The United States of Purple Presidency - Solving Both Our Energy and Global Warming Issues With One Plan

This is the fourth in our series of posts on how the United States of Purple drive for the Presidency would address and resolve the major issues facing the country, issues that have been around for decades. The political class has occasionally attempted to solve some of these issues but their half-hearted attempts have always failed, either because they did not understand the root causes of the problems or because actually solving a problem might alienate a few voters and endanger their much cherished reelection chances.

Without understanding the root causes of our problems, the odds of resolving these issues are minimal. As a result, when the political class actually tries to address the problem, their solutions fall flat on their face. Recent political class attempts to fix our energy dependence problem is a case in point:

- The current administration has given out Federal taxpayer grants, loans, and loan guarantees to various companies in what appears to be a a random manner. Solyndra, the California solar panel manufacturer is the purest example of failure. Shortly after getting a Federal government loan worth well over half a billion dollars, the company went bankrupt and lost the taxpayer wealth with no discernible benefit.

The shallow reason for the failure is that the company and the political class did not anticipate the changing short term market conditions, driven by the drop in foreign manufactured solar panels. The real reason for losing over half a billion dollars is that the political class did not understand the root causes and underlying dynamics of market conditions which led to the failed company.

- This deeper reason carries over to the many other failed alternative energy companies that the political class has thrown money at in a willy-nilly manner such as Beacon Power, Spectra Watt, and Evergreen Solar, all of which went out of business. They do not understand how to solve the energy problem from a root cause understanding perspective and their inability to think strategically. They have no idea how to use leverage to exponentially grow their opportunity for success.

As a result, we end up with very shallow, tactical thinking that just ends up wasting taxpayer wealth on bad investments.

- Every couple of years or so, the political class puts together a show about how they want to raise the average miles per gallon the cars in the country should achieve. These so-called CAFE standards are used for political debate and at the end of the bluster, the average miles per gallon performance standards are raised for some time in the distant, distant future. Then the politicians congratulate themselves for delaying, but  not solving, the problem of energy dependence.

Their charade brings to mind an old saying that I believe is attributed to Abraham Lincoln:

Question: If you called a tail a leg, how many legs would a dog have?

Answer: It would still have four legs, just because you called a tail a leg does not make it a leg.

Just because you raised the CAFE standards doesn't mean it will happen, especially if you do not have a strategic plan behind it.

- Speaking of shallow tactical thinking vs. long term strategic thinking, let's talk about Obama's Cash For Clunkers program. Recall that the President gave away thousands of dollars of taxpayer wealth to anyone who bought a new car within a specified period of time. The failed rationale for the program was to increase sales of autos in tough economic times in order to help jump start the economy and replace older, lower mileage cars with newer, higher mileage cars.

We now all know that this tactical thinking approach was a failure. We have previously reviewed a Federal government report and analysis that proved there were no incremental auto sales as a result of this program and thus, no incremental spurring of the economy or substantial increase in national gas mileage. The timing of the sales may have changed, people delayed or moved up their purchase of a car to get the free Federal tax money, but in total, no incremental sales occurred. Bad tactical thinking, small minded energy programs that do no good.

We could go on about the failure of the Federal Energy Department and the Federal political class for a long time relative to their inability to create a strategic, coherent, and effective energy policy and strategy for the country, despite having over thirty years to do so. However, the above examples get the message across, allowing the same people to do the same type of short term and tactical thinking and get the same type of bad results is not the way forward.

Complicating the matter today is the rift over global warming. Some citizens and scientists say it is an issue, some citizens and scientists say it is not an issue. As usual, we end up with the typical political gridlock, name calling and inaction, that we get on all other issues in today's political climate.

I, myself, am a global warming doubter. I laid out my reasons in the following post from last week: 

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/02/i-am-global-warming-doubter-and.html 

However, what if I am wrong? What if we really do need to do something about man made emissions? Do we really think that building a massive government bureaucracy called "Cap And Trade" would actually work?

We know now that the massive government bureaucracy known as Obama Care is not working nor will it ever work. With the collapse of MF Global, the 8th largest American bankruptcy ever, and the likely criminal misuse of over a billion dollars of client assets, that the massive government bureaucracy established by the Dodd-Frank financial industry reform legislation is also not working.

Other massive government bureaucracies also are dysfunctional, from Social Security To Medicare to food stamps. There is no reason to believe that a massive government global warming cap and trade program would not be a disaster.

But what if you did not need a massive bureaucracy to address both global warming and our energy crisis? What if there was a long term strategic approach to both problems together rather than the failed tactical approaches to either problem? What if you could leverage the force of the market place to solve both problems, real or imagined, and not rely on the limited ability and knowledge of the 600 or so people in the White House and Congress? What if you could solve both problems with a minimal impact on freedom and citizens' wealth?

The following approach would be our best chance to do all of the above, migrating us to energy independence while cleaning up our energy foot print. This approach would involve some very simple principles:

• The approach to co-solving the global warming/energy crisis would be revenue neutral to the Federal political class, i.e. it would not put more of our wealth within the power of the politicians in this country.
• Once the approach was set, it would be hardwired for at least ten years in order to remove market uncertainty and allow businesses and citizens to compute their short term and long term personal energy plans based on a firm belief that the rules would not change midstream. As we have stated earlier this week in this series, the Obama administration has an ugly tendency to inject major uncertainty into all of the major issues of our times (tax codes, tax breaks, health care, energy policy, etc.). Uncertainty breeds fear and we do not need any fear on an endeavor such as this.
• Market forces and the personal choices of Americans would drive/leverage this process, not another massive government bureaucracy. The massive bureaucracy known as the Energy Department has been a bust for over thirty years, there is no reason to believe it or another government bureaucracy will do better going forward the next ten, twenty, or thirty years.
• The plan will be strategic and long term, no more short term failures like Cash For Clunkers, Cash For Appliances, and Cash For Caulkers, all of which not only were non-strategic but also were not successful.
• There will minimal and hopefully no failed government subsides. There should never be another Solyndra, Beacon, or Evergreen. The market, operating under a long term strategy and set of rules, should pick the winners and losers, not politicians and their cronies who have shown a propensity for only rewarding themselves and operating ill fated companies into bankruptcy. For a good review of these failures, track down a New York Times August 18, 2011 article entitled: "Number Of Green Jobs Fails To Live Up To Promises."

So what would this dual solution look like? It would have the following, long term (ten years) components:

- A five dollar per barrel of oil tax/fee would be implemented and added onto to previous year's $5 tax every year for ten years, and that cost would be allowed to filter down into the production of heating oil and gasoline. Thus, ten years from now, a barrel of oil would carry an incremental $50 per barrel tax.

