Poor economic policies killing the business environment

So many people in this country do not understand the workings of business, including the vast majority of our elected leaders in Washington. Their anti-business policies proliferate and have formed giant roadblocks to a healthy economy, have delayed the recovery and kept millions of Americans on the unemployment line for far too long.

If you want to end a recession, leave as much money in the hands of the people as possible; the more money people have, the more they can spend. Create a stable environment so that businesses feel comfortable in hiring; make it easy for existing businesses to expand and for new businesses to start up. That environment will create jobs and new taxpayers, and more jobs and more taxpayers will fuel a recovery.

What government is doing now, however, is implementing policies that create uncertainty and dampen the entrepreneurial spirit; increasing taxes that rob needed capital from small businesses and punish the wealthiest consumers, who are the ones with the most to spend; crafting regulations that raise business costs and make it difficult to add workers and expand.

It was a failure of the federal government and the Federal Reserve following the 1929 stock market crash that led to a 15-year depression, and that is what is happening now.

Testimony from someone who has as good a set of credentials as one could expect, Las Vegas casino resort and real-estate developer Steve Wynn, sees exactly this view. He is credited with much of the dramatic resurgence and expansion of Vegas, and he is splitting up his headquarters in Las Vegas and putting half of it in Macau, China. Why? In a May interview with CNBC, Mr. Wynn said: “The opportunities I see are far superior abroad than in America.”

Asked by the CNBC interviewer, “What about the regulation, the [communist] government oversight and working there, as opposed to here?” he replied, “Macau has been steady. The shocking, unexpected government is the one in Washington. That’s where we get surprises every day; that’s where taxes are changed every five minutes; that’s where you don’t know what to expect tomorrow. To compare political stability and … predictability in China to Washington is like comparing Mt. Everest to an ant hill. Macao, in China, is stable. Washington is not.”

From Steve Winn’s point of view, the actions of our elected representatives have created a situation in this country that not only discourages the very activities needed to turn the economy around, they have created a business environment that is less stable, and therefore is less appealing, than a communist economy. That is remarkable, and more than a little unsettling.

The Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress think that the way to turn the economy around is for the government to spend money it doesn’t have and to raise taxes on virtually everyone, and especially on “the rich.” This method is deeply flawed, as evidenced by what happened in the 30s, because it not only takes money from those at the bottom of the economic scale who need as much of their money as possible to survive, but it takes even more money from those at the top of the scale who are the ones in the best position to positively affect the economy by buying additional goods and services, and investing money in new and existing businesses.

Government cannot exist without the money it takes from the private sector. Why, then, since government cannot exist without a vibrant private sector, would anyone think that government can fix a downturn in the economy without supporting activity in the private sector?

President Obama wants to raise taxes on “the rich” by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, and that is a horrible idea.

George W. Bush took office in January 2001 and inherited a recession that was substantially complicated by the September 11 terrorist attacks. The 2001 Economic Growth and Recovery Tax Act and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 together ended the recession, and did so not with spending and tax increases, but with tax cuts for everyone. And, according to the (begin ital) Wall Street Journal,(end ital) contrary to the “tax cuts for the rich” demagoguery, the Bush tax cuts resulted in the richest five percent paying 60 percent of all income taxes in 2005.

This is the kind of stimulus that we need today, but is the opposite of the steps that President Obama and Congressional Democrats have taken.

And a CNN/Opinion Research poll taken last month shows that the country disapproves of the way the economy is being handled by 57 to 42 percent, and by 62 to 36 percent Americans say the federal budget deficit is a serious problem.

Deficits result when government spends more than it takes in. Mr. Obama and Congressional leaders want to keep spending at record levels and increase revenue by raising taxes, which will thwart private sector productivity by transferring money to the government that would be better spent by the people who earned it.

The way to cure a deficit caused by too much spending is to spend less.

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Technorati Tags: Economy, Politics, Recession, Democrats

Democrat's reckless energy policies are damaging the country

There seems to be no vision of the results of the Democrats’ fatally flawed energy policy horrible enough to dissuade them from continuing down the path that will wreck the current energy system.

Congress and the President are determined to put into effect policies and regulations that will have a substantial negative impact on our current means of producing the energy the American people and their economy require without fully considering the consequences of their actions. The six-month moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico stands as grim testimony to the damage caused by these ill-considered policies.

A study of the effects of moratorium in the Gulf, which ends in late November, shows it will cost more than 8,000 jobs in the Gulf states of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas; nearly $500 million in wages will be lost because of the ban; and $2.1 billion dollars in economic activity and approximately $100 million dollars in state and local tax revenues will be lost. Louisiana State University finance professor Joseph Mason’s study also shows that at a minimum 12,000 jobs may be lost nationwide, and that will cost the federal government around $200 million dollars in tax revenues.

Summing up the damage caused by the moratorium, John Young, chair of Jefferson Parish Council in Louisiana, has called the moratorium "a death blow to Louisiana."

"The decision appears to have been made in an uninformed manner that borders on recklessness. It has increased our risk to the environment, it has increased our national security risk and it has increased the risks to job security. It must be reversed now," said Louisiana Democrat Senator Mary Landrieu.

“The moratorium was imposed without proper economic analysis and I think the administration will be shocked when they understand how many people this action has put out of work and how many thousands of small businesses are being jeopardized by this action," Sen. Landrieu said.

If these are the results of only six months of no drilling in the Gulf, how much worse will it be to extend the ban or to put crippling policies into effect?

American Petroleum Institute (API) President Jack Gerard predicts a measure being pushed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid “will cost American jobs, slow economic growth and will place our energy security at risk.”

A serious element of the bill is a requirement for an extremely high level of insurance coverage on projects on the Outer Continental Shelf, so large as to be unattainable, and insurers say that will force many American companies out of U.S. waters, costing thousands of jobs and millions in economic activity that the country cannot afford to lose. While large companies may be able to self-insure, they will see costs increase precipitously, and will likely look elsewhere to invest their money in drilling projects.

API estimates that continuing down this path will cost more than 175,000 jobs and billions of dollars in federal oil and natural gas revenues.

