What We Have Here is a Failure to Negotiate

By Alan Caruba

In the movie, “Cool Hand Luke” the warden of a prison camp utters the now famous line, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” The decision of the Democratic members of the Congressional Super Committee to refuse further discussion of revenue issues is a failure to negotiate.

I have a friend, Jim Camp, who is one of the world’s authorities on negotiation, a coach to international corporations and others that engage in multi-million dollar deals requiring major negotiation skills. When the news was reported on Wednesday that the Democratic members had walked away from the negotiation table, I picked up the phone to ask for his reaction.

“We live in an era when the conventional wisdom is that compromise is the goal,” said Camp. “The real goal is a valid mission and purpose. What’s missing is that the committee as a whole is not focused on the real mission which is the best result for the American people and the nation. Instead, their goal is political gamesmanship, a massive over-reach by both parties to the negotiation.”

Based on more than twenty years of coaching negotiations, Camp said "Tactics do nothing more than create conflict." The news media reports on tactics, but Camp said “Neither party is negotiating to the benefit of the American people.”

What is at stake? It’s not whether Democrats or Republicans “win” the Super Committee negotiation.

Created under the Budget act of 2011, the law was passed the first two days of August when the nation’s $14.294 trillion debt ceiling was raised to avoid a potential national default. It was the fourth increase of the mandatory borrowing cap during President Obama’s first term; one that saw the first down-grade of the nation’s top credit rating in its history.

Consisting of six members each from the House and Senate, evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, the official name for the Super Committee is the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. The amount of debt is comparable to the annual Gross Domestic Product, meaning that every dollar the economy earns is equal to the amount of debt that exists.

In the basic terms, Democrats want to raise revenue through taxation to address the debt and permit for more spending. Republicans have committed themselves to avoid such an increase during a period of recession.

The decision to walk away from the negotiation reflects one of Camp’s major warnings. “To act according to how you think the other side will react to you and your actions creates great conflict. To think you know what someone is going to do or say based on how you impact them is to attempt suicide.”

It would be naive to think that the Democrat and Republican members of the Super Committee are not negotiating with an eye on the 2012 elections. As a November 10 Wall Street Journal editorial notes, Republicans have offered a plan "to raise revenues by $500 billion over 10 years as part of a tax reform that would lock in lower rates in return for giving up deductions. Democrats have rejected it, which is puzzling since it would achieve so many of their stated goals."

Refusing to negotiate makes sense only if Democrats are positioning themselves to blame the Republicans for the failure to avoid another potential down-grade of the nation's credit rating. It's not the truth, but the truth is often a rare commodity in politics.

“What we are witnessing,” said Camp, “is a textbook definition of incompetence.”

All negotiation, says Camp, is based on emotion. When both sides share a vision of the end result of the negotiation it can move forward. When emotions blind one or both sides, it is doomed.

As a recent Los Angeles Times editorial noted, in order to slash federal borrowing by at least $1.2 trillion over the coming decade, “members will have to bridge a deep partisan divide over taxes, spending programs, and the effect of government spending on the economy.”

That is the mission, the purpose of the Super Committee, and the editorial warned that “If they have any doubts about the need to cut a deal, however, they should turn their attention to what’s happening on the other side of the Atlantic.”

The turmoil in Europe, based on decades of excessive borrowing and spending by several nation-states, is a reflection of how critical it is for the Super Committee to achieve its mission.

Automatic cuts, not guided by the need, for example, of maintaining our military strength could have disastrous consequences if the U.S. was perceived as weakened and vulnerable by its enemies. Diminishing our military capabilities at this time is not an option.

The Super Committee is an admission of the failure of the U.S. Congress to fulfill its responsibility to conduct the nation’s borrowing and spending in a prudent fashion and it’s been a failure in which both Parties have participated for a very long time.

The deadline for the Super Committee to reach agreement is November 23, the day before Thanksgiving and one side has walked away from the table.

I wish the Super Committee could bring Jim Camp in to help resolve the impasse. Simply stated, failure is not an option.

Editor’s note: Jim Camp is the founder of the Camp Negotiation Institute and the author of “Start with No” and “No, the Only Negotiating System You Need for Work and Home” which has been translated into twelve languages.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

The Great Education Rip-Off

By Alan Caruba

It has taken a severe recession, combined with rising costs for gas and the weekly grocery list, for Americans to begin to seriously question where their tax dollars are going and why. As individuals, as families, and communities, we can no longer be indifferent or profligate.

The events in Wisconsin where the teacher’s union led to protests against collective bargaining has made many Americans begin to question all those TV ads about what a great job teachers are doing and the reassuring message that it’s all about the kids. No, it’s all about salaries, health benefits, and pensions that far exceed those in the private sector.

A recent Policy Analysis (No. 662) published by the Cato Institute on March 10th and written by Adam Schaeffer is titled “They Spend WHAT? The Real Cost of Public Schools.”

The analysis is based on a review of district budgets and state records for the nation’s five largest metro areas and the District of Columbia. “It reveals that, on average, per-pupil spending in these areas is 44% higher than officially reported.” In other words, taxpayers simply had no idea how big a part of their local and state budget the educational system actually represented. That is deceit on a massive scale.

“Real spending per pupil ranged from a low of nearly $12,000 in the Phoenix area schools to a high of nearly $27,000 in the New York metro area. The gap between real and reported per-pupil spending ranges from a low of 23% in the Chicago area to a high of 90% in the Los Angeles metro region. (Emphasis added)

The educational system has been so thorough degraded with political correctness and idiotic “No Child Left Behind” national testing standards that it is little wonder many school systems have massive, unforgivable dropout rates. Black students are routinely put on a fast track to juvenile detention while others are passed through the system to avoid closer scrutiny from the state and federal Department of Education.

And Mr. and Mrs. America are picking up the tab. “Citizens drastically underestimate current per-student spending and are misled by official figures,” says Schaeffer. “Taxpayers cannot make informed decisions about public school funding unless they know how much districts currently spend.”

This is no small concern because state and local officials came up more than $158 billion short of projected tax revenue when they planned their 2010 budgets in the previous year. In response, more than 30 states raised taxes and 43 reduced services. It just got worse, “as the economy deteriorated and tax revenue plummeted more quickly than expected, 39 states discovered additional budget shortfalls of nearly $34 billion.”

Schaeffer noted that “K-12 schooling is the biggest item on state and local budgets. How big? Based on 2005-2006 totals from the national Center for Education Statistics updated to 2009 dollars, state and local governments are spending well over $500 billion on public K-12 education.”

Both the Bush and Obama administrations are responsible for “a startling increase in the federal involvement in and funding of K-12 education, but state and local governments still provide the majority of funds.” That’s YOU.

As shocking as the expenditure of all this money for schools generating students who do not compete academically with those in dozens of other nations is the fact that the statistics being published about the cost of this money pit is always three to four years out of date!

If you were to try to find out what the actual amounts involved were, you could look for timely information on total spending at individual school district budgets and even a skilled analyst like Schaeffer says “The budgets are complex and often confusing.”

“If a district is spending $30,000 per child, surely that is enough to ensure a high-quality education. If the school buildings are nonetheless in disrepair and the kids can’t read, then there is good reason to suspect that a massive share of that money is being wasted.”

Call it the Great Education Rip-Off.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Nutty Professors and Nutty New Taxes

By Alan Caruba

Alan S. Blinder is a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University and a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve. All of which might explain why the nation is broke and why “intellectuals” like Blinder are responsible for some of the most stupid ideas ever imposed on citizens who lack their credentials.

In the January 31st edition of The Wall Street Journal, Blinder had a commentary titled, “The Carbon Tax Miracle Cure.” It is a masterpiece of ignorance.

Blinder claimed that “Everyone knows that CO2 emissions are the major cause of global climate change, that climate change poses a clear and present danger to our planet, and that the U.S. contributes a huge share of global emissions.”

