal policy and against two-thirds of Americans who support it. When he and President Obama hit that ball back over the net by saying Boehner walked out of the talks, that Obama has been left at the alter, etc., Boehner couldn’t just ignore it, from a political perspective, he had to respond. And so he prepared another round to put the ball back in the Democrats court. Reid tried to gut that proposal to stuff it with his own and send it back to the House but Boehner outflanked him by copying Reid’s bill and put it up for a vote, the result being it went down in flames. Reid could not even get his own version passed in the Senate. In the end the negotiations proceeded with Obama, McConnell, and Boehner; Reid was sidelined.

Nancy Pelosi

Nancy Pelosi was Obama’s right hand legislator slamming through ObamaCare, stimulus, TARP, etc. She has been essentially muzzled. When the final deal was negotiated she agreed with one of her members that this was a “Satan sandwich with a side of Satan fries.” Satan? Write that one down folks, it will come in handy along with , “We have to pass the bill to find out what is in it.” She voted for the deal, but told her members to “vote your conscience.” Sounds like “every man for himself.”

John Boehner

Sell out. Traitor. He got rolled. He is done. Not strong praise for playing the role of David, controlling one-third of the legislative power against two-thirds. But he must be doing something right when the New York Times editorial board screams

There is little to like about the tentative agreement between Congressional leaders and the White House except that it happened at all. The deal would avert a catastrophic government default, immediately and probably through the end of 2012. The rest of it is a nearly complete capitulation to the hostage-taking demands of Republican extremists.

Terrorists, hostage taking, brinkmanship. One need only look back to where this started: just raise the debt limit without condition just like every other debt limit increase. The taxes that Obama and the left wanted, were declared a non-starter; cuts equal to or greater than the amount of the debt limit increase were held firm; a vote on a balanced budget amendment in both houses and although it is not likely to pass, every member of Congress will have to go on record where they stand on it. Would this have even seen the light of day in Reid’s Senate without this deal?

There is a lot not to like in the deal, but it is a lot better than where it started. Most important is that it has brought the debt and the consequences of dealing with it into laser focus. It is up to the Tea Party to keep it there over the next fourteen months with a simple question, “If you want the spending to continue, elect Democrats; if you want to get our fiscal house in order, elect Republicans.”

 Mitch McConnell

McConnell also gets scorched for selling out, making deals to undermine real reform, etc. McConnell is the equal if not the superior parliamentarian to Reid. Many of us do not understand how the “sausage” is made in Congress and do not like it when we see it, but McConnell does. Remember when there were only forty Republican senators in the Senate it was McConnell who held them all together, even the RINOs, until Scott Brown was elected to be able to block legislation. It was McConnell who checked Harry Reid’s maneuver to sneak through his version of a deal with a simple majority. It prompted the news conference with Reid, Dick Durbin, and Chuck Schumer to chant, filibuster, filibuster! But McConnell and his deft maneuvering has been holding down the fort until reinforcements arrive.

The Tea Party

The Tea Party was not in complete agreement on this deal but everyone should take something positive out of this. This debate would not have happened at all without them. This would have passed quietly with no strings attached without the efforts of the Tea Party. Some members took a hard line that there should be no increase in the debt limit at all. Others argued caution that the political reality of only controlling one-third of the legislative process meant fighting for the best deal possible, without seeking a “bridge too far,” and triggering Treasury not sending out some checks. If that happened, which checks those would be is anyone’s guess. If the most political damage could be done and tagged to the Tea Party through that process, the left could turn a big defeat into a big victory. With seventy percent of the public disgusted with the process in Congress, if the blame could be hung on those “stubborn, inflexible, terrorist” Tea Party members, instead of having momentum to pick up more seats in November 2012, it could be turned around to “get those crazies out of there,” which would mean electing more RINOs and more Democrats and the disaster that would follow. The spirited debate in  the Tea Party was a good thing, one side kept pulling for a better deal, the other provided enough resistance to keep it from going over the edge. The goal is to get as close to the edge as possible without going over.

Where We Go From Here

Some are saying the deal will allow tax increases when the joint committee convenes. Is it possible? Yes. Is it likely? No. Boehner and McConnell, if they are smart, will appoint hardliners to the committee. My suggestions: Paul Ryan, Allen West, Connie Mack from the House and Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and Jim DeMint from the Senate. I believe there is zero chance that they would vote for a tax increase, regardless of what the Democrats want. Even if such a calamity would come to pass, it would still have to get through the House and I don’t see that happening.

