Published - Idaho State Journal, 2/27/11

So far, common sense, reason, and economic realities are prevailing over nonsensical, illusory, and ideological inanity in the “megaloads” issue in Idaho. In what should be a no-brainer issue, with crude oil prices once again approaching the $100 per barrel level, Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips are being allowed to ship their large pieces of equipment across northern Idaho into Montana.

ConocoPhillips is currently shipping the second of four massive coke drums, used in oil refining, to their refinery in Billings via the Port of Lewiston in Northern Idaho. Exxon Mobil has been jumping regulatory hurtles in their quest to transport 300 “megaloads” of massive mining equipment to their tar-sands project in Alberta, again via the Port of Lewiston.

Last week the House Transportation Committee in Boise defeated legislation that would require an extensive hearing process to be conducted before Exxon Mobil could begin their shipments from Lewiston to Sweetgrass, Montana where they will cross the border into Alberta.

Also last week, Idaho Transportation Director Brian Ness issued the first permit for “megaload” transportation of the mining equipment for the Alberta oil-sands project to begin leaving the Port of Lewiston. As Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry President, Alex LaBeau said, “Commonsense prevailed Monday…People understand this is a well-thought out proposal that will not only protect our highways, but also bring infrastructure improvements to Highway 12 at no cost to taxpayers. The decision is a victory for Idaho’s economy and the regional economy.” The Idaho Department of Commerce estimates the economic benefit of those shipments to be about $70 million to the state.

US Highway 12 has been a critical component to the East-West transportation corridor since 1926, stretching 2500 miles from the Pacific coast in Washington to downtown Detroit, Michigan. As has been the case with the extensive US highway system, Highway 12 was created for transportation purposes, in other words, the conveyance of people and goods over extensive distances. The fact that Idaho’s stretch of Highway 12 is a scenic byway is due to the topography of the region, not the reason for the highway itself.

The Alberta oil-sands project is important for North American oil production. The U.S. currently uses over 22 million barrels of oil per day, and 58% of that is imported to meet our demands from transportation to manufacturing. Over 22% of our oil comes from Canada and Mexico. The Alberta oil sands project is expected to produce up to three million barrels of oil per day within the next few years, which will lessen our dependence on oil from the Middle East and Venezuela, which is currently ruled by an anti-American dictator.

Still perplexing in this mix is how the Obama administration is able to defy court orders to lift the ban on U.S. offshore drilling. I fear this is another instance where radical ideology clashes with economic realities, and we pay the price for it.

According to the Department of the Interior, the U.S. continental shelf contains 115 billion barrels of oil and 633 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, which is enough to meet current U.S. demand for oil and natural gas for 15 years and 27 years, respectively. Environmental extremists have thus far been successful in crippling access to our own natural resources. Cuba, meanwhile, has been granting oil leases to China, Russia, and Venezuela to drill within 60 miles of the Florida coast, closer than any U.S. corporations now can because of Obama’s ban. One of the extremists’ arguments has been that it will take years to put such wells, as well as Anwar, the massive verified oil field in Alaska, into production. Well, it’s been years that they’ve been blocking our access, which means we could be reaping the benefits of less foreign oil dependence if they hadn’t been obstructionists to the process.

The volatility in oil and other commodities we’ve seen recently underscores the fact that scarcity of resources in the face of increasing demand creates price volatility, which price we, as end consumers, end up footing the bill for. And the fact remains, in spite of all the presidential grandiloquence and posturing on alternative energy sources, we are still a society heavily dependent on petroleum. And until Detroit can efficaciously install windmills and solar panels on our cars, we will remain so.

There’s a plethora of anti-oil-sands and anti-”megaload” material being produced by radical extremist groups available on the internet and in print form. Some of it is downright entertaining, as they seek to block the “megaload” shipments because of global warming, “contamination” of the scenic byways, adversely affecting fishing, and even George W. Bush. As is always the case with such extremists, facts and economic realities are at sharp odds with their myopic, idyllic, and narrow ideology. 

Published - Idaho State Journal, 02/20/11

In 1986, Speaker of the House Tip O’Neil declared President Ronald Reagan’s 1987 Budget “DOA,” or Dead on Arrival because it recommended “draconian cuts” of about 3% off of a $994 billion budget. In a facetious twist, the Office of Management and Budget delivered the budget to Capital Hill in an ambulance on the chest of a supine OMB public affairs assistant, who, when delivered to the House Budget committee room, sat up, Lazarus-like, to prove that the budget was still alive.

Now fast-forward to the 2012 edition of the presidential budget request, and we see numbers which the House Speaker should have delivered to the House, perhaps not in an ambulance with flat-lining EKG monitors, but rather in a hearse. And just for good measure, with a stake driven through the heart of it.