Mr. Gerard said, “Legislation that raises the cost of production to uneconomic levels; that renders deepwater oil and natural gas areas off limits to production; drives small- and mid-sized firms out of business; shuts down access to domestic energy resources; or singles out our industry for punitive tax increases—all of which have been part of various bills in the House and Senate—will have significant impacts on jobs and economic growth.”

When 53 percent of American voters pulled the lever for Barack Obama in November of 2008, do you suppose they understood that this is what he meant when he promised to “fundamentally transform the United States of America”?

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Technorati Tags: Energy, Politics, Liberalism, Economy

Media dishonesty and complicity are in the news once again

Not too long ago the light of truth shined on climate scientists who cheated in trying to persuade the world that its end is near when a series of emails were made public revealing their fraud and deceit.

Now, a series of online discussions between journalists, academics and others of a similar mind have been discovered in which the dialogue centered on how to manipulate the voting public, and other matters equally out of bounds. The journalists represent several media outlets, including The Washington Post, Time Magazine, the Guardian (Britain), National Public Radio, The Nation, The New Republic, Bloomberg News, Salon, and Harper’s. The emails were posted at an online meeting place, a list-serve called “JournoList.”

Some people defend the activities of JournoListers as nothing unusual. Mike Hoyt, editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, asserts that the communications are normal interaction between associates. To him there is nothing unusual or improper about journalists discussing how to distract the American public from the negatives of one candidate in a presidential election. Boys will be boys, you know.

But journalism professor Jim Campbell of the State University of New York at Buffalo finds the JournoList troubling. “At one level it could be thought of as just colleagues throwing ideas out to one another, but from another standpoint it almost looks like collusion … where virtual talking points are shared and solidified in a group.” “That can’t be healthy for the country – or for the media, for that matter,” he added.

Bingo.

One useful tactic of the JournoListers was to distract attention from negative Obama news with some sensational charge against a prominent conservative. Someone named Spencer Ackerman, at the time on the staff of the Washington Independent, suggested to participants that to distract attention from Barack Obama’s racist and anti-America minister Jeremiah Wright, pick a conservative like “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares – and call them racists.”

Manipulating information for political and ideological gain wasn’t the only topic these folks discussed in this virtual smoke-filled back-room. They also thought freedom of the press should be done away with, because it allows Fox News to exist. Daniel Davies, a columnist at the Guardian, commented that “I am genuinely scared” of Fox because it “cannot be controlled by any form of peer pressure or self-regulation.” Imagine that: a news outlet that can’t be “controlled.” He continues: “In order to have even a semblance of control, you need a tough legal framework.”

We need a “legal framework” to control Fox News, while the media outlets where the JournoListers work continue to operate unfettered? That sounds both fair and constitutional, doesn’t it?

Jumping on the anti-Fox News bandwagon was Jonathan Zasloff, a law professor at UCLA, who suggested a more strong-arm solution to the Fox News dilemma: “[I]s there any reason why the FCC couldn’t simply pull their broadcasting permit once it expires?” This man is a law professor?

Journalists are supposed to be in competition with one another, not in collusion, formulating “talking points” with each other. It is, obviously, a glaring conflict of interest when journalists pick a side and conspire to support one candidate or one side of an issue over the others. Such conflicts are scrupulously avoided by ethical professionals.

And what a horrid concoction of arrogance and insecurity these media people have. They are so arrogant as to think their ideas are more important than those of their fellow Americans, and yet are so insecure about their ideas that they believe they have to fool the American people into supporting them.

This perverse exercise has revealed such curious creatures as journalists who want freedom of the press for some but not others, and who conspire to manage information, and a law professor who believes Fox News has an FCC “permit” that can be revoked at will.

Good grief!

We are witnessing another once-honorable profession abandoning its integrity and hawking a personal agenda as it takes its place in the Hall of Shame alongside climate science.

At its best, news journalism is a noble and vital profession that adequately informs the public by objectively supplying accurate information so people can be well informed in order to make good decisions. It makes a point of covering controversial issues fully, because controversial issues are the ones most in need of public discussion. It does not favor one side over another, and leaves the picking of winners and losers to the American people, where it belongs.

At its worst, it is a corrupt and dishonorable perversion that controls information on events and issues to fit an ideological agenda. It ignores stories that will damage its chosen beneficiaries and over-emphasizes its point of view on important issues and its chosen candidates. It focuses extra attention toward its opponent’s negatives and ignores the positives. All to the detriment of the country and the citizens it is ethically bound to serve. Such integrity-challenged “journalists” throw ethics on the trash heap, and reduce themselves to partisan players in the political game.

Today, it seems there is much more “journalism at its worst” than ever before.

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Technorati Tags: Journalism, Politics, Liberalism, Democrats

Have you noticed how many more racists there are these days?

The word “racist” describes someone with an irrational dislike for people of a different race. In its worst forms racism involves unfair treatment of members of that race and sometimes violence against them.

Most Americans probably believe that racism has been in decline for several decades. However, news reports indicate that racism is not only alive and well in the United States, but has experienced a strong resurgence. In fact, if those making racism charges are correct, there are racists lurking behind every tree.

Examples abound: During the presidential primary campaign of 2008 we learned that anyone who opposed Democrat contender Barack Obama opposed him because he is black. By extension those who supported his Democrat opponent, Hillary Clinton, and presumably even Mrs. Clinton, herself, are also racists. Since his election we are informed that those who do not support Mr. Obama’s policies are racists, too.

We have also learned that people who think America’s borders need to be secured to prevent illegal entry by drug dealers, kidnappers and others who sneak into our country, and think laws to prevent such entry should be enforced, are racists, as well.

We’ve been told that the people associated with the tea party movement are racists. These evil people object to what they see as government running amok, spending and taxing with abandon and exceeding its constitutional bounds. The Tea Party Patriots brazenly claim they want to “attract, educate, organize, and mobilize our fellow citizens to secure public policy consistent with our three core values of Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government and Free Markets.” That is a radical concept, to be sure, and these grandfathers, grandmothers, plumbers, doctors, electricians, soccer moms and scout leader dads, and other normal American tea partiers are clearly racists.

