Jerry Naughton

Today’s SJ-R article about whether the government will give Memorial Medical Center permission to spend its own money to expand the hospital cited an interesting statistic.  Although government staff recommended allowing MMC to spend its own money, it did caution that some of the construction would cost $429 per square foot, which “ ‘appears high’ when compared with the board’s current standard of $400 per square foot.”  That’s 7.25% over their standard.

Contrast this concern over organizations spending their own money with last week’s story, where the government spent other people’s money.  Grab your calculator if you’d like to follow along.

Various and sundry state and local agencies and other interested parties proudly announced the opening of the Hope Springs Apartments for the benefit of people dealing with mental illness.  There are 23 one-bedroom apartments at 550 square feet each; 13 efficiency apartments with 330 square feet; and a 2,275 square-foot “resource center.”  If your calculator is working, you should come up with a total of 19,215 square feet.

A bit of time spent researching on the interweb finds per square foot estimates for apartment construction ranging from $100 to about $135 per square foot in this area.

How did our public servants do with our money?  They spent $5.4 million dollars — or $281 per square foot.  Well over twice a high estimate, for the purpose of providing what they term, without any apparent sense of irony, “affordable housing.”  To which one can only ask – for whom??

With the election behind us, attention shifts to the next distraction.  That’s the simultaneous expiration of tax cuts and support programs, coupled with automatic, across-the-board spending cuts staged by our feckless national leaders; collectively known as the “Fiscal Cliff.”

Our best hope is that the Washington establishment, the vested interests, the elected aristocracy, et al., just this once will set aside partisan differences, join hands, and for the sake of the country — JUMP!

Of course, a real cliff would be preferable.

Yes, higher tax rates on people earning over $250,000 a year (aka, “millionaires”) would impede business and job creation, but at least decisions can be made.  Uncertainty – including ad nauseum interim extensions – causes paralysis.

On the flip side, there will be higher tax rates on everyone else, coupled with millions immediately losing unemployment benefits, the 2% payroll tax increase, and the slashing of child and earned income tax credits.  This would shift millions back into the “tax payer” category, if only nominally, alleviating the current “free rider” syndrome in the electorate.

And, as frightening as some find sequestration’s military cuts, perhaps we should contemplate whether we really need six- or seven hundred military installations in a gross of countries.  Meanwhile automatic cuts in discretionary non-military spending could prompt the same kind of “is this a critical mission?” analysis.  Is that so bad, if you’re not a military contractor or a welfare bureaucrat?

Sadly, given the current owners of our government, the pols are also more likely to jump off a real cliff than do something right.

Here we are.

Our embassies are under siege in Muslim-dominated countries around the world.

We are burying a top Mideast diplomat and three others murdered in a planned terrorist attack.  Meanwhile, our Egyptian embassy issued an abject apology for someone exercising their first amendment rights.  Or, as they called it, “abusing free speech.”

Now the administration is spending tax dollars airing commercials where Obama and Hillary Clinton continue to legitimize the pretense that this  uprising is based on “hurt feelings” while begging for peace.  Somehow, our Constitutional Scholar-in-Chief neglected to mention our freedom of speech.

So instead of a principled statement explaining the power of one of this country’s pillars of exceptionalism, he reinforced an image of weakness.  The escalating unrest is unsurprising to anyone outside Obama’s echo chamber.  Maybe next Obama and Hillary could don a couple of burkas and throw rocks at a U.S. embassy.  That should help.

Or, here’s an alternative suggestion.

For all of the people chanting and protesting and burning effigies and flags outside our embassies, we should applaud them for exercising their rights to express their grievances.  Take them some water to drink, put out some falafels, maybe erect some tents to give them shade.

For anyone who breaches our walls, sets foot on our embassy grounds with malice, or touches our flag, we should calmly but firmly convey to them that such conduct does not constitute civilized interaction — via a belt-fed, recoil-operated, air-cooled, crew-operated .50 caliber machine gun on full auto.

Sometimes, it’s not what you say.  It’s how you say it.

An 8/27/12 SJ-R letter to the editor proposes Springfield has been remiss in publicizing its “clean energy” accomplishments.  Specifically cited was the benefit of caving in to the Sierra Club’s extortion, with its resultant contracts for wind power running through the latter part of this decade.

