Dissenting Opinions

How Consumerism can fix our Healthcare System

2012-02-05T15:31:00.000-08:00

Americans are the greatest shoppers on the earth.

Yet, government prohibits us from shopping for some of the most important needs in our lives like heath care as well as education services for our children.

In the early 1960s, America spent 6% of GDP in health care. So did Singapore.

America and Singapore both reformed their health care systems in very different ways.

America created two single payer systems -- one for old people (Medicare) and one for poor people (Medicaid).

Singapore created a nation of health care shoppers who have health savings accounts and who must make their own healthcare decisions.

Today, America spends 18% of GDP on healthcare and Singapore spends less than 4%.

Singapore has better outcomes as measured by life expectancy and infant morality.

The 20th century model of big government making decisions for average people has failed in healthcare, education, and just about everything else.

It's long past time that America stops listening to the self-serving 20th century reactionaries and undertake true government reform that will put the country on the right path to a successful future.

Obama's New Scheme to Control the Internet and Spy on Americans

2012-01-14T09:32:00.001-08:00

The Obama administration has been quietly plotting new controls on the Internet, including an ill-advised scheme to issue everyone a single Internet ID.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke announced that the government is drafting a plan called the "National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace" to centralize efforts to create a "trusted" identity eco-system.

Locke said that one of the goals of the program is to reduce or eliminate the need for people to memorize multiple passwords.

The plan will rely on private identity providers, rather than government to issue ids and run the system.

There are several problems with the Obama's Administration plan:

First, having one id is not a good idea. Why is identity theft becoming such a big problem? Because all of your financial information is tied to one government issued id called a Social Security number. Once a criminal gets a hold of that, they can unlock you entire financial life. Having multiple ids enables you to segment your life and reduce the overall damage that can be done if one of the ids is compromised.

Second, there are already multiple identity providers on the internet whose ids can be used across web sites. They include Microsoft Live, Google, Yahoo, and Facebook.

Third, There are already open standards for authentication (OpenID) and authorization (OAuth) that are widely used by these identity providers and various web sites.

Forth, since the government is sponsoring the system, they will undoubtedly mandate that the companies running the system provide access so that the government can spy on our activities.

As usual, the government is claiming that there is a problem when no real problem exists, for the sole purpose of gaining power and control over yet another aspect of our lives. As always, the end result will be the exact opposite of the government's stated goal -- internet privacy will be completely destroyed.

Romney / Paul. That's the ticket

2012-01-12T16:56:00.000-08:00

During the course of the GOP primaries, the GOP establishment (Kristol, Hannity, Limbaugh, Santorum, etc) have unmercifully savaged Ron Paul and laughed at his supporters as some kind of "cultist" nuts.

They have made a huge mistake.

Recent surveys have shown that "independents" (non-party affiliated voters) comprise 40% of the electorate. 79% of those people are angry with Obama and 77% of those people are also angry at George Bush and his big spending GOP Congress.

I am one of those people who think that both parties are a problem.

At this point Mitt Romney looks almost destined to be the GOP Presidential nominee.

Here's a fact: No matter what they say, most of the blowhards on the so-called "right" will line up behind Romney once he gets the GOP nomination, simply because he is the Republican nominee.

However, those of us who have felt unwelcomed in the GOP might have other options.

Ron Paul has not ruled out an independent run for the White House. Gary Johnson (the very successful two-term GOP Governor of New Mexico, who was ignored by the chattering class) is running for the Libertarian Party nomination for President.

This is a huge problem for the GOP. The blowhards like Hannity just aren't smart enough to get it.

The owner of Liberysflame.com came up with a very interesting idea.

Mitt Romney could solve most of his potential problems by naming RAND Paul as his running mate.

Rand Paul has tremendous credibility with the conservative Tea Party.

Rand Paul on the ticket would prevent Ron Paul from running as an independent.

It would also help demonstrate to libertarians, tea partiers, and independents that they are actually welcome in the party.

It's a great idea. If Romney locks up the nomination after South Carolina, he really needs to think about how to bring the party together to defeat Obama. This is the way to do it.

The Monsters of Free Republic

2012-01-08T12:01:00.001-08:00

During the 2000 election, I joined the "conservative" forum site "Free Republic".

I was tossed off of the site in less than a day, simply for expressing a fact-based opinion that differed from that of the site's moderators.

Today I decided to rejoin, just to post my latest blog about Rick Santorum entitled Rick Santorum is no Conservative Savior.

I was tossed off of Free Republic after one post, but not before the moderator changed the name of my post to Rick Santorum is no Conservative Savior, sez troll before getting the ZOT and opened it up to ridicule from the mental midgets, who follow the moderators around like a bunch of lemmings.

Read my post. It wasn't nasty. There wasn't any vulgarity. I didn't personally attack anyone. I merely pointed that Santorum likes to spend your money. The Club for Growth agrees with that assessment.

I got a quick Zap or Zot or whatever they call it over there.

I don't know who posts on Free Republic. I really don't care. But what I do know is that: A.) they are not conservative, B.) they are not very bright, and C.) they do not exhibit any sense of civility or decorum at all. Their behavior is childish, absurd and quite hilarious.

If this is what the "conservative" movement has become, please count me out.

Rick Santorum is no Conservative Savior

2012-01-07T12:21:00.001-08:00

Rick Santorum's virtual tie in Iowa has propelled him into the national spotlight overnight.

Just three weeks ago, Santorum was polling in the low to middle single digits in Iowa. Many people questioned why he was even in the race. I thought that he was probably running for Vice President -- someone who could give Mitt Romney credibility with social conservatives.

Now that Santorum has emerged as the latest front-runner among the GOP Presidential contenders, it's time to take a close look at who Rick Santorum really is.

Santorum was born in 1958 in West Virginia. His parents were government employees who worked at a VA Hospital in neighboring Pennsylvania. After graduating from college with a Law Degree, Santorum went to work for the government as a legislative aide to a Pennsylvania State Senator. He later served on a Pennsylvania government transportation committee.

Santorum was elected to the House of Representatives in 1990. In 1994 he was elected to the Senate as part of the Gingrich revolution. In 1996, Santorum served as Chairman of the Republican Party Task Force on Welfare Reform and he helped steer that important piece of legislation through the Senate.

However, during the Bush the administration, Santorum helped lead the GOP away from their principles, by concocting all kinds of government spending programs designed to create new government dependent constituencies that would be loyal to the GOP.

Rick Santorum voted for the first new federal entitlement program since LBJ (Medicare Part D), the largest federal intrusion into the classroom in history (the failed No Child Left Behind), the largest pork barrel infrastructure bill in history (including the infamous "bridge to nowhere"), thousands of earmarks, Bush's two ill-conceived wars in the Middle East, and much more. Santorum and his buddies turned a balance budget into huge deficits and set the stage for the Democrats to regain control of the Congress and White House.

Rick Santorum is the poster boy for everything that was wrong with the GOP during the Bush administration. As a result, he got booted out of office in 2006 along with the rest of the GOP Congress. He lost to a conservative Democrat by a whopping 59% to 41%.

During the 1980s, Ronald Reagan vetoed a transportation bill from a Democrat Congress because it contained 150 earmarks. During the Bush Administration, Santorum helped to Sheppard a transportation bill through a GOP Congress that contained over 1,000 earmarks (including the "bridge to nowhere"). Bush signed it. This alone should tell us all how much so-called "conservatives" like Santorum have veered off of the course set for us by Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.

Santorum also endorsed liberal GOP Senator Arlen Specter over his conservative challenger Pat Toomey in 2004. Specter won the primary and the election. Thanks to Rick Santorum, Arlen Specter was around to cast the 60th and deciding vote for Obamacare in the Senate.

I've watched every GOP debate during this election cycle. One thing that really strikes me is that of all of the current GOP Presidential candidates, Rick Santorum seems to have learned the least from Bush's misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Like Bush, Santorum seems to believe that the U.S. government can force a western civilization on a country like Afghanistan, where no reasonable civilization has ever existed before.

Earlier this week Rush Limbaugh was bellyaching about people questioning Santorum's conservative credentials. Limbaugh stated that "conservatives" actually do believe in big government -- just not the same kind of big government that liberals believe in. Oh really???

So sure, if our new definition of a "conservative" is someone who wants to conserve the growth of government over the last 80 years and the corrupt cronyism that it spawned, then Santorum is indeed a "conservative".

However, if our definition of a "conservative" is someone who wants to conserve the Constitution, limited government, the free market, and our individual liberty, then Santorum isn't even close to fitting the bill.

I hope and pray that the good people of New Hampshire take a hard look at Rick Santorum in the context of their state motto -- "Live Free or Die" -- and render their verdict accordingly.

Draconian EPA Regulations To Cause Rolling Blackouts

2011-12-04T15:44:00.001-08:00

Obama is poised to shut down 8% of the coal-fired electrical plants in the country.

8%. Next year.

A disproportionate number of the plants will be in Texas.

When the blackouts occur, who will the left blame? Those evil power companies.

It will be "obvious" to all that they need to be nationalized.

After that happens, we'll never have stable electricity again.

It's yet another milestone on Obama's road to banana republic status...

The Euro Crisis in a Nutshell

2011-10-15T18:06:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of hand-wringing on why Europe is poised to send the world economy into a tailspin.

Let's cut through the nonsense and tell it like it is.

In a nutshell, a few years ago, the frugal Germans decided to enter into a single currency agreement with the profligate Geeks, in addition to other countries.

The Greeks did what they always do -- spend well beyond their means.

Now the Germans are left holding the bag.

The current crisis is all about the German population not wanting to take responsibility for the mess that their politicians created.

The only way out of this mess is for the German government to own up to their responsibilities and correct their past mistakes. To do this they need to:

1.) Inflate the Euro to bail out the Greeks. Yes, this will cause people in Germany and other Euro countries to take an economic hit, but this is what they signed up for by agreeing to a monetary union with the socialist Greeks.

2.) Get out of the Euro and restore the Mark.

Sadly, the cowardly politicians in German are not likely to do either. As a result, the world economy could come collapsing down in a magnitude that we have never seen before.

America's Growing Bromodrosis Crisis

2011-09-30T16:31:00.000-07:00

A new study shows that 1/3rd of Americans (more than 33%) have Bromodrosis -- stinky feet. Half of them have extremely stinky feet.

Stinky feet are not only a personal issue. They effect a person's career, social life, and in fact, their very existence.

It's a huge epidemic that is poised to destroy our civilization.

Surveys show that a large segment of Americans are prejudiced against people with stinky feet.

"A lot of people at work have stinky feet," said Lance, a computer programmer from Seattle. "I can't stand working with them. I do everything possible to avoid them".

Yet, only 9% of Americans will tell someone if they have stinky feet.

Sally, a marketing assistant in Chicago concurs: "Some of my best friends have stinky feet. I feel sorry for them, but I just can't bring myself to tell them".

Why is it fair that people with naturally odorless feet have an advantage in life over people who's toe cheese smells like a rotting dead skunk?

The rich can afford Order-Eaters, foot powers and other treatments. But what about the poor? How about the homeless???? What about the socially dysfunctional, who don't realize just how much their feet really stink?

Aren't these people entitled to the same odorless feet as the rich?

Who will hire a person with stinky feet? How can they earn a living? How can they find dignity in their lives???

A person with stinky feet cannot truly be free.

It's very clear that the heartless free market won't solve this problem.

Leaving our Bromodrosis brethren to fend for themselves is not what America is all about.

The government must take action. It must take action now.

First, the government must immediately create a Department of Olfactory Wellness that will declare a new war on stinky feet and eradicate this plague on society once and for all.

Second, the government must also immediately place a tax on people who have naturally odorless feet and redistribute it to the wretched refuse so that can they achieve foot odor equality.

Third, the government needs to outlaw all forms of discrimination against people with stinky feet. It's just not right for someone to lose a job opportunity, let alone a sexual encounter because his or her feet smell like a pound of fermenting cabbage.

Only when we solve this dire problem, can all Americans truly be free.

Obama's Tax on Soup Kitchens and the Poor

2011-09-14T13:51:00.000-07:00

President Obama unveiled his Son of Stimulus bill this week.

For the most part, the bill was a lightweight version of his previously failed "stimulus" bill. It proposes to penalize productive people and hand the money over to support temporary jobs in the government bureaucracy.

As was the case with the first "stimulus" bill, the new bill features even more government micromanagement in the form of "targeted tax cuts" and government-centered spending initiatives.

However, what is really interesting in this bill is Obama's assault on charities that help that poor.

The President's new bill will phase out charitable contributions for couples making over 250,000 a year.

Obama likes to rail against millionaires and billionaires, but working couples that make $250,000 are not not millionaires or billionaires. Obama is so obsessed with harming these people that he is willing to sacrifice soup kitchens and other charities that help the poor and homeless in the process.

Obama's proposals will impact approximately 40% of all the tax deductible contributions, and essentially penalize soup kitchens, hospitals, and churches that provide essential services to those who need them most.

Who does Obama's program hurt most? The "rich" or the "poor"?

The answer is obvious. Unfortunately, Obama doesn't really care about the poor. Like all leftists, he only cares about punishing the successful.

Rick Perry is Right: Social Security Really is a Ponzi Scheme

2011-09-10T17:27:00.001-07:00

Rick Perry's comments during this week's GOP debate at the Reagan library has caused quite a stir in the liberal media.

During the debate, Governor Perry defended the words in his book, calling Social Security a "Ponzi scheme".

After the debate, the "analysis" on MSNBC was truly fun to watch as every commentator sat shelled shocked over the fact that a politician would dare to use these words to describe America's most sacred welfare program.

The only person on the panel who had a clue about what might be going on was Ed Schultz who at one point questioned whether or not whether young people would stick with Obama or jump on the Perry bandwagon.

Unlike the political and media establishment in this country, young people understand that they are going to get the short end of the Social Security "inter-generational compact". Schultz surprisingly realized that Perry's message might resonant with young people.

Let's take a quick look at the Social Security system and see if Perry might be on to something.

The people who got into the Social Security system very early got back on average 15 times the amount of money they paid in. They got a great deal and were raving proponents of the system.

The people receiving Social Security benefits today are getting back on average 2 1/2 to 3 times what they paid in. They are also generally strong proponents of the system.

Today, Social Security is paying out more every year than it takes it. We are borrowing money from foreigners, like the Chinese and Saudis to pay current benefits. As the huge Baby Boom generation retires, the amount of debt we incur each year will quickly escalate.

So, what happens when my generation starts to retire in 15 to 20 years and what will happen to my kids?

We will all be left holding the bag.

There is a financial MODEL that describes this. The model is called a Pyramid scheme or Ponzi scheme or a Bernie Madoff scheme. The people who get it in early make out like bandits and the people who get it late get screwed.

That is exactly how the Social Security system will play out.

The fact is that the Social Security is a pay-as-you-go welfare system that transfers money from young, struggling families to relatively well-to-do retired people. There isn't any "trust fund". The words "trust fund" are used to describe a mountain of debt. A mountain of debt is NOT a trust fund. It's a mountain of debt. Today, the mountain of debt in the Social Security system is so great that it cannot be paid.

Peel away the emotion, the Orwellian language about the "trust fund", and the other political rhetoric, and just look at the financial facts. Then this all becomes very clear.

Rick Perry is absolutely right and I am actually impressed that a politician would tell the truth about this. It's truly amazing.

The big question is what can be done?

Long term, people need to be able to save for their own retirements. Social Security needs to be taken back to it's roots as a program that supplements the income of retirees who are truly poor, through no fault of their own.

Today, 25% of people over 65 have pension or investment income that places them in the "wealthy" category. They still get Social Security benefits, so long as they don't work for their income. Why should young struggling families hand money over the wealthy retired people?

They shouldn't. Means testing Social Security will go a long way to make it solvent for the future.

When Social Security was implemented, the retirement age was 65. The average life expectancy was 59 for men and 61 for women. Most people didn't live long enough to get a check. Today, the retirement age is still 65. However, life expectancy is 73 for men and 78 for women.

The numbers just don't work.

We need to gradually raise the retirement age to keep up with life expectancy.

Bravo to Perry for telling it like it is. I certainly agree with Ed Schultz that a lot of young people will find this message appealing.

The other group who should find this message appealing are wealthy retirees who are stealing from their children's and grandchildren's future. Will they finally put their selfishness aside and say: "no more"? Probably not, but we'll see.

Left Ready to Bash Rich Perry on Immigration

2011-08-28T16:51:00.001-07:00

In 2001, Rick Perry spoke at the Border Summit. In the speech he advocated closer ties with our neighbor to the south.

While the left is busily trying to provide amnesty to Mexicans who have entered America illegally, they are also preparing to discredit Perry with his Tea Party supporters over his 10 year old views on our relationship with Mexico.

Quite frankly, I've changed my position on relations with Mexico quite dramatically since 2001, based upon real world evidence.

The basic argument of letting Mexican workers into the country is simple. Without an economic relief valve, the corrupt Mexican system would deteriorate into chaos. We don't need chaos on our border. But the reality is that we already have chaos on the border, thanks to the drug war. And the chaos is escalating.

When Vicente Fox become the first conservative Mexican President in several decades, I thought that we should give the guy a chance to reform things. But nothing changed. The corrupt system continued, but with different people in charge of the corruption.

My opinion today is that we should close the relief valve and let Mexico explode. A big explosion like we are seeing all over the Middle East is probably the only chance that Mexicans have of reforming their corrupt system.

Unlike the Middle East, there are enough people in Mexico with ties to and experience in the U.S. to help ensure that any explosion results in something better than they have today.

Close the border and let them stew. That's the real answer. It's a completely different answer than I would have given in 2001.

Circumstances change and it's okay to change a position based on new evidence. In fact, when circumstances change a reasonable and rational person will change their beliefs based on the new evidence. Those who don't change in the face of new evidence (like unreconstructed leftists) are not worth listening to.

Obama's Jobs Program

2011-08-24T09:09:00.000-07:00

As the President suns himself at his $50,000 a week estate in Martha's Vineyard, the nation's economy continues to struggle, with new housing starts falling and delinquent mortgage payments on the rise.

As he was leaving for his vacation, Obama promised to unveil a new "jobs program" when he gets back. Undoubtedly, it will be another Keynesian pump priming disaster, just like Obama's "stimulus", which will do nothing to help the economy.

Keynesian economics should have been completely discredited in the 1970s. According to Keynesians and their Phillips Curve, you cannot have high inflation and high unemployment at the same time. Yet, this is exactly what he had under Carter and this is exactly where we are heading again. Yet the left clings to Keynesianism like a religion.

Keynesian economics is predicated on the notion that wages are sticky downwards, i.e., people will not willingly take a pay cut in a recession to clear the market and start economic growth again.

The Keynesian solution was to have government fool people into taking pay cuts during recessions by creating inflation.

That may have worked for a very short while, but people got wise to this and started demanding things like automatic cost of living adjustments in their contracts.

So, a fundamental policy prescription of Keynesian economics just doesn't work any more.

Another Keynesian policy prescription that doesn't work anymore is demand stimulation to start economic growth. Sure, pumping money into the system may help stimulate demand, but demand for what? Cheap goods made in China and Mexico, which does nothing to support economic growth at home.

In a global economy, borrowing money to stimulate demand is a foolish proposition.

What we really need to do to get the economy moving again is stimulate investments in innovation and productive capacity. There are things that government could do to help.

First, we need to dramatically simplify our convoluted 80,000 page tax code which punishes most American businesses with the highest corporate tax rates in the world, while letting politically favored companies get away with paying little to no taxes at all.

Second, our byzantine regulatory system needs to be completely rethought. We need to start by being more outcome focused than process focused. Regulations should have to go through a cost benefit analysis before they are enacted and on a periodic basis after enactment to ensure that they are effective at achieving the desired outcomes with as few side-effects as possible.

Third, we need to fix our broken government monopoly schools to produce students with sufficient skills in math and science to succeed in a high tech economy.

Forth, yes we need to invest in repairing and expanding our crumbling infrastructure. The focus has to be on results, not political expediency. If an infrastructure investment cost effectively helps the flow of commerce through the country it should be undertaken. Otherwise, there is no point in spending the money.

Fifth, we also have to get rid of incentives for not working. Allowing people to lay around growing their bellies on unemployment insurance for two years is counterproductive to economic growth.

Obama had his chance to simplify the tax code and make some needed infrastructure investments by embracing the proposal from his own debt commission. Unfortunately, he ran away from it as if it were the plague. Obama is not about to go to battle with his biggest supporters -- government bureaucrat unions -- to fix the schools. Obama's EPA is increasing the regulatory burden on American businesses. On economic policy, he is doing everything wrong.

The sad fact is that the economy is going to continue to struggle until Mr. Obama is ejected from the White House, because he just doesn't get it.

Thoughts from Taiwan

2011-08-19T04:43:00.001-07:00

I spent the last week in Taipei, Taiwan visiting a customer.

I've been all over Asia, but this was my first trip to Taiwan, other than catching a connecting flight at the airport.

I'm sitting here at Taoyuan International Airport waiting for my 12 hour flight to Seattle, reflecting on my week.

I love Taiwan and its people. The city is on the move. People are hustling and working hard. Yet, they are extraordinarily friendly and caring.

Last night we went to Tower 101, which is one of the tallest buildings in the world. Until very recently, it also had the fastest elevator in the world. We climbed from the 5th floor to the observation deck on the 89th floor in a matter of seconds. The view was spectacular.

Taipei 101 is designed to withstand typhoon winds and earthquake tremors. Inside the building there is a 660 metric ton steel pendulum (my pic is on the left) which acts as a mass damper that sways to offset movements in the building caused by strong gusts of wind. It's the largest mass damper in the world and the building is an engineering marvel.

