Rosewood Bitters - Why We Have No Jobs

MICHAEL STANLEY BAND SINGS THE ROSEWOOD BITTERS

Here are more examples of regulations strangling American jobs. If these stories make you want to rant…they should. Welcome to :progressive" America.

1) The California Department of Fish and Game was on the losing end of a lawsuit filed by various environmental groups against it for failure to do environmental impact studies on fisheries, hatcheries and stocked ponds operated by the Department. While promulgating regulations for itself, the CDFG decided it would be a good idea if it would regulate private fisheries and ponds also. This was not required by the court order, and went way beyond the scope of the lawsuit. It is now proposing draconian restrictions on privately run hatcheries, private fishing lakes and ponds. The impact statements now foisted on private hatcheries and fisheries will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per company and require impact evaluations right down to the grass and weeds around the pond. Translate, there will be no trout stocking in California. If implemented, it will in effect end fishing in California, and cost thousands upon thousands of jobs. The private fisheries have banded together and have filed suit against another whack job agency with not enough to do in hopes of blocking these regulations. What a shame.

2) You have probably heard the story about Gibson Guitar Company, the largest guitar manufacturer in the United States. The Nashville based company uses rare woods in its products, specifically rosewood and ebony which it buys from India and Madagascar. Federal agents raided several of its facilities and seized millions of dollars of these imported woods. The Feds claim Gibson violated United States law claiming that Gibson cannot import wood from a foreign company that may have violated a foreign law. Huh?  Gibson, as well as just about every stringed instrument maker in the country, uses the same agents to purchase these woods as well as the same compliance agents. There is a debate as to weather a 2009 rosewood shipment was exported to the United States by an exporter that violated Madagascar law. The raw wood could not be exported legally, but Madagascar law states that a finished product can…and the wood was precut into specified lengths prior to shipment, and received the stamp of approval from the Madagascar government. But our crack Federal officers determined that it did violate Madagascar law notwithstanding what the Madagascar government said. Yes….you read that right. Funny thing, none of the other guitar companies were raided, all of whom did the same thing. Gibson, however, is a non-union shop, and its owners are Republicans who donate substantial sums of money to the Republican Party. What do you think? Mmmmmm?

Both of these stories would be funny if they weren’t so sad. This is how our country has degenerated…a bunch of bureaucratic thugs. In California, a pissed off agency who decides to take it out on private industry with NO authority. In Tennessee, the United States government has decided it can interpret Madagascar law better than Madagascar, and do a little political persecution at the same time.

And you wonder why we have no jobs.

Jerry Lewis and the Mean and Nasty 30 Somethings

I know that the world didn’t grind to a halt, but in case you didn’t hear about it, Jerry Lewis did not host the Muscular Dystrophy telethon this year. So much for Jerry’s kids! It apparently was not an amicable breakup. From I was able to glean from those reliable entertainment news sites, someone in the MDA got a burr up his/her butt and unceremoniously fired him, except someone forgot to tell him. For awhile it looked like they would kiss and make up for another year, but that too collapsed as air time approached. Instead of an icon running the show, there was an amalgamation of stars in a truncated show after an announcement on air that Jerry Lewis had “retired.”

Time marches on, and change is inevitable. One of my pet peeves is old war horses that don’t know when to pack it in and move on. But this was different. Jerry Lewis was the Muscular Dystrophy telethon. Those WERE Jerry’s kids. He was so identified with the organization it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. Maybe that was the problem.

Or maybe not!!! Why do I sense a thirty something smart ass in the wood pile? Not that I have any inside information or anything, but my experience with folks between the ages of 20 – 35 has not been good these past few years. This generation is the most narcissistic, arrogant, and self centered that the post war baby boom has produced to date. Raised on tech, they have no social skills and rely entirely on technology as a moral compass. 

People this age have always elbowed their way into positions of authority in show business, espcially in television. I have had some interaction with show business types as of late, and I can tell you to watch out. It is a culture like none I have experienced before. No patience. No understanding. No social skills. No decorum. No loyalty. And everything centered on “me”. It is scary.

I have also experienced it in some of the locals around here. They’re not all that way, but more than a goodly portion of them have no respect for anyone or anything but themselves. I can’t tell you how many times I have bumped into young adults of that age group who don’t even have the social grace to say hello. They just stare at you, and when they speak, it usually turns into some kind of chronic whining. They are entitled. Unless you are there to serve them, they want no part of you.