If everyone knew that this tax was coming and it was going to increase $5.00 every year, would would happen? People would adapt, the entire market would adapt, creating leverage for less consumption of oil and less creation of emissions that may be causing global warming.

How would they adapt? The next time the bought a car, they would likely give serious consideration to a vehicle that got great gas mileage, considering that in ten years the cost of a gallon of gas might be as much as 50% more expensive. They would likely look to better insulate their homes if the cost of heating oil was likely to be 50% higher within ten years.

They might also consider implementing active or passive solar energy equipment to avoid or minimize the higher cost of electricity and heating. All of these actions would crate more demand for energy efficient products and services, driving the down the costs of such products and services, getting more people and small businesses interested in managing their energy future if costs came down.

Auto manufacturers and heating equipment manufacturers would invest in research and technology that is more energy efficient, knowing that their customers will become more efficient and smarter shoppers in the future. That would further reduce costs and emissions. All of these actions occur because the true costs of energy, loss of freedom due to the dependency on foreign energy sources and environmental impacts, are now fully part of the end price, i.e. the $5 per gallon per year increase represents these environmental and freedom costs.

Innovators would seek out, invent, or refine better energy sources, be it natural gas, wind, solar, tidal, or other energy technologies that do not exist yet. The competitiveness of new energy sources would be enhanced by the $5 tax approach on oil, creating new domestic industries competing on a more equal basis against oil and coal (see below).

But won't that destroy the economy and give our politicians more access to our wealth. Here is the beauty of this plan: the $5 a barrel tax never makes it in the hands of the Treasury or the political class. That money is rebated back to tax payers every year to do with as they see fit. They could use it to go on vacation. They could use it for a new TV.

But many of them would use it for a better gas mileage car, a better heating system, more home insulation, etc. Thus, we have not reduced the amount of wealth in the market, we have not given it to politicians to waste, we have just reallocated it for the good of the country and the environment.

This plan has leverage, it has certainty, and it will affect far more people than anything else the political class has passed off as an energy program. Cash For Clunkers affected about 300,000 people. I would bet Cash For Appliances and Cash For Caulkers affected for fewer. Their results were pitiful. Practically everyone in the country would be affected be this program. The key is not allowing the political class to get their hands on this additional money.

How much money might this get each of the 140,000,000 U.S. personal taxpayers every year? The U.S. uses about 19 million of oil a day. If you go through the math of 19 million, 365 days, $5 a barrel, you would end up sending each of the 140 million taxpayers a check for just under $250 the first year. It doesn't seem like much but the next year that might get twice that much since the tax would be raised another $5, resulting in more money coming in for distribution.

However, if the plan works, there should be less oil consumption the following year. Thus, rather than $250, assume that consumption goes down 10%, resulting in a second year payback/rebate of $250 and $225 (10% less) or $475. If you continue this model for ten years, an additional $5 tax and an additional 10% decrease in consumption, by the tenth year, each American taxpayer is getting over an annual $1,600 credit that they can use for weatherizing their homes, putting in solar equipment, etc.

A simple but elegant solution: less consumption, less emissions, certainty in the market, a leveraging of the entire market structure, no massive and doomed to failure cap and trade bureaucracy, no energy technologies, and our politicians get no more of our money in the process.

However, I cannot take credit for the plan and its elegance. Many of the details and philosophy of such an approach are well laid out in a September 6, 2010 article in Fortune magazine, that was written by Nina Easton and which covered the above plan proposed by two Republican Congressman, Jeff Flake and Bob Inglis.

- But oil is not the only "bad" environmental fuel. What about coal? Different fuel, same approach. All you have to do is come up with a similar tax that is equivalent to the $5 per barrel oil tax discussed in detail above and apply that to every ton of coal that is mined or refined.

By imposing such a tax or fee, utilities and coal companies would be falling all over themselves to improve coal's performance and environmental impacts. One additional facet that could be included in coal is to reduce that fee as the industry meets tighter environmental standards, i.e. clean up your act, reduce your tax. But the coal tax also never makes into the hands of the political class. It is rebated back to utilities and their users in an annual coal tax rebate.

- Two steps from "Love My Country, Loathe my Government," would also go a long way to fixing our energy and environmental problems. Step 24 would establish a national research program to facilitate the cleaning up of coal and its by products. In this country we have a lot of coal. If we could clean it up, it would go a long way to reducing our emissions, reducing our overall energy costs, and make us much more energy independent.

- Step 25 would implement a serious discussion and initiative with China and India, two countries whose use of coal and the dirty after effects it produces is growing very, very quickly. What global warming enthusiasts always fail to appreciate is that even if the U.S. cleans up its act in emissions, it will have no impact on the global environment and global warming if China and India, big and growing coal users and polluters, do not do the same thing.

We would end up knee capping our own economy for no reason if China and India do not clean up their coal act and continue to increase the emissions they throw up into the atmosphere every day. That is why Step 24, cleaning up the bad after effects of coal, needs to be a world community effort, not just a U.S. effort. And the political class needs to start talking to China and India, to name just a few of the emerging economies, to clean up their coal act also and in cooperation with each other.

- But this is a ten year plan, what could be done prior to seeing the benefits of this simple, yet elegant approach to two problems?  Two things come to mind. An Associated Press report on January 11, 2012 reported that the EPA had put together its first database of U.S. locations that emit harmful pollutants into the atmosphere.

According to the database, 72% of all U.S. emissions come from U.S. power plants, many of which burn coal to produce the electricity we need everyday to get through life. If one assumes this database is correct, why wouldn't we as a nation look at the top 30 or so plants and work to clean them up, if they are the leading polluters of the 72%.

You probably do not want to shut them down since they are probably also the larger creators of electricity. The local and national and national economies would be hard hit if these facilities were shut down and stopped creating electricity But it does not mean that the best and brightest people we have should not attack these 30 locations and do all they can to fix their emission volumes. This would one short term way of addressing the potential of global warming.

- A second short term way ties into the $5 a barrel tax on oil. If we are really series about weaning ourselves off of foreign energy sources, then one approach is to start taxing those people that insist on buying oversized/low mileage vehicles for no business reason whatsoever. This is a personal prejudice, but I see no reason why anyone needs to own a Hummer. I see no reason why someone needs to buy a large, low mileage pick up truck to go buy milk.
These vehicles serve no personal purpose at all.

Now, I hate to act like a politician here and restrict anyone's right of choice. If the political class is not serious about energy independence and global warming than this should not even be a discussion since it is intrusive into freedom of choice, an act I usually find repulsive.

