From the 29 October 2007 Greater Niagara Newspapers

MEN DID DIE FOR RIGHT TO VOTE

By Bob Confer, www.BobConfer.net

In the very contentious 2004 presidential elections the national voter turnout was quite extraordinary. Over 71% of the registered voters from across the nation turned out for the Bush-Kerry main event.

“Off years”, those lacking in the always-glamorous presidential campaign, are typically quite different. We saw this in last year’s midterm election that was heavily promoted and hotly contested, focusing almost solely on the philosophical impasse of our policing action in Iraq. Even though this issue was and is supposedly the Number One issue of concern for all Americans it did very little to bring them in: National turnout was a paltry 40%.

The turnout for this year, one focusing on local elections, will definitely be a lot worse. It would not be a stretch to guess that less than one-third of all voters will make their voices heard. People have their reasons for not voting and for being a part of the civically-disengaged majority. They say they are too busy to go to the polls or they don’t follow politics or their vote won’t matter or that voting is a waste of their time.

Could they speak, the 4,400 men who died fighting tyranny in the Revolutionary War that gave us our national identity would tell you those excuses are so very petty. Their voices would no doubt be joined by the half-million men who perished in our Civil War or the 116,000 American soldiers who died in the first World War or the 405,000 of the second or the 95,000 of the Korean and Vietnam campaigns or the 3,800 who have so far perished in the Iraq conflict. In total, almost 1.5 million military men and women have died while fighting America’s wars. Countless millions more were injured, whether physically, mentally, or emotionally.

Every one of those men and women gave of life, limb and heart to fight for one or all of three things: the creation of American, America’s well-being and safety, and American principles as a symbol of hope for oppressed people around the world.

For these warriors the American flag was their guiding light. They died or suffered for Everything America. The mores and principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, everything those documents and their founding principles represent - and everything they caused America to be - became the model of service and the higher calling for these men. Our rights to freedom, liberty, property, prosperity and, yes, a representative form of government were maintained and guaranteed by the immeasurable sacrifices of these souls.

Yes, it is just like the common mantra that says these men died for your right to vote.

That is not a baseless, overly-patriotic way of thinking as many naysayers like to believe. It is founded in reality. Many people revel in their ability to live freely, speak freely, earn freely, and spend freely, yet ignore the underlying base to the continuation of the abilities: the act of voting freely…participating in the electoral process and choosing people who will represent them to the best of their abilities.

It is vitally important that our modern approach to citizenship is changed and more people vote in next week’s elections and every election thereafter.

It’s the right thing to do. It’s the American thing to do. And, it’s the very least you can do out of respect for the blood that was shed for you, me and our loved ones. 

From the 22 October 2007 Greater Niagara Newspapers

GUNS: FOR THE PEOPLE
By Bob Confer, www.BobConfer.net

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not infringed”

When it comes to the creation, interpretation and, ultimately, the enforcement of laws wording is everything. The anti-gun crowd understands this quite well and has invested considerable effort in the analysis of the language of the Second Amendment. They are hell bent on using semantics to make the Constitution meet their needs despite knowing that these needs in no way match the original intent of the founding fathers who all to a man believed in the natural right of self-preservation (against Man, beast or tyranny) and the requisite ownership of weaponry that allows one to satisfy that right.

Because of this indifference to historical record and actual intent, one could consider the anti-gun efforts to be flawed if not evil.

The logic applied definitely is.

The most cherished argument of those against guns is their belief, based upon their bastardization of the wording, that the right to bear arms is a collective one and not a singular one. To make this point, they have focused on the words “the people”, citing the usage of the word as being based in multiples. Hence, they believe the Constitution implies the need of an armed protective force (police or military) that looks out for the people as a whole, rather than each and every one of us sharing the same responsibility.   

By picking apart language of the Second Amendment and looking at it as a stand-alone law independent of the rest of the Constitution these souls have ignored how it fits into the whole scheme of things and how this law, no, this right, should be appropriately interpreted. The amendment is properly written and, therefore, non-controversial as long as one looks at how its language is used in the rest of the Constitution.

The maligned “the people” appears throughout the original document, also showing up in amendments 1, 4, 9, and 10. The phrase is used in the same fashion on every occasion. If it were to be looked at in the collective sense every time our nation would be very short on personal rights.

