Have you ever seen one of those movies where a car is speeding towards a cliff and just before it heads over the edge the driver jumps out and the car flies into the abyss and maybe crashes and ignites into a ball of flame?

If you haven’t don’t worry, you’re about to live one… and unfortunately for you, you’re not the driver who escapes, you’re a passenger strapped in for the excitement. President Obama is the driver and the way he’s running his campaign, it looks like he’s getting ready to jump…

As you probably guessed, the car in this story is the United States economy. Everyone knows that the economy is… anemic to say the least. The unemployment rate, which is now down to 8.1% is so only because 2.2 million people have given up looking for work since Obama’s inauguration. If those people were still looking for work, if they had any expectation of actually finding a job, the unemployment rate would be 11%.

As bad as two million people being so discouraged that they quit looking for work altogether is, there are a pair of dangers right around the corner that may mushroom that number, and take millions of jobs with them.

The first has to do with taxes. Unless it’s fixed, in January 2013 the tax code is going to create what the Washington Post has christened Taxmageddon. Between the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, the beginning of the taxes within ObamaCare, and a variety of other tax changes, federal taxes are going to increase by a total of $500 billion next year. That means that the government is going to be sucking $500 billion out of the private sector, i.e. your pocket, to fund its turtle tunnels, green energy boondoggles and Las Vegas conventions. To put that amount in perspective, that $500 billion you will no longer have to spend is more than the revenues of Apple, Target, Coke, Disney, McDonalds and Procter & Gamble combined! Now imagine removing that much activity out of the economy… That shouldn’t have much of an impact on jobs.

Would you rather keep that $1,600 (per person) tax hike and spend it as you like on goods and services that benefit you and your family, or would you rather send it to Washington so that the borg can spend it on things like National Public Radio, wealth redistribution schemes and Amtrak? Unfortunately for us we already know what Barack Obama thinks about that.

The second bomb the country is facing is particularly troubling because the danger is so obvious. Why is it obvious? Because we’re still licking our wounds from a mini version of the same problem: the housing crisis driven recession. Although the fundamental cause of the economic meltdown was government intervention in the housing market, the proximate cause was the sub-prime mortgages. Many of those mortgages were of the variable rate type where borrowers received a low introductory rate that would adjust (usually upward) over a period of time or in some cases, abruptly. When rates were low everything was peachy and consumers were purchasing houses at record numbers while investors were borrowing to buy investment properties. The markets were humming along.

Then everything hit a wall. Interest rates jumped, borrowers were no longer able to pay their mortgages, property values plummeted, banks collapsed, and the economy staggered into the “Great Recession”. We were told we were on the brink of a financial meltdown on par with the financial collapse of 1929 and civilization might not survive. Five years later we are limping along, but at least the world didn’t end.

Unfortunately for you and me, Barack Obama has not been smart enough to learn from that recent history. Over the last three years he has piled a total of $5 trillion in new debt on the shoulders of the American people. As bad as that is, that’s not the worst part of it! The greater danger is that virtually every dollar of that new debt is in the form of short term notes. The administration chose this route because, like the homebuyers, they get a great low rate. A two year note today carries a .03% interest rate while a ten year would carry a 2% rate. The problem is, when interest rates spike, all that debt will have to be refinanced, likely at the much higher rates. As an example of the impact of higher rates, consider this: If the government were today paying the 5% it was paying a mere 5 years ago the interest payments alone would be an additional $400 billion a year, almost as much as they will spend on the whole of Medicare this year. That would be like removing from the economy the revenue of Ford, Dow Chemical, Kellogg’s, Google, GAP, the NFL and Microsoft as well. A rate jump from .03% to 5%? No way, that’s not possible. Really? In the two years between January 1978 and January 1980 interest rates jumped a total of 14%, from 6% to 20%. Imagine what $10 trillion financed at 20% might look like!

Barack Obama has set the United States on a Thelma and Louise course, but likely won’t be in the driver’s seat when we actually leave terra firma. Unfortunately for Mitt Romney, the pain that Obama has guaranteed us will likely occur on his watch and there may not be much he can do to avoid it. Indeed, unbelievably, it has the potential to make the current disaster of a presidency look relatively prosperous in comparison.

If he recognizes this in advance, Romney will have the opportunity to steel the American people for the maelstrom ahead while giving them a reason to expect things will get better. That is after all what real leaders do: They prepare their countrymen to persevere through difficult times without needing a scapegoat to make their case; they inspire their citizens to pick themselves up, dust themselves off and go forward to build the prosperous future they seek; and finally, and perhaps most importantly, they seek to reduce the state’s power to frustrate and obstruct the citizenry’s ability to build that prosperous future. Now that’s an action movie I’d like to see.

As President Obama and his administration are constantly telling us, the horrible economy is not his fault because he inherited the “Worst recession since the Great Depression”. One can certainly make that argument. You just can’t get it to stick.

If you could however, what you’d basically be saying is that that 3 ½ years after taking office the President of the United States is essentially helpless to impact the economy. “No, no, no!” his supporters would no doubt respond: “That’s not what we mean! The entire economy, nay the entire world’s economic system would have collapsed if President Obama had not saved us.” That’s simply a 2012 version of the absurd and decidedly non-empirical “Jobs created or saved” measure the administration proffered when it became obvious that their stimulus was a failure.

