Acting to Increase Jobs in American Manufacturing

I voted to pass legislation last week that is designed to promote and increase U.S. manufacturing jobs. The “U.S. Manufacturing Enhancement Act of 2010,” H.R. 4380, is expected to support tens of thousands of American jobs, reduce the cost of doing business, promote U.S. manufacturing and production, and increase the gross domestic product (GDP) by billions of dollars. The bill passed the House with overwhelming bipartisan support by a vote of 378-43.

This bill will create good-paying jobs for hardworking American families while creating an atmosphere that will encourage economic and employment growth for a long time.  There is no question in my mind that my work in crafting and voting for common-sense, bipartisan legislation to create and sustain jobs, such as the U.S. Manufacturing Enhancement Act, is some of the most important work I do.

Fostering “Green” Jobs

Last week, I chaired a hearing in the House Small Business Subcommittee on Rural Development, Entrepreneurship and Trade dealing with new regulations proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that could stop small businesses in the recycling industry from converting coal-fired power plant waste (coal ash) into safe, ecofriendly building products.

Entrepreneurs have developed safe uses for coal ash, recycling 50 million tons in construction products like concrete, cement and gypsum wallboard.   The designation of coal combustion byproducts as hazardous waste could raise utility rates and cause layoffs in small businesses.   Innovative North Carolina entrepreneurs are working hard to help reduce pollution and replace the jobs we’ve lost to outsourcing by creating good-paying jobs here at home.   It’s important to foster green industries that put people back to work and promote a healthier environment for our children and grandchildren.

Participating in Signing Landmark Wall Street Reform Legislation into Law

As a member of the conference committee, the small bipartisan group that worked to reach a compromise on the different versions of The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act passed by the House and Senate, I had the opportunity to take part in the signing ceremony for this legislation that will usher in a new era of consumer protection for taxpayers and small businesses.

The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is a direct response to the financial meltdown we saw in 2008, and the subsequent loss of 8 million American jobs.  As he signed the bill, President Obama called its provisions “the strongest consumer financial protections in history.” I am proud to have been a part of the process that allowed those protections to become law.   This bill’s common-sense reforms will protect hard-working American families and small businesses and set the stage for their future financial success.

by Paula Canup

If you have been a faithful reader of this column, you know I have written more than once on the importance of getting facts straight, especially when information comes from the Internet. Guess I should have sent those columns to the White House and the Department of Agriculture, not to mention FOX News and the NAACP (Hey, you don’t see those two in the same boat very often!)

Unless you’ve been “off the grid” this week, you know that a viral Internet video led to the firing of Shirley Sherrod, state director of Rural Development in Georgia. The video showed only a snippet of a speech Ms. Sherrod made before a chapter of the NAACP. In that snippet, she talked about her unwillingness to help a white farmer save his farm when she was working for a nonprofit agency twenty-four years ago. This misleading piece of video was posted on BigGovernment.com by Andrew Breitbart, a Tea Party activist who was responding to charges by the NAACP that the Tea Party movement is racist. Breitbart intended to show that racism goes both ways. FOX News picked up the story, and Bill O’Reilly called for Sherrod’s firing. Within a week, Ms. Sherrod was told to pull over to the side of the road and send in a letter of resignation on her Blackberry. Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture, must have been very anxious to get rid of someone who appeared to be a political liability. The NAACP piled on, condemning Ms. Sherrod for her comments.

Ms. Sherrod did not go gently into that good night. She appeared on all the network and cable news shows, Good Morning America, The View, etc., telling her side of the story.  It turned out that, in her speech, she went on to say she realized her prejudice was wrong, that it’s not about black and white, but helping poor people. Once the full story got out, everyone, including the White House, Sec. Vilsack, the NAACP, O’Reilly, and even Obama himself, were falling all over themselves to apologize to Ms. Sherrod – with the exception of Breitbart who posted the video in the first place.  (Shame on him.) Vilsack took the bullet for the administration, accepting full blame, even though Sherrod was told twice that the White House wanted her to resign. CNN commentators gleefully pointed out that they had not covered the story because they had only partial information, but FOX had run with it.