Afterwards, we had diner at a great restaurant that specializes in dumplings.

We were sitting at diner, looking at all of the energy in the city, the wonderful people, and everything that they've accomplished over the last 50 years. I couldn't help but think that if Chiang Kai Shek hadn't lead 2 million people off of the mainland, all of these people and what they've accomplished wouldn't be here because the communists would have murdered their parents and grandparents for rebelling just as the communists murdered so many others.

Our thoughts quickly drifted to the problems we face in America. Although the American left haven't turned into mass murders (yet), they are killing the country nevertheless.

In Taiwan and the rest of Asia, you are expected to work and take care of yourself. If you can't, you rely on your family. In America (and Europe) the government's welfare system has destroyed the family by replacing it with a faceless, uncaring bureaucracy. They've also replaced our core values of hard work and responsibility with sloth and dependency. So, you've been on unemployment insurance for 2 years???!!! No problem, Obama and his minions will let you ride out the rest of your miserable life at the taxpayer's expense.

At one point last night I told my colleague that we should take every big mouth leftist in the U.S., and dump them off in Taiwan, the Philippines or elsewhere in Asia without a penny in their pocket. If they can manage to survive a year, both they and America would be better off when they come back. I seriously doubt that many of them could survive.

It's getting close to boarding time. I am so glad to be coming back to America with another shining example of how the American values of hardwork, thrift, and personal responsibility translate into success in every society. It is so sad that many Americans are losing those very values.

The Message From Iowa

2011-08-13T18:19:00.000-07:00

The short message from Iowa was: Tim who?

Michelle Bachmann and Ron Paul were 152 votes apart. Each of them got more than twice as many votes as Tim Pawlenty even though he spent more money in Iowa than Bachmann and Paul combined.

The challenge for Pawlenty is that he is too timid to survive the bare knuckle brawlers running the Obama campaign. Fortunately, the GOP primary voters know it.

The deeper message was that the right candidates were not on the ballot.

Rick Perry wasn't even a candidate and wasn't even listed on the ballot, yet he got more votes than Mitt Romney.

Perry had a great announcement speech in South Carolina today. First, he hammered Obama with Obama's own words and deeds. Second, the speech was very focused on the economy and jobs. Third, the speech was very upbeat about America's potential. I was surprised to see how Reaganesque it was. People will respond to this. I did.

My view is that the nomination is going to come down to Romney versus Perry. In the end Ron Paul will be the only other candidate standing, but he won't get the nomination.

I really like Michelle Bachmann. She is smart, articulate and unafraid to speak her mind. I would happily vote for her if she won the nomination. I don't believe that she will win. She is also unlikely to be an anyone's VP selection because she is too independent, as is Ron Paul.

South Carolina Governor Nicky Haley had a lot of good things to say about Perry today. She could wind up on his ticket if he wins the nomination.

Given the GOP's history of nominating the next in line, I still think that Romney will win the nomination. However, the situation is a little different today because the average person is more involved, so we'll see.

Let's hope that the GOP nominates someone who not only can beat Obama, but also will have the courage to stand up to the special interests and make the changes necessary to put America on the right track.

An Economic Lesson from Harry Truman

2011-08-13T10:20:00.000-07:00

The appointment of yet another deficit commission, to make recommendations for reducing the programmed increases in our national debt over the next 10 years, demonstrates just how dysfunctional the political system has really become.

President Obama appointed a bi-partisan deficit commission last year. In December, they came back with a modest proposal to reduce the planned increase in the debt by $4 trillion over the next 10 years.

Obama should of went on TV, held the plan up, and told the American people that we need to do this to fix the economy. Then he should have dumped it in John Boehner's and Harry Reid's laps and focused like a laser beam on building support for it around the country. That's what Reagan and Clinton would have done.

Instead, Obama ran away from it. It was his own debt commission. Democrats and Republicans on the commission voted for it. But Obama ran away from it like it was the plague.

Over the last few months a bi-partisan group in the Senate, known as the Gang of Six, also came up with a modest proposal to reduce the increase in the debt by $4 trillion over the next 10 years. Both Democrat Majority leader Harry Reid and President Obama ran away from it.

Now, as part of the deal to raise the debt ceiling by a whopping $2.4 trillion over the next 18 months, the House and Senate have appointed yet another deficit commission tasked with finding future savings in the budget, amounting to a lousy $1.6 trillion over the next 10 years. This won't do a thing to solve our economic woes.

The big problem here is that Democrats just don't want to cut spending.

They are sustained by various Keynesian economists, like Paul Krugman who warn of dire economic consequences if we cut government spending.

Keynesian economists also warned Harry Truman not to cut government spending at the end of WWII. They actually tried to get Truman to keep the wartime economy in tact. They argued that we should continue to build military equipment and just bury it in the desert in the name of "full employment".

Fortunately, President Truman told the Keynesian's to take a hike.

Truman oversaw a massive transformation from a government directed economy to a private one. Yes, there were some minor dislocations as there are in all transformations, but the economy did not collapse, millions of people were not thrown out of work, and we did not enter a second Great Depression as the Keynesian's claimed would happen.

The following table, from the White House Office of Management and budget, illustrates spending during the Truman era versus today:

Year	1944	1945	1946	1947	1949	1949	1950	1951	1952	2011
National Defense	37.8	37.5	19.2	5.5	3.5	4.8	5.0	7.4	13.2	5.1
Human Resources	0.9	0.8	2.5	4.2	3.8	4.0	5.2	3.4	3.4	16.6
Physical Resources	2.6	0.8	0.4	0.5	0.9	1.1	1.3	1.2	1.2	1.4
Net Interest	1.1	1.4	1.8	1.8	1.7	1.7	1.8	1.5	1.3	1.4
Other	1.8	2.0	1.6	3.4	2.3	3.3	2.9	1.5	1.2	1.4
Undistributed offsetting receipts	-0.6	-0.6	-0.7	-0.7	-0.6	-0.7	-0.7	-0.7	-1.0	-0.6
Total	43.6	41.9	24.8	14.8	11.6	14.3	15.6	14.2	19.4	25.3

Look how fast Truman wound down the war time economy: Government spending went from a peek of 43.6% of GDP to 11.6% of GDP in 4 years. Truman kept government spending at about 15% of GDP between 1947 and 1951. Yes federal spending jumped to 19.4% of GDP in 1952, but this was entirely due to increases in national defense to fight the Korean war.

Unless you were a black in the south, life during the late 40s and early 50s was pretty good, because the government mostly kept it's nose out of our business.

Look at the chart carefully. The problem we have today is very clear -- a bloated and unsustainable welfare / entitlement system, which now comprises nearly 17% of GDP. It will continue to grow and squeeze out the private economy as baby boomers head into retirement.

We need to take a lesson from Truman and unwind as much government spending as possible in as short a time as possible.

We don't need to go from 43.6% of GDP to 11.6% of GDP as Truman did. We only need to go from 25.3% to 18% or so. That, plus simplification of the 80,000 page tax code is all we need to do to restart the economy and balance the budget.

Harry Truman does not get enough credit from history for saving the country.

Had Truman listened to the Keynesian's, who wanted to build tanks and bury them in the desert, America would be a poor country today.

The Biggest Loser to Ever Occupy the White House

2011-08-10T08:55:00.000-07:00

Obama's dismal handling of the downgrade to America's credit rating is the most pitiful lack of leadership in recent memory.

In my 52 years on this earth, I have learned that there is one thing which is 100% certain in life: winners take responsibility and losers blame others.

Bush, Europe, the weather, the Arab Spring, Wall Street, Owners of private jets, the Tea Party, Oil Companies, Glen Beck, Gold "speculators", the GOP, and even ATM Machines... all at fault for the dismal economy, which led to the downgrade. But not the government and certainly not Obama. No, they are as pure and faultless as a virgin's honey pot.

Even liberals are starting to get this. People from Maureen Dowd to several Clinton confidants have concluded that Obama is the biggest loser to occupy the White House since Jimmy Carter.

In my view, Obama may yet become the biggest loser to ever occupy the White House.

Nothing is going to change until this incompetent SOB is booted from office, one way or another.

Wisconsin Recall Election

2011-08-10T08:29:00.000-07:00

I was watching MSNBC last night covering the Wisconsin recall election. They were in Wisconsin among a crowd of recall supporters.

Every single "working person" they interviewed was a government employee -- mostly employees of the failed government monopoly school system. There wasn't a single Teamster, UAW member, etc. in the crowd. It was all government employees.

This should have crystallized the real problem in America for everyone. The two sides in America politics are not "rich" versus "poor". The two sides in America are people who work for a living versus people who vote for their living. There are "rich", "middle class", and "poor" people on both sides.

We no longer have government of the people, by the people, and for the people. It's now a government of the government, by the government, and for the government.

Until this dramatically changes, America is going to continue its slide into the trash heap of history.

Bush and Obama: Not a Dime's Worth of Difference

2011-08-04T22:09:00.000-07:00

Leon Panetta, Obama's Secretary of Defense, warned today that he would not accept large cuts in military spending as part of a deal to slow the increase in the government's debt.

Penetta insisted that we need to borrow money from foreigners to bring the government's wars to "stable conclusions".

Unfortunately, Penetta seems to be affected with the same type of delusions that plague most U.S. politicians.

The government's wars in the Middle East are not going to come to "stable conclusions" regardless of how much money we borrow from China to wage them.

Regardless of when we leave Afghanistan -- next week or next year -- the Taliban will reassert their power. There is not a damn thing that can be done about it.

What about the TRILLION dollars we spent in Iraq? Oh, it's a stable "democracy", right? Wrong. Violence in Iraq is escalating. The Iraqi Shiites are now in cahoots with Iran to control the country. The Sunnis are alarmed, so they are escalating their attacks. The Kurds are scared to death of being slaughtered by both when the U.S. government leaves, or sooner.

The U.S. government is bombing Libya for what reason? To get rid of Qaddafi? Well, he's still there. My guess is that he's not leaving soon. The U.S. government has pissed off a very nasty snake for no reason. As a result, Americans will die in an airplane bombing at some point soon. Gaddafi has done it before and he'll do it again. Why did the U.S. government invite this???

It's time to wake up to the reality of the 21st century.

We've moved from a bi-polar world to a multi-polar world. The American government can no longer throw a few billion dollars around to keep people in line.

We need completely new thinking on foreign policy. We are not going to get that new thinking from a bunch of old hacks.

What is Really Driving the Deficit?

2011-08-04T21:47:00.000-07:00

We spend $700 billion on the military each year.

If we leave Iraq and Afghanistan we save $100 billion.

If we leave Europe, Japan, and South Korea we might save $100 billion more.

I support downsizing those commitments right now.

That leaves us with $500 billion in military spending, which is less than 3.5% of GDP. That would be lowest military spending since before WWII. It's a reasonable price to protect the country.

The deficit this year is over $1,500 billion. Take $200 billion out of the military and we still have a $1,300 billion deficit.

Yes, military spending needs to be reformed, but it is not the primary driver of the deficit.

The primary driver of the deficit is that over half the people in the country receive a government check.

Until that fact really sinks in, we are going to continue to hemorrhage money.

Will Obama Outmaneuver the GOP Again?

2011-07-15T11:19:00.000-07:00

The debt showdown in D.C. is getting really nasty. This week Obama upped the ante by claiming that if the debt ceiling isn't raised, the government might not be able to send out Social Security checks.

This is an old Democrat scare tactic. Whenever there is a budget battle at any level of government, unscrupulous Democrat politicians hold up the programs that would be most painful to cut as a way to scare voters to put pressure on the GOP to cave into their demands.

The GOP shouldn't fall for it any longer.

The Federal government is expected to take in $179 billion in revenue in August. Interest on the debt, Social Security, Medicare, and military salaries will add up to $143 billion in August. That leaves $36 billion left over for everything else. Yes, other things will have to be prioritized -- that's called living within one's means.

Here's what the House needs to do: immediately pass a bill mandating that if the debt ceiling isn't raised, the administration must prioritize paying the interest on the debt, Social Security, Medicare, and military salaries above everything else. If the Democrat Senate fails to pass the bill, or if Obama fails to sign the bill, then everyone will know who is responsible for Social Security checks not going out.

Cain: Obama could not run one Godfather’s pizza restaurant

2011-06-03T08:45:00.000-07:00

Newsmax is reporting that in an interview, former Godfather's CEO Herman Cain said that Obama doesn't have the capability to run one Godfather’s pizza restaurant.

Let's take a quick look at what an Obama pizzeria might look like:

1.) He'd pay his pizza flippers 6 figure salaries and endow them with lavish retirement plans.

2.) He'd force his delivery drivers into $40,000 Chevy Volts -- only a three hour recharge between each delivery.

3.) He'd implement a progressive pizza pricing policy. 50% of his customers with the lowest incomes would get free pizzas. In fact, he would pay them to eat his pizzas. The top 2% of his customers would have to pick up 40% of his cost if they wanted to eat his pizza. He'd borrow the rest of from Domino's.

4.) To make up for past discrimination, where Godfather's would refuse to deliver pizzas to crime ridden ghettos, Obama would implement a pizza reparations policy. The drivers would go to the ghetto, with extra money in their pockets so they would be worth robbing.

5.) When the business came crashing down, he'd blame the "greedy rich" for not wanting to pay $10,000 for each slice of pizza from his store.

America at the Crossroads

2011-05-06T16:38:00.000-07:00

The U.S. unemployment rate rose to 9.0% in April. Economic growth is anemic. Gas is well over $4 a gallon is most states, and over $5 a gallon in Hawaii.

Over the last couple of years the government has implemented several programs, that cost around $1 trillion each, designed to "stimulate" the economy, including the Bush TARP, Obama Stimulus, and the Federal Reserve's "Quantitative Easing".

The economy has only gotten worse.

Obama and the left keep talking about implementing more of the same type of programs to "stimulate demand".

The problem is that the entire Keynesian notion of stimulating demand is obsolete in a global economy.

Sure, the government can temporarily hand out borrowed dollars to stimulate demand. What demand are they stimulating? Largely demand for products made elsewhere, which doesn't create any jobs in America.

I’m a free trader, but borrowing money to buy products made abroad is the path to ruin. We need to earn money to buy those products. Earning money requires us to make things that people want to buy.

To fix the ills that plague us, America needs to increase investments in innovation and productive capacity.

Today, there are two huge challenges stopping us:

First, our tax system is a complete disaster. According to OCED, American has the most progressive tax system in the world. We also have the highest corporate tax rates in the world. We also have one of (if not the) most complicated tax systems in the world, which costs us a half a trillion dollars a year just to figure out our taxes. To top it all off, there are huge U.S. corporations that don't pay any taxes at all, because they were able to successfully lobby politicians to implement loopholes in the tax system to specifically benefit them. Not only is our tax system unfair, it's also counter-productive and hurts our economy.

Second, the government monopoly schools are an even bigger disaster. America spends more per student than almost every country, yet the government monopoly schools are among worst performing schools in the developed world. America's economic prowess depends on our ability to innovate. Over the last couple of decades, most of our advanced technology talent has come from importing people from China, India, and other foreign countries. Luckily, these people still want to come to America. But importing talent is not a substitute for growing our own talent. The government monopoly schools don't graduate enough people with the basic math and science skills to move the country forward.

We need to do two things to get the country on track:

First, we need to simplify our Byzantine tax and regulatory system.

Second, we need to fix the broken government monopoly schools.

Sounds simple, right? Unfortunately, there are a huge number of special interests (from General Electric to the National Education Association) that benefit from the current system at the expense of the country. Those special interests are not about to give up their tax-funded goodies and go quietly into that good night. So, changing anything becomes increasingly difficult.

That's the problem.

Here's an undeniable fact: The rate of change in the world is changing exponentially. Unfortunately, the U.S. government is stuck in the industrial age, when the pace of change was much slower.

Unless America has some real reform that moves the special interests out of the way, our decline as a nation will accelerate rapidly.

Who will stand up and say: "no more"?

How about you???

bin Laden - Obama Credit and Blunder

2011-05-02T16:50:00.000-07:00

In a dramatic late night announcement, President Obama went on national television last night and told the American people that a Navy Seal team killed Ossama bin Laden.

The U.S. government announced that they sent bin Laden to his watery grave, probably somewhere in the Arabian Sea.

Bravo to Obama and CIA Chief Leon Panetta for brining bin Laden to justice.

However, the decisions surrounding the disposition of bin Laden's cold, dead body were not without controversy.

I'm not a conspiracy nut, but I wonder why the government didn't keep bin Laden's body around for independent verification.

Obama is from Chicago -- a town notorious for winning close elections within the margin of error coming from dead people voting from the grave. Those dead folks put Kennedy in office in 1960.

Yes, bin Laden is probably dead, but the Obama administration should have produced independent verification of bin Laden's death. They didn't.

The administration's mistakes around verification of bin Laden's death will result in bin Laden's demise joining Pearl Harbor and the Kennedy assassination in the chronicles of American conspiratorial political history.

It didn't have to be that way. But the administration's actions made it so.

Consumer Reports: Chevy Volt doesn't make economic sense

2011-04-01T13:31:00.001-07:00

Consumer Reports recently wrote a scathing report on Government Motors new Wundercar -- the Chevy Volt.

Consumer Reports concluded that:

"When you are looking at purely dollars and cents, it doesn't really make a lot of sense. The Volt isn't particularly efficient as an electric vehicle and it's not particularly good as a gas vehicle either in terms of fuel economy."

They are exactly right.

In real world conditions, the Volt will go about 28 miles on a charge. It takes 3 to 4 hours to recharge it.

Contrast that with the Tesla Roadster (made in America) which gets up to 245 miles on a charge and the upcoming Tesla Model S sedan, which will get up to 300 miles on a charge.

Unlike the Tesla models, the Volt has a gasoline engine that kicks in to recharge the battery when it runs dry. As Consumer Reports concluded, the combination doesn't live up to GM's hype.

Plug-in electrics are not the future anyway.

I've been convinced for quite a few years that Hydrogen Fuel cell electrics are the future. Most of the major auto companies, including Mercedes, Toyota, and even GM, seem to agree.

Fuel cell cars are powered by the most abundant molecule in the universe -- hydrogen. They produce electricity through a chemical reaction that is caused by combining hydrogen and oxygen. That energy is fed into an electrical motor. The only tailpipe emission is water vapor.

GM has a pretty good fuel cell prototype in the Equinox Fuel Cell SUV. The Equinox is a full size SUV powered by a hydrogen fuel cell.

The Equinox will currently go 160 miles on a tank full of hydrogen in real world conditions. It can be refueled in a couple of minutes. On a fuel cost basis, it gets about 70 miles to a gallon of gas. Not bad. And it's electric, so you get close to full torque at all RPMs, even in reverse!

Toyota has been showing off a similar fuel cell SUV. Mercedes is currently piloting a small "B-class" fuel cell car, with plans for larger fuel cell cars in the near future. Toyota and most other car companies have major fuel cell efforts underway.

The big challenge to fuel cell adoption is the refueling infrastructure.

GM has partnered with the Hawaiian Gas Company, which is building hydrogen refueling stations across Oahu. Mercedes has formed similar partnerships with energy companies in Germany who plan to roll out 1,000 hydrogen refueling stations in Germany over the next five years. California already has a handful of hydrogen refueling stations, with plans for many more.

Tesla has proved that electrical cars can be sexy and powerful. The Telsa Roadster is a great looking car. It goes from 0 to 60 in 3.7 seconds, which is as fast as the Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano, Corvette Z06, and Porsche 911 GT3.

Electric cars are definitely the future.

What we need is an electric car that can be refueled in about the same time as a gasoline car.

That is what hydrogen fuel cells provide.

Hat's off to GM for trying something new and innovative with the Volt. Innovations don't always succeed. I suspect that the Volt will wind up amongst the long line of failures that GM has tried to bring to market over the last several decades.

However, GM is also on the forefront of fuel cell technology. That's a good thing.

Random Thoughts on the Situation in Japan

2011-03-29T18:51:00.001-07:00

Japan is suffering through a horrendous series of back-to-back catastrophes that are starting to make the world question whether or not Japan will survive.

I've been to Japan 25+ times. Japan is a great country. The Japanese are a great people. They will survive these catastrophes.

However, they may not be able to survive their own brain dead politics which have:

A.) Kept Japan in a rolling recession for 20 years because the politicians refuse to reform their financial system.

B.) Torpedoed population growth by discouraging young women from marrying and having babies. (Only single women can really have careers in Japan, so many young women just don't get married and don't have kids.)

As sad as it sounds, perhaps the Earthquake, Tsunami, and resulting nuclear challenges will wake Japan out of it's 20 year old slumber and ignite their spirit of quality, excellence, and results that typified Japan in decades after WWII.

Libyan War Hypocrisy

2011-03-25T16:38:00.000-07:00

The reaction to the Libyan war on all sides has been hilarious and the worst demonstration of hypocrisy that I have ever seen.

Republicans who cheered Bush when he attacked Iraq are now up in arms about Obama doing essentially the same thing.

On the other side, the same Democrats who attacked Bush are either cheering Obama or remaining silent.

The ONLY two groups who have been completely consistent are the far-far left (Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader, Cindy Sheehan, etc.) and libertarians (Judge Napolitano, Ron Paul, Rand Paul, etc).

Obama's foreign escapade has done a great job uncovering how screwed up things have really become in America.

Open Season on Bureaucrats -- The Revolution Continues

2011-03-17T06:53:00.000-07:00

Miami-Dade County Mayor Mayor Carlos Alvarez raised property taxes. He used the money to give huge raises to government bureaucrats.