If the President is not responsible for the economy after three years in office, what are we to make of his taking credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden after just two? The financial meltdown began in 2007 and by 2009 we were officially out of the recession. Yet key pieces of intelligence that led to the CIA eventually locating bin Laden were discovered even earlier, in 2005 and 2007. In addition, critical to the success of the intelligence gathering process was information garnered from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed using the very “enhanced interrogation” techniques candidate Obama objected to.

As Obama seeks a second term so that he can begin to fix the economy, Vice President Biden is there to tell voters the only things they really need to know about the President’s first term: “bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive”. The President apparently wants to take “credit” for GM as well, despite the fact that the ill advised rescue of the UAW… er… of GM began under President Bush also. But the bottom line is that General Motors is alive, has paid back its loans, and is profitable. Alive, like so many things with this administration, is a relative thing. Yes, GM did pay back its government loans, but the money used to do so came from… other government loans. And yes, the company is currently profitable, but that is in no small part because it received $45 billion in special tax benefits not typically available to companies emerging from bankruptcy. (I’d venture to guess that even the hapless Solyndra might eke out a “profit” if given tens of billions in loans and a $45 billion write off.) The lesson for America from GM and the administration is that it’s OK if a company doesn’t pay taxes so long as its union members get paid.

As we look forward to an exciting run up to the November election, the question is, how is it that a President seeking a second four year term isn’t responsible for the economy 3 ½ years after taking office, but somehow is supposed to be given credit for killing bin Laden a year earlier? Has the Presidency been reduced to a cafeteria plan where the man sitting in the Oval Office gets to pick and choose the issues for which he wants to be held responsible? Does the fact that he takes credit for something mean that we have to agree with his assessment? What about the things he demurs to take credit for? Are we forced to blame them on President Bush or can we pick any scapegoat?

Harry Truman famously had a sign that sat at the edge of his desk in the Oval Office that read “The Buck Stops Here”, in reference to which he once told Naval War College audience: “The President–whoever he is–has to decide. He can’t pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That’s his job.” I’m not sure what kind of a sign is sitting on Barack Obama’s desk, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it weren’t similar to that contemptuous sign you find posted on desks and doors of bureaucrats all across the country: “A lack of planning on your part doesn’t constitute an emergency on my part.” Only in President Obama’s case it reads: “A lack of economic opportunity on your part doesn’t constitute failure on my part.”

Bill Whittle over at Pajamas Media had a great piece in his Afterburner segment this week. Calling statistician William M. Briggs’ “The love of theory is the root of all evil” “The Best Sentence Ever”, Whittle discusses how the love of the theory of Communism caused the deaths of well over 100,000 million people during the 20th century. The crux of his piece is that liberals, living in their world of theory and planning have no clue how the world actually works.

Just such liberal fatuousness was on display in Saturday’s New York Times. The paper ran a 3,800 piece bemoaning the fact that Apple Computer, the most valuable company in the world was short changing California (and the United States) on taxes. Somehow, the company, which employs over 20,000 people in the state is not doing its fair share. According to the Times, Apple, which is headquartered in Cupertino, California, could earn up to $46 billion this year worldwide and California is getting bilked. The Times states that Apple utilizes offices as close as Nevada and as far away as Luxemburg to shield itself from California and US taxes.

While the Times explicitly states that Apple is not responsible for California’s budget problems, in a piece Mark Antony would be proud of, it helpfully points out: Apple serves as a window on how technology giants have taken advantage of tax codes written for an industrial age and ill suited to today’s digital economy. And if the subtlety makes the point too opaque, the Gray Lady makes it clear: The growing digital economy presents a conundrum for lawmakers overseeing corporate taxation: although technology is now one of the nation’s largest and most valued industries, many tech companies are among the least taxed…

The message is clear. The fact that California is an economic basket case is Apple’s fault, (along with other high tech companies). It couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that California’s budget grew by 40% from 2000 to 2010 while the population grew by a mere 13%. It couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that the government has been chasing companies and jobs out of the state for decades with their regulatory straightjacket. It couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that state employees, most supported by unions, earn an average salary of $68,000 (vs. a state average salary of $54,000) and total compensation in excess of $105,000. No, the problem is that Apple is legally taking advantage of the tax code to reduce the amount of money it pours down the bottomless pit known as Sacramento. That should be obvious to anyone.

The Times suggests that if Apple were not using these “tactics” its federal taxes would have been $2.4 billion higher in 2011. Assuming that Apple does half of its US work in California, that figure suggests that Apple would have paid approximately $300 million dollars more in California taxes than it actually did. Obviously that would have fixed the state’s $25 billion shortfall.

To put this in perspective it might be helpful to examine what Apple actually does in California. It employs over 20,000 people in the Golden State, with an average salary of $70,000. Their $1.5 billion in wages contribute $132 million directly to the state’s coffers via income taxes. According to Apple, for every one employee in the United States, it creates or supports 11 jobs outside the company via suppliers, partners, service providers etc. Taking Apple’s metric and applying it to those 20,000 employees would give you an additional 220,000 California jobs. Given that the average salary in California is $54,000, those 220,000 employees doing the jobs created or supported by Apple generate an additional $12 billion in salary which would generate another $1.05 billion in state income taxes. Then of course all of those employees likely spent most of that $13 billion wage income in California, which in turn generated much income and more taxes.

