Alternative Energy Pipe Dreams

 Published April 8, 2011 in the Lynchburg Ledger

When the Democrats took control of Congress in 2007, the cost of gas at the pump was around $2.15 a gallon.  By August of 2009, the cost had climbed to around $4.00 a gallon.  Then along came the financial collapse brought on by the sub-prime home loan market meltdown and the price at the pump took a nose dive.  When Barack Obama took the oath of office on January 20, 2009, the cost of gas at the pump was about $1.60 a gallon.  

Since then, the cost has steadily climbed to today’s $3.59 a gallon, more than doubling in cost.  The liberal media is totally silent and seems to be ignoring this economy-crushing increase.  If a Republican was in the White House, they would have plenty to say.

With the continuing unrest in the Middle East, the petroleum futures market has bid the price of a barrel of crude to $108.00.

The U.S. is still importing over 50 percent of our daily oil consumption.  We get 70 percent of our petroleum imports from five countries, which are:  Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Venezuela.

Barack Obama recently visited Brazil and gave them $2 billion to explore deep water oil reserves, stating the U.S. would be a big customer.  Brazil currently is our 10^th biggest supplier of crude oil.

When Obama returned from his jaunt to South and Central America, he spoke at Georgetown University stating his goal was to reduce oil imports by one third by 2025.  

Just how does he plan to do this?  By increasing domestic production like drilling offshore and in ANWAR?  No, it is by consuming less and relying on alternate energy sources.

I believe Obama is privately thrilled with the current increases at the pump as the economy will limit gas use.  He also expects new vehicles to get better gas mileage.

One way to increase mileage is to make vehicles smaller.  A friend of mine just returned from Vietnam where he says everyone rides around on motor scooters.  Even entire families are loaded onto one motor scooter.

Obama would love that, but the rest of us would not.  We are used to the freedom a comfortable car provides.  For safety reasons, I will not buy a car that weighs less than 3,000 pounds.  In an accident, anything lighter will result in injury or death.

Obama is also looking to “alternative energy” sources to solve the problem.  However in many cases, they made the problem worse or prove to be totally impractical.

Today’s gas contains 10 percent ethanol.  This mixture and small engines like lawnmowers don’t get along very well.  The ethanol dissolves the gaskets in carburetors and the engines won’t run.  This year millions are going to break out their mowers and lawn tractors and discover they won’t start.  A trip to the small engine repair shop is going to cost big bucks.

Many boaters have already learned this lesson as ethanol and outboard engines don’t get along either.

Have you noticed the cost increases in food lately?  Much of that increase is caused by corn being diverted from animal feed and food production to ethanol production.

A gallon of ethanol has only two thirds the energy as a gallon of gasoline so with 10 percent ethanol in your gas, your mileage is decreased by 3 percent.

Then there is wind energy.  In a Letter to the Editor in the Roanoke Times on March 28, 2011, my friend Dr. Charles Battig wrote about “wind turbine syndrome.”  He wrote, “’Wind-turbine Syndrome’ was coined by Dr. Nina Pierpont in describing the medical impacts on captive neighbors. Ringing in the ears (tinnitus), headaches, insomnia and nausea are health complaints she documented. Citizens in Canada, Britain, Denmark and France have registered similar complaints to their authorities about nearby wind-turbine installations.  The low-frequency thump, thump, thump is relentless and inescapable, save by moving away.”
A lesson learned all too well by the people of Falmouth, Massachusetts. 

Looking to save money on the town’s electric bill, this liberal Cape Cod town installed a 1.65 megawatt wind turbine at a cost of $5.1 million.  But as soon as it was turned on, the sound it emitted was described as that of “an old Soviet helicopter.” 

One person who lives a quarter mile from the turbine says, “It is dangerous,” he told a Boston TV channel, “Headaches.  Loss of sleep.  And the ringing in my ears never goes away.”

It didn’t take long for the residents to file a lawsuit.  The town agreed to shut off the turbine when the wind exceeded 23 miles per hour.  Its maximum efficiency is in winds of 30 miles per hour.  Instead of saving $400,000 per year in electric costs as they anticipated, they will save only about half that.  At that rate, it will take the Town of Falmouth over 25 years just to break even on the cost of the turbine.