One can only conclude that Blinder is among the last of Al Gore’s acolytes who has not heard that the only “climate change” occurring is the same that has been going on for 4.5 billion years on planet Earth.

Blinder’s miracle tax is “a carbon tax—really, a carbon dioxide tax—but one that starts at zero and ramps up gradually over time.” Will someone please tell Binder that the scheme to sell “carbon credits” for the right to emit carbon dioxide (CO2) has gone bust? Even the Chicago Exchange created to foster this “global warming” fraud has closed its doors.

The idiocy of Blinder’s “miracle tax” is that, if you can tax CO2, what is to prevent government from taxing oxygen too? Or nitrogen? Hell, just tax the entirety of the Earth’s atmosphere because, obviously, we are just using too much of it.

Blinder’s justification is that “the U.S. contributes a huge share of global emissions.” So, naturally, Americans should be taxed for exhaling six pounds of CO2 every day, along with every other activity from manufacturing to transportation, as well as heating and cooling our homes and all other structures. Every living creature and most all human activity emits CO2 along with the earth’s numerous active volcanoes.

It probably never occurred to Blinder that all other nations also “contribute” global emissions.

For the record the Earth’s atmosphere is composed of 76.55% nitrogen, 20.54% oxygen, and 0.91% argon. Of the remaining 2% of the atmosphere, water vapor constitutes 1.95%, while carbon dioxide is 0.0389%. Let me repeat that, 0.0389%.

Despite what the liars at the Environmental Protection Agency are loudly shouting these days, carbon dioxide is not a “pollutant.” In earlier eras there was far more CO2 in the atmosphere than now, providing the dinosaurs vast amounts of vegetation on which to dine and something to eat for those dinosaurs with a taste for other dinosaurs.

The only “global warming” in recent times has been the one degree of warming that began to occur at the merciful end of the Little Ice Age from 1300 to 1850. The Earth has, since 1998, entered a new cycle of completely natural cooling due to a solar cycle called the Maunder Minimum when the Sun’s radiation is reduced.

Acknowledging that “this is a terrible time to hit (the nation) with some big new tax”, Blinder nonetheless advocates a carbon tax that “should be set at zero for 2011 and 2012. After that, it would ramp up gradually.”

“The tax might start at something like $8 per ton of CO2 in 2013 (that’s roughly eight cents per gallon of gasoline), reach $25 a ton by 2015 (still just 26 cents per gallon), $40 a ton by 2020, and keep on rising. I’d like to see it top out at more than $300 a ton in, say 2040.”

This would lead, says Blinder, to “lucrative opportunities from carbon-saving devices and technologies.” He envisions “80% of our electricity being generated by clean energy sources in 2035.”

By clean energy Blinder means wind and solar energy which, together, barely produce one percent of the electricity America uses daily. It is unreliable and would not exist were it not for government subsidies and mandates requiring its use.

Meanwhile, the vast bulk of our electricity comes from coal, just over 50%, and a combination of natural gas, nuclear, and hydroelectricity (dams). Even if we blanketed several States with solar mirrors and wind turbines, we could never match the cost effectiveness and efficiency of fossil fuels.

Blinder notes that “No one likes to pay higher taxes” and dismisses value-added taxes (a favorite form of extortion in Europe), but in his view “A CO2 tax trumps them all”, concluding that a carbon tax would reduce oil imports.”

Apparently, it has not occurred to Blinder that extracting some of America’s vast oil reserves, billions of barrels worth, might also reduce oil imports, but what is one to expect from a professor of economics who thinks taxing a minor component of the atmosphere would solve our present economic problems?

Only morons want to turn America’s corn into “biofuels.” Only charlatans want to “reduce” greenhouse gas emissions. And only those locked in academic ivory towers keep insisting that man-made “climate change” is “a clear and present danger.”

You end recessions by reducing taxes, not inventing new ones. You end recessions by encouraging access to the nation’s reserves of coal, natural gas, and oil because that generates real jobs, not “green” ones. And you end recessions by not listening to the likes of Alan S. Blinder.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Chris Christie's Jersey Attitude

By Alan Caruba

It’s the curse of having sat through too many local town council meetings and too many speeches by politicians; it’s taking notes as they speak because you want to keep what’s said fresh in mind. Regular folks don’t do this, but anyone who has spent any time as a reporter will tell you it is a hard habit to break.

So, on Tuesday, January 11, I found myself taking notes as New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie, gave his first constitutionally required State of the State speech. He will be back in February with a speech about his budget. It was delivered to the members of the New Jersey Senate and Assembly, mostly Democrats; all of whom had learned in the previous year that the Governor was a jolly, fat buzz-saw who just loves a good fight.

Gov. Christie was preceded by two of the worst Governors in current times, Jim McGreevey who discovered he was gay after he put his boyfriend on the payroll and the whispers in the statehouse became a raging storm. He was followed by Jon Corzine, a limousine liberal. Together they increased taxes and fees 115 times in eight years! In a single term in office, Corzine raised taxes $9 billion!

I am New Jersey born and bred. I have traveled to nearly every other State in the Union with the exception of Alaska, Maine and Vermont. Do you really think I would ever leave a state that was the fictional home of Tony Soprano and the actual birthplace of Frank Sinatra? You gotta be kidding me! Forgetaboutit!

Two days after Gov. Christie took office, the state treasurer informed him that Corzine had left him and everyone else in New Jersey with a $2.2 billion deficit! Did he immediately raise taxes to cover it? No. Instead, he and the treasurer scoured the budget and found $2.2 billion in projected spending. What he did next stunned a state legislature almost as profligate as California’s. He impounded the $2.2 billion by executive order.

Goodbye old world order in New Jersey. Hello Chris Christie new world order in the Garden State. As Gov. Christie put it, to create real change, “you’ve got to show a little attitude.” If there is one thing New Jerseyans have and love, it is attitude!

So it should come as no surprise that, when Gov. Christie turned 18 and was eligible to vote, he voted for Ronald Reagan. In a talk in November at a Goldwater Institute event, he recalled how “then-Governor Reagan spoke to me. He talked about smaller, less intrusive government that was going to open up our country to exploit the entrepreneurial spirit that has always built and made it a unique place.”

“He talked about less spending, so that less money would come to Washington and more money would stay with the people who knew how to spend it best. He talked about a government that didn’t regulate every little bit and piece of your life.”

“And he talked about lowering taxes so that people could feel the economic freedom that comes from not having a government in your pocket every 15 minutes.”

Christie’s State of the State speech reflected the values that Ronald Reagan espoused and, in this centennial year of his birth, I think he would have loved every word of it. “I believe in a culture of truth,” said Gov. Christie. The voters liked what they heard and happily replaced Corzine with a man who had gained recognition by putting corrupt New Jersey politicians in jail.

On Tuesday Gov. Christie told the assembled legislators, “We cannot spend money we don’t have.” Do I dare hope that Chris Christie will someday run for President?

The latter part of his State of the State speech was a dissection of how retrograde the state teacher’s union is and why the state’s pension and benefits system had to be changed because it was hideously under-funded by billions and because he wanted to ensure that policemen, firemen, and other civil service employees would actually have a pension when they retired.

Last year he spoke to an initially hostile meeting of firefighters. By the time he got through they all crowded around him, eager to shake his hand and get their picture taken with him. Christie is no ordinary politician. “This isn’t about politics,” he said, “This is about their lives.”

He is passionate about reforming the school system in New Jersey and would, one suspects, take delight in crushing a teacher’s union that exists for nothing other than political power. Last year, when he urged New Jersey voters to demand 4% to 5% pay cuts, 59% of the school budgets were defeated.

Ronald Reagan stood six foot, two inches tall. He had literally been a movie star! Chris Christie is short. He is fat. And he is completely comfortable with that. He is a good public speaker and when he speaks, you know he really means what he says.