Yesterday, he was booted from office in a landslide recall election.

200,000 people voted in the election, making this the largest recall election of a local government official in U.S. history.

88% of the people voted to toss him out.

This should be another warning to the cowardly and clueless politicians in D.C. who are still refusing to deal with the government deficit, debt, and economy.

Do your jobs, or it's your turn next.

America is still the Land of Dreams

2011-03-08T17:54:00.000-08:00

The continuing poor economic situation really got me thinking about what America is all about and what it means to be an American.

I don't like to write about my family, but given the ugly situation in Wisconsin and elsewhere, I feel the urgent need to write about my wonderful wife and how she is realizing her dreams in America.

When I got divorced a few years ago, a friend advised me to take a broader perspective on potential partners than women in my local area. During my career, I've traveled the world many times and I've met a lot great people. So, I took his advice. I found a great woman in the Philippines.

We were married in May, 2007.

My wife opened a home day center in the fall of 2009. She found the regulations, she passed her state inspections, she acquired customers, and she served her customers well. Her customers love her.

In her first year in business, my wife netted over $40K. Not bad for a girl from the third world in her first year as a business woman in America.

We are now saving so that she can open a large day care center. She has dreams of opening many day centers. She will do it.

In her short time in America, my wife already knows that your dreams can come true. She has seen it. She has done it. Her dreams are coming true every day. She is thankful for being in America. Nothing will stop her.

Unfortunately, American leftists just don't get it. They are so tied up in their income distribution, collective bargaining nonsense that they can't see the real America. To them, the entire concept of America is lost in the haze of political nonsense.

My wife grew up in a one room bamboo hut. She picked root crops for her grandmother's family business. Her daily shower was pouring a bucket of water over her head.

Now she is a successful business woman in America.

In spite of the county's problems, America is still the land of dreams and opportunities. My wife has demonstrated this.

All I can say is: Shame on the lazy. Shame on the government bureaucrats. Shame on the political left. Shame on them all for trying to destroy this country and what America represents to humanity across the world.

Shame, shame, shame.

Thomas Friedman and the Great Man Theory of History

2011-03-03T17:53:00.001-08:00

Thomas Friedman recently wrote an article stating that Obama's racial make-up and religious ancestry are the root causes of the turmoil in the Middle east today. According to Friedman, people have decided to fight their governments because Obama is black and his father was Muslim. Here is what Friedman actually wrote:

Americans have never fully appreciated what a radical thing we did — in the eyes of the rest of the world — in electing an African-American with the middle name Hussein as president. I’m convinced that listening to Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech — not the words, but the man — were more than a few young Arabs who were saying to themselves: “Hmmm, let’s see. He’s young. I’m young. He’s dark- skinned. I’m dark-skinned. His middle name is Hussein. My name is Hussein. His grandfather is a Muslim. My grandfather is a Muslim. He is president of the United States. And I’m an unemployed young Arab with no vote and no voice in my future.” I’d put that in my mix of forces fueling these revolts.

Over the last few years Friedman has pretended to be some kind world authority because he's actually been somewhere other than Toronto and Cancun.

Well, I've been in 26 countries on 6 continents. I've been to many countries 20 or more times each.

I can tell you with complete certainty that Friedman has learned nothing in his travels around the world.

Thomas Friedman is trapped in the early 20th century "great man" theory of history. Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Roosevelt, Kennedy... "Great" men (not good men, but powerful men) changed our destiny. According to that view, a "Great Man" is the necessary catalyst for dramatic change.

Friedman desperately wants Obama to be the next "great man" who changes history.

The current reality is very different. The revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East are based on the availability of open and uncensored information. The same kind of open and uncensored information that Friedman and the mainstream American media views as a threat.

The Middle East has a very young population. They are on Facebook, Twitter, email, various discussion groups, and SMS (cell-phone text messages) interacting with their friends and relatives living in America and other western countries, as well as new acquaintances that they met on the internet. They also watch cable stations like CNBC International, CNN, and Al Jazeera. They know more about the world around them than any generation that proceeded them.

These people can actually see our freedom. They don't hate our freedom like Rudy Giuliani and other neo-cons believe. They are envious of it. What they hate are their own rulers who deny them this freedom.

In any societal disruption, changes in the environment build slowly. Eventually, those changes reach a tipping point and then radical change seems to happen overnight. This is what we are seeing in the Middle East today. The change that the internet brought to their countries has finally reached the tipping point. As a result, the people have awoken and the dictators are falling one by one.

I do agree with Friedman on one point -- we are only seeing the beginning of this revolution. There are dozens of tyrannies in the middle east and Africa that will eventually fall as part of this information awakening.

That is a good thing for them and eventually the world. I am glad to be here to see it.

The Final Death of the 20th Century

2011-02-25T14:06:00.000-08:00

The last few weeks have been among the most exciting and promising in recent memory.

People all over the middle east are rising up against the tyrants who have lorded over them for decades.

Even Colonel Gaddafi -- a brutal dictator, who has been in power for 42 years -- is fighting for his survival. This should tell us all that something very big is happening in the world.

The turmoil isn't just occurring in the middle east.

Beleaguered taxpayers in Europe and America have staged their own revolutions as well -- booting out fiscally irresponsible politicians who have run up their public debt and torpedoed their economies.

In America, the Tea Party movement helped spur an electoral revolution that saw the largest GOP gains in the Congress in more than a generation.

Expectedly, the forces of reaction are waging a bitter fight against change.

Government bureaucrats and others who live off of tax money have staged violent protests in Greece, France, and the U.K.

In the U.S., the teacher's unions are mounting an all out effort to hold on to the unchecked power that they have over our wallets and our children.

America has among the worst public schools in the developed world. Last year we were 25th out of 34th in math and science. People across the political spectrum understand that we need fundamental reform in education. Over the last three decades, every proposal by both Democrats and Republicans to fix the public schools have been met by bitter opposition from the NEA and other government employee's unions. The NEA has been successful in blocking any and all change.

Today, the NEA is fighting for it's very survival.

The more I look at what's going on around the world, the more I am convinced that we are witnessing the final death of the 20th century and the concept of the all powerful state that it spawned.

People from Tea Party members in America to lowly peasants in Libya are standing up and saying: we've had enough, NO MORE.

It's a great time to be alive to witness this monumental struggle for freedom against the state.

The sad part is that America may very well lag in this revolution because our vested interests are the most powerful vested interests on earth. It's going to take more than one election to push them aside.

Let's hope that our resolve remains strong and that we remain focused, so that America remains the leading beacon of freedom in the world.

The Fundamental Difference Between Private and Public Unions

2011-02-20T10:40:00.000-08:00

I grew up in Detroit. I make a huge distinction between industrial worker unions like the UAW and Teamsters on the one hand and government bureaucrats unions like the NEA on the other hand.

The NEA funnels compulsory union dues into political campaigns to essentially elect their own bosses. The politicians who benefit from this refuse to make any changes whatsoever in the horrible school systems no matter how bad they get.

Milwaukee teachers earn on average for $100,000 a year in salary and benefits. What do we get for it? 32% of kids in Milwaukee never graduate high school. Many of those who do "graduate" are functional illiterates who can't read, write, or perform simple arithmetic.

American cannot remain a prosperous country with our awful school system. This has to change. It will never change as long as the NEA and AFSCME own the Democrat Party.

FDR himself was against government workers unionizing. He was right.

Common Thread to Middle East Protests: Young, Connected Populations

2011-02-20T10:03:00.000-08:00

There have been a lot of uninformed commentaries on the cause of the various uprisings in the Middle East, especially among the neo-cons who have become hysterical about a plot by the Muslim Brotherhood to take over the Middle East and then the world.

The fact is that the situations in the countries experiencing protests in the middle east are all very different.

1.) Tunisia is a relatively wealthy country. The protests there are very similar to what happened in Chile and many Southeast Asian countries in the 80s and 90s -- people who got some amount of economic freedom finally demanded political freedom as well.

2.) Egypt is very poor and corrupt. Young people decided not to take it any more. Sure, the Muslim Brotherhood was involved in the protests, but they didn't start it or lead it. In the end, I suspect that Egypt's military will behave a lot like Turkey's military and not allow a theocratic state to emerge in there.

3.) Bahrain is also a wealthy country. It has a population that is 2/3rds Shiite being ruled by a Sunni minority. The Shiites see a fundamental unfairness and have finally have decided to do something about it.

4.) Iran is run by religious tyrants. The young people don't like it. Prior to America invading Iraq, the young people in Iran were electing reformist governments. The Iraq war enabled the clerics to whip up mistrust of America in Iran, warning that we were secretly plotting to install the Shah's son as ruler. Those type of scare tactics are no longer working.

The common thread running across all of these countries is that their populations are very young. They are restless. They are also on social media like Facebook and Twitter. So they understand more about the outside world than ever before.

Having direct contact with free people in North America and Europe is a catalyst for all of this discontent.

The neo-cons have it exactly wrong. The young people in the middle east don’t hate our freedom. They envy it. They see the freedom that we have and it causes them to be furious with their own governments for denying it to them. This is a good thing.

This is why cutting off trade and restricting travel is exactly the wrong policy when dealing with tyrants. We need to encourage more contact between Westerners and the oppressed peoples of the world. Yes, this even includes Cuba. Once they see what we have, they won’t stay silent any longer.

Milwaukee Teachers Earn Over $100,000 a Year

2011-02-19T09:42:00.001-08:00

The Wisconsin teacher strike has ignited another debate about America's supposedly underpaid teachers.

Let's talk reality here.

According to the MacIver Institute total teacher compensation in Milwaukee is $100,005 a year. Salaries average $56,500 and benefits are $43,505. It's a strange salary to benefit ratio, but unions have been pushing benefits over salaries for decades. It was their choice to do this.

Teachers work less than 37 weeks a year. They get 10 weeks off in the summer, 1 week at Christmas, 1 week for mid-winter break, 1 week for spring break, and 11 holidays. The leaves 1472 hours for work. $100,005 / 1472 hours is $68 an hour.

Over the last couple of years, I ran a little consulting firm. When I needed people, I brought them in as 1099 subcontractors at a straight hourly rate. No benefits whatsoever. Over the last two years, the average hourly rate I've paid is $65. That's less than the Milwaukee teachers make.

There are three important differences as well:

First, I live on the west coast, where the cost of living is much higher that it is in Wisconsin. Computer programmer rates are much lower in the Midwest than they are in Seattle. The average teacher in Wisconsin makes significantly more per hour than the average contract programmer.

Second, I hire people who have quantitative college degrees, like Computer Science where they go through 4 semesters of calculus, linear algebra, and statistics. I don't hire people who have worthless teaching certificates or degrees in "Phys Ed".

Third, if the people I employ don't do a great job, my customers won't pay me. They certainly won't bring me back to do more work. On the other hand, teachers get "tenure", which makes it impossible to terminate them no matter how screwed up their product (your kids) become.

The sad fact is that America's poorly performing public school system has little to do with lack of funding or poor teacher compensation. The schools don't perform because the unions care more about their own power than they care about our kids. That's the bottom line.

MSNBC: Wisconsin Teachers Out to Lunch

2011-02-18T12:45:00.000-08:00

This morning on the MSNBC show Jansing & Company, they showed an interesting graph on the real financial situation with the teachers in Wisconsin.

According to MSNBC:

- The average single private sector employee pays 18% of the cost of his/her healthcare insurance.

- The average married private sector employee pays 29% of the cost of healthcare insurance for themselves and their family.

- In Wisconsin, teachers only pay 6% of the cost of their healthcare insurance.

Wisconsin has a budget deficit of $3.5 billion. They are constitutionally mandated to balance their budget. To help balance the budget, Governor Walker has proposed to increase the amount teachers contribute to their health insurance premiums from 6% to 12% of the cost. This is still far lower than people in the private sector pay. The teachers's union response? Close the schools, stop educating our kids, and run around carrying signs that equate Governor Walker to Hitler.

The underlying story is that America has among the most under-performing public school systems in the developed world. Last year, American students ranked 25th out of 34 developed countries in Math and Science. American was right in the middle on language skills. It's not a great performance for the students of the greatest country on earth.

Money isn't the problem. America spends more money on education per student than every other country except Switzerland.

Wisconsin teachers earn on average $89,000 a year in salary and benefits. They work less than 9 months of the year. That's $10,000 a month, equivalent to $120,000 a year if they worked full time like the rest of us. That's a fair chunk of change. Quite frankly, great teachers should probably make more than this. That's how to attract great teachers. We need to attract more great teachers. However, we also need to terminate bad teachers. Bad teachers are rarely terminated. Why?

The problem is that the NEA owns the Democrat Party. The NEA uses forced union dues to support Democrat politicians who reciprocate by blocking merit pay for great teachers, Charter Schools (which was the idea of courageous Democrat politicians), and school choice. Of course, any notion that a Principal could terminate a lousy teacher who is destroying your child's future is just not even open for discussion by the NEA and their Democrat protectors.

The McKinsey Global Institute just released a study which showed that America's public sector and especially America's public schools are the among the most unproductive in the developed world. They are also the most resistant to change. McKinsey also faults the U.S. government for creating the most burdensome regulatory climate in the world; not doing it's job in providing a healthy infrastructure that meets our needs; and ignoring our growing energy challenges.

What did The Economist say about McKinsey's conclusions? "Alas, a country which is so good at business is pretty bad at government".

That about sums it up.

This is our challenge.

Every American Should be Proud of the Egyptians

2011-02-10T17:35:00.000-08:00

The brave Egyptian protesters are in day 16 of their protest against the dictator Mubarak. Mubarak refuses to leave. The Egypt military is starting to make veiled threats against the protesters. Yet, the protests continue.

Every American should be proud of the civil disobedience the Egyptians are displaying. After all, Americans pretty much invented civil disobedience. Sorry President Obama, it wasn't Gandhi. Gandhi was a big fan of Henry David Thoreau.

Unfortunately, there is a segment in American society that is alarmed by the protests in Egypt. It's a segment of the population that I have a great affinity with and respect for -- conservatives.

One has to wonder how "conservatives", who champion American values, came to be alarmed by and even oppose the Egyptian's desire to be free of tyranny.

It all started with the Cold War. It continues with the desire of some "conservative" politicians (the neo-cons) to remain relevant by exploiting the fears of Americans, rather than exploiting our ideals.

During the Cold War, America faced an organized, ideological enemy (Communism) that enslaved half of the world and had tens of thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at us. America did what it took to fight this tyranny. One thing America did was prop up anti-Communist dictators -- some of whom were pretty nasty at home. American did what we had to do for the future of world. I supported it 100% and I won't apologize for it.

However, after the Cold War ended the U.S. government stopped propping up dictators in Latin America and Asia. Most countries in Latin America and Asia have progressed to market economies and pluralistic political systems.

Unfortunately, the U.S. government did not stop propping up dictators in the Middle East.

Who flew the Airplanes into the Word Trade Center? Hondurans? Chileans? Filipinos? South Koreans? NO. It was people who lived in oppressive regimes in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, that are supported either financially or militarily by the U.S. government.

Today, Tunisians and Egyptians are clamoring to be free. Others are likely to follow.

Americans should be cheering. Unfortunately, many "conservative" politician are sounding the alarm bells instead.

Why?

The GOP coalition is much more ideologically diverse than the Democrat Party. The only thing that held the GOP coalition together was anti-communism. After the Cold War ended, parts of the GOP coalition including libertarians like Ron Paul and paelo-cons like Pat Buchanan started questioning our expensive military commitments abroad.

This alarmed the "neo-cons", so they started looking for a new enemy. For a while during the 1990s, they were beating the drums against "Red" China, which in many ways is more capitalist than the U.S.

9/11 saved the GOP coalition for while. But 9/11 is not the hot topic for Americans today. So the neo-cons are reaching for new solutions. Some are starting to beat the drums against China again. Others are warning of an imminent threat that radical Muslim regimes will pop up all over the middle east. But Egypt is not Iran. There isn't an exiled Ayatollah waiting to take over. The most respected institution in Egypt is the pro-Western military.

I love my country. I often call myself a "conservative". But American conservatives who oppose the demonstrators in Egypt are on the wrong side of history.

Hosni Mubarak, Please Enjoy Your Retirement

2011-02-02T12:43:00.000-08:00

Hosni Mubarak stepped in to take charge in Egypt after Anwar Sadat was assassinated in 1981.

Mubarak was an invaluable ally in our fight against the communists, who at that time enslaved half the world, were on the march in Afghanistan, and had thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at the United States. The world should always remember the courageous job Mubarak did in helping us draw a line in the sand against communist aggression.

However, the Cold War has been over for 21 years. The world has moved on. Most of the anti-communist strong men in Asia and Latin America are gone. In their place, democracy and markets are flourishing. Unfortunately, the Mideast seems trapped in the 1980s, still run by monarchs, military strongmen, and religious fanatics.

It's time for Mubarak to retire. There is little to be accomplished in having him stay until the fall election. In fact, there is much to lose if the pro-democracy protesters turn to the extremists out of frustration resulting from his refusal to leave.

President Mubarak, thanks for your help in defeating the communists. Now it's time to go. Please enjoy your retirement.

The Real Story with Obama's Colorado School Turnaround

2011-01-27T07:57:00.000-08:00

During the state of the union address, Obama praised the Bruce Randolph school in Colorado for turning themselves around rather dramatically in a few short years.

Three years ago, Bruce Randolph was one of the poorest performing schools in Colorado. In 2010, 97% of the seniors graduated. Many of the graduates were the first in their families to get admitted into college.

How did they do it?

Sen. Michael Bennet and the school's principal Kristin Waters, convinced the Colorado government to give the school almost complete autonomy from the state's education bureaucrats over budget, staffing, schedule, school calendar, and curriculum.

One of the first things they did is terminate all of their tenured teachers and told them they could re-apply for their jobs. Only 5% got their jobs back. 95% of the tenured teachers weren't up to par.

The Gate's Foundation has done significant research into why public schools fail. Their conclusion is that it's all about teachers. The producer of the movie "Waiting for Superman" came to the same conclusion. Good teachers succeed and bad teachers fail our children. It's not any more difficult than that.

In the private sector a business can: A.) fire bad employees and B.) pay good employees a lot of money. You can't do that in government. That's the problem. It has to change.

If we're really serious about fixing the public schools, we need to give principals the ability to terminate bad teachers and reward great ones with substantial performance bonuses tied to international test scores. We also need to get schools out from under their state's education bureaucracies and let the principals and the parents who have kids in the school have a greater say in how the schools are run.

This is how the Bruce Randolph school was able to succeed. It's how other schools will be able to succeed as well.

Unfortunately, the teacher's unions have viscously blocked every attempt to implement these types of common sense reforms.

The big question is whether or not Obama and the Democrats are willing to do battle with their largest specialist interest group (the NEA) so that our kids can have a fighting chance in the global economy?

Obama's Tepid State of the Union Speech

2011-01-26T06:41:00.000-08:00

Last night, President Obama delivered on of the most tepid state union speeches in recent memory. Obama's "winning the future" theme was exactly the right one. Unfortunately, very little of what he said will help us do that.

Obama should have held up the report from his own Deficit Commission. He should have told the American people that this is his program for moving forward. Then he should have turned around and handed it to John Boehner and asked him to pass it immediately.

Instead, we got a laundry list of disconnected new initiatives that just don't add up and won't do a thing to solve the looming fiscal crisis caused by too much government spending.

Here's the blow-by-blow analysis:

1.) Obama is calling for new "investments" on infrastructure. In this context, he's actually using the term "investment" correctly. Here's the problem: for years Democrats have called every bit of government spending "investments", including spending on transfer payments from one group to another. Only 6% of Obama's trillion dollar "stimulus" program was spent on real investments in our future. So, at this point it's difficult to trust what the Democrats say about this. Yes, we need to fix and upgrade our crumbling roads, bridges, ports, airports, water and sewage systems. But it has to be paid for by cutting subsidies and transfer payments.

2.) Obama mentioned China's "green energy" programs. Great! China is building the largest damn in the world. It's difficult to build a damn in the United States anymore because the extreme fringe of the environmental movement won't allow it. China has 30 nuclear power plants under construction. The last time the U.S. started a new nuclear power plant, Jimmy Carter was still president. Again, the extreme environmentalists won't allow it. Please tell us Mr. President, what specifically do you plan to do about your supporters, who have been blocking energy progress since the 1970s?

3.) Obama called for more "investments" in education. What he really means is more transfer payments to the teacher's unions who have destroyed our school system. No thanks. Been there, done that. Not a single dollar more at the local, state, or federal level should be spent on public schools until: A.) the teacher's unions are de-certified, B.) we abolish the entire notion of "tenure", which only serves to protect bad teachers, and C.) every school is taken away from the board of education bureaucrats and turned over to the parents who actually have kids in the school, i.e., every school is turned into a Charter school. Obama has claimed for years that he supports Charter Schools. It's time to put up or shut up. We're either going to truly reform one of the worst performing education systems in the developed world, or reconcile ourselves to becoming a second rate country.

4.) Obama called for building high speed rail lines in California and the Midwest. The last thing in the world we need is to waste money on a government run high speed rail system, which will cost a ton of money, almost no one will use, and will quickly degrade and stagnate like every other service the government tries to provide. A better answer to providing mass transit is to eliminate state and local laws which prevent private entities from competing to provide bus and other types of mass transit services. The Philippines have privately run mass transit systems, which do a great job at getting a lot of people where they need to go.

5.) Obama is right about the crazy organization of the federal government and all of the duplication across agencies. For example, the federal government has 72 welfare programs. They could all be collapsed into a single program that provides cash subsidies to the poor and disabled. We'd save a TON of money on administrative costs. A TON. Do you actually think that he will do anything like this? I don't.

