Riley^®

Not surprisingly, Osama bin Laden was nailed through information gained from interrogating terrorists. It led to a trusted associate of the world’s most wanted terrorist. From there, finding bin Laden was a matter of locating that individual and tracking him to al Qaeda’s leader. It took years to get the job done because of the elaborate security procedures that protected bin Laden. But, last Sunday, Osama got his. Good riddance to the man mislabeled a mastermind for pulling off 9/11. It just isn’t that hard to figure out how to murder unarmed civilians.

The interrogation techniques used to gather the information leading to bin Laden’s demise have been intensely criticized for several years. These harangues are almost as voluminous as the write-ups on 9/11 and fall into two categories: the techniques are inhumane and, my personal favorite, they don’t yield desired results.

Both of these arguments are tortured. Interrogation techniques are, by design, stressful and painful. They’re a type of heavy-handed negotiation: we’ll stop the pain if you tell us what you know. That being said, methods resulting in death and broken bones are definite no-no’s. Inflicting severe physical and mental suffering is frowned upon. But, severity is a function of duration as well as degree and varies by method.

For example, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the terrorists who named the trusted associate, was allegedly waterboarded 183 times. Obviously, something that repeatable isn’t damaging. It is very nasty, as it simulates drowning, but that is the whole point. No pain, no gain.

As for tough interrogation not providing reliable information, of course it does. Certainly, the interrogation of a single individual may not yield the truth for a number of reasons. But, when several people at different times provide the same information during interrogation, it’s a pretty safe bet they’re telling the truth. That’s what happened here.  Osama’s most trusted courier was identified from statements given by assorted terrorists undergoing painful interrogation, including waterboarding. Three cheers for that.

The anti-interrogation proponents, such as those cited above, claim the techniques actually elicit false information from those interrogated. Apparently, the methods they describe are not what our armed forces and intelligence agencies use because our guys got the truth.

The final piece of the puzzle was pinpointing bin Laden’s exact location. Why was U.S. intelligence so confident he was in the courier’s Pakistani compound? Turns out, Osama was betrayed by the same tell that gives politicians away: an exaggerated attempt to cover up what they want hidden.

The truth of a situation is often learned from elaborate efforts to conceal it. The denial becomes so overblown that, rather than obscuring reality, it points to it like a flashing neon sign. In our search for bin Laden, the Abbottabad compound was the flashing sign. The security around and in it was so tight, and so out of proportion to the neighborhood, that something was very clearly amiss.

The entertaining, if entirely expected, fall-out from bin Laden’s death are the conspiracy theories springing up like flowers in April. Such as, he’s still alive and well since, not only is there no body, we cooked up a too elaborate excuse to explain why not. Or, he was killed, not because he resisted, but because Obama didn’t want the embarrassment of Eric Holder fighting for yet another civilian trial. Or, Osama’s body was flown to DC for scientific study into the psychopathology of cowardice.

I’m partial to the last one. It would shed some light on the behavior of our spending-crazed politicians, too.

See you in the mirror.

Last Wednesday, President Obama took another stab at talking about the debt and what he plans to do about it. The next day, he kicked off his re-election campaign in Chicago. The timing of the two events was not coincidental and that’s unfortunate. It’s past time for this President to take the debt seriously instead of using it as a prop for his political ambition. Nothing makes that clearer than Standard & Poor’s downgrading its outlook on U.S. Treasury securities from stable to negative because of the debt crisis.

Obama’s speech was just another pitch to his base, reminding them that they all need to stick together through the 2012 election. And they loved it. Self-styled liberals gave the President high marks for defending the modern social welfare state. They praised his promise to end “unnecessary and wasteful tax-giveaways to the wealthy”. They delighted in his commitment to expand government spending.

Obama’s play to keep his base in line is a gamble the rest of us can’t afford. No viable economic model sustains his plan for debt reduction. The big revenue source in his proposal is, of course, increasing taxes on the rich. Today, he defines them as the top 2% of wage earners, couples making more than $250,000 annually. Effective in 2013, Obama would increase their tax rate by 4.6%. Typical of political posturing, the planned tax hike harms both the targeted taxpayers and the economy, while having no budgetary upside. It is simply pain without gain.

In 2008, the latest year for which figures are available, the top 2% paid $477 billion in taxes. Even tripling that liability would not zero out this year’s $1.6 trillion deficit, let alone touch the $14 trillion national debt. Obama’s tax line in the sand, rather than having any fiscal benefit, is just a touch of class warfare to get the re-election juices flowing.

