Dues

Over the past 50 years union participation in the private sector has declined from 35% to 11% while growth in the public sector unions has increased. In an attempt to further this growth here in Minnesota the unions want to include child care providers. A similar situation developed in Illinois some years ago and today the Supreme Court ruled against the union which means the Minnesota case will follow. In Minnesota like 26 other states all public employees must pay union dues. Using the law the unions maintained that if a mother is caring for her invalid child and receiving funds from Medicaid she is considered a state employee and therefore must pay dues. This was struck down by the court today. The reason this is important is that unions act like lobbyist promoting government benefits for their members and 95% of the money goes to democratic politicians. A few years ago Wisconsin changed the law and allowed people to stop paying union dues if they wanted to and the number paying dropped 60% and the union collections dropped from 6 million per year to 2 million per year. If other states followed Wisconsin it would likely be the end of public unions.

Immigration

In The President’s speech today on immigration he said the House refuses to pass the Senate Bill and that is the holdup. I decided to check out the Senate Bill and here are the key points. If you're an undocumented immigrant who arrived in the United States before Dec. 31, 2011, haven't committed a felony (or three misdemeanors), hold a job, and pay a $500 fine and back taxes, then you will immediately gain the status of "registered provisional," allowing an individual to legally stay in the United States without risk of deportation After six years, you'd have to renew the status, which is dependent on maintaining a steady work history, having a clean criminal record, and paying another $500 fine. Four years after that (10 years after initially attaining "registered provisional" status), you could apply for permanent residency (aka a Green Card). That step requires showing constant work history, constant presence in the United States, continuous tax payments, clean criminal record, and knowledge of English and civics, as well as paying another $1,000 fine. Upon reading that I feel it is reasonable but there are two reasons why the House will not vote on this bill. First they do not feel these provisions will be enforced but second and more important it does not close the border. They remember when President Reagan gave amnesty to 3 million illegals with the promise that the border would be closed but it never happened. They feel that this is a road to citizenship for those here and in ten years there will just be another such vote and illegals will continue to come across the border. Just as the number coming across increased after the Reagan bill they feel the same thing will happen again.

Zillionaires

One of the Blogs that I read is Politico and they had the following article today. Memo: From Nick Hanauer To: My Fellow Zillionaires You probably don’t know me, but like you I am one of those .01%ers, a proud and unapologetic capitalist. I have founded, co-founded and funded more than 30 companies across a range of industries—from itsy-bitsy ones like the night club I started in my 20s to giant ones like Amazon.com, for which I was the first nonfamily investor. Then I founded aQuantive, an Internet advertising company that was sold to Microsoft in 2007 for $6.4 billion. In cash. My friends and I own a bank. I tell you all this to demonstrate that in many ways I’m no different from you. Like you, I have a broad perspective on business and capitalism. And also like you, I have been rewarded obscenely for my success, with a life that the other 99.99 percent of Americans can’t even imagine. Multiple homes, my own plane, etc., etc. Now this caught my eye because I was wondering what this guy and his friends thought they could do in some meaningful way about income inequality. One thing they could do is to earn less because sharing doesn’t work out that well and here is what I mean. Total income in the US is 14 trillion and the top .01% earn 5% of that or 700 billion. There are 135,000,000 people working and .01% represents 13,500 people and they earn on average $50 million each. If we take all of the earnings from the top .01% and give that to the rest they will each get $5,000. Since the average household income is $50,000 that will give everyone a 10% raise. Not a small thing but certainly not equalizing income. If the .01% want to have a real impact they should give away their wealth and forget about their income. Wealth is defined as assets minus liabilities. The total wealth of the United States is about 200 trillion and the .01%ers own 12% of that or 24 trillion. Now if we divide that among the other 135 million the each get $180,000. While the gap between the superrich and the rest of us is widening the facts are that there are not enough of them and too many of us. If that zillionaire really wants to help he should continue what he has been doing and create new industries that will create new jobs which will allow more people to increase their own wealth. It is called free market capitalism.

Recessions

PR people say that if a statement is made often enough it becomes fact whether it is or not. One current example is that the most recent recession was the worst since the Great Depression but if you review the data this may not be the case. The most commonly used statistic is the unemployment rate which reached 10% in Oct of 2009 but during the 1980 to 1982 recession it hit 10.8% in Sept of 1982. During the recent recession the prime interest rate has been 3.5% but in 1981 it reached 21.5%. The inflation rate since 2008 has been about 2% but in the early 80’s it reached 13.5%. Personal income rose quickly after the 1982 recession but income has declined since 2008 to the present and the decline is most evident in the middle and lower income groups which means the gap has widened more severely than in earlier recessions. Six years after the current recession started there are fewer people working than in 2008. In the recession of 1982 the number of people employed increased by 6% within four years after the recession ended. I believe a more accurate statement would be that the recession of 1980 was much worse but the recovery was much better.

Profiling

Current estimates say that 2,000 Europeans and 100 Americans are now fighting in Syria. The terrorist there are teaching these people how to make bombs and to use them in suicide bomb attacks. These 2,000 as European citizens can enter the United States without advanced Visa requirements. US citizens can enter unrestricted. The United States is asking foreign airport security to be on special alert. My question is what are they asking them to do? Are they saying to give special attention to dark skinned males who look like they are from Middle Eastern areas or do they say just double check everyone coming to the US? Should blond blue eyed females from Scandinavia be given the same scrutiny as these men or will we finally admit that profiling is the only thing that makes sense. It seems a little ridiculous that this is even in doubt.

Mike Rogers

The historians are telling us that the voters in the next presidential election will be looking for someone with foreign policy experience and that should give a decided edge to Hilary Clinton who as Secretary of State has met with foreign leaders on a regular basis. On the republican side there is one individual who has the experience to deal with issues of international importance and that is Congressman Mike Rogers. He is the chairman of the intelligence committee and has access to classified information and is well prepared to deal with areas like the Middle East, North Korea and Russia’s Ukraine. He is not running for re-election as he has decided to give someone else an opportunity to serve. He plans to become a talk radio host but if party officials approach him he may be open to the idea of running for president. He is a well-spoken veteran with over 20 year experience in public office. While he is a Washington insider his work has largely been behind the scenes and would be a fresh face on the national stage.

