Clunkers

            The end of every year brings out lists of all kinds: the year's best and worst, its successes and failures, its most notable events, and so on. Consumer reporter John Stossel made up a list of his own: the worst programs introduced by government. Among them was Obamacare, of course, plus government funding of sports arenas that sit idle most of the year, tax credits for raising alpacas or buying electric vehicles, the increase in the minimum wage, and subsidies for ethanol.            

            My vote for the most stupid government idea of the year goes to Cash for Clunkers. Politicians fell all over themselves praising the program for stimulating car sales. It did that for a brief period, certainly. But look at the unintended consequences. Car sales for the following months plummeted; the program added billions to the deficit; and money that was spent on new cars was not spent elsewhere, making the program stimulus neutral.

            The worst part of the program, however, was crushing the clunkers that were turned in. Why was this bad? Because It deprived the used car market of many usable vehicles, thereby denying potential buyers of more affordable transportation. In fact, the law of supply and demand caused all available used cars to go up in price.

            If Cash for Clunkers makes economic sense, shouldn't the genuises in Congress be encouraging us to smash our TV sets and dump our refrigerators and washing machines in favor of new ones?

            Here's another unintended consequence. A close personal friend of mine owns an auto repair shop in Florida. Several of the people who took advantage of Cash for Clunkers were customers of his. As a result of the program, their clunkers no longer need servicing. My friend's shop has been operating in the red ever since. He says Cash for Clunkers is the worst thing the government could have done to his business. He told me the other day he was forced to put his shop up for sale a couple of months ago. He hasn't had any takers nor, in this economy, does he expect any. So he soon will have no choice but to close his doors and send his employees to the unemployment line.   

            As the 112th Congress gets down to business, I sure hope it doesn't try to outdo the 111th in stupid ideas.

Truman Wisdom

            I was never a big fan of Harry Truman. To me, he was a little man who never measured up to his big job. But my appreciation of Truman grew enormously after I read David McCullough's biography of our 33rd president. Turns out he was a man of great courage and integrity and possibly the hardest worker the White House has ever seen.

            My favorite Truman quote is, "My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference."

            This bit of wisdom certainly applies to the 111th Congress. Never in my memory, and perhaps in the history of our country, has a congress been so ready to prostitute itself for the sake of power. Never has a congress, in consort with an abetting president, plunged our nation so deeply in debt. Never has a congress so scornfully disregarded the will of the people in imposing programs it did not want and could not afford.

            As the lame ducks go home, all I can say is Good Riddance!

            But will the 112th Congress mend its sinful ways?

            Republicans in control of the House may turn out to be better piano players. But I fear the establishment that employs them will still be selling the same merchandise.

Swine waste

            The 111th Congress has just been given the lowest approval rating (13%) of any congress in history. It is well deserved.

            On their way out our representatives in Washington are flipping us the bird with an appropriations bill containing 6,714 earmarks adding $8 billion to our debt. They obviously don't care that the people they represent told them loud and clear in November to stop wasteful spending. They just don't give a damn.

            Thanks to Senator Coburn we can now access the full list of earmarks along with their sponsors. Examples of outrageous projects are coming out from all quarters, but I thought I would look at the list myself to see if my own representatives were lined up at the trough.

            Sure enough, I didn't have to look very far before I found a beaut sponsored by our very own G.K. Butterfield. Would you believe $349,000 for swine and other animal waste management? How appropriate. Congressman Butterfield happens to be an expert in swine waste, having signed off on every pork bill introduced by the House since he's been in office. Now he is evidently looking to pay someone to shovel the s--- out of his back yard.

            Maybe Congressman Butterfield can't stand the stink anymore. We sure can't.

Two pitchers

            The news on December 16 confirmed that baseball pitcher Cliff Lee had signed a 5-year contract with the Phillies for $120 million, or an average of $24 million a year. If he stays healthy and averages 32 games a year, he will earn $750,000 per game.  At an average of 100 pitches per game, that comes to $7,500 per pitch. Not bad.