Then there are the various community colleges of Los Angeles which spends a little under $8 million annually on electricity.  

One “green thinking” individual came up with a plan to save money.   For only $975 million, he could take them “off the grid” using solar photovoltaic panels.  When you do the math, it takes 121 years to break even and since solar cells are only guaranteed for 20 to 30 years.  An engineering consultant estimated it at 1.9 billion, giving a break even time of 237 years. 

The City of Los Angeles actually signed off on the project but reality set in and it was scrapped, but not before spending $10 million on the project.

There are no practical alternate energy sources to replace the carbon-based fuels we have become dependent on.  Perhaps, some day hydrogen will be a practical fuel, but until that day arrives, it is “Drill Baby, Drill.”

Comparing Obama to Carter

 Published april 1, 2011 in the Lynchburg Ledger

I suspect that one of the people most excited about Barack Obama’s presidency is former president Jimmy Carter.  Up to now, Jimmy Carter has been considered the most incompetent president in history.  Now, in a race to the bottom, Barack Obama seems to be on track to take the title from Carter.

Carter in turn, has described the Bush (43) administration as the “worst in history.”  Historically, former presidents have refrained from commenting on their successors, but Democrats like Carter and Clinton seem to think they are above that.

Jimmy Carter was the 39th President and served from 1977 to 1981, when he was defeated by Ronald Reagan in 1980, perhaps the best president of the century.

We are still suffering from the incompetence of the Carter administration some 30 years later, both internationally and domestically.

Under Carter, Iran went from a friendly dictatorship to an Islamic nation dominated by Islamic fundamentalists. 

On taking office, Carter announced that "human rights" was among the highest of his priorities. Carter immediately made America’s ally, the Shah of Iran, one of his first targets.  Carter publicly chastised the Shah for his human rights record, claiming he had been torturing about 3,000 prisoners, many of them accused of being Soviet agents. Carter sent a clear message to the Islamic fundamentalists that America would not come to the Shah's aid.  His anti-Shah speeches were actually played from public address systems in downtown Tehran.

When it comes to foreign relations, we can not think in terms of good and bad, but rather in terms of tolerable and intolerable.  When you depose an ally, you better be sure what you get in their place. 

Carter didn’t and Iran became a fundamentalist Islamic state.  The regime of Ayatollah Khomeini, which took power, executed more people in its first year in power than the Shah's government had allegedly killed in the previous 25 years.  Khomeini's regime was a human rights nightmare and continues to be even today.  Two American hikers who possibly strayed into Iran have been held for over two years charged with spying.  A third was released on a massive amount of bail. 

We had a similar situation in Egypt where Obama abandoned our long-time ally Hosni Mubarak.  Mubarak was a tolerable dictator and a stabilizing influence in the Middle East.

Obama has also decided it was time to oust Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, in spite of Gaddafi’s much less militant stands in recent years.  Gadaffi voluntarily surrendered his growing nuclear capability after we invaded Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein.

Is history about to repeat itself?  Speculation is that the Muslim Brotherhood is poised to take political control of Egypt.  If they do, Egypt will be turned into another Iran.

It was Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini who introduced the idea of suicide bombers to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and who paid $35,000 to PLO families who would offer up their children as human bombs to kill as many Israelis as possible. 

Khomeini gave the world Hezbollah to make war on Israel and destroy the multicultural

democracy that was once Lebanon.  They are responsible for the deaths of 241 U.S. Marines in their Beirut barracks in 1982.

Jimmy Carter is responsible for the chain of events that gave us not only Hezbollah, but al-Qaida and the 9-11 attack, the Taliban and a nuclear Iran and North Korea.

It was Jimmy Carter who negotiated the flawed agreement with North Korea (at Bill Clinton’s request) that resulted in their nuclear weapons capability today.

When the Soviet Union saw us so willingly abandon a staunch ally such as the Shah of Iran, they invaded Afghanistan, and it was the resistance to the Soviet invasion that helped give birth to the Taliban. We actually supported the Taliban back then by providing arms and instructors from the CIA. 