Term limits

I have always been opposed to term limits for US congressmen but I am changing my mind. The argument against term limits has always been that we have elections to take care of that but because the system has been rigged with things like gerrymandering, that is not working. Over 90% of incumbents are re-elected. A congressman is more likely to lose his seat in a primary than in a general election. A reasonable start would be two terms for senators and 6 terms for house members giving each a maximum of 12 years. It is time to get rid of career politicians and open the door to new ideas. The problem is that such a change would have to be approved by the congress.

Credit

The President gave another nice speech today where he said all the wonderful things he wanted to do to help the middle class but he couldn’t get anything done because the Republicans in congress would not go along. I was a plant manager at several locations and have some ideas for the president. If I were sent to a plant that was performing below standard and the manager was at odds with the union here is how I would handle it. I would invite the union leadership into the office and explain to them that my job is to go to the home office and get the best benefits for the employees. I would tell them that I will take their ideas and promote them with upper management and every time we got another benefit I would make sure that all of the plant employees knew that we got these benefits because of the union and how they worked hard to get the best for the employees. Everyone in the plant would know that they were getting real value from their union dues. I would be very specific and point out item by item how the union used their influence to get these new benefits. Then I would ask the union leaders to make sure that the plant ran at top efficiency. As plant production increased it would be easier to get more benefits and the employees would see a direct connection between the union and benefits. Now if I were elected as a Democratic President with a Republican congress I would use the same approach. I would meet with the congressional leaders and tell them that every time we reached an agreement on any new program or policy I would let the American people know that this success was because of the hard work of the congress and they were the ones who pushed for these programs and I congratulate them on their accomplishments. I believe it is easy in business to be results oriented and not credit oriented but in politics that is not the case. I believe that if you told a president he could have his program but the credit had to go to the other party he would not go along because in politics party trumps country and who gets the credit is everything.

Economy

President Obama was in town today and here is an excerpt from his speech. "There are a lot of people who work very hard, do the right thing, are responsible but still find at the end of the month that they are not getting ahead," he said. "And that's the central challenge that drives me every day. He says this has been driving him every day and I assume he means for the last 6 years that he has been president but the facts show that the problem has worsened during this time. I believe he should realize that talk doesn’t do it and that action is needed. It is easy to criticize so what is the solution. He could announce tomorrow that he is opening the Green Mountain oil fields to private drilling and that he will give tax breaks to energy companies to produce more natural gas and then get out of the way and watch the miracle of the free market go to work. When this energy boom fires up and high paying jobs are created and exports sky rocket the economy will take off. As the cost of energy goes down it helps low and middle income people pay their utilities. It provides low energy cost for industry which will expand to supply the new consumers working in the energy business. Then he could offer interest free loans to business to install natural gas filling stations at all truck stops and more loans to truckers to change over to natural gas. He could encourage the already underway changeover to natural gas of garbage trucks, buses, trains and cabs in all the big cities. He could expand pipeline to the east coast so home owners could replace heating oil with natural gas. The frosting on the cake is that all of these changes will improve the environment and the could all be done with private money.

Coal

Today I watched a former executive from the coal industry say that Obama’s new regulations will cause the loss of many jobs and prices of electricity to rise. He doesn’t understand what is happening any more than Obama. What the government is proposing will happen without them and sooner. Since the onset of fracking the supply of natural gas has increased and the price has decreased. The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday proposed a rule designed to cut carbon dioxide emissions from existing coal plants by as much as 30 percent by 2030, compared with 2005 levels. This regulation was passed so the government can jump on the bandwagon but this train has already left the station. The share of U.S. electricity that comes from coal is forecast to fall below 40% for the year, its lowest level since World War II. Four years ago, it was 50%. By the end of this decade, it is likely to be near 30%. What this means is that by the time the government set deadline of 2030 comes around there will be no coal fired power plants. What is happening as far as jobs is a temporary loss but soon the exports of coal to Africa will increase and these miners will be back to work. In the longer term these miners will be out of work as oil replaces coal in our exports to Africa and other countries. This is the downside to getting rid of coal. The long term process is coal to oil to natural gas and then one day to hydrogen. Coal will go the way of the buggy whip.

Walmart

Over my lifetime I have witnessed different corporate entities be vilified because of their size and profits. When I was young it was Standard Oil then AT&T followed by Microsoft and today it is Walmart. Walmart tries many ways to improve its reputation and has led the way in areas like low cost drugs, improving the environment and hiring disabled people but they are constantly under the gun for their low wages. That is a problem that can be overcome with just a little help from the customers. Walmart sales in the United States last year were 279 billion and they 850,000 full time employees here in the states. These full time employees working 2,000 hours per means 1.7 billion hours and if each were paid ten dollars per hour more that would cost the company 17 billion dollars. If they raised their prices by that amount their total sales last year would have been 296 billion instead of 279 billion or a price increase of 6 percent. From my personal perspective that would be OK. We spend about $1,000 per month at Walmart and that would mean an extra $60 per month which I would be happy to pay to double the salaries of the employees there.

