Net neutrality

Maybe you’re a bit confused about this.

The term sounds like something good – I mean, “neutrality” is usually a good thing, right?  If you subscribe to Netflix or another streaming service, they want you to write your legislators in support of net neutrality.  And if you’re someone who has built an extensive music and movie library from “free” stuff you downloaded online, you’re all in favor of it. 

Or maybe, like a lot of folks, you just can’t see how net neutrality makes a damn bit of difference to you.  You can’t understand what all the fuss is about.   

That’s what proponents of net neutrality are counting on. 

Net neutrality is actually a very big deal. For the record, I am opposed to it. 

Net neutrality is not about “fairness,” as many proponents claims. It’s about taking advantage of what other companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast have built – and yes, they did build it, with billions of their shareholders’ dollars – and preventing them from controlling what they built.

It will convert what are now shareholder-owned assets into public property and effectively hand those over to government regulators and politicians to manage.  If there’s a more egregious recent example of “unlawful taking” by the government I can’t think of one off hand. 

What are we talking about here?

Proponents and critics both throw around that it’s about “the Internet.”  It is, and it isn’t – it’s actually about Internet access speeds to customers of one of the Internet access providers. Think Time-Warner, Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and the other firms that you use to connect to web sites like Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, or NaughtyNurses.com.

What these access providers give you is space on their pipeline to send and receive data at a certain speed. Granted, these pipelines are now huge, but only after the providers invested billions in new technology and in running fiber and cable from their operations to your address. It costs them billions more each year to continually upgrade capacity, also known as bandwidth.    

Yet prices for bandwidth – on a Mbps (megabits per second) basis – continue to fall.  My business is paying less today for 100-times the bandwidth we had only a few years ago, for example.  Bandwidth is an amazing bargain for consumer and business end users. 

But as bandwidth has gotten cheaper, web marketers and services – legitimate and nefarious – have jumped in to suck up the bandwidth.

The idea of downloading a two-hour movie in the 4 GB range would have been unthinkable a few years back; it would have taken hours or even days. However, that’s what Netflix users do all the time.  Several music services offer real-time streaming over the Internet.  Some music and movie pirate sites allow their audiences to steal copyrighted materials in unlimited quantities. 

Make no mistake, demand for bandwidth is expanding exponentially. Those offering or pulling /stealing massive files every minute of every day are spiking this demand. The main reason is that it doesn’t cost them anything extra. A weasel in his mom’s basement can pull HD movies off porn sites around the clock; if he has a grandfathered unlimited data plan he can suck all the bandwidth he wants—which is why many providers don’t offer those anymore. The same goes for the porn sites he’s patronizing; bandwidth is dirt cheap.   

Many access providers want to be able to charge a premium to sites, like Netflix, whose main business is delivering huge files to subscribers, to ensure that a site’s subscribers get faster download speeds. The providers also want greater latitude to throttle down access speeds to those who suck a lot of bandwidth, like our proverbial weasel in his mom’s basement. 

Honestly, I don’t blame them.

They built it. They own it. They have plenty of competition to keep them honest.  And they have the right to reap the rewards from their investment. You may bitch about your monthly bill, but what they built is certainly better than listening to the modem mating call and watching our computer screens paint one character at a time.   

Proponents of net neutrality are a mixed bag of commercial entities that want to preserve their free ride, looney leftists, anti-capitalists, moochers and politicians (admittedly redundant). 

I understand why companies like Netflix and others like them want to keep things as they are. The overwhelming majority of their business is online.  The Apple iTunes store is the same.  Online music and video download services have practically zero distribution expense.  Their support for net neutrality is based on economic self-interest. 

Publicly though, the net neutrality pitch appears more altruistic:  FCC regulators and politicians need to step in to save the “free” Internet and prevent providers from creating a two-tiered system. If they don’t, the Internet will no longer be “free” and available to everyone equally.    

In this case, appearances are very deceiving. 

