December 2015 – Page 2

The revenue challenge

In this day and age of ever-expanding government that desires to cater to our every whim, it takes money to grease the wheels. Unfortunately for those in the government people aren’t naturally inclined to support higher taxes or fees, so they have created more and more methods of vacuuming money out of peoples’ wallets in order to enrich themselves. One extreme case in point was the subject of a recent Institute for Justice update – it seems the small community of Pagedale, Missouri has decided that fines need to be levied for egregious offenses such as having mismatched curtains or a grill in your front yard. It’s a technique reminiscent of the notorious old “speed trap” communities like New Rome, Ohio that ended when states outlawed the practice of deriving a high percentage of a municipality’s revenues from traffic tickets.

I bring this up at the risk of giving the city of Salisbury some bright ideas when the speed cameras and rain tax bring in less revenue than predicted, but it makes a larger point: there seems to be no limit on what governmental units will consider for a “sin tax.” As one example: while those who believe in liberty gained a small victory earlier this year when Wicomico County allowed its speed camera contract to expire, the city of Salisbury isn’t giving up on its $768,000 in annual revenue that they wrest from peoples’ pockets for the simple act of exceeding the posted speed limit, even if it is set too low for the conditions or is active at a time when kids are not going to or from school. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear about Salisbury lobbying the state to expand the allowable area for these ticket producers outside their current legal restriction of school and active construction work zones.

More traditional “sin taxes” such as those on cigarettes have been a staple for years, and are often promoted for a particular purpose. Even having the states raid the coffers of the tobacco companies themselves has done little to slake their thirst – this report points out the hypocrisy of states taking tobacco settlement money but spending it on almost everything but cessation. Next in line for this treatment is marijuana – my prediction is that our kids will live to see a day where it is freely available, taxed like tobacco, and has cessation programs like tobacco does now. (The only difference is that we don’t have large-scale marijuana producers to extort settlement money from as we do tobacco companies.)

Of course, I understand that government needs money to operate, and while I may disagree about the ins and outs of particular policy decisions I understand I have to pay some taxes and fees along the way. Having said that, though, I object to the backhanded way state and local governments are trying to enrich themselves, often with no input from the public or recorded vote. (One example from Maryland: thanks to a vote from legislators two years ago, our gas tax is now indexed to inflation. It goes up without a vote; however, proposals to return it to the old system never make it out of committee.)

If government is to be properly limited, that limitation shouldn’t just be on the spending end. Excessive means of tax and fee collection as well as civil forfeitures provide more methods to confiscate the fruits of our labor for little benefit – unless you’re a well-connected crony. If you think you’re working harder and harder but have less to show for it, you may be right, but the solution isn’t going to attained easily. There are too many interested in keeping things just the way they are, so you may soon end up paying for that hole in your window screen you didn’t have time to attend to last weekend.

Out of order

It’s become almost as much a Christmas tradition as hanging stockings or decorating the tree – our national government gets another stopgap spending measure in lieu of a regular budget in order to avoid a Christmas government shutdown. We’ve done this practically every year since Barack Obama became President, and this year is no exception.

You can read any number of opinions about how bad this deal will be, such as this one from my friend Rick Manning at Americans for Limited Government or the fine folks at Heritage Action. It’s not a done deal yet, for the vote is expected to come tomorrow, but there will be a lot of pressure to vote this out and beat it out of town before Christmas. We already have the tax package that was a series of tradeoffs.

Yet I want to focus on one representative, and he happens to be ours. You may recall Andy Harris voted on an equally controversial bill last year that he explained away, as well as the same thing earlier in 2014. There’s obviously some who also still hold a grudge against him for voting for John Boehner to stay on as Speaker of the House. Somewhere in the back of my mind I seem to recall him saying something along the lines that this year’s budget process should be smooth because we could do it in regular order. So much for that.

If anything deserves explanation, the reason all this couldn’t be done in regular order would be the first thing on my mind. In November 2014 we gave Republicans a majority in Congress – they have the “power of the purse” that was the excuse as to why things couldn’t get done in the previous four years. No longer did we have only 1/2 of 1/3 of the government. So why is this still a problem?

As I see it, if Congress does its job and passes a budget that does what conservatives want to do such as defund Obamacare, rein in the regulators, and make other prudent spending cuts, the onus is on Barack Obama to sign it or deal with the consequences of a government shutdown. It’s on him. After all, if people are still blaming George W. Bush for a government shutdown 4 1/2 years after leaving office, it must be the president’s fault.

So I think tomorrow we will see another long social media post from Andy Harris explaining away another vote for bloated government. We already have the narrative that these were the cards dealt by John Boehner to Paul Ryan and next year things will be different.

Stop me if you’ve heard that one before. I’ll believe it when I see it.

Debating the need

Apparently they had a debate last night.

I think I watched the first main event (since I didn’t get back home in time for the now-infamous “kiddie table” debate) but since then I have chosen to spend my time on other, more useful pursuits like doing my website. Unfortunately, until you get down to a manageable number of people (about five to six at the most) it’s not worth the effort. (Granted, the more recent warmup debates should have been quite good with only four people participating.)

