Photo by Violentz

Most presidents view an address to a joint session of Congress for serious non-partisan purposes. Outside the annual State of the Union address they are rare. President Bush only did it once, in the aftermath of 9/11, and while jobs are very important to the country at this time, it is no place for a lecture (saying pass this bill seventeen times) from the most inexperienced president in our history.

This is not to minimize the importance of getting the economy moving. Who does not know that this is a problem? But it rings hollow that it was not important enough for the president to call Congress back into session in August, nor to delay his own two-week vacation to Martha’s Vineyard. Even scheduling the speech was bungled. President Obama does not seem to understand that Congress is co-equal to the Presidency and to the Judiciary. They do not report to him. He does not commandeer their chamber for his use whenever he so desires. He can make a request and then Congress can pass a resolution to invite him.

But let’s look at it a different way. Can anyone imagine John Boehner requesting an audience in the White House where he would bring in television cameras and then lecture the president about how things are done around here? Preposterous. But this president used his State of the Union address to lecture the Supreme Court, also guests at that speech, on a ruling that they made. Just who does he think he is? He is not king; he is not a dictator. He is a candidate for reelection who is rapidly sinking in the polls and is looking for the Hail Mary that will save his sorry presidency.

Having added four trillion dollars to the national debt, he is back looking for more. After a bruising battle to raise the debt limit, all he can think about is spending. But this time it will be different. This time it is paid for. Let’s think about that. Paid for by whom?

The federal government has no money other than what it takes from the private sector. So how is it possible that President Obama and his merry men and women are smarter than 340 million of their fellow Americans? How do they think that they can take money from the private sector, and only they know how to best put it back into the private sector to make the economy grow? I know there are readers out there objecting that it is not just the private sector who pays for government, but actually it is.

Think of it this way. If a Congressman takes his $174,000 salary and, assuming he knows how to actually use TurboTax, he figures out that he owes $50,000 in income tax and pays it. Is he really paying for any part of government other than a portion of his own salary? To put it another way, would it be any different to cut the salary to $124,000 and make it tax-free? Not really. The Congressman will never pay enough in taxes to cover his own salary. The same can be said of any government worker. They will never pay enough taxes to cover their own pay and put additional money to pay for the rest of government. So the government is ultimately supported by the private sector. The more government spends, the less there is available to the private sector that really creates jobs, because at a minimum, some of the money collected has to go to paying the rest of the salaries and everything else that is government. If you leave a dollar in the private sector it is still a dollar, If you pass it through the government first, you will never get the whole dollar back into the private sector.

So if you want the economy to grow; if you want to create jobs, the way to do it is to make the government as small as possible to still meet its basic mission, as spelled out in the Constitution (Article I, Section 8), and leaving the rest to us. Shrink the government back to what the Founding Fathers laid out, and reduce the taxes accordingly. This is not the time for political posturing.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

To no one’s surprise, President Obama followed his lame first attempt at a budget with the same tired class warfare “taxing the rich is the solution plan”. The problem is spending. This problem is not going to get fixed until we: a) stop spending more; b) start spending less; and c) spend less than we take in until the debt is paid off. Yes, I said paid off. We are the wealthiest country on earth. We should be able to live within our means and not have to borrow to keep a bloated, inefficient, unaccountable government in Washington growing and growing.

Let’s take a look at the facts. The following three charts show how much of Adjusted Gross Income is earned by the most productive 1%, 5%, and 10% (the blue bars) and what share of total income taxes they pay (the red bars). This is over a twenty year period:

Share of Income vs Share of Tax Burden of Most Productive 1 Percent

Share of Income vs Share of Tax Burden

Share of Income vs Share of Tax Burden of Most Productive 10%

What is clear from all three of these graphs is that over the past twenty years if you look at the trend lines, while the most productive amoung us produced more, the share of the tax load they paid grew even faster. So let’s stop the sleight of hand about how many dollars the changes in tax law affect Mr. Obama personally and let’s be clear, to use Mr. Obama’s favorite phrase, there was no tax cut voted in December, the vote just maintained the status quo. So, Mr. President, level with the American people. Just what percentage of total income taxes do you want the most productive 10% of Americans to carry? Since you feel 70%, the amount they carry today, is not enough, what do you think is fair? 80%? 90%? 100%? Should the most productive 10% of Americans pay all of the income taxes while the other 90% pay none? Stop dancing around and be straight with the American people and tell us how much of the total pie is fair for the most productive to pay?

But we don’t have enough revenue because of the Bush tax cuts, you say. Okay, let’s put that one to rest as well.

Federal Government Revenue over Time

It is clear that the tax revenue collected hit its peak after the Bush tax cuts. They fell off after the start of the recession, which is expected, but it appears they bottomed in 2010 and the Bush rates were extended (not increased, not decreased). It’s the spending, stupid!

Trying to raise more money through raising tax rates runs into Hauser’s Law. As I explain in Liberty’s Lifeline, W. Kurt Hauser looked at eighty years of revenue data and concluded that tax revenues will not exceed 20% of GDP no matter how high the rates. If spending continues at 24% of GDP where it is now, we will be digging a hole out of which we will never escape. It’s the spending, stupid!

