Fighting to Preserve Liberty in America
When last she held the Speaker’s gavel in the 111th Congress, Nancy Pelosi failed to pass a budget at all. This was the first such failure since 1974. But somehow Republicans are obstructionists. When asked in May of this year about the Senate passing a budget, Harry Reid had this to say, “It would be foolish for us to do a budget at this stage.” Foolish. But somehow Republicans are obstructionists.
It was quite a night. It was everything we imagined and yet not enough. The Republicans resoundingly carried the House of Representatives, but fell short on taking the Senate. A large number of state legislatures flipped over to the Republican column and a number of governors too, but states like New York was as uncompetitive for Republicans as ever. True, the Republicans picked up a number of seats in New York, but considering where they were coming from, currently holding only two of twenty-nine seats currently.
There was a commercial not too long ago where a young man looked out his window to the village green where a bundle of money had just fallen. He calls his wife/girlfriend over to show her. She suggests running down and getting it, but he says, no, let’s wait. Next you see a frizzy headed guy down on the green who screams, “MONEY!!!!” In seconds, people came out of the woodwork and scoffed up all the money while the young couple looked on.
The image of that commercial popped into my head as I considered the job summit being led by President Obama. To me, the young couple represented the government pondering how to direct the economy to achieve this specific goal or that. The mob on the green was the free market. While the government dithers over what kind of legislation to write, which special interest groups to pay off to pass it, how to develop incentives to get private industry to do this or that, if they would just cut taxes and get out of the way, the free market would get to work creating jobs where they are needed, not where some bureaucrat thinks they should go.
Uncertainty
The biggest cloud overhanging this economy is uncertainty. The Obama administration is slamming through enormous changes: a $787 billion Porkulus package, cap and trade, health care. Businesses look at this combined with the accumulation of massive government debt, tax increases rather than cuts (yes letting the Bush tax cuts expire is a tax increase, not just the expiration of tax cuts as Speaker Pelosi tries to spin it) and they don’t know what hiring that extra employee is going to cost, let alone what it will cost to keep the employees they already have. So they don’t hire until the dust settles and they can calculate the impact.
“Tax incentives for job creation are “worthy of further consideration,” he said, while adding that the administration is also set on making a big push in the area of green jobs.” – President Obama at Jobs Summit
“Worthy of further consideration”? Since conservatives have been calling for tax cuts for a year now, this kind of statement in Obama-ese translates thusly, “I have to make a nod to the right, to acknowledge that I heard them, but it ain’t happening.” Couple that with the “big push in the area of green jobs.” We are in the midst of the scientific scandal that the “settled science” of man-made global warming could be the greatest hoax since Bernie Madoff, and Obama wants a big push in the area of green jobs. What if that area collapses because the urgency that Al Gore has been screaming about is no longer urgent? It’s government planning on the order of Soviet five-year plans or Mao’s Great Leap Forward programs. It harkens back to Jimmy Carter’s giant Synfuels project that was going to convert coal into oil, until oil prices fell and the project imploded, but not before billions of tax dollars were poured into that rat hole.
How Simulating!
If you listen to Joe Biden, the stimulus plan is working better than expected. But let’s take a closer look. As of about three weeks ago only $120 billion of the stimulus money had been spent. (So why is Congress looking at another stimulus with over $600 billion left to spend in the first one?) Of that money, 80% went to the Department of Education, Health and Human Services, and the Department of Labor. What about all the “shovel ready” projects? Only about $4 billion has gone to the Department of Transportation. Feel better?
Jobs Summit Attendees
So who is meeting with President Obama at the jobs summit? Well first let’s look at who was not invited:
I don’t know about you, but I think they might have an idea or two about how to create conditions that let the free market create jobs. As for the attendees:
How many jobs do unions create, not occupy, create? Think of the auto industry, steel industry, public K-12 education, the Postal Service, and government in general. Do they bring images of thriving, vibrant, engines of job creation? Or is the image more of the basket cases of the U.S. economy? This is not a slight against the union workers themselves, but rather of their leadership who create so many restrictions on job rules to artificially create the need for more jobs. There motto is: why have three people do the work, when you have five do it?
