Fighting to Preserve Liberty in America
Photo by roberthufstutter
Throughout out the Republican campaign process, Herman Cain has been portrayed as an interesting candidate, but with no serious chance of winning the Republican nomination. What I found was the most curious logic was on the O’Reilly Factor the other night. Bill’s reasoning that Herman Cain won’t win the nomination was because the most important thing to Republicans was to unseat Obama and that independents won’t vote for Cain because he is too conservative.
Photo by BlueRobot
A contentious battle has concluded today with the passage of the debt limit deal. It was a hard fought battle where no one is entirely happy with the outcome. Before we leave this field of battle, we should take stock of the accomplishments and the players involved.
Presidential candidate Herman Cain stepped to the podium yesterday afternoon and addressed an enthusiastic crowd. Cain was plain spoken and engaging and immediately connected with his audience.
[podcast]http://libertyslifeline.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Fix-New-York-2.mp3[/podcast] [click to continue…]
President Obama has just created a panel to figure out how to get our debt under control. Even when he makes a decision, such as this one, it is to pass the buck to someone else to do the heavy lifting. His attempt to overhaul health care turned into the Harry and Nancy Show. Obama campaigned and gave speeches while Pelosi and Reid shut out the Republicans and created the bill that could not be passed. Obama is now trying to put lipstick on that pig, by calling for a bipartisan meeting. But instead of starting over and getting ideas from everyone, they are basically going to pick over the stinking corpse of the bill that the Democrats could not get passed. It is obvious that the real objective is to either get some Republicans to sign on or to use the meeting as a club to beat the Republicans as the “party of No.”
Stop Me Before I Spend
This president can’t seem to control himself and he finds that he painted himself into a corner. If he tries to raise taxes on those who make less than $250,000 per year he will be breaking a major campaign promise. If he stops spending on his own, he will lose the left which is about the only support he has remaining. So he calls in Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles to co-chair a committee charged with making the president a tailor made fig leaf, to allow him to cut spending and raise taxes, while shrugging his shoulders and saying, “I can’t go against the excellent advice of this august commission.”
If he wants to cut spending, he can just cut spending. He doesn’t need a commission to do so. How about an across the board spending freeze, except for national defense, until the economy grows enough to balance the budget and not with gimmicks like increasing discretionary spending now 24% and then saying you will freeze that same spending for the next three years? How about freezing government hiring? How about returning $500 billion in unspent stimulus money and $400 billion in repaid TARP money, plus interest, to the Treasury? Don’t hold your breath. That would require someone with executive experience who knows how to make a decision, rather than deliberating, like a legislator. Sarah Palin comes to mind, as does George Bush (I & II), Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan. These experienced executives knew how to put together a budget and make decisions. Chris Christie in New Jersey was just sworn in last month as governor and he immediately identified the problem as too much spending and got to work cutting it back. All that President Obama seems to know how to do is talk.
If we start advertising now, we may get enough resumes to review to find a replacement by 2012.
Daniel Henninger wrote in the Wall Street Journal:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tells of congratulating freshman Sen. Obama on a phenomenal speech. Without a hint of conceit, Mr. Obama replied, “Harry, I have a gift.”
In the article he also describes this observation:
Harvard Law Prof. Charles Ogletree told how Mr. Obama spoke on one contentious issue at the law school, and each side thought he was endorsing their view. Mr. Ogletree said: “Everyone was nodding, Oh, he agrees with me.”
That’s essentially how he got elected. With a heaping helping hand from the popular media, many people saw Obama as a blank screen upon which they could project their own views and see those as Obama’s own. He’s our man! He listens. He cares deeply. For a politician it is a phenomenal gift. For a legislator it is an extremely valuable gift. For an executive it is poison.
Pulling the Trigger
As a politician or a legislator you are in the role of persuader; somebody else makes the decision to vote for you or vote with you, respectively. As an executive you are in the role of the decider. You must make a decision and every decision, especially the tough ones are going to make a good many people unhappy. Perhaps that explains why, in the Illinois Senate, Obama voted “Present” so many times. Voting “Present” rather than “Yea” or “Nay” allowed him to hold that special place where everyone felt he agreed with them. Too many decisions one way or another would have tarnished “the gift”. So why is “the gift” poison for an executive? If you don’t have “the gift” and you make a decision your opponents may disagree with you, but they are not surprised. If you have “the gift” and you make a decision, those on the short side feel betrayed and angry, because they thought you agreed with them and then “sold out” and decided the other way.
Obama is in a tight spot where he has to make decisions and decisions have consequences. When you make a decision it is very hard to make it seem like everyone got their way. His complete lack of executive experience is telling. If he had some executive experience, such as a mayor or a governor, he might have had enough practice learning how to make his decisions appear to satisfy everyone, as his campaign speeches did. But that’s the thing about decisions. If everyone supports them, they’re not much of a decision, like deciding to pardon a turkey on Thanksgiving. Everyone enjoys the decision, but it’s really not what we elect presidents for.
I’ll Have the Waffles, Please
If you watch closely, you can see that Obama is struggling to preserve “the gift”. He said he is for closing Guantanamo, but not yet. He is for pulling out of Iraq, but no timetable. The general he put in charge of Afghanistan, McChrystal, said he needed 40,000 more troops, but Obama could not bring himself to say yes or no. He had to ponder, think, consult, weigh alternatives, and three months later, he gave McChrystal what he asked for. Those on the left complained that he was not pulling out. Those on the right complained that he wasted precious time while our troops were on the battlefield. His backers tried to give him the fig leaf of showing gravitas. He can’t seem to find the magic formula where everyone applauds him. From “the gift” he has gone to “the anti-gift”. Instead of satisfying everyone, he is finding that he is satisfying no one.
