Author: Randall Reeder

Starting a new year, California and New York are leading the country in peculiar decisions. California voted to give a laying hen almost twice as much floor space as she has been accustomed to. So egg producers were kinda forced to get rid of half their Leghorns (probably sold ‘em to Col. Sanders) and now there is a severe shortage of eggs.

See, the voters were fooled into thinking that if you give an old hen twice as much space she’ll lay twice as many eggs. So why don’t they just buy eggs from another state? Well, the California legislators took it upon themselves to pass a law that farmers in the other 49 states had to get rid of half their hens, too. That is, if they wanted to sell eggs in California.

Now, whether Californians will ever vote to eliminate half the hogs, I got my doubts. They might give up some eggs, but not bacon.

California also banned plastic bags from grocery stores. The store can give you a choice of empty cardboard boxes, which works fine if you have a cart full of groceries. (Sam’s Club has been doing this for years.) Of course, if all you wanted was a dozen eggs, and now you can only get half a dozen, just put ‘em in your purse.

In New York the governor banned hydraulic fracturing for gas and oil wells. I wonder if he also banned gas and oil (and gasoline) from fracked wells in other states from crossing New York borders.

President Obama started this whole idea a few years ago when he decided to eliminate electricity generated from coal. He knew the price would jump, but I read today that as those power plants shut down in a couple of years we are likely to have blackouts.

Who knew that 2015 is an election year? Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie, Joe Biden and a dozen others are already gearing up for a run with a finish line 22 months away.  Ohio is in the thick of this super marathon. Republicans have announced they will hold their convention in Cleveland. And there’s a 50-50 chance Democrats will meet in Columbus.

Back in the 1920s and 30s Will Rogers proclaimed proudly that he had helped keep the Presidential Conventions out of his state of Oklahoma. So I feel like I have let down my fellow Ohioans.  The only previous convention in Ohio, or at least the most recent, was the Republican convention in 1924. Will was there, and I’ll tell you more about it later.

President Obama is ending 2014 on a high note. The Dow at 18,000 and gas prices around two dollars a gallon made December a nice turnaround from a disastrous November. Remember the election?

The year was filled with plenty of problems: the JV team better known as ISIS, the Ebola outbreak in Africa, the Putin “outbreak” in Ukraine, the VA and IRS scandals, Secret Service issues, and rising suspicion of local police by African-Americans.                                                                                                                                                One unfortunate continuing issue is that our foreign policy is viewed as a disaster by our friends. Yes, they probably relied on us too much in the past, happy to let us defend the free world. But after six years of withdrawing our strong influence, both big and small troublemakers seized on cracks in our armor to attack and taunt.

Is the Great Recession over? The economy is closing the year with good news. The latest quarterly report shows a 5% increase in GDP, employment is up and shoppers spent more for Christmas. There is concern however that middle and lower income folks have not benefited much from the recovery. If gasoline stays low for a few months like it did six years ago, and the Federal Reserve keeps interest rates near zero and minimizes inflation, even these folks may have a few extra bucks in their pocket.

I think the average person has a better understanding of economics than our President. Did you hear him comparing the economics of constructing the Keystone XL pipeline to roads and bridges?  First, he declared there is no potential benefit to this country of building the pipeline (with private dollars) because it will simply make a Canadian oil company wealthy with no effect on oil supply or gasoline prices.  Instead, he touted the potential economic benefits of pouring more taxpayer dollars into roads and bridges.  Even an old cowboy knows the difference between something paid for with private dollars and something financed with tax dollars, especially dollars borrowed from China.

President Obama does seem concerned about the cost of keeping our Gitmo prison open for Islamic terrorists. He says it is costing a million dollars per prisoner a year so he wants to turn ‘em loose. Actually he wants to return them to their home Islamic country, but that’s the same as turning ‘em loose. For one of those terrorists that we let out a few years ago, we have offered $5 million to get him back. Where’s the economics in that? Do you suppose we ever spent a million a year on a prisoner at Alcatraz or Sing Sing? To save money we need to operate that prison like a Gitmotel-6 instead of a Ritz-Carleton with gourmet meals, plush rugs and a manicured soccer field.

Historic quote by Will Rogers:
“It hasn’t been a bad old year, as years have been going lately. In fact in years to come, when all these professors switch from economists to historians, they are liable to label [this year] as the historical year, the year of the big switch from worse to better.” DT #2312, Dec. 31, 1933

Al Sharpton and the mayor of New York got themselves in a heap of trouble. They have been encouraging protests against the police and a few protesters attacked police and others marched down the middle of the street in Brooklyn, chanting, “What do we want? Dead cops! When do you want it? Now!”

