From the 26 November 2007 Greater Niagara Newspapers

INFLATION STATISTICS ARE FLAWED

By Bob Confer, www.BobConfer.net

“Inflation” is defined by a rise in prices for a defined set of goods and services. As simple as that sounds, the study of inflation is somewhat helter-skelter. It’s nowhere near an exact science with economists split on the cause of rising prices. Some believe it is associated with the growth of demand exceeding the growth in supply. Others think it signals the oversupply of money.

Regardless of who’s right or wrong, inflation is for real and is currently being caused by both factors.

We definitely have an overabundance of money. This is made apparent by the ever-decreasing value of the American dollar in the foreign exchange markets. It’s not that the Canadian dollar or the Euro are getting stronger, it’s that our money is getting weaker. Our nation has too many dollars out there, whether in the form of current currency (real and ethereal) or “future” currency (US Treasury bonds) with very little to back it all.

As the value of our dollar has shrunk American consumers have seen sudden, extreme shifts in the purchasing prices for nearly everything they want or need because of demand. For the sake of this conversation, let’s focus on some needs. Fuels continue to rise out of control, with gasoline 38% more expensive than it was this time last year, propane 25% more and home heating oil 35% higher. Add to that money-drain the higher costs of food associated with the corn-consuming ethanol fiasco, perfectly exemplified by last week’s Thanksgiving dinner which was 11% more costly than it was in 2006. Taxes could fit into this equation as well, as the “consumer” has no choice but to pay them: for the past decade property taxes for school funding have risen by an average of 7% per year across New York while city and municipal taxes in that same period have gone up by 5% per annum.

These items all constitute “needs” and only represent a piece of the typical consumer’s market basket. Discretionary spending has been hit, too: Consumer goods and durable goods are all up thanks to the higher costs of inputs such as plastics, metals and shipping.   

Our ability to buy decreases on what seems to be a weekly basis. Yet, the government would have us believe otherwise.  Perhaps as confused (or sheltered) as some economists may be in regard to inflation, the Federal Reserve and the Bureau of Labor Statistics continue to deny its existence. Their preferred indicators of inflation (Personal Consumption Expenditures Index and Consumer Price Index, respectively) have it pegged at 2.5% and 3.7%. Those values are in stark contrast to reality and borderline comical.

The Federal Reserve’s PCE is flawed by design and an insult to the working class. It is undeniably a fictional statistic as it is based upon Core Inflation, which means it looks at everything except food and fuel (and taxes). This begs the question, how can a government accurately portray the buying power of its peoples if it chooses to ignore what makes up the majority of their market baskets? Many families can afford only food, fuel, and rent. By using a statistic like the PCE the federal government is saying these people can buy just as many items as they did last year. As my numbers proves – and as we all know - they cannot.

The BLS’s CPI is just as weak. The index is created from a random, quarterly sampling of 10,000 families, questioned in the form of interviews. They are asked about their spending habits and are not required to maintain journals. Because of that, it can be said without a doubt these families will in no way remember everything they bought or spent over the three-month period. And, these families are selected only from larger cities, so many of them will not have the gasoline expenditures that suburban and rural people have because they may rely on walking to work, public transportation or shorter commutes. Also, just as the PCE, this statistic ignores what’s spent on taxes.

As these statistics prove, economics is a strange science and one, especially in the hands of the government, fraught with weaknesses. The economists fail (or don’t want to) see that Americans are getting less bang for our bucks. As we spend more on gasoline, food, and government we have less to spend (or invest) on everything else and, even then, we have to cut back on life’s necessities in order to balance our budgets. Inflation is real (we can all feel it) and we don’t need number crunchers telling us it’s not. 

From the 19 November 2007 Greater Niagara Newspapers

DISAGREEING WITH THE EDITORIAL BOARD ON HANDGUN ISSUE
By Bob Confer, www.BobConfer.net  

We find ourselves at a crucial moment in the history of gun ownership in the United States. Very soon the Supreme Court will decide whether or not to hear the case of the District of Columbia v. Heller. In this case Washington resident Dick Heller and his lawyers say the city’s 31-year-old handgun ban is unconstitutional. Heller, an armed security officer by profession no less, had attempted to register a personal handgun for home protection and was denied by the City, which he then sued and lost to. But, then, a three-man panel of the US Court of Appeals ruled in his favor, that is, until the full panel of the Appeals Court agreed with the City. That judicial mess is what has led up to this case now being front and center before Chief Justice Roberts and crew.

If the Supreme Court moves on this issue to clarify once and for all whether gun ownership is a singular or collective right it would satisfy one of the more controversial and confusing issues of our time. It is an issue debated at length due to multiple interpretations of the language and intent of the founding documents. Along with abortion, firearms represent one of the two most polarizing topics in American political culture; it is one that has for years permeated political discourse and one for which everyone has their opinion. People care passionately about their stance and quite often take much offense to the other side.

