Charlie Sheen, Congress, and the end of the world

Let’s see, today is March 8, 2011.  What do you suppose was going on one year ago today?  Lets see if we find out.

Seems that Iraq was trying to hold elections, and terrorists were blowing up bombs and killing people to keep them from going to the polls. Looking at today’s news, the only thing missing is the elections.  They are still at it, people are rioting , terrorists are planting bombs in shadows.  No progress, just more death.   And we went to war for more than 10 years to change this….how?

The nation of Chile was devastated by a powerful 8.8 magnitude earthquake a few days prior to March 8, 2010 (actually on Feb. 27 of that year). This tragedy left lots of folks dead, injured and homeless. Today they got a scary reminder.  A 6.2 magnitude quake rattled northern Chile this morning, but so far there have been no reports of injury or damage.

The stock market a year ago today was seeing some gains and the DOW closed above 10,500. Everybody thought that was a good thing.  For the last few days, the stock market has been headed back toward that mark in response to the skyrocketing oil prices and civil war in Libya, but no one thinks its good time.  Last time the arrows indication the market’s moves were green, but lately they’ve been red and pointed down.   At the time of this writing, it appears that the market has regained some of its losses over the last few days and the DOW is above 12,200.  We’ll see how long it stays that way.

Speaking of skyrocketing oil, crude at the time of this writing was at $104.76.  A year ago today it was $68.01. Last year gasoline prices were around $2.67 or so here in Arkansas, today I noticed they had climbed to $3.45.  We’ve definitely had change in this regard, though not in a good direction.  Oil and gasoline rose to well over four dollars in July of 2008, and was one of the major causes of our economic disaster that year.  High energy prices and an over extended housing market brought the American economy to its knees, and in spite of propaganda to the contrary, it’s still not on its feet completely.  If gas spikes that high again, it may bring it down for good. Opening drilling in our own oil fields was dismissed then by our President because it wouldn’t help the crisis. Said it would take years to get to, so there’d be no point.  Well, had we started then, we’d be 3 years closer to it than we are now and rising oil prices might not be the crisis it is now.

Other news from a year ago?  Well it doesn’t really matter. There’s unrest in the mid-east, but there has been for what, 6000 years or so?  The faces and names change, but the stories don’t.  Same for Hollywood. Today it’s Charlie Sheen, a year ago it was someone else burning out on cocaine or anorexia or some other nonsense.  Tomorrow, it will probably still be Sheen, but eventually he’ll be replaced by another out of control life going down in flames.  Our economy is crashing or recovering, and our politicians…well, status quo seems to be immovable.  They continue to waste tax dollars at amazing levels.  Wisconsin state politicians have even found a better way to do that…they go hide in Indiana [edit...a reader tells me it was Illnois, not Indiana, sorry.]  I could understand a day or two to make a point, but they’ve carried it well beyond the legitimate protest point and should in my opinion be relieved of their duties and replaced.  Time to stop screwing around and solve the problems.  They don’t want to be part of it, fine. Stay in the other state.

Come on folks…elected officials work for us.  If you had made as big a mess at your job as these people have, you’d have been fired, and rightly so.  So, ok, we haven’t been paying attention, so we share in the blame. We’ve neglected going to the polls and participating in the process and these folks have been allowed to run amok.  Yes, boys and girls, it’s our fault for not taking them to task before this, so go to the polls on the next chance you get and send them a message.  The recent turnover in the House of Representatives should have served noticed that we were paying attention again, but it obviously has not.   We obviously need to send a stronger nudge.   Either they work for us, and I do mean FOR US, or they don’t get to keep the seats.

Working for us means making choices in our behalf that we approve of and that are in the best interest of the country.  Take for instance, this push by the Obama administration to get electric cars into development.  I agree that an alternative to petroleum powered cars must be found, but I don’t think that the full electric battery powered car is the answer.  It could be a stop gap, but it will never be a permanent solution.  Americans are a people on the move.  We go where we want, when we want and none of us are willing to give that up.  Electric cars severely limit this ability.  To just get back and forth to work, they might be ok for those who live in the city and can drive at low speeds to get to the market and to work and such.  What happens when it’s time for a vacation? If you live in New York and decide to go to California, it will take nearly a month in your electric car just to get there, assuming you can get the full 100 miles or so that they all tout as a cruising range.  If you find that funny, lets do some math.  Google Maps suggests three routes to get from New York City to Los Angeles.  One is 2790 miles, the second ins 2778 miles and the third is 2810 miles.   All three are close enough to call it 2800 miles.  If you can only drive 100 miles a day, you’re talking 28 days to get there.  In a normal car, it would be about 56 hours if you average 50 mph.  If you take your time and only drive 12 hours at a time, you’d be there in 4 ½ days. You’d also have to figure out some way to overcome the frustration of only being on the road for 2 hours at a time as well, and hope you find a place to stay with a recharging station for the 16 or more hours it will take to recharge. While that’s going on, you’ll be on foot or at the mercy of cab drivers  to get to you things to do while your car sits at the hotel and sucks up electricity.  You would have to save up a lot of vacation time, and a pile of money to stay in hotels for two months.