There’s nothing altruistic about net neutrality.  It’s a power grab, plain and simple, by politicians and regulators who want to turn all the providers into public utilities. Why? Because once something is a public utility, politicians and regulators have total control. They can dictate what services have to be provided to whom and for how much. They can require that certain classes of customers get free or reduced-cost services. They can also decide what’s allowed and what isn’t. 

Wonder why your utility bills are so high? Go ahead, pull one out and take a look – it makes no difference whether it’s your electric bill, your phone bill, or water bill. Look at the cost-recovery charges to offset the free or dirt-cheap services regulators make your utility provide to low-income consumers.  See the additional charges and special taxes to offset other giveaways. 

This is what happens when politicians and regulators control a “utility.”  It’s no longer about providing reliable service at a fair price to everyone; it’s about using the utility as another social welfare program for purely political purposes. One-time luxuries like air conditioning, cable TV, and cell phones with data packages become subsidized entitlements paid for by others. 

The FCC and politicians already control the public airwaves, which gives them incredible power over broadcast TV as to what’s allowed, what appears, who can be owners, and how much free time must be given to “community” programming.  By extension, they also have control over the wireless spectrum, which allows them to control cell service providers. 

But controlling the Internet is the ultimate wet dream for politicians and regulators. 

They can choose winners and losers. They can require that selected classes get free broadband hookups, setups, and service. They can raise rates on others to pay for that. They can diddle with the economics to force providers they don’t like out of business, and to subsidize providers they favor. I can envision a special tax treatment for a provider that invests in wind turbines, powers their offices with solar, or makes their service techs drive hybrids, for example. 

But there are other, scarier possibilities.   

They can then control which sites are allowed and which are blocked. They can snoop on the public to their hearts’ delight and monitor everybody’s online activities. In case you weren’t aware, access providers already keep track of every site and web page you visit, when, and how long you stay there, plus your private e-mail, online chat room discussions, and more.  Now imagine sharing all that with your government. 

Creepy, huh?  Kind of like China …

Look, net neutrality is a Trojan Horse.  It’s not about keeping the Internet “free.”  It’s about the exact opposite – putting the Internet under the control of politicians, politically appointed regulators, and faceless bureaucratic hacks. 

I’d rather rely on the motives of a handful of access providers – who can be held accountable – than on the motives of politicians and regulators who can’t. 

Don’t fall for it. 

Dining with Democrats

We had dinner this past weekend with a couple we haven’t been out with in some time.  He’s retired; she’s a bit younger and still working. 

All went well until the conversation veered toward politics.  Not my doing, BTW. 

It happened because we started talking about how amateurish the local news is here in the early morning.  I said the local ABC, NBC and CBS affiliates lost me long ago.  I liked the goofiness of Fox 29 in the morning; the two morning hosts always appear to be  seriously stoned. And Steve Keely, to me, always seems like a caveman they shaved.   

The guy’s wife said she doesn’t see much morning news – cable or otherwise.  She said he’s always glued to Morning Joe on MSNBC when she’s getting ready for work. At night he has Rachel Maddow on – another MSNBC personality, who his wife thinks is just too extreme. 

Between us, I’m sure MSNBC would appreciate his loyalty.  In most ratings day parts MSNBC is in a death match with CNN for distant second or third.  On most days Morning Joe gets about a quarter of the viewers of Fox & Friends in the same time slot.      

That aside, I told them my pattern for national and world news is to check out FoxNews.com, then CNN.com, then NBCNews.com to get a balanced view of what’s really happening.  Somewhere in between all those, I said, is probably what’s true.  I lamented that so many of the cable and broadcast media outlets (not calling out any of them by name) now report what their audiences want to hear, instead of what’s true.  

I thought that was pretty neutral. Apparently not.   

That got him going on Fox and how unfair they were to Obama.  And it went downhill.  

He thinks MSNBC is unbiased. Then again, that’s all he watches. Their reality is his.  If you were fed a nonstop diet of Morning Joe, Rachel Maddow, and the like, and never looked at anything else, you would believe what he now believes. I find the same myopia from those who only read the NYT and consider it the most balanced of all the newspapers.

