Louis R. Avallone

Category: Economy

  • For Example: The Benefits of Caring

    For Example: The Benefits of Caring

    By Louis Avallone
    –
    “You should be more interested in doing the Lord’s work than in always criticizing those who are trying to help the less fortunate,” begins an email I received from a reader, in response to a recent column. “Who do you think really cares more for our fellow citizens?” continues the reader, “Senator Landrieu or the Governor?” And there it was. Staring me down, like the truth, in this namby-pamby, I’m-OKyou’re-OK, wishy-washy, pacifist-like society that we have become. Apparently, I don’t “care” enough about the less fortunate, as if that’s all that is needed in order to help. “Caring” may start us down the road to helping others, but we should hardly remain there. After all, we all know the road to you-know-where is well paved with good intentions.

    So does it really matter who “cares” the most about the less fortunate. If those who “care” the most really aren’t helping at all? Consider this is the 50th year of Lyndon Johnson’s unconditional war on poverty. Yet after $15 trillion dollars in spending, the poverty rate today is virtually the same as it was in 1964. We are now spending close to $1 trillion per year on government assistance, yet 46 million Americans still live below the poverty line. Is there any question that intentions simply aren’t enough?

    Or what about how much the Obama administration cared about making sure that you could keep your healthcare plan, if you liked it? But now, four million Americans (so far) have now lost their healthcare plan. Again, intentions simply aren’t enough.

    The Congressional Budget Office just reported that because of the Affordable Care Act, almost two million people would quit their jobs by 2017, figuring they can end up ahead by taking government benefits instead. Again, intentions, especially unintended ones, simply aren’t enough.

    Or how about the intentions of Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package to save our economy? Well, five years later and despite the good intentions, our labor market remains in horrible condition, the economy grew at less than 2 percent last year, and it is estimated that the stimulus package destroyed roughly one million private sector jobs – all while the workforce participation rate today is at a 36-year low.

    Do you care enough about people earning a “living wage,” rather than a “minimum” wage? Well, I hope you care as much about finding at least 500,000 Americans each a job also, because that’s how many jobs will be lost by hiking the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour by 2016 – and that’s according to the Congressional Budget Office. Again, intentions simply aren’t enough.

    Yet, intentions are powerful beginnings. They are the starting point for every dream. They provide a spark to ignite a purpose, launch a plan, and to direct the mind. But if intentions are all that are needed to be successful, or to stop smoking or to lose weight, then maybe achieving those goals are in fact easier done than said.

    One only needs to look around to see what decades of politicians’ good intentions have done to our nation, and our communities. As explained by economist Thomas Sowell, “If there is any lesson in the history of ideas, it is that good intentions tell you nothing about the actual consequences.”

    So while the reader who wrote to me valued “caring” or one’s intentions as the litmus test of whether to support a government program or policy, history abundantly proves that “caring” alone is inadequate to achieve genuine assistance, or a leg up, for those truly in need.

     

    The correct answer, I think, to the reader who wrote to me, is that all of our elected leaders, whether Landrieu or Jindal or the President of the United States, should be held accountable, not by how much they care, but by how much good they do in terms of meeting their original intentions. After all, in the words of Pablo Picasso, “What one does is what counts. Not what one had the intention of doing.”

  • Policy Disasters: Politicians Don’t Have to Follow the Path of “Learned Helplessness”

    Policy Disasters: Politicians Don’t Have to Follow the Path of “Learned Helplessness”

    By Louis Avallone
    –
    It’s called “learned helplessness.”

    It’s a state where you have given up hope and effort that your actions will affect your outcomes, even when later you’re in a position where control of the outcome is completely within your reach. It’s why women stay in abusive relationships, or why the poor feel that no matter how hard they work, or how much education they get, they will never escape their present lot in life. And it must be why so many folks don’t even bother to vote, or take part in our political process, because they’re discouraged that nothing gets done or will change anyway.

    It’s a problem in politics because the important issues facing our nation are so vast, and the solutions seem so monumental. For many, the mountain is simply too big to climb, or the hole dug is too deep to get out of, so why bother?

    But it doesn’t have to be this way. Today, our nation is buried under a mountain of debt, 5 million Americans have had their health insurance policies cancelled as a result this administration’s policies, the gap between the rich and poor has widened to a point not seen since the Great Depression, respect for our nation is dwindling as world leaders seemingly taunt the United States and unemployment is so rampant that there are three unemployed people for every job opening in our country today.

    With all of that said, it’s clear that too many Americans suffer from “learned helplessness” when it comes to electing the same politicians, election cycle after election cycle, even when real change, and the choice to send someone else to Washington or Baton Rouge, is plainly within their reach.

    For these folks, they say, “Why bother?” I say, “Hogwash.”

    You don’t have to be expert in all of the important issues of our day to escape “learned helplessness,” or to believe that what you do can make a difference. You only need to look at example after example of liberal policies that have caved in on themselves, and litter the scrap yards of life.