Instead of leading, President Obama, came out yesterday with Budget 2.0, and basically made a campaign speech instead of a serious policy statement demonstrating leadership. Here is Charles Krauthammer’s analysis:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR0E3trOF-k

President Obama ran for office with the promise of bipartanship. He promised to change the tone in Washington. He has not even been able to change his role from campaigner-in-chief to chief executive and instead has become punter-in-chief. He punted his responsibility to put together a budget to a bipartisan commission. He didn’t like the yucky medicine his commission offered up and so he dismissed their recommendation. He now talks of a new bipartisan commission.

He also likes to follow the instructions of his mentor Saul Alinsky, “pick a target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.” He did it to the members of the Supreme Court in his State of the Union address after the Citizens United v FEC decision by calling them out as they sat immobile in front of him. He repeated it yesterday by inviting Paul Ryan and other Republican leaders to this speech and then attacked them.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JjGGnwe6UQ

When I started writing this blog in 2008 it was primarily because I saw the candidate Obama as someone with no executive experience, a few years in the Illinios senate where he voted mostly present, less than a full term as a U.S. Senator before he bailed out to run for president, and the author of a couple of books and I was stunned that people across America actually believed this man, who may be great guy to have a beer with or play a game of basketball or golf, could actually handle the job. Well, as another of his mentors, Reverand Wright, once said, our chickens are coming home to roost. I would much rather have Jimmy Carter sitting in the Oval Office today than this man, and that’s saying something.

It’s about the spending, Mr. President, and if you don’t understand that, wake up Joe Biden and give him a turn at the wheel. It’s time to take your responsibility seriously and make some tough decisions. Right now 2012 is a pipe dream for you.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

Candidate Barack Obama said to Joe the Plumber, spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody; he also said, I want to give those coming up behind the same chance you had. It sounds altruistic, caring, full of hope. But if Barack Obama turned and looked over his shoulder he might be surprised to see that there are fewer and fewer people coming up from behind. What he might see is the fear of reckoning for one hundred years of progressive policy and programs. Policy and programs that were sold to allay earlier generations’ fears coupled with the promise that the bill was easily paid and a long way off. But the bill collector is now at the door and the next generation is huddled in the corner with no sign of hope and no confidence that Barack Obama will change anything.

Destroying Public Schools

I had an opportunity to watch the documentary Waiting for Superman that chronicles the hopes of five school children desperately trying to get the education they have a right to from the public school system. Their hopes hinged on winning a lottery for a seat in a charter school.

Ponder these two statistics.

1. Fully 70 percent of eighth-graders are not proficient in reading, and most of them will never catch up. To parents, if their child is failing in their early teen years, it means failure for life.
2. Each year, more than 1 million high school seniors fail to graduate. Everyone understands the consequences of education failure, and this number quantifies that failure in black and white – Research from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation

Kids fall behind and drop out because the feel they are losing ground, they have no future, they have no hope. It is not necessarily because of individual teachers, but because of the system and the system is welded in place by the teachers’ unions.

One of the key elements is teacher tenure. The concept of tenure started in colleges and universities as a way to protect professors from dismissal for political views or controversial positions. It was that tenure would allow independent research and inquiry without fear and reprisal. It was hard for a professor to get tenure. It required years of teaching and surviving a tough vetting process. Tenure was copied by the teachers unions and in most schools all that it requires is to show up and keep breathing for two to three years to have a job for life.

Michelle Rhee, as superintendent of the Washington DC public schools, tried to offer an alternative. She proposed giving teachers a choice. They could choose to keep tenure and their contract would give them a modest raise. Or, they could forego tenure and be eligible for additional merit pay that could double their salary. The teachers union would not even let the proposal come up for a vote.

So  the first reason we need to redistribute the wealth is that we are rapidly producing an underclass that doesn’t choose not to take care of themselves, but is unable to take care of themselves because the progressive movement and teachers unions care more about keeping incompetent teachers employed and paying union dues ahead of educating the children. It is estimated that 80% of our public schools will fall short of the No Child Left Behind goals targeted for 2014. The Obama administrations answer for this is, naturally, to move the goal posts. The program has changed to Most Children Left Behind the Rest of the World. Billy Joel summed it up in one of his songs No Man’s Land:

 I see these children with their boredom and their vacant stares,

God help us all if we’re to blame for their unanswered prayers.

Minimum Wage

Okay so you can’t graduate high school. Maybe you can get an entry level job and learn the ropes from there. What’s  that you say? What the young adult brings to the table isn’t yet worth $7.25 an hour?  Too bad. That is the least amount of money you can be paid by law. It is called the minimum wage.

Earlier this year, economist David Neumark of the University of California, Irvine, wrote on these pages that the 70-cent-an-hour increase in the minimum wage would cost some 300,000 jobs. Sure enough, the mandated increase to $7.25 took effect in July, and right on cue the August and September jobless numbers confirm the rapid disappearance of jobs for teenagers.

The September teen unemployment rate hit 25.9%, the highest rate since World War II and up from 23.8% in July. Some 330,000 teen jobs have vanished in two months. Hardest hit of all: black male teens, whose unemployment rate shot up to a catastrophic 50.4%. It was merely a terrible 39.2% in July. – Wall Street Journal, Oct. 3, 2009

In the midst of the most prolonged high level of unemployment since the Great Depression a progressive policy is enhanced that costs 330,000 teen jobs, just as predicted. So first we destroy their education and then we tell them they can’t get a job because they are not skilled enough to earn $7.25. But that’s not all. Local bureaucrats join in the fun.

