CABPRO Report

Eve of the Budget Debate

by Congressman Tom McClintock on the House Chamber Floor

Washington D.C.

March 27, 2012

Eve of the Budget Debate

 M. Speaker:

The House is about to consider a budget in a dangerous hour in the life of our country.  Last year, we barreled past several urgent warning signals: the loss of our nation’s triple-A credit rating; the size of the national debt surpassing our entire economy; a record third year of trillion dollar-plus annual deficits.

I believe this to be one of our last opportunities to avert a financial crisis unprecedented in our nation’s experience and on a magnitude far greater than that now destroying Greece. 

The blueprint passed by the House Budget Committee last week is a disappointment to those who believe the budget can and should be balanced much sooner, and I do not entirely disassociate myself from those sentiments. 

But the immediate issue before us, as Lincoln put it, “is not ‘can any of us imagine better?’ but, ‘can we all do better?’”  The approaching financial crisis demands first and foremost that we turn this country away from the fiscal precipice and place it back on a course to solvency. 

This budget does so.  Indeed, it improves on the House budget last year that was killed in the Senate, but wich according to Standard and Poors, would have preserved the triple-A credit rating of the United States Government.  This budget, I believe, will restore it.

It is a long road back, balancing by the late 2030’s and ultimately paying off the entire debt by the mid-2050’s.  But even relying on the static scoring of the CBO which presents a worst-case scenario – it still means that my children – who are now in college – will be able to retire into a prosperous and debt-free America.

There is a great deal in it for Conservatives not to like.  That is not the issue.  The issue is, will this Congress and ultimately this government change its fiscal trajectory enough to avert the sovereign debt crisis that fiscal experts across the spectrum warn us is just a few years dead ahead?

Letter to the Editor

Eric Bolling (Fox Business Channel's Follow the Money) test drove the Chevy 
Volt at the invitation of General Motors.

For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted only 25 miles before the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline engine. Eric calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it ran on the battery. So, the range including the 9 gallon gas tank and the 16 kwh battery is approximately 270 miles. It will take you 4 1/2 hours to drive 270 miles at 60 mph. Then add 10 hours to charge the battery and you have a total trip time of 14.5 hours. In a typical road trip your average speed (including charging time) would be 20 mph.
 
According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery.  The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned so I looked up what I pay for electricity.  I pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh. 16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the battery. (Electricity is expensive and the Government wants to make it more so). $18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery.

Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine only that gets 32 mpg. $3.19 per gallon divided by 32 mpg = $0.10 per mile.

The gasoline powered car cost about $15,000 (more like $20K) while the Volt costs $46,000.

So GM (Government Motors) & the Government want us to pay 3 times as much for a car that costs more than 7 times as much to run and takes 3 times as long to drive across country.
 
You do not have to be a rocket scientist to figure the GM Volt is not very cost effective and does not save energy in the long run.

Editor's note update: the author of the Letter to the Editor sent in the following link: Chevy Volt - Building a Better Tomorrow

Have The Politicians Fund Entitlements

By Martin Light

During this election year Governor Jerry Brown, President Obama and their left wing socialist progressive supporters are demanding more “Entitlements” for their voter base. Maybe we can help.

Most of us wouldn’t mind how many or what kind of entitlement programs our politicians implemented if we weren’t expected and ultimately forced to pay for the ones we don’t want and  won’t benefit from.

One thought is to let state, congressional and presidential candidates campaign for all the social and corporate welfare programs they like. But instead of allowing the state and federal governments to appropriate our income to pay for a seemingly endless number of special interest entitlements, we should expect these candidates to bankroll their own programs. If a candidate really cares so much about his constituents that he’s  willing to spend other people’s money on funding special interest programs, he/she should be willing to spend his/her own money once elected on helping them. Past practice says that despite their overwhelming altruistic tendencies and allegiance to the less fortunate, most, if not all politicians, would not personally fund the entitlement programs they promoted that got them elected. Funny thing and I wonder why?

