Goodbye Private Sector, Hello Big Government

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Dec 042010
 

In October 2010 there were 112 million civilian jobs plus 23 million government workers. That’s according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Government is growing and the private sector is shrinking. Only 36% of the 310 million population is working in the private sector. That’s going the wrong way.  

see: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_12042009.pdf

Why are jobs disappearing?

Government. Too many useless regulations and too many job-killing regulators writing regulations with the force of law but not approved by Congress. Congress can’t keep up with the laws they write and the regulators write three to five times as many regulations as Congress writes laws.

Plus government uses the force of law, doesn’t sell anything; is not controlled by competition nor by the need to make a profit. Those four requirements keep the free market under control at no cost or effort while government is out of control and a constantly increasing burden on the workers. 

The welfare state sucks money out of the 112 million workers pockets to support: 1. government workers,  2. Illegal Aliens, 3. the prisoners, 4. those on unemployment and 5. the families of the employed. Do the arithmetic: 310 million less 112 million, the number working in the private sector,- gives 198 million being supported by 112 million who also have to support themselves. So 112 million jobs support all 310 million people.

 

Save America. Stop Government Banks

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Dec 032010
 

A column in the Bucks County Courier by Mike Krauss promoted Bucks County starting a bank because the county has so much money and assets that are not being used. In 2008 Krauss reports Doylestown had $201 Milllion cash on hand and and $351 Million in assets, funds and investments. That’s HALF A BILLION DOLLARS of money taken from the people that are not being used to help the people.

Krauss promotes going local because the Federal System of controlling banks has failed. Of course it failed. Government should not be in banking because the goals, strategy and tactics of government use force in relationships. Force should be limited, as was done in the Constitution, to police and military and the courts. Government ruins the free market in practically everything by regulating and taxing it as much as possible. Government should not get into more banking because, as Krauss admits, government has turned into an “Orwellian Monster”

Force breaks things and kills people. Force is not a substitute for profit making. The Federal Reserve has no competition and no reason to restrain itself. A private enterprise on the other hand cannot use force, must face competition and must generate profits or it fails. That’s why private, profit making, competitive businesses do well. If they do not provide value for money spent they fail because customers abandon them.

Think about the success of say, Wal-Mart. Why do people smile when they shop there? Then think about how government is so unsuccessful when they can simply command people to do things under penalty of punishment? Why do people complain about paying government but willingly pay Wal-Mart? Profit and Competition keep Wal-Mart in business. Force and Compulsion keep people mad about government. 

Think how awful it would be to go to another government controlled bank that exists on the backs of the people.  Government destroys private sector jobs. If you get a chance tell Mike Krauss where to stick his idea.

Jack Wagons In Charge

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Nov 242010
 

Government cannot keep it’s fingers out of the citizens money.

Every year with very few exceptions more people are added to government and more money is taken from the private sector. That’s the simple tactic of the government Jack Wagons who are running things in Washington and Harrisburg.

The Regulators are the Jackwagons. They pass more regulations every year than Congress passes laws but the regulators are just about invisible.

Ever see a meaningful spending report for say the EPA? Or for any of the other agencies who make laws but call them regulations? Ever wonder why?

Accounting Coleslaw

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Nov 152010
 

Northampton’s Accounting System is just about all nonsense. Very secret. Hard to track expenses. No substantive budget tracking,  just “final figures by month”. Coleslaw.

For 2011 it’s more of the same with no voice of reason trying to get an Objective Review. The 2010 budget was overstated. It should have been cut and all the real extate tax in Northampton could have been eliminated with no change in service.

Same for 2011 where at least $3 million could easily be cut from the budget. But that won’t happen because there is no effective way open to cut the bloat.

But it’s no different than Bucks County’s, Pennsylvania’s or Washington’s. Purposely designed to keep outsiders, i.e., Citizens in the dark.

“Keep ‘em like mushrooms. In the dark and feed ‘em sh**.”