But I wonder how the race would have gone had they used my original idea of randomly selecting six participants per debate and doing three in one evening. It’s probable that the general order may have stayed fairly close, but when you are depending on a poll to determine debate placement that has a margin of error larger than the amount of support some in the bottom tier were getting, there could have been people taken off the main stage who may have deserved a place. Who knows: if the Donald would have had the bad luck of the draw to be outside prime time in the first couple of debates he may be closer to the pack or even out of the race. Just food for thought.

It seems to me that the debates are now sort of like an NFL Sunday. In the 1:00 games you have the teams without a great fanbase or that are doing so-so…sort of like the early debate. It’s the 4:25 national game and the 8:15 primetime game that people care about – in fact, NBC gets to pick the game it wants in the last few weeks of the season, with some exceptions. So the prime-time game the other night would have been the Cruz Cowboys taking on the Trump Generals. (Yes, I had to borrow from the old USFL but Trump owned the New Jersey Generals so it fit. In fact, the ill-fated idea to move the USFL to a fall schedule was his.) Anyway, supporters of every candidate watch and keep score like a fantasy football game, and everyone is confident of victory. My social media was filled with commentary.

One thing that the debates were supposed to provide, though, was some winnowing of the field – so far it hasn’t changed a whole lot. With several governors in the race originally but the general political mood being that of seeking an outsider, 2016 wasn’t the year for Rick Perry in his second try or Scott Walker or Bobby Jindal in their first. Notably, Walker was the only main-stage debater to withdraw, although had he not he would likely have been relegated to the second-tier thanks to his polling support evaporating rapidly. Perry just missed the cut for the first debate to John Kasich and never really recovered, while Jindal never caught on (unfortunately.) On the other hand, people seem to hate how John Kasich and Jeb Bush perform in debates but they continue to qualify – meanwhile, the rules were bent a little bit to put Carly Fiorina in the second debate and Rand Paul in the most recent one.

But if you go back to the first of October (and I’m looking at the RCP universe of polls) you’ll find the following movement:

Trump +11 (27 to 38, with a range 22-41)
Cruz +8 (7 to 15, with a range 4-22)
Rubio -1 (13 to 12, with a range 8-17)
Carson -5 (17 to 12, with a range 9-29)
Bush -5 (10 to 5, with a range 3-10)
Christie +2 (2 to 4, with a range 1-4)
Kasich -2 (4 to 2, with a range 1-4)
Fiorina -5 (6 to 1, with a range 1-7)
Paul 0 (2 to 2, with a range 1-5)
Huckabee -3 (4 to 1, with a range 1-5)
Graham 0 (1 to 1, with a range 0-2)
Pataki -1 (1 to 0, with that being his range)
Santorum -2 (2 to 0, with that being his range)
They don’t poll for Jim Gilmore. I think he’s still in it.

We actually have 3% more undecided than we did before. But you can see that after the top four, picking the next tier can be tricky because several are polling under the margin or error. Even with these debates, the sheer amount of headlines Donald Trump creates have done more to pad his lead than the formal gatherings.

I imagine the bottom-feeders are putting their eggs into one basket at this point. Jeb Bush still has quite a bit of money, while Chris Christie, John Kasich, and George Pataki are playing to do well in New Hampshire. On the other hand, candidates with evangelical or populist appeal like Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum are counting on Iowa. I guess Carly Fiorina is basing her appeal on her gender, Rand Paul is trying to light a fire under his dad’s supporters in the libertarian part of the GOP, and Lindsay Graham is likely hoping to use his home state as a springboard.

But even with Bobby Jindal withdrawing – granted, he was only getting 1 to 2 percent – the only gainers since October are Trump and Cruz. Ben Carson’s meteoric rise is now a free fall; however, he’s still in the top four that command nearly 3 out of 4 GOP voters. The other 10 are fighting over that last quarter.

We will know by year’s end who will go on, as the fundraising totals have to be in. I suspect there may be fewer chairs needed for that debate.

Resettlement concerns on Delmarva

After the 11/13 Paris massacre and San Bernardino Islamic terror attack, the concerns about the resettlement of Syrian refugees were understandable. After a few days to think about it, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan opted to cooperate as little as possible with the federal government’s attempts to bring in thousands of refugees, who are primarily male and of fighting age. Even so, the request by Hogan is non-binding and Montgomery County, home to about 1/6 of Maryland’s population, has put out its own welcome mat in the shadow of the nation’s capital.

Perhaps more worrisome for Delmarva residents concerned about the proximity of these barely-vetted Muslims in search of a peaceful locale to wage jihad (oops, did I say that?) is that Delaware Gov. Jack Markell has joined most of his Democratic counterparts in saying this army of refugees would be welcome. Sussex County is a possible destination, which leaves some in the First State unsettled.

On Thursday a coalition of groups will come together in front of Legislative Hall in Dover for a press briefing to express their opposition to Delaware’s putting out the welcome mat so quickly.

A Concerned Coalition of Delaware residents, representing thousands of concerned citizens is holding a press briefing in Dover at noon on Thursday, December 17, 2015. Alliance leaders will meet in front of Legislative Hall. The leadership of various groups will present their collective “Open Letter to Governor Markell” regarding his stated plans to resettle some undetermined number of Syrian refugees in the state of Delaware.

These groups are united in opposition to the Governor’s plan and will present their views to the media and the public. The alliance represents the concerns of their memberships totaling in excess of 10,000 Delaware families and individuals. All are welcome who wish to join in support of these shared concerns. Spokespersons will be in attendance from the various allied groups and will be available for comments.

