Too RUDE, but All Too True

Anyone who lives in Oregon should understand this:

John Oliver leads left-wing cable television slam-a-thon of Cover Oregon



The parody was excellent.

     

The Grace Commission: Good Advice Ignored

I've often heard the Grace Commission mentioned in various articles, so decided to look it up. From Wikipedia:

The Grace Commission

The Private Sector Survey on Cost Control (PSSCC), commonly referred to as The Grace Commission, was an investigation requested by United States President Ronald Reagan, in 1982. The focus of it was waste and inefficiency in the US Federal government. Its head, businessman J. Peter Grace,[1] asked the members of that commission to "be bold" and "work like tireless bloodhounds. Don't leave any stone unturned in your search to root out inefficiency."[2]

The report
The Grace Commission Report[3] was presented to Congress in January 1984. The report claimed that if its recommendations were followed, $424 billion could be saved in three years, rising to $1.9 trillion per year by the year 2000. It estimated that the national debt, without these reforms, would rise to $13 trillion by the year 2000, while with the reforms they projected it would rise to only $2.5 trillion.[4] Congress ignored the commission's report. The debt reached $5.8 trillion in the year 2000.[5][6] The national debt reached 13 trillion after the subprime mortgage-collateralized debt obligation crisis in 2008.

The report said that one-third of all income taxes are consumed by waste and inefficiency in the federal government, and another one-third escapes collection owing to the underground economy. “With two thirds of everyone’s personal income taxes wasted or not collected, 100 percent of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the federal debt and by federal government contributions to transfer payments. In other words, all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services [that] taxpayers expect from their government."[4]

Congress was warned. They had the chance to do something about it, and did nothing. We The People, let them do it. Now we are living the consequences.

Mr. Grace, a Democrat Businessman, was an interesting fellow:

J. Peter Grace

[...] In the Kennedy administration, J. Peter Grace was head of the Commerce Department Committee on the Alliance for Progress.[5] President Reagan, in announcing the selection of J. Peter Grace to lead The Grace Commission on waste and inefficiency in the Federal government, said:

We have a problem that's been 40 years in the making, and we have to find ways to solve it. And I didn't want to ruin your appetites, so I waited till now to tell you this, but during the hour we're together here eating and talking, the Government has spent $83 million. And by the way, that includes the price of your lunch. [Laughter] Milton Friedman is right. There really is no such thing as a free lunch. The interest on our debt for the last hour was about $10 million of that.

In selecting your Committee, we didn't care whether you were Democrats or Republicans. Starting with Peter Grace, we just wanted to get the very best people we could find, and I think we were successful.

I'll repeat to you today what I said a week ago when I announced Peter's appointment: Be bold. We want your team to work like tireless bloodhounds. Don't leave any stone unturned in your search to root out inefficiency.[6]

Mr. Grace, a Democrat, was asked what he would say to the campaign theme of Walter Mondale, the 1984 Democratic Presidential candidate, that higher taxes would be required to ease the deficit regardless of who wins the November election.

"I'd tell him he's nuts," Grace said. "He's wrong. He's wrong."[7] [...]

   

Oregon's State Budget, and Facing Reality

Here is an interesting read. It claims our state deficit needn't exist:

The Fallacy of a $3.5 Billion State Budget Deficit

[...] The official assumptions assume we will continue to do almost everything the state is doing now, in the same manner it is doing them now. This is not only a recipe for a huge deficit, but it is also a recipe for shortchanging everyone who has a right to expect that their state government will focus on its core responsibilities and do so in a fiscally responsible manner.

As set forth in Facing Reality, we identify a number of ways the state can reform how it performs certain services, how it pays for them, and how it can spin off or end other services to reduce costs and/or improve service. Included are items such as privatizing liquor distribution and sales and the DMV, reducing corrections costs, eliminating a number of costly tax credits and new programs, and targeted reductions in public employee compensation. All together these reforms could save some $2 billion in the upcoming biennium.

In Facing Reality we also propose a reasonable limit on the future growth of state expenditures, and the reduction or elimination of perhaps the most damaging symbol of Oregon’s perceived unfriendliness to business and entrepreneurship: the highest-in-the-nation 11 percent capital gains tax. [...]

Read the whole thing for the details; it's excellent. Now we just have to find a way to force our politicians to face reality.


Also see:

Oregon tax hikes lead to cut jobs, higher prices

Oregon nears highest income tax in the nation

Oregon; following California's example?
     

Cut the government waste first

Coburn: Control Government Spending or Face 'Apocalyptic Pain'

"Apocalyptic pain" from an out-of-control debt could cause 18 percent unemployment and a massive contraction in the economy that would destroy the middle class, a leading Republican deficit hawk said in an interview that aired Sunday.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who recently issued a report on government waste, warned that the U.S. only has about three or four years to get its fiscal house in order or it could find itself facing austerity measures seen in Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and earlier in Japan.

[...]

The senator, who was recently elected to a second -- and he pledges -- final term in Congress, said he's not trying to scare anyone, but eliminating waste in the federal government's ledgers is imperative not just to prevent default but a massive implosion that he defined in catastrophic terms.

"I think you'll see a 15 to 18 percent unemployment rate. I think you will see an 8 to 9 percent decline in GDP. I think you'll see the middle class just destroyed if we don't do this. And the people that it will harm the most will be the poorest of the poor, because we'll print money to try to debase our currency and get out of it and what you will see is hyperinflation," Coburn said.

"If we didn't take some pain now, we're going to experience apocalyptic pain, and it's going to be out of our control. The idea should be that we control it," he said.