A 575,000 square foot armory in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx in New York City was given to the city by the National Guard who no longer needed the space. The city tried to find developers for the space and finally succeeded, choosing Related Companies as the developer. The project was to develop retail space and other amenities, create 2200 jobs and invest $300 million in the neighborhood. However, because it came with $17 million in tax breaks to attract a developer it also came with the stipulation that no job could be offered in the space that paid less than $10 per hour plus benefits or $11.50 per hour without benefits. When it was clear that the developer couldn’t get any tenants to bite on the higher minimum wage, the project was killed. The progressives crowed that they stopped a developer who wouldn’t commit to paying a living wage but people in the neighborhood had a different view.

“It’s sitting here and it’s wasting space and a lot of people around here definitely need jobs,” said Joel Bekker, a teacher at Kingsbridge International High School. “We keep talking about raising taxes and paying for the poor, but here’s an opportunity for people to earn their own way.” – New York Post, December 12, 2010

There is another battle I will call the Wal-Mart Wars. Wal-Mart has tried unsuccessfully to open a store in New York City running up against the progressives and the unions every step of the way. Wal-Mart’s tag line is “Save money, live better.”  With all the hubbub about a living wage, you would think that allowing a company that eats, lives, and breaths low prices would be welcomed as a hero to help those living wages go further. But nothing could be further from the truth. Wal-Mart is non-union. Wal-Mart pays low wages but it also touts opportunities for advancement saying that 70% of its managers started out as hourly workers. But that’s not good enough to fit in the progressive mold despite being able to bring jobs to the city and lower prices to the community.

Reason number two for redistribution of wealth is a large number of unemployed, not because they don’t want to work, but because progressives have decided for them the parameters by which they can be hired. You can’t eat, but at least no one’s exploiting you. The progressives have made sure of that.

Crime and Drugs

If you drop out of school uneducated and can’t get a job what do you do? If your morals went the way of your dreams and aspirations you can always turn to crime. Go into the drug business, the money is good while it lasts if you stay one step ahead of the odds. You can walk around flush with cash and if you die young, so what. What else were your prospects?  If you go to jail, at least you get “three hots and a cot,” that is, meals and a bed and free medical care

If a life of crime is not for you, perhaps you can use some drugs as sort of a cheap mini-vacation from your dismal life. That is, of course, until you reach the point where you become addicted to your escape, and then you can check into a new hell hotel.

Reason number three for the distribution of the wealth. If you sign up with the government to redistribute your wealth you may have some level of control over how much that turns out to be. Otherwise you may be negotiating with people who have little regard for your life but a lot of lust for your belongings.

The Forgotten Man

While these and other progressive programs and union initiatives were put in place, who is left with the bill. For those pulling the wagon they are finding it harder because more and more people are riding on the wagon. The forgotten man is handed the bill but has little say in the negotiations. So, should the forgotten man accept this fate or should he fight back?

Education

One of the bargains the forgotten man did agree to was to provide tax dollars in return for a public school system. It benefits all of us if we have an educated work force not predicated on the ability to pay for a private education. But what the forgotten man did not agree to was to provide lifetime employment to teachers without regard to the quality of the education provided to the children in their charge.  

“Every morning in Africa a gazelle awakens knowing it must today run faster than the fastest lion or it will be eaten. Every morning a lion awakens knowing it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve. It matters not whether you are a gazelle or a lion, when the sun rises you had better be running. – African proverb

The forgotten man wants the teachers to wake up each morning running, not sauntering to the schoolhouse to put in their time.

Right to Work

Everyone should have a right to work and not have to be forced to join a union to hold a job or be told he can’t work for a wage less than some bureaucrat says is fair. It is called individual responsibility. The employer and employee should be able to negotiate over the terms and conditions of employment freely without government interference.

Crime

One of the striking examples illustrated in the documentary Waiting for Superman, was that for the cost of incarcerating a prisoner for four years, you could pay for twelve years of private school and still have money left over for college. It is not about money. It is about freedom. But freedom has a cost and to the unions that cost is stark. They stand to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in union dues. Here it is in their own words:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwxiRXqH_hQ

Educating our children before giving teachers a comfortable and unchallenged lifetime position is anathema to the teachers unions.

The issue is clear. Either surrender the wealth you have accumulated for your family through your hard work to the progressives, or turn the tide to make our future generations self sufficient and productive. Make no mistake it will be a battle. Are you ready for the fight? If so, let’s get to work.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours.  Please comment below.

The common themes in each presidential race turn on a hope and dream for the future, defining a common purpose and a call to action. Candidates usually win on the success of their ability to marshal these themes into a cohesive series of arguments for their nomination and eventually election to office. Few were as effective as Ronald Reagan at recruiting the support of the average listener. If he could get your ear, he could get your vote. Candidate Barack Obama frequently compared himself with Ronald Reagan during his campaign. His media cohorts happily aligned themselves with this maladapted relationship, with the centrist and even right leaning (business friendly and low/fair taxes) themes hinted by Obama’s vague comparisons.

He then has compared the first half of his first term to Ronald Reagan, again with the support of an eager media. They both inherited a terrible economy, with high unemployment, handed to them by unpopular presidents, and a world on the brink of disaster. That is basically where the comparisons end in real life and thus spurring a misunderstanding in comparing the two I call The Great Reagan Mistake. When Ronald Reagan was elected, interest rates were double digits, as a result of years of an economic condition known as “stagflation”, a term rarely used because Reagan’s economic policies essentially made the condition obsolete. Or so we thought. A couple more years of this recovery, especially if interest rates rise as they are predicted by many economists to do, and the term will come back into vogue sooner than one may think.

