FDA Shakes Down Medical Device Companies

Posted on 20-Feb-2012 by Highvoltage

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to Company XYZ – “That sure is a nice little medical device you have there.  It’d be a shame if we never got around to approving it.”

I have no evidence that the above conversation actually took place but after reading a story on Medcity News, it’s hard not to see the latest news from the FDA as anything but a shakedown for protection money from medical device companies.

It has been known for years that medical device companies (and drug companies) are finding it increasingly more difficult to get products approved by the FDA.  From the Progressive Policy Institute paper written in June 2011:

“For the purpose of this paper, however, we will focus on the FDA, which has been criticized for imposing excessive requirements on the approvals of new drugs and medical devices.  Three facts are clear.  First, the FDA’s regulatory reach and intensity has increased over the past 10 years.  FDA employment grew by 33 percent between 2000 and 2011, even as employment in the regulated industries – pharmaceuticals, medical devices and biotech – only rose by 3 percent.”

Before I get to the Medcity News article, let’s first clarify some FDA jargon.  Prior to selling a device for human use, the medical device company is required to submit either a Premarket Approval (PMA) for devices that support or sustain human life or a Premarket Notification (510(k)) for all other devices that don’t meet the stricter requirements of a PMA. 

A few weeks ago the FDA appeared to offer a deal to get things moving and cut through the red tape.  From the Medcity story:

“Now, a tentative deal has been reached. The FDA announced Wednesday that in exchange for agreeing to shorter review periods for 510(k) applications and other performance improvements, the FDA is getting $595 million over five years from the medical device industry. The three industry groups with whom the FDA reached a deal were AdvaMed (Advanced Medical Technology Association), the Medical Device Manufacturers Association and the Medical Imaging and Technology Alliance.”

So in exchange for $595 million, the medical device companies in these three groups will get faster service/approvals of their 510(k) applications.  Why does the FDA need this payment from the medical device companies to speed up applications?  From the FDA announcement:

“The agreement provides FDA $595 million in funds over five years, which will give FDA the ability to hire additional reviewers, lower the ratio of managers to reviewers and enhance training for reviewers.”

Wait, why does the FDA need to hire new reviewers since they have already outpaced the private companies that they regulate?  The FDA workforce grew 10 times faster than the private companies did over the past 11 years and that should provide them ample headcount to take care of their duties.

It should be pointed out that this negotiated amount of $595 million is really something that medical device companies have paid since 2002 under the Medical Device User Fee and Modernization Act of 2002.  From the Medcity News article:

“Congress first established the user fee program a decade ago with the Medical Device User Fee and Modernization Act of 2002 (MDUFA I) because the medical device review program had expanded greatly and prompted concerns about its capacity and performance. The five-year program was reauthorized in 2007 (MDUFA II) and will expire on Sept. 30.”

“The $595 million will help FDA hire 200 new scientists. At one time, a number as high as $805 million in user fees was also mentioned. But the new amount essentially more than doubles what the industry paid the last time user fees were reauthorized back in 2007 — $287 million.”

So we are really talking about an increase of $308 million when compared to 2007 numbers.  But if this additional $308 million (spread over 5 years) is going to fund 200 more scientists, that puts the average annual salary of these new scientists at $308,000/year.  Can I get one of those jobs?

There is no need to hire new scientists and there is no way each of these new scientists will be making over $300,000 per year.   This is a bribe, pure and simple, and I can’t believe this sort of thing is happening in America now. 

Posted in healthcare, Over Regulation, politics | 2 Comments

A Demonstration of the Scientific Process

Posted on 20-Feb-2012 by Highvoltage

For me, one of the most attractive aspects of science is the way theories become accepted.  It is a complicated process and sometimes takes years (if not decades) but the extremely difficult journey a theory takes on its way to acceptance is what makes science fun.  This is counter intuitive to today’s instant results culture but it is the way science has been performed for thousands of years and it will not change.

Whether we are talking about Einstein’s General Relativity, the search for the Higgs Boson, a cure for Polio, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle or the effects of CO2 on Earth’s climate, the general process is always the same.  A scientist proposes a theory, designs tests, gathers data, tabulates the results, draws conclusions either supporting or negating the hypothesis and publishes a paper through a peer review process. 

But the process doesn’t stop there because as single test result is not enough to satisfy the highly skeptical scientific community.  Those results are argued fiercely and it will take many more independent test results and published papers to further validate the theory and only then is the theory granted the lofty status of “accepted” in the general scientific community.  Scientists are a skeptical lot and revel in the contentious debate of data and this is not seen as mean spirited but accepted as the norm in scientific culture. 

It may seem odd to those outside that field but it is how science is carried out and this blatant willingness to open your work to intense scrutiny is what drew me to this field of study in college.  What other professional field would bare to the world the intimate details of your work for the sole purpose of ridicule and proving your years of hard work incorrect?  That is exactly what scientists do every day.

This past month I’ve had the joy of helping my daughter with her 5th grade science project and the results of this project reinforce the need of peer review and repetition of the test protocol to validate the results.  Before I get to that, let me explain the project that we undertook.

We decided to test the bacteria and mold killing power of various hand cleaners to determine which is the best to use when washing up before a meal.  Remember our moms always told us to wash our hands before eating and we wanted to see how wise our mothers were!

We decided to divide our test into 4 groups with each group containing 3 samples:

Group 1 – Control – no soap would be used

Group 2 – Dial with Triclosan (a popular ingredient in many hand soaps)

Group 3 – Softsoap (pure soap, no anti-bacterial ingredients)

Group 4 – Purell with ethyl alcohol (basically “white lightning” grain alcohol and is popular with many hand sanitizers)

We filled 12 Petri dishes with an Agar gelatin (which is great food for bacteria), divided them into the 4 groups and seeded each sample with bacteria.  The bacteria came from our home PC keyboard and we used a tap water wetted cotton swab that was rubbed over the keys and then swirled over the agar in a looping back-and-forth motion.  Then, for the samples in group 2, 3 and 4, we placed a drop of the soap on a cotton swab and made a vertical swipe over the agar from top to bottom and noted the plane of application with a pen mark on the Petri dish.  We then covered all 12 Petri dishes, kept them in a warm environment and monitored them daily. 

Our hypothesis was that hand sanitizer would be the most effective in preventing bacteria and mold growth with the Triclosan product coming in second and hand soap in third.

The results of each group after 6 days are shown in the pictures below.

Group 1 – Control

 


You can see bacteria and mold grew in all areas of the Petri dish and shows that using nothing to clean your hands is not a wise act because you’ll be consuming bacteria and mold when food comes in contact with your hands.

Group 2 – Dial with Triclosan

 

Here we see in 2 of the samples, there are no bacteria or mold growth in the center of the Petri dish where Dial with Triclosan was applied.  The 2nd sample had growth in the center so the Triclosan product was only effective 67% of the time.

Group 3 – Softsoap

 

We see here that the plain Softsoap was effective in preventing bacteria and mold growth in 100% of the samples since there was no growth in the center of the Petri dish.

Group 4 – Purell with ethyl alcohol

 

These results were counter to our hypothesis in that 2 of the three ethyl alcohol samples had bacteria and mold growth in the center of the Petri dish.  It should be noted that the 1st sample had growth in the center but the large blob of white growth started at the far right of the Petri dish and grew over time to cover the center so in this sample, the ethyl alcohol prevented initial growth on the application area.  But still, the hand sanitizer only worked 33% of the time.

So based on our test results, you’d be better off just using normal soap instead of the Triclosan or hand sanitizer products to kill bacteria and mold.  This sounds very odd so I did a search to see if there were published papers on this same topic and I found this one from the University of Kansas.

In this study, the scientists evaluated the bacteria and mold killing power of Bleach (which we didn’t test in our science project), Triclosan and hand sanitizer (ethyl alcohol).  The products they used for Triclosan and hand sanitizer were equivalent to the samples we used in our science project so let’s see if there results validated the results of our science project.

It should be noted that the University of Kansas scientists used a different testing method where they combined the agar, bacteria and test soap to a solution, mixed it and then looked at growth.  Here were their results.

In this paper, they found that hand sanitizer was over twice as effective as Triclosan in killing bacteria and mold growth.  Bleach was the most effective but since we didn’t include Bleach in our science project I’ll leave that sample out of my discussions here.

So here we have another test that is in direct opposition to the results that we obtained with my daughter’s science project.  Why the difference? 

First, it is important that our testing methods were very different.  The scientific paper test method didn’t take advantage of the bacteria killing mechanism of hand soap which was explained in their paper.

“The low efficiency of hand soap can also be explained by its disinfectant mechanism that it normally works by stripping away the outer layer of oil on the skin to sweep the bacteria from the surface of hands.”

Mixing the solutions together doesn’t take into account the scrubbing method used in washing your hands and our science experiment performed this scrubbing by the application of the soap on the agar with a cotton swab.

The paper also noted that there are limitations to the bacteria killing power of Ethanol (which is also known as ethyl alcohol) and this could’ve contributed to the poor performance of hand sanitizer in our science project (I have no idea why type of bacteria was present on our keyboard).

“Former researches also found that some kinds of bacteria cant’ be killed easily and have some characteristics of resistance on ethanol, some of them existing in wastewater can alive even in very high concentrations of ethanol (Yi Hsing Lin et al, 2002) (Stephen B. Pruett et, 2004), which supported this explanation.  Also, some researchers found that ethanol, as a form of alcohols, is rapidly bactericidal against vegetative organisms as well as being tuberculocidal, viricidal and fungicidal but has no activity against spores (Ayliffe et al, 1993), which is also a possible reason for ethanol’s sterilizing selectivity. “

There are other issues with the way our science project was performed that could lead to inconsistent data.

We didn’t sterilize the Petri dishes prior to application and there could’ve been bacteria in the agar, dishes or swabs that introduced bacteria or mold to the results.