2010 State Election Analysis

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Nov 072010
 

This is from Democracy Rising:
First the numbers:
Tuesday’s election restored Republicans to the majority in the House and kept Republicans in the majority in the Senate:
House: 112-91 Republicans, a 21-vote majority subject to a few possible recounts
Senate: 30-20 Republicans, a 20-vote majority unchanged on Election Day
Independent voters and the Tea Party  within the Republican Party have changed politics. Two years from now, PA Republicans will be judged by their success or failure at increasing employment, re-aligning priorities for state spending, repairing the crumbling highway infrastructure, sustaining the gains made in student achievement, and doing all of it without raising taxes.

Since the Pay Raise of 2005, voters have become impatient. While both major parties maintain a base of people who think their party can do no wrong and the other party can do no right, increasing numbers of voters have become more realistic and pragmatic. Their expectations are higher, and their willingness to be soothed by rhetoric and automatic party allegiance is waning.

Leading the charge.
House Republicans immediately began talking about some changes in the way state government works. At a news conference on Wednesday, the presumptive new Speaker of the House, Sam Smith, R-Jefferson, and other Republican leaders cited three potential amendments to the state Constitution:

Reducing the size of the House of Representatives.
Changing the terms of House members from two years to four years.
Limiting spending on political campaigns.
Here are a few articles about their plans:

New Pa. GOP leaders eye a fee on natural gas instead of a tax, Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 4
Harrisburg shifts to GOP control, changes priorities, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Nov. 4
GOP House to face reform pressures, Scranton Times-Tribune, Nov. 4
What’s next? Harrisburg Patriot-News, Nov. 4
House Minority Leader Sam Smith advocates a smaller legislature, Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 5

While citizens can be optimistic that House Republican leaders are thinking more seriously about these issues than their Democratic predecessors, the decision to seek individual amendments to the Constitution comes at the expense of a Constitution convention, which three-fourths of PA voters want. It indicates an attitude that the government belongs to lawmakers instead of citizens. In this respect, the new Republican majority is no different from the old Democratic majority: Incumbents want to keep the power of making fundamental decisions in their own hands and not in the hands of citizens.

Some defining decisions.
Citizens will know in fairly short order how committed the new leadership is to fundamental change. Here are a few benchmarks that we at DR will use to measure progress:

A referendum in November 2011: Will the new leadership let the people decide whether to have a Constitution convention in 2012 so that they can re-define their government?
Public Integrity Commission: One of citizens’ chief frustrations is that laws designed to enforce public integrity are weak and inadequately enforced. Rep. Curt Schroder, R-Chester, has proposed a new Public Integrity Commission that could assuage those frustrations, but will it be strengthened and enacted, weakened and enacted, or simply ignored?
Re-apportionment: Legislative leaders next year will re-draw the boundaries for House, Senate and Congressional districts. Will they improve upon their performance of 10 years ago (when Republicans also controlled the House, Senate and Governor’s Office) that gave PA the second most gerrymandered legislative districts in America?
2011-12 state budget: No one knows the final number, but PA’s deficit is predicted to be $4 billion, plus or minus $500 million. Corbett’s pledge not to raise taxes, fees or other “revenue enhancements” means a lot of cutting and creative financing. Selling the state liquor stores could bring in $1.5 billion to $2 billion, although that is uncertain. Private sector bidders know the state is over a barrel and are not likely to bid top dollar even for one of the best money-making businesses in history. Will Corbett’s determination to hold the line on state taxes result in more costs being pushed onto counties and school districts and thereby raise local property taxes?
Bonus Scandal: Within the first few months of 2011, high-profile lawmakers and staff will go on trial, accused of illegally using tax-funded staff, offices and other resources for partisan political campaigns. They include Sen. and former Majority Whip Jane Orie, R-Allegheny; Rep. and former Speaker Bill DeWeese, D-Greene; and Rep. and former Speaker John Perzel, R-Phila. Perzel lost on Tuesday; Orie and DeWeese were re-elected. If this is the end of the prosecutions after four years of investigation, will citizens be satisfied that corruption has finally been exorcised from the capitol?
Attorney General: Who will Corbett appoint to replace him as attorney general? Will the new attorney general be more aggressive in prosecuting lawmakers, who remain under investigation? Will the appointed attorney general be someone who intends to be politically neutral or someone who intends to use two years in that office as a platform to run for election in 2012?