After a year and a half of the Barack Obama recovery (2009-2010), the results of his economic policies could not be more divergent from the results of the first 18 months of the Reagan recovery (1983-84). Unemployment is chronically high, even though interest rates are historically low and we are told to expect 8% unemployment as the “new normal”. We are also told to expect trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.

According to Larry Kudlow, an economist in the Reagan administration, we have anemic 3% growth in GDP and a microscopic 121,000 new jobs created in the Obama recovery. Get ready for this: in the Reagan recovery, 5.3 million jobs were created by 7.7% GDP during the same period of recovery. Mr. Obama’s government centric high tax and suffocating business climate marked by presidentially led animosity for business in America, has stunted the very growth for which he longs, the absence of which is causing increasing frustration among the administration as well as the American people. Contrast that with the economic launch pad created by the then maligned “Reaganomics”. While his clueless Vice President Bush called it “Voodoo economics” to the howling delight of the liberal media, the business community knew better, and jumped on the rocket and rode it into unparalleled prosperity for the next twenty years. Reagan was the first president to shatter then accepted economic theory that low unemployment, low inflation and high GDP could NEVER exist at the same time. After the Reagan recovery began, those conditions coexisted continuously until 2008. Mr. Obama is turning back the clock, printing money and driving up inflation, while telling us to get used to high unemployment, leading us back into the “stagflation” era of Jimmy Carter.

While Reagan was accused of being an actor who was empty of substance and only made people feel good, this is the sadly unfolding truth about the Obama presidency. While they both had/have a gift for the rhetorical flourish, calling upon Americans to get in touch with their internal longing for a new vision for America, a dream and an awakening spirit, Mr. Reagan’s words were a separate and distinct tool for inspiration of the American people, guiding them through very tough times, while he took decisive action based on sound economic theory, with courage and conviction. Mr. Obama’s need to latch onto that legacy is resulting in the truly hollow rhetoric, lacking the substance so badly needed in the American domestic agenda today. Why can’t liberals just admit they were wrong and go back to what Reagan showed us worked? I always said it was the single most important thing Bill Clinton did to insure his presidential popularity: he didn’t mess with Reaganomics. He kept that his dirty little secret only supply side devotees like me would recognize. He never had to explain it to his liberal base because they were living in such nonchalant prosperity most Americans took for granted by then. He knew better than to make the Great Reagan Mistake. Mr. Obama is losing his window of opportunity to turn the tide and make actual changes. In two years, he will follow Jimmy Carter into oblivion. Hopefully the next President will not make the same mistake.

Please share your thoughts below.

As is the case every ten years we take a census of the population of the United States, as required by the Constitution.  After the census is taken the seats in the House of Representatives are shuffled to accommodate for shifts in population between the states.

So what does this all mean?  In a previous post focusing on the Senate we showed that currently twenty-one Democrats and two independents who caucus (meet and generally vote with) the Democrats will be facing election in 2012 compared to only ten Republicans.  In the House, everyone is up for re-election every two years.  So after picking up 60 seats, or thereabouts as some races still haven’t been decided, where do the two parties start off as a result of reapportionment?  Although final numbers won’t be in until December, it doesn’t look good for the Democrats.

The Democrat strongholds remain on the East and West coasts and in the Rust Belt around the Great Lakes.  The Republican strongholds are the rest of the country.  The dismal economic policies of high taxation and bigger government, are taking their toll and here are a couple of examples.

Rush Limbaugh, perhaps the most hated man on the left, had a residence in New York and paid New York taxes.  On one of his programs he talked about getting out of the state to avoid the high taxation.  New York desperately depends on its wealthy citizens to fund the state and New York City government, particularly the Wall Street crowd.  Instead of trying to persuade Mr. Limbaugh to stay by pointing out the attractions of living in New York, officials tried to endear themselves to their left wing base by taunting him and daring him to leave.  Leave he did, taking his tax revenues with him.

If you look at the cost of renting a truck from U-Haul to move from Texas to California or vice versa, the rates are informative:

From Dallas to San Francisco: $734
From San Francisco to Dallas: $2,116

From Houston to Los Angeles: $706
From Los Angeles to Houston: $2,051

Any student of supply and demand will quickly see the message contained here.  The cost of a truck heading to Texas is nearly three times the cost of a truck going the other way.  Apparently, there are plenty of trucks available in Texas for those who want to move to California, but no one who wants to make that move.  Conversely, there are scant few trucks to help people get the hell out of California before it implodes, but plenty of people bidding the rental price of a truck up.

The Policies in Action

Now that we have touched on the Blue state policies, what is likely to happen?

Blue States – Net loss of seven seats

• Massachusetts to lose one seat
• New York to lose two seats
• New Jersey to lose one seat
• Pennsylvania to lose one seat
• Michigan to lose one seat
• Illinois to lose one seat
• Iowa to lose one seat
• Washington gain one seat

Toss Ups – Net gain of one seat

• Ohio to lose two seats
• Nevada to gain one seat
• Florida to gain two seats

Red States – Net gain six seats

• Missouri to lose one seat
• Louisiana to lose one seat
• South Carolina to gain one seat
• Georgia to gain one seat
• Texas to gain four seats
• Arizona to gain one seat
• Utah to gain one seat

If you look at the toss ups, categorized as such because they voted twice each in the last four Presidential elections for the Democrat and the Republican candidates, Florida is a key state.  Florida will gain two seats and at the same time it just elected a Republican governor and a Tea Party senate candidate Marco Rubio.  If they can pull Florida solidly into the Republican camp, that could mean another two seats for the Republicans.