He’s not some cookie-cutter version of Ronald Reagan, his inspiration. He is Gov. Chris Christie and New Jersey is loving every minute of it.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

The Incredibly Shrinking Obama

By Alan Caruba

If ever a president looked impotent and helpless, it was during the press conference hastily called to secure a former president’s aid to pass the extension of the Bush era tax rates.

It was the image of a former “community organizer” unable to organize even the support of his own political party.

We are witnessing the shrinking presidency of Barack Obama.

When Obama excused himself to attend a family Christmas party, leaving the podium to Bill Clinton, he demonstrated the futility of his efforts to divide Americans along class lines of rich and poor.

Obama has never understood that the American dream is that anyone can get rich thanks to hard work and the opportunities provided by capitalism. Over the past two years it has become obvious to everyone he has been engaged in an effort to destroy the nation through an obscene increase in its debt and the deprivation of its own sources of energy.

The bill to extend the tax rates, in place now for a decade, has been encumbered by the usual “earmarks” that have turned it into a Christmas tree of pet projects by the same Congress whose two previous stimulus bills failed to increase employment and which continues to spend the nation into bankruptcy.

The best thing now is to let the bill die and to wait until a new Republican-controlled House of Representatives can extend the tax rates and rid the present bill off even more deficit spending. Congress has not demonstrated the ability to do the best thing or even the most sensible thing.

The most articulate advocate of rejecting this “compromise” bill has been Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), chairman of the Senate Conservatives Fund, a political action committee dedicated to electing true conservatives to the U.S. Senate.

In a statement by Sen. DeMint, he reflected the expectations and wishes of all taxpayers having been fighting for years to extend the tax rates. “It’s the people’s money and we should not raise taxes on hardworking American families.”

The compromise that the Republican leadership in Congress agreed to was dismissed by President Obama even as he grudgingly tried to get his own party to support it. It has not been the GOP that has held Americans “hostage” as they waited for action on the tax rates, but the White House and the Democrat Party.

Sen. DeMint noted that “it includes approximately $200 billion in new deficit spending and stimulus gimmicks. That’s a lot of money that will have to be borrowed from China and repaid by our children and grandchildren.”

“If we are going to increase spending on new programs, we must reduce other spending to pay for it.”

Perhaps the worst aspect of the bill is that it extends rates for only two years. “We don’t have a temporary economy so we shouldn’t have temporary tax rates.” As this is written, trillions are sitting idle in American corporations and businesses because they are unable to plan ahead to make new investments and hire new employees. A two year extension is futile because businesses must make long-range plans and investments.

Another noxious aspect of the bill is its failure to extend all of the tax rates. “It actually increases the death tax from the current rate of zero percent all the way up to 36 percent. One economic study shows that this tax increase alone will kill over 800,000 jobs over the next ten years.”

It will also destroy the ability of countless small farmers to pass on their legacy of hard work to their families who will, in many cases, have to sell their farms whose wealth is measured in the land they own, not the money they possess.

“I appreciate the efforts made by my party’s leaders to negotiate this deal, but I believe Americans deserve much better.”

The November elections that demonstrated the greatest transfer of power in the House and to some degree the Senate since the late 1940s are ample proof that Americans want and expect better results.

Starting on January 2, 2011 a new Congress could attend to the proper and sensible extension of the Bush era tax rates. Those who know how the Congress functions, however, warn that it would take three to six months to achieve this. The further stagnation of the economy would continue during that time.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Lame Ducks Threaten Economic Recovery

By Alan Caruba

As if the forcing of Obamacare on a nation vastly opposed to it was not enough, the lame duck session of Congress between now and December 31st has the potential to harm economic recovery still more.

Congress includes sixty Democrat Representatives in the House who will not be returning and six in the Senate who were also voted out of office or who have announced their retirement. If the world made any sense, none would be permitted to vote on anything at this point.

If, indeed, Congress functioned in a reasoned and rational fashion, the nation would not be forced to wait until the last month of the year for it to resolve a range of fiscal and other issues despite the fact that Fiscal 2011 has begun. It has not passed a budget and it will need to pass a continuing resolution to fund the federal government until it does.

Americans and the business community in particular are still waiting to see if Congress will extend the Bush tax rates. They have been in effect for nine years. Everyone understands maintaining the existing rates is essential to avoid worsening an ailing economy.

For the President and Democrats in Congress, the issue has to do with “billionaires” and “millionaires” when the real issue is whether small to medium-sized businesses will be able to hire and expand. The issue is whether millions of Americans who are still employed will see their take-home pay reduced in January by additional taxes. It’s worth noting that those high earners already pay some 70% of the income taxes collected every year.

Another problem is Sen. Harry Reid’s intention to bring the “Dream Act”, yet another amnesty effort, to a vote. Here again, Americans overwhelmingly oppose any easing of laws regarding illegal aliens.

Democrats are also discussing a ban on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, a policy that permits gays to serve in the military, but to keep their silence regarding their sexual orientation. In an all-volunteer military corps morale should trump this issue, but thanks to political correctness, it does not.

Medicare, who most agree was in need of repair, but not the bureaucratic monster of Obamacare, is required to reduce reimbursement rates for physicians every year and, to avoid that, Congress has always passed legislation to avoid the cut, called “the doctor’s fix.” If Congress does nothing in the lame duck session, reimbursement rates would plunge 23 percent. Those on Medicare would have to dig into personal funds as doctors would understandably raise their fees to make up for the loss.

The extension of unemployment insurance is going to prove a very difficult issue, which is why the Democrat-controlled Congress put it off until after the elections. Benefits averaging $310 per week are due to expire on November 30 and this affects some two million Americans. It is a disincentive to seeking employment.

Republicans and a contingent of Democrats are demanding that the cost of extending unemployment compensation be financed through budget cuts, but how does Congress achieve any savings when Obamacare creates a federal bureaucracy of more than 150,000 new employees? It will even provide insurance to non-U.S. residents whether they are here illegally or not. If that’s not bad enough, it gives the government real-time access to your bank account and the authority to make electronic fund transfers from it! That's not government, that's gangsterism.

Outside of Congress, another threat exists in the form of the Environmental Protection Agency’s illegal and obscene effort to regulate “greenhouse gas” emissions. The agency plans to initiate this power grab by January 2nd and it must be stopped.

After an orgy of borrowing for stimulus legislation that has failed to generate new jobs, the further devaluation of the U.S. dollar looms as the Federal Reserve undertakes a second “quantitative easing.” The first did not increase bank loans to businesses and others. The Russians and Chinese have just announced they will conduct bilateral trade using their own currencies, not the U.S. dollar that until now has been the global standard.

Further threatening an economic apocalypse is the question of whether more European nations will join the ranks of failed economies from Greece to Ireland to Spain and Portugal. England and France are imposing much needed budget cuts while Germany, the strongest European economy, appears to be understandably reluctant to bail out the Euro.

The arrogance and incompetence of the Democrat Congress and Administration defy the imagination and the clear intention of a growing legend of Americans is to put an end to their liberal legislative abominations.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Obama, The Nation Killer

By Alan Caruba

The unemployment rate keeps climbing and the polling results for the President and Congress keep falling. Conservatives are well aware that the Obama administration has relentlessly pursued legislation harmful to the economy, but just how bad it is and how bad it will become in 2011 may not have sunk in fully for the public in general.

Nothing among Obama’s legislative agenda and executive orders has done anything other than push the nation more and more toward bankruptcy. Perhaps the oddest aspect has been the action of the Federal Reserve which is, in theory, an independent entity. Suffice to say, it is pursuing policies that reflect the same disastrous actions that prolonged the 1930s Great Depression. Not surprisingly, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has pronounced the outlook “unusually uncertain.”

The worst is yet to come because the end of the Bush tax cuts on December 31, 2010 will generate major increases in taxation that will affect all but the appalling 40% who pay no taxes at all. This isn’t redistribution of wealth. It is a penalty levied on investors, entrepreneurs, and those who still have jobs.

One of those policies, the president’s shut-down of drilling in the Gulf, twice rejected by the courts, will add thousands more to the ranks of the unemployed without any justification.

