Under The Hammer

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. It had been a Category 5 hurricane and made landfall as a Category 3. The devastation to the Gulf coast, including New Orleans, was the costliest in US history. And according to the mainstream media, the devastation – including the large number of people who died, and the fact that displaced people did not have proper shelter, food and water – was the fault of then President George Walker Bush. To this day you hear about what a bad job Bush did during Katrina.

In 2012, Sandy, at one time a Category 1 hurricane, made landfall as a tropical storm and caused immense devastation in New Jersey and New York. It is now thought that Sandy will surpass Katrina as the most expensive natural disaster in US history. Just like with Katrina some disabled and elderly people died in their homes because they were not evacuated. People whose homes were destroyed didn't have proper shelter, food and water supplied by the government. People didn't have electricity for weeks.

However, President Barack Hussein Obama doesn't get any blame. By walking on the beach with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Obama got a lot of kudos from the mainstream media. Evidently the hurricane was not Obama's fault and as president he was not responsible for evacuating people from their homes or providing them with shelter, food and water.

If it weren't so common it would be interesting. But according to the mainstream media, people died in Katrina, not because it was a huge powerful storm but because Bush is a racist.

During Sandy people died because Sandy was a huge powerful storm and people were not properly prepared.

, , ,

One thing the mainstream media refuse to understand is that conservatives do not see the growing deficit as the problem but as a symptom of a much more serious problem. The problem is that government has grown far too big and is doing too much for too many people. The result of the government being out of control is an out-of-control deficit.

If this is what you believe, then raising taxes is not a solution because it only allows the government to continue to grow. Liberals don't see the size of government as a problem, only that the government doesn't have enough money to pay for all of the worthwhile and important services it performs. For example, liberals believe that all Americans have a God-given right to a cell phone. Cutting out free cell phones for people is not going to balance the budget, but that attitude is what has gotten us where we are.

If conservatives take their eye off the ball it is easy to get caught up in the idea that the problem is the fiscal cliff, because that is what the media keeps crowing about. But that isn't the problem. The reason that the pledge not to raise taxes is so important to conservatives is because it keeps the focus, not on the symptoms, but on the disease.

, , ,

People, including the vast left-wing conspiracy at the News & Record, are all bent out of shape over these secession petitions on the internet. What happened to the right of free speech? You would think that a newspaper would support people's right to write and sign any kind of petition they want.

For at least the last 40 years there has been a group that protests against war and in favor of world peace in front of the federal courthouse on the corner of Eugene and West Market streets. These people are extremely devoted and believe in their cause. They also believe that somehow standing on a corner in Greensboro, North Carolina, rain or shine, is going to help stop war all over the world. I don't understand it, but I believe they have every right to stand there and protest whatever they want, and I admire them for their dedication. This is America. We are supposed to have freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.

Maybe some conservative news media have gotten all bent out of shape about these people, but I don't recall it and I think I would know.

Many of those signing the secessionist petitions think that the federal government is already way too big. They also, for the most part, see the reelection of Obama as irrefutable evidence that the federal government is going to get bigger. Some of them no doubt would really like to secede from the United States of America. States are supposed to have some sovereignty, and if you read the Constitution, states are actually supposed to have a lot of sovereignty. Over the years the states have lost power and the federal government has gained power. Many people would like to see that trend start going the other way and begin moving back so the states in the United States mean something other than a mailing address or a way for Google maps to find a location.

The N&R has reached a new low. It is now using Clint Eastwood movies as historical references. Newsflash to the N&R editorial team: "Josey Wales" is not a real person, and the events depicted in The Outlaw Josie Wales didn't really happen.

, , ,

The reason conservaties don't want to raise taxes is because that only takes more money out of the private sector and it does nothing to solve the government fiscal problems. For the year ending on Sept. 30, 2011, the total federal expenditures was $3.6 trillion, and the deficit was $1.3 trillion. So the federal government borrowed a little more than 36 percent of the budget. Another way to look at that is that the federal government had revenue of $2.3 trillion but spent $3.6 trillion. That is simply not a problem that the government can tax itself out of. By the same token, can you imagine if the federal government cut over one third of its spending? Which is not to say that the federal government couldn't cut entire programs and the country would be better off. The subsidy for ethanol is absurd. President Bush started it, but it is just basic stupidity. There may or may not be some gain in energy from producing ethanol. It depends on whose figures you use. But accepting that there is some gain in energy, how much energy is lost in all the engines that have been destroyed by ethanol? And an industry has been created that cannot survive on its own, kind of like generating electricity with windmills. It only works with huge subsidies, which means it doesn't work.