The swiping method of applying the soap to the Petri dish was inconsistent.  Because this was my daughter’s project, I insisted that she perform the tasks.  It is entirely possible that she employed varying pressures when swiping across the Agar and that could’ve scrubbed bacteria or mold off the Agar and was unrelated to the killing power of the various soaps under consideration.

We used different keys for each sample (i.e. R, S, T, L, etc.) and there could’ve been more bacteria or mold on some keys versus others.

Conclusions

Okay, so this is a lot of data and where am I going with this?  The scientific process is not easy and one should be cautious in drawing dogmatic conclusions from an isolated experiment.  Scientific theories do not become accepted until multiple independent experiments reach the same conclusions and we should read all research papers with a skeptical eye.  This is how science has always worked and is the reason that scientists must undergo a rigorous curriculum in college that teaches analytical thinking and healthy skepticism.

From my daughter’s science project, the only thing I can say for certain is that you need to clean your keyboard periodically!

Posted in general science | 1 Comment

Bread Lines Can’t Be Far Behind

Posted on 16-Feb-2012 by Highvoltage

When a government thinks they can control the supply of goods better than the Free Market then supply shortages and price controls are sure to follow.  We have seen throughout history when countries try to tinker with the Free Market and implement varying degrees of Socialism that bureaucrats fail at this attempt.  The Invisible Hand, first characterized by Adam Smith, states that the profit motive of individuals will seek to provide a good or service to the Market in the most efficient manner and doesn’t need a team of czars directing their actions.  The Free Market economic system has propelled the United States to a world leader and we didn’t need hundreds of czars to oversee the means of production for all industries.  

Supply shortages and price controls can’t happen in American though, right?  Well, it is already starting and with goods that are necessary to treat our sick children.

There was a story on NPR today showing how critical children’s Leukemia drugs are in scarce supply.

“The latest crisis concerns the old standby cancer drug methotrexate. For six decades, it has made the difference between rapid death and lifelong cure for thousands of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, or ALL, and a type of bone cancer called osteogenic sarcoma.”

“Many hospitals around the nation are perilously close to running out of a form of methotrexate that is necessary to inject in high doses to treat these forms of cancer.”

“For ALL and osteogenic sarcoma, “there’s really no known curative therapy without methotrexate,” says Dr. Howard Weinstein of Massachusetts General Hospital. “Based on our current outlook, if we don’t get any supply, we’re going to be out of methotrexate in the next couple of weeks.”

“We’re probably good for a few weeks, but if we don’t get any, we’ll have to do some substitution or delays of therapy and give the high-dose methotrexate later when it’s available,” says Dr. Bruce Bostrom.”

“He says doctors just don’t know how that’s going to affect patients’ chance of a cure — which is at least 90 percent with the right treatment.”

“Brenda Carr’s 4-year-old daughter, Rowen, is a patient at Bostrom’s hospital.”

“What I just couldn’t believe was that there was nothing really to prevent this from happening,” Carr says. “It gets really frustrating. I try to stay logical about it, but, unfortunately, I’m a mom.”

How did we get to this point where a high demand drug is in scarce supply?  From the NPR story:

“The reason for this particular shortage is that a principal supplier of injectable methotrexate, Ben Venue Laboratories of Bedford, Ohio, shut down in November after it flunked an inspection by the Food and Drug Administration.”

“Erin Fox, an expert on drug shortages at the University of Utah, says the FDA inspectors found a long list of serious problems.”

“If you want to read something to give you nightmares, you can look at the FDA 483 inspection form,” Fox says. “You can read about mold on the walls and rust from machinery falling into the vials. It really provides a very grim picture of a crumbling factory.”

“The same lab is responsible for another recent and far-reaching drug shortage involving Doxil, a drug relied on by thousands of patients with ovarian and breast cancer. Ben Venue Laboratories was the sole worldwide supplier of Doxil, which is now unobtainable.”

Well, I don’t blame the FDA for shutting down this facility if these conditions truly did exist but for a drug that is such high demand, surely there is another supplier who is in the Market to take advantage of this other company’s failure. 

“Valerie Jensen of the FDA’s office of drug shortages says three other manufacturers have been persuaded to ramp up production of preservative-free methotrexate.”

That is good news but I’m curious why the FDA needed to persuade them to ramp up production.  We’ll get to that later but what about the other critical drug, Doxil, from that troubled lab?

“Jensen said the FDA expects to have good news about Doxil. She says the agency is exploring the possibility of licensing a foreign company to make the drug, something the FDA has done eight times in the past year with other drugs in critical shortage.”

What?  We have to use a foreign company to manufacture this drug?  Why aren’t there any US companies that are already producing this drug?  We have only one company in the whole US that can produce this drug?

It gets worse.

“Carr, the Minneapolis mom, says she has her fingers crossed. But she’s skeptical.”

“This isn’t the first time we’ve been on the brink of drug shortages, especially in cancer treatments,” Carr says. “I don’t want another mom to have to be thinking about whether or not their child is going to get the medication they need.”

“Experts say there certainly will be other parents who will have to worry about other shortages, because the root causes will not be easily resolved.”

Why do we, all of a sudden, see massive drug shortages in the US?  There is obviously a market for these drugs so why are companies not producing them?  What are these ‘root causes’ that the NPR article speaks of?  Since the article didn’t elaborate, let me take a swipe at it.

From another NPR article, the number of drug shortages per year is plotted on the following graph.

Number Of Drug Shortages Per Year

Since 2007 we have seen an increase in the number of drug shortages.  Why would such a lucrative market see an exit of companies willing to compete?  Could the over regulation of the FDA have something to do with it?

This paper from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), which was written in June 2011, seems to think so.

“For the purposes of this paper, however, we will focus on the FDA, which has been criticized for imposing excessive requirements on the approval of new drugs and medical devices.  Three facts are clear.  First, the FDA’s regulatory reach and intensity has increased over the past 10 years.  FDA employment grew by 33 percent between 2000 and 2011, even as employment in the regulated industries – pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and biotech – only rose by 3 percent.”

“Second, in the wake of high-profile episodes such as the Vioxx case, the FDA has gotten stricter about requiring evidence of safety and effectiveness before approving new drugs.  Third, the number of new drugs approved fell sharply over the past decade compared to the decade before.”

I wrote a post last year showing how over regulation from the US government is literally killing us and this article by the PPI validates my claims.  It basically comes down to this – Why would a company waste resources (and several millions of dollars) to develop and validate a drug only to experience road blocks from the FDA that hinder the product coming to market?  The answer is, they won’t.

This is what we get from government over stepping its bounds with regard to regulation of the market and this is just the beginning unless the elections of 2012 bring about real change that we can believe in.   

Posted in economics, Over Regulation, politics | 3 Comments

Over Regulation Caused The Fall

Posted on 16-Feb-2012 by Highvoltage

Years from now when future historians are contemplating the reasons the Great American Empire fell, this is one of the documents they’ll most likely read – A recent article from The Economist (which is normally very Left leaning) describes how the home of the Free Market (laissez-faire) is being consumed by over regulation.

The article references the 848 pages of Dodd-Frank as a prime example of a bill that started with noble intentions but quickly ran off the rails with bureaucratic tinkering (although the bill was passed in 2010, only 93 of the 400 rules have been finalized).  It also talks about Obamacare that, among other overreaches, increased the number of illness and injury categories from 18,000 to 140,000 (there are three related to burns from flaming water-skis).

Read the whole article to get the full effect but here are a few of my favorite paragraphs (Note: The Economist is published in England so the spelling below is representative of how our brothers and sisters over the pond write).

“Two forces make American laws too complex. One is hubris. Many lawmakers seem to believe that they can lay down rules to govern every eventuality. Examples range from the merely annoying (eg, a proposed code for nurseries in Colorado that specifies how many crayons each box must contain) to the delusional (eg, the conceit of Dodd-Frank that you can anticipate and ban every nasty trick financiers will dream up in the future). Far from preventing abuses, complexity creates loopholes that the shrewd can abuse with impunity.”

“The other force that makes American laws complex is lobbying. The government’s drive to micromanage so many activities creates a huge incentive for interest groups to push for special favours. When a bill is hundreds of pages long, it is not hard for congressmen to slip in clauses that benefit their chums and campaign donors. The health-care bill included tons of favours for the pushy. Congress’s last, failed attempt to regulate greenhouse gases was even worse.”

“Democrats pay lip service to the need to slim the rulebook—Mr Obama’s regulations tsar is supposed to ensure that new rules are cost-effective. But the administration has a bias towards overstating benefits and underestimating costs (see article). Republicans bluster that they will repeal Obamacare and Dodd-Frank and abolish whole government agencies, but give only a sketchy idea of what should replace them.”

“America needs a smarter approach to regulation. First, all important rules should be subjected to cost-benefit analysis by an independent watchdog. The results should be made public before the rule is enacted. All big regulations should also come with sunset clauses, so that they expire after, say, ten years unless Congress explicitly re-authorises them.”

“More important, rules need to be much simpler. When regulators try to write an all-purpose instruction manual, the truly important dos and don’ts are lost in an ocean of verbiage. Far better to lay down broad goals and prescribe only what is strictly necessary to achieve them. Legislators should pass simple rules, and leave regulators to enforce them.”

“Would this hand too much power to unelected bureaucrats? Not if they are made more accountable. Unreasonable judgments should be subject to swift appeal. Regulators who make bad decisions should be easily sackable. None of this will resolve the inevitable difficulties of regulating a complex modern society. But it would mitigate a real danger: that regulation may crush the life out of America’s economy.”

 

ADDENDUM: I have written my own assessments at the over regulation in the US and the damage it is causing.  You can see them here, here, here and here.