Where do we go from here? We need to get more like minded people elected to Congress and the White House. This deal was by no means a great deal, but it was far better than no deal. We often lament that many people in America are just not focused on what is going on in Washington and what it means to us. This debt debate was front and center on the national news for weeks. This is something we need to leverage and expand on. We have come a long was since the fall of 2008 in getting people involved, getting them interested, and getting them educated. This event is an opportunity to get more people enraged and engaged. We must seize the opportunity, formulate the message, and drive it home as we close in on November 2012.

Consider if we had a great budget deal, everything we wanted. The stock market would rebound, the economy would start to recover with some uncertainty lifted, and if the employment picture improved, who do you think would take credit for it? It would be Obama crowing all day, every day, how it was a tough struggle, but he alone saved the day. Everything bad was Bush’s fault, but everything good was his doing. Therefore American must obviously give him four more years. A imperfect deal is a gift. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth; ride it to the finish line.

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

Congressman Eliot Engel writes a letter to the editor of the New York Times titled, “Banning Gun Imports.” He was prompted to write because of an editorial in the Times titled “Hypocrisy, Locked and Loaded,” but I’ll address that one later. Here is how Congressman Engel sees it. There is a tremendous illegal drug business in Mexico. It has gotten so big and contentious and violent that thousands are killed every year. His solution to the problem in Mexico? Ban the importation of guns into the U.S.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives created a program that would allow the illegal purchases of guns in the U.S. and let the guns walk across the border to Mexico with the idea that it would lead them to the cartel bigwigs. Instead the program backfired, they lost track of the guns, and the guns turned up at the scene of a shootout with U.S. Border Patrol agents where an agent, Brian Terry, was killed. When Congressman Darrell Issa’s government oversight committee started investigating what happened, Democrats circled the wagons to deflect criticism of the Obama administration and instead brought out that old bromide gun control. Chairman Issa would have none of it, provoking the ire of the New York Times editorial board and thus their editorial.

Why not focus on the root causes? The root cause is not guns. The root cause is drugs. Why doesn’t New York’s mayor Michael Bloomberg, instead of launching crusades against trans fats and table salt, launch a crusade against the glamorization of recreational drugs? Perhaps if he could get his Hollywood pals to stop taking drugs and stop glamorizing drugs then maybe there wouldn’t be cartels in Mexico killing each other to supply the drugs, or would that be too uncool?

These drug cartels are swimming in money. They are as well equipped as some armies. Do we really think that instead of buying fully automatic AK-47s at one of the world’s arms bazaars, they instead are buying “cheap AK-47 ‘knockoffs’”, to quote Congressman Engel, at retail in the U.S.? No doubt there are guns flowing into Mexico, where gun ownership is tightly controlled. When there are reports of guns being smuggled across the border in containers of powdered milk, do you think that is destined to a drug cartel, or perhaps a frightened citizen who is trying to protect himself and his family from the cartels?

The left doesn’t want to totally alienate gun owners in America because they could never win another election if all gun owners voted against them. So what you will typically hear is, “I support the right of Americans to own guns, but…” You will hear that from Carolyn McCarthy, who along with Bloomberg is perhaps the most anti-gun politician in American and you will hear it from Congressman Engel:

While I support the right of American citizens to own firearms for legal purposes, there is nothing sporting about AK-47s, which are military-style weapons.

Excuse me, Congressman, but my copy of the Constitution doesn’t include the word “sporting” in the Second Amendment. It is not about sports, it is not about hunting, it is not about target shooting. What it really is about is the people being protected against the tyranny of government. So instead of focusing on guns, perhaps you and your Democrat colleagues all the way up to the White House, should start a campaign with your pals to make drugs “uncool”. While you waiting for the guffaws from your friends to die down, perhaps you should work on sealing the Mexican border. Third, perhaps you should convince the Mexican government to relax their gun control laws so that their citizens won’t be coming here to buy guns to protect themselves, since their government won’t or can’t because they are too corrupt. Focus on solving the problem, not on getting an applause line from your base.

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

In article in the New York Times titled, “Squandering Medicare’s Money,” the article itemizes a number of procedures that are routinely perfomed under Medicare, but have little or no medical value. So why are they done? One reason is alluded to in the article while another is not.

