Delta Engineers maps out growth plans

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ENDWELL — Over the past five years, Delta Engineers, Architects & Land Surveyors, P.C. has expanded its staff, added new technology, and is looking to continue its expansion efforts into new markets nationally as well as overseas. The firm has grown from 35 to 120 employees, says Anthony Paniccia, president and CEO of Delta. […]

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The firm has grown from 35 to 120 employees, says Anthony Paniccia, president and CEO of Delta. With that growth, Delta added a new precast concrete group and also purchased a $120,000 laser scanner for use in its surveying work. The result of those two additions has been double-digit growth every year, Paniccia says. On average, over the past five years, the company has grown about 20 percent annually, he says. Paniccia declined to disclose revenue figures.

“The laser scanner has helped us significantly,” he says regarding the company’s growth. As word spreads about the speed, accuracy, and cost-effectiveness of the technology, prospective clients are seeking them out, he says. Delta is one of just a handful of companies in New York using the laser technology, he notes.

The laser scanner records about 50,000 data points per second, resulting in 3D images that are accurate to 1/32nd of an inch, Paniccia says. The laser scanner, with its accuracy, goes a long way toward reducing human error and putting Delta closer to its goal of producing error-free work for its clients, he adds.

“Delta always wants to be on the cutting edge,” he says. “This was the next opportunity for us to be ahead of the curve, and we always want to be ahead of the curve.”

Another area where Delta is making strides is with its precast concrete group, which designs a variety of precast projects such as retaining walls, box culverts, septic tanks, and modular buildings for clients across the country, Paniccia says. Delta is certified to provide this service in 45 states and currently works with clients in 44 states, he says. Along with entering new market areas, Paniccia also hopes Delta will gain more market share in the areas it already serves.

That division of Delta’s business has grown rapidly, he says, due in part to aggressive marketing efforts that include attending trade shows and industry conventions throughout the year. The goal is to attend shows in areas of the country where Delta currently does not have clients in hopes of gaining new ones, he says.

“It has turned out to be a great business opportunity for us to pursue throughout the United States,” Paniccia says.

While Paniccia remains focused on growing in the U.S. through both the precast group and increasing demand for laser scanning, he also has his eye on overseas growth as well.

“We have a few opportunities right now in the United Arab Emirates,” he says. Those prospects could result in a steady enough business in the Middle East to support a satellite office there, he adds.

Other goals Paniccia has outlined for Delta’s future include increasing employment, first to 150 people and eventually 200 employees. That goal is reachable, he says, through both organic growth and acquisitions, if the right opportunities present themselves. “We’re always looking for possible acquisitions,” he says.

Headquartered in 38,000 square feet of space at 860 Hooper Road in Endwell, Delta Engineers, Architects & Land Surveyors (www.deltaengineers.com) serves the building facilities, precast concrete, transportation, land surveying, and environmental markets. Founded in 1976, the company is ISO 9001:2008 certified.

Delta also has offices in Delhi and Vernon.

Delta’s local Southern Tier projects include new dorms under construction at Broome Community College, a dorm project in Oneonta for Newman Development Group, LLC, the Front Street reconstruction project in Binghamton, and the U.S. Rt. 11/Court Street project, also in Binghamton.

Contact The Business Journal at news@cnybj.com

ConMed’s third-quarter profit falls

Manufacturing & Engineering, Regional News, Technology

UTICA — ConMed Corp. (NASDAQ: CNMD), a Utica–based surgical-device maker, on Thursday reported that its third-quarter net income fell to $5.7 million, or 20 cents

Upstate Medical unveils IHP expansion, targeting neuroscience research

Construction, Design & Real Estate, Health Care, Subscriber Only

SYRACUSE — The State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical University on Oct. 21 formally opened its more than 158,000-square-foot Neuroscience Research Building (NRB), an expansion of Upstate’s Institute for Human Performance (IHP). The one-block long, five-story addition, which is adjacent to the IHP, cost $72 million, Upstate Medical said in a news release.

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The one-block long, five-story addition, which is adjacent to the IHP, cost $72 million, Upstate Medical said in a news release.

The facility is located on a two-acre site bounded by Harrison and Madison streets, and Crouse and Irving avenues in Syracuse.

The expansion is designed to help bring the researchers at Upstate Medical University together to study the brain, said Rosemary Rochford, vice president for research at Upstate Medical, in speaking with reporters following a tour of the facility.