    The British tried appeasing Hitler in the 1930s, because they were convinced war was immoral, and that we must have “peace in our time.” That approach didn’t work out, of course. Hitler became stronger, and millions more died through appeasement, than would have otherwise. And what are we doing in the Middle East today? Appeasement.

    Or what about the administration’s proposal to raise the minimum wage? If you already know that unskilled minorities, aged 16 to 19 years old, are already experiencing a 37.8 percent unemployment rate, and you raise the minimum wage, how do you help these folks when they would be the first workers to be let go after the minimum wage is raised?

    Or how about this example? Liberals are always talking about unfettered, free access to contraceptives, and how abstinence is simply old-fashioned, foolhardy thinking. Yet, in example after example, the well-intentioned liberal thinking falls short, time after time. In New York City, for example, schools distribute thousands of the “morning after pill,” as well as prescriptions for birth-control pills, intrauterine devices, hormonedelivering injections, etc. to help to prevent pregnancies.

    However, and despite liberal intentions, one of every 10 abortions occurs in New York. More abortions are performed on minors, more late term abortions, and more repeat abortions, are performed in New York City than anywhere else in the country. If this is one of the most important issues for women in history, how can this debauchery be good for the very women these liberals are intending to help?

    We could talk about how, because of the Affordable Care Act now, and the rising insurance costs to employers, the most qualified candidate for a job may never get the job because the most attractive candidate may be the one already covered by their parent’s or spouse’s health insurance policy, saving the employer the cost of the premium altogether. Ridiculous.

    And we could talk about how fulltime employment, under the Affordable Care Act, is now defined as working 30 hours per work. At 30 working hours per week, you can see that we’re fast becoming a nation of under-achievers.

    We could also talk about how, in 1999, liberals prodded the Fannie Mae Corporation to ease the credit requirements, and encouraged them to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit was generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. And it didn’t take long for the housing market to collapse just a few short years later, of course.

    Here’s the bottom line: As a nation, we must re-learn that success is within our control, and that we can affect the outcome, but can’t keep doing what we’ve doing, or we’ll simply keep getting what we’ve been getting. Escaping “learned helplessness” is understanding that it is not the blowing of the wind that determines our destination; it’s the setting of the sail.

     

    And that starts by electing folks that “get” that idea and who see the promise, and are likewise willing to pay the price.

  • Just Stop Digging: A Japanese History Lesson

    Just Stop Digging: A Japanese History Lesson

    By Louis Avallone
    –
    In the 1980s, the Japanese changed American culture in many different and significant ways. Now, they look poised to do it all over again, but this time, by teaching us a history lesson.

    In the late 1980s, Japan was the world’s second largest economy. Japanese automakers entered the U.S. market with small economy cars and pickup trucks that Detroit simply wasn’t interested in making (at the time, at least). Japanese companies, such as Sony and Toshiba, developed the transistor radio and the Walkman. The Japanese were so resourceful that they even took products developed by U.S. companies, such as VCRs, camcorders, and microwave ovens, and made them affordable to the masses.

    But oh how the mighty can fall. And Japan certainly did. Over the past 20 years, Japan’s annual rate of economic growth has averaged a mere 1 percent and last year their population reached it lowest number since the 1950s. And their population is getting older, as well. There are 30 million Japanese who are 65 or older (which is 25 percent of their population).

    Their birth rate is still below their death rate, and that just signals more trouble ahead, as the Japanese face rising welfare and medical care cost  for an aging population, while coping with a rapidly dropping workforce due to fewer births.

    Around 1990, though, when the Japanese economy begin its spiraling descent and unemployment rose, Japanese young people welcomed the chance to “find themselves,” or the liberty “to not be job-locked, but to follow their passion,” as Nancy Pelosi, and other Democrats would say. But now, 20 years later, being “job-locked” doesn’t sound so bad, after all.

    Why? Well, almost one-third of those Japanese young people, now in their late 30s and early 40s, do not hold regular jobs, and some never have. Only half of working 15-to-24-year-olds in Japan have regular jobs.

    If all of this sounds similar to the United States, you’d be right on the money. The unemployment rate for 18-29-year-olds in our country, including those who have given up looking for work, is almost 16 percent. Among African-Americans in this same age bracket, the unemployment rate is almost a whopping 25 percent.

    It’s so bad that even the Obama administration admitted last month that there are three unemployed people for every job opening in our country today.

    And our country’s economic growth rate is expected to remain stagnant again this year, and our population continues to shrink (just like Japan’s). In fact, population growth is so low right now in the U.S. that you have to go back to the Great Depression in the 1930s to find a lower growth rate.

    So when Democrats, like Nancy Pelosi, start making ridiculous claims, such as how Obamacare will “shift how people make a living and reach their aspirations,” it’s time to tell this Japanese history lesson, and have a come-to-Jesus meeting with Democrats.