Posted in Over Regulation, politics | 9 Comments

Playing Into Obama’s Hands

Posted on 15-Feb-2012 by Highvoltage

The 2012 elections will be about returning America to 1) fiscally conservative principles (balancing the budget, reducing wasteful spending, dialing back on ‘entitlement’ programs, etc.) and 2) economically conservative principles such as removing the business damaging regulation brought about by Obama, Pelosi and Reid (such as the DoJ, FDA, HHS, EPA and NLRB).  

These two goals are tough enough and we don’t need to burn valuable energy on topics that are non sequiturs.  I have warned before that conservatives should remained focused on the issues at hand and not take the bait of the Left to pursue red herring arguments that don’t contribute to the main problems currently facing America.

Sadly, Rick Santorum didn’t take my advice and his insistence on talking about social conservative issues is the reason I believe he’ll lose to Obama in a general election if he gets the Republican nomination.  Focusing on social conservative issues will not play well with independents and some right leaning Democrats and we will need those votes in November to defeat Obama.

Now we see that state Republican leaders in New Hampshire are taking the bait of the Left.  New Hampshire passed a gay marriage law two years ago when the state Legislature was controlled by Democrats and now that the Republicans are in control they have set repeal of this law as a priority.  From the NPR article:

“Supporters of New Hampshire’s 2-year-old same-sex marriage law like to stress its purity, that it was enacted without a court order or the threat of one. So do its opponents. For them it’s a reminder that if a Democrat-dominated Statehouse could vote in gay marriage, a Republican-dominated one may be able to vote it out.

Republican state Rep. David Bates, the author of the repeal bill, led a recent rally on the Statehouse steps.

“I think it’s time to move back, back to the true meaning of marriage,” Bates said.”

I’m amazed why Gay Marriage is even an issue for Conservatives in 2012.  I am a conservative Christian who is married to a wonderful woman and I don’t understand the same-sex attraction that others have.  But I am strongly in favor of allowing Civil Unions for adult homosexual partners and I have come to that conclusion based on my Libertarian views on social issues and not based on my Christian views and interpretation of Scripture.

What harm is there in two consenting adults entering into a mutually beneficial relationship?  If that is what they want then why should our government prevent that?  Providing same-sex couples the legally binding stamp of “marriage” gives them legal rights later in life (making medical decisions for their spouse, caring for their estate, 401k beneficiaries, etc.) and that seems like the right thing to do.  I’m not saying that we should force churches to officiate these marriages if homosexuality goes against the church’s religious beliefs but what is the problem with allowing same sex partners to marry legally in a Justice of the Peace or other civil ceremony?

Even if you don’t believe as I do – Is repealing Gay Marriage really something that is top on our list of “problems” to solve in 2012?  It’s just silly for Conservatives to waste limited energy making this issue into some sort of Maginot Line that conservatives must defend at all cost.   If we continue to focus on these diversionary topics then we’ll lose the narrative of the 2012 Elections and lose big to Obama. 

Posted in politics | 2 Comments

Socialism in the Old Testament

Posted on 13-Feb-2012 by Highvoltage

Chapter 31 of Genesis gives an amazing example of the evils of Socialism and what the Producers must eventually do to get out from under that oppression.

This past Sunday, my preacher delivered a fascinating message today based on Genesis chapter 31 and the theme of that message was to keep pressing on toward our long term goals and eventually we’ll reach them even though it may take a very long time.  It was an inspiring message but being someone who thinks about stories in terms of their economic and political implications, I came away with a different take on the same passage of Scripture.

First let’s review the story told in Genesis chapter 31.  Jacob, son of Isaac, was employed by Laban, who was Jacob’s uncle, and Jacob was involved in the popular profession of the time – raising sheep and goats.  For 20 years Jacob labored in the fields, amassed great wealth, married Laban’s daughters (Rachel and Leah) and kept Laban’s family wealthy even though Laban’s family never worked but instead lived off the profits of Jacob.  For 20 years, Laban was constantly changing the rules on Jacob which amounted to more of Jacob’s hard earned money going to fund Laban’s family and less to fund Jacob’s family.  After 20 years, Jacob received a message from God to take his family, livestock and fortune away from Laban and leave the oppressive climate.  After a few days, Laban realized Jacob (and his means of production) was gone and he was angry (now his family will have to work!) so he pursued Jacob.  After a confrontation, the two parties made a treaty to part in peace and the story has a happy ending.

Does this story have a frightening similarity to events happening in the world today?  Do we have a climate where the Producers are getting upset because they are paying taxes to a large group who choose not to work? 

From the recent report from The Heritage Foundation , America now has half its eligible citizens not paying Federal Income taxes and over 70% of US Government spending goes to fund dependence programs.  To put it another way, over 90% of Federal Income tax revenues go to fund Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare and Unemployment Insurance.   So called “Entitlement” programs like Social Security, Welfare and now Obamacare are unsustainable and will eventually bring America to the breaking point.

Greece is out of money and forced to finally undergo painful austerity measures to compensate for decades of government handouts and what do the citizens do?  Riot.

All over the world, governments are slowly starting to understand the truth that Margaret Thatcher so eloquently stated many years ago:

“The problem with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

As the Laffer Curve and John Galt taught us, there is a point where the Producers will get tired of having all their profits drained to support the lazy and they will eventually leave the system which will cause it to break down.

This is how Socialism always fails.  It was true 4,000 years ago with Jacob and it is true now with the world now waking up to the evils of European style socialism.  Let’s hope that we are waking up in time to save our civilization because the longer we wait, the more painful the solutions become.

Posted in economics, Entitlement Programs, politics | 4 Comments

NLRB Will Target Caterpillar Next

Posted on 10-Feb-2012 by Highvoltage

It appears the anti-capitalism branch of the US Government, called the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), will have someone else to intimidate after they recently completed their shakedown of Boeing.

Bloomberg Business Week reported a few days ago that Caterpillar, who is headquartered in Illinois, will seek another state to build its newest manufacturing plant.

“Caterpillar Inc., the world’s largest maker of construction and mining equipment, won’t choose its home state of Illinois as the site of a new factory costing about $150 million, according to local officials.”

“The company told Peoria County it will build the plant in another state, Lori Curtis Luther, the county’s administrator, said in a telephone interview today. Jim Dugan, a spokesman for Peoria-based Caterpillar, declined to comment.”

In a saner time, American businesses were free to choose any location to build their facilities based on a number of factors that benefited not only the company but their share holders.  But after the NLRB’s attack of Boeing for building its new plant in South Carolina instead of the Strike prone state of Washington, there is a new business climate in America that allows the NLRB, which is loaded with Union stooges, to dictate where businesses can expand. 

As it turns out, the NLRB will only allow companies the freedom follow sound business practices once the Unions have received their monetary bribe from the target company.  Recall that the NLRB dropped the charges against Boeing only after the International Association of Machinists received a bribe from Boeing.  This was outlined in an article from The Economist:

“It seems that the NLRB, a legacy of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, chose to drop the case only after it was asked to by representatives of the International Association of Machinists, the main Boeing union. The union told the government agency that it had just struck a lucrative deal with Boeing covering its workers in Washington State. With the deal done, the union no longer needed the government to hold a helpful gun to Boeing’s head.”

So get ready Caterpillar for the NLRB to dog you day and night once you start construction of your new facility in a Right to Work state.  Caterpillar should start the protection money payoffs now to the unions in Illinois to prevent future legal action. 

Posted in Over Regulation, politics, unionthugs | Leave a comment

Robert Reich – Ignorant or Evil?

Posted on 08-Feb-2012 by Highvoltage

Today on Marketplace Robert Reich, professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkley, weighed in on the idea that America turning into an ‘entitlement state’ or worse, ‘European style welfare system.”

Mr. Reich’s full comments are pasted below (emphasis mine):

“One of the few things the Republican presidential candidates agree on is that President Obama is turning America into what they call a “European-style welfare culture.”

“In his standard stump speech, Mitt Romney charges Obama with replacing our merit-based society with an “entitlement society.” Yesterday’s big winner Rick Santorum says, “There’s a push to get more and more people dependent.” Newt Gingrich calls Obama the best food-stamp president in American history.”

“Government data do show direct payments to individuals shot up by almost 32 percent since the start of 2009, and almost half of Americans now live in homes where at least one person is collecting a federal benefit — such as Social Security, food stamps, or unemployment insurance.”

“The GOP candidates argue our economic problems stem from this sharp rise in what they see as dependency on government. But they have cause and effect backwards. The reason for the rise in these federal benefits is Americans got clobbered in 2008 with the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression. Many are still in it. They and their families have needed whatever helping hands are available.”

“That’s why the percentage of Americans falling into poverty has grown dramatically over the past three years.”

“Most of the new jobs being created are in the lower-wage sectors of the economy — hospital orderlies, nursing aides, secretaries and retail clerks, hotel and restaurant workers. Millions of other Americans remain working in their old jobs only because they’ve agreed to cuts in wages and benefits. And millions of others have become temps or contract workers.”

“If anything, America’s safety nets have been too small and shot through with holes. Only 40 percent of the unemployed qualify for unemployment benefits.”

“We haven’t entered an entitlement society. Too many Americans have entered a downwardly-mobile society.”

It is true that the great recession of 2008 caused many to go on government assistance but Mr. Reich fails to note that the recovery (if you can call it that) has been nothing but a dead cat bounce and by his own admission over half of Americans are still living on some form of government assistance.  The reason for this is not a mystery to those who believe in fiscally conservative principles and our pitiful recovery is a direct result of Obama’s business killing regulation which is evident in a recent post from the Heritage blog.  Here is a chart comparing the recoveries (output relative to potential GDP) from two deep recessions – 1981 and 2008 – and this shows how Reaganomics beats Obamanomics hands down.

 Liberals fail to link increased government assistance (extended unemployment benefits and increased welfare spending) to hindering the economic revival because we incentivize people to stay on government assistance instead of looking for work.  As proof of that theory, I have shown in a previous post how increasing Welfare spending as a percent of GDP increases the poverty rate.

