photo by Kevin Dooley

One of the main reasons the current economic problem is so hard to solve and the battle lines are so starkly drawn is that there is strong disagreement on what the problem is and likewise the solutions. The mantra from the left is that the problem is Bush’s fault, there was too much deregulation under Bush, although no one points to any particular regulation repealed under Bush that caused the crisis, and that we don’t tax enough. Those on the right have a different view.

Conservatives believe that President Obama is hell bent on changing America from a world leader to just one part, co-equal with many others in a world government. Think of the European Union with America added. In addition, we believe, that Obama wants to remake America as another socialist state on the European model instead of fertile ground for creative entrepreneurs to plant the seeds of their dreams and watch them grow. Instead he wants to redistribute the wealth by taking from those who produce to those who do not.

At first blush this may seem compassionate even fitting within the Judeo-Christian philosophy of helping the least of our brothers. However, I don’t recall learning anywhere in my Catholic upbringing those passages in the Bible or among the church scholars where we should all defer to the government and shirk our individual responsibilities. In other words if the story of the Good Samaritan was played out today, the Samaritan would see the man beaten and lying on the side of the road, dial 911, and then go about his business without soiling his hands to help the poor man himself. No worry, there must be plenty of government programs to help the poor guy and better yet, we can tax the rich to pay for it. He would not be so crazy as to put the man in his car, take him to a private hospital, leave some money for expenses and promise to pay any shortfall on his return. That would be viewed as nutty. However, when Obama’s philosophy is in place for a long enough time it changes from that of helping those truly in need, to one of entitlement. If you doubt this you need only look and listen to the recent rioting in Britain. They can rob and loot from business owners, because they say they’re the rich and they deserve to get taken down a couple of pegs. But who is paying for their handouts?

But aside from our view of the role of government what about what has worked in the past and what has not? What about the lies that pack political punch but do not stand up to scrutiny. Let’s take a look at the “we have to tax more” lie.

President Bush was not a fiscal conservative. For example, he added the prescription drug benefit to Medicare without providing funding for it. But in an article in the Wall Street Journal giving a primer on the debt situation, John Steele Gordon says this:

That decline {of debt relative to GDP] ended in 2001 following the collapse of the dot-com bubble and rising unemployment in the resulting recession. By 2003 the debt-to-GDP ratio had risen to 61.7%. Many blame the Bush tax cuts for adversely impacting federal revenues, causing the debt to spiral upwards. But that is just not true. Federal revenues declined by almost 12% in the early years of the decade, but when the tax cuts fully kicked in in 2003, the economy began to grow strongly again and federal revenues increased 44% in the next four years, while unemployment fell to 4.2% from 6.2%. Federal outlays in those four years increased by only 26.4%, and while the debt-to-GDP ratio increased to 64.8% by 2007, that was still well below what it had been in 1994.

First, the Democrats love to hark back to the Clinton years, the last time we had budget surpluses, as proof of the genius of Democratic leadership. But when Bush became president and was hit with a recession and the bursting of the dot com bubble, why was that not Clinton’s fault? Answer: President Bush had more class than to point fingers. He took the hand he was dealt and played it. Likewise, when he left office he made no comments about his successor, unlike the equally classless former Presidents Carter and Clinton who can’t bring themselves to get off the political stage.

Bush cut taxes and brought the unemployment rate down to 4.2% from 6.2%, while Obama jacked up spending and the unemployment climbed from 7.7% and is stuck at over 9%, two years after the recession officially ended.

Second, the argument from the left is that we have to repeal the Bush Tax cuts because we cannot afford them. As Mr. Gordon points out we had a revenue boom. In 2007 the Treasury took in more revenue than at anytime in history. This is plainly a spending problem and we have to unwind the reckless spending. The spending under President Bush was out of control and under President Obama he has kicked into overdrive.