Alternately, you could take some sort of public transportation like an airline or train or maybe even a bus.  Airline could have you there in a matter of hours, with a great deal of aggravation (getting groped, irradiated, etc by the TSA) and expense.  A train would probably get you there in a week or so assuming you had access to rail service where you live and a bus could probably get you there in 2 weeks.  They stop at every town they come across, remember.  Traveling cross country via mass transit limits your options considerably as well.  In your car, if you see a sign that says something about the world’s largest mushroom, you can take the appropriate exit and go see it if you wish. On a bus, train or plane, that ain’t happening.  You can always get off at the next scheduled stop and back track, if you can find a way, or perhaps rent a car which you’ll have to do with any of these methods once you reach your destination. Sounds like a great time to me.  In fact, I have experienced this.  We loaded up and flew somewhere once, but I didn’t rent a car.  We had booked a hotel right on the beach near all the attractions so we thought we’d be fine on foot or occasionally using a cab.  Well, we had a good time on the vacation, but we’ll never do that again.  Every time we got in a cab it was 40 bucks.  At one point I even considered buying a couple of department store bicycles to use during our stay.  Would have been far cheaper than the cab fare we doled out.  Ever since then, we’ve had a method of self transport when we’ve gone anywhere.  

At any rate, why would we pursue the electric car so vigorously, when there is an alternative that is very similar to what we do now?  No, I’m not talking about ethanol, though that is at least a renewable energy source.   I’m talking the hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicle.  Something similar to the Honda Clarity.  It can be driven like a normal car, at normal speeds and has a range of some 300 miles or so before it needs refueled.  It refuels like a normal car, in that you can pull up to a hydrogen dispensing unit, refill your fuel cell and be on your way in about 10 minutes, as opposed to 16 hours in a plug in electric. Its only emissions are heat and water vapor, so it’s very clean to operate.  Its manufacture does no more damage to the environment than a normal car, and is much less damaging than the plug in electric in that respect.   So why is there so much interest in and push for the plug in electric?  Why not build hydrogen refueling stations and develop the means to produce, transport and store hydrogen safely instead of fooling about with battery powered cars?

Our President has demonstrated a desire to transform America into something more….European.  He likes socialized medicine for some reason. Heaven knows it’s been a failure in every country that’s tried it.  Europe has a much more extensive rail system that we do, and he pushes hard for that, even though Amtrak has been a money pit that has never been profitable. The English rail is the butt of endless jokes even by the English.  If electric cars are eventually mandated, that would force people to use the rail system for longer distance travel, so maybe that’s why he’s so interested in it.  Factories and other employers here would have to become much more forgiving of people coming in late if that becomes a reality, because the trains in Europe are by reputation seldom on time. Still, he could claim success with the rail projects if other means of transportation were as neutered as the electric car.

I for one am not interested in making America more European.  We did not become the world’s greatest super power by imitating our European neighbors.  Not that there’s anything wrong with Europe, I think it is a marvelous place, steeped in centuries of culture and history that is absolutely fascinating.  Nevertheless, 235 years ago this nation decided to do things its own way; to leave behind the old ways and forge ahead on its own.  Sure, we made mistakes along the way. We made some enemies too. But we made a great many friends, and have risen to be the shining example of just how successful a nation can be.   When disaster strikes, we can, have and will offer aid to any nation, friend and foe alike.  Our success is slipping away, however, because we have tried too hard to not offend, to be politically correct, to become multicultural, multilingual, even apologizing for our successes.  Well, to that I say “bollocks”.  We need to climb back up on top, stop that nonsense and make our economy thrive, and put our own ingenuity and inventiveness back to work to solve our problems ourselves.  That’s not going to happen riding around in electric cars and bullet trains.  Sure, we’ll make some enemies by being successful, but they’ll get over it.  If America falls, the rest of the world will fall as well.  The entire planet will descend into chaos and the nut jobs of the world like Imadikkahed (or whatever his name is) in Iran will wage war after war of oppression, till there is nothing left.  If America falls, it truly will be the   End of the World (click to listen).

What is wrong with the folks in DC?

What is wrong with the folks in Washington DC that we have trusted to run this country?  Are we as a people all really stupid enough to have sent 537 complete idiots to represent and lead us? Yes, 537.  I include the President and Vice President in this.  We have sent 535 men and women to the most perfectly conceived and designed organization ever seen in the history of man, and over the last few years they have made a complete mess of everything they are supposed to do. So have the last few Presidents, as proven by the wide open borders, the 2 hopelessly entrenched wars we are attempting to fight as well as all the other involvement we are tangled up in, not to mention the mess that the federal budget is in.  In this edition, we’ll take a look at the roll of Congress, the President and Vice President as a guy like me understands it.

Before this gets started, let me say right up front that I am no expert on Constitutional law, or law of any kind for that matter.  The Constitution was written more than two centuries ago, and we have issues today that our founding fathers would never have even dreamed of, let alone been able to anticipate. In spite of all that, it is the document that has the last word, and spells out some pretty specific duties for those we elect to these most serious of offices.  Even a guy like me, with only a high school education and 51 years of life experience can understand these basic duties, and see where these people are failing.  Let’s start at the top, with the President of the United States.  Everybody knows his role as “commander-in-chief” but I’m not sure everyone understands what that means. The President is the highest ranking officer in the military.  He cannot declare war on his own, but has it within his Constitutional authority both to command military action as needed to protect the United States and it’s interests at home and abroad, anywhere in the world, and if necessary to ask Congress for a formal declaration of war in order to continue those actions.  This power is necessary to respond quickly to any threats to the sovereignty of our nation, and he is in fact required by his oath as President to do these things.  It is no accident that the Constitution was written this way.  It was the intent of the Founders to have a civilian as the head of the military. “We the People” does not mean “we the military dictators”.    Abraham Lincoln spoke of “government of, by and for the people” in the Gettysburg Address, and this institution, our method of governing ourselves is that of which he speaks.

