Today’s New York Post posted an opinion piece today suggesting that Charlie Rangel be fired.  Charlie Rangel is head of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.  In the past year, Mr. Rangel has ‘discovered’ large sums of money he neglected to report on the disclosure forms he is required to fill out as a Congressman.  He has made various excuses about forgetting income or having language difficulties, but as yet has not suffered any penalty for his forgetfulness.

Congressman Rangel is now suggesting that fines and penalties be made stricter on average taxpayers who make filing errors or mistakes on their returns.  According to the article:

“The Post’s Charles Hurt reported yesterday that Rangel’s committee seeks to reduce legal defenses and increase fines and penalties on taxpayers undergoing IRS scrutiny for what they assert are innocent errors.

Among other things, Rangel’s bill would even prohibit the IRS from forgiving taxpayers who erred in good faith — though that would be a very generous interpretation of his own tax troubles.”

This is another plank in my platform for term limits.  Admittedly, term limits will not ensure more honest lawmakers, but it will limit the amount of dishonesty they can get away with! 

Today’s Wall Street Journal posted an article on what has happened in California because the Environmental Protection Agency has cut off the water supply to the San Joaquin Valley.  The area is suffering from a drought made worse by a cut off of the water supply because of possible danger to the delta smelt.  According to the article:

“The state’s water emergency is unfolding thanks to the latest mishandling of the Endangered Species Act. Last December, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued what is known as a “biological opinion” imposing water reductions on the San Joaquin Valley and environs to safeguard the federally protected hypomesus transpacificus, a.k.a., the delta smelt. As a result, tens of billions of gallons of water from mountains east and north of Sacramento have been channelled away from farmers and into the ocean, leaving hundreds of thousands of acres of arable land fallow or scorched. “”

This is another in a long list of examples of what happens when you give the government control over things they know nothing about.  It’s called the Law of Unintended Consequences.  The farm communities in the areas affected have been decimated.  The unemployment rate in some farming towns like Mendota is near 40%.

The article concludes:

“Things in California may have to get so bad that they endanger Democratic Congressional incumbents before Washington wakes up, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Mr. Salazar has said that convening the God Squad would be “admitting failure” in the effort to save the smelt under the Endangered Species Act. Maybe so, but the livelihoods of tens of thousands of humans are also at stake. If the Obama Administration wants to help, it can take up Governor Schwarzenegger’s request that it revisit the two biological opinions that are hanging farmers and farm workers out to dry.” 

My conclusion comes in the form of a few questions.  Is a dustbowl where farmland used to be in any way an environmental asset?  Was the impact of this action taken in consideration before the water stopped flowing?  Is providing food and jobs for people more important than protecting a species which may or may not be endangered?

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports today on the problems of toxic Chinese drywall that has been imported into the United States since 2006 and used in new construction.  The problem is thought to be high levels of sulfur-compound gases being released from the drywall.  The drywall has been used in the construction that followed the hurricane damage along the Gulf coast in 2005 and in other new construction throughout the country.. 

According to the article:

“Attorneys representing homeowners estimate more than 2,000 lawsuits already have been filed in state and federal courts, targeting Chinese, U.S. and German companies, as well as builders, installers, suppliers, distributors and import brokers.

“We expect about 20 manufacturers of Chinese drywall to be involved in these cases,” said Jeremy Alters, an attorney in Miami handling many of the cases. “There is no quality control in this drywall. It’s hard to believe no one knew it was bad. It is destroying homes and it will cost billions.””

There are lawsuits, and hopefully the people who have been hurt by the use of the toxic drywall will be reimbursed for their losses, but there is something else to be seen in this situation.  American products are among the safest in the world.  At times we have overreacted and put restrictions in place that do not need to be there, but for the most part, we get it right.  We need to encourage American manufacturing–not put roadblocks in front of it.  We need reasonable environmental laws that will allow the environment and manufacturing to coexist side-by-side in a way that benfits both.  If we become too strict in our laws concerning manufacturing in this country, we will be importing more products that do not comply with our safety standards and putting Americans at risk.  We are not going to change the lack of safety in overseas products from countries like China; our solution is to become more self-sufficient in meeting our own needs.

The Wall Street Journal ran an article on Sunday by Mary Anastasia O’Grady on what is happening in Honduras.  The current acting president of Honduras, Roberto Micheletti, became president when the former president, Manuel Zelaya, was deposed and exiled from the country. 