The “solutions” being floated talk about it taking 10, 20, 30, 40 years to get things under control. It didn’t take that long to get into this mess, why should it take that long to get out? Granted, we are facing the Baby Boomers going from paying into Social Security and Medicare to drawing out and addressing that has to be front and center. The ponzi schemes that are Social Security and Medicare, like all ponzi schemes, have reached the point where we don’t have enough new people paying in to keep the con going. It is collapsing and we need our representatives to come up with a workable solution. We need to return to Constitutionally limited government, and let the states handle those things that are not specifically delegated to the federal government by the Constitution as is clearly spelled out in the tenth amendment.

But first we need our representatives to act like grown ups and stop trying to score political points to get themselves reelected, and face up the what the problem really is, spending, and fix it. The golden goose is dead. It’s time to live within our means.

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

Texas governor Rick Perry announced on Saturday that he was running for president. In his teleprompter free speech he drew more distinctions between himself and Barack Obama.

His foreign policy seems to be based on alienating our traditional allies, while basing our domestic agenda on importing those failed Western European social values. We don’t need a president who apologizes for America. We need a president who protects and projects those values.

We all witnessed President Obama’s world apology tour shortly after taking office. The tour made those on the left feel all warm and fuzzy, while making those on the right hot under the collar. No longer would we have cowboy presidents throwing America’s weight around and causing the rest of the world to dislike and even attack us. He traveled to Cairo to bash the United States of America. Once you do that, you can’t walk it back. His replacement can, but he cannot. So what has his pro-world, anti-American view gotten him?

In a recent poll by Zogby, President Obama’s approval ratings in various countries around the Arab world are:

• Morocco 12%, down from 16%
• Egypt 5%, down from 9%
• Jordan 10%, down from 16%
• UAE 12%,down from 22%

But the real kicker is that President Obama’s approval ratings in the Arab world are now lower than President Bush’s ratings when he left office in 2008. In my book Liberty’s Lifeline, I write about the concept of “the strong horse,” President Obama is not a strong horse, President Bush was.

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

Mommy! Johnny Boehner didn’t return my phone call! Waaaah! Seriously? Is this what a president says in a press briefing? Good Grief!

Peggy Noonan wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, that captures the character of this president quite nicely.

For the longest time he wouldn’t engage, and now he’s engaged. For the longest time he didn’t care about spending, and now he cares about spending. Good, both in terms of policy and for him. But his decision to become engaged has become a decision to dominate, to have his face in front of the television cameras with his news conferences, pronouncements, and what his communications people are probably calling his “ownership” of any final agreement. He’s trying to come across as the boss, the indispensable man, the leader. And, of course, the reasonable one.

That’s all very nice and part of Political Positioning 101, but at this point it’s not helping. He’s becoming box-office poison. His numbers are falling. The RealClearPolitics composite job approval poll rating has him down six points since June 2, when the debt-ceiling crisis began. That fall, from 52% to 46%, exactly tracks his heightened media presence and his increased attempts to be seen as dominant. Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm, said that if he ran for president today he’d lose, that his job-approval numbers are “worse than they appear,” and that he continues to have real trouble with undecided voters.

And if you’ve watched him lately, you know why. When he speaks on the debt negotiations, he is not only extremely boring, with airy and bromidic language—really they are soul-killing, his talking points—but he never seems to be playing it straight. He always seems to be finagling, playing the angles in some higher game that only he gets. In two and a half years he has reached the point that took George W. Bush five years to reach: People aren’t listening anymore.

The other day he announced the Gang of Six agreement with words that enveloped the plan in his poisonous embrace: “I wanted to give folks a quick update on the progress that we’re making.” We’re. He has “continued to urge both Democrats and Republicans to come together.” What would those little devils do without Papa? “The good news is that today a group of senators . . . put forward a proposal that is broadly consistent with the approach that I’ve urged.” I’ve urged. Me, me, me.

The Republicans have put forward plan after plan, the Democrats acting alone, none. Yes there is that gang of six or seven or whatever, but you will notice that the Democrats will not take a step into that minefield without a Republican at their side. But what have the Democrats done by themselves? President Obama puts forth a budget and when that is laughed off the air, he comes back a couple of weeks later with a new one. It’s unheard of for a president to do that, and then his budget is put up for a vote and it goes down 97-0. He couldn’t even find a single Democrat to vote for it? Do the Democrats in the Senate under Harry Reid vote for anything other than to block it?