6.) Obama called for a 5 year "spending freeze" on domestic discretionary spending. This won't even come close to balancing the budget. His freeze might reduce the deficit by $400 billion over the next 10 years, but deficits are projected to be $14 TRILLION dollars over the next 10 years, which will double the national debt to $28 trillion. His freeze amounts to less than 3% of the projected new debt. It's not enough to keep the country solvent.

7.) Obama is finally paying attention to the trade agreements with Columbia and Panama which have been languishing on the shelf for years. That's a good thing.

8.) He paid some lip service to tort reform to help reign in heath care costs. This is also a good thing, but I don't think he's serious given that Trial Lawyers are among the largest contributors to the Democrat Party.

9.) He also mentioned lowering the corporate tax rate, which is the highest in the world, and simplifying the tax code. This is the one recommendation from his deficit commission that he seems to be endorsing. It's a great idea and it should be done to help restore our competitiveness.

10.) Of course Obama had to throw some red meat to the fringe left by bashing oil companies and successful people. No surprise, but it is getting really, really old.

It's pretty obvious that Obama still doesn't understand that the country faces an almost insurmountable fiscal disaster caused by excessive government spending. Here are the two big questions: A.) Will the GOP actually do something about it? B.) If the GOP does do something about it, will Obama really go along? We'll see.

Healthcare Reality Check

2011-01-23T11:33:00.000-08:00

The GOP House has voted to overturn the huge mess known as Obamacare. We'll see if it passes the Senate. Regardless, President Obama is not going to sign. So, the GOP is already starting work on replacing Obamacare with their own ideas.

What should the GOP propose? There are two countries that can guide us.

Switzerland undoubtedly has the best healthcare system in Europe. Singapore has the best healthcare system in the world. Switzerland spends about 10.8% of GDP on healthcare. Singapore spends less than 4%. Healthcare expenditures in the U.S. have ballooned to a whopping 16.5% of GDP.

Neither Switzerland or Singapore have the kind of "socialist" or "single payer" systems that enchant the know-nothings on the American left. In fact, public expenditures on healthcare as a percentage of the total is about the same in Switzerland and the U.S. The government spends a much lower percentage of the total in Singapore:

Switzerland -- 55%
United States -- 50% average, depending on the state
Singapore -- 34%

Why do their systems work to control and costs and ours doesn't? Singapore and Switzerland have similar philosophies -- they put people in charge of their own care, but they also require them to take responsibility.

In Singapore you are required to save 8% of you income for healthcare. You can use your health savings to buy insurance and pay for out-of-pocket expenses. The government subsidizes health savings for very low income people.

In Switzerland you are required to spend 8% of your own money on health insurance. The government subsidizes insurance payments for very low income people. Out of pocket expenses are additional.

Switzerland and Singapore have created nation's of healthcare shoppers, who use their own healthcare dollars wisely.

The problem in the U.S. is that Medicare, Medicaid, and employer paid insurance take financial responsibility away from individuals so people don't have any incentive to use medical services in a cost effective way.

I've been to Singapore. They have a great and very cost effective healthcare system. It cheaper than ours. They also have better outcomes than we do. ditto for Switzerland.

The answer to escalating healthcare costs in the U.S. is not to give more control to power hungry politicians and greedy bureaucrats. The answer is personal responsibility and personal control. Singapore and Switzerland have shown us the way. Are American politicians smart enough to follow? We'll see.

TSA Grooms Children to Cooperate with Sexual Abusers

2010-12-05T10:08:00.000-08:00

It's bad enough that the TSA demands to take naked pictures of us, or subjects us to invasive "pat downs", which includes fondling breasts and rubbing genitalia. Now they've truly outdone themselves.

TSA director, James Marchand recently issued an official directive to TSA agents ordering them to turn the "pat downs" into some kind of game for children.

"Try to make it as best you can for that child to come through. If you can come up with some kind of a game to play with a child, it makes it a lot easier."

He also said that making it a game would become a part of the TSA's training.

Child abuse experts are not amused. As Ken Wooden, founder of Child Lures Prevention, points out:

Telling a child that they are engaging in a game is one of the most common ways that sexual predators use to convince children to engage in inappropriate contact. Children don't have the sophistication to distinguish between a pat-down carried out by an airport security officer and an assault by a sexual predator. The TSA policy could desensitize children to inappropriate touch and ultimately make it easier for sexual offenders to prey on our children.

How can experts working at the TSA be so incredibly misinformed and misguided to suggest that full body pat downs for children be portrayed as a game? To do so is completely contrary to what we in the sexual abuse prevention field have been trying to accomplish for the past thirty years.

Whichever numskulls at the TSA came up with this idea should be fired. More importantly, the manner in which the TSA conducts all of its business needs to be closely examined.

Isaac Yeffet, who was formerly in charge of security for Israel's El Al Airlines has made it very clear that the TSA's entire approach is misguided. As a result, the TSA is actually endangering us, not making us safer.

El Al Airlines spends their time looking for people who might be a threat to us. They do this by determining common characteristics (including travel habits) of terrorists and then spending more time interviewing and searching the people who have those characteristics than other passengers.

The TSA on the other hand spends their time patting down 3 year old girls, taking dirty pictures of 40 year old nuns, and abusing 70 year old men with artificial limbs and colostomy bags looking for things. Sure, the TSA finds a lot of things -- shaving cream, shampoo bottles, and maybe even an occasional Lady Gillette. Have they ever caught a terrorist trying to board an airplane? No.

Things have gotten so bad that even Republican Congressmen who voted to create the TSA are now calling for it's abolition. I agree.

Airline security should be placed in the hands of the people who have the most to lose from a terrorist attack -- the airlines themselves. Banks, Armored Cars, and even shopping malls provide for their own security. Airlines should be allowed to do them same. We'd all be safer as a result.

Unemployment Skyrockets, Obama Flees Country

2010-12-03T08:40:00.000-08:00

The new unemployment figures were released today. Unemployment rose to 9.8%.

We've now had 19 straights months of unemployment over 9%, which is the worst record since the Great Depression.

So what did Obama do? He snuck out of the White House in the middle of the night and flew to Afghanistan.

I guess he thought he'd be safer there than in front of the U.S. press.

Americans Better Off Because of WikiLeaks

2010-12-02T15:06:00.000-08:00

By now, most Americans know that WikiLeaks has published a bunch of private documents from the U.S. State Department regarding U.S. foreign policy. WikiLeaks is a website run by Julian Assange. The documents were given to WikiLeaks by an Army Private, who is now in jail.

Both the left and right are outraged over the affair. Over the last few days almost everyone on Fox News and MSNBC have been screaming for Julian Assange's head. Some are calling for the U.S. government to arrest Julian Assange for espionage. Others have called for more drastic measures, including declaring WikiLeaks a "terrorist organization" and even assassinating Assange.

While the left and right are sitting together around the nationalist campfire singing Kumbaya, Justice Andrew Napolitano (Fox Business) is pointing out some very interesting facts.

Napolitano correctly points out that this is a free speech issue, which is protected by the First Amendment. He also correctly notes that the Supreme Court has uniformly ruled that if the information is of public interest, then the public has a right to it.

It is certainly in the public interest to know that a Vice President of Afghanistan spirited $52 million of American foreign aid out of the country; that our "ally" Saudi Arabia is both funding al Queda and pressuring us to bomb Iran; and that Hillary Clinton has ordered her staff to dig up dirt on foreign leaders, probably for the purposes of extorting them in the future.

We the people need transparency to remain in control. No, we don't need the nuclear launch codes, but we need to understand what our government is doing in our name around world. Now we know. It's not pretty.

Oh, but this is a national security threat and people will die as a result. What about that?

WikiLeaks went to great extents, working with the Guardian and New York Times, to redact (censor) the articles to remove names of innocent people who might be harmed by the release of the documents. Over 300 names were removed. They even asked for help from the State Department, who declined to help them. If anyone is actually killed because of this, who is really to blame?

Yes the Private First Class who leaked the documents is in deep trouble. He should be in deep trouble because he signed a contract agreeing to obey his orders. He didn't. Now he has to suffer the consequences.

However, WikiLeaks is a media organization that has every right to publish news that is in the public interest. Their efforts have enabled Americans to better understand what the politicians are doing in our names around the world. We are more informed and therefore better off because of it.

A huge problem is the U.S. government classifies too many things. So, it becomes difficult to understand what the real secrets are and how protect them. Libertarians, liberals, and many conservatives understand this. It's been discussed for years.

Almost all politicians pay lip service to "transparency" during their campaigns. Unfortunately, almost NO politicians do anything about it once they are in office.

WikiLeaks did something about it because our politicians wouldn't. Americans are better off as a result.

Even more on Radical Tax Reform

2010-11-11T14:46:00.000-08:00

I was asked a question about tax rates on another forum. Here is the question and my answer:

What do you think the tax rate that maximize revenue is?

Great question and it depends on circumstances, including what kind of deductions (loopholes) we have. Today, we have deductions that don't contribute to the overall health of the country.

Federal tax revenues have ranged from a little over 17% of GDP to a little over 19% of GDP for a few decades. This includes when the top rate was 70% and when the top rate was 28%.

Bush lowered tax rates without eliminating tax deductions. Reagan never did that. When Reagan lowered tax rates twice (top rate went from 70% to 50% in 83 and then to 28% in 86) he also eliminated deductions.

After Reagan, tax rates increased and more deductions proliferated. We had a recession. Then Clinton / Gingrich cut the capital gains rate. We had an economic boom as a result.

The problem today is that most politicians are economic illiterates. The left says punish the "rich" with high taxes and the government will have money to spend on "social justice". The right claims that cutting any taxes will stimulate an economic boom. Neither of these positions is correct.

The best approach is to lower tax rates and reduce tax deductions. Reagan believed this. Bill Bradley believed this. Jack Kemp believed this. Jerry Brown believed this. And now Obama's debt commission believes this. It's a bi-partisan belief. Economic illiterates don't understand this. They are in control. That's the problem.

I will trade tax deductions for lower rates any time. I will also trade consumption taxes for taxes on innovation and production anytime. These are the right things to do for the country. Unfortunately, there are politicians who are either too stupid or too power hungry to do this. That's the problem.

More on Radical Tax Reform

2010-11-11T12:42:00.000-08:00

More on Obama's Deficit Commission...

The idea of simplifying the tax code by lowering tax rates and eliminating deductions is not a new one.

In the 1970s, an economics professor from Canada (Art Laffer) demonstrated that there are two rates that will produce the same revenue. A tax rate of 0% will produce the same revenue of a tax rate of 104% or higher, namely ZERO revenue. However, a 10% rate and a 90% are not inequivalent. Imagine a skewed bell curve. A 10% rate might produce the same revenue as 80% or 90% or 95% or some other high rate. It depends on a lot of things. Reducing rates can produce higher revenue by stimulating economic activity, but it depends on where the rate is in the context of the condition of the economy.

Second, there are a lot of serious people who believe that the current tax code severely distorts economic activity to the detriment of America. Should we give people a tax break for buying a big house? Probably not. Should we give them a break for taking a risk and investing in a new business? Yes, if we care about the long-term competitiveness of the U.S. economy. Unfortunately, the current tax does the opposite. We deduct big mortgages and tax capital gains. That's part of the problem.

The GOP was almost in complete agreement while Reagan and Clinton were Presidents that we needed radical tax reform in this direction -- either a flat rate income tax with limited deductions or completely replacing the income tax with a national sales tax. Jerry Brown agreed with this in 1992 too (Art Laffer was his economic advisor.)

We all had great hope when the GOP took control of the Presidency while keeping control of both Houses of Congress for the first time since before the Great Depression. Unfortunately, all discussion of radical tax reform died a quick death during the Bush administration. Bush was too busy creating new social programs like Medicare Part D and No Child Left Behind to be bothered with such trivia as the long term competitive nature of America.

The idea of radical tax reform is not dead. It has now made a surprising comeback in the Obama Deficit Commission.

Sure, there are partisan hacks like Sean Hannity who will piss and moan about the proposals just because Obama created the commission. However, it will be the left-wing of the Democrat Party who will have the biggest problems with this proposal. They are already out in force.

Obama Deficit Commission Leaks Recommendations - Surprising Tax Rate Reduction

2010-11-11T10:55:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Obama's Deficit Commission leaked some of their proposed recommendations.

The Deficit Commission is bi-partisan group created by President Obama to come up with recommendations on how on to reduce (and presumably eliminate) deficit spending over the next decade. The commission's members were appointed by the President as well as the Democrat and Republican leaders in the House and Senate. Some of the GOP's rising stars, including Congressman Paul Ryan and Senator Tom Coburn, are members of the commission.

The draft proposal calls for cutting $4 trillion from the projected deficits over the next 10 years. Nancy Pelosi, Congressman Rick Weiner, and many others on the left immediately declared the draft as unacceptable. To date, most Republicans have had a more cautious reaction.

The spending cuts in the commission's report aren't even close to being deep and broad enough to balance the budget in 10 years. They didn't touch Obamacare because the members had "healthcare fatigue" after last year. They are waiting too long (2075) to make very minor changes to Social Security. They don't do much about spending in the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Eduction, Energy, and Labor. Yes, they are proposing to close 1/3rd of U.S. overseas military bases and bravo to them for that. But, the proposal will NOT balance the budget in 10 years. They need to propose more to be credible.

However, their tax proposals are much more interesting.

Obama's deficit commission proposes to reduce the top income tax rate to 23%. That's a 36% cut from the current 36% top rate and a 42% cut from 39.6% (where the rate will be if the Bush tax cuts expire). It would also collapse the current six income tax rates (10, 15, 25, 28, 33, 36) to three rates (8, 14, and 23). Plus it eliminates the alternative minimum tax and cuts corporate tax rates. The U.S. currently has the second highest corporate tax rates in the world. Obama's commission proposes to reduce the top corporate tax rate from 36% to 26%.

Mostly, they propose to "pay for it" by eliminating deductions.

The GOP has wanted to flatten rates and eliminate deductions for 30+ years. Reagan did this twice -- once at the beginning of 1980s when the top rate was cut from 70% to 50% -- and again in 1986 when President Reagan teamed up with Democrat Senator Bill Bradley to cut the top rate from 50% to 28%, while eliminating deductions.

One deduction Obama's commission wants to eliminate is the deduction for jumbo mortgage loans over $500,000. Subsidizing consumption at the expense of innovation and production (including the purchase of expensive homes) is not the right thing to do if we want to have a healthy, competitive, economy. But this is exactly what the current U.S. tax code does. Of course, people certainly should be able to buy a million dollar plus home if they can afford it, but the tax code shouldn't subsidize consumption over innovation and production.

The commission's report is very mixed. On the one hand, it demonstrates cowardice because they propose to wait until most of us are dead to fix Social Security. On the other hand, it demonstrates some courage given that they were created by a Democrat President and still propose to dramatically reduce income tax rates, including rates on the "rich". Overall, I am actually encouraged by this report. But they need to do a lot more on spending.

What Should Obama Do Now?

2010-11-05T09:20:00.001-07:00

After Tuesday's historic election, the pundants and politicians are all speculating on whether or not Obama will "pull a Clinton" by moving to the center and working with the GOP.

There is a lot of speculation on what that might look like.

I have a suggestion. Obama's deficit commission is due to report on Dec 1. He should take their report and dump it in Boehner's lap. Then Obama should do a hard sell, telling the American people that: A.) it is a bi-partisan recommendation, B.) it reduces the deficit, and C.) and we need to pass it now to fix the economy.

That would put the GOP on the spot. They would be forced to come to grips with the bill and either pass it or try to explain why they won't.

Unfortunately, I don't think Obama will do this because there will be spending cuts in the bill that Obama won't like. So, it is very likely that he will muck with recommendations by gutting the spending cuts and adding more taxes. At that point, the GOP will be in the driver's seat until 2012, because they will be able to correctly claim that Obama only cares about growing government, not balancing the budget and fixing the economy.

Why do I believe that Obama won't "pull a Clinton"? Because Obama and Pelosi are already running around claiming that the election was not a referendum on their failed policies. In spite of the fact that Obama has been on television morning, noon and night for the past 18 months selling his stimulus and healthcare bills, the Democrats keep claiming that the American people just don't get it.

It's not the American people who don't get it. It's Obama and Pelosi. Their delusional state doesn't bode well for America over the next two years.

Voters to Obama: Take Your Spending and Shove It

2010-11-03T07:39:00.000-07:00

The voters sent a clear message last night: We don't like what Obama and the Democrats have done to us over the last two years. We're not going to take it any longer. So, take your big government spending and shove it.

The breadth and depth of the Democrat's defeat was unimaginable just a couple of months ago.

The GOP will pick up 63 to 65 House seats -- the largest turnover since WWII. Not only were the Democrat classes of 2006 and 2008 largely purged from the House, several long time Democrat Congressmen (like Ike Skelton) were defeated.

The GOP won almost 700 state legislative seats. (I thought I was being optimistic when I predicted at least 300). 20 or 21 state legislatures will change party control, just in time for redistricting. North Carolina and Alabama have GOP state legislatures for the first time since the 1870s.

Several governors races are still too close to call, including Oregon and Minnesota, which the Democrats were supposed to win handily.

The GOP won at least 6 Senate seats. Rand Paul won by double digits. Marco Rubio had a larger than expected margin. One of the most liberal members of the Senate (Russ Feigngold) was handily defeated. We'll see what happens in Colorado and Washington.

The GOP elected the first female Latino governor (Susana Martinez), the first female Indian governor (Nikki Haley), and two other women governors (Mary Fallin and Jan Brewer). The GOP also elected three Latino Congressmen, including a woman (Jaime Herrera) from my state. They also elected and two black Congressmen. We'll see if they are allowed into the Congressional Black Caucus.

The only bad news for the GOP is that three successful business women (Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorini, and Linda McMahon) went down in flames as did Christine O'Donnell, and Sharron Angle. What a surprise given that they were viciously attacked as extremists, whores, bitches, psychos, and worse by the Democrats and their cronies in the media. Feminists everywhere must be so proud of their great triumph in defeating these women with their vulgar slurs.

The big question is what will Obama do now? Will he try to work with the GOP House like Clinton did after the GOP picked up 54 seats in 1994? My guess is that he won't. Obama is too much of a leftist ideologue. He also doesn't have any experience working with an opposition. Obama will likely try to use executive orders to push through his radical agenda on things like carbon emissions, while continuing to demonize the GOP as obstructionists.

Democrats who predict that the GOP will just sit back and do nothing are kidding themselves. That may be what Mitch McConnell wants, but he isn't calling the shots. The House is in charge of the GOP agenda. There are enough Tea Party candidates elected last night to push through pretty much whatever they want and send it to the Senate.

There are 21 Democrat Senators up for reelection in 2012. Many of them are in solidly red states while others are in states that swung heavily to the GOP yesterday. That includes Joe Manchin of West Virginia who just won a special election by running television ads in which he used a rifle to shoot holes in Obama's cap-and-trade bill. It's doubtful that they will continue to follow Obama off of a cliff.

On the GOP side, people like Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Jim DeMint and others will not be content to simply block and filibuster legislation. These people have an agenda and they are they are going to try to push it.

It would not surprise me at all to see a coalition of scared Democrats and GOP Tea Partiers in the Senate pass a fair amount of legislation on taxes, spending cuts, and fixes to Obamacare.

We should also expect to see the new GOP Governors and State Legislators push through their own reform agenda to fix their economies, failing schools, and tort systems.

Last night was an election of historic proportions. Now, the real work begins.

Obama: A captive of his own history

2010-10-22T11:10:00.000-07:00

As we approach the 2010 mid-term elections, the GOP is poised to make big gains in the House of Representatives, State Governors offices, and State Legislatures. The GOP will also likely pick up several seats in the U.S. Senate, but not enough to gain a majority.

Few people predicted this outcome when Barack Obama took office less than two years ago.

So what happen? In short, Obama and the Democrats blew it. They took a bad situation, created by George Bush, and made it worse.

It didn't have to be this way. In spite of some of some my more partisan friend's opinions to the contrary, the left does come up with some good ideas on occasion. However, most of those ideas never get implemented because of the left's dependence on government employees unions for their political muscle.

So, what would a strong, center-left agenda actually look like? Here are a few examples how Obama could could have put such an agenda together:

A.) Education, education, education.

Everyone knows that are nation's schools are failing. It's not only our inner-city schools. American schools in general are under-serving our kids as evidenced by our drop out rates as well as math and science test scores, compared to the rest of the developed world. Davis Guggenheim (a liberal) just released a movie "Waiting for Superman" which digs into the issues our public school system faces. Everyone should see this. When you do, it will scare the hell out of you.

We cannot compete in a increasing technological world with drop outs who don't know much about math and science.

Money is not the problem. America spends more money per student than all but two other countries. As a percentage of GDP, America spends more on education than most of the countries who have better results than we do.

Democrats have come up some great ways to reform the system. Charter schools are public schools where the parents and principals, not bureaucrats, are put in charge. The first Charter schools were implemented in Minnesota (a liberal state). Magnet schools are schools for the best and brightest, which focus on a specialized area, like math and science. Governor Jim Hunt (D-NC) put a huge focus on Magnet schools in the 1970s. They were a key to attracting tech companies to the Research Triangle in Raleigh. I'll add in Vocational schools for high school kids who aren't going college. Instead of having them waste their time in film appreciation classes, they could be learning a skilled trade that will help them and society.

These are Democrat ideas that work.

Obama could have used the "stimulus" to champion educational reform. After the 2008 election, he certainty had the political capital to do so. Instead, he just showered "stimulus" money on the teachers' unions to "save" their jobs for one year, without any significant reform at all.