The Iranian revolution also led to the Iraq-Iran War that took a million lives and encouraged Hussein to invade Kuwait to strengthen his position.  This brought us Desert Storm where we had to evict Iraq from Kuwait.

Economically, Carter adopted the Keynesian economics of the time, buying into the theory that there was a reverse "trade-off" between inflation and unemployment — an idea that proved spectacularly wrong but one Barack Obama subscribes to.  Under Carter, the U.S. became mired in "stagflation," with both inflation and unemployment rising sharply. 

Under Obama, we have high unemployment and his policies are keeping them high by restricting small business.  The rate of inflation has been held artificially low by the Federal Reserve but with rising gas prices, the costs of every thing else, such as food, is on the rise.

Carter was famous for embracing dictators.  He kissed Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev on each cheek.  Carter also kissed Fidel Castro when he visited that communist despot.

Obama took another approach.  Obama greeted the king of Saudi Arabia with a full bow from the waist.  He also bowed to Japan’s Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko at the Imperial Palace.

During the Carter administration, the Housing and Community Development Act of 1977 was passed and set in motion the events which led to the housing meltdown and financial collapse of 2008, which helped elect Obama.

Carter established the Departments of Energy and Education.  Ever since, our supply of domestic energy has steadily decreased as we become increasingly dependent of foreign oil.  Our students, who once scored at the top of international scholastic tests, now score at or near the bottom.

Unless we repeal ObamaCare, our health care system, now the finest in the world, will revert to a second class system such as we see in Europe.

Jimmy Carter was a one-term president.  Let us hope and pray Barack Obama will be also.

Islamic Fundamentalists and Other News

Published March 18, 2011 in the Lynchburg Ledger 

Last week was certainly a busy news week. 

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker stood his ground against unruly union protestors and the legislature stood with him.  They stripped out of the stalled appropriations bill the portions that reformed union benefits for public workers and passed it separately, no longer needing the quorum needed for budget bills.  This enraged union workers and they were further enraged when Walker signed the bill.

We all got a good look at labor unions in action.  They trashed the state capitol building in Madison, costing taxpayers about $7.5 million to repair.

The 9.0 magnitude earthquake in Japan quickly grabbed the headlines as sections of Japan were devastated by the quake and the ensuing tsunami.  This event, the 5th largest ever recorded in modern times, is sure to have long-lasting consequences on the Japanese people and economy. 

Perhaps the biggest concern is the nuclear power plants that were affected.  It should be noted that the reactors withstood the earthquake; it was the tsunami following that knocked out cooling capacity for some units.  On the on a seven-point international scale of gravity for nuclear incidents, the Japanese incident has been upgraded from 4 to 6 according to France's Nuclear Safety Authority.  Three Mile Island was a level 5 and Chernobyl was a 7.

But three main stories, all having to do with Muslims, are what mainly caught my attention.

There is the on-going revolt in Libya, where embattled leader Muammar Gaddafi’s 41 year dictatorial rule is on the verge of collapse.  One problem is that Barack Obama seems to be completely indecisive, projecting weakness rather than strength.

Additionally, there is unrest in Saudi Arabia, where last Friday was suppose to have been Saudi Arabia's "day of rage", planned for and anticipated for weeks.  The protests in the east, where the Saudi Shia minority is concentrated, were mostly to call for the release of political prisoners.  The rest of the nation seemed to ignore the call for action.

Domestically, we heard about the sting operation at National Public Radio (NPR) by conservative James O’Keefe posing as a potential donor with connections to the Muslim Brotherhood.  NPR executive Ron Schiller was caught on tape admitting his willingness to accept $5 million from what he had to know was an Islamic terrorist organization.  Schiller also was recorded making derogatory statements against Republicans, Jews, evangelical Christians and the Tea Party.  He was forced to resign.

Also resigning from NPR was CEO Vivian Schiller (no relation to Ron).

O’Keefe also released a recording of a conversation between NPR executive Betsy Liley and a member of the fictitious Muslim Education Action Center about how to proceed with a $5 million donation, including her suggestion the gift wouldn't be subject to an audit. She is on unpaid leave.

I was delighted to see NPR exposed.  I had an issue with them in the Washington DC area and quickly learned how little they care about facts.