“We’re bringing all the scientists from different parts of the campus together. We’re bringing our clinical researchers and our basic science researchers to really begin to look at … basic functions of the brain and also how the brain doesn’t go so right sometimes in disease,” Rochford said.

The researchers at Upstate Medical, who are already focused on studying the brain, will move into the facility next April, Rochford said.

The expansion also seeks to speed the pace of scientific discovery and to strengthen Upstate’s research enterprise, projected this year to total $34 million, the medical school said.

“It is a vital part of our mission, that being research and new knowledge. It’s also vital for the region … and that, of course, is the new knowledge-based economy,” Dr. David Smith, president of Upstate Medical, said in his remarks during the ceremony.

The formal opening preceded a public lecture that featured three of the country’s leading names in brain-research science. They included Susan Hockfield, Nicholas Spitzer, and Dennis Choi, who discussed how present-day research is leading to new advances in the prevention, treatment, and cures for disorders of the brain.

Hockfield is president emerita and professor of neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Spitzer is director of the Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind and professor of neurobiology at the University of California, San Diego. Choi serves as director of the Institute for Advanced Neurosciences and professor and chair of the department of neurology at Stony Brook University.

The building design

The Boston–based architecture firm Goody Clancy designed the expansion to achieve the Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) silver designation from the U.S. Green Building Council, Upstate Medical said.

The building also features a parking garage for 51 vehicles, mechanical space, loading dock, and space for a future cyclotron (a type of particle accelerator). The structure also has a combination of 31 wet/dry, open/closed laboratories and laboratory support that includes microarray, microscopy, and phenotyping cores, offices, and administrative space.

It also includes a two-story atrium providing gathering space, conference rooms, a lounge, and a physical connection to the existing building, Upstate Medical University said.

About the research

Interdisciplinary research at the IHP is currently devoted primarily to human activity and rehabilitation.

The NRB will house investigators from various disciplines whose studies involve disorders of the nervous system, such as behavioral disorders like Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), diseases of the eye, and neurodegenerative diseases, such as Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or what’s known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease), Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s, according to Upstate Medical.

The building is designed to allow scientists and researchers to easily move between different labs, and not confining them to a single “cubby hole,” Rochford said.

“So, that fosters interaction,” she said.

Upstate Medical is also using state funding to invest in “cutting edge” technology in the NRB, Rochford added.

“We’re going to get microscopy and this is a way to look inside the brain, so you get better visualization of what the brain is actually doing,” she said.

Upstate Medical is investing in next-generation sequencing technology as well, Rochford said, referencing the scientific mapping of the human genome and noting that Upstate researchers will use the technology in their study of the brain.

“Understanding people’s genetics and why they’re susceptible to different types of diseases, and in this case, neurological diseases,” Rochford explains.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com

Eat to Live Food Cooperative opens on Syracuse’s south side

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SYRACUSE — Syracuse University’s (SU) South Side Initiative Office and the Southside Community Coalition have formally opened the Eat to Live Food Cooperative at 2327 S. Salina St. in Syracuse. Organizers and project stakeholders held a small ceremony on Oct. 15 to mark the occasion. GroundWorks Capital Coalition (GC2), the Gifford Foundation of Syracuse, and

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SYRACUSE — Syracuse University’s (SU) South Side Initiative Office and the Southside Community Coalition have formally opened the Eat to Live Food Cooperative at 2327 S. Salina St. in Syracuse.

Organizers and project stakeholders held a small ceremony on Oct. 15 to mark the occasion.

GroundWorks Capital Coalition (GC2), the Gifford Foundation of Syracuse, and the Southside Community Coalition worked together on the project that is aimed at bringing healthy food to Syracuse’s South Side, according to SU.

The 3,000-square-foot grocery store and café features healthy food and produce from local farms and distributors.

The cooperatively owned grocery store will serve an area of Syracuse that the state and federal governments have defined as a “food desert,” according to SU.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines food deserts “as parts of the country vapid of fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods, usually found in impoverished areas. This is largely due to a lack of grocery stores, farmers’ markets, and healthy food providers,” according to the website of the American Nutrition Association, a nonprofit that provides nutrition and wellness education.

The Eat to Live Food Cooperative wants to offer the neighborhood residents more healthy food “options,” Shirley Rowser, president of the board of directors at the cooperative, said in her remarks during the ceremony.

The resident member-owners will run the cooperative along with an elected board of directors, SU said in a news release.

