[bluhn-der-krat]

-noun

1.  An official, who in attempting to appease the left works without exercising intelligent judgment, thereby harming or jeopardizing national interest through the implementation of  a series of self-serving policies that ultimately result in gross, stupid, and careless political mistakes .

A great man once declared that “[t]ruth will rise above falsehood as oil above water,” this maxim held for a long time and even penetrated Capitol Hill and Pennsylvania Avenue. But the people wanted ‘change’ simply for the sake of change.  And now the declaration reads: “truth will be mixed with falsehood, as oil with ethanol.”

President Obama’s decision to release 30 million barrels of Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) this month qualifies him as one of the great energy blundercrats in modern American history.  The administration’s justification for the release of these critical barrels of crude, which are in reserve for emergency and war purposes only, seems simple but is really insidious.  According to the administration, the ‘market’ is desperate for the light sweet crude that Libya would have exported. Which market, to be clear? Well, not the United States, because Libyan crude is exported almost exclusively to Europe.  But nevertheless, more world crude supply should translate to lower product prices. Unless of course it does not. As one Senior Administration official said, not to worry, because our price-meddling heroes will just tap SPR again:

“At the end of the first 30 days of action by the IEA member, we will review the results…the U.S. stands ready to do more if necessary to address this issue.”

The president now considers himself a one-man market maker armed with 727 million barrels of taxpayer oil and he is not afraid to use them in an election cycle. On a dip, he can draw his bureaucratic paw and say “see what I did to control the price at the pump, p.s. available for hire in 2012”. This of course is supposed to be music to the ears of the uninformed and the unemployed. Gasoline prices had already declined ten percent from the start of the driving season, but only because the economy is a disaster.

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Co-authored with Bill Zettler

In the March 28, 2011 issue of the Weekly Standard, Eli Lehrer, Vice-president of the Heartland Institute, a premier think-tank based in Illinois, wrote an article entitled “Pensions Aren’t the Problem.” Lehrer puts forth the argument that defined-benefit state pensions, not only were not in trouble, but were a good way for states to recruit talent at little expense.

While Heartland does some fine work, in this case, we have to disagree with their analysis.  All too often of late the positions of NASRA (National Association of State Retirement Administrators), an organization of self-interest and self-righteousness not unlike their sister organization the NEA (National Education Association), have not received the critical examination they are due. After all, if all state employees were on Social Security and 401K programs there would be no need for state retirement administrators and their staff of thousands.

Let’s go through Mr. Lehrer’s major claims one by one:

CLAIM: “…pension benefits represent a reasonably small share of overall state spending (3.4 percent in Illinois).”

FACT: The way you come up with what appears to be a minuscule percentage of state spending is as follows: (more…)