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First Things First

...But not necessarily in that order.

Speaking of Congressional perks

Wednesday, 23. July 2008, 20:37:48

As noted in the previous entry, your Congresscritter gets a variety of generous perks in addition to a generous and automatically-increasing salary. How generous? Get a load of this (via Politico:

A leased Cadillac: $557 a month.

Chinese food for 230 colleagues: $1,425.

A 46-inch Sony flat-screen television: $2,805.

Having taxpayers foot the bill: priceless.

Members of Congress get between $1.3 million and $1.63 million per year to run their offices. Much of
the money goes to staff salaries and rent for district offices. Some of it does not.

Politico names a number of Democrats who find creative ways to spend this taxpayer largesse:

A review of congressional records shows that Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) used his Member’s Representational Allowance to purchase four Sony Bravia 46-inch, high-definition LCD TVs for his two Chicago-area offices earlier this year.

The cost: $2,805.92 each, for a total of $11,224.

The reason? "They replaced older, bulkier and more cumbersome sets, making it easier for the staff to monitor local and national news as well as to participate in teleconferences," according to Jackson's office.

This doesn't pass the laugh test. TVs sit on a table. Unless Jackson's staff is tasked with lugging these TVs from room to room, the fact that they're 'bulkier and more cumbersome' is a mighty lame excuse.

Now, I have no doubt that both parties piss away our hard-earned money on such nonsense. But a million bucks? Puh-leeze!

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Speaking of taxpayer-paid vacations

Thursday, 17. July 2008, 20:38:04

Speaking of Congress' perk of taxpayer-paid junkets masquerading as 'official business,' I can't help but wonder whether the Congressional Democrats' persistent refusal to increase domestic oil production is somehow related to the fact that our political class is fairly well insulated from the economic travails of the rest of us.

Think about it: Congressfolk get a very nice salary (over $160,000 if I recall correctly), with automatic annual cost-of-living increases... plus a housing expense... plus a travel expense... and free airline travel (often on a military aircraft) -- and other perks few of us could attain to.

Speaking of that travel expense, very few of them t drive their own cars, particularly when they're on 'official business.' Rather, they travel in SUV style -- and when their 8-cylinder Ford Behemoth or Chevy Megasaur runs low, the driver just flips out a credit card -- and the bill is paid by... well, you know.

The Democrats insist that it'll take five (or seven, or ten) years to bring any new oil production on line. The problem is that they've been telling us that for 13 years now. Congress didn't learn anything from the aftermath of 9/11, but they sure as heck should have got a clue from the problems caused by Hurricane Katrina. Instead of taking steps to ensure a steady supply of gas and oil, they've dithered. And why not? They aren't suffering.

It's obvious that the Congressional Democrats won't act until and unless a Democrat is elected president -- but their "Let them eat cake!" attitude could push America into a full-blown recession.


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Our tax dullards at work

Thursday, 17. July 2008, 19:29:15

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US News is on the case:

While many Americans watched their wallets, several dozen members of Congress used the Memorial Day recess to travel overseas to places including Rome, Venice, and Athens without digging into their own. At least 64 lawmakers traveled abroad that week, many with spouses in tow, a U.S. News review found. The largest contingent was 17 members of Congress ensconced for five nights in the $480-a-night Rome Cavalieri Hilton, courtesy of the Aspen Institute, a nonprofit group famous for transporting lawmakers to chic destinations, ranging from the Grand Cayman Islands to Istanbul, for in-depth looks at foreign policy and other issues. [...]

Ten lawmakers went on a weeklong, taxpayer-paid trip from May 23 to 30 for meetings of the Transatlantic Legislators’ Dialogue in Ljubljana, Slovenia, with subsequent stops—and la dolce vita—in Venice and Naples. The dialogue unites lawmakers with peers from the European Parliament. Seven in the U.S. delegation had a spouse along, says Lynne Weil, spokeswoman for the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Just something to think about while you're enjoying your staycation. Hey, at least someone is enjoying a vacation abroad!