Residents and organizations on Syracuse’s south side had the idea to “satisfy the need for affordable and fresh food in the neighborhood,” said Joseph Bryant, president of the Southside Community Coalition.

Reeves Farms of Baldwinsville is among the suppliers, according to Bryant.

“Basically, it’s a grocery store. Anybody can shop [here]. The difference between this and the traditional grocery store is the business model of being cooperatively owned,” Bryant said while speaking to reporters after the ceremony.

Nearly 100 shareholders own the Eat to Live Food Cooperative, Bryant said. Every member-owner has equal voting rights and decision-making rights, he added.

The cooperative employs eight people, including a mix of full- and part-time employees, he said. Bryant wasn’t sure if the employee count would increase over time.

A membership costs $100, SU said, and the cooperative will accept monthly payments.

The project to prepare the store cost about $1.5 million, Bryant said. The entire process started in 2007.

Grants from Empire State Development through the Central New York Regional Economic Development Council (CNYREDC), National Grid, the Central New York Community Foundation, the Gifford Foundation, and the Allyn Foundation provided most of the funding for the cooperative, Bryant said.

The CNYREDC grant totaled $394,000, Bryant said.

Irish-Millar Construction, Inc. of Syracuse served as the general contractor on the project.

Independent architect Sekou Cooke designed the building. Cooke came to Syracuse in early 2010 to teach at SU’s School of Architecture and learned about the project from Linda Littlejohn, associate vice president of SU’s South Side Initiative.

“At that point, they didn’t have a budget. They didn’t have a site. They didn’t have a place to go. And I told her she really needs a full scope of architectural services,” Cooke says.

SU students and faculty in the School of Architecture, the College of Law, the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, and the School of Information Studies were also involved in the project as part of ongoing academic and engagement work, according to the university.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com

Crunch drop the puck on 20th season in Syracuse

Sports, Entertainment & Tourism, Subscriber Only

SYRACUSE — When Onondaga County officials and team owner Howard Dolgon introduced the Syracuse Crunch hockey club in May 1994, Dolgon had planned on an “infinite stay.” “We were here. We were staying here, and that’s still the plan,” Dolgon says. The Syracuse Crunch, which is part of the American Hockey League (AHL) and a

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SYRACUSE — When Onondaga County officials and team owner Howard Dolgon introduced the Syracuse Crunch hockey club in May 1994, Dolgon had planned on an “infinite stay.”

“We were here. We were staying here, and that’s still the plan,” Dolgon says.

The Syracuse Crunch, which is part of the American Hockey League (AHL) and a minor-league affiliate of the Tampa Bay Lightning, has started play in its 20th season at the Onondaga County War Memorial.

Dolgon recalls it was his work in public relations that evolved into his eventual ownership of the Syracuse Crunch.

A year prior to the team’s May 1994 introduction, Dolgon was working with a sports public-relations agency in New York City. One of his clients was Black Velvet Whiskey, for whom he was negotiating a sponsorship deal with the AHL’s director of marketing.

“We became friendly, and he knew my passion for hockey,” says Dolgon, who, for several years, was a season-ticket holder for the National Hockey League’s New York Rangers.

A few months later, his AHL contact notified Dolgon about the renovations at the War Memorial. A local group wanted to bring hockey back to the arena, but it didn’t have an ownership group, he says.

Dolgon eventually met with former Onondaga County Executive Nicholas Pirro.

“Almost a year to the day, we had the press conference in May of ’94 to announce the team,” Dolgon says.

The Crunch owner credits the team’s fan base and its corporate support as factors in its longevity in the Syracuse market.

The Crunch understood that when a company provides financial support for a sports organization, the relationship means more than having their sign in the building and getting tickets, he says.

Dolgon believes the relationship is about leveraging programs through the team to “help the needle move … help them increase either their brand image or their direct sales.”

That was the approach the Crunch used from day one, he adds.

A number of local businesses have been long-time sponsors, which leads to “trickle-down effect,” Dolgon says.

“You can put that corporate support in your pocket, or you can take that corporate support and put it back in the team and keep your ticket prices at a reasonable level for you community,” he adds.

In addition to the fans and corporate sponsors, Dolgon has also had to maintain a working relationship with Onondaga County.

The most recent lease negotiation for use of the War Memorial took place in July 2012, when the Crunch extended the current agreement five years through the 2023-24 season.