    They may be interested in learning that 20 years later, the once young and unemployed Japanese, who were seeking their “aspirations” as 20-something year olds, have remained unemployed as 40-something year olds, as well.

    And although these folks never got “job-locked” from pursuing their passion, they also never learned new skills that would earn them enough to boost their country’s economic growth beyond a paltry 1 percent.

    So when the Congressional Budget Office said Obamacare will drain another 2.5 million jobs from the economy by 2021, that means those will lose a paycheck, and the ability to support their families.

    No, we need an economy that encourages job creation and personal responsibility, not “finding yourself” when you have bills to pay. Without more jobs, we’ll end up just like Japan. There’s nothing wrong with hard work, even when it’s not your “passion.” Or being “job locked,” or whatever that really means to the growing number of Democrats using that term. You see, and what they don’t get, it’s not so much what you get from working hard, but it’s what you become by working hard.

    As author Seth Godin explains, “Hard work is about risk. It begins when you deal with the things that you’d rather not deal with: fear of failure, fear of standing out, fear of rejection. Hard work is about training yourself to leap over this barrier, tunnel under that barrier, drive through the other barrier. And, after you’ve done that, to do it again the next day.”

    So, the Democrats can denigrate hard work by making unemployment seem liberating and desirable, despite the Japanese experiences over the past 20 years. The political spinning hardly distracts from rising unemployment numbers, stagnant growth, or the loss of a paycheck that supports a family.

    This is how Japan is poised to change American culture again, if we will only heed the lessons they have learned over the past 20 years.

    And even if you are not a Republican, or a Democrat, or any political party affiliation at all, that’s OK. The lessons of history can work for you, too. But whatever you call yourself, I just don’t want to call you unemployed. Our country’s future literally depends on it.

  • Truth Be Told: ‘Honesty is Hardly Ever Heard’

    Truth Be Told: ‘Honesty is Hardly Ever Heard’

    By Louis Avallone
    –
    Americans average about 11 lies per week. There are major ones, and minor ones, of course. Maybe it’s an excuse on why you were late, or didn’t complete a task. Maybe it’s when a friend asks your opinion on a matter, and you wanted to be polite, more than you wanted to tell the truth.

    Well, it turns out this may be impacting your health. Linda Stroh, a professor emeritus of organizational behavior at Loyola University in Chicago, said, “When you find that you don’t lie, you have less stress, and being very conflicted adds an inordinate amount of stress to your life.”

    In fact, a recent study indicated that as individuals tell more lies, their physical and mental health declines. Conversely, as the number of lies decrease, their health improves.

    Might this also be true for our nation’s health, as well? After all, are we lying to one another, instead of having an honest discussion about our national debt, the crippling costs of entitlement programs and the failures of our immigration system? We need to speak truthfully about why our schools are failing and why our healthcare costs are spiraling out of control, and about the deterioration of the family and the whitewashing of religion from our national consciousness? Don’t we just need to put it out on the table, and talk openly? We do.

    But instead, we find ourselves almost always conflicted, as we are reading, watching and listening ad naseum to elected officials and news reporting that often are anything but truthful.

    What honest person believes Hillary Clinton’s or President Obama’s explanation about Benghazi? Who really believes the administration’s claim that it’s a positive sign that the unemployment rate went down .03 percent last month, when there are 92 million people who have dropped out of the labor force altogether, and are not looking for work at all?

    Who doesn’t feel they were bamboozled for months and months and months when Obama promised, “If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it.” And now four million Americans (so far) have now lost their healthcare plan, and it seems that the administration knew this would happen all along. Remember Nancy Pelosi’s pitch, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” Goodness.

    But this administration started out straight enough, right? The President promised in 2009, for example, that “My administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in government.”

    Who, in their right mind, believes this has happened? Maybe it’s because, as some say, we can’t handle the truth. After all, our nation is on the verge of bankruptcy, and yet still so many folks seem oblivious and continue supporting policies and candidates that increase government spending, and they do this, year and after year.

    But some may say telling the truth is not all that it is cracked up to be, either. Remember Walter Mondale’s 1984 pledge to raise taxes? He said, “Let’s tell the truth … Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.” He lost in a landslide, of course, but you could also name many other reasons for that outcome, as well.

    The bottom line is that honesty still means something in this world, and it’s not just an “American” thing, it’s a “human being” thing. And we remember it, or the lack of it, long after the details of its subject matter are long forgotten. Lyndon Johnson lied about Vietnam. Richard Nixon lied about Watergate. Bill Clinton lied about Monica Lewinsky.

    Thinking back, it may be no coincidence that Billy Joel’s song, “Honesty” was nominated for “Song of the Year” at the Grammy Awards in 1980, right in the middle of that year’s presidential campaign. As the song goes, “Honesty is hardly ever heard. And mostly what I need from you. But if you look for truthfulness, you might just as well be blind.” Winston Churchill, although likely not a big Billy Joel fan, said it another way: “The truth is heavy, therefore few care to carry it.”

