Hug Fest Or Debate

“As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other.” — James Madison, Federalist No. 10 — 1787.

In watching last night’s presidential debate one thing became crystal clear to me — Mitt Romney, much to my chagrin, was not going to hit President Obama with his weapons of mass destruction. Instead he decided to act “presidential” and take some fictional high road that he and his political advisors though was the better course and allow Obama to act as petulant child by attacking him and in some cases spewing bald face lies.

The debate opened with the moderator, Bob Schieffer, asking a question on the current events in Libya. As I sat watching Romney, who had the first bite at this apple, I thought Romney would have an opportunity to really take Obama to the woodshed. But he didn’t. Then I had to scream at the TV and grab Romney by the throat and shake him.

Instead of pointing out the many missteps the Obama Administration made regarding the attack on our consulate in Benghazi and the murder of our ambassador along with three of his protectors Romney stated that the attack was carried out "apparently by, I think we know now, by terrorists of some kind against our people there."

He then went on to “congratulate Obama on taking out Osama bin Laden and going after the leadership in Al Qaeda and said; “But we can’t kill our way out of this mess. We’re going to have to put in place a very comprehensive and robust strategy.”

There were so many things Romney could have attacked Obama on regarding the attack and the subsequent cover up. He could have challenged Obama on the State Department ignoring Ambassador Stevens request for added security. He could have mentioned the fact that the State Department was watching the attack in real time from an unmanned aerial vehicle. He could have asked Obama why he did not order the quick reaction force stationed in Italy, an hour away from Benghazi into the fight or an AC130 gunship to take out the attackers. But Romney did none of these things. Instead he turned the conversation to the economy.

When Obama accused Romney of investing in China when he was with Bain Capital Romney said nothing. This is when a screamed at the TV in hope that Romney would hear me as I wanted him to mention that General Motors, the government owned car company, has plans to build 70% of their vehicles in China, thus loosing thousands of jobs in the United States. According to recent article in Forbes Less than one in five GM vehicles are manufactured in the United States. The article states:

“According to Obama, GM does everything right. It offers high-paying jobs to American workers. It invests at home. GM put American manufacturing back in the high-tech race on American soil. The new GM is good for America, and America is good for GM, as a former GM chairman declared in 1953. GM is back where it should be.

We need to look no further than General Motors’ own figures to learn that GM outsources almost two thirds of its jobs overseas. Less than one in five GM vehicles are manufactured in the United States.

To be exact: GM’s December 31, 2011 annual report shows General Motors of North America accounting for 98,000 of the 207,000 GM jobs worldwide. But 12,000 of these jobs are in Canada and 11,500 are in Mexico. Accordingly, GM has 74,500 jobs in the United States and 122,500 abroad, even after Obama’s touted surge in Detroit jobs. Almost two thirds of GM’s jobs are in other countries.

GM’s outsourcing is not a slip. GM clearly states that foreign investment and outsourcing of jobs are an integral parts of its growth strategy.”

Romney could then have stated that GM still owes the American taxpayer $24 billion dollars. Once again Romney let Obama of the hook and allowed him to continue his rant about Romney outsourcing to China. This was driving me crazy. Romney did, however, mention Solyndra and Obama’s failed green energy initiative.

Then Obama really got testy when he accused Romney of wanting the car companies to go belly-up and lose thousands of jobs. Romney responded that he had recommended a structured bankruptcy with government guarantees for the companies when they came out of bankruptcy and for the protection of the warranties for those who owned GM and Chrysler vehicles. This is when Obama lost it and virtually called Romney a liar and screamed that we should fact-check his statement. Well it turns out the Romney was telling the truth and Obama was lying into the camera without any hesitation at all. The

“You were very clear that you would not provide government assistance to the U.S. auto companies, even if they went through bankruptcy," Obama said, going on the offensive. "You said that they could get it in the private marketplace. That wasn't true."

But Romney rejected the claim — and he's got the op-ed he wrote to back him up. "Under no circumstances would I do anything other than to help this industry get on its feet," Romney said, "And the idea that has been suggested that I would liquidate the industry, of course not."

In a 2008 op-ed entitled "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt," Romney did in fact call on the government to play a role in responding to the auto crisis but in the form of federal guarantees, not loans.

"The federal government should provide guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing and assure car buyers that their warranties are not at risk," Romney wrote in The New York Times editorial.

You could see the rage on Obama’s face as he lied to the American people.

Like many conservatives I was looking for an ending similar to Sunday’s Giants-Redskins game when Elli Manning hit Victor Cruz for a game winning 77 yard TD pass with seconds left on the clock. Instead we got the boring Bears-Lions game where the bears plodded to a win over the hapless Lions.

His remarks about horse, bayonets, aircraft carriers, and submarines were not only demeaning they were out of bounds for an incumbent president. Within moments of his remarks a Marine tweeted that the Marines still use bayonets, as do the rest of the military. In fact they train with them.

The whole time during the last Presidential debate, Mitt Romney looked like the incumbent and Barack Obama looked like a challenger trying to keep it together. More specifically, Barack Obama, when he made eye contact, looked like he was seeing and invisible hand writing “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin” on the wall behind Bob Schieffer. This was a man who knows the gig is almost up.

Throughout the debate, Mitt Romney smiled, agreed, and avoided fights. Barack Obama did everything he could to get into fights. That’s not what incumbents in a comfortable lead do.

The biggest issue to come out of this debate, though, was Barack Obama totally claiming that sequestration was Congress’s fault — he signed it into law — and that it would not happen, despite it being the law of the land.

Within mere moments after the conclusion of the debate, the Obama camp already walked it back. It is never good for the President of the United States when, immediately upon conclusion of a must win debate, his campaign team is already walking back his bold statements. His jokes about sequestration will haunt him in military towns and his dismissiveness of the American Navy will hurt him in key swing states.

We’re two weeks away and signs point to the Obama campaign flailing about like a chicken with its head cut off — or more precisely Florida, North Carolina, and, of all things, Virginia cut off. Colorado too seems to be slipping out of Obama’s reach making Ohio more and more necessary. Paul Ryan has begun making incursions into Western Pennsylvania, which gets Ohio media markets, but also helps Republicans in Pennsylvania — something Obama cannot do for Democrats.

Within a week, the Obama campaign will probably trot out some blonde somebody with Gloria Alred to claim Mitt Romney and his five sons have all been sharing her. It will be their October Surprise. No doubt Eric Holder will be enlisted to drum up a few indictments too. They’ll pin their hopes on last minute fiction.

The Obama campaign is desperate and scared. Desperate and scared campaigns, like animals. tend to lash out. We’re seeing signs of that now with the “binders full of women” nonsense among other things. The Obama campaign has made a near fatal — quite possibly fatal — mistake. The campaign has been run on what Barack Obama has done for people without barely a hint of what he will do in his second term. People want to vote for something. Obama has given them nothing to vote for — just reminders of a past that includes a whole lot of unemployment and a still deeply unpopular take over of the American healthcare system. At least there’s Big Bird and Sandra Fluke.

What’s more, Mitt Romney and the GOP both are benefiting tremendously from Team Obama’s pride. The Obama campaign cannot, out of pride, admit it is losing key states. Consequently, the campaign continues to pour money into states like Florida that have fully slipped away. The Obama campaign is also hoarding Democratic Party funds that could be spent on other races. An unwillingness to let go of states and money and an inability to help other Democratic campaigns is not just costing Barack Obama, but is costing the Democratic Party as a whole.

Hamburgers, Batteries And Debates

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." — Frederic Bastiat, The Law.

Yesterday I posted a blog about the administrative state and the increasing influence and power being exerted by the experts and masterminds who manage that state. Also there was round two of the Obama-Romney debate last night that I will address later.