Exporting oil

The Obama administration today paved the way for the US to begin exporting oil, something that has been illegal since the 1970’s. This may open the door to more oil production. First it will come from private lands but as the government sees increased revenues and jobs it will see the advantages of opening government lands to drilling. In the government owned Green River formation there is 1.5 trillion barrels of recoverable oil which is over 200 years supply based on current usage. Long before this runs out the United States and other countries around the world will have figured out how to extract methane hydrate from the ocean floor where it is found at about 3,000 feet. Recent experiments have shown that the methane which is tied up in water can be replaced with carbon dioxide which means there will be no net increase in CO2 emissions. Replacement of CH4 in hydrate form with CO2 is a candidate for recovering CH4 gas from its hydrates and storing CO2

Walk the talk

There is an old adage, walk the talk, meaning that talk is cheap but getting the job done says you know what you are talking about. One of the persistent themes in President Obama’s speeches is the middle class and the increasing disparities between the rich and the poor. When he speaks on these subjects the people literally swoon into his outstretched arms but what has happened. When The President says the cost of electricity will necessarily skyrocket that hurts the middle class. When refusing to open government lands to drilling and the price of home heating oil and gasoline rise that hurts the middle class. When taking water from California farmers to save a small fish causes the price of vegetables to rise that hurts the middle class. When The President allowed the payroll tax to increase from 4.2% to 6.2%, that hurt the middle class. When illegal immigrants enter the country that puts downward pressure on wages and that hurts the middle class. When the government increases taxes on cigarettes, that hurts the middle class. When the down payment on a home is increased, that hurts the middle class. When student loan debt increases that hurts the middle class. When you pay fast food employees more this will raise prices and that is a transfer of wealth from the middle class to those earning less than the middle class. When fewer people are working today than six years ago, that hurts the middle class. When people have unemployment checks instead of pay checks, that hurts the middle class. These discrepancies between talk and walk are particularly acute in the black community where unemployment is twice the national rate, where income differences are exaggerated, where the drop-out rate, the drug use, the crime rate including that half of all homicides are black on black, the single parent rate, home ownership rate and test scores all show an underclass. Yet these people enthralled by the talk support The President with 95% of their vote. While all of this is going on the government support of the big banks by printing money has made the rich, richer and added to the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor. Another old adage says you can fool some of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time but Obama is getting close. The most amazing thing about all of this is that none of it is the fault of The President.

Ethiopia

Back in the 80’s we took in a refugee from Ethiopia and he stayed with us. He had a number of health problems including TB and I had to take him for a physical which included a series of inoculations. I had to spend a lot of time helping him get acclimated to his new homeland including getting him to the dentist and the eye doctor along with getting him a job. I bring this up because of the children who are coming across our southern border. They too are afflicted with various diseases and need special care before they can mingle with the general population. The question is who is going to do all of this? Has anyone even thought about this or will it come to our attention when a serious problem develops?

Kyoto

In 1997 nations of the world met in Kyoto, Japan to reach an agreement to lower Green House Gases (GHG) but they wanted to exempt China and India since those countries announced they would not go along with the idea. President Clinton played up to the environmentalist by saying he would sign but he knew that all treaties had to be approved by a two-thirds vote in the senate and the senate would not approve. They voted against it 95 to 0. Since that time fracking has increased the supply of natural gas and it has replaced coal in power plants and home heating oil and the GHG are now below the requirements put forth in the Kyoto Protocol. The result is that the emissions from fossil fuels are below 1997 levels as is the price. This trend will continue until all coal fired power plants are either closed or changed over to natural gas. The reason for these changes is that it makes sense environmentally and economically. The goal is to move from coal to oil to natural gas and eventually to hydrogen and do this around the world. The United States is blessed with enough oil and natural gas to move the entire world in this direction and in the process to stimulate our economy and become energy independent.

Oil exports

The controversy over the Keystone pipeline is so convoluted it has become nonsense. First off there are currently three pipelines going to the US from the Alberta oil sands and one line going to the west cost of Canada with a second line under construction. They are currently selling all of their production and if the Keystone is not built it will just mean more going to the west coast. In the 1970’s the US banned the export of oil because of shortages in the domestic market and that law has not been changed. The US is now producing oil in such large amounts that they could export and put our balance of payments in a better position while waiting for the laws to be updated. Until that time the US is sending the new found oil to the refineries in the south where it is changed into gasoline and diesel and then shipped overseas since there is no ban on refined products. The arguments about the increase in CO2 from this oil are not valid since it is all used either here or overseas and we only have one earth. If the pipeline is approved the oil will be sent to refineries in the US and those products will be shipped to foreign markets. If the pipeline is not approved the oil will be shipped to western Canada and then overseas. If the law against exporting oil is rescinded the oil will be imported from Canada and exported overseas. One temporary advantage to building the pipeline is that it will provide jobs while under construction. Not long ago the US refineries were updated to use the heavy crude that they expected as the supplies ran out. The new oil is light and not easily refined in these plants so it is building up as reserves waiting for the law to change so it can be exported. We currently export gasoline out of the Gulf Coast refineries while we are importing gasoline from Europe to the East Coast market because shipping cost are less. In time this will change and we will be using US gasoline on the East Coast. The US currently exports 3.5 million barrels of petroleum products every week. As the US oil production grows it will export more and that will put downward pressure the world price which will benefit everyone. At the same time natural gas is replacing oil in many areas primarily in home heating which releases more oil for export. As oil exports grow many places like China will replace coal with oil which will reduce the problems associated with climate change. The move across the globe will be from coal to oil to natural gas. This results in cleaner less expensive energy for everyone.

Minimum wage

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz announced that he would invest $35,000,000 in a plan to help employees with college tuition. They sell 600,000 cups of coffee per day in the USA and if they raise the price by 15 cents per cup this will bring in over $30,000,000. They recently raised the price by this amount but said it was not because of the tuition plan. This is an excellent way to pay for employee benefits including wages. Let us carry this over to McDonalds and find out how much we would have to increase the cost of a hamburger to double the wages of employees to $16 dollars per hour. McDonalds has 700,000 employees and if they all work 2,000 hours per year equals 1.4 billion hours. If they get an $8 per hour raise that will cost 11.2 billion dollars. They sell 23 billion hamburgers per year in the United States, so they would have to raise the price of each hamburger by 50 cents. Just do it. Once a McDonald’s employee starts to earn $16 per hour some may think of that as a career but that is their choice. In most cases they will not double their take home pay and they should be aware of that. A family of four with a stay at home mom and a dad who earns $16,000 per year ($8 per hour) gets an additional $12,000 per year from the government primarily from the Earned Income Credit and the Child Tax Credit. If they double their salary, these benefits will be reduced by about $2,000. This means they would earn $32,000 in wages plus $10,000 in government benefits for a total of $42,000. The only deductions would be $2,400 for payroll tax since they pay no income tax. This equates to a take home pay of $40,000 and the poverty level for a family of four is $24,000. Like I said, just do it.