When the tax cut deadline comes at midnight on December 31, the “death tax” on estates will return, increasing 55% on estates of $1 million or more, but it won’t just be “the rich” who are affected. As reported in Investor’s Business Daily, “The lowest bracket for the personal income tax, for instance, moves up 50%, to 15% from 10%.” These brackets will increase 25% to 39.6% for others.

The marriage penalty returns and the capital gains tax “will jump 33%” and “the tax on dividends will go all the way from 15% to 39.6%--a 164% increase.” Wall Street will hit a wall of resistance from investors.

A spending-crazed Congress will have $115 billion more to waste and, according to the Congressional Budget Office, it will reach $2.6 trillion by 2020, a mere decade from now. These funds are theoretically going to be allocated toward paying for the vastly expanded Obamacare “reform” of the already insolvent Medicare program.

A booklet by Michael D. Tanner, “Bad Medicine”, published by the libertarian Cato Institute, points how the fallacy—the lie—that an expanded Medicare will protect those now without such protection against rising healthcare costs. The truth is that by 2019 an estimated 21 million Americans will still be uninsured.

Obamacare will cost far more than advertised; more than $2.7 trillion over ten years of full implementation and will add $352 billion to the national debt over that period. Insurance costs will skyrocket for younger, healthier workers.

Furthermore, Obamacare “will increase taxes by more than $669 billion between now and 2019, and the burdens it places on business will significantly reduce economic growth and employment.”

A July 23 Rasmussen poll revealed that 75% of likely voters say free markets are better than government management of the economy. “Americans overwhelmingly believe that more competition and less regulation are better for the economy than more regulation and less competition.”

Wayne Crews, the vice president for policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, describes what is necessary for economic recovery, citing “massive spending cuts, deregulation, privatization, tax-cutting, avoiding of monetary inflation, and elimination of government-granted monopolies and favors.”

The Obama administration and Democrat-controlled Congress will not engage in any of these well known remedies. What is occurring is a deliberate policy to destroy the nation’s economy and with it the nation. The trade deficits the nation has run, importing more than we export, will ensure we do not dig ourselves out of the hole for years to come.

Writing recently in the Globe and Mail, a London newspaper, Neil Reynolds warned that “Democracies produced Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, fulfilling the expectation of Socrates and Machiavelli that democracies end in tyranny. Now democracies are fulfilling the complementary expectation of Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman that democracies end in bankruptcy.”

All hail, Obama! The Nation Killer!

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Cap-and-Trade is a Nation Killer

By Alan Caruba

There are many reasons why the Cap-and-Trade Act will harm the future of the nation, but among the worst is that it is entirely based on a lie. The very worst, however, is that it is a nation killer.

Cap-and-Trade is intended to set up a trade scheme in “carbon credits” that is estimated to be worth a trillion dollars if enacted. The rationale is the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide (CO2), to avoid global warming.

There is no global warming and no need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

The vast bulk of CO2 is natural. The Earth produces 97% of the CO2 in the atmosphere. The atmosphere is essentially and overwhelmingly water vapor. CO2 plays no role in climate change.

Cap-and-Trade is a tax on energy use and Americans are constantly told that energy use in any form—-coal, oil, natural gas, or nuclear—-is bad. That’s not just a lie, it is insane.

Americans are told that “renewable” or “clean” energy can replace the energy generated by the use of coal, natural gas, and by nuclear plants. Solar and wind energy can never achieve this. They depend on totally unpredictable sources, the sun and wind. All such “green energy” must have existing plants as backup.

Green energy produces electricity. Oil is not used for this purpose, but one of the primary “reasons” offered for Cap-and-Trade is a reduction in the importation of oil. There is literally no connection between the two.

Cap-and-Trade authorizes the government to set a limit on the amount of carbon dioxide that can be produced. It then gives existing industries credits for the amount they are already producing. Those industries can then use the credits or trade them on exchanges set up for that purpose.

Renamed the “American Power Act”, the bill put forth by Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) borders on being an act of treason against all Americans.

The Institute for Energy Research commissioned Chamberlain Economics to do an economic and distributional analysis. Here are some of their findings:

# The American Power Act would reduce U.S. employment by roughly 522,000 jobs by 2015, rising to more than 5.1 million jobs by 2050.

# U.S. households would face a gross annual burden of $125.9 billion per year or $1,042 per household. The costs would be disproportionately borne by low-income households and senior citizens

In July 2009, Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Olympia Snow (R-ME) introduced a bill to make the Commodity Futures Trading Commission the sole regulator of the carbon market that Cap-and-Trade creates. It is an independent agency of the federal government. Here are some facts the mainstream media is not reporting:

# The chairman of the CFTC is Gary Gensler. Formerly employed by Goldman Sachs, he was nominated by President Obama.

# Goldman Sachs is a part owner of the Chicago-based exchange where carbon allowances would be traded.

# Goldman Sachs has spent millions of dollars lobbying for Cap-and-Trade legislation in anticipation of making billions at the expense of taxpayers and energy consumers.

# Goldman Sachs employees are heavy contributors to the Democrat Party, giving it more than $4.4 million in the 2008 election. Barack Obama’s campaign received more than $997,000.

Utilities and investment banks in the U.S. and Europe see carbon trading, a wholly fictitious new financial instrument, as a huge new profit center. Carbon trading could top $1 trillion a year by 2020.

This totally artificial “market” will create a “bubble” that, when it bursts, will dwarf the losses that have occurred in the sub-prime mortgage meltdown that caused the current financial crisis.

Meanwhile, hidden within the Cap-and-Trade bill is a provision prohibiting homeowners from selling their homes unless they completely retrofit their homes to comply with energy and water efficiency standards. The costs will, for many, make it impossible to sell their home.

A Wall Street Journal editorial stated that “The whole point of Cap-and-Trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas…These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station, but in every manufactured good, from food to cars…Americans should know that those Members (of Congress) who vote for this climate bill are voting for what is likely to be the biggest tax in American history.”

There no scientific or economic justification for the passage of Cap-and-Trade legislation. The President knows this. The Democrats in Congress know this. It’s more than just a tax. It is a nation killer.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Bring Back Prohibition!

By Alan Caruba

That’s right. Bring back Prohibition. It was such a success, right? Oh sure, it led to the development of organized crime, everyone ignored it, and it took a Constitutional amendment to get rid of it, but it did save so many from the evils of demon rum—not!

Taxes on things people enjoy are generally called “sin” taxes. They are an easy way to raise revenue and politicians who break most of the Ten Commandments love to impose them.

I would love to see Congress try to pass a massive tax on chocolate. How long do you think it would take for a Chocolate Tea Party to get organized, on buses, and down to the Capitol steps wielding pitchforks?

But wait, eating chocolate in any shape, manner or form has health implications. At a time when we are all being hectored for being too fat, chocolate is a major contributor to that trend. It’s said to give the younger set zits and, of course, it runs up their dentist bills like crazy. Never mind that it tastes good! It’s bad for you and should be taxed and taxed and then taxed some more!

This is, of course, the “reasoning” behind the long campaign to stamp out smoking in America. It is, we’re told, “for your own good.” If we had to give up everything we enjoy for our own good, we’d—all together now—bring back Prohibition!

Before I continue, in the interest of full disclosure, I smoke cigars. I have smoked them since I was in my twenties and I am now in my seventies. My father, who passed away in his early nineties, smoked a pipe from his youth. Second-hand smoke had no apparent affect on my mother who passed away at age 98.

The “science” behind second-hand smoke is the typical bogus exaggeration that got DDT banned. Since 1972, malaria has claimed the lives of an estimated forty million people worldwide.

To punish smokers because there are some diseases associated with it is manifestly unfair when one considers that over-eating can be just as hazardous to one’s health and, of course, drinking too much is a major cause of death.

Just about anything one does to excess can be harmful. The real question is whether the government has any mandate to interfere with personal lifestyle decisions. The answer is, it doesn’t.