Coburn said he can come up with $350 billion off the top of his head in inefficiency and waste that could be eliminated without impacting anyone in a practical sense. He noted $50 billion in programs that are duplicative and $100 billion in Medicare and Medicaid fraud that was not addressed in the health care law.

"We have 267 job training programs across 39 different agencies. Why do we have 267 of them? We have 105 programs to encourage people to go into science and technology, engineering and math. That's 105 sets of bureaucrats. None of them have metrics on it," he said.

"The Pentagon can't even audit its own books. It doesn't even know where its money is going. And we refuse to have the tough forces go on the Pentagon so that at least they are efficient with the money they're spending," Coburn added. [...]

Government has no respect for the money it spends, because it doesn't earn it. That's why they waste so much, and why it's important to limit their power to spend. It's pathetic that it's gotten this bad already.
     

Mathamatics are not Partisan

The Bush Tax Cuts and the Deficit Myth
Runaway government spending, not declining tax revenues, is the reason the U.S. faces dramatic budget shortfalls for years to come.

President Obama and congressional Democrats are blaming their trillion-dollar budget deficits on the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. Letting these tax cuts expire is their answer. Yet the data flatly contradict this "tax cuts caused the deficits" narrative. Consider the three most persistent myths:

• The Bush tax cuts wiped out last decade's budget surpluses. Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.), for example, has long blamed the tax cuts for having "taken a $5.6 trillion surplus and turned it into deficits as far as the eye can see." That $5.6 trillion surplus never existed. It was a projection by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in January 2001 to cover the next decade. It assumed that late-1990s economic growth and the stock-market bubble (which had already peaked) would continue forever and generate record-high tax revenues. It assumed no recessions, no terrorist attacks, no wars, no natural disasters, and that all discretionary spending would fall to 1930s levels. [...]

The whole thing is very detailed, exposing each flawed premise being used to blame tax cuts for deficits, and then goes on to clearly demonstrate how it's government spending that's driving up the deficits.

Tax cuts allow people to spend and invest their own money, which stimulates the private sector economy and creates jobs, which creates more taxpayers, thereby increasing revenues also. But if the government continues to spend beyond the revenues they are bringing in, well nothing can "fix" that, other than cutting spending. Raising taxes won't do it because that means less jobs and overall less tax revenue being generated.

It's math, numbers. You can't spend what you don't have, and you can't over-tax or you will reduce tax revenues. The solution: live within our means. Duh.


Related Links:

Why the "Recovery" is stalling

What happens when Tax Cuts Expire in 2011?

Obama's Anti-Business Policies Are Our Economic Katrina
     

Brand Names dissapear as the economy flounders; it's survival of the fittest. Or is it?

Many long established companies are going under, except of course for some who are favored by government, and kept going on taxpayer's money:

24/7 Wall St. Ten Brands That Will Disappear in 2011

24/7 Wall St. has created a new list of brands that will disappear, which includes Readers Digest, Kia Motors, Dollar Thrifty (NYSE: DTG), Zale (NYSE: ZLC), Blockbuster (NYSE: BBI), T-Mobile, BP plc (NYSE: BP), RadioShack (NYSE: RSH), Merrill Lynch, and Moody’s (NYSE: MCO).

[...]

Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) were on our earlier list. We were wrong about them closing. They have become “wards of the state,” kept open by the US government to help maintain an orderly mortgage market. It is estimated that keeping the two firms open costs taxpayers about $7 billion a month. The companies lost a combined $291 billion in 2009. Members of Congress are pushing to have the companies shuttered. It is almost certain that they will not be around, at least in their current forms, much longer. One estimate is that the cost of supporting the two companies will total $1 trillion, making it more likely that they will be closed in the favor of other alternatives to maintain the mortgage market. [...]

In a sensible world, Fannie and Freddie would be shuttered, but economic sensibleness seems nowhere in sight, so I'm not so sure. Fannie and Freddie are government created entities, and the government has their own reasons for maintaining them, at any cost, apparently.

Read the whole article for other companies that are about to disappear. Some of them, like Newsweek, I won't miss. But who knows, they may get a bail-out too? More money taken away from the productive people who earned it, and given to unproductive people who squander it? And the surviving, profitable companies who are paying their own way, are then forced to compete with the unprofitable, government subsidized ones? How fair is that?

Rewarding failure, and punishing success. Change You Can Believe In.
     

Union abuses are costing taxpayer's plenty

The taxpayers need to be outraged. From Neal Boortz:

THE UNIONS ARE OUTRAGED?

Yesterday I told you about the unionized New York City bus drivers who took an average of two months paid leave in order to recover from being "assaulted" by spit. Turns out that someone in New York is actually trying to do something about these abuses. That person would be MTA Chairman Jay Walder, and boy does he have the unions spitting nails. They are actually MAD that they are being called out for not doing their job.

The bus driver assault story is pretty outrageous. But unfortunately, it doesn't stop there. Here are some other examples from the New York Post of some of the outrageous union practices in New York City.

• Overtime kicks in by eight-hour day rather than 40-hour week. So employees earn full pay while working less by calling out sick and then making up the lost wages through (premium) overtime.
  
  
• Many bus drivers clock a 12-hour shift for driving four hours in the morning rush and four in the evening rush. For the four hours in between, they're paid for being available -- but with no work to do.
  
  
• Whenever crew members of the Long Island Rail Road are switched from one train to another, they get another day's full pay.
  
  
• Real-time bus arrival information is finally being tested on Manhattan's 34th Street -- more than a decade after technology had made it possible. Union drivers didn't want to be tracked, so union bus mechanics refused to service wheels with the rotation-counting device needed to supplement GPS in its early days.
  