Really balancing the budget by raising taxes requires significant rate hikes for all taxpayers not just the top wage earners. The top tier rate would go up from 35 to 88 percent. The middle tier would increase from 25 to 63 percent. And the lowest level would rise from 10 to 25 percent. This ugly truth underscores the fact that spending cuts, not tax increases, are the weapons necessary to slay the debt dragon.

The debt is intertwined with other bad economic news all of which makes Obama’s bid for re-election more of a crapshoot. The March unemployment rate stood at a very unhealthy 8.8%, relatively unchanged from the previous month and still well above Obama’s once promised limit. He’s not very good at forecasting favorable economic times or keeping a lid on bad ones.

A related issue is GDP growth. In order to make substantial improvements in the unemployment rate, it has to be sustained at more than 3% for several consecutive quarters. But, the last time we saw that happen the White House was barely a twinkle in Obama’s eye. Worse, predictions for this year’s first quarter GDP growth now fall in the 1.5 – 2.0% range, well below the 2.9% rate in 2010’s fourth quarter.

The reasons for the downturn are several: higher commodity prices, rising energy costs, weak durable-goods orders, a still bleak housing industry, flat wages, increased consumer savings, tightening fiscal policy, and reduced credit availability. So much for the staying power of 2009’s debt-ridden stimulus program, heralded by our President as the answer to our fiscal problems.

What should Obama be doing instead of politicizing the debt in order to rally his political base? He should be making the difficult choices that our current fiscal horror show requires. Like it or not, this means Ryan-deep spending cuts. We’ve suffered through more than two years of the President’s political pandering and social engineering. He should give capitalism at least the same amount of time to get us back on our feet. Refusing that play is a sucker’s bet.

See you in the mirror.

On a Sunday news show last weekend, one of the regulars was criticizing the Republicans’ 2012 budget proposal before it was even released. His gripe was that it doesn’t raise taxes on the “rich”. Of course, it doesn’t raise taxes on anyone, but that wasn’t his complaint. The guy thinks the rich, whoever they are because he didn’t throw out a figure, have to pay more because they’re not paying enough. As far as he’s concerned, they never pay enough.

Wow, really? Here’s a better idea. Before we force fit pieces of our fiscal jigsaw puzzle together, let’s take a look at the picture on the box. What are we supposed to be assembling? So far, our two political sides haven’t figured that out. They’re focused on different actions, if they have an action plan at all, rather than addressing the basic question. They’re both concentrating, sort of, on the debt, which is beginning to sound the death knell for our economy. But, that staggering load is just a symptom of what’s wrong. If we manage to get by it this time, what then?

To weather the current storm, Dems insist on raising taxes while the GOP’s weapon of choice is the axe. Which one is right depends on whether we’re taxing too little or spending too much. Was the news guy just being a liberal knee jerk or do the feds actually need more revenue? The answer lies in the purpose of the federal government. The picture on the outside of the puzzle box is of government as it’s supposed to be. That picture should determine the actions we take today and everyday.

In our federal tax history, government spending has driven the tax burden, not the other way around. We’ve never tried to figure out what a fair tax is and spend according to the revenue it generates. Instead, spending is the whip that makes the tax horse run. Unfortunately, for generations, federal spending has been motivated by political gain for one party or the other. Rather than a disciplined exercise with the big picture in mind, it has become a hodge-podge of mainly welfare handouts. That tactic, which we’ve come to accept as the norm, serves politicians well. But, it has brought us to the brink of financial ruin.

So, what should the federal government be doing? Here are some choices:

– According to the White House website, government exists to enact the will of the people.

– According to a basic liberal tenet, government takes care of people.

– According to me, government supplies a few common services that the states can’t provide as well.

We all know the will of the people thing isn’t right. Back in the day, the people’s will was used to deny rights to large groups of citizens. After quite a while, the courts stopped that nonsense. But, the majority is perfectly capable of making bad choices again. Then there’s today. The “will of the people” has become a pat phrase politicians use to impose their will on the people.

As for taking care of people, Uncle Sam makes a pretty scary nanny with those long legs, the scraggily beard and bony, pointing fingers. That’s because the Constitution, which provides for equal rights and equal protection, is not about making people equal. As far as the feds go, people are assured equal opportunities, not equal results. It’s up to them, as individuals, to make something of themselves. And if they don’t, that’s on them, too.

So, what’s the federal government about? It’s about providing a common defense, facilitating interstate trade, enforcing Constitutional rights and not much else. The massive federal welfare programs should simply end. Make the states responsible for their own residents. Let them be like Massachusetts with its big social programs and high tax rate. Or they can be among the many that are trying to claw their way out of the money pit.

Either way, we stop the nasty practice of burdening the responsible with the foolishness of the irresponsible. Isn’t that a nice picture?