The farm lobby and the environmental lobby are too strong to eliminate these programs, but they are examples of what the federal government shouldn't be doing.

Here's another. Get on public transportation almost anywhere in this country and you can safely bet your next paycheck that you are riding on a vehicle mostly paid for by the federal government. Why should the federal government provide buses for Greensboro or any other city? If cities want to provide mass transit let them pay for it.

, , ,

Even the environmentalist wackos at The New York Times had to admit that solar power was a huge disappointment after Hurricane Sandy. You might think that homes with big solar panels would not have electricity when the grid went down, but that is wrong. Most solar systems are wired to provide electricity to the house or business and then sell the remainder to the electric utility. When the grid goes down the solar systems are automatically cut off because you don't want a solar panel to be sending electricity on wires that the utility is trying to fix. It's the same reason that before home generators kick on, they disconnect from the grid. With solar panels it is a little different because to run a home with solar panels big batteries are needed to get you through the night. So when the grid goes down the solar panels disconnect themselves and you have great big reflecting panels on your roof.

...continued on page 2

...continued from page 1

, , ,

People will be glad to know that now that the campaigning is over, Obama is back to his busy schedule running the world during the week and playing golf on the weekends. Obama was back out on the course on the Friday after Thanksgiving for his 106th round as president. However, it is his only 14th round this year because campaigning has taken up so much of his time.

With no campaigns in his future, here's hoping that Obama can hit the golf course two or three times a week. When he is out on the course the world is a safer place. But it does say a lot about his priorities that wars and disasters don't keep him off the golf course but a campaign for reelection does.

, , ,

Political consultants are like economists and meteorologists, it doesn't matter how often they are wrong they keep working. The best example is Democratic consultant Bob Shrum, who has worked on the presidential campaigns of George McGovern, Dick Gephardt, Michael Dukakis, Bob Kerrey, Al Gore and John Kerry. As you might note, none of those men were ever president. To be fair Shrum did work for nine days for President James Earl Carter's campaign in 1976 and that was a winner, some say because Shrum only worked for him for nine days.

I have a personal beef with the Mitt Romney campaign. The campaign spent somewhere around $1 billion for the campaign and $40 million in North Carolina, but they didn't spend a dime with The Rhino Times and, from what I have been able to determine, very little with newspapers in general. I believe in newspaper advertising and, in particular, a great way to reach voters. It's a little thing, but if you take care of the little things then the big things take care of themselves. In my opinion, particularly late in the campaign when television watchers had been bombarded with ads for months, I think spending some money on print – where you can say more than "my opponent is a terrible person" or "I'm a great person, vote for me" – would have been a good idea.

Of course, one of the huge mistakes the Romney campaign made was at the other end of the technological spectrum. I wrote several times during the campaign that the campaigns had better polling data than the public and I was half right. The Obama campaign had much better polling data than the general public and – the exception that proves the rule – the Romney campaign had much worse polling data than the general public. The Romney campaign pollsters completely missed the demographic mix of the electorate. Because of that late, in the campaign Romney was wasting time in states that he didn't have a chance of winning instead of spending all his time in the true battleground states.

Along those same lines, Obama had a state-of-the-art get-out-the-vote effort. It combined high-tech information with low-tech shoe leather and worked. Romney had a get-out-the-vote effort that was a complete flop. It was a state-of-the-art system that crashed. The system was a huge failure, which is proof that you should try something like that out in a race for mayor of Oak Ridge or something before you bet a presidential election on it.

Romney lost but he didn't roll over and play dead like Sen. John McCain did in 2008. Romney worked hard and listened to very bad advice from the people he hired to get him elected, which may be a sign that Romney may be great at hiring good businessmen but he is horrible at hiring pollsters and not that good at hiring campaign managers.

By the way, despite all that talk you heard about the fat cats supporting Romney with massive amounts of money, the Obama campaign raised $100 million more than the Romney campaign.