Children on the border

The problem of children on the border has prompted our government to step up to the bat and take action. They have sent $250 million dollars to the governments in Central America so they can set up programs to take care of their children so they won’t want to come to the United States. Knowing that these governments are corrupt it is naïve to think that they won’t just take this money and use it for their personal purposes. To them it will be like getting drug money without sending the drugs. So why are we doing this? The answer is that is how our government solves all problems. The just send some money and then go home thinking they have done their duty and solved another problem.

House divided

Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki has used sectarian differences to promote his personal agenda. As a Shia Muslim he has replaced the Sunnis in his administration and withheld government benefits from the Sunni areas in Iraq. Lincoln said a house divided will fall. For many years here in America we have fought to eliminate the divisions between black and white and have made considerable progress but still have long way to go. In addition we now have women against men and rich against poor. Are we headed for a fall?

Candidate

There are two major ways in which people look at presidential elections. One group selects the person they believe can do the best job and another group always votes for the party. Their reasoning is that the party stands for certain principals that they agree with and the person in the White House will carry out those ideas. Over my life I have voted for 4 Republicans, 4 Democrats and 2 Independents so I fall into the first group. Here are some ways to defend your president that have proven to be effective. There is always someone else at fault when a problem arises. Things would be worse if we hadn’t done what we did. The other party does this and more. There are things going on behind the scenes that we don’t know about. When all else fails, change the subject. If you have blind loyalty to your candidate or party these excuses will work but if you are willing to admit that your person is not perfect and makes mistakes the country will be better off.

Mission Creep

I just finished listening to President Obama speak on the subject of Iraq and that he will send in 300 advisors. I was reminded of the summer of 1955 when I was eligible for the draft and President Eisenhower sent a couple hundred advisors to Viet Nam. A few short years later President Kennedy upped that to several thousands and eventually over 500,000 troops were sent there. That was when the phrase mission creep came into use. I am sure Obama is aware of this and will avoid that trap but sometimes circumstances dictate otherwise.A

Iraq

The President concluded at the end of his first term that he could not expect any co-operation from congress so he made his now famous statement that he would ignore them and use his power of the pen to make changes and he has done that, particularly using the EPA. Now the situation in Iraq has caused him to reconsider and he invited congressional leaders into the White House to ask for advice. The members like Harry Reid who voted for the Iraq War are now running away from the President saying, you decide on what we should do. Reid is not alone as people who voted for the Iraq War do not want to talk about it. They just want to say that was Bush’s war and then just change the subject. Reid is of particular interest because of the way he dealt with the war. He first voted for it and then when things started to go bad he said he voted for it reluctantly and then when things got really bad he said the war was lost. During this time he voted 6 times to send more money and troops to Iraq. Then came the famous surge and he said it would never work and when it worked he later claimed partial credit for the success. The true irony of this whole affair is that President Obama who campaigned against the Iraq War and criticized Bush for getting involved now finds himself in the position of getting involved after he pulled everyone out and claimed that he kept his promise to get us out of Iraq. What he is finding out is that things look a lot different campaigning than they do in governing. On the campaign trail problems have simple solutions because it’s all about talk and The President is very good when it comes to giving speeches.

End of world

There is an old joke about a news broadcast and it goes something like this: The Russians have just launched their entire fleet of nuclear bombs toward the United States. In other news the market rose 2% on the Fed’s lower interest rates. Today I saw a real live enactment of this type of news. A scientist said that climate change has now passed the point of no return and the earth in on a course of self-destruction. Then then announcer said there were storms in the Mid-West.

Black in America

I have been doing a lot of reading about what it means to be Black in America and have come up with ten things that help to understand what it is like. 1 Feeling nervous and strange walking into a room where I was the only Black. 2 Watching people watch me strangely when I was the only Black in a room. 3 Having a father who had to wait a year to go to medical school because they only allowed 2 Blacks and 2 Jews in a class -- in Michigan. 4 Feeling like I had to be smarter, run faster, jump higher--not just metaphorically speaking--to be considered equal in corporate America. 5 Being called a "double-dip" employment hire--Black and female. 6 Fuming when White people call me or any other Black "articulate" because we don't talk like some stereotype. 7 Being asked in an interview at the first law firm I joined "why don't you want to work at a Black firm". It was 1985. 8 Feeling like I had to leave part of the real me at home every day when I went to work in corporate America. 9 Feeling like the corporate focus on "diversity" is a way to avoid addressing the issue of race head on -- and maybe helping to move past it. 10 Watching people of all colors skirt around the issue of race because talking about it is uncomfortable. I believe these are honest evaluations of how Black people see the world around them and I wonder if President Obama feels the same way. I know from my readings that Condi Rice felt many of these things. It was reported that she was often the youngest and smartest person in the room and almost always the only Black

War weary

Americans are not only war weary but they are world weary. They learned from the experience in Afghanistan and Iraq the limitations of raw power and now they are learning the limitations of not having the threat of using raw power. Using hindsight we can see an example of both of these concepts and how things would be different. If President Bush were told in 2003 that if we went into Iraq we would suffer the loss of 4,500 troops and injury to 35,000 and it would cost 1.5 trillion dollars and in the end Iraq would end up in chaos, he would have decided against going into Iraq. If three years ago President Obama was told that if he did not go into Syria to depose Assad that 160,000 people would be killed and 3 million sent to camps many in Jordan and terrorist would take over half of Syria and half of Iraq he would have gone in. Unfortunately in the real world we are not gifted with hindsight.

