"Though not a professional political operative or someone who has personal experience with running for office, I may have an implausible bit of strategy that might work for the most
desperate or reckless among you: Under-promise and under-deliver.”
Now admittedly while the above is true, I do have some considerable experience in the concept of under-promising, from having made a career out of it. As for under-delivering, I have little fear of contradiction as to my level of expertise in this area; having a lifetime of it to point to.
Recommending it therefore as a political strategy in the last month leading up to an election in "Under-promise And Under-deliver" might have some actual (if rather twisted) value that can only be discovered after reading this offering on the website of the TFP. (Besides, I've already published a disclaimer to cover any potential blame.)
The good news however, is that regardless of the quality of the writing in the column or the value of the advice contained therein, you would still be able to look forward to so much more that's to come in this week's 'Star' edition, not to mention the weekend version of Toledo's largest Sunday circulation and Ohio's Best Weekly newspaper (at least according to the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists), the Toledo Free Press.
For those of you expecting a rant about which party controls government here, you're about to be disappointed. Instead this is about the results of all of the power that you've been saving the last couple of years and what it means to you in the years ahead. Energy-saving appliances, high-efficiency air conditioners, furnaces, and hot-water heaters, and of course those lovely (and toxic) energy efficient light bulbs that we've all planted, and which are now starting to bear fruit. It's a bitter fruit however.
The graph above shows information released by the US Energy Information Administration that in spite of continued population growth we are either using less energy (as in transportation and industrial) or at worst minimally increasing demand (residential and commercial) for the amount of energy that we are consuming as a nation. What is the result of all this sacrifice and belt-tightening in the way of expensive new appliances and even more expensive light bulbs ... energy now costs more.
Now I suppose it's understandable to have to pay more for electricity when those producing it are having difficulty keeping up with the demand out there. These are basic market influences that have been in place since civilization began. With demand waning however, one would in fact suspect that supply and demand would see costs going down.
Oh sure, the EPA regs are making it increasingly difficult to use coal, and coal is cheap as a consequence of its abundant supply and decreasing demand. Natural gas, its bituminous counterpart; is not only far less polluting, but available in supplies that are currently project to last for hundreds of years and as cheap as it's been in the last 15 years. Oil too, seems to have been discovered in far greater supplies than was previously known in this nation, and its price has been relatively stable over the last couple of years.
As detailed today in the Kansas City Star however, rates for electricity in the Kansas City area look to be going up by about 10%, with state regulators granting Kansas City Power and Light $64 million of a requested $106 million in rate increases. For those of you who haven't been keeping track (which is of course what they're counting on), this means that electric rates have gone up some 42.7 % since 2000. In spite of that, Regulators called the result of this decision a success since they reduced the stockholders requested 'return on equity' (profit) from 10.4% to 9.7%. So let's get this straight, Kansas City Power and Light was granted a 10% profit margin by government mandate; and for selling less of their product than they have in the past, regardless of the what's involved in producing its product in the first place.
You know, there's nothing like knowing that the government's got your back and what therefore your profit margin is going to be as a business before you actually do business. It's nice to have a warm, fuzzy government agency grant you a higher profit margin by fiat than most businesses make after a year's hard work. And with the exception of farmers, who still unaccountably get paid by government for not growing crops on land that they own, it's nice to get paid more for producing less.
Why should anyone else care about these tragic numbers .... because it's happening all over the country. All of the more efficient power plants, infrastructure improvements, and declining usage have left us with nothing in the way of lower costs. In fact, electricity remains one of those bastions of constant rate increases. If usage is us, rates are required to go up in or to serve customers. If usage is down, rates are required to go up in order to make up for the lack of revenue generated by customers (pun intended). Of course, there's probably more that I could say on the subject; but running computers takes electricity after all. So while can still afford both my groceries and my electric bill, I will simply as the question:
The Power Companies or the Local Regulators, who really has the power?
Many of us who have spent any amount of time studying the Constitution still maintain that this document under which the second form of the federal government of the United States was created was designed in order to limit the scope of that government. While there was a consensus that the Articles of Confederation had created a central body too weak to much longer survive, there was still a great deal of concern so soon after the Revolution that one much stronger would prove equally inimical to both the rights of the states and those of citizens.
And so it was that in "The Federalist Papers" James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay sought to allay the fears of the people that this new document did not do just that. Of course they did so following a very strict interpretation of this document, a point of view no longer widely held by many of those currently in power; but by doing so they managed to get each of the thirteen original States to ratify the document. Even then, ratification was not assured without an agreement placing some additional protection into the document itself, and the first ten amendments or "Bill of Rights" were born.
Today's far more liberal interpretations of the Constitution, as well as the often voiced concept of a 'living Constitution' are causing some of us to revisit this concept of a 'limited government'. We are challenged however in that strict interpretation by a two-party ruling elite far more concerned with protecting their own rice bowl than with the rights of the people that they swore to serve when taking their oath of office. Perhaps therefore, it's time that we took up once again the concept of additional protection from an over-reaching national legislature and bureaucracy.
I therefore propose that we begin to lobby for an addition to the Republican Party Platform in the months leading up to the convention in Tampa for ... Term Limits. Don't get me wrong here, I don't propose that we limit the terms in office of legislators, much as I would like to, as there is little chance that we could get those elected to office to lift their heads from the government trough long enough to even consider such blasphemy. Instead I would like to propose a mandatory limit on the length of time that any new law or regulation can remain in effect without being approved again. Failing to gain that approval, such a law or regulation in question would be automatically rescinded. Without seeking demand for a specific timetable, I would off the suggestion of three years for new legislation passed by Congress and one year for new regulations instituted by agencies and bureaucrats without the approval of Congress.
