MASSACHUSETTS VAULTS INTO FIRST PLACE

In January of 2017 the legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, USA, Earth, known as “The Great and General Court,” implying some connection to legality and justice, collectively determined that their theft of monies from their subjects-taxpayers would have only an indiscernible impact on the rest of the Solar System, let alone the Universe. And so far, they appear to have calculated safely. Not even the orbit of the Moon has been perturbed.

Not ones to be caught without full justification, albeit besotted with partisanship, the august leaders of the aforementioned and veto-proof majority of both chambers of that vital legislative coven, all sworn to uphold the laws and constitution of the Commonwealth as well as the laws and Constitution of the United States of America, searched the Galaxy for comparative compensations that rendered said august leaders of the majority party (of which many members were likewise “leaders”) second-rate or, God forbid, third-rate, by comparison and therefore instantly deserving of sufficient added compensation as to restore primacy to the Great and General Court of Massachusetts’ leadership – every last friggin’ one of them.

Holding the balance of reason and probity was the tiny band of Republicans (also blessed with numerous “leaders”) numbering but 6 of 40 in the Senate – the “upper” chamber – and 34 of 160 in the House – the “lower” chamber. Observers and constituents have argued since which fits the latter designation, in fact, and which the former.
They seem, to all not so newly compensated, to be vying for the latter. There will surely be a study.

In 2014 the “Special Advisory Commission Regarding the Compensation of Public Officials” delivered itself of a remarkable document that purported to win over any doubters of the premise that the hard-working, frequent-vacationing leaders of the Democrat Party hegemony in Massachusetts’ state government, most particularly in the legislative offices, were, sadly, underpaid and just scraping by in their selfless service to the citizens of this great state. Of course, its effects, if converted into passable legislation, would be bipartisan, so there certainly was no self-service that might happen… none.

The study now extant became a Christmas present burning holes in the back pockets of Stanley Rosenberg, Robert DeLeo, nearly every member of the Great and General Court, every judge, magistrate, court officer and constitutional officer to boot. It simply needed the right Christmas to arrive for a quick, unobstructed delivery into their suffering hands. The anticipation must have been exquisite.

Finally, with ostensibly Republican governor Charlie Baker fully compromised, January 2017 saw delivery of the long-awaited financial orgasm. “Our royal thanks for the sacrifice and diligence of the Special Commission.”

What did the committee do during their months of service? And, it is worth asking, for whom? After all, the report IS neatly typed, carefully printed and edited for accuracy and timeliness, not to overlook well-peppered with charts and graphs, and plenty of margin space for easy gleaning. All of its authors are not only eminent, but well-regarded – a comfort, that.

There are fundamental premises that the report was created to make relevant, even justificatory of, the “need” to take more money from the Commonwealth’s tax-paying citizens and deliver it into the pockets of their “representatives” and many others. Somehow, we should now be convinced-of and, perhaps, relieved to grasp, the value of paying all these people more than most of said tax-payers, themselves, make.

Premise # 1: Higher, appropriately higher, compensation is needed to attract and retain the best talent – and presumed competency – for these crucial jobs.

Premise # 2: The relative pay of politicians in similar offices in the other 50 states is of some (arcane) value in our deciding how much to pay OUR politicians.

Premise # 3: The total compensation packages of huge private for-profit and not-for-profit CEO’s and other corporate officers form logical comparisons to what are held to be equivalent-responsibility public-sector positions.

The first premise can be challenged by the greater than 90% incumbency re-election rate in the House and Senate. Clearly the jobs are attractive enough to keep nearly every office holder vying to retain his or her seat – even during the dark days of insufficient compensation. Likewise, Secretary of State, Treasurer, Auditor, Attorney General and other executive offices are both sought after and clung-to like pregnancy-swollen breasts, despite the poor comparisons with other states’ office holders. Pregnancy? How did that happen?