So, based on the self-limited info he’s selected, he believed Obama’s primary problem was that he was a really smart guy, perhaps too idealistic when he took office. Obama’s biggest mistake was that he approached Congress with an open mind and open heart and expected that if he was willing to meet them halfway, they’d reciprocate, he said. 

As far as passing ObamaCare without a single Republican vote, changing Senate rules to bulldoze Republican opposition to Obama appointees, and all of the Executive Actions to bypass Congress, in his mind Obama and the Democrats had no other choice. There was no alternative to get important things done for the country. Obama and the Democrats did what they had to do. 

The recent mid-term elections didn’t matter, he added.  In fact, Republicans gaining control of both House and Senate just made it easier for the Democrats to win those back the next time because Republicans wouldn’t do anything between now and 2016.  

More importantly, that would also cement Hillary’s inevitability as the next President. 

Huh? 

To him, Hillary was the best qualified candidate – one of her key qualifications being that she had lived in the White House with Bill. She had also been a Senator and Secretary of State. So she knew already better than any governor or Senator how government should operate. 

Hillary would sweep the primaries.  Democrats would unite behind her. There would be nobody of substance to run against her from the Republicans.  She would win in a landslide.

But what about her baggage and her age, I asked.  What about the “What difference does it make now?” moment?  What about the fact that a lot of liberals don’t think she is liberal enough?  What about a challenge from Elizabeth Warren?  Or maybe Bernie Sanders? 

More importantly, I asked, if she is so invincible, then how did Obama beat her?

He said Obama won because he was a fresh face.  (I didn’t push back on that but I did think to myself, well, she wasn’t a fresh enough face back then and now she’s six years older.  And those years have not been kind to her. Sorry, but that’s true.)

Anyway, he was so convinced that Hillary would be the next President he was willing to bet on it. So I said how about $100?  He said okay. We shook on it. We'll see who is right.  

I don’t think Hillary makes it through the Democrat primaries, much less wins the Presidency. Obama isn’t going to support her or let her use his OFA organization. Elizabeth Warren – a fresher and younger face and darling of the “true” liberals and class warriors – will attack Hillary as part of the old establishment.  Hillary will come off as old news compared to Warren. 

After Hillary loses a primary of two, my guess is she drops out claiming health issues.  

I could be wrong.  But I don’t think so. 

One thing’s for sure:  My friend is the true face of the Democrat party and typical MSNBC Kool-Aid drinker.  Ill-informed, smugly confident and immune to what’s happening in the world beyond their like-minded friends, and what MSNBC says. Like the NYT critic years ago who couldn’t believe Nixon won because no one she knew voted for him, they only talk to each other.   

Bless his heart, as we would say in the South, but he has lost touch with reality. To think that the mid-term losses were not important is wishful thinking; to think Democrats' resounding defeat somehow guarantees them retaking the Senate and House is pure fantasy.  But that’s what the liberal talking heads on MSNBC are preaching. Tune in sometime and see for yourself.    

Maybe you’ve had the same experience recently with your more liberal friends. They seem to be seething these days; just waiting for the opportunity lash out.  It’s uncomfortable when it happens.  All you can do is say “Wow, it’s getting late …” and make your escape. 

Even if you make a sincere effort to avoid discussing politics, it's increasingly difficult to have a pleasant conversation with many liberal friends anymore. And I suspect they are only going to get worse over the next two years.     

To make sense of the numbers, just do the math ...

I’ll readily admit a prejudice against people who can’t do simple math. 

I’m talking about the basic stuff – addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

I’m certainly no math snob.  Trust me, like most of us, I haven’t faced a quadratic equation to solve since I left high school.  That’s good, because I wouldn’t remember how – if I ever did.  I’ve never had a need for most of the algebra I sat through in school. That’s the truth. 

My wife was taking a college course once and asked me how I would solve it one of its math problems. I told her my solution. She told me I was wrong. I told her I didn’t care anymore.

But I’m a whiz at the basics.  Maybe it was all those years of drilling on multiplication tables and the endless hours doing long division, but most times I don’t need a calculator.  If I can’t do the math in my head, then I just need paper and pencil.  It’s not that hard.

