Superior Democrat Math

(Published as a letter to the editor of the Gualala Independent Coast Observer)

Editor

A writer to the ICO recently demonstrated that many public employee jobs at an average annual salary of $65,000 could be saved by diverting campaign finance money to fund their continued employment. This is truly an apples and oranges concept: public employees are paid from taxes; campaigns are financed by contributions. How the money would get from the one pot to the other puzzles me. Short of an outright donation to the government, which I encourage all Liberals who think they aren’t taxed enough to make, this is not doable.

However, I surmise the letter writer’s point was that funding Republican campaigns was a waste of money, and that Democrats spending twice as much was not, since this was not mentioned. This inspired me to examine government money wasted supporting clean energy development that could be better used.

In a January report, CBS News featured 12 clean energy companies that were having trouble after collectively being approved for more than $6.5 billion in federal assistance. Five already filed for bankruptcy: the junk bond-rated Beacon, Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt, AES’ subsidiary Eastern Energy, and the infamous Solyndra. Abound Solar Manufacturing, Longmont, Colo. recipient of a $400 million federal loan guarantee, just laid off 280 workers, 70% reduction of its workforce.

Using Republican math, $6.5 billion would fund 100,000 public employee jobs at $65,000 each per annum to vote for Democrats. Using Liberal math, Democrats would take credit for saving 100 million public employee jobs even if the unemployment rate stayed over eight percent, and still get all their votes.

Since there are only 310 million Americans, the Democrat claim wont pass the smell test but that wont stop them from making it, or their Liberal supporters from believing it. Democrat math beats the Republican variety hands down.

Mike Combs

Gualala

INSATIABLE

(Published in the Independent Coast Observer)


The federal bureaucracy is insatiable for power and the ultimate results of its actions in dealing with complex matters (such as health care) will be less freedom, greater inefficiency, and an inherent inability to adjust requirements to reality. A case in point is last week’s announcement by HHS that it must delay the implementation of its new reimbursement codes for Medicare. These new reimbursement codes will increase the total number from 18,000 to more than140,000!

Why such an increase? Well, for example, the regulations will apply 36 different codes for treating a snake bite, depending on the type of snake, its geographical region, and whether the incident was accidental, intentional, assault, or undetermined. The new codes also thoroughly differentiate between nine different types of hang-gliding injuries, four different types of alligator attacks, and the important difference between injuries sustained by walking into a wall and those resulting from walking into a lamppost, and so on. (Michael Tanner, National Review Online, 2/29/12)

Americans are becoming increasingly aware of the extent to which the federal government’s power to control our lives is expanding. Everyday, regulation writers are busy churning out requirements that will diminish our freedom and our pocketbooks. Such requirements are often thinly supported by Congressional law, if at all, and too many laws go unread by lawmakers. That was absolutely the case with ObamaCare. But the bureaucrats read them and then interpret them, and their political bosses enforce them, and we (citizens, doctors, businessmen, etc.) must abide by them or face punishment.

Conservatives understand that we need Constitutionally sound laws to enable a free, dynamic society. But we don’t abide the dictatorial tactics of leaders who use a compliant federal bureaucracy to bend whole segments of our lives to their ideologies.

Jim Littlejohn

Concerned Coastal Voters

Gualala, CA