And, not always poor. New Jersey, for example, has a similar GDP to that of Massachusetts, based on kinds of economic activity, port value and as GDP per capita. Mass., $485 billion; N. J., $570 billion, a difference of 15%. The cost of state government, however, IS VIRTUALLY IDENTICAL: $55.1 billion for Mass., $56 billion for N. J. New Jersey is almost 10% more efficient than Massachusetts in this regard. Political leaders must be better compensated there, no?

Well, no. New Jersey’s senators and reps are paid 18% LESS than the toiling servants of Massachusetts. Putting lip-gloss on it, the N. J. senate president and house speaker are paid 31% (!) LESS than our vital comparatives… for doing a better economic job. Taxes are high in both states, Democrats dominate in both states, taxpayers are restive/complacent in both states. We certainly can’t justify 40% pay increases looking at those bozos! It is good that we didn’t compare ourselves to Florida!

Still, there must be some cobbled-together set of statistics that will obscure our purposes more completely while appearing to justify this embezzlement. Ummm… aha! Let’s make a chart that compares and ranks the old (high) pay scale to ALL other states: premise # 2.

The assembled charts are wonderful, guaranteed to make a reader’s eyes glaze over. No one is going to pore over a list of fifty rates of pay for governors, lieutenant governors, attorneys general or anyone else. Presented with the two pages of six columns of small print, the concerned reader will find the numbers that pertain to Massachusetts officers and relax in the knowledge that this report includes extensive, thorough study.

Except for the nationwide self-aggrandizement of politicians, the fact that Mass. paid its governor MORE than 39 other states did and LESS than only 10 others is, in one important sense, meaningless. In another sense, the generous taxpayers of Massachusetts ought to have taken solace in the realization that we have well-compensated our governor in comparison to almost all other states. Doesn’t matter.

The big deal is Table B-7: nice big print, comparing the Senate President’s and House Speaker’s (equal) salaries with those of other full-time legislatures (11, all told), ranking 5th and 6th respectively. In 2014, this meant only $95 grand per year plus numerous benefits and stipends to ease the pain. Oh, the horror.

Legislators in Massachusetts receive raises every two years based on the calculated “Median” income in the state. Sounds fair. It’s a plan that was supposed to avoid the contentious process of legislators voting for their own raises! All of you who hate doing the same thing where you work, can appreciate the awkwardness.

Well, despite many legislators clinging to their sinecures for decades – and becoming wealthy somehow, and retiring with pleasant pensions and health-care benefits, the automatic (median income has and always will rise in this system) raises were not making legislators, especially their “leaders” (20 of them) rich quickly enough. You can see the problem: How on Earth can we slip a gigantic compensation package through the legislature and signed by a governor? Hmmmm…

Turns out, there’s nothing better than a mind-numbing report produced by a Commission – a commission: brilliant! – all of whose members are both eminent and highly regarded. That’s the ticket.

Still, facts on the ground comparing pay scales with other states really don’t quite carry the water for this hijack. What must be included is something ethereal, heavenly, mystical. Let’s compare our collective irresponsibilities and partisan claptrap with real leaders: top-paid CEO’s, COO’s, corporate treasurers and the like. Find a highly-paid corporate lawyer to help the Attorney General. This will make our grandees appear UNDER-paid even with this new bloat, and enhance our leadership status among the low-information voters.

Premise # 3: What top private-sector executives make is relevant to what political leaders make, and their responsibilities are roughly comparable. A fabulous, fantastic concept that can be made true in the hands of the right eminent and highly regarded Commissioners. Go for it.

In reality, where taxpayers actually live, there is no comparison – none. Private-sector (whether for-profit or not-for-profit, “business”) leaders operate in a different world: one where performance is measured intricately and specifically against economic results and targets, month-by-month, quarter-by-quarter and beyond. Highly paid people in business can be fired based on results. They answer to boards of directors or trustees. They are carefully regulated by governments, and taxed, fined and fee’d to a fare-thee-well and still required to show performance and results that meet goals.