Were the anti-gun version to be used on the First Amendment (freedom of speech) you could not stand up and make your voice heard at a legislative meeting, participate in a protest, or hold a concerned citizens meeting. Instead, you would have to allow the government to call together such an action and then your voice could not be yours, it would have to mirror that of the collective.

If it were applied to the Fourth Amendment (protection from unreasonable search and seizure) that right would be utterly nonsensical. It is universally understood that “the people” in this case applies to the rights of the individual, as it is he or she being searched and owns the houses and properties made note of. Usage of the collective style of “the people” here would negate all rights to both personal security and property. Everything in this nation would be based in communal, at-large ownership.

The phrase’s appearance in – and the continued ignorance of - the Ninth Amendment shows what happens if a Constitutional right is denied, just as the anti-gun folk want it. The founding fathers rightly knew there are assumed inalienable rights not called-out or covered by the Constitution (like freedom to privacy) that every person has, rights that were granted to us naturally, be it through the play of the universe or at the controlling hand of God. The Ninth was intended to prevent the government from becoming our world’s controlling power, something like a God State that would steal or override our natural rights. It didn’t stop the government from doing just that: Today’s modern United States is nothing like intended and something in defiance of the rights of the individual which are the rights of “the people”.

This affront to natural, personal and Constitutional rights occurred because the Supreme Court interpreted the meaning and the language of the Ninth Amendment in self-serving ways it saw fit.

That is the same tactic the anti-gun crowd wants to use. They want to twist and turn the language of our nation’s Bible to fit their needs, even though their needs don’t jibe with those of all Americans, collectively and singularly, philosophically and realistically.  

From the 15 October 2007 Greater Niagara Newspapers

WHY THE FOCUS ON ALBANY

By Bob Confer

Our local elected officials take a lot of heat. Whether county legislators or town councilmen or school board members, they tend to be the primary targets of taxpayers’ ire over the dire straits the upstate region is in. 

It’s rare that I apply that same heat to them. In the past couple years of writing this column I have spent little time addressing local politicians. Sure, they might to a point contribute to the sorry state of affairs in New York, but much of what appears in the budgets of schools and local governments are not of their doing: They must kowtow to the State and accept a myriad of unfunded mandates like Medicaid, union directives, educational demands, and social programs.

In the whole scheme of things anything local politicos do to harm taxpayers is exceeded a thousandfold by the evils perpetuated by state-level politicians and their bureaucratic brethren in the state’s various departments and 750 authorities. Hundreds of bills are passed every session (and countless more administrative actions developed) that increase taxes, take away our rights, and feed the entitlement philosophies of the liberal downstate contingent. It’s the latter that also limits our voice in state politics (a primary cause of our “Appalachian” economy) because Maziarz, Hayes, Schimminger and the like represent a distinct minority in Albany, drowned out by the vast majority of elected officials who reside in the NYC metro area.

My disdain for Albany is apparent in my columns. Over a third of them have focused on state-level government. Like a civics nerd I study and offer commentary on what happens there because it affects me – and, similarly, everyone else - in two really significant ways: as a businessman and as a regular taxpayer.

As a businessman I look at it this way: My coworkers and I can control almost all competitive factors that affect the company’s ability to gain and/or maintain business. We can control labor costs, regulate material usage, and streamline ourselves. But, we have no control over the costs associated with where we are. Our cost of doing business in NY equates to a staggering 4% disadvantage. This number is derived from Albany-induced costs associated with utilities, insurances, taxes and more. A 4% loss in competitiveness is significant in today’s worldwide economy and will definitely make or break a business deal. That’s why so many businesses have left NY and many more are opening elsewhere in our nation.

Businesses are not alone in this. The citizens suffer a great deal, too. New Yorkers pay 43% more in taxes than the average American. Looking at it on a per capita basis, each and every man, woman, and child in NY loses $1,800 per year by living here. That’s $1,800 that could be spent on food, school, investments, durable goods, and more…$1,800 per year that we will never recoup.

As someone trying to live and work in such an environment I find it necessary to my survival - and the well-being of everyone around me - to change this mess. To further educate our citizens I’m taking-on a new endeavor. Starting next week, every Monday I will be a call-in guest on “Dialog”, the talk show that airs after the 11:00 AM news on 1340 WLVL and is hosted by my good friend Scott Leffler. I will share with him and his listeners “the Albany Update”, my ten-to-fifteen minute analysis of what happened the week before in state politics and how it will play out in our future. Hopefully it will be a great way to start the week out, initiating related discussion not only on Scott’s show but also around water coolers.