Move On
It’s time for Obama to “Move On”. He should put “the gift” in his trophy case right next to his Nobel Peace Prize. It got him to the White House. How much more can he ask of such a thing? So drop the pretense. We all know he is a hard left guy, so he should just be who he is. He may suddenly face a more hostile press, or they may love him more, although that would be hard to believe. But when he makes a decision he will at least please his base, and then his opponents can fight his statist goals without being branded as racists. As a hard left guy he will probably not get re-elected because America is not a hard left country, on the contrary the majority of Americans describe themselves as conservative. But by choosing he can try to do what he can within one term. It will be a battle. Obama’s poll ratings have dropped steadily since his inauguration and the Democrats are likely to lose seats in Congress this fall. As an old acquaintance once said to me, “It’s like standing in the middle of the road. Choose left or choose right, but choose; otherwise you get hit by traffic coming in both directions.”
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 — Amendment X, United States Constitution
“I’m Mad as Hell and I’m Not Going To Take It Any More”
That quote from the movie “Network” popped into my head as I read about a legislator in Oklahoma, calling for legislative support for the 10th Amendment to the Constitution. It passed the state assembly unanimously. So what does this mean? The sponsor of the bill, State Senator Randy Brogdan, explains:
The “federal government has been putting the screws on (the states) a little tighter and tighter each year” along with unfunded mandates of varying sorts.
And each time this happens, Brogdon explained, “We lose a little bit of our freedom and liberty.”
The federal government has been growing enormously and taking on more and more things that used to be handled locally, such as education, and welfare. Other programs have not changed as the economy has, for example, as the percentage of the population that farms has decreased dramatically has the Department of Agriculture shrunk accordingly?
You Must Obey!
The way the federal government works around this is by saying, okay, you don’t have to do what we tell you, but you will get no federal funding if you don’t. It seems like a Catch-22, no? Since the 16th Amendment, which authorized the income tax, the federal government can decide how much to tax incomes and there is little that the states can do about it. They take money from your pocket under threat of imprisonment, and will give it back to you only if you comply with their rules.
How Do We Fix This One?
It may require a constitutional amendment to fix as the 16th Amendment says:
The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration. — 16th Amendment to the Constitution
I’ll leave the legal mechanics to those better qualified, but I would propose the following. That the federal budget shall include a breakdown of projected revenues derived from income taxes, broken down by source: individual, corporate, etc. A state should then be allowed to refuse mandates and programs from, say, the Department of Education, and withhold from the IRS that proportion of tax dollars destined for the Department of Education from that state.
Certain departments should be deemed mandatory, such as Defense, State, Treasure, to name a few as these departments serve all citizens.
The legislation under consideration in Oklahoma will have little effect if the federal government can suck up as much money as it wants to from the states, via their citizens and then just keep the money if the states refuse to participate in the programs. How do you determine which programs should be subject to the states discretion? No money should flow from a state, to Washington, and then back to the state. That is just plain stupid and wasteful, or a distribution of wealth, none of which is a government function. Paying for roads and infrastructure that does not cross state lines should be funded locally. It is ridiculous that the federal government pays 90% of the cost of a highway that lies entirely within a city. Look at the scandalous “Big Dig” in Boston. Billions of dollars spent and parts of it are falling down. Why should any of this be paid for by the people of Kansas, Oklahoma, Alaska, New York, Florida, et al.?
But the real answer is following the 10th Amendment. It clearly states that the role of the federal government is spelled out in the Constitution. If it’s not in the Constitution then that responsibility is left to the states or the people. Show me where in the Constitution it says that the federal government is responsible for education. It’s not in there and that department should be shut down tomorrow.
It’s Time to Rein the Monster In
The anger in the country is growing. Those who acted responsibly are being told they have to bail out the irresponsible. They are being told by “Buck a Day Biden” that it is their patriotic duty to pay higher taxes to help out. Meanwhile half a dozen Obama appointees haven’t paid the taxes they owe, let alone paying more. I give Biden the “Buck a Day Biden” moniker because that is how much this millionaire gives to charity. He doesn’t want to spend his own money on charity, he wants the government to take your money to fund government programs to do that.
If you don’t think the anger is growing take a look at this. Rick Santelli
With Citibank caving in on the subject of cramdowns, we are all about to take it in the neck. What the cramdown is, is where a bankruptcy judge can re-write the terms of a mortgage, including lowering the principal on the loan, in effect, “cramming” the loss down the banks throats.
Now I’m no fan of the banks making loans to people who shouldn’t have gotten them, but it has been a long standing principle that in a foreclosure, the bank gets the house, if you can’t pay. If the loan is structured right, that is, a good down payment then this presents good security for the bank. In return, banks have traditionally been able to offer lower rates on mortgages than on many other kinds of loans. However, if you change the rules of the game, such that banks no longer have that kind of security, what is any rational banker going to do? That’s right, raise the interest rates.
So any banker writing a mortgage in the future, will have to weigh that some day in the future his security could be taken away at the stroke of some legislator’s pen. While it is true that, Sen. Schumer’s proposed deal is only on loans in place at the time of the legislation and only if the bank and the consumer tried and were unable to negotiate different terms, it still hangs over the mortgage industry. A banker today, will have to consider that in the next thirty years of the mortgage I am about to write, there may be another serious economic downturn, and in that downturn, some legislator may decide to do this again. Therefore, I’ll add 1/4% or 1/2% to the rate to cover it, on every mortgage I write from this day forward.
Let’s recap. Government programs (Fannie, Freddie, Community Reinvestment Act, Clinton’s Justice Department, HUD) push very hard on banks to make loans to marginal lenders. The housing bubble bursts causing financial crisis and government rides to the rescue so that we can pay more for mortgages forever.
And we keep electing these people.
