GET LOST

The Senate is commencing hearings on the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), with the intention of ramming it through the Senate after the November 2012 elections during the lame duck session – much like the Democrats did with their most recent Christmas present – the START Treaty. LOST will cede American sovereignty to the United Nations and will tax the United States to fund UN military operations.  I oppose it.

Inconsistent with American principles, Sen. Kerry, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is chairing these hearings, but no one who opposes LOST has been invited to appear.  LOST supporters –  especially Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – don’t seem to understand the threat that it poses to American sovereignty. Under questioning by Sen. Mike Lee, Secy. Clinton came off as flustered, ill-informed, and “lost,” remaining captive to her talking points. 

Some of the problems with the treaty include:

·        it contains a backdoor tax increase on U.S. businesses that would be used to fund the operations of the international organization charged with overseeing it and could force America into the a Kyoto-style “cap and trade” system that would further damage the nation’s industrial productivity and move U.S. government funds offshore to yet another international body;

·        according to a “conservative” estimate by the U.S. Extended Continental Shelf Task Force, the United States would transfer $70 billion to the International Seabed Authority, the organization charged with overseeing LOST;

·        under LOST, the responsibility for preserving freedom of the seas would be relegated to a United Nations body whose mission is to resolve conflicts before they become shooting wars. It is not in the national interest of the United States to have its maritime or economic power subject to the whims of a highly politicized U.N. bureaucracy often driven by an anti-American agenda. Nor is it in its interest to be a party to another treaty that other signatories might flout with impunity; and

·        in addition, the Treaty could also get in the way of fighting the war on terror, for which the United States needs maximum flexibility. The treaty identifies only four circumstances under which ships may be stopped on the high seas -- human trafficking, drug trafficking, piracy and illegal broadcasting;

America has been down this road before. It lead to war not to peace. During the period between WWI and WWII, the global powers developed a series of treaties intended to prevent war. The democratic states abided by them while the dictatorships in Germany, Italy and Japan did not. They cheated as all bad state actors do, and the world turned a blind eye to their dishonesty. This left the democracies at a distinct disadvantage and ill-prepared when war eventually came.
Peace, as Ronald Reagan famously said, is best secured through strength. America has been complying voluntarily with the terms of treaty since 1983 -- a situation that protects its sovereignty and gives it maximum flexibility.

Before we GET LOST, we should GET SMART.

To Pledge or Not to Pledge – That is the Question

I agree with Phyllis Sato (Virginian Pilot May 18, 2012, “Pledge to Fail”) that candidates and incumbents who take the Grover Norquist Taxpayer Protection Pledge to “solemnly bind themselves to oppose any and all tax increases” may end up doing more harm than good.  

Representative Rigell (R- VA2) has not renewed the pledge, and conservative Representatives Allen West and Reid Ribble have refused to re-sign it.  They understand that while it may appear to give constituents a sense of comfort, it actually provides their opponents and the liberal media with one more weapon to use against them and one less chip to negotiate with on behalf of their constituents. If a pledger cuts spending by a trillion dollars, but then supports a bill that closes tax loopholes raising taxes by a million dollars, does that break the pledge? I think not.  Rep. Rob Woodall (R-Ga) put it succinctly, “True tax reform cannot be achieved until we are willing to abandon the current tax system in favor of something that is fair for all Americans.”

The only pledge that matters to me is Rep. Rigell’s oath as an elected representative to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; to bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and to take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and to well and faithfully discharge the duties of his office … so help him God.

Performance is preferable to pro forma pledges. 

Gods of the Supreme Court

“With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.”

From Gods of the Copybook Headings, Rudyard Kipling, 1919

The central message of Rudyard Kipling’s poem is that the basic and unvarying aspects of human nature will always reemerge in every society that becomes complacent and self-indulging.  And so it is with a legal ruling by U.S. District Judge Michael Urbanski that the first four of the commandments be redacted to convey a more secular message. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit on behalf of a student at Narrows High School, in Giles County, VA, who was upset by the display.

In their attempt to eliminate God from the marketplace of ideas, the progressives are, in fact, violating the First Amendment according to their own interpretation of it.  The Supreme Court ruled in Theriault v. Silber, 1978, that the First Amendment was too narrow and should be expanded to include those who have no religious belief:  (1) atheism may be a religion under the establishment clause (Malnak v Yogi, 1977) and (2) secular humanism may be a religion for purposes of the First Amendment (Grove v. Mead School District, 1985).  So, in effect, by requiring four of the commandments to be dropped, they may be imposing their secular humanist / atheistic "beliefs" on others in violation of their own principle of "separation of church and state" (which does not appear in the Constitution, but nonetheless is a principal tenet of liberal progressivism). 

