Bernie Maddoff and Social Security

Why did Bernie Madoff go to prison? To make it simple, he talked people into investing with him. Trouble was, he didn't invest their money. As time rolled on he simply took the money from the new investors to pay off the old investors. Finally there were too many old investors and not enough money from new investors coming in to keep the payments going. Next thing you know Madoff is one of the most hated men in America and he is off to jail. Some of you know this but not enough of you.

Madoff did to his investors what the government has been doing to us for over 70 years with Social Security. There is no meaningful difference between the two schemes, except that one was operated by a private individual who is now in jail, and the other is operated by politicians who enjoy perks, privileges and status in spite of their actions.

Do you need a side-by-side comparison here? Well, here's a nifty little comparison:

BERNIE MADDOFF: Takes money from investors with the promise that the money will be invested and made available to them later.

SOCIAL SECURITY: Takes money from wage earners with the promise that the money will be invested in a "Trust Fund" and made available later.

BERNIE MADDOFF: Instead of investing the money Madoff spends it on nice homes in theHamptons and yachts.
SOCIAL SECURITY: Instead of depositing money in a Trust Fund the politicians use it for general spending and vote buying.

BERNIE MADDOFF: When the time comes to pay the investors back Madoff simply uses some of the new funds from newer investors to pay back the older investors.
SOCIAL SECURITY: When benefits for older investors become due the politicians pay them with money taken from younger and newer wage earners to pay the geezers.

BERNIE MADDOFF: When Madoff's scheme is discovered all hell breaks loose. New investors won't give him any more cash.
SOCIAL SECURITY: When Social Security runs out of money they simply force the taxpayers to send them some more.

Bernie Madoff is in jail. Politicians remain in Washington .

'The taxpayer: That's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination.” - Ronald Reagan

"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert , in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.” - Milton Friedman

Times-Reporter Firetruck Editorial Gets It Right

The Times-Reporter editorial on Wednesday, January 19, 2011, is commendable. This time they really got it right. Councilwoman Cox and Fire Department Chief Parish got the old ladder truck refurbished without the usual hemming-and-hawing which is typical of bureaucrats.

For twenty years Sandy Cox has been on City Council, much of it as the Chairman of the Finance Committee. She has seen councilmen, mayors, and department heads come and go. But she keeps getting reelected and fortunately for the city, keeps getting reappointed to Chair the Finance Committee. As a result of her experience, she knows where the money is, how much there is, and even more importantly, how not to spend it.

Chief Parish knows firefighting. He is good at it. And he knows equipment. When he went to the City Council two years ago and asked for a new ladder truck there was no question that it needed replacement. He made a good presentation to support his request, one which made a lot of sense, but the price tag was unreasonable, and Cox told him so along with the mandate to find another way. Well, Parish did. He located an outfit in Virginia, one of the few in the country, which rebuilt fire trucks at huge cost savings. It took a while, but when he came back to Council, he had the facts on what had to be done, what it would cost, and how long it would take to refurbish the old ladder truck.

Cox, in the meantime, dug through the budget figures, checked Auditor Gundy’s figures on the financial status of the City, crunched numbers in the cash status reports, and came up with a financial plan whereby the City of New Philadelphia could afford to refurbish the ladder truck to new condition. Council accepted Cox’s financial plan, okayed the purchase, and the City let the contract.

The end result is available for anybody to see. Take a trip down to the station house and see what you taxpayers bought. But as you look at it, marvel at what was accomplished. First no outside financing. No loans. No bond issues. No promissory notes. Even better, the job came in at only 1.3% over the estimate, something unheard of with government contracts. Even more amazing, the truck was delivered within the promised time frame, and at half the cost of a new one. How this was accomplished is simple. Cox does her homework and understands her responsibilities.