Then, there was the furor New York Republican Rep. Peter King’s Homeland Security Committee hearing on Muslim-American radicalization.  It is absolutely incredible how the Democrats come to the defense of those who have sworn to destroy our nation and kill those who won’t convert to Islam.

What some call Muslim “radicalization” is in fact Muslim fundamentalism.  The 19 terrorists who flew the planes into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and a field in Shankesville, PA were Islamic fundamentalists. 

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood gunman who killed 13 innocent service personnel is an Islamic fundamentalist.

Richard Colvin Reid, commonly known as the shoe bomber, is an Islamic fundamentalist.

It is estimated that about 10 percent of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims are fundamentalists.  That is to say, they believe and seek to practice the teachings of their holy book, the Koran, all 130 million of them. 

The Koran teaches that those who refuse to convert to Islam must die.  They call this jihad, which is defined as “holy war waged by Muslims against infidels (non-Muslims), or a holy struggle or striving by a Muslim for a moral or spiritual or political goal.”

Compare the fundamentalist Muslim to the fundamentalist Christian, who also believes the teaching of their holy book, the Bible.  There are an estimated 2.1 billion Christians but only about 10 percent are fundamentalist.  They are the direct opposite of fundamental Muslims as Jesus teaches His followers to “love their enemies.”

Jesus summed up fundamental Christianity when he said.”‘ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself."   Jesus also said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.   Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”  This is called the Great Commission.

Jesus tells his followers to love God and their neighbors and to go into all the world preaching the “good news.”

This is just opposite what the Koran teaches.  It tells Muslims to hate their neighbor if they are “infidels” and to spread Islam by force, not the spoken word.

Christianity has liberated women where Islam keeps them enslaved. 

Although alms giving are a basic Muslim tenet, you rarely see Muslims responding to disasters such as the Japan earthquake.  Rather, you will see them sending aid and weapons to jihadists throughout the world.

It is the Christian community who responds to national disasters.

Peter King’s Homeland Security Committee needs to continue to hold hearings until the true nature of Islam is exposed and understood.

Preparing For Disaster

Published March 11, 2011 in the Lynchburg Ledger

It has now been two weeks since the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and the resulting tsunami, and we still don’t know the true magnitude of this disaster.  We will likely never really know the exact extent since whole communities have simply disappeared.  We may never know the total death toll.

When a disaster of this magnitude strikes, communications networks are completely destroyed and will take months to restore.  In the meantime, communications will be re-established gradually and we will learn more as time goes on.

The most attention has been focused on the nuclear reactors that were damaged and opponents of nuclear energy lost no time spinning the destruction to their advantage.  In the news business, there is an old saying, “if it bleeds it leads.”  A newsletter I get added “if it radiates it fascinates.”

All six of the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant are Generation II boiling water reactors designed and built by GE about 40 years ago.  They were designed to withstand a magnitude 8.8 earthquake and they exceeded their specifications.  The primary containment for the nuclear core is a concrete and steel structure around the pressure vessel.  The secondary containment structure of thick poured concrete around the primary containment. An outer structure is designed to keep out weather.

Although the reactors survived the quake, the electric grid which the plant is connected to, did not.  When the grid went down, control rods were automatically inserted into the fuel assemblies stopping the nuclear reactions in the reactors in operation. The backup diesel engines to generate emergency electrical power turned on providing the necessary circulation of water needed to keep the fuel rods from overheating.  About an hour later, the tsunami hit the plant breaching the sea wall and destroying the diesel backup for the electricity to the pumps providing cooling water.

They have been struggling to cool the reactors ever since. 

Some radioactivity has escaped but has been disbursed in the atmosphere so levels detected are well below the dangerous limits.

Japan is located right along the western edge of the Pacific Plate along a subduction zone.  The Pacific Plate is descending below the Eurasian Plate making Japan very prone to not only earthquakes but tsunamis. 

The plate tectonics for North America is completely different.  On our west coast, the Pacific Plate is moving north, sliding along the North American Plate.  Although they are earthquake-prone, the geography is such that major tsunamis are not likely. 

