On Extending Unemployment Compensation

I am opposed to the 13 month extension of unemployment benefits that has just been passed by Congress. Am I a Grinch? I don’t think so. Am I heartless? People who know me know I am very generous. What I am against are benefits that last so long that people adapt to living on the dole or that can easily be defrauded.


Let me give you an example:

In late 2008, I terminated two employees for cause; one for being legally drunk on the job and another for falsifying time records. Both were violations of printed company policy. The State ruled that I could legally fire them, but that their actions were not serious enough to deny them unemployment benefits. Nearly two years later, they are both still collecting unemployment although they are doing work in competition with me while collecting unemployment. Now that their benefits are close to running out, I was told by a competitor that one of them has just applied for a job. What they are doing is defrauding the system, but the state has cut back on the number of investigators and is not able to pursue this issue.

Those of you who are business owners; when was the last time you had someone ask you to sign their sheet or card showing they applied for a job? It has been several years for me. How does the Employment Security Commission know if someone receiving Unemployment Compensation is actively seeking work or is working on the side and not reporting it?

Also, continuing benefits that exceed minimum wage, what incentive is it to accept a lower paying job? A recent article in the paper said that if you don’t have a job a lot of businesses won’t hire you; they are afraid you could be just looking for a temporary job to re-set your unemployment.

If we are going to continue these generous benefits, we need to tie them to some controls or follow up to prevent fraud or re-training to work in a field that is hiring. Payouts without strings have got to stop.

The Iron Lady's Reign is Ending

What concerned me most Democrats controlling both houses of Congress in 2008 along with a Democratic President was their ability to push through a progressive/socialistic agenda without compromise and that concern proved true. For the past two years, they have voted down virtually all Republican amendments in committee or taken bills directly to the floor where they could be passed without amendment with a super-majority. On the health care bill, they debated one version for months and then at 3:00 in the morning of the vote they withdrew the bill and replaced it with a 2,000+ page bill that was voted on without reading.


The Democrats even ran the country for the past year without a budget. They just brought up these massive bills as emergency measures and passed them along with a “continuing resolution” to provide the spending authorization for them. They can’t be accused of overspending the budget, because there wasn’t one.

The main perpetrator of this abomination was Nancy Pelosi. They called Margaret Thatcher the “Iron Lady” because of the way she controlled the Tory Party in Great Britain with iron fisted control. Well, Margaret has to pass that iron gavel on to Nancy. She was able to maintain virtual domination over a party that has a lot of diversity. Those that disagreed were bullied into supporting the bills by threats of pulling spending from their districts or running an opponent in the 2010 election. And now, the Democrats are even more hard line than before because the more moderate Democrats have been purged.

And now, this weekend, the progressives had their little show. They brought up the continuation of the Bush era tax cuts the way they want with no amendments; a continuation for up to $250k and tax increase over $250k. The Senate, as expected, shot it down. This was as expected. Most commentators believe a deal is in place to continue the tax cuts for all in return for an extension of unemployment benefits (another issue) and that this weekend’s exercise was just a show for the progressive base so that they can continue their class warfare agenda, for example, Republicans favor the rich.

I’m looking forward to the new year and a little gridlock. At least, the two sides will have to talk to get something done and we might see things become a little more reasonable.

My Daddy Was a Democrat

I hear that a lot lately. I feel strongly that 100 years is long enough for one party to have controlled the State of North Carolina. Sure, there have been a few Republican governors, and the House was controlled by Republicans for a couple years, but by and large the Democrats have controlled this state since the Democrats took control of the NC Senate in 1898.


The Democrats control the agenda in lawmaking, they control where highway money is spent. For example, why is there an interstate loop around Fayetteville before Charlotte’s loop is complete? It’s because of the arcane formula that allocates money equally by district, not by where the growth is.

My daddy was a Democrat, too. He was a conservative Democrat. In Virginia, it was the party of Harry F Byrd, Jr. who left the Democratic Party and became an independent. It was the party of Mills Godwin who’s first term as Governor of Virginia was as a Democrat and his second, 4 years later, was as a Republican. My daddy did not willingly leave the Democratic Party, it left him. The party was taken over by progressives. (I don’t say liberal, because the progressives have co-opted that label as well. My beliefs were considered liberal in 1970.) The Virginia Democratic Party became the party of Governor Jerry (“If it moves, tax it!) Balliles. They tried, unsuccessfully, to remove the state constitutional requirement to balance the budget so taxes soared to support their social programs.

So, my daddy was born a Democrat, but died as a proud Republican. He changed with Goldwater (against Lyndon Johnson, the most progressive president since FDR). I changed with Ronald Reagan who I consider the greatest President of my lifetime, a strong proponent of individual responsibility and opportunity.