The 800 pound gorilla that drives medical costs continually skyward are the personal injury lawyers. Doctors practice defensive medicine because of these lawyers since they don’t want to be sitting in a witness chair answering the question, “Well why didn’t you perform test or procedure X?” Since it wasn’t performed, no one can say what the outcome would have been. In the doctor’s learned opinion he may say that it wasn’t relevant. The lawyer will argue otherwise, but if the doctor can produce negative test results, well, there’s your proof it wasn’t relevant. So the tests get done and billed and medical costs climb.

In Texas, they are reforming the system there. The have put caps on personal injury awards, and are passing legislation that would have someone who brings a frivolous lawsuit pay the legal fees of the winner. Applications for new doctor’s licenses have risen 60% and malpractice insurance premiums have fallen 27%.

The odd thing in the article is it criticizes a number of tests that would be considered preventative. ObamaCare supporters have been pounding the drum for more preventative measures. But sometimes preventative measures are not the best idea. Having a colonoscopy when you are 85 years old, is probably going to be of little value and may actually increase the risk of infection or a perforation of the colon. But when the patient is not involved in the payment process, who cares?

Which brings up the point I make in my book, Liberty’s Lifeline, the need to eliminate third party payers. If you go to a restaurant that has an all you can eat buffet, and you know that someone else is picking up the check, do you not reach for that extra dessert? If you had to lay out the money, or at least part of it, you might question why the procedure was necessary or effective. Gee, that sounds a lot like the Ryan plan. Putting patients in charge of their health and their families, not a nameless, faceless, unaccountable panel of bureaucrats. Just imagine medical care modeled on the Department of Motor Vehicles instead of the doctor’s office that you know today. The former is ObamaCare, the latter is the Paul Ryan plan. Which do you prefer?

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

The Democrats have a new leader of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the New York Times is swooning that Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the new chairwoman of said committee is speaking out.

At a rally Monday for Mayors Against Illegal Guns…[s]he called as well for improving the information available to law enforcement about people with histories of mental illness.

The Times editorial cheers the Democrats making gun control a campaign issue and rounds up the usual suspects, Virginia Tech and Tucson. But what happened at Virginia Tech and Tucson was not a lack of gun control laws. It was a glaring example of the nanny state and political correctness run amok. It is against federal law for a person who is mentally ill to purchase a gun. In both cases multiple witnesses had observed both Seung-Hui Cho and Jared Lochner as being frighteningly unhinged. But it is not politically correct to draw attention to someone like that. The nanny state says we should try to integrate them into society. In the Virginia Tech case, Linda Roy, chair of the English department was raising red flags but the administration tut-tutted her concerns, saying you can’t force a student to get counseling. In Tucson, it was a similar situation but no one wanted bring Jared Lochner before a magistrate to have him declared mentally ill, which if it was done and entered into the system, he would have been denied the ability to buy the gun he used, legally.

Gun laws should be about what a person does, not what they own. You cannot keep anything out of the hands of anyone determined to get it, whether it is a gun, a knife, a club, or fertilizer and diesel fuel. When you pass such laws, who follows them? Right, law abiding citizens. By focusing more and more on stopping things rather than stopping acts, people who are responsible and law abiding cannot get the things they need to defend themselves (because they are law abiding) while criminals are not. So the guy breaking into your house downstairs and going into your daughter’s room has a gun, you have a baseball bat. Good luck, buddy. When you hear your child cry out because four nasty, smelly miscreants are in your house, take your time, rummage through your closet make sure you can find your gun, your holster, your magazine holder and a couple of spare magazines, because your elected officials insist you cannot lawfully load more than ten bullets in your gun, so if you don’t carry enough equipment to be able to re-load if you get in a gunfight, you and your family will probably die. Thank you, Congresswomant McCarthy.

Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy’s husband was killed and her son injured by a gunman named Colin Ferguson on the Long Island Railroad. The fallacy that Congresswoman fails to see is that a determined gunman like Ferguson, Cho, or Lochner take time to prepare for their rampage. In each situation these gunmen faced a sea of defenseless people, and while they may have carried a high capacity magazine, they didn’t need to. A trained person can perform an emergency re-load of a ten round magazine in about two seconds. Facing defenseless people, these gunmen were not under time pressure. So what exactly does McCarthy’s ban on magazines that hold more than ten bullets accomplish? Nothing. Just a smug sense of accomplishing something among the statists, until the next tragedy of defenseless people being slaughtered because their elected officials rendered them so.

If only New York’s gun laws (you know, the ones law abiding citizens pay attention to) had allowed citizens to carry weapons to defend themselves, Congresswoman McCarthy’s husband might be alive today. Instead she wants to pass laws that will be ignored by the lawless to make sure that you and your family meet the same fate as hers. No thanks.