So I’m stunned when a number comes out and people don’t understand how over-the-top it is.  All they’d have to do is divide that number by whatever to see how excessive it is. 

When it was announced that Rick Perry was sending 1,000 National Guard troops to secure his southern border at a cost of $12 million a month, nobody blinked.  Except me, apparently. 

Since a thousand thousands is a million, that meant it would cost $12,000 a month, per Guardsman, to patrol the border.  Roll that up and that’s $144,000 a year, per Guardsman. 

Now, I believe we don’t pay our soldiers enough, and I’m sure there are associated expenses I’m not considering, but I’m going to go way out on limb here and say something is wrong with this number.  I’m betting those Guardsmen aren’t making $50,000 a year on average for active duty.  So what accounts for the other $94,000? Housing?  Even if we put each Guardsman up in their own apartment for $2000 a month that’s only $24,000. Food? I think they could eat pretty well – like at $150 a day – on the remaining $70,000 and still have $15,250 left over for incidentals and entertainment. 

Then there are those government contracts issued to house and feed the illegal alien kids streaming across our border.  Somebody did the math and it came out to almost $350 a day per kid. You could put them up at an all-inclusive resort for that.  No wonder they’re coming here. 

Then there are the various make-work government programs.  Someone calculated that in one big stimulus program alone, each new job created cost almost $150,000. In other Federal "jobs" programs, the cost per job is even higher.    

A few years back HUD investigated a program that gave Philly roughly $50 million to provide grants to homeowners for rehabbing their properties.  That investigation revealed the city gave out only a handful of grants, but the $50 million was completely gone – consumed by “administrative expenses.” That might have surprised HUD but not anybody who knows how the city works.   

So where do these numbers come from? 

And why isn’t anybody paying any attention to them? 

I have two theories. 

The first is the belief by politicians and the general public that the government has access to endless supplies of money from the taxes it collects, and also because it can print money.  They honestly believe our government is Scrooge McDuck rich, wallowing in money.  And all that money is just looking for a place to be spent.  If we start running out, we can simply print more.  So government money is like “found” money; if there’s waste, so what? 

My second theory is that most of the public has reached what I call the point of diminishing astonishment.  A million bucks was once a big number.  Until we got used to billions. And now that the national debt is in the trillions, a billion dollars can seem kind of small.  Everything’s relative. 

So when Obama originally asked for $2 billion in Federal money to take care of the 50,000 illegal kids who crossed our border recently not many people blinked.  That’s $40,000 per kid, BTW.  Then, Obama almost doubled down by raising the request to $3.7 billion for the same 50,000 kids.  Now we’re talking about $74,000 per kid. 

To put that in perspective, we could probably fly each of those kids back to where they came from on their own chartered private jet for less. 

But that’s not the point.  It’s not about the math.  It’s not about a cost/benefit analysis. 

It’s all about the optics; the appearance of "doing something." And the realization that the public really doesn’t understand the numbers anymore.  It’s easier than ever before to pad the bills to cover wasteful government programs and egregiously overpriced contracts handed out to cronies. 

Former U.S. Senator William Proxmire used to put out his annual Golden Fleece Awards to spotlight often ridiculous government projects.  More recently Senator Tom Coburn has published his annual “Wastebook.”  The media always had a good time with stuff like rabbit massages at Ohio State, teaching mountain lions to use treadmills and other goofy programs funded by the government.  Fun yes, but all of this is pretty small stuff – maybe $25 billion in the latest Wastebook; not even a rounding error in a trillion-dollar Federal budget. 

The real question is whether our politicians and bureaucrats are spending far more than we need to on practically everything.  I suspect we are.  And I suspect the reason has more to do with political payoffs, Congressional back-scratching and home-state pork than anything else.  A lot of the numbers just don’t make any sense when you analyze them. 

If I can do the math, so can those in Washington. They’re hoping you don’t bother.

So the next time politicians start yammering about the need to raise taxes, why we can’t cut spending, and the budget deficit, realize it’s all crap.