Khatallah

Abu Khatallah was picked up in Libya on Sunday and is now on board a naval vessel. He is suspected of being involved in the bombing of the Benghazi Embassy. The government says he will be charged in federal criminal court. If he has not been Mirandized whatever he says may not be used in court. If he has been Mirandized I wonder where he got a lawyer. He did not have to go along if he was not arrested so he must be under arrest. Bringing him home by boat gives the officials a lot of time to visit with him. If he is smart he is keeping quiet. This will be interesting to follow.A

What next Iraq

Now that the finger pointing over Iraq has started, it is time to review the past so as not to reinvent the past as is being done by too many. Prior to the invasion of Iraq the situation was consider dire and a threat to the United States. There is a lengthy list of those who were for the Iraq war and the list includes many names who today are trying to distance themselves from that. After the war started a fatal mistake was made by the Bush administration when they asked the question, where are the WMD. The more appropriate question would have been where did the WMD go? There were dozens of countries who gave thousands of tons of WMD to Iraq. Sadam said he destroyed the WMD but when asked where he refused to say because soil samples taken at the site would have shown if this really happened. To this day no one knows where these WMD went. Many of these people are now saying it was a mistake to go into Iraq and with the benefit of hindsight there are good reasons to believe that. As the war progressed things went from bad to worse starting with not being prepared to protect the country from looters as the country was liberated from the dictator Saddam Husain. At the lowest point General Patraeus was sent to develop a counterinsurgency plan and within two years it was successful so by 2011 there was relative peace in the country. At that time The President said: But we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people. We’re building a new partnership between our nations.” Here is Joe Biden on the same subject. Vice President Joe Biden predicted in 2010 that Iraq would be “one of the greatest achievements” of the Obama administration. Some say it was a mistake not too leave some troops in Iraq but The President was unable to develop a status of force agreement which means that the US would be responsible for the safety of the troops. Some say he did not push the issue because he was looking for a reason to pull the troops out but there is no way to verify that but it does fit with his idea of ending both wars. The danger here is what will happen in Afghanistan when we pull everyone out at the end of 2016 which happens to be the end of Obama’s second term. In the absence of American presence Maliki began to replace seasoned well trained officers with his political friends. Many of those replaced were Sunni Muslims and all were replaced by Shia Muslims. This resulted in the Sunni’s feeling left out and when the recent invasion by the ISIS group took place these dis-satisfied Sunni’s joined in with the group and that is where we are today. We are now awaiting The Presidents next move.

Starbucks

There is a rather strange thing going on in the business world. Starbucks is offering up to $30,000 to each employee to be used for college tuition. Normally benefits are used to encourage employees to stay with the company. The CEO says this is not a cost to the company but an investment. This can certainly be an investment in the country but it is difficult to understand how this would be an investment in the company. When these people graduate from college it is highly unlikely that they would stay in a job as a server in a coffee shop. They could become managers but there are too few openings for that, so they would likely use their education to get a better job in some other field. If this company wants to reach out and help young people get a better education then more power to them but it does seem a little strange. Maybe they will start a new tread and in that case it would be companies helping each other by helping students which in turn would help the country.

NYT

The New York Times made the official move today away from Obama and toward Hillary. Writer Nicholas Kristof said the problems in Iraq today stem from Obama’s refusal to act in Syria. He points out that Hilary and General Petraeus both wanted to move against Assad but Obama would not act. To add frosting to the cake he failed to point out that Hilary voted for the Iraq War which many feel was the original sin.

Procrastinator in Chief

There were two main reasons that I did not vote for Obama. First was his lack of experience and second I didn’t want a single party congress aligned with the same party president in the event of a vacancy in the Supreme Court. I have now changed my mind since we now have another party in control of the house and Obama now has 6 years of experience as president. My concern now is his world view. He has what I call the Rodney King syndrome. You recall the unfortunate black man in Los Angeles who was beaten by the cops and then he said, “why can’t we all just get along”. The President came into office thinking that if we just admit to our past mistakes and reached out the hand of friendship, the world would respond in kind. While I can attribute that to his lack of experience he still seems to think that he can use his charismatic speeches to chart the direction of countries and when his talk doesn’t get results he is hesitant to use action. He recently admitted that he was aware of the developing problems in Iraq some four months ago but he is still trying to formulate a plan. Every day that he waits the situation becomes more difficult. Foreign policy is a learning curve for most presidents but he seems unwilling to face reality. These bad guys will not just go away. Soon the price of gas will begin to rise and this might derail the fragile recovery we are in and our safety depends on a strong economy. He should immediately open up the government owned lands in the west for oil production. It is estimated that in a year we could be well on our way to energy independence. This would make us less vulnerable to turmoil in the Middle East and it would fire up our economy.

Storms

A couple of months ago there were lots of stories in the news about the current weather and every time there was a severe weather situation it was attributed to climate change. This suddenly stopped as abruptly as it began and I wondered why until I took the time to check some things out on the Internet. In short order I discovered that the number of severe situations were pretty much the same over the past 100 years. There were no detectable differences in tornados, hurricanes, floods, earth quakes and a slight increase in forest fires. Anyone who investigates the idea of climate change comes to understand that it is necessary to move away from fossil fuels but these attempts to get attention based on questionable proposals only serve to confuse the issue.

Too late

It is becoming obvious that we will either deal with the terrorist in Iraq now or later and now seems the preferred time. When President Obama talked about intervening in Syria he used the phrase no American boots on the ground and later we had CIA spotters there. This time he is saying no troops on the ground and this allows for intelligence gathering without using troops. These spotters are necessary if any air strikes are planned but they will have to infiltrate the terrorist areas to get good intelligence. They are trained to do this. As of now Obama is following his normal procedure of waiting to see what happens. The waiting in Syria worsened this situation that has now spilled over into Iraq. General Eisenhower said that every battle that was lost can be explained in two words. Too late! The President seems to think that things will get better with time but if they don’t it makes any action more difficult.