            Cliff Lee is a pretty good pitcher. He won only 12 games in 28 starts last year, but he has two Cy Young awards and a fine 7-2 post-season record.

            The papers on December 16 also announced the death of Bob Feller. He had been the oldest living member of Baseball's Hall of Fame, having been enshrined in 1962.  in spite of losing four years of his prime to the military in WW II, Feller won 266 games in his career, five of them before his 18th birthday. He was, incidentally, the first major leaguer to sign up when he joined the Navy the day after Pearl Harbor. He boasted often that he was the only chief petty officer in the Hall of Fame.

            Feller was more than just a pretty good pitcher. He tossed three no-hitters and 12 one-hitters, and had 2,581 career strikeouts. In 1946, his first year back  from the war, he had 26 wins, 36 complete games, 10 shutouts, and 348 strikeouts. Stats like that today are simply unimaginable.

            I saw Feller up close twice. The first time was in 1954 when my dad took me to Fenway Park to see the Red Sox play the league-leading Indians. We sat in the first row behind the visitors' bullpen. Late in the game Feller warmed up. Right in front of me. I can still remember his fluid motion, the hop on his fastball, and the pop of the catcher's mitt. For a baseball-crazy kid like me, that was really special.

            The second time was a few years ago when Feller was guest speaker at the annual promotion shindig for the Edenton Steamers. After dinner Feller sat and autographed dozens of baseballs, including one for this big kid. I gave the ball to my grandson Cole who is as much a fan as I am. Every once in a while I ask Cole if he still has that ball. He always responds with that little smile of his, the only answer I need.

            I don't think Bob Feller was ever paid $100,000 for any one season. If the Yankees were willing to put up $150 million for Cliff Lee, what would they put up today for Bob Feller in his prime?

Squirrels

originally published in April, 2010

            I have a bird feeder strung up on a line outside my kitchen eat-in area. While I'm eating my breakfast I can watch wrens, sparrows, titmice and cardinals eat theirs.

            Birds are sloppy eaters and spill lots of seeds on the ground. That's good for the thrashers and the doves who don't like to fly up to the feeder. Bird seed also attracts squirrels. But they are not satisfied with seeds spilled from above.

            Last week I made a big mistake. I brought a bag of bird seed in from the garage and left it on the screen porch next to the patio where the bird feeder is strung. That's all the squirrels had to see. The next morning I got up to find a big hole in the screen and a big hole in the bag of seed. The squirrels obviously had had a party and left quite a mess.

            I had to do something about this situation. I figured I had four options.

            The most permanent fix would be for me to lie in wait and shoot the varmints. But then my neighbors might report me, and I'd end up arrested for using excessive force on an intruder bent on stealing my property. So I chucked that idea.

            So I thought I might set a trap for the thief and release him somewhere far from my house. But then I might be accused of capturing a squirrel just because he looked like a squirrel without proof that he was the one who made a hole in my screen. That would be considered squirrel profiling, and profiling is not PC.

            Then I thought I might just set out a big bowl of seeds and nuts every night on my screen porch and let the squirrels in unmolested. Sort of like food stamps for squirrels who don't have enough to eat. But squirrels have a voracious appetite and this option would cut into my seed budget so severely I wouldn't have enough for the birds. In effect they would lose their seed entitlement, and that's not a good idea, because protesters might demonstrate against me for denying justice and fairness to the birds.

            The last option would be for me to enclose my screen porch with glass and deny food to all the squirrels permanently. But that would be like shutting off Foreign Aid. And the haves shouldn't do that sort of thing to the have-nots. That wouldn't promote social justice.

            Such a dilemma. I need to consult some friends and maybe appoint a study commission to come up with recommendations. Gee, I think I know a guy in Chicago who is real good at this sort of thing.