The alliance is a coalition of the 9-12 Delaware Patriots, Faith and Freedom Coalition Delaware, the NAACP – Central Delaware, the Frederick Douglass Foundation – Sussex County, IOTC Delaware, Reverend Shaun Greener, (and) other individual citizen supporters.

This came to me from my friends at the 9-12 Delaware Patriots.

Obviously the concern is that a percentage of these refugees aren’t coming here to escape the pandemonium of Syria’s civil war but to assist in spreading the jihad of the Islamic State, which has its unofficial “capital” in the eastern Syrian city of Raqaa. With the continuing revelations of how the San Bernardino killers were able to plan their attack and the more recent news about mass cell phone purchases and propane tank thefts in rural Missouri, people are understandably on edge.

While Maryland may get refugees whether Governor Hogan likes it or not, the chances are they will settle in the Baltimore or Washington areas. Similarly, Delaware refugees would likely migrate to the Wilmington area but the rural character of southern Delaware and the Eastern Shore may have more appeal as training or staging grounds for mischief. We may be making something out of nothing, but a neighbor noticed the San Bernardino couple were getting a lot of packages and opted not to call authorities for fear of “profiling.”

People in this coalition may be profiling these prospective refugees, but the track record suggests its for good reason.

Identification of a problem

It may be one of the best lectures given this year, and thanks to the Daily Signal I got to read it.

Back in November, businessman and entrepreneur Bill Walton spoke at Hillsdale College on the subject “The Problem of Crony Capitalism Today.” It’s an excellent read, with definite length and gravitas within. But there was one passage I wanted to speak to in particular:

I don’t believe that American politicians, bureaucrats and businesses today are more venal or dishonest than politicians or businessmen of the past. There has forever and always been cronyism and people seeking special favors from the government. What’s changed is that the scope and reach of the federal government has dramatically expanded.

Before the 1930s, Court interpretations and the general consensus in America was that the Constitution severely restricted the power and scope of the federal government. Then a constitutional revolution occurred from 1937 through 1943 that dramatically expanded its powers. There is not enough time to get into the details but three Supreme Court rulings changed everything.

The first allowed Congress to delegate its powers to federal agencies.

The second gutted the Commerce Clause giving the federal government power over regulating virtually all manufacturing and agriculture in United States. Federal Judge Alex Kozinski calls this the “Hey-you-can-do-anything-you-feel-like” clause.

The third ruling, declaring Social Security constitutional, reinterpreted the “general welfare” clause to allow Congress to spend money on virtually anything.

Fast-forward to today. There is little chance that these rulings can be reversed. Charles Murray believes that there is no chance and observes, “To reverse any of these rulings would mean that about 90 percent of everything the federal government does is unconstitutional. That’s not going to happen.”

90 percent of everything the federal government does is unconstitutional? Sounds about right in this entitlement-addled era.

But the point Walton makes is that businesses of a certain size have figured out the money is in a perverse sort of innovation, one of figuring out unique ways of gaming the system through heavy lobbying and the right mixture of political contributions. Granted, interest groups representing small business also try and set a place at the table but these groups are themselves a big business.

Simply put, certain entities have figured out a way to tap into the rich pipeline of tax dollars constantly flowing into Washington, D.C. It’s a little like hitting the lottery day after day, while the rest of us poor suckers pay for the tickets that never win. Rigging the government’s lottery can get you sent to prison, but scamming the taxpayer lottery through favorable regulations and rent-seeking is just another day at the office for some.

While the rulings Walton cites are further proof that SCOTUS is far from infallible, I don’t quite think all is lost. As I said yesterday, though, being the adult in the room isn’t always popular. If a true reformer was ever elected the system would indeed act like a cornered bear, scratching and clawing back through an all-out assault by the media, interest groups, lobbyists, and members of Congress who also are enriched by the current system. It’s a process that could take decades; unfortunately, we don’t have years to waste. Even if a reform-minded president was elected, he or she only can serve a maximum of eight years – that’s nowhere near long enough to unwind the entitlement regime we have in place.

But the regulations and tax code can be addressed in a term or two, and addressing those problems may cushion the mistakes we’ve made with adopting all the government-dependence programs we have. It’s not to say those shouldn’t have a sunset date assigned to them, but we can go a long way toward fixing our economy with an aggressive approach at limiting the aspects of government that can be addressed in the relatively short window of time that a presidential term affords.

It’s reflected in the palette of solutions Walton gives:

So are their solutions to the pervasive and growing problem of cronyism? If so, they need to be big ones. Radical ones. Tinkering with things like term limits, revolving door government, campaign finance reform are not likely to change much in Washington so long as trillions of dollars are at stake.

Mancur Olson believed there is only one way to cure “advanced institutional sclerosis.” Be utterly defeated in a world war like Japan and Germany. They had to start over from scratch.

Charles Murray advocates “massive civil disobedience” underwritten by privately funded multibillion-dollar defense funds to sue government and cronyists.

George Gilder believes that one solution is to “zero base budget” every agency on a three-year budget cycle. Zero out their budget and make them show that they are doing something worthwhile. He would also sunset all regulations after 10 years.

I’d start with getting rid of the income tax code and replacing it with a flat tax or fair tax. This would eliminate tax code cronyism and ignite the economy.