    No, in the end, it’s not that the American people cannot handle the truth; it’s that they shouldn’t be expected to manage their lives in the absence of it.

  • Multitasking

    Multitasking

    By Louis Avallone
    –
    It’s ironic, isn’t it? The Democrats in Washington, on any day of the week, want to convince you that bigger government is better government. They want you to believe that it can provide better schools for our children, even though only 69 percent of U.S. teens now graduate from high school (despite $2 trillion in federal spending since 1965). They want you to believe that government can create jobs, even though nearly 30%, or over 30 million Americans are unemployed (or underemployed) – and that’s after more than a trillion dollars in stimulus spending. In fact, at the current rate of job growth, it won’t be until 2022 before we return to the almost full employment rate that we had back in 2007.

    And these Democrats are the same folks that believe that bigger government (along with good intentions) can help the poor move from poverty to prosperity, even though there are more people on food stamps today than ever before in our country’s history, and that’s after $1 trillion in annual welfare spending (which is 250% more than it was just 20 years ago).

    Yes, these are the same folks that feel government-run healthcare, which makes up almost 20% of our gross domestic product (or $2.5 trillion in spending), can be administered efficiently, and effectively, by the same federal government that already makes $72 billion in improper payments every year to our healthcare providers.

    And yes, that’s the same federal government that cancelled White House tours for students, released thousands of illegal aliens from prisons, and cut back on the number of air traffic controllers, just to make a point during the sequester earlier this year.

    But even though liberals have an unshakable confidence in bigger government, liberals suddenly start acting like our federal government can’t walk and chew gum at the same time whenever there’s scandal or impropriety. They deflect the importance of issues by claiming that the federal government can’t be troubled with the issue du-jour, as if their all-knowing, all-solving federal government can’t focus on more than one issue at one time.

    You can tell when liberals feel threatened with scandal or impropriety because they suddenly start saying that they need to be “doing the job that the American people sent them to do”, or that they’re “going back to work for the American people” now.

    Remember, during the Monica Lewinsky investigation? President Clinton couldn’t be troubled with such ridiculousness, since the allegations being made were “false” and he said he needed to “go back to work for the American people”.

    And then there’s White House advisor David Plouffe who said Republicans in Congress should focus more on “doing the job they were sent to do”, instead of focusing on the IRS scandal, the seizure of the Associated Press phone records by the Justice Department, and the foreign policy failure in Benghazi.

    You see how this works?

    And when Obama’s $500 billion “American Jobs Act” was in danger of not passing in Congress, and was being debated by Republicans, what do you think a Democrat Congressman pulled out of his talking points? You guessed it: He urged his colleagues in Congress to stop debating and to finish “the job the American people sent us here to do.”

    And what about when Republicans were questioning last month the confirmation of Thomas Perez as our next Secretary of Labor? Yep, a Democrat U.S. Senator pulled out the predictable, “Let’s just do the job the American people sent us here to do.”

    So, instead of confronting the objection, or the underlying issue, these folks in Washington are only interested in their next election, instead of the next generation. They don’t get it, and they will use any means necessary to distract attention away from failed policies and broken promises. And while the Roman empire kept its citizens distracted during its decline with bread and circuses, Congress is aided by Americans who are kept far too occupied by Royal weddings, American Idol, Justin Bieber, Dancing with the Stars, and Lady Gaga.

    Our message to liberals in Congress is simple, though: You can’t have it both ways. A government that is big enough to be all things to all people can multi-task, if you really want to do the job that the American people sent you to do.

    You can investigate the failure of the Obama administration’s foreign policy in Benghazi, while at the same time addressing the fact that the U.S. will no longer be the largest economy in the world by 2016.

    Congress can appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS scandal, while at the same time deal with the fact that the average American family is struggling with the rising costs for food and healthcare costs. You can investigate the Justice Department’s seizure of the Associated Press phone records, and at the same time figure out how to reduce our nearly $16 trillion in federal debt.

    It’s still true, in the words of Ronald Reagan, “Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem.” However, that “problem” can still walk and chew gum at the same time. But continuing to walk all over the American people with tired and trite distractions, should simply no longer be an option.

  • Challenging Times

    Challenging Times

    By Louis Avallone
    –
    One of Thomas Jefferson’s “Canons of Conduct” urges us to, “Always take things by their smooth handle.”His intended meaning in saying so was that there is both a respectful and thoughtful manner for us to deal with one another, despite the inherent – and expected – differences of opinion between us. And while the folks in Washington never want to let a crisis to go to waste, they definitely—and deliberately – missed grabbing the smooth handle on this one. In fact, they grabbed it by the sharp end, and now we’re definitely going to need stitches.