In addition, we could expect the people who vote for special interest entitlement programs to also fund them. The politicians who appeal to the most voters will win and, more importantly, likewise will only be able to make good on the programs they’ve been sent to office to enact. In many respects the politicians will be forced to implement the most worthy of the entitlement programs but also begin operating like a private business. If they exhaust program funding due to their own incompetence, careless decisions or cronyism they’ll either have to abandon their programs or appeal to their supporters for additional  sponsorship.

Isn’t it way past time that consideration be given to controlling government support of special interest entitlement programs from taxes we are forced to pay and from which we rarely see any personal benefit for ourselves? Too often it is easier to be charitable with other people’s money i.e., our tax money. Have the politicians pony up some of their own cash along with some of that from their voter base and we’ll see funding stop going to worthless projects that show little or no return on investment.

Martin Light was CABPRO's Executive Director from 2008 to 2011and has returned to blogging on his Light on Nevada County (lightonnevadacounty.blogspot.com/) which you are welcome to visit for more perspectives on local, state and national issues.

The View From Andy’s Desk - Navigating CEQA

By Andy R. Cassano, Nevada City Engineering

CEQA stands for the California Environmental Quality Act. The law is the single most important guardian of meaningful environmental protection. The law is also the single most discouraging aspect to private and public projects in California.

So we help our private and public sector clients navigate this law in the most efficient way possible. I think of CEQA as the “look before you leap law,” requiring decision makers implementing new projects to think things through before they hurry into new construction projects of any kind. Thought must be given to what kind of environmental damage could occur and mitigation steps must be identified to avoid or minimize potential impacts.

To local governments, CEQA is an important tool, giving them the authority, responsibility, and tools to avoid project impacts or even to turn down projects where they believe that the adverse impacts of a project cannot be mitigated or offset to reasonable levels.

CEQA requires a very regimented schedule of events with mandatory components. It’s important to our clients that these steps be completed appropriately and in a timely manner. There are specific limitations on the nature and scope of legal mitigation measures applied to a project, including:

1. Mitigations must be related to a physical  impact. Mitigation is not required for purely socio-economic impacts.

2. Mitigation measures should be effective in reducing the actual impact of the project.

3. Mitigation measures should be within the controlling agency’s express or implied authority.

4. Mitigation measures must be reasonably connected to the potential impact of the project, containing what the courts have called “essential nexus.”

5. Mitigation measures must be roughly  proportional to the magnitude of the impact.

6. Mitigation measures must not be prohibited by any existing statute.

Down but Not Out

By Barry Schoenborn

My company, Willow Valley Press, isn’t “too big to fail.” We fall more into the category of “too small to succeed.” Yet, despite the Great Recession, and despite dramatic changes in the publishing industry, we have succeeded. We’re still in business, and poised to do better as the economy gets better.

I sometimes marvel at our endurance. This little company started in Nevada County in 1988 as  Willow Valley Software. To this day, we still operate WVS – the Technical Writing Company to do technical documentation. However, big American corporations have determined that our brothers and sisters in India can do a better job than we can in writing manuals in American English! So our tech writing business has been reduced. Well, maybe the corps figure the Indians need the money more than we do.

For those of you who (like me) were born in the Stone Age, you may remember John Cameron Swayze strapping a Timex watch to the propeller of an outboard motor and revving her up. He’d say “It takes a licking and keeps on ticking.” Sometimes I feel like that watch.

A key point is that Willow Valley Press (WVP) is different from WVS. We publish books, and so we’re not beholden to cost accountants of corporate clients. We publish what the public wants. We are beholden to the marketplace, which is just fine with me.

We follow a few basic principles. You might think they apply only to micro-publishers, but they apply to most small businesses. At WVP, we have practices that can apply to any local manufacturer or retailer. Let me share them with you.

• Make or sell what people want to buy. We publish books that people are interested in reading. So they buy. This is so simple. I wish some local retailers would grasp this. Granted, people are price-sensitive, but an appealing product and the “in-person” buying experience are usually worth the money to the customer.

• Don’t make or sell junk. Don’t try it. China will kill you on manufacturing junk. The    Internet will kill you on selling junk. At WVP, we publish quality books, mainly “Greatest Generation” stories.