  
• While the new system on the Canarsie line can run trains with no crew aboard, L trains still operate with crews of two -- thanks to union work rules.
  
  
• The union representing crane operators insists on having full-time "oilers" at construction sites every day. But unlike the steam-driven equipment of old, modern cranes don't need constant lubrication.
  
  
• On building sites across the city, union operators must staff elevators -- even when they have normal push-buttons for each floor.
  
  
• Told it would cost $1,000 to have a union electrician plug a laptop into the wall of a Midtown hotel, one smart customer ran out and bought a spare battery for $70 instead -- and then noted it would be cheaper to buy a whole new computer than to pay the hotel electrician.
  
  
• A Midtown hotel just lost out on hosting the Sidney Hillman Foundation awards dinner after its unionized workers said they'd refuse to serve the foundation president -- because he also heads up a rival union.

Sort of makes you wonder how much money we could save on government if government employee unions were made illegal.

Bold emphasis mine. It's a good question. If the unions are going to destroy the taxpayers who pay them, I say destroy the parasitical unions. It's self-defense.


Also see:

Another perfect example of how unionized government employees are dragging us all down

Why Greece is in trouble. And a warning for us.

The cure for Greece is the one for US too
     

Big Government is OUR fault?

Apparently, there is a case to be made for it:

What Made the U.S. Government So Big?

If you're going to argue that the size of government is the defining debate in modern politics, you should probably explain why the government is so big. It's not because of new laws. It's because of old laws.

David Brooks latest column argued that "as government grew," moderates and independents recoiled and conservatives revolted. Brooks is right that people are angry. Four out of five Americans don't trust the government according to a new Pew poll, the highest level of public dissatisfaction in history. But that anger has much more to do with the recession -- plus a dash of complex conservative angst -- than with Obama's new spending initiatives.

[...]

In short, our government is growing because of what past presidents have promised and voters have consistently supported at the polls: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the Federal Unemployment Tax Act. Clive Crook put it nicely: "Big Government is no longer a prospect to ward off. That choice has been made."

That statement is powerful, and it has at least two implications. First, we need to stop pretending that Democrats suddenly "have become the government party." Every party is the government party when it controls the government.

Second, now that we've made the Big Government choice, we have to pay for it. The David Brookses of the world need to explain to Americans that this isn't about Obama. It's about all of us, collectively, making decades of promises that we haven't promised to pay for. We will need new taxes, or dramatic and potentially painful reforms to our entitlement programs. That is where this debate should be.

I'm afraid that it's all too true that people are only worried about big government now because the economy is in bad shape. But it's still true that we can't keep spending money we do not have. We have to get spending under control. The government needs to stop wasting money. It's the wrong time to be expanding government even further, unless your goal is to collapse our economy and destroy our political system.
     

Why Obamacare is a "healthcare bridge to nowhere" that can't be "tweaked"

REPEAL
Why and how Obamacare must be undone

In the days since the enactment of their health care plan, Democrats in Washington have been desperately seeking to lodge the new program in the pantheon of American public-policy achievements. House Democratic whip James Clyburn compared the bill to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Vice President Biden argued it vindicates a century of health reform efforts by Democrats and Republicans alike. House speaker Nancy Pelosi said “health insurance reform will stand alongside Social Security and Medicare in the annals of American history.”

Even putting aside the fact that Social Security and Medicare are going broke and taking the rest of the government with them, these frantic forced analogies are preposterous. The new law is a ghastly mess, which began as a badly misguided technocratic pipe dream and was then degraded into ruinous incoherence by the madcap process of its enactment.

The appeals to history are understandable, however, because the Democrats know that the law is also exceedingly vulnerable to a wholesale repeal effort: Its major provisions do not take effect for four years, yet in the interim it is likely to begin wreaking havoc with the health care sector—raising insurance premiums, health care costs, and public anxieties. If those major provisions do take effect, moreover, the true costs of the program will soon become clear, and its unsustainable structure will grow painfully obvious. So, to protect it from an angry public and from Republicans armed with alternatives, the new law must be made to seem thoroughly established and utterly irrevocable—a fact on the ground that must be lived with; tweaked, if necessary, at the edges, but at its core politically untouchable.

But it is no such thing. Obamacare starts life strikingly unpopular and looks likely to grow more so as we get to know it in the coming months and years. The entire House of Representatives, two-thirds of the Senate, and the president will be up for election before the law’s most significant provisions become fully active. The American public is concerned about spending, deficits, debt, taxes, and overactive government to an extent seldom seen in American history. The excesses of the plan seem likely to make the case for alternative gradual and incremental reforms only stronger.

And the repeal of Obamacare is essential to any meaningful effort to bring down health care costs, provide greater stability and security of coverage to more Americans, and address our entitlement crisis. Both the program’s original design and its contorted final form make repairs at the edges unworkable. The only solution is to repeal it and pursue genuine health care reform in its stead.



From Bad to Worse

To see why nothing short of repeal could suffice, we should begin at the core of our health care dilemma. [...]

The rest is an in-depth look at the different approaches to healthcare reform, how and why we ended up with the current bill, and why it is a "healthcare bridge to nowhere" which cannot succeed. And thus HAS to be repealed, and yes, replaced, with genuine SUSTAINABLE reform.

If only that had been done from the beginning. What a waste this all has been. And what a struggle we have ahead to clean up this mess.


Also see: "Obamacare is not going to happen"

     

Government Bureaucracy and Unions versus Us

Class War: How public servants became our masters

[...] There was a time when government work offered lower salaries than comparable jobs in the private sector but more security and somewhat better benefits. These days, government workers fare better than private-sector workers in almost every area—pay, benefits, time off, and job security. And not just in California.