“They recognize what the hockey club brings to the community,” Dolgon says of Onondaga County Executive Joanne (Joanie) Mahoney and Deputy County Executive William Fisher.

The lease negotiations have led to a number of changes at the War Memorial, including new seating in a portion of the arena and a complete renovation for the team’s training room in the summer of 2011.

“We’re hoping we eventually have luxury suites in the building. We have the video board now,” Dolgon says.

Besides its business relationships, Dolgon believes a professional sports franchise should be active in its community.

The Crunch on Oct. 9 named Upstate University Hospital as the team’s presenting sponsor of its anniversary season. Upstate wants part of that sponsorship to focus on its work at Upstate Golisano Children’s Hospital.

“If we could help by putting a focus on what that hospital does and it helps other people, that’s where we’re playing a role in the market,” Dolgon says.

The Crunch held its home opener on Oct. 12 and the opening ceremony included a seven-minute, retrospective video reviewing the team’s history in Syracuse dating back to 1994.

“So, it was really a story that we told,” Dolgon says. “You don’t realize how quick 20 years go by.”

As a connection to its past, the Crunch welcomed back “Big Bad” John Badduke, who participated in a ceremonial puck drop. Badduke was a member of the team in its inaugural season in Syracuse in 1994 and played three seasons with the Crunch.

His 649 career penalty minutes ranks fourth in Crunch history, according to the team’s website. The team raised a banner during the 1998-99 season honoring Badduke after a fan vote recognized him as the fan favorite during the franchise’s first five seasons, the website says.

The Crunch entered this season as the defending Eastern Conference champion, which resulted from its affiliation with the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Crunch had inherited players from Tampa’s previous affiliate, Norfolk, which had captured the Calder Cup the prior season.

Besides Tampa Bay, the Crunch has also had affiliation agreements with Anaheim (2010-12), Columbus (2000-09), and Vancouver (1994-99).

Dolgon declined to release information about how much revenue the team generates annually.

Sports management is a “different kind of business,” he says, but notes it keeps him and his colleagues young and working toward annual goals.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com

Galaxy Communications launches sports-marketing division

Small Business, Sports, Entertainment & Tourism, Subscriber Only

SYRACUSE — Galaxy Communications, LLC, the Syracuse–based operator of 14 radio stations in the Syracuse and Utica markets, has announced the creation of a sports-marketing division. The firm, which has relationships with several local and regional sports teams, has hired Ken Elander as general manager of Galaxy Sports Marketing, Galaxy Communications said in a news

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Polaris Business Solutions moves to new office, adds new product

Regional News, Subscriber Only

AUBURN — Polaris Business Solutions, a six-year-old accounting-systems consulting firm, has kicked off the fall with a new office that will allow the business to continue growing and a new product to help clients also grow their businesses. Last month, Polaris’ Founder and President Todd Delaney moved his business from a home office to Suite

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Last month, Polaris’ Founder and President Todd Delaney moved his business from a home office to Suite 4022 at 2 South St. in Auburn to accommodate the company’s continued growth. The firm’s revenue has increased about 40 percent per year for the past two years. Delaney predicts revenue growth between 30 percent and 40 percent this year as Polaris Business Solutions continues to land new clients and larger projects.

Delaney says his typical client is a growing business that previously used accounting software like QuickBooks that it bought, installed, and managed on its own. “QuickBooks is a fine program, but there comes a point where you just outgrow it,” he notes. That’s when businesses come to him for help.

Delaney currently employs one person full time and uses four subcontractors on an as-needed basis, but he hopes to do some hiring later this year or in early 2014. First, he plans to hire a marketing and sales person to free him up from the sales side of business and follow that with a second consultant to work with his growing client base. Polaris Business Solutions currently serves clients across New York state as well as across the U.S. with its array of accounting-system products.

Polaris specializes in enterprise-resource planning (ERP) systems and works with businesses to realize cost savings, improved efficiency, and increased productivity when implementing or upgrading an ERP system. Essentially, ERP is business-management software that integrates all facets of a business from product planning to sales and marketing and even human-resources functions such as payroll. The end-result is a one-stop shop that puts all the business’s necessary information in one place.

Now, with the addition of Acumatica software — a cloud-based ERP software application used by small and medium-sized businesses to manage financial data — to its product lineup, Polaris Business Solutions provides its clients an application that’s accessible from anywhere as long as the client has a computer and an Internet connection. Polaris offers Acumatica in addition to Microsoft Dynamics SL, Microsoft CRM, and Sage 100 ERP programs, which are solid programs, Delaney says, but have limitations in how a business can deploy them. Typically, those products need to be installed on a client’s computer and have limited functionality when accessed from off-site, he says.