Islam

originally written in September, 2010

            According to one popular talk show host, a moderate is someone who lacks strong views and principles. On the other hand, if you do have strong views and principles, you are likely to be called an extremist. The Left, for instance, loves to brand anyone with strong conservative views as sexist, racist, or homophobe. Now we have a new label: Islamophobe.

            Guilty as charged. I am an Islamophobe. I fear Islam. I view with dread the ascendancy of Islam throughout the world. But I am also grateful that I am not alone, thanks to Imam Rauf.

            Imam Rauf has been posing as a peace-loving moderate Muslim eager to play lovey-dovey with non-Muslim Americans by building a mosque/community center near Ground Zero. However, the more we learn about Imam Rauf, the more we see that he is anything but a moderate. His refusal to condemn jihad, his suggestion that America was partly at fault for 9/11, his refusal to disclose his funding sources, his association with a notorious Truther, all of this and more has torn the mask off this fundamentalist. We now have come to see who Imam Rauf really is. His mosque project has nothing to do with peace and reconciliation: it is meant to be an in-your-face confirmation that 9/11 was a Muslim triumph.

            Unfortunately, we still have idiots like Mayor Bloomberg and liberal elites who preach a phony sermon of tolerance for those very people who blindly follow the dictates of the Koran, which commands its adherents to deceive and to kill the infidel. And we have a president who clearly sympathizes with the Muslim world, bows to its leaders, and sells them billions in modern weaponry, a president who seems oblivious to what is being preached in mosques and taught in Islamic schools right here in this country.

            In the name of religious tolerance we too easily forgive the events of 9/11 and Fort Hood. We also overlook the atrocities committed by Muslims throughout the ages in the  name of Allah. And we ignore the on-going genocide in the Sudan and the incessant call for Jewish extermination.

            Thanks to the likes of Imam Rauf, Americans are coming to realize that there are no moderate Muslims and that Islam is not a religion of peace. Islam is not to be embraced in the spirit of religious freedom.

            It is to be feared.

Greece

            Senator Robert Byrd, the King of Pork, died this year. While in office, he spent something like $5 billion in taxpayer money on projects for his home state. Just so the citizens of West Virginia wouldn't forget his generosity, he lent his name to dozens of courthouses, libraries, schools, clinics and government buildings, not to mention streets and highways and even locks on the Ohio River.

            I can imagine Senator Byrd's greeting at the Pearly Gates. "Senator, if you're here for your heavenly reward, you'll have to get to the end of the line. You've already gotten yours."

            The extraordinarily generous people of Perquimans County who donate money, goods, and services to charity every year don't need to get their names on buildings and such. For them, charity is its own reward. But sometimes it helps to attach a face, a name, or a place to a good cause.

            Moved to tears by photographs of refugees in Europe during World War II, my grandmother, who was crippled by arthritis in her final years, collected old and discarded coats. With her painful and gnarled fingers she mended the garments, added buttons, and replaced linings. She then sent them off to a refugee relief organization. She didn't ask for a reward, but she pinned a note inside a sleeve of every coat, giving her name and address along with the simple words, "I hope this coat gets to someone who needs it."

            Shortly after she died in 1947, we received a letter from Greece addressed to her. My father, who had studied classical Greek but could only make out a few words of the modern version, took the letter to a Greek Orthodox priest for translation. The priest didn't speak English, so he read the letter to his daughter who couldn't read Greek, but understood it well enough. She told my father that the letter was from a Greek woman who wanted to thank my grandmother for the coat that had kept her warm through the harsh winter of 1945.

            I have a feeling my grandmother didn't have to stand in line very long at the Pearly Gates. She never knew it, but her pass was written in Greek.

Debt Relief

            Seven of the eighteen members of the Debt Relief Commission voted against sending the commission's recommendations to Congress for an up or down vote on the full package. Dissenters had their reasons, although no two agreed exactly. I would have voted no, too, not because I oppose debt reduction, but because the recommendations didn't go far enough.