But if we are serious, than I would start putting a purchase tax on all vehicles, like large Hummers, that do not meet a reasonable gas and emission target. Next year, I would increase that target, the following year I would increase it again. And again and and again.

Americans could still use their freedom of choice to buy a Hummer or a large low mileage pick up truck for personal use (if these vehicles are being used in legitimate business operations, they purchase tax would be waived). This plan would not take that options away from them. They would just have to pay more for this sales choice.

Two things would happen under this plan. First, auto companies would get really serious about improving emissions and gas mileage performance on these types of vehicles. If they did not, their vehicles would become less and less financially attractive over time, given the increase in the purchaser tax.

Second, some customers would start to ask if they really do need a large Hummer to take their kid to the soccer game, a family sedan with better mileage and no purchase tax would be just fine. In both cases, you get leveraged behavior across a large swath of the marketplace that reduces consumption of foreign energy sources and cleaner air.

This would not be a small tax. I would start it at $1000 and increase by $1000 every year for ten years. Within three years you have added $3,000 the cost of the car and should see results. If you do not, increase the amount until you do see positive behavior change.

And the best, most brilliant part of this approach: none of the purchase tax money goes to the political class. It goes into the rebate pot of money we discussed above, back to the 140,000,000 American tax filers each year and back into the economy, not the black hole of waste in Washington.

- While this is a simpler, more leveragable, and more elegant approach than anything our political class could come up with, it is no small task. That is why Step 23 in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" is so important. Step 23 would put together a panel of smart Americans to operationalize this plan. They would use their vast knowledge and expertise to refine the Hummer purchase tax amount and increase, develop the coal tax we discussed above, determine if $5 dollars a barrel of oil tax increase very year is enough to change behavior, propose ways to fix the emissions on those top 30 emitters of global warming gases, etc.

They would develop and present the plan to Congress and the President, all of whom would vote thumbs up or thumbs down on the plan's entirety. They would not be able to adjust anything since 1) they are politicians, not experts, 2) they would adjust things based on personal political needs and campaign supporters and not the good of the country, and 3) if they start to nit pick the details then nothing would ever get finalized.

Let the expert panel do the hard work, trust their expertise, and let's get on with things. Establish some long term certainty in the market so that businesses, providers, and consumers of power know the ramifications of their own actions and plans, actions and plans that are not held hostage by the whims and uncertainty of the political class.

If the political class votes negative on the overall plan, then it would be pretty obvious that they really do not want to solve the problems of energy independence or global warming. Or they want to solve the problem where they control everything, restricting freedom of choice, building large, ineffective bureaucracies, and collecting and wasting more of our individual wealth.

We know that this approach never works, that is how we got stuck with the Federal Energy Department, Solyndra, and Cash For Clunkers, all of which were clunkers of ill repute and wasters of taxpayer wealth of large disrepute. In the United States of Purple, simple, elegant, long term, leveragable, and strategic is the only efficient and effective way to solve problems.

Political class bureaucracies like their proposed cap and trade lunacy is not the way to go. The political class way leaves us right where we were when we stood in long gas lines in the 1970s, stranded and helpless in the middle of nowhere.

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein



We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/

Why, Why, Why? Random Questions For Our Political Class

As I listen to the constant drone that comes out of the political class in Washington, I rarely find anything within that drone that truly answers a real question or addresses a real issue. It is the same posturing and the same demagoguery all of the time.

Thus, rather than continuously hope for progress and answers from our politicians, I decided to simplify the task. Since they cannot formulate the right questions and right answers to our major issues, I have developed the following questions, in no particular order, that I would like to have addressed in a finite time, in a finite manner, without malice towards any other American, and in a way that eventually starts us down the path to solutions.

- Why do we continue to pay for and station tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Europe as a protection screen for western Europe? Isn't the Iron Curtain down and and an invasion from Soviet bloc armies highly unlikely? In these times of budget constraints, shouldn't we finally declare victory over communism, bring home the troops and save tens of billions of dollars a year?

- Why do we continue to pay for and station tens of thousands of troops in South Korea, fifty eight years after the Korean conflict ended? Can't South Korea defend itself since it now has one of the largest and fastest growing economies in the world and requires mandatory military service of its young people? Shouldn't we finally declare victory, let the South Koreans defend themselves, bring home the troops, and save billions of dollars a year?

- Why do we still have troops stationed in Iraq? Wasn't President Obama supposed to bring them home on a much quicker timetable than the Bush administration set up? Wasn't that one of the primary reasons for voting for Obama in the first place?

- Why don't ever see caskets bearing the remains of U.S. servicemen who died in Iraq or Afghanistan fighting any more? Wasn't that a big controversy when Bush was President, the need to see what we were dong to our armed forces? Why is that no longer a priority with the Democrats and the main stream media?

- Why hasn't the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay been closed down yet? Wasn't that a primary reason to vote for Obama, his passion to close the prison and remove it as a recruiting tool for terrorists around the world? Why is it still operating if it was that important during the 2008 Presidential campaign?

- Why is gasoline about to go over $4.00 a gallon again, with some experts predicting it will go to $5.00 this summer? It cannot be Libya since Libya supplies only 2% of the world's oil and virtually none of the 2% comes to the Untied States.

- Why hasn't the political class, decades after the oil crises of the 1970s and decades after the formation of the Energy Department, come up with a coherent, efficient, and cost saving national energy policy and program so that $4.00 a gallon for gas scenarios never happen again?

- Why hasn't the political class sealed the border with Mexico, 25 years after Congress ordered the Pentagon to seal the border within 45 days?

- Why do Federal politicians get paid during a government shutdown and why do Federal politicians get automatic annual pay raises regardless of how well or how badly they perform in office?

- Why do new Federal employees get a traditional pension program when hired but the vast majority of other Americans, who fund that pension program through their taxes, no longer have the opportunity to get the same benefit that they finance?

- Why does the Federal government only include people who are actively looking for a job in their unemployment calculation? Even if you get so discouraged that you stop looking for a job, aren't you still "unemployed?" Is it to make the political class look better when unemployment numbers are released?

- Why do we continue to fight the losing battle in the "war on drugs?" When will the political class finally come up with a coherent and effective policy and strategy on this scourge that actually addresses the growing threat of the Mexican drug cartels and the human plight of those Americans addicted to drugs?

- Why does our public education system still stink, while being the most expensive education system in the world? Why is U.S. public education a national embarrassment despite the establishment of the Department of Education three decades ago and the existence of a  blueprint to fix the situation that President Reagan's education commission produced in 1983, "A Nation At Risk?" Hasn't the risk grown greater 28 years after the problem was identified?