In this day of Internet, You Tube, blogs, and twenty-four hour, highly competitive TV news, journalists scramble to get the scoop on every story. This leads to mistakes, and, unfortunately, innocent people get hurt as a result. For that reason, it is especially important that journalists take the time to check sources and get the whole story. Acting too quickly on very little information can lead to wrongheaded decisions and embarrassment. Just ask Tom Vilsack and Bill O’Reilly.

1) Pass legislation only if it can be done more efficiently by the Federal government than by state and/or local governments or individuals and is allowed by the Constitution.

2) Provide equality before the law. Rescind all laws and regulations and grants that give special favors to individuals, groups, (including political) and corporate entities.

3) Rescind bureaucratic regulations that lessen the ability of American firms to compete in the international market place. This is the way to create more productive jobs.

4) Phase out all government subsidies/tariffs over time since by definition they are supporting entities that are unable to compete with more effective and lower cost alternatives. Also such protection generally hurts the entities and individuals who buy the overpriced subsidized entities.

5) Allow Americans to choose their retirement plans, including private investing of their social security deductions.

6) Reduce medical costs by rescinding government controls and mandates over healthcare and privatizing the entire system.

7) Nominate to judicial positions only those who follow the Constitution. Cut the funding for any judicial position which has a judge who blatantly ignores the Constitution in their decisions.

Provide a strong national defense which includes and requires securing our borders.

9) Provide 6 to 12 month work permits to any illegal employees. All other illegals, unless they are family members who are supported by a working family member, must be deported. Citizenship should be give to only those persons born here of legal residents.

10) Repeal the so called “Finance Reform” bills so that private individuals and companies, not government bureaucrats, are not deciding who gets credit and who doesn’t.

11) Reduce the budgets by 25% a year of the Departments of Education, Agriculture, & Energy, so they can be eliminated within the next four years.

12) Audit and then abolish the Federal Reserve to make it difficult for the Federal government to be irresponsible in transferring citizen’s hard earned money to others who did not earn it.

13) Become energy independent by building nuclear power plants, the safest, least polluting energy technology we have. Also lift the ban on all drilling within 50 miles of our shores and in the 50 states.

14) Pass a simplified tax system like the “Fair Tax” or the “Flat Tax.”

15) Balance the Federal budget.

16) Abolish all corporate and capital gains taxes so that every business entity in the world will want to set up in the USA and hire Americans.

17) Outsource every government service possible to private individuals on a bid basis.

18) Completely privatize the Post Office and cut all subsidies so that it can go bankrupt and another entity can go in and do away with all the bureaucratic fat.

19) Allow GM and Chrysler to go bankrupt so they can restructure and eliminate the featherbedding practices and ridiculously excess pension plans which are underfunded so these companies can become profitable again and expand their work force.

20) Give the President line item veto which can be overridden by a two thirds vote of the legislature.

OK, this is my start up punch list. What is yours?

James F. Davis

7-28-10

Jim Fitzgerald

During the 2008 Presidential campaign, one fear that surfaced was whether Obama would implement restitution for racial minorities if he were elected. Part of that fear was based on restitution we provided to the Japanese-Americans interned during World War II. On the other hand, that fear was mitigated by knowing that we never provided restitution for Native-Americans that were placed on reservations located where no one else wanted to live. Our history of dealing with non-whites has not been a pretty one and flies in the face of democratic principles that we hold to so dearly, such as equality for all.

Even though one outcome of the Civil War was that no one could buy and sell another person, non-whites were still denied access to equal opportunity until the 1960’s and the Civil Rights Act. I graduated from a segregated high school in 1963 and still remember the arguments surrounding “separate but equal.” There was a glass ceiling set so low back then that in spite of legislation to the contrary, non-whites, nor women, had a ghost chance in hell of acquiring jobs or privileges available to most any hard-working white man. The conditions of the 60’s and 70’s came to be known as “white privilege.”

To break that glass ceiling, legislation created affirmative action programs that were designed to level the playing field and give non-whites an advantage in a system that had been gamed against their success. Over time, these programs were applied to all people of color. In other words, everyone but a white person was receiving favorable treatment, even legal immigrants that had never been discriminated against by our government. The previous whites-only system got turned on its head to the point that anyone but a white could receive favorable treatment.

Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) argues, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece (7/23/2010), that the time to dismantle diversity programs is here. He points out that “America still owes a debt to its black citizens, but government programs to help all ‘people of color’ are unfair.” He goes on to say, “Beyond our continuing obligation to assist those African-Americans still in need, government-directed diversity programs should end.” The Senator makes a very persuasive argument that the government should enable opportunity for all and not be in the business of picking winners. After 25 years, it is time to bring diversity programs to a close. It is time to truly level the playing field.

I think it is fair to say that the Obama administration leans heavily in this direction. In fact, they lean so heavily on the side of demonstrating fairness to all that they over-reacted to the Sherrod story. By wanting to show America that this administration does not tolerate racism, they fired a black woman on incomplete information. They have egg on their face, as does Andrew Breitbart, the conservative who selectively, and deceptively, posted a video suggesting reverse racism. Another case in point is Charlie Rangel (D-NY), who has been in Congress since the 1970’s and unless he resigns quickly, will be put on trial for significant ethical violations. Most of you know that Rangel is black. No one is defending his actions, neither the Democratic administration nor the Democratic Congress. It is the Democrats that have brought one of their own into the public spotlight during an election year for egregious misbehavior.

Remember that a black President can bring an end to diversity programs without significant rancor or charges of racism, something a white President would find very difficult. So, is Obama leaning toward restitution? The evidence would point in the opposite direction.

rmaccrea1@gmail.com

Where is the Economy Going?

We hear good and bad reports every day. It seems that nobody knows what is going to happen. Why is construction dropping even lower when mortgage rates are so low? This seems to be from high unemployment, the difficulty in getting bank financing, and the large number of foreclosures. In the USA 8% more foreclosures began the first half of this year than the same period last year. RealtyTrac’s report also stated that 1 in 78 homes received a foreclosure filing during those six months!  But there was a positive note: Foreclosures went down in June, 7% below the same month last year. But a huge number of foreclosed homes from the last several years need to be sold before we can see improvement (nationally and locally).

Our local economy has depended on people moving from Florida. But before they can build or purchase they need to sell their home. And the foreclosure problem is worse in Florida. RealtyTrac reported that 1 in 32 Florida homes received a foreclosure filing during those same six months, more than twice as bad as the rest of the country!

Can we wait for the real estate market to improve in Florida? How will we feed our families? We need to create a new market, energy efficient upgrades to existing homes and businesses. This is needed, affordable, and can be profitable.

Blue Ridge Mountain EMC announced a 6% rate hike in July. Reduce your winter heating costs by making improvements right now. Most homes waste a lot more than 6% of their energy.

If you don’t know how to identify these energy leaks, partner with a professional energy rater. For less than $1000 they can inspect and report the easiest problems to fix and which improvements would save the most. The builder can estimate the costs. The customer can spend where it will save the most energy. And the energy rater can help insure that the builder performs the work correctly.

One more detail to make this work: The community needs to know that this can reduce their cost of living. That is the purpose of this column and The Greening of Andrews Valley program. We invite you to attend a seminar: How Living Green Can Save You Money

When: July 28, 2010 (noon to 2:00pm)

Where: One Dozen Who Care (65 Wilson Street, Andrews, NC, in the plaza next to Andrews pool and recreation center on business 19)

Cost: $5

Call one Dozen Who Care to reserve your seat 828-321-2273

Please fill out the energy survey and send it to me in advance. This information will help me apply the program to the needs of those attending.

Bring your own lunch and drink.

Richard C. MacCrea is the director of The Greening of  Andrews Valley, a program of Andrews Valley Initiative. He works in the field of energy efficient, green building. rmaccrea1@gmail.com

By: E. Kirsten Peters

Columnist

“Rock Doc”

One of the better phases of childhood, it has always seemed to me, is playing with codes and secret messages. You may remember a summer’s afternoon with “invisible ink” made with lemon juice.  Perhaps your playmates devised code games for writing based on substituting numbers for letters, or you spend a day slowly beating out an important message in Morse Code for the neighborhood kids to hear.

Despite what you think, you may not have left the world of intrigue and secrecy behind. If you buy anything, via the Internet, you’re using sophisticated codes, because all the Websites are based on them.

In childhood, the simple number-for letter code worked the same basic way whether you were encoding or decoding a message. That’s a “one key” approach that’s still used- in much more sophisticated  form- in some modern cryptography. The encryption method used by governments has this kind of structure, although its codes information based on groups of letters rather than one letter at a time. In the omen method, this means that instead of 26 options to write down- the 26 letters of the alphabet – there are oodles and oodles of options (actually, a little ore than the number 1 followed by 77 zeros).

