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 been 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 of 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

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal, newly elected Republican Congressman from Hawaii Charles Djou called Birthright Citizenship a GOP Achievement.  And to think I was happy to hear Mr. Djou was elected in an unusual special election where he ran against two Democrats simultaneously.  They split the vote and he won.  Birthright Citizenship is not a GOP achievement it is an accomplishment of judicial activism, pure and simple.  Mr. Djou says, “The Citizenship Clause of the Constitution’s 14^th Amendment provides that a person born in the United States is automatically a citizen, regardless of the race, ethnicity or citizenship of his parents.”  Where the hell does it say that? 

The Amendment actually reads, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”  These, so called conservatives, like the first part of the clause but seem to go ignorant or blind at the second part.  If you are a Constitutional Originalist, you look to the meaning of the Constitution first in the actual text, then to any information that you can glean from what was discussed at the time of its passing.  This is a case where that information could not be any clearer.

Senator Jacob Howard of Ohio was the author of the citizenship clause of the 14^th Amendment.  He said:

 “[E]very person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States.  This will not [emphasis added] , of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.  It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are not citizens of the United States. “

How much clearer could “not include aliens” be?  Aliens are outside the jurisdiction of the United States and are subject to their home country.

Linda Chavez, who presents as her conservative credentials that she served in the Reagan and Bush administrations, points to English Common Law as the basis of the Birthright Citizenship.  Since under Common Law you are immediately and forever a citizen of the place of your birth.  However, with the Declaration of Independence we did away with that custom of English Common Law.  Under Common Law, you could not renounce your citizenship, and if we are still under that law, we are still all Englishmen.  It was also one of the causes of the War of 1812.  The British did not recognize our process of Naturalization.  They were stopping our merchant ships and taking off sailors they deemed to still be English citizens and pressed them into service in the Royal Navy.  The concept that Ms. Chavez is arguing supports Birthright Citizenship is from feudalism, where the serfs belonged to the land.  They received the lord’s protection and in return gave their lord a lifetime of service.

At the time of passage of the 14^th Amendment, whose purpose was to grant citizenship to the freed slaves, the debate was whether it would also confer citizenship on the American Indians.  Under Mr. Djou’s logic and Ms. Chavez’s they were born here, it was automatic.  But it wasn’t.  Not because of discrimination but because they were members of their tribes which were considered sovereign nations.  The United States signed treaties with them.  In the Supreme Court case Elk v Wilkins the court ruled:

“Indians, born within the territorial limits of the United States, members of and owing immediate allegiance to one of the Indian Tribes, an alien though dependent power, although in a geographical sense born in the United States, are no more born in the United States and ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ …than the children of subjects of any foreign government born within the domain of that government, or the children, born within the United States, of ambassadors or other public ministers of foreign Nations.”

That was the law until 1898 in the Supreme Court case United States v Wong Kim Ark, where the majority used the Common Law argument to ignore what was written in the text of the Amendment, what was discussed at the time of the Amendment by the author of the Amendment and its supporters and the prior Supreme Court case.  This is judicial activism at its baldest.  In the dissenting opinion by Chief Justice Fuller he made it clear:

“when the sovereignty of the Crown was thrown off and independent government established, every rule of the common law and every statute of England obtaining in the colonies, in derogation of the principles on which the new government was founded, was abrogated.”

The American Revolution did away with that definition of Birthright Citizenship under the Common Law.

So along comes Lindsey Graham, who can’t decide if he is for open borders or against them, so his suggestion to amend the Constitution to end Birthright Citizenship sounds somewhat hollow.   It is also irrelevant.  Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution clearly grants the Congress the power “To establish an (sic) uniform Rule of Naturalization..”  This does not require an amendment, just a simple clarifying law that Birthright Citizenship does not exist in the United States.

The irony is that the 14^th Amendment was created to make it more difficult for future Congresses to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which said pretty much the same thing as the 14^th Amendment and it was changed with the stroke of the pen of an activist Supreme Court.  Perhaps we need to consider the idea of Mark Levin in that perhaps we need to have a legislative veto of Supreme Court decisions.  If the role of the Supreme Court is to interpret laws written by Congress, why not let Congress with a two-thirds vote, explain what the Supreme Court misinterpreted?