According to a 2007 analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics by the Asbury Park Press, “the average federal worker made $59,864 in 2005, compared with the average salary of $40,505 in the private sector.” Across comparable jobs, the federal government paid higher salaries than the private sector three times out of four, the paper found. As Heritage Foundation legal analyst James Sherk explained to the Press, “The government doesn’t have to worry about going bankrupt, and there isn’t much competition.”

In February 2008, before the recession made the disparity much worse, The New York Times reported that “George W. Bush is in line to be the first president since World War II to preside over an economy in which federal government employment rose more rapidly than employment in the private sector.” The Obama administration has extended the hiring binge, with executive branch employment (excluding the Postal Service and the Defense Department) slated to grow by 2 percent in 2010—and more than 15 percent if you count temporary Census workers.

The average federal salary (including benefits) is set to grow from $72,800 in 2008 to $75,419 in 2010, CBS reported. But the real action isn’t in what government employees are being paid today; it’s in what they’re being promised for tomorrow. Public pensions have swollen to unrecognizable proportions during the last decade. In June 2005, BusinessWeek reported that “more than 14 million public servants and 6 million retirees are owed $2.37 trillion by more than 2,000 different states, cities and agencies,” numbers that have risen since then. State and local pension payouts, the magazine found, had increased 50 percent in just five years.

These huge pension increases have eaten away at public finances, most spectacularly in California, where a bipartisan bill that passed virtually without debate unleashed the odious “3 percent at 50” retirement plan in 1999. Under this plan, at age 50 many categories of public employees are eligible for 3 percent of their final year’s pay multiplied by the number of years they’ve worked. So if a police officer starts working at age 20, he can retire at 50 with 90 percent of his final salary until he dies, and then his spouse receives that money for the rest of her life. Even during the economic crisis, “3 percent at 50” and the forces behind it have only become more entrenched.

In the midst of California’s 2008–09 fiscal meltdown, with the impact of deluxe public pensions making daily headlines, the city of Fullerton nevertheless sought to retroactively increase the defined-benefit retirement plan for its city employees by a jaw-dropping 25 percent. What’s more, the Fullerton City Council negotiated the increase in closed session, outside public view. [...]

The article is long, but identifies the rot with many specifics. Government bureaucracies and unions are milking us all dry, killing the goose that lays the golden eggs; our productivity and job and wealth creation. So more and more taxes have to be collected from a continually shrinking tax base.

Here is a link to seven charts, that show us where all this is leading:

7 Charts Worth How Many Trillion Dollars?

This is unsustainable. Government Bureaucracies and unions have become parasites that are killing the host who pays them. Somethings gotta give.

     

Ford: The way to run an Automobile Company

Ford Reports Nearly $1 Billion Profit
The latest and strongest sign of the automaker's comeback comes as it pays down debt and adds to U.S. market share

It's now fair to declare Ford Motor (F) an unqualified turnaround story.

The company reported a $997 million third-quarter profit on Nov. 2, adding profits to gains in market share and improvements in quality since CEO Alan Mulally took over in September 2006. The nearly $1 billion profit is a $1.2 billion turnaround from the third quarter of last year. The company also generated $1 billion in cash and paid down $2 billion in debt.

"Ford is making tremendous progress," Mulally said on a conference call. "Our transformation is working."

Strong earnings are a big victory for Ford and Mulally. The company has been far stronger than rivals General Motors and Chrysler (FIA.MI), gaining market share this year. But looking healthier than GM and Chrysler, both of which were in bankruptcy earlier this year, was hardly a great feat.

Ford still has a big debt load, something that GM and Chrysler were able to greatly reduce in bankruptcy. The company dropped long-term debt to $23 billion. But adding short-term debt and obligations to the UAW's retiree health-care trust, Ford's debt is estimated at $38 billion. It's a disadvantage, but Barclays Capital analyst Brian Johnson says Ford should have enough cash to meet its needs. [...]

Ford is succeeding, but it has to compete with failed companies who are unfairly being subsidized with taxpayer's dollars. Why is the government using our tax dollars to reward failure, and to compete against successful privately owned companies?
     

Coming Soon: No More Saturday Mail Delivery

That is, if the Post Office has it's way. It's the first I've heard of it, but it seems it's been in the works for a while. Some say it's not only likely, but inevitable:

Commentary: Say goodbye to Saturday mail?

[...] The postmaster general of the United States, John E. Potter, has gone to Congress and officially asked for permission to do away with Saturday mail.

His reasoning is hard to argue with. In the e-mail age, usage of the U.S. Postal Service is plummeting. Just about everyone claims to love the look and feel of a handwritten letter, the giddy anticipation of seeing the mail carrier strolling up the sidewalk and wondering what he has inside his bag for you, the orderly, set-your-watch-by-it routine of mail delivery to your home every day of the week except Sunday.

We all say we love it, but we don't use it, at least not enough to offset the prodigious costs. The Postal Service says it will lose approximately $7 billion this fiscal year. Americans have mailed 20 billion fewer items this year than they did last year. Over the past 20 years, some 200,000 mail-collection boxes have been removed from U.S. streets because not enough people were dropping their letters into them. The Government Accountability Office has officially declared the Postal Service to be a high-risk agency.

What to do about this?

One thing, according to Postmaster General Potter, is to stop delivering mail on Saturdays. He has told Congress that this will save more than $3 billion every year.

If and when it happens -- and it's beginning to seem inevitable -- the texture of the nation's life will be altered, probably forever.

[...]