Now all of this is moot anyway, because the Constitution (Amendment I) states "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ..."  According to Webster's original dictionary (1828) “religion” was defined: "Includes a belief in the being and perfections of God, in the revelation of his will to man, and in man's obligation to obey his commands, in a state of reward and punishment, and in man's accountableness to God; and also true godliness or piety of life, with the practice of all moral duties ... The practice of moral duties without a belief in a divine lawgiver, and without reference to his will or commands, is not religion." [Emphasis mine]  Words form ideas and ideas have consequences ... in this case according to the original meaning of the term "religion" to those who wrote the Constitution, atheism and secular humanism were incorrectly classified in 1978 by the Supreme Court as religion (what else have they gotten wrong?) and therefore have no standing under it (in fact religion was a matter left to the states).

Before liberal readers jump on the federalizing of the 14th Amendment by the Supreme Court in Everson v. Board of Education (1947) to conflate freedom of religion with civil rights, they should read the writings of those who lived at the time of the passage of the 14^th Amendment.  Samuel T. Spear, a respected commentator of that period, wrote (Religion and the State, 1876, p. 224): "the Rule adopted by the Supreme Court of the United States interpreting the [Fourteenth Amendment] ... makes it inapplicable to the religious liberty of any other right of the citizen as determined by the State of which he is resident. The Court in the cases of Paul v. Virginia (8 Wallace, p.36) and of the New Orleans Slaughter-house (16 Wallace, p. 36) laid down the principle ... There is nothing in the last three amendments to the Constitution that reaches the question of religion, and nothing anywhere else in this instrument that places the States under the slightest restraint with reference to this subject; and hence it is true as remarked by Justice Story [one of the Supreme Court's most noted legal scholars, appointed by President James Madison] in his Commentaries on the Constitution (section 1879) that "the whole power over the subject of religion is left exclusively to the State governments, to be acted upon according to their sense of justice and State constitutions." [Emphasis Added].  The federal government should not even be involved in this debate. 

But then again, progressivism is a political ideology whose ideas are so good they must be mandated. When facts get in the way, ignore them.  When institutions get in the way, abolish them.  When words get in the way, redefine them.   Rudyard Kipling had it right: “They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings; So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.”

Compassionate Capitalism or Socialist Servitude?

The occupy Wall Street crowd would have us believe that capitalism is the root of all our social ills. Now a report by James R. Otis, "An Audacious Promise: The Moral Case for Capitalism," Manhattan Institute, May 2012, attempts to quantify this claim.

A comparison of modern economic indicators since 1800 validates Milton Friedman’s conclusion (http://bit.ly/J0fhdX) that no other economic system has done more to eradicate poverty and improve the human condition than capitalism:

·         Since 1800, the world's population has increased six fold, yet despite this enormous increase, real income per person has increased approximately 16-fold.

·         In America, the increase is even more dramatic. In 1800 the country's total population was 5.3 million, life expectancy was 39 years, and the real Gross domestic product per capita was $1343 (in 2010 dollars).By 2011, the population is growing to 308 million, life expectancy doubled to 78 years, and GDP per capita increased 36 fold to $48,800.

Other factors being equal, capitalism has done more than anything else in the last 10,000 years of human history to alleviate social evil and poverty. As opposed to socialism, capitalism meets an individual's wants and needs by assisting them to obtain them. It recognizes that people are competent enough to take care of themselves and are the best providers of their own wants and needs.

And before one objects that the above metric is measured in pure dollars, a similar comparison can be made by looking at improvement in the quality of life. According to a Dallas Federal Reserve study based on U.S. Census Bureau data, the following table illustrates ownership of material goods in American society between 1970 and 2005. The table compares property ownership by all households in 1970 to “poor” households in 2005, as a percentage of population:

Households that Own	% All Households 1970	% Poor Households 2005
Washing machine	71	72
Close dryer	44	57
Dishwasher	19	37
Refrigerator	83	99
Stove	87	99
Microwave	1	73
Color TV	40	97
Videocassette/DVD	1	78
Personal computer	3	25
Telephone	93	96
Cell/mobile phone	1	60
Air conditioner	34	82

 Beyond these gains, Americans are the most generous citizens on the planet, giving more than $306 billion in 2007 to charity to help others while 60 million Americans volunteer time for nonprofits, hospitals, churches, and other causes.