Many of these goals involve COST-CUTTING(!), a miraculous process whereby profits increase and excess payroll is jettisoned. This leaves, over fairly short times, the BEST employees employed, and only as many of those as needed to achieve results for the share-holders. These are foreign concepts in state government, specifically in Massachusetts state government, where political “leaders” see their goals as met by INCREASING jobs, and not for the best of employees, but for the most loyal, politically.

Goals for legislators and officers in government are not lower costs, not better returns on investments or returns on assets; the goal is re-election and job-security – not to mention as much pay, compensation, expense reimbursement, pension and perks as possible while appearing heroic!

This is not to say that political leaders and functionaries don’t have POWER. That is the one quality they share with business leaders. What they don’t have is actual responsibility for performance or profit – things that get business people fired or bonused. They never work for bonuses based on meeting economic targets. Things can go to Hell in handbaskets in state economies and politicos are victims of world-wide conditions, same as the rest of us. But, not responsible. Nor is their pay cut because stock prices are down for bad performance or for poor vision for the immediate and long-term future.

Finally, NO OTHER STATE is trying to attract these captains of government to come run THEIR states because of a record of market-beating success. These people are LUCKY, in the main, to have the cushy jobs they have. When things go south they can raise taxes, by POLICE POWER. In business, leaders have to attract new revenue because they deliver what customers or donors actually WANT and will voluntarily pay for. And they want to compare themselves to corporate success-masters?

This isn’t a report on compensation delivered by eminent and highly regarded people, IT IS A FRAUD from the very start. This is Kabuki theater, designed to defraud the taxpayers of Massachusetts. With a series of impressive and MEANINGLESS charts and 50,000 words of palaver, the House and Senate justified grand theft.

And our God-damned governor let it go through! Oh, he vetoed it – that was his Kabuki role, but he didn’t fight it, he didn’t campaign against it, he didn’t use any of his power to stop this legal CRIME. The day after his “veto” was overridden, he was at a “time” for a Democrat in Fall River with Stan Rosenberg and Bob DeLeo. This isn’t the fox in charge of the hen-house, it’s the ROOSTER.

There was one big reform. To save senators and reps from cheating on their per-diems they now receive bloated flat-rates to reward these vital characters for showing up for “work.” Oh, thank goodness! There were maps and charts to justify them.
The ONLY reform that would justify this grandiose sleight-of-hand, is TERM LIMITS for all of these people, and the right to remove judges by plebescite. Did I mention that the AUTOMATIC biennial raises are still in effect? NO ONE who voted for this scam deserves another vote from any of us.

Borrowing for Welfare?

Nearly every day there is some article or letter in the newspapers that decries the fact that the United States’ “defense” budget is larger than the next 7 nations’ defense budgets, combined. Moreover, that “bloated” defense budget could be reduced significantly so that the “savings” can be used to feed the hungry and house the homeless right here in our own country, for Heaven’s sake.

None of these heartfelt concerns is based on the right perspectives or even the right data. That’s the trouble with statistics.

For example, 65% of fiscal 2017’s Federal Budget is committed to entitlements, pensions, health-care and education. From a Constitutional standpoint, most of that 65% is not the business of the federal government, whereas defense, now 16% of the budget, categorically IS.

Years ago welfare was strictly local… and recipients were a little ashamed of having to ask for it. Many, your grandparents or great-grandparents, and many of your parents, would do the most menial jobs to AVOID being on welfare and to get “off” of it as quickly as possible. Children learned this reaction and revulsion. Welfare was a handout when you needed it, as temporarily as possible.

Soon after World War II, though, states took over welfare from cities and towns, mainly under pressure from cities, which were buckling under the northward migration of blacks from the deep south. Almost immediately, states began prevailing on Washington to take the burden off of their backs. After all, weren’t the new Northerners crossing state lines because of “national” conditions in the economy?

After 13 years of the “New Deal,” we could have seen where this was going. There were votes to be gained in the impassioned cries for better – federal – welfare: codified compassion.

