There is great turmoil in the land as Obama’s second term begins

By James H. Shott

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) last week insisted that "we are in a recovery," and blasted Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for disparaging the economy's performance. The drop in GDP in the 4th quarter is the Republicans fault, he said, citing their austerity and brinkmanship. “Growth went down in the fourth quarter because of reduced government spending,” he said. “The economy was rejecting the austerity and brinkmanship.”

Well, if Sen. Reid is correct and the economy is recovering, things must be better than when President Barack Obama took office prior to the recession ending. Let's take a look.

On the positive side, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is bumping up against its all-time high mark of 14,164, and has regained the losses from the financial crisis.

However, since January of 2009 until just before the election last November the number of long-term unemployed had risen from 2.7 million to 4.8 million; the price of gasoline had more than doubled; there were 40 states with high unemployment compared to 22 in 2009; median household income was down 7 percent; mortgage delinquencies were up by 60 percent; the Misery Index was up 25 percent; and the National Debt had increased by 53 percent.

Today there are 1.2 million fewer jobs in America than there were then, and the number of Americans on food stamps has increased from 32 million to 46 million. The amount of money that the federal government gives directly to Americans has increased by 32 percent since 2009.

And the most recent economic news in addition to the news that for the first time since 2009 the U.S. GDP was in negative territory in the 4th quarter is that consumer confidence plunged in January to its lowest level in a year, and the unemployment rate rose to 7.9 percent for January.

Is this what Sen. Reid thinks a recovery looks like?

Actually, this is what happened to the economy because Barack Obama avoided dealing with the things that really needed attention – the economy, jobs, energy independence, etc.  – and instead wasted all of his four years playing with less-critical issues like health care, killing the coal industry, sending guns to Mexican drug dealers, wasting billions on a failed economic stimulus, and flushing money down the green energy toilet.

As the president's second term begins it is remarkable to observe the high degree of outright revolt among the states and the people over government actions and proposed actions under Mr. Obama's watch, highlighted by the feeling of a majority of Americans in a new poll that the federal government threatens their personal rights and freedoms. Fifty-three percent of 1,502 adults surveyed from January 9-13 by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press responded that government is now a threat to their freedom.

Twenty-seven states are balking over the Affordable Care Act on constitutionality and budgetary grounds, and have sued the government. Provisions of the law threaten to blow states' Medicaid expenses through the roof.

Forty-three Catholic groups have sued the government on religious freedom grounds. The Affordable Care Act forces them to provide services to their employees that violate their religious tenets, in contravention of the 1st Amendment's protection of religious freedom.

And perhaps worse, as the details of what was in the bill that no one read before voting on it leak out, we are learning of taxes and increased costs. The measure requires Americans to buy health insurance or pay a penalty to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and the IRS tells us the cheapest plan will cost a family $20,000 a year.

“We found that about three quarters of again, whatever you want to call them — taxes, fines, penalties — about three quarters of those costs will fall on the backs of those who make less than $120,000 a year. It’s a big punch in the stomach to middle class families," economist Steven Moore of The Wall Street Journal said. This is what passes for "affordable" to Democrat leaders.

A more serious revolt against federal initiatives results from talk of imposing a ban on assault weapons. A number of county sheriffs are refusing to assist the feds on banned weapons initiatives from the administration and Congress on constitutional grounds, should a weapons ban be put into effect. Many law enforcement officials have written letters expressing their positions on proposed bans, and one county sheriff noted that not only does every sheriff takes an oath to "preserve, protect and defend" the Constitution, but federal agents also take that oath, and he believes they won't enforce the bans, either.

Despite the unintended consequences of the Affordable Care Act that punishes those it was supposed to help, and the brewing constitutional crisis over banning weapons instead of addressing the root cause of mass killings, the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats go merrily along, trampling on whoever and whatever gets in their way.

We expect our government to be responsive to our wishes, and the unprecedented level of opposition to these two issues ought to command the attention of those in leadership positions, and cause them to re-evaluate the unpopular course they are following.

Cross-posted from Observations

All pain and no gain: Manic regulation kills jobs, produces no benefits

Commentary by James H. Shott

In March of this year the federal Energy Information Administration (EIA) released data showing that in 2011 coal was responsible for 42 percent of U.S. power production, a little lower than years past, but coal still is the most commonly used fuel in producing domestic electricity. 