Syria and Iraq

It was about two years ago when Syria exploded with a civil war. About one year into the war, President Obama concluded that Syrian leader Assad must go but he was reluctant to take military action to help the people who were challenging the government. At that time it looked like the people were winning and Assad would soon be deposed. Then Iran and Russia stepped and started providing aid to Assad and in the past year he was able to recover and now seems to be winning. During this past year many outside forces joined in the fight against Assad and many of these are terrorist types and now the United States is reluctant to help since it is not clear who these foreign fighters are. All this has now spilled over into Iraq and some of these same terrorist are threatening the government of Iraq. In The President’s speech he said he has been aware of this problem for about 14 months and now he is trying to decide what if any action to take. The President is aware that the people of the United States are war weary and thus his hesitancy. If he decides to use force in Syria and/or Iraq, the problems he will face have been exacerbated by the delay.

Veterans

The United States senate came riding in on the white horse to save the VA and start taking care of our veterans. Just how did they do this? After studying carefully the problems with the VA they concluded that by spending 50 billion dollars a year they could solve the problems. The vote was 93 to 3. Now they have to wait for the house to refuse to go along and they can tell their constituents that they did their job. Even if the house were to approve such expenditures this will not solve the problems in the VA. It would take years of digging into the details of how this huge agency operates and that requires a commitment of time and energy in which these elected officials have no interest. The press will follow suit by reporting the amount of money and the vote and then forget about it and so will the rest of us and that is how much we all really care about our veterans.

Missing emails

The two years of missing IRS emails is reminiscent of the 18 minutes of tape accidentally erased by Nixon’s secretary Rose Mary Woods. For those who don’t remember she was a loyal friend and supporter of Nixon and everyone assumed that she erased the tape on purpose. It didn’t matter since there was plenty of other information on other tapes. In this case many will assume that Lois Lerner, also a loyal supporter of Obama deleted the emails. No one will likely ever know in either case.

The latest attempt by the administration to solve the problem with children crossing the border was to send out a spokesman to explain the danger to the children. He talked about the conditions at the various places where the children are kept when they arrive here. What he fails to understand is that the dangers here pale in comparison to the dangers they faced in their home country where drug cartels operate freely and drug gangs roam the streets. This is one more example of the unexpected consequences of good intentions. The laws were changed to allow people crossing the border from countries other than Mexico to be given special treatment. Lawmakers saw small children whose parents had paid coyotes to take their kids across 1,000 miles of Mexico to the border and then ferry them across the Rio Grande into Texas where they would find safe haven. The proof of the danger in these Central American countries is the fact that parents would do this to their children.

Sgt. Bergdahl treatment

There are thousands of returning veterans who need special help with the emotional problems associated with reintegrating into society and many of them cannot even get an appointment to see a health specialist. Then we have the case of Sgt. Bergdahl who is surrounded with experts in many fields. He is getting individual attention and being flown to the best hospital in the military for this type of treatment. What’s wrong with this picture?

Shia vs Sunni

The leader of the newest terror group in Iraq is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and he was imprisoned by the Americans in Iraq until his release in 2009. With his leadership skills and his dislike for America he took a ragtag group of fellow terrorist and turned them into a fighting machine and he is now threatening the security of Iraq. When he took the city of Mosel he came into millions of dollars and can now use that to pay more mercenaries and buy more equipment. He will soon form an alliance with the Kurds and have access to the oil in northern Iraq and this will bring in more money. The Kurds have long wanted their own state and this may be their chance to break away from Baghdad. This is just one more example of how using the animosity between Sunni and Shia Muslims to promote a political agenda can be effective.

Responsibility to protect

When Susan Rice and Samantha Powers became a part of the Obama administration they proposed a concept called, “Responsibility to Protect”, which said that if the lives of innocent people are threatened the United States should take steps to protect them. This was the policy that the President followed when he ordered American Air power to intervene in Libya. When the same thing happened in Syria the administration said it was a different situation although many now say that if American air power had been used early on it could have turned the tables on Assad. Now after 160,000 have died and millions have been forced into refugee camps the same thing is happening in Iraq. The President will once again be asked to intervene to save innocent people with the use of air power.

Iraq oil

When the US pulled out of Iraq there were many who warned that the country would once again revert to a sectarian civil war and it looks like they were right. These same experts say that if we had left a small contingency of troops, about 10,000, this could be avoided. These same experts are now telling us that when we pull out of Afghanistan the same thing will happen. If the terrorist succeed in taking over Iraq they will have the 3 million barrels of oil produced each day at their disposal and that kind of money can buy a lot of mercenaries and military equipment. This will cause a spike in the price of oil and the US should start getting prepared by opening up government lands out west to private producers. There is more than enough oil there to make the US self-sufficient. The administration has signaled that the US policy is to get away from involvements as we left Iraq and are planning on leaving Afghanistan. An old adage says to either lead, follow or get out of the way. We are somewhere between the follow and the get out but our policy is not clear enough to decide which.

Border

A new law implemented in 2009 states that if mothers with children or children alone come across the border from countries other than Mexico, they cannot be sent back. As word of this law became known and reached Central America children started making their way across Mexico to the US border. In 2011, 13,000 came and in 2012, 25,000, in 2013, 47,000 and estimated 60,000 for this year and 200,000 next year. Central American countries like Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua where 10,000,000 children live are plagues by drug cartels and associated crime so these children are willing to pay “coyotes” to help them get to America. Once at the border they swim or float across the river and then turn themselves into the authorities who must provide for them.

The year 2050

The year is 2050 and all of the dire predictions have come to fruition. Social security checks are being reduced, Medicare is surviving using rationing and Medicaid is broke. The interest on the debt is now 50% of the budget and inflation is eating up what is left of the paycheck. Republicans in congress are blaming the Democrats for spending too much and the Democrats are blaming the Republicans for not raising taxes. The results of yesterday’s congressional elections show that 90% of incumbents were re-elected. We have the government we deserve. To quote that famous philosopher Pogo, we have met the enemy and they is us”.