Just do the math.   

Thought for the Day – November 5, 2014

Republicans won control of the Senate last night and now will hold 52 of the 100 seats. They may add to their majority in runoffs to come. They also added more seats to their majority in the House. 

Now what?

Well, now we start the season of bullshit from the Democrats.

Despite a stinging defeat practically everywhere Democrats will say that this election had absolutely nothing to do with their policies, or those of Obama and his imperial presidency. They’ll say their turnout was low; they’ll say this is not uncommon in mid-term elections, especially in the sixth year of an incumbent President. They'll note that Republicans only won a "narrow majority" anyway, so they shouldn’t consider this a mandate, by any means. 

They’ll deny this was a referendum on where the country is headed under their leadership. 

Then they’ll say the most outrageous and hypocritical thing of all. 

They’ll say Republicans now need to start reaching across the aisle and learn to compromise with Democrats if they want to get anything passed. 

No, seriously, that’s coming.  Just wait for it. Some Democrat hack like Reid, Pelosi, Schumer, Durbin or “Plugs McKenzie” Biden is going to say those words. And the weirdest part of all is that they will honestly believe that the Republicans need to take a more conciliatory tone with Obama and Democrats now that Republicans control both the House and Senate.

WTF? 

This will come from the same weasels that used their Senate majority to block every piece of legislation from the Republican-controlled House for years.  The same people that – when they controlled both House and Senate – rammed legislation down Republicans' throats with zero Republican input, and passed it with zero Republican votes.  It was Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats who used the “nuclear option” – a procedural sleight of hand – to bypass Republicans entirely and lower the threshold for certain Senate confirmations from 60 to 51. 

The only time Democrats reached across the aisle was to give Republicans the finger.  

And now they’ll want Republicans to compromise?   

I think the appropriate response would be to quote what Dick Cheney said to Patrick Leahy. 

Please, dear God, I hope the Republicans don’t fall for this nonsense about their “responsibility” to compromise.  When the Democrats held all the cards, did they compromise?  And don’t get caught up in restoring the “traditions of the Senate” by repealing the confirmation rules change the Democrats railroaded through when they were in power.  Don’t do it. Use it. 

Republicans – do not forgive and forget. That’s what Obama and the Democrats hope you are naïve enough to do. They’ll take advantage of any goodwill you show them and turn on you. They will backstab you in a heartbeat.

Democrats are not interested in moving the country forward, just making the Democrat party bigger.  They hope to do that by allowing more illegals in and empowering them to vote, increasing the number of people dependent of government handouts, and appealing to people who prefer to vote for living instead of work for a living.

So I hope for once Republicans don’t get sucked into the phony compassion issues.  Republicans need to deal with securing our borders, and then deciding what to do with everyone here illegally already – in that order.  They need to start reining in entitlements rationally, not expanding them. They need to make it more attractive to work than to not work. They need to drop the pretense of making our enemies love us and let them start to fear us again. 

Most of all they need to start making government more trustworthy. 

Republicans need to get off the issues of cutting taxes, excessive regulation, personhood, repealing ObamaCare entirely, and personal vendettas against the IRS, Eric Holder, and yes, Obama. These are all non-starters and “trap games” not worth expending political capital.   

The reason Republicans won big yesterday had nothing to do with these specific issues.  Instead, they won because of an overall sense that the Democrats and Obama were incompetent in governing and had been unable to fix the continuing bad economy. 

So the people voted against the Democrats, and by proxy Obama, rather than for Republican red-meat issues.  If the Republicans have a modicum of common sense, they’ll keep this in mind. 

Fix what’s broken and move on. 

And don’t feel compelled to compromise. 

Thought for the Day -- November 4, 2014

I was voter #25 in my township this morning. 

For the record I voted a straight Republican ticket. I did that mainly because I so deeply despise the Democrat brand locally, regionally and nationally.

A perfect example is the race for governor here.  

In fairness, the much maligned incumbent Republican Governor Tom Corbett is a truly awful politician.  He’s wooden, doesn’t do a good job selling himself, his policies, or his accomplishments and doesn’t seem to like glad-handing and baby kissing. 