This was not a coup.  Honduras has a law imposing term limits on its presidency.  Mr. Zelaya had asked for a referendum to override this law so that he could continue as president.  The courts and the legislature had denied this request.  Ignoring that, Mr. Zelaya had gotten ballots for the referendum from that bastion of democracy Hugo Chavez and was going to proceed with the referendum.  At that point the courts and legislature ordered the military to remove him from office.  They did not want Mr. Zelaya to become ‘president for life’ following the example of his friend Hugo Chavez.

The United States, for whatever reason, has not supported the ousting of Mr. Zelaya.  Our current administration and state department have sided with Hugo Chavez in seeking the reinstatement of Mr. Zelaya.  We have begun to put some very strong pressure on Honduras to do this.  According to the Wall Street Journal article:

“The most recent example of the Obama-style Good Neighbor Policy was the announcement last week that visa services for Hondurans are suspended indefinitely, and that some $135 million in bilateral aid might be cut. But these are only the public examples of its hardball tactics. Much nastier stuff is going on behind the scenes, practiced by a presidency that once promised the American people greater transparency and a less interventionist foreign policy.

“To recap, the Honduran military in June executed a Supreme Court arrest warrant against Mr. Zelaya for trying to hold a referendum on whether he should be able to run for a second term. Article 239 of the Honduran constitution states that any president who tries for a second term automatically loses the privilege of his office. By insisting that Mr. Zelaya be returned to power, the U.S. is trying to force Honduras to violate its own constitution.”

America is working against democracy in this case.  We are in essence trying to stop another country from following its own consitution.  I hope someone in the administration or the state department will reverse course on this.  We are wrong. 

With the dealth of Ted Kenneday, the talk in Massachusetts is of the Kennedy legacy and what it means.  I think I have a different opinion–Barack Obama is not the next Kennedy.  John F. Kennedy was only President for a short time.  He made some mistakes, but he also said and did some very smart things that today’s Democrat Party would be appalled at.

According to Jeff Jacoby in Sunday’s Boston Globe:

“It is a paradoxical truth,” he once told the Economic Club of New York, “that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now.” What he had in mind, he said, was “an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes.”

Those were not the words of Senator Edward Kennedy. The speaker – in December 1962 – was President John F. Kennedy, and his ringing call for tax cuts was no anomaly.”

Jeff Jacoby also reports:

“Senator Hubert Humphrey vowed that if anyone could find anything in the 1964 Civil Rights Bill that would compel hiring on the basis of race, “I will start eating the pages one after another.” In a 1963 press conference, President Kennedy explicitly opposed racial preferences: “We are too mixed, this society of ours, to begin to divide ourselves on the basis of race or color.'”‘

The article further points out:

“JFK likewise spoke for mainstream Democrats when he asserted that America would “pay any price, bear any burden” to advance freedom and democracy in the world. He was a hawk who pressed for higher defense spending and American military superiority. The Democratic Party of more recent years – the party of “come home, America” and the nuclear freeze – was one he wouldn’t have recognized.”

I used to be a Democrat.  If the Democrat party still stood for the ideas expressed above–low taxes, color-blind civil rights, and the support of democracy around the world, I would still be one.

There seem to be some real questions about global warming (or climate change) and what causes it.  If the Cap and Trade Bill passes, we will be spending millions of dollars (out of the pockets of every American) to solve a problem we are not totally sure exists.  I am all in favor of reducing pollution, but I am also in favor of common sense in dealing with the problem.

Jonah Goldberg posted an article in the Los Angeles Times today about sunspots.  It seems that if we have no sunspots today, we will have gone fifty-three days without a ‘solar blemish,’ breaking a ninety-six year old record.  According to the article:

“During what scientist call the Maunder Minimum — a period of solar inactivity from 1645 to 1715 — the world experienced the worst of the cold streak dubbed the Little Ice Age. At Christmastime, Londoners ice skated on the Thames, and New Yorkers (then New Amsterdamers) sometimes walked over the Hudson from Manhattan to Staten Island.”

This is not something I want to see at all!  On the subject of global warming, the article points out:

“MIT’s Richard Lindzen says that “there has been no warming since 1997 and no statistically significant warming since 1995.””

I’m sure it is coincidence that many of the people pushing for the Cap and Trade Bill own part or all of companies that trade in carbon credits.  There will be millions made by a small group of people if this bill passes.  I personally like the idea I heard from someone who was offering to let people pay him $5 not to take a shower (his own contribution to carbon credits).  I think it’s time to step back and take a breath before we do something very expensive that may not have any relationship to a problem we may not have.