Mill Creek Metro Parks' Swamp

Midst the Federal government spending spree, Ohio is offering for your consideration, its own version of pork. Mill Creek Metro Parks is the crown jewel of Mahoning County. I can’t think of a person who has a bad thing to say about it. It is stunning, beautiful…there are not enough superlatives to describe it. The trustees have made an effort to expand it from its core into other areas of Mahoning County to be enjoyed by all taxpayers. It is at the top of the list of why people who leave the area want to move back.

But lately the caretakers of Mill Creek Park have been smitten by wetlands. Instead of dredging the largest of the three lakes located within its boundaries, it left half of it go to “wetlands”, destroying its boating facility, eliminating ice skating on the lake, and making an overall mess of an area that used to be known as the “new boat docks”. In that circumstance, however, it was an issue of having to spend a whole lot of money to fix the lake, or a little bit of money to let it go to wetlands. They made the right decision.

Recently the park system purchased 44 acres in Boardman Township on Western Reserve Road. The acreage is located on the old sod farm that lined Mill Creek on either side. It was a huge expanse of beautiful green grass for most of my lifetime. The cost to Mill Creek Metro Parks was 2.6 million dollars. It is adjacent to areas which the park designates as existing wetlands. Now the Ohio EPA is providing a grant in the amount of $247,645.00 to convert the new land acquisition, adjacent to an existing wetland, into a new wetland identical to its neighbor. We will have just one, big happy wetland.

Folks, it’s a swamp. No matter how you slice and dice it…no matter how you ecologically justify it…no matter how much you try to dress it up…it is a swamp. Do we really need to spend $247,645.00 of taxpayer money for a swamp? More to the point, if they just left it alone, since it is adjacent to an existing swamp, wouldn’t it eventually return to its natural state as a swamp itself over a period of time?

People who are into this stuff tend to go over the top. Let it go. The money could be better spent in a thousand different ways. But since we are dealing with the government, and they are not spending their money, but your money, you have just bought yourself a swamp.

If you think this is bad…just wait. By the time the Feds get done with the “stimulus” package and the “omnibus spending bill,” they might just make this swamp look like a something worthwhile. We are in trouble. It is only a small example of things to come.

Afghanistan; The New Vietnam?

Midst all the news of bailouts, stimulus programs and mortgage rescue plans, President Obama announced he is increasing the American troop level in Afghanistan by 17,000, a surge, if you will. Obama made much during his campaign that we fought the wrong war. His position was Afghanistan was much more important, and roundly criticized the Iraq War, along with his left wing supporters in the media. “The war is lost!” exclaimed Harry Reid, Senate Majority leader.

The Bush surge worked, and Iraq, while not a place that I would care to visit, is stable and functioning. It will be the cornerstone of our Mideast policy in the future, and provide a base of operation for future problems that may develop in the Mideast. History will judge Bush kindly on Iraq.

Afghanistan, however, is another issue. It could prove to be Obama’s Vietnam. One only has to look at its history to realize that outside of maintaining a minimal military presence there to threaten against any future terrorist activity, we should be wary. Any country that has gone to war there has lost. It is an outpost of desperation.

Iraq is an industrialized country with educated people and a middle class, albeit dwindling under Sadaam. Afghanistan, on the other hand, is backward, mostly uneducated, and a rogue state whose primary source of income is opium. Even the moderates within its firmly entrenched Islamic theocracy are conservative, with women routinely beaten and kept under lock and key. It is a country of warlords and fiefdoms, with a government whose sole sphere of influence is in Kabul, its capital city. Its history is one of continual civil war and continual fighting in one of the poorest countries in the world.

In addition, the really bad guys are holed up in Pakistan, in an area the Pakistani army has just walked away from, turning control over to the Islamists. The politics makes invading this area impossible, reminiscent of Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Its terrain is foreboding. The war is being fought on deserts and horrendous mountains, with plenty of places for these roaches to hide.

The Soviet Union tried invading Afghanistan to support its Marxist government is 1979. As a student of Soviet history, two things led to the downfall of the Soviet Union: 1) The Chernobyl nuclear accident, after which the Soviets could no longer hide its technological deficiency; and 2) The Afghan War in which Soviet forces were massively defeated, leaving the country with their tails between their legs, and bankrupting the Soviet Union. It was a stunning defeat.

From 1979 to 1989, the Soviet Union fought the same type of war on which we are now embarking. During that period of time, more than 600,000 Soviet forces served in Afghanistan at a clip of about 55,000/year. Afghan casualties alone are estimated between one to two million. The Soviet Union placed its casualties around 14,000, with 35,000 injured. But independent researchers have place those figures much higher (deaths closer to 25,0000). Sickness from disease like hepatitis moves the general sick and casualty numbers into the hundreds of thousands. Deaths to Afghanistan troops and civilians conservatively are placed around a million.

The left wing press almost succeeded in sabotaging our efforts in Iraq, but is remaining strangely silent about the ramping up of the American Afghan war. America didn’t learn from the French in Vietnam…we are ignoring the lesson of the Soviet War in Afghanistan. While we are focusing on our economy, this may prove to be the biggest boondoggle of them all.

