Did anyone really think that this Congress was capable of a real solution to the debt and deficit crisis?  Certainly Standard & Poors didn’t think so.  As the Cato Institute noted in a picture’s-worth-a-couple-trillion-dollars fashion, the long-term effect of this deal on the nation’s debt accumulation trajectory will be negligible.  And when ideological non-soulmates Keith Olbermann and Judge Andrew Napolitano both suspect that a key component of the bill, the so-called “Super Committee”, might be unconstitutional, you know we’re in uncharted waters.

Congress shoots... and misses

Maybe now the folks that were never politically involved, but have been suddenly active via the Tea Party, will wake up and realize it boils down to having the right elected officials in place when the votes are being cast and counted.   In the long term, that’s not a bad thing.

Greedy, capitalistic corporations.   They caused the financial crisis and are destroying the American Dream.   They’re preventing the curing of diseases.  They’re endangering our environment and our national security. They’re even making our kids fat.

Or so too many people think, nearly enough for a voting majority that would fulfill de Tocqueville’s prophesy:

“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” — Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Fortunately, to back safely and permanently away from the edge of the cliff, we need only allow for true capitalism to thrive and to replace the crony capitalism that so many people confuse it with. Crony capitalism feeds on greed.   True capitalism and truly free markets, defeat it.

Continue reading at Forbes Opinions…

What’s it going to take for government to get serious about our financial condition and long-term economic health? New legislation, authored by politicians with a different view of what government can and can not do, and what it should and should not do.

Enter, Jeff Flake.     Continue reading at Forbes Opinions…

On April 13th, President Obama proposed his budget, one based on the progressive fallacy that our current level of government spending today is correct.  And because we have a deficit, we require more revenue to make up the difference.   So goes the thinking of a President who knows no boundaries as to what government can and should do.

Continue reading at Forbes Opinions…

Want a recipe for ruckus? Merely suggest that Social Security might be a “Ponzi scheme”. You might even end up on Drudge Report. Yet the facts bear out the thesis, as we shall see…

Continue reading, at Forbes Online…

The inevitable battle between the runaway public sector and the private sector that funds it has begun.  What started recently in Wisconsin will continue to spread across the country as the unworkable fiscal mathematics that are so many state budgets finally degenerate into social unrest between the payers and the payees. More specifically, the instigators of this mess, the public sector union managements and their progressive political operatives, will struggle against their most existential threat to date.  It will not be pretty.

Continue reading at Forbes Opinions…

Like old-growth timber succumbing to a band of lumberjacks, incumbent Democrats in Congress crashed to Earth in record numbers Tuesday night.   Where there’s been a steady call for politicians to “do something” about the economy, about jobs, about Wall Street, about the environment, about everything, at least one Congressional district showed that they want “something else” to be done instead.   I’m referring to my own Congressional District 19 in New York, where a newcomer to politics, Dr. Nan Hayworth, ran against the Democratic incumbent, John Hall.   It is a tale worth telling, and emulating.

Continue reading at Forbes Opinions…

Eleven months ago, in the face of a gauntlet of headwinds that the Obama administration was creating in front of the American job creation engine, I came to the following conclusion:

“If you were an entrepreneur, or a business owner or manager with the ability to start large new initiatives, perhaps ones requiring large numbers of new employees, in the face of the above legislative uncertainty, would you dare proceed?”

The resulting economic lockup, and the trillions of private capital sitting in fear on the sidelines, has become the story of the day.

Predicting this story was not difficult, due to the nature of The Machine itself.  Driven by a lust for power, fueled by environmental extremism, economic illiteracy, and class warfare, and financed by a self-serving cycle of union cronyism, there can only be one conclusion:  The Machine is antithetical to the founding principles that made this country great, and can only produce seizure.   Here’s how it breaks down: Continue reading »

[This essay was originally entitled "Lessons from Grand Central Station", until several readers pointed out that the correct name is Grand Central Terminal.  It was an error that I could not let stand.  The permalink (URL) reflects the original title so as to not break existing references. -- Author/Admin]

Every weekday morning, trainloads of people are dumped into New York’s Grand Central Terminal and sent on their way.  Thousands per hour traverse the huge main room as they make their way to their desired subway stations, taxi stands and exits in all directions.  Arteries of traffic spontaneously form and disperse — you can join one that’s going in your general direction, get swept along its path and then step out at your stop.   The human pathways will intersect each other with the precision of a champion marching band.   Collisions between any two people amongst the throngs are rare, even amongst those who clearly don’t know where they’re going.

What’s most remarkable about the above is that no one manages this process.   There are no human traffic cops in white gloves waving some people on and telling others to stop.  There are no ropes herding commuters one way or another.    There are no rules dictating which path you must take to get from point A to point B.   The room manages itself, based on essentially one unwritten rule:  common courtesy. That is to say, you can’t charge through the crowd like a running back, stiff arming people as you go.   What might initially appear as chaos is instead a model of simplicity and efficiency.

Continue reading »

As I’ve written before, “Nothing is more dangerous than the combination of bad ideas and great communication”.    I want to add to that, by including voter apathy.

Witness the birth of ObamaCare, and the justifiable rage that has ensued as a result of the state taking one sixth of our private economy into its control.   In the days before the historic vote, note that not even the New York Times could produce a poll saying that a majority of Americans wanted this bill to become law.  Most remarkably, as of March 29th, a stunning 54% of likely voters would see it repealed.   In morphing their supposed mandate for “change” as pertaining to healthcare and health insurance policy into a supposed mandate for this bill, Obama’s operatives reached their peak (thus far) in disingenuousness.

The rage exists simply because our representatives did not represent.   Instead, they blatantly misrepresented.   Continue reading »