But first let’s look at the cost of a hamburger and what is costs the taxpayer when you ride the government train called Amtrak. If you take a ride on the train from Boston to Washington D.C., known as the Northeast Corridor you will pay $6.65 for the no so tasty burger. What you may not realize is that the true cost for that burger is $16.15, leaving the taxpayer with a $9.50 deficit. No big deal you say. Wrong. Last year Amtrak lost almost $250 million on its food and beverage service and according to and August 2^nd report in the Washington Examiner the government subsidized rail service lost $833 million over the last decade on the food and managed to spend $1.70 for every dollar that they received in revenue. What a way to run a railway!

Why are they losing money on the F&B service? Are they serving burgers made with kobe beef? No. The major reason is the 1,234 union employees serving this food. According to Representative John Mica (R-FL):

“The food service is legally obligated to break even, but Amtrak lost $84 million just last year. “The rail service’s food and beverage operation has 1,234 employees, and taking into account Amtrak’s $84.5 million loss last year, that’s $68, 476 per employee.”

A similar report in the New York Times states Amtrak lost more than $800 million on its food and beverage services over the last 10 years, largely because of waste, employee theft and lack of proper oversight, government auditors have found:

“Joseph H. Boardman, president and chief executive of Amtrak, confirmed the losses but said the railroad was taking steps to address the problem. “We are still looking for ways to improve our cost recovery,” he said.

According to audits by the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, and the railroad’s own inspector general, Amtrak loses about $80 million a year selling food. Since 2002, Amtrak’s food service has lost $834 million.

Amtrak said it was increasing the use of credit cards for food sales to cut down on cash thefts by employees, reducing staff, creating a better system to track inventory and to collect revenue. It has also set up a three-person loss-prevention unit.

Ted Alves, the Amtrak inspector general, testified that the bulk of the losses were on Amtrak’s long-distance routes, which account for 87 percent of the deficit. Last year, Amtrak spent $206 million in providing food services but collected only about $121 million. Long-haul routes do not include the Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington.”

If McDonalds, Burger King or Jack In The Box can sell a burger for less than two dollars and make a profit how is that Amtrak loses nine bucks on a burger that the customer shells our six buck for. The reason is Amtrak’s use of over-paid employees to pass out the food.

In 1991 when I was working as a GIS consultant for the West German Railroad (Deutsche Bundesbahn) I learned quite a bit about their operations and how the made money. One of the things they do is outsource their food and beverage service to private contractors who run the dining cars and snack trollies. In this manner they do not provide pensions and health care for these employees — that’s left (under German Law) to the contractor. It’s left to the contractor to provide good service and food and make a profit.

To a lot of the people who matter in media and politics "Amtrak" means "the guys who run the Northeast Corridor trains" and it seems unimaginable that they could lose that much on food service. If you delve into the report, however, it's clear that the losses are coming from Amtrak's weird long-haul routes off the NEC rather than from the Boston-D.C. service.

That said, this is no excuse for losing tons of money on food service! If selling food on trains isn't a profit center for the train operator, then the train operator is doing something badly wrong. And Nick Rahall's (D-WV) comments on this make me want to scream:

Representative Nick J. Rahall II, Democrat of West Virginia and the ranking member on the committee, said the hearing was a not-so-veiled attempt by Republicans to get rid of Amtrak food service workers, who number about 1,200.

“It’s a whopper of an idea, trading good-paying jobs for cheaper hamburgers,” Mr. Rahall said.”

This conception of government agencies as primarily jobs programs for public sector workers rather than public service providers is really toxic. The point of Amtrak is to provide passenger rail services. Its workforce practices should be designed with that end in mind. If adopting a leaner workforce would allow Amtrak to invest the money needed to run faster trains while holding fares constant, that would be a huge win for American transportation. And over the long run, the only way to have a vibrant railroad workforce in America is to have a vibrant railroad sector. But to have a vibrant railroad sector, Amtrak has to be focused on trying to run a railroad, not trying to create a handful of make-work jobs. If Amtrak was a truly private run operation I am sure their cost structure would be much different.

By now the $500 billion dollar fiasco of Solyndra is a household word. Now Obama has another brewing scandal with the battery manufacturer A123 Systems, a firm that makes batteries for green electric cars that are not selling. Yesterday A123 Systems declared bankruptcy leaving the taxpayers with a $241 million dollar debt. Of course to Obama, who touted this firm two years ago as one of his green energy firms that would employ 400 people, this is chump change. A123 Systems said it would sell its automotive business assets to Johnson Controls Inc. (JCI).

According to a report on Bloomberg:

“The filing may fuel a debate over government financing of alternative-energy and transportation businesses. Federal grants and loans to companies including A123, Fisker Automotive Inc. and Tesla Motors Inc. (TSLA) have drawn scrutiny from congressional Republicans following the September 2011 bankruptcy filing of solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC two years after it received a $535 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Energy Department.

“This action is expected to allow the company to provide for an orderly sale,” A123 said in a press release. Johnson Controls plans to acquire A123’s automotive-business assets in a deal valued at $125 million and will provide financing of $72.5 million to support A123’s operations, according to the release. A deal to sell a majority stake to a Chinese company fell through, A123 said.

…

Electric-vehicle sales since 2011 totaled fewer than 50,000 through September, just 5 percent of Obama’s target to have 1 million such vehicles on U.S. roads by 2015.

The debtors’ two largest customers are Fisker and AES Energy Storage LLC and its affiliates, which accounted for about 26 percent and 24 percent of their total revenue during the year ended Dec. 31, respectively, court papers show.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said last month that Obama has picked “losers” for alternative-energy loans and grants. His running mate, Paul Ryan, has called for all green-energy subsidies to be eliminated.

A123 has posted at least 14 straight quarterly losses. Its shares had fallen 85 percent this year to 24 cents as of yesterday’s close in New York.”

In a similar report on Obama’s brilliant record of investing our money President Barack Obama said last Thursday that “we got back every dime we used to rescue the financial system."

According to the Congressional Budget Office, however, the government will lose about $24 billion on the bailout.

According to a report on CNS “We got back every dime we used to rescue the financial system, but we also passed a historic law to end taxpayer-funded Wall Street bailouts for good,” Obama said in Miami Thursday:

“The Congressional Budget Office--based on figures from Obama’s own Office of Management and Budget---gives a different assessment.

“The cost to the federal government of the TARP’s transactions (also referred to as the subsidy cost), including grants for mortgage programs that have not yet been made, will amount to $24 billion,” said the CBO report, which was released on the same day Obama spoke.

TARP is the Troubled Asset Relief Program – the formal name of the government’s financial bailout program passed in October 2008.

CBO said that the cost of TARP “stems largely from assistance to American International Group (AIG), aid to the automotive industry, and grant programs aimed at avoiding home mortgage foreclosures,” noting that the losses will be so large they will eclipse the financial gains the government will realize from bailing out other large financial institutions.

In fact, CBO reported that as of now $65 billion in TARP funds remain outstanding.”

Why Romney did not hit this issue hard last night is beyond me. Red States has a very detailed article entitles; “The Pigs At Obama’s Green Energy Trough” that is well worth reading. There is a good expose of the corruption behind the BrightSource project.

Realistically, very few presidential debates have the kind of clear-cut winner that the first Romney-Obama debate did. It’s more productive to look at what each candidate came looking to accomplish.

Romney: Romney came in tonight with three main goals.

One, he wanted to repeat his strong showing from the first debate. He did that – he was vigorous, authoritative, and came across as the same technocratic moderate that he really is.

Two, he wanted to avoid any major gaffes that would foul up the momentum he has going. He did that, too. He never seemed stymied, never really put his foot in his mouth in a harmful way. Even when he bought into the false left-wing premise of a question on gender pay equity, he came away talking about his own experience hiring women in his cabinet (he might have mentioned his female running mate in Massachusetts as well and that Obama pays women in the White House less than men).