Of the four, “lawfare” has a certain appeal, and I like Gilder’s idea because it sounds vaguely familiar – sort of like something in Chapter 7 here. But each of the three latter items are reasonably attainable in a short time window, beginning with the dawn of 2017. (That is if the first possibility doesn’t come to pass prior to that time.) Whoever we elect as President now has some agenda items for his or her to-do list – let’s see who has the intestinal fortitude to put the plans into action.

The consolidation of responsibility

It started out so innocently, somewhat like a warm late-summer day did almost a decade-and-a-half ago. But somehow things became so much bigger and darker.

There’s no doubt a Facebook disagreement pales ever-so-greatly in comparison to 9/11, but the reauthorization of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act became yet another excuse for partisan bickering, with many of these comments criticizing the heartless Republicans. It’s certainly not hard to garner sympathy for the families of those who were affected by the fall of the Twin Towers.

Yet being the adult in the room isn’t always the most popular thing.

I have no problem with state and local funding of first responders provided they can justify the need for it. Salisbury and Wicomico County are in the process of ironing out a long-standing disagreement over the city providing fire and EMS services for outlying areas close by the city. (Due to haphazard annexation, there are significant pockets of county population completely or nearly fully surrounded by the city limits. I used to live next door to a county resident while I lived within the city limits – the city limit split our shared driveway. The house I lived in literally was the single piece of property that made that relatively large neighborhood area a county island.)

But I would like to know how it became the federal government’s responsibility to take care of these first responders to begin with. It seems to me that this act of terror was equated with an act of war and first responders were elevated to a status not unlike our veterans. And while the families of these firemen and police officers have suffered greatly as these first responders have, there should already have been a state-based workman’s compensation program in place. In short, they are deserving but it’s not the federal government’s place to pay these bills because they had no contract with Uncle Sam like veterans have. Saying so, though, makes one out to be a bad guy.

Beyond this, there is the question of what role the federal government should take.

It seems to me anymore that we assume the federal government will always be our backstop, there to cover us in the event of disaster. Because of this, we aren’t preparing ourselves for a world where the government can’t or won’t be able to help us. How many people have based their retirement dreams on the fact that Social Security and Medicare will always be there, despite the math that equates both to Ponzi schemes? I haven’t checked in several years because I had a lengthy unintentional hiatus from full-time work, but I don’t think it would take too many years for me to go through the amount I had taken out of my checks over the years for Social Security.

At some point, we need to have the cord cut. The question is whether we will have the willpower to do it ourselves or simply have the rug pulled out from under our feet without warning or a chance to prepare. Those who seem to think we can stay on the same course when it comes to the direction of our federal government are sadly deluded. Donald Trump may be the GOP frontrunner, but he has the wrong approach to entitlements. (By the way, I think I’m really doing a disservice by referring to them as “entitlements” because I would like to know exactly where in the Constitution these programs are. Would you consider yourself entitled to Donald Trump’s wealth if you did nothing to earn a portion of it? That’s what the government seems to think.)

For the families of these first responders things will turn out all right because it’s likely the provision will be placed in a must-pass appropriations bill and we will be paying for these luckless police officers and firemen until they pass away. It’s not really our federal government’s proper place, but giving out money to people we deem deserving always feels good. Things will feel great until the day the golden goose lays dead from exhaustion.

This little experiment we embarked upon almost 250 years ago was supposed to be one where government was limited, with authorization to only do a small number of tasks. Somehow we have come to a point where government is unlimited and unchecked. This 9/11 example, to me, buttresses the old adage, “A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.” The same seems to go for what we thought was a constitutional republic.

Report: High wages aren’t the issue with manufacturing

As you surely know, I have taken an interest in rebuilding manufacturing within our nation in general and this region in particular. While much of our local economy takes the form of manufacturing in an agricultural sense, either through grain farming or its primary purpose of assisting in the raising and processing of chickens, the advantages to the local and national economy if America began to make things again is beyond dispute.

So when I was sent a link to a manufacturing report by the union-led Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM), I wanted to see what the perspective would be. Up front, it was clear that the AAM had their eggs in one basket.

“American factory workers are the solution, not the problem,” said Alliance for American Manufacturing President Scott Paul. “Instead of scapegoats, America needs a manufacturing strategy. That strategy should be built on balancing trade, investing in our infrastructure, enhancing our training programs, and rebuilding our innovation base.”

This report, with the lengthy title “Exchange rate policies, not high wages, are why U.S. lags China and Germany in export performance,” comes from the liberal Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Paul’s interpretation of the report:

“The idea that high wages in the manufacturing industry are causing job losses is common, but incorrect,” (report author Robert E.) Scott said. “Pushing manufacturing jobs into the low-wage, non-union south is a race-to-the-bottom strategy that should be rejected. Instead, we need to fight currency manipulation by countries like China and take a page from Germany and Europe to rebuild American manufacturing.”

His is a truncated summary of the last bullet point solution offered in the EPI report:

The strategy of pushing manufacturing into the low-wage, nonunion southern states is a race-to-the-bottom strategy that should be rejected in favor of high-road strategies: fighting currency manipulation and doing more to rebuild American manufacturing, taking a page from the German and European models (with supply-side policies that benefit and support the manufacturing sector, including increased spending on research and development as a share of gross domestic product; support for “stakeholder capitalism” in which boards of directors include an equal number of representatives of workers and managers; and heavy investment in training and job creation).