The size of that digit alone tells us we’ve entered the realm of Mathematics, with computers necessarily to do the work of calculating and keeping track of everything.

The trouble with the one-key approach is that you have to get the key to everyone who needs it without nefarious folks learning the key as it moves around. And security is likely to go downhill over time in part because multiple parties have the same key and use it on an on-going basis.

An alternative is the “public key/private key” approach in which the key to encoding a message is known to everybody, but for practical purposes an entirely different key – called the private key- is needed to decode the message.

Here’s the way mathematics professor Anna Johnston at Washington State University explained it to me. ” Public/Private key” cryptography is based on special mathematical problems. These problems are next to impossible to solve in one direction, but fairly easy in the other.  Think of the hard direction as climbing Mt. Rainer on your knees, with the easy problem more like taking a helicopter trip down from the summit.” she said.

Let’s say you are trying to communicate securely from your computer to Billy Bob’s computer  in Baltimore. Starting with a large, random prime number to build on, your computer can make a public key for your coding and a private key for your decoding. You can send your public key to Billy Bob, but he ( and any internet hackers or spies) would have to “climb Mt. Rainer” to find your private key.

Only your private key can decode Billy Bob’s messages to you. His first message to you can contain his public key, so you can code your your reply to him using his public key- but ony his private key can decode what you just sent.

Even throwing huge amounts of computing power at breaking the public key/private key system doesn’t work.

“But advances in mathematics and the computer science need to be watched, in case something comes along to make the current systems insecure.  Johnston  said.

You’ve doubless noticed that, from time to time, a bank or ven the CIA has lost private information from secure sites to hackers. That’s partly becuase the trouble with even the sophisticated public/private key is that the secuirty of the private key remains crutial.

Code breakers need only learn Billy Bob’s private key ( or yours) to snoop. A computer virus taht reports individual key strokes or otherwise reads the secret decoding key can give hackers what they want, and all secuirty is gone in an instant.

By the way, Johnston is a mom as well as a Mathematician and sometimes she teaches secret codes to kids. “They love codes until I mention the M-word”. ( meaning mathematics) she said with a laugh. But talking with Johnston, even this aging rockhead feels a bit more claer about codes.

E. Kristin Peters is a native of the rural Northwest, but was trained as geologist at Princeton and Harvard.

I hope you played with your food when you were young. Perhaps you experimented at some point with pushing a drinking straw through Jello. If you twisted the straw as you removed it, from your food, you could sometimes trap a column of gelatin in the straw. You then had the choice of either blowing the Jello at a sibling or, if your parents were at the table, gently squeezing the gelatin out of the straw onto your plate with your fingers.

Geologists take samples of ancient muck and mire in a way similar to kids playing with Jello. We bang pipes down into the soft earth lake beds or peat bogs, pull them up and push out narrow columns of muss inside. The muck is composed of many, many layers going back in time. We Geologists call this activity “coring” and although it’s physically tough work, it’s no more complex than jamming straws into Jello.

The reason Geologists make cores of mud is that low spots on the Earth can record the climate of Earth’s past. Evidence geologist get from coring lake beds and peat bogs has taught us just how frequently both regional and global climate changes.

A Scandinavian geologist got the coring and climate story started. His name was Lennart von Post, he lived and worked around 1900, and he was the first geologist to carefully investigate what cores of muck could reveal about past climates.

Of all the places where geologists can core the Earth, our favorite spot is the peat bogs. That’s because peat is the first step in the long geologist process of producing coal, and geologists are inordinately fond of all fossil fuels. So it was quite natural than von Post started coring the ancient remains of plants and mud layers that make up the peat of southern Sweden.

Little fragments of twigs and leaves can identify the species of plants that produced such material, you have your first clue about past climate in a region. Von Post went to work identifying  such bits of old plants, but he also had the wit to look at the ancient mire through the microscope. What he discovered  was that he could identify ancient pollen in the layers of pat he was cataloguing.