In addition to being commander-in-chief of the military, our President is also the chief law enforcement officer in our nation. He cannot make laws, though it is his right and privilege to suggest legislation that the Congress may act on as it sees fit under its constitutional authority (more on that later). That’s not to say that you’ll ever see the President writing speeding tickets or busting bad guys on TV, nor should you.  His power resides in the federal level, and is best administered by the various agencies under his direction and does not include enforcement of local, county, or state laws.  Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution makes this clear with the words “he shall take care that the Laws be faithfully executed”, referring to laws passed by Congress.   This of course is a very simplistic description of just two of the President’s responsibilities, but now you know enough to continue with the discussion.

The Vice President has a rather unique job.  He is there to advise and assist the President, but his main function from a constitutional point of view is to preside over the Senate. He does not have a vote except in rare instances when the Senate is equally divided, and then may cast the tie breaking vote.  His other duty is to assume the Office of President should it be necessary due to the President being incapacitated.

The Constitution is very specific on how the House of Representatives and the Senate is to be structured, with specific duties, powers and responsibilities granted to each. None are more explicitly laid out as those that have to do with impeachment of public officials.  Contrary to popular belief, impeachment does not mean that the person is removed from office.  An impeachment is the act of bringing formal charges, followed by a trial.  This can be done against any public official, but in the case of Congressmen, Senators, or the President or Vice President, the House of Representatives is responsible for formulating the accusations, and the Senate then tries the accused. The accused individual is only convicted if two thirds of those Senators present agree.   Punishment is very specific as well, and is limited by the Constitution to removal from office only, and possible disqualification to hold any other office.  Once this is done, the person can then find himself subject to civil and or criminal proceedings according applicable laws.

Laws in this country are not solely up to the will of Congress and the President.  We have one more avenue for checks and balances, that being in the Supreme Court. This body has no authority to make or suggest legislation, but is charged with the examination of various laws if challenged by the people, and to determine the constitutionality of the laws in question.  The Supreme Court may strike down a law as unconstitutional if it so finds, and to issue an explanation of the meaning of the Constitution as it applies to each case.

Knowing how all this works or rather, how it should work, we as a nation find ourselves in a difficult situation.  There is no provision in the Constitution to remove a Congressman, Senator or President for doing a bad job, only if the actions of the person are criminal. The exception to that is at election time, by which we can replace the person if enough people vote to do so.  So let’s say for a moment that someone digs through all the legislation in the past year and comes up with a list of expenditures that can only be termed as wasteful spending.  Is it illegal for Congress to waste money?  If so, who do you charge? The person that introduced the bill? The Congressmen and Senators that voted for it? The President for signing it? Or do we hold them all responsible?  If there is something in the budget that was so wasteful that it could be called “theft” and we as a people call for impeachment of those responsible, how would it ever make it to trial?  All 535 would stand accused, so how could they judge their fellows for the same crime?  President Clinton’s impeachment lasted two full months, so 535 of them would take 1070 months or more than 89 years!

Our only recourse is to go to the poles and vote them out.  If you read the recent GAO report, or Senator Coburn’s Wastebook 2010, it won’t take long for you to see that not a single one of them deserves another term in office.  The GAO report outlines more cuts in spending just by eliminating waste and duplication than the proposed budget now being considered by Congress.  Just the 100 items in Wastebook 2010 add up to 11.5 billion dollars.  Before we allow them to start cutting Social Security and Medicare, before we raise retirement age to the point that no one will live long enough to get to it, lets cut out the obvious waste. Take the GAO report and fix the stuff on it.  Eliminate fraud in the so-called entitlement programs before you reduce or eliminate people who really need the help.  We hear news stories all the time about someone receiving 2 or 3 or more payments each month, having signed up under every name they could think of.  Use those marvelous super computers to analyze the names, addresses, social security numbers and other identifying characteristics and find the duplicates.  Don’t cut Veterans benefits, increase them.  They deserve it and we owe it to them.  Streamline the nightmare that is our income tax system, make it fair to all, thereby reducing costs and saving money. 

The shift of power in the House after the recent election should be a sign to you, Congress.  The people don’t like the job you’ve done, and continuing on this course will not be tolerated.  Mr. President, most of America is not happy with the job you’ve done in protecting us.  Take definitive action on the southern border. You give the appearance of being more concerned with making Mexico mad than you are with protecting the people who put you in office.  You’ve made America mad, Mr. President.  Seal the border; make it safe for Americans to walk on American soil. Farmers should be safe in their own fields; tourists should be safe in our National Parks.  This belongs to us, Mr. President, not them. So what if it offends Mexico, this is the United States, not a Mexican territory.  The drug cartels and other criminal elements directly threaten the sovereignty of this great nation, and you don’t appear to be doing anything about it.  That is offensive to America, Mr. President! If Mexico get offended because we protect ourselves from their criminals, just how good a friend are they anyway?

