Published-Idaho State Journal, 05/22/11

It’s always amusing to observe responses to my weekly missives. Some readers ascribe statements to me that I’ve not made; some attempt to twist what I say into something never said nor intended; and yet others read between the lines and attempt to tell me what I was really saying but didn’t. I’m a literalist, which means I usually say precisely what I mean, much to my family’s chagrin. There’s enough incertitude and dubiety in the world today that as a literalist, I’m obligated by my own values to not contribute to the untidiness of inference.

So when I wrote two weeks ago, “The media’s coverage of the death of Osama bin Laden this past week provided a historic case in duplicity and disingenuousness by both commission and omission,” I meant precisely that, that the media failed to analyze the removal of Osama in light of the present administration’s desire to treat them as American citizens with full access to our judicial system. Osama was not mirandized, no search warrant was issued for Osama’s hideout, and he was executed rather than taken into custody to face a lengthy trial, after being detained at GITMO, which Obama promised to close, and has since reneged on.

And when I stated, “In his speech Obama declared, ‘We will be true to the values that make us who we are.’ We seriously must assess what those values are, since so much of what led to Osama’s death presents an ethical conundrum of significant proportions. The media displayed little scrutiny of what exactly those values are.” That likewise was precisely what I meant to say. Nowhere in the piece did I make any judgment call as to the propriety of assisting Osama in his rendezvous with his 72 virgins, as Islamic terrorists believe they do when they die.

Nowhere in the column did I render my own assessment of the propriety of taking Osama out the way he was. But if had, I would’ve concluded that he got his just desert. Whether we are safer or not is yet to be determined as threats of retribution attacks from Islamic radicals have escalated since Bin Laden’s removal from our mortal realm.

But I may have been wrong in my criticism of Obama and his determination to treat all terrorists as American citizens, as it related to Osama’s removal. Several Beltway sources claim that Obama didn’t make the call, but CIA Director Leon Panetta did. So much for that “gutsy call!” Those same sources have indicated that Senior White House Advisor Valerie Jarrett had great influence on the president in not proceeding with the raid in Pakistan, but in the end it was the CIA Director who made the call. If that is the case, I apologize to the president for not being true to his stated values regarding terrorists. But if those reports are true, it makes us wonder why, in his address to the nation, he referenced himself over 25 times, as if he had done it all.

The ultimate credit for the operation lies, as it usually does, with the superb military personnel who executed (no pun intended) the mission. A friend sent me an email last week that put the issue in proper perspective. It said, “Thanking Obama for killing Bin Laden is like going into McDonalds and thanking Ronald McDonald for the hamburger. It’s the guy cooking the burger that should get the credit, not the clown.”

It is troublesome to me, however, that the safety of the team members and their families has been jeopardized by another loose-lipped moment for Vice President Joe Biden. In his announcement of the mission, Obama was careful to characterize the force as “a small team of Americans,” as did the rest of the administration. Robert Gates, Defense Secretary, confirmed that, “We all agreed that we would not release any operational details from the effort to take out bin Laden. That all fell apart on Monday, the next day.”

Later that week Biden, at a function in D.C. said, while introducing a Navy Admiral, “He can tell you more about and understands the incredible, the phenomenal, the just almost unbelievable capacity of his Navy SEALs and what they did last Sunday.” That’s how we found out they were SEALs.

In an interesting twist, Eric Holder, Obama’s Attorney General, is investigating CIA operatives who engaged in enhanced interrogation techniques to find Osama. And this week Obama visited the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia to thank them “for all they did to pursue and locate Osama.” It is the ultimate in hypocrisy, in my estimation, to be prosecuting people for doing their job while thanking them at the same time!

Much more will likely become public over Osama’s demise in ensuing months and years, but lest there be any question on the issue, I’m glad he’s gone. 

Published - 05/15/11

One of the greatest tools of magicians is misdirection, or distraction. While causing attention to be drawn to a nonessential hand movement or gesture, the other hand is engaged in the prestidigitationthat creates the magical trick. Some politicians, obviously having learned the art, are giftedly adept at the process.

A superb case-in-point was the dog-and-pony show conducted by the Senate Energy Committee this week as they brought in the top oil company chief executives to grill them on high gas prices and threaten to eliminate oil company tax deductions. That was the distraction and misdirection. What it was designed to do was play to populist frustration over high gasoline prices.

Meanwhile, the real trick has been played by their political leader in the White House and his Department of Energy, which somehow seems inappropriately titled. It would be more accurately referenced as the Department of Non-Energy, as it continues to do everything possible to restrict domestic production of the black gold, increasing our dependency on foreign supplies, and consequently contributing to the higher gas prices we all pay at the pumps.

Drilling, refinement, and delivery of oil products for our daily consumption adds up to about 16% of the cost of gasoline. Crude oil prices, determined by the commodity exchanges like the Chicago Board of Trade, comprise 70% of the cost of a gallon of gasoline. Federal, state and local taxes make up the remaining 14%.

