Sidney™

The Mosque-Near-Ground-Zero controversy rages on and is not likely to end anytime soon. The Mosque backers have backed themselves into a corner. The President of the United States is making a sales pitch few are buying. Politicians across the Country, both pro and con, are stoking the fire, some with more ridiculous arguments than others. And some who are just plain ridiculous. Meanwhile, the main concerns of the Country go unanswered. No one knows when it will be over or how it will be resolved. So, rather than predict an end, let’s talk about what the end should be.

The answer, which, by the way, applies to the entire Park51 Center, is no, it should not be built there. Anyway you look at it, right side up, upside down or even sideways, the Center, placed near Ground Zero, is a significant national security concern. Under those circumstances, it shouldn’t be permitted. I know, I know. “National security” has been used a lot in the last few years to get away with even more. But, before you reject it in this case, read on.

For months, Daisy Kahn and her husband, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the determined duo behind the Center, recited the same two motivations for its construction: a gathering place for the Muslim community and a wonderful gesture of cultural détente to America. A gathering place could be built almost anywhere in Lower Manhattan making the current choice inconsequential to the Center’s community purpose. However, spurring cultural détente between Islam and America is much better served by the current location. Or so Daisy repeatedly claims. But, it takes two willing participants to do the détente tango. It doesn’t happen when one of them is being dragged around the floor by the hair, caveman style, which is what’s happening now. With no reasonable possibility for détente, the reason for the location evaporates.

Other justifications for the Center’s location have sprung up. Like, Obama’s freedom of religion claim and Ron Paul’s property rights clarion call. But, we know that our rights, constitutional or otherwise, are not absolute. Not the right to life or the right to liberty, property or even the practice of religion. Superseding interests can exist that justify the restriction of any of these freedoms in particular contexts. The police power of the State exercised as capital punishment, conscription, zoning ordinances, etc., serves to curtail or even deny them under appropriate circumstances. So, asserting a right is just the beginning of the discussion, not the end.

That end here is national security, which compels the Center’s construction at a different place. An Islamic Center located within spitting distance of Ground Zero will be a beacon for radical Muslims. A place to celebrate the fall of the twin towers and an incitement to do more of the same. Feisal, the Center’s primary fundraiser, has spent this century blaming the U.S. for September 11. At the same time, he refuses to denounce Hamas, the Islamic terrorist organization. It is no wonder that Hamas supports the construction of the Center. One of the backers did recently state for the first time that construction funds would not be sought from Iran. However, we have yet to hear the same promise from Feisal who, so far, has been noncommittal.

An even greater encouragement to extremists is the strong support the Center receives from the appeasing mouthpieces among our political leadership. What a boon to terrorists everywhere that the mayor of the devastated City invites them back to party. Then there’s Obama and Nancy Pelosi. In sponsoring Feisal’s goodwill tour of Muslim countries, even our State Department is seen as sanctioning the Center’s location. These trips give him a platform to pitch the Center, among other things. While he’s prohibited from directly soliciting funds, only the stunningly naïve believe his State Department speeches do not have that effect.

Of course, the national security concern may be assuaged in another way. Instead of using part of the Center’s space as a 911 memorial, the backers can rent it to the FBI and all the other interested alphabet agencies. You can bet they’ll be all over it once construction is complete.

When Howard Dean, Newt Gingrich, Harry Reid and Sarah Palin line up on the same side of an issue, believe there’s something to it. The alternative on this one is to join the Obama-Pelosi-Hamas bandwagon. You choose.

See you on the left-side.

In 1913, Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act. All 31 pages of it. Signed into law by Woodrow Wilson, it created the Federal banking structure, including the national bank and the entire Federal Reserve System. In 1935, Franklin Roosevelt signed into law both the National Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Act. They total a combined 107 pages. The Civil Rights Act, inked 29 years later by Lyndon Johnson, came in at 74 pages.

These pieces of legislation represent sweeping changes in their respective areas. Arguably, they are the most important Acts of the 20^th Century. Together, they add up to 212 pages.