Not to be forgotten are the shareholders such as California’s many shareholders, pensioners and mutual fund holders who own shares of Apple stock. The country’s largest pension fund, CalPERS, owns 2.8 Apple shares and provides benefits to more than 1.6 million California employees and retirees. Because the company has done such a good job of husbanding its resources, its stock has quadrupled in three years, generating almost half a trillion dollars in wealth. No doubt many of those investors and pensioners have enjoyed the capital gains Apple has provided, which are of course taxed as ordinary income at 9.3%. Not only did those capital gains generate tens of millions of dollars to state coffers, they no doubt generated revenue at the local coffee shops, grocery stores and movie theaters as well.

The Times provides a perfect example of Whittle’s point. California is a fiscal basket case and the solution is fairly straightforward: Change the tax code to force companies like Apple to pony up hundreds of millions or billions more in taxes. As liberals often do, they sit in their little cubbyholes and play with their calculators. “We can raise taxes or plug that loophole and the money will just pour in”. They rarely look at how the world really works. Certainly California and Congressional legislators could revise the tax code to make it more difficult for companies like Apple to reduce their tax burden. But would it generate a tax windfall? A balanced California budget? Not likely. What’s more likely is that Apple would start looking to reduce its California footprint and begin to open offices and actually employ people outside the state and the country, imperiling the real impact the company has on the state.

Despite decades of crystal clear proof that they simply don’t work, liberals maintain their devotion to the theories of high taxes, centralization and state control like members of the People’s Temple following every Jim Jones dictum as if it were gospel, regardless of its rather negative consequences. The only problem is, they not only want to drink the Kool-aid themselves, they want to force us to drink it as well. As a good libertarian I’m happy to let anyone put anything in their bodies they choose, but I’d just rather not drink the cyanide myself.

In 1990 I knew everything I needed to know about Rush Limbaugh. He was a racist. He was sexist. He was an arrogant, rich SOB who didn’t care about the poor. He was a fool who knew nothing about how the world worked. How did I know these things despite never once having listened to his program? Via the media of course. Despite having a Bachelor’s in Political Science, I paid very little attention to actual politics. As a grad student I paid cursory attention to the news and didn’t much venture beyond what I saw on ABC news.

One day while arguing about Limbaugh something of an epiphany was forced on me by my roommate. He simply asked, “Have you ever actually listened to him?” As I stammered a bit I had to admit that I had not. It dawned on me that I was speaking quite authoritatively about someone I knew so little about… Hence the epiphany. Not about the nature of Limbaugh, but rather about the notion of taking what media says about someone or something as gospel. Today I take virtually everything I hear or read with a grain of salt. When possible I compare what I’ve heard with what I know firsthand. When that’s not possible I make sure that I look to sources I trust for corroboration.

As for Limbaugh, I started listening to him and it took a while for him to grow on me. At first blush he’s rather bombastic and just a wee bit arrogant. After a while however it became clear that at the core, he is, as he puts it “Right, 99.7% of the time”. One might not always appreciate his particular brand of commentary, but, far more often than not he is spot on in terms of the point he is making.

To this day, despite having the most popular and profitable radio program in the United States, Limbaugh remains a polarizing figure. He is a convenient lightning rod for the left as they seek to mischaracterize the conservative message he promotes. And they have done a great job of disparaging conservatives. From a sexist Rush Limbaugh to the Tea Party racists to Paul Ryan seeking to throw Grandma off a cliff, the left in general and the media in particular have done a spectacular job of misrepresenting conservatives to those who are like I was twenty years ago, too busy or lazy to look at the facts.

As such I’d like to provide a little reality to the way conservatives are characterized.

Myth: Conservatives hate government and want to get rid of it.
Reality: Conservatives know you need government, just not big government. They believe that government should be small and should do only those things for which it is Constitutionally empowered. Conservatives believe that citizens, either individually, as part of a family or a community or even as owners of corporations can make better decisions than government can. This does not suggest that conservatives believe that everything works perfectly without government. They simply believe that government is a poor vehicle with which to address most problems.

Myth: Conservatives are racists.
Reality: Conservatives focus on the rule of law and individual responsibility. Conservatives generally oppose affirmative action programs not because they hate minorities, but rather they believe in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. that Americans should “Not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Conservatives don’t believe that government contracts or school admissions should be forced to reflect the specific demographic makeup of the United States any more than the NBA or NHL should be.

Myth: Conservatives don’t care about the poor.
Reality: Conservatives care greatly about the poor and needy, they just don’t think government is the solution to the myriad problems that the poor face. Indeed, in his 2007 book “Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism” Arthur C. Brooks shows that conservatives, or people who disagree with this statement, “The government has a basic responsibility to take care of the people who can’t take care of themselves,” are 27 percent more likely to give to charity than liberals. Conservatives don’t hate the poor, they simply don’t believe that failed government redistribution programs are the way to lift people out of poverty.
They believe that communities and churches and private organizations would do a far better job.

Myth: Conservatives love big business.
Reality: Conservatives certainly love business because they recognize that America’s capitalist system has generated more wealth and improved the condition of man more than any other economic system in the history of the world. However, conservatives are actually frequently at odds with big business because of the cozy relationships big, established businesses often nurture with politicians and bureaucrats to the disadvantage of their smaller competitors. Conservatives would rather see big companies go bankrupt so that their assets can be rationalized rather than having the government support them and distort the markets. Failure and reinvention are, after all, at the core of economic success.