Well, two of the mayor’s New York policemen were executed today in Brooklyn.

Rev. Sharpton would be better off if he found a church where he could preach a Christmas sermon, and remember that, to Christ, all lives matter.

President Obama announced that he has negotiated a deal with Cuba: we will end sanctions, and in return Cuba will end… nothing. The Castro brothers admit nothing, give up nothing, and of the millions of dollars Cuba will end up receiving, none will be shared with the people of Cuba.

President Obama said he would “like to go to Cuba.” However, the First Lady and his daughters yelled, “NO! We’re going to Hawaii for Christmas, not Havana.”

Most young folks know little about Cuba except it has been Communist under Fidel Castro since the 1950s. Here are a few comments by Will Rogers, who had earlier visited Havana during a Pan American Conference in January 1928. President Coolidge gave a speech there.

      “In 1898 we tried to fix it so Cuba would have liberty and all the accompanying benefits. Now [1933] Cuba is having one of the best civil wars that’s been produced in years.” DT #2188, Aug. 8, 1933

“There is no doubt that Cuba is run cockeyed, but what country ain’t? Now, we get our sugar from Cuba, and anything we do in Cuba is going to be misunderstood.” DT #2189, Aug. 9, 1933

     “Did you see in the paper where Cuba is laible to have another change of government?… It’s their country. It’s their sugar. Take the sugar out of Cuba and we would no more be interested in their troubles than we would a revolution (in Africa).” DT #2218, Sept. 12, 1933 [Today, Will would add cigars.]

Merry Christmas to all. Anyone in Hawaii for the holidays is gonna be a whole lot merrier than anyone in Cuba.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers: (on Christmas)

“I am too busy replacing presents to write today. I bought some mechanical and electric things for the kids and wore ‘em out playing with ‘em myself.” DT #120, Dec. 23, 1926

“Merry Christmas, my constant readers, both of you. No scandal today. There is some, but it will be more scandalous by tomorrow.  Men, act surprised as if you didn’t know the tie was coming.” DT #121, Dec. 24, 1926

Our Lame-Duck Congress passed a bill. It’s a huge bill, 1600 pages, that spends $1.1 Trillion. Nobody has read it, and nobody seems to like it except President Obama and Speaker Boehner. Nancy Pelosi doesn’t like it. Senators Ted Cruz and Elizabeth Warren don’t like it. If that sounds like an odd mixture, you’re right.

You may remember last month I told you what a Lame-Duck was:  “It’s like where some fellows worked for you and their work wasn’t satisfactory and you let ‘em out, but after you fired ‘em you let ‘em stay long enough so they could burn your house down.”  Well, this Lame-Duck lit a fire to one end of the house while building an addition on the other end. And they’re sending us the bill for the arsonist, firefighters, lumber and carpenters.

Is $1.1 Trillion the total budget for a year? No way! The government will spend close to $4 Trillion. So where are the arguments over the other $3 Trillion? Well, that’s our so-called entitlements and other commitments made by previous Congresses, some of them Lame-Ducks too. That $3 Trillion is the big chunk of the budget we ought to be debating. Interest payments are getting out of control and the only way to reduce those payments is to eliminate deficits. Social Security and Medicare need attention, and nobody knows what a hole Obamacare might plunge us into.

       Time magazine selected their Person of the Year: The Ebola Fighters. Good choice.

I have another good choice that I doubt Time even considered. I’ll call this the “Will Rogers Person of the Year.”

Who could it be? My “person” is the men (and women) who have developed horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing.** Now, my Oklahoma prejudice may be showing, but think about the impact the expanding American oil and gas industry is having on our economy. I read that the drop in gasoline prices (not to mention natural gas prices) is equal to another Quantitative Easing. That means it is worth about $80 Billion a month. And this economic boost is with real dollars, not “printing press dollars” from the Federal Reserve.

**Note: The “person” mainly credited with this development is George P. Mitchell (1919-2013), a Texas oilman. His father was an immigrant from Greece, who changed his last name from Paraskevopoulos to Mitchell. George P. Mitchell graduated first in his class at Texas A&M in Petroleum Engineering. He eventually founded an oil drilling company which is now part of Devon Energy.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers:

       “The budget is a mythical beanbag. Congress votes mythical beans into it and then tries to reach in and pull real beans out.” DT #2047, Feb. 24, 1933

       “We never will get anywhere with our finances till we pass a law saying that every time we appropriate something we got to pass another bill along with it stating where the money is coming from.” DT #1733, Feb. 12, 1932

Did you know there was a race to 18? The stock market is approaching 18,000 for the Dow Jones. But our national debt got to 18 first; it hit $18,000,000,000,000 last week. Whether President Obama will claim credit for either one I’ve got my doubts.