Clinton

As a result of Hilary Clinton’s book some of her personal finances have become public. It appears the both she and her husband earn about $200,000 per speech and that along with book revenue has brought their net worth to around $100 million dollars. It was reported that Mitt Romney’s net worth was $200 million and he was roundly criticized for that. He made his money by making venture capital loans to struggling and new start-up businesses. I believe the difference is that Romney seemed distant from the ordinary people whereas Bill Clinton could feel their pain. It may make it difficult for Mrs. Clinton to run on the concept of income inequality but if the news media doesn’t press the issue she will likely be OK.

NSA records

In an attempted to turn the tables on government agencies collecting private records of phone calls and emails, a private watchdog group has requested records by way of a law suit from the EPA. They were told that the records were erased so the group went to NSA and asked for the records. The NSA didn’t respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit, and it has rebuffed several efforts by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and others to try to see phone records that the agency likely collected and stored. This is one more example of private agencies doing the work of the press.

Immigrants

For more than ten years certain members of congress tried to pass what is called the Dream Act. This would allow certain illegal immigrants to receive a heads up toward eventual citizenship by providing permanent residency. It could not pass the senate so in June of 2012 The President passed his own version. After years of getting nowhere with the DREAM Act, President Obama has decided to pass a version of it on his own. Obama and Janet Napolitano will announce today that, according to new Homeland Security policy, certain young-ish illegal immigrants who came to the United States as minors will no longer face the threat of deportation and can apply for a documentation that would allow them to work in the United States. His next move was to stop deportation and now he is releasing illegal immigrants who have been convicted of crimes. If illegals are allowed to stay here without fear of deportation or charged with criminal activities it becomes de-facto amnesty. Until 2/3rds of both houses are willing to oppose the president he has a free hand. There is one area where the majority of both parties should take action and that involves the thousands of children who made their way across Mexico from Central America and ended up on our borders. These children should be given asylum and the proper care to grow up healthy. They left their families because the countries they come from are drug infested slums and they need help.

Sgt Bergdahl

When the story about Sgt. Bergdahl first broke I said three mistakes were made. First the ceremony in the Rose Garden, second Susan Rice saying he served with honor and distinction and third The President saying that we get are soldiers back regardless of the cost. Since then those who do not like the president over-reacted and caused the whole affair to turn political which means the longer this goes on the less of a problem it will be for the administration. What concerns me is the fate of the soldiers who came forth and declared Bergdahl a deserter. They are about to find out what it means to go up against the power structure. By the time the politicians get through with these guys they will rue the day they ever spoke up. They will suffer the same fate that whistle blowers must endure. Everything they did and said will be twisted until they are discredited and end up looking foolish.

Promise

The news people when referring to Obama’s pledge to close Guantanamo just say he promised to close the place. What they don’t say is he promised on his first day in office that he would close the place within a year. That was more than five years ago. It now appears that if he closes it within 8 years the promise will be fulfilled.

End war

Alert! The administration has discovered something that can change the world. President Obama has decreed that when we leave Afghanistan the war is over. This is brilliant because in any future wars around the world, all that will be needed to end the war is for one side to pull up stakes and go home. If only the world had figured this out years ago it would have save countless lives. We should have done this 13 years ago or better yet we should never have gone there in the first place. This started out to be a bit of sarcasm but as I got into it, I think there is a message here. The senate voted 98 to 0 to go to Afghanistan and the house voted 420 to 1 to go to war. The lone deserter was Congresswoman Barbara Lee. Hats off to her.

End war

Alert! The administration has discovered something that can change the world. President Obama has decreed that when we leave Afghanistan the war is over. This is brilliant because in any future wars around the world, all that will be needed to end the war is for one side to pull up stakes and go home. If only the world had figured this out years ago it would have save countless lives. We should have done this 13 years ago or better yet we should never have gone there in the first place. This started out to be a bit of sarcasm but as I got into it, I think there is a message here. The senate voted 98 to 0 to go to Afghanistan and the house voted 420 to 1 to go to war. The lone deserter was Congresswoman Barbara Lee. Hats off to her.

Bergdahl

Secretary of Defense Hagel is on TV saying we don’t know yet what happened to Sgt. Bergdahl but will investigate. The Army conducted an investigation into Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s disappearance after his disappearance in 2009, but it remains classified to this day, the Pentagon said Tuesday. Defense Department spokesman Col. Steve Warren said he would not detail the conclusions the Army reached in its first look into what became of Bergdahl, who was returned to American special operators over the weekend after five years as a Taliban prisoner’ • WWarren said the Pentagon has no plans to release the secret Bergdahl investigation and reporters would have to try to get it under the Freedom of Information Act. “I’ll be standing by for your FOIA requests,” he said. I would like to recommend to Secretary Hagel that he open up this report and tell us what is in it. If he cannot do that then tell us why he can’t. This looks like one more example of the administration stalling in the hopes that Americans will lose interest and they likely will.

Obama power

The Republicans keep saying that President Obama is breaking the law and the question arises as to what they are doing about it. The answer to this is a real eye opener and deals with presidential power. In the most recent example of the failure to give 30 days notice to congress before releasing any prisoners from Guantanamo, The President is using the same logic he used when challenged in the past. He says the statutes passed by congress are unconstitutional and says the courts will side with him since disputes between the executive branch and the legislative branch must be adjudicated by the Supreme Court. If some months down the road the Court rules against The President, he will say OK I was wrong but the deed is done and you can’t undo it. I think now that he has used this approach on a number of occasions he will use it more and more. The President himself has referred to such actions when he said, if congress doesn’t act I have a pen and phone and I will act.