            For example, the absence of any recommendations on Obamacare was glaring, in my opinion, but I understand why the commission didn't want to tackle that turkey.

            The recommended reduction in the size of the federal government, on the other hand, was central to the report, but it was pusillanimous, in my view. Why, for instance, should we limit ourselves to an across-the-board reduction of 10% in the federal workforce of over 2,000,000 people by the year 2020? And only through attrition? Go back to the year 2,000 when the number was 1,778,000 and start cutting from there. Do it now.

            The commission recommended the elimination of only a handful of departments among a long list deserving abolition. Let's take just one, the Department of Education. It was made a cabinet-level department by Jimmy Carter in 1979 against the opposition of Republicans who said the involvement of the federal government in education was unconstitutional and an inappropriate intrusion into local, state, and family affairs. Ronald Reagan tried to eliminate the Department of Education, but a Democratic Congress wouldn't let him. Republicans since then have repeatedly made this part of their platform, but to no avail. It deserves to go.

            The Department of Education has over 4,000 staff members and over 6,000 contract employees. Its current budget is 63.7 billion dollars, not including an additional 96.8 billion in stimulus money at its disposal. To do what? To tell school children what they should have for lunch?

            What clause in our Constitution gives the federal government the authority to dictate to teachers what they should teach in their classrooms?

            What bureaucrat sitting on his glorified duff in Washington has a better understanding of the problems and challenges in Hertford Grammar than the administrators and classroom teachers in that school?

            In my younger days I served on a Board of Education for thirteen years, and I railed against the federal government every time it dangled a bag of money at us with long strings attached. Sadly, the government's intrusion into what should be a local matter is worse now than it ever was.

            Want some real debt reduction? Start with the Department of Education.

Broccoli

            The other day I happened to tune in to Neil Cavuto on Fox News when he had a nutritionist named Rebecca Scritchfield gush profusely over Michelle Obama's new initiative to place 5,000 salad bars in our nation's schools. Cavuto asked Ms. Scritchfield where the government found the constitutional authority to do this. Among the many reasons she gave was this statement that just blew my mind. She said, "Eating broccoli is a matter of national security."

            Are vegetables good for you? Of course they are. But broccoli a matter of national security?

            Here's how Ms. Scritchfield's contortions of logic brought her to her portentous conclusion. Kids who don't eat their vegetables don't grow up healthy. And if they aren't healthy, they can't pass the physical required to enlist in the armed forces. Therefore, eating broccoli is a matter of national security.

            Cavuto could hardly contain himself; but the nutritionist remained impervious to ridicule and common sense. If parents can't get their kids to eat their vegetables, she argued in all seriousness, then it's the government's job to do it for them.

            Has the nanny state gone completely mad?

            I can just picture government agents in school cafeterias redirecting kids with runny noses away from the pizza line and forcing them to cough and sneeze their way along the salad bar to load up their plates with carrots, lettuce, and broccoli. Now that'll make 'em healthy.

            OK. So we don't put Janet Napolitano's agents in school cafeterias. Let's just put a stalk of broccoli on students' desks in the morning and have them pop the broccoli in after the Pledge of Allegiance. "...for Liberty and Justice and Broccoli for all."

            Beyond that, let's have Nanny Napolitano's TSA agents give a stalk of broccoli to every child passenger who gets scanned and groped at the nation's airports.

            Why not have the NSA adopt broccoli as its logo? We could have new posters of Uncle Sam pointing at us and saying, "Keep America safe. Eat broccoli."

            How about a broccoli stamp or a broccoli bumper sticker? Or a National Broccoli for National Security Day?

            President Obama could lead the way by sporting a broccoli lapel pin in place of the American flag pin he is so embarrassed to wear.

            I've got lots of ideas. If Nanny -in-Chief Michelle Obama would only call me, we could get started right away on saving the country from war and pestilence.