Myth: Conservatives want to destroy education in the United States.
Reality: Conservatives want their children and grandchildren and friends’ children educated as much as anyone. Conservatives simply don’t want the government running the education industrial complex. They look at the skyrocketing costs, unaccountable bureaucracies and abysmal performance records in the country’s public schools and believe a free market provides a far better opportunity for students to get a good education.

There are of course many other myths the left has successfully propagated about conservatives that have manifested themselves into our political landscape. That’s a problem for conservatives in general and in particular for the kinda / sort of conservative Mittens Romney. The economic foundation of the United States is not going to be saved by simply putting Barack Obama in the unemployment line, although that is certainly a necessary first step…

Rolling back the government and unleashing the economic might of the United States is going to take a conservative Congress sufficiently motivated to make the hard choices and be willing to bear the arrows of a cornered left. And this is where the tire hits the road. Conservatives have to stop allowing the left to define what conservatism means. Rush does a great job of energizing the base, but the reality is not everyone is lucky enough to get pushed into an epiphany as I was. Not everyone will be on board with everything in the conservative agenda, but 90% agreement is better than 10%… at least then we’d still have a country to talk about.

Conservatives must make crystal clear the choices Americans face. It’s not between mending Medicare and killing Grandma. It’s not between closing the Department of Education and illiterate children. It’s not between cutting taxes and starving the homeless. It’s between the Republic and failure. Conservatives need to take a page from the dairy farmers with their Got Milk moustaches and tee shirts. Find an engaging and compelling meme to highlight the conservative message and invite Americans to understand what it means. If you get people talking about the real issues then the possibility exists to bring them over from the dark side. I wonder how James Earl Jones would look in a “got conservative” tee shirt…

Over the course of the last ten years millions of brave men and women have served in the United States military. Those people, those fathers, mothers, sons and daughters deserve every ounce of respect that Americans of all stripes have.

It says a lot about both the country and these individuals that they still see something in the United States worth defending and that they were willing to sign on the dotted line to do so.

Unfortunately, that is simply not enough. Not that those brave men and women aren’t giving enough, but rather, the great sacrifice they have been and are making today is simply not sufficient to save the United States.

The United States is far more than a military power. In reality, military power is but a small part of what makes America great and a leader in the world. People around the planet have been flocking to watch Hollywood movies for decades. They’ve also been sending the best and the brightest of their progeny to study at our universities. During the Cold War it was Levis and Pepsi that Soviet citizens were clamoring for. According to Interbrand, ten of the ten most valuable consumer brands in the world are American, including names like Coke, Disney, McDonalds and Google. None of these things were accomplished with a barrel of a gun. From Star Wars to Big Macs to our private and public universities, people around the world see the United States as a place where seemingly everything is possible, where great ideas come from and where anyone can find success. Little of that is the result of American military intervention. It’s the result of accomplishments and achievements Americans have forged throughout the nation’s history… although winning two world wars certainly didn’t hurt.

The bottom line is, the United States’ military is strong because America is strong. Not the other way around. And what has made America strong is her people, the individual freedom and liberty they have enjoyed since June 21, 1788 and the economic strength that freedom has created.

Unfortunately the liberty and economic strength that underlie two centuries of success are under assault today like they have never been before. As much as I dislike Barack Obama, the blame is not all his. He may be the worst president this country has ever had, but the problem that is undermining the foundation of American greatness has been going on for seven decades. No, the majority of the blame does not fall on the shoulders of Barack Obama, or even the collective presidents of the last 70 years… The fault for the situation we find ourselves in is the fault of the American people.

A free people get the government they deserve and we are to blame for what Barack Hussein Obama has wrought as well as what George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and their predecessors did. Government is a dangerous weapon in the hands of mere mortals with their natural failings of greed, vanity, arrogance and avarice among others. Our Constitution was specifically designed to temper the worst inclinations of men and to limit the scope to which a citizen’s life might be impacted by government action. Staggered terms, a Senate appointed by state legislatures, an independent judiciary a bill of rights. Everything in our Constitution was written to give citizens the greatest degree of liberty possible.

None of that matters when the government simply decides it wants more power and the people do nothing to stop it, or as in the case of the 17th Amendment, assist in the takeover. A government of men can be expected to try and expand its power and reach and James Madison’s Constitution and George Mason’s Bill of Rights were intended to stop such expansion.

Today however both might as well have been written on an Etch-a-Sketch. How does this happen? Simple. Two symbiotic developments resulted in the situation we find ourselves in today. The first is the division of labor. When Cyrus McCormick freed mankind from the yoke of the farm he unleashed a parabolic curve of innovation such as the world had never seen. The specialization wrought an increase in the standard of living that was exponentially more powerful than anything that had come before. Simultaneously Americans began to enjoy something that few people in the world had ever enjoyed and no people had had on that scale: leisure time.