Three, he wanted to go in for the kill. On that, Romney failed. He let Obama get away with some flagrant lies, like claiming that Planned Parenthood performs mammograms. He completely botched an obvious attack on Obama’s disastrous and dishonest response on Libya, to the point where even moderator Candy Crowley – who was mostly running interference for Obama on this and on Fast & Furious – had to step in and remind Romney that Obama’s Administration had been dishonest on Libya. Romney forced a confrontation on the facts on oil drilling – one the fact-checkers have to give him – but like John McCain in 2008, he seemed hesitant to really take the fight to Obama on more divisive issues.

It’s true that Obama is now set up to be completely dismantled on Libya in the third debate, if Romney comes loaded for bear. But I suspect that by the time that debate arrives, nobody will be left undecided.

Obama: Obama also came in with goals, four of them.

First, Obama needed to show that he actually still wants the job. He did that – he was much more vigorous tonight, showing some fight and some indignation and squaring off in some true alpha-dog battles with Romney.

Second, Obama needed to give his partisans something to cheer for. He was late sometimes in doing so (especially waiting for his closing to attack Romney on the 47% tape) but did deliver.

Third, Obama needed to lay out something more like a positive second-term agenda. On this, he failed miserably. He has nothing to offer but a stew of “more of the same.” Closing with the 47% attack really underlines the extent to which this is a campaign bereft of positive promise.

Fourth, and perhaps most important, Obama needed to strip the bark off Romney, convince the voters that he was in no way an acceptable alternative. And outside the choir, Obama really didn’t seem to do that. He didn’t dismantle Romney’s agenda, he just disagreed with it. He basically denied the existence of the problems Romney cited on energy policy. Despite pre-debate preening on Romney’s record in Massachusetts, Obama never attacked that record. And despite his heavy reliance to date on attacking Romney as a tax-hiker, Obama spent far more of the debate bashing tax cuts, leaving little doubt which candidate was the low-tax candidate.

Romney’s strongest moments were two. One, he just buried Obama in response to an African-American man who declared himself a disheartened Obama ’08 voter; Romney responded with a blistering indictment of Obama’s economic record. And two, he offered a great answer on American competitiveness. He also came away with a good answer on immigration, albeit one that won’t please many of his own primary supporters.

As Erick Erickson writes in Red States:

“I think Mitt Romney won the debate, but not by much. He flubbed a few good opportunities to really score decisive blows on the President, but definitely drew more blood. The CNN polling and CBS News polling confirm it. While more thought Barack Obama won the debate, largely because his last performance was so bad, clear majorities outside the margin of error thought Mitt Romney would be best on the economy, jobs, the deficit, etc. That suggests Romney did win, but people viewed Obama’s debate performance as an improvement over the first one. In fact, while other areas of the debate may overshadow this point, Romney deftly dispatched Obama on his economic record. That is the one issue that matters. It got so bad, Obama had to trot out Planned Parenthood and Big Bird.

….

The President tried to claim that the reason gas prices were so low in 2008 was because the economy was so bad. He actually wanted the audience to believe that the economy is going gangbusters now as a reason for $4.00 gasoline — a delusion the undecided voters clearly did not buy. His words — he said that gas prices were so low because of the economy, which clearly means he thinks it is so high now because of the recovery. What recovery? Romney hit him hard on this and the undecided voters reacted favorably to Romney. There is more room for Romney to hit Obama on the airwaves over gas prices.

….

Candy Crowley should not have tried to referee the Libya answer as she moderated. Herding the cats was a difficult enough task. Interjecting on the Libya story made her part of the story in a way she should not have become. But for all the people heaping aspersions on her (full disclosure: I am a political contributor for CNN and have long thought the world of Candy Crowley even before I had a relationship with CNN), they should be thanking her. It was her interjection to clarify what was and was not said that muddied the water on what the President actually said”

Dick Morris has a similar take on the outcome of the debate when he writes:

“Fundamentally, Romney’s smooth, polished, dignified, articulate, sincere, and compassionate manner in the debate puts to rest eight months of Obama negative attacks on his character. Barack Obama is about to learn the lesson Jimmy Carter learned in 1980 when he lost to Reagan — and found his lead collapsing after the debates. When a president with a failed record tries to win by attacking and demonizing his opponent, he can succeed only if there are no debates. Since neither Goldwater (1964) nor McGovern (1972) had the chance to show themselves to America in debates, the negative characterization of them by first Johnson and then Nixon stuck. But Ronald Reagan’s debate performance nullified Carter’s attacks and showed him not to be the war-mongering madman the president had accused him of being. Similarly, Obama’s portrayal of Romney as insensitive, elitist, incapable of understanding the problems of the average person, a tax cheat, and a cold blooded capitalist all fell before Romney’s real persona as it came through on television.

And once Obama is stripped of his negative messaging, he has nothing to say. His defense of his economic record and his energy drilling essentially boiled down to asking people what they wanted to believe — their own eyes or Obama’s speeches.”

Since last night Crowley has issued a statement claiming Romney was rights and she was mistaken in her remarks. According to a report on Fox News this morning Crowley said; "He was right in the main. I just think he picked the wrong word.”

“The moderator in Tuesday night's presidential debate, after appearing to side with President Obama on the question of whether he called the Libya strike a terror attack from the start, conceded afterward that Mitt Romney was "right" on the broader point -- that the administration for days insisted it was a spontaneous act.

"He was right in the main. I just think he picked the wrong word," Candy Crowley said of Romney on CNN shortly after the debate ended.

Crowley was referring to the tense exchange in the final half-hour of the debate, when Romney questioned whether Obama had called the attack an "act of terror" rather than "spontaneous" violence that grew out of a protest against an anti-Islam video.

….

Obama, indicating he thought he had just gotten a boost from the moderator, then chimed in: "Can you say that a little louder, Candy?"

However, Obama didn't explicitly label the Benghazi strike terrorism in those Sept. 12 remarks. What he did say is: "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation."

Crowley, during and following the debate, pointed out that despite Obama's Sept. 12 remarks his administration was peddling a different story to the public. She said it took two weeks for officials to say more definitively that the attack was more than an out-of-control protest.

And she continued to clarify on CNN that Romney was making a legitimate point.

"Right after that I did turn around and say, 'but you are totally correct that they spent two weeks telling us that this was about a tape'," she said.”

In the baseball playoffs, the tie goes to the runner. In debates, ties are decided by the moderator and that’s what happened during the Tuesday night presidential debate at Hofstra University in New York. CNN’s Candy Crowley made her presence felt as a moderator in a major way on two points, but none larger than the issue of Libya.

The terrorist attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and four others in Benghazi has become a sore point for Obama, but Crowley made sure she called Romney out before Obama could tag him.

When Romney said Obama had not called the attack an act of terror for 14 days, Crowley interrupted and said: “It -- it -- it -- he did in fact, sir. So let me -- let me call it an act of terror.”

Naturally, Obama asked her to restate her point and she did. “Can you say that a little louder, Candy?” asked the president. “He — he did call it an act of terror. It did as well take — it did as well take two weeks or so for the whole idea there being a riot out there about this tape to come out. You are correct about that,” she continued.

Conservatives were outraged, arguing that Crowley’s interruption spoiled a key Romney point. They weren’t the only ones. Even Politico’s Mike Allen called the Crowley point “arguable” and pointed to the transcript of Obama’s statement saying it “generally” referred to “acts of terror.” CNN’s John King called the Obama statement a “generic” comment about terror, not specifically calling the Libya attack a terrorist act.