This project is notable as it does not fit into the norm of the way New Philadelphia, and other municipalities, do business. It’s all about the money. Take a good, hard look at how politicians do business. And you don’t have to look that far from home. Cox does due diligence. Other bureaucrats in town don’t. If you attend council meetings, and not many do, you hear a lot of “I don’t know”, “I’m not sure”, “I don’t have those figures with me” responses from the administration to questions ranging from finances to water billing, from paving to cash flow. It is difficult to understand why questions on the operation of the city by citizens as well as council members, are not answered concisely by administration representatives nor some council members. Difficult because it is the job of all elected officials, appointed department heads and supervisors, to know enough about the operations they oversee to have those answers. And if they don’t know, they have nobody but themselves to blame because, in short, they don’t do their homework.

Lack of background research by city officials and members of city council is inexcusable. Walking into a Council meeting without a profound understanding of what legislation is going to be considered is more than incompetent. No-one who holds an elected or appointed office does so unwillingly. Be it administrative, legislative, or appointive, each has actively politicked for the position, and part of the responsibility of each is to be fully informed on the legislation they are asking and voting for.

As pointed out in the T-R editorial, because of the efforts of Sandy Cox and Jim Parish, the refurbishing of the ladder truck was a success, not only equipment wise but financially as well. They both did their home work and it worked. New Philadelphia has an all but new ladder truck and the taxpayers got good value for their money.

If you don’t believe that homework, research, and study don’t pay off, consider the fiasco of the Gas Aggregation Plan now going on in the Special/Contact Committee, the two plus years it took the Public Safety Committee to come up with an ineffective noise ordinance, the lack of support and failure of the proposed runway extension at the New Philadelphia Airport, and the granddaddy failure of them all, the rezoning of Franklin Square against the wishes of the New Philadelphia citizen. These and other legislative and administrative problems occur because city officials do not do their due diligence.

All things taken into consideration, Sandy Cox and Jim Parish did a superb job on the part of the city to save half-a-million dollars and still come up with a modern ladder truck. Yep. This time the Times Reporter editorial got it right.

New Philadelphia Tech Park Viability Questioned

In a recent Times-Reporter article, CIC Seeks Financial Aid From Commissioners, January 8, 2011, it was reported that the Community Improvement Corporation of Tuscarawas County (CIC) requested an interest free loan from the County Commissioners in the amount of $75,000 to help cover staff expenses of $100,000. To help cover the other $25,000, the CIC requested a matching fund grant of $22,500. Without this help, it is possible that the CIC could not meet expenses and would have to close. The County Commissioners made no commitment but are looking into the request, and well they should.

Over the past years, beginning in 2001, the CIC along, with the Tuscarawas County Port Authority, has been involved in the development of the Tuscarawas Regional Technology Park. The plan was to create a high tech park on the east end of New Philadelphia near Kent State Tuscarawas which would attract high tech research and manufacturing. If successful, such a park would provide jobs, increased tax revenues, and prosperity for the region. But, it hasn’t worked that way even though the City of New Philadelphia, Tuscarawas County, the State of Ohio, and the Federal Government, have dumped in more than 12.5 million dollars to its construction. And what do we have to show for it?

Cost overruns for one thing. A law suit or two for another. A hilly area where level ground for construction is nonexistent. Streets, sewers, and water lines which lay unused. A water tank, at a cost of 1.2 million dollars, designed to supply the Tech Park and the east end of town, which is providing water to residences. Oh, yes. There is also a fiberglass broadband linkup ready to go. The only thing missing is interest by businesses willing to buy property there.

Of the 12.5 million dollars already spent or committed to the Tech Park, $5.4 million are committed for construction of an Incubator Building. The Incubator will provide prospective businesses with a place to use as start-up sites from which to grow and expand, either in the Tech Park or elsewhere. It will be a year or two until the Incubator is ready for occupancy, but even then there is no surety that tenants will be occupying the facility. And where will this money come from?

The State of Ohio, the federal government will give grants and loans, as will probably the county and surrounding cities. Kent State Tuscarawas made a $809,000 donation. Which brings up the question, if Kent State is able to donate $809 thousand for the Incubator, why tuition raises there?