Truman blazed integration trails, Eisenhower enforced anti-segregation in schools, Kennedy hemmed and hawed but crawled toward full integration and voting rights legislation, Johnson, riding a wave of sympathy for his murdered predecessor, got civil rights legislation done, and then carried on further to create some wildly expensive – reckless – new “rights”: federal, unaccountable, politically charged, easily defrauded, vote-attractive welfare.

Smartly, though, Johnson couched the new largesse to which people were now entitled – not ashamed-of, in wonderfully sympathetic terms and names. Names like: Aid for Dependent Children (AFDC), Women, Infants and Children (WIC), Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP, ie. Food Stamps), Pell Grants (free college), Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), Rental Voucher Program (Section 8), Federal National Mortgage Administration (“Fannie-Mae”), Child Nutrition (School lunch, breakfast, dinner!), Head Start (very, very expensive day-care), Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), and, the granddaddy of them all: MEDICAID.

Current spending on these and more than ONE HUNDRED other federal “anti-poverty” programs (who could be PRO-poverty?) is nearly 900 BILLION dollars. That means that our virtually bankrupt federal government is BORROWING money to provide welfare.
Well, say unionized federal social workers and sympathizers, our defense budget is larger than the next 7 nations’ combined, let’s cut that, first!

Except… it isn’t.

When China, for example, builds sand islands in the South China Sea, and puts military airstrips and naval “bases” on them, and claims 200-mile territorial waters around these extensions of “China,” it’s not a military expenditure, but something else. For example.

When Russia directs a manufacturer to produce engines for new IRBM’s and ICBM’s, they aren’t military expenditures – they’re developments in space exploration. All peaceful. And subterranean military bunkers for both armament manufacture and survival are certainly construction projects… and expensive, but military? Not so you’d know.

And no other country carries the degree of personnel costs and benefits that are packed into the “Defense” budget of the United States. Simple ledger numbers are not comparable with other nations’ budgets.

Actually, under the Obama administration, defense has been cut a few times. One of his first steps was to fold tens of billions of retirement costs into the Defense Department budget. Logically, the cost of military retirements should not be measured as part of the Pentagon’s war-fighting / force-projection budget, should they? They certainly don’t threaten anyone but us.

Next, Obama forced the Congress into the “sequester” process, of which a large fraction of restrictions were imposed on defense – to be “fair.” Big cuts.

Finally, he walked out of Iraq, abandoning the very bloody, very costly gains we had made there. We are now paying to regain what had been won. His frothy, fraudulent Iran anti-nuclear “agreement” (cunningly not a treaty), will cost us many billions going forward – billions that need not have been spent had there been a different foreign policy.

The new president sees significant weakness that exists now or very shortly will, as normal refitting and reconditioning of hardware takes larger and larger fractions of critical military systems out of service. Warplanes are becoming antiques as our most experienced pilots are retiring; it is our phenomenal pilots who keep last-generation fighters useful in their 30th year of service. Now our latest fighter platform is too expensive to buy enough of!

If anyone thinks that McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried chicken are going to convince our potential enemies to not work – and fight – to destroy us, it is time for him or her to wake up. Maybe unrestricted immigration will make everybody love one another, but so far it is weakening the “West” and confusing our Constitutional rights with national suicide.

Don’t Feed the Beast

There’s an old admonition about feeding the beast: it starts to hang around and won’t leave when you try to shoo it away. Even if you scream really loud and wave your hands – or ballots – it won’t leave if the food trough is still where it always was. That’s how liberalism / progressivism is. While we weren’t looking it was building thousands of troughs and passing laws and regulations that make it illegal, or something, to NOT fill the troughs… and not with just the normal rations, but ever larger ones.

Donald Trump is a pretty canny guy and has a good eye for talent. He also can recognize problems for what they are and, better, envision a path to solutions. What he never understood was how tightly, ferociously and viciously the progressive beasts are prepared to cling to their “food” troughs.

