Fighting to Preserve Liberty in America
Senator Chuck Schumer is extremely upset. Something extreme is going on and he doesn’t like it. That extremist new chairman of the House Budget Committee, Paul Ryan has released his extreme budget plan that will cut $6 trillion out of the federal budget over the next ten years. How extreme is that?
“I always use the word extreme, that’s what the caucus instructed me to do the other week, extreme cuts and all these riders, and Boehner’s in a box but if he supports the Tea Party, there’s inevitably [be] a shutdown. – Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY)
In an article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Senator Marco Rubio said:
Every generation has had to confront and solve serious challenges and, because they did, each has left the next better off. Until now.
It brought to mind the movie Generation Zero, that chronicles the origins of the great financial meltdown that we have experienced. In that movie they point to one of the contributing factors the transition in power from those who lived through the Great Depression and World War II to the Baby Boomers, who knew little deprivation in their lives. Now as these boomers, of which I am one, took the reins of power, caution was thrown to the wind.
Maybe it was because he was trained as a medical doctor that Rand Paul knows that if you are going to lift something heavy you have to bend your knees and keep your back straight. Contrast that to the other members of Congress who stand on tiptoes, with their legs straight, bent at the waist leaning far over and picking through the $1.6 trillion deficit using only their thumb and forefinger, to find some morsel that they can extract from the budget, crying all the while “It’s too heavy, it’s too heavy.”
The Republicans in the House of Representatives led a freewheeling debate, unknown during Nancy Pelosi’s reign, to put together a continuing resolution for the rest of the current fiscal year ending in October. Hundreds of amendments were offered by both Democrats and Republicans and voted on. Some went against what the Republican leadership wanted, but it was how the House was supposed to work.
The Democrats were routed at the polls. They lost the House of Representatives; they converted a near supermajority in the Senate to a mere majority and they lost enough state level races to give Republicans the kind of control they haven’t enjoyed since 1928. But the message fell on deaf Democrat ears.
After an anemic GDP report for the second quarter of 2010 of 1.7% growth, the third quarter barely topped it at 2.0%. With only four days left before the election and the mood against Obamanomics already at a boil, this is not good news for the Democrats. The Wall Street Journal reports:
With the holiday season just around the corner, the outlook for spending by Americans doesn’t look great either. A gauge of consumer confidence has been falling since June as Americans worry about weak home prices and jobs.
So much for the stimulus. The recession ended before dollar one of the stimulus hit the streets and over a year later the economy is still crawling. So don’t look for the unemployment numbers to be changing anytime soon under this administration’s plan.
Tuesday, November 2, will be interesting.
With a week left in the election, Kirsten Gillibrand holds a substantial lead in the polls to be elected to the seat to which she was appointed after Hillary Clinton moved on to the State Department. Liberty’s Lifeline finds this a remarkable situation considering that for most of the past year polls have shown the Gillibrand trailed a generic “someone else”. It would seem that in this year of an anti-incumbent uprising, she would be among the easiest senators to unseat, and yet her race is considered “solidly Democratic”, in other words, in the bag.
If you watched the video of her debates with Joe DioGuardi she seemed overly scripted, delivering pattern Democratic talking points to questions even to the point of ignoring the question to parrot the memorized response. In a “lightening round” that required a yes or no answer, she seemed to struggle to give an answer to some questions that required thought before answering. It almost looked like a game show where she seemed delighted to get an answer right rather than giving answers she actually believed in.
The ads for Chuck Schumer’s re-election campaign is touting how he’s for the middle class. The centerpiece of this ad is a $2,500 tax credit for college. At the same time, he is prepared to wave through the largest tax increase in U.S. history, by not voting to keep the current tax rates in place beyond January. Notice how I didn’t say tax cut for the rich, or anyone else for that matter. That’s because there is no tax cut under discussion. It is about keeping the current tax rates in place and not jacking them up on January 1st for anyone, lest the already feeble economy be snuffed out entirely. But back to Chuck.
A seventeenth century observer famously said, “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” What Chuck Schumer is talking about is exactly that. He supports high taxes wherever he can (a 19% rating from the National Taxpayers Union). He voted against the 2003 Bush tax cuts. So Chuck Schumer believes in taking as much of your hard earned money that he can and then arrange for specific “bribes” such as tuition tax credits that he can brag about running up to an election. The same can be said for earmarks. It is a way for incumbents to bribe the public with the public’s money.
In New York we have the unusual situation of voting for two senators in the same year. Chuck Schumer is the incumbent running for reelection and Kirsten Gillibrand was appointed to the Senate to fill Hillary Clinton’s vacant seat when the latter became Secretary of State in the Obama administration. So in some respects, Ms. Gillibrand is running for the Senate for the first time rather than as an incumbent.
As a Congresswoman in 2007 she was a member of the “Blue Dog” coalition of conservative Democrats. In the Senate Ms. Gillibrand has been quiet as a church mouse. Perhaps that is because she doesn’t want people to notice her metamorphosis from a moderate Democrat from upstate New York with a 100% approval rating from the National Rifle Association to another far left Harry Reid “pet”, voting with the Democratic leadership 97% of the time. Now that she is in the Senate she has been endorsed for election by a leading gun control group which the NRA strongly opposes which prompted this response from the NRA
“She was either being dishonest with her voters in the congressional district or she’s being dishonest to the voters in New York state,” said the NRA’s chief lobbyist, Chris W. Cox. “Either way, the key word is dishonest.”
Gillibrand’s spokesman had no comment.
