Thinking Outside the Box

Upstate NY is sputtering and staggering, economically speaking, and many of its cities are teetering on insolvency. It is clear that something needs to be done to reverse these perverse circumstances. The real question is, what?

     Governor Cuomo has embraced a hastily put together tax incentive program, which would reward start up businesses with tax free zones in and around SUNY campuses. It is an idea which, if properly administered, could hold great promise. It could also be nothing more than St. Elmo's fire, a flash in the pan program that sounds better in press release than it translates to in reality. Nevertheless,  it is a concept worth exploring. But there are other ideas worth exploring too that our Governor might consider to help give Upstate NY the power to pull itself back up by its own bootstraps.

     Maybe what we really need to do is seriously think outside the box. Tax incentives can help spur growth and development, but the larger picture of tax structure, regulatory refinement, and business friendly governance must be looked at too. It would be foolhardy to put all of our development eggs in one basket.

     So, I'd like to advance another incentive proposition that might just work to unshackle Upstate NY from it's economic doldrums. I call it the "Energy Generation Zone" concept ( EGZ) .
  
     The mill towns of upstate New York sprang up along the waterways where there was abundant water power to drive the engines of economic opportunity.  At the turn of the century, electricity was mostly locally produced, and locally distributed.  Hydro plants gave way to coal fired plants, and coal fired plants gave way to nuclear plants, and nuclear plants gave way to cleaner fossil fueled plants that burned natural gas.  Energy came to be transmitted over long distances to satisfy the craven appetites of a growing megalopolis .

       One silly thing happened on the way to market, though... someone forgot to charge more for electricity that traveled longer distances. No differential was allowed for pricing electricity according to distance from the generating source.

      As a result, there was little profit incentive to build bigger and better transmission lines.  Our system grew like suburban sprawl. So many lines, so few transmission corridors!  And now, we find ourselves imprisoned by a huge Rube Goldberg powerline contraption strung together like so many tin cans, with a lot of twine.     Could we fix it, and spur economic growth at the same time?

Yes, we can, and we should.  We can price electricity and natural gas , in part,  on how far you have to send it from the source to the destination.  We can give communities willing to host electrical generation plants, like Nuclear Plants, or natural gas production and drilling plants,  incentives for hosting them by allowing some of the product generated to be consumed locally at reduced rates.  What’s wrong with taking, say,  20% of the power generated and selling it locally at reduced rates? It would attract industry, and give business and residential customers who live in the
shadow of these facilities a break on their rates as a bonus for hosting the plants. If we incentivize power and gas production, there will be less contention about hydro-fracking, and more competition to host energy production. It could accomplish the reversal of fortunes our Governor is seeking.

      Perhaps it is time to step outside the tax incentive box, and think just: incentive. After all, that is what makes our capitalistic system hum, and we could certainly use a little more hum and a little less ho-hum in Upstate New York. What say you Governor?

 

It’s time for Congress to stop saying “no” and start saying “go.”
Go forth and build bridges, tunnels, roads, schools and high-speed rail systems. It’s time to stop being stupid and start building up this country again. Political rhetoric aside, the longer we wait to fix our roads and bridges, the further behind we get in the race to maintain our competitive advantage in a more competitive world. So, enough already with the obstructions, congressional Republicans. Let’s get on with the program of rebuilding America.
Yes, we have debt. Yes, we need to reform and modify our entitlement programs. Yes, we need to fix the size of our military and what it costs to maintain it. But that doesn’t mean that we stop investing in the infrastructure of the country while we deal with our debtor status.
And I’d like to remind my Republican friends that it was not entirely our current president  who put us in our current fiscal pickle. I seem to remember an unfunded war that was launched on false premises putting $3 trillion dollars on the national credit card. Then there were the Bush-era tax cuts for the well-to-do and the Medicare prescription drug program, neither of which were funded. All of this helped put us in the deep hole we are trying to crawl out of now. There was nary a whimper of concern about spending when a Republican occupied the White House.
Where were all the deficit hawks then? They are coming out of the woodwork now, crying that the sky is falling, and it might be if we can’t get our collective house in order and do two things. We need to raise enough revenue to run the government and the programs that are necessary for national well-being; and reduce wasteful, inefficient governmental programs (many of which are duplicates) and right-size the government. The military should not be exempt from that process, either.
If we can build roads, bridges and schools in Afghanistan while we are trying to right-size the federal budget, can we not do the same thing in our own country? Why must we wait as our roads and bridges crumble? Do the congressional Republicans really want to wait four more years to build bridges, roads and schools? Did we not have an election last fall that should have settled something?
In response to the president’s comments on the subject in Florida recently, House Speaker John Boehner was quoted as saying that Republicans “also wanted to upgrade American roads, bridges and other infrastructure, but only if it could be paid for.” Boehner’s office distributed comments he made last month after President Obama’s State of the Union address.
“It’s easy to go out there and be Santa Claus and talk about all the things you want to give away,” Boehner said. “But at some point, somebody has to pay the bill.”
OK, we know that. And, by the way, Mr. Speaker, once the expenses are decided upon, the bill should be paid — all of the bills. That is part of the process of being a grown-up, not flinching on our debt limit and using it as a political pawn to extract concessions.
The latest report card for America’s infrastructure had an unexpected bit of qualified good news: The collective infrastructure grade has inched up to a D-plus. It’s the first time in the 15 years that the engineering organization has conducted its study that the grade has improved. The full report can be downloaded, along with interactive analysis of all 50 states, at www.infrastructure reportcard.org.
But here’s the question: Is moving from a D to a D-plus good enough for the leading country of the free world? I think not. It’s time to set aside the megaphones and pick up the shovels. We have lots of digging to do to get ourselves out of the hole we have put ourselves in. We have no time to waste.

