Unions; Public vs. Private

The union showdown in Wisconsin is drawing public ire for the following reasons. The unions being targeted in Wisconsin are government employee unions (public servant unions), not private sector unions. The right to collectively bargain that is at issue is for benefits only, not for wages. So the left stating that it is all about busting the unions is at best, disingenuous. The passage of the bill will not take away their right to bargain for wages and it only affects public sector unions, not private unions. It gives the government the freedom to amend the pension plans going forward and to address the projected shortfalls. It addresses the very real problems associated with a defined benefits pension plan. The projected shortfalls in pension funding are real and that is what this bill will fix going forward.

This bill does not alter collective bargaining rights in any way for private unions. It does weaken the government employee union's political influence, such as monetary support for candidates by reducing the size of their coffers. it does this by discontinuing the automatic payroll deductions for union dues. In this way, only those union members that actively send voluntary contributions as dues will be funding the unions. Not all members of unions appreciate the ways in which their dues are used to support political candidates that they may or may not personally support.

It is because of that single provision that President Obama weighed in on the subject. And he did much more than just weigh in, he is actively participating in fomenting a contrived opposition. His political campaign apparatus known as "Organizing for America" has bussed in thousands of "rent-a-protesters" and had signs professionally printed up for his rent a mob. He is afraid of losing his base. The very unions that handed him the Presidency are under direct assault and he is lashing out at the attackers. Those attackers just happen to be ordinary citizens and politicians that are fiscally conservative and this will come back to bite him and it is also going to be very damaging to the democratic party in general.

Unions served a valid purpose years ago, but they have outlived their usefulness as attested to by the rapid decline on overall union membership over the past few decades. In fact, the only unions that have grown at all are public sector unions. And lets face it, these people are supposed to serve the public not have the public serve them. They get loads of paid holidays that most do not get. They get great benefits that they pay little or nothing for. They have job security that most do not. They have higher average wages than most. What makes them feel so entitled as to organize into labor unions at all? They do not suffer the ills that prompted the advent of unions in the first place.

You see, government should run more like a business. If it did perhaps unions would have been a necessity years ago, but not now. The elected politicians pass laws that the bureaucracy implements. Where is the "management to labor" relationship? It doesn't exist! So why do they need a union to begin with?

Common Sense Wins The Day!

Federal Judge Henry E. Hudson ruled Monday, in a case brought forth by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, that section 1501 of the Obamacare bill was unconstitutional. That section is the one that outlines the individual mandate which requires private citizens to purchase health insurance or face fines and other penalties. This is significant in that without that provision in the bill, it essentially has no teeth. Without the individual mandate, the bill is dead.

Most people expect that it will go to the fourth circuit court of appeals and eventually to the Supreme Court. In his ruling, "It is not the effect on individuals that is presently at issue -- it is the authority of Congress to compel anyone to purchase health insurance," wrote Hudson, who was appointed to the federal bench in 2002 by President George W. Bush. "Every application of Commerce Clause power found to be constitutionally sound by the Supreme Court involved some form of action, transaction or deed placed in motion by an individual or legal entity. The constitutional viability of the minimum essential coverage provision in this case turns on whether or not a person's decision to refuse to purchase health care insurance is such an activity," he wrote.

Not that I am against reforming our health care system but Obamacare was the wrong way to go about it. For instance, it does nothing to address costs. It merely addresses coverage for everyone. And there are unintended consequences already cropping up as well. Just recently, pharmaceuticals have announced that they will no longer be able to give deep price discounts on orphan drugs to children's hospitals across the country because of provisions in the law. Orphan drugs are drugs that are used to treat rare conditions that affect less than 200,000 individuals inside the United States. Drugs are classified as Orphan drugs by the FDA. By existing law, orphan drugs must be made available to chidren's hospitals at a deep discount. a few pharmaceuticals lobbied aggressively for the new provision in Obamacare and it was put in at the last minute. So the most vulnerable amongst us, the ones least able to pay for these expensive drugs, have been given the cold shoulder. 