I would like to think that sense of entitlement comes from the government, but mostly it comes from over indulgent parents who have given these kids everything they want when they wanted it. Now the kids want more. There is no working for the future. Everything in their life has to be instant gratification whether it is communication, houses, jobs, or sex. If it is not provided to them, watch out. And if they can’t get a job after college, Mom and Dad better get used to supporting them in the style to which they are accustomed.

Next year, mention Jerry Lewis around telethon time and you will get “Jerry who?” Fame is fleeting no matter how long you may have had it. But I can just see some smart 35 year old account executive sitting at an MDA meeting this past year saying “Time to get rid of the old goat. That senile dude is bringing us down, man.”

And if that’s case, shame on them. And if we don’t start to clean up our act with another generation of self absorbed, self centered tech junkies with no social skills coming down the pike, shame on us.

YSU Faculty Non-Strike: The Frog and the Scorpion. Vote YES on Issue 2!

A scorpion was standing by a river trying to get to the other side. Looking around, he called upon a frog to carry him to the other side. “No” said the frog. “You will sting me and surely we both should die”. The scorpion replied that he was certainly not suicidal, and the frog had nothing to worry about. So the frog allowed the scorpion to climb on his back and they proceeded across the river. ½ way across, the scorpion twitched his tail and stung the frog. “Now you have done it” shouted the frog. “Why would you sting me knowing that we will both now drown?” “It’s my nature!” replied the scorpion as they sank to the bottom of the river.

I am so impressed by the largesse of the Youngstown State University faculty. Their decision not to go out on strike warms the cockles of my heart. And the news media is positively batty over their generous decision to allow the students to resume their very expensive education this week. Look how reasonable the local union is acting.

This past summer, Youngstown State instituted ANOTHER 3.5% tuition increase supposedly to make up for cuts in this year’s Ohio state budget. But the unions saw that money, and decided they wanted a raise. A “fact finder” decided that all of the money should be awarded to the faculty union, even though other unions had yet to have their shot at the gold ring. When the Board of Trustees said no, the union voted to strike, and gave the university its 10 day notice. Then almost immediately after giving the notice, the union abruptly changed its mind and agreed to work under the old contract until a new one could be worked out

Nowhere and I mean nowhere, did I see anything mentioned anywhere about State Issue 2 (SB 5) being the motivating factor behind all of this union civic mindedness. These folks aren’t this way by nature. The unions at YSU are just the opposite. In fact, public employee unions in this area are among the most strident in the country, going out on strike before it was legal for public employees to strike! Ask the folks in Boardman.

I would have loved to been a little bird in the room as the frantic calls poured in from the Democratic Party and the union bosses’ telling them now is not the time to go on strike. This strike would have been the topic on every radio talk show in the state, not to mention SB 5 supporters’ commercials. This kind of behavior is exactly what SB 5 was designed to prevent. How is the media missing this story? Can you imagine? A strike by state university professors right before a statewide referendum designed to prevent this type of public employee “behavior”?

Issue 2 is the referendum on Ohio Senate Bill 5. Here are some easy questions to determine whether you support Issue 2 (Senate Bill 5) or oppose it.

1) Do you believe public employees should have the right to strike? If you say no, vote yes on Issue 2.

2) Should public employees be required to participate in a uniform health care plan as provided for by the state rather than negotiate individual plans? If you say yes, vote yes on Issue 2.

3) Should public employees be required to pay at least 10% of the cost of their health care plan like employees in the private sector? If you say yes, vote yes on Issue 2.

4) Should public employees be required to pay at least 10% of their pension costs like employees in the private sector? If you say yes, vote Yes on Issue 2.

5) Should public employees be allowed to accumulate sick days and vacation days and be paid a lump sum for them when they retire, sometimes in excess of a $100,000.00? If you say no, vote Yes on Issue 2.

6) Should teachers’ job security and pay be determined by seniority or by their effectiveness as teachers? If you think the latter, vote Yes on Issue 2.

7) Should employee pay be based on the ability of a political subdivision to pay salaries, or based on an outside arbiter telling the subdivision they have to give raises, and put a levy on the ballot to pay for it? If you believe the former, then vote Yes on Issue 2.

The professors at YSU have dodged the bullet by heeding the story of the scorpion and the frog. But without Issue 2 being on the ballot this fall, school's out for summer, and all fall too!  Remember, that trip across the river is a two way trip.  The scorpion might not sting going across, but coming back is a different story. 

Vote Yes on Issue 2.

