My wife is smarter than I am. I’m more sentimental, although she’s half Scottish, so she may just be faking that.

When we shop, I buy American. She buys Japanese, German, Italian, Swiss, English — whatever she thinks is best in the long run.

Three years ago when we moved to the ‘burbs, for example, she bought a Honda Odyssey; I went Ford Focus hatchback. (Sexy vehicles, I know.)

When the Honda seized up on the road a couple of months back — the Ford has run flawlessly — I was secretly happy, even after a bill arrived for $1,300. Finally I was right — or lucky. I had been batting zero; this brought me to around 1-9. I couldn’t eat lunch for a month, but it was worth it for the smile.

Like I said, my wife is smarter than I am. She’s also a better researcher. Whenever we need to buy a durable good, she buries herself deep in the internet, emerging days or even weeks later with a pearl of a pick. I go on a website or two, filtering out everything but American products. That’s my starting point.

The one thing I have over my wife is that I’m more stubborn than she is. I’m 95% Irish. Evidently she finds that endearing, because she let’s me make my mistakes and then patiently waits for me to be proved wrong. It’s patronizing, but a small price to pay for getting, say, a brand new GE 8,000 BTU air conditioner. “You see, you see!”, I say excitedly as we’re unpacking it.

After one season that died. It had a five-year warranty, with tiny fine print. Guess who didn’t read it.

Then there was the American refrigerator, washing machine, dryer, and brand new dishwasher (also GE) that came with the house – it still had the plastic on it.

After three years, they’re all gone. The refrigerator and dryer died; the washing machine didn’t wash.  I actually felt sorry for the dishwasher, in an ugly-duckling-that-never-turns-into-a-swan kind of way. It never knew what it was. It clearly wasn’t a dish washer.

My house today is filled with machines with names I can’t pronounce. My soon-to-be-88-year-old father still has German shrapnel in his leg, so it grates at my innards to even try.  But their performance is as smooth as their names are guttural. That tough, baked on grease like in the TV commercials? Phu!

They cost more than the American brands, but my wife calls them “investments”, assuring me they will save money in the long run. I’m beginning to see her point.

I’m sitting a train while writing this with a man who just spent $100,000 – at least his insurance company did  — tearing up his entire kitchen floor and replacing it after a new, top-of-the-line American refrigerator sprung a leak.

“It was a 50-cent hose connector,” he explained. “Everything in this unit was state-of-the-art; then they cheaped out with a 50-cent hose connector.”

That’s a really interesting point, and, I think, GM and Ford are now onto it and doing well as a result. It doesn’t pay to cheap out on 50-cent hose connectors or cheap plastic cup holders. Scrimping and cutting corners can badly erode consumer confidence. Quality has to come before price sometimes.

American companies will never be able to compete on price with the Chinese, South Koreans, Vietnamese, or India Indians (If we ever can, we’ll be in big trouble.) But we can build better quality products than they do and re-build loyal customer bases in the process.  It would be a life-line for American buyers, like me, who have to face down spouses time and again with a plug in one hand and an I-don’t-know-where-this-came-from in the other.

My wife just told me that my Ford Focus was built it Mexico.

La, la, la, la. I can’t hear you…

Fast Tube by Casper

A Republican state senator heading to work today in Madison, WI. Meanwhile, the 14 Democratic state senators continue to subvert democracy by hiding out in neighboring Illinois to prevent quorum  — and a vote — in the Wisconsin senate.

Remember, federal employees have none of the “rights” over which Wisconsin public employees are demonstrating. President Carter disallowed collective bargaining among public employees with the Civil Service Reform Act. FDR opposed the practice, too.

It’s time that President Obama and the Democratic Party called back their dogs in Madison.  Someone is going to get hurt, and that’s not going to help anyone.

Fast Tube by Casper

I think even President Bush would have to laugh at this one.

“I realized that somebody had to be [the last survivor], and it was me.” — Frank Buckles 2008

The last surviving American veteran of World War One is gone. Frank Buckles of Morgantown, WV died this week at age 110.  Mr. Buckles, who outlived nearly five million Americans doughboys with whom he served , talked his way into the U.S. Army in 1917, at the age of 16.

There are just two First World War veterans alive now – one in England, the other in Australia.  Both fought for the so-called Triple Entente.  Both are 110.