B.) Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure.

Our aging infrastructure is crumbling. In many places it hasn't kept up with population growth. A real center-left agenda would have used a big part of the "stimulus" money to build a world-class, 21st infrastructure for the U.S. -- roads, bridges, tunnels, airports, shipping ports, and more. Yes, a few infrastructure projects were funded, but the funding was a tiny, small part of the stimulus. Instead, Obama used most of the "stimulus" money to bail out government employee's unions to "save" their jobs for one year.

C.) Simplify, simplify, simplify

Our tax system is a mess. We have the highest corporate tax rates in the world, yet many corporations escape paying taxes. We have a progressive personal income tax system, yet the wealthiest American generally pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes than do the middle to upper-middle class. Complying with our Byzantine tax system costs the American economy several hundred billion dollars a year.

It doesn't have to be like this.

When Jerry Brown ran for President in 1992 he advocated scrapping all federal taxes and replacing them with a 13% flat rate income tax and a 13% VAT. No deductions. No loopholes. Ralph Nader had a similar proposal in 2004.

Every study has shown that a flat rate tax would collect more money from the super rich because the loopholes would be gone. It would also save Americans and our companies hundreds of billions of in tax preparation fees each year. And it would do a lot better job "stimulating" the economy than Obama's "targeted" tax cuts.

Obama could have really provided some vision here and gotten a whole bunch of Republicans to join in. But he didn't. Instead, he relegated himself to spewing class warfare rhetoric while arguing about whether or not the top tax rate should be 36% or 39%. It's just pitiful.

The bottom line

There are many other proposals that a visionary center-left government could have undertaken, that would have gained broad support in the country, and been successful in really moving the country forward.

Unfortunately, Obama is not a visionary. He is a captive of his history -- a past of associating with people like 1960s radical Bill Aires, union thug Andy Stern, and racist Jeremiah right, all of whom who do nothing but brood about their class and race grievances.

This is why Obama has failed. This is why the country is failing. This is why we will see a significant political change next Tuesday.

Anti-incumbent sentiment marches on!!!

2010-08-04T13:33:00.000-07:00

An ex-Gateway executive (Rick Synder) came out of nowhere to win the GOP nomination for governor of Michigan. He beat two professional politicians - the Michigan Attorney General and a U.S. Congressman.

He won the nomination with a substantial margin.

At this point, the GOP establishment has to be soiling their pants.

A friend of mine, who knew I grew up in Michigan, asked me if I knew Rick. Here's how I responded:

No, I don't know him. I'm not even sure how Gateway and Michigan and fit together. I think Gateway came out of South Dakota. Now they are in San Diego.

I'm typing this on a 3 month old Gateway laptop, which is amazing given that Dell nearly put Gateway out of business 10 years ago. Now Dell is suffering under enormous quality problems, with brain dead management that purposefully shipped faulty products. Sounds likes the Detroit auto companies in the 70s, doesn't it?

This is what I love about the unfettered free market -- if you get too big for your britches, another company is going to come and kick your rear end. Who benefits? We do! I was hesitant to buy the Gateway but I did because the capabilities it offered were much cheaper than the competition. I love it.

No, Bush's big corporate bailouts are not the free market. This is one of many reasons why I really dislike the GOP -- they've made people believe that their crony capitalism is the free market. It's not. The Democrats do the same thing, and it's just as bad or worse, but they don't pretend that it's the free market.

This primary season is turning out to be a real turning point for our country. So far, we've tossed our 4 incumbent Congressman and 3 U.S. Senators in the primaries! When was the last time that happened? More importantly, outsiders like Rick Synder are capturing their party's nomination all over the country.

I hope that Snyder wins and brings his business sense to government. This is the only way that Michigan will recover and move forward.

I also hope that the outsiders who've managed to win their party's nomination across the country are successful in the fall.

The GOP establishment needs to be put out of business by the competition just like any business who has lost touch with their customers.

Does the GOP Really Need Another Chance?

2010-08-01T15:03:00.000-07:00

Recently, I've been reading a lot of blogs which argue that the GOP needs another chance to make things right.

The GOP was in control of the Presidency and the Congress prior to the Great Depression. Herbert Hoover and his GOP Congress blew it.

After 70 years, the GOP finally got a chance to run it all again. The GOP blew it again.

George Herbert Hoover Bush created the first new entitlement since LBJ (Medicare prescription drugs), they created the largest federal intrusion into the classroom in history, and they created pork barrel programs so full of waste that it made the Heritage Foundation cringe.

On top of that, Bush and his GOP Congress spent $1 TRILLION on a fruitless war in Iraq -- a country that didn't attack us and wasn't a threat to us.

The GOP's result? They turned a balanced budget into massive deficits and gave us the worst economy since the Great Depression.

Yes, of course Obama is worse. He's a Democrat.

Do you know the difference between the Democrats and Republicans? The Democrats tell you that if you elect them they will expand government power and control over your life. That's what they do. On the other hand, the Republicans are LIARS. They pretend to be for limited government until they are in power and then they expand government power and control too.

Yes, there ARE some really good elected GOP politicians. Jim DeMint comes to mind. What did former GOP Senate Majority Leader (Trent Lott) recently say about Jim DeMint? "We don't need a lot of Jim DeMint disciples, as soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them."

Too hell with the stinking GOP.

BRAVO to Ann Coulter

2010-07-09T14:33:00.001-07:00

Bravo to Ann Coulter for calling on neo-commies like Bill Kristol to STFU with regards to Micheal Steele's comments on Afghanistan.

RNC Chairman Michael Steele said that America had every right to dispatch the al-Queda presence in Afghanistan, but that it was crazy to bog American troops down in a no-win situation in Afghanistan. The unruly Afghans could not be subdued by the Brits or Soviets. More importantly, our real enemy -- al-Queda -- has moved on to Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

Steele is right. It's absolutely foolish to continue to waste American lives and money in Afghanistan.

We can accomplish our continued goals there by bribing a handful of warlords, using a fraction of the money and American lives that we'll spend on Obama's direct military action. We did it with Egypt -- bribing them to make nice with Israel. Over the last 30 years, the amount of money we spent on Egypt to achieve some amount of peace in the middle is tiny compared to what we've spent on Afghanistan in the last few years.

It's about time that real conservatives stand up to the big government neo-commies in the GOP and their demented foreign policy (not to mention their crazy "government greatness" philosophy at home).

BRAVO to Ann Coulter for joining (and given her position, leading) the growing conservative dissent to the neo-commies war mongering foreign policy.

I am more encouraged than ever that we are heading for real, positive change.

Thank you Ann.

Gingrich set to run in 2012?

2010-07-09T14:16:00.000-07:00

Newt Gingrich visited Columbia and Charleston today for a pair of fundraisers -- his second visit to South Carolina since the spring.

Is he preparing a run for President 2012? I think so.

I know that a lot of the readers of this blog aren't excited about Gingrich, but I am. Here's why: Gingrich is the ONLY Washington political leader in my lifetime who actually managed to reduce federal government spending.

When Gingrich became speaker, federal spending was 22.4% of GDP. When he left, it was 18.4% of GDP. It was a magnificent accomplishment.

Yes, Clinton deserves some credit too. After two failed years in office, Clinton decided to go along with Gingrich in removing welfare from entitlement status, cutting the capital gains, balancing the budget, and much more. America benefited greatly from their collaboration.

What happened after Gingrich left office? George Bush and his big government GOP Congress escalated spending faster than any President since LBJ. Obama has made it worse.

If Gingrich runs I will support him in the primaries because he is the only political leader in my life time that has actually managed to rein in government spending.

I also generally like Sarah Palin and will support her if she gets the nomination. I love Ron Paul. I voted for him and volunteered for him when he ran for President in 1988. However, he's not a young man any longer. He may have to be satisfied as being the godfather of America's second love affair with liberty. (Not a bad historical position!)

I will not support RINO Romney, Huckleberry, or Benito Giuliani because they do not represent the kind of party that Goldwater and Reagan spent so many years trying to build.

The Value of Property Rights in Society

2010-05-26T15:19:00.000-07:00

Recently, Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul made quite a stir in suggesting that a portion of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was misguided.

His comments have caused an enormous flurry of misrepresentations in the mainstream (left-wing) media.

Paul made a couple of interesting points that were completely missed by the unthinking left.

First, that government policy was a driving force behind discrimination. From "separate but equal" to the fact that most of the KKK leadership were elected Democrat party officials, government was a large contributor to segregation and other discriminatory evils.

Second, that markets ultimately will do a much better job at ensuring equality of opportunity, justice, and fairness than the government. For example, why did Apple, Microsoft, HP and IBM start providing spousal benefits to their gay employees? Because government made them do it? NO. Sure, there are laws TODAY in some cities and states today that mandate this, but the whole movement started with high tech business who were competing in the market for scarce resources. Apple for example took a lot of heat in some states (like Texas, where they had sales offices)for leading this, but they stuck to their guns and did it anyway.

What do you think would happen to a business today if it refused to service some demographic segment? Their competition would put them out them out of business very quickly. (Yeah sure, there would be a few backwaters where these types of small businesses might survive, but they are largely irrelevant in the grander scheme of freedom, so who cares?)

Paul's reflections had nothing to do with racism. His comments were all about the value of property rights in creating and sustaining a free, prosperous, and decent society. Of course, the brain dead left just doesn't get it because they have never understood why property rights are indispensable to freedom. This is why the left always fails.

That's the bottom line.

Fed Audit and Greece Bailout

2010-05-12T08:18:00.000-07:00

The Senate passed a bill calling for a one time audit of the Federal Reserve to scrutinize the $2 trillion in emergency loans that the Fed provided to some of the nation’s biggest banks.

The bill was a very watered down version of bill that passed in the House, which would have enabled the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to audit every item on the Fed’s balance sheet, including all credit facilities and all securities purchase programs. An amendment to expand the Senate bill to match the House's failed to pass. Still, this is a good first step as it would enable the GAO to audit at least some Fed actions for the first time in history.

The government's bailout of Wall Street points to a huge problems in our financial system and even larger problems with the control that Wall Street has over politicians in both parties.

Conceptually, Wall Street exists to support the needs of other businesses. When businesses need capital to start up or expand, they can get the money in one of three ways: A.) from their own savings, B.) through borrowing (debt), or C.) by selling a portion of the business to others (equity).

What does this have to do with derivatives, credit default swaps, or even the whole concept of "selling the market short"??? The short answer is nothing whatsoever. All of these things are nothing more than gambling. Goldman Sachs and their ilk have turned our financial system into Las Vegas. Like Vegas, the system is rigged so that the House wins 98.5% of the time.

The one difference between Las Vegas and Wall Street is when a casino in Vegas goes belly up, Washington doesn't rush in with our money to bail them out.

Unfortunately, the situation is about to get even worse. The U.S. government is taking part in the $1 TRILLION Greek bailout both through the IMF and also through the Federal Reserve, which is shipping dollars to Europe to help stabilize the Euro. Of course the money won't be used to put the country on the right path. Instead, it will be given to lazy union members who'd rather sit arounding sipping Ouzo, while bad mouthing America, than work.

I've been to Greece a couple of times. It's a beautiful country that has been completely destroyed up by decades of political corruption.

Why is it our responsibility to pay for their mistakes? Oh, because the country might "melt down". GOOD. The country SHOULD melt down because maybe then the politicians will be forced to confront their problems and eliminate the costly welfare state that has been sucking the life blood out of their country.

We have our own problems too. They are on a much grander scale than Greece's.

17% of our workforce is unemployed or under employed. Our official debt has reached $13 trillion, which is a whopping 90% of GDP -- almost as bad as Greece's. Unfunded entitlements in Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare, and government pension plans top $130 trillion -- more than $438,000 per person. Government spending at all levels is approaching 40% of GDP, which is not far behind "socialist" France at 44%.

With all of these problems confronting us, how dare the politicians hand our money to Greece. How dare they?

Greece and the rest of the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain) caused their own problems. It's time for them to deal with it.

We created our own problems too. It's time for us to boot the SOBs out of office who are making things worse.

The Incumbent Purge is Underway!

2010-05-12T06:39:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend, three term Republican Senator Bob Bennett failed to win a spot on the GOP primary ballot in Utah. Yesterday, Congressman Alan Mollohan failed to win the Democrat nomination in West Virginia. Over the next few months, at least a dozen additional incumbents could lose their seats in the primaries. Among them are three Senators -- Blanche Lincoln, Arlen Specter, and John McCain.

Specter typifies what's wrong in Congress. The guy has been locked away in the District of Columbia for 45 years. The world was a very different place when Specter got to Congress in 1965. At this point, he's completely clueless about most everything. He also doesn't have any philosophical foundation or moral center. All he cares about is hanging on to power.

McCain is so scared that he recently released a disgusting, disingenuous, and pandering television ad about the border, in which he completely reversed his long held positions on illegal immigration. JD Hayworth is currently behind McCain in the polls, but fortunately the Arizona primary isn't until August. By then, McCain's famous temper will have torpedoed his campaign.

In Kentucky, conservative-libertarian Rand Paul holds a double digit lead over the establishment hand picked candidate Trey Grayson in the GOP Senate primary. Grayson used to be a Democrat, who supported Bill Clinton. That didn't stop former Vice President Dick Cheney, Senate leader Mitch McConnell‎, and much of the rest of the GOP establishment from endorsing him. Why? Because they are scared to death that Paul will be an independent voice who will not go along to get along.

The slaughter in the general election in November is likely going to be much larger. House Republican Leader John Boehner claims that as many as 100 House seats are up for grabs. I'm not a big Boehner fan, but I agree with him on this -- there is an anti-incumbent furor that could result in as much as 20% of the House turning over this year. All of the losses won't be on the Democrat side.

If unemployment stays around 10%, there will be another slaughter in 2012. This isn't only bad news for Barack Obama. Establishment types like Mitt Romney will likely be causalities as well.

This is all great news. The voters are finally waking up and throwing the bums out.

Unfortunately, Americans usually don't pay much attention to the goings on in the District of Columbia. They are this year and they did in 1994, but generally they don't.

In the absence of a diligent electorate, we need term limits. Unfortunately, regardless of who controls Congress, elected politicians are not going to pass a law, let alone a Constitutional amendment to limit their power in any way. That's the big problem.

I for one am looking forward to seeing large numbers of incumbents in both parties being booted from office this year and in 2012. Those that remain will be so scared that they will clean up their acts and do what we want -- at least for a short period of time.

Jim Bunning endorses Rand Paul and gives him $2,000

2010-04-24T15:19:00.000-07:00

It's nice to have a true conservative, who is also one of the great major league pitchers of all time on your side!

Who are the neo-commies and Dick Cheney backing? A ex-Democrat hack who supported Bill Clinton. This demonstrates how f'd up the GOP really is.

Tea Party: All Noise and No Muscle?

2010-04-05T06:37:00.000-07:00

The AP is running a story today that paints the Tea Party movement as being largely ineffective. One Republican consultant characterized them as making a lot of noise, but having no no muscle.

The smarmy little Republican operative who said that may very well wind up eating his words. There is still plenty of time between now and 2012 for a new Ross Perot type candidate to emerge and get in front of this thing.

Perot was largely a creation of the media, starting with Larry King. Half way through the campaign he went nuts and quit, and then re-entered the race. However, people were so angry at H.W Bush that Perot won 19% of the vote anyway.

People are every bit as angry today, starting with W. Bush, Wall Street, the Congress, and now Obama. The Tea Party is a ready made movement for a right-of-center populist candidate to leverage. I think Sarah Palin knows this and is paving the groundwork to make it happen.

Palin was the first GOP leader to endorse the third party congressional candidate in NY23. She has endorsed Rand Paul for Senate in Kentucky over the establishment, neo-con candidate. Her husband used to be a member of the Alaska Independence Party. A couple of weeks ago, she stunned GOP sycophant Sean Hannity by saying that third party conservative candidates are a good thing because: A.) they provide us with more choice and B.) they help keep the GOP candidates in-line. After their disastrous performance under Bush, we all know that the GOP needs to be kept on a short leash. Sure Palin made a campaign appearance with McCain, but this was a political payback for McCain putting her on the ticket in 2008.

The GOP has a nasty habit of letting people have their turn at the Presidential nomination. Reagan lost the 1976 primary but wound up as the candidate in 1980. Bush lost in 1980 but was the candidate in 1988. Dole lost in 1988 but was the candidate in 1996. No serious 1996 contender ran in 2000, but McCain lost in 2000 and he was the candidate in 2008. Everyone knows that it's Romney's turn next. Palin knows this too, which is why I think she is laying the groundwork for an independent campaign in 2012.

Palin may or may not be the best choice. It's still not clear that she has what it takes to go the distance. Who else is there? Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson looks set to run, but he has little national exposure. I like the idea of having a successful business person like Perot in the race. Unfortunately, most high profile technology executives are liberals. We certainly don't want anyone from Wall Street in front of this movement. Donald Trump? He made some noises about running a few years ago, but then bailed out.

So unless someone emerges from the ether over the next year, it's probably Palin or no one. If it's no one, we're going to get stuck with RINO Romney and nothing much will change.

A Constitutional Convention to overturn Obamacare?

2010-03-30T16:17:00.000-07:00

South Carolina Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer is asking the state legislatures to call a Constitutional Convention to overturn Obamacare.

34 State Legislatures would have to agree to call the Convention. State Legislatures would appoint delegates to the Convention. Each state would get one vote. Any amendments drafted by the Convention would have to be ratified by 38 State Legislatures.

Healthcare isn't the only issue that the states have with the federal government.

5 states have passed the Firearms Freedom Act which declares that the federal government has no authority to regulate firearms that are produced and solid within their states. Several other State Legislatures have introduced the bill.

Most of the states in the west have thumbed their noses at the federal government by passing medical marijuana in spite of federal drug laws.

In addition, unfunded federal mandates have become a rallying cry for several states, who are sick and tired of the federal government's unfunded orders. 49 states have introduced or already passed 10th Amendment resolutions which affirms the states's sovereign rights under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution.

The government has been using the Interstate Commerce clause to trample on the 10th amendment since at least the Roosevelt administration. In recent years it has gotten significantly worse.

The Interstate Commerce Clause was originally created to ensure that states didn't erect protectionist barriers against other states. Unfortunately, it has become the statists' main method of usurping power from the states and the people.

Lieutenant Governor Bauer is right. It's time for the states to call a Constitutional Convention, which at the very least drafts an amendment that clarifies the powers that the federal government has under the Interstate Commerce clause. Those powers are limited to ensuring open trade between the states.

Until this done, the states can bellyache all they want but they aren't going to make any headway with the growing Leviathan in the D.C.

NATO rejects Russian appeal to eradicate opium fields in Afghanistan

2010-03-26T14:43:00.000-07:00

This is the dirty little secret of the Afghan war. When they were in power, the Taliban almost completely eradicated the opium trade. Since the U.S. government deposed them, Afghanistan has once again become the largest exporter of heroin in the world.

In rejecting the Russian request, U.S. officials stated that the "Afghan drug problem had to be handled carefully in an effort to avoid alienating local residents".

When was that ever a concern in Columbia or Mexico???

How Your Government "Protects" You

2010-02-26T04:41:00.000-08:00

There was segment on this on Stossel (Fox Business Channel) last night. It was about an experimental implant for a degenerative eye disease that has shown great promise in helping some bind people see.

The doctor who created the implant has already spent 7 years and $50 million conducting FDA trials which have demonstrated that the implant works. Now the FDA wants more – another $100 million and trials that will last another 3 years.

There are too few customers for the treatment to warrant spending another $100 million on trials. So, investors won't fund the effort. The doctor is going to stop pursuing it.

A potential patient, Stephen Lonegan, was on the show who has an eye disease that could be helped by the implant. He said he wants the treatment and will take whatever risk is involved. Some FDA bureaucrat said no. They said that their restrictions are for his own safety. Stephen said: "There's nothing safe about going blind. I don't want to be made safe by the FDA. I want it to be up to me to make the decision myself."

So this poor guy is going to go blind as a result of the decision of some mindless government bureaucrat following the rules of some impersonal, uncaring government bureaucracy.

In the meantime, all we heard from the Democrats at yesterday's so-called healthcare summit is how evil insurance companies are forcing little old ladies to do things like use their dead friend's false teeth (seriously, this was a topic of discussion).

Joseph de Maistre once said that "every nation has the government it deserves". Well, here it is...

McCain Trying To Regulate Nutritional Supplements Once Again

2010-02-25T07:27:00.000-08:00

John McCain has introduced yet another bill to get the FDA to regulate nutritional supplements. The Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. 321) could deny Americans freedom of access and mandate a doctor’s prescription for many dietary supplements.

Nutritional supplements have been under attack for a couple of decades. Every few years there is a push to regulate them. Fortunately, those efforts have always failed in the past.

Suzanne Somers has been fighting FDA control of suppliments for some time. As she correctly points out, the FDA did an internal study of themselves a couple of years ago and basically came to the conclusion that they lack the scientific capability and competence to evaluate new drugs and medical devices. A big reason why prescription drugs are so costly in America is because the pharmaceutical companies are at the mercy of the incompetent FDA, who takes too long to conduct drug trials.

Mandating that the FDA regulate nutritional suppliments will drive up their cost, as it has for pharmaceuticals. It will also deny Americans the freedom to do what they think is best to keep themselves healthy.

Obviously, we do need an independent body to verify the safety of potentially dangerous prescription drugs and the claims made by their manufacturers. However, that doesn't mean that we need the government to do it.