I strongly believe knowledge is power and if people know even just a little bit more about the real cause of our high taxes, shuttered businesses, and disappearing loved ones then they will be empowered to affect change where it needs to occur…in the State Capitol and the backrooms of state agencies, the evil domains that have turned New York’s economy into our own little Hell.

This may seem to be an insurmountable battle, but if we all work together as good citizens then we can gradually change things for the better. It will take time, it will take some sacrifices, but, someday, maybe we can appropriately consider ourselves the “Empire State”, a prosperous place to live, work and raise a family.    

From the 08 October 2007 Greater Niagara Newspapers

THE BUSINESS APPROACH TO GOVERNMENT
By Bob Confer, www.BobConfer.net

Politicians and bureaucrats are pretty indignant about the size and scope of their government when the concept of shrinking it is broached. A common if not canned response to the need for increased efficiency and lower costs says it can’t be done and you can take away only so much. They would have you believe that government is what it is and it can never be any smaller (and there’s a very good chance it will only become larger).   

Such an approach would never fly in the private sector, especially nowadays. During the past two dozen years a couple of things occurred that brought about the need to make businesses much more efficient: the floodgates to increasingly-competitive worldwide trade were opened and a greater number of Americans became investors. In order to one, not lose market share, and two, satisfy the needs of their myriad stockholders, the approach to modern business management changed almost overnight. Now, amidst a never-ending battle over dollars and cents at the selling price end and at the bottom line, businesses have found it crucial to their survival that they become smaller, more efficient, and almost preposterously pennywise.

While this has taken place in the private sector the public sector has remained markedly inefficient. It has failed to adopt any of the new-age philosophies that are now the norm in the business world, instead allowing maintenance of the status quo. Dangerous. The private sector really can’t afford to be doing things the way that it has been for years, for it’s getting closer to a Zero Hour where it - and the people paying into it - will break. There’s only so much money to go around.  

Because of that, it’s imperative the public sector mirror the private sector’s approach to business. It’s not a stretch to make the aforementioned agents of change (open markets and shareholders) applicable to the reasoning for adjustments. All governments are definitely competing against other governments for customers (residents/taxpayers) and the governments that are smaller and less expensive tend to experience an influx of new customers. Case in point, watch people leave tax-heavy New York for better opportunities in tax-light greener pastures across the United States. It’s these very same people who then end up becoming public “shareholders”. By paying taxes they are investing in their community’s well-being and demanding the best return on their investment.

If the same factors that have forced businesses to change exist in the world of politics why not apply the same tools of change that businesses have been using, those of smaller market baskets, outsourcing, elimination of redundancy, and downsizing?

For starters, the services rendered by the public sector need to be decreased. Many businesses have in recent history dropped products and services that they for years had offered, discovering that their ability to gain or maintain market share was independent of the specific offering. Government should follow suit and carefully reevaluate each and every service to determine if it is really something crucial to the common good. Common sense should prevail and show the government shouldn’t wasting its time in offering things like, say, gambling (Off Track Betting).  

In a similar bent, government should also consider outsourcing. This does not mean shipping service jobs overseas. What it does mean is government should look inwards and determine if what it is doing matches its core competencies. If not, it should shop out those functions in the private sector, getting the tasks accomplished in an affordable and customer-friendly manner. Local municipalities do so, often outsourcing garbage collection. State-level government should follow suit, looking to outsource a majority of its 750 authorities, putting their duties in considerably-more capable hands.

Were government to cast a critical eye upon itself, just like businesses routinely do, it would discover a system similar to an onion, layers upon layers, some no different than the next. It should then take a business-like approach, eliminating redundancy, waste, valueless activities, and people. By becoming leaner and meaner it would offer a better value for its investment. Look no further than the FDA to see bureaucracy out-of-control and in need of downsizing (9,000 employees, only 1,750 of which are inspectors).     

Efficiency in operations is not rocket science. Every day, every business from pizza shops to manufacturers to financial institutions focus on streamlining their ways of doing things in an effort to sustain themselves in today’s - and tomorrow’s - world. It’s high time government did the same. It’s just good business.