Mr. Reich reaches the conclusion that we are not turning into an entitlement state and doubles down by stating that the safety nets we have aren’t big enough!  Astounding!  From the 2009 IRS tax data (the latest available) I have shown that over 90% of all tax revenues go to pay Social Security, Welfare, Medicare, Medicaid and Unemployment Insurance.  How can you say we are not an entitlement state when almost all the money we take in from taxes pays for entitlement programs?  And yes, Social Security is an entitlement program.

It is ironic that Reich would make these statements the same day an exhaustive research article was published at the Heritage website showing that America’s dependence on government assistance is at an all time high.

Almost half of all Americans don’t pay any income tax.

Over 70% of government spending goes to pay for dependence programs.  Note that this differs from my 90% figure because ‘spending’ takes into account the money we borrow (I just used the money we take in from taxes).

Mr. Reich is a bright guy so how does he not see this?  Is he ignorant about how economics is always about motivations and when we provide handouts to those who are able to work we just enable them to remain on the government payrolls?  Or does he have a political agenda that is complicit with Obama in wanting to turn America into a Socialistic state?  There really is no other alternative to explain the statements he made today – he is either ignorant or evil.

Posted in economics, Entitlement Programs, politics | 9 Comments

What Defines A Disaster?

Posted on 06-Feb-2012 by Highvoltage

There was a post on the Heritage blog showing the number of FEMA disaster declarations per year from 1953 to 2011 and there is a curious increase starting in 1996 that needs to be explored.

I went to the FEMA website and found the same data that was presented on the Heritage blog so I’m convinced this data is valid.  Not that I would expect a reputable site like The Heritage to falsify data but I go by the rule “Trust but Verify” so this is standard practice for me.

Before we get into the details, it will help to understand how FEMA defines Major Disaster, Emergency and Fire Management Assistance so from the FEMA website:  

Major Disaster – Under the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Ace, any natural catastrophe (including any hurricane, tornado, storm, high water, wind-driven water, tidal wave, tsunami, earthquake, volcanic eruption, landslide, mudslide, snowstorm or drought) or, regardless of cause, any fire, flood or explosion in any part of the United States that, in the determination of the President, causes damage of sufficient severity and magnitude to warrant major disaster assistance under the Stafford Act to supplement the efforts and available resources of States, local governments and disaster relief organization in alleviating the damage, loss, hardship or suffering caused thereby.

Emergency – Any incident, whether natural or manmade, that requires responsive action to protect life or property.  Under the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, an emergency means any occasion or instance for which, in the determination of the President, Federal assistance is needed to supplement State and local efforts and capabilities to save lives and to protect property and public health and safety or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in any part of the United States.

Fire Management Assistance Program – Fire Management Assistance is available to States, local and tribal governments, for the mitigation, management, and control of fires on publicly or privately owned forests or grasslands, which threaten such destruction as would constitute a major disaster.

The purpose of the Heritage piece was to highlight the high number of declarations coming from the Obama administration in 2011 and I am not here to refute that claim but I find it more troubling that starting around 1996 (when Clinton was President) we saw a step function increase in number of declarations as compared with the historical averages.  While I like to bash Clinton and Obama, you’ll notice that Bush continued this trend during his two terms as president so what happened in the mid 90’s to cause this increase?

The Anthropogenic Global Warming cult likes to say that increases in CO2 will lead to more storms and hurricanes and if you are a member of this cult you probably already snapped to that as the major cause.  Unfortunately the data don’t support that theory as you’ll see soon.  Let’s look at some of the major contributors to disasters in the United States.

Was there an increase in hurricanes making landfall in the US during the last 15 years?  Nope.

What about Tornadoes?  Did the US see an increased amount of these deadly and damaging storms?  Nope.

It must be floods then, right?  Nope.

I’ve heard a lot about Earthquakes in the news lately so maybe we’ve seen an uptick in damage caused by these natural catastrophes.  Nope.  From the USGS website (emphasis mine):

“We continue to be asked by many people throughout the world if earthquakes are on the increase. Although it may seem that we are having more earthquakes, earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or greater have remained fairly constant.”

“A partial explanation may lie in the fact that in the last twenty years, we have definitely had an increase in the number of earthquakes we have been able to locate each year. This is because of the tremendous increase in the number of seismograph stations in the world and the many improvements in global communications. In 1931, there were about 350 stations operating in the world; today, there are more than 8,000 stations and the data now comes in rapidly from these stations by electronic mail, internet and satellite. This increase in the number of stations and the more timely receipt of data has allowed us and other seismological centers to locate earthquakes more rapidly and to locate many small earthquakes which were undetected in earlier years. The NEIC now locates about 20,000 earthquakes each year or approximately 50 per day. Also, because of the improvements in communications and the increased interest in the environment and natural disasters, the public now learns about more earthquakes.”

What about wildfires?  From the Heritage graph, that was a big component of the increase so maybe that is the reason.  Well, yes!  The average fire SIZE has increased (not the frequency) so that has led to more destruction.

The total area damaged by wildfires has increased and now we must ask why that has happened over the past 15 years.  The website that provided the chart above offers the following explanation:

“One statistic I concentrate on is the average size of fires, not so much the number of fires or the total acres burned each year, two stats that the mainstream media harps on. The average size is affected not only by the weather, but also by the fuel condition and age, how many fires were burning at the same time, the short-term availability of firefighting resources, the skill and efficiency of the firefighting effort, strategy used on fires, and the number of firefighting resources on the payroll of the firefighting agencies.”

The website Wildfiretoday has another post with more explanation on why these fires are getting larger:

“Fire suppression for the last 100 years is catching up with us. Preventing naturally occurring fires to routinely reduce the fuel loads increases the amount of fuel, and the continuity of it, available when a fire starts. Fires burn more intensely and with more resistance to control.”

“Climate change. There is no doubt that temperatures in the last few decades have been higher that they were before this period. We can debate how this may have affected wildland fires. Many areas have had extended droughts, causing die back of brush and shrubs. Trees are stressed, making them more susceptible to insects and other pests. Do these higher temperatures have a direct effect on fire behavior on an hour by hour basis?”

The author brings up a great point that we are so hyper sensitive to fire suppression that we’ve prevented naturally occurring, smaller fires to destroy some of the fuel that is consumed in later fires.  While I’m not a member of the AGW cult, there has been an increase of temperatures in the last 20 years when compared with temperatures of the decades prior that could also contribute to increased wildfires so I agree with the author here too.

So the only disaster that has increased in the past 15 years has been due to wildfires but the other declaration bars (Major Disaster and Emergency) from the Heritage graph have also increased from prior years and the data doesn’t support a justification for that.  Why did the Federal Government issue more disaster declarations over the past 15 years?

Over the past couple of decades we have seen Liberal ideals, which affirm the Government’s role in bailing out its citizens from all manners of hardship, assimilated into American orthodoxy.   What started out as a safety net has turned into an entitlement frenzy.  When the government spends over 90% of all tax revenues on Social Security, Welfare, Medicare, Medicaid and Unemployment Insurance, it is not difficult to believe that our definition of “Emergency” has gone soft.

The increase in tax payer dollars to fund disaster relief is not the problem but just one more symptom of America’s slow slide into Euro socialism.  It must stop now!

Posted in politics | 4 Comments

Lessons Learned From The Fall Of Communism

Posted on 06-Feb-2012 by Highvoltage

Janet Daley from The Telegraph wrote a great article a couple of days ago that everyone should read.  This article gets to the heart of the income inequality/fairness meme currently being peddled by the Left and I’ve stated before that this fairness argument is a direct result of America failing to educate its youth on the benefits of Capitalism.

I’ll highlight a few paragraphs below but read the full article here.  

“But in spite of the official agreement that there is no other way to organize the economic life of a free society than the present one (with a few tweaks), there are an awful lot of people implicitly behaving as if there were. Several political armies seem to be running on the assumption that there is still a viable contest between capitalism and Something Else.”

“If this were just the hard Left within a few trade unions and a fringe collection of Socialist Workers’ Party headbangers, it would not much matter. But the truth is that a good proportion of the population harbours a vague notion that there exists a whole other way of doing things that is inherently more benign and “fair” – in which nobody is hurt or disadvantaged – available for the choosing, if only politicians had the will or the generosity to embrace it.”

“Can I suggest that you try the following experiment? Gather up a group of bright, reasonably well-educated 18-year-olds and ask them what world event occurred in 1945. They will, almost certainly, be able to give you an informed account of how the Second World War ended, and at least a generally accurate picture of its aftermath. Now try asking them what historical milestone came to pass in 1989. I am willing to bet that this question will produce mute, blank looks.”

 “The failure of communism should have been, after all, not just a turning point in geo-political power – the ending of the Cold War and the break-up of the Warsaw Pact – but in modern thinking about the state and its relationship to the economy, about collectivism vs individualism, and about public vs private power. Where was the discussion, the trenchant analysis, or the fundamental debate about how and why the collectivist solutions failed, which should have been so pervasive that it would have percolated down from the educated classes to the bright 18-year-olds? Fascism is so thoroughly (and, of course, rightly) repudiated that even the use of the word as a casual slur is considered slanderous, while communism, which enslaved more people for longer (and also committed mass murder), is regarded with almost sentimental condescension.”

“Is this because it was originally thought to be idealistic and well-intentioned? If so, then that in itself is a reason for examining its failure very closely. We need to know why a system that began with the desire to free people from their chains ended by imprisoning them behind a wall. Certainly we have had some great works of investigation into the Soviet gulags and the practices of the East German Stasi, but judging by our present political discourse, I think it is safe to say that the basic fallacies of the state socialist system have not really permeated through to public consciousness.”