Did Republicans Really Win?

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Nov 062010
 

You’ve heard it before, –the Democrats lost. That’s verifiable. It’s only partly true that Republicans won. The electorate is so angry that they directed their outrage against Democrats in the only possible way, by electing Republicans and that’s the problem with a two party system. Insufficient Choice. 

Many voted Republican because that was the only way to vote against what government has been doing wrong with any hope that government will get smaller.

The second problem the Republicans may not do the right things. The third and much larger problem is the vast bureaucracy of Regulators and the massive amount of Regulations. There’s so much inertia built into the system that getting the country to be run according to the Constitution is just about impossible. Freedom is still on the run.

Theft by Government

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Nov 042010
 

It’s very subtle and well disguised but the culmination of all Progressive and Liberal ideas always ends with money from the entire culture flowing into some government entity. “These ideas,” economist Don Boudreaux says, “are almost exclusively about how other people should live their lives, about how one group of people (the politically successful) should engineer everyone else’s contracts, social relations, diets, habits, and even moral sentiments.” Liberalism’s ideas are “about replacing an unimaginably large multitude of diverse and competing ideas . . . with a relatively paltry set of ‘Big Ideas’ that are politically selected, centrally imposed,…..”  and enforced by government.

These are the ideas that are rejected by or unsupportable in the free market. Progressive/ Liberals use the Power and Force of Government to impose their ideas, not by the natural give, take and compromise of the everyday interactions of millions of people.”

Government takes American Jobs

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Nov 042010
 

Government at all levels is a massive JOB-DESTROYING scheme. Un-necessary government work violates the Constitution but it also cuts American private sector profit producing America saving jobs.

Every public sector job destroys from three to ten private sector jobs. Government is massively inefficient. The large total amount of money taken in small increments in trillions of micro-transactions to finance political campaigns that are deisguised as “government jobs” are empty, unnecessary cash transfers from the productive to the un-productive.  Government inefficiency is well documented. Government costs real money and real jobs. Whatever increases the cost of capital formation, such as increasing the cost of investing in say earthmovers, prevents contractors from purchaseing more of them. Managers. owners and investors will have less capital to work with and as a result be dissapointed because of lower wages. Foreign bulldozers become more competitive and foreign jobs are created. That’s how American dollars and jobs are exported. 

Policies that raise the cost of capital formation such as capital gains taxes, low depreciation allowances and corporate taxes, reduce capital formation, and serves the interest of job-destroying politicians who get more money to buy votes and the public loses three waysstors nor consumers. It does serve the interests of politicians who get more resources to be able to buy votes. Workers, consumers and investors lose money.

How does Government get away with taxes and other measures that reduce our prosperity potential. Part of the answer is ignorance and the anti-business climate that is so common it’s like it’s in the air. Notice that prosperity foregone is invisible. We can never tell how much richer we would have been without today’s level of government interference in our lives and therefore we don’t fight it as much as we could if we know.

Now you know.

Republicans didn’t win

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Nov 032010
 

The democrats lost —- because of Obama’s agenda. Even if Obama tries to pivot to the Right, he lost his Mo-Jo. But it’s not a cakewalk for the Repubs who are more like Democrats than they are like Tea Party People. Unfortunately it will take six months of watching and analysing to figure them out then here we go again until finally the government gets itself under control.

“We make a great mistake if we believe that tonight these results are somehow an embrace of the Republican Party,” said incoming Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. A rising GOP star, Rubio seized his new role as a party leader and potential presidential candidate, casting the results as “a second chance for Republicans to be what they said they were going to be not so long ago.”

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