I am no different in this regard. That’s why, last week, I was shocked to see all of the Greater Niagara Newspapers running the very same GNN-written editorial that denounced the singular approach to gun ownership. I would expect such unabashed anti-gun rhetoric out of a left-leaning metropolitan newspaper like the New York Times, but not out of our newspaper network whose Niagara-Orleans readership is best summed up as right-leaning (if not outright conservative) and, therefore, more truer to the founding fathers’ ways of thinking when it comes to Constitutional understanding.

Everyone is allowed their own opinions (or else I wouldn’t be on these pages every week) and mine in no way mirrors that of the editorial board(s). I am of a pro-gun mentality and I found the editorial to be an outlet for Big Media fear mongering and, overall, an argument fraught with holes.

The board seemed quite content with the collective interpretation of the Second Amendment, focusing on the use of the word “militia”. I ask that they go back one month when my column looked at two other words in the amendment (“the people”) to declare that the amendment portrays singular rights based upon the use of those words in other amendments (1, 4, 9, 10). Those rights would ring hollow if the essence of the individual were eliminated by using the same collective mindset that the anti-gun crowd applies to the Second.

The authors then went on to say everything is rosy with New York’s gun laws. This could not be further from the truth. Our State is a minority (and far from a role model) when it comes to the Second Amendment, be it in terms of guns or weapons of defense. We are one of 12 states that has a pistol permit system. We are one of 8 states that limits pepper spray. And, we are one of only 6 states that prohibits stun guns. Based upon the severity of these reigns, were these to actually be effective regulations our violent crime rate would be very far below the national average, if not at the absolute bottom. Instead, we consistently find ourselves amongst the top twenty most violent states.   

Perhaps based upon such statistics, the editorial board also noted that there is no correlation between tougher gun laws and the reduction in violent crime. If that’s the case, why would the writers chose to support such ill-advised legislation? By doing so they are only promoting the elimination of weapons from the hands of law-abiding citizens, giving the advantage to the evil wretches of society who chose to forgo morality and steal from, rape, and murder the innocents.

The editorial board has their opinions. I have mine. The Supreme Court has theirs. All those who count themselves as American fundamentalists and believers of natural rights and self-responsibility should hope the Court’s approach is more similar to mine. If not, our citizens will continue to argue the issue while, in the background, the governments of the various states erode our very personal rights.                   

From the 12 November 2007 Greater Niagara Newspapers

JOIN THE PARTY

By Bob Confer, www.BobConfer.net

Last week was a special time for civics in Niagara County with candidates and voters alike partaking in the truly American ways of the republic style of governance. The week (and all weeks leading up to it) was fraught with excitement.

On Tuesday we finally saw the outcome of the most hotly-contested local election cycle this county has ever seen. For the past twelve months, individuals from one end of the county to the other duked it out for control of municipal and county government. In the West we had a Battle Royale for the mayoral throne in Niagara Falls, a city that for decades has been begging for some semblance of leadership.  In the East we had a very heated, well-followed rumble for council and supervisory positions in Royalton, a town trying to come out of the darkest period in its 190-year history. And, to cap it all off, in every nook and cranny of this great county we saw the Republicans and Democrats battling for control of the legislature, the GOP staging an unprecedented domination amidst the all of the he-said-she-said chaos.          

While this all occurred the good citizens of the county were given an icing atop this cake. The state leadership of the Libertarian Party – one of the “third” parties – gave birth to the Niagara County Libertarian Party. This was a direct result of the efforts of WLVL’s controversial-yet-beloved Scott Leffler, a man who truly loves the county and wants it to become something special, as prosperous as it was just a handful of decades ago.

The Libertarian Party will add balance to County politics, offering the voters an alternative to the same old same old. Having a third party (why stop at three?) independent of the other two is so unlike what currently takes place in our fusion-happy yet divisive local ways. God bless the Democrats and Republicans all, but our county – no, our whole nation! – has been divided too harshly because of the two party system, a system that unfortunately demands the individual to be associated with issues and the trappings of government that he or she may not support in earnest. The Libertarian Party will give people an outlet for their frustrations and someplace to escape the hateful labels the two parties place upon one another.

And, what a great outlet it is. It is one I have accepted with open arms. Throughout the years of my adult life I became increasingly disenchanted with the Republican Party. It was supposed to be a party that best represented my politically-conservative ways. Its core values were touted as “small government” and “low taxes” but I found it was transforming into nothing of the sort with the GOP at all levels of government – state and federal especially – taking our rights, spending highly, and becoming a mirror image of the Big Government Democrats. So, I left the party and took my Constitution with me, looking for a new home.