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

The order in the Middle East has been crumbling, but it seems that the only place President Barack Obama knows where to lead is on the dance floor or when ramming through his socialist programs. When it comes to real solutions to fix the economy or on foreign policy he is utterly lost.

When students rose up against the mullahs in Iran, the Obama administration was strangely silent while demonstrators were murdered in the streets.  But Israel is condemned at the drop of a hat. When the Mubarak regime started to wobble so did the president’s position, for Mubarak, against Mubarak, for Mubarak, against Mubarak. In capitals across the Middle East and around the world our enemies rubbed their hands in glee, while our friends started looking for new friends.

When Khadafy rattled his saber at Ronald Reagan and bombed a discothèque in Berlin that killed two American servicemen, Reagan responded with a raid on Libya that landed 277 hits with 5 misses. Khadafy went back in his cage. When violence broke out from this terrorist slaughtering his own people, President Obama remained silent for days due to a “scheduling conflict.” The scheduling conflict concerned getting Americans out of the country. Between Reagan’s action and Bush’s taking out of Hussein in Iraq followed by Khadafy’s throwing in the towel on his nuclear program, it seems clear that Khadafy does not want a military conflict with the U.S. So a clear message to him that the fastest way to get into a military conflict with the U.S. would be to impede the evacuation of any U.S. citizens will give him pause. To back that up the Sixth Fleet should have been put on station in the Gulf of Sidra and Obama could then be a leader and speak out forcefully against this terrorist.

Instead our leader made it clear he was ready to follow the United Nations. So look out, Khadafy, we’re going to let you have it in Switzerland and kick you off the Human Rights panel. Take that! You can almost see Khadafy’s wrist getting red and starting to swell. I’ll bet that any American left in Libya is bursting with pride over that step. Now we are going to start applying sanctions. Am I the only one who thinks Libya will deteriorate to chaos, if it is not already there, before any sanctions can have an effect? How many people think, Khadafy is going to pull up short because we have frozen his assets like his mansion in New Jersey? With all due respect to the Garden State, I don’t think that is top of mind for Khadafy.

Budget Matters

On budget matters we are now kicking around $4 billion in cuts to prevent a government shutdown for two weeks. How about Harry Reid getting back to Washington and putting the Senate in session to consider the bill already passed by the House that cut $61 billion from the budget? We are running a $1.6 trillion single year deficit. A cut of $61 billion may change that number to $1.5 trillion after rounding. Let’s get serious! Where is the leadership from the White House. His budget was a joke, boasting of saving $1.1 trillion over TEN YEARS. We will be that much deeper in the hole by NEXT YEAR.

Meanwhile my congressman is out fighting the spending cuts that were included in the House bill that passed that chamber. Doesn’t anyone understand the urgency of the problem? We are hemorrhaging red ink and it is time to stop blaming Bush and start looking at the people who are doing the spending.

All the Democrats want to talk about is that the Republicans want to shut down the government, the Republicans want to shut down the government, while they pick up their fiddles and play a tune. If President Obama was a leader, the leader of the Democratic party, he would be on the phone to Harry Reid and tell him to get back to work. Put together the best deal you can, but this is a crisis. But President Obama doesn’t see any crisis. He is more focused on preventing  a solution in Wisconsin than in doing his duty.

The Ultimate Organizer

The president is organized, if nothing else. In this realm he shows his strength. He manages to play a round of golf about every other week. He has top union leaders to the White House about every other week and his White House is on the phone with them several times per week. He has hosted swell parties at the White House and today the New York Times introduces us to his personal trainer. But to show his community spirits, he shares his personal trainer with other White House staffers.

Instead of a President Obama with nice six pack abs, I would much prefer the leadership and waistline of Chris Christie.

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

The Republicans were swept into control of the House and took a major bite out of the Democrats control of the Senate on a program of fiscal responsibility.  Now as they work on their first budget, some of the tug-of-war was on display at CPAC’s opening day.

The news in advance of the conference was that the Republicans planned to cut $32 billion from the budget which was far short of the $100 billion that they campaigned on. Yes, they said, but half the budget year is already gone so the $32 billion on a prorated basis is much larger.

Senator Rand Paul has thrown down the gauntlet with a proposal to cut $500 billion from the budget. At CPAC he explained that $32 billion isn’t going to get the job done. “We spend $32 billion in five days,” Paul said, “we add $32 billion to the debt in nine days.” He prefaced that statement by saying that if all  non-defense discretionary spending was cut, it would not balance the budget.