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Permissable Obama Jokes

Wednesday, 16. July 2008, 23:15:42

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Maureen Dowd grouses that

If Obama keeps being stingy with his quips and smiles, and if the dominant perception of him is that you can’t make jokes about him, it might infect his campaign with an airless quality. His humorlessness could spark humor.

Actually, his campaign already sports a humorless affect, as do many of his supporters; witness the misplaced (if well-orchestrated) outrage over that dumb New Yorker cover.

Dowd reflects:

Andy Borowitz satirized on that subject. He said that Obama, sympathetic to comics' attempts to find jokes to make about him, had put out a list of official ones, including this:

"A traveling salesman knocks on the door of a farmhouse, and much to his surprise, Barack Obama answers the door. The salesman says, 'I was expecting the farmer's daughter.' Barack Obama replies, 'She's not here. The farm was foreclosed on because of subprime loans that are making a mockery of the American dream.'"

Sounds about right. So here's my contribution:

Why did Senator Barack Obama cross the road?

To bring Hope and Change to the American people disaffected by eight years of failed Bush policies.

Rimshot!


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This isn't the first oil crisis

Wednesday, 16. July 2008, 11:39:30

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Here's a blast from the past:



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Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less.

Tuesday, 1. July 2008, 00:16:38

What a radical notion: Let's use the oil resources we control, rather than allow ourselves to be beholden to the oil resources of other countries.

Sign the petition.

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Why does gas cost more in some states?

Thursday, 12. June 2008, 19:20:35

Another article, this one from Slate (via MSN Money), notes that pump prices vary by states due to three factors: Taxes, pipelines, and ethanol.

I've already written about the burden of state and Federal gas taxes -- as much as 12% in Wisconsin. Here's a link to a nice graph that shows that taxes account for almost the same percentage of a gallon of gas as the entire refining process (as a national average).

Access to pipelines helps to drive down gas prices; conversely, states far from pipelines have the added cost of transportation. That's true of any commodity, of course, but it hits places like California harder than, say, New Jersey or Missouri.

Ethanol has helped keep gas prices down in some areas. There's a bit of a paradox here, since ethanol isn't cheap to make; but, with crude oil prices as elevated as they are, ethanol is cheap by comparison. Of course, there's the non-trivial issue that the mandate for ethanol is driving up food prices. Thanks, Congress!

Another factor that politicians don't like to talk about (primarily the fact that our country's energy policy is against drilling for oil on its own lands) is that some states, like California, mandate a special formulation of gasoline, or even varying the formulation by season. Naturally, this makes gas more expensive, too.

What can be done to reduce gas prices? In the short term, like it or not, the answer is to bring more oil to market. As The Wall Street Journal points out today,

[T]he U.S. remains one of the only countries in the world that chooses as a matter of policy to lock up its natural resources. The Chinese think we're insane and self-destructive, while the Saudis laugh all the way to the bank.



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Blame Congress for High Oil Prices

Monday, 2. June 2008, 14:27:36

That's the title of an excellent op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal.

Some of the inconvenient facts presented here:

15% of the cost of gasoline at the pump goes for taxes; only 4% represents oil company profits.

Fun fact: Uncle Sam rakes in 18.4 cents per gallon. Your state takes a healthy share, too -- see for yourself. California grabs 18 cents, as do many other states. New York nips an additional two bits -- and they're not even the greediest state. Ten percent of every $4 gallon you buy goes to the gummint.

[N]ational oil companies control nearly 80% of world petroleum reserves.

The US doesn't have any national oil companies (though if Maxine Waters gets her way, she'll nationalize - or, as she put it, 'socialize' - them.) That puts our oil companies at a tremendous competitive disadvantage. And that's not even counting the subsidies that national oil companies get from their governments.

Congress has also made it a national policy to ban access to
reserves available in nonpark federal lands in the West, Alaska and under the waters off our coasts. These areas hold an estimated 635 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas – enough to meet the needs of the 60 million American homes fueled by natural gas for over a century. They also hold an estimated 112 billion barrels of recoverable oil – enough to produce gasoline for 60 million cars and fuel oil for 25 million homes for 60 years.