• Provide outstanding customer service. Local retailers sometimes don’t get this, to the point where critical letters appear in The Union! But it’s easy. At WVP, we respond promptly to every query and we fulfill orders fast.

• Use the Internet. For us, it’s a primary tool. Websites and Facebook are our friends. Locally, even restaurants should have a website. Note well: we did a website for a local Chinese  restaurant, and that was a giant boost for them.

• Spend your money on your employees.  Local manufacturers sometimes don’t get this. If you create “intellectual property,” as we do, plan on paying good money to the intellects who do the work. They are your “engine.” Since most of our talent is local to Nevada County, our salary dollars help mortgages to get paid and families to eat out at restaurants.

• Sell global, spend local. In the Good Ole Days of technical documentation, we made a lot of money from Hewlett-Packard Company, Roseville. But the staff spent the money locally. In the Good New Days of publishing, we use Amazon and Barnes & Noble to sell our books everywhere, but, again, we spend the money locally.

• Keep your sense of humor. People are sometimes outrageous. The government and big companies are often brutal. Not a day goes by where I don’t need to laugh at something or somebody. That includes laughing at myself.

Don’t forget the famous Horatio Alger theme: “Strive and Succeed.” It sounds really old hat, but I believe that the principles of hard work and utter honesty will get you through hard times.

Barry Schoenborn is the President of Willow Valley Press in Nevada City. He published “Dandelion Through the Crack,” by Kiyo Sato, which won the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. He’s also the author of “Technical Math for Dummies” and “Medical Dosage Calculations for Dummies.”

Dispite the left's dreams, Romney beats Obama by 6!

By Todd Juvinall

One thing I have learned being a political aficionado over the years is this, in politics everyday is a new day.  Today, the left says, look!  Rush Limbaugh is the most hated man in America, and he is sinking the GOP ship.  Tomorrow, Romney beats Obama by six points! Read the daily tracking poll HERE.

Rush is not doing anything to the GOP.  For one thing, most Americans don't even know what his registration is.  For another, most Americans think all politicians are buffoons and it makes no difference who they vote for.  The difference is on election day, the day of the true American nationwide poll, that is truly the day of decision.  Sudden death overtime and it is in the hands of the 10% who make up their minds in the poling booth.

I read the lefty blogs to retain some perspective on what they think.  It is always the same.  If the world was run as the left says it should based on today's news, there would be no need for elections.  Every little flub to the left means the GOP is toast.  I chuckle heartily when I read their screeds.  No, Rush Limbaugh's comments will not sink the GOP.  The left will sink the left and the then the GOP will sink the remainder.  It is about the economy and it is not about the personal bedroom mores of Ms. Fluke.  Just like Elliot Spitzer's trysts as Client Number 9 was not the demise of the democrats in New York.  It seems Andrew Cuomo did just fine.

It is usually about war, the economy and the "misery index".  Obama has a war going, he has a crummy economy which he is trying to put lipstick on and the misery index is what makes people want to change their leaders.  Obama has high gas prices and his fawning press buddies downplay it.  But the people are not stupid.  The President is blamed whether the mainstream media says it or not.  Where mom and dad used to take the kids for frozen yogurt treats on Thursday night, that is now going into the gas tank to get them to work.  That makes people mad.

No, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas and what happens today in politics doesn't mean it will hold true eight months from now.  I am not worried about the vote in November.  I am amuse no end on the left-wing's daily glee about the GOP's demise in their minds.  Ain't gonna happen and no one should get overly excited about the plight of the GOP.

More Rush, he sets the record straight on advertisers

By Todd Juvinall

The reason this issue is being defended by me and many other conservatives across America is it is a fundamental rights issue and it is under attack by the democrats and their sub-group, the extremist liberals.  Sure, we have all said Rush Limbaugh should not have called Ms. Fluke what he did and so he apologized.  We thought the left, those who defended Client #9 (a number of anonymity given by his escort service), Governor Elliot Spitzer, would say OK, Rush apologized like Spitzer, let's move on.