So Smart They're Stupid

A friend of mine sent me an inspirational piece entitled Born Again American. It brought a tear to my eye, and I intended to write about it this week. Instead, I have decided to use it as a topic for the main blog next week. I am too frustrated and feel like a bona fide rant this morning.

What the hell is the matter with those jack asses in Washington? Over the past several weeks, I have written numerous times about the folly of the “mark to market” accounting rule. It is destroying our country. I have come to the conclusion that there is some hard-headed idiot who made the decision as to how to implement the rule and is now refusing to admit that it was a mistake, and God forbid, he/she might have been wrong.

Look, everybody wants a fair estimation of the worth of a company. But understating the value of an asset is just as wrong as over stating the asset. The fact of the matter is that no one seems to know how to value derivative assets or we wouldn’t have this problem in the first place. What I do know is that the paralysis on this issue has transformed a difficult situation into a geometrically growing downward spiral that is destroying our financial system. These derivative bonds, the so called “toxic” assets, are backed by real assets. They are worth something. To assume they are worthless is just plain wrong.

The financial tsunami is a paper tiger. In case you don’t know it, our entire financial system is based on thin air. Those dollar bills with which you buy your groceries are actually worth about as much as a jar of…well, you know! Probably less!!! They are physically worth the cost of the paper and ink. They are worth something more because we choose to believe they are worth something more. In the old days, our money was based on actual silver and gold reserves. Those days are long gone. Now the value of our money is based on a complicated formula rooted in the full faith and credit of the United States government; in other words, nothing.

The toxic assets, on the other hand, do have something backing them. They are secured by houses and automobiles. Given how weak the dollar has been against other currencies over the past few years, maybe I would prefer a toxic asset. Even when the dollar has gone up vis-à-vis the Pound and Euro, it is still substantially weaker than it was just a few years ago when the Euro was a joke. Given that the government is now embarking on the largest spending bill in the history of our Union, inflation may make those toxic assets look more and more attractive.

Just so you know, the “mark to market” rule, as it is currently being enforced, has only been around since 2007. This isn’t some long standing principle upon which our economic system is based. So its modification to provide for a realistic value of bank assets is not that big of deal. This new way of looking at bank assets is destroying us.

My late Aunt Josephine used to say some people are so smart they're stupid. That is the case here. It is time to modify the "mark to market" rule.

Obama's Scare Tactics

Are you scared? Barack Obama wants you to be. He says that if the stimulus package as drafted by Nancy Pelosi isn’t passed, it would be a catastrophe. He says an economic downturn would occur from which America would never recover.

Horse manure!!!! My father-in-law used to say, things never get as good as people say they are going to get, but never get as bad either. The 1982 recession was worse than this. The job losses are tragic. It is bad out there. But good times will be back, and quicker than you can imagine in this day and age of instant communication and transfer of capital. Obama should be ashamed of himself. The American public deserves better than to be scared out of its wits to pass what by any measure is a traditional, Democratic spending plan, only on steroids. Do you really want your tax dollars to fund an $850,000.00 frisbee golf course?

Certainly reform is in order. Non-regulated hedge funds, indecipherable financial securities, and no-money down loans need to be curbed. I have beaten the energy issue to death and I won’t repeat it here. The biggest failure in the Bush presidency was the massive run-up of the national debt. Spending at levels that are going to come down the pike very shortly is like trying to cure an alcoholic with a case of whiskey. It won’t work.

And it will make the situation worse. The money has to come from somewhere. The government will either have to borrow it, or print it, on scales heretofore unimaginable. The result will be rampant inflation and skyrocketing interest rates. This isn’t theory, it is history and common sense. If the government borrows the money, they will be competing with the private sector for capital, and have to pay increasingly higher interest rates to sell its bonds. Trillions of dollars have already been printed up and shoved into the economy. That money has to land somewhere…and it will land in goods and services with the traditional too much money chasing too few goods.

Here are the true, scary statistics. The entire amount of goods produced by the United States economy is around $14 trillion. The national debt, as of August of 2008, was $10.6 trillion. The debt ceiling is now raised to $11.3 trillion...almost equal to one year's Gross Domestic Product. Obama, in one spending package alone, is going to spend in excess of $1 trillion, on top of the already existing record breaking national debt. This package would equal the equivelent of spending $648,000.00 every year since the birth of Christ. The debt service on the national debt is about 4.9%, or $6.86 billion, per year. The national debt currently is approaching $38,000.00 for every person in the United States, excluding illegal aliens, which is why he probably wants to grant them amnesty...sort of lightening the load. This economy will never be able to sustain that kind of debt load and service. On top of that, Obama intends to tax the most productive segments of our society to pay for it, small businesses.

Stabilizing the banking system will do more to help this economy than any stimulus the government can spend. The cure as proposed by Obama and his Congress is really what this country should be afraid of. There will be catastrophe.