Dear Congressman,                                                                                         Saturday, November 07, 2009

I would like you to know my positions of the various issues facing our country at this time:

A.       Healthcare-not at this time of duress on the economy; and certainly not without careful consideration for such massive changes over such a large area of our lives. And I still see missing tort reform, which is where it should start from. Where is the ‘fix’ for Medicare and Medicaid? Why is competitive bidding prevented by Congress? Why do you insist in addressing the demand side of equation side without working to expand supply of services in an efficient manner? Setting up easily accessible clinics manned by nurse practitioners’ would be a first step. Funding scholarships for nurses capable of enhanced education, to increase the supply of providers.

My background in is cost accounting. Even for the so-called emergency room visits of extreme cost, there is something wrong with either the way Hospitals setup for this service for lesser medical challenges, or the cost structures are distorted. For instance, the true marginal cost of seeing a patient with a cold takes only one room for a short time and one practitioner to diagnose and prescribe a cure. So it is either that the hospitals do not setup a different track for these patients or else their accounting techniques lead to distortion as the true marginal cost should be minimum and not assigned arbitrarily the full overhead burden of the hospital.   If I am correct, then there are understatements in cost of other services the hospitals perform. My instincts as a cost accountant, is that the accounting is very flawed. 

   The answers to the specified issues above are that Congress is placing special interests above the good of the people.   Also in its mad haste, Congress is not defining the real issues involved so will make huge and terrible mistakes.

B.       Cap and trade-I believe this area has not an acceptable model of the climate yet to take such drastic measures as to take down on purpose, our economy further and again, in the middle of a depression. I understand the sciences now indicate not a Global Warming but instead a Global Cooling.   Is that not proof enough that Congress has no justification of making such massive and ill-considered changes in the structure of our economy at such a dangerous time in our economy?

And again Congress seems to take on the demand side and not the supply side of solutions which appear to be so intuitive. For instance, where is the fast track approval system for nuclear energy production? Where is the increased funding for research into clean coal burning technology or sequestration? Where has allowing the harvesting of federal timber been cleared rather than letting it build and build until it is finally so overgrown that it enables wildfires to take place?

Again in this area, I see Congress as listening to special interests rather than doing well thought-out work to address the needs of the people.

C.      America has a problem in the economy.   This is an emergency now and nothing should be done by Congress other than to work in this area with intelligence and far-sightedness, other than to provide for the common defenses.

Here the issues are multifaceted;

At issue here are; credit availability, government crowding out the demands of the private sectors for available credit due to massive deficit funding needs,   the failure of the Stimulus program to be immediate and well-thought out in terms of targets for stimulating our economy. Is it really a stimulus to target unemployment insurance or is that a reactive solution? Is it really stimulus to fund the Detroit public schools for I believe it was $570 million even though they had a $60 million probable fraud unaccounted for, plus a complete failure in doing its function which was I thought to educate and not fund teachers and administrators? Education is important so why didn’t this money go for a more proven model of an effective school system? However, I do think this is not fairly called an economic stimulus measure. Its aim is far more long-sighted and again, I think it demonstrates Congress is reactive to special interests and not sufficiency contemplative of its real mission which was to stimulate the economy.

The issues on Main Street are the tightening of credit by banks at the worse time in our economy thus shrinking demand, the unknowns facing small business owners of these large and secretive programs Congress is acting on such as Heath care, Cap and Trade, increased taxes, unmanageable federal deficits and the issues that presents in terms of possible devaluation of the dollar and foreign trade, continued government programs that do not encourage ‘made in America’, a seemingly unending supply of remaking America overnight proposals instead of first, insuring America goes to work, an administration that instead of eliminating special interests merely concentrates on becoming closer to the most parasitic of those special interests such as unions, trial lawyers, teachers, to name a few, and simply on and on. 

We small business people do not see the bottom yet and instead more changes which are part of the equations we use to determine what we should do individually in terms of our business; all very much under laying a Congress and President who address other issues rather than the one that effects us most which is the economy. As the saying goes: “It’s the economy stupid”.

One additional comment please. President Obama is in a perfect position to address for the good of society the broken family structure of America which seems to lay at the core of education failure, decreasing morality, the dignity of jobs rather than subsistence levels of living off the public dole, etc. And in no segment of society is that worse than in the black communities. This was CHANGE we all wanted and needed. 

James C. Featherston

8-11-08

RE: Energy Crises

What a fantastic opportunity to solve three problems we have which are:

The energy crises.

The transfer of American’s wealth to other and mostly unfriendly nations.

By retaining the profits from mineral exploitation on Federal lands, we could pay significant funds against the National Debt, particularily the Social Security Trust Fund liability.

Adding well-paid jobs in America.

I have never been an advocate of Federal management of any endeavor, but contracting out the discovery, drilling, and completion of oil and gas deposits on Federal Lands to experts without political overhead being added, and then operating the fields with a competitive bidding process we could capture the tremendous profits resulting for the Federal Deficit.

