Fighting to Preserve Liberty in America
Photo by Dave Makes
Two news items yesterday, when put together, start to tell an interesting story. Warren Buffett invested $5 billion in Bank of America in a private sweetheart deal that will guarantee him a 6% return (that’s $300 million per year) and he is hosting a fund raiser for Barack Obama in New York where the tickets start at $10,000. What’s going on?
The latest news on the economy is not encouraging: a mere 39,000 jobs added and the unemployment creeps ever closer to 10% at 9.8%. In spite of this, or apparently ignorant of it, the lame duck House voted yesterday for another whopping tax increase on the most productive among us. Yes, yes, they will beat the class warfare drums about tax “cuts” for the rich, when what they are voting on is not a cut at all, but either leaving things the way they are or raising taxes. With the recovery barely showing a pulse, it is not the time to take money out of the hands of free market capitalists and put it in the hands of the government. Who do you think can pull the economy out of the doldrums, entrepreneurs or government bureaucrats?
“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’” – Ronald Reagan
Our friends on the left scoff at such words as those above, but the longer they are in power and providing “help”, the more they get tied up in knots. Let me walk you through an example using Congressman Tim Bishop as the key player.
There’s good news and bad news coming out of the Tim Bishop campaign. The good news is that he has a new ad out so we don’t have to keep watching the same ad he has been running incessantly for the past five weeks. The bad news it’s about the one subject that Tim Bishop wants to talk about, outsourcing. It’s the same old stuff, wrapped in a new package. Why can’t Tim Bishop talk about his record? Is he embarrassed by it or afraid of it.
Tim Bishop has one reason that he consistently gives for sending him back to Congress and that is that his opponent, Randy Altschuler, started a company and Bishop claims it outsourced jobs overseas.
In a New York Post article yesterday, Raymond J. Keating informs us that the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, where he serves as chief economist, just released their Small Business Scorecard for the 111thCongress. The scorecard rates members of Congress on a wide range of votes (27 in the Senate and 22 in the House) that cover such things as workplace regulation, ObamaCare, government spending, tax policies, energy legislation, and bailouts. Overall, he tells us the New York delegation scored just 11 percent on the scorecard, the sixth worst of the fifty states. The two members of the delegation that scored well are Peter King, and John Lee. On the other hand Tim Bishop failed to vote even once with small business on big issues. A big fat zero.
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.