China replaced us as the world’s largest economy, proving you can’t grow your economy by borrowing money. If borrowed money counted, our $18 Trillion would put us so far ahead China would have to round up fifty other countries to top us.

Our economy may be nothing to brag about, but it’s better than most. Yes, it sounds like a contradiction, but nobody except Germany and the US has climbed back up to levels before the Great Recession. Another 300,000 workers found jobs last month and the unemployment rate stayed below 6%. Still, if you ask ‘em, the majority of Americans think the recession is not over.

One thing that is helping out is oil prices. Gasoline around here is about $2.50 and headed down. That can leave a few more dollars for presents under the Christmas tree.

Jonathan Gruber, the Obamacare economist who became famous for calling American voters “stupid” will testify to Congress this week.  The Supreme Court may be listening in because those nine justices are taking a second look at the health care law. If five of them decide Gruber was calling them stupid, they may shut down at least part of Obamacare.

Seventy-three years ago Japan attacked us at Pearl Harbor. The next day President Roosevelt and Congress declared war on Japan and Germany and Italy. Even though the country was totally unprepared in 1941 to wage war, it took us and our friends less than four years to defeat them. In 2001 we were attacked by Islamic terrorists, and thirteen years and two Presidents later we seem to be nowhere close to defeating them.

What’s the difference between then and now? Well, back then winning that war was not only “Job One”, it was our only job. Nothing else mattered. Today, we’ve got a hundred different “jobs” and “killing Islamic terrorists” may rank no higher than fifty. It has to share time and resources with global warming, fighting Ebola, flying to Mars, common core math, retraining police not to shoot, and saving snails, minnows, turtles, hoot owls, and prairie chickens.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers:

(The League of Nations appointed a delegation) “to go to Manchuria and see how much country Japan had captured. Well, Japan asked ‘em not to come till they had captured enough to make the trip worthwhile. If Japan keeps expanding, the delegation will meet the Japanese army at about Reno or Salt Lake.” DT #1728, Feb. 7, 1932

“China has had a war. It was the usual modern war. Nobody knows who won.” Saturday Evening Post, May 12, 1928

Are China and Iran thankful?

Iran and China are in a race to see who can make the best deal with us. You can talk all you want about a Black Friday sale where you get a wide-screen TV for a dollar, but China signed a deal where we will cut carbon emissions by 25 percent by 2025. And what will they give in return? Nothing until 2030. And until 2030 they are free to keep increasing their carbon output to cancel our cuts.

If you want a hint on what it costs to greatly reduce pollution, look at what they did in Beijing when president Obama and other world leaders were there for a conference. China wanted those leaders, and all the TV cameras, to see sunshine and clear skies instead of thick smog. So here is how they did it: they shut down half of their manufacturing plants and told car owners to keep ‘em parked every other day. Of course, nothing that drastic will be needed to meet our part of the agreement, but still…  Well, there is one good angle from this China agreement; we can sell more coal to China to generate their electricity to offset the loss of coal burned here.

Iran was looking over our shoulder on the China confab and figuring out what kind of a deal they can get on their nuclear bomb. They don’t have a bomb yet, but it’s kinda like a new Ford with the spark plugs missing. They promise to keep the spark plugs on a shelf if we remove all economic sanctions. Israel says we should take away their spark plugs and all four tires, then destroy the Ford.

You’ve probably heard of “Net Neutrality.”  I ain’t sure myself what it is, but it has something to do with the internet and how it’s paid for. I think the debate is whether a person who spends all day watching movies sent live over the internet should pay more than someone who only uses it to check email twice a day. I don’t know the answer, but it will give you something besides football to argue about when the family gets together for Thanksgiving.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers:

       “Thanksgiving Day. In the days of our founders they were willing to give thanks for mighty little, for mighty little was all they expected. But now neither government or nature can give enough but what we think it’s too little. Those old boys in the fall of the year, if they could gather in a few pumpkins, potatoes and some corn for the winter, they was in a thanking mood. But if we can’t gather in a new Buick, a new radio, a tuxedo and some government relief, why we feel like the world is agin us.”  DT #2594, Nov. 28, 1934

       “Didn’t we pass an immigration law to keep people out of our country? Well that was all right. It was a good law. It’s our country and we got a right to say who shall come in.” WA #223, March 20, 1927

You know Lincoln’s famous quote, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”  Well, it took 150 years and an economist from MIT to prove him wrong.

