Short, open letter to Glenn Beck

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.

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

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.

Tea Party a Major Success

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.

George Bush and his Big Spending Republicans

I’m frequently asked if I worry that voting for Bob Barr will put Barack Obama in the White House. It’s a reasonable question. The answer is no. Here's why: I’m an old adage kind of guy. Regardless of the situation, I believe that there is probably an old adage that is relevant and instructive. One of my favorites is: “Actions speak louder than words”. In spite of their blather about being for limited government, George Bush and his Republican Congress have been far bigger spenders than Barack Obama could ever hope to be.

According to the conservative Heritage Foundation, federal spending has increased 60% under Bush, after adjusting for inflation. That’s twice the rate of growth under Bill Clinton. The majority of spending increases were not for national security or domestic law enforcement.

Discretionary spending rose a whopping 75% under Bush. Discretionary spending fell throughout the Clinton years. George Bush doubled farm subsidies. He dramatically increased education spending, with failed programs like No Child Left Behind. He passed the most expensive pork-barrel highway bill in history. Welfare programs like Medicaid and Food Stamps grew 56% under Bush.

Entitlement spending has also ballooned under Bush, in part because of Bush’s new Medicare drug entitlement, which will cost $783 billion over the next decade and trillions in the following decades.

Waste, fraud and abuse are now at record levels. Bush has presided over the largest increase in pork barrel earmarks in history. Bush spends $60 billion a year on corporate welfare. Half of all farm subsidies go to wealthy corporations who don’t need it. Medicare fraud is estimated to cost upwards of $25 billion annually. The government’s own auditors believe that programs totaling $123 billion in annual spending fail to show any positive impact on the populations they serve.

There’s more: $55 billion in federal overpayments; 1,200 "lost" computers in the Commerce Department; Home Land Security employees buying plasma televisions and iPods; the Defense Department wasting $100 million on airline tickets that were never used; Air Force personnel spending your tax dollars on gambling, cruises, and strip clubs...

Even the debit cards given to Hurricane Katrina victims were used to pay for things like Caribbean vacations, NFL tickets, Dom Perignon champagne, “Girls Gone Wild” videos, and at least one sex change operation!

The result? George Bush and his Republican Congress added trillions to the national debt by turning Clinton’s last annual $155 billion surplus into the current annual $500 billion deficit.

So, back to the question: Am I worried that voting for Bob Barr will put Obama in the White House? Nope. George Bush and his GOP Congress have proven to be worse than their Democratic predecessors, so what else could I possibly be worried about???

Huckabee and the final GOP repudiation of Reagan

Mike Huckabee’s comments this week stating that libertarianism is un-American signals the final Republican repudiation of Ronald Reagan, who said: “I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.”

Huckabee is right in stating that libertarianism is more of a threat to the GOP than liberalism, given that the GOP has become even more liberal in their use of government power to control our lives than the Democrats. Consider this: George Bush and his GOP Congress have presided over the fastest growth in federal spending since LBJ's Great Society. They created the largest federal intrusion into the classroom in history (No Child Left Behind), the most expensive public-works program ever (the 2005 highway bill), and the largest new entitlement program (the prescription-drug benefit) since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid. They launched an alleged “war on terror” that spent upwards of $3 trillion, killed 4,000 Americans, and brought us $4 a gallon gasoline. They trampled on states’ rights over issues such as assisted suicide and medical marijuana. They expanded the government's power to spy on Americans.

Huckabee fits right in with this crowd. According to the Club for Growth, while he was governor of Arkansas, Huckabee increased state spending by 65%, increased the government workforce by 20%, raised taxes by 47%, and increased the state debt by $1 billion. He also had a strange penchant for releasing convicted murders and rapists from prison. During his tenure as governor, Huckabee issued more commutations and pardons than all of the six neighboring states combined. Those states include Texas, which has more than 8 times the population of Arkansas.

If this is what passes for "conservatism" today, please count me out.