It is smokers who are routinely punished financially for the enjoyment of cigars, cigarettes or pipe tobacco. It used to cost me around $140 a month for two boxes of Casa Blanca’s, hand-rolled cigars from the Dominican Republic. It now costs over $200 a month. That’s obscene.

Only government could get away with forcing up the price in that matter. These days it is intended to close the gap in bloated state budgets. In New York State, the latest tax proposal on cigarettes would increase the cost to about $10 per pack!

The problem is that neither the federal, nor the state budgets ever seem to get smaller, leaner. The entire nation is on the brink of bankruptcy and, apparently, taxing smokers seems to be one of the preferred solutions.

With the exception of those states whose constitutions require balanced budgets, most of the fifty states are in such deep debt that the federal government must print money and send it to them in box cars to help pay for all the unfunded mandates that have been imposed on them, along with the cost of their contracts with civil service unions whose pensions and health care benefits dwarf those employed in the private sector.

There’s currently a House bill, H.R. 4439, the Tobacco Parity Act of 2010 that would raise taxes on pipe tobacco. It would raise it 775%!!!! The tax would increase from $2.83 per pound to $24.78 per pound! That, too, is obscene.

Prohibition demonstrated that, if you raise the price of a certain good or service beyond a certain point, people will find a way to procure it more cheaply. They will cross state lines, purchase over the Internet, or seek a black market outlet. One of the favorite ways of financing domestic terrorism that Islamists found has been trafficking in out-of-state cigarettes.

This is so manifestly nuts that it can only hasten the day when a Fair Tax, one based on purchases as opposed to income, must become the law of the land. Making life expensive for everyone who wants to smoke, drink or fill up their gas tank is surely going to reach a point of a massive blowback from taxpayers because it is manifestly unfair and unjust.

Here’s how irrational raising taxes on tobacco use is. The increased tax is supposed to reduce the number of smokers. Thus, we’re told, the raising of taxes is intended to reduce the number of people from whom the higher taxes can be squeezed. This is the same insane illogical thinking that justifies raising gasoline taxes in order, we’re told, to force people to use public transit.

It never happens. It is a fantasy. It is a modern form of the inquisition.

The only thing this deliberate injustice achieves is the destruction of any motivation to earn more or to invest one’s earnings. It exists to secure more revenue for government programs, giveaways, of which there is no end. It is a formula for the destruction of the nation.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Where There's Smoke....

Tax Day - 2010

We Want a 'Fair Tax" Now!

By Alan Caruba

Both my Father and older brother were Certified Public Accountants. Around the dinner table, the Internal Revenue Services was spoken of as the adversary. “Tax time” which used to mean a March 15 deadline was preceded by a period of long working hours. Over the years the tax laws became so arcane and dense they defy comprehension.

The income tax is probably the worst thing that ever happened to the United States in the last century because it was always punitive and regressive. It punishes saving. It deters economic growth through investment. It takes the wage earner’s money before he or she receives their paycheck.

There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come and you can read all about it in Ken Hoagland’s “The Fair Tax Solution: Financial Justice for All Americans” ($19.95, Sentinel, Penguin Group USA). With notes and index, this book is a mere 151 pages and is small enough to fit into anyone’s pocket or purse. You will learn more about taxation in America from this little book than from several volumes of tax code.

Let me put the Fair Tax is perspective. In early March, The Washington Post reported that “President Obama’s proposed budget would add more than $9.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, congressional budget analysts said Friday.” As most people know by now, you can never trust any estimate of costs that the government puts forth unless you multiply it by a factor of two or three.

The U.S. is facing a financial Armageddon.

The projected deficit of $1.5 trillion “would force the Treasury to continue borrowing at prodigious rates, sending the national debt soaring to 90 percent of the economy by 2020.” Someone wants America to collapse and someone is doing everything in his power to ensure that happens.

Real limits on how much the government can borrow must be imposed. Limits on how much it can spend are needed. The claim that taxes only “soak the rich” is false because income tax laws are now destroying the middle class while most of the officially “poor” pay no taxes at all.

Hoagland is the Communications Director of Americans for Fair Taxation, the sponsoring organization for Fair Tax legislation. What he does not know about taxation is not worth knowing and what he does know he imparts with breathtaking simplicity and directness.

“Today we tax the very thing our economy needs to grow—-income and that which produces income. We take money from savings, from returns on investment, and from what we are paid for our labor.”

The Fair Tax, which would replace only federal taxation, is based on what we individually consume. It is paid at the point of sale and it does not take earnings from one’s paycheck, nor punish you for having a savings account or for capital gains as the result of investing wisely. A Fair Tax says your money is your money.

The current tax system actually punishes corporations for being headquartered here. The U.S. levies the second highest (after Japan) corporate tax in the world. The result makes doing business in American far less competitive than in other nations. It forces corporations to collectively spend billions on compliance.

“According to the Tax Foundation, small businesses spend an astounding $724 in compliance costs for every $100 they pay in income tax.” Most people have to hire people to prepare their tax returns for them because of their complexity.

Enacted in 1912, over “almost one hundred years of congressional amendments, court decisions, and taxpayer/IRS disputes (the tax code) has swelled to more than 2.1 million words” and in fiscal year 2006 it was 16,845 pages.

When an earlier version of the income tax was proposed, it was repealed in 1872 and a later 1894 version was rejected by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional in 1895 because the income tax violated the Constitution’s prohibition against direct taxation (article 1, section 9). It took a Constitutional amendment, the sixteenth, ratified February 12, 1913, to permit it.

After that, Congress had an enormous source of revenue with which to swell the federal government.

“The cost of compliance, the hours and money spent on preparing tax forms, totaled close to $300 billion in 2008,” writes Hoagland. “That’s twice as much as the total of all the taxpayer stimulus checks mailed out in 2008.”

The result of the income tax has been “destructive, as politicians from both parties have taken us down a path of unsustainable spending.”

Despite what you will be told, the Fair Tax will collect the same amount of revenue as the income tax, but it will spread the burden more equitably and transparently.

It would literally eliminate any need for the Internal Revenue Service because it is a tax of 23% of what consumers spend “instead of an average of 30% of all the money they earn.”

No more gigantic, impenetrable tax code.

No more prying into the private transactions and earnings of citizens.

No more deductions for withholding and payroll taxes from your paycheck before you are paid.

No more punishment for saving or investing.

No more incentives for corporations to artificially keep salaries low or to move out of the nation to avoid harsh taxation.

Your earnings are your earnings. They do not belong to the federal or state government. With a Fair Tax, the more you earn, the more you keep, depending on how much you decide to spend.

That’s why it is called a Fair Tax and that is why the time has come to enact it.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

The Reality of Healthcare Reform

As noted over at Theo Spark's blog, this sums up the healthcare reform Obama and the Democrats want to impose on us:

"A medical system with the compassion of the IRS, the efficiency of the U.S. Postal Service, and the financial solvency of the Social Security system. What could go wrong?"

Lots of Taxes, Lots of Spending

By Alan Caruba

We sometimes forget that the primary reason we live in the United States of America and not some British Commonwealth nation is that the people who fought our Revolution got fed up with all the taxes that King George and Parliament kept imposing on them. No taxation without representation was the rallying cry.

Now all we seem to have, whether at the federal, state or local level is endless taxation on virtually everything we purchase, use or own. In many cases those taxes have risen obscenely in recent days.

The new tax on tobacco products is, we’re told, intended for our own good, making them so expensive we will give up smoking. Other proposed taxes on “fast food” and even soda are passed off as being an incentive to eat in a more healthy fashion. Our personal health is our business, not the government’s and surely not an excuse to tax us!

There have always been “sin” taxes on things like tobacco and alcoholic beverages, but thanks to the profligate spending of all legislatures everywhere, these taxes are rising to obscene levels, unrelated to anything than a desperate effort to fill gaps in the budget.