Professor John Gruber was hired by President Obama to write the Affordable Care Act in a convoluted way that would fool the Congressional Budget Office, newspaper reporters, and enough Senators to get it passed. Even then they had to persuade a Senator from Nebraska with the “Cornhusker Kickback” and Sen. Landrieu with the “Louisiana Purchase.”  Only when the law reached the Supreme Court did John Roberts see through the gobble-de-gook and say, “Boys, it’s a tax, not a mandate,” and that’s all that made it legal.

This great school in Massachusetts, MIT, is known for producing engineers, not economists. An engineer knows that if he lies, a bridge might collapse, an engine can fail, or an airplane fall out of the sky. He would be fired, and maybe hung. But an economist… when he lies he gets praised for putting something over on the people because it will be good for ‘em in the long run.

You may remember that last Friday I was in Washington. I was invited to speak at a Leadership Breakfast in nearby Rockville, Maryland on “Common Horse Sense Leadership.” Of course I had to depend on my friends for the best tips on being a leader, friends like Henry Ford, Amelia Earhart, Gen. Billy Mitchell, President Roosevelt and a few others. I told ‘em I was proud to be invited because no place today needs lessons in leadership more than Washington.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren gave her assessment of the economy, “Wall Street is doing very well, CEOs are bringing in millions more, and families all across this country are struggling.” She’s right. The Great Recession that started in 2008 is over according to most economists, but if you’re stuck without a job or working part time, it’s not over. Maybe this lame-duck Congress can make some progress on jobs, like approving the Keystone Pipeline that’s been held up for six years.

On November 11, I spoke at a retirement center in Columbus. I told them that since I just turned 135 it was a pleasure to address an audience of the same age range. We had several veterans and the rest of us showed our appreciation. I started at 10 o’clock and they seemed pleased, being Armistice Day, that my one-hour talk would end at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers:

            “Everybody is knocking this lame-duck Congress, but do you know those fellows have a chance to make a real name for themselves and make us ashamed that we fired ‘em? They know exactly how the people voted… So when any questions come up all they have to do is read the election returns. Course, if they want to still be on the minority side of all these things we will know exactly why they was defeated.” DT #1976, Dec. 4, 1932
“An awful lot of people are confused as to just what is meant by a ‘lame-duck Congress.’ It’s like where some fellows worked for you and their work wasn’t satisfactory and you let ‘em out, but after you fired ‘em you let ‘em stay long enough so they could burn your house down.” DT #1980, Dec. 8, 1932

The election results can be summed up pretty well by something I said many years ago: “I’m not a member of any organized political party…. I’m a Democrat.”

About the only Democrat who does not recognize a shellacking is President Obama. He says he has the support of the two-thirds of the population who were too lazy to go to the polls and vote, so he’s gonna look out for their interests.

On Friday the President invited Boehner and McConnell and other leaders in Congress to the White House for lunch. Served them sea bass and a 6-pack of Honey Ale. That might get a Harvard professor in an agreeable mood, but for these Republicans from the Heartland, rib eye steak and Budweiser would go down smoother.  Speaker Boehner seemed to want to work on getting more jobs created to improve the economy while the President appears most interested in having another ten million Mexicans arrive to fill those jobs.

I was in Washington Friday, and would have enjoyed an invitation to sit in on that high level discussion. Instead, I spent the lunch hour on Capitol Hill, kinda at the invitation of Congressman Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma. I had met him last Saturday at Claremore, and he told me to stop in his office and sit a spell. Since he would not be there himself, I could even use his office. He didn’t really say that last part, but I did get to sit in his chair for a few minutes.

I toured the Capitol and got to see “my” statue which kinda guards the door to the House of Representatives. Television news folks are usually in the wide hallway beside the statue, but they must have all been over at the White House. I also got into the Supreme Court chamber.  The nine Justices were not there so it was peaceful and quiet, no arguing.

Also went to the World War II Memorial for a while. I had a special reason to be there at the time. The entire National Mall was being prepared for a huge crowd on Veterans Day, Nov. 11. That day is set aside to honor those men and women who fought and served our country so we can live in freedom and have the right to vote. Or for two-thirds, not vote.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers:

“If your side lost, don’t take it too much to heart.  Remember there is always this difference between us and Italy. In Italy Mussolini runs the country. But here the country runs the President.”  DT #1954, Nov. 8, 1932

“Their greatest trait to recommend the Democrats is optimism and humor. You’ve got to be an optimist to be a Democrat, and you’ve got to be a humorist to stay one.” Radio, June 24, 1934

“The trouble with the Democrats up to now has been that they have been giving the people ‘what they thought the people out to have’ instead of what the people wanted.” Saturday Evening Post, March 30, 1929

Last week the President was seething. Well, this week the rest of us are seething because we learned how the government wasted $25,000,000,000.