Our economy is failing, our people can’t find work, the housing market is in a meltdown, yet we continue to send staggering amounts of money in the form of foreign aid to countries that are not our friends.  How about keeping some of that here?  It’s time to look to our own house Mr. President and members of Congress.  I’m all for a healthy 2 or 3 or 4 party system, but at some point you’ve got to lay “loyal opposition” aside and do what’s best for the nation.  Just because a proposal is from the Republicans or Democrats or Tea Party does not automatically mean its bad, any more than being from your own party means its good.

No one says it will be easy.  The problems are enormous. The decisions will hurt.   If you can’t handle it, step down and let someone in that will.  You asked for the job, now do it.  Look at the legislation for what it is, not which party started it.  Secure our nation; bolster our freedoms instead of taking them away.  Prop up our economy instead of everyone else’s.  Remember, you are there to do the will of the people who elected you. 

Falling off the deep end

Ok folks…the entire world has gone off the deep end. Is there no one left out there that has any common sense?  We expect a certain amount of eccentricity from Hollywood, so it’s no surprise to anyone that Charlie Sheen is in the news again. Seems CBS has shut down this idiot’s show because he can’t leave the cocaine alone.  Even got himself hospitalized after a porn star orgy.   Then there’s Lindsey Lohan, headed for jail…again…or so the reports indicate.  She’ll probably do 30 minutes, maybe an hour behind bars.  It’s all a publicity stunt.   Then you got that Colorado hockey coach who for some reason known only to him thought that the appropriate response to  what he felt was a bad call by the reffs was to strip.  Yes, he removed most of his clothing and lodged his protest wearing only his pants and socks. CHL officials suspended this idiot for the remainder of the season.

Then there’s a report of Amber Portwood being involved in a nude photo scandal.  Well, ok…who is Amber Portwood, and why does anyone care if she posed nude?  Don’t we have anything better to worry about than some reality show cast member most of us never heard of posing for naked pictures?  Who cares?  I looked at the pics. Take my word for it, no one will care. Amber, I got news for ya, Playboy ain’t gonna be calling any time soon.

Speaking of posing nude, there’s a new flap going on over Hollywood celebrities posing nude while pregnant.  The fuss being raised is not over the celebrity, nor the fact that she’s posing nude.  Seems that some moron has decided that this practice exploits the unborn child some way and how wrong and unfair it is to the child.  They site Demi Moore’s pics in 1991 as an example, with mentions of several other stars, Britney Spears among them as examples.  Again I have to say “so what?”  Moore’s pictures were 20 years ago, the child is now an adult and I couldn’t even tell you if she had a boy or a girl, nor do I care.  Britney Spears has shown us everything she has at one time or another, so why is a baby bump newsworthy?  People take these Hollywood folks far too seriously. The same person raising the ruckus about the babies is also trying to blame the poor body image lots of people have of themselves on this type of picture. These people are not role models, nor should they be.  They are actors. They make their living by entertaining us, not teaching us how to live.  By the time the make up artists, airbrush and photo editing people get done, they don’t even resemble a normal human being but believe it or not, they are!  They suffer from stretch marks, the extra weight, and all the other things pregnant women put up with, but they have armies of technicians that keep us from seeing it.  If you look at these pics and think anything else, you’re kidding yourself.  Don’t blame your poor body image on them, it’s your own delusions.  What you see these stars do is all carefully staged and managed, it’s not real folks.  You could send Quasimodo in for a photo shoot with these people and he’d look fabulous.  It’s all make up and digital photo editing, don’t believe it.

Then I saw this headline : Congressional Budget Chief Warns of Burgeoning U.S. Debt .  Well, no s%#t Sherlock, did you figure that out all by yourself?  Somebody in DC is worried about the explosion of debt because it might be a problem someday.  Of course according to him, its all Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security’s fault. Has nothing to do with the administration handing out billions of dollars to countries that hate us, companies and banks that were allowed to let their “bailouts” be used in an unregulated manner to the point that they can’t even tell you what they did with it.

The one that jerks my chain the most is the story about our lawmakers trying to figure out how or even if they should arm ICE agents in Mexico.  Seems that under an agreement reaching back to 1990, US agents are not allowed firearms in Mexico.  Yes, that’s right…our Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, operating in a country where there is little that resembles law and order, a country where more than 30,000 people have been murdered since 2006, cannot carry weapons to defend themselves while in Mexico.  There are only 2 ways to handle this folks.  Either you arm our agents, with sufficient firepower to put down any attack, or you pull them out and put them on our side of the border.  A border which should be sealed, by the way.  You want to know how to arm them?  It’s easy. You give him a .40 caliber Glock for each hip, put an AR-15 on his back, a knife in each boot and one on his belt.  Then you give that agent about 25 more agents armed the same way, all with orders to shoot to kill anyone attacking them.   This is not hard.  Oh, but wait, Mexico might not like that, you say.  Tough, I says.  Of course, Uncle Sam will have to grow his cojones back to do this, but if they protest, we say, fine.  No armed agents means no agents at all.  No agents means no foreign aid.  Cut them off.   It’s about time we stopped taking all this abuse and did things our way for a change.   We’ve backed off, not meddled anywhere we didn’t absolutely have to, we send all that food, money and medicine to friend and foe alike, and see what it’s gotten us?