To sequester, or not sequester...that should not be the question!

If at first you don't succeed, stall, stall, again. For the 7th time since electing a house majority in 2010, the Republican House majority members are again threatening to shut down the government . The American people are tired of it. Beyond tired.  But these continued threats are part of a strategy to wear down the winning coalition of the election of 2012, by convincing the electorate that the more things change, the more they stay the same, and that, as a result, all this hope and change stuff is sheer nonsense. We must get on with the agenda of government dismantlement!

 Obamaquester...Boehnerquester? Whose idea was this sequester? Does it really matter? To run a government by blind cuts is a dumb idea.  It was conceived in part so that smart people in Congress would get together and make smart choices.  Instead, smart people are giving in to dumb choices, and because they cannot agree, the American people may be stuck with the dumbest of government cuts ever.

 The point is, if you don't believe in government, then you shouldn't be in it . If the way you are going to govern is to continually threaten to shut down the government you are helping to govern, there is more than a hint of irony here. There is an enigma that gets only more and more enigmatic as each successive crisis of political hostage holding unfolds in Washington. And these same guys refuse to negotiate with foreign hostage takers?

   A hostage is a hostage is a hostage, the same as crying wolf is crying wolf is crying wolf . Where is Dirty Harry when we really need him? Make my day? Bring it on...we are done with this sequential self imposed hostage taking. This plot twist is getting old, fast. The American people are undergoing brinksmanship fatigue.

  We can't have two competing Presidencies at the same time, and you can't run the country from only one house of Congress. We had an election last fall. The American people spoke. The Republican majority in the House has refused to listen.  So the political Hari- Kari process continues.

    If your goal is to end government as we know it by shutting it down, then in the immortal words of Nike...just do it...and accept the consequences, and the resultant blame. Or , as Lee Iacocca  once famously put it, "Lead, follow, or get out of the way!"

It's a doozy!

     The debt ceiling issue is not an issue. It is a doozy.   The debt ceiling doozy is a manufactured bit of political leverage that has been created out of the whole cloth of sheep shavings the radical Republican wing of the Republican Party has left , posing as legitimate arguing points. It is a dangerous fiction.

     This doozy is a ridiculous red herring tossed into a debate as a purported zinger, when in reality it has no zing to zang.  It is said that "There are varying degrees of "doozy", the most common being a night filled with drunken hilarity that for the most part is only recalled by those who did not get too drunk, or partake in the doozy" . Sadly, in this scenario, it is a group of US Congressmen who are out on a political binge, at the expense of their fellow citizens. But it is the American people who will wind up with the resultant hangover. It's too bad because this manufactured doozy is  a ruse, and as we all know, a ruse by any other name is still a ruse!

     To think that somehow the party out of power can foist its will on the party in power by refusing to pay the bills it has jointly incurred is beyond ludicrous.  If this were a divorce contest, it would be like the husband refusing to pay the joint credit card bills incurred, until the wife caves on the amount of alimony being sought. It is a kind of cutting off your nose to spite your face tactic which should have no place in a logical debate over such issues as "entitlement reform".

     And who labeled Social Security and Medicare "entitlements" anyway? Haven't those who are receiving the benefits paid into the program for many years? Is insurance you have paid for really an entitlement? Is it really welfare when the recipient who has paid all the premiums cashes in on the benefit?

     The American economy is actually strong, and able to get stronger if these Congressional clowns would just get out of the way.  It is less than fortunate that 535 people are holding back 311 million people from being all that they can be.

    In law school, we were taught that when the facts are on your side, you pound the facts. When the law is on your side, you pound the law. When nothing's on your side , you pound the table. Table pounding has become the rule d'jour in Washington these days.
 President Obama's response to these table pounders is appropriate . As he said, he's not going to play that game. . He needs to tell them firmly,
"Go pound salt!"