But there is a bigger question. Considering the 17.9 million dollars already spent or allocated for the Tech Park, is it really worth it to the public as a whole? When does such a large expenditure reach the point of no return? When does the realization that throwing money at a lost cause isn’t going to work? Government is fallible. Government fails because it is unable to understand that it lacks the knowledge to operate a business in a way in which the public in general profits rather than a small, select group. It fails to realize that it can not succeed in such a project when the principle decision makers do not understand the basic principles of business.

If there were a real need on the part of private business to have such a tech park, private business would develop it because there would be a profit to be made. Private business requires a profit on investment to exist. If there is none, investors don’t put their money on the line. Government doesn’t have this outlook. Governments, at all levels, use theft of earned income, through taxation, for to finance projects no investor would buy into because of the lack of return on their investment.

Ten years of false premises, poor planning, tunnel vision on the part of the CIC regarding the New Philadelphia Technical Park, has led to an 18 million dollar debacle which we can no longer afford. The plan made in times when the economy was on a rise no longer applies. It is now obvious that the New Philadelphia Technical Park is not high on the list of desirable locations for businesses. Negative factors include the difficulty of doing business in Ohio, lack of accessibility to the Tech Park, lack of a comprehensive marketing plan, an advertising budget and sales staff which is inadequate to the task, and continued dependence on consultants who have failed to produce tenants for the Tech Park. The inability of management to overcome these obstacles has been accepted as the norm by those who are responsible for its success.

There are only two choices left to the CIC and those who are proponents of the New Philadelphia Technical Park. The first is to accept that the plan has failed, its good intentions not meeting the requirements which businesses desire, and let the plan pass away. The second is to objectively appraise the work already done, determine what caused the failure, and adapt the site to another, more practical use. In either case, rather than spending an additional 5.5 million dollars for the Incubator Building, return the money to the public coffers to reduce the public debt. To continue to spend taxpayer dollars for a project which, in ten years, has failed to produce even one seriously interested response from a viable business is a breach of trust to taxpaying workers and businesses be they located locally or nationally.

It is sad but undeniable that the Tech Park failed because of poor planning and inadequate management. Had the original planners done their due diligence when considering a project of this type, the proposed project might never have been seriously considered, saving millions of dollars which have been spent accomplishing nothing but increased debt. It is time to let it go.

New Philadelphia Police Contract Comments

Had two comments which we really wanted the readers of this blog to have the opportunity to read. Both come from that avid reader and commenter of blogs, Anonymous. Both of them were posted on January 8, 2011. We thought they were interesting because of the point of view The difficulty is that they refer to past blogs and following the usual procedure, that is tying them to the blogs they refer to, the comments would probably never be seen by other readers because of the ages of the original blogs.

The first, refers to a blog written on November 17, 2009, titled New Philadelphia Police Contract, the link to which is http://nptattler.blogspot.com/2009/11/new-philadelphia-police-contract.html. The comment follows:

“You speak about "not singling out the police department" when you rant for paragraph upon paragraph about how the expenses of the city take priority over the well-being and overall protection of the citizens you represented. The job of the police in any state, city or village is to uphold the constitution and protect those that they serve, (i.e. the public). For you, as a formal elected official to sit here and spew forth details of a contract in order to inflame more than inform citizens is wrong. Regardless of your personal opinions of how things are conducted inside of this city, make your outlook at least somewhat balanced.”

The second comment refers to a more recent blog written on December 12, 2010, titled New Philadelphia Union Asks For Pay Raises, the link to which is

http://nptattler.blogspot.com/2010/12/new-philadelphia-police-union-asks-for.html. The comment follows:

“http://www.timesreporter.com/newsnow/x389484517/Three-men-in-custody-after-one-of-the-largest-seizures-in-New-Phila-history?img=4 It would seem that officers working for the New Philadelphia Police Department don't offer any "increase of services or patrolling of troublesome areas" do they? I guess this one incident is just "business as usual".”

Glad for the comments and we thank you for your efforts, whoever you are.