That means for a gallon of gas priced at $3.65, we’re paying about $.58 to the oil companies for their costs, excluding the actual cost of the crude oil. Of that, about 7-9% is profit. On a percentage basis, a 9% profit on $4.00 gas versus $3.00 gas is 30% higher, resulting in record quarterly earnings by the oil companies in the first earnings quarter. But because of those record earnings, they become perfect scapegoats for the populist politicians in the White House and the Capitol, and play well into their magic trick of misdirection.

The oil companies pay over $12 billion in taxes, or about $35 million per day. So while the magician-politicians are pounding the table decrying the record profits of the companies that do all the heavy lifting to keep America moving, they’re collecting about the same amount of cash with the other hand. And what do they do to earn their share? They make it nearly impossible for the oil companies to explore, drill, and refine their product. Now how’s that for gratitude?!

The major oil companies generate a relatively modest profit. The five biggest oil companies (Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP America, and ConocoPhillips) average a 6.05% profit margin. Collectively, the S&P 500 average profit margin is 8.9%. Oil company profits pale in comparison to other sectors, especially information technology which boasts an average 18% profit margin. That includes the likes of Microsoft with a hefty margin of 33%, and Apple Computer with a 22% margin.

And now the magician politicians want to eliminate the tax breaks that the oil industry gets. They get no subsidies (cash outlays). They only get the same kinds of tax breaks that any other business entity is eligible for. As former Colorado Congressman Bob Beauprez said this week, “Contrary to popular opinion and the President's spin, oil and gas gets no taxpayer funded subsidies. The tax code does allow them certain tax credits and deductions to encourage continued investment in an industry that is heavily front-end loaded with capital expense.  These are the same kind of incentives available to Coca-Cola, General Electric, Ford, and Microsoft and other companies doing business in the U.S.”

As mentioned a few weeks ago, we have to acknowledge that this administration likes high energy prices for ideological reasons. During his presidential campaign, Obama declared that energy prices would "necessarily skyrocket" on his energy agenda. And his current Energy Secretary, Steven Chu has said that he thought our gas prices needed to be much higher as a means of weaning us from our reliance on fossil fuels. He told the Wall Street Journal two years ago, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe." At that time, gas prices averaged $8 per gallon there.

It’s obvious by now that their means to help drive up gas prices is to do everything within their power to thwart and restrict domestic oil production.

Just as it is with most aspects of our economy, from health care to energy, the largest contributor to higher costs is bad policy and poor regulation. Don’t be misled by the magic tricks of misdirection and distraction by the ruling political class. The politicians advancing an anti-oil ideology are the ones to be most upset with over high gas prices, not the ones who deliver it to us.

Published - Idaho State Journal, 5/8/11

The media’s coverage of the death of Osama bin Laden this past week provided a historic case in duplicity and disingenuousness by both commission and omission. All was rosy as far as the media was concerned, even though there were many elements to Osama’s demise that begged additional scrutiny by the fourth estate.

To assess the media’s duplicity, it may help to couch our analysis in the context of Barack Obama’s comments Sunday night when he announced to the world that bin Laden had been killed in Pakistan. In his speech Obama declared, “We will be true to the values that make us who we are.”

We seriously must assess what those values are, since so much of what led to Osama’s death presents an ethical conundrum of significant proportions. The media displayed little scrutiny of what exactly those values are. For example, the information leading to the identification of Osama’s “most trusted courier,” was derived by the use of “harsh interrogation techniques” on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed by the CIA. As if that wasn’t enough, the CIA confirmed and garnered additional intelligence on the identity of the trusted courier by waterboarding (aka “harsh interrogation technique”) Mohammed’s assistant, Abu Faraj al-Libbi. Collectively this intelligence led our counterterrorism experts to the courier, who in turn eventually led to the location of bin Laden.

I still haven’t heard Attorney General Eric Holder announce that he was dropping his investigation into CIA operatives who conducted the waterboarding. I’m sure there’s a value embedded into that reticence.

Those harsh interrogation techniques were so demonized by the press when it was learned that George W. Bush authorized them, you’d have thought the nation had lost its soul for resorting to such measures. Yet it would appear that if such questionable intelligence lends itself to gloating over the media’s darling, such Machiavellian “ends justify the means” is condonable.

As columnist Victor Davis Hanson wrote this week, “It seems okay to assassinate a terrorist kingpin either by air attack or commando raid. But legal and moral problems arise if he is captured, detained, waterboarded, or tried in a military tribunal. A quick death seems to end almost all legal discussions and controversies.” That seems to clarify some of those “values that make us who we are,” doesn’t it?

A fundamental value that we Americans treasure relative to our judicial system is that those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty. Even if someone admits or confesses to a crime, that confession is only valid and usable in a court of law if the accused has been read their Miranda rights. I guess I missed the reporting of Osama being Mirandized. And typically the death penalty is decried by the media as inhumane and uncivil, yet apparently in this case it was acceptable.