Let’s recap the plans on the table:

While Obama, who shunned press conferences and briefings for months, now seems to hold one like Grace before meals, is all posturing all the time. He is also trying to paint the Tea Party patriots as unreasonably stubborn. Well, let’s revisit that one.

Do you remember a negotiation a few short months ago, after the 2010 election. The Republicans ran on a platform of fiscal responsibility and were rewarded with the overwhelming support of the American people. So they set about to work cutting $100 billion from the current fiscal year. Through intense negotiations with the president, the $100 billion became $30 billion (it’s okay, because it’s less than a full year). Then when that onion got peeled back there were only about $300 million in real immediate spending cuts. Snookered?

It is a time honored Democrat tradition to negotiate a deal and then welsh on it if they can. Ronald Reagan negotiated with Tip O’Neill to raise $1 in taxes for every $3 in spending cuts. The tax increase was immediate, the spending cuts never came. George H. W. Bush, negotiated spending cuts and the Democrats insisted on tax increases. Bush went along and then the Democrats ran on a platform that Bush broke his “Read my lips…” pledge. Let’s see, you get what you want and then you beat up the other guy for giving it to you?

So does anyone wonder why the Republicans might be digging in their heels. I have a suggestion for Speaker Boehner. Go play golf. Start the August recess early. Send everyone home. When the Democrats and the president find enough of a spine to put their plan on paper and present it to the Republicans to accept or reject, then perhaps we can consider this a negotiation among adults. But for right now it is the Democrats who are blocking every effort to put our fiscal house in order.

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

I received an e-mail from my congressman introducing his new “Big Oil Welfare Repeal Act”. It was one of those proposals that was either a political ploy or demonstrative of the potential damage that can be done by politicians who spent their lives closeted from the real world in either the ivory towers of academia or as life long members of the ruling class. I wrote a reply:

April 29, 2011

Congressman Tim Bishop

306 Cannon H.O.B.

Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Congressman Bishop,

I received your e-mail today regarding tax subsidies for oil companies. Your e-mail began:

“’With oil at more than $50 a barrel, by the way, energy companies do not need taxpayer-funded incentives to explore for oil and gas.’  So said President George W. Bush in, 2005.”

If I am not mistaken, Congressman, you were in Congress in 2005 and your party was in the majority from 2006-2010. What did you do to fix this for the past six years? If President Bush was in favor of ending the subsidies, and you were in favor of ending the subsidies and the Democrats held both houses of Congress why did you fail to act? Bringing this up now, sounds not like leadership but cheap political posturing.

I am no fan of subsidies for any companies, but let’s not kid ourselves. Corporations build their tax liability into their prices. They don’t pay taxes; they collect them from their customers. So if you somehow believe that by taking away the subsidy and making oil companies pay more in taxes that the price of petroleum products like gasoline will not increase, you are deluding yourself.

Your next statement says that your effort “is not about punishing oil companies; it is about making smart choices with limited resources.” I am mystified by your statement that “Right now, Americans are paying oil companies at the pump and on tax day. I hope you agree that gas is far too expensive to pay for it twice.” We don’t pay the oil companies on tax day. A tax break means they pay less, not that we pay them. You seem to embrace the statist concept that all wealth belongs to the government and the government takes what it wants and give us the rest, rather than we give money to the government. Second, Exxon makes about seven cents profit on a gallon of gasoline, so if you raise their taxes, what do you suppose they are going to do? That’s right, raise the price of a gallon of gas.

If you really want to bring down the cost of gasoline, rather than scoring political points here are some suggestions:

1. Abolish the federal gasoline tax which is $0.184 per gallon. Abolish the Department of Transportation while you are at it and let each state raise the revenue they need for their infrastructure and roads. It may mean they reinstate part of that tax at the state level, but it will also put pressure on them to perform better.
2. Reduce the number of different blends of gasoline required by the EPA. We haven’t built a new refinery in this country in over 25 years and we have to keep changing over the formula to meet the EPA requirements which curtails output.
3. Eliminate subsidies for ethanol. If we’re cutting energy subsidies let’s do it for wind and solar as well. If they are not economically viable, why should the taxpayer pay for someone’s hobby?
4. Increase the drilling for our own oil and natural gas. The less we depend on foreign oil the less they can play with the spigot to make exploration projects here unprofitable at a whim.