We as a people have become a nation of neutered mewling babies and have elected leaders that reflect that.  We are scared of our own shadows, so cowardly in fact that anyone who attempts to defend himself or his family from an attacker is made to be the villain. We try to buy off all these nations that hate us and our success, with promises of more food, money and military protection all the while refusing to see what they are doing.  I have no quarrel with the people of most of the nations in the world.  They want to have jobs and raise their children and live life in a way that makes them happy. I wouldn’t deny that to anyone, unless what makes him happy is depriving me or mine that same opportunity. It’s the nut-job leaders in some of these places that are causing the problems.  You take some hard line religious fanatic who is so delusional that he’s convinced that God has appointed him to bring about Armageddon, no amount of money will stop him from trying.  I sometimes get told that I watch too much television, but I think Alfred Pennyworth (Bruce Wayne’s butler in the Batman stories) said it best: “Some men aren’t looking for anything logical.  They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just wanna watch the world burn.”  

Harry Reid, Nevada Brothels and the end of the world.

Have any of you watched the news today? Or even looked at the headlines on the news services? If you have, you’ll know that the world has gone insane in the last few weeks.  If not, you need to take a look and see what’s going on around you.   I would particularly urge Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader to take a look. If the headlines I’m seeing are true, somebody needs to get that man in front of a tv or newspaper quick because he does not know what’s going on.

Let me explain why I think so.  We have Middle Eastern governments toppling like so many dominoes. Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Algeria  and even Jordan have protesters marching in the streets demanding change, bloodshed and death everywhere.  There are reports of it happening in Iran, with Imahdikkahed, or whatever the president’s name is there threatening capital punishment for any who participate. Iraq is the same mess it’s been for the last 2 decades, and Pakistan is still trying to straddle the fence between being friends with the United States and continuing to support and aid all the terrorist groups that operate from there.  As a result, the stock market plunged more than 200 points today and crude oil shot up from an already inflated price of around $86 to over $93.  We have Americans and others being captured and murdered by pirates off Somalia’s coast, Democratic lawmakers now in 2 states hiding from Republicans, a national debt that will exceed the gross national product by the end of the year, businesses dying like flies, millions of Americans unemployed and losing their homes and that’s just a start. The last issue of this blog was all about government waste, we have a drug war going on in Mexico that has killed more than 30,000 people has begun spilling over into this country because of the wide open borders, and reports of Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations working with the drug cartels in Mexico to further threaten the United States.

So what is Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader worrying about?  Brothels in Nevada!  What in the hell is he thinking?  Why is he even talking about this with all the serious stuff going on the world? Granted, he is from Nevada, but he was elected to a federal post, not county commissioner.  Let the locals worry about local stuff, and get on with fixing the healthcare disaster, the national debt disaster, or any of the other national disasters we are facing. Do the job that your people elected you to do!  Who gives a rat’s ass if there is a brothel in Nevada?  China owns 2/3 of our nation and he’s worried about a brothel?  This mess in the Middle East will drive oil prices out the roof and topple our economy.  Iran continues to harass Israel, who won’t put up with much more and will take military action if the threatened much more.  That will quickly lead to an escalation the likes of which have not been seen.  You think the $4 a gallon gas was bad before, wait till it’s $10! That’s what all out war in the Middle East will do for you. And that won’t be all, folks.  How quickly we forget.  Skyrocketing fuel prices will cause skyrocketing prices on everything else.  Food, medicine, electricity, materials for the factories to run, feed for the chickens and cattle all will spiral out of control and we’ll be plunged into an economic depression that will make the Great Depression of 1929 look like an economic hiccup.

No one in this country can do very much about the conditions in the Middle East beyond preparing us for that eventuality, but Reid and the rest of the Senate along with our President and the House should be working on plans to protect us from the effects of all this.  They should be working to reduce our national debt, and cutting out all the ridiculous programs that I talked about last time.  They should be figuring out how to put Americans back to work and stop the landslide of foreclosures.  Instead, Congress is screwing around with stuff that should by definition be of local concern.  A past issue of this blog was about how the FCC wanted to set federal standards for local programming. I’ve talked at length of how the Department of Education has railroaded through laws like “No Child Left Behind” which has imposed federal standards on local schools, and how that has failed dismally, by the way.   Why all of a sudden is Congress so interested in meddling in local affairs?  Is it because they are so overwhelmed by the enormity of their jobs that they just can’t do it?  Is it because they simply don’t care about why they sit in those seats?  Some of both?  What’s next in this chain of events…having to get Congressional approval for building permits?   Can you see having to petition your Senator to sponsor a bill to get you a garage sale permit?  Congress, Reid included, needs to turn its attention to running the country at the national level and leave local affairs to the locals.

A $14 TRILLION national debt (that’s more than $45,500 per citizen) and the Senate Majority Leader is worrying about a few brothels in one state.

Why does R.E.M.’s “It’s the end of the world as we know it” keep running through my head?