They’ve had a good run, our progressive saviours – about a hundred years or so, constantly finding reasons that freedom was a problem, as is free-will and any religion that preaches the concept of free will and personal salvation. And they became very good at stifling freedom and when that didn’t work, stealing it.

How can politicians steal freedom? Let us count the ways. A key measure of freedom is private property. The Constitution enshrines the concepts of private property, private thoughts and beliefs, and of security within one’s private realm. That is, that one is free to live as one pleases in his or her pursuit of “happiness.” The government – the locus of political action – exists to assure your freedom from threats to your privacy.

Just saying the previous five sentences is to laugh at our precarious position in modern America. There is barely an activity left that is no longer truly “private.” Try to think of one:

• Sex? What kind of sex? Surely the federal government has nothing to say about sex, right? Except that they do. All kinds of sexual function and dysfunction have gained the status of “protected minority” with rights and enforcement.

• Business, private, owner-operated business? Should be a “piece of cake,” but, please…

• Raising your children? Punishing them? Teaching them your values? You are so suspect that every teacher and school administrator has been placed on notice to observe and report any ways you handle your child that the state disagrees with. Worse, you are often the last person to know about the mind-numbing, values-warping content of many lessons and courses. Do you know how to use a condom? Or what “gay” sex is? Your eighth grader does.

• Driving? If you pay enough, it’s a privilege. If you are deemed “suspicious,” such as driving where you – or your car – don’t belong, you can be stopped, identified, and your personal property searched on the basis of some articulable “suspicion.”

• Do you work? Earn an income? Well, it’s certainly not really yours, is it? Numerous of others’ needs must be addressed by “your” pay before you get a share. Many of these are “benefits,” so-called, but they are benefiting someone else. Things like FICA, your Social Security “contribution.” Then there is the bonus deduction for Medicare and the so-called “income tax withheld” that pays a Hell of a lot of people to do things you never heard of, probably don’t like and probably can’t afford for yourself! It must also pay interest on debts you have not incurred but which were incurred in your name, long before you were born, most likely. How free is that?

• Private property? From local “zoning” boards to the EPA, how you use your own property is abridged in, literally, hundreds of ways. God forbid you’ll be found to own a “habitat” for an “endangered” specie of gnats or centipedes. No one wants to be responsible for killing the last right-handed beige centipede, but the concept of “threatened” or “endangered” life forms carries great power to push humans around. So-called progressives love doing that. They are those who know what’s wrong with most humans and why what they tend to do is flawed. Want to build a shed for your garden tools? Better get permission from the town and all your neighbors.

• Your own health? I mean of YOUR OWN BODY? Well, you can’t buy the care you want because the doctor you want to buy it from can’t sell it to you. “Free” enterprise, indeed. Congress, that bastion of good sense and careful budgeting, is cobbling together how the last frontier of control will dictate how and, eventually, whether you will live, at all, if your life will burden the federal deficit. Ye Gods!

• And self-defense? Immigration and the world-wide movement of peoples have changed the need for personal self-defense. Add drugs to the mix of cross-cultural peoples and it is a more dangerous world – and neighborhood – today than it was a hundred years ago, or even fifty years ago. Yet our progressive neighbors, who place little value on the United States’ cultural norms, or its borders, are the same who demonstrate AGAINST your inherent, inalienable right to defend yourself and your family. You are rendered more free to die for their principles.

Finally, consider that when a new American is born, he or she has a debt of $155,000! And the government, that benign behemoth we all depend upon to protect our “rights,” is adding to that debt for all 330 Million of us at the rate of $5 a day. That’s $150 a month ON TOP OF the taxes we already pay. With about half of us NOT PAYING federal taxes, it’s more like $300 a month for every family that has a worker/ breadwinner.
The problem is, rather than figuring out how to reduce that burden, congress works overtime to INCREASE it. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Let’s keep in mind that every dollar of tax is a loss of freedom; every dollar of DEBT is a growing ball-and-chain that now inhibits our collective ability to defend ourselves.

Mr. President, I haven’t heard much about this…