You and your party had four years in power. Now all we seem to hear from your side is demagoguery of every idea the Republicans put forth. If you don’t like them, fine, come up with your own ideas and then debate them. But the demonizing of every idea they put forth has to stop.

Sincerely yours,

William R. O’Connell

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

It didn’t take long for President Barack Obama to get set back on his heels and hastily call a press conference to talk about his budget. Throughout his term we have seen his inexperience show as he jerks back and forth from position to position, unless it involves pushing his progressive agenda, where he is laser focused.

However, in listening to the president it makes you wonder if we occupy the same time-space continuum that he does. His budget plan projects that in 2015, the deficit will be down to $607 billion, a level that he alone among all presidents has reached or exceeded, and he says of that projection, “will not be running up the credit card anymore.” Say what? He is planning to overspend revenues by $607 billion and that is not running up the credit card anymore. Has there been another language overhaul that I missed like the one that changed spending to investing?

His plan also will add $7.2 trillion to the debt. It took every president from George Washington until Nancy Pelosi took over the purse strings half way through George W. Bush’s second term to borrow $8 trillion. From Nancy Pelosi becoming Speaker of the House until now, another $5 trillion was added and President Obama wants to add another $7.2 trillion to that! One president, Barack Obama, has set a course to borrow more money during his term in office that all other presidents combined and he calls that “not running up the credit card.” Is he delusional? If Joe Biden weren’t the Vice President I might start pushing to invoke the twenty-fifth amendment.

Everything has to be on the table. Entitlements have to be re-designed and re-designed out of existence so that these previously private responsibilities, no where authorized in the Constitution, are once again the private responsibilities of all Americans and not the incompetent nanny state that knows no limit to fraud and mismanagement of such programs.

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

As we approach the mid-point of his term we, once again, hear President Obama with another scheme to create jobs.  This time he really, really means it.  For a mere $50 billion we can build roads, rails and runways and we can create an “infrastructure bank” to boot.  I guess the government wants to get into the banking business now that they have swallowed up two thirds of the domestic auto companies and passed a law to take over health care.  But, hey, who are you calling a socialist?

The infrastructure bank has supporters: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ed Rendell the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania and Michal Bloomberg the Democratic, Republican, Independent mayor of New York, but they want it to support more projects such as water and clean energy projects.  But here’s the really good news, according to the New York Times “They say such a bank would spur innovation by allowing a panel of experts to approve projects on merit, rather than having lawmakers simply steer transportation money back home.” We get a brand new panel of experts to tell us morons what is good for us! 

How about this idea, get the Federal government out of the roads, rails and runways business.  Unless the road is part of the Interstate highway system, and that means interstate, the feds should stay away from it.  If a road within a city needs maintenance, that city and its citizens should pay for it, not taxpayers elsewhere in the country.  That’s how the whole process got screwed up.  You build my road, I’ll build your road and nobody will know who pays for what, until we find out we are $13 trillion in debt.

One of the good ideas Jimmy Carter had was to deregulate the airlines.  Airlines became competitive and prices came down.  The problem is that air travel consists of three components: the airlines, the airports and air traffic control.  Complete the process, deregulate the airports and air traffic control.  If you do that, airports can charge different prices for takeoff and landing slots.  No more will we see thirty-two flights all scheduled to take off at 7:30 AM from one airport.  Private investors would also have an incentive to build a state of the art air traffic control system. 

By the way, what happened to all those “shovel ready” projects from the first stimulus plan?  Did we actually finish building all the turtle crossings that this country needs?