Have you ever looked at a piece of equipment or a label on an electrical chord and seen the letters UL? Underwriters Laboratories is private company that certifies products for safety and compliance with standards. Manufacturers pay UL to certify their products so that both the manufacturers themselves and their customers know that the company has delivered a safe, quality, product that is compliant with the relevant standards. The range of things they certify is stunning -- appliances; building materials; chemicals; equipment related to the production and distribution of food, water, and energy; high tech equipment; medical devices; and more.

If a product UL certifies turns out to be unsafe, the consumer can seek redress from both the manufacturer and UL. So, UL has every incentive to ensure that the products they certify are safe. Can you sue the FDA for allowing a dangerous drug on the market? Not really.

We could apply the same type of model to pharmaceuticals. Yes, require pharmaceutical companies to get certification for their new drugs. But allow private companies like UL and others to compete to provide that certification. The certification companies would complete by keeping up with the science and latest testing techniques, which would streamline the certification process, speed time to market, and lower drug costs. In the end, we'd also be safer with competing private certification companies than we are with the incompetent bureaucrats in the FDA.

The answer to the the mess the FDA created is right in front of us, but once again, neither political party is willing to make any real changes to the system at all.

In the meantime, we all need to tell the politicans to keep their sticky fingers off of our vitamins.

A few thoughts on tomorrow's Healthcare Summit

2010-02-24T13:04:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is Obama's big healthcare summit. Many Republicans rightfully believe that this is some sort of political set up. I agree. Obama's strategists have convinced him that the GOP doesn't have any ideas so they concocted this forum in the hopes of exposing their lack of real ideas to the American people.

My view is that the GOP needs to come to the summit ready to aggressively push a reasonable and rational plan for fixing what ails our healthcare system.

A lot of the problems with the healthcare system originate in the state governments. The GOP likes to mention our litigious tort system. This is clearly a state-driven problem. The states have caused other problems as well, for example:

1.) Most states have legislated minimum types of coverage for health plans. Like everything else the government gets its sticky fingers into, what winds up as part of the "minimum coverage" is largely decided by special interests. So, if I don't want to pay for acupuncture or massage therapy, tough luck -- these must be included in the plan by law, which makes the plan more expensive.

2.) The issue with not being able to offer insurance across state lines is also largely the fault of the states that restrict the companies that get to offer health insurance in their states. Of course political payoffs, like campaign contributions have nothing whatsoever to do with who gets to offer insurance and who doesn't.

3.) Finally, most states have legislated out all creativity and innovation from the insurance industry. For example, a couple of months ago a clinic in New York started offering unlimited patient visits for a flat fee of $75 a month. Everyone thought this was a wonderful idea, except the brain dead state government who said it was illegal to do this because that would make the clinic an insurance company.

This is actually a larger problem than just healthcare. All heavily government regulated industries are laboring under foolish laws that makes them uncompetitive in an increasingly competitive world.

The country needs legislation, or maybe even a constitutional amendment that forbids federal, state, and local governments from granting monopolies to businesses or doing anything else that restricts businesses from entering markets. (Professional licensing, etc. would still be okay as long as it was applied uniformly to everyone.)

If we unshackle the creative and competitive nature of the American people, the big problems that we have today won't be so big tomorrow.

We Can't Balance the Budget without cutting Overseas Military Expenditures

2010-02-24T08:58:00.000-08:00

The U.S. government is facing annual trillion dollar plus budget deficits as far as the eye can see. Economists warn that in 10 short years interest payments on the debt will consume a whopping 80% of all federal tax revenue. This is not sustainable. Long before we reach that point, the U.S. government will have to devalue the dollar and/or default on the debt, making us all poorer in the process.

There are plenty of ways to squeeze money out of domestic programs. We don't need 29 federal welfare programs. We don't need the departments of Education, Agriculture, Labor, or Commerce. Does anyone know what the Commerce Department does anyway??? The poorly managed Post Office loses $5 billion a quarter. It should be privatized. We need to take a hard look at all domestic spending.

However, one fact is becoming increasingly clear -- it is not possible to balance the federal budget without reducing the size of our overseas military expenditures.

Our current global defense posture is a relic of the Cold War. The Cold War ended more than 20 years ago when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989. Maintaining Cold War era defense programs and commitments detracts us from meeting the actual threats that we face today. It is also heavily contributing to our enormous annual budget deficits.

Unfortunately, reform will be very difficult. Here's why: the GOP's electoral coalition was largely built around defending us from the communists. So, the GOP is going to be very hesitant to make any changes that could jeopardize that coalition.

After the Soviet Union fell in 1989, a few people on the right like Pat Buchanan started making noises about bringing the troops home from Europe and Japan. This scared the heck out of the GOP establishment, especially the neo-conservatives. So, they started beating the drums against so-called "Red" China (which in many ways is actually more capitalistic than the U.S. is today)

The sad fact is that 9/11 saved the neo-conservatives and the Cold War coalition because they could stand up and say: "see, the world is still a dangerous place and you need us to protect you".

Fortunately, people are starting to wake up to the fact that al Queda is not a country that we can invade and subdue, like we did to Germany and Japan during World War II. Instead, al Queda is a roaming band of bad guys who can easily pack up their things and move elsewhere. We invade Afghanistan so they move to Pakistan. We invade Pakistan and then they go to Yemen. If we invaded Yemen, they would high tail it to Somalia. On and on...

The so-called "war on terror" is a prescription for endless war, growing government power at home, and a mounting pile of debt that will quickly bankrupt the country.

Think about this real hard: Does it make sense for us to borrow money from the Europeans to protect the Europeans? Does it make sense for us to borrow money from the Saudis to protect the Saudis?? Does it make sense for us to borrow money from the Chinese to protect Asia from the Chinese??? This is exactly what we are doing. It's insane.

It's time to bring the troops home from Europe and Japan. The European Union collectively has a higher GDP than does the U.S. Japan is the second largest national economy in the world behind the U.S. (China will likely pass Japan this year.) These are rich countries who are more than capable of defending themselves. So why are we borrowing money to subsidize their defense???

If the Saudis want us to protect them and their oil fields, let's have a national debate on whether or not we should. If we do, then the Saudis can pay us with free oil to keep them safe.

It's also time to find a better way to protect ourselves from the terrorists than costly foreign wars without end. A good place to start would be to reform the failed Border Patrol and the TSA to reduce the chances of another attack at home.

The rapidly mounting debt should be a huge wake up call for all Americans. Obama's measly little spending freeze on discretionary domestic programs won't do a thing to solve the problem. The GOP doesn't even have a plan. If and when they come up with one, it likely will not contain any serious assessment of our costly overseas military commitments. That's a big problem for our future.

Germany wants U.S. to remove its Nuclear Weapons

2010-02-23T07:26:00.000-08:00

There is a report out today that Germany wants the United States to remove its nuclear weapons from German soil, with officials describing them as a "relic of the Cold War". Conservative German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued a written policy statement to her party starting: "We will advocate within (NATO) Alliance and with our American allies the removal of the remaining nuclear weapons from Germany".

This is exactly right. Th Soviet Union died in 1989. There is no more credible state-sponsored international communist threat. Russia and the Germans are good friends.

Maintaining our Cold War defense posture detracts us, in terms of both focus and money, from meeting the actual threats that we face today.

So, why in the heck do we continue to spend our tax money supporting something that is not wanted and not needed??? I'll tell you why -- because we are living in a hidebound country, controlled by special interests (including, but not limited to defense contractors), who are completely resistant to any and all change.

Put modernizing our defense strategy on a long list of changes that need to be made to our illustrious government in the District of Columbia.

Hatch worried that the Tea Party will tear GOP apart

2010-02-21T14:19:00.000-08:00

Orin Hatch has been bellyaching that the Tea Party threatens the GOP establishment. He joins a growing chorus of GOP regulars who are becoming very worried about the consequences of Tea Party activism. GREAT!!! They should be worried. While there are a small handful of good people in the GOP, most of the SOBs in the party need to get booted from office along with the Democrats.

I cast my first vote in 1980. I voted for Reagan. For 20 years, I listened to GOP excuses. Reagan couldn't cut spending in the 1980s because he had a Democrat congress. Gingrich and the GOP Congress couldn't cut spending in the 1990s because they were laboring under a Democrat President. For 20 years I said: I want to see the GOP run it all so that they can make the changes they talk about.

Well, now we've seen the GOP run it all under Bush and it wasn't a pretty site.

They created the first new entitlement program since LBJ. They initiated the largest federal intrusion into the classroom in history. They created the largest pork barrel programs the world has ever seen. According to the Heritage Foundation, Bush oversaw Hurricane Katrina "victims" spending OUR TAX MONEY on things like Caribbean vacations, Dom Perignon champagne, Girls Gone Wild videos, and at least one SEX CHANGE OPERATION. They embarked on a costly, demented, and belligerent foreign policy that has left America weaker in the world.

As a result, they turned a balanced budget into a massive annual deficit. They doubled the national debt and had to borrow a TRILLION dollars from the Chinese to do so. They collapsed the economy. Then they gave Wall Street Banksters $700 BILLION dollars of OUR TAX MONEY, which was promptly used to lavish bonuses on FAILED executives.

Of course, one could point out that Obama is even worse, but to do so would be missing the entire point, which is: Both parties are sprinting towards hell. I don't want to go to hell. I want someone to turn around and go the other way. The GOP has shown that they won't. That's the problem.

Mounting debt points to dire consequences ahead

2010-02-15T06:48:00.000-08:00

We learned last week that the Social Security system is finally paying out more each year than it is taking in. As a result of Carter raising Social Security taxes in the 70s, the Social Security system has been taking in more money than it was paying out over the last 30 years. Of course, the money wasn't being saved for a rainy day. Instead, the kleptomaniac politicians pilfered it to pay off special interests, including big agribusinesses, Wall Street Banksters, and other large corporations who don't want to compete in the market; leftist "community organizers" like Acorn; government union bosses; corrupt university scientists studying "climate change"; welfare queens; and an endless parade of other leeches. The politicians' theft of the Social Security surpluses masked the true magnitude of annual budget deficits for more than 30 years. Now those surpluses are gone.

Government economists predict that even when (if?) we come out of this recession, the growing demands of the baby boomers on Social Security and Medicare will force the debt to keep piling up.

Honest people have been warning about entitlement spending for more than 30 years. For a long time, nothing was done to reform anything because every time someone tried to tell the truth the left would demagogue the issue, accusing the reformers of being heartless sadists who wanted to throw grandma into the snow without her shawl.

To make matters worse, the last two knuckleheads in the Oval Office have made the situation even worse. George Bush created the first new entitlement since LBJ (a costly prescription drug program for the elderly). Not to be outdone, Obama created a $1 trillion "stimulus" bill that failed to stimulate anything except the salivary glads of power hungry politicians. He also proposed (and hopefully has failed) to expand government healthcare entitlements from 50% of healthcare spending today to 100%.

Given the endless orgy of spending, government economists predict that interest on the debt will gobble up a whopping 80% of all federal revenues by 2020. EIGHTY PERCENT. There won't be any money left to do anything else.

We're not going to be able to just switch out the Congress and make a few tweaks to the system like we did in 94. It's too late for that. Given that the politicians are too corrupt and cowardly to make real changes, we are looking a a grim future ahead.

Mark my words, one or more of these three things WILL happen long before 2020:

A.) The government will undertake a massive tax increase (probably in the form of a Value Added Tax) that will cripple the economy even further and decimate middle class living standards.

B.) The government will create a hyperinflation to pay off the debt with worthless dollars, and wipe out what remains of middle class savings and investment.

C.) The government will default on its debt and collapse the global economy.

All empires come to an end. Thanks to corrupt politicians, lobbyists, and Wall Street bankstes,the post WWII American empire may be next. That's not necessarily a bad thing. It all depends on what comes next.

One path points us in the direction of freedom. It requires that we stand up to the federal government and reassert our rights with state nullification of federal laws (which is already happening in a few states with regards to gun control), a constitutional amendment that strictly limits federal power (including closing the "interstate commerce clause" loop hole, which has been used by the politicians to get their grubby little fingers into every aspect of our lives), repeal of the 16th and 17th amendments (which are the root cause of our problems), and potentially secession, if need be.

The other path -- of more government spending and debt -- could very easily end up with a strong man in charge of the country. Remember, the hyperinflation in Germany directly led to the ascension of Der Führer. That's the last thing we need.

We're on an uncharted course, at least for America. But we can learn from history and the mistakes that other countries have made. Hell, we can learn from the mistakes that other countries are making TODAY, namely the PIGS -- Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain. Frankly, the U.S. situation is about as dire as theirs in terms of debt to GDP ratio. The only difference is that the U.S. is such a large and important country that it will take longer before our day of reckoning arrives. Make no mistake, it will arrive, and when it does it will be even worse than theirs because there will be no one left to bail us out.

It's long past time to learn from history and get our fiscal house in order. The magic question is whether or not we will learn.

Short, open letter to Glenn Beck

2010-02-12T07:17:00.000-08:00

Glen,

A few minutes ago you told a caller not to worry about people going back to sleep after the next election. I disagree.

In 92, the country was every bit as angry as they are today. The result? We gave Ross Perot 19% of the popular vote -- the second highest total of any third party candidate in the 20th century (Teddy Roosevelt won 27% of the vote as a Progressive candidate in 1912. We did this even after we knew he was crazy (remember the whole "Bush is going to sabotage my daughter's wedding" thing???). If Perot had the type of voter concentration that Wallace did in 68, he could have swept the west the sent the election to the Congress.

Fortunately, people stayed angry for two more years and we swept the GOP into control of the Congress.

The GOP congress did a great job in the 90s. But then most people went right back to sleep. They stayed asleep when George Bush and his GOP congress escalated spending faster than any President since LBJ, created the first new entitlement program since LBJ, and initiated the largest federal intrusion into the classroom in history.

It took one of the worst economic collapses in our lifetimes to wake people up again.

My view is that we are in deep trouble for a long time. I am afraid that it is too late to simply elect some new people who can tweak the system and make it all better. We may have to entirely reboot the system from the bottom with a new a constitutional convention that puts the politicians into there place. Regardless of what happens this year and in 2012, we are in for a long, scary ride.

Why should we trust them again?

2010-01-21T12:57:00.000-08:00

House minority leader John Boeher was on Michael Medved's show today. In response to a caller's question, Boeher said that the the GOP did indeed have a health care proposal. He gave the URL where it was posted.

REALLY??? I'll bet that most people have no idea that the GOP has a health care plan. Of course Boehner didn't articulate AT ALL what was actually in the plan.

Reagan and Gingrich understood something that Boehner doesn't -- being shy and keeping things quiet is NOT how one wins in the marketplace of ideas.

The sad fact is that the current GOP members in Congress lack the kind of great leadership and communication skills that they had in the 1990s under Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, and Bill Archer. Not only did those guys accomplish a lot (welfare reform, capital gains tax cut, balanced budget, etc), they also set the stage for what would happen when the GOP took control of the Presidency. I remember the big debates between Armey and Archer on how they would scrap the current tax code in favor of either a flat rate income tax or a national sales tax. Even "moderates" like Pete Domenici (R) and Sam Nunn (D) came up with their own version of radical tax reform (a “consumption-oriented” income tax).

ALL reform (let alone talk of even more radical reform) died in January 2001 when George Bush became President. Instead, George Bush and Karl Rove tried to emulate the Democrats by buying votes with the first new entitlement program since LBJ and the largest federal intrusion into the classroom in history. It didn't work and they got booted out of office. Boehner was part of the mess that Bush made.

The result was inevitable -- the Democrats now control the federal government and are doing everything possible to make it even larger.

I am so VERY happy that Scott Brown won in Massachusetts. It signals that virtually everyone except the most brain dead socialist is waking up to reality. However, this doesn't mean that we should automatically trust John Boehner and the Bush GOP sell-outs again. We need to take it candidate-by-candidate and really take a hard look at whether or not they going to return power to the people or continue to consolidate government in the hands of a few elitists.

Obama Care goes to Senate Floor

2009-11-24T15:39:00.000-08:00

All of the Democratic Senators plus Socialist Bernie Saunders and "Independent" Joe Lieberman voted to send the government healthcare take over bill to the floor for debate.

Lieberman still claims that he will not vote for the final bill if it includes the "public option" (government run program). Is he serious or just posturing???

At one point, Senator Mary Landrieu was making similar noises, but then she got a $300 million payoff from Harry Reid. She bragged about it and then voted for the bill.

This is how your government actually works. This is why we are in so much trouble.

Ron Paul bill to Audit Fed wins in House Committe

2009-11-24T15:29:00.000-08:00

Well, here is some good news for once. Ron Paul's bill to audit the Federal Reserve Bank passed the House Financial Services committee by a vote of 43-26. The bill has 309 co-sponsors, so it should sail through the House.

The the Federal Reserve and the rest of the financial establishment are up in arms, panicked with the thought of us rubes on main street finding out what goes on behind their closed doors.

So, at the last minute, Barney Frank tried to sabotage the bill by proposing an amendment that would have essentially gutted the bill.

The bill still has to pass the House, without being gutted by Barney Frank, Mel Watt, and the rest of the establishment. Then it has to pass the Senate. Then the two bills needs to be reconciled and pass the House and Senate again.

We're still along way from knowing what goes on behind the closed doors of the fed. But it's a good start. Congratulations Dr. Paul!

Republican lawmaker says he would 'consider' a war tax as last resort

2009-11-24T15:25:00.000-08:00

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) said he would "consider" supporting the Democrats war surtax should President Barack Obama withdraw all American forces from Afghanistan.

I have news for Mr. King -- the "war" (actually a misguided nation building exercise) cannot be won. The Russians couldn't subdue the unruly Afghanis. Neither could Bush. Obama won't be able to either.

A REAL conservative would not be in favor of flushing American tax money down the toilet.

We need to get out of Afghanistan and then spend a fraction of war money on bribing the Afghani war loads to do what we want. It worked in Egypt -- we've been paying the dictator Mubarak a relatively small amount every year to make nice with Israel. He has.

Is the Collapse of the Dollar a Blessing in Disguise?

2009-10-12T10:32:00.000-07:00

Over the last several weeks there have been rumors that a group of countries, including China, Russia, Japan, France, and the oil rich Gulf States are preparing to dump the dollar for oil trades. This follows months of speculation that many of the same countries have been working to replace the dollar as the world's primary reserve currency with a new international monetary standard based on a basket of currencies. The dollar has been plunging on world markets.

Why is this import? Well, because the massive and ever increasing U.S. government debt has been largely financed by foreign countries. When a country sells us products for dollars, it can use the dollars in four ways:
• It can buy things from us
• It can buy things (like oil) from other counties that are priced in dollars
• It can invest in U.S. assets (stocks, bonds, real estate, etc)
• It can lend the money to the U.S. government to finance deficit spending

Countries like China sell us products for dollars. They lend a lot of this money to the U.S. government to finance deficit spending. China also uses some of the dollars to buy oil, which is priced in dollars. The countries who sell oil for dollars also use their dollars to finance U.S. government debt.

If countries stop taking dollars for oil and other products they sell to us, it will be the end of the U.S. government’s ability to borrow enormous sums of money. If that happens, the days of big government would soon be over because they wouldn’t have the money to keep spending. That’s a very good thing.

The question is how it would happen? If the world dumps the dollar, the government will have two choices. They can cut spending and live within their means. Or they can turn the printing presses on to keep spending just a tiny bit longer, and create a hyperinflation in the process. The latter would be a catastrophe that would wipe out the middle class and set the stage for political upheaval, including the potential for violent revolution. It’s happened in other countries. We don’t need it to happen here.

If the world does dump the dollar, let’s hope that there are enough rational people around to realize that the party is over and have the courage to reign in government spending. If not, things will get much worse before they get better.

Is opposition to Obama’s programs really driven by racism?

2009-09-29T18:07:00.000-07:00

Recently, there has been a flurry of accusations claiming that the people who oppose Obama’s programs are motivated by racism. I understand the why. Most Republicans didn’t say a thing when George Bush expanded the federal government at a faster clip than anyone since LBJ. The very few Republicans, like Ron Paul, who did speak out against the big government schemes of George Bush and Karl Rove were ostracized by the GOP leadership.

Today, Republicans are going ballistic because Obama is doing basically the same thing as Bush – spending money like crazy, centralizing decision making, and driving a stake into the heart of America’s future. It shouldn’t be surprising that many see racism at work, even though a better explanation is simple partisan politics.

Regardless, it should be very clear that the GOP is filled with unprincipled hypocrites who, like the Democrats, only care about power and control. They need do some house cleaning if they want to gain the trust of the American people again.

The Sheer Idiocy of Government

2009-09-16T14:54:00.000-07:00

There was a great story today about how the government denied a disabled person the request to buy a $150 iPhone application that translates text to speech. Instead, they recommended that the person purchase an $8,000 specialty computer that can’t be used for any other function.

Why? Because, Medicare regulations only allow people to purchase single purpose devices. Any and all multi-purpose devices are automatically rejected, even though they may be orders of magnitude less expensive. Wouldn't it be great if a disabled person could check their email from the same computer that they used for their disability??? Unfortunately, it's just not allowed according to government rules.

There is only one word to describe this -- idiotic.

This conclusively demonstrates the sheer idiocy of government. There isn't any common sense. There isn't any compassion. There are only mindless people who follow mindless rules.

Then we wonder why everything is so screwed up.

Acorn Scandal: “Mainstream” Media Corruption Not New

2009-09-16T05:44:00.000-07:00

The "mainstream" media's refusal to discuss Acorn's criminal conduct demonstrates conclusively how corrupt the media really is. This is not news to me. I figured this out more than 27 years ago when I caught ABC news involved in a propaganda campaign against Ronald Reagan.