Pollen  is surprisingly sturdy stuff. It will remain intact for literally thousands of years, lying in a layer of muck, waiting for a geologist to come along, core it, and identify the plant that it produced.  If you have allergies, you know pollen is blown around on the slightest breeze. That’s the basic fact that makes pollen much better than twigs or leaves for telling us past climate. Pollen reflects all the plants in the whole region. If you know the identity of the whole range of plants in a region, you know pretty well what the climate must have been like, both interns of temperature and precipitation. (Thinking of gardening sonnies) And once you’ve described the pollen from a core, you can make a carbon-14 date of a twig and assign a specific age to the climate you’re been able to deduce. Ancient pollen makes it crystal clear that climate varies again and again over whole regions on Earth. Just for example, in northern Europe where von Post first worked, there have been ten major climate intervals in the past 15,000 thousand  years. Each of these shifts was substantial.

The warmest era- when oak forests covered the lowland of Swede – was what we geologists call “the Optimum”, the balmy times of about 6,00o to 8,000 years ago. That era was much warmer than today.

Some of the great shifts in climate were global in scope, some were only regional. And just to give us all night mares, some of the biggest shifts in temperature occurred in huts 20 years or so, -well within a single human lifetime . Studying past climates demands strength in the field, patience in the lab, – strong eyes in the for the microscope work-  and plenty of courage too. The simple but brtal fact is that major and minor climate change is woven into the fabric of Earth itself.

Dr. E. Kirsten Peters is a native of the rural Northwest, but was trained as a geologist at Princeton and Harvard. Questions about science or energy for future Rock Docs can be sent to epeters@wsu.edu. This column is a service of the College of Sciences at Washington State University.

by Paula Canup

On February 19, 2009, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act – a.k.a. the Stimulus Bill. Eighteen months later, many people, including myself, are asking, “Did it work?”

It certainly doesn’t feel like it. Unemployment remains at nearly 10%, the highest since 1983. The housing market took another hit as soon as the 8000k tax rebate expired. Many economists are predicting a double-dip recession, and a few even use the “D” word. President Obama made the mistake of predicting that unemployment would not rise above 8% if the stimulus bill passed. So it’s fair to say the plan failed to meet expectations.

But that’s just one way to look at it. It’s just as important to consider what would have happened if the stimulus had not passed. Many, perhaps most, economists believe the bill saved us from going over the cliff. If they are correct, then the stimulus succeeded in doing what it was intended to do. Obama’s problem is the impossibility of proving the negative – what didn’t happen. We can’t rewind history and try it without the stimulus.

The reality is, we will never know how well this plan succeeded. Economists still argue over whether Roosevelt’s New Deal worked to bring us out of  the Depression – decades later. The 2009 stimulus did save the jobs of many teachers and other state employees, at least temporarily. It also created new jobs, but how many? The estimates are all over the place, so it’s fair to say we don’t really know that either. Independent firms such as Moody’s have concluded that between 1.6 and 1.8 million jobs were either saved or created. The White House just released an estimate of 2.5 to 3.6 million jobs.

After much research, I’ve concluded that the stimulus did work to some degree, at least in the short run. But how effectively and efficiently did it address our economic problems, and how much effect will it have long-term? The idea of Congress doing anything efficiently is, perhaps, laughable. The sheer size of the bill, at 1,073 pages, suggests that a great deal of pork was included. It also means that almost none of the people who voted for it actually read it. They didn’t have time to read it even if they were inclined to do so. Since much deal-making went into getting it passed, it is likely that politics, not effectiveness, decided where much of the money would be spent.

Boosting the economy immediately may have been necessary. It may be that a bad stimulus bill was better than no stimulus at all. If it helped grow our economy, it could even lower future deficits by bringing in more tax revenue, but who knows if it will be enough to offset its cost. The looming entitlement problem is still there and will have to be addressed. So will that thirteen trillion dollar national debt.

Jim Fitzgerald

When Social Security (SS) was signed into law in 1935, the poverty rate among seniors exceeded 50%. As far as I know, there were no private retirement programs at that time. Unless a senior was wealthy, they either had to work until they died or depend upon family to care for them. I will not go into the discrimination (against women, minorities, and certain types of employment) that was later legislated out of the original bill but, in general, for the first time this country took a stand that protected many, but not all, of the elderly from abject poverty. Today, it is estimated that all that stands between poverty and 40% of the elderly is Social Security.