The division of labor meant that while citizens were able to focus on their jobs stamping engine blocks, editing books, testing scientific theories or flipping burgers, everything else was magically available to them at far less than it would cost them to produce or procure on their own. As their lives became more silo like, they began to understand less and less about things with which they had little contact. For a while they relied on family, friends and community organizations to help fill in the gaps. Then government stepped in and decreed that it was their job to tell citizens what was good and what was bad and what needed to be done, when, and by who. Government is, after all, there to help… isn’t it?

Then of course there is the money. Government largesse becomes a powerful weapon when combined with citizen’s ignorance. As government started providing more information and benefits it started issuing more and more regulations. Today we have the situation where the government seeks to control virtually every aspect of a citizen’s life. Indeed, half the population pays no income taxes, one third of the population relies on the government for most if not all of their income while the entire population is burdened with regulations around every corner. This regulation is particularly onerous to entrepreneurs and businessmen, the backbone of American progress.

Today, with individual liberty and capitalism under fire, the foundation of American greatness is withering away like the grains of sand through an hourglass. The question is, can the country be turned before the sand is fully drained? This is one battle that the men and women of the military cannot fight for us. This is a battle that will be fought in the voting booths across the country. But the real battle is going to go on long before November 6th. The question is, are you going to join the battle? How far are you willing to go to preserve the greatest nation in the history of the world? Politics is rarely a pretty thing and sometimes it causes real pain when you disagree with people close to you. Such is life. Would you rather keep the peace with your brother in law or friend at the cost of watching everything you hold dear slip away, or do you want to take a chance and try and change someone’s mind? It may not work. You might end up talking to yourself or having someone yelling at you. The battle between now and November 6th is not a hot war like what is going on in Afghanistan, but it no less important.

The pending nomination of Mitt Romney demonstrates that conservatives cannot depend on the GOP to light a fire under the American people about the dangers of the leftist agenda and profligate spending. The danger posed by your mother in law or your best friend are nothing compared to the Taliban or Al Qaeda and the other real dangers our men and women in uniform face every day. How much are you willing to do to make sure that their sacrifice is not in vain? Are you willing to do what it takes to help send the Democrats home? Are you willing to do what it takes to help put the United States back on track to greatness and prosperity? Pick up the phone, buy your buddy a beer. Start a conversation. Have a dinner party. Post something on Facebook. At some point someone has to do it. If not you, who? If not now, when? How much is your country really worth? How much are you willing to do for her? Are you going to sit back and watch as the sands of liberty and prosperity pass or is a free Republic worth fighting for? Twenty years from now when someone asks you what were you doing during the most important election of your lifetime, what do you want to be able to say? Do the things today that you will be proud to speak of tomorrow… make a difference, help save your country.

This past week the Supreme Court heard arguments for and against ObamaCare. The decision, expected to be handed down in June may very well be the single most important case in the history of the United States.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, the perennial swing vote on the court pinpointed the argument on Tuesday:

Here the government is saying that the federal government has a duty to tell the individual citizen that it must act, and that is different from what we have in previous cases, and that changes the relationship of the federal government to the individual in a very fundamental way.

He is making the observation that if ObamaCare stands, the federal government can not only tell you what you are prohibited from doing, but at the same time it can tell you what you must do.

Donald Verrilli, the administration’s attorney, suggests that the reason the government can regulate the healthcare market is that that everyone participates in it at some point.

Justice Scalia points out that everyone participates in the food market and therefore the government could use that rationale to force everyone to buy broccoli.

Verrilli’s retort: Though the two markets do share that one trait, they remain distinctly different. The healthcare market, he said, contains participation that is “often unpredictable and often involuntary.” The food market is not that.

Which in turn caused Justice Alito to ask about burial insurance, the cause of which is often unpredictable and almost always involuntary.

You can see where this is going. This gets us to the fundamental question about liberalism in general. When will enough regulation be enough? Will there ever come a point where liberals believe that there is simply enough government regulation in place and that they should stop making new laws? Is there a point where citizens are going to be allowed to exercise individual responsibility to the point that they are responsible for their own lives? From the federal government all the way down to local towns and counties, what one describes as freedom in America is rapidly shrinking.

The thing that liberals never seem to get is that the unknown factor in their plans for universal perfection (read equal outcomes) is the fact that it includes humans. There is nothing that humans have ever been involved in that is perfect, that is 100% successful or 100% safe. Yet liberals continue to push the envelope. And it’s not just about safety… it’s gotten to the point that New York City’s Department of Education believes it’s the government’s job to save people from getting their feelings hurt so they’ve put out a list of 50 topics that should not be used in tests because they might offend various people. Dinosaurs are on the list, presumably because it would offend people who don’t believe in evolution. Computers in the home cannot be mentioned (because not all kids will have computers in their homes) but mentioning a computer in a school environment is allowed.

Is there some point of minutia that is beyond the reach of liberals? John Stossel did a special recently called “Illegal Everything” about regulation and featured children from around the country being stopped from selling lemonade. In one case, in Midway, GA, one of the little girls’ father went to city hall to find out what law the girls had broken. No one knew, but the Chief of Police was clear about why they had to be stopped: We were not aware of how the lemonade was made, who made the lemonade, or what the lemonade was made with.

In the spirit of the times, I would like to suggest a new regulation. All men should be required to get a federal dating permit in order to strike up a conversation with a women in a bar or at the supermarket. Certainly some men lie about all sorts of things in order to get a woman into bed. From their jobs (or lack thereof) their salaries, their previous relationships, their education and even their marital status. Women across the country would be saved from ever getting their hearts broken or their purity despoiled. Licenses would be $25 per year and would have to be shown within the first 5 minutes of any intended coupling. The woman could scan the license with her smartphone and immediately know everything about her would be suitor.