As someone who has basically sat out politics for a dozen years because I did not see a chance of change, I now see that opportunity for change. Everyone please check out the candidates. What do they stand for? Don’t just vote the way your daddy did.

Corruption and Cronyism is Alive and Well in NC

Mike Easley, Corruptocrat

This morning’s Charlotte Observer has a major piece on the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation. It is some very interesting and enlightening reading. But, this goes way beyond the SBI. Corruption and cronyism run rampant through the whole North Carolina state government. In my opinion, this is because the state has been under one party rule (Democrat) for the entire 22 years I have lived in NC, and probably much longer.


They say Chicago is a culture of corruption, but you don’t have to look past Raleigh to see that corruption and cronyism is alive and well in North Carolina. We have seen a few Republican governors, but from the Attorney General on down, the state has been controlled by Democrats. Democrats have controlled who gets new highways, who is appointed to state regulatory agencies, and most important they have controlled redistricting for state and federal legislatures that have created districts that favor Democrats. For example, you have the 12th Congressional District that was added after the 2000 census that was engineered to favor a Democrat. Also, Lake Norman is split and added to two predominately Charlotte districts so LKN residents see their Senators repeatedly vote against their interests.

Here is an example. Since 1993, only two people have been Attorney General, Roy Cooper and Mike Easley. And, Mike Easley is currently being investigated for corruption. If you Google “NC SBI Corruption” for an image, you get a picture of Mike Easley.

As far as SBI Directors, except for the one who died every one of them who served for the last 20 years are still in the NC government at high levels. Greg McLeod, the one appointed last month was a lobbyist for Roy Cooper. Shouldn’t the Director of the state’s highest law enforcement agency have a law enforcement background? Robin Pendergraft, the one who ran the agency for the past nine years was not fired, just reassigned to Deputy Attorney General for Medicaid Fraud. Brian Beatty is now a commissioner of the NC Industrial Commission. Jim Coman is a Senior Deputy Attorney General. This looks like employment for life, they just shuffle their friends in and out of jobs in the state government.

The cure for this corruption is a total colon cleanse. We need to vote out the Democrats in charge so we can get rid of the corruption and cronyism. We need a new deal in allocating highway funds. We need to have at least one house of the legislature to be in Republican hands so the Democrats don’t have a free hand to direct money and projects to the home districts of their cronies. We need to have redistricting that makes sense and is fair.

Former Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory Speaks to the Subcontractors

Pat McCrory address the ASAC and PHCC

Former Charlotte Mayor, Pat McCrory spoke to a joint meeting of the American Subcontractors Association of the Carolinas Charlotte Chapter and the Charlotte and Gastonia chapters of the Plumbing, Heating and Cooling Contractors Association. The meeting was held on Tuesday August 17th at Byron’s Southend. Over 80 members and guests were in attendance.


The mayor’s topic was change and resurgence in Charlotte. There are many things that encourage him about the future of Charlotte and the likelihood that Charlotte will experience a resurgence ahead of the country in general. Some of the reasons are as follows:

The banks in Charlotte are hiring. Even though Charlotte lost the headquarters of Wachovia, Wells Fargo and Bank of America are increasing jobs in Charlotte due to the lower cost of living as compared to New York and San Francisco.

The availability of educated and trained employees and Charlotte’s infrastructure are fueling the opening of new businesses and relocations to Charlotte.

Charlotte’s airport with over 500 direct flights daily to locations coast-to-coast make Charlotte desirable for corporate and division offices.

Charlotte’s dynamic city center, South End district and the light rail to connect them makes Charlotte attractive to young urban dwellers. Getting people to transfer to Charlotte is generally not a problem

The cloud on the horizon is government spending and taxes at the state and local levels. Charlotte and North Carolina are no longer low tax areas. Also, the number of government employees has continued to increase. Even though Charlotte has curbed the rate of wage increases and now makes city employees participate in the cost of healthcare, this is not true at the county and state levels which have continued to give 7-8 percent increases and pay 100% of healthcare costs. These generous benefits are far more than are available in the private sector and since government employees are able to retire after 30 years at 80% of pay, this will be unsustainable in the near future as these increases and benefits continue to grow at twice the rate of the private sector.

Mr. McCrory issued a call to arms for business men and entrepreneurs, who typically work years at low salaries and benefits to get their businesses going, to show up at city and county budget meetings to make their voices heard. The city fathers hear a drumbeat every day from city and county workers about how hard they work and how little they are paid. Most on the city council and county boards have never had to meet a payroll and have no idea how hard the private sector has to work to pay for the government salaries and spending.

Mr. McCrory concluded to a standing ovation.