As first established, the payroll tax to fund the system flowed into the general revenue fund for the federal government. However, in 1939, Congress created the Social Security Trust Fund to manage surplus funds and this Trust had the power to invest the surplus in marketable and non-marketable securities. In other words, like a private retirement account, the growth of surplus funds was intended to handle future retirements. In 2007, according to one source, there was a cumulative surplus of $2.2 trillion dollars in taxes and interest after benefits were paid.

Unfortunately, the Trust loans any excess money to the federal government in the form of bonds, giving Congress a ready source of funds. Of course these bonds have to be repaid, with interest, by more taxes later. The system is in trouble because the government borrowed the surplus, spent it, and now does not have the resources to repay the Trust. The way it looks, Bush was correct in referring to these bonds as “just IOUs that I saw firsthand.”

In 2000, during the Presidential campaign, Al Gore talked about placing Social Security funds into a “lock box.” Everybody laughed at him and thought the idea of a “lock box” was silly. Essentially, what Gore proposed was to stop lending surplus funds to the government. He wanted SS and Medicare placed off-limits to politicians. If this had happened, and that is a very big IF, projections were that SS would be self-sustaining, essentially forever.

The current debate would lead one to think that SS is a flawed system. Not so. It is the huge debt owed the Trust by the government that is the problem. The flaw is that both parties raped the system by “borrowing” the surplus with no plan to repay it and now we have to deal with the consequences.

Unless the current commission working on the problem demands that any and all surplus funds be placed off limits to politicians, there will be no effective solution. Keep the surplus money in a “lock box” where it belongs. And demand that the government make yearly contributions until the bonds have been repaid. There is no need to increase the retirement age or raise payroll taxes or reduce benefits. Stop lending the excess to fund other programs.

Understanding the effects of government policies on the economic well-being of the majority should be the major focus in picking our elected leaders.  Andrew D. White, a history professor, ambassador and first president of Cornell University wrote one of the first detailed analyses of government monetary policy cause and effect.

He collected and analyzed the treasury papers of the French revolutionary government of 1789 to 1799.  This resulted in a book, Fiat Money Inflation in France-How it Came, What it Bought, and How it Ended.”

When they seized power in 1789, they confiscated approximately one third of the country’s land from the owners without compensation.  They took the choicest properties, namely all church assets and the most productive aristocratic farms and enterprises.

They created a paper currency and sold the confiscated assets to raise more money.  Understanding the ultimate results can help us predict the probable long-term effects of similar policies being followed today.

Printing money enabled the leadership to allocate resources to what THEY believed was in the best interests of its citizens rather than letting them decide for themselves.  At first it appeared to bring prosperity, but ultimately it brought disaster.

When the government increased the amount of money in circulation without a corresponding increase in assets (wealth) being created, the money lost value.  This hurt the poor the most since they were salaried and wages never went up as fast as inflation, even though wage and price controls were established and laws were passed requiring the indexing of wages to inflation.

Despite severe penalties of fines, imprisonment, and even death sentences, the government could not stop the currency’s loss of value. People of substantial means generally have had the ability to put more of their wealth into objects of permanent value and are less affected by inflation.

As the economy nosedived, tax increases were implemented to soak the rich.  It made things worse for employees because it took an even bigger portion of their salary as inflation grew.  With fewer buyers, manufactures also had to cut back production and lay off more workers.

The people who benefited the most were those who were politically connected.  But perhaps the most significant effect of the government’s policy was a wholesale demoralization of society.

Inflation encouraged people not to save because the currency lost its value.  Consequently there was even less money for investment to create jobs.

Values, essential to any civilization in maintaining and improving the human condition, broke down.  Morality, integrity, humanity, self-denial, hard work, and thrift were undermined.

Rampant government spending transformed prosperity into famine. Brutality, cruelty and chaos became commonplace in what historians now call France’s Reign of Terror.”

The result of France’s economic collapse was a dictator, Napoleon.  Largely ignored by historians, he did straighten out the financial mess.  At his first cabinet meeting Napoleon responded to his finance ministers request to print more money with,”I will pay cash or I will pay nothing.”

By the time Napoleon met his Waterloo and was thrown from power, France, despite the heavy expenses of war, did not suffer severe economic problems because the government had virtually no debt.  The natural laws of cause and effect revealed by this and other history are the best way of avoiding the repetition of past mistakes.  Why is it that our government leaders continue to institute policies that have cause so much suffering in the past?

James F. Davis 7-21-10