It hinges on some simple concepts:

The deposits are in Federal lands. Therefore, they belong to the American people.

The marginal cost of producing one more barrel of oil from a producing field on land is appx. $1.50, while off shore it cannot be that much greater.

The significant cost is in exploration and development of a new field.

Current technology has taken much of the guesswork out of the decision to drill on a prospect.

No longer is the price of oil a ‘free-market’ price.

 

What I propose then, is that legislation be introduced to enable the Federal Government to locate and develop these prospects rather than the old method of leasing them out to some Company.

This way, the Federal Government could capture all the profits on these deposits and I further propose that the profits be used to fund alternative energy research and to fully fund the Social Security Trust Fund. I would hope that agreement could be reached to prevent using these profits to increase Federal expenditures until such time as the National Debt is eliminated.

A critical path some mention is the currently unavailable off-shore drilling rigs. If Congress would refer to Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, Congress could determine that the first punishment of the illegal cartel of OPEC would be to cancel all their contracts with American off-shore drillers and bring them back home.

If and while I have your attention, I wanted to offer an insight I have to the future…the population of the World is beginning to tax the available resources of Earth. One can see the trend-taking place among markets, that capitalist allocations of resources are losing ground to Nationalism.

Yes, oil is the current dilemma and actually could have been prevented in Congress had been more far-sighted than they were. But still the day would have come.

Next will be food and water. Furthermore, we are approaching or already in the days when allocation by price alone is not a just allocation method. Somebody above my pay grade should begin to work on this coming situation.

What is interesting to note is how lucky America is. We really do have an abundance of fossil fuels, plenty of great agricultural land and plenty of water (somebody did decide to take a lot of agricultural land out of production for some reason and we need to start thinking of how best to get it back into production). While remembering the lessons of The White Men’s Burden experienced in India by England, I don’t think we would be good Christians if we allow other people’s to starve when we insisted in returning available land to a natural state of chaos based on somebody’s near-sighted conjecture of what is the best course of action.

IT IS BECOMING VERY OBVIOUS THAT THE REAL MOTIVES OF NANCY PELOSI AND HARRY REID AND COMPANY ARE TO TANK THIS ECONOMY FULLY TO CAUSE US TO VOTE IN OBAMA.

WE ARE NEARLY A YEAR NOW INTO THE MORTGAGE CRISIS, NOW SPREAD TO THE FOLLOWING AREAS:
A.  CREDIT CRISIS
B.  HOUSING CRISIS
C.  STOCK MARKET TRAIN-WRECK
D.  OIL AND ENERGY CRISIS
E.  CONSUMER DISPOSABLE INCOME CRISIS
F.  LOOMING SMALL BUSINESS OWNER CRISIS

YET TOTAL CONGRESSIONAL INACTION AND IN FACT, A RECESS WHEN THE REPUBLICAN'S PROPOSED ACTION AND NO RECESS. 

ARE WE THAT STUPID THAT THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH MAKING US ALL SUFFER FOR THEIR POLITICAL GAIN?

AND WHAT DOES THIS SAY ABOUT OBAMA'S DEBTS THAT WILL DEFEAT THE PROMISE TO CHANGE THINGS?

Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution gives the Congress the power of: Defining and Punishing Piracies and Felonies committed on the high seas, and OFFENSES AGAINST THE LAW OF NATIONS.

Yet the Congress has yet to act (since at least 1974) against the Oil Cartel (OPEC) as an illegal restraint of trade.

There are those that process a belief in free trade.  But in the case of China, which managed their currency to be undervalued against the US Dollar by about 40%, isn't that also an artificial restraint of free trade by definition?  Who did it damage?  American workers as they lost jobs to the Chinese and Chinese workers who were paid in an undervalued currency.

I would call that an offense against the law of nations in that the currency was 'managed' and there never was any 'free trade' by definition.

Who was hurt by this failure of Congress to act?  By now, nearly all American Companies have built new modern factories in China and trained their workers in best practices while America's resources have become aged and discouraged.

On the other hand, who benefited?  Obviously Chinese infrastructure, obviously by the Middle East, obviously by politicians in America who cling to their jobs for perhaps not-so-obvious reasons. 

We, the people have become complacent.  Every two years there is an election in the fall and we now accept the fact that Congress will steer clear for that year of doing the people's business so they can get re-elected. 

So, in conclusion, have the people become complacent or has Congress become complacent?

My vote is 12 years maximum term limits so Congress has less desire to make it a career and instead represent us for a change, and with no pension.

My final comment here is we will not probably get a vote on these issues and since our Constitution was written in the days of horse-back riding and originally required Congress to meet in Early December to avoid the flooded rivers, the only revision I know of is that Congress can meet later now due to our bridges, air travel, internet, telephone, etc.  Time for a change? 

Let the people vote as it is their government of laws and taxes.