     And so do the American people , come 2014.  Every single one of them who engage in this ridiculous ruse should be tarred, feathered, and ridden out of town on the nearest rail come next election.

 We need to all be elephants then, and not forget what havoc they have sought to wreak as a result of their partisan political  demagoguery.. Elephants don't forget,  donkeys need to remember , and we all need to learn learn know how to kick back at these doozy makers a little harder.

Greed, The Grinch and Ebeneezer

The forces of greed, corruption and obstinacy have a firm grip on our body politic in Washington, and all this fiddling while Rome burns is doing nothing to advance the cause of the Commonweal. Indeed, it is tearing apart the very fabric of our constitutional curtain, showing the stage behind it that has been left  bare and bereft of bold men with big ideas, but occupied instead by little men with greedy self serving limitations. The spirit which is the darkest among us is holding sway, and Mighty Mouse is no where to be seen yet to save the day.
     How did we come to this point? How did we let the darkest side prevail? Why have we weakened our bolder , nobler selves so much that we have given way to the Darth Vaders in our body politic to dominate the day?
    We thought we had voted again for hope, and at least some change, and the truth is , we did. But the Captains Queeg who are manning the Congesssional ship of state have refused to let go of the wheel, and have opted instead to head for the nearest iceberg.
    We have survived Mayan Aramageddon, but not the  four horsemen of our self inflicted apocalypse : greed, corruption, obstinacy and power lust. It has become such a spectacle that the spokesman for one of most well heeled and powerfully monied lobbying organizations, Wayne LaPierre of the NRA, has even publicly embraced the idea that to do do away with gun violence, all we need is more guns! Armed guards at every schoolhouse gate. That's the answer!
    The Faustian bargain that has been struck here is one of historic proportion. Money has so dictated our politics that the Lobbysist Lords like LaPierre, and Grover Norquist won't allow their Congressional minions to vote on either sensible gun regulations or a fairer system of taxation.  Ebeneezer Scrooge and  The Grinch have forged an alliance with the Dark side, and Obie Wan Kenobi is no where to be found.
    What's really wrong? To paraphrase a gritty old Cajun pol, " It's the money, Stupid!" How can we be so blind? Until we get the money out of politics, we have little future to look forward to . We will flounder and fulminate ourselves along the craggy cliffs of the abyss as long as we let greed and avarice rule our roost.
  Maybe we just have to let all the tax cuts expire, and all the budget cuts go into effect before we can awaken ourselves from the nightmarish scenario that has taken center stage in Washington . Before we can collectively cry "Out, out damn spot!" From politics, let money be gone, and principle return! Tis the only way to truly re-ennoble ourselves, and to awaken the American spirit of common purpose and goodwill . Away from us ye Jacob Marleys! The angels of a better spirit await.

Custer,  Bluster,  and diminished luster

As the old saying goes, "Denial is a river in Egypt", and the Republicans  are still somewhere between the Gaza Strip and Benghazi in their river of deep denial.
      They would have you believe that Mitt Romney lost because he was not a  good enough snake oil salesmen. It apparently does not matter to them that the snake oil he was selling was more like cyanide for the middle class than castor oil, which is always good for what ails you. The voters refused to drink the Kool Aid.
    In the end, as it turns out, the American people were just not as stupid as the Republicans thought. They couldn't be bought. They couldn't be bamboozled, and they would not let their votes be suppressed. They showed up when it really mattered, and it did matter. Elections always matter. They also have consequences.
     We have seen the great wealth of this country be disproportionately husbanded by those at the top of the scale in ways that are reminiscent of the old Robber baron days. One joke making the rounds is that the CEO of Hostess twinkies calls a final meeting with the union boss and one representative worker. There are a dozen Twinkies  on the table. The CEO walks off with 11 of the twinkies and says to the employee, " You'd better watch out for that union guy, or he'll eat most of your twinkie".
     There are the greedy pizza barons who live in multi million dollar mega mansions, but are threatening to lay off their employees if they have to invest 12 cents per pizza of their profit in employee health care. There are the coal barons who are laying off their miners because they didn't work hard enough to produce , not coal, but votes, for the one percenter agenda.
     It is reminiscent of the slaveholder mentality which caused us to take up arms against one another to defend the right of some men to enslave others in pursuit of profit. Has our civil war never really ended? What's wrong with this picture? Who is painting our political landscape?
     The answer is not surprising. It is the small cadre of omnipotent oligarchs who place their greed above the good of the planet and their fellow human beings. They have tried to buy their way into the think tanks and the universities to manipulate the national agenda, and to deny anything or anyone who stands in the way of their unbridled self aggrandizement and hubristic hegemony. They have sprinkled the fairy dust of social issues among the great unwashed to insure that people vote against their own economic issues. They have tried to manipulate the numbers of those who vote, so that their agenda is vouchsafed for their undemocratic plutocratic dominance.
     They have failed to achieve success on the national level, but they have achieved some degree of success in manipulating the Congress and many state legislatures to champion their causes. They have done so by rigging the bidding process and drawing the lines of The Congressional and state legislative districts in such a way as to insure their success. They have further undermined democracy by opening up the flood gates of political bribery, ala Citizens "Un-United". They are acting like the Joker in a Batman movie sequel, and there seems to be no stopping point. It is a far flung and semi successful conspiratorial effort to bend the will of the majority to advance their cause, and the real joke is that they have done so while invoking the concept of liberty and justice for all. That is the ultimate irony, and the joke is on us.
     Give me you tired, your poor, your weary, your befuddled masses, and we shall manipulate them to our advantage, and crush any hopes they might have to climb the socioeconomic ladder. Their philosophy is ' I've got mine the hell with you, and if you try to climb up into this boat on that rope ladder, I'll Step on your fingers". The other side's philosophy is more like " I've got mine, how can I help you get yours"!
     The American people are not stupid.  They have made their choice. It is now up to the losers to show some grace and some common sense, and to remember that there are still many more things that bind us together than divide us. The American dream still beckons for us all. Clearly, we need to trim the budget, and pay down the deficit as well. The solvency solution is broader than just raising taxes on the well to do. But, If the Custer-like last stand of a defeated Republican agenda really is to hold out against tax hikes for the top two per cent of the country, the moral bankruptcy of that position will end up bankrupting us all. Lord have mercy. We deserve better than that.