- Why does President Obama still want to fund the Headstart program when his own Health and Human Services Department published a report last year that proved it was ineffective in making our younger kids any smarter than those that were not in the Headstart program?

- Why do we continue to stick our neck, our national focus, and national resources into the affairs of other countries, e.g.. Libya, while our strongest economic competitors, China, India, South Korea, etc., continue to focus on building up their economies to our national economic detriment?

- Why do we continue to allow corporations, unions, PACs, and other groups of people to contribute obscene amounts of money to election campaigns which always end up overwhelming the needs and best decisions for ordinary Americans? Our founding fathers insisted on freedom of speech for individual Americans, not companies, unions, etc.

- Why do we not have term limits on Federal politicians in order to constantly flow through new people with fresh, new ideas through the legislative process, people that might actually have lived outside of the Beltway and understand the reality of life in America? Why can't we get rid of career politicians that do not know reality outside of the D.C. Beltway, whose reality is only their financial ties to lobbyists and campaign contributors?

- Why do not have a coherent and effective immigration policy that would regulate the flow of new immigrants into this country, immigrants that can positively contribute to American society in many different ways?

- Why do mega-millionaires in Congress continue to draw a salary that is minuscule to the size of their personal wealth? If serving your country is such a noble calling, then serving it and not getting paid because you are rich beyond most Americans' dreams is an even nobler calling.

- If American companies have to adhere to strict accounting and financial standards, as laid out in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, why isn't the Federal government, the largest financial entity in the country also subject to the same oversight and accountability since we know that the Federal bureaucracy easily wastes up to $100 billion a year through fraud and mismanagement?

- If every American and every American company is subject to EPA rules and laws, why isn't the biggest polluter in the country, the Defense Department, also subjected to the same scrutiny?

- Why is the Federal political class so unable to cut spending in the multitude of areas that would affect very few ordinary Americans? Could it be because it would affect military contractors, corporate welfare recipients, lobbyists, and incumbent campaign donations?

- Why do gay Americans not have the exact same rights in this country as straight Americans? Aren't they Americans also?

- Why does the Patriot Act even exist in a country that should pride itself on freedom and liberty?

- Why should rich Americans such as Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Warren Buffet and most hedge fund managers still receive a Social Security check? They can afford to live without that check while many Americans cannot afford to live without one, a possibility that could happen unless true, effective, and honest Social Security reform is implemented.

- Why isn't the retirement age raised to 70 for those more affluent Americans that can afford to wait? Isn't it better to have those with the financial resources to do without for a few years in order to save the system for those less fortunate?

- Why aren't all members of Congress and the executive branch required to take and pass a course on basic economics so they would at least know or have some appreciation how stupid their policies were before they are enacted?

- Why do the Democrats still allow the "Super Delegate" process to exist, a process that could usurp the freedom and wishes of millions of Democrats who vote in primary elections and caucuses?

- Why do we still have an electoral college process, a process that values the votes of some American citizens much more highly than other citizens?

- Why do we only have the candidates from the Democratic and Republican parties at Presidential debates, shouldn't we have any candidate present that holds a mathematical chance of winning?

- Why do we still allow politicians to gerrymander their own Congressional districts, usually ensuring their re-election time after time? Shouldn't the process be turned over to an independent process that makes sane, rational districting decisions?

- Why do taxpayers still foot a large part of the bill for the Democrats and Republicans to have their Presidential conventions?

- Why do we still have an embargo against the island of Cuba? Five decades after Castro came to power, five decades after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, five decades after the Cuban missile crisis, can we finally grow up and drop the embargo?

- Why do we still allow Congressional earmarks, which are nothing more than thinly disguised ways for incumbent politicians to pay out taxpayer money in return for campaign donations?

- Why do we still allow our politicians to use Federal tax money to build bike paths, do feasibility studies for indoor race tracks, build a Paper Industry Hall of Fame, research fish waste in Alaska, and other such nonsense in their home districts?

- Why has Health and Human Services had to issue over 1,000 waivers to Obama Care requirements in just the first year if this was such a great piece of legislation?

- Why does President Obama think that developing, discussing, explaining, and televising his NCAA basketball March Madness picks is such a good use of his time when he has to oversee three military actions in the Middle East, an imminent government shutdown, record high national debt, and a nation bitterly divided against itself?

- Why does the political class continually focus on the "Bush tax cuts for the rich" at the expense of everything else? The Republicans worry that the Washington political class will spend $1.42 for every dollar it receives and that is why they are against tax increases. The Democrats worry that richer Americans might actually spend their own money on things they want, not what the Democrats want.

Since the Bush tax cuts are a spit in the ocean of our national debt, why not create a virtual lock box so that money from the reinstated Bush tax cuts never reaches the political class? Instead, the money goes directly into a Treasury account whose sole purpose is to buy back U.S. debt to reduce our national debt. Get this issue out of the way in this manner and move on to real debt reduction issues for once.

- Why does the Federal government and the political class that operates it never seem to have any contingency plans in place to handle emergencies such as Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill? Don't we pay enough in taxes to get some protection preparation from the government ahead of time?

- Why is Tax Freedom Day so late in this country, normally sometime early in the second quarter? Doesn't the political class realize that there can be no personal freedom without economic freedom and a late Tax Freedom Day like we currently have is not conducive to freedom?

- Why have state governments and state politicians been so negligent or ignorant when it came to foreseeing how their rampant, wasteful spending would eventually come back to potentially bankrupt their respective states?

- Why did no one from Housing and Urban Development, the Federal Housing Authority, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Senate committees on housing and banking, the House of Representatives committees on banking and housing, the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, and the Securities and Exchange Commission foresee the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression until it hit them flat in the face?

- Why is Barney Franks allowed to receive campaign donations from the very banks his House committee was responsible for overseeing and why was Chris Dodd allowed to receive campaign donations from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government entities his Senate committee was responsible for overseeing?

- Why do politicians focus on irrelevant matters such as the noise volume of television commercials, the need for a better college football playoff system, iPhone and Android apps that tell users where local police speed traps are likely to be, and other such nonsense when all of the far more important questions listed above are unanswered?

- Why do we not have a process that would allow voters to remove politicians from standing Congressional committees for dereliction of duty? For example, in a perfect world, any politician sitting on a House or Senate Intelligence committee should have been removed from their post on September 12, 2001. Any politician sitting on a committee that oversaw FEMA should have been removed from their post within days after Hurricane Katrina hit.