Words cannot accurately describe the staggeringly outrageous figures themselves or the disconnect with economic realities in that massive document. It’s further clear that the president didn’t get the message from the November election.

With proposed spending of $3.7 trillion, and projected revenue of $2.6 trillion, the projected deficit for 2012 is a whopping $1.1 trillion. Based on the president’s own budget figures, the FY 2015 figures are $4.2 trillion in spending, $3.6 trillion in revenue, and a deficit of $768 billion.

The spending figures are astronomically illogical and unsustainable, but even more alarming is the projected increase of 65% in revenue. Where is that mythical 65% increase in revenue coming from that allows Obama to brag that the deficit will be reduced over the next five years? For those of you who subscribe to the notion that we’re “taxed enough already,” brace yourselves, for there’s only one way that revenue can be increased by 65%. And it brings to mind the classic idiom of killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

As incomprehensible as the budget recommendation is, even more disturbing is the way the president represents it. In his press conference when he rolled it out (should’ve been on a morgue gurney), Obama shockingly declared, “On the budget, what my budget does is to put forward some tough choices, some significant spending cuts so that by the middle of this decade our annual spending will match our annual revenues. We will not be adding more to the national debt. It's -- so, to use a -- sort of, an analogy that families are familiar with, we're not going to be running up the credit card anymore. That's important; and that's hard to do. But it's necessary to do, and I think that the American people understand that.”

Such a statement, in light of figures taken directly from his own budget, can only be characterized as an immense detachment from reality. Where are the “spending cuts” if total spending increases from $3.7 to $4.2 trillion? There is no cut in spending, perhaps only a cut in the rate of growth of that spending. And thank heavens for that, since the total government debt has increased by nearly 100% in just four years, having just surpassed the $14 trillion mark.

And yet still he has the audacity to declare, “we’re not going to be running up the credit card anymore,” Remember, this is his own budget. Either he didn’t know what was in it and was just saying what he thought we wanted to hear, or he knew full well what was in it, and still told us what he thought we wanted to hear. I’m convinced the latter is the case, and he just thinks we’re oblivious to the facts or that we’re too illiterate to know that he’s obfuscating the truth. That makes his statement no less than a prevarication, of the bald-faced variety.

It is with regret that I’ve come to the conclusion that there is little connection between reality and what this president says. We saw it through the health care debate, consistently making assertions that we know now were just not so. He gives new meaning to the old quip, “How do you know when a lawyer is lying?” Answer, “When his lips are moving.”

The President’s budget is supposed to be a blueprint of what the executive branch foresees from a spending and revenue standpoint. It is not enacted, unless adopted by Congress. The House of Representatives creates the budget that the government lives by, and we can only pray that our Congressmen are smarter than the president thinks we are.

We make a mistake if we assume that what he says is true and reliable. Don’t accept the sound bites at face value. A new level of scrutiny is required of all of us as citizens to sort out the facts from the propaganda that the president and the still-doting press spin for public consumption.

Published - Idaho State Journal, 02/14/10

For some, the mere utterance of the word “nullification” conjures up images of voodoo incantations to exorcize evil spirits, or of “Gomers running around the block yelling ‘Citizen’s arrest.’” For some inexplicable reason, such images were never invoked when California, and 13 other states, through nullification, established their own marijuana laws to override federal laws, or when 25 states, through nullification, invalidated the Real ID Act just three years ago. Apparently the concept of nullification is just fine when it suits their ideological purposes, but heaven forbid when it doesn’t!

There are now 27 states, including Idaho, challenging Obamacare, 12 of which are pursuing the nullification route. Nullification is a doctrine that states can invalidate federal laws deemed unconstitutional.

There are several components to nullification that are critical to understand. The first is to understand the Supremacy Clause in the Constitution. Article VI Clause 2 asserts that treaties and laws established by congress are the “Supreme Law of the Land.” The pertinent portion of the clause reads, “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof… and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.” There is a critical qualifier in that statement, “in pursuance thereof.” This qualifier makes clear that such laws passed by Congress are only the supreme law of the land if they are in accordance with the enumerated powers granted Congress by the Constitution. In other words, federal law is supreme over conflicting state statutes only insofar as congressional actions are constitutional.

Taking this one step further, as Thomas E. Woods in his book “Nullification” explains, “Nullification begins with the axiomatic point that a federal law that violates the Constitution is no law at all. It is void and of no effect. Nullification simply pushes this uncontroversial point a step further: if a law is unconstitutional and therefore void and of no effect, it is up to the states, the parties to the federal compact, to declare it so and thus refuse to enforce it…Nullification provides a shield between the people of a state and an unconstitutional law from the federal government.“

The states, as parties to the “federal compact” have the authority to invalidate federal mandates as granted by the Tenth Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights. “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Since the powers granted the federal government are specified in the Constitution, hence qualifying them as “enumerated powers,” all other rights are held by the states or the people.