In the run-up to the second presidential debate, CNN’s Candy Crowley declared that she would not just be a “fly on the wall” as she played the tiny role of moderator, that she would step in whenever she chose to say, “Hey, wait a second, what about X, Y, Z?”

And boy did she, cutting off Republican Mitt Romney repeatedly and often throwing the floor to President Obama with an open “let me give the president a chance here.”

More, she alone decided the topics for the debate, picking questions from the 80 so-called “undecided” voters chosen by the Gallup polling organization. Her selections were tailor-made for Mr. Obama — Mitt Romney’s tax plan, women’s rights and contraception, outsourcing, immigration, the Libya debacle (which gave Mr. Obama to finally say that the buck stops with him, not, as Hillary Clinton said, with her).

She even chose this question, directed to both men: “I do attribute much of America’s economic and international problems to the failings and missteps of the Bush administration. Since both of you are Republicans, I fear the return to the policies of those years should you win this election. What is the biggest difference between you and George W. Bush, and how do you differentiate yourself from George W. Bush?” Undecided my butt. This was just another chance for Obama and the left to blame Bush — how sad. To be fair and balanced Crowley should had found a person to ask if Obama was following the policies of Jimmy Carter, after all he was a Democrat.

Ms. Crowley, who called Mr. Romney’s selection of Rep. Paul Ryan as running mate a “ticket death wish,” asserted her unilateral power at the outset, telling the audience before the cameras went on that she planned to “give the debate direction and ensure the candidates give answers to the questions.”

After both candidates answered Question One, she blurted: “Let me get a more immediate answer” — whatever that means. But when Mr. Romney sought to correct falsehoods told by the president, she cut him off: “We have all these folks here.” In the end, Mr. Obama would get 9 percent more time.

Obama falsely said that he had called the murders in Benghazi a terrorist act the day after September 11. Gov. Romney was seemingly bewildered about what to say. Obama further told the outrageous untruth that in a democracy, the President should not be criticized over a defense/foreign policy disaster.

Let's look at the facts:

Obama gave a lengthy speech on September 12^th , after the murders in Libya, in which he first of all apologized to the Muslims for that infamous video. Then he talked about the terrorism of September 11, 2001, and his visits to some graves of some victims. It was in that context that he mentioned terrorist acts — NOT in the context of the killings in Libya. Those, he was still blaming on an inflamed mob and that video. For Obama to take his own words out of context to excuse his inexcusable kowtow to the Islamists was disgraceful, deceptive, but frankly, not surprising. But for Gov. Romney to not catch him on it and whip him was a disappointment. Gov. Romney might have said, "Sir, you were covering up for the al Qaeda affiliates most of September and you are still covering up for your incompetence. It is insulting to the nation."

Even worse is Obama's anti-Constitutional pretention that no one is allowed to criticize him on foreign policy or else it's "playing politics."

To this, Mr. Romney should have said that it is the essence of a free people that the elected officials can and must be criticized for their mistakes. Otherwise, we do not have a democracy.

If this is how Obama misunderstands the First Amendment, he should not be in high office.

But Mr. Romney missed that moment, too.

Something went wrong last night. Romney was not on the beam on Libya. But the dishonesty and shameless obfuscation of Obama were genuinely frightening. Look, Secretary of State Clinton has already apologized, so we know something went badly wrong in Benghazi. Only Obama is still saying he didn't do anything wrong. Obama is smooth, but he is in a box now, and let's hope that Gov. Romney does not let him out next time.

The Transformation of America’s Political Institutions

“We are coming now to realize that life is so complicated that we are not dealing with the old conditions, and that the law has to step in and create new conditions under which we may live, the conditions which will make it tolerable for us to live.” — Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom, 1913.

In 1913 Woodrow Wilson gave a speech entitled “The Old Order Changeth” as a part of his New Freedom series. In speech Wilson stated:

“We used to think in the old-fashioned days when life was very simple that all that government had to do was to put on a policeman’s uniform, and say, "Now don’t anybody hurt anybody else." We used to say that the ideal of government was for every man to be left alone and not interfered with, except when he interfered with somebody else; and that the best government was the government that did as little governing as possible. That was the idea that obtained in Jefferson’s time. But we are coming now to realize that life is so complicated that we are not dealing with the old conditions, and that the law has to step in and create new conditions under which we may live, the conditions which will make it tolerable for us to live.”

Wilson, while a fan of Thomas Jefferson, did not believe that the United States could survive in the new industrial world by adhering to the outdated model of the Constitution. He believed we needed a new system of leadership where the executive was the political leader of the nation and we needed a cadre of experts to run his new administrative state. This was to be the model for the progressive liberalism’s transformation of America’s political institutions from Madison’s constitutional republic, where laws were made by the legislature, to an administrative state where laws and regulations came down from the executive branch through the hands of commissions of experts and masterminds.

Progressives undertook the transformation of America’s political institutions—in particular the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches—to reflect their understanding that government is divided into politics (representation of the will of the people) and administration (development and implementation of civic policies and programs determined by scientific expertise and masterminds). This administrative system, in which Congress delegates its lawmaking authority to regulatory agencies, replaces the centrality of the consent of the governed with the rule of unelected, bureaucratic experts.

As a direct consequence of the idea that government should adapt to the changing needs of modern industrial society, Progressives have transformed the functions of American political institutions and, in so doing, have expanded the power of government. Jettisoning the Founders’ understanding of the purpose of separation of powers (to prevent the tyranny of the passions by enabling reasoned deliberation in legislative matters), Progressives transformed the three branches of government to reflect their desire for a division between politics and administration.

The business of elected politicians, the Progressives held, is to give expression to the will of the people. However, ultimately motivated by their own desire for reelection, politicians merely represent the special private interests of their immediate constituents. Lacking the technical expertise and training required by the complexities of rulemaking in a modern society, members of Congress delegate their lawmaking power to the nonpartisan, bureaucratic experts who staff administrative agencies. In turn, these experts formulate the policies and regulations governing the daily life of citizens.

The Executive and Judicial branches likewise have undergone a transformation. The President is now viewed as the nation’s legislative leader. His primary responsibility is to rally public opinion around certain proposals, and to secure their enactment. He is only secondarily responsible for the execution of laws. The federal Judiciary also currently exhibits the Progressive understanding of its function that the Judicial branch should be thought of as an administrative agency whose expertise is the Constitution. This expertise authorizes it to determine the ultimate meaning of the Constitution, in accordance with the needs of the times and the realities of progress.

In Federalist 49 James Madison wrote:

“The executive power might be in the hands of a peculiar favorite of the people. In such a posture of things, the public decision might be less swayed by prepossessions in favor of the legislative party. But still it could never be expected to turn on the true merits of the question. It would inevitably be connected with the spirit of pre-existing parties, or of parties springing out of the question itself. It would be connected with persons of distinguished character and extensive influence in the community. It would be pronounced by the very men who had been agents in, or opponents of, the measures to which the decision would relate. The PASSIONS, therefore, not the REASON, of the public would sit in judgment. But it is the reason, alone, of the public, that ought to control and regulate the government. The passions ought to be controlled and regulated by the government.”

But by 1913 the liberal/progressives believed as Frank Goodnow and Woodrow Wilson had stated the political leader of the nation should be the president who would respond to the WILL of the people and that administration should be the execution of that will. As you can see this is in total contradiction to what our Founders believed and wrote in the Constitution. The Constitution gives all power to make laws to the legislative body and limited powers to the executive. In essence it is the responsibility of the executive to carry out the laws passed by Congress.

In 1915 Herbert Croly (the co-founder of The New Republic) wrote in his essay Progressive Democracy:

“The mechanism of direct government has, consequently, an essential function to perform in the organization of a social democracy. The realization of a genuine social policy necessitates the aggrandizement of the administrative and legislative branches of the government. Progressive democracy recognizes the need of these instruments, but it recognizes the need of keeping control of them. A strong government with an affirmative policy and effective popular control are supplementary rather than hostile one to another. The realization of such a policy will in the long run demand both an efficient system of representation and an efficient method of direct popular supervision.