And you, dear reader, are likely a racist, too, unless you voted for Barack Obama AND support Cap and Trade AND want another stimulus program AND want socialized medicine and the rationing of care AND favor government taking over industries one at a time AND don’t care who comes into our country, even kidnappers and murderers AND support every tenet of the radical leftist agenda. Presumably, if you don’t like tacos, Gen. Tso’s chicken and/or chocolate ice cream, you are a racist.

Leftists are intolerant of opposing ideas; are incapable of accepting that some people simply disagree with them; are impotent to mount serious intellectual arguments against opposing points of view, and are therefore condemned to defeat political enemies by debasing them, rather than debating them. Thus they stoop to name calling. Being a racist is one of the most damnable, despicable, loathsome, contemptible and vile things that one can be, so that is naturally the insult of choice.

After all, labeling your enemies as racists is easy, requires no thought, calls up awful visions of detestable behavior, and is effective. At least until you stop to examine the charge and realize it is usually devoid of substance. In other words, when leftists call their political enemies “racists” it is an empty, intellectually vapid charge.

In every large faction of people there likely are some jerks, some geeks, some crooks, and even some racists. An example of this truism is Mark Williams, leader of the Tea Party Express, who wrote a blog post that was at best offensive, and at worst racist. Leaders of the National Tea Party Federation, an organization seeking to represent the tea party political movement, responded by expelling Mr. Williams and the Tea Party Express from their organization.

If the tea party movement is as racist as the leftists would have us believe, why would it police itself and cast out bad apples?

It is a cheap political trick to accuse the entire tea party movement of being racist. That charge fails both the laugh test and the smell test and, more to the point, it is unsupportable.

The reckless use of the term “racism” has now entered the mainstream of American politics. Unable to defend the ineffective, irrational and dangerous policies of President Barack Obama and the Congressional leadership, leftists resort to attacking virtually anyone who disagrees with any of their positions, and labeling them “racists.” Saul Alinsky would be proud.

However, this gutter tactic has a downside, a very substantial downside: When you carelessly throw around the term, when you call everybody a racist, you render the term meaningless. and real racism, the target we all should want to eliminate, gets lost in the demagoguery.

And there’s a high degree of hypocrisy here; all incidents of racism are not equal, it seems. The NAACP recently attacked the tea party movement for its supposed racism, but ignored the overt racism by the New Black Panthers whose members have advocated killing “crackers” and white babies. We’ve seen that the tea party people oppose racism on the right; what about the NAACP? Isn’t all racism bad, or just racism by white people?

We can’t gain ground against racism by condemning some instances and ignoring others, or by degrading the term through misapplying it to political enemies.

Which begs the question: Does the left really want to fight racism, or just score cheap political points?

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Technorati Tags: Culture, Politics, Racism, Leftists

Americans are poorly prepared for citizenship

Pathetic. That’s the word for it. A huge number of Americans don’t have the faintest idea what their country is all about. Most know that the 4th of July is also known as “Independence Day,” but too many have no idea of its significance.

Tonight Show host Jay Leno did a “Jaywalking” feature in which he posed questions about July 4th to random Americans on New York streets. The degree of ignorance about their country’s origins was nothing less than astonishing.

Susan, a woman of about 30, thought we won our independence from America. Asked what country King George ruled, Susan struggled to find an answer and finally said … “Greece.”

A younger woman named Molly thought Martha Washington sewed the first American flag, and when prompted by Jay with the first name “Betsy,” Molly supplied the last name: Ford. When asked, “And what did Paul Revere say when the British were coming?” Molly didn’t know.

An unidentified young man thought the general who led the colonial soldiers was named “Churchill.”

“Why did Washington cross the Delaware?” Jay asked a bearded fellow. After some thought, he ventured, “To get to the other side?”

Jennifer identified herself as an instructor of college business, general education and computer courses. When asked what was celebrated on July 4th, she answered, “The 4th of July,” and thought we achieved our independence in, “oh … 1922?” She wisely declined to identify her employer.

A middle-aged fellow said the number of original colonies “right now, I guess, thirty?” His wife was called in to help. Jay asked if she helps her teenage son with his homework, and she said she did. He asked what happened on the 4th of July. “I have no clue,” she replied. The son was called in, and answered the question “What happened on Independence Day?” with, “Independence broke out.” The three stumped family members then summoned grandpa, a man probably in his 60s. He knew the answer to every question, including where the Statue of Liberty came from (France), and what bird appears on the Great Seal (bald eagle), all without stopping to think.

If you think these are isolated examples that were edited for effect and do not represent how little Americans know about their country’s history, you would be wrong.

In 2005 The Washington Post published an article by Naomi Wolf that said, “…only 47 percent of high school seniors have mastered a minimum level of U.S. history and civics, while only 14 percent performed at or above the ‘proficient’ level…” She added that middle school students in most states are not required to take classes in civics and government. More recent statistics are not much better.

Every American over age 15 ought to know the answer to those basic questions, like that grandfather did. What do these dismal performances say about our culture; our education system; our future?

Once upon a time there were year-long civics and US history classes in junior high or high school, and students learned about their country’s foundations, how the government works and their role as citizens. Are these subjects no longer taught in public schools, and if not, why not? If they are, why are so many people ignorant about civics and US history?

Americans also don’t know much about basic economics. They don’t understand how business works; what happens to the money that people spend and how it circulates through the economy creating jobs, paying salaries, buying more products to sell or raw materials with which to produce new products, and producing profits that make it worthwhile for the owners to keep businesses operating.

They don’t understand that when government is too big and spends too much, it undermines economic growth by transferring resources needed by the productive private sector to drive the economy to the unproductive, inefficient public sector. Government cannot exist without a strong, vibrant private sector, which suffers when excessive taxation is imposed to support unnecessary and unauthorized bureaucracy.

Economist Henry Hazlitt explained the problem of economic ignorance in his brilliant book Economics in One Lesson: “The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy … tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.”

It is serious enough that millions of Americans are poorly educated about their country’s founding principles and basic economics, but when that ignorance infects those running our government – as it does today – our future and our liberty are in danger, as we now see. Elected public servants have failed to follow Mr. Hazlitt’s rule.