However, along the coast of Alaska, the Pacific Plate is diving under the North American Plate.  Alaska is definitely prone to earthquakes with the possibility of tsunamis, as history shows.

On March 28, 1964, I was operating a Nuclear Detection and Reporting System research station in Manassas, Virginia when the “Good Friday” earthquake occurred in Alaska.  This 9.2 magnitude earthquake and ensuing tsunami took 128 lives.  15 from the earthquake and 113 from the resulting tsunami.  I clearly recorded the event on my seismic monitoring equipment.

On the east coast, the North American Plate meets the Eurasian and African Plates but this fault line is expanding rather than colliding.  The plate boundaries are actually creating undersea land and the plates are moving away from each other.  Consequently, here in the east coast, the chances of a severe earth quake and tsunami are somewhat remote.  Our major risk would be from the fault along the Caribbean Plate and a fault located off the coast of Portugal. 

However, the east coast is much more susceptible to hurricanes and the associated tidal surge, which can be just as destructive as a tsunami.  We saw what the tidal surge from Hurricane Katrina did along the Gulf coast.

I have spent many hours in the air flying up and down the east coast and from Maine to Florida; it is one solid line of coastal development.  If a category 4 or 5 hurricane should strike almost anywhere along the east coast, the result will be very similar to the Japan tsunami.

Here in Lynchburg, we are at about 900 feet above sea level so in no danger from a tsunami or tidal surge. However, weather-related events such as tornados and hurricanes remain our greatest threat.

 

Last week, Virginia conducted a state-wide tornado alert.  Those of us with NOAA weather radios heard our alarm go off.

 

In 1969, Hurricane Camille dropped 27.36 inches of rain in Nelson County resulting in 123 deaths, just five less than the Alaska earthquake.  It took many hours for those outside Nelson County to discover a disaster had even occurred.

So the question is how does one prepare for a possible disaster?  In most cases, if a disaster strikes, you need to be totally self sufficient for at least three days if you survive.  You can go to the ready.gov website for a list of items you will need in your disaster kit. However, I recommend doubling or tripling the amount of water as they did not allow enough water for flushing.

I keep a supply of water, enough food to last a while, and a generator which will keep the refrigerator running, allow me to cook, watch TV, generate heat and operate my computer and ham radio equipment.

In a major disaster, all communications will be out and the only source of emergency communications will be by ham radio as it was during Camille and Katrina.  Locally, we are well prepared.  We have communications equipment permanently installed at Lyncom, the communications centers of Amherst, Bedford and Campbell counties as well as Lynchburg General and Bedford hospitals.

I am an assistant emergency coordinator for Campbell County and locally we train once a week.

Let us hope we don’t have to use our emergency provisions or communications, but if disaster should strike, we are as prepared as we can be.

Where Is the Outrage?

Published in the Lynchburg Ledger on March 11, 2011 

When Barack H. Obama took office in 2009, the price of gas at the pump was $1.95 a gallon.  As of last Tuesday, the national average is $3.52, an increase of 81 percent.  With the price of crude oil on the rise due to the unrest in the Middle East, we could easily see $4.00 gas by Easter and $5.00 gas by Memorial Day.

So where is the outrage from the mainstream media?  You know if this happened during a Republican administration, the media would be on the warpath and demanding the government do something.

Well, it is the government doing something, that is partially responsible for the high prices.  What they are doing is preventing our vast domestic sources of oil to be tapped.  We need to revive “Drill Baby, Drill” but because of all the hype over the spill in the Gulf of Mexico, we are drilling less, not more.

Obama still has a hold on drilling in the Gulf in spite of a court ruling against him. The administration late last Friday appealed a judge’s orders directing the Interior Department to act on several pending Gulf Coast deep-water drilling permits.  Meanwhile, many of the drilling rigs have departed for more friendly locations, costing Louisiana some 30,000 jobs.

It is not as if we haven’t had a warning.  As far back as 1973 when the members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) proclaimed an oil embargo against the U.S in response to our support for Israel, we knew we were vulnerable.

For 38 years, we have heard talk about becoming energy independent, all the while becoming more and more dependent on foreign sources of oil.  The problem is not technical, it is political, specifically the left-wing, environmental wacko type of political opposition.