The growing trend with the mid-market businesses he serves is increased access, Delaney says, and that is where Acumatica is a perfect fit. Clients can install it on their own servers and host it themselves. Or, they can choose a host company for it if they don’t have their own server. Alternatively, clients can deploy it completely in the cloud. And no matter how Acumatica is deployed, clients can access it over the web whenever they need to, Delaney notes.

“You can basically work anytime, anywhere,” he says. A project manager can access information right from the job site, for example, and approve invoices for the project, or a business owner can access information while traveling.

Overall, Delaney says, people have become more accepting of cloud computing, particularly with products such as Google Docs and Office 365. “They find the cloud less scary,” he says. That bodes well for Polaris and Acumatica, he says, and he expects that his ability to offer clients an array of options, both cloud and non-cloud, will only help his business continue to grow.

Delaney founded Polaris Business Solutions (www.polaris-business.com) in 2007. Prior to that, he worked for DM Systems, Inc., a unit of the accounting firm Dannible & McKee, LLP, which provides ERP systems. At Polaris, his focus is on assisting his clients in selecting, implementing, and optimizing the performance of an accounting system and his services include on-site training as well as remote-access training.

Contact The Business Journal at news@cnybj.com

MacKenzie Hughes attorneys discuss health law’s effect on providers

Law, Accounting & Taxes, Subscriber Only

SYRACUSE — Health-care providers have major concerns about how the national health-care reform law, called the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare, will affect them, according to two attorneys with the Syracuse–based law firm Mackenzie Hughes, LLP. Physicians are concerned that the health law will reduce their freedom in how they practice medicine due to all

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Physicians are concerned that the health law will reduce their freedom in how they practice medicine due to all the regulations governing what procedures they can use, says Clayton Hale, Jr., an attorney with Mackenzie Hughes, LLP.

Hale concentrates his practice in the areas of health care, business, and tax law, according to the firm’s website.

“It’s going to provide them with more work because they’ll have more patients if they choose to participate in the Medicare and Medicaid programs, but also the paperwork is going to require a lot of additional hours in the work day,” Hale says.

Hale also believes doctors are concerned that they won’t be generating as much revenue under the health-care law because of reduced reimbursements.

Physicians also need to determine if it makes sense to become a participating provider with one, or any, of the health-care plans that are part of the state or federal health-insurance exchanges, says Maureen Dunn McGlynn, an attorney and partner in the Mackenzie Hughes firm’s business department with an emphasis in health-care law.

Doctors have to realize that participating in new plans will mean “the additional required quality data collections and reporting that’s required in order to be a participating provider with these plans that are part of the exchanges,” McGlynn says.

Hale then provided some examples of the requirements health-care providers will face in 2015.

A physician will have to demonstrate that he or she is using the best clinical practices so that a health insurer will permit the doctor to participate in a given plan, Hale says.

In addition, doctors have to demonstrate the use of chronic-disease management procedures and the use of evidence-based medicine.

“They also have to participate in the health-information technology rules. They have to convert from paper-based records to digitized records,” Hale says.

Those requirements are detailed in the law, but Hale wasn’t sure when the federal government would release the regulations detailing those requirements.

McGlynn also notes the federal health-care reform law has led to the creation of accountable-care organizations (ACO).

Such an organization enables various providers (physicians, hospitals, physician groups) to join together to provide care for patients. If the group is able to save money, then the providers within that ACO share in the federal government’s incentive payments for proving that their collaboration resulted in quality care at a lower cost, McGlynn says.

The health-care reform law covers a wide range of medical issues, but one matter it doesn’t address is their liability for malpractice, Hale says.

It’s been an issue for doctors for several years, and Hale think it’ll become an “even bigger problem” as the Affordable Care Act is requiring doctors to “economize” in the way they practice medicine, such as reducing the number of tests they perform.

“So if a doctor doesn’t perform the test because he’s being pressured not to run up costs, and he makes a mistake, or he should’ve done the test, they’re still liable for substantial damages in the malpractice area,” Hale says.

The law also doesn’t address the “doc fix,” which relates to the formula for Medicare reimbursement, according to Hale.

For more than a decade, Congress has had to approve a bill to prevent scheduled cuts to Medicare-physician payments, or what is known as the “doc fix.”