Recent economic policies and those favored by the Congress and the Obama administration demonstrate that ignorance of economic principles is pervasive among most Democrats and more than a few Republicans. Some of them also don’t know their history and civics.

A prime example of excessive government is the federal Department of Education that controls public education, which has failed miserably in the critical need to teach civics, history and economics.

A good step toward restoring government to sensible and proper levels would be to shut down the DOE.

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Technorati Tags: Culture, Politics, Education, Government

Bones: NASA's first "feel good" trading card

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Polls: Americans don't like what Obama is doing

New polling data shows President Barack Obama’s Job Approval continues to slide.

The Real Clear Politics average of seven polls taken from June 17 through July 8 shows that the president garnered 46.4 percent favorable and 47.9 unfavorable, for a -1.5 deficit in job approval. However, the two most recent polls show larger margins of disapproval.

A Gallop poll taken from July 6 through 8 shows only 45 percent approve of what Mr. Obama is doing, while 48 percent disapprove.

But a Rasmussen poll taken over the same three-day period shows a 7.0-point margin, with 46 percent approval and 53 percent disapproval.

Support for the Democrat’s health care reform plan has dropped to 42.3 in the RCP Average for the period May 19 through July 1, while 50.7 percent disapproved. And the new Rasmussen poll taken on July 1 shows Americans don’t like the plan by a 60 to 36 margin, a spread of -24 points.

By a two-to-one margin (62.3 vs. 30.2), Americans strongly disapprove of the direction the country is heading, as reflected by the RCP average from June 10 through June 27.

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Technorati Tags: America, Politics, Job Approval, Democrats

The Latest from Bones

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Technorati Tags: Culture, Politics, Illegal Aliens, Liberalism

Liberals use the courts to change the rules

A story in The Washington Post informed readers that “The Supreme Court ruled the Second Amendment provides Americans a fundamental right to bear arms that cannot be violated by state and local governments.” This issue should never have had to be decided by the Supreme Court.

The Second Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights, which is a specific articulation of what many of the Founders regarded as fundamental principles of human liberty – “unalienable Rights,” according to the Declaration of Independence – that must be guaranteed, and not left in doubt, so those rights were specifically guaranteed in the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution in 1791.

They include the right of free speech, freedom of the press, the right to assemble and to petition the government, freedom of religion, the right to due process and trial by jury, protection from unreasonable search and seizure, and the right to keep and bear arms, among others, which the Founders recognized as essential for a free people in a free society, and which Justice Samuel Alito confirmed in his majority opinion: "It is clear that the Framers . . . counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty."

The 5-4 ruling came in response to a challenge to a Chicago law banning handgun possession. Such blanket bans are in response to the illegal use of handguns, but are poorly thought out and fraught with flaws and unintended consequences, the most obvious of which is that law abiding Chicagoans who have sold their handguns to comply with the law, or have not purchased a handgun because of the law, have had their most effective means of self-defense outlawed by the City of Chicago, leaving them vulnerable to criminals who still have their guns.

It is ludicrous to suggest that the Framers ever intended for such a preposterous situation to be created.

Gun control is another of the many areas where good intentions fall victim to reality: In the real world gun control laws do not control guns. What they do most effectively is to disarm potential victims.

The populace has nothing to fear from law abiding citizens with guns. In fact, studies show that law abiding citizens who are armed provide an effective deterrent to crime. In an article titled “Can Gun Control Reduce Crime? Part 1,” historian and writer Benedict D. LaRosa noted that “Vermont has the least restrictive gun-control law. It recognizes the right of any Vermonter who has not otherwise been prohibited from owning a firearm to carry concealed weapons without a permit or license. Yet Vermont has one of the lowest crime rates in America, ranking 49 out of 50 in all crimes and 47th in murders.”

He also said that states which have passed concealed-carry laws have seen their violent crime rates fall by from three to seven percent, which makes perfect sense: If a criminal believes his intended victim may shoot him, he might think twice before robbing attacking him or her.

All of the gun control laws in the universe cannot keep criminals from having guns. That’s sort of what the term “criminal” implies, you know? Does it make any sense to prohibit law abiding citizens from owning guns to protect themselves from criminals who ignore the law and arm themselves? That’s a no-brainer.

Still – and this is truly troubling – four of the nine Justices of the United States Supreme Court voted in this case to maintain Chicago’s prohibition against handgun ownership, which is a de facto vote against the concept of law abiding citizens owning handguns for self-defense. That defies both common sense and the intent of the Second Amendment. But more importantly, it is a serious threat to our freedom that those four Justices – Steven Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Paul Stevens, and Sonia Sotomayor – either do not understand the intent or the plain language of the US Constitution, which they are duty bound to uphold, or they have substituted their own ideology for the intent of the Constitution. Neither is acceptable

This behavior is referred to as “judicial activism,” a theory that judges can and should creatively reinterpret the Constitution and laws in order to serve the judges' own ideas of the needs of contemporary society.

But what is the point of having a constitution if it can be reinterpreted by judges? What is the point of enacting laws if judges can interpret them according to their own personal views? And why should any of us obey existing laws, if their meaning changes from judge to judge?

For centuries people have used anchors to keep their boats from being moved around by winds and tides. Our Founders realized that the Republic also needed an anchor to keep it from being swept around by changing social and political ideas, and they created the United States Constitution for that purpose, and to establish a nation with maximum personal freedom. It has served us well for more than 200 years, making America the most exceptional nation in history.

We must be smart enough to follow it and not screw things up.

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Technorati Tags: Rule of Law, Politics, Liberalism, Democrats

Your government at work: Getting it wrong, with amazing consistency

Right now America desperately needs a competent government like the one our Founders gave us. What we have instead is one that is too big, too powerful and painfully dysfunctional.

The border with Mexico is poorly guarded and allows anybody to come into the United States unimpeded, which causes states along the border to waste millions of dollars dealing with illegal aliens, and puts American citizens at risk of physical violence and even death. The criminal element has turned Phoenix, Arizona into the city with the second most kidnappings in the entire world.