Orphan drugs are just one of the many bad aspects of Obamacare. Lets hope that the bill goes down in flames fast as it should. Thank God for Ken Cuccinelli, Judge Henry Hudson, and common sense. The United States needs more heroes like them now.

The Lack of National Pride on the Left.

The one thing that sets Americans apart from the rest of the world is mobility. When Henry Ford took the idea of interchangeable parts to the next level with the invention of the assembly line and gave the gift of mass production to the world, the result was extremely affordable transportation for the masses. People were no longer constrained by geography, and the age of mobility was born.

It is no mere coincidence that the petroleum industry was born at approximately the same time that the automobile was conceived. Natural petroleum seeps had been known to mankind for thousands of years prior to the automobile. They were thought by many to have medicinal value and were applied to wounds to speed healing, and truth be told, that wasn't too far off the mark. And so the natural seeps were revered as a gift from God.

It was used for lighting into the nineteenth century along with whale oil. But it was the age of mobility that caused the ravenous thirst for fuel for that mobility. Serendipitous as it was, oil  was discovered quite by accident in great abundance while drilling for water in Titusville Pennsylvania and it turned out to be the fuel of choice for mankind's new found mobility. And voila, it was the birth of the modern petroleum industry.

The extreme intrinsic value of a highly mobile society wasn't lost on the politically savvy. Hitler capitalized on that value. He honed the idea into a razor-sharp military machine. "Blitzkrieg" as Hitler called it comes from Middle High German and it literally means "lightning attack"; aptly named for the speed of overwhelming force by which Germany took control of enemy territory.


And in like fashion, the politically powerful of today are seeking to control the masses by controlling our mobility. They seek to make purchasing energy for mobility so expensive as to restrict mobility itself. This is the insane and warped reasoning behind the whole "Cap and Trade" ideology. It is a blitzkrieg of a different kind, but the intent and the desired result is the same; subjugation of the masses. It really doesn't have anything to do with environmentalism, or saving the planet. It isn't even about filling their coffers or lining their pockets or balancing budgets, social justice, or the redistribution of wealth. It is all about controlling the mobility of the freest people that God has ever graced this planet with; You!


There is an abundance of modern scientific evidence that refutes the notion promulgated by the left which postulates that there is only a finite amount of naturally occurring crude oil in the ground. The fact is that oil is still being formed today at a fairly fast pace. There is no shortage of oil in the ground. The only shortage we experience is that of will power to overcome the self-imposed limitations on exploration and development of our own oil resources here at home.

Live free or die trying is more than a slogan, it is who we are. It is what we are. It defines us. It sets us apart from all who have been before. Our mobility is why we are the envy of the world. It is why others covet our freedom. That is why even those who espouse unbridled disdain for us would secretly love to come and live here. It is also why those of us already here that preach against our values, simply do not pick up and go anywhere else on the planet to live out days. They talk out of both sides of there necks. Their mouths say one thing, while their actions (or lack thereof) says the opposite; hypocrites every last one.


I for one, know I am free and how that came to be. I make no apologies to anyone for daring to live free or die trying. How about you? Are you proud to be here? Are you proud to be an American? Are you proud to be one of the most free people on the planet? If you aren't perhaps you should look elsewhere for an oppressive regime to live under.

His Incredibly Incompetent Boobness; Obama

The incompetent jackass Obama has lost his appeal to reinstate the blanket moratorium on all offshore drilling for oil. This is more than just being about energy in general and oil in specific however, it is about keeping Obama from running roughshod over the entire constitutional process and usurping de facto dictatorial power for himself. Who would have ever guessed that the Supreme Court would be the fly in his ointment of supremacy! All hail Roberts and Alito! Thank God for the two of them.

Obama is a wet blanket to prosperity anywhere in this country. Every time that damned fool opens up his pie-hole and his extreme disdain for all things American spews out of it like diarrhea, the markets tank, businesses shudder in fear at what this manic fool will perpetrate next. He really is clueless isn't he? A transaction tax? He must be smoking some awfully good crack on the links if he thinks that any Americans are willing to pay any more taxes on anything. STOP SPENDING YOU ASSHOLE!