This doesn't even include substantial oil shale resources economically recoverable at oil prices substantially lower than those prevailing today.


Congress, of course, desperately needs us to believe that gas prices are the result of a Big Oil Konspiracy. In March, they summoned the usual suspects for the obligatory blame-Big-Oil hearings. And, contrary to what you may have read in the media, they didn't take it lying down, but pointed out many inconvenient facts:

Access to resources is severely restricted in the United States and abroad, and the American oil industry must compete with national oil companies who are often much larger and have the support of their governments. We can only compete directly for 7 percent of the world's available reserves while about 75 percent is completely controlled by national oil companies and is not accessible.


And:

Exxon Mobil is the largest U.S. oil and gas company, but we account for only 2 percent of global energy production, only 3 percent of global oil production, only 6 percent of global refining capacity, and only 1 percent of global petroleum reserves. With respect to petroleum reserves, we rank 14th.


And:

While all oil-importing nations buy oil at global prices, some, notably India and China, subsidize the cost of oil products to their nation's consumers, feeding the demand for more oil despite record prices. They do this to speed economic growth and to ensure a competitive advantage relative to other nations.

Meanwhile, in the United States, access to our own oil and gas resources has been limited for the last 30 years, prohibiting companies such as Shell from exploring and developing resources for the benefit of the American people.

According to the Department of the Interior, 62 percent of all on-shore federal lands are off limits to oil and gas developments, with restrictions applying to 92 percent of all federal lands. We have an outer continental shelf moratorium on the Atlantic Ocean, an outer continental shelf moratorium on the Pacific Ocean, an outer continental shelf moratorium on the eastern Gulf of Mexico, congressional bans on on-shore oil and gas activities in specific areas of the Rockies and Alaska, and even a congressional ban on doing an analysis of the resource potential for oil and gas in the Atlantic, Pacific and eastern Gulf of Mexico.



The ugly fact is that just about every policy that the Democrats have foisted upon us since the 1970s has led us to where we are today: an unnecessary shortage of oil, and high gasoline prices.

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America: the Anti-Europe

Sunday, 1. June 2008, 23:25:20

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Yet another poll of Europeans brings us the news that the US is held in low esteem by most of them. The Telegraph scolds its fellows by noting that

America's actions undoubtedly make the world a more peaceful and stable place. Its support for economic globalisation promotes global prosperity and encourages international co-operation.


And this is certainly true. Europe has ridden on our economic coat-tails since the Great War; to this day, most of Europe is quite willing to indulge its socialist fantasies while demanding, straight-faced, that the US continue to foot the bill for their protection, both economic and military.

I don't really care what the Europeans think. I'm more concerned with Americans who think that we should ingratiate ourselves to better their opinion of us. Well, guess what: it won't work.

For those who are convinced that Europe hates (dislikes, whatever) America because of Iraq/Afghanistan/global warming/oil/etc. etc. ad nauseum barf, a little history lesson courtesy of Walt Whitman:


Attitude of Foreign Governments toward the U.S. during the War of 1861-'65.

Looking over my scraps, I find I wrote the following during 1864, or the latter part of '63:

The happening to our America, abroad as well as at home, these years, is indeed most strange. The Democratic Republic has paid her to-day the terrible and resplendent compliment of the united wish of all the nations of the world that her Union should be broken, her future out off, and that she should be compell'd to descend to the level of kingdoms and empires ordinarily great! There is certainly not one government in Europe but is now watching the war in this country, with the ardent prayer that the United States may be effectually split, crippled, and dismember'd by it. There is not one but would help toward that dismemberment, if it dared. I say such is the ardent wish to-day of England and of France, as governments, and of all the nations of Europe, as governments. I think indeed it is to-day the real, heartfelt wish of all the nations of the world, with the single exception of Mexico -- Mexico, the only one to whom we have ever really done wrong, and now the only one who prays for us and for our triumph, with genuine prayer.