Republicans have to learn to stop fighting by the Marquis of Queensbury rules, while Democrats, bite, kick, pull hair, scratch and hit below the belt.  Yes, Christ told us to turn the other cheek, but he also overturned tables, formed a whip out of cords and drove the money changers from the temple.  In other words, sometimes you have the hit the bully hard between the eyes before he learns to stop being a bully.

So if the Republicans regain control of Congress in November, they should open the new Congress in January with detailed hearings on what happened to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and don’t pull any punches.  By that I mean if they need to put Andrew Cuomo in the witness chair, even if he is the governor of New York, which he probably will be, then they should do so.  It’s time to stop playing patty-cake.

For all the hoopla of the Dodd-Frank Act, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were left out of the new regulations.  Oh, we’ll get to those later.  Okay, let’s get to them with the Republicans in charge.  Let’s expose how it was our government that got us into the housing mess and let’s do this before the Democrats re-write history and paper over their culpability in the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression.  It’s time to put the big lie to “it’s all Bush’s fault and Republican policies.”

The papering over has already started by none other than Franklin Raines the former head of Fannie Mae who received bonuses of over $90 million while at the helm of Fannie Mae and was also charged with cooking the books that helped him receive those bonuses.  He reached a settlement with the SEC and gave back about $1.8 million from the profits in the sale of Fannie Mae stock and gave up $5.3 million in future benefits related to his pension.  But he essentially kept the rest, what the Wall Street Journal called a “paltry settlement.” 

Mr. Raines claims the demise of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to which taxpayers have already coughed up $145 billion, was due to bad credit decisions made after he left the firm.  To put it in his own words:

 “The Journal had been warning for years that the on-balance sheet portfolios of Fannie and Freddie would lead to their demise. Mr. Carney suggests that excessive leverage was the culprit. Unfortunately, neither of these were involved. Nope. Just bad credit judgments. Decisions made, by the way, while operating under close regulatory scrutiny.”

According to the Wall Street Journal “What he doesn’t say is that Fan and Fred had a political and legal mandate to support low-income housing.”  To meet this mandate which had increasing goals each year, Fannie and Freddie had to cast a wider net to find these borrowers and the wider they cast the net the lower their standards had to be.  Thus more creative types of mortgages were created to lower the bar such as, interest only loans.  This scheme would continue to work as long as housing prices kept rising but that could not go on forever.  When the music stopped a lot of people were left standing without chairs and we all lost.  People’s credit ratings were destroyed, mortgage securities were worth far less than face value, people walked away from houses, and taxpayers were forced to pick up another “too big to fail” enterprise.  By the way, where in the Constitution does it authorize the federal government to get involved in helping people buy houses?

The secret veil put in place by the main stream media has been lifted.  With the Internet and the bloggers and cable television and talk radio, the main stream media can no longer keep information that does not comport with their agenda hidden from the American people.  The American people are energized and informed but that may not last long after the election, if we don’t continue to engage them.  Uncovering the true “swamp” that is our federal government and draining it should begin by letting the sun shine in.  So let’s do away with the good ol’ boy politics of not rocking the boat when you gain control so that they won’t rock the boat when they get it back.  If we don’t have a new class of non-incumbents who are willing to go to Washington and clean it up, really clean it up, we need to get rid of them and put new people in their place.  If that means replacing Republicans with better Republicans or Democrat incumbents with better Democrats, so be it.  We have to end the process of only being able to choose between two pathetic life time politicians who have never lived in the real world.

The rush to push through the Dodd-Frank Act, unread by those who voted for it, is working to bring the greatest economy on earth to a grinding halt.  Here is exhibit A.

The Wall Street Journal reported that The Ford Motor Company wanted to issue bonds that were backed by packages of auto loans, but had to pull the issue because of the new Dodd-Frank Act.  Dodd-Frank requires that issuers include credit ratings in its offering documents, that is, it has to disclose what credit rating agencies such as Moodys, Standard and Poors, and Fitch say about the quality of the bonds.  Those rating agencies, however, have refused to allow companies like Ford to use their ratings in their offering statements because  the Dodd-Frank Act now holds them legally liable for the quality of their ratings.  In other words, if those credit rating agencies say the bonds are high quality, and it later turns out they don’t live up to that rating, the rating agencies could be sued for damages.  This has brought the $1.4 trillion asset-backed securities market to a standstill.

Ratings companies argued that the new law effectively would render them “experts,” which brings with it potential new liability akin to those held by auditors and lawyers.