We don't need bigger deficits, we need austerity. Starting with less damned government. Every time anything happens, this idiot rushes to create a damned commission to study it and develop a report about it (while he duffs another 9 holes somewhere). What does he think, this is a college exam he is studying for or something; develop a report. What an asshole. 

Keynesian economics never worked before, and it will not work now. Free markets are self-regulating and do not require government intervention to "correct" the business cycle. All that government regulation accomplishes is market distortion every single time. History is replete with examples of this.

Gulf OIl Catastrophe Is Made Worse By Obama's Ineptness as Leader.

Regarding the Earth's bleeding of oil and methane into the Gulf of Mexico because of BP's Deep Water Horizon well; why on earth would they have used dispersants to begin with? If the oil is dispersed it will be harder to recover the oil from the ocean. And recovering it should be the goal, not allowing it to linger in the environment where marine life are harmed by it! They suggest that as much as twenty percent of it will just evaporate, but that can only happen if it is on the surface. After treating it with dispersants it hangs at various depths under the surface, where it cannot possibly evaporate.

It was a rash decision for our government to allow British Petroleum to release nearly a million gallons of chemical dispersants into the ocean in an attempt to emulsify the oil. They should have forced BP to use the disparate viscosities of oil and seawater to keep the oil in one place; on the surface, where it can easily be skimmed, or gathered and burned. Now there are multiple massive plumes under the surface at different depths that can never be removed from the environment. They are marauding death plumes for marine wildlife that happen to swim through them or have them settle upon them in their habitat.

And then there is the Obama administration's equally oafish response by refusing several offers of international help and not suspending the Jones Act, and also banning all offshore oil production for six months which hampers our economic recovery by crippling an important industry that employs hundreds of thousands of Americans with high paying jobs.

Regarding the cleanup of surface oil; the use of "off the shelf" technologies can easily handle the entire cleanup. By retrofitting ocean going supertankers with a few large high-speed centrifuges and a little old fashion plumbing, the oil and seawater on the surface can be scooped up in massive quantities, pumped into a centrifuge, spun and separated. The oil can be pumped into a hold, and the seawater can be returned to the ocean cleansed of oil. Yet none of this is being done because the Obama administration is angling for political advantage. They are seeking to capitalize on this disaster with the "never let a good crisis go to waste" mentality, and that is childishly shameful, environmentally irresponsible, and a huge political gamble that he will most likely loose.

The Middlemen

I recently had a conversation with one of my loyal customers of my communications business. They have a main office and two satellite offices, one of which uses dial tone from the main office via IP telephones on the system at the main office. They had moved this remote IP office over to another nearby building in an office park in which they own two of the several buildings. The IP phones were working just fine, that is until they experienced power problems at the new building. The IP phones went up and down several times after midnight one day and this caused the fault buffer in the phone system at the main office to quickly fill up. When the fault buffer filled up, the operating system performed a stack dump which causes a forced rebooting of the system. So the frantic service call that I received was that "Our phone system keeps going down and coming back up repeatedly".

After a few questions I surmised that tech support from the equipment manufacturer was warranted. With tech support on the phone, I had them dial into the switch and have a look at what they could find out. When they told me that the fault buffer was causing the system to reboot on account of extensions 124 and 126 going up and down repeatedly, I knew instantly what the problem was; bad power at the IP office location.

I had the maintenance person at the customer's location unplug the phones until he could procure a couple of UPS for me to put in line with them. After completing the service call, I called the customer back and explained that the real culprit was bad power.

You see, I had worked at Detroit Edison for several years as a contractor in the metering department and a few more in the communications department. I was there before and during the deregulation of the utilities industries and have made a few key observations about it all.