    And while not everything in life has a smooth handle, the news that officials at Barksdale Air Force Base have canceled the annual Defenders of Liberty Open House and Air Show is another example of a government that cannot successfully manage its own affairs, yet nonetheless increasingly urges you to allow them to micromanage yours.
    The air show attracts as many as 300,000 visitors to our area each year, not to mention its use as a valuable recruitment opportunity for folks looking to join the military as career. Before 9/11, the only other cancellation was 60 years prior – in 1942.

    You see, the air show is more than just a “show”; it’s part of our community, and our shared traditions. To watch those fighter jets streak across the sky, and hear the thunderous roar of their engines – whether you were driving along Youree Drive or working in your backyard – these were the sights and sounds on a warm and sunny weekend afternoon that assured you that all was still right in the world (or at least that our country’s best men and women were fighting to make it that way).

    There is a cost of approximately $250,000 to organize the air show, but the admission and parking for the air show were always offered free of charge by the base. And even though Col. Andrew Gebara, 2nd Bomb Wing commander explained the cancellation by saying, “These are challenging times,” I believe that there are literally thousands of residents in this area that would gladly support the air show by paying admission, out-of-pocket. It would not be merely for the entertainment value either, but to honor those Americans who have sacrificed their lives for liberty, and for those soldiers who continue to guard it every day.

    We’re told that the “sequestration” is the reason for the cancellation of the air show at BAFB, as well as the cancellation of White House tours. It’s also the explanation why The Department of Homeland Security released thousands of illegal aliens from prisons to save money. It’s why the Federal Aviation Administration says it is planning to cut back on the number of air traffic controllers.

    It’s the reason that the National Park Service plans to close visitor centers, open park road later, and furlough park police. It’s why some federal courts may have to suspend civil jury trials in September, and why the administration explains that every FBI employee, including special agents, will be furloughed for almost three weeks by the end of September.

    But it doesn’t have to be this way, especially when our federal government wastes annually far more than the $85 billion in automatic federal spending cuts that are being blamed for those furloughs, closings, etc.

    Examples of waste? Well, where do we start? It is estimated that taxpayers spent $1.4 billion on the Obama family last year, on everything from staffing, housing, flying and entertainment (by comparison, British taxpayers spent $57.8 million on the Royal family). In fact, just the four (4) Hawaiian vacations, taken by the Obama’s, have cost taxpayers over $20 million, including operating Air Force One at a rate of $179,750 per hour, for the nineteen (19) hour roundtrip journey from Washington, D.C. to Hawaii.
    Considering this cost, you might think this administration would show some solidarity with the nation, particularly because so many Americans are out of work, and choose instead to vacation at Camp David, or a nearby resort, where vacations could be arranged for a mere pittance, compared to the cost of getting to Hawaii. Just sends the wrong message, when our nation is borrowing so much money to just pay the interest on its bills.

    The bottom of line is this: The cancellation of the BAFB air show is an example of a giant ruse being imposed upon our nation. When our federal government is already wasting at least $72 billion in improper payments every year to healthcare providers, and when we are already spending $25 billion every year just maintaining unused or vacant federal property, and when there’s $2.7 billion in fraud within the food-stamp program, there’s just no need for Obama to threaten laying off teachers, or scaring senior citizens of an impending flu epidemic, or warning of higher cancer rates, or even cancel our air show, because federal spending has been cut this year by just 2.4% of the federal government’s annual budget.

    The answer, my friend, is for this administration to employ common sense tactics first and last, not scare tactics.

    Yes, there’s definitely a “smooth handle” here. Those folks in Washington just need to get a grip.

  • Translation

    By Louis Avallone
    –
    Do you remember Charlie Brown’s teacher in the TV series, where the teacher made odd, unintelligible sounds whenever communicating with Charlie, Lucy, Linus or any of the other characters in the Peanut’s series?

    The teacher would be heard saying, “Wah wah woh wah wah wah wah,” and the children would respond with, “Yes, ma’am,” or “I understand.” The viewer at home was then left to interpret what had been said by the teacher, based on observing the kids’ reactions to the teacher’s “wah wah woh wah wah wah wah.”

    Well, this is what it is like trying to understand President Barack Obama’s rhetoric and campaign speak, especially these days.

    And many Americans are satisfied to hear “wah wah woh wah wah wah wah” anyways, without details.

    One example of this rhetoric is the Obama campaign against the $85 billion in automatic federal spending cuts that begin this month. As you may know, from the media coverage, the “sequester” is a $1.2 trillion collection of automatic federal spending cuts that will be made over the next 10 years, with these spending cuts divided evenly between the military budget and domestic spending programs.

    Although only 1 in 4 Americans report paying attention to this “sequester” debate at all, a recent Gallop Poll shoed that 57 percent of Americans have concluded that the sequestration cuts will harm the national economy, while 44 percent believe it will harm their personal financial situations. So what did Obama say when he recently commented about the sequester?