Congressman Paul Ryan, who spoke after Senator Paul, knew what he was up against leading off his remarks by saying, “I hear there are some Rand Paul fans in the crowd,” the crowd acknowledging his observation with applause. Congressman Ryan is not reluctant to lead the charge in cutting the budget down to size, but is he being aggressive enough? Congressman Ryan was just elected to his seventh term, so he knows the ways of Washington. Senator Paul is a freshman, so he has not yet learned what cannot be accomplished, and we hope he never does.

So the battle lines are drawn, the experienced Ryan taking the more cautious approach and Paul driving a harder line and Democrats sputtering in apoplexy.  The always sagacious Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, “After all, you can lose a lot of weight by cutting off your arms and legs,” he added. “But no doctor would recommend it.” That is one point of view. Here is another, if you have to ask someone else to tell you whether or not your shoes are tied, you could probably stand to lose some avoirdupois.

Rand called for reinforcements in the form of the new minutemen, the Tea Partiers. He said that the same Tea Party folks that help elect him needed to stay on those elected to Congress so that they do not back slide on their spending commitments. Paul’s rallying cry may already be having an effect. The New York Times reports, that Republicans are going “dig deeper” to find more cuts than initially proposed.

This should get very interesting.

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.

In the recent election campaign, lacking anything positive to say about their record, when Democrats were not making personal attacks on their opponents one of their diversions was to taunt their opponent by saying, “Oh yeah, what specifically would you cut from the federal government, and don’t say waste and fraud.”

Ah, yes, what to cut?  While pondering that the other day, I came across an article in the New York Times titled, “For Federal Employees, a Feeling of Being Targets in the Budget Wars.” In reading the article, I came up with the perfect formula on how to prepare the list of possible cuts. 

Identify every federal employee that makes more than the median income and if they also belong to a union, put them on the list.  Have everyone on the list write a one page description of how their contribution exceeds in value what they are being paid.  Sort the list in order of credibility, and start cutting.  Stop when you have balanced the budget.

Incoming!

I can detect the missiles being fired in my direction, so let me state my case.  The aforementioned article begins with the story of Iyauta Moore, a woman with a master’s degree in public administration from American University and who makes over $100,000.  In 2008, $113,799 put you in the 90^th percentile of income earners in the United States. To put it another way, you made more than 9 out of 10 Americans.  The clincher was the statement that Ms. Moore was a member of the American Federation of Government Employees.  What the hell does a person making six figures need a union for?  Perhaps we need to revisit how unions came about in this country.

Unions

As the economy transformed from agrarian to industrial, the factories needed many workers to do relatively simple jobs.  These were mostly unskilled or semi-skilled jobs where an individual could be easily replaced with next to no cost to the factory owner.  If the owner didn’t like a worker for any reason, he could fire him on the spot, walk to the gate of the factory and pick another man out of the crowd, escort him to his place on the assembly line and say something like, “You stand here. You take two of these nuts out of this bin. You put the two nuts on those two bolts as the assembly travels by.  You then take this wrench and tighten the two bolts. Repeat. Any questions?”  Total elapsed time, maybe fifteen minutes.  Cost of the interruption to production? Pennies.  Thus the factory owner had all the power and the worker had none.  The worker lived in constant fear of losing his job and never getting a raise.  Unions solved this problem.

Individually, a worker’s value was trivial to the factory owner.  As a group, all of the workers had enormous value to the factory owner.  The union was the glue that bound the individual workers into a large economic force.  Now back to our story.

It’s About Value

Where was I? Oh, yes, what the hell does a person making six figures need a union for?  Does she not provide value as an individual?  Is not her education something worth compensating her for?  Would it be difficult or costly to go through the process of replacing her? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, why does she have to tie her fortune to others for her economic well being?  Perhaps this tells the story.

“She bristles at the notion that she is just another overpaid, underworked, cosseted bureaucrat. What I do here involves creating something that doesn’t exist,” she said of her job at the Department of Education, where she is establishing a group to help oversee all of the department’s grants, “That’s not pushing paper.”

“We’re out and we’re making a difference in the community. And I don’t really think you can put a dollar figure on that.”