Your tax dollars at work

I just read Senator Tom Coburn’s “Wastebook 2010” and I must say, the people in our government, from the local level all the way up don’t have a clue. Wastebook 2010 is a list of 100 expenditures of federal funds on  what Senator Coburn feels were completely useless and unneeded projects.  According to Coburn, this list adds up to $11.5 Billion dollars, and that there are “examples like these too numerous to count”.  We’ll take a look at some of the things on his list in this edition, and if you’d like to read the report in its entirety, you can find it here:  Wastebook 2010

 Very few of us have been unaffected by the last few years and the economic turmoil that has forced millions of Americans out of jobs.  Many have lost their homes and other possessions, struggle to find health care and even food.  The stimulus package put forth by the Obama administration was supposed to help with all this along with the bailouts to the banks and big industry like car companies and so forth.  The talking heads on the nightly news point to all of this and say it’s the cause of the staggering amount of debt .  All of that has had a great effect on the national debt, no doubt, but I would offer that if there are examples too numerous to count of spending like we are about to take a look at, that this is where we are bleeding to death, and we must gain control of this nonsense before it kills us.  I don’t have a problem with anyone spending their money as they see fit.  I do it, you do it, and that’s just the way it is.  We all buy things we don’t need, and sometimes spend more than we should.  Few of us save money against hard times or for retirement like we should.  You gotta have a little fun once in a while, and as responsible adults, we have earned the right to do as we please.  If we spend the rent money on a party, and wind up homeless, well, maybe we know better next time.  The problem is, Congress is doing this, and if we don’t make them stop, we’ll all be homeless and there won’t be a next time.

Take for instance the very first item on Senator Coburn’s list.  According to this list, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) spends $175 million dollars a year maintaining buildings it doesn’t use.  In spite of this tremendous amount of money, many of the buildings are in very poor condition and are infested with vermin. In the report, Coburn says that the VA disputes the figure; saying that it only spent $34 million dollars on these properties and that is has in fact sold off 266 of the unused buildings in the last 3 years.  You got to wonder, if the buildings are virtually abandoned, and have fallen into disrepair, what are they doing with the money supposedly spent to maintain them?

I’m not going through every one of the 100 items on the list, but I can’t resist number 2.  The city of Shreveport, Louisiana  according to this report, spent $1.5 million dollars of stimulus money removing mold from a housing complex. In their stimulus grant application, they said that $100,000 of it would be used for this purpose with the rest going towards improving low income housing projects operated by the city.  The report goes on to state that HUD officials noticed some 10 months after the money was received that none of it had been spent, and that after a year unused funds had to be returned.  A few weeks later, city officials had signed contracts for a million and a half dollars for “mold remediation” at this one apartment complex.  Well, here’s where it gets sticky.  The complex was slated for demolition.  Why would you spend any money on improving a building you were going to tear down?

Number seven on the list is the next thing to talk about.  The Department of Energy’s electric bill is $190 million dollars a year.  It’s energy consumption is second only to the US Postal Service in all government agencies.  Auditors say they could reduce that by more than $2 million dollars a year by turning off unused lighting and switching to more efficient technology.  Imagine that.

Then there are the Armenian criminals that bilked Uncle Sam out of $35 million in fraudulent Medicare payments, but I don’t really count that as something they did willfully.  That was a crime committed against our government that I supposed couldn’t be helped at the time. At least they discovered it and arrested those responsible.

Another crime, this one perpetrated by our government against the people of this nation is the $1 million dollars of tax payer money spent to put up little signs with snippets of poetry in various zoos around the country.  Yes, I said poetry, on signs, in zoos.  Its bad enough that someone would actually have the gall to ask for federal money to do this, but the Senators and Representatives that pushed this through should at best lose their seats, and in reality should see the inside of a prison for a year.  Don’t get me wrong, I am not against the project itself.  Zoos are valuable assets that should be protected and maintained, but that sort of thing should have been funded by bake sales and car washes at a local level, not with federal money.  A drop in the bucket you say?  That’s a matter of perspective.  That drop is pretty valuable when its leaking out of the bucket, and you depend on the contents of that bucket to survive.

The nearly two and a half million dollars spent to subsidize flights between the cities of Macon and Athens, Georgia to Atlanta is another program that should send the people involved to prison.  The payments were made under the federal government program called Essential Air Service, intended to support carriers who will serve rural communities far removed from so-called “hub” airports. The flights take 50 minutes, but it’s less than a 90 minute drive from either of them to Atlanta.  With population of more than  92,000 for Macon and well over 100,000 for Athens, these cities can hardly be described as “far removed rural communities”.  With all the hassles involved in air travel these days, why would go to all that trouble to dodge a 90 minute drive? Little wonder they have to subsidize the flights, very few people are actually doing it.

While we’re talking about Atlanta, did you know that more than $47 million dollars of your stimulus money was given to Atlanta to build a street car project in downtown?  Why is that a problem you ask?  For two reasons…one, after its completion, if you were to ride it from one end to the other, you will have only been transported a little over 2 1/2  miles. Two, the street car track is being built directly over a subway that covers the exact same route. Proponents say that it will help to alleviate traffic and congestion in the downtown area.  Really? For two and a half miles? Come on…you can’t be serious.

Don’t even get me started on the $2.5 million dollars the Census Bureau wasted on the Super Bowl commercial.  Whoever cooked that up should be wearing a striped suit and swinging a hammer to turn big rocks into little rocks.

Here’s one that will twist your shorts.  Number 21 on the Senator’s list says that the National Institute of Health gave the University of Puerto Rico nearly $443,000 to study male prostitutes and their social setting…in Vietnam.  Since 2008, this project has received nearly a half million dollars a year.  Why?