On another front, Obama continues to tinker with the mortgage market rather than getting out of the way, letting housing prices find their bottom and then going from there.  George Mason economist Anthony B. Sanders said in the New York Times, ““Housing needs to go back to reasonable levels.  If we keep trying to stimulate the market, that’s the definition of insanity.”  Even Democrats are piling on:

“The administration made a bet that a rising economy would solve the housing problem and now they are out of chips,” said Howard Glaser, a former Clinton administration housing official with close ties to policy makers in the administration. “They are deeply worried and don’t really know what to do.”

Who would have thought that a president and vice president with no executive experience prior to taking office would not know what to do once they got there?  After all everyone knew that Obama was a really nice guy with an even temperament, what went wrong?  Now we hear that Fannie Mae wants to back mortgages with nothing down.  But not to worry, this time they are actually going to require the lenders to check to make sure the borrower has income. I feel better already.

Since this administration seems to like experts how about listening to these experts:

“We have had enough artificial support and need to let the free market do its thing,” said the housing analyst Ivy Zelman.

Michael L. Moskowitz, president of Equity Now, a direct mortgage lender that operates in New York and seven other states, also advocates letting the market fall. “Prices are still artificially high,” he said. “The government is discriminating against the renters who are able to buy at $200,000 but can’t at $250,000.”

It’s time for President Obama and his administration to get his boot off of the neck of the economy.  Ours is the strongest most resilient economy in the world, if you set it free.  All of the tinkering and the anti-business threats have pushed employers to the sidelines.  The uncertainty over the economy has led businesses to take a wait and see attitude.

The rhetoric the Democrats have been trying to muster to save their skins is that “eight years of failed policies,” yada, yada, yada.  The reality is that this recession started one year after Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid took over Congress.  This recession started in the last year of the Bush administration, not the first seven.  This recession has lasted nearly twice as long and counting under Obama than it did under Bush, and it shows no sign of changing anytime soon.  A recent poll in Ohio by Public Policy Polling asked respondents who they would prefer to see in the White House right now and the results were George W. Bush 50%, Barack Obama 42%; what does that tell you?

So, Mr. Obama, keeps your hands were we can see them and slowly step away from the economy.

Two disparate news items this weekend got me thinking.  The main stream media is all abuzz with Chelsea Clinton’s wedding, even to the point of throwing the term royalty around.  It is estimated that the wedding will cost $3-$5 million, although Sally Quinn of the Washington post puts the bill at closer to $1 million.  The comparison was then made to the cost of Jenna Bush’s wedding, a mere $100,000.  This became fodder for The Joy Behar Show.  Comedian Judy Gold leaped at the opportunity to take a shot at Bush, “Yeah, well, if he could have found a way for us to pay for Jenna`s wedding, he would have done that, okay, he likes to spend other people`s money.”  An interesting perspective on other people’s money that I will return to later.

The other news items was an article in The New York Times, by Bob Herbert titled “A Sin and a Shame,” lamenting that corporations are hording cash and not hiring people and it is all so unfair, in fact, sinful.  This is while this government is spending huge amounts of money that someone will have to pay back, massive new programs like ObamaCare that we are still uncovering what that will cost, and enormous tax increases about to kick in on January 1 when the Bush tax cuts expire.  Perhaps they are hording cash for a reason?  Perhaps they are not hiring because they don’t know what any new employees will cost under these new programs, or for that matter what their existing employees are going to cost?  Perhaps it is because the latest economic reports show GDP shrinking and if that continues why would you start hiring if your business is going to slow down with the rest of the economy?

We have two very divergent views of the economy today.  One view is held by those who actually work in the private economy and the other view is held by those in the ivory towers of government, which brings me back to the weddings.  I really don’t care what the Clintons or the Bushes spend on their daughter’s weddings.  It’s their money.  But perhaps it is instructive to look at where that money came from.