Courts can declare laws unconstitutional, but the states can too. It’s illogical to presume that the federal judiciary, which obviously is a component of the federal government, is the sole and ultimate arbiter of what is constitutionally allowable by the federal government. Nullification in essence is the states’ refusal to enforce and implement unconstitutional laws.

As Woods explains,” Since the federal courts are themselves a branch of the federal government, how can the people be expected to consider them impartial arbiters?..So in a dispute between the states and the federal government, the resolution is to come from …the federal government?”

Thomas Jefferson understood this dilemma, which is why he said, “every state can of its own authority nullify within its territory ‘all assumptions of power by others’—i.e., all perceived violations of the Constitution by the federal government.” Although most such disputes wend their way to the Supreme Court, states have not abrogated their authority to resist federal mandates, and last I checked, the Bill of Rights, including the 10^th Amendment, has not been repealed.

California has done this very thing in regard to the growth, sale, distribution, and use of marijuana for “medicinal” purposes. In direct violation of federal law, California has rejected federal mandates on the subject and flaunts their independence by ensuring the feds can’t invoke interstate commerce restrictions.

In 2005 congress passed the Real ID Act, which was intended as a security and identification measure. The law has been denounced by 25 states, refusing to implement it because of concerns over privacy and funding. The “law” is still on the books of the Federal Registry, yet implementation has been postponed numerous times because of the significant state resistance. In essence, the law is “null and void” due to state refusal to implement it.

To allow the federal government complete autonomy in implementation of any legislation according to their whims, regardless of constitutional authority, is to acquiesce to unmitigated tyranny. Federal mandates must be kept in check by the states, per their constitutional authority, and the “consent of the governed,” us!

Published - Idaho State Journal, 2/6/11

Sounding the call for education reform, several notable organizations have courageously weighed in on the much-needed repair of our arguably broken educational system. The Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry, The Idaho Business Coalition for Education Excellence, the Boise Chamber of Commerce, and Melaleuca Inc. are calling for a renaissance of Idaho education. Most notably, the J.A and Kathryn Albertson Foundation has explicitly called for reform.

The Albertson Foundation proclaimed in a full-page ad in last Sunday’s Idaho State Journal, “For the first time in our history as a supporter of Idaho’s education system, we are compelled to sound the alarm – loudly and widely. Given the current economic climate and our poor position in the global workforce, the status quo is not an option and will only harm Idaho.”

They continued, “We don’t take this stand in support of the Governor and the State Department’s education plan lightly. As a friend and supporter of education we wade into this issue circumspectly, but we wade in nonetheless. The reform efforts we’ve funded have not worked, have had limited impact, or were never systemically adopted. At all levels and repeatedly, we’ve met with political indecision, territorialism, and a lack of political will. The historical focus on barriers, challenges, excuses and maintaining the status quo permeates our education system and stakeholder groups.”

Our educational system is not producing the results required to meet the needs of an increasingly global workforce, where Idaho school children are prepared to compete with kids around the world. The Albertson Foundation cited some disturbing data to illustrate. “Only 1 in 4 high school graduates is deemed college ready, and many will require remediation after high school. (ACT Profile Report, Idaho Graduating Class, 2009) Idaho is in the bottom 10 states for college-going rates and dead last in the nation for our postsecondary retention rates. (National Information Center for Higher Education Policy and Analysis). In the future, most jobs will be either for highly skilled workers or the low-skilled working poor. Our system prepares students for the latter. (Lumina Foundation, Increasing College Success: The Economic Imperative). By 2018, 61% of jobs in Idaho will require postsecondary credentials. 146,000 skilled jobs will be waiting, but Idaho students are not on track to be qualified to fill them. (Lumina Foundation, A Stronger Nation Through Higher Education, Sept. 2010, Idaho Profile).”

More money or continued funding at current levels is not the answer. As the Albertson Foundation, which has invested over $400 million into Idaho schools, declared, “While money matters, it is NOT the solution. Now is the time, while resources are scarce, to end inefficiencies, remove contractual roadblocks, incentivize collaboration and results, and get rid of policies that perpetuate silos, territorialism, and the duplication of services.”

As Albert Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” We’ve been doing the same thing over and over again with our educational system, even pumping more and more money into it, while expecting different results than we’ve been achieving. It’s time for a paradigm shift where we think differently and enact a system that produces different results. Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna’s plan seems to do just that. It challenges the status quo which means we’ll be excoriated by cries from the special interest groups, primarily the teacher’s union, over how devastating it is.