Fast forward to 2010 and its comprehensive reforms. Our brand spanking new Obamacare bill is 2,074 pages, or 28 times longer than the Civil Rights Act. The new Finance Reform law breaks the scale at 2,319 pages. It’s 75 times longer than the Federal Reserve Act. And more than 10 times longer than the four seminal pieces of legislation from the past century combined.

This year’s explosion in size of our Federal laws speaks volumes about what’s wrong with our current pack of “leaders”. But, the implications of size alone pale in comparison to the yawning chasm of undefined processes and regulations cutting deep within the voluminous pages. Into this void of uncertainty rides the future of health care and finance in our Country.

How uncertain is it? In creating each law, it’s as if Congress and the President gambled our fate on a single spin of a giant roulette wheel. A straight up bet that the marble will stop in the desired slot. Trouble is, instead of having less than 40 slots, each wheel has thousands of them. We have virtually no chance that the marble will drop in the one labeled, “rational implementation”.

Take Obamacare. Wait. You can’t because you don’t know what it is yet. When Nancy Pelosi crowed that Congress would have to pass it so we could know what was in it, she was being overly optimistic. For example, while the law requires insurance companies to spend a certain percentage of premium dollars on “benefits”, it does not define the term. So, a few heavily lobbied regulators are plugging that hole by picking and choosing from a list of tens of thousands of medical services.

There’s more. Way too much more as it turns out. The Congressional Research Service, Capitol Hill’s independent policy arm, issued a report this month excoriating the unknowable extent of Obamacare’s convoluted bureaucracy. The number of agencies, boards, commissions and panels is impossible to estimate. Attempts to tally them stop at 159, but there’s no certainty in that small of a number. And, the scope of their responsibilities is ill defined and appears to overlap in certain areas.

Even worse, some agencies are empowered to spawn more agencies at their discretion. Raise your hand if you think spontaneous generation of expanding bureaucracy is a good thing. Whether and how many of these entities will be funded is not known. But what is known is that Obamacare is a bungled bureaucratic mess of the highest order. And its mangled mug is the face of our new health care reality. A great big Bronx cheer to the hundreds of politicians who had a hand in spinning that wheel.

And then there’s Finance Reform. Or, as it’s come to be known, the Lobbyist Full Employment Act. In its 2,319 pages, the Act affects every facet of the financial services industry. Yet, it leaves most of the truly difficult decisions to agencies, empowering them to regulate on a scale never before seen. Like Obamacare, the industry will be defined by nameless, faceless bureaucrats unrestrained by public accountability.

The Act leaves to regulators alone the job of formulating 243 new rules of finance conduct. Well, not exactly alone. Since last year, nearly 150 lobbyists registered to work at financial agencies in the executive branch. Many of them are former government employees who will now be lobbying their old colleagues regarding the new rules. So much for Obama’s campaign promise to shut that revolving door.

In science and economics, new theories are tested with vigorous verification and validation methods. Wide ranges of sample inputs churn through simulated models to determine the worth of new ideas. But, when this Congress creates comprehensive reforms, it runs no simulations. It tests none of its assumptions. It just spins a giant wheel. It makes you shutter to think about what’s coming next.

See you on the left-side.

Less than two weeks before his inauguration, Barack Obama stated that only the Government could rescue the American economy. He intended to spend our way out of the Great Recession. Mounting national debt did not give pause for thought, let alone deter. True to his word, Obama’s been on a spending binge unlike anything in our nation’s history.

But, most of it has gone to increase social benefits rather than effectively fight the Recession. The result is a looming economic disaster. Our debt will equal 62% of GDP by the end of this year, a ratio increase of more than 50% since Obama’s inauguration. Increasing debt won’t end with the stroke of midnight on December 31, either. Under his forecasted budgets, the debt-to-GDP ratio will rise to 90% by 2020. That does not include the spiraling cost of Obamacare or the money the Government borrowed from the Social Security fund, which stands virtually depleted.

Shortly after that the economy will be toast and our quality of life mere cinders. We’ll be buried, not just by debt, but by the interest owed on it. So, by continually digging deeper, we’re just Greecing the skids for the jump into economic oblivion without so much as a threadbare parachute.