“The inclusion in the offering documents are an unacceptable risk,” Dan Curry, president of DBRS Inc., a bond rater, said. He said the expert liability is “really the standard for an auditor” and shouldn’t be used for rating agencies, since their opinions are “an attempt to predict future outcomes.” – WSJ, July 21, 2010

Gee, how long did that take to gum up the economic works?  Less than twenty-four hours.  This legislation was rushed through without waiting for the report from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to tell Congress what the root causes were so, perhaps like grown-ups, they could actually craft legislation that would address the root causes rather than hamstring the economy.

The Securities and Exchange Commission just issued a six month waiver to the requirement that credit ratings must be included in bond offerings.  That should give us enough time to send all these overpaid progressive chowderheads packing and reclaim our country.

An in depth article in the New York Times titled, “Lapses Found in Oversight of Failsafe Device on Oil Rig,” covers at length the problems surrounding the technology and methods employed to prevent the disaster that we see every day on our television screens, newspapers, and the Internet.  It also points to the nearly complete lack of oversight and enforcement by the federal government to protect us.  Politicians like to write legislation and put flowery titles on the same and gather for the cameras for signing ceremonies, but when it comes to the heavy lifting of enforcing the laws put in place they often fall down on the job.

When disaster strikes the typical Washington reaction is to add more regulations that eventually become so complex and contradictory that compliance becomes nearly impossible (e.g., Internal Revenue Code).  In the case of the oil spill in the Gulf the article points out that studies were conducted in 2003, seven years ago, on failure points to prevent the situation we are living with today, but no requirements to put them in place or test them were instituted.

The article focuses on a device called a blind shear, whose purpose is, in the event of an accident like what happened on the Deepwater Horizon, to activate a pair of shear blades to cut the pipe that rises from the well and seal the well shut.  The reliability of single blind shears has only proved to be about 46%.  With this empirical data, new wells are installing two such devices for redundancy and backup.  Such a recommendation was made to the Materials Management Service (the government agency regulating drilling) in 2001, nine years ago, but the MMS took no actions on the recommendation.  In 2003, the MMS received a recommendation that would require the necessary underwater robots and testing of emergency backup systems, but again the MMS, demurred.  The practice has been that the MMS simply took the drilling industries word that they were taking steps to prevent problems.

In 2003, the Deepwater Horizon rig has a problem in a storm that caused the rig to break away from the well it was drilling, the blind shear worked perfectly in that case giving the company a false sense of confidence in the technology.  What happened next is revealing:

The following year, BP opted to remove a layer of redundancy from the blowout preventer. It asked Transocean to replace one of the blowout preventer’s secondary rams with a “test ram” — a device that would save BP money by reducing the time it took to conduct certain well tests. In a joint letter, BP and Transocean executives confirmed that BP was aware that the change “will reduce the built-in redundancy” and raise Transocean’s “risk profile.” – New York Times, 20 June 2010, pA1

Since the MMS did not require two blowout preventers, BP was in the clear to remove one.  Also, consider the term “risk profile,” and think of this in terms of a free market where insurance companies played a role.  If you increased the risk profile and didn’t want to have your policy canceled in its entirety for hiding that fact, the insurance company would no doubt increase BP premiums for the increased “risk profile.”  Since this effort was a cost saving measure, having to pay more in insurance might have changed the equation such that BP would leave things as they were with two blowout preventers.  But the government encouraged deep water drilling, the government put a cap on the amount of damages that a drilling company would have to pay that created a moral hazard, the government ignored recommendations to required greater safety measures and the government was lax in enforcing those regulations it had in place, instead relying on taking the industry’s word that all was well.

On a separate issue regarding the cleanup, in an article in the Wall Street Journal titled, “The President Does a Jones Act,” it states that in the two weeks following the disaster, thirteen countries contacted our government offering assistance with the clean up.  Our government turned the offers down.  As the State Department put it:

“While there is no need right now that the U.S. cannot meet, the U.S. Coast Guard is assessing these offers of assistance to see if there will be something which we will need in the near future.” One month later, many of these offers are still outstanding. – Wall Street Journal, 19 June 2010

The Belgians reportedly have the ships and technology that could clean up the mess in the Gulf in one-third the time than is currently estimated.  All it requires is suspending the Jones Act of 1920.  Bush did it almost immediately in the wake of Hurricane Katrina so that foreign ships could come in and provide temporary housing for the hurricane victims.  Officials in the Obama Administration weakly respond that “no one has asked them yet,” to suspend the Jones Act.  What are they waiting for?  Doesn’t Obama and everyone in his administration to hit the Sunday talk shows tell us that they has been on top of this since day one?  One plausible reason for the hesitation is that it might offend the maritime unions. 