Once -- in 1957 -- there was an attempt to do away with it. The postmaster general at the time, a fellow by the name of Arthur E. Summerfield, decided, in the name of budgetary prudence, to end Saturday mail deliveries nationwide.

It lasted for exactly one Saturday. On April 13, 1957, the mail did not come to America's homes. There was such public anger and outrage over this that President Dwight D. Eisenhower promptly signed a bill to provide more funding to the post office, and by the next Saturday, the country's mailboxes were being filled again.

Would the elimination of Saturday delivery be met with the same public outcry now? Would President Obama, like President Eisenhower half a century ago, be forced to bring back the Saturday mail? [...]

The USPS is losing 7 Billion per year? And they want to save money now by cutting back on service? I've got a better idea, that would save even more money and not cut back service. Privatize the Post Office.

The article mentions that prior to 1950, the USPS used to do multiple deliveries per day, as many a 9 times a day in places like NYC. Back then, when it was an essential service that was heavily utilized and relied on, there may have been some justification for running it as a government agency. But times have changed, and we should at least examine the option of privatizing the Post Office.

UPS and Fedex manage to operate efficiently, and at a profit. USPS doesn't, because it's subsidized and full of unionized gold-brickers, clocking in until they can retire on their fat pensions; they don't have to be efficient or even make a profit, because they get paid regardless, with our tax dollars.

It's time to cut them loose, but I wouldn't hold my breath with this administration. Government expansion and control are the order of the day. Just imagine what they would do if they ran our health care too?


Related Links:

Privatize This

Is It Time to Privatize the Postal Service?
     

Obamacare: more government making more problems AND needless, unsustainable expense

Here is a government monster that needs to be killed before it's turned loose:

Inside the monstrous Obamacare bureaucracy



Many people seem to think we just need to get insurance for everyone, but not only is More Health Insurance is Not the Answer, it's actually part of the problem. Too many third parties and bureaucracy actually create administrative costs that are driving up the price of health care. Obamacare would simply expand and feed that problem. We need to simplify insurance and health care billing and bring prices back in touch with reality, using the free market and consumers choice.


Related Links:

Health Care Costs; why the high prices?

Lowering Health Care Costs for Everyone

A National Health Care Preview, and a lesson from Natasha Richardson's experience
     

Washington really is broken. See how it "runs"

The American people supposedly voted for change in Washington, but in so many ways it continues to be business as usual. A broken system that continues to be broken:

Short-Circuiting Bipartisanship Is Nothing New for Congress

[...] it was hardly novel this week when Republicans protested vigorously that their legislative rights had been violated as the Democratic-led Congress pushed through the $787 billion economic stimulus bill with just three Republican votes in the Senate. Only the party labels had changed.

In truth, regular order — as following the Congressional rule book is known on Capitol Hill — has not been occurring very regularly in the House and Senate for years. And both parties are to blame.

Intense partisanship, a reluctance to work across the aisle, procedural game-playing and thin margins in the House and Senate have led both parties to short-circuit the legislative process, skipping over committees, blocking the right to propose amendments and generally strong-arming legislation through by relying on their own majorities.

“Bad process leads to bad policy,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, who has been on both sides of the closed negotiating room door over the years.

It has gotten so bad that Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who is the majority leader, noted that almost half of the 58 Democratic senators have never participated in an official House-Senate conference committee, a form of negotiation that was once a staple of Congressional legislative life.

Some Democrats say such irregular times for the nation do not allow for regular order. But they did convene a conference committee on the stimulus bill, though it was not much of one. Negotiators met after Senate Democrats and three Republicans had already cut a deal on the plan. Democrats, who had a firm parliamentary grip on the negotiations, were not about to let the carefully calibrated agreement fall apart. [...]

Bold emphasis mine. This NYT's article goes on with their usual spin for the Democrats, claiming that the Democrats now want to get back to old procedures, especially since there have been complaints about it within their own party. But where is their actual incentive to do so? As a majority party, they can just keep pushing through whatever they want.

I would like to think that if Republican's gain more seats in the House and Senate, that things would improve, that there would be more balance and therefore, more bi-partisan cooperation. But I'm not so sure. If established procedures and order in conducting government business are not respected and followed, they can't be expected to "work" under any circumstances.

It's worth reading the whole article. It just shows how our lawmakers in D.C. have been ignoring established protocals and rules for a long time now. Is it any wonder that Washington doesn't "work" anymore? How can it, when our lawmakers just do what they want to do?

And this isn't just a problem in Washington. I've seen it in the state governments of California and Oregon. State politicians take an Oath to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the state, then when they get into office, they DON'T. They just do what they want. The result; massive debt and chaos, making our system of government unworkable.

When laws, rules and procedures are ignored by those who are supposed to follow and uphold them, they cease to have any meaning. Lawmakers can keep passing new laws to make themselves look busy, but without respect for the law and the procedures established for the creation of the laws that are supposed to govern us, what good can come of it?

Our system of government is literally breaking down. It served us well for over 200 years, but it can't continue to function when it is simply ignored and disregarded at will. There are people who want to replace it with something else, and I can't say I like what I see coming.

We can't turn back the clock, but we may have to fight to keep what is best from our past, to hold it and bring it forward into our future. That's why I insist it's important to respect our current form of government; it's a case of use it or lose it. Our politicians seem to use it less and less. How long before we lose it?


Related Links:

Our Tax Cheat Treasurer has No Plan

Is Obama compounding Bush's mistakes?

What would a U.S. currency collapse look like?
     

Our Tax Cheat Treasurer has No Plan

Isn't that special? From Neal Boortz:

SO WHERE WAS THE PART WHERE WE GET A PLAN?