“Communism’s fatal error was in thinking that morality resided in the mechanisms of an economic system rather than in the people who operated them. There is no way of avoiding the need for individual responsibility, which lies with citizens, not governments – or with bankers as people, not with the “banking system”. Some political leader (David Cameron?) needs to have the nerve to say this or we shall be talking nonsense forever.”

Posted in economics, politics | 2 Comments

Obama Owns It

Posted on 04-Feb-2012 by Highvoltage

Remember this date (03-FEB-12) because on this day Americans (and Conservatives in particular) got two pieces of good news that could have impacts for the 2012 election and our country going forward.

First, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) issued its unemployment numbers for January and they were good (on the surface).  America added 243,000 jobs, the U-3 Unemployment Rate dropped to 8.3% and the job gains were adjusted for November and December by +57,000 and +3,000 respectively. 

The U-6 Unemployment rate (which counts those who have been so discouraged that they left the work force and aren’t counted in the U-3 rate) is still high at 15.1% and this is a better indicator of the so called “recovery” that the Obama team touts.   James Pethokoukis at the American Enterprise Institute wrote a good piece explaining what the U-3 Unemployment rate would be if we had the same participation rate now (63.7%) as we did when Obama took office (65.7%) as well as other analysis from the BLS report today.

While today’s BLS report shows the recovery under Obama is still much worse compared to the recovery under Reagan, this was at least some good news for the economy and shows that even with all the job killing policies of this current administration, Capitalism is still able to produce some small gains.  Hopefully this is a sign of things to come for those who have struggled to find a job and many Americans can becoming gainfully employed while we wait for a real recovery to happen after our community-organizer-in-chief loses the general election in November.

But there is another piece of good news that has larger implications on the election this year and that came from Obama’s team today.  Obama officially stated that he now “owns” the economy and he can no longer blame poor economic data on Bush.  See quotes from the following USA Today story:

“Further evidence that the economy is continuing to heal from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression,” said a statement from Alan B. Krueger, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.

“It is critical that we continue the economic policies that are helping us to dig our way out of the deep hole that was caused by the recession that began at the end of 2007,” Krueger wrote on the White House blog.”

So there you have it.  Obama’s chief economic advisor stated that the lower unemployment rate is a direct result of Obama’s policies and they will continue to enact these policies to improve the jobs situation going forward.

In engineering terms – If you claim that a system outputs have been altered based on your inputs then you make the claim that all prior inputs to the system have been swamped out (or eliminated) and you now have your hands firmly placed on the steering wheel of that system.  You can’t claim credit for the positive effects and deflect blame to someone else for the negative effects once you make that claim.

Obama owns every piece of economic data that is produced from now until November when the election occurs.  Do not let Liberals use the “we’re just fixing what Bush broke” meme ever again.  Obama owns this economy now and he is responsible for it 100%.

ADDENDUM – It should be noted that the unemployment rate of 8.3% is larger than the Obama administration stated would be the maximum rate it would reach after enacting his 2009 stimulus plan.  See link here (Figure 1 page 4).

I have also shown in a previous post how the economy could rebound in 2012 as the expectation of Obama’s loss in the general election becomes more certain.  Do not be surprised by this and you have heard it here first.

Posted in economics, politics | 5 Comments

Romney Pile On

Posted on 01-Feb-2012 by Highvoltage

Today on CNN, Soledad O’Brien interviewed Mitt Romney and unless you slept through the day you know how the interview went.  For those who haven’t heard the entire exchange, here it is:

“Romney says, “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair , I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich…. I’m concerned about the very heart of America, the 90-95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling.”

O’Brien asked him to clarify his remarks saying, “There are lots of very poor Americans who are struggling who would say, ‘That sounds odd.'”

Romney continues, “We will hear from the Democrat party, the plight of the poor…. You can focus on the very poor, that’s not my focus…. The middle income Americans, they’re the folks that are really struggling right now and they need someone that can help get this economy going for them.”

Romney isn’t sounding much like a ‘compassionate conservative’ and I don’t think you’d confuse him with George W. Bush with that exchange.

To summarize his comments in the CNN interview – If elected, Romney will focus his resources to target growth areas that will benefit the vast majority of Americans (Middle Class).  The Rich can take care of themselves and we already have programs in place to help the very poor (Welfare, Food Stamps, Medicaid, Unemployment Insurance, etc.) so Romney would help the one demographic group that has been left out – the Middle Class. 

There is plenty to hammer Romney on but talking about reviving the US economy is straight, no-compromising language is not one of them.  Did he use a poor choice of phrasing that provides catchy, out-of-context sound bites for the MSM and Obama?  Yes.  Was his message correct from a conservative viewpoint?  Yes.

If anybody but Romney had made these statements 2 years ago at a Tea Party rally the crowd would’ve erupted in thunderous applause and pretty soon “not concerned about the very poor” would’ve been trending on Twitter because so many conservatives would be cheering about it.  Conservatives would’ve cheered because the message delivered by Romney today gets to the heart of the difference between our World View and that of Liberals. 

A Liberal sees the poor contrasted with the wealthy and wants to further enslave the poor by offering more handouts and ‘punish’ the wealthy by increasing their taxes.  I’ve shown how increasing Welfare spending increases the Poverty rate and I’ve explored the Liberal Group Think topic which explains why Liberals seem to be averse to taking the economically necessary, but painful, steps to ensure long term stability.  Even President Obama’s chief economic advisor wrote a paper showing how extending Unemployment Insurance benefits keeps the Unemployment Rate high for a longer period of time.     

Conservatives see the poor and wish to bring them up without knocking the successful down.  We know that if we remove the barriers for the middle class then more of them will move from middle class to wealthy, start business, increase consumption and grow the economy (which will lower the poverty rate and improve the lives of the poor).  Knocking the wealthy down will not help the poor in any way (short or long term) and there is just no way a Liberal can justify that policy. 

James Pethokoukis had an excellent post today explaining, in economic terms, why Romney was exactly right and used the evidence from a paper written by Bruce D. Meyer and James X. Sullivan.  Below is a portion of the Pethokoukis post and the emphasis was the author’s:

“The focus of Mitt Romney’s campaign is boosting economic growth after a terrible recession and awful recovery. And this is exactly the right emphasis, not more “anti-poverty” programs. Meyer and Sullivan looked at why the material well-being of the poor has improved so much during the past three decades.

First, here is what helped only a small amount: noncash transfers such as food stamps or housing and school lunch subsidies.

Here is what helped a lot more: “The impact of taxes is particularly noticeable for the poor, a substantial share of whom have been lifted out of poverty by more generous tax credits.”

And this is probably most important: “Together, this evidence suggests that other factors, perhaps most importantly economic growth, played a critical role in the improved living standards of the middle class and the poor.”

That’s right, economic growth. Take care about the economy and everyone will benefit, even the poor and very poor.”

So we should’ve seen Conservatives coming out of the woodwork to defend Romney against the inevitable arrows from the Left.  But we didn’t.  Because in today’s super charged, “If-You-Don’t-Vote-For-My-Candidate-All-Hope-Is-Lost” mentality of my conservative brothers and sisters there were more arrows shot at Romney from the Right than from the Left.  How did we get to the point where we are now ‘vetting’ Republican candidates using the traditional criteria of the Left?  Capitalism, wealth, financial success, removing barriers to those who are trying to create wealth and providing incentives for the poor to leave poverty are now taboo topics with some Republican candidates and their supporters.

I hope this doesn’t come back to bite us in November.

Posted in politics | 2 Comments

Appeasing The True Deniers

Posted on 31-Jan-2012 by Highvoltage

It appears that yet another final ‘nail in the coffin’ has been hammered home debunking the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) scam.

The Daily Mail reported that the Met Office and the University of East Anglia have released a report stating that global temperatures have been flat since 1997. 

“The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.”

This is not a surprise to the real scientific skeptics, like me, who have been saying this for years.  I noted in a post last year that the global temperatures have been flat since 1998 and using the data from the University of East Anglia (called HADCRUT3) and the University of Alabama Huntsville I plotted the following graphs:

But it gets worse for the AGW cult – now scientists are predicting a cycle of the Sun that will reduce Earth’s temperatures over the next decade.  From the Daily Mail article:

“Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food.

Solar output goes through 11-year cycles, with high numbers of sunspots seen at their peak.

We are now at what should be the peak of what scientists call ‘Cycle 24’ – which is why last week’s solar storm resulted in sightings of the aurora borealis further south than usual. But sunspot numbers are running at less than half those seen during cycle peaks in the 20th Century.

Analysis by experts at NASA and the University of Arizona – derived from magnetic-field measurements 120,000 miles beneath the sun’s surface – suggest that Cycle 25, whose peak is due in 2022, will be a great deal weaker still.”

The following graphs from the Daily Mail article show the Sun’s Solar Activity (energy output) and Sunspot count over the past several hundred years as well as the projected Solar Activity for the next solar cycle. 

You might think that high sunspot count corresponds to a cooler Sun because sunspots are cooler regions and hence have a different color.  But in actuality, higher sunspot activity produces higher net Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) because the regions around the sunspot, called Faculae, are much brighter than the normal regions of the sun, have a higher energy from the normal regions of the Sun and persist longer than the sunspots. So the Sun’s net TSI is higher during periods of high sunspot activity and lower during periods of low sunspot activity. 

The Sun has experienced very low TSI from low sunspot activity in the past and these periods were called the Maunder Minimum (which occurred between 1645 and 1715) and the Dalton Minimum (which occurred between 1790 to 1830).  These two Solar minimums coincided with a period of history that was characterized by such extremely cold temperatures that scientists call the years from about 1600 to 1850 the Little Ice Age.  Farms in Europe and North America were destroyed by the harsh winters, glaciers, canals and rivers in England were frozen deep enough that people ice skated on them and civilizations in Greenland vanished due to starvation.   