The last one I’ll mention is one that just completely blows me away.  There are all sorts of promotions for wine and tourism and ad campaigns that were in my opinion complete wastes of money.  Money spent to demolish abandoned buildings out in the middle of nowhere and to maintain roads that no one ever uses, but  this one beats all. This is another National Institute of Health boondoggle that wasted $800,000 of stimulus money.  Now, let me digress for a second.  I thought all this stimulus money was to be spent in ways that would stimulate the American economy and help put Americans back to work.  Isn’t that what President Obama got on tv and told everybody?  Well, if that’s the case, why did all this money go to a program to send researchers to Orange Farm, South Africa to teach South African men how to wash their genitals, and to study the “feasibility of improving male genital hygiene as a possible way for men to protect themselves from HIV”.  Yes my gentle readers, nearly a million dollars of “stimulus” money, meant to help keep our economy on its wheels, was spent half a world away to teach men how to wash their tallywhackers after a roll in the hay. I don’t argue that they need to know how to do that, but is it really the responsibility of the American government to make sure they do?

Do you see now why I said at the start of this that the people running our nation don’t have a clue?  If we don’t band together and get these idiots out of office in the very next election, we are doomed to fail as a nation.

Electric Cars revisited

Let’s take a look at owning a plug-in electric car.  The first thing that comes to mind is your freedom from the gas pump.  You never have to care about the price of gasoline or diesel again!  As the owner of a full size 4WD pickup truck with a very large V8 engine, I can see where that would have a lot of appeal. So how much would a plug in electric actually help this situation?

Standard equipment for the plug-ins currently available includes a cable which you plug in to standard house current. If you’ve depleted your battery, you are looking at as much as 20 hours to recharge it. This would be a situation where you’ve run it down somewhere to the point that it could not be driven and you’ve had it towed home.  Let’s assume you didn’t do that, and the car made it into your garage. To be fair, we’ll say that it is discharged to the point that it takes 16 hours to charge back up. To put that in perspective, if you’ve arrived home at 6 p.m. and plugged in your charger, the battery won’t be fully charged until 10 a.m. the next morning.  If you have to be at work at 7, that could be a problem.  I suppose you could unplug it and drive on a partial charge, but I would imagine that the owner’s manuals do not recommend that practice. I haven’t read any of them, but that’s a pretty standard recommendation on any battery powered device.

There is a way around the 20 hour wait however.  For an additional $700 to $1200, plus the cost of installation, you can have a Level 2 charger installed in your house. Commonly referred to as “charging docks”, these chargers require a dedicated 240 volt 30 amp circuit to operate.  In most places, installation will require the services of a licensed electrician. Be sure to check any local codes and ordinances before you buy one of these.  If you live in an older home or in a rural area, you may need to upgrade your electrical panel to install one of these devices. This will pump up the cost considerably. Once installed however, this charger will top off your electric “tank” in about 8 hours.

Ok, you’ve laid down $30,000 for the car, another $1200 for a charger and $1200 more to have it installed so you’re ready to start saving all that gas money right?  Well, let’s talk about my truck for a minute.  I spend about $40 a week for gas for it, more or less depending on if we do much driving on weekends. Through the summer, it’s considerably less, as my wife is out of school and I work at home. If we use $40 per week for an example, the costs associated with the charger bought gas for me for over a year at current prices.  For people that already have small cars and spend say, $12 a week for gas, that’s 4 years of fuel, just in the charger! But you’re saving gas money, remember?

I mentioned earlier that you were free from the gas pump with one of these.  True enough, but if it’s your only means of transportation, you’re on a pretty short leash with one of them. Published specifications say you can get up to 100 miles per charge. That specification assumes you are driving in perfect weather on flat terrain at 35 mph. I would bet that around where I live, you’d see that drop off sharply. There is very little flat terrain in this part of Arkansas, and if you live around here or have watched the news lately you’ve seen that the weather is far from perfect.  We commonly range from temperatures in the teens in winter to triple digit heat in summer.  My wife has a 34 mile round trip commute to work, and I dare say that factoring in the distance, terrain and weather, it would tax the abilities of most of the electrics out there to make that trip every day.  She certainly couldn’t make it two days in a row without a recharge.  Add trips to the market, pharmacy and all the other things you have to do to make life livable and you are now out of range.  You see, they don’t advertise that you can’t get that 100 miles per charge if you have to spend time on a freeway at 70 mph.  Highway speeds sap your battery very quickly. These things are in-town, residential speed commuter cars.

One of the things you see in any argument online about owning these things is what happens when there’s a disaster that knocks the power out. Neither side of the online battles that I have read has any common sense.  For one, if the power fails, you can’t recharge.  That’s a given. If the disaster happens while you are at home that might not be a big deal, depending on what caused it. But what if you need to evacuate? If it’s a manmade disaster like a chemical spill for instance, your little electric car can probably get you to safety. But what happens if you just made your 40 mile commute, got home, plugged your car in, turned on the tv and discovered that there’s a category 5 hurricane headed your way and the governor has ordered everyone to move inland by 200 miles?  After you wait the 8 hours to recharge, it’s gonna take anywhere from 2 to 5 days to go that far in your electric car.  Bad news if the hurricane is 12 hours away.  But if the power is out you can’t pump gasoline or diesel either, you argue.  True, but you can pump it with a hand cranked pump or pour it from a gas can!  The 5 gallon can you have in the garage for the lawnmower, if full, will get you a good long way down the road in whatever sort of gasoline powered car you happen to have.  Your electric might get you to the refugee center, but you’re going without any of your stuff.