While it’s true Springfield’s government and CWLP aren’t exactly shouting the results of this decision from the rooftops, CWLP does in fact mention it on their website, thusly:

“Of the 628,359 MWH purchased by CWLP in 2011, 359,825 MWH was in the form of wind energy … CWLP paid $17,440,716 … for the wind energy and sold it for $5,409,741 … for a net cost to the utility of $12,030,975″

So, we’re losing $12 million a year now and into the foreseeable future, due to our elected officials’ forward-thinking decision to pay someone else over twice CWLP’s production cost for unreliable additional units of its core service, of which it produces a surplus, then turn around and sell them for a third of what they just paid.

Coincidentally, that’s about the shortage in CWLP funds that led to it being declared in technical default on its loans.  Alternatively, if we could apply those funds to the city’s massive pension funding deficit instead of subsidizing an economic and environmental boondoggle, we’d be caught up about the same time those wind power contracts expire.

So this and other examples of how our city runs could indeed be used to attract new businesses and young professionals.  To Bloomington.

Ever heard of the “Misery Index?”

It’s a metric first proposed in the 1960′s by economist Arthur Okun that combines the unemployment rate with the inflation rate, both of which are indeed miserable things.  Especially if they’re happening to you.  Especially at the same time.

In the Keynesian-based economics of our government experts, by the way, that can’t happen.  Inflation, according to simple government economic theory, is from too many people having jobs, so they’re making too much money, which causes prices to rise when they all try to buy the same stuff at the same time.  Unemployment, on the other hand, reduces that pressure on prices.  So it’s not possible to have them both rising at once.

Jimmy Carter proved them wrong, ending with a 1980 economy sporting 7.6% unemployment and a 14.38% inflation rate for an all-time record 21.98% Misery Index leading into the election.

Fortunately for economists, their theories are evaluated on political expediency, not results.

Fortunately for Obama, in the 1990′s, government economists began “adjusting” the definitions of unemployment and inflation.  Not surprisingly, these adjustments tend towards understatement.  For example, people who have given up looking for work or whose benefits expired are no longer included in the unemployment number; and if steak prices go up 30% in a year, they assume that you’ll buy hamburger — hence, no inflation.  As a result, the currently reported Misery Index is at an uncomfortable but not outrageous 9.9%.

However, if you were to measure unemployment and inflation the way they were originally defined, which exercise is still performed at the website shadowstats.com, you find a current inflation rate of around 9% and a real unemployment rate of 22%.  That makes Obama the indisputable,  but unofficial,  steward of the worst economy ever with a breathtaking 31%.

Now that’s misery.

Just when Democrats are on the verge of proving that they’re the most economically illiterate creatures to walk the earth, the Republicans get all jealous and start yelling and jumping up and down until everyone who’s paying attention recognizes that it’s always and evermore a dead tie.

Here’s a little something House Minority Leader Cross and others upset with the idea that schools pay for their staffs’ pensions may want to try getting their heads around:

Having to pay for goods and services you asked for and received isn’t “cost shifting.”  It’s just “cost.”

Taxing satellite TV providers in order to give money to education is cost shifting.  Taxing smokers to give money to Medicaid is cost shifting.  Taxing strip clubs to give money to women’s shelters is cost shifting.  Taxing offshore oil rigs to give money to education is cost shifting.

See a trend here?  You’re funding a benefit (“cost”) for one group of people by taking money from a completely unrelated group of people (“shift”) who won’t receive a benefit.  This shouldn’t be hard to grasp as it currently comprises 98% of all government activity.

Say for some reason and in spite of all evidence, you believed someone when they promised they would pick up the tab for half of something you where considering buying.  So you signed up for a whole lot of extra bells and whistles that you otherwise couldn’t afford and wouldn’t have ordered.

Time passes, and as actuarial reality sets in, you are presented with the bill for all of those goods and services you’ve received.  It may be accurate to yell “fraud!,” or maybe “Ponzi!” (or what I yell — “told you so!”) but it is most definitely not cost shifting.

So please watch your words.  There may be children reading.