But, surely, Stimulus spending will fix things. Unfortunately, its sustaining affect on the economy is nil. The proof? GDP is falling quarter by quarter while our persistently high unemployment sets new records. Consumer confidence, and spending, is plummeting. In the face of an economic stall out, Government economists can’t substantiate a long-term benefit commensurate with the Stimulus cost. Or any, actually. The most they can say is, “things would have been worse without it”.  But, temporary up blips in the economic graph are worthless. Even worse is the prospect of double-dip ripping through the economic landscape.

How about the private sector to the rescue? Right now, Obama is sitting on the sector’s back, slowly breaking it with crushing piles of new regulations and higher taxes and fees. And business itself is catching the blame, which is being used as an excuse for still more Government control.

Won’t increasing taxes on the “rich” bail us out? Other than creating income distinctions, all it’s ever done for Federal tax revenue is decrease it. Why? Those highly paid tax attorneys and accountants simply kick into an even higher gear and shift their clients’ money to more obscure shelters. Which also means it’s not being spent so the economy loses out on those dollars as well. Meanwhile, the debt continues to grow.

Can’t anything be done? European countries in the deepest debt also have higher tax rates than the U.S. Greece is not a point off the data curve. Its smack dap in the middle of it. These high tax/deep debt countries made the conscious decision to trade economic growth for social benefits doled out by their governments. And their economies are slowly slipping off the precipice. Taxes just can’t keep pace with spending and most of the countries have maxed out their borrowing from the neighbors. This year, Europe’s leading nations vowed to cut their deficits in half by 2013 through spending reductions. They’re trying to rein in the public dole before it gallops over the edge dragging them with it.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S., our Government has chosen social benefits over economic growth, too, putting us on Europe’s well-worn path to economic annihilation. And they’re doing it during an economic downturn and without our permission. Yet, we’re the ones who will pay the heavy price unless we hastily reverse course. So, it comes down to whether there’s a chance for a competent, honest Government in our immediate future.

We could try being like Switzerland. That Country holds the enviable position of having the lowest tax rate on average workers in the world and the 7^th highest per capita GDP. The Swiss have a high standard of living, an educated work force, an unemployment rate of 3.9% and a low national debt. Of course, the Country also has a relatively small population and the Government runs very efficiently. It is actively luring businesses with low tax rates and pro-growth regulations.

Rather than sending our businesses there, let’s send our politicians in trade for theirs. A big win for us and a hearty “good luck” to the Swiss.

See you on the left-side.

Complaining about the illegal immigration problem gets you only so far. To make it all the way to the finish line, you need to develop solutions. Let’s consider one to help stop people streaming illegally across our border with Mexico for work or for free social services. Or to anchor themselves to our Country through the birth of a child. To solve that problem, the first thing we must do is secure our border.

This is not an endorsement of somebody’s political position. We don’t care what politicians say. But, like the blind squirrel that occasionally finds a nut, even they can be correct once in a while.

As a practical matter, if we don’t secure the border first we’ll be in a far worse position down the road. I mean, look at us. We’re living in 1986’s future – and we’re much worse off today than back then when amnesty was granted to less than 3 million illegal aliens. And promises of border security were thrown around like rice at a wedding. But like the rice, border security was swept into the garbage bin after the celebration was over.

The result of the empty security promise? In 2010, we have almost four times the number of illegals than in 1986. The combined net cost of illegal immigrants to federal, state and local taxpayers is $100 billion annually. The big price tag items are education, incarceration and healthcare. With entitlement programs to our own folks drowning our Country in debt, we can no longer afford to pay the costs of people here illegally. How do we turn off the tap? Secure the border to stop the flow.

To our politicians who say the border will be secured but only as part of a larger solution, we don’t believe you. We do believe that you’re all about securing your own political future. The 2,000-plus pages of Obamacare and of Finance Reform are gorged with pork just to get you re-elected. You even threw costly programs into those bills that were so far outside their scope a good hunting dog can’t pick up the scent. You admit ignorance about how those laws will shake out and what the actual costs will be and you don’t care.