- Why are we cursed to be ruled, not served by these types of politicians, politicians that would not know leadership even if it walked up and introduced itself. Politicians that have not solved any major problems, decades after the problems were identified. Politicians that see staying in office as more important than serving while in office. Why, why, why?


Note: Answers to many of these questions and the processes to attain those answers are outlined in the fifty steps in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government."




Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendmen.com

2010: Politically, It Was Much Worse Than You Thought

As we come to the end of the year, it is usually a good time to look back and see what the year brought us and hopefully, be thankful for our health, wealth, and good times. However, from an American political class perspective, the events of 2010 were not healthy, wealthy and good for most of America. The exact opposite was true, events of the year were much worse than we think they were, based on some recent news reports:

- In the lead up to the passage of the legislation that would extend the Bush tax cuts for every American for two years, the Democrats were hollering that the legislation was not a good idea to extend the tax cuts for those Americans making over $250,000 a year. It would add about $70 billion a year to the national debt and this horrified them. Never mind that while in control of Congress the past four fiscal years, they managed to add over $4 TRILLION to the national debt.

The Republicans have spent most of the year decrying how out of control Federal government spending was, using that fact as a rallying cry to have a great midterm election. Wow, both parties seemed so interested in taming the budget deficit. However, according to an article in the December 17, 2010 isse of The Week magazine, once the two parties got together to work out a compromise on the tax cuts, the resulting compromise legislation ended up increasing the national debt by $900 billion in just two years. Thus, although all Americans will continue to be taxed at their same level, each U.S. household has now been burdened by an additional future national debt burden of almost $8,000.

How come every time the political class does anything, current and future Americans get hit with more onerous debt burdens? What makes this latest travesty so frustrating is the hypocrisy of both parties who claimed to worry about curbing government spending but ended up making a bad situation even worse.

- According to an article in the December 20, 2010 issue of Business Week magazine, the United States added 937,000 jobs in 2010. This was not nearly enough to begin bringing down the almost 10% unemployment rate. Conversely, a single company in Taiwan, Foxconn, by itself created 300,000 jobs in 2010. Let's see: one foreign company creates 300,000 all by itself, our political class creates only three times that much for the entire country. Proves once again that no matter how much government money is wasted in "economic stimulus programs," it cannot compare in either volume or cost effectiveness in the job creation capability of the private sector. Pathetic. When we will they ever learn?

- One reason that entities like Foxconn can create so many jobs and the United States political class cannot, despite spending hundreds of billions of dollars, was vividly illustrated in the December 27, 2010 issue of The Week magazine. According to the article, the last economic stimulus program spent money on a new heating system for an Indiana Methodist church, bought new windows for a Wyoming Catholic church, and food for a Pennsylvania Christian organization's homeless program. Combine them with other such wasteful stimulus programs as researching insect colonies on an island off the coast of Africa and you can see why much of the stimulus spending had absolutely no chance and no leverage of creating jobs.

A real company in the real world spends money efficiently. In the political realm, money is spend inefficiently to get incumbents re-elected by fixing their places of worship or counting bugs.

- Staying with the bad financial management theme of government, prepare to be horrified by the assertions from various sources in a December 17, 2010 article, also in The Week magazine. According to a a quote from the Financial Times, a recent document dump by the Federal Reserve Board, as required under the recently passed financial markets regulation bill, revealed that the Fed had not dumped about $800 billion into the market to rescue the banks and other financial institutions from the Great Recession, as originally and widely thought.

It was much worse. The Fed had actually dumped more than four times that amount or $3.3 TRILLION. These TRILLIONs were lent to domestic and foreign banks (I cannot understand why the U.S. taxpayer would bailout a foreign bank!), hedge funds, and even Harley Davidson. All of these TRILLIONs were disbursed without congressional oversight or approval.

According to the article, the Fed took massive risks with current and future Americans' wealth and financial health by taking on not good loans with solid collateral but "toxic assets." The article goes on to pint out that the Chairman of the Fed, Ben Bernanke, pushed to bailout AIG, the most toxic of all the bailed out companies even though his staff concluded that any AIG bailout was unnecessary.

The article quotes the CEO of JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon, when he told his shareholders "that the bank hadn't actually needed the Fed's help - but the program (loans from the Fed) did save us money." This verifies the assertion made many times in this blog that many of the financial institutions did not really need the Fed's help to survive. They could have made the hard business choices needed to get themselves out of the problems they created (issued more stock, sold off assets, cut salaries and expenses, etc.) but were more than happy to have an out of control and foolish Fed give them a lending hand, courtesy of the American taxpayer.

Thus, the American taxpayer was actually not on the hook for the original $800 billion dollars of bailout (almost $7,000 per U.S. household.) It was much worse with each household responsible for closer to $30,000 per household ($3.3 TRILLION) due to the Fed and Bernanke being out of control and accountable to no government oversight or institution.

- Another article in the December 17. 2010 issue of The Week magazine reported that American students finished 17th in reading test scores, 23rd in science test scores, and 31st math test scores in an international survey conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. These scores were ranked relative to the 60 countries included in the survey. A recent Associated Press article revealed that almost 25% of those wishing to enlist in the U.S. Armed Forces cannot complete basic reading and math tests.

Thus, as we are closing the second year of the Obama Presidency, we see that we are seemingly further and further away from properly educating our kids to compete in the world. Combine these results and findings with a recent quote by Robert Reich in Salon.com (as reported in the December 27, 2010 issue of The Week magazine) where he stated unemployment rate of those Americans without a college education is more than 20 percent (double the national average) and you can see what an education hole the political class has dug for the country.

This continuing public education failure by our political class, regardless of who controls Congress and who controls the White House, is drastically undermining the future economic strength of the country along with the ability of our armed forces to defend us. Shameful.

- Not only has the failure of public education in this country not been addressed in 2010:

• We still do not have a national, comprehensive, and rational energy policy.
• We still do not have a national, comprehensive, and rationale immigration policy.
• We still do not have a rational, comprehensive, and rationale health care reform policy with Obama Care coming apart at its financial underpinnings and in courts throughout the country.
• We still do not have a national, comprehensive, and rationale drug addiction policy. The current policy, the lost "War On Drugs" has not worked for the past forty years, has wasted untold billions of dollars, has not materially reduced drug usage, and has allowed a near lawless, violent narco state to evolve just south of our borders.