I was in Greece, with the U.S. Air Force for a couple of months during the early 80s. The U.S. Airbase was an extension of the Athens Airport. About 50 Greeks worked on the base as cooks, janitors, etc.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was raging across Europe. Enormous marches were being held in places like London, Paris, and Berlin against Reagan’s plans to stage short range ballistic missiles in Europe.

We were staying in a hotel in Glyfada, which was a suburb of Athens. The Air Force delivered VHS tapes of the ABC News. We’d typically get them 3 days after the original broadcasts.

One day, the Greeks who worked on the base went on strike. They went on strike for all of the usual reasons – more pay, better benefits, etc. They formed a small picket line in front of the airbase. A few people from the smaller and nuttier of the two communist parties joined them. We were told not to go to work for a couple of days.

Three days later (after the strike was done and we were all back to work) we received a VHS tape of the ABC News, where Frank Reynolds was reporting that the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament staged a massive anti-American protest in Athens, which shut down the airbase. They showed footage of what seemed to be hundreds of thousands of Greeks marching in the streets. The video was not labeled “file footage”.

We were all sitting there scratching our heads wondering what the heck was going on. We asked an employee of the hotel to look at the tape. He said that this was a video of the protests against the Greek dictatorship from about 10 years earlier.

It was very obvious to us what was really happening -- ABC News was engaged in a propaganda campaign against President Reagan and his plans to stand up to the Soviet Union.

Yesterday, when asked why he wasn't reporting on the Acorn Scandals, ABC News Anchor Charlie Gibson claimed that he hadn't even heard about them. In other words, nothing has changed with the media's selective and politically biased "reporting" in 27 years.

Obama’s Protectionist Folly

2009-09-15T10:24:00.000-07:00

The Obama administration announced on Friday that it is imposing a 35% tariff on tires imported from China. This sent chills throughout the international community. America and much of the world are already mired in the worst economic crisis in decades. The administration’s ill-conceived protectionist action could spark a full-blown trade war that would deepen and lengthen the current downturn.

First, let me state unequivocally that I am not one who believes that running massive current account deficits year after year is inconsequential. Since 2001, when George Bush took office, the United States has run up a $3.8 trillion trade deficit in manufactured goods. That’s more than twice the $1.68 trillion trade deficit America incurred for imported oil and gas. The consequences of continuing this are very real, broad, and deep.

However, punishing Americans by raising the prices of imported goods is not the answer. The real solution is to fix America’s convoluted tax system, which makes products produced here increasingly uncompetative in world markets.

The U.S. has the second highest corporate tax rate in the developed world, which drives up the cost of goods that are produced in America. In addition, most other countries provide their domestic companies with tax rebates on goods that they produce for export, lowering their prices in world markets.

The government also taxes money that U.S. corporations earn overseas when the money is brought back home. This penalizes U.S. companies that want to use their foreign earnings to invest in America. As a result, a large portion of overseas earnings is never brought back home and put to productive uses. The U.S. is one of the very few countries in the world that do this. The Obama administration is proposing to make the situation worse by taxing foreign earnings whether or not the money is repatriated, which will surely drive corporate headquarters out of America.

The U.S. tax code also punishes savings. Not only does the government tax income that is saved, it also taxes the interest on that savings. Consequentially, Americans don’t save enough to finance all of the available domestic investment opportunities. Instead, we borrow money from countries like China and Saudi Arabia.

The U.S. also imposes payroll taxes on employers to fund Social Security and Medicare, which increases the cost employing people, thereby reducing the potential for job creation.

Lastly, it will cost Americans an estimated $350 billion next year just to comply with our overly complex tax code. That is money that can’t be used for more productive purposes.

The real answer to America’s trade deficit is to replace our convoluted and counter-productive system of taxing savings, production, and employment, with a simple system of taxing consumption. Doing so would have the following effects: America’s savings rate would increase. American would become a huge magnet for productive, job creating foreign business investment. American exports would be far more price competitive in world markets. In the domestic market, products produced in America would be more competitive with imports. In addition, money that is spent today complying with the complex tax code would be put to better uses.

There would be many other benefits as well, including increased privacy because the government would no longer be required to collect massive amounts of information about what we earn and how we spend it.

One such proposal for fixing our broken tax system is the Fair Tax, which proposes to replace all current federal taxes with a simple retail sales tax on goods and services.

Unfortunately, it’s not likely that the Obama Administration or the Democratic Congress will even consider anything like this. They are too busy bashing corporations and placating union bosses. Instead, in addition to their ill-conceived protectionist measures, they are likely to make the tax system even more convoluted and punitive, much to America’s determent.

Peter Schiff to Announce for Senate

2009-09-15T05:14:00.000-07:00

Peter Schiff -- one of the few economists to accurately predict the recession -- will announce on Thursday his run to unseat Chris Dodd.

This is the kind of smart guy we need in the Senate.

You can support him here

Look at these clips from 2006 and 2007:

Tea Party a Major Success

2009-09-13T17:49:00.000-07:00

By all accounts the 9/12 Tea Party was a major success. The D.C. police were surprised by how many people attended. At one point, they had to close Pennsylvania Avenue. Of course, the so-called “mainstream” media tried to downplay the significance of the protest, declaring that only “tens of thousands” of people were in attendance. The London Daily Mail was the first news source to set the record straight, estimating that up to 2 million people were in attendance.

When was the last time that the left was able to stage a protest rally that drew upwards of 2 million people?

The D.C. march was only part of the story. Tea Parties were held across the country. My wife and I were startled yesterday to see 50 or 60 protestors in our normally quiet suburb of Redmond, WA.

It's very obvious that something big is happening here. It's not just the Tea Parties. 20 states have now passed 10th Amendment Resolutions declaring their sovereignty over the federal government, demanding that the federal government stop usurping their power. Who would have thought even a couple of years ago that this would have been possible? It has now become inevitable due to the massive power grab of the Bush administration and the even greater foundation of tyranny being laid by Barack Obama.

Hopefully the Republican establishment will finally get the message and respond to voter discontent in the same way they did in 1994 – with a real program for true reform.

Return of the Gun Grabbers

2009-09-13T12:14:00.000-07:00

Frank Lautenberg, one of the most vehement opponents of the 2nd Amendment, has sponsored a new bill designed to deny Americans their constitutional rights. At first glance, S.1317 – “The Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2009” might seem entirely reasonable to most Americans. After all, who wants dangerous terrorists to have firearms and explosives? The bill gives the Attorney General the authority to deny the sale or transfer of firearms to anyone who is on the government’s terrorist watch list. Therein lies the problem.

Over 1 million people have wound up on the government’s terrorist watch list since 2001. The list contains some truly frightening characters. Let’s take a look at a few of them:

John Anderson of Minneapolis, who turned 8 on July 4, is among them. He wound up on the terrorist watch list two years ago. Repeated appeals by his mother to have him removed have fallen on deaf ears in Washington. Watch out for that box cutter under his blanky.

12 term Democratic Congressman John Lewis of Atlanta was put on the terrorist watch list 6 years ago. He is still subjected to repeated airport searches and required to present multiple forms of identification when he tries to travel.

James Robinson, who is a retired Air National Guard brigadier general and a commercial pilot for a major airline is also on the watch list. He has difficultly even getting on airplanes to do his job because his name mistakenly appears on the list.

Drew Griffin, who is a CNN reporter, "coincidentally" found himself being added to the terrorist watch list last year after he began a series of investigative reports that were critical of the Transportation Security Administration.

More than 2,000 Americans file to get their names removed from the list each month. Few, if any have succeeded. We all know that once government puts somethings in place, it’s almost impossible to change. So, these and many other poor souls will have to spend the rest of their lives being harassed by government bureacrats every time they try to board an airplane. If S.1317 passes, they will also have a key constitutional right taken away from them even though they haven’t commitment any crime.

Welcome to Amerika…

Czar Nation

2009-09-06T16:55:00.000-07:00

It is a welcome relief that one of the most virulent people to ever occupy a high government office has resigned today. For those of you who don’t know, Van Jones was Obama’s Green Jobs “Czar”. He is also an avoided communist and given his own statements an apparent overt racist. He resigned amid a furor over his various past statements, including those that accuse the Bush administration of being culpable in the 9/11 attacks on America. As readers of my blog know, I have been a harsh critic of George Bush for good reason. However, anyone who accuses the President of the United States of being in cahoots with the terrorists who killed more than 3,000 Americans has no place in legitimate public discourse.

Van Jones isn’t the only issue. Obama has appointed 32 “Czars” to his administration. What is a “Czar” anyway??? A Czar was a dictatorial ruler of Russia. Obama has 32 of them.

The Constitution requires Congressional approval of high ranking executive branch appointments. Obama has skirted the requirement by subjugating his official cabinet-level appointments to 32 advisors, known as "Czars", who officially don’t have any constitutional role, but nevertheless have enormous power and influence in the government.

Obama isn’t the first person who appointed a “Czar” to a high profile government position. Reagan had a Drug Czar. Bush had a Health Czar. Although these and other positions were ill-conceived, they were limited and mostly put in place for political marketing reasons – hey, look we’re trying to do something about this entrenched problem (shhh... that the government probably created and can’t possibly solve)

The Obama administration has taken advantage of this precedent to circumvent the Congress and Constitution altogether by appointing 32 “Czars” that in many cases seem to be superior to the constitutionally allowed Cabinet Secretaries, which require Congressional approval.

I’m old adage kind of guy and there is on old adage that is very instructive here -- give someone an inch and they will take a mile. We should have objected strenuously when the first “Czars” were appointed in prior administrations. We didn’t and this is what we would up with today -- an adminstration full of petty tyrants put in place without any public scrutiny whatsoever.

So, good riddance to the left-wing looney Van Jones. 1 down and 31 to go. The larger challenge is how to fix the long-term damage this has inflicted on our republic.

Healthcare "Reform" Fiasco

2009-09-04T19:23:00.000-07:00

As the Democrats frantically try to salvage their health care "reform" initiative, it is import that American’s understand one thing. The free market didn't create the problems with our current healthcare system. The government did.

In the U.S., the person receiving the benefit (the patient) is not the person who is paying the bills (employer or government). So, patients have few incentives to use the system wisely. Why? Because government started corrupting the system in the 1960s. In 1960, before the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, healthcare spending was 5% of GDP. 55% of that was paid out of pocket. Private insurance paid 24% of the tab. Government picked up the rest at 21% of total costs. Today, healthcare costs are a whopping 18% of GDP. The mix of who pays has been completely turned upside down with the government providing between 45% and 56% of healthcare costs, depending on the state, while out of pocket expenses are less than 17% of the total.

Even our "private" system of employer paid health insurance was an unintended consequence of government wage and price controls during WWII. Employers competed for short supplies of labor by offering new benefits like healthcare insurance because they weren’t allowed to compete by raising wages.

Government regulations restrict competition and price shopping by prohibiting companies from selling health insurance across state lines. Auto insurance and home owner's insurance are sold across state lines, why can't health care insurance???

Onerous regulations dramatically drive up the cost of bringing drugs to market. Drugs costs are a major component of escalating healthcare costs. New drugs are often available in Europe, Japan, and elsewhere years before they are available here. Are the Europeans and Japanese dying more frequently than Americans from unsafe drugs? No.

Our legal system is also driving up healthcare costs due to excessive punitive damages that have driven up medical malpractice insurance. In many states, for example OBGYNs are leaving the profession because of the rising cost of medical malpractice insurance, which is a consequence of America's legal system.

It should be obvious that it's a complete myth that America has a "free market" healthcare system. A free market healthcare system would place patient choice and responsibility at the center of the system, not government bureaucracies.

Singapore reformed their socialized healthcare system to one where choice and responsibility were center stage and the cost of healthcare in Singapore has fallen while quality has risen. Their system is based on mandatory medical savings accounts, catastrophic health insurance, copays, information transparency in prices and outcomes, and means tested government subsidies for the poor. On every measure from infant mortality to life expectancy, Singapore is better than the U.S. Their costs are less than 1/3 of ours per capita.

Here's the funny thing: Singapore got a lot of their ideas from the U.S. -- medical savings accounts were proposed by U.S. economists in the 1970s. Singapore adopted them in 1984 and costs have fallen while quality and patient satisfaction have increased.

Of course, the politicians who believe that the government is the answer to every problem don't want to hear the facts. They only want to hear how they can gain more power and control for themselves.

Tea Parties, Secession and the 17th Amendment

2009-05-02T17:53:00.000-07:00

At one of the April 15th “tea party” tax protest events, Texas Governor Rick Perry suggested Texans might at some point get so fed up they would want to secede from the union. The resulting furor on the left-wing blogosphere – accusing Perry of being “un-American” and potentially worse -- is both funny to watch and sad at the same time. It’s sad because there are so many people in the United States who are ignorant of our own history. Their ignorance is a big part of the problem.

How did the United States come to exist? Through an act of secession. On July 4th, 1776 the “Declaration of Independence” was signed, which declared our independence from Great Britain. The Declaration started with these words:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

The Declaration went on to list a number of grievances that the colonists had against Britain and King George. Among those grievances were the levy of taxes without the colonist’s consent. The Declaration wraps up by saying:

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved…

Britain didn’t take kindly to their colony trying to secede and they tried to stop it by force. That led to the Revolutionary War.

Unlike most modern politicians, the colonists were no hypocrites. They upheld the right of secession as the new constitution was being debated and even after it went into effect. The delegates at Virginia’s ratification convention stated: "The powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression." In his first inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson said that: "If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it." Fifteen years later, after the New England Federalists attempted to secede, Jefferson said, "If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation ... to a continuance in the union .... I have no hesitation in saying, 'Let us separate.'"

In spite of all of the ignorant blather from the left today, I am increasingly encouraged because so many Americans are discovering the heritage and meaning of this great country. For example, 20 states have now passed "10th Amendment" resolutions declaring their sovereignty over the federal government and demanding that the federal government stop usurping their power. Who would have thought even a few years ago that this would have been possible? It's now become inevitable due to the massive power grab of the Bush administration and the even greater usurpation of our rights being undertaken by Obama.

Here's one last thing that we all need to learn: The framers put in a place a system of checks and balances so that no government entity within the United States could gain too much power. In 1913, the 17th Amendment passed which removed the right of state governments to appoint senators. The 17th Amendment removed the biggest check that the state governments had on the federal government. The balance has tilted towards the federal government ever since. Now we find ourselves in this big mess with a bloated, unresponsive government run by special interests. It's only going to get worse. The only enduring way that we can restore the balance between the states and the federal government is by repealing the 17th Amendment. That should be on the top of everyone’s agenda.

Furor over AIG

2009-03-18T17:46:00.000-07:00

AIG announced that it was paying bonuses to top executives totaling $165 MILLION. For what? Running the company into the ground. Of course, if AIG was a private company, held by private stockholders, they could do whatever they want and risk being punished by the market. Unfortunately, all of us lowly taxpayers are the ones who are being punished because Barack Obama and George Bush handed AIG $200 BILLION of YOUR money. It’s not over yet.

Congressman Barney Frank was beside himself, stating that since the government now owns AIG, they should start acting like owners. What business experience does Frank have that would be helpful here as an “owner” of AIG? NONE WHATSOEVER. Barney Frank’s only business experience is that his boyfriend once ran a gay prostitution ring out of Barney Frank’s apartment.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama and his tax cheat Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner knew all about the bonuses before they pledged another $30 BILLION of your money to AIG. Remember, Nancy Pelosi defended Geithner during the confirmation process, stating that he was “too big to fail”. Big or not, in his short time as Treasury Secretary Geithner has failed miserably. He needs to go away.

Right now the Obama administration is twisting in the wind as much as the Bush administration. They have no idea what to do, except to throw more of your money at failed companies with brain dead management. It needs to stop.

Frank, Geithner, Pelosi... These are the people running your country, spending your money, and ruining the lives of you and your children. How much more of this can we take?

Obama’s Trickledown Economics

2009-02-25T16:14:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama said something very reveling last night, which seems to have escaped the political chattering classes:

“So I know how unpopular it is to be seen as helping banks right now, especially when everyone is suffering in part from their bad decisions… It's not about helping banks - it's about helping people. Because when credit is available again…”

So, let’s be clear – the plan is for the government to mortgage your children’s future, to hand trillions of dollars to banks, so that they can lend you more money and put you further into debt.

This is trickledown economics of the most perverse kind.

The GOP doesn’t have any room to gripe. They helped create the mess we are in by doubling the national debt over the last eight years with a drunken orgy of spending that gave new meaning to the term “waste, fraud, and abuse”.

The Democrats are making it worse. It was bad enough that they passed a $800 BILLION “stimulus” bill that was larded up with some of the most egregious misuses of taxpayer’s money ever seen. Their latest move is a new $500 BILLION supplemental budget filled with special interest spending.

Where does that leave the rest of us? Screwed. Big time.

It’s becoming very clear that there isn’t dime’s worth of difference between the two parties. They are both captives of the same lobbyist culture in D.C. that has ruined our country. Unfortunately, Americans have demonstrated conclusively that they aren’t willing to do anything about it by voting for alternatives.

Do you like being Micromanaged by Government???

2009-02-07T20:07:00.000-08:00

Neither do I. In fact, I don't like being micromanaged by anyone. At least when my boss does it I have the option of telling him to take a hike. We don't have any option of doing this when the government gets involved.

Unfortunately, the competing “stimulus” bills passed by the House and Senate contain a mind-boggling array of provisions that will punish or reward you based on your behavior. Do you want to buy a Chevy, Ford, or Chrysler? There might be a tax break in your future. But, if you want to save money for a rainy day, well… tough luck…

Regardless of which “stimulus” bill becomes law, we’re in for even worse times. The non-partisan Congressional Office (which is now appointed by Democrats) issued a statement this week assuring us that the stimulus bills will “hurt the economy more in the long run than if nothing is done”.

Let’s not forget that the “New Deal” prolonged the Great Depression. It took World War II to revive the economy, 14 years after FDR took office. So why are we trying to do this again???

The government created the current crisis by borrowing too much itself, artificially lowering interest rates to cause the population to run up too much debt, and coercing the financial intuitions to lend money to people who couldn’t afford their homes. The last thing we need is to borrow more money from the Chinese and Saudis to fund more nonsensical programs in the “stimulus bill”, like $8 BILLION in “Tribal Assistance Grants”.

Borrowing more to spend on the “stimulus” is not going to save us. It’s going to kill us.

What’s the answer? In short, we need to reign in the corrupt politicians and their lobbyist buddies who have ruined this country. Obama pledged to do this, but since taking office he has appointed a plethora of tax cheats to high office. He has also not followed his own executive order by appointing former lobbyists to high ranking positions in his administration. At this point it should be clear that Obama is nothing more than a typical politician in that he seems to believe that the rules exist only to stifle the opposition. This is not the kind of change that people voted for.

So, how do we make things right?

First, we need to dramatically simplify the tax code. Americans spend more than $200 BILLION dollars a year just trying to comply with America’s convoluted tax policy. Not only do we have one of the most complicated tax systems in the world, we have among the highest business tax rates in the developed world. Our top corporate tax rate is higher than in the social bastion of Sweden! We need to radically overhaul the tax system, making it simpler, fairer and more conducive to job creating innovation and production.

Second, we need to streamline government income redistribution programs. How many government income transfer programs exists? More than we can count. We could save countless billions of dollars a year in administrative overhead by combing all of these into a single income assistance program.

The same goes for healthcare. Politicians across the political spectrum love to berate our healthcare system, yet they are the ones who created the mess that we have today. There are too many government programs with too much overhead and too few benefits. We need to replace the maddening plethora of government healthcare programs with a simple program that assists lower income families to buy health insurance in the market.

The government also spends countless billions on programs that almost no Americans would support if they actually knew about them. President Reagan correctly called this spending “waste, fraud, and abuse”. Unfortunately, these programs have only multiplied over time. The problem is that there are too many programs for most of us to keep track of. We should get rid of them all.

We need also need to rethink the enormous amount of money that we are spending overseas. Why should American taxpayers continue to pay billions to subsidize the “defense” of rich countries like Japan, Korea, Germany, and others??? The Cold War has been over for 20 years, yet the government can't get over their cold war mentality. It’s long past time to end the government Cold War "military industrial complex" and save a ton of money in the process.

The bottom line is this – we shouldn’t be increasing America’s debt to the Chinese and Saudis by spending nearly a TRILLION dollars on a “stimulus” bill that the Congressional Budget Office says won’t stimulate anything, except perhaps the condom manufacturers who will get a big chunk of the change. Instead, we should take the opportunity to simplify the tax structure, rationalize government programs, and eliminate crazy government spending.

Bill Gates: Charter Schools and Good Teachers

2009-01-28T17:41:00.000-08:00

Bill Gates wrote a very interesting article in the New York Times today about his experience in trying to reform the public school system. It’s a must read for those of us who care deeply about our children’s future.

Here are some excerpts from the article:

Nine years ago, the [Bill and Melinda Gates] foundation decided to invest in helping to create better high schools, and we have made over $2 billion in grants.

Many of the small schools that we invested in did not improve students' achievement in any significant way. These tended to be the schools that did not take radical steps to change the culture, such as allowing the principal to pick the team of teachers or change the curriculum…

But a few of the schools that we funded achieved something amazing. They replaced schools with low expectations and low results with ones that have high expectations and high results. These schools are not selective in whom they admit, and they are overwhelmingly serving kids in poor areas, most of whose parents did not go to college. Almost all of these schools are charter schools…

It is invigorating and inspirational to meet with the students and teachers in these schools and hear about their aspirations. They talk about how the schools they were in before did not challenge them and how their new school engages all of their abilities…

It is amazing how big a difference a great teacher makes versus an ineffective one. Research shows that there is only half as much variation in student achievement between schools as there is among classrooms in the same school. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.