How could a bunch like you be believed about a promise you’ve welched on for decades? You regularly break your word because you just can’t disappoint Hispanic voters, one of the fastest growing special interest groups in the Country. In trading the interests of all you serve for short-term political advantage, you’re driving a wedge through the social fabric of our Country. This must end. So, Immigration Reform starts with you reforming yourselves first by keeping the 1986 promise to secure the border.

If the border can’t be completely secured with physical restraint then genuine legal deterrents become necessary security components. This doesn’t mean Obama’s “silent raid” policy on businesses that employ illegals, imposing weak sanctions on companies and letting illegals find work in other locales. Or his Justice Department taking on Arizona for enforcing federal law while letting the three “sanctuary” states, that violate it, skate. What is the message in that?

Legally deterring unlawful entry requires a different, and effective, message. Stopping the flow means making the downside of illegal behavior much less attractive than its perceived rewards. Since deportation is a revolving-door and business sanctions only hurt the local economy, how about this instead? Put the guy who owns or runs the company in a detention facility right alongside his illegal ex-employees. And keep them there for a good, long time.

That message couldn’t be clearer: if you choose to enter illegally or employ illegally, be prepared to pay a steep price. If this sounds harsh, perhaps it’s because we’ve gotten so far away from fairness and justice for all that they’re no longer recognizable.

I know, I know. Detention centers are not built or maintained for free but they are cheaper than the cost of illegals in our Country. Cheaper than the cost to our taxpayers at all governmental levels. Cheaper than the cost to the integrity of our Country. And much cheaper than the price we’re paying for the politically-driven rending of our social fabric.

Next week, Riley writes about another round of amnesty.

See you on the left-side.

We can always tell when politicians are trying to pull the wool over our eyes. They telegraph their disinformation punches in the same way every time. Constant pounding on whatever it is they want to K.O., using a barrage of vague, but very inflammatory, posturing. Congressional addresses, press releases, fancy footwork in flowery speeches brim full of lofty platitudes and even taller tales. Bobbing and weaving with combinations of jabs, hooks and rabbit punches, so we’ll throw in the towel before raising a single thought in defense.

Because, if you’re a politician, thinking voters are dangerous people. When voters think, politicians need reason and substance in their corner. But, those things are hard for them to come by. It’s much easier to pulverize whatever stands in the way of their agenda with crushing marketing blows. To make sure we keep our brainpower in the locker room, our leaders don’t just rely on throwing a flurry of punches themselves. They get as many organizations as they can doing the same thing. The idea is to overwhelm us with so much pounding that we eventually accept their phony line, hook and sinker.

Let’s look at some disinformation specifics in the immigration reform/anti-Arizona law barrage. This week, I’m going to examine the fancy footwork in Obama’s flowery immigration reform speech. Next week, Riley will review the constant hammering on the Arizona law, including the law suit filed against it yesterday by the Justice Department.

Obama delivered his hallmark speech last Thursday. It was the first of his Presidency on the subject and it had been so long in coming that we expected more. It was painfully short on detail and very long on rhetoric. That’s because the purpose was to shore up eroding Hispanic voter support. And Obama was at his flowery best. He used several of his fancy footwork disinformation bobs and weaves. One of Obama’s favorite moves is to confuse facts with effectiveness. He did that a couple of times on Thursday: “We have more boots on the ground on the Southwest border than at any time in our history.”  And, “The southern border is more secure today than at any time in the past 20 years.”

Those statements, even if true, are meaningless in and of themselves. “More boots” doesn’t equate to enough of them or to effective use of them. “More secure” does not mean that it’s secure at all. Without actual success, “more” is merely a costly gesture. And for Arizona, it’s just that. Phoenix is now the second kidnapping capital of the world thanks to the unfettered expansion of the Mexican drug trade across the Arizona border. And that trade translates into more than drugs flooding our streets. It also means violence in our streets and the eventual disintegration of civil order. Welcome to Mexico’s newest northern state.

And how about those eloquent Obama whoppers about Lady Liberty designed to bring pro immigration reform tears to our eyes? Like, “[T]he Statue of Liberty…was funded in part by small donations from people across America.” In fact, the Statue, at a cost of 2 million francs, was paid for entirely by citizens of France. Americans picked up the tab for the pedestal after the French bankrolled the Lady.  But, no one is going to get all choked up over a pedestal so Obama revised history to support his histrionics.