A Safety Deposit Box in the Cayman Islands

It gets frustrating week after week pleading for Obama and his liberal henchmen to do what is right for the country. I am personally sickened by his tone deafness evidenced by the foreign made bus fiasco last week and his millionaire Martha Vineyard vacation this week and next. His aides are attempting to frame it as a “working” vacation, which it probably is to an extent. But the visuals of him and pies and golf and his wife’s insistence that she go there separately at the taxpayer expense is downright disgusting.

In the meantime, we are supposed to sitting around waiting for his “C U in September” jobs plan. Where the hell has he been for the last three years? I don’t want to hear he is “entitled” to a vacation. He wanted this job. Now he’s got. He cavorted around the world right after his inauguration. You couldn’t tell where his apology tour ended and his vacations began. They all ran together. Not to mention his wife’s sortie to Spain. He has played more rounds of golf than any recent sitting president. His idea of leadership is to wait for Congress to call him and tell him what to do. Now enough is enough. Go back to Washington and at least look the part.

Those of you who know me know I like to dabble in the stock market, so I watch the business news…A LOT!!! This morning one of the CNBC guests was Mark Faber of the Gloom, Doom and Boom report. His analysis of things has been spot on for the past several years as he raised the hue and cry while the rest of Wall Street frittered.

This morning he talked about gold. He said that gold is too high to buy right now, but you should grab it on the dips. And he didn’t mean gold stocks or ETF’s. He recommends that you hold physical gold, like bars or coins, and keep them in a safety deposit box. He then went on to enumerate a whole list of nations and cities you where you might want to maintain a safety deposit box. The United States was not on the list. The interviewer pointed that out to him, and he again listed the places he would store gold and refused further comment.

If there is any indication how distrustful business is of these jackasses in Washington, it can’t get any clearer than this. He says 30% of your portfolio should be in physical gold maintained outside of the country. Without saying it, he confirmed what many of the “right wing whackos” have been warning about. They know how people like Obama and his crew operate. If they view anything as a threat to their economic philosophy, they move to crush it.

Marc Faber apparently remembers Executive Order 6102 signed by Franklin Roosevelt criminalizing the ownership of gold as he moved forward with his New Deal. His rationalization was that hoarding gold impeded economic development making the depression worse. Over the next few years numerous orders were issued to replace previous ones declared invalid by the courts…but the net effect was that it wall illegal to hold physical gold until Gerald Ford's administration. In the mix, there were rumors of Roosevelt’s enforcement arm raiding banks and seizing safety deposit boxes to get those horrible gold hoarders. The record is unclear as to exactly what the government did and didn’t do seizing private safety deposit boxes…but the conclusion is that something happened. Where there is smoke, there is fire!!

Has the nation reached a tipping point when respected financial planners tell clients to buy gold and get it the hell out of the country? The answer is a very clear yes. Obama has lied over and over and over again as to his intentions and content behind his legislative initiatives in the first two years of his presidency, and his regulatory initiatives he is using now to circumvent the Republican House.

I repeatedly say that when it comes to Barack Obama, don’t look at what he says. Look at what he does!!! And you, too, may be looking for a safety deposit box in the Cayman Islands.

Youngstown State Faculty Strike and SB 5

Let me understand this. In Ohio, the Republicans took control of all state level elected positions, plus both houses of the Ohio congress, and the Ohio Supreme Court. Governor Kasich faced a multi-billion dollar shortfall in the state budget which must be balanced as required in the Ohio constitution. As part of his effort to balance the budget, and to bring sanity to all levels of government in Ohio, Kasich supported a piece of legislation which came to be identified as Senate Bill 5, or SB5.

This bill returns the law to where it was 20 years ago, prohibiting public employees from striking. It requires that all public employees pay a part of both their health care costs and pension contributions. It also eliminates binding arbitration from third party arbitrators who have had the propensity to order wage increases based on everything BUT the current fiscal situation of the government entity at issue. In other words, they can’t order a pay increase based on a supposed future tax hike.

It was a contentious battle in the Ohio legislature, but it passed and was signed into law. Next, the public employee unions took their over the top behavior and filed for an initiative to repeal SB 5 in the November election. The SEIU showed up in Ohio and hit the inner city neighborhoods for signatures, not telling these folks that their taxes would go up if SB5 is repealed, and that the only ones who benefit from the repeal are the unionized employees.

They also hit the university campuses telling the students that SB5 “destroys the middle class.” But it doesn’t tell them that it could cause their state university tuition to go up because it would give back to their faculty members the right to strike and cause another tuition hike.