Such as system would open a Pandora’s box of issues. What happens when a man changes jobs? How long does he have to update his license? What happens if he gets a raise? A cut in pay? Who decides if a previous relationship ended amicably, the man or the ex? Does she have the right or obligation to comment on the issuance of his license? How would a government computer weigh an acceptable honesty score? Does lying to your girlfriend about how beautiful your last girlfriend was generate enough positive points to outweigh the truth you told her about how bad her cooking is? Is there even a remote possibility that this could somehow make dating a better experience?

This may sound farfetched, but that’s what happens when government gets involved in practically anything. Education. Healthcare. Housing…

At the end of the day the United States, like every other society throughout history is guaranteed to be imperfect by the fact that it is made up of imperfect humans. Liberals make the mistake that collective decision making and rule making can move the nation farther down the road to perfection. It can’t and it won’t. The strange thing is, the more regulations they foist on the population, the more people become law breakers, inadvertent and otherwise. With over 100,000 federal regulations and literally millions of state and local ordinances it’s virtually impossible that individuals can go through any day without breaking some laws. With so many regulations, virtually everything is illegal, and it’s simply the whim of the regulators, politicians and police that decides who gets prosecuted and for what.

ObamaCare is the single most important court case in a century for one simple reason. It presents the American people with the clearest choice between freedom and statism since the calamitous 1942 decision in Wickard v. Filburn.

If the Supreme Court throws out the individual mandate and the rest of ObamaCare, perhaps citizens will finally feel like they have a fighting chance in taking on the borg that government has become and begin the process of rolling back the overreach that permeates every area of our lives.

On the other hand, if the Court upholds ObamaCare then it is the swan song of freedom as you know it. The United States will not collapse the next day or the next week or even within the next few years. It will however happen. Power corrupts absolutely and absolute power corrupts even more… A government bestowed with carte blanche will see no reason to ever curb its own power, and eventually it will take over everything. Lemonade anyone?

How many people marry the first person they ever kiss or date or even have sex with? Not that many. The average age an American loses their virginity is 17 while the average age they get married is 27. Nonetheless, despite a decade in the dating pool, experiencing everything from one night stands to years of living with someone, when people finally take the plunge, half of all marriages end up in divorce.

There are lots of things that one might take from that observation, but the thing that is most compelling is that despite their best efforts, people are not perfect. They make mistakes. After spending the first 10 years of their adult lives trying to get it right for what is arguably the most important decision of their lives, half the population still gets it wrong and asks for a “do over”. Despite all efforts to make a good decision, half the time we get it wrong. And that’s with everyone involved seeking a common goal!

So the question is: If, with everyone involved seeking to do what’s in their and their partner’s best interests, we get it wrong half the time, how often does government, with its myriad players involved, many promoting conflicting, even mutually exclusive positions, get things wrong? No doubt far more often that individuals earnestly seeking a lifetime of happiness.

Unfortunately with government, unlike marriage, rarely, even in the face of abject failure, does a law or regulation get thrown out. Once a law is on the books, they almost never come off regardless of their cost or efficacy. Of course if it were only a few laws there wouldn’t be much of a problem. It’s not a few. In terms of actual federal laws, today there are somewhere in excess of 20,000 on the books. That is nothing when compared with the regulations those laws have spawned.

The Code of Federal Regulations is the list of all of the regulations of the United States – which are based on the bills passed by Congress and signed into law by the President. Today the Code contains over 150,000 pages of regulations. And those regulations are growing fast. In 1970, 183 years after the Constitution was ratified, the Code contained 53,000 pages. Today, a mere 40 years later we’ve actually added 100,000 more. And the pace is actually increasing and becoming more onerous.

If these regulations had little impact on our lives it wouldn’t matter if there were millions of them. Unfortunately their impact is anything but little. Federal regulations alone (and there are lots more laws at the local level) cost Americans over $1 trillion per year, or approximately 7% of our GDP and more than we actually pay in income taxes. And those are just the direct impact costs. Imagine how many companies are never started, how many would be entrepreneurs settle for secure government jobs, or how many companies fail because of the phalanx of federal regulations? No doubt the number is huge.

This leviathan of government regulation is made all the more worse because it has spawned an army of millions of federal government employees and lobbyists, none of whom wants to put themselves out of work. The intractable problem of government growth and increasing regulation will not solve itself. It’s going to take brute Constitutional force.

A Constitutional Amendment should be passed that states that all federal laws have an implicit sunset provision of 10 years unless it passes each house of Congress by at least 60%. It would also stipulate that all federal regulations would sunset after 10 years, regardless of the margin of passage of the underlying law. The effect of this Amendment would be a greatly diminished the number of zombie like federal regulations that never die, regardless of their cost, efficacy or unintended consequences. Each sub 60% law would have to be re-authorized each decade.