We are continually told by this administration that we need more government expertise telling us how to run our lives.  Surrender your liberties, we’ll take care of you.  I don’t think so.  What do you think?

Zogby International conducted a survey to measure how well people understand economics and what their political persuasion was.  The conclusion they came to was clear:  the Left is economically ignorant.  As reported in the Wall Street Journal (Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?) there were eight questions and the multiple choice answers were:  Strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, strongly disagree or are not sure.  Here are the statements:

1. Mandatory licensing of professional services increases the prices of those services
2. Overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago
3. Rent control leads to housing shortages
4. A company with the largest market share is a monopoly
5. Third World workers working for American companies overseas are being exploited
6. Free trade leads to unemployment
7. Minimum wage laws raise unemployment

Answers of strongly agree and somewhat agree were grouped together for scoring purposes, as were strongly disagree and somewhat disagree.  The survey respondents were then asked their political persuasion:  progressive/very liberal; liberal; moderate; conservative; very conservative; libertarian.  The correct answers to the statements are

1. Agree
2. Agree
3. Agree
4. Disagree
5. Disagree
6. Disagree
7. Agree

Here is how the respondents performed grouped by political views:

1. Libertarians 84.3% correct answers
2. Very conservative 82.4% correct answers
3. Conservative 77.7% correct answers
4. Liberals 59.9% correct answers
5. Progressive/very liberal 32.4% correct

If this were a course in school, liberal, very liberal, and progressive students, would have all failed and in some cases miserably;  conservatives would all have passed by comfortable margins.  The article goes on to say, “The pattern was not an anomaly.”  I think this survey explains an enormous amount about the frustration being felt across America today. 

Other studies have shown that about 60% of Americans describe themselves as conservative.  The current administration is driving hard left at an extraordinary rate and most Americans don’t understand what President Obama and the Democratic Congress are doing or why.  This survey explains it pretty well.  They don’t know what they are doing, or they are expecting outcomes that are economically flawed.  The American people know it and they have been shouting, “STOP!”  But the Democrats blissfully press on in their ignorance and are confused why America is not going along. 

Statists have long assumed and treat their fellow Americans as if we are too stupid to know what they are doing is for our own good.  Well here’s the proof folks that the American people are the ones who know what works and what doesn’t and the only way to fix it is to send all the progressives/very liberal/liberal politicians packing.  If we elect conservatives they will implement what works and what economics proves works, and our country will be on the mend.

You don’t have to go too far to find a story about people suffering in these tough economic times, and your heart goes out to them.  Some have lost houses, are living in cars, really tough stuff.  But there is another story under the surface that reflects common attitudes developed growing up in the nanny state kicked into high gear by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In the midst of these tough economic times, instead of getting out of the way by cutting taxes and red tape, the Obama administration is focused on piling on more government programs.  Worthless stimulus packages, health care reform, and efforts to push cap and trade have not moved the unemployment needle a whit.  They extend unemployment benefits and keep whistling past the graveyard hoping they won’t get swallowed up.

Personal Responsibility

Since the Great Depression and the growth of the nanny state, more and more people have bought into the myth that the government can provide all, and our responsibility is to enjoy the ride.  An article in today’s New York Times writes about people benefitting from a government program to keep them in their houses if they face becoming homeless.  But there are some subtleties in the hard luck stories that give me pause.

There is the case of Antonio Moore who lost his job as a mortgage consultant that paid him $75,000 per year.  He lost his 3-bedroom house with a Jacuzzi and his Lexus sedan.  He is now faced with eviction from his apartment.  The article doesn’t go into details, but in most cases you don’t lose your house and car if they are all paid for.  Again, it doesn’t say if Mr. Moore bought his car new or used, but when I think of a car like a Lexus I usually don’t think that fitting in the budget of someone making $75,000 living in the San Francisco Bay area.  Had Mr. Moore purchased a Toyota Corolla instead of the Lexus would he be in better shape?  Again, I don’t know the details.  I am just wondering.

Then there is the case of Dawn Martin.