Laying the disaster scenarios aside, these things are good for the environment, right?  Well, depends on how deep you look.  Most people prefer to turn a blind eye to the damage done to Mother Earth to make the batteries for these things. It requires digging gigantic holes in the ground, and consuming monstrous amounts of fossil fuels and electricity to mine, refine, ship and fabricate the minerals required as well as all the waste products generated in the process.  All that happens in other countries so we choose not to see it.   We also choose to ignore the dangers these vehicles create in the event of a crash.  All this high current wiring running through the car bodies poses a hazard to rescue workers and the equipment they use to extract victims from crashes.

Do we need an alternative to fossil fuel powered cars?  Absolutely we do.  Is the plug in electric the answer to that question?  No, I don’t think so. I think they have their uses.  If the purchase price comes down in the under $15,000 range, I could see them serving folk who live within 20 miles of where they work and can drive at residential speeds to get there as a second car just for that purpose. As a solitary means of transportation, they are not going to be practical. They will be fashionable for a while, but I think you’ll see a great many of them on the “pre-owned” market that are less than a year old.  The market for these is going to be a small niche.  In these days of “gotta have it now” and do it as cheap as possible, these cars will never succeed.  We complain if a web-page takes a half second to open, so how will we tolerate waiting 20 hours to recharge the car?  Can you imagine the reaction in the business world if some corporate executive called across town to another branch to have someone come over for a meeting or to repair a critical piece of equipment and he gets told “sorry boss, it will be four more hours before my car is charged enough to drive again.”  That would go over like a lead balloon.  Speaking of corporations, how many companies do you suppose would be willing to put charging docks in the parking lots for the employee’s use?  Not many I’ll wager, unless there was some huge tax incentive to do so.  Even then, it would be more trouble than most companies would be willing to endure.

Obama and the million electric car march

Let’s see, where to start.  President Obama wants to have a million electric cars on the roads by 2015.  Interesting idea, but not very practical, I would say.  As I’ve mentioned before in previous articles, electric cars are inhibited by two major concerns. One is the extremely limited range, and the other is a staggering price tag. To offset the latter, our President is planning to offer a $7500 tax credit for buying one.  That would bring the actual cost of a $32,800 Nissan Leaf down to $25,300 (assuming you paid cash for it). Let’s think about this from a practical point of view.  If you financed one of these cars at 7.5% interest for 60 months, with a $5000 trade in allowance, you’d be paying roughly $574 a month for a car that can only go (if you are lucky) 50 miles before you have to recharge it.  This can take up to 17 hours. A trip from Fayetteville to Little Rock and back would take 6 days, assuming you could find someplace to plug it in. You get very many electrics on the road hotels and restaurants will have to start charging for recharging.  It would create a new revenue stream for them, I suppose.  Instead of a parking meter, you could have a “charging meter”.  Might add a whole new definition to the term “charge card”.

These cars would be best suited to those of us who live not in the big congested cities like Los Angeles or Dallas or London, but in the small towns of around 75,000 population.  Why? Simple…less traffic and shorter commutes.  If you have to make a 40 mile commute across Dallas in the summer while running the AC, you’d run the risk of depleting your battery before you got there!  The town where I live is about 65,000 and even if you live at one end and your job is at the most distant point possible at the other end of town, you’re only 10 miles away.  You could drive your Leaf to work and back, to the market and even out for an evening  without having to worry about getting stuck with a dead battery and only have to charge it overnight every couple of days.  That would make a huge impact on air quality and the amount of gasoline as a whole these million cars in the President’s proposal would use.  But you and I both know that won’t happen.  How many families in this country with the economy in the shape it’s in now could afford to buy a car with a nearly $600 a month payment just to go to work and back?  We are being practical here folks…I’m not talking about Tyson and Wal-Mart executives here.  I’m talking about the people that work in the factories, mills, and processing plants. The guy who changes your oil, cuts your hair, and stocks the grocery shelves.  The lady behind the cash register, who waits your table, or takes care of your kid at daycare.   How many of these folks could lay down $574 a month for a car payment, let alone the insurance for these things? 

In the first paragraph I made mention of a trade-in worth $5000. Let’s explore this for a minute.  For this example we will assume that car is paid for, is in reasonably good condition and gets 20 mpg.  At $3 a gallon for gasoline, one month’s payment on the electric would buy enough fuel for you to drive this car for 3826 miles.  If gasoline went up to $5 per gallon, you could still buy enough to drive 2300 miles…for the cost of one payment on the electric.  There is no way that buying one of these things makes any economic sense.  If you are wealthy enough to afford a fashionable toy, then by all means, go for it.

In a previous edition, I put forth my concerns about how much damage to the environment is done by just building these things, and the fossil fuels consumed in the process. All that is hidden behind the “green” movement’s hype and nonsense.  If this is your only car, you certainly don’t want to live in a hurricane zone, or any part of the country prone to ice storms that cause widespread power outages. Can you imagine trying to evacuate your family from a coastal area during a hurricane warning in a vehicle that has a 50 mile driving range? What happens if the power is off for a week?

Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not picking on Nissan in particular.  The Leaf is probably the least expensive and most practical of the all the full electrics out there.  What I am saying is that the so-called “plug in electric” will be a fad.  Unless battery technology changes considerably and very quickly, this idea will die a quick death.