Neither the states, nor the federal government seem to understand the need to STOP SPENDING. Every new “entitlement” program, like the proposed healthcare “reform” just imposes more and more taxation, and creates larger debt.

Here’s a list of just some of the taxes we pay:

Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL license Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Excise Taxes
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline TaxGross Receipts Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges re IRS Penalties
Liquor Tax
Luxury Taxes
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Property TaxService Charge Tax
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax
Sales Tax
Recreational Vehicle Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Taxes
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax

In my home state of New Jersey, the tax per gallon of wine and spirits increased 25% this month. That’s about $5.50 for liquor and 87.5 cents per gallon of wine. New Jerseyeans are famous for being among the most taxed citizens in the nation. No wonder some of us drink! We have exorbitantly high property taxes, along with income and sales taxes. Born and bred here, I remain mostly out of inertia and old age.

Now, in President Obama’s words, “we’re broke” and the answer he and Congress propose is to raise taxes while increasing the national debt by trillions so that your children’s children will be born having to pay it off.

The history of the Great Depression and sheer common sense argue against this.

At the same time, the federal government is taking ownership of a large piece of the automotive industry, owns a majority interest in a huge insurance company and is owed billions in TARP money by banks, investment houses, and AIG.

The Democrats want to take over healthcare in America.

The Democrats want to put a tax on all energy use.

The Democrats are even proposing to set how much executives can be paid.

There is a word for this. It’s communism.

There has long been talk of “a flat tax” and a “value-added tax.” The former is advocated by Steve Forbes and, if he’s for it, it is probably a good idea. The latter is favored by European nations and is a form of sales tax.

The great problem with all taxes is that, once imposed, they are rarely, if ever, repealed. The profligate spending by state and federal legislatures is the problem.

What is wrong with this picture? EVERYTHING!

Borrowing, Spending and Regulating, Oh my!

By Alan Caruba

It sometimes seems to me that the Congress and the White House are determined to put an end to the nation through a combination of exorbitant borrowing and insane spending.

At the end of May, an article in USA Today reported that “The government took on $6.8 trillion in new obligations in 2008, pushing the total owed to a record $63.8 trillion.”

These trillions reflect various retirement benefits such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the new prescription medicine benefits. Then there are programs to aid Americans who have lost jobs, are behind on their mortgage payments, or just want to buy a new car by declaring their old one a “clunker.” When you add in the so-called “stimulus” bill, the bailout of General Motors, and the TARP bailout to financial and insurance firms, it adds up.

Robert Samuelson, a syndicated columnist, asked in May “Just how much government debt does a president have to endorse before he’s labeled ‘irresponsible’?”

While facing $63.8 trillion in obligations, Samuelson noted that “From 2010 to 2019, Obama projects annual deficits totaling $7.1 trillion; that’s atop the $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009.” It doesn’t stop there, however, “Obama’s health plan might cost $1.2 trillion over a decade; he has budgeted only $635 billion.”

Did President Obama and every member of Congress flunk arithmetic in grade school? How can they possibly believe that the actions they have taken and presumably intend to take with regard to an insane healthcare reform and massive tax on all energy use add up to anything than the total financial failure of the United States?

It adds up, according to USA Today, to “an extra $55,000 a household to cover rising federal commitments made just in the past year…” I don’t know about you, but I don’t have $55,000 to spare. The economy has pretty much wrecked any plans I made to earn enough to cover my present expenses.

According to the Investor’s Business Daily, “American families over the last year already lost 8% of their net worth—in part as a result of inept government meddling, past and present.”

The result will be “Near-record deficits increasing at record rates (that) will push the public debt of the U.S. beyond the economy’s plausible capacity to pay—70% of GDP (Gross Domestic Profit) by 2012, heading quickly to 82% of GDP in 2019 and on pace to be astronomically higher soon thereafter.”

As someone who thanks a merciful God for the ability to check my checking and savings accounts’ balances via the Internet, all these enormous numbers and percentages tend to make my head spin. I understand them in the abstract, but I can barely get a grip on them in terms of the vast amounts of money they represent.

There are, however, still other numbers that are strangling the nation’s capacity to somehow get out of this mess.

For several years, Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute has taken an annual look at the growth and the cost of federal regulations. He deserves to be beatified for this task. They are published in a report titled “Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State.” On June 3, the latest report made its debut. Here’s a snapshot of how a nation strangles to death on regulations:

Federal agencies issued 3,380 new rules in 2008. Federal regulations ate practically 10% of what the U.S. economy produced last year. At $1.172 trillion, the cost of regulation is nearly equal with $1.2 trillion in income taxes.

Regulatory costs are a huge hidden tax. The federal government spent $2.98 trillion in 2008 and businesses spent more than a third of that amount on regulatory costs.

Crews points out that, “Rolling back regulations would constitute the deregulatory stimulus that the U.S. economy needs.

We’re all on this roller coaster together and there can be no happy ending to the ride.

The U.S. Weather Service Says...

By Alan Caruba

Below is a recent post by the U.S. Weather Service. I have added some boldface to elements of the text.

· Due to the unusually cool and wet conditions in June…here are some interesting facts to note:

· This June is tied for the 8th coolest on record. The average temperature was 67.5. (That’s) 3.7 degrees below normal…which also occurred in 1897.

· This was the coolest June since 1958…when the average temperature as 67.2 degrees.

· Below average temperatures occurred on 23 out of 30 days this June…or 75 percent of the month

· Central Park has not hit 90 degrees in the month of June this year. The last time this occurred was back in 1996.

· Central Park has not hit 85 degrees in the month of June this year. The last time this occurred was back in 1916. This has only occurred two other times…1903 and 1886.

· The low temperature dipped below 60 degrees eleven times in the month of June. The last time this occurred was in 2003 when it occurred seventeen times.

· It was the second wettest June on record with 10.06 inches of rain. The wettest June on record is 2003 with 10.27 inches.

· There were 19 days this June where there was at least 0.01 inches of rainfall. This has never occurred in Central Park.

One month does not a climate cycle make, but when one considers that the Earth has been cooling since 1998, it is a snapshot of things to come. Given the recent effort by the Environmental Protection Agency to silence one of its analysts whose report debunked the entire rational for the “Cap-and-Trade” bill passed by the House, it is amazing that the U.S. Weather Service is being permitted by the Stalinist Obama administration to actually report some “interesting facts” that demonstrate that the weather for the U.S. is cooling, not warming.

Now let it be said there is a difference between “weather” and “climate.” The weather, no matter where you are on planet Earth is what is happening in a particular place at a particular time.

The climate is measured in decades and in centuries. Clear trends emerge and they are given names like “ice ages” and the past is broken down in a variety of ages from the Paleozoic era to the Cenozoic, to the Mesozoic, the latter including Cretaceous, Jurassic, Triassic, Permian, Pennsylvanian, and Mississippian. We are currently in the Holocene era, dating from about 10,000 years ago.

Human civilization such as we know it---cities, agriculture, trade---didn’t show up until 5,000 years ago. Suffice it to say this was long before the Industrial Revolution which the Greens blame for a warming that is not happening.

The cooling being seen now reflects the way that, from around 1300 to 1850, much of Europe and North America suffered through a mini-ice age.

Simple logic and common sense suggests, given the very low sunspot activity of late, that we are headed into a similar climate cycle and the low temperatures in June, not seen since as far back as 1867 and 1903 appear to confirm this.

This is why a Cap-and-Trade bill whose alleged purpose is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, blamed for “global warming”, is a complete and total fraud.

Any Congress that passes this law and any President who signs it is engaged is treasonous behavior because it is a massive tax on the use of energy, the single most essential factor for the revival of our failing economy.

America, the Silly Nation

By Alan Caruba

As we prepare to celebrate Independence Day, we will hear about our Founding Fathers, about those who fought our wars to preserve and safeguard our nation, and other men and women who contributed to the nation’s greatness.

