Eating Your Seed Corn

Governor Corbett’s state budget proposal speaks volumes about his priorities.  Oil and gas drillers will get a better deal than they get in any other state with significant Marcellus resources, since the proposed impact fee is much lower than the extraction taxes imposed by other states.  To pay for this largesse, he makes dramatic cuts to higher education.  This means our children will have to incur even larger student loan debts to pay for the education so vital to ensuring their future as well as that of our economy.

Our farmers have an expression for the strategy of sacrificing investments that will pay off in the future for the sake of short term gain.  It’s called “Eating your seed corn".  That sums up perfectly what is going on here.  Critically important investments in our future workers and leaders have been sacrificed.  Well established industries that made enormous campaign contributions are receiving huge breaks.  How do you think that’s going to work out over the long term?

Back To "Mission Accomplished?

This is a response to a Letter To The Editor that recently appeared in the Harrisburg Patriot-News.  Follow THIS LINK to see the original letter.

Mr. Ken Chrosniak wrote in a recent letter to the editor that he is insulted by Vice Pres. Joe Biden’s comment that the Taliban per se is not our enemy.  While I make no judgment on Mr. Chrosniak personally, I find his comments incredibly naïve.  They exemplify the hyper-political climate we are in these days.

Here is what I believe Mr. Biden meant by his remark.  The Taliban did not attack America.  Al qaeda did.  The reason we went to war against the Taliban was that they refused our demand to turn over the perpetrators of 9-11.  Mr. Biden was not saying that he embraces the narrow-minded hyper-religious views of the Taliban.  He was simply saying that we should not choose to go to war with every organization with whose policies and actions we do not fully agree.  Especially in these days of budget deficits, we can’t afford this, if indeed we ever could.

We had a President who seemed to embody Mr. Chrosniak’s world view, George W. Bush.  After 9-11, he declined to focus our energies on the group directly responsible for 9-11, al qaeda.  Instead, he first attacked Saddam Hussein based on trumped up charges that he had WMDs, would soon have nukes, and possibly had something to do with 9-11.  His partner in crime, Dick Cheney, suppressed those within the CIA who questioned the truth of these allegations.  This led us into a decade of trillions of misspent dollars, thousands of lost lives and much lost prestige on the world stage.

I prefer an Administration that carefully investigates allegations before proceeding with force, and keeps its commitments such as systematically eliminating Osama bin Laden and the other leaders of al qaeda.  Apparently Mr. Chrosniak would like to go back to the bad old days of “Mission Accomplished”.  He and I disagree about that.