I remember the World War I veterans marching up Fifth Avenue when I was a kid in New York City in the 1960’s.  There were lots of them, and, in retrospect, they weren’t that old at the time – mostly in their sixties and seventies.  It occurs to me only now that the really old marchers probably were veterans of the Spanish-American War.  How quickly history fades.

To the day he died, Frank Buckles advocated for a World War One monument on the Washington Mall.  It’s a crime there’s not one. Sixteen million people died in that war, including 117,000 Americans.  Another 21 million were wounded.

World War One is now practically forgotten.  Just two left. All nearly quiet on the Western Front.

Ye sleepers, who will sing you?
We can but give our tears
—
Ye dead men, who shall bring
you
Fame in the coming
years?
Brave souls . . . but who
remembers
The flame that fired your
embers? . . .
Deep, deep the sleep that holds
you
Who one time had no
peers…

–Robert Ernest Vernède, 1875-1917

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported today that government is inefficient, thereby ensuring its own budget line.

It found tens of billions of dollars in overlapping services – 82 federal programs to increase teacher efficacy, 80 programs to spur economic development, 15 agencies overseeing food safety, and 20 running homeless services.  The list goes on. In all, the nonpartisan GAO found between $100 and $200 billion in duplicative spending.

All these programs, I’m sure, are well meaning.  But do we need every one of them? Probably not.  Do we need any of them?  Probably.

In a recent email exchange with a close and lifelong (so far) friend on the political Left, I offered that liberals see the world for how it could be, and conservatives see the world for how it is.  I think that’s a fair assessment, and he graciously agreed.

In this GAO story, we see those two viewpoints in action: Government stepping in to make the world a better place – who doesn’t  want safe food and better teachers? – and then doing it poorly.

Conservatives will argue that the results of those efforts, as outlined by today’s GAO report, are predictable, indeed, they are inherent in government enterprise. Liberals will argue that only government has the resources to undertake these worthy and altruistic efforts; what is needed is greater efficiency of effort, not abandonment.

Collectivism is at the core of this seemingly endless argument.  Does it work?  Or, more importantly, to what degree does it fail? I think it fails to a prohibitive degree in most cases. My good friend thinks it succeeds to a degree sufficient for further nurturing.

Can a perfect balance of government ever be found?  Thus far it has not been.  It has proven as elusive as the personal diet.

This argument started long before my friend and I were born, and I don’t think either of us will settle it in our lifetimes. But if we’re lucky enough to live another 30 or 40 years, and if the republic still stands, we at least will have something to talk about.

The debate over TSA screenings has officially become ridiculous — and dangerous for Americans and the TSA screeners we love to hate. An ill-considered bill just sponsored in the New Hampshire House would make it a Tier III sex offense for a TSA agent to touch or view a person’s goods without probable cause.  The penalty for a Tier III sex offense includes publicly registering as a sex offender for life.

No one likes these security screenings — and there is plenty of room for debate over how far is too far — but threatening TSA agents with life-long sex offender status is tantamount to shutting down the U.S. airport security system. I wouldn’t get within 10 feet of anyone’s anything if I were a TSA agent with this law on the books.

If a TSA agent gets too touchy feely, fire him.  If it’s egregious, press charges.  Sue the TSA if you want. But this bill is excessive and counterproductive.  Its sponsors need to get real.

The 14 Wisconsin Senate Democrats playing hooky in Illinois will cost Badger State taxpayers an extra $165 million if they don’t return to work by tomorrow to approve a measure to refinance the state’s debt, according to this Reuters story.   Governor Walker warns that their failure to vote on the measure will mean more job layoffs going forward.

By my math that means the 14 Democrats are costing taxpayers $11.8 million a piece by failing to show up for work tomorrow alone.  That’s a lot of damage for a hard day’s work a day off work. I wonder if they’ll be accepting their paychecks.

Nasser, Gamal Abdel (1918-70), Egyptian soldier and statesmen.  A leader of the coup that deposed King Farouk in 1952, he became prime minister of Egypt (1956-70).

With emotions high on the night before the coup of 1952, one of Nasser’s associates was close to tears.  “Tonight there is no room for sentiment,” said Nasser firmly. “We must be ready for the unexpected.” Some minutes later, when the man had regained his composure, he asked Nasser,”Why did you address me in English?”  Nasser laughed. “Because Arabic,” he replied, “is hardly a  suitable language in which to express the need for calm.”