Well, no.  The Spitzer denigration of women, his wife and his children, was forgiven by the left since he too was a liberal.  Rush is not to be forgiven and he is to be driven from the airwaves, no forgiveness by the liberals for Rush.  The democrats are trying to use the boycott as well.  Attack the sponsors who have ads and get them to bail.  Some have.  But ABC News, a leftwing network, we call it a Obama Channel, as well as democrats at all levels in America are after Rush's advertisers and they are spreading lies about the number.  I saw a local democrat controlled blog state there were 28 or 32 advertisers that have departed.  I had not heard that so after some research I concluded there were about ten at the national level and maybe 18 at the local level.  The boycotters are trying to convince us they are all national level advertisers.

Even here in little old Nevada County, the democrat Central Committee, composed of some very extreme leftists, has begun circulating petitions to get KNCO to dump Rush.  Today Tom Fitzsimmons of KNCO had a three hour two way caller show in place of Rush so he could get a feel for how the community was reacting.  It appeared to me the people want Rush left alone.  They like him (not Tom's wife however).  The left doesn't but we knew that anyway.  But interestingly, the democrats have not thought this out very well in their emotional reaction and in  the opening they feel Rush is vulnerable about.

KNCO, SPD and other targets of the democrats are community assets and both contribute too many events here.  Many of those events are democrat events/  What will they do now if the democrats are successful? Unintended consequences will rear its head.  It won't be pretty. I was pleased to listen to many women call in and support Rush as well.  Of curse, the left would nake you think he is despised by all women but it is not true at all.  The Democrat Central Committee members, the real extreme radical left of our community, many are "Occupiers", are behind this dissension in our county.  Tell them you don't agree, don't let them intimidate you.  Stand up for free speech.

HERE is Rush Limbaugh's explanation about the lies being told by the democrats on the advertisers.  He already has replaced some and one wants, actually is begging, to come back.  America, you just have to love it!

Ronald Reagan and the "Rendezvous with destiny"

 By Todd Juvinall

I swiped this video of perhaps one of Reagan's greatest speeches from Barry Pruett's blog.  Barry took his family to tour the Reagan Library in Simi Valley and I am hoping to do the same someday.

The speech was made in support of Barry Goldwater and of course we know Goldwater was defeated by Johnson in 1964.  I was a supporter of Goldwater in Junior high here in Grass Valley and even then I was ridiculed for that support.  That was my first attempt at political activism. 

I have no memory of the Reagan speech but everything he spoke of so eloquently in the clip above is still relevant now  and has grown to become the behemoth government we have today.  He speaks of the welfare state, social security, big government and liberalism.  He talks about the dangers of giving up freedom for security and the abuse by government agents in taking our property.  He uses a farmer, a rice farmer in a midwestern state whose 900 acres were taken by the government and sold becasue the farmer did not want to be part of the government program telling him how much rice to grow. 

There is so much in the speech the present day freedom lovers can relate too.  He mentions Senator Fulbright's comments stating the Constitution is outdated and needs to be replaced.  We know now that Fulbright was a William Jefferson Clinton hero and mentor.  The cold war was going strong in those days and the liberals then were preaching and trying to practice "accommodation".  Reagan called it appeasement.  He was right.  Today we see the liberal philosophy of appeasement practiced by our present government in the policies of "political correctness" regarding the nations and ideologies that would do us harm.  Some things never change,

Reagan was way ahead of his time and as a common sense man, he saw the end results of policies and government growth and warned us to remember that the Founders tried to prevent that.  Well the left has dripped constantly on the rock and has created the nanny state Reagan so described would come to pass if we let it.  Many of us have been on the front lines of freedom fighting and as Reagan said, we had to take the slings and arrows of the left and their media pals.  We have and still are, called names of derision.  Barry Goldwater was defeated on a set of lies told by Johnson and his media pals even then, in 1964!

I hope you watch the visdeo and its full 27 minutes.  This speech should be shown and discussed in every school and class across the land.  It truly is a speech of warning and of hope.  Ronald Reagan was truly a great American.  Please watch the video and listen varefully to see if you can agree he was truly a person who could tell of the future.