As far as big business is concerned, let me dispel the thought that conservatives and big business go hand in hand. In many cases big business looks to cut deals with the government to protect their industries and markets from upstart companies. They have gotten big and lethargic, rather than nimble and vibrant. Small businesses create about 80% of the jobs in the U.S. and they didn’t have a seat at the table.
So was the jobs summit about creating jobs or just jive talk? If you want a real jobs summit see what American Solutions was hosting in Cincinnati, Ohio and Jackson, Mississippi. They actually discussed ideas that would work.
In his Sunday column Frank Rich described Republican candidate for New York’s 23rd Congressional District a “mainstream conservative by New York standards.” So what did Dede Scozzafava do after falling so far behind the Democratic and Conservative candidates that she decided to drop out? Well, naturally, she endorsed the Democrat! Why would a conservative endorse the Conservative, rather than the Democrat? Because, perhaps, she was a RINO? That is, a Republican In Name Only.
Party On
What frightens the statists more than anything else is that the Tea Party people know how to walk and chew gum at the same time. They know that protesting is one thing, but it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t bring about results. What was demonstrated in New York’s 23rd District is that just like the Minutemen back in Revolutionary times, conservatives could rally, join the fight, and win. The lock the left had on the media is gone. The statists no longer control the information game, putting their spin on the news. If this were 20 years ago, Doug Hoffman the Conservative candidate in the race, would have been, at best, a footnote in history. His story would not have gotten off the local newspapers in that rural part of New York State. In today’s world, he quickly got on television, talk radio, and the blogs, got his message out and the rest is history.
What’s the Lesson?
Despite Frank Rich’s hand wringing and Dede Scozzafava’s backing the Democratic candidate, how has the race changed? From neck and neck between the Conservative Hoffman and the Democrat Owens, recent polls show Hoffman surging into the lead with one poll showing a 5% lead and another showing a 17% lead. The lesson is that if you give Republicans good conservative candidates, they will vote for them. If you instead go for weak, moderates, then the Republican base stays home, and the independents choose between the professional statist (Democrat) and the amateur statist (moderate Republican) and as I like to say…in a contest like that why wouldn’t you pick the pro over the amateur?
Can anyone offer us a deal to give us cash if replace our Congressional Clunkers? How about the health insurance companies? They’d probably kick in, since they are Congress’ new whipping boy. Oil companies, coal companies? They get bashed every time Congress screws up and bans nuclear power, offshore drilling, ANWR, and coal as the price of oil climbs. Banks who didn’t take TARP money? Well Congress wants to set their salaries now.
Congressional Mileage
How much liberty per dollar are we getting for the money guzzling Congressmen and Senators who pull down $169,300 per year (more for committee chairs, and Speaker Pelosi who weighs in at $217,400)? And this doesn’t begin to count their expense budgets, gold plated health care, etc. I’m sure we could get much better mileage from a smaller government and a Congress that only meets half a year. I’m willing to bet that the longer Congress stays in session the more trouble they get us into, while consolidating their power and feathering their own nests.
Here’s the Plan
Let’s set up a fund. We’ll let Goldman Sachs run it, as they seem to know how to turn a buck. Anyone can contribute to the fund, no limits. For every Congressman who voted for the Stimulus, Cap and Trade, and the Health Care disaster and is run out of office, the fund will pay out a percentage of the fund to everyone who registered and voted. The percentage will be calculated as the percentage of these clunkers who are retired out of Congress.
Think about it. If you are a voter who really, really believes that the Stimulus, Cap and Trade, and the government takeover of our health care system is a good thing, you will vote to re-elect the members of Congress who voted the same way. However if you don’t, then perhaps you need a little personal stimulus to cross party lines, or set aside ideology, and vote the bums out. It might even help improve voter turnout. And why not? If ACORN can get illegal aliens and dead people to vote for their candidates, we need a way to fight back.
What do you think?