  Challenge lies in finding way to meet in middle

PITTSBURG, Kan. — To secede or not secede should not be the question. Whether ’tis nobler to suffer the indignity of losing an election, without much recourse for the next four years, or to just throw in the towel, or move to Canada is not the reality of choice we citizens face.

The real challenge lies in finding ways to meet in the middle and avoid driving off the cliff like Thelma and Louise.

I am old. I have actually lived through and voted in 11 presidential elections. Sometimes I have been happy about the results, and sometimes I have been sad. As I told my students, sometimes you are the windshield, and sometimes you’re the bug. Elections have winners and losers (usually), and elections do have consequences. Majority rule does indeed mean majority rule.

Sometimes I have even been downright indignant about the result, as in 2000, when I felt that the real winner of the contest was denied the right to take office by a Supreme Court 5-4 intervention that was unprecedented, unwarranted and, I think, ultimately unwise.

But I never threatened to secede from the union. It took me nearly a year to accept the leadership of the presidential annointee of 2000, and only when our nation was challenged in a direct and unimaginable way on Sept. 11 did I rally, emotionally, behind our politically appointed president. But rally I did. So did many of my fellow doubting Thomases who questioned the ascendancy of George W. Bush. For better or for worse, he was the only president we had, and I had to learn to accept that fact. Whether he achieved office as a result of electile dysfunction or mendacious manipulation of the electoral process was no longer the issue. There was reason to unite, and go forward. Just as there is today.

At least today there is no doubt about the result of the election, no doubt about the result. It is clear who won, with a solid majority, albeit not a landslide. Most elections are never decided by landslide votes; they are more often a 50-plus to 49-minus situation. The difference in this last election involved more than 3.5 million popular votes, and 126 electoral votes. In the end, it wasn’t even close. No need for a recount. No hanging chads, No butterfly ballots. No court manipulation of the results. There was a clear winner.

In terms of coming to grips with the enormities of the challenges we as a nation face, the longer we kick the can down the road, the more perilous becomes our predicament. Failing to address and solve the issues — of entitlement reform, tax reform, climate change, energy independence and educational backsliding — will have far-reaching consequences for the hegemony of our great nation. We will either continue to lead or slide into the status of a back-bencher wannabe country whose best times are past and whose future is unsecured. That is the choice we face.

Much of the energy of the opposition party for the past four years has been focused on denying the legitimacy of the re-elected leader we have. The strategy was to hope he would fail and to trip up his efforts to succeed at every turn, even if it resulted in tripping up the country itself, temporarily. Help was on the way (they thought). Well, it didn’t happen, and we now have the same president for the next four years, and it’s time for the opposition to suck it up and deal, and live to fight another day. We all need to take a deep breath and not waste time on silly things like threatening to secede.

There are even some citizens on the other side of the spectrum who would be happy to see the red states of the former confederacy and cow country just go away. They are just as wrong as their secession-threatening brethren. In the end, we are still “E Pluribus unum,” one from many. Let’s just remember that. Our partisan thorns will surely resurface four years hence, but for now, in the immortal words of Rodney King: “Can’t we all just get along?”