…

““Democracy implies and needs some method of representation which will be efficient and responsible enough to carry out a social policy, but which does not imply the delegation of its own ultimate discretionary power to any body of men or body of law. The new system can accomplish nothing without human energy, intelligence, sacrifice and faith, but if those qualities are present, it will make the best use of them.”

…

“In all three of the principal departments of government, there are essential functions to be performed which must be delegated by a democracy to selected men under conditions which make for technical efficiency and individual independence and self-respect. The Fathers of the Republic were fully justified both in keeping the powers distinguished, and in seeking to balance one against the other. Their mistake consisted in the methods adopted for preserving or readjusting the balance. The preservation of a balance depends upon the harmonious development of several elements which enter into it; and as in the course of nature harmonious development is rare, the preservation of any such balance must usually be contrived by human insistence and intelligence. Only one part of a democratic system is entitled to exercise any such function—the electorate itself. The whole of a democratic political system is divided into three parts, not merely or primarily as a protection to individual and popular liberties, but rather to provide an essential positive individual and popular liberties, but rather to provide an essential positive function for the people to perform—the function of recreating the unity which is necessarily compromised by the no less necessary specialization of governmental function. Such is the part which the people, or the closest possible approximation to the people, have to play in the process of their own nationalization or socialization. They must divide in order to act, to think, to rule, to move on and to aspire; but they must not impose upon any one of the resulting classifications or subdivisions the responsibility of ultimate social cohesion. That responsibility rests with the whole people, and its fulfillment depends upon popular intelligence, sympathy and faith.”

This is in total contradiction to Madison’s beliefs, as expressed I his famous Federalist No. 10 where he spoke of “factions” and “passions” of the people and made the case for a constitutional republic with a bi-cameral legislature and a “check and balance” between the three branches of government with the legislative being the most powerful due to their budgetary control and the judiciary being the least. Madison wrote:

“By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.

…

The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.”

Today we live in an administrative state where Congress’ primary function is Constituent services. Our representatives pass broad conceptual laws and then leave the interpretation and enforcement to the experts and masterminds of the administrative state. These bureaucratic experts outlive Congresses and Presidents and are the real power in the United States.

An example is the EPA. When Congress passed the clean water act they had no idea as to how the masterminds at the EPA would interpret, create regulations and enforce them. This was clearly demonstrated when an Idaho couple decided to build a house on their property on which there was a small inland lake. Not only did the EPA prevent them from building their dream home on their own property they also prevented them from having a hearing and going to court to plead their case. Fortunately the Supreme Court granted certiorari and heard their case after the Ninth Circuit Court rejected their case. In Sackett v. United States Environmental Protection Agency the Supreme Court, by a decision of 9-0, rejected the decision of the Ninth Circuit Court and ruled against the EPA.

In his opinion Justice Alito noted in this case “real relief” must come from Congress. The Clean Water Act does not contain clear rules regarding procedure. No one really knows what a wetland is. The EPA takes advantage of the lack of clarity and, like any bureaucracy, grabs power. This is the 40th anniversary of the Clean Water Act. As Congress has not seen fit to clean it up over the decades, it is unlikely to do so now.

The problem is for the Sacketts is that they won the right to sue the EPA, but not the right to build their home. This is another battle that needs to be fought against the masterminds of the EPA and the administrative state.

As I have written before the liberal/progressives, the advocates of the administrative state, believe as Wilson that the Constitutions is outmoded and is what is holding the nation back from moving forward. Sanford Levinson, a professor of law and government at the University of Texas, Austin believes the Constitution is “Imbecilic.” He writes in his article, “Our Imbecilic Constitution:”

“Our vaunted system of ‘separation of powers’ and ‘checks and balances’—a legacy of the founders’ mistrust of ‘factions’—means that we rarely have anything that can truly be described as a ‘government.’ Save for those rare instances when one party has hefty control over four branches—the House of Representatives, the Senate, the White House and the Supreme Court—gridlock threatens. Elections are increasingly meaningless, at least in terms of producing results commensurate with the challenges facing the country.

“But if one must choose the worst single part of the Constitution, it is surely Article V, which has made our Constitution among the most difficult to amend of any in the world. The last truly significant constitutional change was the 22nd Amendment, added in 1951, to limit presidents to two terms. The near impossibility of amending the national Constitution not only prevents needed reforms; it also makes discussion seem futile and generates a complacent denial that there is anything to be concerned about.”

And then we have Supreme Court Justice William Brennan stating at a Text and Teaching Symposium:

“We current Justices read the Constitution in the only way that we can: as Twentieth Century Americans. We look to the history of the time of framing and to the intervening history of interpretation. But the ultimate question must be, what do the words of the text mean in our time. For the genius of the Constitution rests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs. What the constitutional fundamentals meant to the wisdom of other times cannot be their measure to the vision of our time. Similarly, what those fundamentals mean for us, our descendants will learn, cannot be the measure to the vision of their time.

Time works changes, brings into existence new conditions and purposes. Therefore, a principle to be vital must be capable of wider application than the mischief which gave it birth. This is peculiarly true of constitutions. They are not ephemeral enactments, designed to meet passing occasions. They are, to use the words of Chief Justice John Marshall, ‘designed to approach immortality as nearly as human institutions can approach it.’ The future is their care and provision or events of good and bad tendencies of which no prophesy can be made. In the application of a constitution, therefore, our contemplation cannot be only of what has been, but of what may be.

Interpretation must account for the transformative purpose of the text. Our Constitution

was not intended to preserve a preexisting society but to make a new one, to put in place new principles that the prior political community had not sufficiently recognized. Thus, for example, when we interpret the Civil War Amendments to the charter-abolishing slavery, guaranteeing blacks equality under law, and guaranteeing blacks the right to vote-we must remember that those who put them in place had no desire to enshrine the status quo. Their goal was to make over their world, to eliminate all vestige of slave caste.

There are those who find legitimacy in fidelity to what they call the ‘intentions of the Framers.’ But in truth it is little more than arrogance cloaked in humility. It is arrogance to pretend that from our vantage we can gauge accurately the intent of the Framers on application of principle to specific, contemporary questions.”

I guess Justice Brennan, one of the most liberal/progressive justices to sit on the Court, never heard of or reads the Federalists Papers, which give a pretty good idea of what our Founders were thinking.

And then we have the liberal/progressive Thomas Friedman writing about the wonders of China, a totalitarian state in his article “Our One-Party Democracy.”

“One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China’s leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down.

Our one-party democracy is worse. The fact is, on both the energy/climate legislation and health care legislation, only the Democrats are really playing. With a few notable exceptions, the Republican Party is standing, arms folded and saying “no.” Many of them just want President Obama to fail. Such a waste. Mr. Obama is not a socialist; he’s a centrist. But if he’s forced to depend entirely on his own party to pass legislation, he will be whipsawed by its different factions.”

Look at the climate/energy bill that came out of the House. Its sponsors had to work twice as hard to produce this breakthrough cap-and-trade legislation. Why? Because with basically no G.O.P. representatives willing to vote for any price on carbon that would stimulate investments in clean energy and energy efficiency, the sponsors had to rely entirely on Democrats — and that meant paying off coal-state and agriculture Democrats with pork. Thank goodness, it is still a bill worth passing. But it could have been much better — and can be in the Senate. Just give me 8 to 10 Republicans ready to impose some price on carbon, and they can be leveraged against Democrats who want to water down the bill.

“China is going to eat our lunch and take our jobs on clean energy — an industry that we largely invented — and they are going to do it with a managed economy we don’t have and don’t want,” said Joe Romm, who writes the blog, climateprogress.org.”