So the AGW cult is facing a double whammy – the predicted warming from increased CO2 concentrations has not occurred in the last 15 years and the predicted Solar Cycle 25 should bring about much cooler temperatures on Earth.  After decades of calling AGW skeptics ‘deniers’,  it now appears that the AGW scientists were the true ‘deniers’ and wasted their time chasing a flawed power grab of the Left.

What are the AGW cult scientists to do?  They don’t want to suffer the indignity of having to admit that decades of work have been in vain no more than the rest of us want to embrace a civilization crippling CO2 reduction scheme. 

No worry, I have a way out for the AGW scientists like Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann and John Cook.  The Climate Change issue has been more akin to a war than a scientific discussion so let’s end this debate the way all wars end – with a peace treaty.

Skeptics will admit that CO2 is a powerful greenhouse gas capable of warming the Earth beyond the point where humans can inhabit it (AGW scientist egos are appropriately stroked) if the AGW scientists admit that the big yellow orb in the sky is swamping out the effects of that tiny molecule (which was totally unexpected by the AGW scientists but common sense to the rest of us).   

Problem solved – Everybody is happy, no?

Posted in Climate Change | 3 Comments

Looking Up – Winter 2012

Posted on 30-Jan-2012 by Highvoltage

A previous post of mine provided what I hope was a teaser for those contemplating entering the field of amateur astronomy.  Starting in 2012, every few months I’ll provide some suggestions on objects that can be easily seen with either your naked eye or low power binoculars that will give you an opportunity to dip your toes into the vast ocean of cosmic knowledge.

During the remaining weeks that make up the Northern Hemisphere’s winter, I suggest three prominent objects in the night sky that are directly overhead before you go to bed – Jupiter, Orion Nebula and the Pleiades star cluster.

JUPITER

 Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, orbits our sun between Mars and Saturn and based on Kepler’s Third Law, it takes Jupiter almost 12 Earth years to make one orbit around the Sun.  Jupiter is massive and you could fit over 1,300 Earths inside Jupiter but since Jupiter is made of gas, it is only a little over 300 times as massive as Earth.  Jupiter has four major moons – Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa, which are easily visible with binoculars and with a telescope you can even see the shadows of the moons on Jupiter’s surface.

To see Jupiter now, look in the South-West after sunset and it will be the brightest object in that portion of the sky.  For those of you who are familiar with the constellations, it is currently in Aries and Jupiter’s location is shown below.

With binoculars, Jupiter will appear as a true orb and not a point of light and depending on the location of the moons, you can see all four of them.  The following images are taken from my telescope but since my scope is a Newtonian on a Dobsonian mount, the telescope doesn’t track the rotation of the earth and they aren’t the best quality. 

Jupiter and its four moons

 

ORION NEBULA

A Nebula is an interstellar collection of gases and if there is enough mass of elements (hydrogen, helium, etc.) then stars are created inside the nebula and this is why nebulae are considered as “star nurseries.”  Our star, the Sun, was once born in one of these nebulae and our solar system was born from the combining of elements to form not only our star but our planets.  

There is a famous nebula that is prominent in the winter sky located 1,600 light years away from Earth in the constellation of Orion the hunter.  As a side note – A light year is the distance covered by photons that travel at roughly 300,000 km per second so the Sun is a little over 8 light minutes in distance from Earth.  The Milky Way Galaxy is roughly 100,000 light years in diameter and we are roughly 25,000 light years away from the center of the Milky Way so that gives you a reference for how ‘close’ the Orion nebula is to us. 

The constellation resembles a man hunting with a bow and arrow and he has a belt that has a sword and the stars that make up the sword contain this beautiful nebula.  The constellation is located in the South East just after sunset and the location of the Orion nebula is shown in the red circle in the following picture.

The Orion nebula is beautiful in high powered telescopes and the image pasted above was from the Hubble Space Telescope.  You can’t see these colors with the naked eye using either binoculars or a telescope but here is a picture of the Orion nebula in a land based telescope that is very similar to what you’d see from a modest amateur telescope.  Binoculars will not yield the same definition but you will be able to see the gas cloud surrounding these newly born stars. 

PLEIADES

There is a prominent open star cluster that you can see in the winter and it is very close to us at 380 light years.  The Pleiades is located in the constellation of Taurus and there are roughly 500 stars that make up this cluster and depending on light pollution and your eyesight, you should be able to view seven of these with the naked eye.

If you live in the suburbs or in a rural area, the fuzzy nature of the Pleiades is viewable with the naked eye and even with low powered binoculars you can glimpse the immense star concentration.  The Pleiades is a little more difficult to find if you are not familiar with the night sky but in the winter you can see it in the West after sunset.  Look in the North East for the backwards 3 that is the Cassiopeia constellation then move left to the constellation of Perseus and the Pleiades is located just to the left of Perseus.  The Pleiades is shown in the red circle on the following picture.  

The following picture shows the Pleiades star cluster as seen from a low powered telescope and you can see similar images using binoculars.

Go outside during the coming weeks and view these objects with either your naked eye or with binoculars to grasp the beauty of our cosmos and share them with your family and friends.  Our Cosmos is truly spectacular and venturing outside on a cold evening to witness these objects provides an  opportunity to connect with the wonders of the Universe that can’t be replicated by any TV show you might be watching.  There are plenty of amazing pictures of the cosmos on the internet but nothing compares to seeing these actual photons being absorbed on your own eyes.  

Posted in astronomy, cosmology | Leave a comment

Academia Versus The Real World

Posted on 27-Jan-2012 by Highvoltage

Robert Reich teaches public policy at the University of California at Berkley and served as Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton.  He graduated from Dartmouth, was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford and earned a Juris Doctor from Yale.  So the guy is smart and has a ton of experience in politics/academia but when it comes to running a business, the guy is as useful as a screen door on a submarine.

On the ride home I heard the following comments he made on Marketplace and they are pasted below with my comments interlaced.    

“A defining issue in the 2012 campaign will be the relative roles of business and government in making Americans globally competitive.”

Well this and the phony Income Inequality/Class Warfare talking points of Obama will be the defining issues in the 2012 campaign.

“But American business can’t lead the way because it’s increasingly global, with less and less stake in America. And its goal is profits, not better jobs.

According to the Commerce Department, U.S.-based global corporations added almost 2.5 million workers abroad over the past decade. But they cut their U.S. workforce by about 3 million.

Apple employs eight times as many workers overseas as it does in the United States. An Apple executive recently told the New York Times, “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems.”

That is exactly right; Businesses shouldn’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems.  A business is interested in one thing and one thing only – profit.  Without profit, it won’t last very long unless the owner contributes to Obama’s campaign and then he’ll have access to an almost unlimited amount of tax payer funded loans – See Solyndra and Ener1. 

But even though profit is the guiding force in business, Corporations are not disinterested in the welfare of American citizens.  Corporations donate billions of dollars annually to non-profit charities in an effort to pay back the communities that support their businesses.  While Corporations don’t have an obligation to solve all of America’s problems, Mr. Reich is ignoring the real world facts and implying that they have no interest in helping America out.

“At the same time, the National Science Foundation warns that Asia’s share of global R&D spending now exceeds America’s. One big reason: Over the last decade, American firms nearly doubled their R&D investment in China.

No wonder the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, dominated by corporate CEOs, is calling for lower tax rates and less regulation. These CEOs are beholden to their shareholders — not to American workers — and these proposals mean higher earnings per share. But they won’t create better jobs.”

Again, this is basic business practices and if a corporation is incentivized (because of high corporate tax rates or union intimidation) to move labor out of the US then they not only have the right to do that, they have a fiducial requirement to do that.  The economy of the 21st century is different than the one of the early 20th century because we live in a global market with other countries who can supply cheap labor to manufacture our products.  America needs to embrace the Knowledge Based Economy and realize that these cheap labor jobs that are used to make simple products will not come back to the United States.  Corporations who choose to manufacture products in the US at a higher labor rate and higher tax rate will sacrifice profits and eventually go out of business.   

“Americans will get good jobs in the global economy only if they’re productive enough to attract them. But a large and growing portion of our workforce isn’t equipped to be productive. We’re hobbled by deteriorating schools, unaffordable college tuitions, decaying infrastructure, and declining investment in basic R&D. All of this is putting us on a downward slope toward even lousier jobs and lower wages in the future.”

I am a firm believer that education is the tide that will float all boats and I want more focus and dollars placed into this area but Mr. Reich’s solution is to raise corporate taxes and funnel that money to the government to decide where it is spent.  If extra tax revenue would be used for education then I could support it but he is naïve to think that our government would use extra tax revenue to fund education. 

Using the 2011 US Tax Revenue and 2011 US Budget Outlays I have shown that over 90% of all tax revenue goes to fund Social Security, Welfare, Medicare, Medicaid and Unemployment Insurance.   In 2011, Federal government spending on education only accounted for 5.6% of tax revenues so the extra income from increased corporate taxes will be funneled to the entitlement programs and not used for Education.  If our government placed a high priority on education then they’d divert some of the current entitlement spending to education but they refuse to do that and raising Corporate taxes will only increase the funding for people who don’t work or pay taxes (i.e. Socialism).  

“Big American corporations aren’t clamoring for better education and infrastructure. They want lower taxes and fewer regulations. And they have huge clout in Washington, with legions of lobbyists and boatloads of money for political campaigns.

That’s the problem in a nutshell. When it comes to making Americans globally competitive, almost no one with any clout in Washington is representing Americans.”

If we want to make American corporations globally competitive then we need to remove the over regulation (which has been outlined here, here and here) and decrease corporate taxes.  This would increase corporate profits and if companies had more money then they’d invest in new capital (facilities, equipment, etc.) and hire more workers.  These new workers (which would arise not only from the manufacturers but also from the companies that build the new facilities and provide the new equipment) would, in turn, pay local, state and federal taxes that would increase the government coffers to be used in building road and improving education. 

Raising taxes on corporations without giving them an incentive to increase investment in the United States is just perpetuating the Welfare State and ensuring that more jobs move out of this country.