    Well, he started with scare tactics, causing unnecessary stress to our senior citizens as well as
    disheartening millions of families where a mother or father is still looking for a job in an economy where 23 million Americans are out of work.

    He said, “Thousands of teachers and educators will be laid off,” and “(t)ens of thousands of parents will have to scramble to find childcare for their kids. Hundreds of thousands of Americans will lose access to primary care and preventive care, like flu vaccinations and cancer screenings,” not to mention that cuts in federal spending “could” force reductions in food inspections, which “could” lead to outbreaks of more food-borne bacteria such as E. coli.

    And if that wasn’t enough to get your heart pumping, he ramped up his rhetoric by saying that these mandatory spending cuts will jeopardize our military readiness and “eviscerate jobs and energy and medical research.”

    Wow. I think he left out that there will be less baseball, hot dogs and apple pie for everyone too, right? So, when do the locusts arrive?

    Well, here are the facts: Even with the $85 billion in spending cuts this year, the federal government will STILL spend more in 2013 than it did in 2012. This year’s spending cuts represent only 2.4 percent of the federal government’s $3.6 trillion budget, and our federal government wastes far more than $85 billion every year – and without the Biblical calamities prophesied by Obama.

    Some examples of this waste? Well, it is estimated that the federal government makes at least $72 billion in improper payments each year and that we spend $25 billion annually just maintaining unused or vacant federal properties.

    Then there’s healthcare fraud that is estimated to cost taxpayers more than $60 billion annually, not to mention a GAO audit recently that found that the Pentagon’s weapons systems suffered from a combined $295 billion loss in cost overruns.

    With all of this said, those scare tactics employed by this White House, regarding the sequester, are collectively a disingenuous, self- serving, ideological effort to avoid shrinking government at any cost, especially when you consider that federal spending will STILL be higher in 2013 than in 2012 (even with the spending cuts) and that federal spending will continue to grow in coming years – exceeding 40 percent of the economy by 2050, and that’s even with Social Security going bankrupt by 2037.

    Notwithstanding those scare tactics and Obama’s “sky-is-falling” campaign against any spending cuts, it’s all quite hypocritical – especially from an administration whose own party, in the Democrat-controlled Senate, has not passed a budget in 1,402 days.

    And so, we wait, while this administration runs up the federal debt, now expected to be $16.2 trillion by 2016, which is $6.2 trillion more than when Obama first came into office four years ago and while they oppose any spending cuts whatsoever and however small.

    The bottom line is that Obama hasn’t redirected America from the slippery slope of financial insolvency. No, in fact, he’s brought his own sled.

    And as long as most Americans are satisfied to hear “wah wah woh wah wah wah wah” without knowing the details, it’s just going to be tough sledding for us all.

  • Predicting the Future

    Predicting the Future

    By Louis Avallone
    –
    For centuries, man has sought to predict the future, whether by astrology, palm reading, tarot cards, tealeaves, or crystal balls. In more modern times, sociologists and statisticians have developed scientific methods for rationally predicting the future, through trend analysis and cyclical patterns, such as when interest rates are lower, the stock market rises, and bond prices go down (just as an example).

    It’s easy to understand why we are so fascinated by predicting the future. Comedian George Burns may have said it best, and most simply, “I look to the future because that’s where I’m going to spend the rest of my life.” It was Einstein who said he didn’t worry about the future because it comes soon enough.

    Of course, it has often been said that trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights, while looking out the back window. Incidentally, this also explains the kind of leadership coming out of Washington these days, and before long, it’s not unlikely that this foolish driving will simply get everyone stuck in the mud, on that country road, just spinning our wheels. And for those who have been stuck in the mud a time or two, spinning your wheels – only digs you in deeper.

    So, with all of that said, I am still going to share with you a method of predicting the future, regarding the path of our nation, and the leadership of those folks in Washington, for the next four (4) years. With this method, you will be able to predict the policies of this administration and amaze your friends, on a variety of important subjects, especially on those, which aren’t yet dominating our national conversation.

    Here is how you do it: Take any subject or issue, which this administration feels will advance their political agenda in Washington, and then find those instances in history where governments have instituted policies to address that same subject or issue. Now, make a list of those government policies that have failed.

    Now, by “failed”, I mean those government policies whose stated objectives were hardly achieved, and thereby the costs greatly outweighed the benefits. For example, foreign aid programs that don’t help many foreigners, increasing government spending for schools that don’t educate students very well, or welfare assistance to the poor that does not lift the poor out of poverty, etc.

    Once you have identified these “failed” policies of the past, you can now predict, with almost certainty, the position, and direction, of the Obama administration on that same issue. I’ll give you a couple of examples.

    Look at the European countries, and the results from generations of socialist government policies, nationalizing everything from banks, to automobile manufacturing, insurance, healthcare, education, and energy production. The economic competitiveness of these European countries pale in comparison to the economies of India, China, Japan, and Korea, where workers are more productive. The average German, for example, works just 1,535 hours each year or 22 percent less than the average working American.