The time periods themselves are less important however than the concept of a forced review. Suggesting a three year review for legislation should allow for the periodic party swings in the legislature. If a law has merit, such merit and the law itself should prove easy to defend even amidst the pendulum swings of party public favor and renewal should still be all but assured. Should such legislation prove over time to have been either inadequate or over-reaching, the three year period should prove sufficient to allow it to lapse with no loss of face to either party or the legislators who originally passed it.
As for regulations, since most do not go through the debate of 'elected officials' in the first place, the review process should come much quicker. Legislators who have abrogated their Constitutionally mandated responsibility and authority to create law in this country would be forced to take up the issue of accountability that much quicker and at least attempt to do the will of the people; and be themselves judged for doing so.
In addition to addressing new laws, a process which likewise mandates the review of at least 10% of existing legislation should become a part of this obligation. There are far too many confusing and contradictory laws and regulations on the books to allow for continued addition to their number. A recognition of this fact and a way to force the a clean up of the issued cannot help but have a positive effect. A mandatory review would likewise provide the incentive and political cover for elected officials to do so without jeopardizing their political futures. It would likewise put agencies and bureaucrats on notice that their actions should not be unilaterally attempted without eventual consequences.
Now many might believe that placing Congress under such an enormous encumbrance would not allow them time to pass 'new' legislation or regulation. So be it! If one job was created or saved by virtue of bringing the runaway train of the national legislature under even that much control, it would be worth it. Perhaps the burden of such a mandatory review would be just the caution that Congress requires before imposing its will in the way of new laws and rules. The national register (the list of federal regulations) is already over 81,000 pages long. That single fact alone should dictate that it's far past time that something can and must be done to provide new limits. The tax code is over 71,000 pages, far too complex for anyone to comprehend or be able to comply with. Forcing Congress to review each law or regulation may be just the impetus that they need to simplify the entire tax code.
At the very least, adoption of such a proposal into the platform of one of the major political parties might scare potential candidates from taking on such a burden, and dissuade today's generation of professional politicians from seeking to return to the job. Recognizing this as comparable 'Labors and Sisyphus' may allow some new blood to finally seep into the anemic arteries of a largely spineless group of lawmakers; thereby promoting the real hope and change that this country so desperately needs.
In football when the team playing defense attempts to line up in an area beyond where they're supposed to, a penalty is called for "Encroachment" and the offending team is marched back five yards for the rules infraction. In examples that I have talked about in this blog and in a column for the Toledo Free Press, agencies of the federal government appear to be regularly committing the same type of rules violations, attempting to usurp the authority of the legislative and judicial branches of the government in an attempt to push forward a progressive political agenda.
- Medicare regulations that go into effect January 1st are pushing forward a proposal for end-of-life care (also known as Death Panels) that the legislature rejected while passing health care reform.
- The Agriculture Department is taking charge of school bake sales and the food sold at them in the name of protecting our youth from unhealthy food without a mandate to do so.
- The Department of Health & Human Services has told health care providers that they will not be able to raise rates more than 10% without the permission of that agency, in spite of being given no such pricing authority in this industry.
- Having failed to gain authority through "Cap and Trade" legislation, the Environment Protection Agency has nevertheless decided on its own to regulate the emissions of CO2 (a substance that at other times and places is considered naturally occurring) for oil refineries and power plants.
- The Department of Homeland Security has decided that global climate change is now a national security threat and will form a panel to identify and assess the impact that it has on their mission whether they have the authority to or not.
- The FCC has broken new ground on multiple fronts, ignoring a letter from members of the Senate as well as court rulings to assume control over parts of the Internet.
It would be criminally naive to believe that these Cabinet level agencies, with Secretaries appointed by the Executive Branch of government, made these moves without explicit or implicit permission if not approval of the president. In fact we were warned that this was a possibility when some parts of the aggressive legislative agenda of the the Obama Administration were rejected in Congress.
No more egregious attempt by one branch of the government to nullify the separation of powers has occurred since "The Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937". In this legislative proposal by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, an attempt was made to grant power to the executive branch to appoint additional Justices to the High Court (up to a maximum of six) for every sitting member above the age of 70-1/2. Though the bill ultimately failed due to adverse public reaction, it is universally considered as an attempt by FDR to pack the High Court in order to get one more sympathetic to his New Deal legislative agenda and subvert one that was ruling parts of it unconstitutional.
Evidently the current Administration has learned something from the mistakes of prior progressive presidents. Understanding that its current agenda was not and will not be approved and that the approval of what is still a Conservative Supreme Court was unlikely and irrelevant, it turned instead to a bureaucratic and regulatory process that was not in place on the same scale during FDR's time. If the legislative and judicial branches could be not counted on to do the right thing as proposed by the President, one need simply find an expedient way to go around them.
Regardless of altruistic motives involved, the relative good for the country that might or might not occur, or whether you approve of the agenda being implemented is immaterial at this point. The simple fact of the matter is that the federal government was created with a system of checks and balances to prevent just such an overreaching by one branch of government and protect citizens from any one branch becoming too powerful. Any attempt to subvert those protections by any person or group must be considered inherently wrong.
We have yet to see how the Legislature will react to some of these recently passed regulations and whether it will attempt to bring these agencies to heel through its control of oversight and budget. We must likewise wait as legal challenges are mounted to some of the legislation that apparently gave these agencies their regulatory powers.
There is little doubt in my mind however, that a clear violation of the rules has already been committed. If it were within my power as referee of this game; I would certainly throw the yellow flag and charge this President, these Cabinet Secretaries, and their agencies with the penalty of Encroachment.