I always knew Thomas Friedman was a lefty-progressive, but a believer in a totalitarian dictatorship of experts and masterminds who have complete control over their citizens is quite another matter. No less a figure than Karl Marx argued that administrative bureaucracies would not, in fact, be free of their own self-interests. I wonder how Mr. Friedman would feel if the government began to censor his articles and tell him what he could or could not write under pain of imprisonment.

With the power of the legislature diminishing and the rise of the administrate state the liberal/progressive have no taken to the courts to establish their control over the governed. Most people believe it was Marbury v. Madison that gave the Court power over the constitution. Over the years the Court has ruled on many issues with dubious Constitutionality; Dred Scott, Plessey v Ferguson, Wickard v. Filburn, Korematsu v. United States, and the latest example of the ruling on ObamaCare.

Now our legislation emanates from the bench and the liberal/progressives love it. If they can’t get their agenda through the legislature and the executive does not support them they turn to the bench. The final interpretation of the Constitution is now in the hands of 9 unelected members of the Supreme Court and by a 5-4 decision these justices can write new laws. This proven in the 1958 landmark case of Cooper v. Aaron which held that the states were bound by the Court's decisions and had to enforce them even if the states disagreed with them.

While the progressives hailed the 9-0 decision some legal scholars criticized the Court's rationale in Cooper. Perhaps the most famous criticism of the case was that of a former US Attorney General, Edwin Meese, in his law review article entitled The Law of the Constitution. There, Meese accused the Court of taking too much power for itself by setting itself up as the sole institution responsible for the interpretation of the Constitution. He wrote that while judicial interpretation of the Constitution binds the parties of the case, it should not establish a supreme law of the land that must be accepted by all persons.

In the abstract of his paper presented at the presented at the Citizen's Forum on the Bicentennial of the Constitution (New Orleans, LA, October 21, 1986) Meese states.

“This paper discusses the distinction between the Constitution and constitutional law. The Constitution is the fundamental law of the United States. It creates the institutions of government, enumerates the powers of these institutions, and delineates areas government may not enter. The Constitution is the instrument by which the consent of the governed is transformed into a government. Constitutional law is that body of law which has resulted from the Supreme Court's adjudications involving disputes over constitutional provisions or doctrines. A constitutional law decision does not establish the "supreme Law of the Land" that is binding on all persons and parts of government, henceforth and forevermore. Rather, Constitutional law is the product of judicial interpretation of the supreme law of the land, the Constitution. Officials of the executive and the legislative branches of government also have the duty and responsibility to interpret the Constitution.”

My final quote is from Peter Orszag, Obama’s former formerly Obama's director the Office of Management and Budget (one of those bureaucratic masterminds), and now a vice chairman at Citigroup. He recently penned a column in the New Republic titled: "Too Much of a Good Thing: Why We Need Less Democracy." In which he said:

“THE PROBLEM WITH such commissions is that, like automatic stabilizers and backstop rules, they reduce the power of elected officials and therefore make our government somewhat less accountable to voters. Larry Diamond of the Hoover Institution at Stanford puts it this way: “There is something undemocratic about entrusting the formation of big policy decisions to expert commissions.” And yet he also goes on to note that “the process is not less democratic than having nine unelected justices with lifetime tenure and no political accountability to anyone but themselves decide such basic questions as when a woman can have an abortion and where a child can go to school.” He concludes that, despite the risks, rising polarization justifies the increased use of these types of commissions.

As the debt-limit experience vividly illustrated, by polarizing ourselves, we are making our country more ungovernable—and no one has come up with a practical proposal to deal with the consequences. I wish it were not necessary to devise processes to circumvent legislative gridlock, but polarization isn’t going away. John Adams may have been exaggerating when he pessimistically noted that democracies tend to commit suicide, yet, as we are seeing, certain aspects of representative government can end up posing serious problems. And so, we might be a healthier democracy if we were a slightly less democratic one.”

Liberal/progressives, at least since Woodrow Wilson, want to replace the will of the people with the will of the bureaucrats. They want a society run by experts and masterminds — like the ones that run our failed "stimulus," TARP and the Fed.

Fact is, they don't trust you to run your own lives, and they have a barely concealed contempt for the very people who voted them into office. They want to rule you by curbing your democratic rights — by force, if needed.

The consent of the governed is being replaced by the rule of the experts and masterminds of the administrative state. Politicians come and go, but bureaucrats are forever.

Ending Union Dominance In The Golden State

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." — Frederic Bastiat, The Law, 1849.

There is no doubt that California is broke. California’s GDP once ranked 5^th in world ranking has now slipped to 9th behind Brazil. Once ranking first in average income California has fallen to 17th ($43,647 per year) behind North Dakota, ranked at 7^th.with $47,236 per year and Wyoming at 6^th with $46, 898 per year. (Connecticut ranks 1^st with $57,902 per year.) But, California has the largest budget deficit in the nation at $10 billion and this does not include the unfunded liabilities for government worker’s pensions and life-time healthcare.

Keep in mind that these numbers are for the state at large and do not include counties, cities, and school districts — and in California that number is astronomical. In fact is so bad that three major cities; San Diego; and San Jose have passed ballot measures reducing the impact of civil service workers on their budget and Stockton has declared bankruptcy.

One of the reasons California is in the mess that is in today is the tremendous amount on influence the unions have on Sacramento. The unions with the most influence are the public sector unions, teachers unions, and SEIU. Without the money and voting numbers these unions are able to bring to the polls each election California would be a red state and Jerry (“Moonbeam”) Brown would not be governor. In 2010 Brown won by more than 1.3 million votes (53.8%) and there are an estimated 900,000 SEIU members in the state, including nurses and hotel workers.

From the outside looking in, you have to admit that something is a little "off" in California politics. In the year 2010, while voters nationwide swept Republicans into office high and low, voters in California kept Democrats in office, with the numbers in the California House delegation remaining exactly the same. Not only did Californians re-elect far-left U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, but California voters also dusted off and voted back in as governor a relic from the 1970's, Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown. Californians preserved a Democrat majority in the California Senate and even added to a Democratic majority in the Assembly. And I am sure Obama will carry the golden state by the same margin.

When my wife and I arrived in California in 1962 the political climate was much different. California was a “fair and balanced” state. Pat Brown, a Democrat, was governor and the state was moving forward with water and transportation projects. People, by the thousands, were migrating to California to find opportunities for a better life and to enjoy the favorable climate.

When my wife and I arrived in California I took a job with the California Division of Highways (now Caltrans) as a surveyor and highway engineer. During my 10 year tenure with Caltrans I served under Pat Brown and Ronald Reagan and I did well, advancing in my profession and providing for my expanding family.

After 10-years I had had enough of civil service as I became disenchanted with the culture and the desire to begin my own consulting civil engineering and surveying business, which I did along with two partners. Things went well for my partners and me as we grew the business to 100 employees by 1980. Then with the election of Jimmy Carter and his disastrous economic policies and mortgage interest rising to 22% our business began a rapid decline as most of our clients were land developers and home builders. By 1982 we had declined to ten employees and one of my partners had decided to look for other opportunities. I had to look for another form to merge with.

In 1982 I was able to strike a deal with another firm suffering from the same effects of the Carter economy and for the next 22 years I served as a principal and director of our combined forms and by the time I retired we had grown to over 800 employees with offices throughout California and in Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado. I was responsible for developing business in the public and corporate sector due to my experience and knowledge in the transportation sector and my disdain for working in the land development sector of the business. My clients were now federal agencies, state and local governments, utility companies, and large A&E firms such as Bechtel and Parsons Brinkerhoff.

