Unions

There is a liberal web site called Media Matters and they are currently under petition to unionize their employees and they are resisting. I am reminded of my days working in at union plant in Ohio and in our plant we had a cafeteria. As a part of the contract negotiations the company agreed to turn over operation of the cafeteria to the union. They proceeded to hire employees to run the lunch room but they paid them only minimum wage and offered no benefits as they were all part time employees. The world view changes when the shoe is on the other foot.

Gore

One of the many things that citizens get upset about is corruption. The free market capitalist system has raised more people out of poverty than any government or any religion or any charity but the number one enemy of the free market is corruption. Most of the time people who are corrupting the game do not commit any crime but use money, power and influence to change outcomes. One recent case of note is former VP Al Gore. When Al was VP his estimated net worth was about 2 million. He took the money he got from the Noble Prize and using his influence convinced some friends to invest in green energy companies. Later his companies received money from President Obama’s green programs and within 14 years he turned his two million into 100 million.

Smoking gun

As the congress investigates the various so called scandals in the Obama administration the democrats complain that have investigated and found nothing. They say there is no White House involvement so the rest is just political. I have heard this argument before. It was in April of 1972 when a couple of guys broke into the Democratic Headquarters in the Watergate Hotel and it was not considered worthy for congress to investigate. In was only because two reporters continued to look into it that finally more than 2 years later the President resigned. During the first year of the investigation not much happened and the complaint from the Republicans was that this was all a political witch hunt and there was no there, there. Even after all the facts were made public President Nixon would not have been found guilty if it were not for the infamous tapes. Nixon in order to write his memoirs had installed a voice activated tape recorder in the oval office and these tapes revealed his part in the whole affair. It was the smoking gun. The same thing happened to President Clinton with the blue dress. It is difficult to tie the president to a crime without the smoking gun and presidents know this. It is what is meant by plausible deniability. People working directly for the president are expected to fall on the sword to protect him. It is akin to the blue wall in the police department. This is one of the reasons why presidents often seem to be in the dark on major issues.

Jobs

I start with the premise that most people would rather have employment than an unemployment check. If this is the case, what is needed to provide employment? The obvious answer is a growing economy. Jobs are created by business both small and large and by risk takers starting new businesses. To expand the economy we need lower taxes on business, fewer regulations on business and an optimistic attitude about the future. For the past few years we have been doing just the opposite. Taxes have been raised, regulations increase and polls show that people are pessimistic about the future. A good place to start is in the energy business where incentives to grow could be increased and regulations decreased. A poll came out yesterday about how the people of North Dakota feel about their future and they were filled with optimism. The primary reason for this is the boom in the oil and gas industry which provides good paying jobs, good profits and lots of tax revenue for the state. This could be happening all across the country.

Putin

There is a famous line that says, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. As Putin makes his move into Ukraine it is apropos that we review Europe between the great wars. Putin said he took over Crimea because there were Russians living there who wanted to rejoin the Mother Land. Now he is saying that Russians living in eastern Ukraine are being mistreated and is leaning toward going in to protect them. When Hitler came to power he took back land that Germany lost in the first war. He first took back an area known as Sarrland and then the Rhineland then Anschluss followed by Prussia. In these areas Hitler claimed that the Germans living there were being mistreated. Next he took Sudetenland and Austria saying the people there wanted to be part of Germany and each time Western Europe complained but nothing more. England sent Chamberlain to talk with Hitler and Hitler promised if he could have the rest of Czechoslovakia he would not take an any more territory and Chamberlain rushed back to England raising the document and declared peace in our time. Within months Hitler invaded Poland and the war began. Europe was exhausted after WW 1 and the people wanted nothing to do with war so they responded with words as Hitler expanded his empire. The same thing happened as Japan invaded Manchuria and then China. The League of Nations established to protect small countries from being invaded by more powerful countries did nothing. It behooves the world to pay attention to what Putin is up to.

Rich vs poor

Throughout history there have always been too few rich people and too many poor people and this has opened the door for unscrupulous individuals to use this discrepancy to their advantage, the latest example is Chavez in Venezuela. Typically a charismatic person comes in and promises the people he will take away the money from the rich and give it to the poor. He gains power and redistributes the wealth making sure to take a little extra for himself. Then he uses his power to grow into a dictator and in the end the poor people remain poor and often worse off than before. This type of political approach is called populism and people just keep falling for it because in most cases they are desperate. The Obama administration is using this approach by pitting the one percent against the 99 percent and it is working as it normally does. No one ever bothers to point out that there are not enough rich to make a difference. Even in America, the richest country in the history of the world, if we took all the income from the top one percent and gave it to the 99 percent we would each get $5,000. If we further refined the redistribution to giving money only to the lower half of the income spectrum, those who paid no income tax, they would still only get $10,000. It may make a good election year sound bite to say you are going to spread the wealth around but it is an old game that never really makes much difference to the poor. It has been tried many times and the poor always end about where they were.

NATO

The North American Treaty Alliance (NATO) is composed of 28 countries mostly European and they all rely heavily on the United States for their national defense. The burden of defending Nato’s 28 members falls increasingly on just one: the United States. Last year, America accounted for 72 per cent of Nato defence spending, up from 59 per cent in 1995. The total money spent on military around the world is about 1.55 trillion and the US spends 550 billion or about 44% of the total. The countries of Europe have the luxury of spending their money on government social programs as the US takes care of protecting them. Just one more example of American exceptionalism.