The effort to repeal SB5 was particular virulent in Youngstown, Ohio…home of Youngstown State University and one of the strongest Democratic enclaves in Ohio, if not the United States. The Chairman of the Democratic Party just about destroyed the local Chamber of Commerce because it supported SB5 making a jack-ass out of himself in the process.  Youngstown State is also a hot bed of public employee union activity with a hair trigger propensity to strike.

The final piece of the picture occurred last spring when the Youngstown State University Board of Trustees raised tuition another 3.5%, as they have done almost every year, the maximum allowed by state law.

Here’s the fun part. The YSU faculty is currently negotiating its new contract, the last it can negotiate under pre-SB5 rules. And these idiots have voted to give the university a 10 day strike notice. The arbitrator looked at that 3.5% tuition hike and decided that just about all of it should go to the faculty. Of course, it only makes sense because the administration of the university has been giving themselves hefty raises “to keep up with comparable positions in other parts of the country.” Ya…like New York or San Francisco where the cost of living is 10 times higher than here. Of course, the tuition hike was actually instituted to replace reduced funding from the state to the university, or so they say, which has nothing to do with salary increases.

Do I understand this correctly? The faculty at Youngstown State University is going to go out on strike to get salary recommendations from an arbitrator who wants to award an unpopular 3.5% tuition hike to one set of wage increases benefiting faculty members who are already grossly over paid…AND they want to strike right before a vote to repeal the piece of legislation that was designed to prevent this very scenario from happening in the first place…AND in a part of the state where the repeal effort needs the most support…AND effecting a group who might otherwise vote to repeal it but for their tuition hike and their teachers going on strike as the students have to get a third job to pay for all of this? Sweet!

As my Aunt Josephine said…some people are so smart they're stupid.

Downgrade: The Death of Keynesian Economics

Those of you who have ever taken an economics class probably learned like me to hate those graphs with all of those intersecting lines. To me, equilibrium was something that kept me from getting dizzy. Economic equilibrium had just the opposite effect on me. I wanted to run out of the classroom screaming as those graphs started spinning round and round.

One of the first words out of the mouth of my first economic professor was the name John Maynard Keynes, a British economist who died in the late 1940’s, and came up with some clever economic theories during the Great Depression. At that time, political, business and economic leaders were trying to make sense of what was happening in the world economies. Of course, they were looking in the wrong places. Much of the Great Depression was due to political reasons in Europe (the train track gauge from country to country was different, for example) and bad policy by the Federal Reserve Bank here in the states which continually upped reserve requirements for the banks to the point where over 90% of American currency printed by the Federal Reserve was being held in the banks.

Keynes, however, decided that what the world needed was a new economic theory. Communism and National Socialism (Nazis) were running amok in the world, and he attempted to come up with a theory that would allow the democracies to take a more activist role in their respective countries’ economy. Thus Keynesian economics was born.

It is not hard to understand. Keynes theorized that governments could circumvent normal business cycles by trying to achieve more efficiency in a nation’s economy. Although he admitted that if left alone, any problems in any economy would eventually correct itself in the long run, he also believed that in the long run, we would all be dead. This type of thinking during the Great Depression gave political cover to those who were caught up in the socialist utopian theories of the day without having to actually call themselves socialists. Massive government spending and debt in areas of the economy that needed correction was better than extended periods of displacement and discomfort. It would speed the normal correction along.

And it worked once. Keynes propounded his theories in the 1930’s, and the massive government spending resulting from World War II proved his point. My economics teacher was quick to point out that it was the huge deficit spending to build the war arsenal that ended the Great Depression. He was right. Massive spending on hard assets….tanks, airplanes, steel, concrete, trucks, jeeps, bombs and guns absolutely ended the Great Depression…and don’t forget all of those unemployed men enlisting or being drafted into the army. The economy was humming.

So American politicians decided that Keynesian theory was a winner, and it gave them an excuse to continue to meddle in the economy. If you were a leftist or a progressive or a liberal, you found your hero and justification to mold America into the place you thought it should be…a reflection in the social democratic eye of nations. Keynesian theory sanctified the ever increasing national debt.

Unfortunately, World War II was the only time Keynesian economics worked. Of course it worked…look at what they made with the money!!! But since then, government spending has been directed at everything BUT hard national assets. It has been directed towards social justice programs, welfare, entitlements…NOT roads, bridges, energy development, or as Obama has recently admitted, shovel ready projects that weren’t as shovel ready as he thought.