Yesterday we were supposed to get the grand financial plan from Obama's tax-cheating whiz-kid Tim Geithner. And what we got was a bunch of grandstanding, but not a lot of details. Here's one good line: "We're will have to try things we've never tried before." Wait! Isn't that what brung us to this hideous dance with all these ugly partners in the first place?

Let's see ... we'll start out by making millions of home loans to people who have no credit, no steady job history, and certainly not enough income to pay the loan back. We'll make these loans to people who should be renters. We've never tried that before on such a large scale .. let's see how that works out for us.

Here's something else we haven't tried before. Let's pass a law - we'll call it the Community Reinvestment Act. This will be a really nifty way for the government to interfere in the free marketplace. We'll set up some urban gangs who can make sure local banks make bad loans to favored minority groups .. or they'll get spanked by the federal government. Let's see how THAT one works out for us.

Once we have those two programs we haven't tried before in place, we'll keep interest rates artificially and illogically low for far too long. Yeah, let's follow this monetary policy that virtually every sane economist not working for the government thinks is a grave mistake because voters like low interest rates. That ought to work out really well.

So now our tax-cheat Treasury secretary wants to try some more things we haven't tried before? Well, you may think that this message brings great hope, but it would seem that the stock market didn't like that one bit.

If you want to see just how this gang of leftist statists want to change this country some new details can be found here.

The reason we don't have more details has to be because they really don't know how the hell they're going to pull this off. It's just going to be stuff we haven't tried before. No chance for letting people work, thrive and then spend their own money.

Bold emphasis mine. After the Berlin Wall fell, Leftists around the world had to face the fact that prosperous and free people would never willingly vote for a hardcore Leftist agenda. Their solution? Make the current system of government unworkable, so it can be replaced with... "something else". I've been hearing people on the far Left saying this for many years. And the parts I've highlighted in Neal's text above shows the ways in which they are doing this.

I don't claim that Obama or even most of the Democrats are consciously doing this, that sabotaging our government is their deliberate agenda. But I believe it is the deliberate agenda of the movers and shakers in the Democrat party, like George Soros. They pull the stings, and they get people elected who will advance their agenda, whether those people deliberately mean to or not.

The financial crisis we are in could have been avoided, by being more conservative with our taxpayer's money, and using traditional common sense in financial matters. Yet overspending Republican's like George Bush also have their share of blame in this too.

I heard Democrat Senator Barbara Boxer on NPR the other day. She was complaining about Republicans opposing the stimulus bill. She said something to the effect of, "Where were they when George Bush was putting us 7 Trillion Dollars over budget?".

Of course she has a point. Yet the fact is, many Republicans DID complain, were very put off by that, and the Republican base has shrunk as a result.

I could be more sympathetic to Senator Boxer if she was truly upset by Bush's overspending. But her attitude seems more along the lines of, "Bush overspent by Trillions, now it's OUR turn to do the same".

I remember when I lived in California, and Boxer was my senator. She couldn't even balance her own checkbook, she was overdrawn HUNDREDS of times.

Where is the Change We Can Believe In? Where is the accountability for our tax dollars? This is Change? I just see the same old Democrat overspending crap, compounding Bush's Republican overspending crap. Our government is SPENDING MONEY WE DO NOT HAVE. Further more, we are having to pay interest on this growing debt.

Just look a California, teetering on the verge of financial collapse. That is the nations future. California is hoping the Feds will bail them out. Who is going to bail the United States of America out? No One, that's who.

I see a major tax payer's revolt in our future. It can't happen soon enough, IMO.
     

Dave Ramsey's solution for the financial crisis

I printed a link to this in a post below, but I think it deserves a post of it's own.

The Common Sense Fix

Years of bad decisions and stupid mistakes have created an economic nightmare in this country, but $700 billion in new debt is not the answer. As a tax-paying American citizen, I will not support any congressperson who votes to implement such a policy. Instead, I submit the following three-step Common Sense Plan.

I. INSURANCE

a. Insure the sub-prime bonds/mortgages with an underlying FHA-type insurance. Government-insured and backed loans would have an instant market all over the world, creating immediate and needed liquidity.

b. In order for a company to accept the government-backed insurance, they must do two things:

1. Rewrite any mortgage that is more than three months delinquent to a 6% fixed-rate mortgage.

a. Roll all back payments with no late fees or legal costs into the balance. This brings homeowners current and allows them a chance to keep their homes.

b. Cancel all prepayment penalties to encourage refinancing or the sale of the property to pay off the bad loan. In the event of foreclosure or short sale, the borrower will not be held liable for any deficit balance. FHA does this now, and that encourages mortgage companies to go the extra mile while working with the borrower—again limiting foreclosures and ruined lives.

2. Cancel ALL golden parachutes of EXISTING and FUTURE CEOs and executive team members as long as the company holds these government-insured bonds/mortgages. This keeps under-performing executives from being paid when they don’t do their jobs.

c. This backstop will cost less than $50 billion—a small fraction of the current proposal

II. MARK TO MARKET

a. Remove mark to market accounting rules for two years on only sub-prime Tier III bonds/mortgages. This keeps companies from being forced to artificially mark down bonds/mortgages below the value of the underlying mortgages and real estate.

b. This move creates patience in the market and has an immediate stabilizing effect on failing and ailing banks—and it costs the taxpayer nothing.

III. CAPITAL GAINS TAX

a. Remove the capital gains tax completely. Investors will flood the real estate and stock market in search of tax-free profits, creating tremendous—and immediate—liquidity in the markets. Again, this costs the taxpayer nothing.

b. This move will be seen as a lightning rod politically because many will say it is helping the rich. The truth is the rich will benefit, but it will be their money that stimulates the economy. This will enable all Americans to have more stable jobs and retirement investments that go up instead of down.