Courtesy of The Little Brown Book of Anecdotes, Clifton Fadiman, Editor. (A highly recommended buy.)

Seventy thousand public employee union members and Democratic Party operatives reportedly turned out to protest planned public union reforms at the Wisconsin state capitol on Sunday.  Professional “sympathizers” picketed in New York and Washington.  Public union and Democratic Party PR machines went into overdrive, hyping the picketers with news releases, Tweets, Facebook entries, blog posts, You Tube videos, and photo sharing.

The public’s reaction: Zzzzz.  Aren’t the Oscar’s on tonight?

Left wing demonstrations are played. They are becoming snooze-fests at any size. Public employee unions have always been able to turn out bodies.  It’s what they do.  It no longer matters in what numbers they turn out; the routine is mind-numbingly predictable: Here come the tee shirts with the slogans emblazoned across them.  There go the handmade signs. Now the whistles, the drums, and the chants: “[Fill in the blank], shame, shame, shame!”  Sometimes they blow up a giant inflatable rat or cockroach. And then they go home to supper.

We have all seen it too many times now to care — or even notice — when professionally led demonstrators hit the streets. Whether it’s MoveOn.org, SEIU or the AFT,’ it’s all the same tactics and all the same message: “The Man sucks. Gimme, gimme, gimme.”

It occurs to me that the demonstrators have reached the point of diminishing returns. There is nothing more they can do than demonstrate, and no one really cares when they do.  They are not going to pick up arms and storm the Winter Palace. The Democratic Party would never allow it. And the unions already donate tens, indeed, hundreds of millions of dollars every election cycle to defeat Republicans at the polls.  What is their leverage with popularly-elected GOP governors? This time we’re really coming after you?

But the biggest problems the public employees have in their current fight is not public fatigue over conveyor belt protests, it’s that they are in the wrong, and the public is now paying attention.  We are on to the cozy and quiet deals union leaders have forged with the Democratic Party in statehouses across the country over the years.  We know about them because they are bankrupting our states and driving us out of our homes with property tax increases.

Katherine Kersten of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune crushes it today with this piece.

Some of what she writes:

“…why did public unions catch on, then grow exponentially in the 1960s?

“Because union leaders and Democratic politicians, like New York City’s Mayor Robert Wagner, figured out they could benefit big-time from scratching one another’s backs.

“They could guarantee full campaign coffers for Democratic candidates while arming public employees with a power to dictate their own wages and benefits that private-sector unionists could only dream about.

“Here’s the vicious cycle: Union leaders take money from union dues and pass it to Democratic candidates. Once elected, the politicians “negotiate” with the unions that helped elect them.

In essence, the unions hire their own bosses who face them across the bargaining table.”

That is the fundamental truth of this debate, and a million picketers in Madison, WI isn’t going to change it.

The public employee unions are going to lose this fight.

The New York Post today reports that 1,500 city teachers are paid to work on union business while on the job, forcing the city to hire additional teachers to take their place in the classroom.  On top of that, these loyal  “union reps” are given a healthy stipend from the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), in some cases exceeding $50,000.  A Manhattan English teacher identified in the story pulls down more than $150,000 a year — $100,000-plus from taxpayers and $50,000-plus from the taxpayer-funded union. Nice haul for a 9-5 job.

This union-payoff scheme – yes, it’s in their contract – costs city taxpayers an extra $9 million per year, the Post reports, enough to hire 198 new teachers.  It is the latest in a seemingly endless series of revelations about union sweetheart deals around the country, like the one in Buffalo, NY that guarantees free annual cosmetic surgery to teachers.  (That cost Buffalo taxpayers an extra $9 million in 2009.)

You can’t blame the teachers.  And you can’t blame their union representatives for advocating for all this ridiculous largesse.  It’s what they are paid to do.  It’s the elected officials owned by the unions who are at fault – including the 14 Wisconsin senators  hiding out in Illinois.

But we can fix the system that perpetuates the problem with the right political will, indeed, we must if we want to prevent states from going bankrupt.  That is what Governor Scott Walker is trying to do in prohibiting collective bargaining on benefits in the Badger State – just as President Carter banned it for federal employees in 1978 with his Civil Service Reform Act.  Bargain all you want on salaries – those are predictable and transparent costs – but not on the sweetheart deals.  All this wink-wink union love is killing us.