Gridlock is Good

by: Humphrey Stevenson

When Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) announced that he would not seek re-election he declared, “For some time, I've had a growing conviction that Congress is not operating as it should. There is much too much partisanship and not enough progress; too much narrow ideology and not enough practical problem-solving. Even at a time of enormous national challenge, the people's business is not getting done."

There have been some political pundits that have speculated the real reason was that he is eyeing a run for the Presidency although Bayh himself has flatly denied this. The theory is that if Bayh wants to run, he must first distance himself from the walking disaster that is the Obama administration.

But let’s take Senator Bayh at his word and assume that his concern with Congress is this partisan gridlock and he would like to see more bipartisanship. Touting something as bipartisan is a favorite ploy of the left, for example, Obama’s new bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. It looks to me to be nothing more than political cover for Obama’s tax increases but he sprinkled it with a few Republicans and called it bipartisan in order to ward off any criticism.

After newly-minted Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) voted for Harry Reid’s $15 billion “Jobs” bill he said, “I hope my vote today is a strong step toward restoring bipartisanship in Washington.” With all due respect to Senator Brown, Bipartisanship is highly overrated. It, more times than not, means Republicans abandon their principles and go along with a liberal proposal just to get something done. If they do not, the Republicans are portrayed as obstructionists. However, being an obstructionist is not necessarily negative; it all depends on what is being obstructed; Obamacare, cap and trade, runaway spending are all worthy of being obstructed.

The Democrats have labeled the Republicans as the party of “No.” Their meaning is that the Republicans are just opposed to everything this administration proposes without reason and offer no alternatives. This is simply not true. For example, the Republicans have offered many proposals regarding healthcare and placed them on a website. I don’t agree with all of their ideas but they have made the proposals.

Senator Bayh also makes the point that “the peoples business is not getting done.” This is a common reframe and usually means that some party agenda items are not being passed into law. But who’s to say what the peoples’ business is? Just because Congress is not busy passing bills does not mean that this is any problem for the people. Recently, Congress was not in session for several days due to massive snow storms in the DC area. I don’t recall any major problems that could not be handled with the laws currently on the books.

The American people are not in need of constant Congressional action. In most instances, the people are better off without it. Americans are an incredibly self-reliant people and usually government action is the cause of any dependence.

There is the idea that the people elected Barack Obama and they get what they wanted. It is quite possible that the people did not know who they were electing. It is also fair to say that the people were not given much of a choice; a liberal “D” or a liberal “R.” It is further possible they were caught up in the historic nature of the election, the dynamic speeches and the promise of “Hope and Change” without any substantive definition of those terms. Now that the people have had time to look at who they have elected, they hope for a way to hold the agenda in check until they can make a change.

We do not live in a pure democracy. We elect a President not a king and he does not get free reign to implement any agendas item he wants simply because he got more votes in an election. As John Adams put it, “We have a government of laws, and not of men.”

As a football fan, I understand the idea of playing for field position. Sometimes that’s the best you can do. Gridlock is good. Gridlock can preserve liberty. Gridlock can prevent a destructive, radical agenda from being implemented until the people can make a correction. Hopefully, we can keep Obama’s team bottled up inside their 5 yard line and force them to punt in November.

Green Energy Puts US in the Red

by: Humphrey Stevenson

Towering hulks of rusting scarp iron. Andrew Walden of American Thinker calls them “Spinning, post-industrial junk which generates nothing but bird kills.” That is all that is left of many of California’s vaunted wind farms. Thousands of these wind turbines left cannibalized and abandoned after the government mandates ended and subsidies ran out. They are now nothing more than corroding monuments to California’s failed experiment with wind power. And the millions of tax dollars that funded them? Ask Bob Dylan; they’re Blowin’ in the Wind energy.

Sunshine, on our solar panel, makes Biden happy. (My apologies to the late John Denver) The Detroit Free Press reports that Vice President Joe Biden visited a solar panel manufacturing plant in Saginaw, MI. The plant received almost $142 million in federal energy tax credits to produce the material for solar panels. "It's a wonderful day for solar energy," Biden said as he gazed at the rows and rows of solar panels. The panels produce 30 kilowatts of power (when the sun shines), enough to power the plant's administration building.
Sounds great, right? Ask yourself, “Would the plant produce the solar panels without the energy tax credits?” No; I don’t know what Biden would be gazing at but it wouldn’t be solar panels; perhaps something the company can make a profit on.
The Carrizo Plain in California was once home to the largest photovoltaic array (solar power plant) in the world. It was built in 1983 by ARCO and had 100,000 1’ x 4’ solar panels on 177 acres of land. The thought behind it was that crude oil would reach a price that would make the 5.2 peak megawatts produced profitable. That never happened and the site closed in 1994. The solar panels were sold and the concrete and steel pillars that held them were dug up.
Is this the future of ethanol? I once thought that the US fuel ethanol industry could be viable and I still, to some extent, think it could be. However, in order to do so the focus must be placed on making a profit selling ethanol not providing another market for corn.