It is good to look back, but future generations will look back as well and wonder how such a great nation became such a silly nation, the object of scorn and ridicule around the world, challenged by every gangster nation that shares the planet; attacked by Al Qaeda, threatened by North Korea, mocked by Venezuela, insulted by Iran, and sustained by the wealth of China and other lenders.

What other republic is governed by fools who voted without reading “climate” legislation whose 1,200 pages of rules and regulations will enrich a few and leave the rest scrambling to pay the light bill? That is, if the light turns on. If passed by the Senate, it will be the largest tax increase in the history of the nation. It exists to “save the planet” from a “global warming” that is not happening.

What other nation would systematically ensure that its vast resources of coal, enough to power plants to produce electricity for the next hundred or two hundred years, not be used because no new plants will be built? Fully fifty percent of our electricity comes from coal, but this nation is about to waste billions of dollars on wind and solar energy—so called “clean” energy—which accounts for about one percent.

If wind or solar was a sensible way to produce electricity, surely utilities would have invested in it long ago. It isn’t. It never will be. Only a very silly nation would shift billions of dollars to such “clean” and “renewable” energy when it was sitting on top of tons of coal.

Only a silly nation would ensure that its other vast, natural and national resource, oil, would be put off limits to all exploration and extraction in Alaska and along our vast coastlines, as well as huge reserves in the nation’s interior. Only a silly nation would do this while listening to its politicians talk about “energy independence.”

Only a silly nation would ignore the vast potential of nuclear power and use all manner of bureaucratic obstacles to drive up the cost of building plants to generate electricity.

Only a silly nation would ignore the security of its southern border as a virtual invasion of illegal aliens pours across, and take advantage of all manner of welfare programs, special education programs for their children, and free medical services. Our prisons, too, are filling up with illegal aliens.

Only a silly nation with twelve million or more of these illegal aliens in its midst would actually be looking for a way to magically make them citizens overnight while ignoring the fact that they having been taking jobs from natural born and naturalized citizens by working “off the books” and sending billions back to Mexico and points south. Amnesty would double or triple the existing population of formerly illegal aliens in America as family members joined them.

Only a silly nation would allow the teachers unions to totally control the quality of education and transfer power to Washington, D.C., away from the States and local communities where it rightfully belongs.

Only a silly nation would spend thousands of dollars per student and, at the same time, ignore the message they are sending with obscene drop-out rates. Only a silly nation would impose a one-size-fits-all system of testing on millions of students.

Only a silly nation would to allow the graduation, year after year, of students lacking the most basic math, science, reading, and other skills necessary to provide the workforce we require.

Only a silly nation would ensure that the costs of a college education were so high that graduates enter the workplace burdened by years of debt.

Only a silly nation would continue to seek negotiations with Iran whose leaders cry “Death to America” every day. Only a silly nation would elect a President who, when the desire for freedom and democracy broke out on the streets of Tehran, expressed respect for the “Supreme Leader” and outrage only after protesters had been shot to death and clubbed into submission.

Only a silly nation would permit itself to literally go broke, along with most of its States, and then vote billions more in a “stimulus” bill while, at the same time, giving billions to failed auto companies and taking government ownership. We own an insurance company as well. This is contrary to the Constitution. It is nationalization.

It was, however, a silly nation that caused the housing mortgage meltdown with government mandates that required banks and mortgage firms to lend money to people who would not normally qualify for them.

It is a silly nation that proposes to provide healthcare insurance to everyone at the same time Medicare is on the brink of bankruptcy. Nationalizing the healthcare system will kill a lot of Americans by rationing health services, but that’s what a silly nation does.

Only a silly nation would raise taxes in the midst of a major Recession verging on a Depression. The last Great Depression lasted ten years because of such foolish actions and ended only because the nation had to gear up for World War Two.

There was a time when mature people led the nation prudently and, when necessary, boldly. What we have now are petulant and indifferent children intent on personal enrichment.

What we have is a President that does not like America..

What we have is a silly nation.

Cap-and-Trade Bill: Villainy on a Grand Scale

By Alan Caruba

Supported by outright lies by the President about “clean” or “renewable energy”, and based on the greatest hoax of the modern era, “global warming”, on Friday Congress is reportedly going to vote on the 1,200-page Waxman-Markey “Cap and Trade” bill (H.R. 2454).

It would impose a huge tax on the provision and use of electricity in the nation.

Energy is the most vital resource America has and we have enjoyed abundant and affordable energy for our long history. That will all change if the Waxman-Markey bill becomes law.

There is no “global warming.” The Earth is presently ten years into a cooling cycle and it is predicted to last a very long time.

Calling carbon dioxide “a pollutant” is a lie. All vegetation on Earth is dependent on carbon dioxide. Putting Limits on carbon dioxide emissions is idiocy and lunacy.

For the nearly six months since President Obama assumed office and in league with the majority Democrat Party in Congress, the actions taken to date appear to have a single purpose, the destruction of the nation’s economy.

The Waxman-Markey bill is villainy on a grand scale.

It is no accident that President Obama and his acolytes keep calling for “clean energy”, “energy independence”, and babbling endlessly about “green jobs” as the real jobs of Americans are systematically destroyed. Upon taking office, Obama rescinded the executive order to permit exploration of the nation’s offshore continental shelf for the wealth of oil and natural gas it possesses.

It is no accident that his Secretary of the Interior unilaterally cancelled 77 oil and gas leases or that, on March 25, the House of Representatives passed the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 that adds two million more acres of wilderness to the 107 million acres already “protected” by the federal government.

It is estimated that 300 million barrels of oil and 8.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas lie beneath these “protected” acres. The government owns 607 million acres of land in a nation founded on the belief in the sanctity and power of private property, the keystone of capitalism.

Even if the bill were to become law, it totally ignores the fact that all the other nations of the Earth will continue to generate “greenhouse gases.” The United Nations Kyoto Protocol, intended to reduce these gases, purposefully exempted China, India, and all undeveloped nations. Its limits are, by definition, meaningless.

The Waxman-Markey bill will, by 2035, reduce the aggregate domestic product (GDP) by an estimated $7.4 trillion. Our present annual GDP is about $14 trillion. It is estimated to destroy 844,000 jobs on average with peak years seeing unemployment rise by over 1,900,000 jobs. It will raise electricity rates 90% after adjusting for inflation. Prices for gasoline and natural gas will rise by 74% and 55% respectively.

This bill will impoverish Americans and destroy the nation.

Out of 307 million Americans, I seriously doubt that more than a relative handful know what Cap-and-Trade means or that it is even being debated, but they, their children, and their grandchildren will, by the actions of this Congress, live in a very different, very costly America.

The Democrats in Congress and the present occupant of the White House, by their actions, must hate America. They pose the greatest threat to its future that has ever existed in our history.

Call, write, fax, and email your representatives in Congress. Let them know you will not stand by idly as they destroy America.

When Government Goes Insane

By Alan Caruba

I have this theory that every so often governments go insane. Usually they have someone who is already demented heading up the government, but it takes a majority of the elected body to enact crazy laws and it takes the government apparatchiks to engineer the systemic failures, the wars, and the crazed rush off the cliff.

The election of 2008 is a splendid example of this. The majority of voters elected a man with the thinnest possible resume for the job of President. Indeed, the man has refused to release his birth records to reassure voters he met the minimum, Constitutional standards for the job. The man, however, was a skilled orator, able to give voice to the TelePrompter speeches written for him by master manipulators.

Promising “change”, promising a government free of “lobbyists”, promising “transparency”, and generally promising a new dawn of enlightened government, Barack Obama and his majority in Congress arrived on January 20, 2009 and promptly began to bankrupt the nation, deprive Americans of access to its vast energy resources, and seek to impose an insane law predicated on the belief that carbon dioxide, vital to all life on Earth, was a “pollutant” that had to be reduced and, of course, heavily taxed.