So without a ballot being cast it looks pretty positive that the Republicans will start off the 2012 House election with a six to eight seat advantage on top of the sixty to sixty-five or so they just won. 

There is no certainty that this will play out along these lines.  After all the Democrats could flip several seats in their strongholds if all the Republicans grab those U-Haul trucks and head for friendlier, liberty loving states.  Conversely those freedom seeking migrants might move into districts that are now held by Democrats in the South and flip them to the Republican column. 

The key thing for the Republicans to have continued electoral success is to stick to what you ran on without any backsliding.  I can assure you that the Tea Party will either have your back or be breathing down your neck.  You pick

There is an increasingly nasty battle brewing in the Republican race for the nomination to run against Democrat incumbent Tim Bishop in the First Congressional District in New York.  With jobs and the economy the number one issue across the nation, the petty personal attacks may result in potential Republican voters staying home in disgust.

In an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal titled, “New York’s GOP Never Learns,” Kim Strassel concludes her article by saying, “The effect has been to enrage and divide a New York party that should have bigger things on its mind. Say, winning this fall.” 

Chris Cox is trying to play catch-up to the front runner Randy Altschuler who has been actively campaigning for more than a year.  The difficulty for Mr. Cox is that his positions are not that different than those of Mr. Altschuler.  So, while Mr. Altschuler has been taking on the Democratic incumbent Tim Bishop and Bishop’s lockstep voting with Nancy Pelosi, Mr. Cox has resorted to attacking Mr. Altschuler.  Not to leave his flank unprotected, Mr. Altschuler has been forced to respond and now the race, with two weeks to go before the primary on September 14^th, has degenerated into a mudslinging contest.  There is a third candidate, George Demos, who is lobbing attacks from the rear with little effect.

Each candidate is calling themselves the “true conservative,” and Mr. Cox has garnered the support of the Suffolk County 9-12 Project the self-proclaimed “Largest Tea Party organization in Suffolk County.”  Mr. Cox’s father, Ed Cox, is the head of the New York State GOP.  Ms. Strassel reports that the senior Mr. Cox, backed Steve Levy over Rick Lazio for governor to curry favor with the Suffolk County GOP chairman to back his son.  It is all the kind of backroom political dealing that have attracted a rush of newcomer candidates and put incumbents of both parties on the endangered species list.

The Tea Party Endorsement

What caught my eye was the endorsement of the Suffolk County 9-12 Project and the announcement by Bob Meyer, co-founder.  He gave as one of his primary reasons that, Randy Altschuler was one of those people, “getting rich off the backs of hardworking Americans by outsourcing their jobs.”  That sounds more like Jimmy Hoffa, Andy Stern, or Barack Obama’s class warfare than any Tea Partier I know.  A commenter on the 9-12 Project’s site, Judyann Joyner added, “Randy is credited with the creation of ‘white collar sweatshops in India.’”  Pretty strong stuff.  I don’t know if Ms. Joyner or Mr. Meyer visited the company that Mr. Altschuler co-founded in India, but Business Week magazine did.

“The lights burn day and night in the gleaming glass-and-chrome building that towers over a leafy street in the southern Indian city of Madras. Here at OfficeTiger, 1,500 young men and women peer into computers 24 hours a day, analyzing and processing U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission reports and other documents drawn up by lawyers and bankers on Wall Street. Walking the floor, sometimes even at 3 a.m., is 34-year-old co-founder and co-Chief Executive Joseph Sigelman.”

Just because the office operates 24 hours per day, don’t be conned into thinking the same people are at their desks 24 hours a day.  “Gleaming glass-and-chrome building that towers over a leafy street,” yup, sounds like a hellhole to me.  Business Week added, “Indeed, OfficeTiger is the only successful startup in India’s $5 billion outsourcing industry that is owned and managed by a U.S. entrepreneur.”  So we have an American company making money in India, in what seems to be a rather large and competitive field, and this is a bad thing?  Since when did conservatives turn into protectionists?  But what about the jobs they replaced?  Okay, let’s examine that. 

You have some Wall Street firms that are in a competitive business.  A young entrepreneur comes up with an idea to reduce operating expenses by having an external company handle routine clerical tasks that are not one of the firm’s key competencies, that is, people don’t buy that firm’s services because of their typing skills.  The company outsources and reduces costs.  By reducing costs, they prosper and grow; by growing they create more high skill jobs like lawyers, accountants, financial analysts, IT people, etc.  Perhaps even some of the former typists, because of their computer skills can move up the ladder to spreadsheets, and databases.  Do some people lose their jobs, yes, just as buggy whip makers lost their jobs when the automobile came on the scene.  Okay, let’s shift to India.

In India white collar jobs are created; their standard of living improves; they buy consumer goods like iPods and iPhones and their offices need sophisticated IT equipment from companies like Cisco Systems which grow companies like Apple and Cisco creating jobs in the U.S. We live in a global economy and if we want prosperity and peace, the best way to get there is through free markets.  Even Mr. Cox in the policy section of his website blames government policies for companies outsourcing jobs overseas.  If it is the government’s policies that make these jobs uncompetitive here and Mr. Cox knows it, why is Mr. Altschuler wrong for reacting to it and helping American companies that use these services remain competitive?