- Although we do not have many policies listed above, as we look back to 2010, we still have the following in this country, courtesy of the political class:

• We still have the prison at Guantanamo despite Obama campaign promises to close it.
• We still have the Patriot Act, one of the most freedom inhibiting laws of all time.
• We still have an ineffective SEC who has not prosecuted anyone of consequence despite the largest financial meltdown of our generation. Was everyone involved in the financial markets during the meltdown completely honest and law abiding?
• We still have an ineffective Congress and political class which continues to work on useless legislation such as the recently passed law to regulate the sound of television commercials.
• We still have a perverted election process that allows incumbent politicians to almost ensure their perpetual re-election via controlling earmark allocations, gerrymandering Congressional districts, accepting money from money well endowed organizations (PAcs, corporations, unions, etc.), and moving money around the country to benefit of the political parties but to the detriment of local voters.

I would say have a happy 2011, that it cannot be any worse than 2010. However, every time I say something like that, the political class proves me wrong and makes things worse. Instead, let's hope and work towards replacing those in office with a better and smarter class of people with higher standards of integrity and performance, both in 2011 and beyond. We cannot afford a lot more years like 2010.


Our recent book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.org

Jill Costello: Profile In Courage And Leadership, The American Political Class: Not So Much

I hesitated to do this blog post for a number of reasons. First, I could never do justice to the the fantastically written article the post is based on. The article is entitled "The Courage of Jill Costello" and was written by Chris Ballard. It appeared in the November 29, 2010 issue of Sports Illustrated. Second, I know my writing cannot do justice to the courage and leadership that Jill Costello exhibited during her lifetime. Third, I really hesitated to compare Jill Costello to the behavior of our political class in the same article, the chasm of leadership and courage between the two is unbelievably wide.

However, I decided to go ahead anyway, with apologies up front, if I do not capture the fine writing of Chris Ballard or the courage and leadership impact of Jill Costello.

Jill Costello was a 21 year old junior and a coxswain on the crew team at the University of California when she was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer, the most advanced form, even though she had never smoked a cigarette in her life. The survival rate is about 15% for this type of cancer. The article describes the fight that Jill put up against the cancer:

• She put up with 14 rounds of chemo treatments.
• She put up with radiation treatments.
• She put up with aches and extreme fatigue
• She put up with night sweats, skin sensitivity, puffy cheeks, liquid retention, her abdomen swelled, and her ankles and feet swelled up so much that she could not wear shoes.
• She was weak and susceptible to the smallest illnesses such as a common cold that could lead to pneumonia in her weakened condition.
• She took an untold number of pills.
• She self injected herself with anticoagulant that always resulted in an instant new bruise.
• After many chemo sessions she was so weak that she could barely stand on her own.
• She continued her studies at Cal, attaining a 4.0 in her final semester despite having to use a powered cart to get to classes.
• She graduated with her class at Cal.
• She never stopped dreaming of getting back to the Cal crew team as the coxswain in one of their boats.

What impact did Jill have on other people while she was undergoing debilitating treatment:

• She organized a charity run which attracted 5,000 people and raised more than $320,000.
• She spoke at Genentech, a cancer research firm.
• She exchanged emails with a half a dozen cancer patients around the world.
• She was interviewed on NPR as a spokesperson for those lung cancer patients who never smoked.
• When returning from treatments, Jill and her family found mounds of food deposited on their doorstep from friends.
• Her teammates, who had all scattered and left school for the summer when she was diagnosed, remotely put together two videos which they send to her to lift her spirits.
• At the beginning of the spring season, her teammates went out for a two mile run and when they returned they had taken off their sweatshirts to reveal tee shirts that read "Cal Crew Cancer Killers."
• While she was in France looking for a treatment and cure, her teammates shed their traditional Cal uniforms for their race with their most heated opponent, Stanford, and wore special uniforms in Jill's favorite color with the Cal bear logo replaced with a silhouette of Jill. Where the word "Cal" typically was on their uniforms, "Jill" had replaced it. Needles to say, Stanford never had a chance.

Now back to her dream of returning to a Cal boat. On May 16, Jill got into the Cal varsity eight boat, and despite a bloody nose that developed in the middle of the race, led the Cal women's crew team to a victory over Stanford which allowed Cal to become the 2010 Pac-10 champions. On May 19, Jill found out that there would be no cure for her condition, the treatments had not stopped the growth of the tumors in her lungs, bones, and liver.

Despite the bad medical news, she spent the next week or so like a regular coxswain would have and went about the duties of any coxswain. And despite her condition, Jill got into the Cal varsity eight boat and led her team to a second place finish in the nationals. Less than a month later, Jill Costello passed away.

What an incredible story. Jill Costello's courage and leadership is probably unparalleled in any story I have ever heard. She was focused on having a positive impact on the world and her teammates, despite constant and excruciating pain. As a leader, she made others around her better in what they did and who they were. She made courageous decisions to train and race and support her teammates despite chronic pain and fatigue, pain and fatigue that most others would have succumbed to and taken the easy way out. She was a leader in so many ways, focused on positively impacting those immediately around her and many, many more that she probably never met. Unbelievable.

Now, not to diminish this outstanding young lady's fortitude and positive attitude, when was the last time any of Jill Costello's adjectives were used to describe our political class:

• Courage - rarely, if ever, do you find a courageous politician. They will hide behind the spin doctors and campaign managers lest they dare to take a stand that might irritate a voting block. Always best to take the easy way out to avoid the pain and fatigue a courageous decision might entail
• Leadership - rarely, if ever, do you see a politician stand up and tell the country the hard truth about what is reality and then lead the country to face that hard reality. Better not to endanger their re-election chances, the good of the country be damned.
• Focus - when has our political class ever focused on anything? The 40 year old war on drugs is still a losing battle, the 30 year search for a coherent energy policy is still lost in  the woods, we still having a failing public school system, our borders are a joke when it comes to illegal immigration, and a whole slew of problems never get fixed. No focus, no solutions.
• Make Those Around You Better - politicians have called segments of Americans some ugly names over the past two years including racists, un-American, Neanderthals, members of the Klan, "the enemy" and other denigrating names. If we had any Jill Costellos in our political ranks, they would not allow this behavior to occur. A leader would make all of us better people and citizens, like Jill did to those around her and around the world. Our politicians would rather run down others for their own cheap political gain.
• As we sit here today, our politicians are arguing over how to tax rich Americans, a decision that will have minimal impact on a $13 TRILLION national debt. They denied a bid to relieve all of America's small business owners the burden of filing massive and useless paper work associated with the health care reform legislation, not because it was a bad idea, but because they did not have the courage to find and cut $18 billion from a $3.5 TRILLION budget, a .5% cut. Thus, their lack of courage will burden millions of American small businesses for no reason. They are bickering about how to cut the out of control deficit spending since none of them wants to be a true leader and accept the political hits that might occur despite what might be best for the country. No courage, no leadership, no focus.