Jerry (Moon-Beam) Brown, Pat Brown’s son was inaugurated as the 34^th governor of the State of California on January 6, 1975 and things in California began to go downhill. There is a saying, when talking about the similarities between a father and a son that states “the apple does not fall far from the tree.” In Jerry Brown’s case the apple fell or rolled miles away. Jerry Brown was anti-transportation and pro-government. He cancelled many of the proposed freeway projects and supported something called the Dill’s Act. In 1978, he signed the "Dill’s Act," which gave California public employees the right to collective bargaining. Not only did the Dill’s act allow public employee collective bargaining it laid the foundation for an economic disaster in California, defined public employee pension programs. It also insured the dominance of the Power of the Democrat Party in California.

In normal collective bargaining, say between a private sector union and a group of employers, the union negotiates with the employer on the basis of what will be financially beneficial for both parties. This means that the union knows it cannot ask for more than the employer can afford without going out of business and ending the jobs for the union employees. This was the case in the 70’s when the auto workers kept pushing the American auto makers and the auto makers kept giving into the unions and increasing the prices of their cars. As the prices rose the door opened for foreign auto makers to move in with less expensive and more reliable cars. As the Japanese auto makers began to erode the market for the American car makers they began opening plants in the United States, and these plants were non-union shops. To this day these Japanese (now Korean and German) auto plants remain non-union and their employees have resisted all attempts by the UAW to organize them into the union.

This is not the case with public sector unions. Here the union representative negotiates with the employer in the same manner as the private sector. The one big difference is the employers are the politicians who are supported with union money, money that is coerced from the employees whether they like it or not and then donated to the same politicians that will determine their wages and benefits. It’s a closed loop.

The public service and teachers unions also pose a monopoly on the work they perform. As two examples are the teachers unions and in A&E services. The teachers unions, through their massive political donations to the Democrat Party have been able to stifle school vouchers and the establishment of charter schools where non-union teachers are hired. This has been done to the detriment of our K-12 education system.

Architect and Engineering services are a more egregious abuse of the public service unions. Federal, state, and local governments need A&E services to design and construct buildings, highways, dams, subways and other civil works. As these projects vary in intensity and number it makes no sense to for government to maintain high level of workforce. This is why these agencies will outsource his work to the private sector where they can obtain qualified professionals. State highway departments outsource and average of 50% of these services to the private sector to avoid staffing for peak levels and then maintain these civil servants for twenty-five to thirty years and paying them for doing nothing. This also greatly adds to the liabilities for defined pension programs that are breaking the budgets of state and local governments. (See the Tale of Two Cities)

California's governor Schwarzenegger commissioned a study by Stanford University, which has found that California's three public employee pension funds (The California Public Employees' Retirement System [CalPERS], California State Teachers' Retirement System [CalSTRS], and University of California Retirement System [UCRS]) lost $109.7 billion in portfolio value in one year (June '08 to June '09) and are currently in shortfall of "more than half a trillion dollars."

By law, California taxpayers are required to pay the public employees' pensions shortfalls that may occur. Local governments cannot "print money" as the federal government does to cover budget deficits.

In the State of California less than 10% of these A&E services are outsourced to the private sector. This is due to the power of the PECG (Professional Engineers in California Government), the public service union representing architects, engineers, surveyors, and mappers. Due to PECG’s money and power Caltrans is over-staffed by at least 30%-40%. The currently have a workforce of about 22,000, a workforce that should be somewhere around 14,000 or less. While this does not sound like a big deal you should consider that these 8,000 employees with be there for 25 to 30 years and then draw a defined pension and health care benefits for the remainder of their lives. Currently one-third of the Caltrans $11 billion dollar budget is devoted to salaries of civil service employees. As for the monies owed for pensions and health care you need to look at CalPERS, California’s combined pension program.

I had a very personal experience with the power of PECG in 1997 when the California Supreme Court upheld a 1990 decision by a Sacramento Superior Court, Eugene T. Gualco. The court found that since the 1986-1987 fiscal year, Caltrans has unlawfully contracted privately for engineering projects that the civil service has traditionally done;  that by hiring more civil service employees, Caltrans could have the work at issue performed in a timely manner, and that Caltrans failed to justify private contracting on a cost-effectiveness or other valid basis.

The trial court also found that Caltrans undertook private contracting as a direct result of “gubernatorial/executive branch policy against the expansion of state government,” which required Caltrans to “balance and temper” its requests for funding for additional staff by contracting with private entities, without regard to whether qualified persons were actually available for civil service employment or whether Caltrans could assimilate and train them in a timely manner. The court found insufficient evidence to support Caltrans's contentions that (1) its increased project workload involved short-term or temporary work that private contractors could perform most economically and efficiently, or (2) private contracting would allow Caltrans to perform its work in a more timely and effective manner than hiring new civil service staff.

Thus, on April 17, 1990, the court issued a permanent injunction prohibiting Caltrans from (1) contracting privately for engineering and inspection services for highway projects unless the work was to be performed in compliance with the then existing criteria set forth in section 14101 and former section 14130 et seq.;  (2) entering into cooperative agreements with local entities when private entities were to perform part or all of the work;  and (3) awarding contracts to private entities for construction survey staking.

As I mentioned above I was developing a book of business with public agencies and in one court decision I had $7 million dollars in contract value wiped off my desk — work I and my firm were well qualified to perform and a lesser cost than the public sector.

This did not sit well with the California voters and in 2000 they approved Proposition 35 by 55.2% to 44.8). Prop 35 amended the California Constitution by eliminating several restrictions that had previously prevented the state government and local governments throughout the state from contracting with private entities for engineering and architectural services. Under the terms of Proposition 35, at any time that a California government agency awards a contract to a private entity, the government agency first has to go through a competitive selection process.

Still, to this day PECG fights any efforts of Caltrans to outsource more than 10% of its work. According to the American Council of Engineering Companies of California, both the bipartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) and the State Auditor have previously recommended that the state can make meaningful savings at Caltrans — money that the state could put to better use in actually rebuilding its crumbling infrastructure. The LAO, for example, has concluded that Caltrans is way overstaffed and recommended cutting Caltrans staff by 1,500 positions for a savings of approximately $200 million per year. That proposed reduction would be more than 4.5 times the size of the governor’s proposal.

The ACEC says that Caltrans management itself has also recognized that the department needs to shift more of its engineering work to the private sector in order to better manage project and personnel workload. Management last year asked to be able to contract up to 20% of its workload to the private sector instead of the 10% historically contracted out. Gov. Brown’s proposal will result in Caltrans being able to contract out just 11% of its work, according to the ACEC.

Caltrans today is actually an anomaly, says Paul Meyer, executive director at ACECC. “Nationwide, state departments of transportation use private engineering firms on average for more than 50% of their workload,” he says. DOTs realize, he adds, that with a private firm after a project is satisfactorily finished, the state has no further financial obligations, such as public employee pensions and lifetime health care.

In addition, the LAO and State Auditor have also pointed to systemic inefficiencies in Caltrans’ operations. Until addressed with meaningful reforms, these will continue to hamper the department’s ability to accurately account for project costs and limit its efficient operation, the ACECC says.

Meanwhile, the California Transportation Commission is taking up the challenge of raising public awareness with its first “Needs Report” since 1999. The 191-page report covers roads, highways, bridges, airports, seaports, railways, border crossings, and public transit infrastructure, warning that further decay and a deterioration of these transportation systems “may take many years to recover.” The reality is that, in the aftermath of the “Great Recession,” the public has lost its focus on big picture issues like the transportation system, says the CTC.

“California’s transportation system is the largest and most complex in the nation. Historical investments in freeways, roads, bridges, rail systems, airports, public transit, and other transportation infrastructure have fueled the state’s phenomenal economic growth in recent decades. But times have changed,” the CTC notes.