What was supposed to bring increased "choice and competition that would result in lower costs and better service for consumers" has in fact done neither. In fact, quite the opposite has happened. You see, Detroit Edison, which was founded by none other than Thomas Edison himself after he left Ford, used to own the entire process from start to finish. They owned the power generation, power transmission, metering and collections. But with the deregulation that was foisted upon them, they were forced to give up something. They chose to sell off the power transmission part of their enterprise to a company called ITC Holdings Inc. based in Novi, Michigan. Not that I have anything against ITC per Se, ( I actually have a cousin on my Dad's side that is a Linesman there) but having two many chefs in the kitchen spoils the stew. And now after this forced deregulation we have lousy power all over the region that regularly fries sensitive digital electronic business telephone systems. My customer experienced this firsthand a few years back.

And then there is the constant assault on our front door by all the young sales types with clipboards in hand hawking the latest and greatest way for me to purchase energy. There is one who tells me that I can shuck the evil gas company and just pay them instead and they will guarantee that my gas rates will not change for the next five years. I usually ask them if they also guarantee that if the rates should go down, would they as a middle man pass that savings along to me or other consumers? No thanks, I'll take my chances with the original supplier of my energy. And then there is the one who uses green energy as a marketing tool. Like I or anyone really stops and thinks about how the energy we use gets there as we push the button on the remote for our big screen televisions, or flip the light switch, get a cold drink out of the fridge, or make coffee or toast in the morning. Green is nothing more than a marketing tool. Ask Tipper Gore about that one, Oh, that's right she won't be a "Gore" much longer. Guess that she got fed up with the hypocrisy too.

I liked it much better when the only assault or intrusion that we had to tolerate was on the phone. That was handled easily by technology like caller ID or privacy blocker. No, now we have actual people stalking our front doors with clipboards, pens and name tags to look official that try to convince us that we are unwise to play roulette with the evil power companies on our own. We need them to moderate our prices for us because we are so busy and uneducated about the whole process. Folks, we wouldn't have a process to contend with if it wasn't for our lousy government sticking its damned nose where it does not belong; in our business, in the first place!


I feel rather sorry for those fools who carry the clipboards around. I figure that they got suckered into that job because they needed the money that badly since they probably have been out of work for so very long. But I do not feel sorry enough to abandon all reason and add another middle man into the fray between me and suppliers of the energy I use. Adding a middle man into any business transaction will only increase costs for the end consumer.

Sometimes, the wheel is just fine like it is; you don't really need to reinvent it. All it does is turn round and around regardless so why try to mess with it?

New Hate for Big Oil.

The latest news on the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is that it will make landfall as early as tomorrow evening. Governor Bobby Jindahl of Louisiana is mobilizing a united effort to lessen the environmental impact on the beaches, wildlife, tourism, and the shrimping and fishing industries there.

The untold story here is not that the rig had caught fire after an explosion, or that it sank and damaged the well head. The real story here is that the efforts to extinguish the fire are what sank the rig! These rigs (oil platforms) are floating vessels that are permanently moored to the seabed far below. So the question arises, why did British Petroleum try to extinguish a fire on a floating oil platform with water instead of foam?

After what happened on the Air Carrier U.S.S. Forestall, the United States Navy, (which I served in) trains every recruit as a fireman. Every fireman knows that you cannot fight an oil fire or many other chemical fires with water. Water only spreads the fire around because the chemicals are lighter than water and the viscosity is so different. Even some certain solids are best extinguished with foam. Expanding foam quickly smothers the fire and chokes off its access to the oxygen that is vital for sustained combustion. The heat remains, but without oxygen the flames are quickly extinguished.

Knowing this, why then did they choose to fight the fire with water? They only succeeded in reducing the buoyancy of the platform to the point that it became unstable and sank falling onto the well head a mile below the surface of the water and thereby damaging the well casing at three points on the way down.

And now of course the flip-flopping Governor of Florida has penned a letter to Obama petitioning for the end to "drill baby drill" and all exploration off shore. This couldn't have happened at a worse time. This may just doom us to forever purchasing oil from hostile nations overseas. BP should be skewered for this, not necessarily for the environmental impact alone, but also (and especially) for the socioeconomic fallout for United States citizens as well.

And for God's sake BP start stocking fire fighting foam on board your oil platforms, and train every single employee in firefighting like the United States Navy does. And keep them current on their firefighting knowledge and techniques. This catastrophe was entirely avoidable.