Archive for November, 2011

David Karki

The Congressional super-committee, whose job it ostensibly was to find spending “cuts” in exchange for having extended the debt ceiling a few months ago, has given up having passed no cuts at all and with the entirely expected outcome that Democrats were engineering all along:  getting the chance to either massively raise taxes, massively cut the military, or massively blame Republicans for not getting phony, phantom “cuts” that never existed.

I do have to give it to the Democrats, though; their plan was every bit as well-thought and executed as it is utterly dishonest. And now they have the big lie that their media allies can keep spewing all the way to next November, to provide cover for them and President Obama – who was nowhere to be found as he once again “led from behind”:  that they actually give a tinker’s damn about cutting spending, and it’s all the Republicans’ fault it didn’t happen.

As for the Republicans, they lived down to their unofficial nickname of The Stupid Party and got played for fools yet again because they simply cannot bring themselves to admit the Democrats don’t mean well and to find the spine and guts to fight them tooth and nail to the bitter end.

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James Melton

Here is the thing about pessimism: It doesn’t get you anywhere. Throwing up your hands and declaring the hopelessness of social problems and policy conundrums does not make them go away. It certainly cannot solve anything.

That’s why it is disheartening when folks like Nolan Finley, who ought to know better, imply that the state’s largest city is simply doomed and there is nothing that can be done about it. In a Nov. 20 column, Finley, editorial page editor of the Detroit News, invoked the notion of the “end times” to describe Detroit’s current financial situation. At this point, Finley wrote, “Detroit’s fate seems tragically sealed.”

That kind of primal scream might be satisfying to those who see Detroit mainly as problem to be disposed of, rather than a challenge to be embraced. But it’s not realistic or helpful. Detroit isn’t a fall maple leaf that will dry up and blow away. On the contrary, Detroit makes up the roots and the trunk of its metro region and state – and is not going anywhere.

Why do I say that? It’s not just because I happen to live there.

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Brett Noel

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Eric Baerren

Tucked away in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 was an exemption to the Safe Drinking Water Act for fracking. Fracking, nearly as dirty as it sounds, involves shooting jets of chemical-laden water underground to produce fissures, which release trapped natural gas. The gas is then piped to the surface and used to produce energy.

Oil and gas companies have fracked for decades, in Michigan and elsewhere, and it’s been mostly pursued safely. What changed over the last decade was that oil and gas companies were on the verge of another great energy rush, with fracking as the method of choice. In 2005, they were merely getting out ahead of the game by getting it exempted from federal drinking water laws.

The industry has long maintained that fracking poses no danger to drinking wells. Now, you might ask why something that poses no danger to drinking water has to be exempted from laws intended to protect drinking water. It’s a good question. It would have been a better question in 2005. Today, we can mostly dream about what might have been.

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Dan Calabrese

Let’s just recognize something: Congress is never going to get spending under control. It doesn’t want to. It is never going to balance the budget. It doesn’t want to do that either. It only wants to create a convincing enough illusion of its attempt to do so that it can get itself through the current election cycle.

And because the voters have thus bought tickets to this absurd theater act, and show no signs of doing otherwise any time soon, the problem is not going to be solved.

Ever.

It is par for the course that the congressional supercommittee has failed to achieve the spending cuts that were allegedly its mission. Monday following Sunday is a bigger surprise than that.

The nation faces more than $10 trillion in new debt over the course of the next decade unless Congress does something drastic to change the direction of events. Congress will not do this. Congress does not want to do this.

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Gregory D. Lee

Last week the Obama Administration announced that it is delaying a decision to build an international pipeline from Canada to U.S. refineries until it can further study alternative routes and safety concerns. The president said, “We should take the time to ensure that all questions are properly addressed and all the potential impacts are properly understood.” According to the Associated Press, his decision will most likely delay a decision on constructing the pipeline until after the 2012 presidential elections.

So much for this “shovel ready” project that would have lessened America’s dependence on Middle East oil by at least 700,000 barrels of oil a day, enhanced national security and provide upwards of 20,000 good paying U.S. jobs. As it turns out, according to the AP, some liberal donors threatened to withhold campaign contributions to Obama’s re-election if he approved the project. Think that might have influenced the president’s decision to shelve the pipeline?