Obviously, a competent government would not allow this situation to have arisen, let alone to continue. But our government has done nothing to return security to the taxpaying citizens of Arizona who expect and deserve much better.

Faced with federal negligence on the border the state of Arizona passed a less strict version of the federal law that addresses illegal aliens in an effort to protect its citizens. And how did the federal government respond to that? It bad-mouthed the people of Arizona and threatened to sue the state.

In addition to government dysfunction, some of our citizens are badly confused on this issue, as well, and advocate boycotting Arizona businesses and call Arizonans “racists” for wanting to protect themselves from criminals. But what’s worse, there is evidence that the federal government may be participating in boycotting Arizona.

Arizona Democrat Representative Gabrielle Giffords issued a statement saying, “It is very troubling when the federal government becomes involved in a boycott against our state.” … “Although I personally disagree with the immigration law, it came about because of growing frustration over the federal government’s unwillingness to secure the border. The federal government’s participation in this boycott only adds to that frustration.”…

The government, predictably, has denied Congresswoman Giffords’ charge, however it cannot deny that the Department of Education moved its North American Mobility program convention scheduled for October in Tucson to Minnesota.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer recently met with President Barack Obama about the ridiculous border situation, and she said he told her the administration would provide some help soon. And sure enough, the president kept his word, having the feds post signs warning Arizonans to stay out of some areas of their own state because it is not safe to go there. No doubt Gov. Brewer feels much better now. These signs are 80 miles from the Mexican border, and 30 miles from the state capitol.

A monumental ecological disaster unfolds in the Gulf of Mexico when an oil rig explodes, killing 11 workers and unleashing a flow of oil into the waters of the Gulf, putting at risk wild life in the water and marshes, the jobs of thousands of Americans, and the beaches of the Gulf Coast. How does the federal government respond to this tragedy?

The government can’t fix the oil leak, of course, but when the president finally did something, he chose to threaten legal action against the company operating the oil rig instead of acting to help contain the oil. He then banned all drilling in the Gulf, putting thousands more jobs at risk.

Fortunately, a federal judge properly recognized that the ban was unwarranted and illegal and overturned the moratorium. And how did the administration react to the ruling? It threatened to issue another drilling moratorium.

When the federal government ignored offers of assistance at home and from abroad, and ignored desperate requests for help from states threatened by the oil flow, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal took matters into his own hands and began constructing sand bars to block the oil approaching his shores. And the US Coast Guard responded by shutting down the barges constructing the sand bars because it was unable to ascertain that the barges had the required fire extinguishers and life preservers on board.

These are the most recent examples of government ineptitude, but it goes back decades.

The current financial crisis is a nightmare scenario of government bungling that began in 1977 with the reckless Community Reinvestment Act to help people who couldn’t afford one to buy a home. Congressional meddling made that worse along the way, and then Congress changed the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 to allow commercial banks to merge with investment banks. Capping off this litany of ineptness is the behavior of House Ways and Means Chairman Barney Frank, who in 2002 and 2003 fought off efforts to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which collapsed not long thereafter.

After creating the environment that allowed financial institutions to run wild and bring on the financial crisis, Congress now thinks it needs to fix things with a financial reform bill. But the bill ignores two of the most needed reforms: fixing “too big to fail,” and once again separating banking functions from investment functions.

Despite these magnificent failures in housing, banking, border security and oil clean-up activities, Congress and the administration go merrily along inserting government where it doesn’t belong and cannot function without creating chaos.

As President Ronald Reagan famously said, government isn’t the solution, government is the problem.

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Technorati Tags: Government, Politics, America, Democrats

Going Rogue, Part II: the EPA forsakes rationality

“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency took a rare step against a planned ‘mountaintop’ coal mine in West Virginia,” The Washington Post reported in March, “proposing to block the mine, despite the fact that it has a federal permit.” The story outlined the EPA’s authority to take such action, noting that “it has used that power only 12 times since 1972. It has never used the power in a case such as this, where the mine has a permit.”

Those concerned about water quality might think it is good that the government is looking out for the quality of streams affected by coal mining. However, for the EPA to protect streams from contamination it must compare the level of contaminants against realistic thresholds. That is not what the EPA does.

The agency’s recent guidance on water quality requirements relies completely on measuring conductivity – which is the ability of water to carry an electric current – to determine whether water is contaminated.

Stream biologist Ben Faulkner explains in a video produced by FACES of Coal that pure water does not conduct electricity; conductance requires solid material dissolved in water to do that. He also said that low conductivity is not a guarantee that water is safe.

The EPA has set 300 – 500 microSiemens per centimeter as the threshold for water purity; water with greater than 500 is contaminated, according to the EPA. But Mr. Faulkner notes that Evian bottled water has 558 microSiemens, Perrier has 712, apple juice has 1,919, and Gatorade has 2,580. By EPA standards, all of these products are harmful.

Iron, zinc, selenium and copper are common components in streams affected by mining, Mr. Faulkner said, and in combination over 500 microSiemens render a stream contaminated under the EPA standard. But he points out that these substances are vitamins, not toxic chemicals. Their presence in water is not automatically a problem. It’s the concentration of substances that is important, and when these metals or other contaminants are present in streams at elevated levels, mining processes are modified to control them. Even so, critics say the EPA threshold is too low; FACES of coal asserts that it is not achievable; and Mr. Faulkner says that conductivity is “a poor way to evaluate whether the stream is healthy or not.”

Yet conductivity at that level is how the EPA determines stream contamination. Is water quality the objective of the EPA, or is this a way to accomplish a political goal of the Obama administration?

The minority staff of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee issued a report last month that answers that question: “Our investigation found that the Obama Administration is using the Clean Water Act Section 404 permitting process to dismantle the coal industry in the Appalachian region.”

The EPA also has the power – and according to the US Supreme Court, the duty – to regulate “greenhouse gases” under the Clean Air Act, and its December endangerment finding formalized its conclusion that these gases threaten the environment.

This finding sets the stage for the agency to act to reduce the emission of the six gases that are allegedly responsible for global warming /climate change, “allegedly” because manipulation of scientific data and outright fraud in the climate science arena have destroyed the credibility of evidence of manmade global warming/climate change. Furthermore, a sizeable body of climate scientists argues that human activities do not cause changes to Earth’s climate.