So what is the socialist left’s alternative? Their answer is for the “1%" to give their wealth to the “99%." So who, exactly, are these top 1%? A study by Alan Meltzer, of the Wall Street Journal, in his article "A Look At The Global 1%", March 9, 2012 studied the income earned by the top 1% of earners in the United States, Canada, Australia, Netherlands, United Kingdom, France, and Sweden between 1903 in 2004. The percentage of total income earned by the top 1% has follows remarkably similar curves in all seven of these nations, even though their social policies are quite different. The median of the seven was approximately 18% in 1925, decreased to approximately 5% in 1980, and rose to approximately 9% in 2000. The United States, United Kingdom, and Canada departed from the group – on the upside – from about 1985 on, and averaged approximately 15% in the year 2000. Using the15% value, if the wealth of the 1% were taken away and given to the 99%, their incomes would rise by an average of 18%. However, this is not the only effect. Because the 1% invest much more of their income to provide jobs for the 99%, these jobs would be lost. In addition, once the wealth of the 1% is redistributed, everyone will realize that no one's property is safe, and the incentive to create business and industries would be sharply reduced. The economic circumstance of the entire nation will fall. Once private property is lost, liberty is lost. All that is left is tyranny, and wealth and power will be concentrated in those who control government. In effect, if the 99% are allowed to destroy the 1%, all of us will be ruled by the 0.000001%, a wealthy and corrupt few.

For those who currently believe themselves to be the “99%” – that is the Occupy Wall Street crowd, who apparently cannot do math, read history, or follow a rational argument –  the word picture is this: if Bill Gates’s $20 billion net worth were liquidated and divided among the people of the world, they would each receive about three dollars. Bill would be out of business and could not produce the software that provides the 99% with the capability to create information technology based jobs or to access online education that will lead to them creating their own wealth. Instead, all control would be transferred to a centralized government, like the Soviet Union, which collapsed under its own weight – unable to efficiently nor effectively meet the needs and wants of its people.

 History teaches us that it is better to be unequally wealthy rather that to be equally poor.

The Course of Our Discourse

Over the past two years, I – like many other Americans – have become very concerned about the direction of our Country and the inability of our political leaders to come together to solve the serious moral, social, and fiscal problems that confront us.  While there is an ideological divide in America, which must be acknowledged, the first step in solving our differences must be a willingness to communicate.  This requires trust, which at its core demands that each of us treat others with respect and in a civil manner.  Over the past two months, interestingly enough, three separate incidents reinforced my resolve to re-double my efforts in this regard: a speech by my Congressman (Rep. Scott Rigell www.scottrigell.com), a visit to the Virginia Capitol (http://www.virginiacapitol.gov/), and an article in the Virginian Pilot by Candy Hatcher (Shoring Up Civility, March 30, 2012 http://bit.ly/H50Y49).

On March 30, I attended a rally for Rep. Scott Rigell.  In his talk he stressed the need to treat each other with respect in our civil discourse because respect builds trust which is fundamental to effective communication.  Effective communication allows us to constructively deal with conflict.  He emphasized that civility should not be confused with weakness, because civil communication leads to understanding, which is the essence of strength.  He went on to illustrate his point by successes he has been able to achieve through his Republican colleagues and constructive, civil dialogue with many in government who do not share his political views.  Among others, these successes include:  (1) keeping a US Navy carrier in Norfolk; (2) creating 300 jobs on the eastern shore; (3) preserving medical benefits for veterans and improving living standards in military housing; (4) preserving the historical heritage of Fort Monroe; and (5) establishment of a new caucus based on constructive dialogue in government, the “Fix Congress Now” caucus.  In fact, Rep. Rigell has reached out to Sen. Mark Warner and Rep. Bobby Scott, both Virginia Democrats on some issues, and they have reciprocated.

The month before, I was prepared for Rep. Rigell’s speech by a visit to our state capitol.   At the book store, I thumbed through a bound copy of George Washington’s “110 Rules of Civility.” The rules are based upon principles set forth by French Jesuits in 1595 and were used by Washington’s schoolmaster to teach him penmanship.  Washington translated them into a table, practiced them on a daily basis, and documented his progress towards achieving them.   These habits formed his character.  If it was good enough for Washington, I figured it was good enough for my grandson and me.  So I bought a copy and we started to work on them together.