George Herbert Walker Bush, Jenna’s grandfather, was born into a successful family.  His father was a banker and a Senator.  But after getting out of the Army after WWII he went to Yale and upon graduation, moved away from that family and settled in Texas to start an oil company.  He went into private business and put his own money at risk.  What that means, to those who never took that chance, is you may be successful and make a lot of money, you may be successful and make a little money, you may fail and lose your money.  Chances are greater that you will lose than win, but that is the American Dream.  If you lose, you have to start over by trying to earn and save up what you lost to try again, if you have the guts and drive.  Bush succeeded in forming Bush-Overby and later with Zapata Petroleum.  He became President of Zapata for ten years and then Chairman for another two, before going into politics.  By then he was a millionaire in his own right.

George Walker Bush, Jenna’s dad, attended public school in Midland, Texas, where his parents had settled.  He went to private school after the family moved to Houston.  He later attended Yale University and became the only president to get an MBA which he did, from Harvard.  Like his father, he went into the oil business starting several independent oil exploration companies.  He later bought a stake in the Texas Rangers baseball team for $800,000 and was instrumental in building the team’s attendance.  He later sold his stake for $15 million.  Then he went into politics.

The two Bushes know risk, know about taking chances and became millionaires on their own before going into politics.  They also learned lessons about spending money and doing so prudently. 

Bill Clinton went into politics almost immediately after getting his law degree.  He was Attorney General and then Governor of Arkansas.  As governor he had a governor’s mansion.  He ran for president and upon winning traded in his governor’s mansion for the Executive Mansion, aka the White House.  He had been on the government payroll and living in government provided housing almost his entire working life.  The sweat of the people in who paid their taxes paid him.  After leaving office, Mr. Clinton was able to write books about his experience and make speeches commanding six figures a pop.  His wife did pretty much the same.  They lived off the people and ended up very rich.  They didn’t create a product or service, they didn’t create jobs, and they didn’t meet a payroll. 

I can hear the screams from the left right now, “What do you mean he didn’t create a job or meet a payroll?”  Try this test.  If Bill Clinton’s opponent was elected rather than Bill Clinton, would there still be a government payroll and government jobs?  If yes, Bill Clinton didn’t create them.  If either of the Bushes didn’t create their companies would there be jobs at those companies or payrolls?  No.

What about some other famous politicians who tell us what to do?  Let’s look at Al Gore.  Here is another individual that spent the bulk of his career in government.  He was a member of Congress, a United States Senator, Vice President and presidential candidate.  Today he is very rich.  It is said he may become the first “green billionaire”.  If he went into his current endeavors before a life in government, would the story be the same?  Or is it because of his name, reputation, and connections that he made at the public trough, that he is wallowing in riches, and telling the rest of us to reduce our carbon footprint while his mansions consume ten times the energy of his neighbors?

Charlie Rangel spent most of his life in government.  He rose through the ranks and now has a waterfront condominium in the Dominican Republic, writes the tax laws but does not observe them, and is a wealthy man.  Conservatives don’t believe in rent control or rent stabilized apartments, but Charlie does.  After all, how can poor and middle income people afford to live in places like Manhattan if greedy landlords have their way.  So Charlie Rangel who makes $174,000 per year, plus his chairmanship pay, has not one, not two, not three, but four rent controlled apartments.  Is he poor or middle class?  No, he is the political class.  He took three adjoining rent controlled apartments and had them joined together, while the fourth apartment served, illegally, as his campaign headquarters.  What about the poor and blue collar workers who could live in Manhattan if three of your four rent controlled apartments weren’t being horded by you?  Let them eat cake.

John Kerry is in the news for trying to avoid $500,000 in taxes on his new yacht.  Here is another individual who spent his entire working life in government.  He can tell the rest of us to pay more taxes while he garners favors spending our money. He is the richest man in the Senate but with prenuptial agreements with his wife he only lists personal assets of between $400,000 and $1.8 million and joint assets with his wife of $300,000 – $600,000.  So how does he buy a $7 million yacht?  I am not suggesting anything nefarious, it’s obvious his wife paid for it, but do you think he is in touch with someone trying to make a payroll in the private sector?  You pay taxes; John Kerry has advisors to figure out how to avoid them.

