Publisher's Perspectives 2010

Posted on 09 December 2010 by LeslieM

Stop the “Lame Duck” Abuse!

9 Dec 2010
As we get ready to go to press this week, the “lame duck” politicians in Washington are still negotiating how to go forward on various federal issues. Unfortunately, our present system allows politicians who have already been defeated in an election the first week of November to continue voting on important items for several weeks, well into January. This very backward system was necessary historically when newly-elected  politicians had to ride horses across country to get to Washington D.C. It makes no sense now, and only serves mischief-makers in Washington D.C., who are busy every hour taking advantage of it for their own self interest. That needs to be changed, but would require a revision of our Constitution, which is not easy to do. However, maybe some of the newly elected Tea Party congressmen will take on this task.
David Eller, Publisher

Our unemployment problem is easy to fix — simply send the illegal workers home —

28 Oct 2010
The Republican candidate for governor in California, Meg Whitman was recently demonized for having previously employed an illegal immigrant from Mexico in her home. The candidate claims she was shown paperwork at the time of hiring verifying the person she hired was in the United States legally. However, when she later learned the paperwork was forged, she “fired” the worker. When her Democrat opponent, Jerry Brown, arranged to get the crying former employee and her lawyer on television in front of California’s huge Mexican immigrant population, she quickly found herself behind in the polls.
When Ronald Reagan was president, there were some 3 million illegal people, mostly Mexicans, living in the United States. The Mexican government encouraged it, as the people send money, that would otherwise go to U.S. workers, back to Mexico.
Meanwhile Tip O’Neal, the Democrat leader of Congress at the time, said something to the effect that if the American people were going to elect someone as conservative as Ronald Reagan, “we need to get some ‘new’ Americans.” O’Neal then pushed the legislation through Congress, which Reagan signed but later regretted. It legalized and ultimately gave citizenship to 3 million people who had entered our country illegally. Many stayed in California, registered to vote and turned California into the bastion of the Democratic Party which it is today, thanks to O’Neal and Reagan.
It is reported that there are now over 10 million more illegal people in this country at the same time we have massive unemployment. All the polls show that in this election, the main issue is “jobs.” Nearly every politician running is talking about more jobs.
The obvious way to get more jobs immediately is for our government — local, state and federal — to arrange for the people who are here illegally taking American jobs to get back to their country of origin and properly apply if they want to come here and work. In fact, a lot of legal jobs could be created in the process and millions of Americans could get back to work.

Obama wants more jobs? He needs to decrease taxes… for everyone!

16 Sep 2010
The politicians used to say, “It’s the Economy Stupid.” Now Business owners are saying, “It’s the high Taxes (Stupid)!”
The formula is really quite simple:
Increase taxes = increased costs = increased prices = decreased business = decreased jobs
Decreased taxes = decreased costs = decreased prices = increased business = increased jobs
Therefore, it should be obvious to the president and his advisers that if they want more jobs, they need to decrease taxes on the people who produce the jobs.
He apparently is willing to consider that, but stubbornly wants to limit it to those making $200,000 or less. That probably sounds reasonable to most people. However, what he and “they” don’t understand is that if a businessman is fortunate enough to “make” $200,000, very little is left for him to live on after he pays his taxes and, typically, a bank loan from those funds.
For example, assume a businessman or woman borrows $1 million for a business to employ 10 people. First, he would probably need to have saved at least $200,000 to invest in the business in order to get a $1,000,000 loan. So he has $1,200,000 invested in the business. But now, he must make enough money from the business to pay back the bank loan and interest. Assuming the loan is at 6 percent, and he has 10 years to pay back the bank, he has to make $60,000 just to pay the bank interest, plus another $100,000 to pay the bank loan principal. If he is successful and makes $260,000 from the business, he pays the bank $60,000 in interest, leaving him $200,000 in taxable income. He pays income taxes to the U.S. government of approximately $ 56,000, leaving him $144,000. From that he has to pay the bank $100,000 principal on the loan, leaving him $44,000 to live on. He certainly is not a rich man.
However, under Obama’s current plan, it gets worse. If someone grows their business and hires more people, their tax rate will increase from 35 to 39.6 percent, for a 13.1 percent increase in tax rate, substantially lowering their actual income. This certainly does not encourage people to grow their businesses and hire people. In fact, it does the opposite, which is why the economy is stuck. You can’t increase taxes on the people who create 85 percent of the jobs in America, and then wonder why they don’t go out and hire more people. No wonder folks are worried.

Deerfield’s City Manager Should be Given Another Chance

14 Jan 2010
Most people we’ve talked to can’t imagine a worse time for the City of Deerfield Beach, or any city, to “fire” its City Manager. Happening right in the middle of three union negotiations with city employees, it would appear that the rug has been pulled out from under the city manager(s), who were in the midst of negotiating with city labor unions. The appearance is that union employees — representing fewer than 1 percent of our population who actually live in our City — have greater sway with some of our politicians than do the 99 percent of us who actually live here and pay the taxes. What is wrong with that picture?
City Manager Mike Mahaney came here knowing that due to the most recent change in our city charter, he could be fired at any time by a vote of just 3 of the 5 city commissioners voting to do so. That is a pretty tough job environment to walk into. However, Mike is a man of great spiritual faith, with an unusually well-qualified background and education to do the job. For instance, Mike not only has a bachelor’s degree, and a master’s degree in Business Administration from the much-respected Virginia Tech University, he has taken and passed all the tests and is a Licensed Professional (Consulting) Engineer in several states.
Has he ruffled some feathers? I’m sure he has or he wouldn’t be doing his job. Can he overcome some of the management “quirks,” which we all have, and which have put him into this current situation? I bet he could if given a chance.
After all, it’s going to cost the City, i.e. us taxpayers, several hundred thousand dollars to pay his severance pay and then recruit another manager. That is a poor use of our dwindling city financial assets. Therefore, hopefully, the city commission will reconsider and give Mike another chance. Otherwise, it appears that the City is controlled by its labor unions. This could result in the lowering of our city credit rating by Moody’s, and result in all of us paying even higher taxes.
David Eller, Publisher

Time to put Florida Power and Light in its Place

7 Jan 2010
If my Father were still alive, he would be saying, “Who in the world do they think they are?”  He would be speaking, of course, about Florida Power and Light Company (FPL) executives’ demand for a $1.27 billion annual base electricity rate hike!
The Public Service Commission (PSC) controlling the rates used to be elected state-wide. However, when the first Republican Paula Hawkins was elected, and forced reductions in rates from the power companies became so popular that she went on to be elected as a U.S. Senator, the Democrats, who controlled the legislature and governor at the time, changed the law in Florida to make the PSC appointed rather than elected. Consequently, this allowed the FP & L executives, who had been overcharging us for electricity for decades to again start overpaying themselves hundreds of millions of dollars while doling out contributions to politicians of both parties, which they still do. In fact, they hold us monopolized customers in such disdain now that they still boldly refuse to reveal the detailed salary information of their top 460 employees, i.e. those earning more than $165,000. And this “secret” cost they, of course, pass on to us. The fact that the Public Service Commission has to go to court on Jan. 27 in Tallahassee’s First District Court of Appeal to try to even get that information is outrageous!
Meanwhile on Jan. 13, the PSC is scheduled to meet and vote on FP & L’s bloated request, which includes a 12.5 percent profit — way above most power companies in the USA’s profits. Also, FP & L management has been accused by their main sister company, and some now-retired employees, of a lot of improprieties including misappropriation of millions of dollars of expenses charged to the public. This all needs to be investigated before giving them even one penny of additional money from us “captive” customers!

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