If a policeman shoots an unarmed man, he is ignominiously discharged from service and brought up on charges of murder. Osama was not armed at the time of his death. I guess it’s okay under certain circumstances. And how about that issue of shooting him again just to make sure he was dead? That sounds like something that cowboy George W. Bush would authorize. I don’t think we do that even when we inflict capital punishment. We don’t gas them or electrocute them again just to make sure they’re dead.

So thus far we have, by Obama’s own admission, the president not just giving the order to not bring Osama to justice, as has been said so many times, but declaring himself to be the arresting officer, the judge, the jury, and the executioner, all done on foreign soil over the protestation of the Pakistani people. Is this new precedent, or am I missing something about what exactly the values are that “make us who we are?” The media seems to have no problem with all of this as long as it’s done by their guy in the White House. Why do I have this sneaking suspicion that there would be a bit more scrutiny if all this had been done on W’s watch?

And just for good measure, the President also authorized himself to be the funeral-home director, by directing the military to dispose of Osama’s corpse at sea. I guess being commander-in-chief has some perks that I wasn’t aware of, including corpse disposal without input from family members.

In his Sunday speech, Obama referred to himself over 25 times as if he did it all. Certainly the media would have mocked W as being narcissistic if he had given a similar speech of self-adulation.

Not only are we left to wonder what Obama’s values were being referred to when he said they “make us who we are,” but again we’re left marveling at the dearth of scrutiny and criticalness by the media. They surely covered the incident of Osama’s death much differently than they would have had Bush was still in office. 

Published - Idaho State Journal, 5/1/11

The Idaho State Legislature passed three bills this year that have the potential to significantly improve the quality of education in Idaho. It’s imperative that we are all cognizant of what the legislation actually does, as opposed to what it purportedly does.

The Students Come First laws raise the minimum teacher salary to $30,000 a year and also puts in place a funding mechanism to increase the minimum salary for the future. They maintain the current salary apportionment grid for teachers with longevity and added educational credits.

The Pay for Performance (PFP) plan provides extra compensation for teachers who serve in hard-to-fill positions, like calculus teachers in small school districts, or leadership roles, like mentoring new teachers or developing curriculum. This comes as a bonus to those teachers on top of their pay grid compensation. The local school board determines hard-to-fill positions and the extra compensation.

PFP also allows for teachers to earn bonuses beyond their base salary for meeting or exceeding student achievement goals at the state and local levels. This will provide for the entire certified staff of a school to receive bonus pay when their school is showing growth in student achievement. Local school boards set local student achievement goals for bonus participation.

Teacher tenure is preserved for those who already have it. Those who don’t, including new hires, will not have continuous contracts, or the guarantee of a teaching job regardless of their performance. They will be offered one or two year contracts after a three-year probationary period.

Contrary to the disinformation and misinformation being widely promulgated, collective bargaining and union representation are not eliminated. Rather, their collective bargaining is limited to matters pertaining to salary and benefits. In the past they could negotiate as part of the contract things like bell schedule, school calendar, teacher evaluations, and grading methods. This gives the local school board much more flexibility and latitude in those peripheral issues without jeopardizing salary and benefit negotiations.

The new legislation retains the right of local school boards to maintain policies addressing grievance procedures for teachers, preparation time, and extra duties. This is not eliminated, as has been erroneously represented.

All collective bargaining sessions must now be conducted in public. Since we as taxpayers pay their salary and benefits, it’s only logical that these sessions should be more in compliance with Idaho’s open-meeting laws.

All local school boards and school districts must be totally transparent in fiscal matters, including master contracts and associated information. Further, the State Department of Education will create a web-based fiscal report card and will post financial data and statistics for every school district, public charter school, and the state.

Teachers’ and principals’ evaluations will now be at least partially based on the job they are hired to do, which is to teach our children. The student achievement standards for evaluative purposes will be established by the local school district.

For teachers who don’t already have a personal computer in their classroom, beginning in the fall of 2012, they will get one. They will also be trained on how to integrate computer technology into the curriculum and into the classroom to raise student achievement.

Starting with the Fall semester of 2012, high school teachers will be provided mobile computing devices. High school students will be provided access to similar devices (most likely, inexpensive yet powerful devices like Apple’s iPad). Local districts will determine how best to utilize these devices on a daily basis and teachers will decide how to incorporate them into the learning process. The local boards will also decide whether to allow students to take them home or not.

Starting with the graduating class of 2016, students will have some online curriculum. The State Board of Education will determine how much will be done online, but local districts will determine the curriculum.

As taxpayers, we benefit by the increased transparency in the disposition of financial resources. As parents of public schools, we benefit by the increased focus on results and achievement, by rewarding schools and teachers for jobs well done. The incorporation of technology in the classroom and online curriculum helps the children learn how to use it to augment their education, while increasing efficiency from a cost standpoint. And the Students Come First legislation empowers teachers to earn more based on their performance and grants more flexibility and authority to local school boards to teach our children.

Even President Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, has said, “Challenging the status quo will take courage. It will take commitment. And it will take collaboration,” as he has laid out similar proposals on a national level. Students Come First does challenge the status quo in a way that benefits our students, despite what special interest groups may be telling you.