Since ethanol is only about 70 – 75% as efficient as a motor fuel as gasoline, the ethanol industry relies on a 51 cents per gallon blenders’ credit in order to make it competitive with gasoline. What happens when we can no longer afford this subsidy? We are going to see the Midwest dotted with the rusted remains of the failed US ethanol industry.

The end of subsidies will spell the eventual end of Obama’s “green economy.” All of these green energy technologies have to be subsidized by the Federal Government until they are viable. But they will never be viable; if they were the private sector would be pursuing them now, without any push from the government. Once the subsidies are ended, the technology will be abandoned and the hardware will be left to rot. However, Obama is right about one thing. His green energy ideas don’t burn coal, oil or natural gas. Instead, they burn tax dollars.

To top all this off, we now know that impetus for Obama’s green economy was a complete hoax. UK Daily Mail reports that even Professor Phil Jones, who was once perhaps the leading global warming alarmist, has admitted that there has been no “statistically significant warning” in the past fifteen years. He also said he lost all that data that was supposed to prove this fraud. Billions upon billions of dollars have been spent and are going to be spent to save us from this nonsense and he lost the data! His excuse was that he wasn’t as organized as he should have been and his office wasn’t very tidy. I pointed out in an earlier article that Jones received $22.6 million in grants. Seems like with that kind of money he could buy a couple of filing cabinets and hire a secretary. As it turns out, the scientific consensus on global warming was only one third right. It was a scientific con.

I am not against new technology. I am against government subsidies on any technology. But don’t let me stop you. If you want to power your business with a windmill or put solar panels on your house, go right ahead. Just don’t ask the rest of us to pay for it. If a technology cannot stand on its own in the private sector, it should go the way of a Democrat Senator; bye Bayh.

The Search for the Tea Party Leader

by: Humphrey Stevenson

The left is on the hunt and they will not be stopped until they find their quarry. In every bush, under every rock, the left is furiously searching for the leader of the Tea Party movement. It is akin to the search for the Loch Ness Monster. They want so badly to find someone, anyone that they can pronounce as the Tea Party leader.

After former Governor Sarah Palin spoke at a Tea Party convention on Saturday, Juan Williams flatly declared on Fox News Sunday that Sarah Palin is the leader of the Tea Party movement and she should accept that role.

I hate to burst Juan Williams bubble but while former Governor Palin is an important voice in conservative politics, she is not the leader of the Tea Party movement. Sarah Palin is a private citizen who accepted an invitation to speak before a group of other private citizens. Nevertheless, since the political leanings of this group are in opposition to that of the present administration, she and the group both must be castigated.

The fact is there is no one leader of the movement. But that fact has not nor will it stop the left from their quest. There two reasons for this endless search for the leader for the Tea Party movement.

First, a movement without an ultimate leader just does not fit the template that the left has cut out. You see this does not happen on the left. To have a movement, you first must have a recognizable, well financed leader; a community organizer in other words. Someone has to say, “You take this sign and stand over there; you wear this shirt and stand here and on cue, all of you yell this cute little rhyme I have written out.” The idea that a bunch of hick, hayseed rednecks (which is what the left thinks of us) could put together a movement without someone to tell everyone exactly what to do is inconceivable to them, if for no other reason than the fact that they cannot do it. In their world, the community cannot organize itself.

We already saw this last summer. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed the Tea Parties as Astroturf or fake grassroots. What she was saying was that there existed some mysterious puppet master pulling the strings behind the scenes. She could not fathom how hundreds of thousands of individuals and small groups could first communicate and then organize themselves into what became the Tea Parties without the guidance and financing of an ultimate leader.

The other reason the left wants to find a leader of the Tea Party movement is that they want to destroy the movement. It is very difficult to use their time-tested Saul Alinsky tactics of “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it” on such a large, diverse group. Try as they might through intimidation, name-calling, fear-mongering and so forth, the left just has not been able to make much headway against the Tea Party movement. However, if they could find a clearly defined leader or even create such a leader, the tactics would be much more successful. They could then exploit any flaws, weaknesses or missteps of the “leader” and tear him or her down. Once they have discredited the leader, the movement could then be discredited.