“[Lawmakers will] have to do that again at the end of this year; otherwise, there’ll be a substantial reduction in the reimbursement rate next year,” Hale says.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com

New York State Bar Association launches new Women’s Community

Law, Accounting & Taxes, Subscriber Only

The New York State Bar Association (NYSBA) announced it has created a new initiative to meet the unique challenges faced by women attorneys. The NYSBA Women’s Community launched on Oct. 17 at the Committee on Women in the Law’s program, “Women on the Move 2013: Racing Ahead of the Curve – Tech-Savvy Practice Pointers for

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The real story: the public is the problem

Opinion, Subscriber Only

Late in the evening of Wednesday, Oct. 16, President Barack Obama signed legislation to re-open the federal government, which had been partially shut for 16 days. The political drama captured the attention of the media, which was consumed by the tactical struggle and the question of who won and who lost. The real story occurred

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The real story occurred on Friday, Oct. 18, at 3 p.m. when the Treasury announced that the federal debt exceeded $17 trillion. Every U.S. citizen now has a debt obligation approaching $54,000 as the federal government continues unabatedly to borrow $200 million an hour.

Surpassing the $17 trillion debt mark was just the introduction to the story that should have dominated the media. The history of how we got here would then follow. It took the U.S. government 193 years to rack up the first trillion dollars; eight years later, in 1990, the number jumped to $3 trillion. When George W. Bush took office in 2001, the debt was $5.7 trillion. President Bush only needed two terms in office to balloon the debt to $10 trillion. Not to be outdone, President Obama has increased the debt 70 percent in less than six years and is on target to reach the 100 percent mark ($20 trillion) when he leaves office.

The real story would end by addressing what drives spending and the resulting deficits and debt — “entitlements.”

Robert J. Samuelson, in an Oct. 20 op-ed piece in The Washington Post, suggests we banish the term entitlements and identify specific programs in order to evaluate them. Here is the Top 10 list, brought to you by the Office of Management and Budget, and ranked by the millions of recipients in the program: Medicaid – 63.2, Social Security – 55.8, Medicare – 49.9, Food stamps – 46.6, Child nutrition – 35, College loans – 11.3, Unemployment insurance – 8.9, Supplemental Security Income – 7.9, Veterans compensation – 3.8, Civil-service retirement – 2.5.

If we eliminate the overlap in some of the programs where recipients receive multiple benefits, that still leaves about half of all U.S. households receiving a federal benefit. That’s a huge constituency. In 2012, all of the entitlement programs accounted for 63 percent of total federal expenditures.

Samuelson also suggests that we get rid of the word entitlement because it deludes the public into thinking the programs are untouchable. If truth be told, these programs have no legal standing. The U.S. Supreme Court dealt with this issue as early as 1937 (Helvering v. Davis) when the court ruled that Social Security was not a contributory insurance program but a payroll tax for a welfare system. Our 535 elected politicians in Congress can alter the terms of Social Security or any other federal program on a whim. In 1960, the Supreme Court confirmed the status of Social Security, and thus all other federal programs, in Fleming v. Nestor, when the court proclaimed that Social Security benefits were not “accrued property rights.”

The polls keep telling us that the public has a limited willingness to be taxed and instinctively understands that we can’t keep spending and borrowing at the current rate. At some point, interest rates will rise and the $223 billion in interest we currently spend annually to sustain our borrowing addiction will rise and squeeze out other spending options and reduce investment available to private capital markets. At some point, our creditors will become disenchanted, since their “investments” are being repaid in depreciated dollars that the feds print ‘round the clock. Worst-case scenario, our monetary system collapses.

But the same polls tell us that 90 percent of our fellow citizens don’t want Uncle Sam to mess with “their benefits.”

America, you can’t have it both ways. In the 1970s, the U.S. was the world’s biggest creditor. Today, we’re the biggest debtor on the globe. The answer is to modify benefits and eligibility levels over time so as not to distort the economy and also to make the changes politically acceptable. Blaming the Beltway for gridlock is an easy distraction from the real problem.

The story will end well when Americans finally look in the mirror to identify the real problem and admit that all they are doing is passing a heavy financial burden on to our children and grandchildren so that we can continue our current bi-polar lifestyle. Washington will respond when the public finally makes up its mind to embrace fiscal sanity.

Norman Poltenson is publisher of The Central New York Business Journal. Contact him at npoltenson@cnybj.com

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