Ms. Gillibrand voted in favor of giving stockholders a vote on executive compensation in corporations. Does she favor giving Americans a vote on her and her colleagues’ compensation? In July 2009, she voted yes on a Congressional pay raise. So we need to keep those greedy corporate types in check, but she gets to vote herself a raise? But that’s not all; when as an attorney she represented corporations she had a very different role. As an attorney representing Philip Morris her job was to keep the Department of Justice from finding out that Philip Morris’ own research showed that tobacco was harmful.
“So when the Justice Department tried to get its hands on that research in 1996 to prove that tobacco industry executives had lied about the dangers of smoking, the company moved to fend off the effort with the help of a highly regarded young lawyer named Kirsten Rutnik [now Gillibrand].” – New York Times, March 26, 2009
Call it inconsistent, but whatever you call it, Ms. Gillibrand doesn’t like to talk about it.
Tomorrow is the New York State Republican Primary. We go to the polls to choose our candidates who will go up against the Democrats in November. This is an important election and an important turning point for our country. New York is a deep blue state and the Republican party seems to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution. The candidates that they often put forth are more likely to make Republicans throw up their hands and stay home on election day than turn out and vote.
We have seen the hope and change of the Obama administration and it scares the hell out of many Americans. The change we need is to turn out the “go along to get along” crowd and put in true reformers. At Tea Party meetings I encounter more and more New York conservatives who say they are tired of hiding their beliefs. They used to keep their political views to themselves because they feared repercussions from their employers, their customers, their schools, but they are tired of it. They tell me they are coming out of the closet.
We need to embrace this view. It may mean we lose some races like the special election in New York’s 23rd Congressional district, where the Republican bosses picked Dede Scozzafava, who after falling behind Doug Hoffman, the Conservative candidate, in the polls, dropped out and endorsed the Democrat. It is time to stand and be counted. Liberty’s Life Line makes the following endorsements.
New York’s First Congressional District
In New York’s First Congressional District, Liberty’s Life Line endorses Randy Altschuler. Randy came out early and often to challenge incumbent Congressman Tim Bishop and Speaker Nancy Pelosi on their reckless spending. He has articulated a conservative view on the major issues that we face and he is a free market conservative. Christopher Cox has a number of positions that are similar to Randy Altschuler, but instead of focusing on explaining how he would govern and why he is the better candidate, he chose the low road to attack his fellow Republicans in a mudslinging campaign that angered numerous voters. Mr. Cox also promotes a protectionist point of view, rather than a free market point of view and he seems confused about what the job of Congressman entails. In one of his ads he talks about putting Suffolk County taxpayers first. If he were running for County Executive, that would be fine, but a Congressman cannot put his constituents ahead of any other taxpayers. Federal tax laws should affect all Americans equally, and where they don’t they should be changed so that they do.
George Demos’ campaign is verging on the desperate. His positions on his web site are little more than platitudes and he has chosen to make the centerpiece of his campaign social issues that are not what the majority of the voters are concerned about right now. We are heading toward a debt crisis, and Mr. Demos oddly chose to run on an issue that will let the incumbent change the subject from the economy.
New York Senate versus Kirsten Gillibrand
Liberty’s Life Line endorses David Malpass for United States Senate for the seat currently held by Kirsten Gillibrand. Mr. Malpass has more experience at the federal level having worked in the Reagan administration. He also understands that New York has, for years, paid more money in taxes to Washington than New York has gotten back in government money. Yet every year Sentators Schumer and Gillibrand vote for more spending and more programs that New Yorkers will fund and others will reap the rewards. Mr. Malpass understands that the answer is not to fight for a bigger share of the pie for New York, but to shrink the pie and eliminate unnecessary programs and spending. Mr. Blakeman has relied more on imagery in his campaign and attacks on Mr. Malpass rather than focusing on how he would govern and therefore be the best choice for the Senate. Mr. DioGuardi seems to advocate the same old ways of doing business. For example, he advocates “Paygo” which was the tool Democrats invented to force tax increases as new programs were added to the economy and which the Wall Street Journal described as “kind of budget gimmick that gives gimmickry a bad name.” We need straight forward shrinking of government not better tools to monitor how badly it is being done.
New York Senate versus Chuck Schumer
Liberty’s Life Line endorses Jay Townsend for United States Senator for the seat currently held by Chuck Schumer. Both Mr. Townsend and Mr. Gary Berntsen have strong national security views, are for tax reduction and reduced spending. Mr. Townsend’s positions seem to be more thoroughly developed. For example, he is for the repeal of ObamaCare and in its place he supports some common sense methods to reduce the cost of delivering health care without spending $1 trillion. Mr. Berntsen doesn’t address health care on his website. Mr. Townsend also has pledged to ban all earmarks, which are basically the way incumbents bribe their constituents to send them back to Washington. Replacing Chuck Schumer will be a tough challenge so we need to put forth the best candidate we can.
New York State Governor
Liberty’s Life Line endorses Rick Lazio for governor. Although Carl Paladino has captured the anti-incumbent energy and had energized people to come out and support him, Rick Lazio has a concrete plan on how he would attack the issues. New York State government is so broken, Life Line could see that an outsider like Mr. Paladino could just be hamstrung and stalled by a legislature that is vehemently opposed to him. Think Arnold Schwarzenegger in California, who came in on a re-call election to turn things around but ended up being the one turned around. Mr. Paladino, as a CEO, is coming from an environment where he calls the shots, in Albany he will have to work with the legislature to get things done and it will take him a little while to figure out what buttons to push. Mr. Lazio has legislative experience as a Congressman, and has thought through his plan in sufficient detail that it might actually work. Mr. Paladino has moved the debate which is a major victory and if he loses the primary Life Line hopes he will support Mr. Lazio. Likewise, if he should prevail, we all must get behind him to defeat Mr. Cuomo in November.