A Lexus Lane to Nowhere

I recently read that the NC Department of Transportation has applied for a $30 million stimulus grant to convert the HOV lanes on I-77 to HOT lanes. A HOT lane is a High Occupancy TOLL lane. It means you can pay your way into the” fast” lane. In places that have this type of lane, it is mockingly known as the Lexus Lane.

The grant would pay for the electronic signs and sensors necessary to make the change. The toll would change during the day, going from a nominal charge most of the day to $2-3 dollars during peak periods. Sensors would sense traffic flow and increase the toll when traffic increases, say, after a Panthers game. Drivers would be required to have a transponder chip to utilize the lane so you can be billed for your trip.

I question the sanity of this proposal. I make the trip to and from Charlotte every day. I cannot reason why I, or anyone else for that matter, would pay a couple dollars to travel at the same speed as the free lanes only to run headlong into the bottleneck that occurs a mile or so after the HOT lane ends. Or, in the morning, after I have driven in stop and go traffic from Exit 25 to about mile marker 22, the traffic frees up before you get to the HOT lane and is unobstructed until you get to Charlotte.

I have another idea. On a couple of trips to Virginia, Northern Virginia and the Tidewater area, I have seen the way Virginia is handling this problem. If this were Virginia, they would beef up the shoulder and add an additional lane that could be used during peak times. This could easily be done from Exit 23 going north to Exit 28 and From Exit 28 going south all the way to the four lane section of the highway. Since the lanes would necessarily be narrowed, they would have to reduce the speed limit to 55 or 60, but that would be a big improvement over the 20 to 30 MPH that you drive a peak times on this stretch of highway.

If the purpose of a stimulus grant is to increase jobs, I contend that paving highways produces more jobs than putting up some signs, laying down sensors and creating an agency to collect tolls. They say that highway construction jobs are not “green” jobs. I say they are. To eliminate traffic bottlenecks and keep traffic moving can reduce traffic pollution far more than a Lexus Lane to nowhere.

Who Will Be the Next Milton Friedman?

I was recently watching a business program on television where several people were debating the wisdom of spending another vast sum of money in another stimulus bill (now called a jobs bill) in order to stimulate the economy. One of the people made the statement, “Anyone who has taken economics knows that in a recession you need to inject money into the economy to stimulate spending and jobs.” That started me thinking, “Where did this guy learn economics?”

This thinking is the product of Keynesian economics, named after John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946). Keynes hypothesized that government can use fiscal and monetary policy to mitigate the adverse effects of business cycles with their periodic recessions. Keynesian theories were the basis of the policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal when massive amounts of government spending and government agencies were set up in an attempt to restart the economy during the Great Depression. If you distill Keynes down into a word, it would be demand. Keynesian economics attempts to create demand to level out a downturn in the economy.

If this guy had a balanced lesson in economics, he would have learned about the theories of Milton Friedman (1912-2006). Friedman, a disciple of Keynes, went to Washington in 1943 to work in Roosevelt’s New Deal. He realized there was a flaw in Keynesian theory in that the “Phillips Curve” which described the consumption function did not work. During the 1950’s, Friedman became the leading advocate opposing Keynesianism and promoted a macroeconomic policy called monetarism. He argued that the government could not micromanage the economy because the people would realize what the government was doing and would change their behavior and neutralize the policies. He predicted that Keynesianism would cause “stagflation,” high interest rates and minimal growth. (Remember Jimmy Carter?). Friedman argued that a small increase in the money supply and relaxing of business regulations were all that were required.

Friedman and his disciple, Arthur Laffer (The Laffer Curve), were the architects of the policies of Ronald Reagan, which took only 18 months to turn around the malaise of the Carter years. If you boil Friedman down to a word, it would be supply. In the Reagan years, this was known as supply side economics. The increase in money supply was provided by tax cuts which resulted in an economic turnaround that also increased the total tax revenue to the government. This also worked for John F. Kennedy who used a tax cut to avoid a recession. George W. Bush also used tax cuts which increased total revenues, but strayed from Friedman in that he allowed spending and the size of government to increase which negated the positive effects.

Keynesian thought came to the forefront again in 2007 and has been the basis for the policies of Barack Obama and former British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. Gordon Brown has now been removed from office. The Obama administration has pumped trillions of dollars into the economy and has little to show for it except they have doubled the national debt in 18 months. We have had only minimal growth. The Fed is loaning money to banks at zero interest in an effort to hold down inflation, but that is the only thing currently keeping us from a full blown case of stagflation.

The causes of our economic crash are for another time. Read Paul Schiff’s book, "Crash Proof: How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse" (2006). Written one year before the economic problems started, he predicted both the stock market and the real estate collapses. There is a third collapse in his prediction, the collapse of the dollar. There is your stagflation. Friedman is dead. Arthur Laffer is seventy years old and retired. Where is the next great economic theorist to get us out of this Keynesian debacle? I wonder.