Obviously there is a certain appeal to some of getting back to the conditions we had circa 1960, when American manufacturing was the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, workers brought home a salary that could support a family while Mom stayed home to take care of the kids, and Big Labor had its own corner of the political table. Five decades later, we have ceded that crown to China for a number of reasons. But I don’t think currency manipulation is the primary reason.

The EPI’s worry that manufacturing jobs are flocking to the “low-wage, non-union south” is in and of itself a tacit admission that wages and benefits are an important factor in site selection. China got to be a manufacturing leader because they have a very inexpensive workforce of semi-skilled laborers – the same sort of workforce that illegal aliens bring to the table in this country, although it depresses wages here in a different manner. Given the equality of other factors nationwide such as the federal regulatory regime and abundant cheap energy, those who do site selection tend to choose the places where they can get the biggest bang for their buck.

By the same token, willing local governments which assist these manufacturers with providing new infrastructure and greenfields for development tend to have more success than those urban areas with problematic old systems and brownfields that require remediation. But that’s not the only reason nice plots of available land sit empty in regions of the country outside the South.

Here in Maryland, we are saddled with a state government that refuses to even consider right-to-work legislation and has gone out of its way to punish large non-union employers. A decade ago when I began this site, the largest state issue was the (so-called) Fair Share Health Care Act and whether the Maryland General Assembly would override Governor Bob Ehrlich’s veto, which they did. The bill was narrowly tailored to affect just one employer: Walmart. And while correlation is not causation, the fact a proposed Walmart distribution center in Somerset County was placed on a continuing hold was blamed on the unfriendly climate for non-union businesses in Maryland. (The bill itself was later struck down in court as an ERISA violation, something I thought improper at the time.)

If you assume my overall argument is in favor of this “race to the bottom,” you’re forgetting a simple fact: a little bit of something is better than a whole lot of nothing. There are many paths to prosperity our nation, state, and city have available to us but it seems to me the best one is where we add value to the goods and services everyone needs. This is why our chicken industry succeeds, since we take that which is available to us to raise and process chicken for a world market and have developed an expertise that competitors have a hard time matching. Granted, not everyone in the industry makes a ton of money but that’s a function of the value placed on chicken by the market. Chicken is a very useful food product but people also like and can choose beef, pork, seafood, or vegan as well. On the other hand, there’s a reason oil is called “black gold,” to use another useful commodity for an example. The resource has a very high value thanks to its functionality, relative scarcity, and lack of alternative products.

America as a whole needs to again become the place where the most value is added, and once we get there we will all succeed because of it. (That will be the point where trade takes care of itself as well.) Back in 1960 we were the leaders in adding value, but now we’re not because we let others take our place. Re-establishing our manufacturing base will help us get that crown back, even if some parts of the country do more to help themselves in improving their economic state.

Stepping away if not selected

I find it interesting that two of the non-politicians in the Presidential race are the ones who would abandon their party if certain conditions apply.

Donald Trump has waffled back and forth on a third-party run, which is a prospect that scares Republicans who can see him doing a Ross Perot and helping to hand the election to a Clinton. Even though Trump’s support seems to hold between 25 and 35 percent in national polls, that represents a significant enough chunk of the national electorate that it would make the difference in a presidential election. It’s likely Trump would take less from Hillary’s base than he would from a Republican.

But today Ben Carson joined Trump in vowing to leave the party if the convention ends up being brokered. This, though, is a possibility given the rules in place and the large number of hopefuls still out there. Winner-take-all rules in various states could give Trump the nomination with the share of the vote he’s currently receiving, but the GOP establishment frets that The Donald’s outspokenness on issues such as immigration and a Carteresque ban on Muslim immigration would repel moderate voters. So the fear is the delegates will be browbeaten into supporting a different candidate that’s more acceptable to the establishment.

There is nothing that says a Republican candidate has to stay loyal to the party if rejected – in fact, in the 2012 cycle former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson began as a Republican candidate but once he found his campaign had little traction he decided to withdraw from the GOP race and seek the Libertarian Party nomination instead (which he received.) On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders is actually not a Democrat but seeks their nomination nonetheless.

Unlike Trump, Ben Carson did not leave the door open for a third-party run if he leaves the GOP. But the question is whether Carson would be willing to work with the eventual nominee if he or she comes through a divided convention. With the number of candidates out there who would otherwise not be occupied, there are a lot of prospective campaigners out there. Carson would certainly appeal to certain evangelical and minority audiences as a conservative surrogate. Someone has to take the message into certain quarters where they would be embraced in a manner that Donald Trump could not. Truthfully, it would not surprise me if Donald Trump was the 2016 answer to Ross Perot, and I will admit that George H.W. Bush’s forgetting what his lips said about no new taxes drove me to vote for Perot. It was a vote that would have went for Bush.

It’s been noted that Trump supporters tend to be less educated and more rural than typical Republican backers. They remind me of Reagan Democrats, who were the working-class laborers that voted Democrat along with their unions for generations but became fed up with a Democratic party that drifted farther and farther away from its moorings. Many of that generation are gone – remember, the first Reagan election was half a lifetime ago and those who had put in 25 years at the factory back then have passed on. It’s their kids that are looking at Trump as the answer.

In this day and age, people are less and less wedded to party and more and more skeptical of politics as usual. If nothing else, the rise of Carson and Trump have proven that experience doesn’t matter as much anymore. Whether they stay as Republicans may not matter if the GOP doesn’t strengthen their brand.