This is not a time for envy, and it’s not a time for politics. It’s time for all of us, as Americans, to stand up, speak out, and fix this mess.

Source URL:
www.daveramsey.com/media/pdf/the_common_sense_fix.pdf".
     

The Federal Deficit and the American Dollar

John Stossel: Federal deficit is cause for worry

President-elect Obama says don't worry about the federal budget deficit.

"The consensus is this: We have to do whatever it takes to get this economy moving again -- we're going to have to spend money now to stimulate the economy. ... (We) shouldn't worry about the deficit next year or even the year after; that short term, the most important thing is that we avoid a deepening recession."

It must be music to a politician's ears when a "consensus" tells him not to worry about deficits. He can spend without limit. So Obama talks about a "stimulus package" that he says will rebuild the infrastructure and "green" the energy industry. That won't happen, of course. Government performance consistently falls far short of its goals.

Obama hasn't put a price tag on his stimulus package yet, but speculation begins at $500 billion, with some people -- like Paul Krugman, the recent Nobel prize winner -- saying that's way too small. "I'm still not sure ... whether the economic team is thinking big enough." [...]

Stossel goes on to compare our situation with the Great Depression, and how government spending and intervention in the 1930's prolonged it. And how that is relevant to our situation today? Read on:

[...] Obama must realize that government has no wealth of its own and that commandeering scarce resources from the private sector only stifles the economy. The 2009 deficit is projected to be $438 billion. Obama's "stimulus" could take it up to a trillion and beyond. That's just the beginning since the Democratic Congress' spending wish list and Medicare's $35 trillion unfunded liability loom. [...]

This is what concerns me most. Our government seems to keep spending money it does not have. The debt just keeps getting bigger and bigger. The "bubble" just keeps growing. What happens to the Dollar when the bubble bursts?

We really don't want to find out. There is no part of our constitution that requires a balanced budget, because, I believe, it was considered just common sense to balance the budget. Duh! But common sense seems to have gone out the window. It really, really needs to make a comeback. The American people and government cannot keep spending money we do not have.
     

"Reality Check" for USA is long overdue

Whether it's passing failing students through the education system and letting them graduate, uneducated and unemployable, or bailing out failing auto industries instead of letting them be replaced with non-failing ones, it's the same thing. Postponing reality only makes your reality check much harsher when it finally, unavoidably arrives.

Postponing Reality

Some of us were raised to believe that reality is inescapable. But that just shows how far behind the times we are. Today, reality is optional. At the very least, it can be postponed.

Kids in school are not learning? Not a problem. Just promote them on to the next grade anyway. Call it "compassion," so as not to hurt their "self-esteem."

Can't meet college admissions standards after they graduate from high school? Denounce those standards as just arbitrary barriers to favor the privileged, and demand that exceptions be made.

Can't do math or science after they are in college? Denounce those courses for their rigidity and insensitivity, and create softer courses that the students can pass to get their degrees.

Once they are out in the real world, people with diplomas and degrees-- but with no real education-- can hit a wall. But by then the day of reckoning has been postponed for 15 or more years. Of course, the reckoning itself can last the rest of their lives.

The current bailout extravaganza is applying the postponement of reality democratically-- to the rich as well as the poor, to the irresponsible as well as to the responsible, to the inefficient as well as to the efficient. It is a triumph of the non-judgmental philosophy that we have heard so much about in high-toned circles.

[...]

Detroit and Michigan have followed classic liberal policies of treating businesses as prey, rather than as assets. They have helped kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. So have the unions. So have managements that have gone along to get along.

Toyota, Honda and other foreign automakers are not heading for Detroit, even though there are lots of experienced automobile workers there. They are avoiding the rust belts and the policies that have made those places rust belts. [...]

It's worth reading the whole thing. Thomas makes an interesting comparison with the horse and buggy industry, and the businesses supporting horses and horse-transportation, that were displaced by the automobile. There were no bail-outs or stimulus packages for them. Somehow, everyone adapted without a diaper-changing government spending tax dollars to keep dying industries going.

People have no respect for "easy" money that they don't earn. Government has no respect for our money, because they don't earn it. The government doesn't need to reform the auto industry (the free market is doing that), the Government itself needs to be reformed. From the WSJ:

Let's 'Restructure' Washington While We're at It
Congress is at least as unresponsive to consumer demand as Detroit.

Congress has been suitably tough in its advice to Detroit, calling for "a complete restructuring" of our failing auto makers. But how about restructuring Washington? The federal government is a giant Rube Goldberg machine that not only wastes hundreds of billions of dollars each year but also burdens local governments and the private sector with legal requirements that no longer serve the public good. Congress should take its own advice and retool Washington. Here's how:

[...]

- Streamline management. The federal government employs about 2.5 million civilians (including the Post Office), about 10 times the number directly employed in the U.S. by Detroit. The bloat is legendary. In his study on "thickening government," NYU Prof. Paul Light found that some government agencies have 32 layers of management, compared to five layers in most well-run companies.

Civil-service rules make hiring an ordeal and firing practically impossible. Rigid job classifications are far more onerous than UAW work rules, guaranteeing massive inefficiency. At many federal agencies, people shuffle back and forth, passing paper from one level to the next, doing nothing useful. Civil service needs to be overhauled.

- Make products that the public wants. Congress is in the business of making and revising laws. But it almost never goes back and reviews unintended consequences. Pick up any volume of the U.S. Code and ask yourself whether the detailed provisions of that law make sense today.