 

Rush Limbaugh will prevail in the battle for free speech

By Todd Juvinall

Just as we saw the Occupy Whatever moment quickly fade into the sunset, the liberal firestorm against Rush Limbaugh will fade out too.  Why do I say that?  Because both strategies are not real.  They are contrived and being used by misguided people, manipulated by the big money of people like Georgie Soros and the Media Matters website and a few others

Americans like Rush Limbaugh.  He does make some people mad and he is certainly full of himself.  He has had his ups and downs but he is smart.  Sure I and most people would have used different terms to describe the request by Ms. Fluke to the democrat press conference (a fake Congressional Hearing) regarding her concern she and like minded young women could not afford the three thousand dollars worth of contraceptives required over their schooling years.  I would not have called her a term Rush used and he actually apologized last Saturday to her for calling her a naughty name.

The left won't let up though.  They want to boycott Rush.  They are calling the advertisers and radio stations to try and convince them to bail on Rush, thereby hurting his ability to maintain his radio program.  Well, it won't work.  It won't work in my view because Americans by the millions listen to him and when that takes place, businesses want to advertise there.  Remember SNAPPLE?  It was made famous and rich because they decided to advertise on his show.  Thousands of jobs were created and many people grew rich.  That is the American way.  Boycotts may work on a bus line but not on something like radio, a successful in dollars radio.

Even our local KNCO has been robo-called by the left to drop Rush.  Well, if a radio station is a venue of free speech it would seem ridiculous to me to practice anything else.  How do people who exist on free speech convince us they will censor free speech?  Many of the liberals complaining probably shop down at Costco anyway.  They don't spend their money here.  Heck I heard they are trying to boycott SPD since they advertise on KNCO and their ads sometimes air on Limbaugh's three hours.  SPD is one of the most generous businesses to causes here in Nevada County.  The left wants to boycott them then perhaps they can go buy what SPD donates.  Unintended consequence's of leftwing hate mongers.

KNCO should resist the vocal left.  They are usually loud for a short time then they tire and go back to gardening.  The people that actually make the nation work and the city and county work are not these vocal leftwingers.  The businesses I have spoken with said yeah, Rush used the incorrect term but he apologized, let us move on.  Just as the left moved on from Ed Schultz and Bill Maher, icons of leftwing TV and radio when they both called Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin and Michelle Malkin the nastiest anti woman names.  I don't recall the right boycotting them.  I recall the right saying let us fight these liberals nasty words with free speech, not boycott.

That is the difference between the left and right in America as I have discovered over the years.  The left wants to shut you up, run you our of town and punish you for eternity.  The right says more speech.  More speech is the American way.

 

Conservative US blogger Andrew Breitbart dies at age 43. A huge loss to the truth he believed in. By Todd Juvinall

From the UK Telegraph, the full article is HERE

"The conservative American journalist, author and blogger Andrew Breitbart died in Los Angeles of natural causes on Thursday morning, according to an announcement posted on his Big Journalism website. He was 43 years old."

I am in total shock.  While at the ERC meeting this morning, Greg Marks, Representative for Assemblyman Dan Logue told me Andrew had died.  Both of us were in instant mourning.  I have followed Andrew since I started paying attention to to the Obama ACORN scandals.  We all remember him sending into the lions den those two brave people to expose the illegal activities of Obama's ACORN buddies.  Andrew's hard work and bravery caused the political class to boot the ACORN scofflaws from the pubic dole.

I am listening to Tom Sullivan as I write this and he just had a call from a liberal who was applauding the death of Breitbart.  Those liberals are truly disgusting.  he left just can't handle the exposure of their vacuous idea logy to the light of day.  We see how the left has no respect even for the dead.  Shame on you!

Breitbart started with Drudge and ended his tenure here on earth as one of the foremost people exposing the lies of the left and their hypocrisy.  The left is celebrating his death while true American Patriots are mourning his death.R.I.P Andrew Breitbart, you will be sorely missed by the those of us who respected your truth telling.