On Feb 16, 2011, President Obama declared oil was the “fuel of the past “without really being specific as to what the “fuel of the future” might be.  Sure, he talked about alternate sources, but they will never meet our needs and he knows it.  I believe he actually wants $5.00 per gallon gas because it is not energy independence he wants, but behavior modification.

When it comes to energy, there are only three sources on earth: solar, lunar and nuclear.  All energy can be put into one of the three categories.

The least obvious is lunar power, the gravitational pull the moon has on the seas causing tides.  I see some TV commercials talking about harnessing the tides to generate electricity.  You would need specific areas where tides are abnormally high, such as in the Bay of Fundy.  Each day 100 billion tons of seawater flows in and out of the Bay of Fundy during one tide cycle.  That would be fine as long as you didn’t need any power during the two low and high tides in every day. 

That is the problem, having energy available in the quantities you need, when you need it.

The second in nuclear power which produces about 13-14 percent of the world’s energy needs.  Where France derives over 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy, the US derives only 20 percent of our total electric power from nuclear.  We currently have 104 nuclear reactors on line producing 799 billion kilowatt hours of power.

The US has not built a new nuclear power plant for the past 30 years.  The accident at Three Mile Island, which injured nobody, gave the environmental wacko’s all the ammunition they needed to pull the plug on nuclear.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy currently operated approximately 150 nuclear powered ships and has done so safely for years.

One of the problems with nuclear is the storage of spent fuel rods.  Again, this is not a technical problem but a political one.  A depository under Yucca Mountain in Nevada is all ready to accept spent fuel rods but Democrat Harry Reid has blocked that for years.

Finally there is solar energy, by far the biggest source. 

Usually when we hear the term solar, we think of a bank of photovoltaic cells that generate electricity when exposed to sunlight.  However, every other form of energy we use is part of the solar family.

Wind energy is solar.  The sun is the only cause of our climate.  It created areas of high and low pressure and winds are generated as the high pressure winds flow towards low pressure areas.

Hydroelectric power is also solar.  The sun evaporated the water from the seas and it falls back to earth in the form of precipitation at higher elevations.  Power is generated as this water attempts to flow back to the sea under the force of gravity.  This is called a “renewable” form of energy and we get about 10 percent of our power from hydroelectric.  All the potential dam sights have been developed so there will be no expansion in this form of energy generation.

Bio-fuels are also solar, without the sun, nothing will grow.

Finally, oil, gas, wood and coal are forms of stored solar energy.  They were all living organisms at one time, dependent on the sun.

We get about 50 percent of our electric power from coal and 20 percent from natural gas.

Oil produces the fuel we need for transportation because it is easily stored, converted and transported.  The US has sufficient reserves to last for at least 100 more years.  I remember back in the ‘70’s, the predictions were we would run out of oil by 2000.

In 1995, Congress passed legislation to open ANWR to drilling, but “William the Impeached” veto’s it.  Since then, the Democrats have blocked just about every attempt to develop domestic sources of oil.

Petroleum is the fuel of the past, but it is also the fuel of the present and the future.  If we don’t kick these liberal Democrats out of office in 2012 and begin developing our own oil and gas reserves as well as opening up more coal mining, in a very short period of time $5 gas will seem like a bargain.

Will We See a Repeat of 1995?

Published in the Lynchburg Ledger on March 4, 2011 

Congress has just kicked the can down the road, postponing a potential government shutdown by two weeks.  In the continuing resolution which passed by the House by a 335 to 91 vote, the government will be funded from March 4^th until March 18^th and cut spending by $4 billion.  Senate Democrats have indicated they will pass the extension and Barack Obama has indicated he would sign it although he favored a 4-week extension. 

By way of a review, we are at this stage because the last Congress failed to pass a budget for the fiscal year which began October 1, 2010.  The Democrat-dominated House, led by frequent-flyer Nancy Pelosi, did not even attempt to produce a budget because last year was an election year.  The voters noticed and fired her for non-performance of duty.  Since October 1^st, the government has been running on “continuing resolutions” which keeps the government running at current spending levels.