Take something relatively innocuous, like the requirement in the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act to maintain the privacy of patient information. One effect is lots of forms -- over $1 billion worth annually. Compliance also stifles important activity: For example, research on heart-attack recovery at the University of Michigan slowed to a crawl when only one-third of the sample bothered to complete the necessary HIPAA paperwork.

- Enhance competitiveness. Washington's failures are far more significant to the economy than Detroit's. The federal government not only is over seven times larger than Detroit in annual expenditures but it also establishes the legal platform on which the entire U.S. economy operates. The legal infrastructure that Congress has provided is a huge, internally inconsistent mess, requiring businesses, hospitals and schools to negotiate a maze of legal detours. Day-to-day, teachers, doctors, business managers and government officials are unable to make sense of ordinary choices. Law has effectively removed the freedom needed to take responsibility. [...]

There's more suggestions, with examples, it's worth reading the whole thing. One thing they mentioned that I didn't excerpt was farm subsidies. They may well be worth reforming, but I'd be VERY careful about cutting or reforming funding to something as essential as our food supply. But the rest is an excellent comparison of our government to the failing automakers. They suffer from the same problems. Both are strangling from bureaucrats, unions and needless paperwork. In both cases, major reforms are needed.
     

Here it comes; The Cow Fart Tax

Proposed fee on smelly cows, hogs angers farmers

MONTGOMERY, Ala. – For farmers, this stinks: Belching and gaseous cows and hogs could start costing them money if a federal proposal to charge fees for air-polluting animals becomes law.

Farmers so far are turning their noses up at the notion, which is one of several put forward by the Environmental Protection Agency after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that greenhouse gases emitted by belching and flatulence amounts to air pollution.

"This is one of the most ridiculous things the federal government has tried to do," said Alabama Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks, an outspoken opponent of the proposal.

It would require farms or ranches with more than 25 dairy cows, 50 beef cattle or 200 hogs to pay an annual fee of about $175 for each dairy cow, $87.50 per head of beef cattle and $20 for each hog.

The executive vice president of the Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation, Ken Hamilton, estimated the fee would cost owners of a modest-sized cattle ranch $30,000 to $40,000 a year. He said he has talked to a number of livestock owners about the proposals, and "all have said if the fees were carried out, it would bankrupt them."

Sparks said Wednesday he's worried the fee could be extended to chickens and other farm animals and cause more meat to be imported.

"We'll let other countries put food on our tables like they are putting gas in our cars. Other countries don't have the health standards we have," Sparks said. [...]

With continuing rising food prices, do we really need to be adding food taxes and driving farmers out of business? The government won't allow us to drill our own oil, now they want to limit our food production. Are we supposed to depend on foreigners for everything? Whatever happened to American self-sufficiency?

President-elect Obama wants to spend billions to rebuild our nations roads and bridges. I can support him in that, because it needs to be done, and it's a traditional function of government. But should regulating cow farts become a function of government?



It's essentially a meat tax, and while vegetarians may be pleased by it, I think few others will. Big government will always think of endless new ways to raise new taxes and control people by limiting the things they depend on for life and freedom. But only if we let them. We should draw a line here.


Related Links:

A Tax on Cow Farts to fight Global Warming


Cow Farts Collected For Global Warming Study
     

Rising food costs due to Ethanol Boondoggle

I warned about this in a previous post in May of last year. Now it's happening, and it's not only a waste of taxpayer's money, it's damaging our economy and causing food prices to rise world-wide. Walter Williams at Townhall.com gives us the details:

Big Corn and Ethanol Hoax

[...] Ethanol is 20 to 30 percent less efficient than gasoline, making it more expensive per highway mile. It takes 450 pounds of corn to produce the ethanol to fill one SUV tank. That's enough corn to feed one person for a year. Plus, it takes more than one gallon of fossil fuel -- oil and natural gas -- to produce one gallon of ethanol. After all, corn must be grown, fertilized, harvested and trucked to ethanol producers -- all of which are fuel-using activities.

[...]

Ethanol is so costly that it wouldn't make it in a free market. That's why Congress has enacted major ethanol subsidies, about $1.05 to $1.38 a gallon, which is no less than a tax on consumers. In fact, there's a double tax -- one in the form of ethanol subsidies and another in the form of handouts to corn farmers to the tune of $9.5 billion in 2005 alone.

[...]

Ethanol production has driven up the prices of corn-fed livestock, such as beef, chicken and dairy products, and products made from corn, such as cereals. As a result of higher demand for corn, other grain prices, such as soybean and wheat, have risen dramatically. The fact that the U.S. is the world's largest grain producer and exporter means that the ethanol-induced higher grain prices will have a worldwide impact on food prices.

It's easy to understand how the public, looking for cheaper gasoline, can be taken in by the call for increased ethanol usage. But politicians, corn farmers and ethanol producers know they are running a cruel hoax on the American consumer. They are in it for the money.

[...]

The ethanol hoax is a good example of a problem economists refer to as narrow, well-defined benefits versus widely dispersed costs. It pays the ethanol lobby to organize and collect money to grease the palms of politicians willing to do their bidding because there's a large benefit for them -- higher wages and profits. The millions of gasoline consumers, who fund the benefits through higher fuel and food prices, as well as taxes, are relatively uninformed and have little clout. [...]

I've only excerpted a few things wrong with ethanol from the article, there's more. Read the whole thing. I can't believe our government, both parties, is actually doing this to us. We can thank the global warming hoax and it's attendant hysteria too, for helping it along.




Related Link:

Bakers lobby govt to help ease wheat crunch