Burning coal is dirty, but it is cleaner today than any time in the last 60 years. And mining coal is risky for workers, but so is commercial fishing, logging, flying airplanes, and farming/ranching, the four most dangerous occupations in the country. Yes, coal has its negatives, but so does every one of the energy sources suggested to replace it. 

On the plus side, coal not only produces energy, it produces direct and indirect employment for hundreds of thousands of Americans, and billions in tax revenue from its production and sale, and from the income of industry businesses and workers. 

Coal generates electricity in 48 states and is mined in 25 states. According to the National Mining Association (NMA) U.S. coal mining directly employs nearly 136,000 people, and the average coal miner earns $73,000 per year. 

For each coal mining job, an additional 3.5 jobs are created elsewhere in the economy. For example, 60,000 people work in coal-fired power plants, and thousands more work in the transportation industry delivering coal to customers. The NMA estimates that 50,000 new employees will be needed in coal mining over the next 10 years to meet demand and to replace retiring workers. And, coal is projected to be the dominant fuel for electricity generation in the U.S. through 2035, according to the EIA. 

This information ought to be seriously considered when the vast army of government regulators is hard at work making life more expensive, but not necessarily better. It was clearly ignored when the Environmental Protection Agency developed the Utility MACT Rule, which establishes the maximum achievable control technology (MACT) standards for emissions of hazardous air pollutants from coal- and oil-fired power plants. Primarily, Utility MACT targets mercury emissions. 

You remember mercury. It’s the poison contained in every one of the new miracle light bulbs, called CFLs, which Congress mandated to replace the popular, inexpensive and safe incandescent bulbs we have used for decades. It is also released by coal combustion and the EPA fears it will settle into water supplies and cause birth defects when consumed by pregnant women. 

The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) recently commented on a study by the Competitive Enterprise Institute that disputes the EPA’s data. “The EPA's December 2000 determination that triggered the rule assumed that 7 percent of pregnant women in the United States have blood mercury concentrations exceeding the agency's reference dose. In reality, only 0.4 percent (one in every 250 pregnant women) had blood mercury levels exceeding the reference dose.” 

“Furthermore, the EPA's reference dose is overly cautious: the EPA's reference dose is 1/15th the lowest exposure level associated with mild, subclinical effects in epidemiological studies,” the NCPA reports. “Finally, the EPA produces no evidence of mercury exposure at these levels having any effect on unborn children.” 

The report also says “EPA estimates that each year 240,000 pregnant women in subsistence fishing households eat enough self-caught fish to endanger their children's cognitive or neurological health, yet the agency has yet to identify a single woman who fits this description.” 

The EPA justifies implementing this rule by claiming that the public health benefits of limiting coal burning will be greater than the compliance costs. It claims the Rule will save $80 billion a year, but relies on achieving levels of particulate matter discharge well beyond levels generally recognized as safe. 

Furthermore, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission projects the Rule will result in losing 81,000 megawatts of electricity generation, almost eight times the EPA’s estimate. 

American coal plants are vastly cleaner than those in other countries, where pollution control is virtually non-existent. China now emits more mercury than the United States, India, and Europe combined, and mercury pollution wafts across the Pacific to foul our air and water. The EPA would better serve Americans if it regulated China’s coal burning. 

Americans for Prosperity predicts American families and businesses will see electricity bills rise by an average of 12 percent nationwide and by as much as 24 percent in coal country, and this “burdensome regulation” will destroy over a million American jobs in the coming years. 

The U.S. Senate had the opportunity last Wednesday to put a halt to this anti-coal, anti-common-sense scheme, but failed by a 53-46 vote. Incomprehensibly, two coal-state senators, West Virginia Democrat Jay Rockefeller and Tennessee Republican Lamar Alexander, voted against the measure, along with four other Republicans. Clearly, Senators Rockefeller and Alexander have failed their constituents and their states. 

The EPA grossly overstated the dangers of mercury from burning fossil fuels and grossly understated the harmful effects of Utility MACT on the public. These folks will not be satisfied until every detectable particle of every substance that at some level of concentration might be harmful to something or someone is eliminated from the Earth, and they are eager to force job losses and higher consumer costs on us trying to achieve that impossible goal.

Cross-posted from Observations

More business-like habits in Washington might rescue the country

Commentary by James H. Shott 

Some Americans fully understand the potentially cataclysmic economic situation facing the country. They are not the ones we have to worry about.