The U.S. House has passed a budget to fund the federal government to the end of the fiscal year, September 30, 2011, but removed funding for many of the Democrat’s pet projects for a total savings for the remainder of the year of $61 Billion.  All the Senate has to do is pass the House budget bill and send it to President Obama for his signature, but the Democrats are stalling. 

Some of the cuts in spending that infuriate the Democrats are the de-funding of Planned Parenthood, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, $14 million for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and certain EPA and Department of Energy programs.  The Republicans cut the EPA budget by about 29% and included prohibitions to fund programs implementing carbon dioxide regulations and regulation of cement plants, which is the Obama Administration’s way of implementing Cap and Trade, which failed in Congress.

The Republican House, the Democrat Senate and White House are playing the old game of chicken.  None wants to be the first to blink.  Democrats must think the two-week extension will give them time to sway public opinion to their side.  I don’t see that happening.

It was the Democrats in the last Congress that rushed legislation like ObamaCare though Congress without giving legislators and the public time to read them.  Now those the shoes is on the other foot, Democrats seem more than willing to slow things down.

Failure to reach a settlement by March 18th will result in a shutdown of the non-essential functions of the federal government. Would that be a good or bad thing?

The last time the federal government shut down was in 1995 under similar circumstances.  Back then, we had a Republican House and Senate and “William the Impeached” in the White House.  Once again, it was the Republicans trying to rein in spending and the tax-and spend Democrats in opposition.

In 1995, the Republicans took a short-term public relations hit and were the first to blink.  In the long-term, they suffered little ill effects at the polls.  They lost only nine House seats in 1996, easily retaining their majority.  In the Senate, they gained two seats.

Where they did suffer was in the personal attacks lunched against them by Democrats.  Their philosophy has always been if you can’t beat them at the polls, smear their reputation.  Then - Speaker Newt Gingrich was targeted by the Democrats on a phony ethics issue.  Democrats are already trying the same tactic this year.

The entire political climate has changed in the 16 years since the last government shutdown.  In 1995, about the only well known conservative talk show host was Rush Limbaugh; there was no blogosphere, no Fox News Network, no Tea Party movement and no Lynchburg Ledger.

Today, all that has changed.  Much more unbiased information is available today than ever before.  In 1995, the three major TV networks, the New York Times and the Washington Post dominated the news with their liberal bias and spin.  The Fox News Network, now available in 102 million households across the country, was launched on October 7, 1996 and quickly grew to be the top TV news provider in the nation.

The Internet has also had a major impact and provided a much needed alternate source for news.  Outlets such as The Drudge Report, Real Clear Politics and Townhall.com are just a couple of excellent sources of information.

A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey reported last Monday that fifty-eight percent (58%) of the respondents say it’s better to have a partial shutdown until Democrats and Republicans can agree on what spending to cut.  The Democrats have lost the argument in the public square and they are beginning to step out of denial.

With a possible government shutdown looming, bureaucrats in federal agencies will be scrambling to determine how many “essential” workers will stay on the job.  They will decide just who qualifies as essential personnel, earning the right to continue working even as the rest of the government gets furloughed.

With the rebellion of unionized government workers in Wisconsin and other states, I think it is about time the nation had the debate over rights of the taxpayers and the unionized public employees.  Today, the percentage of unionized workers is approximately 11 percent and half of those are government workers.  Government workers now make on average more than the taxpayers who pay their salaries and benefits.

The federal government needs to trim its spending as the various states do.  In some cases, cuts will hurt, but for the long-term economic health of the nation, they must be made.

Let us hope the Republicans won’t be the first ones to blink this time as the public is solidly in their corner this time.

Republicans Keeping Their Promises

 Published  in the Lynchburg Ledger on February 25, 2011

Republicans elected last November are keeping their promises, and the Democrats are going ballistic.

Republicans took control of the House of Representatives with a landslide that has not been seen in decades.  They made significant gains in the Senate but failed to win a majority, which will now make for interesting political debates and standoffs.

Republicans also took 10 governorships from Democrats, adding to the two they took from Democrats in 2009; one being Bob McDonnell here in Virginia.  Republicans also made significant gains in state legislatures.