    The Dutch and Norwegians put in even fewer hours, as do the British. In addition to this idleness, unemployment is even higher in European countries than it is in the United States.

    This makes the point, exactly, in terms of predictions: The Obama administration is following the same, failed policies of those European countries, including Greece, where entitlement, dependence on others, envy, irresponsibility, and lack of ambition have led to a lower quality of life for all, stemming from an inability to compete with more productive economies around the world.

    Here’s another example, with regards to foreign policy: Obama said, “Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us” and that he would negotiate with Iran personally, saying “I’m not afraid of negotiating with anybody”. Well, history’s lesson on this foolishness is fatal. While England and France negotiated, Hitler continued to mobilize his military, and violated every agreement in the meantime.

    Iran is doing the same now, and is using negotiation to buy time for their deadly ambitions. And much like Hitler, they agree to negotiate, then violate the negotiated agreement, then refuse to negotiate, until the international community responds forcefully, and then they agree to negotiate (again). The merry-go-round starts all over.

    Still, today, our Iran foreign policy seems to be a Xerox copy of the failed attempts to deal with Germany, which led to World War II. What happened to the successfully proven foreign policy of America: peace through strength?

    Perhaps Obama’s interest in repeating failed government policies is because he believes that everyone, who has tried them before, just didn’t do them well enough. Maybe he thinks they weren’t smart enough to understand them, in the first place, but that if he tries them, he’ll get it right.

    Others say that Obama is just interested in re-making America into a European-like state. Maybe. But thus far, he seems only interested in those European policies that have failed.

    So now, at the end of this column, and unlike past centuries of mankind, you now have a reliable method of predicting the future, regarding the leadership of those folks currently in Washington. I can’t explain why they do what they do, but it reminds us all of one thing: We desperately must look to the successes of history, if we’re going to restore, anytime soon, our nation’s great future.

  • Hard Workers Should Reap Rewards

    By Louis Avallone
    –
    In a shopping mall, recently, I saw a young man wearing a Nike T-shirt that said, in large bold letters, “Hard Work Pays Off.” Obviously, this was a reference to the great preparation and training athletes undertake to play their sport successfully. Michael Jordan spent his off seasons taking hundreds of jump shots a day, for example. Award-winning pitcher Roy Halladay regularly puts in a 90-minute workout before his teammates even make it to the field. Another example are Olympic gold- medalists and No. 1-ranked duo Venus and Serena Williams, who were up hitting tennis balls at 6 a.m. from the time they were 7- and 8-years- old.

    Then there’s Kobe Bryant, the leading scorer in Los Angeles Lakers history, who just wants to be remembered as a hard worker, saying, “To think of me as a person that’s overachieved, that would mean a lot to me. That means I put a lot of work in and squeezed every ounce of juice out of this orange that I could.”

    So this got me thinking about “hard work.” There’s no one out there talking about how “lucky” Bryant is to have been the NBA scoring champion (twice) or to have led his team to win the NBA championship five times. There’s no one saying he’s made enough points now, even though he has already scored more than 30,000 points in his career and is ranked in the Top 5 of all NBA players in history for scoring. Despite his success, no one would even consider suggesting it’s unfair he scores so often or that history ought to be revised so that some of his points can be redistributed to his other teammates, who arguably deserve some of those points since Kobe didn’t score all those points on the court by himself.

    The same holds true for basketball great Michael Jordan. Even though he holds the NBA records for highest career regular season scoring average (30.12 points per game) and highest career playoff scoring average (33.45 points per game) and led his team to win the NBA championship six times, no one even questions the “fairness” of so many points being scored by a single player or that he received so many awards during his career, even though there were other players on the court with him that worked hard also and would have liked to have scored lots of points and won awards just the same.

    But while it seems ridiculous to consider redistributing a player’s points at the end of a game to lower-scoring players by taking points away from folks like Kobe or Michael (who obviously have more points than they know what to do with), this is precisely what some folks in Washington are doing by raising taxes on folks that have more “points” than most. And even though “hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard,” none of that occurs to these same folks in Washington – and it may never – as long as the fallacy in raising taxes doesn’t matter to millions of voters, either.

    Can you imagine telling Kobe he needed to “get some skin in the game” right after he scored 81 points in a single game (the second-highest point total in NBA history)? Or that he needed to offer an attitude of “shared sacrifice,” so his teammates might have more opportunities to score the same amount of points that he does, even though he’s doing more than his “fair share” to make sure the team wins?

    As a coach, would you ever tell him that at a certain point he’s made enough points (like Obama said at a certain point, “You’ve made enough money.”)?

    Of course not. That’s ridiculous. But this is the essence of modern- day liberalism. It seeks to minimize the power and responsibility of the individual to affect its own success … or failure. Even an economics professor from Cornell University wrote in The New York Times recently that “talent and hard work are neither necessary nor sufficient for economic success.” You see what we’re dealing with here?