Immigration: The SEASON Act and its effects

By Cathy Keim

Second in an ongoing series.

I am using my prerogative to switch to a different immigration topic because a friend sent this Breitbart article and pointed out that Rep. Andy Harris is on the list, as is Senator Barbara Mikulski. As I mentioned before, immigration is such a broad subject that one cannot cover all the angles in just an article or two.

I actually wrote to Andy Harris about the Strengthen Employment and Seasonal Opportunities Now (SEASON) Act (H.R. 3918) back on November 12. I saw him later that day at the Kathy Szeliga event and I asked him about his support for this bill.

He stated that the Obama administration had changed the regulations about the H2B visa program and HR 3918 was merely to return things to the way they were done previously, adding that employers needed the foreign workers to do these jobs that Americans will not do. I asked about the families of H2B workers and he said that they were not allowed to bring their families with them.

But I checked on the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) website and it clearly states that:

Any H-2B worker’s spouse and unmarried children under 21 years of age may seek admission in H-4 nonimmigrant classification. Family members are not eligible for employment in the United States while in H-4 status.

So I must disagree with the Congressman’s assertion. My concern was that if the families enter with the worker, then they will most certainly have an impact on the local economy as the children enroll in school and utilize other social services.

The H2B visa worker may be a boon for the employer, but the rest of the community is underwriting the social service costs for the cheap labor. In addition, we are paying the welfare costs of our unemployed citizens who could be working instead of a foreign worker. The taxpayer is picking up the tab in every direction while the employer is improving his profits.

The employers complain that Americans won’t do these jobs, but it is likely that they would do them if they were paid a fair wage. The employers utilize the H2B visa program to bring in foreign workers to keep the wages depressed.

According to the Society for Human Resource Management:

In a separate final rule, the departments unveiled the methodology for determining the prevailing wage that must be paid to H-2B workers.

(snip)

The Economic Policy Institute’s (vice-president Ross) Eisenbrey expressed disappointment that the rule allows alternative wage surveys to set the prevailing wage. “Employers only use these alternative surveys to ensure that they can pay their workers the least possible amount, rather than using credible and reliable survey data compiled by DOL,” he said, pointing to the seafood industry as an example as having used private wage surveys to justify “paying their H-2B workers wages near the federal minimum wage for grueling work like crab-picking, rather than the higher average wages paid across Virginia and Maryland for similar work.”

Here is a link to information about the changes to the H2B visa program that were put into effect in April of this year.

I also asked Mike Smigiel, who is running against Andy Harris for the First Congressional District seat, for a statement about HR 3918. Smigiel said:

With our real unemployment numbers over 11% and the workforce participation at one of its lowest levels in years we clearly have a workforce that is hard pressed to find employment. The most vulnerable sector of the workforce are youth, legal immigrants, and those with a high school education or less. Record numbers of Americans are living in poverty and surviving on food stamps, it is hard to fathom that Congress would expand the H2-B program to an all time high.

What Congressman Harris failed to address is the fact that those here on the H2-B program can bring their spouses and families in under the H-4 visas. Do you think that the spouses and children of those coming in under the H-4 visa program are not going to be working, going to school, getting sick? These associated costs will be additional burdens upon our already strained economy.

Our first obligation should be to helping our unemployed and underemployed citizens by providing this most vulnerable sector of the workforce work training and providing incentives to employers to hire citizens for the jobs.

It is disingenuous of Congressman Harris to sponsor this legislation since just a few months ago he voted to prohibit American poultry, beef or pork producers from listing the country of origin on their products. This does not benefit the consumer or farm workers but makes it easier for large farming corporations to take their operations overseas where labor is cheaper and there are fewer regulations placed upon their farming operations. Their products can then be sold in the US without any notice that they were not raised here. So thanks to Congressman Harris we may be eating Chinese chickens with American companies’ names on the product.

Once again, I would encourage you to pick up your phone and call Congressman Andy Harris and Senator Barbara Mikulski and ask them to not support HR 3918. Let’s put our own citizens back to work.

Odds and ends number 76

Once again I have a potpourri of items that I think need between a couple sentences and three paragraphs, so here goes.

Over the last few months I have followed the saga of atheists who have tried to have the Bladensburg Peace Cross removed thanks to attorney and second-time U.S. Senate candidate Richard Douglas. Early last week a federal judge dismissed the case in a brief, two-page order, although the plaintiffs promised to appeal. Douglas called the decision “a good day for liberty,” and I tend to agree. Kudos to the good barrister for lending a hand.

Something Douglas has stressed in his populist campaign is the plight of the working man. So while manufacturing jobs held relatively steady over the last couple months, those who advocate for manufacturing thought the job report was rather bleak. “It’s the latest evidence that manufacturing in America is at or near a state of recession,” said Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) head Scott Paul. “While much of the service sector is growing albeit with low wages, our goods-producing economy is struggling under the yoke of global weakness and China’s massive industrial overcapacity.”

That imbalance with China was also the subject of print ads sponsored by another industry group, the U.S. Business & Industry Council.

Their point is simple: there were no currency manipulation provisions included. While China, which has a long-standing reputation for the practice, is not a part of the TPP, other members have also been accused of similar tricks. The USBIC apparently desires a united front among many of China’s regional trading partners.