Ms. Martin is mortified to be asking for help. She grew up wealthy, with vacations spent on Caribbean cruises. “I had everything I ever wanted,” she says.

She and her husband have a painting business that until 2008 was grossing $100,000 per year, but in this tough economy it dropped to $38,000.  That’s hard.  But then here is the between the lines story:

Her father has money to help if it really comes down to it, she acknowledges.

“I don’t see him letting his grandkids land on the street,” she says, “but he’d hold it over our heads for a long time. That would lower me to a level that I wouldn’t want to go.”

So she is here, at Samaritan House, filling out the paperwork for the homeless prevention program.

So because of her pride, she turns to your family and mine, through higher taxes to fund a government program, to help her through her rough spot before she will turn to her own family.  But don’t worry.  When our money is gone, she will turn to Dad.  The painting business is picking up so Ms. Martin is confident they will be able to sustain themselves.  She is able to take our money to tide her over and still maintain her pride. 

But what did Ms. Martin learn about money when “growing up wealthy”?  Is Dad responsible for not teaching her or was she a rebellious child who ignored him and perhaps that is why he would hold it over her head for a long time.  Will she do something different this time around or hope for another government program?

Perhaps I was a little torqued before reading this story by another in the Wall Street Journal that wrote about the homes underlying the Goldman Sachs fraud case.  This article talks about a Ms. Onyeukwu, a 43-year old nursing home assistant with pre-tax income of $9,000 per month.  She is having trouble paying her $688,000 mortgage at $5,000 per month which is 56% of her pre-tax income.  Her solution?  Refinance it with a $786,250 mortgage.  But hey, the interest rate is lower so her payments of $5,000 per month will stay the same.  What is she thinking?  I could be way off base here but I’ll bet she could get a nice apartment for significantly less than $5,000 per month.  Sell the house, live within your means.

Government as Savior or Government as Pusher?

This is a tale of two government programs and personal responsibility.  We had or still have a massive government program that uses threats, goals, and sleight of hand to help millions achieve the American dream of home ownership.  This is not through thrift, like our parents did it, but by the government threatening banks with charges of racism (there’s the race card again) if the banks didn’t lower their lending standards.  As the housing market took off, the feeding frenzy intensified and everyone was trying to buy houses or finance them with less and less money down.  The Community Reinvestment Act, HUD, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac were all players in this debacle, but don’t expect our elected officials to wade into that swamp to see what happened.  No, they will pile the blame on the banks and Wall Street, while they take Wall Street’s massive donations and do nothing but pass meaningless “reform legislation”.  Now we need new government programs to keep these people hanging on.  How similar is this to the drug pusher who gives you your first hit for free to get you hooked and dependent on them forever.

What About Personal Responsibility?

Unlike the people in the articles, I believe I have responsibility first and foremost for my actions.  If I need help beyond myself I turn to my family and then the charity of my church.  I believe many conservatives share my views, which is why on average conservatives give 30% more to charities than liberals.  It is why I gave the moniker “Buck a Day Biden” to Vice President Joe Biden because in his financial disclosure forms he reported give only about $300 a year to charity.  Here is a man who has been drawing six figure salaries from the taxpayers for years, is a millionaire, but will not reach very deep into his own pocket to help his fellow man, but has no problem reaching into your pocket and mine to create some government program to give your tax dollars to someone else.

There is a man named Dave Ramsey, who was a millionaire in his mid-twenties but later lost it all and declared bankruptcy.  He now teaches others how to live without debt and take responsibility for their financial lives.  It is a lesson all of us should learn and if we do, I’ll have to find something else to write about that sets me off.  But in the mean time we have a lot of work to do.  First we have to stop the federal government’s runaway train.  Next, we have to shrink government.  Then we have to go back to being responsible for ourselves and wean ourselves off the government.

Comedian Lewis Black visited the Wall Street Journal and talked about the Tea Party and how he doesn’t understand them.  I couldn’t have made a stronger argument for the Tea Parties by pointing out how little the leftists and the statists don’t understand.