Prisoner swap

It has now been revealed that the Sargent traded for Guantanamo prisoners was a deserter. The DOD knew this four years ago. The prisoners would have been released at the end of 2016 when all troops are withdrawn from Afghanistan so this is just an early release. The fact that the Sargent was a deserter should have no bearing on bringing him home. As the facts come out he will be dealt with by the military. There are three things wrong with the way this was handled. First, The President held a news conference at the White House with the Sargent’s family when it would have been better handled by working quietly with the family. Second, was Susan Rice, knowing the Sargent was a deserted saying on TV that he served, “with honor and distinction”. Third, President Obama said regardless of the procedure, “we still get an American soldier back if he’s held in captivity – period, full stop,” He should avoid using the period like he did when he said you can keep your doctor, period. From that phrase some might assume that any price was not too high to pay to get the Sargent back and when you think of the possibilities, that is not a responsible thing to say.

Cost of electricity

The response to the new EPA regs on coal shows the ignorance of some people when it comes to the energy business. The new push by the government is a day late and dollar short. The march toward replacing coal with natural gas has been ongoing for several years and recently accelerated because of fracking. This is good for the environment and cost less so just let the market do its thing. The job loss in the coal industry will be minimal since the miners are still working and shipping the coal overseas. The cost of electricity to the consumer will go down since natural gas is much cheaper than coal. This is a win-win. The only people in jeopardy of losing their job are the lobbyist for the coal industry. PITTSBURGH — In a surprising turnaround, the amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere in the U.S. has fallen dramatically to its lowest level in 20 years, and government officials say the biggest reason is that cheap and plentiful natural gas has led many power plant operators to switch from dirtier-burning coal. I am sure the administration will take credit for this even though they are not happy with fracking but most people will not know the difference. The President has such little understanding of this industry that he said that the cost of electricity would sky-rocket when the country reduced its CO2 emissions.

Veto power

One of the things that turned me off about Senator Ted Cruz was the way he tried to fool people into thinking that if the Republicans took the senate they could roll back Obamacare. At the time the Republicans held 46 seats and if they took the majority and had 51 they still could not repeal Obamacare. The reason is that The President would veto the vote and it would take 67 senate votes to override a presidential veto. It would likely never get to the president because the Democrats would filibuster and that takes 60 votes to overcome. Cruz didn’t lie but he didn’t tell the whole story. I talked to many people who believed that with 51 senators they could roll back Obamacare. Now the same thing is happening with the latest rulings on carbon from the EPA. Some senators are saying that if the Republicans take the senate they can stop the EPA. They leave out the fact that The President can veto and they would need 67 senators to override the veto. The only way to get rid of Obamacare and to stop the EPA is to have the majority in the senate and house and have a new president so nothing will happen until after the 2016 elections. The President has brought to the forefront the realization that a president can run the country much like a dictator unless two-thirds of both houses vote to restrain him. Regardless of whom the president is this makes me a little uncomfortable.

Prisoner exchange

I suspect that President Obama is kicking himself today. He is a cautious man by nature who only acts after extended deliberation but he acted quickly in bringing home our captured soldier and now problems are developing. The reasons he acted quickly are that the soldier’s health was deteriorating and the opportunity to make a deal presented itself. Some say that it is a distraction to get the news away from the VA problem. In any event it appears there was a lot more going on with this soldier. Reports are coming out that he was a deserter and cost the lives of other soldiers who were sent out to bring him back. If this proves to be true then trading hardened terrorist for him might be a mistake.

Swat Valley

There is a sense of relief as we prepare to leave Afghanistan and many wonder what is going to happen after we are gone. There is no certainty as to what will happen but we can look at Pakistan in 2009 when they agreed to turn over the Swat Valley to the Taliban in order to end the fighting. The Taliban immediately set up Sharia Law which meant that the progress toward women’s rights would come to a swift end. Here is just one example of what one may expect. “From January 15, girls will not be allowed to attend schools,” Mullah Shah Doran, the Taliban second in command in the scenic Swat Valley, announced in a recent radio address. Mullah Doran said educating girls is “un-Islamic.” Subsequently 120,000 girls were put out of school and 300 girl’s schools were burned to the ground. Are the women’s rights advocates here in the US going to express their concerns about this matter? Are we as citizens concerned?

Ratings

The common excuse given by the administration, the congress and the press for not uncovering the problems in the VA are that they accepted the data given to them by the VA officials. The government kept increasing the VA budget without digging beneath the surface to see what was really going on. I am reminded of a somewhat similar situation that occurred in the insurance industry. The big insurance companies, one of which I worked for, would submit information to rating companies like AM Best and Moody’s and these companies would accept this information and then evaluate the safety of the insurance company. In addition the insurance companies paid the rating companies for this service. Over time, incidences came up, where insurances companies would suddenly go bankrupt, even though they had AAA ratings. This happened because the information they submitting to the rating companies was false but the raters accepted it because it would be too costly in both time and money to check things out. Does that sound familiar?

Prisoner exchange

For the past five plus years Attorney General Eric Holder has maintained that those being held in Guantanamo are terrorist and not prisoners of war and thus should be tried in US courts and it is illegal to hold them without a trial. This would not be a problem if they were considered prisoners of war since they can be held until the end of the war. Today The President exchanged five of these for one of our soldiers who had been held by the Taliban for the past five years. When asked about the US policy of not negotiating with terrorist the administration contended that those released were not terrorists but in fact were prisoners of war. Then the administration jumped into the murky world of semantics and said that they didn’t actually negotiate with the Taliban but worked through a neutral third party in Qatar. There is a legal requirement that congress must be given 30 days notification of any prisoner release from Guantanamo and the administration said they could ignore that because of special circumstances. This will be brought to the attention of the news media who will likely ignore it. The longer term possible problem is that this may encourage the Taliban to kidnap other soldiers and hold them for ransom. As the news broke about our trading five Guantanamo prisoners for our captured GI, the thought occurred to me that maybe we could trade the 193 convicted murderers we just released from jail for the one marine who is jailed in Mexico. The problem is that Mexico doesn’t want them. Let’ turn the tables and agree to keep them if they agree to let our soldier go free.