So those evil corporations started by those evil men like George Herbert Walker Bush and George Walker Bush, know the value of a dollar.  They know we are not out of the woods yet and so to protect the jobs that their companies still have they are not hiring but are building their rainy day funds.  Perhaps Bob Herbert should ask why his employer is shedding jobs left and right.  Perhaps this is his safe way of doing so, but on the other hand the New York Times is hardly hording cash.  Its circulation is crashing because people like Bob Herbert are so out of touch with the rest of America; no one wants to read his rants any longer.

So perhaps Bill Clinton spends millions on Chelsea’s wedding because he didn’t learn the value of a dollar.  He lived of the government for many years and then just held out a basket and it was miraculously filled with more money than he can count.  George Bush spent $100,000 on a wedding because he knows how hard it is to earn a dollar.  What we need is less of the political class telling us what to do, and then handing us the bill and more entrepreneurial Americans who risk their own money, watch it like hawks, create jobs and generate wealth that they then reinvest in America.

Best wishes to Chelsea and Marc.

The talking points have been established that it was eight years, eight, of failed Bush and/or Republican policies that got us into this mess and President Obama and the Democrats are working hard to get us out of it.  Let’s take a closer look.

What blew up in 2008?  It was the housing market.  The underlying cause of the problem has Democrat/liberal/progressive fingerprints all over it going back to Franklin Roosevelt who created Fannie Mae.  Add into that mix Lyndon Johnson privatizing Fannie Mae to hide it from the budget and creating HUD; Jimmy Carter creating the Community Reinvestment Act; Bill Clinton pushing for more home ownership among those who could least afford it, Andrew Cuomo as HUD Secretary pushing Fannie and Freddie to take on riskier mortgages; Barney Frank and Chris Dodd fighting against regulation before they were fighting for it (and where have we heard that formulation before?); and when housing prices run out of gas and the house of cards that the Democrats built collapses, it’s all Bush’s fault.

Let’s look at the timeline.  When he took office, President Bush was handed a recession from Bill Clinton resulting from the dot.com bubble.  In less than a year we had 9/11.  In spite of that, Bush pushed through tax cuts and got the economy to grow through most of his presidency.  The Democrats took control of Congress in January 2007 and in December 2007 the economy went into recession.  One year later Barack Obama is elected President of the United States.  Now, more than a year and a half after Obama is in office the economy looks like it is slipping into a double dip recession, and this is the Republican’s fault?  Who has been spending like a drunken sailor?  Who wasted almost $1 trillion on a stimulus plan that was so ineffective the Obama administration had to invent a new statistic, “jobs saved”, to hide its dismal performance.  They add on ObamaCare, which no one in Congress read before voting on it and no one knows what is in it and so no small business is going to hire anyone until they know what it costs.  How is that the Republican’s fault or Bush’s?

We are just a few months away from the tax cuts put in place by President Bush expiring.  President Obama wants them to expire.  This will place an additional massive burden on small businesses and just about everyone else and he wonders why aren’t companies hiring?  The man came into office with no executive experience and the year and a half he has been in office he hasn’t seemed to pick up any.  Could it be because he is surrounded by advisors who have little to no executive experience themselves?

To my fellow Americans I say, hang in there it is less than 100 days to vote the bums out.  Perhaps not all of them, but at least we can bring in some adult supervision.  It’s time to stop steamrolling the American people with the socialist programs and to let “We the People” take back our government.

Although it is getting very tiresome and it is losing it’s bite, Democrats still are desperately clinging to “we inherited eight years of Bush policies, yada, yada, yada.”  Was it eight years?  If so, how did he get re-elected in 2004?  I will be among the first to say that Bush wandered off the conservative reservation with his spending, but Bush didn’t create Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac either.

What Have We Inherited?

Let’s take a look at everything else we have inherited.  Why stop at Bush?