Is it not indeed strange? America, made up of all, cheerfully from the beginning opening her arms to all, the result and justifier of all, of Britain, Germany, France and Spain -- all here -- the accepter, the friend, hope, last resource and general house of all -- she who has harm'd none, but been bounteous to so many, to millions, the mother of strangers and exiles, all nations -- should now I say be paid this dread compliment of general governmental fear and hatred?...

Are we indignant? alarm'd? Do we feel wrong'd? jeopardized? No; help'd, braced, concentrated, rather. We are all too prone to wander from ourselves, to affect Europe, and watch her frowns and smiles. We need this hot lesson of general hatred, and henceforth must never forget it. Never again will we trust the moral sense nor abstract friendliness of a single government of the old world.


If you've had any honest civics education during your school years, you remember that the United States of America was founded because our ancestors couldn't stand living in Europe, with its repressive attitudes toward religion and what we'd today call alternative lifestyles.

Check out the comments to the Telegraph article. Here's one that pretty much sums up my attitude:

In the last hundred years, we evil Americans have been called upon to solve every European Conflict. We've tried appeasing you, and we've tried ignoring you. Yet you continue to lord your alleged superiority over us. Even hundreds of thousands of American dead to secure European liberty mean nothing to you. Billions of dollars to build your countries mean nothing to you. We even had to straighten out Kosovo and Serbia for you, a purely European problem in YOUR backyard. I'm sure I'm not alone in beginning to feel that if western Europe wishes to follow the rabbit down the same black hole of failed eastern European economics or Middle East religious intolerance, we may not stop you. We just may have spent too much of our blood, our toil, our tears, our treasure for peoples and nations who will never like us, no matter what we do. I'm sure you won't like our indifference, either. But I, for one, feel your antipathy should be repaid with the same coin.

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Thirst for Tax Revenues Drives Tennessee Mad

Friday, 28. September 2007, 16:19:23

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Like New Jersey and various other states, Tennessee figured it had a source of free money when it hiked cigarette taxes. It hiked them so high -- from 20 cents per pack to 62 cents -- that Tennessee's citizens living near its borders have begun buying their butts in other states.

Unlike any other state of which I'm aware, though, Tennessee has instituted a "cigarette surveillance program" under which citizens can be charged with a crime -- or even have their cars seized -- for legally buying a legal product:

...state Department of Revenue agents will begin stopping Tennessee motorists spotted buying large quantities of cigarettes in border states, then charging them with a crime and, in some cases, seizing their cars.

Critics say the new "cigarette surveillance program" amounts to the use of "police state" tactics and wrongfully interferes with interstate commerce. But state Revenue Commissioner Reagan Farr says his department is simply doing its job, enforcing a valid state law while protecting Tennessee retailers who properly pay state taxes. [...]

The idea is for the monitoring agent to spot a person buying cigarettes in volume at an out-of-state market, then departing in a vehicle with Tennessee license tags. Starting today, monitoring agents spotting such a suspect will call an arresting agent who will stop the car when it enters Tennessee, he said.


I'm curious where, exactly, Tennessee invented the authority to conduct surveillance of innocent people in another state. But wait -- it gets better:

Under state law, bringing more than two cartons of cigarettes into the state without paying Tennessee taxes is a "Class B" misdemeanor, carrying punishment of up to six months in jail and/or a $500 fine. Bringing 25 or more cartons is a "Class E" felony, with minimum penalty of one year in prison and a maximum of six years plus a fine of up to $3,000.

In addition, the specific state statute dealing with untaxed cigarettes provides that vehicles used to transport more than two cartons "are considered contraband and are subject to seizure," says a Department of Revenue statement.

Farr said that agents have been instructed to seize any vehicle carrying more than 25 cartons of cigarettes without Tennessee tax stamps. In cases where three to 24 cartons are involved, he said vehicle seizure is "at the officer's discretion."


So let's see how this works: you buy a legal product -- we're not talking fireworks or plutonium here -- out of state, and when you bring it home, you're arrested for possession of "contraband."

I can foresee a competition among Tennessee's lawyer set to see who can be the first to challenge this in court, because this turkey of a law will go down hard. I guess Tennessee never heard of the Fourth Amendment.

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