You Have To Pay For Stuff

I happen to enjoy watching Lewis Black entertain.  His hook is that of a very angry man sputtering about what is dumb and frustrating in the world and for me it really hits a chord.  It’s a pity he doesn’t see what is so dumb about his view of the Tea Parties.  In the WSJ interview he mentioned that he was poor at one time and the government actively pursued him for his last quarter.  That’s your first hint, Lewis.  He says now he is rich and when the government takes some of his money, guess what, he’s still rich.  Okay, good for you.  The Tea Party believes you are entitled to that and that is the American way.  But then he steps on his argument and says, you’ve got to pay for: policemen, firemen, educate our children and provide water.  I can’t argue with that, but what has that got to do with an out of control federal government?  That’s the problem.  Most members of the Tea Party aren’t protesting paying for police, firemen, education and water.  We don’t get those from Washington, we get them and pay for them locally.  We don’t believe there is a phenomenal brain trust in Washington that knows all and sees all and can tell us how to live our lives better than we can.

Later in the interview Black actually says, “I can agree with the Tea Parties in the way it [money] is used some times.”  What does the Tea Parties really believe in?  Limited federal government.  Limited to the powers granted to it by the Constitution.  Everything else, such as police, firemen, education, and water, should be provided by the state and local government.  Lewis, it sounds like you actually agree more with the Tea Partiers than against them if you only took the time to understand what we stand for.  You might actually find some new material for your act, such as:

“The Department of Education… THE Department of EDUCATION!!..those morons need an education.  Ever since that nitwit Carter created the damn thing they spent a TRILLION F*%!&#G DOLLARS, and now no one graduates HIGH SCHOOL!!!  BRILLIANT!!!”

If Lewis Black watched any of the town hall meetings over the summer they looked like his act.  The only difference being there were 150 Lewis Blacks (the citizenry) and one member of the audience (Congressperson), except the Congressperson wasn’t visibly laughing.

So, Lewis, should I look for you at the next Tea Party?

I was watching Mike Huckabee’s show this weekend when a curious exchange took place.  Governor Huckabee tried to be fair to President Obama by saying “I believe in his heart that President Obama believes he is doing what is best for the country.”  The governor is not alone among those who oppose President Obama who graciously say this.  Perhaps it is a preemptive strike to avoid being tarred as a racist.  At the same time, however, they will say they think President Obama is a smart man.  How do you reconcile those two positions?

 Either the man is an idiot and he is stumbling toward socialism without realizing it, or he is an intelligent man who is taking the country to socialism by design.  I don’t see a middle ground.  The only possibility is that he is a man with an arrogance so breathtaking in scope, that he ignores the will of the people and is implementing programs and policies that he believes is better for the unintelligent masses, and mistakenly thinks it is still capitalism.  I can’t square the man’s intelligence, which I believe he has, with him not knowing the difference between capitalism and socialism/Marxism.

 Okay, so what prompted this train of thought?  It was prompted by some little know activity south of the border and I don’t mean Mexico.  Earlier in his term, President Obama, Secretary Clinton and others tried to help return a Hugo Chavez puppet to the presidency in Honduras.  Manuel Zalaya was following tactics of Chavez and Castro, to remain in office beyond his term which is limited.  By doing so, he was immediately in violation of Honduran law and their constitution.  He was removed by order of the Honduran Supreme Court with the backing of the Honduran legislature.  The only step they might have taken which was too far was they put him on a plane out of the country.

 Chavez, Castro, et al, were outraged.  Did the Obama administration come down on the side of democracy and democratic institutions? No, they tried to strong arm Honduras to put Zalaya back in office, by cancelling visas, affecting trade and other measures.  Honduras proceeded, ignoring these threats, to hold a general election to peacefully choose a new president which they did.  The United States has reluctantly agreed to recognize the new president, but it was not easy for small Honduras to stand up to the United States and based on what they were fighting for and they shouldn’t have had to.

 What other signs do I find troubling?  After going against the will of the American people in forcing through ObamaCare, Fidel Castro heaped praise upon Obama for the law’s passage only criticizing him for taking so long.  In April of 2009, President Obama embraced Hugh Chavez.  Today Hugo Chavez is in the process of shutting down the last television outlet that is critical of him while forming closer ties to Ahmadinejad of Iran.

 In Ecuador, President Rafael Correa is following the Chavez model.  He is also chummy with Iran, is constantly threatening the free press, and the economy is in shambles.  He fired congressmen who disagreed with him and replaced them with others who saw things his way.  When the constitutional court said the fired congressmen had to be reinstated, Correa took to the airwaves to declare he was ignoring the court’s decision.  Shortly thereafter an angry mob marched on the court, the police who are supposed to protect them stood aside.  Do we have a statement of concern from the White House regarding this trampling of democracy?  No, we have the State Department’s Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Arturo Valenzuela, calling on President Correa.  According to the Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady:

 During Tuesday’s meeting before television cameras, Mr. Valenzuela expressed concern about Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its budding relationship with Ecuador. According to Reuters, Mr. Correa told him: “We don’t want to get involved in that discussion. But what does it have to do with selling bananas to Iran or with Iran financing our hydroelectric plants?” Translation: Ahmadinejad is my friend. You butt out.