Capping all this madness was a naïve effort to establish improved relations with the spawning ground for terrorism around the world, the Middle East. He is determined to change the fanaticism that have spawned Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, the Taliban, and decades of Islamofascist terrorism from Bali to London, Manhattan and Madrid, to Mumbai.

And it has taken barely four months to get to this point.

In the President’s own words during a C-Span interview, “We’re out of money.”

A recent Cato Institute Tax & Budget Bulletin by Chris Edwards, its director of tax policy studies, spells it out.

“Federal spending is growing by leaps and bounds,” wrote Edwards. “The budget hit $3.9 trillion this year, double the level of spending just eight years ago.”

“The government is also increasing the scope of its activities, intervening in many areas that used to be left to state and local governments, businesses, charities, and individuals.”

To clarify what is occurring, it is necessary to know that the U.S. Constitution expressly forbids the government from bailing out individuals or private industry. Such bailouts violate the Equal Protection doctrine that forbids the government from selecting who shall receive the bailout and who shall not.

Moreover, it violates the General Welfare clause because such bailouts benefit a small group and not the general public. Finally, it violates that Due Process Clause because it interferes with contracts that have already been entered into and, lastly, they turn the public treasury into a public trough.

This new administration, however, has given the union virtual ownership of Chrysler and is likely to do the same with General Motors if the courts do not intervene. The losers are those who lent money to them under contractual terms that put them first in line to be compensated, but who have been left out in the cold along with their fiduciary responsibilities to their investors.

“In recent years,” wrote Edwards, “the range of federal control over society has widened as politicians of both parties have supported nationalizing many formerly state, local, and private activities.” This has led States in particular to spend well beyond the taxes they collected because they counted on the federal redistribution of funds to make up the difference. In the process, they gave up control over their education, healthcare, and transportation systems to name a few.

Edwards cited the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance, a 2,205-page official compilation of all federal aid or subsidy programs, including grants, loans, insurance, scholarships, and other types of benefits.

“There has been a large increase in the number of agricultural programs due to bloated farm bills passed in 2002 and 2008. There have also been large increases in the number of homeland security and justice programs, which subsidize local activities such as firefighting and policing. While those are important activities,” said Edwards, “it would be more efficient if they were funded locally because Congress often steers such funds to projects of dubious quality and little national security relevance.”

The Founding Fathers fashioned a central, federal government with specific limitations on what it could or could not do. Most of these have been violated since the last century’s increasing governmental intrusion and acquisition of centralized power.

“It is very sad that a nation founded on individualism and limited government,” wrote Edwards, “has more people than ever suckling at the federal subsidy teat.”

“President Barack Obama has proposed a wide range of new subsidies in energy, health care, and other areas. If enacted, they would take America further away from the individual reliance, voluntary charity, and entrepreneurialism that made it so prosperous in the first place.”

We should not be living in an America where the unions own the corporations, where the banks are not free to determine their own prudent loan principles, where local schools are governed from Washington, D.C., where the kind and size of automobile you drive is decided upon by politicians and bureaucrats, and where we are denied the energy we need based on false accusations about “dirty” fuels that are, in fact, the life’s blood of the economy.

Much of what the government is doing and proposing to do is patently insane. It is most surely unconstitutional.

Visit the official site of the July 4th “Tea Parties” that will be held to protest what is being done to our nation at http://www.teapartyday.com/.

Tax Day, Tea Party Day

By Alan Caruba

Growing up as the son of a Certified Public Accountant and, later, as the brother of a CPA, the talk around the dinner table was frequently about taxes and the Internal Revenue Service. Being quite young at the time, the minutia of the discussion escaped me, but I came away with a strong sense of how the IRS could wreak havoc in the lives and enterprises of clients who had run afoul of its impenetrable regulations.

These days the Tax Code of the United States is so huge and being added to on a daily basis that it is impossible for anyone to understand, but one need only understand that those like the current Secretary of the Treasury and other appointees of the Obama administration understood the need to avoid paying the full amount of what was due until or unless they were caught.

Cheating on one’s taxes has achieved a perverse patriotic status given the way the federal government redistributes the revenue via a Congress that exists only to pass multi-billion dollar spending bills with thousands of “earmarks” that are intended to ensure their reelection in their districts or states.

Moreover, the federal government has completely ignored the U.S. Constitution that forbids “bailouts” that disburse funds from the public treasury to private enterprises.

James Dale Davidson of the National Taxpayers Union and the author of several books on the way the government both collects and disburses tax revenue said “The politicians don’t just want your money. They want your soul. They want you to be worn down by taxes until you are dependent and helpless. When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both.”

The present financial crisis is based entirely on government mandates that required banks and mortgage firms to make bad home loans to people who would, in a previous era, never have qualified to receive them and then used government sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to purchase those bad loans.

They, in turn, “securitized” them and sold them to insurance, banking and investment houses that fell victim to what is arguably an insane policy based entirely on the liberal belief that everyone has “a right” to live in their own home even if they could not afford it.

Americans gathered in the hundreds of thousands from coast to coast on April 15, the day taxes are due, to protest not just the manner in which the financial crisis was brought about, but to protest the present plans of the Obama administration to carry out the warning Davidson issued.

“Tea Parties” are named for the best known tax protest in pre-Revolutionary, colonial America against those imposed by England, demanding “No taxation without representation.”

The harsh reality of our present times is that Americans have no representation in either Congress or the White House.

The will of the people is being trampled upon by extreme left-wing ideologues that ginned up and then used the fatigue and disapproval of enough Americans for the previous Bush administration to acquire power.

Forgotten amidst this is the fact that many conservatives protested the Bush initiatives ranging from No Child Left Behind to a proposed amnesty for illegal aliens, to the failure of the former President to veto any spending bill for six of the eight years he held the office.

We have arrived at a point where citizens must organize and gather in meetings around the nation to demand to be heard. My fear, however, is that the Democrat controlled Congress and, most certainly, President Obama has no intention to listen or respond to the will of the people.

Driven by the belief that the federal government alone knows best and aided by the way the individual, sovereign powers of the states has been steadily eroded by federal programs that can threaten to withhold funding vital to their needs, the liberals in charge know they must impoverish Americans in order to make them entirely dependent on the central government.

It is no accident, as commentator Paul Driessen points out, that that the current indebtedness imposed on Americans through spending and taxation “is more accrued debt than 43 previous administrations combined, and it doesn’t include the cost of servicing this debt or the U.S. share of the $1.1 trillion ‘global stimulus’ devised by the Group of 20, to be administered by professional spenders at the International Monetary Fund.”

Looming in the near future is a “climate change” bill that would impose a “cap and trade” government auction of “carbon credits” that U.S. industries and businesses would be required to purchase. Every business enterprise would have to spend millions to acquire these credits in order to use energy to produce the goods that constitute the wealth they generate for investors, employees, and the economy in general. The cost of these credits would be passed onto consumers.

There is no “climate change” crisis that can or should be addressed by the U.S. government. The Earth is not warming. It has, for a decade, been cooling. This is due in part from reduced solar activity in the form of cyclical reductions in magnetic storms known as sunspots.

The alleged “global warming” has been exposed as a huge hoax perpetrated on an international basis to enrich the United Nations while positioning it to become a global government.

The Obama administration is engaged in a vast effort to deny the expansion and development of the energy sources America needs as its population increases and it is doing so under the false flag of “climate change.”

No amount of “clean energy”, solar and wind, will ever substitute for oil, natural gas, and coal. Vast reserves of these energy sources exist and it is the U.S. government that refuses to permit access to them. So-called clean energy constitutes barely one percent of the energy used by the nation.

The debt imposed by Obama administration initiatives is deliberate. It cannot be blamed on the previous Bush administration.

The lies being told daily by President Obama and the collusion of Democrats controlling the Congress are the single greatest danger facing the nation.

One can only hope that the Tea Parties held on Tax Day mark a massive push-back against a plot to impose an unconstitutional and un-American effort to render Americans too poor, too dependent, too weary to fight back.

The future of the United States of America literally hangs in the balance.