The most obvious impact of this change would be that politicians and bureaucrats would no longer be able to spin yarns about milk and honey without any accountability. At the time of reconsideration, each sub 60% bill (or every regulation) would have a decade’s worth of hard data to analyze, making it far more difficult to hoodwink the public with rosy scenarios that have no basis in reality. The beauty of this proposal is that it would force legislators and regulators to defend a law’s actual results rather than opine on its promised virtues. Given that most government programs cost more than projected, rarely work as promised, and often have significant unintended consequences, a decade should be a long enough time to inflict any law or regulation on the country and her citizens.

This proposed Amendment would apply to all existing laws and regulations, giving each 10 years from the day of ratification before it expired. The result of this would be immediate and twofold: It would dramatically slow the growth of government and regulations while simultaneously beginning to make government more efficient. By forcing politicians and bureaucrats to focus on defending their existing laws and regulations (AKA power) it would immediately diminish their incentive to create new programs. At the same time, given that politicians and bureaucrats would have to argue against a law’s or a regulation’s actual consequences rather than it’s promised benefits, it would force them to focus their attention on producing demonstratively positive results rather than just spending more money or accumulating more power.

In the Omega Glory episode of Star Trek Captain Kirk and company come upon a planet where the inhabitants are speaking the garbled versions of the words of the Pledge of Allegiance. The people don’t know the actual words or even what they mean but do so because that was what has survived through the generations. In a similar way, when laws and regulations (and the bureaucracy they spawn) calcify and become completely detached from the original goal for which they were established, they cease to be proper tools of government and instead become simply another instrument of government power and coercion. By putting in place a mechanism for objectively evaluating the success or failure of government actions in relation to the problems they were intended to address, this Amendment would both demand real accountability on the part of government as well as give citizens a reason to remain engaged in its workings.

I can think of no better mechanism for putting Thomas Jefferson’s words into action:

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

I’ve just sat through the 17 minute homage to Barack Obama narrated by Tom Hanks. How is it possible that Barack Obama’s approval rating is even close to 50%? Why isn’t it 100%? According to Hanks, Barack Obama is the real deal. Fearless. Intrepid. Selfless. And most of all: Successful. Like Lincoln before him, the events of the day forced his hand and the resulting display of courage and skill showed the greatness of the man.

Like most of what Hollywood creates, this movie is fiction, utterly devoid of a real connection to the real world. In reality, Barack Obama is easily one of, if not the worst President in American history. If he were a contestant on Jeopardy he would have a five digit negative score.

The crime in Hollywood however is not being inaccurate, it’s being boring. If I were writing a script for our hero President it might include a bit more action.

Here’s an outline of my script:

It’s a cold November when the economy is in turmoil, and Americans are trudging to the polls in the final climax of a battle between the proxy for the hated oil industry President and the beloved man of the people. Finally night fell and victory is his. The despot from the state of Texas who led the country into two wars and lined the pockets of his Big Oil friends had been vanquished – along with is would be successor. America now had a leader worthy of respect where Americans could once again be proud to say they’re American. This new President is going to save the planet from turning into a fireball, make sure fairness and equity reign supreme and make America respected again around the world. He’s going to stop the bloodletting, both fiscal and actual and like Lincoln before him, he’s going to save America. Americans weep in the street at their good fortune.

Our Protagonist in Chief rolls up his sleeves and gets to work. The first thing he does is pass a three quarter of a trillion dollar stimulus bill that will rebuild the infrastructure of America, bridges, roads, railroads… the literal foundation of the country. More importantly, it’s the working people that count and his bill is going to put Americans back to work and keep the unemployment rate from even approaching 8%, 1% lower than it would be without his brilliant plan. At the 11th hour, after a knock down drag out fight our hero signs the legislation into law and the economy is saved. The country lets out a collective sigh of relief. That was close.

Next our hero turns his attention to saving the tens of millions of Americans who are at risk of dying in the street because of the healthcare system leaves them to suffer at the hands of the greedy pharmaceutical companies. A minor bump in the road to salvation is experienced when the lionhearted Ted Kennedy passes away and is replaced by the milquetoast Scott Brown. No problem. After much hand-wringing our hero saves the day as he maneuvers around Brown and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is passed. Americans from coast to coast are now finally safe from medical tyranny. Bells are ringing in the street as people gather in public places to give thanks for their having elected such a brilliant tactician.

Our bold young hero is recharged and poised to take on the scourge of red ink that is bedeviling the government and constraining its ability to serve its citizens. But before he can implement his secret plan to return to fiscal rationality the nation is confronted with the news that things are far worse than he might have ever imagined. This calls for something audacious. Deficits be damned! Our hero throws caution to the wind and has his minions write three budgets in a row that bust the bank. He doesn’t want to, but in the face of such great economic danger, and despite the potential danger to his legacy, he knows he must.

Fast forward in my movie to three years later and all is right in the world. Our hero has vanquished all evils and after playing a few rounds of golf per week is rested and ready to take on all comers. He has delivered the nation from the brink of Armageddon and to the land of milk and honey.

As we see the silhouette of our intrepid hero against the setting sun we understand that he is anxiously awaiting the next day to arrive so that he can once again share his greatness with America and all of humanity. If only the citizens would repeal the 22nd Amendment America he could spend his life making their lives better.

Unfortunately for actual citizens, my story too is fiction. Three years after our hero takes office, virtually everything he has touched has turned to a disaster. His $787 billion stimulus plan not only did not keep inflation from getting to the 8.8% he warned of, but it bumped up against 9.9%, a full two points higher than what his plan was supposed to produce. Not only that, it created almost no jobs and those that did were ridiculously expensive.