Something else the left would like is for the Tea Party movement to go third party. This should be avoided. A conservative third party would only serve to elect Democrats by splitting the right wing vote. Ross Perot’s Reform Party only served to secure Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 and 1996. There may be limited times where a Tea Party candidate could offer the voters a choice if the Republican candidate offers no real alternative to the Democrat. However, even in these cases we must carefully weigh what we might gain against what damage it could do.

In the Republican Primaries, however, it’s another story. There the fight is on. We should put our full support behind the most conservative Republican candidates there are. But when facing the Democrats, we must present a strong, unified force.

We should focus on becoming the dominate force in the Republican Party. We should endeavor to wrestle control of the party away from the liberal/progressive wing. Then bring the Republican Party back to its bedrock, conservative values that not only win elections but are the solutions for what ails the United States.

This is a Budget?

by: Humphrey Stevenson

On Monday, February 1, President Obama unveiled his proposed budget for FY 2011. The budget contains $ 3.8 trillion in spending and a record $ 1.56 trillion deficit. Let me get this right; you only have $ 2.24 trillion to spend but you are going to spend $ 3.8 trillion. First off, how can $ 2.24 trillion not be enough? That is $ 7,467 for every man, woman and child in the US. Second, a deficit of $ 1.56 trillion means you are 41% over budget! I guess I’ve been working in the business world too long. In this world you can’t be 5% or even 2% over budget. To do so will find you standing on the carpet of the boss’s office. 41% over will find you cleaning out your desk.

Let’s put this in numbers we can better understand. This would be like a family that brings in $ 50,000 per year, but proposes to spend $ 70,500 next year. Where are you going to get the other twenty large? I suppose you could talk to a couple of guys named Rocco and Vinny but their penalties for late payment are kind of on the stiff side. No, we all learn to live within our means. Even President Obama admitted that families cannot handle their budgets the way Washington does. We know our expenses can’t outstrip our income. If we have to keep a reign on our own spending; we should expect no less from Washington.

In his budget, Obama proposed a $ 5,000 tax credit for businesses to hire an employee. Far be it for me to disparage any sort of tax deduction but by proposing this Obama shows his lack of economic understanding. Businesses do not exist simply to provide jobs to people; they exist to provide a good or service and make a profit. Employees are hired to perform tasks; increasing productivity and reaping greater profits. If a business owner sees no increase in business he will not hire any employees no matter how many tax credits are offered to them.
Obama wants to let some Bush era tax cuts expire raising the top income tax rate from 36% to 39.6% for individuals making more than $ 200,000 and families making more than $ 250,000. Further he wants to raise the capital gains tax rate from 15% to 20% for this same group (AP). This is exactly what you don’t want to do if you want to create jobs. Most people in this group are small business owners who file their taxes as an individual. In addition, this idea of raising the capital gains tax would cut investments limiting the capital available for business expansion.
Obama wishes to limit the itemized tax deductions high earners can claim for charitable donations, mortgage interest and state and local taxes (AP). This idea has a twofold purpose. First, of course, raise money for the Federal Government but also to hurt charitable organizations. You may ask, “Why would he want to do that?” The answer is to make government the charity of first resort, furthering the dependence on the Federal Government and the government’s control of peoples’ lives.
Obama has proposed a spending freeze. He thinks this would save $ 250 billion over 10 years. This works out to about 0.66% of his FY 2011 budget. Even if you believe that the spending freeze is legitimate; it is nickel and dime stuff. We are nibbling around the edges when we need to be taking big bites.

His “freeze,” however, does not extend to entitlements. At some time, sooner, rather than later we must look at entitlements. This is where the majority of Federal spending goes and our present level of spending is unsustainable. We have no choice; the spending will end eventually, one way or the other. Either we start making serious cuts in our entitlement programs and look for ways to phase them out or they will collapse our economy. As Derek Thompson of The Atlantic said, “Our deficit crisis in an entitlement crisis, and the solution won't be pretty.”

In the end, this is less a budget and more a big government manifesto. I’ll leave you with the words of Representative Paul Ryan, the Ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, after reading Obama’s budget, “Make no mistake: This is a budget aimed to advance the administration’s philosophy and ideology. By increasing taxes and letting the country spiral into debt, this budget is a firm step toward transforming America into a collectivist society overseen by a social-welfare state.”