Those who can’t find jobs often need government assistance such as food stamps (now known as SNAP.) But the state of Maine recently grabbed the notice of the Daily Signal for a proposal to ban the purchase of junk food and pop with EBT cards. Certainly to some it would border on nanny statism, but the state argues that:

“Our current food stamp policy lets water in one end of the boat while bailing out the other,” said DHHS Commissioner Mary Mayhew. “If we’re going to spend millions on nutrition education for food stamp recipients, we should stop giving them money to buy candy and soda. Maine is facing an obesity epidemic, especially among its low-income population, and we should be solving that problem rather than enabling it.”

In short, if you wish to gorge yourself on Skittles and Mountain Dew, find a job and get off the dole. Maine has cracked down on welfare programs since Governor Paul LePage took office – maybe Larry Hogan should pay attention.

Someone in Hogan’s administration got the hot water turned up on him, as the James O’Keefe video I talked about a few days back had the sequel. Now we know his deputy isn’t particularly into martial fidelity, but then again we sort of factor that into the equation anymore. This guy named Clinton was elected president for doing far worse, so perhaps being on the large end of the Project Veritas telescope will be a resume enhancer for this liberal deputy AG.

Chances are, though, soon Thiruvendran “Thiru” Vignarajah will be ignored by the media, sort of like what we’re advised to do by columnist, fill-in radio host, and would-be Congressman Dan Bongino regarding Barack Obama. Whether it’s gun control, border security, Syrian refugees, or simply his method of leadership, America is better going in the opposite direction our feckless President desires us to go. Simple advice that’s worth the read, as Dan often is.

Yet Obama’s government is still powerful and has the capacity to make peoples’ lives miserable. Take the Internal Revenue Service and a new proposed rule that will ask nonprofits to keep Social Security numbers for donors who give more than $250. Tonya Tiffany of MDCAN got her moment of fame as an advocate against this regulation.

Those who are interested in stating their case have until December 16 to go here and give their opinion. Operations which only have sporadic activities and run on a shoestring would be most affected, and MDCAN falls under that umbrella as their primary activity is the Turning the Tides conference each January.

As they argue:

The IRS wants to make non-profit organizations responsible for storing and reporting the Social Security Numbers for anyone who donates more than $250. This will burden the non-profits financially as well as increase your chances of having your identity stolen. It could also make it easier for the IRS to target organizations based on politics and move on to also targeting the private individuals who support those organizations.

On the latter point, I think back to the emotion surrounding donations to the side supporting Proposition 8 in California some years back (in favor of traditional marriage.) Even years later, those who chose to donate in its favor had to deal with its fallout. Instead of harassment from a group, though, imagine the full weight of the government harassing donors. The system isn’t really broken so there’s no need to fix it.

There’s no need to fix my e-mailbox, either. While it’s not completely empty, the remaining items deserve more of a hearing. Look for these in the next few days.

Presidential purity?

In the wake of comments many believed exposed Donald Trump as a religious bigot, there was condemnation on both sides. But what happens if he wins the Republican nomination in a deeply divided GOP? Maybe my fellow blogger and Central Committee member from Howard County Dave Wissing gives us a clue. He took to social media yesterday to state:

I usually keep my political posts to a minimum, but after today it has reached the point where I can’t stay quiet any longer. As a lifetime Republican who has always supported Republicans for President, I will not support Donald Trump for President should he get the Republican nomination and will work to defeat him. If this costs me my position on the Central Committee, so be it.

More in my party should be saying this.

I’m not going to look at this from the standpoint of whether what Trump said was right or wrong. Instead it brings up the question of whether members of the Central Committee are supposed to blindly follow the party, even if they nominate a person who would seemingly represent the worst possible face of the party.

In the past we have had discussions about something we dubbed the “David Duke rule,” named for the white supremacist who was successful enough to finish second in Louisiana’s 1991 gubernatorial “jungle” primary. Duke ran as a rump Republican against party-switching incumbent Buddy Roemer and former scandal-tainted governor Edwin Edwards, who eventually won a fourth non-consecutive term over Duke. Duke was shunned by practically every elected Republican in the country up to and including President George H.W. Bush, who backed the Democrat Edwards. While my philosophy is to trust the wisdom of the voters, sometimes circumstance forces you to turn your back on a candidate. For many, including Wissing, this seems to be the case with Trump.

Nor does every Central Committee have a loyalty clause.

In reviewing our county’s bylaws, making a statement like Wissing’s is not automatically grounds for removal. Instead, the only grounds for removal is that of missing meetings or conventions. Further, in our case, a 2/3 vote of the committee would be enough to not endorse Trump (or any other candidate) as far as our county is concerned. If Howard County’s rules are similar, those calling for Wissing’s resignation are out of order despite his proclamation.

Yet there is the average Trump supporter to consider. He or she tends to be the working class voter that Republicans constantly try to keep from defecting to the Democrat Party where they came from to vote first for Ronald Reagan. I know a few Trump supporters who like his tough-talking rhetoric, if not his record of political accomplishment, and they’re bound and determined to see him become President.

They can’t seem to move the Trump needle over 25 to 30 percent in the polls, though. There are still over a dozen candidates in the race, but eventually more will drop out and support will coalesce behind other challengers who may eventually replace Trump as the frontrunner. This may solve the immediate problem but create a second one – disheartened Trump supporters who stay home rather than vote for another Republican.