One of the biggest Republican campaign promises was to cut spending and that they are doing.  But the Democrats, who apparently were tone deaf last November, are doing everything they can to preserve their tax-and-spend ways.

The U.S. House passed a repeal of ObamaCare only to be shunned by the still Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate.  Senator Harry Reid simply refuses to deal with the House passed bill, for now anyway.

Last weekend, the House passed a budget bill for the remainder of FY 2011, which began October 1, 2010.  The Democrats under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi simply refused to do their job.  Budget bills are to originate in the House, and Pelosi never bothered to address the budget, opting instead to spend their time on ObamaCare, Cap and Trade and repealing “Don’t Ask – Don’t Tell.”  The government was kept running on continuing resolutions.

In the budget for the remainder of this fiscal year, Republicans slashed $61 billion from current spending, just as they promised to do.  They cut funding drastically and in some cases de-funded programs completely. 

They cut funding for implementing ObamaCare, de-funded Planned Parenthood and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) which I was thrilled to see.

Planned Parenthood is the largest provider of abortions in America, while CPB has outlived its usefulness and become a liberal propaganda outlet.

Senate Democrats have vowed to block the budget, and Obama has promised to veto it, setting up the possibility of a government shutdown.

The last time the government was shut down over spending was in 1995 when the Republicans instituted similar spending reforms, and President William (the Impeached) Clinton vetoed it. 

It was the Republicans who took the public relations hit after the liberal media spun the issue to favor Clinton and the Democrats.  However, today, the climate is a bit different.  With the Internet, blogs, talk radio, Fox News Network (fair and balanced) and the Tea Party movement which has educated many, the liberal media will not have it so easy pinning it on Republicans this time around.

With Jim Webb announcing he will not run in 2012, we will see just how much of a liberal he is when the House budget bill arrives.  We know Mark Warner is a liberal, but we may be able to apply pressure on him to heed the will of the people.

Financial reform is also being felt in the individual states; the most notable being Wisconsin.  The outgoing Democrat governor left Republican Governor Scott Walker a $3.6 Billion deficit to deal with.  Wisconsin, like most of the states, must balance their budget every year.  To deal with the looming financial disaster, the state House passed a bill requested by Walker which included some much needed financial reforms. 

Much of the reforms addressed the out-of-control costs of the state’s public employees, who are all unionized.  They responded by calling Walker a Nazi (and a dictator generally); signs calling him a rapist; and signs calling for his death.  The liberal media has also chimed in with similar rhetoric.  I guess they didn’t get the Obama memo on “civility.”

Union members are being asked to increase their contribution to their health care from 5 to 12.4 percent.  They are also being asked to contribute 5.8 percent of their own retirement, which is currently totally taxpayer-funded.  Other reforms include limiting collective bargaining to base pay only, stopping the state from collecting union dues, requiring an annual secret ballot to keep unions certified, and for union dues to be voluntary and not required as a condition of employment.  Walker’s proposed union bargaining reforms will exempt police and firemen.

Walker, a former county executive, says that for local governments to balance their budgets, they must have these reforms.

The teacher’s unions are the largest unions in the state and have reacted the most violently.  Teachers have called in sick en masse, only to show up at the state capitol in Madison to protest.  With Wisconsin scoring 44^th out of all the states in standardized testing, right at the bottom, perhaps the state needs a massive turnover in the teacher ranks.

The average pay and benefits package for a Wisconsin public employee is $89,500 where the average for workers in the private sector in only $67,000.  Is it any wonder that Republicans promising financial reform were swept in all over the country?

The Democrats in the Wisconsin Senate fled the state so there would be no quorum in the Senate to vote on the bill.  Republicans hold the majority in the Wisconsin Senate so not one Democrat vote is needed.  These Democrats are blocking the democratic process from following the will of the people.

Wisconsin is just the beginning   Financial reform is on tap for many states such as Ohio, Florida, New York and even California, and the public employee unions in each state will undoubtedly react just like as in Wisconsin.  That is why Scott Walker and the Wisconsin Republicans must stand their ground. 

We should be very thankful Virginia is a “Right to Work” state and the unions can not bankrupt us as they have so many other states.