Uh, Ms. Moore, you just did put a dollar figure on that and it’s zero.  If you can’t put a dollar figure on it, it has no value.  The job is spending government money in an agency that shouldn’t exist in the first place.  Providing for education is nowhere in the Constitution.  That is a function of local government not the federal government.  Since its inception the Department of Education has spent over one trillion dollars and we all know how much it has improved education in the United States and our standing in the world.  Ms. Moore cannot seem to describe what she does that is worth her six figure salary. “creating something that doesn’t exist…help oversee  the department’s grants…making a difference in the community.”  Creating what?  What is the purpose of the grants that you oversee?  What is the difference you are making in the community?  Shut it down.

Extortion

“I think federal employees are definitely getting a bad rap and definitely become political punching bags,” said William R. Dougan, the president of the National Federation of Federal Employees.  Wow, that’s surprising he would say that, don’t you think? The main problem with public sector unions is the relationship between unions and politicians.  Unions work furiously to help elect politicians and then the politicians negotiate the labor contracts with the unions and hand the bill to the taxpayers.  It is extortion.  Public sector unions should be prohibited from any political activity as a conflict of interest.

The next case is of Mathew Kolodzie a Department of Defense firefighter.  I think very highly of firefighters and I also think it takes a lot to train them, making them highly skilled in what they do.  If so, why do they need to be cogs in a union machine?

If Mathew is a good firefighter, Mathew has value and he should be paid accordingly.  If he is underpaid, he can threaten to leave to find a higher paying job elsewhere.  The Department of Defense would then be faced with the decision of finding another qualified candidate and going through the expense of training them and if the replacement is not satisfied with the pay, risk losing them and repeating the cycle.  That’s how it works in the free market in the private sector.  An employer knows it costs about five times as much to hire a new employee than to keep an existing one.  So the employer has to weigh his expenses against paying his people enough to keep them from leaving. 

If on the other hand, there isn’t a higher paying job for Mathew elsewhere, and there is a waiting list of people to take Mathew’s place because they think the pay is just swell, then he is probably paid appropriately.  The only reason, then for joining a union is to extort more compensation and benefits than the free market would provide.  Now, if that is a bargain that a private company and a private union want to engage in, have at it.  But public employees are paid by taxpayers and the more the public employees are paid the more the citizens are taxed to pay for it.  It’s a pretty tough sell to tell someone struggling to make ends meet that their taxes have to be raised to pay some government employee six figures.

The Times article tries to make Mr. Dougan a sympathetic figure because his schedule calls for him working two days on and three days off and that requires him to work a minimum of 144 hours over a two week period.  Wow!  That’s a 72 hour work week minimum!  That is, of course, until to look more closely.  Like many professional firefighters, they “live” at the firehouse while on duty so they are with the equipment and can respond to a fire twenty-four hours per day.  If there is no rash of fires raging, then they have time to sleep each day so subtract 48 hours from that two week figure (six nights at eight hours per night), now that 72 hour week is down to 48 hours.  Subtract time for meals and breaks and you have a forty hour workweek, like most everyone else.

I Could Do Better Elsewhere

Then we have the case of Carl Houtman a research chemical engineer for the Forest Service, he too make around $100,000 per year.  He says his job is like a university professor, but a typical professor makes around $150,000 and in private industry he could double his salary.  So, why don’t you Carl?  I think I have a solution for you.  Whatever it is that Carl does for the Forest Service, why don’t we contract that out?  Carl could get that private industry salary he talks about, and we would pay for the services provided and not get stuck paying Carl a rich government pension for the rest of his life.  Everybody wins.  If we find out we really don’t need to continue with what Carl is doing, we can let the contract lapse when it comes up for renewal.

Pay for Performance

The article says that some lament that there are fewer performance incentives in government.  You don’t say!  “Once you’re past your probationary year, there’s basically no reward for performance.”  Isn’t that the definition of a union?  Unions don’t like high performers, they make the rest of the union look bad.  They want middle of the road plodders.  They hold back those who have drive and ambition and protect those who are marginal.  Just ask Lance Hamann.

Lance is a purchasing agent for the Department of Agriculture (why do we need a Department of Agriculture with less than 3% of the workforce working in agriculture?).  He makes a bit more than $40,000 but he is also the president of Local 1840 of the federal employees’ federation.  “To me, there’s a rhyme and reason to all the red tape the government does have, “ he said, “so I try my best to be patient with the red tape, knowing it’s just how the government runs.” I couldn’t have said it better myself, Lance.  Axe, please.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours.  Please share your comments below.

[podcast]http://libertyslifeline.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Fix-New-York-2.mp3[/podcast]