Despite this raging controversy over an unproved and vigorously debated theory, the EPA stampedes merrily ahead to restrict greenhouse gas emissions, with particular emphasis on carbon dioxide.

But industry sources say the Clean Air Act was designed to regulate localized air pollution, and is a clumsy tool for broader application. The US Chamber of Commerce, among others, thinks the endangerment declaration could lead to litigation that will harm the economy.

Carbon dioxide, like the vitamins dissolved in streams, is vital to the ecosphere; CO2 exhaled by humans and other animals is essential for plant life; the oxygen plants emit is essential for animal life, and a significant faction of scientists believe more CO2 is good, not bad.

The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change says on its Web site, CO2 Science, “Clearly, the panic-evoking extinction-predicting paradigms of the past are rapidly giving way to the realization they bear little resemblance to reality. Earth's plant and animal species are not slip-sliding away” to extinction. And the Center’s Dr. Craig Idso concludes that "Clearly, there is no way that these real-world observations can be construed to even hint at the possibility that a significant increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide will necessarily lead to any global warming."

A resolution in the US Senate to stop unelected government officials at the EPA from micromanaging the economy was defeated 53-47 last week with just six Democrats joining Republicans in trying to protect us from runaway bureaucratic malfeasance, precisely what this column warned of in December in the first “Going rogue.”

The EPA has become nothing more than a political tool of leftist ideology that is taking aim at American industries, and may well be a key element in unraveling the US economy.

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Obama, Dems continue to get battered in the polls

Poll numbers are not improving for our young president. An ABC News/Washington Post Poll from June 3 through 6 questioned participants on whether they "approve or disapprove of the way Obama is handling" three different things.

On the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, 44 percent approved, while 49 percent disapproved.

On the economy, 50 percent approved while 49 percent disapproved.

On the federal budget deficit a mere 39 percent approved and 56 percent disapproved.

None of these numbers ought to surprise anyone; the Obama administration has been toothless in making appreciable differences in any of these serious issues. In fact, in every case its policies have made things worse without even a hint that there are plans that will turn things around.

The most serious poll result, however, came in response to the statement, “He understands the problems of people like you."

While 51 percent of respondents answered in the affirmative, Mr. Obama’s rating on this question has been in free fall since April of last year, when 73 percent of respondents answered affirmatively. By July his rating had dropped 10 points, and by January of this year, his rating was down to 57 percent. Disapproval ratings have risen roughly opposite the sinking approval numbers.

Congress fares no better.

Fox/Opinion Dynamics poll on June 8 and 9 revealed that only 22 percent approve of the job Congress is doing, while 69 percent disapprove, a negative margin of 47 points.

A week earlier, an ABC/Washington Post poll’s numbers were only slightly better, 26 favorable against 71 percent unfavorable, a 45-point deficit.

Back in May Democrats in Congress managed to please only 37 percent of the participants, against 61 percent who disapproved in an AP/Roper survey, while Republicans did as well on the approval side, but fared worse on the disapproval side, with 65 percent.

And, by a virtual two-to-one margin, a Gallup poll in the last week of May shows incumbents are in deep trouble. Asked whether they would rather vote for a candidate for Congress that has been in Congress or one that hasn’t, 60 percent said a candidate who has never been in Congress, while only 32 percent said they’d vote for someone with Congressional experience.

Republicans and Independents were clearly anti-incumbent (71-22 and 69-25, respectively), while Democrats were more evenly divided at 45-41 in favor of incumbents.

The Rasmussen Reports weekly Generic Congressional Ballot shows that since April 4 when the Democrats attracted 38 percent of the vote, the number is down to 36 percent on June 13, while Republicans garnered 47 percent on April 4 and 46 percent on June 13. Republicans are favored on the Generic Ballot over Democrats by a 10-point margin.

In what may be the most telling number, this month's Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll found that Mr. Obama’s approval rating of 51 percent, down from 77 percent at his inauguration, is significantly below Hillary Clinton’s rating , which has been in the 60s since she became Secretary of State.

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We’re from the government and we’re here to help. Or not!

Nearly two months after BP’s Deepwater Horizon explosion killed 11 workers and started spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, little has been done to slow the flow of oil from the seabed and less has been done to clean up the oil in Gulf waters and on beaches. People are angry, and rightly so.

Making decisions when you are angry usually produces bad decisions, and this situation proves the rule. Many questions are only partially answered and some not answered at all, and there’s no reason to have rushed to judgment. What we should have done is rush to the assistance of the people of Gulf Coast states. But instead, Washington sat on its hands, telling us “we were there from day one.”

The Dutch government offered its help and was rejected, and a number of creative ways of extracting the oil in the water have been suggested, but they have been ignored, lost in the bureaucracy, or couldn’t break through the blame-focused attitude of the Obama administration. The president should take a deep breath and change his focus from blaming and butt-kicking to actually doing something to help the people of Gulf Coast states. In other words, stop talking and do something!

Banning off shore drilling and boycotting BP are two popular actions favored by a large number of Americans. Such ideas appeal to the opportunist, or to people overcome with emotion who want to shoot first and ask questions later. Boycotts are sometimes effective tools to make a point. Often, however, they are ill-advised and, frankly, dumb. Boycotting BP stations falls squarely into the latter category. It’s like kicking the dog when your kid wrecked the car. Our friends, neighbors and acquaintances that own and work in these businesses are not to blame for the problems in the Gulf, so don’t punish them. And driving the company out of business would be counter-productive.

President Barack Obama’s rash decision to stop all drilling in the Gulf and other off shore locations presents more serious problems. The president wants to insure there isn’t another accident like this, but he should know that as bad as this one is, it’s the first significant deep water accident in 40 years. He over-reacted.

Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute (API) told Congress that raising the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund cap from $75 million to $10 billion, as proposed by US Senate legislation, would jeopardize about 145,000 jobs. Further, Mr. Gerard said that raising the cap could raise costs for offshore operations. "The impacts would be devastating ... just a 10 percent increase in development costs could … [result in] reducing production, jobs, and put $7.6 billion in future government revenue at risk," he said.