This is pretty simple stuff to anyone who lives and works in the real world but I would not expect that kind of common sense thinking from Mr. Reich who has spent his whole life in academia and his statements above validate my assumptions.

Posted in economics, politics | 2 Comments

Income Inequality Links

Posted on 26-Jan-2012 by Highvoltage

If you watched the Community Organizer in Chief give his State of the Union speech then you know what we are going to hear from the President for the next 10 months – Income Inequality and everyone paying their fair share.

Conservatives will have to combat these memes from the left and I’ve compiled a list of links that can prove helpful.

First, my take on the liberal’s income inequality message is here.  It is refreshing to know that an MIT economist also made the same claim that moving to a knowledge based economy causes income inequality in the less educated.

My take on the ‘paying their fair share’ liberal talking point is here.

Here is a Great video from an Economics professor explaining why demonizing the successful is antithetical to Capitalism.

Here is a Wall-Street Opinion piece explaining why Romney should not be ashamed of his income (success) and tax rate.  

James Pethokoukis from The Enterprise Blog has the following excellent posts on the topic.

Seven reasons why Obama is wrong on the Income Inequality meme.

Eleven things that Obama didn’t tell you about tax ‘fairness’ in his State of the Union.

Capital Gains tax should be zero and Mitt Romney should not have to explain why his tax rate is 15%.

Debunking Elizabeth Warren’s meme that median income has stagnated.

Big Government policy is the source of Income Inequality (with a quote from Milton Friedman).

Income equality has actually surged during recent years when our government punished wealth creation and income of the top 1% has risen since 1990 but strangely, Liberals didn’t have a problem with it then. Notice also that wealth share of the 1% has been flat since the 1950’s.

The 1% didn’t steal all the money.

Posted in economics, Income Inequality, politics | 18 Comments

What We Are Up Against

Posted on 23-Jan-2012 by Highvoltage

Many conservatives, like me, spend many hours each day talking politics with other conservatives at work, on Twitter/Facebook and on website comments sections and I think we lose sight of what those in the middle of the political spectrum are thinking about and we definitely underestimate the thoughts of those on the Far Left.

The worst thing we can do this year is to be smug and think the rest of America is fed up with Obama, Pelosi and Reid and will gladly kick them out of office no matter who we pick as our candidates.  The Democrats made that fatal flaw in 2004 when they, thinking that everyone hated Bush, selected an ultra Liberal candidate in John Kerry.  We know how that turned out and we are in jeopardy of doing the same thing in 2012 by insisting we select Far Right candidates who are, in reality, unelectable in a general election. 

Ok, you can call me a RINO or a member of the GOP Smart Set but as I’ve stated before, decades of Liberal policies have poisoned peoples’ thinking and it will take years to reverse it.  We must demonstrate to America that true conservative policies work before Americans vote for true conservative candidates.  

During tonight’s Florida debate, my wife (who is a Civil Engineer and very smart) asked me what K Street, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Dodd-Frank were.  My wife represents the Center Right segment of America and we need these votes to win elections and if our candidates aren’t tailoring their message to them, then we have already lost.

We must also not underestimate the vast number of people who are Center Left who sound more like Far Left people because they get their news from the Mainstream Media which regurgitates the Far Left message.

Over the weekend I jumped into a Facebook political discussion, something that I normally avoid, and didn’t get too deep into it but I think the conversations that we had should be viewed by all conservatives.  This is what we are up against in 2012 and we better open our eyes or risk 4 more years of Obama and a Democrat controlled Senate.

The conversation is pasted below and I’ll leave it to the reader to digest it and draw their own conclusions.  I must say that many of the individuals listed on this stream are known to me and they can be considered college educated and professionals so they have the ability to think for themselves. While I interjected contrarian opinions, I respect the way they treated me and this is the way we should have our debates (although they failed to abide by one of my rules for a reasoned debate – ignoring the facts).  I have blacked out all names and pictures except my own to preserve their anonymity since I didn’t solicit their permission to publish the conversation.  

Posted in politics | 1 Comment

A Failure to Communicate

Posted on 22-Jan-2012 by Highvoltage

We have lost the ability to solve problems in Washington DC and we won’t regain that ability until we replace partisan politics with reasoned debate.  I like a good political fight as much as the next guy but we can’t fight 100% of the time and eventually we must debate the issues, use facts and reach a consensus.  This is true with both small and large issues and it is what has fostered the growth of the United States of America for over 200 years. 

Fierce debate has been the norm in America and although it takes us a while to reach our conclusions, i.e. Civil Rights for African Americans, we eventually end up on the right side of the issue and pick a path that leads to growth.  Nothing captures the American debate process better than when Winston Churchill once stated that:

“Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing…after they have exhausted all other possibilities.”

Intense debate and slow action are what characterize American politics but the current intellectual level of debate in DC is no different that the amateur debates you see on Twitter and Facebook –  moving quickly to personal attacks, ignoring the facts and spewing talking points.  We can and must do better.

My ground rules for entering into a debate with someone is to assume that both parties have the best of intent and realize that our differing points of view arise from either different world views or different data that is leading us to these opposing opinions.  In a perfect world, the two parties, through conversations and sharing data, arrive at a solution that both parties agree benefits the organization (be that a business, country or any entity).

I have found that debate falls down when one of the following situations occur – 1) one of the parties doesn’t have the best of intent (they are arguing for the sake of arguing and are not interested in reaching a solution) or 2) one of the parties refuses to acknowledge factual information.  Personal attacks are another situation that quickly breaks the debate down but generally someone will resort to personal attacks after one of the other situations has occurred.  Once any of the above happens, I usually give the person another shot at redeeming themselves but if they continue, I end the conversation and tell them that I have refused to take them seriously anymore.

Sadly, it appears that both of these conversation killing situations are present in political discourse in the United States and this explains the caustic political climate present in both Washington DC and Main Street USA.

It is understandable that quick consensus will not be reached on large, complicated issues such as Climate Change or the latest Liberal talking point of Income Inequality but recently we have seen debate break down on simple issues.  A current example of this failure to communicate is evident in the Left’s accusation that Newt Gingrich is a racist because of comments he made regarding a student work program.

Gingrich gave a speech in early December in Des Moines Iowa where he laid out a plan to instill a work ethic in poor children by replacing the high paying union jobs in public schools with part time work for the children and he claimed that the children would not only learn the power of a work ethic but earn money.  You can read the full story from ABC news here and judge for yourself what Gingrich said but a portion of the ABC news article is pasted below:

“Gingrich said that successful people he knows started work early by doing small jobs like babysitting and shoveling snow.

“You have a very poor neighborhood. You have students that are required to go to school. They have no money, no habit of work,” Gingrich said. “What if you paid them in the afternoon to work in the clerical office or as the assistant librarian? And let me get into the janitor thing. What if they became assistant janitors, and their job was to mop the floor and clean the bathroom?”

Gingrich talked about a program around while he was in Congress called “Earning While Learning,” which paid students to read books. He said it was the same concept of students gaining money for doing academic work that he would like to see students to invest in.

“They wanted the money. The kids were showing up saying, ‘I demand you let me read. You can’t keep me from this program,” Gingrich said.

Gingrich said there would be a lot of details to work out, but the general principle was “exactly the right direction for America’s future.

“If we are all endowed by our creator with the right to pursue happiness, that has to apply to the poorest neighborhoods in the poorest counties, and I am prepared to find something that works, that breaks us out of the cycles we have now to find a way for poor children to work and earn honest money,” Gingrich said.”

I agree with this program and I got my first job at age 13 keeping score at an adult amateur baseball league during the summer and followed that up at age 16 by starting to work at Wal-Mart through high school.  I continued to be employed part time throughout my years in college and while I enjoyed earning a paycheck, the intangibles I received from those jobs led to my successes later in life.

Sounds pretty simple, right?  Who would disagree with instilling work ethics and giving poor children money?  The Liberal crowd disagreed because they said Gingrich was a racist.

Fox News’ Juan Williams questioned Gingrich in the Myrtle Beach debate and that exchange, in part, led to Gingrich’s surge in South Carolina and his eventual big win in that Primary.  Here was the initial question from Williams and you can detect the racist accusations:

“Speaker Gingrich, you said black Americans should demand jobs, not food stamps. You also said poor kids lack a strong work ethic and proposed having them work as janitors in their schools,” Williams asked. “Can’t you see that this is viewed, at a minimum, as insulting to all Americans, but particularly to black Americans?”

But Williams wasn’t alone in calling Gingrich racist for these remarks.  The always race bating Representative Sheila Jackson Lee implied that Gingrich was using ‘code words’ to spew racism (emphasis mine):

“These are code words. It’s inappropriate,” Jackson Lee told MSNBC’s Martin Bashir Friday. “Let me say that the code words, as far as I’m concerned words that generate and signify race.”

“[With Gingrich] It is ‘I will use race to divide. I will call the president the food stamp president,’” she said. “Telling us that a janitor who makes $37,000 would be in a better position to give his job up so that the children of the poor in New York…can pick up a broom and work.”

To say children in New York should “pick up a broom and work…is a code word to, if you will, portray poor children and poor school districts that they have seen no one work legitimately,” she said. “That they don‘t have a work ethic and these janitors are overpaid unionized workers who don’t have family and are not making $37,000 a year”

“I think Mr. Gingrich should be ashamed of himself and we should not want to win at any cost. Let’s bring the country together. Let’s not destroy Mr. Obama. Let’s talk about helping the American people,” she said.”

I don’t see any “code words” here and it appears that Jackson Lee is using her world view, which obviously states all Republicans are racist, to read into these statements that support her cause.  Only Liberals are using “race to divide” and it appears that Jackson Lee is more concerned that we “not destroy Mr. Obama” than helping poor families escape the slavery that government assistance perpetuates.  Welfare spending and poverty rates are correlated as I’ve shown in this post and the Liberals, who garner a large percentage of African American votes , have done nothing to help remove poor families from government handouts in the form of Welfare and Unemployment Insurance.