I wish I knew Jill Costello, Chris Ballard writes about an outstanding young woman. I also wish our politicians knew her,  knew her fortitude, knew her focus, knew her compassion, knew her courage, and knew her leadership. I also wish they would start acting in her spirit for the good of the country, even if it is painful and fatiguing and has downsides to their own personal political careers.


Our recent book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/

United States' Leaders Vs. The World's Leaders - Who Wins This Smackdown?

It can get pretty depressing talking about the American political class. Problems such as the failed war on drugs, public schools that do not educate, lack of a national energy program, escalating health care costs, skyrocketing national debt, annually increasing budget deficits, higher and higher taxes, unacceptably high unemployment numbers, trivial partisan bickering and sniping, continuous political ethics violations, of which the alleged Charles Rangel and Maxine Walters scandals are just the two latest in a long series of ethics lapses, moral lapses such as those committed by Clinton, Spitzer, Foley, Ensign, MacGreevey, Sanford and others can really bring you down. And we as taxpayers, pay for this shoddy behavior to the tune of TRILLIONS of dollars over the past few decades.

But are we the only country that suffers these types of politicians or do other countries have real leaders instead of real politicians? Are other countries moving forward on the major issues of the time or are they also bogged down in mud slinging re-election campaigns and working on trivial issues that never positively impact a significant portion of their populations? In a non-scientific survey of what other nations are doing on major issues of our time, I came up with the following areas where foreign politicians actually display leadership traits and actually get things done on issues that matter:

• Portugal's leaders took the courageous step a few years ago and decriminalized possession of illegal drugs. As a result, drug usage actually went down when possession was decriminalized, more users went into rehab programs, and drug enforcement costs went down. In the United States, nothing has been done to address our failed war on drugs, resulting in increasingly large prison populations based on illegal drugs and the development of a violent, almost narco state just south of our border with northern Mexico. Over forty years after Nixon declared war on drugs, we are no closer to having a sane drug policy in this country that is enforceable, logical, and compassionate.
• Argentina's leaders recently passed legislation that legalized gay marriage. They recognized that we are all humans with distinct values and tastes which should not be isolated and condemned but should be recognized and given the full benefits of other citizens. In the United States, the Federal government maintains the ant-gay marriage law, Defense Of Marriage Act, and refuses to repeal the discriminatory "don't' ask, don't tell" policy of the armed forces. We are all Americans, we should all be treated equally in all aspects of life. Unless of course, acting against homosexuals, or any piece of our culture and society, can get politicians some cheap, discriminatory votes.
• We have known that our public school system was a failure relative to educating most of America's kids back in the early 1980s when a Reagan commission issued the landmark report, "A Nation At Risk." Despite the warning, almost thirty years later, public schools continue to eat up large chunks of taxpayer money while turning out mediocre students. The National Center For Educational Statistics, a part of the U.S. Department of Education, tracks how well 4th and 8th graders are doing in math and science education around the world. Their website contains the latest results of country by country comparisons and the results for the U.S. are not good. In science, we ranked 8th for fourth graders and 11th for eighth graders. In math, we ranked 11th for fourth graders and 9th for eighth graders. In all four categories we trailed Russia, England, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan and in some of the categories we also trailed Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary and South Korea. Thus, some countries' leaders have been able to put together higher quality education systems than the United States, despite our spending the most money on education than any of those nations ahead of us.
• In the 1970s, we as a nation became painfully aware of how dependent we are on foreign sources of energy as a result of the oil embargoes. Since then, our political class has done virtually nothing in developing a national energy policy and strategy that would result in less expensive and less vulnerable sources of energy. While our politicians did nothing, what have foreign leaders done in the area of solar power? According to the website, http://www.pvresources.com/, which tracks large scale solar electricity facilities around the world, the United States is soundly beaten in the area of generating electricity from the sun. According to the website, 52 of the largest, top one hundred world wide facilities generating electricity from the sun are in Spain, 24 of the top one hundred facilities are in Germany and only 5 of the largest facilities are in the United States. The Spanish solar facilities generate over 800 megawatts of electricity a year or 17.3 megawatts per million Spaniards, the German solar facilities generate almost 500 megawatts of electricity a year or 5.9 megawatts per million Germans, and the United States solar facilities generate only 91 megawatts of electricity or .29 megawatts per million Americans. From another view, these numbers show that on a per person basis, Spain gets almost 60 times more energy from solar than the U.S. while Germany gets over 20 times more energy from solar than the U.S. Clearly, some nations' leaders have been able to accomplish energy independence much better than our political class.
• Moving from solar to wind energy, consider a Time magazine article from February 25, 2009 about wind energy in Denmark. In the late 1970s, right after the oil embargo shocks, the Danish government implemented a program to take advantage of their winds. As a result, the Danes now get almost 20% of their electricity from wind turbines (Spain also scores a success story here, getting 10% of their electricity from wind), the Danes have reduced their carbon emissions over 13% from 1990 as a result of their wind energy, and they are the market leaders in wind technology and manufacturing. We get very little of our energy needs from wind technology. Oops, our politicians lose again relative to having a long term vision in both the wind and solar world relative to other world leaders. Imagine if our politicians had the strategic and long term energy vision of the Germans, Danes, and Spaniards. Imagine if we were getting 20-30% of our energy from wind and solar, numbers that seem very realistic given what other countries have accomplished. Do we think that our failed invasion of Iraq would have happened and the TRILLION dollars or so we incurred as a result of the invasion could have been used to offset our deficit or lower our taxes? Would we have stationed U.S. troops throughout the Mideast, deployments which inspired bin Laden to launch the 9-11 attacks? So much good could have happened if our politicians had acted intelligently and with urgency over the past four decades in this area like other nations did.
• An article in the September issue of Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine reviewed the economic situation in Brazil. Economists expect the Brazilian economy will grow over 7% this year while the U.S. economy will struggle to grow 3%. Credit rating agencies have raised the credit rating for Brazil based on the growth policies instituted by Brazil's leaders and their ability to keep their national debt levels under control, unlike the politicians in the United States who have run up dangerously high debt levels. As a side note, the top income tax rate in Brazil is only 27.5%, 7.5% less than the U.S. top tax rate. Do we think that Brazil figured out that high taxes stifle growth while our politicians have not yet figure that out? the article goes onto explain how many economies in South America are looking stronger and stronger as we go forward, based on how well their leaders have managed their respective financial affairs.