30 Second Caller Uses First Amendment Against Christianity

If you want a definitive example of why the United States is in such a deplorable state, take a look at the 30 Seconds comments for Monday, January 3, 2011 published in the Times-Reporter. Somebody, who has no idea of what the United States Constitution is all about, made the following statement: ““Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” That is not a quote from a godless liberal, those are the first words of the First Amendment that the founding fathers wrote. It is intended to protect this country from being taken over by any religion, including Christianity.”

The comment is designed to make a point which is hidden, most likely with a political motive in mind. Considering the timing, it opens some questions, none of which will be answered by he who submitted it to the Times-Reporter.

The First Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The statement made by the anonymous 30 Seconds submitter, is privileged by the First Amendment. But it is a half truth, a standard tactic for those who do not use logic to back up their statements. The rest of statement of the Amendment forbids prohibition of the free exercise of religion by the United States Congress.

To this point, the Congress has done neither. It has not tried to establish a national religion nor has it passed legislation to prohibit the free exercise of religion in the United States. United States courts have prohibited the free exercise of religion through bench legislation, the most blatant being the United States Supreme Court who has consistently ruled against the Second Amendment on every occasion the matter of religion has come before it.

The writers of the Constitution were specific in what they said. The terminology is concise and understandable. Congress shall make no law establishing nor prohibiting the practice of religion in the United States. It’s that simple. Federal courts rule on matters of the Constitution, the Supreme Court particularly, and in the case of the First Amendment, should rule only on the action which Congress takes, not on arguments which occur within the sovereign states. It’s called home rule and such matters belong under the jurisdiction of such states, not legislative federal courts..

Those who fear and attack Christianity, but apparently no other religion including Islam, are hard to fathom. The United States was founded by Christian believers who brought their beliefs and work ethics to a new world. They built it into the most powerful and productive country in the history of the world. It was not until the sixties when the Christian ethic began to be debased that the United States started into decline. There is no question, regardless of religious orientation, that the loss of the Judeo-Christian ethic which built this country, has produced disastrous social and economic results. Crime runs rampant in government. Lack of responsibility in the family has created a new class of poor, enslaved to the government, totally dependent on welfare payments, trapped in a life without hope.

The caller of the Times-Reporter article has an ax to grind which he does not explain. Not knowing what that ax is, opens inquiry into its interpretation. With the political situation being what it is, could this be a continuation of the debate as to whether a mosque should be built in downtown New York City to commemorate the successful murders of four thousand by Muslim terrorists? Perhaps he is the typical atheist who believes that Christ never existed, was not resurrected, and is a meaningless legend, but is so afraid that he is wrong in his belief that he fears even the mention of Jesus’ name? Or could it be possible that he really doesn’t understand what Christianity has done for this nation?

What other country has freely in the past done so much for so many people in so many countries? No country has provided the relief to stricken peoples without asking for something in return as we have. After the Second World War, we rebuilt the economies of our enemies. We have responded to disasters with aid and succor as no other nation has ever done. We have gone in harm’s way to protect those who could not protect themselves. We have liberated more people from oppression and helped them reconstruct their lives than any country which ever existed. And we did it because of a history of responsibility, honor, and hard work, all based on the Christian ethic.

If the caller believed the Constitution, and the First Amendment, was important, if he understood what they meant, he would not be complaining about Christianity, which he really is. Rather, he would be up in arms because of the loss of constitutional guarantees which have been taken from him by the federal government. He would be outraged by the illegal usurpation of those rights by President Obama, the courts, and the Congress. He would be ashamed that he stands by and allows the practice of Christianity to be forbidden in violation to the Constitution.

An atheist? A Muslin? A socialist? Who knows. But the caller is certainly not someone who comes from the heritage which made this country great. Undoubtedly though, he is one who will complain the loudest when the freedom, liberty, and ethics brought to America by Christians has disappeared.

Whoever called the comment to 30 Seconds is allowed to his opinion, guaranteed by the First Amendment. He is also allowed the ignorance of what the Constitution is and its meaning to his well being. Once again it is proven that one doesn’t need the facts to have an opinion.