Writer's Block

I am not sure I suffer from said affliction but I do know I am tired of the health care crap; tired of hearing a President who clearly does not know the campaign was over almost a year and a half ago and is constantly bombarding every freaking news cycle, and VERY tired of a Democratic Party hellbent on trashing the Constitution. In my last lengthy post I discussed the lengths of which that party will go to pass the liberal wet dream of Universal Health Care for all. Yes that is right you heard me, Universal...not some watered down "public option", that's just an appetizer. Hey people, time to read the fine print of the over 2,300 page shell bill behemoth that was posted online late Sunday night. This bill is as Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) put it, meant to "grease the skids" for more BS in the future. Why all the formalities? Well as Philip Klein noted:

Well, under the reconciliation rules in last year's budget, any reconciliation bill would have to have been submitted to the Budget Committee by October 15, 2009. It just so happens that earlier versions of health care legislation cleared the Ways and Means and Education and Labor Committees last year. So Democrats just dusted that legislation off, and are using that as the vehicle to begin the reconciliation process. That's why, for instance, if you look through the 2,309 page bill that was released Sunday night, you'll find a public option, which leadership has indicated would not actually be in the final bill.

That is the rub, since as we know from following this process the Democrats in the House do not trust the Democrats in the Senate to reconcile it properly and vice-versa. If this piece of legislation was only remotely popular amongst their own ranks, the Democrats would have passed this months ago. But as we know, the legislation stinks and rots to high heaven. So that's about all I am going to re-hash on the current state of the "debate".

New Jersey

Briefly I want to highlight what is going on in my state of New Jersey because it may be a road map of future policies. Coincidentally the new governor in Virginia is working on similar actions but we are in far worse shape up here.

We as a state have one of the highest unfunded pension liabilities, it is now a staggering $46 billion dollars. What does that mean? Well it means that this is the deficit we run on guaranteed payouts to pensions of public employees. We don't have enough people to steal from and tax to make up for that. Just take a look at Greece's current situation and imagine that here. Now that deficit was created by irresponsible governing by both parties when the state pretty much stopped kicking in contributions and finding all sorts of budgetary tricks to stem the deficit and show a balanced budget. Which was all well and good when the markets were going strong and the fund was growing through investment. As we know the markets don't stay hot forever, in reality all it did was kick the can further down the road for someone else to deal with. Well the time to deal with it is now. As evidenced by Christie's election, the people of this state have had enough.

It would take a 3 billion dollar contribution this year from the state (or more than 10% of the state budget) to adequately finance the pensions for this year alone. It is time to get away from this guaranteed outcome system, and put public employees in a 401(k) type situation where there is a guaranteed contribution from employee. If you want to invest, make it yourself don't be doing it with the rest of the citizens of this state's tax dollars. This will cut a huge portion of spending out of the state budget. Other solutions have come up as well to find ways to get our state back to liquidity. Christie's recent formation of a commission that will recommend what state government functions should be done cheaper and better by the private sector, is a good place to start. Wow what a genius idea! Feel the sarcasm? Anyways it is nice to know we have a governor that is standing up to the entrenched unions of this state that for too long have been a drain on everyone else who isn't in the union. The $11 billion dollar deficit Corzine left was going to need drastic measures. And more spending and more taxing has NEVER been the answer.

Privatization of course is not a new innovation as Cal Thomas in a recent piece pointed out:

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher succeeded in reducing the size and cost of her government by selling-off entities like British Telecom and British Rail to private companies. Thatcher's policies brought in revenue to the treasury, reduced the size and cost of government and cut the bloated civil service from 732,000 employees when she took office in 1979, to 500,000 in 1997

Unfortunately in this country we have liberal Democrats and some Republicans way too comfortable with big government solutions, still we have had some success:

President Reagan was able to sell off the Conrail freight railroad in 1987 for $1.7 billion. The year before, the Alaska Power Administration was privatized. The federal helium reserve was sold for $1.8 billion in 1996. The Elks Hill Petroleum Reserve was sold in 1997 for $3.7 billion. And in 1998, the U.S. Enrichment Corporation, which provides enriched uranium to the nuclear industry, was privatized for $3.1 billion.

The Cato Institute has done expansive research into what government entities would be best spun off of government control. Now if Governor Christie is successful in making these policies work we may be able to illustrate to the country once again what it means to be small government Republicans as Reagan did. And in so doing, articulating the Founders vision of small government there to protect personal liberty.