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Jocelyn Benson

Last month I was meeting with a group of citizens in Berrien County, when a young man approached me with his parents and introduced himself.  A Marine, he had just returned home from serving on active duty and was looking for work. He had enlisted shortly after graduating high school, and we talked about difficulties he encountered from employers who – though this young man had spent four years as an active-duty Marine – questioned whether he’d ever had a “real job.”

Service members make enormous sacrifices to ensure our freedom and security. It is incumbent upon all of us to ensure that when we welcome them home, we also offer job training and career placement assistance as a reflection of our thankfulness.

Yet as citizens across the country and in Michigan face a bleak job market, our veterans are struggling to find work at an even higher rate. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the unemployment rate among veterans who have left active duty since 2001 was just over 12 percent in October – more than 3 percentage points above the civilian unemployment rate.

Today, President Obama signs the VOW to Hire Heroes Act, a component of his overall jobs plan that Congress enacted last week with bipartisan support.  The bill, among other things, provides tax credits, ranging from $5,600 to $9,600, to companies that hire unemployed veterans.

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Herman Cain

A few days ago, after coming under criticism for my answer to a question about Libya in an interview, I made a lighthearted comment that reflected all this – that I’m not supposed to know everything (most of the media quoted me as saying “anything”) about foreign policy.

Bizarre things happen when you run for president, one of which is that statements like this go viral, with people claiming I had somehow made the case that no knowledge of world affairs is required for the job.

I obviously don’t think that, but I’m also quite willing be honest about my strengths. My background is in the business world, and my greatest strength concerns the economy. My motivation in running for president is to apply my leadership skills to all issues – foreign and domestic. But clearly, as I have met with foreign policy luminaries like John Bolton and Henry Kissinger, I have done a lot more listening than talking – because they know a lot more about it than I do, and it would be absurd for me to claim otherwise.

That said, a man taking the oath of office for the presidency must have a sense of America’s place in the world, and must have a clear idea of the challenges, threats and opportunities that present themselves. Otherwise, success on the economic front likely goes for naught, as mistakes in the international arena tend to be costly both in the short term and in the long term.

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Jake Davison

In 1850, Congress passed the highly unpopular (in the north) Fugitive Slave Act, making it a crime to help slaves escape to freedom. Rather than follow such a repulsive law, the Michigan legislature passed personal liberty laws forbidding judges from recognizing slave owner claims, requiring jury trials for accused runaways and severely punishing false testimony against free blacks. This legislative civil disobedience, repeated in other northern states, defanged this disgusting law, helped rally abolitionist forces and helped lead to the creation of an anti-slavery party and the constitutional banishment of slavery.

In 2010, Congress passed the highly unpopular (nationwide) ObamaCare health care takeover by the narrowest of margins and against the will of two-thirds of Americans. Seven months later, voters nationwide threw out the Democratic majority in the House that passed it, and nearly did the same in the Senate. ObamaCare is today even more unpopular. The largest seizure of government power in the American history, ObamaCare is rightly reviled for ending American economic exceptionalism and turning one-sixth of our economy into a European-style socialist basket case with the goal of ultimately bankrupting and crushing what little remains of a free market in health care.

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Dan Calabrese

As Detroit careens toward complete fiscal collapse, the consensus seems universal that the measures proposed by Mayor Dave Bing amount to little more than Titanic deck-chair rearranging of the highest order. I can’t describe Detroit’s situation better than my North Star and Michigan View colleague Robert Laurie did yesterday.

But there has to be a reason that elected leaders would respond to such a profound crisis in such a meager way. And while people are not going to like this, you have to recognize that lack of political will stems from the realization that the people are not prepared to get behind the measures that need to be taken. And that’s not just in Detroit.

Consider: In July, the Pew Research Center conducted a survey that showed 60 percent of Americans oppose cuts to the three major entitlement programs, demanding that the programs be kept exactly as they are. These three programs are costing the nation more than $2 trillion a year today, and their growth accelerates every year as more people reach the age of retirement. The federal government doesn’t take in enough money to fund just the entitlements, let alone anything else.

How is it possible that 60 percent of Americans don’t support reforming them?

It is possible for the same reason Detroit can’t take the steps necessary to get its fiscal house in order. It is possible for the same reason the Big Three automakers operated for years on the outskirts of fiscal reality. It is possible for the same reason cities and states all across America face perpetual budget crises, and the same reason banks approved mortgages for millions of people who could not possibly pay back the loans, while the federal government cheered them on.

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