There is a piece in the Onion that satirically illustrates the perils of underestimating The Donald, though. Things that may sink another’s campaign seem to energize Trump supporters even more. The trick may be to interest them if Trump falls short.

Immigration: a continuing series

By Cathy Keim

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the need to pause our immigration programs due to the many problems associated with them. It is such a complex issue, with so many areas to address, that I decided to start a continuing series where I can look at some of the more pressing problems in more detail.

We do not have an immigration problem; it could more accurately be called an invasion. Armed with Ted Kennedy’s immigration reform of the 1960s, our elite political class has decided that America needs a remake and one of their methods to achieve this is to bring in immigrants, refugees, illegal aliens, and foreign students by any means available.

For over thirty years we have been experiencing increasing numbers of people flooding into the country, but we have not been making an effort to assimilate them. The government school system does not even try to teach our own children the core beliefs upon which our country was founded or what it even means to be an American, so why would we make an effort to teach these newcomers our unique American heritage?

Immigration without assimilation equals invasion (to quote Bobby Jindal – ed.) and spells the end of America as we know it. There are many agents pushing for this expansion of our population from corporations wanting cheap labor to politicians wanting sure votes to refugee resettlement agencies (VOLAGS) that get paid by the head to bring in refugees. Obviously the motivations and methods vary, so I will address different issues separately instead of trying to cover it all at once.

One of the extremely frustrating aspects of this invasion is that ordinary Americans can see very clearly the negative effects of the masses of mostly poorly educated immigrants flooding our communities, but our elites, buffered by their upscale communities and private schools, refuse to heed the calls for halting immigration.

The Syrian refugee issue has been dominating the immigration discussion recently. It is troubling because these refugees cannot be vetted to insure that there are not jihadists hiding amongst the thousands of people fleeing the fighting. I have already touched upon some of the relevant issues, so today I will concentrate on the question of why are so many people are fleeing the Muslim crescent from Libya to Afghanistan?

The United States government has to accept responsibility for their part in the crisis through their destabilizing various governments in the area during the Arab Spring. Once the dictators were toppled, the vacuum led to an increase in fighting and chaos causing people to flee to safer areas. Some of the people came from areas that are not more chaotic than usual, but are joining the masses as economic immigrants hoping for a better life elsewhere.

When hundreds of thousands of people are on the move fleeing from war, terror, and economic chaos, it is impossible to check their credentials or vet them for security risks, disease, or criminal behavior. While our government helped create the mess, we do not have to bring them into our own country to pay penance. As pointed out before, it is much more cost effective to help them in safe places nearer their homelands so that they can return when the situation permits.

But what if there is a bigger plan behind the forced immigration? The Koran calls for hijrah, or the emigration of Muslims to other lands based on the original hijrah when Mohammad fled Mecca for Medina in 622 AD. This is the date which is used as the beginning of Mohammad’s revelations and when he became a military and political leader, not just a religious leader. Islam is a total package of political thought with military force and a religious component. It is not a just a religion. It was in Medina that Mohammad became a warlord who wreaked havoc on all those around him who didn’t conform to his ideas. Writer and expert on Islam Robert Spencer pointed this out recently:

“And whoever emigrates for the cause of Allah will find on the earth many locations and abundance,” says the Qur’an. “And whoever leaves his home as an emigrant to Allah and His Messenger and then death overtakes him, his reward has already become incumbent upon Allah. And Allah is ever Forgiving and Merciful.” (4:100)

ISIS published an article calling for Muslims to flood into Libya where arms are plentiful and then make the voyage to Europe. The USA made sure that Libya collapsed and this is the result.

While we are certain that a percentage of the emigrants coming from the Middle East and North Africa are jihadists, what of the others that are simply fleeing the violence? ISIS has a plan for that too. The ISIS view of the world is a dark one, for they are sure that they are ushering in the end times and the return of the Mahdi.

Unlike Christian sects that have fled to the hills to await the return of Christ, ISIS takes a more forceful view. They intend to usher in the end times with murder and mayhem. They take a dim view of wishy-washy Muslims or Muslims that live in the gray zone. This would be people that just live their lives, work hard, pay their bills, and don’t give much attention to religion or don’t practice Islam according to ISIS standards. I would guess that the vast majority of mankind falls into this gray zone. While they may be called Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or some other sect, they probably don’t really pay much attention to their religious condition. In the West, this would include the secular people that do not give any credence to any deity.

ISIS has a strategy to push the West through terrorist attacks into retaliating against their Muslim populations, thus causing the non-engaged Muslims to feel a grievance against their government and move from the gray zone into active ISIS activity.

This cycle of terrorism by an ISIS-inspired Muslim living in the West, the government’s crackdown on Muslims as we are seeing in France, the resulting reaction against being treated as guilty by association, and the resulting increase in violence is exactly what ISIS desires. They want all of us to move from a gray zone, which allows for people of different faiths or no faith to live together, to a black zone where you are either for us or against us.

I will take up this development in the next installment of the series.

No matter what ISIS is doing, the first step we need to do is secure our borders and stop the influx of immigrants until things can be sorted out.

There is an opportunity to use the power of the purse to halt the Refugee Resettlement program by refusing to fund it in the omnibus spending bill that must be passed by December 11. Please call your Senators and Representative in Congress at 202-224-3121 to encourage them to not fund this program.