The Virginian Pilot article, published the same day that I attended Rep. Rigell’s talk, brought these two events together.  In her article, Ms. Hatcher quotes University of Virginia professor Jonathan Haidt, who defines civility as “ … the ability to disagree with others while we respect their sincerity and decency.”  She goes on to say, “As I listened to Haidt’s speech, I was also thinking about my representative in Congress, freshman Rep. Scott Rigell, a Virginia Beach Republican whose positions are not often in synch with mine.  … He [Rep. Rigell] vowed to be careful about the tone of his conversation, to keep it civil and professional while still passionate and strong.  … [H]e promised to rely on facts, to go where they lead, not to follow emotion or simply align with a colleague out of loyalty.”  So she called him and asked how it was going.  Her conclusion is my conclusion, “It is a small step, … but if we are to find our way past anger, to financial stability and a more civil society, we have to stop calling names.  We have to start listening to, and learning from, each other.”

Be-Czar Be-havior Be-Lies Executive Order on National Defense Resources Preparedness

Over the two years, the President has demonstrated his penchant to issue Executive Orders that exceed his Constitutional authority as President and that – if not addressed by Congress – will create a regulatory framework which, for all intents and purposes, nullifies Congress’s authority under the Constitution.

On March 16, 2012, The White House posted its most recent Executive Order on the White House website: Executive Order - National Defense Resources Preparedness. Under this order, as I read it, the Federal government can take – in the name of “Defense Preparedness” – food, livestock, fertilizer, farm equipment, all forms of energy, water resources, all forms of civil transportation (viz., any vehicles, boats, planes), and any other materials, including construction materials from wherever they are available. Specifically, the government is allowed to allocate materials, services, and facilities as deemed necessary or appropriate. Because this is an Executive Order, I assume this means that the President, without consultation with the Congress, decides what is necessary or appropriate.

Specific responsibilities are delegated to cabinet heads as follows:

1. the Secretary of Agriculture with respect to food resources, food resource facilities, livestock resources, veterinary resources, plant health resources, and the domestic distribution of farm equipment and commercial fertilizer;
2. the Secretary of Energy with respect to all forms of energy;
3. the Secretary of Health and Human Services with respect to health resources;
4. the Secretary of Transportation with respect to all forms of civil transportation;
5. the Secretary of Defense with respect to water resources; and
6. the Secretary of Commerce with respect to all other materials, services, and facilities, including construction materials.

Cabinet heads are authorized to loan money (viz., does that mean print money?), offer loan guarantees, and even subsidize payments at above market rates for whatever is needed. What happens if the government decides it needs all these things to be prepared, even if there is no war? Does this mean if energy prices are driven too high by his EPA mandates and threatens our defense preparedness, he can speak into existence alternative energy and compulsory conservation, even though these technologies will not produce a sufficient quantity of dispatchable, low-cost energy to meet America’s needs? Does it mean that if healthcare costs are too high, he can demand single-payer healthcare even though it is found to be unconstitutional? Does this mean, he can take my cars and boat, because the federal government simply decides to because it does not like the amount of energy they consume? Why did he not go the American people and explain why he needs this authority? Why did he not go to Congress? Where is the media?

Bottom line: in a crisis situation – which he defines – the President has given himself the authority to take whatever the government needs, print money to get whatever it wants, and distribute it as the government sees fit.

Up the Creek, Without any Power

In the Virginian Pilot Editorial “Coal Plant Harm Swamps Benefits” (March 4, 2012), the Pilot asserts that the 1,600 acre, Cypress Creek Power Station is an environmental nightmare and, if constructed, will cause “a few dozen deaths and cost $200M a year in medical expense in Hampton Roads.” The article then lists all the pollutants emitted by the plant and their potential impact on every political constituency they can identify. 

The Pilots argument is fear mongering at its worst: a text without a context.

First, the Pilot does not place these emissions within regulatory limits.  Since 1990, even as US coal use more than doubled, coal-fired power plant emissions have declined: 58% for mercury, 67% for nitrogen oxides, 70% for particulates, 85% for sulfur dioxide – as well as for most of the other 80 pollutants.  Second, the health impacts projected are most likely based on EPA studies that assume that the technology required to reduce mercury emissions will reduce other pollutants (primarily related to soot and particulate matter) that are already regulated elsewhere, in effect  double counting. Last, the article leaves it to the reader’s imagination to come up with another economic alternative to provide 1,500 Mw to 400,000 citizens: power which provides jobs and powers all the things progressives want to give away for free to their constituents.  Replacing this plant with a wind farm for example would require not 1,600 acres of land by a minimum of 800,000 acres of land. 

Life is full of risks: the question is do the benefits outweigh them and are the costs reasonable.