• With 20% of the federal budget locked in to Social Security and this also being essentially a very large ponzi scheme for which we have enormous unfunded liabilities, who did we inherit this from?  Franklin Delano Roosevelt – Democrat. 
•  What about that other ticking time bomb, Medicare and Medicaid?  Thank you Lyndon Baines Johnson – Democrat.
• Fannie Mae — Need I say more?  Franklin Delano Roosevelt – Democrat
• Department of Agriculture – elevated to Cabinet level at a time when agricultural employment in this country was 70%-80% of the population.  In 2008 agricultural employment was about 2%-3% of the population.  Why do we still need it?  Thank you Grover Cleveland – Democrat
• Department of Education – has spent $1 trillion since its founding and we all know how much it has improved education in this country.  Thank you Jimmy Carter – Democrat
• Department of Energy – Remember the Synfuels project where we were going to convert coal to oil after the first Arab Oil Embargo?  It was a great idea as long as oil stayed above $40 per barrel at the time. Thank you Jimmy Carter – Democrat
• Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) – think of all the wildly successful urban development projects over the years, warehousing our poor in drug infested, dangerous housing projects.  Let’s not forget HUD’s contribution to the current financial meltdown where they aggressively pushed greater lending for homes in poor rural and urban areas.  Thank you Lyndon Baines Johnson – Democrat
• Community Reinvestment Act — another key to the housing bubble, Thank you Jimmy Carter – Democrat:

 “Urged on by ACORN, congressional Democrats and the Clinton administration helped push tolerance for high-risk loans through every sector of the banking system — far beyond the sort of banks originally subject to the CRA. So it was the efforts of ACORN and its Democratic allies that first spread the subprime virus from the CRA to Fannie and Freddie and thence to the entire financial system. Soon, Democratic politicians and regulators actually began to take pride in lowered credit standards as a sign of ‘fairness’ — and the contagion spread.”

• Department of Transportation – used to be part of the Department of Commerce. Split off to create another bureaucracy.  Thank you Lyndon Baines Johnson – Democrat

Gee, all of this we inherited from the pantheon of Democratic gods. It makes Bush sound like a piker. 

Will We Never Learn?

When this country was founded Congress created three departments:  Department of War, the Department of State, and the Department of the Treasury.  That pretty much fits what the founders intended.  A limited federal government that would deal with external issues and defend us from our enemies.  There are now fifteen federal cabinet level agencies.  Why is it that Democrats feel this need to create massive new bureaucracies?  Why don’t they ever go away when they have achieved their mission?  We are now facing crushing deficits brought about by decades of government growth brought about by the Democrats. 

It’s time to stop blaming Bush.  Mr. Obama, you wanted this job.  You won this job.  Now, do this job and stop bitching about what you inherited.  If anyone has something to bitch about it is we Americans, because you and your fellow travelers have built this house of cards and you think the only solution is to build it bigger, faster.  If the load is too heavy to carry, we don’t need vitamins (VAT tax) to get stronger, we need to lighten the load.  We have to shrink this beast down to a manageable size, NOW.

On Tuesday night President Obama gave an uncharacteristically bland speech regarding his way forward in Afghanistan.  In one sentence he said he was adding 30,000 troops while shortly thereafter he said he would be removing them.  It’s enough to make one nostalgic for John Kerry’s “clarification” of how he voted for the war in Iraq before he voted against it.  So our Waffler in Chief has given the enemy their battle plan: hunker down;  keep a low profile;  don’t back me into a corner, and beginning in July 2011, while we’re packing up you can be ramping up.  Bush never committed to an end date certain for that very reason.  They way you defeat the enemy is by making it clear that you will finish the job, no matter how long it takes.

It’s All Karzai’s Fault!

With this administration, it’s always somebody else’s fault.  But put yourself in Karzai’s shoes.  If you have the U.S. on one side, and the Taliban on the other with the U.S. packing up and the Taliban sharpening their knives, who are you going to cut a deal with?  They guy who plans to be there for the next 20 years or the guy who plans to be there for the next 20 months?  There is one way to deal with the bad guys who plan on being there for the next 20 years and that’s to make sure they spend those next 20 years six feet under.

We had similar challenges in Iraq, but once Bush ordered the surge and the bad guys knew we were going to finish the job, they started cutting deals of their own.  Many came over to our side and helped end the violence in a number of provinces.  Peace through strength.  It works.  Weakness fires up the enemy and emboldens him.  You decide which is the better strategy.