See you in the mirror.

Pretty much everyone in this Country knows the U.S. takes a dim view of child labor. Our Fair Labor Standards Act prohibits the employment of children under the age of 16 in jobs that endanger their health and safety. The number of hours they can work is restricted as is the list of occupations they may undertake. A primary reason for the protection of the young is to preserve their academic opportunities, which, for most, exist in our unionized public education system.

But, rather than safeguarding the educational options of our children, teachers unions are slowly dismantling them. In their perpetual power–grabbing brawl with the world, unions are forcing children to labor in classrooms under conditions that endanger their scholarly lives. How about that for a violation of the FLSA?

The problem is that teaching and teachers unions mix like oil and water. The goals of teaching are centered on the advancement of students, both academically and in life in general. The focus of teachers unions is on the advancement of the unions. This means pushing teacher benefits ever higher while stonewalling performance evaluations, overlooking declining student achievements and advocating watered-down curricula. It even calls illegal “work stoppages” during the school year.

In 2009, the National Education Association, the largest teachers union in the Country, published a report on teacher evaluation methods. The report begins by acknowledging the shortcomings of current evaluation practices. It notes that, using those methods, a whopping 90% of teachers are rated as top performers while only a tiny percentage are unsatisfactory. It also points out that the current system allows underperforming teachers to remain in the workforce while denying an upward career path based on excellence. The report goes on to review several ‘promising’ teacher evaluation models and the criteria by which to judge them.

Unfortunately, the first NEA requirement for the acceptance of any performance evaluation method is teacher buy-in. The union fails to see the irony in requiring the approval of those who are overrated or failing to discharge their duties. There’s nothing like allowing underperformers to set the standards by which they will be judged.

While the unions push back against meaningful teacher evaluations, our students continue to trail children from other countries in international assessment tests. In the latest results, American kids rank 14^th in reading, 17^th in science and 25^th in math out of 34 countries. And the decline has been going on for years, as teachers unions continue to strengthen.

Unions blame the lack of performance on underfunded schools. And money is one of the issues, thanks mainly to the teachers unions. Teachers salaries are 40% of a school’s operating budget, which denies funds for other educational sources. Additionally, the outcome of union bargaining boosts the cost of public education by 15%. Is the total cost worth it? Not if the measure is student performance. While average students who attend schools in union districts do perform better on standardized tests, low-performing and higher-performing students score worse. Unions, in essence, create black holes of mediocracy. No wonder U.S. students perform poorly in international competitions.

Because taxpayers view public education as a truly messed up system, some states are fighting back. Florida’s governor is proposing a teacher’s merit pay law. And Connecticut is considering restructuring teacher evaluations. But, progress is piecemeal and slow. Unions are, after all, a powerful political force. They also endlessly complicate the issues. They throw up so many objections to policy changes that the way forward is obscured in a muddy haze.

The best way to clear the air is to get back to basics. Way back, to the days without unions when teachers focused on student achievement, test scores were a lot higher and we were a lot stronger for it.

See you in the mirror.

You’ve seen those post-apocalyptic movies. A complete breakdown of society has occurred, usually from a war of some kind that has wiped out most of the population along with the vegetation. Dingy desert for as far as the eye can see. Straggly, smelly people living in rusted out shacks. Everybody killing each other for little scraps of nothing that has value today. And everybody riding around in vehicles of some kind. Motorcycles with sidecars, big ugly buses, military transports. That kind of thing. And they all run on oil and gas.

What’s wrong with this picture? Is it the apocalypse itself or society’s breakdown or the lack of soap and toothbrushes? No, it’s the plentiful oil and gas because the most likely cause of an apocalypse in the near term is the exhaustion of fossil fuels. And water, of course, but that’s the subject of another blog. The current dramatic rise in prices at the pump has focused public emotion on the energy issue, although it’s never far from the headlines. And we haven’t seen the highest prices yet. The Department of Energy projects that pump prices will continue to rise through this spring and remain high until the end of summer. Prices peaking with vacation time.

The principal solutions for the price squeeze include opening the U.S. oil and gas reserves for production and accelerating the development of alternative fuel sources. How realistic are these ideas? The problem with more oil and gas production is the temporary nature of the relief while hastening the end of a finite supply. As for alternative energy sources, the hard question is whether they will ever produce energy in sufficient quantities to replace fossil fuel.

Despite our best intentions, we just can’t seem to get a grip on the fact that our planet has a limited supply of fossil fuels. The limit is pretty big, but not big enough to meet our growing needs indefinitely unless we’re definitely incinerated by an asteroid along the way. Let’s face it, we consume oil like it will never run out. In 2010, world crude oil consumption grew by the second largest margin in 30 years. The increase wiped out the reduction in use of the preceding two years. Non-OPEC countries, mainly China and Brazil, are escalating their production but by less than 1/10 of the globe’s annual increase in consumption.