I am not an international expert, much more scientific work would have to be done to accurately figure out who has the most functional leaders in the world. But consider just the following small set of examples. If we had leaders that had the illegal drug foresight of Portugal, the compassion of Argentina, the energy strategy of Spain, Denmark and Germany, the educational wherewithal of the Far Eastern nations, Russia, England, Latvia, and other countries, and the economic skills of some South American nations, we would have it pretty good in the United States.

Also, with these skills and results, I doubt Congress would still have its current dismal approval rating of only 20% since they would have actually accomplished something to benefit the country and it's citizens, and not just themselves. Reading the news reports and listening to the news shows, one is left with the impression that American politicians see getting elected as the end game. It used to be that getting elected was the means to the end, you got into office to make noble changes. Now you get into office to enrich yourself. As a result, the world moves ahead of us in so many areas while our politicians look inward for their own benefit and not outward for our well being. Can anyone say term limits?


Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Also visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/

The Continuing Energy Crisis and The Continuing Failure Of The Political Class To Solve It

Before we talk about our lack of a national and rational energy strategy in this country let's review the failures and timelines of political class shortcomings in other critical areas, as we have reviewed in the past few days:

• Nixon declared "War On Drugs" back in the late 1960s and over forty years later we are further away from wining that war than ever.
• In 1983, a Reagan national commission released a landmark document that proved public education in America was failing and provided a road map of steps necessary to reverse the trend of failure. Twenty seven years later, public education is still mostly a failure but costs us twice as much in tax dollars to achieve that failure.
• In 1986, the U.S. Congress demanded that the U.S./Mexican border be secured within 45 days. Twenty four years later, nothing could be further from the truth.

Three major issues that impact the majority of Americans that have not been solved for many decades by the political class but which have cost the American taxpayer TRILLIONS of dollars. Today we had a fourth failure, the lack of a cohesive, national, and rational energy strategy. In the mid-1970s, the economy and the nation was shocked by the oil embargoes and resultant energy crises. More than 35 years later, our energy needs have grown significantly as has our dependence on foreign regimes for much of that energy and our dependence on carbon based energy sources. We are just one political or natural disaster away from the next energy crises.

This failure was brought into focus over the past couple of days as I read about a solar plane test flight that happened in Switzerland. The Associated Press reported on July 8, 2010 that a completely solar powered plane stayed airborne for 24 consecutive hours using nothing but the energy it gathered from its 12,000 solar cells. And this was not just a Kitty Hawk type flight, get just a little bit up in the air. This flight got as high as 28,000 feet above the earth and reached top speeds of 75 MPH as it took laps over the Jura mountains near the Swiss Alps.

The goal of the group responsible for this amazing feat intend to eventually circle the globe using nothing but the energy from the sun. The research team claimed that they proved that a single seater plane can theoretically stay in the air indefinitely using nothing but the rays of the sun.
Clean energy, non-foreign dependence, what a deal. And the entire project appears to have been financed and managed without any help from any government source. Entire cost of the whole project including the around the world flight: about $95 million or about .1% of the amount the U.S. government has acknowledged it wastes in fraudulent and erroneously vendor and other type payments a year.

The main goal of this group is not to replace conventional jet propulsion options but it is more focused on testing and promoting energy efficient technologies. Think about this for a second: if the technology exists to fly a small plane non-stop for 24 hours at altitudes at about five miles above the earth at 75 miles an hour, why can't that same technology be used to power a small compact car on the ground for less than 24 hours at a time and at speeds generally less than 75 MPH? Why has the political class not come up with this kind of solution in the 35 years since Carter was President? If we can waste $100 billion a year, why can't we somehow find a way to effectively spend a fraction of that waste on something as neat and far reaching as this technology? Why do we continue to drill for oil in all the wrong places or subsidize the building of nuclear power plants (and dealing with their deadly nuclear waste) as Obama proposed several months ago when some smart, non-government, non-political class people can fly an airplane on nothing more than the sun's rays? The enormity of the failure of the people running our government is baffling.

Or perhaps not that baffling, if you read an article that was printed the June 20, 2010 edition of the Tampa Bay Times. The article was entitled, "Big Oil's Addiction"and was written by Deborah Gordon and Daniel Sperling. Ms. Gordon a chemical engineer and a transportation consultant and Mr. Sperling is a director at the Institute of Transportation Studies at Cal-Davis. Their conclusion is that while the major oil companies posture about newer, cleaner fuels, they are still fully wedded to their traditional strength: finding and mining or drilling traditional carbon based energy materials via investment massive, multi-billion dollar facilities. The authors talk about a study by Professor Peter Odell of Erasmus University who predicts that the oil industry in 2100 will be larger than it is today. The authors also conclude that the oil industry already has a TRILLION worth of embedded already in existence and will probably invest another TRILLION dollars in the next decade. To think that they are ready to embrace technologies like the Swiss example is foolhardy.

With the money they have invested and the risk involved, the oil companies are not about to step aside and that is where the political class comes in. We now know that President Obama received more campaign donations from BP than any other politician in the past twenty years. Oil company lobbyists are all over Washington DC. Could it be, just maybe, that we have not solved the energy crisis, come up with new technologies, decentralized our energy dependence because of this political/oil company relationship? With relatively minimal investment ($95 million) a small independent group of smart people are flying solar powered plans. I would bet that the oil company spends more than that annually to protect its interests in Washington, interests that are not compatible with a cohesive and diversified national energy plan.

That is why Steps 23, 24 and 25 in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" are so important. This approach would establish another panel of smart Americans, without politicians and without lobbyists, who would develop an integrated energy strategy that balanced the four needs of being diversified, inexpensive, domestic, and clean. As the article authors point out, the oil industry has too much of a vested interest to be put in charge of this effort, the politicians are too closely tied to the lobbyists and have not proven that they can do a good plan after the past 35 years, and at least one of the members of Congress believes that the island of Guam could tip over; do we want to trust that he and others like him can come up with a relative;y complex and effective energy plan? I don't think so.

So there we have it. The failure of the American political class to solve the drug addiction problem (over forty years and still waiting), the energy crisis (over 35 years and still waiting), the failure of public education (over 27 years and still waiting), and the illegal immigration problem (over 24 years and still waiting). The time for waiting is over, the time to stop wasting money and start solving problems should start immediately. Steps 23 through 29 in "Love My Country. Loathe My Government" is the way to do it. Albert Einstein once said that: "The definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." Let's not be stupid, lets finally solve something, without expecting over and over again that the politicians and lobbyists will do it for us.


Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Also visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/