 The U.S. response? Mr. Valenzuela would not rule out a meeting between Mr. Correa and Barack Obama. If that happens, prepare for a redux of the Obama embrace of Hugo Chávez in Port of Spain, Trinidad, in April 2009—more humiliation for Americans who used to think of their government as a noble defender of liberty against despots.

 Creeping Socialism

Obama has given government control over one-sixth of the U.S. economy with the implementation of ObamaCare.  He has nationalized two automobile companies.  He has nationalized the student loan program.  Unions, for the first time, have more members in the government than the private sector, but President Obama wants to increase their numbers in the private sector as well with Card Check.  Who are the unions beholding to and vice versa?  The Democratic Party.  With more union members to do his bidding where does the average citizen stand?  In a July speech President Obama said the following:

 ”We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.” (emphasis added)

 If this doesn’t send chills up your spine conjuring up dark images from the 1930s, you need to put down the Playstation and pick up a newspaper or a book.  Consider that when he graduated from Columbia he became a follower of Saul Alinsky, a Marxist community organizer.  Barack Obama did not cut his teeth by starting a small business.  He cut his teeth learning how to take down capitalism using Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.  As he gets chummy with America’s enemies, he gives the back of his hand to our allies: Israel, Great Britain, Poland,and the Czech Republic.  Do you still believe this is a coincidence Governor Huckabee?

That was the famous “Pottery Barn” analogy that Colin Powell used regarding the war in Iraq.  Now that ObamaCare + Reconciliation is done, all the ugly details that come crawling out of the health care bill like cockroaches when you turn the lights on, will all come to you courtesy of the Democrats. 

Because they chose to go the reconciliation route, the Senate could not dare change a word in the House bill of “fixes” so they could approve what the House sent them with less than 60 votes.  Here’s a sampling of what the genius of government brings you, wrapped in arrogance, with a bow of disdain for the people, as reported by Kimberly Strassel in the Wall Street Journal:

“Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) offered language to bar the government from subsidizing erectile dysfunction drugs for convicted pedophiles and rapists. Democrats voted . . . No! Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) proposed exempting wounded soldiers from the new tax on medical devices. Democrats: No way! Pat Roberts (R., Kan.) wanted to exempt critical access rural hospitals from funding cuts. Senate Democrats: Forget it! This was Republicans’ opportunity to lay out every ugly provision and consequence of ObamaCare, and Democrats—because of the process they’d chosen—had to defend it all.

And so it went, into the wee Thursday hours. All Democrats in favor of taxing pacemakers? Aye! All Democrats in favor of keeping those seedy vote buyoffs? Aye! All Democrats in favor of raising taxes on middle-income families? Aye! All Democrats in favor of exempting themselves from elements of ObamaCare? Aye!”

Now doesn’t that just make you warm and fuzzy inside? 

Bill O’Reilly and Congressman Anthony Weiner had a debate on O’Reilly ‘s show that was jaw-dropping to listen to.  Weiner said that O’Reilly and others were blatantly misstating the facts about the health care bill.  O’Reilly questioned Weiner about the IRS learning details about people such as whether or not they had health insurance.  Weiner said that was untrue and that if you wanted to get a tax credit for health care, you had to say on your tax return that you had health insurance.  He said it is just like if you claimed a tax credit as a first time homebuyer (I won’t get into all the fraud taking place on the homebuyer credit, even by IRS employees). So according to Weiner it’s all voluntary reporting, just as takes place every year when we file our taxes.  How can Weiner stand there and make such a statement?  A key requirement is that everyone has to be covered by health insurance according to the law and the law provides for hiring 16,000 more IRS agents!  Well what are those agents going to be doing if not following up with you if you don’t say you are covered?  Weiner danced and dodged and at one point stood silently pouting when O’Reilly tried to pin him down.

This is ugly and it is going to get uglier as we learn what is in this cancer on our economy.  But Nancy Pelosi warned us.  “We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.”  Well, they passed it, now we get all the bad news.