“Today, California’s transportation system is in jeopardy,” the report continues. “Investments to preserve transportation systems simply have not kept pace with the demands on them, and this underfunding — decade after decade – has led to the decay of one of the state’s greatest assets.”

The State Auditor recently released a lengthy, highly critical report on Caltrans’ spending on project “support” costs, which is primarily spending on Caltrans’ own employees. This spending is important. When “support” spending is too high, that takes money away from actually constructing new projects and creating new jobs.

Here are some findings along with comments:

“Caltrans exceeded their own budgets for project support on 62 percent of their projects. [Editor’s note: This is your gasoline tax money they are wasting]

The legislature's annual arbitrary imposition of a 10% cap on the use of outside consultants actually ends up reducing Caltrans' flexibility. [Note: That may be why Caltrans has hired an excessive number of full-time, long-term employees — and thereby taken on the huge liability of their long-term pension costs. The 49 other state departments of transportation know well how inflexible and expensive the Caltrans model is, and so they regularly use consultants for 50 to 60 per cent of their workload.]

Caltrans' time-reporting system lacks strong internal controls — and consequently no one really knows to what extent Caltrans’ employees are correctly charging their time to projects.

Caltrans also failed — in each of the last three fiscal years — to meet its own goal: a maximum of 32 per cent in the ratio of support costs to total project costs. That is a strong sign that Caltrans is overstaffed. [Note: Last year the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) found that Caltrans was overstaffed by at least 1,500 personnel years (PYs), the equivalent of approximately $300 million/year.]

Another problem with support costs is that Caltrans may be comparing apples to oranges. The State Auditor found that from year-to-year Caltrans fails to use a consistent method to calculate the ratio of support to total costs.

The State Auditor made a series of recommendations to address these findings, including that Caltrans should not hire permanent staff beyond its long-term need for such staff.

The report further states that the Legislature should give Caltrans the leeway to hire consultants to meet its temporary workload increases — a recommendation with which Caltrans to its credit agrees. Now it is up to the California Legislature to act on it.

The report also recommends that the state commission an independent study of the costs and benefits of using consultants. Although Caltrans was not thrilled with that idea, Caltrans does note that “consultants pay for and bring their own tools, equipment and office space to the job — all of which are cost items for the taxpayer to support staff positions. Outside consultants also take care of their own healthcare costs and pension obligations; both “big ticket” items and something the report reminds us are also not included in Caltrans’ staff cost estimates.”

To download a copy of the State Auditor's report, which was released on April 28, click here.

As Joel Kotkin writes in his excellent article in the City Journal:

“California has long been a destination for those seeking a better place to live. For most of its history, the state enacted sensible policies that created one of the wealthiest and most innovative economies in human history. California realized the American dream but better, fostering a huge middle class that, for the most part, owned their homes, sent their kids to public schools, and found meaningful work connected to the state’s amazingly diverse, innovative economy.

Recently, though, the dream has been evaporating. Between 2003 and 2007, California state and local government spending grew 31 percent, even as the state’s population grew just 5 percent. The overall tax burden as a percentage of state income, once middling among the states, has risen to the sixth-highest in the nation, says the Tax Foundation. Since 1990, according to an analysis by California Lutheran University, the state’s share of overall U.S. employment has dropped a remarkable 10 percent. When the state economy has done well, it has usually been the result of asset inflation—first during the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, and then during the housing boom, which was responsible for nearly half of all jobs created earlier in this decade.

….

What went so wrong? The answer lies in a change in the nature of progressive politics in California. During the second half of the twentieth century, the state shifted from an older progressivism, which emphasized infrastructure investment and business growth, to a newer version, which views the private sector much the way the Huns viewed a city—as something to be sacked and plundered. The result is two separate California realities: a lucrative one for the wealthy and for government workers, who are largely insulated from economic decline; and a grim one for the private-sector middle and working classes, who are fleeing the state.”

Much of this malaise in California is due to the passage of the Dill’s act and the power of the public service unions.

There are 13 initiatives on the California ballot this year. I do not usually note for these ballot measures as they end up being “not as advertised” and have numerous unintended consequences. However, there is one ballot measure I will surely vote for —Proposition 32. Prop 32 goes as far as the Constitution allows by severing the money tie between special interests and career politicians by:

• Prohibiting unions and corporations from giving to candidates
• Prohibiting unions and corporations from deducting money from employee paychecks for political purposes without permission, making all political contributions truly voluntary
• Prohibiting contractors from contributing to politicians who approve their contracts

The disconnect between the demands of the unions and those of California voters is what backers of Proposition 32 hope to remedy with their proposal to end all union and corporate donations to candidates, and to end automatic union and corporate deductions in paychecks for political contributions.

If this all sounds familiar, it should. Similar California ballot measures have been proposed and have lost in the past. Both Proposition 226 in 1998 and Proposition 75 in 2005 went down to defeat, thanks to unions outspending the proponents 4 to 1 in the case of Proposition 226 and 10 to 1 in the case of Proposition 75.

So what is different this time? For one is the momentum gained from Wisconsin's battle with unions. A similar measure passed in Wisconsin under Gov. Scott Walker, and Wisconsin Republicans who favored the measure survived a recall. The knowledge that this measure may actually pass may inspire supporters to actually cast their votes for Proposition 32.

Also, unlike with prior measures, in addition to paycheck protection, Proposition 32 also prohibits corporations and unions from contributing to candidate campaigns, so this measure is more even-handed. Proposition 32 also prohibits contractors from contributing money to the politicians who will award contracts.

Another difference this time is Gloria Romero, former Democrat state senator and major supporter of Prop. 32. As California's Senate Democratic majority leader from 2001-2009, she saw first-hand the public-sector union corruption in Sacramento. "There is no other way to say it politely," she recently told the Wall Street Journal. "It's owned." Both in office and later as head of the California chapter of Democrats for Education Reform, Romero has fought for education reform in California, including the ability of parents to take their kids out of failing schools, but has butted heads with the CTA (California Teachers Association) and other public-sector unions many times. The CTA "has killed or hijacked nearly every reform bill that has popped up in the legislature," she told the Journal. CTA officials "walk around the capitol "like they're God."

Romero has been featured in a very effective ad supporting Prop. 32, in which she challenges the voter: "if you want to take back California from the special interests, if you want to get big money out of California politics, if you want elected officials to answer to the people again join me in voting yes on Proposition 32." It is almost enough to make non-Californians move to California so they can vote for Prop. 32.

Romero's ad is the only Prop. 32 ad that directly takes on the teachers' unions. Other Prop. 32 ads target the prison guards union and the large corporate campaign donors, and they are all very effective.

This time around, California also has some home-grown momentum. Earlier this summer San Diego and deep-blue San Jose, California passed ballot measures that kept union pensions from swallowing up their city budgets. In the case of San Jose, the results were not even close: 70% voted in favor of limiting union pensions. Suddenly the old union demagoguery didn't work in cities that wanted to keep their same city services along with manageable union pensions, and not raise taxes to pay for it all.

So far, Prop. 32 is still polling even with Californians. But the unions are putting up a fight. While Proposition 32 proponents have raised a meager $5 million, opponents to Prop. 32 have amassed $36 million to use in campaigning the issue, with millions more in union dues to come. That is a lot of money to pay for TV commercials with worried-looking teachers and nurses groveling before Californians, begging the citizenry not to cut their pay.

There is a saying in California: "as California goes, so goes the country." Well, admittedly, that phrase may have itself spread across the country more than actual California policies. But you have to admit that California's 1978 victory with Proposition 13 in 1978 spread some tax-cutting frenzy, culminating in tax cuts that were passed under President Reagan in 1981. It could be that passing Proposition 32 in California could be the next step in regaining control of America's states from out-of-control unions.