And then there’s Emma Lazarus. Lines from her poem, “The New Colossus”, grace the Statue’s pedestal. To emphasize the importance of immigrants to our country, Obama places Lazarus among them: “Emma Lazarus, whose own family fled persecution from Europe generations earlier, took up the cause of these new immigrants.“ The truth is her folks first landed on the continent in 1654, over a century before the birth of our nation. But, claiming the poet’s ancestors immigrated to our country made Obama’s point so much stronger he just couldn’t resist. In fact, he doesn’t seem able to resist much of anything in pushing through his agenda.

If we’re so out of shape that we can be done in by this kind of disinformation, we deserve to be decked.

See you on the left-side.

Apparently, almost $800 billion is not enough to stimulate an economic recovery, at least not one led by Barack Obama. So, he’s back at it, demanding a gazillion more dollars, which, according to him, are necessary to pull off an escape from Great Recession City. For those who doubt the wisdom of layering spending upon spending, the Administration has a new marketing slogan to sell the idea. The “Summer of Recovery”, first heard from the lips of Joe Biden, part of the national touring company for “Unemployment Won’t Rise Above 8%“. Gee, the new pitch sounds so upbeat we can’t help but cheer for a bigger deficit.

Or can we? Before applauding a deeper dive into deficit hell, let’s consider what the Stimulus has done for us. According to the marketing hype, it’ll give us back our robust economy. But, at almost one trillion dollars, what has it actually delivered?

Let’s take a walk down memory lane and visit some of its heavily advertised benefits, starting with Cash For Clunkers. The Clunker promise: to jump-start depressed U.S. auto sales and help clean up air pollution. The reality: only 125,000 additional cars were sold under the Program, with a marginal effect on pollution.

125,000 may sound like a big number, but it averages 24,000 taxpayer dollars per car, making taxpayers the biggest losers. The real winners were foreign automakers. They captured over 61% of the sales while Detroit’s percentage was less than its market share. Cash For Clunkers, at a cost of $3 billion, turned out to be a clunker itself.

Our next stops on the visit list are a couple of homeowner assistance measures, the tax credit and the Home Affordable Mortgage Program. While the tax credit for qualifying home purchases did produce a flurry of sales, experts now say it did not increase demand. It merely pulled summer sales into the spring to take advantage of the credit. Sales for summer are now projected to be very low. Shades of a bad Clunker flashback.

The HAMP program, which restructures both mortgage loans and payments for distressed homeowners, is worse. Experts predict that most HAMP recipients will default on their restructured debt within 12 months. The reason? The average homeowner is still saddled with a debt-to-pretax-income ratio of 64%, a nut too big for most to crack. That kind of outcome makes Fannie and Freddie, soon to be delisted from the Stock Exchanges, look absolutely stellar.

Then there’s the main focus of Stimulus spending, that three-letter word, jobs. Obama has always claimed that the Stimulus will create or save millions of them by the end of this year. So far, we’ve gotten a whole bunch of phony numbers and misspent funds. And, oh yeah, 3.5 million net job losses. Plus, there’s no evidence that the Stimulus has saved or created a single permanent job in the private sector. There has been a big winner, tho’. The Federal Government. By the end of this year it will grow larger than it’s ever been with 2.15 million employees.

The Stimulus isn’t the only thing Obama wants to grow. Under his proposed budgets, the national debt, or sum of the annual deficits, will reach $20.3 trillion by 2020. Our economy will be consumed by this lack of restraint. So, a chorus of experts is calling for spending reductions, starting now, to try to get the debt under control before it’s too late. Taxpayers, who view deficits on a par with terrorism as a national threat, are singing the same tune. But, Obama and Congress, with more big-ticket spending items on their agenda for this year, like energy and education, remain tone deaf.

American Humorist Will Rogers, who died in 1935, once observed, “Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.” Now days, we’re getting more government than we can ever pay for. A lot more. And that’s nothing to be thankful for.

See you on the left-side.