How much of today’s energy expenditure can be replaced by alternative sources? Experts disagree, but the calculations are dim. Western economies are based on oil and gas. In no place is that more true that the U.S. Fossil fuels feed not only our individual transportation and home heating appetites, but also sustain our manufacturing centers and our distributed economy. To get a small idea of how distributed the economy is, stroll through your local grocery super store. How many of the products on the shelves are produced locally versus nationally and internationally? Ditto for toy stores, clothing stores, pet food stores, etc. If food, for example, wasn’t shipped via boat or rail, or driven to us, we’d either starve or take up community gardening in a hurry. Even at that, our tables would be missing most of the items we happily chow down today.

Not that we’ve given up on the fossil fuel problem. There are proffered solutions that fall between increased oil production and total reliance on alternative sources. Most are a combination of gas and alternative energy, at least for individual transportation needs. Some suggestions are much more ambitious, like dismantling the current national economy and creating regional economies that serve local needs.

One thing’s for certain. Unless we start making a serious dent in the fossil fuel problem today, there won’t be time tomorrow. Maybe there’s no single answer to the predicament. No “one and done”. Maybe it will take a lot of smaller solutions that attack pieces of the problem and work together to provide the necessary impact. Regardless, we need to keep dogging our leaders until we run a solution to ground. If this kind of persistence is difficult to sustain, just slip a Mad Max disc into the DVD player every now and then. That should keep you focused.

See you in the mirror.

Life for the poor and the working class was probably never as miserable as during the western world’s Industrial Revolution. That great period of history, which turned agrarian societies into mechanized urban centers, also spawned an oppressive poverty. Unskilled workers labored long hours under dangerous conditions with little job security. Housing was horrifying. Disease thrived in the overcrowded, polluted nightmare of daily subsistence. Workers were plentiful making them also dispensable. Women and children were a large part of the workforce because they were cheaper and easier to abuse. For example, by the 1860s, twenty percent of Britain’s laborers were under the age of 15 years. It pretty much sucked being them.

The rise of government reforms and trade unions changed life dramatically for those on the bottom rung of mechanized labor. On our soil, trades had existed since pre-colonial days. But, it was the Industrial Revolution’s creation of the factory-worker environment that gave unions their noblest purpose. And, they did do a great job for their people, at least for a while. Through rough and tumble negotiations, they prevailed upon employers to grant job security where none existed. They secured a livable wage, safe working conditions and post-employment benefits. They’ve also been on the decline for the past fifty years, victims of their own excess and the death grip it has on business survival.

Unless, of course, the union is a public employee union. Those groups thrive precisely because of their excess, which is why they shouldn’t exist at all. They are a pretender in the history of unionized labor; the answer to the IQ test question, “which object is unlike all the others?” Show me a picture of the squalor that a public union cleaned up and I’ll show you a photo-shopped image. And yet, they grow stronger. How strong? Today, too many of our states are wandering in a financial wilderness because of massive unfunded pension liabilities owed to members of powerful public unions.

States got in that mess because public employee unions aren’t unions. They’re very influential lobbies. You-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours powerhouses. When a public employee union sits down to talk turkey with state representatives, a miracle of physics occurs. The table has only one side, and everyone is seated along it. In the private sector, union-management negotiation worked because opposing self-interests pursued a joint goal that benefitted everyone. The union wanted as much as it could get for its people. Managers wanted to keep as much as they could for their business. Both sides desired the competitive success of the company that employed them.

In the public sector, the self-interests of those at the table are coincident rather than opposing. Public employee unions are some of the biggest contributors to political campaigns. When they sit down to talk about wages and benefits, they’re too often talking to the candidates their money elected. In exchange for continued campaign largesse, these representatives of the people give the unions what they want to the point of bankrupting state coffers. The only party left out of this party are the citizens whose interests both sides are supposed to serve.

There’s a lot more at stake in Wisconsin these days than a $3.6 billion shortfall and some collective bargaining rights. Like the governments in the Middle East, public unions across the Country recognize the threat to their existence if even one governor prevails against them. Obama’s “assault on unions” flimflam underscores their mass angst. It’s the fear that their power politics will finally be undone by a focused spotlight on its unbridled greed.

It’s also the best chance in years to unburden ourselves of the bank-breaking greed fest that unions and state reps have wallowed in for decades. Time for some serious taxpayer blowback.

See you in the mirror.