After selling Office Tiger to RR Donnelly, Mr. Altschuler started another company in the U.S., CloudBlue, that recycles old IT equipment.  So we have an entrepreneur that has started a couple of companies that have created jobs around the world and that makes him a villain?  Perhaps Mr. Meyer should go back and read some of the quotes on his own website:

“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom.” – Dr. Adrian Rogers

“I have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” – Thomas Jefferson

Mr. Meyer’s key criticism of Mr. Altschuler smacks of the government picking winners and losers.  This business is okay, but not that one.  If your business creates jobs overseas that is bad, but if it creates jobs here it is okay.  Well, Mr. Altschuler has done both and he has firsthand experience doing so, which is what we sorely lack in Washington.  If the strategy of Mr. Cox continues, including creating another party, the TaxPayer party, to run on and split the vote further, Mr. Cox might as well mail his strategy over to the Bishop campaign as I am sure they will find it very useful in the general election.  Not my cup of tea.

The focus should be on defeating the out of control spenders in Congress who got us into this mess, not fighting each other to the death and let the incumbent waltz back into office.  The time is now.  Mr. Cox should focus on what he would do as a Congressman that is better than Tim Bishop and Mr. Altschuler.  If he can’t articulate that, he should drop out.  He is not going to win a lot of support by throwing mud at his fellow Republicans.

Note: In the spirit of full disclosure I have done some volunteer work for the Altschuler campaign

There is panic in the ranks of the left this Halloween.  In today’s Times, Frank Rich, does his level best to whistle past the graveyard, but the fear is clear.  He astonishingly titles his piece, “The G.O.P. Stalinists Invade Upstate New York.”  I guess they feel the Hitler moniker has lost its zest, so the leftists resort to calling those on the right, Stalinists.  Their disorientation could not be more palpable.

What has them in such a tizzy?  It centers around the special election in New York’s 23rd Congressional District.  The local Republican party bosses chose a candidate, Dede Scozzafava, who would never be mistaken as a conservative, although Mr. Rich actually called her, “a mainstream conservative by New York standards.”  That’s like saying David Letterman is chaste by liberal standards, as if these things are measured on a relative scale.  But that’s the way liberals and statists think.  If your neighbor is more promiscuous than you, then you must be celebate.  If you want to make Nancy Pelosi a moderate, move her to Cuba.

Ground Shift

What has Mr. Rich and his cohorts nervously clearing their throats, is that the uprising against the entrenched statists, led by the Tea Parties, actually delivered results.   Ms. Scozzafava is pro-abortion, pro-same-sex marriage, pro-Obama stimulus package, pro-card check to make it easier to form a union without a secret ballot election, and supported by ACORN.  This is what Mr. Rich calls a conservative, “by New York standards.”  What sticks in his craw is that the election was a win-win, for him and his friends.  Elect the Republican or the Democrat and it doesn’t matter much, they both hold the same basic views.  Then along came Doug Hoffman.

Doug Hoffman threw his hat in the ring on the Conservative Party line.  By this Saturday, with support pouring in all across the country from true conservatives, Hoffman was in a dead heat with the conservative and the Republican Scozzafava was fading fast.  So she decided to suspend her campaign, and Mr. Rich and company hit the panic button.

So how does Mr. Rich frame his argument?  Well he starts by saying Hoffman has no grasp of local issues.  Uh, the position is United States Congressman, not city alderman.  He well understands the issues at the national level and how the policies of the Obama Administration are bankrupting the country.  Those policies will negatively affect the people in his district.  But leave it to Mr. Rich to scoff at Hoffman, because he doesn’t know how much pork barrel spending the district needs. A true patriotic Congressman, like John Murtha, finds a way to build an airport in the district that nobody uses and hands the bill to people in other districts like, well, New York’s 23rd.  He’s going to Washington to fight those who are bleeding the Treasury dry.  So Mr. Rich fights that by calling Fort Drum, home to the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division, a “pork-dependent military base.”  Hmmm…the last time I read my copy of the Constitution, it specifically required providing for the national defense.  I couldn’t find in my copy where it required building airports no one needed so that John Murtha could get re-elected in perpetuity.  I understand it is a fine distinction, but I would have thought someone employed by the New York Times would be able to make it.

Frank Rich’s Happy Talk

Mr. Rich oddly calls the developments in New York as good news.  With a recent Gallup Poll, showing that for every self-described liberal there are two self-described conservatives, Mr. Rich says the ideologues that brought about the events in New York’s 23rd, may then start picking off other conservatives and destroy the party.  Does he mean conservatives like Arlen Specter, Lincoln Chaffee, Olympia Snow, Susan Collins, Charlie Crist, oh my!  With 73% of GOP voters saying that Congressional Republicans have lost touch with their base, this is not good news for Mr. Rich and company.  What he believes is that a small cabal of conservatives will put unelectable candidates on the ballot that voters will reject and the Democrats will gleefully reap the rewards.  In reality, the GOP leadership has for too long put weak candidates on the ballot that Democrats easily beat because the Republican base cannot get excited about them.  McCain is a war hero and worthy of our admiration, but just look at his signature legislation:  McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy.  He was not a conservative on many fronts. 