Who we have to worry about are the ones – the millions – that either do not fully comprehend the problem, or have some level of understanding and either are unconcerned about the problem, are using it to their advantage, or have no idea what to do about it. Many of the people in this group hold positions in the federal government, and are responsible for creating the crisis and/or perpetuating it and making it worse.

While government and business are distinctly different creatures, there are aspects of sound business operation that belong in the Federal Government Operators Manual, and Chapter I is “Fiscal Responsibility.”

The Prime Directive, derived from the U.S. Constitution, is a simple one: Government must remain small with limited scope and interfere minimally in the lives of the citizens it exists to serve. It must be a good steward of the people’s finances, taxing minimally and spending frugally.

If such a manual existed and if it had the force of law, many politicians and bureaucrats would have been jailed or fired for their part in creating a crisis that more and more resembles to a frightening degree what now threatens socialist Europe.

The situation is this: The U.S. has borrowed debt amounting to $50,000 for every citizen in the country totaling nearly $16 trillion. Despite this enormous and growing debt, in most years the federal government willfully spends more than it takes in, averaging deficits of $1.3 trillion annually since 2009, which is approximately 40 percent more than revenue, and has increased the national debt by about a third.

To say it is foolish and risky to have done this for years on end produces one of those “well, duh!” moments.
Yet, that is what we have done, and continue to do.

Those Americans more concerned with the fate of the nation than with their own political well-being know that we cannot continue on this course.

There are three options to correct this crisis: Reduce spending; increase revenue; or a combination of both. The latter is the best option.

Some people advocate deeply cutting the out-of-control and frequently wasteful and fraudulent spending. These people are responsible citizens and conscientious public servants. They are accused of wanting to throw people out on the street, take food from babies, and other equally cartoonish slurs by those who want to maintain the status quo, people who a) benefit from wasting your tax dollars or b) benefit from government misspending.

Government taxation and spending is where common business practice should be applied: what would a business with costs 40 percent higher than its income do? Unlike government, which can – but shouldn’t – print money at will, if it wants to survive, a business must have more income than spending. Government should have a balance of the two.

One of the first things a business would do is cut non-essential expense. Here, the federal government has a vast array of opportunities: combine the dozens of wasteful duplicated services, reduce employee expense through attrition; fire unproductive and self-serving federal workers, and take the virtually unprecedented step of shutting down programs that do not work. Like Head Start, a true tribute to government inefficiency that a Department of Health and Human Services study found has wasted $150 billion since 1965, but produces no lasting benefits for participants.

 It could scale back the frenzied regulatory efforts of the EPA and other agencies that spend our money killing jobs, raising costs for businesses and consumers, but produce negligible improvements, or do more harm than good. It could stop agencies like the GSA from robbing taxpayers to fund lavish get-togethers posing as training activities, and stop giving away the public’s money on dumb ideas like the half-billion President Barack Obama “loaned” to the failed solar company Solyndra, and other self-defeating assaults on the private sector. It could sell the 14,000 federally owned real estate properties that now sit empty and unproductive.

The government could give up its predatory attitude toward businesses and the wealthy in its futile effort to increase government revenue, and the politicians could replace their efforts to gin up class envy with practical steps that would foster job creation, thereby broadening the tax base and actually increasing tax revenue.

The idea of raising taxes on rich folks might cause some people to get all tingly, but it won’t make a significant difference in balancing out the treacherous over-spending in which the federal government continues to indulge.

Federal government fiscal negligence predates Mr. Obama’s presidency by many years, but the sign that proclaims “The Buck Stops Here” is on the desk he campaigned so aggressively to earn in 2008, and before he asks a single American to pay a penny more in taxes to support a bloated bureaucracy or higher costs resulting from excessive regulation, he needs to get his administration under control. Some or perhaps most of the ideologues now running the administration are not up to the task, but the country has lots of capable people outside government that can do the job.

Cross-posted from Observations

A Taste of American Socialism

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

Now that America has had a taste of socialism – American style—How do you like it?

Mr. Obama and his henchman have done a wonderful job, in just two and a half years, to “fundamentally change” America – JUST AS HE PROMISED.

America is now very close to, and is certainly becoming,  a third-world nation.