But he’s actually done a very good job, considering what he inherited from Fast Eddie Rendell.  He’s taken a lot of heat for cutting spending on education to give tax breaks to corporations, when, in fact, he didn’t. Rendell used a billion bucks in one-time stimulus money to artificially inflate education hiring and spending; when that money ran out Corbett faced a billion-dollar “deficit” on paper in education funding.  He had no choice but to scale back some of the temporary jobs and spending that one-time pop of money had created. 

Even then, Corbett was able to make up $500 million of that budget hole without raising income taxes. In any other world, he’d be a hero, but Democrats here tore him to pieces for “hurting” schools.  Because he cut corporate taxes, which created jobs here, and refused to support additional taxes on the Marcellus Shale drillers, which created even more jobs here and drove down utility prices for consumers, Dems claimed he sold out school kids for corporate interests. 

In an unprecedented low, even for them, they've even blamed his "budget cuts" for the lack of toilet paper in Philadelphia public schools. His opponent, Democrat Tom Wolfe, ran with that and did a TV spot interviewing teachers who made the same claim.  Of course, it wasn't true; the reason schools didn't have toilet paper in their bathrooms was because, as soon as it was replaced, students stole it or used it for vandalism, like flushing rolls down toilets.

No matter that it wasn't true, like the other Democrat attacks on Corbett, the damage was done.  

Corbett will probably lose today, which is sad because he’s a decent, honorable man.  Terrible politician and campaigner, that’s true, but a good, responsible governor who did the right things, and for which he was tarred unjustly. 

Which brings me back to my utter disdain for the Democrat brand. 

Granted, the Republican brand right now sucks, to quote Rand Paul, who is brave enough to state the obvious. I may not agree with him on everything, but on this he is dead on. I have no idea what the Republican brand stands for, and I follow these things. The only thing it has going for it is that the Democrat brand is so awful.   

I know politics is a contact sport and can be brutal. But the Democrats are hitting new lows in pandering to the worst fears of their constituencies. 

They are blaming Republicans for Ferguson, Ebola, the rise of ISIS, no progress on immigration, the threatened end of life-saving mammograms at Planned Parenthood, attacks on legal abortion, attempts to limit access to birth control, and of course the Republican plan to impeach Obama and roll back civil rights laws to “put y’all back in chains,“ if they win control of the Senate.   

When the Democrats send out mailers featuring black children holding up signs saying “don’t shoot” with the message to vote for Democrats to avoid another Ferguson, that’s way over the top. When leading Democrats say that Republican cuts to health programs fueled the spread of Ebola, and that prior Republican administrations helped create ISIS, it’s reprehensible. 

It just goes on and on – there is apparently no depth so deep they won’t plumb it, no lie so outrageous they won’t use it, and no baseless accusation they won’t promote to further their cause.

They have no shame whatsoever for milking tragedies for political gain.  They don’t hesitate to play the race card whenever possible – whether that’s about Abu Jamal, Trayvon Martin, or more recently Michael Brown – long before the facts are in, and long after the facts have come out. They are quick to use the mass murders of children in Connecticut, or of innocent movie-goers in Colorado, to push their anti-gun agenda. There are no limits. No moral or ethical boundaries.  

They recognize the truth but prefer to lie, whether that’s about IRS targeting, Secret Service lapses, the Bergdahl fiasco, ObamaCare, NSA snooping, or Benghazi.  

At the street level, they enlist the aid of union goons and paid provocateurs to shout down anyone who questions the Democrat orthodoxy, and disrupt appearances by anyone who dares run against them.  When strong arm tactics seem to fail, they resort to using the force of government to harass and intimidate opponents into submission. 

There’s literally nothing they will not do, no matter how base, how dishonest, or how disgusting.  And their Democrat supporters seem to cheer them on. 

Which begs the question: Do their supporters actually approve of the Democrats’ tactics? 

If so, that’s a very scary proposition; that means that a large percentage of the population has no moral compass whatsoever. They have decided there's no right or wrong, and they have no remorse for the pain they cause.  They might as well be sociopaths.      