Nixon was a conservative, Ford was not.  Reagan was a conservative, Bush 41 was not and  Dole was not.  George W. started more conservative than not, but then drifted to become a big spender.  McCain was not a conservative.  Do you see a pattern here?  Conservative Republicans win.

With Obama’s approval rating going down in a virtual straight line, Mr. Rich confidently proclaims that the only politician Obama has to fear is Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan.  By all means, Mr. Rich, you keep telling your pals that.

a “wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”  — Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address

“It’s not that I want to punish your success. I want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success, too.  My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody. I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”  — Barack Obama speaking to Joe “The Plumber” Wurtzelbacher and explaining the virtue of taxing successful businessmen and women more.

“We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people.” “It’s time to be patriotic … time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut.”  — Joe Biden in an interview during the presidential campaign [emphasis added].

Now, tell me, which of the three quotations above move you?  Which of them speaks to you of the greatness of America?

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence speaks eloquently about freedom.  While recognizing the need for government he believed that that which governs least governs best.  Government’s main purpose is to “restrain men from injuring one another.”  So we need some basic laws for to protect freedoms of the minority while recognizing the right of the majority to govern.  For that we have the Bill of Rights.  We need some basic laws to be able to create and enforce contracts.  We need national defense to protect us from enemies foreign and domestic.  Some pretty basic things.  Other than that which is spelled out in the Constitution, stand back and let each man and woman live in freedom to pursue their own happiness.

Barack Obama

Obey

Contrast that to Barack Obama’s conversation with Joe Wurzelberger.  Joe asked him why, as he works 10 to 12 hour days with no guarantee of success or income to build his business and create jobs, candidate Obama, should he become president, would want to take more from Joe in taxes.  Obama says, it’s not that he wants to punish Joe, but he needs to take the fruit of Joe’s labor and give it to someone else so that they can be successful too.  He doesn’t ask Joe for the secret of his success.  He doesn’t ask him how he can keep going for 10 to 12 hours per day.  He basically says, this is going to be a new America and you keep working, Joe, but remember part of what you make, I take, and I give it to whom I decide needs it more than you do, because we won.

Joe Biden

Joe “Buck a Day” Biden, doesn’t even try to spin what they plan on doing.  He basically gets in your face and says he is going to take money from those who are successful and put it in the pocket of the middle class and then tries to shame the audience by saying it would be un-patriotic to object.  This comes from a millionaire who gives about $1 per day to charity from his own pocket.  He doesn’t define who the middle class is, that is for the political class and his cronies to decide, most likely based on where the most votes are to keep them in power.

The Decline of America

When you consider the heights of principle from which this country was founded, with ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, to the depths we have sunk today, with little more than bag men going around shaking down legitimate businesses and citizens to pay for a massive expansion of government and control over our lives, with the smug, pompous politicians in Washington directing the smallest detail of our lives.  It is truly sad.

Lady Liberty weeps.

Did you ever watch a historical movie about how some fringe group ominously takes over the government and leaves everyone scratching their head wondering how it happened?  At the end of the movie you say, “Whew, I’m so glad that could never happen in the good ol’ USA.”  Then you watch the news and see things that are eerily familiar to the movie and you say, “Nah, that’s just my imagination running away with me.”  Until the next piece of news drips on your head.

A news story this morning gave me that uneasy, pit of the stomach feeling again.  It probably shouldn’t have since it was about Venezuela.  Hugo Chavez got the term limit restriction lifted in his country that will allow him to be president for life.  That measure had previously failed but now it passed by a wide margin.  So why am I feeling uneasy about our liberties and what is going on in this country?  Here are some of my concerns.

Bipartisanship

After all the talk of bipartisanship by candidate Obama and the need to change the tone in Washington, the reality was something completely different.  In a so called “stimulus package” that will triple the budget deficit and was rammed through the Congress with no one, and I repeat no one, reading it, one party was virtually shut out of the legislative process.  At the same time 44% of the American people, in a Rasmussen poll, said names picked at random out of the phone book could do a better job on the economy than this Congress.  This package is chock full of 40 years of liberal programs that could not pass muster on their own, but as Rahm Emmanuel says, “You never want a serious crisis go to waste.”  When  Republicans protested about being shut out of the process, the response from the other side was, “We won.”

Fairness Doctrine

In the movie there will come a scene when the incoming powers break into the newspaper offices and smash the printing press, overturn the typesetting table, dump papers on the floor and set them ablaze.  The message is clear, there will be no opposition press.  There is only one message and that is of the new dictator and the new news will be his indoctrination.

Today, there is more and more talk about reviving the Fairness Doctrine.  Here is what former President Bill Clinton said:

“Well, you either ought to have the Fairness Doctrine or we ought to have more balance on the other side,” Clinton said, “because essentially there’s always been a lot of big money to support the right wing talk shows and let face it, you know, Rush Limbaugh is fairly entertaining even when he is saying things that I think are ridiculous….”

Liberals tried to bring balance to the discussion with Air America and it failed dismally.  Why?  People didn’t want to listen to left wing rants all day.  But face it, the main stream media overwhelmingly votes liberal.  So although no one will be smashing printing presses and torching newsrooms, the objective is to stifle the conservative point of view.  Once you do that the only voice that is heard is reinforcing the new ruler.

What the First Amendment says is:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for the redress of grievances.”