    But Michael Jordan explains his success this way: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

    For Michael Jordan, success wasn’t rooted in the equality of the outcomes but rather in the equality of opportunities to fail. The folks in Washington just don’t get it – instead of incentivizing hard work, they virtually demonize it by taxing it.

    There’s a reason that hard work is at the root of success on the court or on the field whether you are Michael Jordan or Venus and Serena Williams. It’s because hard work works. Period. And you don’t have to dribble a basketball to figure out why.

  • Debate Not Hate

    Debate Not Hate

    By Louis Avallone
    –
    As this election season draws to a close, there are some who might say that America today is more polarized than at any time in its history. And this goes behind the mere partisan disagreements, or bickering, regarding taxes, healthcare, immigration, education, or even more fundamentally, the role of government itself.

    Although many Americans are divided on the issues today, the fact is…they always have been. Going back to the election of 1824, no President has ever been elected with more than about 60 percent of the American people’s support. It is expected (and encouraged) that Americans will disagree on what candidate should occupy the highest office in the land, but that alone doesn’t necessarily mean that America is polarized, or polarizing, which is altogether more sinister to our union.

    I’ll explain. You see, the polarization of America is defined by the extent to which public opinion is divided into the extremes, which is often encouraged by factions, within a political party, in order to gain dominance in their respective party. The casualties, unfortunately, are the moderate voices, which often lose power and influence, as a consequence.

    But unlike simple partisanship, polarization is more akin to when a candidate for public office is thought of as dishonest or evil, or when a candidates’ ideology is thought wholly wrong, while another’s ideology is considered free of error altogether. In other words, polarization is bad because it doesn’t allow compromise, whatsoever.
    And depending on when you are reading this column (before or after this November’s election), and whichever side of the aisle you may sit, or stand, it is more important than ever that Americans return to a healthy partisanship, at least, on the issues, not polarization; and come together as one nation, under God, and indivisible.
    How? Well, we can start, I think, with identifying some issues that we can all agree upon, that represent the best of America: The Bill of Rights. Hot dogs. Apple pies. Navy SEALS. Seinfeld (yadda yadda yadda). Steve Jobs. Disneyworld. Girl Scout cookies. Movie theater, buttered popcorn. Can we also agree that, sooner or later, the Monday after the Super Bowl must become a national holiday? Elvis. Free elections. Peanut M & Ms. Fresh, hot donuts.

    And while these are important issues on which we can all reach some consensus, there’s one more issue that requires our consensus as well, whether Democrat or Republican. It’s an issue that stands out as one of the fastest growing priorities in our nation today, with nearly 69% of Americans now calling it a “top priority”: It’s the federal budget deficit.

    It is so important, in fact, that the president of the Pew Research Center has said “In my years of polling, there has never been an issue such as the deficit on which there has been such a consensus among the public about its importance.” One problem is that the same percentage of the public who call this issue a “top priority”, are neither willing to reduce spending nor raise taxes to address the issue.

    So, what’s at stake? Well, our federal debt is near $16 trillion now, and by the time you finish reading this column, the U.S. debt will have grown by approximately $4.4 million. It’s difficult to gain perspective on the crisis, when the numbers become so large. Folks sometimes use analogies to illustrate the dilemma, such as by saying that if you were to spend a dollar every second, it would take you 32,000 years to spend $1 trillion (or a mere one-sixteenth of the debt).

    Others explain it by comparing the federal government’s finances to your own household budget. If you manage your finances, like Congress manages the federal government’s, then your expenses, for example, would be $38,200, with a household income of only $21,700. And then, to add to the irresponsibility, you will charge $16,500 this year, to your credit card, on which you already have an outstanding balance of $142,710. Crazy, right? But that’s what we’re doing every year.

    The national debt is a ticking time bomb. Many economists agree that there will be a point where the interest payments alone will make the debt unsustainable. And per the Congressional Budget Office, the consequences of unchecked government debt will be reduced income and living standards for all of us, and fewer government programs, and higher marginal tax rates.

    This debt will cause inflation, and that will decrease the dollar’s purchasing power, making everything more expensive, from milk to medicine, not to mention the losses that will be sustained by pension and mutual funds, which are already substantial investors in federal debt.

    This is, in part, why Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff said last year that, “The most significant threat to our national security is our debt…”

    And that’s why, whether you are a Donkey or an Elephant, we must all find a way to solve this federal budget deficit, by electing statesmen concerned for the next generation, and not politicians concerned only for the next election.

    Thomas Jefferson said that, “The greatest good we can do our country is to heal its party divisions and make them one people.” Abraham Lincoln explained that, “A house divided against itself cannot stand”. We must not remain a divided America; it encourages our enemies and weakens our courage. Now, who wants some apple pie?