Gates is right. Parents need to be able to choose where their kids go to school. The principals of those schools need to have the authority to hire, fire, and change the curriculum. This is how American colleges and universities work and we have the best higher education system in the world. The public school system doesn’t work this way and it’s among the worst in the developed world.

Hopefully, Gates' research will provide a powerful catalyst for changing our hidebound and failed public education system.

Obama ethics

2009-01-27T06:07:00.000-08:00

The day after President Obama was sworn into office, he issued an executive order prohibiting administration appointees from accepting positions in federal agencies they had lobbied in the previous two years. Democrats heralded it as a new era of ethical behavior in government.

Two days later, Obama had to issue a “wavier” to his own rules to appoint William Lynn as Deputy Secretary of Defense. William Lynn headed government relations with Raytheon, which is one of the largest defense contractors in the country. While Lynn headed government lobbying at Raytheon, the company spent more than $14.5 million lobbying the House, Senate, DARPA, Defense Department, Energy Department, Treasury Department, State Department, and others. The payoff? $54 BILLION in direct government contracts, and more if you include their subcontracts to other companies. Lynn's appointment clearly violates Obama’s new ethics guidelines, which is why he had to issue a “waiver” to his own rules.

Yesterday Timothy Geithner won conformation as Obama’s Treasury Secretary. Geithner was previously president the New York Federal Reserve Bank, which was part of the monetary shenanigans that helped cause the economic mess we are in today. Geithner failed to pay self-employment taxes for several years while he worked at the International Monetary Fund. He also made false deductions on his tax return relating to child care. Geithner did not make any attempt to pay his back taxes until after Obama expressed his intent to nominate Geithner to be Secretary of Treasury. If you would have refused to pay your back taxes for years, the IRS would have put lien on your bank account, garnished your wages, and sent you letters threatening jail. Ask Wesley Snipes who was sentenced to three years in prison for failing to pay back taxes. Geithner's political connections spared him from the type of treatment the rest of us get at the hands of the IRS.

Obama has only been president for a week yet we’re already finding huge ethical problems. I’m quite sure these aren’t the only ones because politicians of all stripes are by their very nature unethical and in this case hypocritical as well.

But hey, Obama’s heart is in the right place and he is trying to do the right thing, so who cares about a few transgressions? While I am in no way comparing Obama to these people, let's not forget that this was the exact argument made by left about all of their heros from Stalin to Castro.

Obama and the Old Truths

2009-01-20T15:54:00.000-08:00

I was extraordinarily heartened by these words that the 44th President of the United States spoke at his inaugural today:

"Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.

What is demanded then is a return to these truths."

I suspect that I will disagree with Obama on many specific policy prescriptions, just as I disagreed with George Bush. However, Obama is completely right that hard work, honesty, courage, fair play, tolerance, curiosity, and loyalty are the bedrock of civil society and progress. I really do wish that he would have included risk taking and the entrepreneurial spirit among his virtues.

Rating the Presidents

2009-01-19T16:16:00.000-08:00

Another Presidential era has come and gone. So, it’s time to update my running list of post-WWII Presidents. Unfortunately, we have a new loser at the bottom of the heap. Hopefully, #44 will be better. Here’s the list:

The Relatively Good Presidents

Ronald Reagan

Good: Cut marginal tax rates by 30%. Helped defeat communism (along with Thatcher, Kohl, and the Pope). Reinvigorated our national spirit after Vietnam and Jimmy Carter. Rebuilt the military after its neglect during the Carter years.

Bad: Failed to do anything about growing government spending and debt.

Harry Truman

Good: Eliminated the war time economy to move us back to a free market, in spite of the advice of his Keynesian advisors to build tanks and bury them in the desert to keep the economy going. (Unfortunately, the Keynesian idiots are feeling their oats again today.) He also desegregated the armed forces and implemented the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe.

Mixed: Dropping of the atomic bomb to win WWII. This was seen as a successes but it is questionable at the same time.

Bad: Korean war

The Mixed Presidents

Bill Clinton

Good: Worked with the Republican Congress to balance the budget for the first time in a long time. Removed welfare from being an entitlement.

Bad: Invaded the Balkins. Failed to cement Russia in the West. Periodically sent cruise missiles to bomb Osama bin Laden, without any real plan on how to eliminate or contain him, which helped lead to 9/11.

John Kennedy

Good: Cut marginal tax rates by 30%. Compromised on missiles in Turkey for missiles in Cuba to avoid war.

Bad: Seeded the Vietnam War. Backed a coup d'etat, which installed the Baath Party (Saddam Hussein’s party) into power in Iraq.

Dwight Eisenhower

Good: Created the interstate highway system. Ended the Korean war.

Bad: Backed a coup d'etat, installing the Shah of Iran. Expanded Social Security and other New Deal programs.

The Irrelevant Presidents

Gerald Ford

Good: Vetoed more bills than most of his predecessors and successors.

Bad: The lame WIN (whip inflation now) campaign.

George Herbert Walker Bush

Bad: First Iraq war (but got out quickly). Generally clueless about the economy.

Good: Only served one term!

The Dreadful Presidents

Lyndon Johnson

Bad: Started the Vietnam War and created the Great Society entitlement programs which set the stage for the inflation of the 1970s and the entitlement mentality and deficits we are living with today.

Good: The Voting Rights Act.

Jimmy Carter

Bad: Couldn’t make a decision in a crisis (according to his own National Security Advisor) leading to American hostages in Iran and a generally failed stint as leader of the free world. Nearly destroyed the military through neglect.

Good: “Deregulated” the airlines and trucking. Appointed Paul Volcker to the Federal Reserve, who helped break the inflationary spiral of the 1970s.

Richard Nixon

Bad: Expanded Johnson’s Vietnam War and Great Society programs. Took the U.S. off of the gold standard. Imposed wage and price controls, creating shortages of everything from gasoline to toilet paper. Few remember this, but people were eating horse meat under Nixon because his price controls caused a beef shortage.

Good: Helped China enter the world community.

George Herbert Hoover Bush

Bad: Lied about Iraq’s involvement with 9/11. Iraq war. Corrupted the Constitution to spy on Americans with the Patriot Act and other legislation. Created the first new entitlement program since the Great Society. Created massive deficits and more than doubled the national debt on his watch. Quasi-nationalization of the financial sector. Largest federal intrusion into the classroom in history. Torture in Guantanamo.

Good: Letterman's Great Moments In Presidential Speeches...

April Fool

2008-12-31T17:59:00.000-08:00

I know it’s January 1st, not April 1st, but there has been so much nonsense in the news over the last couple of days that it’s hard to image that we’re not all victims of some huge national prank.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warned the Democracts not to spend too much on their “economic stimulus” package. Where was Mitch’s concern about over spending while George Bush and the Republican Congress more than doubled the national debt with their prescription drug program for the greedy geezer lobby, no-win war with Iraq, and pork barrel infrastructure spending that gave new meaning to the phrase “waste, fraud and abuse”???

Republican National Committee Vice Chairman James Bopp Jr. submitted a resolution on Tuesday warning that Bush has moved the country towards “socialism”. Well, no kidding. He’s about six years too late in recognizing this.

Finally, some no-nothing Democratic legislator from Connecticut (Frank Nicastro) is urging the government to “save’ the newspaper business. Here’s the inside scoop – the newspaper business can’t be saved any more than could the buggy whip business 100 years ago because the technology for delivering information has changed. The established interests failed to recognize and adapt to the new ways of doing things and as a result they are rightfully being put out of business. Any effort by the government to protect those established interests will fail and make us all worse off.

We can only hope that this kind of nonsense will not continue, so that we can have a happy new year instead of 365 April Fools days next year.

Car 2.0

2008-12-11T19:06:00.000-08:00

The recent turmoil among the Detroit auto manufactures has finally surfaced into a “national crises” with the CEOs of GM, Ford, and Chrysler begging for taxpayer dollars so they won’t have to make tough decisions about the companies they run. I’ve blogged here before about the decades long incompetence of the U.S. automobile leadership. There is a lot of history among the U.S. auto executives with regards to not understanding their markets, ignoring quality, producing poor designs, and many other issues. The so-called "leadership" of the UAW is equally culpable for Detroit’s decline for hiding their heads in the sand for three decades while foreign competition decimated their market share and jobs.

Over the last 30 years, the challenge to Detroit from Japanese, Korean and German manufactures has been about incremental improvement within the realm of how the basic automobile business model works – you build cars people want to buy and your dealer network sells them.

Over the same 30 years, the computer industry has faced a lot more disruption than the auto industry. Many of the companies that helped define various stages of the industry are no longer with us. Think about Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) whose CEO couldn’t figure out why anyone would want a computer in their home!

What would happen if Detroit faced the kind of innovation and disruption the computer industry has endured? They may be about ready to find out.

Shai Agassi was a software entrepreneur. One of his companies was acquired by German software giant SAP. He soon became an SAP wunderkind, and was poised to take over as CEO of SAP. The incumbent CEO decided to stay in place, so Shai left the company.

Shai applied his computer industry background to the auto industry and came up with a plan to radically change the auto market. His new company -- Better Place – aims to build a standards-based electrical vehicle network comprised of charging stations and automated battery swapping stations where you work, eat, and shop. If you want to have lunch, charge the battery. If you’re in a hurry, swap it. Of course you can charge the battery at your house overnight.

The business model for a Better Place works a lot like the mobile phone industry. The electrical vehicle network provider will subsidize the cost of your car and you’ll pay for what you use, but instead of paying for minutes, you’ll pay for miles. Forget about the traditional auto industry and think about AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon. Basically, it’s Car 2.0 -- a proven business model applied to a different industry.

Do you think that Detroit could have thought of this with their inbred, hidebound leadership? No way. In fact, GM snubbed Agassi while Nissan and Renault partnered with him.

25 years ago, IBM was run by a lifer – John Akers -- who ran the company into the ground. Lou Gerstner was brought in from outside the computer industry to save IBM. Perhaps, it’s time for someone from outside of the auto industry to come in and help save it.

Let Them Eat Cake

2008-11-17T05:40:00.000-08:00

George Bush held a meeting of the G20 over the weekend to talk about the plight of the global economy. The G20 is comprised of approximately the largest 20 economies in the world.

I believe that there is almost always an old adage that is relevant and instructive to any given circumstance. In this case the old adage that comes to mind is: “Lead by example”.

Given the dire global economic circumstances, one would think that this group would lead by setting an example of thrift and frugality. Instead, they outdid themselves with an appalling display of supercilious indifference to the plight of their citizens. Their menu included "Fruitwood-smoked Quail," "Thyme-roasted Rack of Lamb," and "Tomato, Fennel and Eggplant Fondue Chanterelle Jus." To wash it down, they indulged in a $500 a bottle wine. $500 a bottle!!! Of course, this was all paid for by you the lowly taxpayers.

If the G20 elitists really wanted to lead and still have a great international dinner, they could have gotten some Chinese and Indian takeout, along with a $10 bottle of California wine from Trader Joes.

The “Fennel and Eggplant Fondue Chanterelle Jus” and $500 a bottle wine once again demonstrates that our so-called “leadership” is completely out of touch with reality.

What a surprise.

Auto Industry Bailout: JUST SAY NO

2008-11-13T17:38:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama is pushing for a $50 billion bailout for the U.S. auto industry. We are essentially being told that without this bailout the world will come to an end because the U.S. auto industry is just “too big to fail”.

Here is the essential question: Why is the U.S. auto industry in such terrible shape and in need of a bailout? High gas prices? Unfair competition? Bad luck? Nope. They are on the verge of collapse because collectively they have suffered from four decades of the most brain dead management on the planet.

The U.S. auto companies took too long to figure out that producing quality cars actually costs less, not more, and results in higher customer satisfaction and stronger brand loyalty. As a result of not understanding this, they lost their mindshare and market share in the U.S. a long, long time ago. The big thing that has propped these companies up for the last two decades were cheap fleet sales that were subsidized by their financing ventures. For example, a couple of years ago, the most profitable division of GM was GMAC, which was even in the mortgage business.

They were also completely clueless on how to compete in international markets. For example, they used to constantly whine about how Japan was unfairly closed to them. When I went to Japan for the first time in 1998, I noticed three things: A.) The Japanese drive on the left side of the road, like the British, B.) there were a lot of German cars on the road, and C.) there were very few American cars. The problem was that the U.S. auto companies took forever to sell cars that were suitable for the Japanese market (i.e., with the steering wheel on the right side). The complete misunderstanding of the market, along with their chronic quality problems doomed GM, Ford, and Chrysler in Japan.

The UAW “leadership” is equally culpable for the industry's long decline for refusing to enable necessary operational changes. For example, guess who has the most advanced and efficient auto manufacturing facility in the world? Ford. It’s in Brazil. The UAW would never allow a plant with that level of flexibility and supplier integration to operate in the U.S., which is a huge part of the problem.

My view is that there is no reason whatsoever why the taxpayers should be stuck subsidizing decades of gross mismanagement. GM, Ford and Chrysler are NOT "too big to fail". Even if they do fail, companies with smarter leadership will put their resources to better use. We'll all be better off.

So, it's time to “JUST SAY NO” to the auto industry bailout.

Bail THIS Out

2008-11-13T05:45:00.000-08:00

The comedy show in the District of Columbia gets funnier every day. Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Paulson announced that he won’t use the $700 BILLION dollars to buy troubled assets after all. Instead, he will use all of the money to "invest" in companies. Paulson admitted that he knew that buying troubled assets wasn’t the right solution to the problem while the bill was being debated in Congress.

Regardless, this is going to cost us a lot more than $700 billion. According to Forbes.com, the U.S. government has already incurred a whopping $5 TRILLION of obligations in the various schemes by the Treasury, Federal Reserve, and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to shore up the financial system.

The list of companies standing in line to get a taxpayer “investment” is getting longer every day. AIG and GE Capital are going after their second round of hand outs. American Express and the grossly mismanaged U.S. Auto Industry are next.

Guess what is going to happen to the corporate executives who got us into the mess? Bloomberg reports that they are going to get big, fat Christmas bonuses. For example, Goldman Sachs has set aside $6.8 billion for bonuses while Morgan Stanley has allocated $6.4 billion.

To top it off, the Democrats are planning some nice surprises for us next year. Congress is holding hearings on confiscating our 401Ks and turning them over to the Social Security Administration. Of course, many of us are going to get stuck with a big, fat tax increase as well.

It just gets better all of the time…

Our New Nuclear Future?

2008-11-09T12:44:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama’s victory will certainly result in the government putting more emphasis on alternative energy. Unfortunately, my guess is that this will only result in more subsidies going to special interests to fund unworkable solutions, like ethanol, rather than in making real progress towards solving our challenges with imported oil.

I’ve written here before about the tremendous amount of venture capital that is being poured into Silicon Valley solar energy startups. I’ve also written about the Picken’s Plan to build a corridor of wind turbines in the Great Plains. Ditto with plug-in electric cars, like the Tesla Roadster, and fuel cells. Another part of the solution may be lightweight nuclear power stations.

A company in New Mexico – Hyperion Power Generation – has licensed some technology from Los Alamos National Laboratory to produce small, compact nuclear energy modules that can be transported to locations wherever electricity is needed.

Each energy module is about the size of a hot tub and can supply the electricity needs of 20,000 homes for 7 to 10 years, at a cost of about $150 per home per year.

The modules don't contain any moving parts. The modules produce energy via a safe, natural heat-producing process that occurs with the oscillation of hydrogen in uranium hydride. The modules cannot go “supercritical,” melt down, or get too hot. They maintain a safe operating temperature without the use of cooling rods. Think of them as kind of a big battery.

The modules are sealed in concrete and would be buried underground. Each module would be removed and refueled at original factory every 5 years.

The modules don’t emit any greenhouse gases. The fuel used in the modules cannot be turned into weapons grade material. The amount of waste after 5 years of operation is about the size of a softball.

The modules can be built in a tiny fraction of the time it takes to build a large nuclear plant. The company already has orders and they expect to ship their first product in 2013.

Plug-in electric cars and creation of hydrogen for fuel cells will require the generation of a lot more electricity than we generate today. Solar and wind are important part of the mix, but they can’t fulfill all of our growing needs. Nuclear needs to be part of the solution and this is a game changing technology to provide it.

Let’s hope that Obama’s proposed increase in the capital gains tax won’t dry up investments for this and other innovative solutions to our most pressing problems.

Obama and the End of Two Eras

2008-11-06T12:20:00.000-08:00

The election of Barack Obama, as President of the United States, signals the end of two long running eras.

First, his election concludes the post-civil rights era, in which race baiting politicians corrupted Martin Luther King’s message to obtain power and status for themselves. Think of Al Sharpton with his Tawana Brawley rape scam, Louis Farrakhan’s various vulgar tirades, and ex-Detroit Mayor Colman Young, who managed to stay in office for 18 years by doing nothing more than sticking his finger in whitey’s eye, in spite of the vast corruption in his administration and the tragic decline of Detroit under his watch. It is simply not credible any longer to decry the U.S. as a “racist” country now that we’ve elected an African-American to the Presidency. Those days are finally over.

Second, it buries the post-WWII conservative era. The modern conservative movement was comprised of a loose collection of economic libertarians, religious fundamentalists, big business interests, and socially conservative blue collar workers, who had greatly differing views on many key issues. They came together as a coalition under the banner of fighting communism. After the Cold War ended, some parts of this coalition started questioning the need to maintain America’s Cold War foreign policy. This potential crack in the coalition alarmed the GOP leadership, so they went looking for a new villain. During the 1990s, many on the right desperately tried to vilify “Red” China, which in many ways is more capitalistic than the U.S. 9/11 finally handed the GOP a new focus of evil in the world and for a few years it worked to keep their coalition intact. Unfortunately for them, George Bush overreached by invading Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11. The GOP lost control of the Congress and now the Presidency. 20 years after the Cold War ended, the GOP’s anti-communist coalition is finally dead. It is not very likely that the GOP can revive it. Those days are also gone.

With the passing of these two eras, the election of Barack Obama positions the country to make the most radical departure with recent history we’ve seen since the Roosevelt era.

The big question is: what Obama will do with the opportunity? Will he overreach to placate the far-left’s crackpot “economic justice” agenda? Will he try to emulate the pro-business and fiscally responsible Clinton Administration? Will he parrot the crusading neo-conservatives, only this time with a focus on "democratizing" Africa, rather than the Middle East?

The other key question is what will the GOP do now? Will they return to their flaccid pre-Reagan “me too” liberalism? Will they repudiate their power hungry, big government ways of the last 8 years? Will they boot the neo-conservatives and return to their pre-WWII, non-interventionist past? Will they just drift along in chaos not knowing what to do, leaving the Democrats to control the national conversation and agenda?

In don’t think any of us know the answers to either of these questions. So, the next two years are going to be very interesting indeed.

An Obama win next Tuesday, but how big?

2008-10-31T21:45:00.000-07:00

Here are my predictions of what will happen next Tuesday:

Obama will win pretty easily. Early returns in Virginia will inform us how the night will go for McCain – a close loss or blow out. Right now, somewhere between 270 and 340 electoral votes seems likely.

The Democrats will pick up 25 or more seats in the House, but probably not more than 30.

The Democrats will not reach a 60 seat, filibuster proof Senate. However, it won’t matter because the GOP “leadership” in the Senate will pretty much cave in and go along with whatever Obama wants out of fear.

The Democrats will completely rule the roost for the next two years. My guess is that the GOP will remain in the wilderness even longer because there isn’t any Newt Gingrich on the horizon who can lead a GOP revival in 2010, no matter how crazy the Democrats get.

The GOP has screwed up big time over the last 8 years by losing site of what they allegedly stood for. They have been completely corrupted by power and have become worse than the Democrats on almost every single measure. Thanks to Bush, the GOP has now reverted to their pre-Reagan status as an irrelevant minority party parroting their pitiful “me too” liberalism.

The GOP deserves what is coming to them. Unfortunately, many of us don't deserve what we will get as a result.

Unbelievable

2008-10-31T15:20:00.000-07:00

So, who is going to worry about putting gas in her car and paying her mortgage??? You and I -- the lowly hard working tax payers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6ikOxi9yYk

Spread the wealth... and broaden the misery…

Bush Police State Update

2008-10-28T17:06:00.000-07:00

I’ve written quite extensively about Bush’s reckless spending, ill-premised war, and growing police state apparatus. Now, we have the Army Times reporting that for the first time an active duty Army unit has been deployed to a dedicated assignment on American soil -- "to help with civil unrest and crowd control." Of course, this has been against the law since the Posse Comitatus Act was enacted in 1878. The act prohibits the military, including the National Guard when they are under federal control, from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States.

Here’s a warning to all of you so-called "conservatives" who cheered every time Bush corrupted our civil liberties in the name of fighting “terrorism”: Bush’s Police State apparatus will still be in effect when Obama takes office in January. One can only image what he might do with it to control those who don’t want their “wealth spread” among Obama’s special interests.

Bush: Union of Socialist States of America

2008-10-24T20:31:00.000-07:00

It was bad enough when Bush announced that the government would “invest” in banks. Now, they’ve outdone themselves by “considering” so-called “investments” in insurance companies.

In the land of the free and home of the brave, the government is nationalizing industries faster than Vladimir Ilich Lenin ever thought was possible.

The government is haphazardly destroying our way of life and we sit here and do nothing.

Remember what Ben Franklin said: “Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither."

We deserve exactly what we'll get.