That’s the Democrat brand.  And that why I despise it so. 

Thought for the Day -- November 3, 2014

Tomorrow is election day.  Well, actually the past few weeks have been “election day” for all the states that allow early voting.

So tomorrow will be somewhat anticlimactic.  That will be true in more ways than one. 

A large percentage of the potential votes have already been cast.  Whether most of those are legitimate is another question.  Between the absentee ballots or early voting by people who might not be citizens or who have registered in more than one state like college students, by house pets, and the ever-reliable “dead” and vacant-lot voters, a sizable number of the living and dead have already exercised their Constitutionally-protected right to vote. 

I suspect most of those votes have been for Democrats. That’s not surprising given the Democrats’ adroit use of tactics to thwart or delay any voter ID requirements.   

Motor-voter registration has been a god-send to the Democrats.  In some states with motor-voter they’ve found that up to 7% of registered voters aren’t even U.S. citizens.  And with never-ending Federal lawsuits to prevent states from purging their voter rolls of convicted felons, the dead, people registered in multiple states, and non-citizens, there’s no telling who a legal voter is.

That’s intentional, and why Democrats can’t afford to see their base reduced by something as silly as proving who you say you are when voting. 

This year it may not make that much of a difference. Obama is deeply unpopular not just with Republicans, but with independents and a lot of Democrats, too.  Even Senate and House candidates running as Democrats act like they’ve never met him. 

That doesn’t mean the Republicans will take the races they need to win to hold the House and take back the Senate. And even if they do, so what?

First, they have to get past the Democrats. That will be tough.  Democrats have proven to be exceptionally skilled at “finding” lost ballots when they need to, even as far back as the Kennedy/Nixon race and more recently with Al Franken’s “victory” in Minnesota.

Plus, Democrats generally believe the end always justifies the means, no matter how sleazy or dishonest the path to that end might be.  Liberal Democrats in particular see nothing wrong with voting a few times, voting for their pet, or channeling their dead or imprisoned relatives’ voting preferences so their voices are heard on election day, because it’s all for a righteous cause. 

It’s not going to be easy to overcome all that. 

But let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that Republicans running for the House or Senate somehow manage to overcome all the Democrat chicanery – and the Republicans’ own propensity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory – and manage to hold the House and retake the Senate.  Then what? Can we expect sweeping change in Washington? 

Don’t bet on it.  In reality – and that’s what this blog is all about – nothing much will change.  The Republicans will huff and they’ll puff but they won’t be all that different than the Democrats they replace. Sure, the first few months may be interesting, but before long they’ll slide into the comfortable Congressional status quo we suffer from now.

They won’t control spending. They won’t cut back on pork. They won’t rein in entitlements. They’ll do little of substance to change ObamaCare, protect Social Security, resolve our illegal immigration problem, or deal with the need for term limits. They might move on Voter ID and a national ID card but don’t count on it. But they will preserve all their Congressional perks. They’ll reward their friends and punish their enemies. And gridlock will still reign supreme, just as before. 

What’s the difference?  Honestly, there isn’t much.   

So why vote? 

Politicians need to be constantly reminded that they serve at the pleasure of the people – not just the special interests – they are supposed to represent. Voting is a way to show politicians that their power is not absolute, and can be challenged and revoked. 

That’s the primary reason to vote. Even if you think one side is as bad as the other, you need to vote for the lesser of two evils if need be.  Just hold your nose and vote. 

If you don’t vote, apathy wins. Our current politicians in both parties have gotten to where they are largely because of voter apathy. That’s allowed the extremists in both parties to hijack primaries to our collective detriment, and prevent more rational voices to be heard. 

Right now we have a two-party system which isn’t working. Many people, including me, believe it is irrevocably broken. Today there are more people registered as independents than registered as Democrats, or as Republicans.    

That means there’s hope.  Maybe one day we will have a viable alternative to the parties that share power at present.

But we won’t get there if we allow politicians to rely on apathy to keep them in office.