Congress shall make no law…so what are they doing? The line between news and opinion has long been crossed.  It used to be you couldn’t tell what Walter Cronkite’s politics were, because he kept his opinions, for the most part, out of the news.  But today there is little difference.  For a great example see this piece by Russ Roberts. (They Report. I Edit. You Decide). They will defend the Fairness Doctrine by saying it is not censorship, but here’s the dirty little secret.

Let’s say you are a radio program manager and you put on three hours of Rush Limbaugh.  Great show. Great ratings. You make lots of money.  Now along comes the Fairness Doctrine.  You don’t have to touch Rush’s show because that would be censorship.  What you have to do, however, is give three hours over to Air America to be “fair”.  Three hours of Air America hate <fill in the blank: Bush, religion, gun owners, pro life> rants.  Ratings for those three hours go in the tank.  No revenue. You’re making no money.  Listener’s start complaining.  So what is a station manager to do?  It’s what they used to do when the Fairness Doctrine was here before, tell Rush he has to close up shop, dump the Air America crowd and play Top 40s songs all day long.  The fact that it wasn’t censorship doesn’t matter, the effect is the same.

The Census

The census, conducted every ten years, is important in two regards.  One, it helps allocate how money from government programs is distributed, and it determines how the number of Congressional seats will be apportioned among the states.  Based on current estimates states like New York (Blue) will lose one or two seats and states like Texas (Red) will gain seats.  That could mean a shift in power from the Democrats to the Republicans.  Uh oh.

The scene in the movie shifts to a darkened office with a light over the conference table.  “We cannot allow the opposition to gain any strength back, we have to consolidate our power.  What do we do?”

“Comrade, we can take control of the census.  Under our control we can count homeless people and illegal immigrants in Blue states and ignore them in Red states.”

“Brilliant!  You see that the census is directed out of your office rather than in some Department.”

You chuckle only for a minute, when you realize that Rahm Emmanuel will be overseeing the census, operating out of the White House, rather than handling it in the Commerce Department as it has been done for years.  Suddenly, the scene seems very real.

The Stimulus and ACORN

In the so called “stimulus bill” there appears to be about $4.1 billion for “neighborhood stabilization activities.”  The money was initially limited to state and local governments but later changed to include non-profits, such as ACORN.  ACORN is surrounded by allegations of vote fraud.  It doesn’t take much of an imagination to understand how close races can be tipped by an organization that perpetuates voter fraud.  Now think about how your tax dollars are being funneled to them to do it.

We Need More Votes in The House.  So Let’s Add a Representative

In consolidating power, what better way than adding votes where you need them.  One way is to add a representative in the House for the District of Columbia.  It is a heavily Democratic district, so why not?  The Constitution? Ignore it.  Just go ahead pass a law.  If the Republicans object, just crank up the racist machine.

Handouts

Of all the tried and tested methods for turning around an economy in trouble, the Democrats seem to be picking all the ones proved not to work.  If you want to stimulate the economy through tax cuts, you cut marginal tax rates.  Instead the Democrats want to give rebates to people who pay no income taxes.  That’s welfare not tax cuts.  But the goal is not to turn around the economy.  The goal is to consolidate power.  What better way than to make sure more than 50% get something from the government and less than 50% are stuck with the bill.  Majority rules.  We won.  Once that threshold is crossed, the majority can start jacking up taxes on those evil rich, so that the “working and middle class” get checks from the government.  Comrade, it from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.

Calling Dr. Mengele

In the movie a sinister doctor approaches the “patient” and plans how he is going to improve life for all of us.  For the “patient”, not so much.

Another provision in the stimulus bill is to establish a new bureaucracy that will “compare drugs, medical devices, surgery and other ways of treating specific conditions.”  This organization will take a role in your medical treatment that was formerly between you and your doctor. “Supporters of the research hope it will eventually save money by discouraging the use of costly, ineffective treatments.”  Isn’t that what medical journals are for?  Isn’t that why the AMA has conferences, to share such information?

“I’m sorry Mrs. Jones, we think you child has Down’s Syndrome, therefore you really must have the abortion, or your medical bills for your childbearing treatment won’t be covered by our national health care.  And you know the costs run into the hundreds of thousands.  What would you like to do?”

Do you really want some bureaucrat in Washington playing with a statistics program  telling your doctor what treatment he can and cannot perform to treat you?

Is This Real?

As you leave the theatre you laugh nervously that this couldn’t happen here.  But every time you pick up a newspaper, the similarity about how a dictator seizes control and then consolidates his power is just too eerie.  But as we have seen in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and now in Venezuela, it can happen and once it does it may be decades before it can be undone, if at all.  The Founding Fathers were very wary of a strong central government.  They believed that the only powers that the Federal government should have are limited and they went to the trouble to spell them out in the Tenth Amendment:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Where does it say in the Constitution that education is a federal function? I’m not against education by any stretch of the imagination, but how can the federal government do a better job than the local school board?  Why is the federal government putting cops on the street?  Shouldn’t each municipality handle this? The Federal Government has gotten too big and too powerful.  It is so vast no one can manage it.  We keep pushing so much up to the federal level we are almost begging for a dictatorship to form.  And with everything they take, and they will take all they can grab, your liberties go with it.

We better wake up, people, and start cutting this monster down to size.  Otherwise it will either consume all of us leaving nothing but a wasteland, or we will be reading our founding documents and see that they are telling to prepare for the Second American Revolution.