Even President Carter entered into the race bating with the following statement on CNN’s Piers Morgan show (emphasis mine):

“I think [Gingrich] has that subtlety of racism that I know quite well and that Gingrich knows quite well, that appeals to some people in Georgia, particularly the right wing,” Carter said in an interview on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight” set to air Wednesday.

“Really?” Morgan asked. “And you think he’s doing it deliberately?”

“He knows well the words that you use, like welfare mamas and so forth, that have been appealing in the past in those days when we cherished segregation of the races,” Carter said. “He’s appealing for that in South Carolina.”

“That’s a pretty serious charge to level at Newt Gingrich, that he’s being racist,” Morgan said.

“I wouldn’t say he’s racist, but he knows the subtle words to use to appeal to a racist group,” Carter explained. “When you emphasize, over and over and over, welfare and food stamps and ‘why don’t the black people get jobs‘ and ’if I’m president, I’ll make sure they turn toward a work ethic, rather than an ethic of welfare and food stamps,’ that’s appealing to the wrong element in South Carolina.”

Gingrich’s speech never mentioned race (certainly not “welfare mamas” or “why don’t’ the black people get jobs”) but instead focused on poor families and providing them tools to exit from government assistance and make a living on their own.  How is this racist?  The objections of Williams, Jackson Lee and Carter are examples where people refuse to debate the topic on just the facts and are intent on constructing straw man arguments that avoid the real issues.  When people reach this point, it is pointless to argue with them and Gingrich did a great job in the debate of not taking the race bating.

Unfortunately this is but one example that demonstrates how America has lost the ability to communicate.  Gingrich’s statements were based on sound American and Capitalistic principles and if those are now called ‘racist’ then we don’t have a prayer of rescuing our country from its rapid descent into Socialism.  We must return to a climate of sensible debate on the issues and this change must start from the top but we will need a leader that is far different from the one currently occupying the White House.

Posted in politics | 2 Comments

South Carolina Primary – Final Thoughts

Posted on 20-Jan-2012 by Highvoltage

Anyone who has visited my website knows I’m a Conservative and my primary goal in the 2012 elections is to remove Obama from office and that goal alone has driven the voting decision that I’ll make tomorrow.

Over the past few decades we have allowed the Liberal message to enter our entire way of life and we deserved what we got with the 2008 elections.  Starting in 2009, the leaders of the House, Senate and White House were the most liberal trio to ever hold those important positions and The Heritage Foundation Blog had a great post today showing what that unholy trinity produced: 

  • The last time the Senate passed a budget was on April 29, 2009.
  • Since that date, the federal government has spent $9.4 trillion, adding $4.1 trillion in debt.
  • As of January 20, the outstanding public debt stands at $15,240,174,635,409.
  • Interest payments on the debt are now more than $200 billion per year.
  • President Obama proposed a FY2012 budget last year, and the Senate voted it down 97–0. (And that budget was no prize—according to the Congressional Budget Office, that proposal never had an annual deficit of less than $748 billion, would double the national debt in 10 years and would see annual interest payments approach $1 trillion per year.)
  • The Senate rejected House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R–WI) budget by 57–40 in May 2011, with no Democrats voting for it.
  • In FY2011, Washington spent $3.6 trillion. Compare that to the last time the budget was balanced in 2001, when Washington spent $1.8 trillion ($2.1 trillion when you adjust for inflation).
  • Entitlement spending will more than double by 2050. That includes spending on Medicare, Medicaid and the Obamacare subsidy program, and Social Security. Total spending on federal health care programs will triple.
  • By 2050, the national debt is set to hit 344 percent of Gross Domestic Product.
  • Taxes paid per household have risen dramatically, hitting $18,400 in 2010 (compared with $11,295 in 1965). If the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire and more middle-class Americans are required to pay the alternative minimum tax (AMT), taxes will reach unprecedented levels.
  • Federal spending per household is skyrocketing. Since 1965, spending per household has grown by nearly 162 percent, from $11,431 in 1965 to $29,401 in 2010. From 2010 to 2021, it is projected to rise to $35,773, a 22 percent increase.

Obama, as the community organizer in chief, has created an environment that is so caustic that compromise is impossible.  Over regulation has stifled business and we’ve seen things over the past few years that I never thought would happen in America – like the NLRB telling a private US company where they can expand and build factories. With the rise of Occupy Wall Street, the Left has started the ultimate straw man argument about income inequality and created the beginnings of a Class War.  Washington DC is broken and if we don’t get a handle on it quickly we’ll turn into Greece sooner rather than later.

The Tea Party rose to power in 2009 and now Conservatism is making a comeback but we are naïve if we think that we can change Washington DC overnight.  It will take several election cycles to get strong conservatives in key leadership posts and we must not get discouraged at the slow pace of change.  Slowly but surely the American people have to be re-educated about the benefits of fiscally conservative policy and more importantly Capitalism.  This will take years to accomplish so conservatives should not think you were in for a quick fight.  The American people will have to be shown the benefits of conservative principles before they will vote in large numbers in a general election for them.

I had hoped that 2012 would allow Republicans to field a strong conservative candidate but looking at the remaining four – Gingrich, Romney, Paul and Santorum – it is obvious we failed at that task.  So tomorrow I will be faced with a decision at my polling location and I feel good about the decision I plan to make.

My logic was to narrow the field down to the candidates that I think can sway enough independents in the general election to ensure Obama’s defeat and then choose the most conservative of those candidates.  From my take on the polls, the history of the remaining candidates and the belief that there are still many independents who are buying into the Liberal lies I made the decision to vote for Mitt Romney.

Romney has shown that he can work with both sides of an issue and while he can be characterized as moving with the prevailing winds (i.e. flip flopper), I feel that the winds will be stronger on the conservative side once we make gains in the House and hopefully take back the Senate.  It will be up to our lawmakers to send conservative bills to his desk for signature and it will be up to Romney to not only sign them but immediately roll back the over regulation from the NLRB, EPA, FDA, DoJ and SEC. 

I made the full case for how I arrived at that decision and posted it here if you choose to read more.

Posted in politics, South Carolina | 2 Comments

Newt Gingrich Town Hall Meeting

Posted on 18-Jan-2012 by Highvoltage

I left work early tonight to attend a Newt Gingrich town hall meeting at a local Barbeque joint and I’ll relay what I saw and heard.

I’m terrible at estimating crowds but I’d say there were at least 400 people crammed into (and outside) this restaurant and even though I got there 15 minutes prior to the scheduled start (which was about 30 minutes late) I had to park about a quarter of a mile away from the restaurant.

I got a good spot in the receiving line and snapped these pictures of Speaker Gingrich as he approached me.

 

Newt giving the finger of judgment.

 

There was a gentleman (who was a Vietnam War veteran) in the receiving line next to me and he was asked by a member of the media why he was supporting Gingrich.  He said he didn’t want Romney and liked the way Gingrich “put Juan Williams in his place” during the debate earlier in the week.  I think Gingrich won many supporters during that exchange and this man was no exception.

Once inside, I heard the following key takeaways from his speech.

Gingrich promised to challenge Obama to 7 Lincoln-Douglas style debates and he stated that Obama would be allowed to use a teleprompter.  Of course it goes without saying that Obama would never agree to that many or necessarily the format Gingrich laid out but I would love to see at least one of these, even if Gingrich isn’t the nominee!

Considering the recent news of Obama rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline project, Gingrich said that the President’s grasp of real world economics is like someone who doesn’t understand how to play Tic-Tac-Toe.  He said he can understand if someone doesn’t understand the intricacies of Chess but Obama can be compared to a person who can’t understand the basics of a simple game that all elementary school kids play.  This, according to Gingrich, is a product of Obama’s lack of understanding of real world life and more importantly, economics.

Gingrich told the crowd to leave here and convince their friends, family and coworkers to vote for him but do it in a way that is not negative to Perry or Santorum.  He specifically mentioned only these two other candidates.

Gingrich said the Romney would have a very difficult campaign against Obama because there would be no difference between Obamacare and Romneycare.  This spring boarded into him making the point that with Gingrich as the nominee, Obama’s $1 billion of mudslinging would land safely in the middle (presumably away from Gingrich and inferring it would hit Romney).

The best line Gingrich had was when he stated that he’ll run against Obama by characterizing himself as the “paycheck president” and contrasting that with Obama as the “food stamp president.” 

The event appeared to be comprised of a partisan crowd of Gingrich supporters and it was a good event where Gingrich was in his element.  He was quick on his feet, answered questions well and even played to the crowd.  At one point he was talking about the pursuit of happiness, which means happiness isn’t guaranteed, and he stated that Obama would like to have a department of happiness.  After that statement someone in the crowd yelled out “and a happiness czar” and Gingrich loved that. 

I have been clear in a previous post that I am going to vote for Romney on Saturday in the South Carolina primary and after the event today I was left with a feeling that many in South Carolina would be swayed by Gingrich’s aggressive debating style and most Palmetto state residents that I talk to would prefer Gingrich debating Obama.  I left the event thinking that the vote on Saturday would be very close between Gingrich and Romney. 

But when I got home the ABC story regarding one of Gingrich’s ex-wives having a “tell all” interview was leaked and now I’m back to the quote that was in a story from The Hill back in early December”

“Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill are nervous about Newt Gingrich’s rise in the polls, with one member saying, “Newt’s hand is always six inches from the self-destruct button.”

Even if this story is just the frustration of an ex-wife, it will do damage and Romney will win South Carolina easily and then Florida will just be a victory lap for him.  But this will be good because Romney is still the only candidate that has a chance of beating Obama when looking at recent polling data.

Posted in politics | Leave a comment