That raises a critical point about unions. Their primary objective is not superior end-product results, but rather union jobs. United Auto Workers’ primary goal is not to produce quality vehicles any more than the Idaho Education Association’s primary goal is to produce well-educated children. Their primary objectives are teacher jobs, contracts, and benefits which may have an affect on our children’s academic performance and job preparedness, but have proven to be causally impotent. After all, look at the results.

Alan Mulally, President of Ford Motor, refused a government bailout. He changed policy, implemented a paradigm shift that challenged the UAW and the status quo, changed policies and the culture within Ford, and now produces some of the best automobiles in the world. He did that with less, having not taken the proffered bailout, and produced exceptional results.

Tom Luna’s plan offers a similar opportunity for retooling our education system to reshape results, as Alan Mulally’s changes at Ford yielded superior end products.

The Albertson Foundation ad concludes, “We can either choose to support education reform, or the choice will be made for us when we can no longer supply innovators or a workforce capable of fueling a vibrant, innovative and globally focused Idaho economy.” Is Luna’s plan the elixir to all that ails our schools? Perhaps not, but it’s a start. What we have is not working. And just like in investing, throwing good money after bad is illogical.

Published - Idaho State Journal, 01/29/11

For those of us who were hoping for an actual analysis of the condition of our country from the perfunctory State of the Union address Tuesday night came away sorely disappointed. Rather than a factual accounting of where we are as a nation, we were treated to the opening salvo of the 2012 presidential race: we got a campaign speech.

There were some references to some of the problems facing the nation but, as has been his wont, Obama’s answer was for more “investment,” to be understood as “more spending.” Government spending is not the panacea for all that ails the country, as we’ve seen firsthand over the past few years as government spending, to be read as “robbing from Peter to pay Paul,” in reality exacerbates our problems, rather than providing solutions for them. And as George Bernard Shaw once said, “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul.” This past couple of years with the emergence of the Tea (Taxed Enough Already) Party types, the “Peters” are making their voices heard. Perhaps it’s time the “Pauls” start speaking up as well.

For example, our national debt has now exceeded $14 trillion while our national economy is just over $15 trillion. When congress changed leadership in 2006 the national debt was just over $8 trillion. And the budget deficit went from $247 billion to over $1.5 trillion just this week.

A temporary freeze in discretionary spending is not going to solve the spending problem as that only accounts for about 40% of federal spending. The majority of federal spending goes toward entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and federal pensions. And every year that percentage of the federal budget dedicated to non-discretionary or entitlement programs increases. This is unsustainable as it is impossible to perpetuate programs that take in $1 of revenue, and pay out $1.20 in benefits. This is a critical issue that must be addressed by someone in Washington. Let’s hope it’s sooner rather than later.

The “Pauls” in this equation are the recipients, the payees of government largesse. While it’s politically unpalatable to talk about reducing benefits from the entitlement programs, the necessity of doing so is obvious. One of the president’s themes the other night was sacrifice, and a little is going to be required of all of us to prevent the utter financial collapse of the country.

It would’ve been good to hear the president say, “The stimulus hasn’t worked. I promised unemployment wouldn’t go over 8% if we passed it, and here we are at 9.6% and the job situation still isn’t improving. Counting those who have given up on finding a job, we have real unemployment over 17%, nearly as high as it was during the Great Depression. And all those ‘shovel-ready’ jobs that were promised to be completed with the Stimulus, well, not only weren’t there very many of those, but we still have our highways and infrastructure crumbling. So I’m authorizing that the last $100 billion from the stimulus that hasn’t been spent be returned to the Treasury and am requiring that ACORN, the states, and all the specious research funds dispensed with the Stimulus be returned to pay off some of the debt I’ve racked up these first two years of my term. And we’re going to repeal much of the regulation passed these past two years that have shackled the private sector and prevented the job growth that should be occurring with record corporate profits.”

Instead, what we got was a proposed spending freeze of $400 billion, which is little more than a cork to plug the “gusher” that he and his compliant congress drilled for us.

As long as we’re fantasizing over what he might have said, I would have loved hearing him quote from Bill Clinton, and echo his phrase, “The era of big government is over.” That would be a significant admission that as Ronald Reagan explained, “Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem.”

It would’ve been great to hear him admit that the health-care reform never was about reducing the cost of health care, but was about the government taking it over. And that since the Congressional Budget Office cooked the books on the proposal to have it appear deficit-neutral, he was going to sign the House bill that repealed Obamacare to avoid adding trillions of dollars more to the federal debt and deficit.

The State of the Union should be just that: a realistic recapitulation of the condition of the country, and specific recommendations to address each of those issues. And rather than moving to the center, as some have observed, he simply moderated his tone while still professing that every prescription to the country’s ailments is still government based.