That’s where the Libertarian Party came in. I found solace in it, a majority of its philosophies mirroring mine. The party – created in the mold of Thomas Jefferson and derived from “liberty” – is heavy on hands-off economics, small government, personal rights (naturally and Constitutionally), and self-responsibility.

That same disgust in the party of one’s youth is what made lifelong Democrat Scott Leffler become a Libertarian and a keen voice of its ways. Some people may look at this quizzically: As Conservative as I am politically and socially, Leffler has always been perceived as the contrary, many people calling him “that liberal talk show host”.  Despite that impasse, and the ire we may have shared in the old ways of two-party labeling, we are able to come to agreements within the Libertarian Party, a melting pot of the various principles that define the best of the civics offered by the other parties.

That’s why the LP may be the route for you to take as well. If you are put-off by where your party has been and where it is going, if you can no longer take the conflict associated with two-party belief systems and you want to work together rather than work against people of alternative views, join the party. America is a big country, one with big responsibilities and an unknown Tomorrow. We all need a third party to right the ship and keep political discourse - and governmental action – varied, vibrant, and effective.                   

From the 05 November 2007 Greater Niagara Newspapers

DISASTER RELIEF IS UNFAIR
By Bob Confer, www.BobConfer.net

The recent fires in California have brought to light the problems associated with living in an area ripe for natural disaster. Millions of Americans tempt the fates by putting their property and even their lives on the line by choosing to live where they do. They possess indifference - ignorance, perhaps - to the West’s fires and earthquakes, the Mississippi Basin’s floods, the East/Gulf Coasts’ hurricanes, and the Midwest’s tornadoes. When disaster does strike, which is often, they seem shocked that Mother Nature could assault them as she has.

On the other hand, we who live elsewhere fully understand the dangers they willingly took on. That’s a big reason why we’ve selected snowdrifts over mudslides. A minor inconvenience is much more welcomed than a major disaster.

So, if we know better while they don’t, why should we be their economic salvation? In almost every measurable natural disaster we end up footing the bill for their self-inflicted misery, paying federal taxes that go towards either, one, rectifying the damaged infrastructure in these highly-populated disaster areas, or, two, investing in the rebuilding of their homes and communities at the financial level at which insurance companies were intelligent enough not to commit. 

Ignoring our sizable investment in our own insurance (therefore, further downstream: their’s), our input to federal payments alone is unfathomable. Some samples of disaster-driven aid, just from one single storm (Hurricane Katrina), are: $2.5 billion to remove debris from Louisiana and Mississippi, $10 billion to help the homeowners in those states, and, the piece de resistance, $100 billion in federal relief spending for Katrina-ravaged areas. That’s $112.5 billion for one disaster, a disaster the impact of which was magnified by people choosing to live along the hurricane-happy Gulf or below sea level in a coastal city (New Orleans).

How much do the countless, less-reported disasters that befall the United States every year cost us? It’s almost impossible to track because so many different scenarios exist or have the potential to exist. The government cannot adequately budget for Nature because she does what she wants, when she wants. Just look at Tornado Alley. It is home to 1,000 tornadoes annually. Statistics show 20 of those can be expected to be “violent” (F3 and above). That doesn’t mean those 20 will occur every year. In one year there may be one F3 storm, but in the next there may be 40. But, anyway you cut it there are still hundreds of tornadoes every year, big and small.

Now, if people - generations of them, no less – don’t learn from their mistakes and continue to live in an area where a decent statistical probability exists that their house may be leveled by a tremor or a gust of wind, why should others contribute financially because of the afflicted peoples’ lack of Darwinian survival skills? Because of their ill-advised life choices, the federal government (read “we”) in 2004, for example, had to bail out disaster victims to the tune of $2.25 billion while giving their states and local governments another $1.15 billion.

The government has essentially become another method of insurance for these individuals. It pays for losses that they would otherwise be unable to recoup. Therefore, it should make sense that their obligation to (not from) the government be treated with an insurance mindset as well. Rather than paying federal tax rates identical to those paid by individuals living in relatively safe areas (New York, Vermont, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, etc) people living in known disaster areas should pay a higher tax rate (a “higher premium” per se) in order to cover the probability of a property-damaging catastrophe. If they expect money to magically appear when needed as it does now, they should invest in that “rainy day” fund.

Residing in certain locales comes with defined economic risk, one the specific population of that area should be prepared to assume. A high-risk/high-tax approach to aid and relief is the only fair approach. The current methods reward continued bad behavior and are quite unfair. We will see that in all its harsh reality in the coming months: the taxes paid by Western New Yorkers who live in a naturally-safe environment in their $80,000 homes will pay for the rebuilding of the expensive homes of the residents of Los Angeles County, California, a place where the average home sells for $525,000 and a place in which the homeowners chose to be, even while knowing the potential for danger.