Senator Tom Coburn published his annual “Wastebook” of federal expenditures that could probably be saved without risking our national security. Here are a few examples.

The Pentagon gave someone a Billion dollars to destroy 16 Billion dollars’ worth of ammunition. Why? Don’t we have plenty of soldiers who would enjoy “destroying” it? Deer hunters would gladly accept a few rounds and destroy ‘em for nothing. And squirrel hunters and groundhog hunters and rabbit hunters, too. Speaking of rabbits, we spent thousands hiring some Swedish gals to give massages to rabbits. I guess that’s so they’ll be more relaxed when somebody is shooting at them.

The National Institute of Health spent $370,000 to find out if mothers love dogs as much as they do their kids. Is that an insult to mothers? Or maybe their kids? If you want to learn something worthwhile, find out if men love their wives as much as football.

The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture gave $50,000 to an alpaca rancher to package and sell the manure in something called Poop Paks.  And a company called Worm Power received $200,000 to buy compost. Put those together and we can save $250,000. Turn the worms loose in the alpaca pasture; they’ll thrive in that high class manure. After every rain you can go out and pick up a thousand dollars’ worth of worms.

We’re spending $200,000 to send text messages to drunks, reminding them to drink responsibly. If a guy is half-drunk driving home from a bar, do you really want him to answer a text message?

These government agencies claim any wasteful spending is only a tiny percentage of the total. To them it may be small potatoes, but for us taxpayers it adds up to $25 Billion.

On Ebola, we got some good news with the two nurses cleared. But a doctor in New York City brought it back with him from Africa. The governors of New York and New Jersey and a couple other states announced none of these folks arriving from West Africa will be allowed to land there unless they are quarantined for 3 weeks. I think other governors should follow; make ‘em all land in DC and quarantine them in isolation at the White House. With golf and fund raising dinners, the President is never home anyway. Let these Ebola patients walk around on the White House lawn patrolling the fence. They would be scarier to intruders than guard dogs.

Next weekend I’ll be in Oklahoma celebrating birthday # 135 for Will Rogers. His birthday is Election Day, Nov. 4. Who knows, maybe I’ll run into Senator Coburn.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers:

“I love a dog; he does nothing for political reasons.” DT #2288, Dec. 3, 1933

“Politics is the best show in America. I love animals and I love politicians, and I like to watch both of ’em at play, either back home in their native state, or after they’ve been captured and sent to a zoo, or to Washington.”

The New York Times reported that the President’s staff told them he is really upset about the poor response to Ebola. In fact he’s seething, absolutely seething, at the incompetence of the CDC. How mad was he? He was so mad that ten minutes after yelling at his staff he went out and drove a golf ball 450 yards. Alas, it went far left.

We may be overreacting to the Ebola crisis. Yes, you can get it from direct contact with “bodily fluids” of a person with Ebola symptoms. But the family that spent days with the man who died apparently has been cleared. None of them got sick.

But why are we allowing a thousand people a week to fly here from the three countries in West Africa with Ebola? A temporary travel ban will have no effect on how quickly those countries get the crisis under control. We’ll still send in medical experts and millions of dollars to help out. A million dollars spent there on Ebola will be way more effective than spending it here. There are thousands of people in those countries who have survived Ebola. And they can freely work with patients because, like chickenpox, once you get it you are immune from getting it again.

I have heard experts saying that our hospitals and treatment centers are way better equipped to treat patients than those in Africa. So what?  One man lied to get into the U.S. with Ebola, two of his nurses get infected, and that one incident has cost us Millions! One of those nurses was foolishly allowed to fly home to Cleveland to help pick out dresses for a wedding. As a result of that trip, two Frontier Airlines planes were removed from service and cleaned. Airline passengers and 150 people the nurse was with in Ohio are being tracked. Add in all the others connected with the hospital in Dallas and the CDC is tracking almost as many people as the NSA.

Does the CDC and the Obama Administration think that if we “accept” a few more Ebola patients that it will reduce the thousands of Africans who die from it?

The price of gasoline dropped below $3.00. That’s good news to most of us, but it might be an indicator of bad news to follow. Europe is slowly slipping into a recession and that could end up hurting our economy. Enjoy it while it lasts; you can drive to Grandma’s house for the holidays and spend the money you save on more presents.