 

Our economy is gone.  Our money is virtually worthless.  Thousands upon thousands more Americans are on the government dole.  Unemployed Americans make-up some 9 to 10 percent of our workforce.  Our government is crumbling under its own weight.  Protesters are in the streets taking advantage of a weakened America to demand such things as a guaranteed government stipend for every American… WITHOUT HAVING TO WORK, AT ALL.  I’m just hitting the high spots here.  The socialist rot goes much, much, deeper.

Those of us alive today are witnessing just how quickly socialism can terminate a country as healthy as the USA.  It is a vicious, viral, form of national cancer. And it has America practically on her knees.

A couple of years ago, I wrote the following: 

“You must forgive me if I get a bit wound-up when socialism is the topic.  I have watched that “destroyer of nations” reap its harvest for many, many, decades. It is, in my opinion, the greatest threat to democracy on the planet.  I see socialism as presenting an even greater threat than the Islamofacist terrorists!  I will never be comfortable with a socialist government in America.  We can argue “degrees” of socialism all day and it won’t matter.  As the expression goes: “a little leaven leavens the whole loaf.”

I think it is pure irony that now, as a “near” socialist nation, America can celebrate an event named “Independence Day” with a straight face! 

 Today, Americans are anything but independent!  We are fat, lazy, and dependent on our new “near” socialist government for far too much.  There is very little “independent” about Americans today.  In just a few months of the Obama regime we have gone from “King of the Hill” to just another member of the “Mediocrity Mob” of nations.

 I know this is difficult to swallow.  You can’t know how much pain it caused me to write these words.  I have stood on the ground where the Wright brothers took their first flight launching America into the space age.  They had no idea that their short flight would end up taking man to the stars, but of course, it did.   I have trod the ground from which our astronauts blasted off to land and walk upon the surface of the moon.  I have witnessed America claw her way to the top through sheer willpower and determination to be the best.  And now, as I approach the autumn of my life, I am watching the decline and fall of that same America.  Do you really think I don’t feel a tremendous amount of pain? I think I must now know what the ancient Romans felt as they watched the greatest civilization in history, to that day, decline, crumble, and fall in ruins around them.

 “Oh,” but you say, “… Socialism is the only way to go.  Everyone will be equal!  No classes, no class warfare…” and such.

 Well, let us see if we can break it down so that even those of you in love with the “cancer of nations,” socialism, can understand it.

 The story is told of an economics professor at a small college who made a statement that he had never failed a single student before but had once failed an entire class.

That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan.” All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.

The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.  

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less, and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride, too, so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.  

All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. 

 

Socialism will bring the end to private enterprise. Just think: under socialism there would be no small businesses, none of those Mom and Pop stores with which we are so familiar in America.  There would be no entrepreneurs. Socialism calls for the redistribution of wealth. Broken down, that simply means taking the money you earned and giving it to those you feel did not earn it. Socialism demands that all wealth in a nation, and that includes yours, will be controlled by the government. In other words, you will own nothing --- not even your own money. The government owns everything and everyone is given only what it takes for that person to survive. Socialism celebrates the lack of an upper class and a lower class. Under socialism there is only one class. And in THAT class all people suffer equally.”

I went on in that 2009 article to note how difficult freedom is: 

 “Americans have made an awful decision.  They have decided to give up.  Freedom is just too hard.  It requires entirely too much work and effort on the part of the individual. It is much easier to sit back, relax, and allow the government to take care of us.  Look, folks, birds locked in a golden cage are just as much a prisoner as those locked in a rusty old quarter-inch mesh wire cage.  A prison is a prison and man is quite capable of creating his own.”

Freedom is hard.  I believe that modern Americans are so far removed from the blood, sweat, and tears that winning America’s freedom cost – plus the energy, dedication, determination, and sacrifice spent to preserve that freedom that we simply do not value it, as a nation, anymore.  The evidence is overwhelming that this observation is true.

America is on the cusp of complete collapse in everyway.  Anarchy stands at the threshold -- leaning forward.

 

In 2008 American elected a savior and, only after it was too late, discovered we had elected a “false prophet.”

Socialism is a lie spawned by the “father of lies.”

Americans, unwilling to exert the labor, the energy, the sacrifice, and yes, when necessary, their bloods and even their lives, have willingly embraced the death of our nation. We have chosen to place no value on anything except our own personal comfort.  And it is killing America.

 I would remind my readers of the old proverb that proclaims that Satan’s greatest trick is convincing mankind that he doesn’t exist. It may be HIS best trick -- but it doesn’t hold a candle to the trick socialism has played on America.

J. D. Longstreet