API’s chief economist Dr. John Felmy predicts that the short-term implications of a drilling moratorium will easily affect thousands of jobs in the Gulf region. Each drilling platform has 100 to 200 people on it, he said, and there are up to 30 platforms in the Gulf. That means as many as 6,000 direct jobs will be lost, and Dr. Felmy says two to three times that many support jobs are also at risk.

If the Obama administration wanted a strategy to virtually destroy the economy of Gulf Coast states, it would be hard pressed to find one more effective than banning oil and natural gas drilling there.

And according to Dr. Felmy, longer term bans on drilling will have a substantial impact on domestic oil production, and that translates to higher prices and perhaps shortages of gasoline and other fuels.

API explains that about 30 percent of the nation’s total domestic oil production and 13 percent of domestic natural gas production comes from the Gulf of Mexico and that deepwater development produces approximately 80 percent of the oil and 45 percent of the natural gas in the Gulf.

The extremists among the drilling-ban crowd would be happy to see fossil fuel use end abruptly, but have given no thought to how we would deal with the chaos that would ensue. These ideologues couldn’t care less how many families are ruined by such actions.

However, the reality of the energy situation is that oil and natural gas are going to be essential to the US energy picture for decades to come because alternative energy sources are insufficiently developed to take up the slack.

But aside from energy, let’s not forget that petroleum is the basis of a vast array of products besides fuels and lubricants. Ranken Energy Corporation explains that one 42-gallon barrel of oil creates 19.4 gallons of gasoline, but more than half of it is used to make things like plastics, asphalt, waxes, golf balls, toothpaste, panty hose, contact lenses, lipstick, nail polish, insect repellant, hand lotion, antifreeze, heart valves, parachutes … approximately 6,000 individual products.

So put the ideology on hold, accept the fact that we need oil and we need more domestic oil, and let’s focus on fixing the problems this tragic explosion has caused, finding wrong-doing and compensating those who deserve compensation. But let’s pass on the opportunity to use this crisis to advance political and ideological goals.

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Economy slumping because of government efforts to turn it around

Try as he might, President Barack Obama just can’t put a pretty face on the latest economic figures.

Prior to the release of the May job numbers, economists surveyed by MarketWatch expected an increase of 540,000 nonfarm jobs, but when the jobs report came out, it showed only 431,000 jobs had been created.

Even so, Mr. Obama told us that the May job report is evidence that the U.S. economy is "getting stronger by the day," and then admitted that 411,000 of those were temporary government Census workers, which means, of course, that only 20,000 real jobs were created.

But even the new Census hiring is suspect. A number of Census workers have come forward saying that they were hired, trained, worked a day or two, were laid off, then rehired for a repeat of the cycle as many as three times. Each re-hire was counted as a new job, raising the new jobs total. But that doesn’t sound very much like a real job, does it? Not even a real “temporary” job.

This disappointing private payroll number was a much weaker result than many economists had expected, and that sentiment was shared by investors, who drove the Dow Industrials to a 323-point slide on Friday, the second time in two weeks the DJIA has closed below 10,000.

The small jobs increase was accompanied by a decrease in unemployment, which fell further than economists expected, dropping to 9.7 percent in May from 9.9 percent in April. But even that news has an asterisk beside it, since much of the decline came from 322,000 unemployed people who dropped out of the labor force and are no longer counted among the unemployed.

Looking deeper into the unemployment data, many analysts regard the number that includes discouraged workers – like those 322,000 who dropped out of the workforce, and those forced to work part-time because of the weak economy –as a more relevant measure of unemployment. That number is 16.6 percent.

Thirty months into the recession, unemployment continues at high levels. The low point in October of 2006, when the rate was 4.4 percent (five percent is considered full employment), is a distant memory, and the rate hovered just above that level until May of 2007, at which point it started to creep up, hitting 7.4 percent in December of 2008. Since then, there has been no good news on employment, and some economists predict the rate will bump up against 10 percent through the summer.

Employment is a lagging indicator of economic recovery, meaning that the economy will show improvement long before unemployment falls to acceptable levels. But the recovery is not gaining strength, either.

Gross Domestic Product was revised downward to 3.0 percent in the first quarter of 2010 from 5.6 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, supporting the idea that unemployment will continue at high levels for a long time. The lower GDP shows “that the recovery in the biggest economy in the world may not be as strong as many have expected,” according to analyst Anna Fedec. The downward revision in GDP “came from consumer consumption and business spending which are required components for growth to be called sustainable,” she said. “In fact, consumer spending, which is vital in elevating production levels, is weak, mostly due to [the] high unemployment rate.”

Unemployment is the most important thing on the minds of most Americans, and it also plays a role in stifling the recovery. People without jobs spend a lot less than people with jobs, and with demand for products and services reduced by high unemployment, new job creation also will languish.

Add to that scenario the fact that the Obama administration’s policies discourage job creation by keeping businesses wondering what tax, expense or government edict is going to be imposed on them next. This uncertainty breeds caution, and caution and uncertainty do not produce jobs.

A look at business cycle history shows that if left alone economic downturns self-correct rather quickly, and that includes every downturn up to 1930, at which point federal government bureaucrats and elected officials decided they knew more about business than business people. That was the blunder that created the Great Depression, and it is the blunder in this recession. Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek called such bureaucratic arrogance the “fatal conceit.”

Following Jimmy Carter’s disastrous economic policies in the late 70s, Ronald Reagan turned things around by cutting taxes. Economist Arthur Laffer points out that the. Reagan tax cuts – which were the engine of the 1983 expansion and unleashed the longest peacetime expansion the U.S. economy has ever experienced – are the mirror image of the Obama tax increases. And he said “the prospect of rising prices, higher interest rates and more regulations next year will further entice demand and supply to be shifted from 2011 into 2010.” Mr. Laffer predicts that economic activity shifted to 2010 helps this year, but will produce an economic collapse next year. “If you thought deficits and unemployment have been bad lately, you ain't seen nothing yet,” he said.