Less than 10% of Obama’s stimulus package went to those kinds of projects. What wasn’t sopped up the states to pay their bills and pension funds was directed towards liberal causes that produced little if any ripple effect through the economy. As one Democratic Congresswoman said: “We don’t need any more white blue collar construction jobs.”

Obama has now learned the hard way that is exactly what we needed. The downgrade by Standard and Poors, no matter how unjustified or justified it may be, is a stunning rebuke of Obama’s socialist policies hidden in the camouflage of Keynesian economics.

And it is not only Obama. Bush the 1st and 2nd, Carter, Johnson, Clinton, and to a lesser degree Nixon and Ford, all practiced Keynesian economics. Only Ronald Reagan saw it for what it was…a phony excuse to spend money where it ought not to be spent.

Those that practice Keynesian economics always forget one important thing. It’s not only how much you spend, it’s what you spend it on. The downgrade of American debt may finally mark the end of Keynesian economic theory. The country rejected it in last November's election. The European Union and the Euro are on the verge of collapse. China is attempting to end the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Standard and Poors simply is telling us enough is enough.

Maybe Keynesian economics will be buried once and for all.

And That, Mr. Greenberg, is Why Americans Tune Out Democrats

A recent article in the New York Times asked the rhetorical question: Why do voters tune out Democrats? It was with a dose of vinegar that Stanley Greenberg, author of the piece, stated: “I see clearly that voters feel ever more estranged from government — and that they associate Democrats with government.” Really? He is just figuring that out? But then he goes off the road. He further states: “If Democrats are going to be encumbered by that link, they need to change voters’ feelings about government.”

His premise is that the American people see government as corrupt. They see government representing all of those big, bad corporations and wealthy Wall Street types to the detriment of the little guy on the street. The Democrats have to change the perception, and go after all of those bad guys in order to get the confidence of the people back.

Of course, let’s start with the struggling little guy who pays NO federal income tax. In 1975, the percentage of American who paid no federal income tax was 17%. Now it is 53%. It doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out that the little guy is getting a pretty good deal, even if the big guys might be getting a better one. Case in point: General Electric.

But that’s just an aside. Americans have an innate distrust of government. What they are feeling is an oppressive government smothering them to death at the behest of whack-a-doodle special interests. It interferes in every aspect of their lives. It hinders their ability to make a living and provide for their families. Every new regulation, every new rule promulgated, every new compliance requirement, kills jobs. It costs the public money. And there is no more money.

I had a box in the back seat of my car with melted glue all over it and warnings in big black letters going up and down every side of the box. You had to see this thing. I was afraid to open the box to see what was inside the warnings were so dire. You know what it was? One of those squiggly light bulbs! I have kept the box to bring it with me when I give speeches as Exhibit A.  God forbid you use a regular light bulb you earth destroyer!!!!

The EPA has just stiffened ozone particulate regulations from 75 ppb (parts per billion) to 60 ppb. What does this mean? For the energy industry, it means about $90 billion over the next few years; for American drivers it means about $1.00/gallon. That is really going to encourage job growth.

The EPA is now attempting to impose by regulation the cap and trade bill defeated by Congress last year. Even the Democrats voted against that one. Yet the Obama EPA refuses to listen to the will of the American people and is implementing these horrendous provisions where lots of people will make trillions of dollars trading air credits at your cost and mine.  The money will come right from Joe Bag of Donut's pocket.

They want to regulate what you eat. They want to regulate how warm or cool you can keep your house. They want to regulate what you can drive. They want to regulate how you raise your children. They want to regulate, regulate, regulate…all of which is done by legal coercion. My favorite is the attempt to regulate water usage. Why? Conserve water for what? You take a shower. It goes down into the sewer. It goes through water treatment into the Mahoning River into the Beaver River into the Ohio River into the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico where it evaporates and flies through the air back to Meander Reservoir when it rains into the Mahoning Valley Sanitary District system into the water storage tank into the pipes then back to my shower. And the cycle starts all over again. Water is NOT a limited resource. It recycles NATURALLY. But some do-gooder in Washington…probably a Democrat….knows what is best for you.

In fact, if you look at all of the whack-a-doodle legislation that we have to deal with in our daily lives, you will find some do-gooder Democrat leading the charge with some pie in the sky cause that absolutely must be shoved down our throat to save the world, or make it fair.  God forbid life might be unfair.

And that, Mr. Greenberg, is the reason Americans tune out the Democrats.