The Obama administration has failed to learn the lessons of 1930 and 1983, to our great detriment.
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Technorati Tags: Economy, Government, Liberalism, Democrats

“Chicago on the Potomac” is not popular with the American people

In four major areas – health care, illegal immigration, the Gulf oil spill, and the direction of the country – the American people do not support Barack Obama and his policies, as reflected in recent opinion polls.

From May 21 to 23, CNN/Opinion Research Corporation asked whether participants think the changes the Democrat’s law will make to the country's health care system will be generally good for the country or generally bad for the country. More than half the participants said “bad,” while 46 percent said “good.” A more direct question followed: “Do you approve or disapprove of the passage of the health care bill which became law in April?” The margin was 13 points; 56 percent disapprove, 43 percent approve.

Another hot topic is illegal immigration and the illegal alien problem in Arizona, and on this one the president and his administration are once again taking a hit. Fifty-nine percent responding in the Quinnipiac University Poll from May 19-24 believe that illegal immigration is a very serious problem, while only 10 percent think it is not very serious. Another 26 percent believe illegal immigration is somewhat serious, and just four percent think it is not a problem at all. All told, 85 percent think this problem is serious.

Not surprisingly, 66 percent also think immigration reform should primarily move in the in the direction of stricter enforcement of laws against illegal immigration rather than in the direction of integrating illegal immigrants into American society, and respondents approve of the Arizona law by a 51 to 31 margin.

On the oil spill in the Gulf, the division is less severe, but only 39 percent of participants approve of the way President Obama is handling the crisis, while 42 percent disapprove, in the Quinnipiac University Poll, May 19-24. Perhaps more pertinent, to the question, "To help solve the energy crisis and make America less dependent on foreign oil, do you support or oppose drilling for new oil supplies in currently protected areas off shore?" 53 support new drilling, against 40 percent who oppose it.

And in a Research 2000 poll conducted for the Daily Kos May 24 through 27 asking about the direction the country is heading, 56 percent said the wrong direction, while 40 percent said the right direction.

Barack Obama and his administration are clearly on the wrong side of the majority of Americans on three important issues and the direction he and the Democrat-controlled Congress are taking the country.

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The Memorial Day Observance at Arlington National Cemetery

Memorial Day is a time when America acknowledges the service and sacrifices of the men and women of our armed forces. At Arlington National Cemetery an observance has taken place for 142 years, and the focus of the modern observance is the laying of a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns by the President of the United States, which presidents have taken part in since Lyndon Johnson first did in 1968.

From that time forward, with few exceptions, American presidents have paid tribute to the brave men and women who have served their country and the thousands who paid the ultimate price to guarantee us the freedoms won for us in the Revolutionary War.

This year, the Arlington ceremony has become the center of attention, and as this is written, President Barack Obama plans to pass on the Arlington ceremony, and take the family to Chicago for the weekend. Information on who did and didn’t participate in the Arlington ceremonies each year is difficult to find, but it is documented that in recent memory three presidents did not participate at Arlington at least once during their terms: George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan. Why did they pass up the opportunity and the duty to honor America’s fighting men and women at Arlington?

Ronald Reagan chaired a summit in 1983 in Williamsburg “to mobilise (sic) a common Western position in confronting the Soviet Union in the final stage of the Cold War,” according to Nicholas Bayne in the (begin ital) History of the G7 Summit: The Importance of American Leadership.(end ital) With Reagan as chairman, “the summits reached some pioneering political agreements, stimulated by the US,” and succeeded in having US Cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe to counter Soviet missiles placed nearby. The meeting was a serious and important event, and Mr. Reagan can be forgiven for asking someone to stand in for him at the Memorial Day ceremony while he tended to the nation’s business.

On Memorial Day, 2002, a day after attending the NATO summit in Rome, President George W. Bush, along with Secretary of State Colon Powell, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony Principi, members of the U.S. Congress, members of the U.S. Armed Services and American veterans celebrated Memorial Day at the Normandy American Cemetery, and Colleville-Sur-Mer, France. Mr. Bush was not at Arlington, but he did honor the thousands of Americans buried in France who helped liberate Europe during WWII.

Some people say that in 2007 Mr. Bush was at his ranch in Texas, and Vice President Dick Cheney placed the wreath, however, the Arlington Cemetery Website contains remarks by Mr. Bush dated Memorial Day 2007.

George H. W. Bush, however, is another matter. One account said that in his four years as president he did not attend the Arlington ceremony a single time. One year, he attended a Memorial Day ceremony in Rome, but he spent the others vacationing in Kennebunkport, Maine, and attending ceremonies there, while other officials attended the Arlington ceremonies. However, it is well known that the senior President Bush postponed going to college to serve in the military during WWII and became the youngest aviator in the US Navy at the age of 18. He flew 58 combat missions and was decorated three times, with the Distinguished Flying Cross, three Air Medals, and the Presidential Unit Citation. His patriotism and commitment to the military are beyond question.

On Memorial Day 2009, a few months after being sworn in as President, Barack Obama attended the laying of the wreath at Arlington. The Associated Press reported that “Barack Obama marked his first Memorial Day as president on Monday, saluting the men and women of America's fighting forces, both living and dead, as ‘the best of America’” by laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery.

This year, the news stories read somewhat differently. Under the headline, “President Obama, Vice President Biden to Participate in Memorial Day Ceremonies” was this report: “On Thursday, May 27, President Barack Obama and his family will travel to Chicago, where they will spend the weekend. On Monday, the President will participate in a Memorial Day ceremony at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, Illinois … [and] Vice President and Dr. Jill Biden … will participate in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery.”

Why did President Obama decline to honor America’s fighting men and women at Arlington this year, as most presidents do each year, and instead chose to take his family to Chicago? Well, depending upon which perspective you hold, he is either doing an honorable thing and keeping a campaign promise to visit his adopted home town and attending a ceremony there, or instead of doing his patriotic duty at Arlington he is taking the family on a vacation.

Do you believe Mr. Obama’s reasons for missing the Arlington ceremony are as good as Mr. Reagan’s or the younger Bush’s, or that he has earned a pass like Bush senior through his service? Or do you think that he is abandoning an American tradition and shirking his duty?

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