Almost exactly two years after his ObamaCare mandate passed the CBO now suggests that rather than costing a mere $938 billion over 10 years as the President suggested, in reality it will cost at least $1.4 trillion, and it has already increased costs for private insurance and it’s not even fully implemented yet.

Finally, our savior’s 2013 budget. Rather than saving $3.2 trillion over 10 years is in actually going to increase them by $3.5 trillion over the decade.

In reality, as the movie closes it is not our hero that we see, but rather the crumbling silhouette of once great nation growing faint against a setting sun, not unlike Athens’s Parthenon or Rome’s Coliseum that suggests a long gone past glory.

If Americans want to watch fiction about a mere mortal who overcomes great adversity to become a demigod I might suggest Braveheart or Gladiator rather than this paean to Barack Obama. At least in that case it’s a pretty straightforward transaction where you spend a few bucks for a couple of hours of good entertainment. In the case of this Obama fiction you are not only being asked to sacrifice 17 minutes of your life, but when it’s over you’re being asked (or told) to sacrifice your liberty and property too. If nothing else it certainly brings a tear to one’s eye…

As I’ve written before, I was a very uninformed young person for the first half of my life. I remember watching a movie in the Florida State student union about how Campbell’s Soup treated workers unfairly. I quickly decided to start my own boycott. Inexplicably, they somehow survived my boycott. I once went to the Tallahassee airport to try and meet Gary Hart before his presidential campaign imploded and I also sat on the stage when Jessie Jackson gave a speech during his 1984 race for the White House. As a Political Science undergraduate one of my professors, a self described Bolshevik, explained the great successes of the Soviet Union thus: Their economic and political system had to be superior to ours, otherwise how could they produce the weapon systems we were so scared of? Made sense to me… There were probably numerous other episodes but my brain has apparently, thankfully, forgotten most of them.

The reason I mention this is because we all did things during our college years that we might want to forget. Luckily for me, none of my nonsense was captured on video. Not so lucky for our President. The video of him encouraging a gathering of Harvard students to embrace the man and the message of the late leftist Dr. Derrick Bell has been making the rounds of the Internet. Although Democrats (and most of the media) suggest this is nothing more than a student showing support for the first black tenured professor at Harvard Law School, I’m fairly sure the President would just as soon not have to deal with the issue during an election campaign.

Luckily Americans recognize that by the time most of us reach middle age, the explorations, experimentations, the ill advised exhortations have been tempered by time and real world experience. Most of course does not mean all, and while one might be inclined to offer a pass to the President for what said in college two decades ago, the same cannot be said for his equally ill advised words two weeks ago.

Of course I’m not talking about Professor Bell. I’m talking about President Obama’s “Energy Speech” delivered last month. Aside from the fact that he makes a number of factual errors, the biggest problem is that the President doesn’t seem to learn from actual experience.

The President seems determined to run the United States off an economic cliff for the sake of his belief in the scam known as “Green Energy”. Not only has he wasted billions of taxpayer’s money on boondoggles like Solyndra, the very expensive and nonworking Fisker-Karma and the rapidly shrinking National Renewable Energy Lab, but more importantly he has added, literally, $243 billion a year to what Americans pay for gasoline. (130 billion gallons a year X $1.86 – the increase in the price of gas since Obama took office) That’s more than 10 times what Americans spend on the NFL, Hollywood movies and in Starbucks annually! Of course there are other unseen costs Americans must bear as businesses have to wrap their increased energy and transportation costs into everything they offer, be it canned tomatoes or package delivery, but those are too numerous to discuss here.

The problem is not a lack of accessible energy as the President suggests, rather the problem is his laser like focus on the illusion of economically viable “renewable” or “sustainable” energy to the explicit detriment of the demonstrably viable and abundant energy sources that fueled the 20th Century. More concerning is that he maintains that focus in the face of the repeated failures of virtually every aspect of the Green Energy hoax:

From subsidized windfarms that are now being subsidized further to stop operating to General Motors halting production of its heavily subsidized Volt because no one wants to buy it to the $50 light bulb that won the Department of Energy’s prize for a “green” but affordable light bulb. Add to that the fact that Green jobs are largely an expensive mirage and you have the makings of what must be a parody of a plan to actually revive the economy. Then when you think about the closing of actual, functioning plants across the country due to increased regulation, and the quixotic support for foreign fossil fuel exploration, it seems like more than just a parody, it’s like he’s mocking the American people.

But, no, really, his intentions are good… Well, even if they were, one must remember Einstein’s definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I don’t think the President is insane, which leads me to the conclusion that he’s doing the same thing over and over again expecting the same results. He believes so strongly that he is right about his green agenda that he simply refuses to believe that things will not turn his way eventually. He’s a modern day Walter Duranty, where billions of dollars are being wasted and millions of jobs are being destroyed yet somehow he doesn’t see it, or doesn’t care. Like Duranty’s reporting of the economic miracle that was the USSR while Stalin used an iron fist to inflict bloodshed and starvation across the Ukraine and other areas of the Soviet Union, President Obama’s words increasingly ring hollow. More and more often when Americans hear “We can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices” or “We’re focused on (oil) production” or “The only real solution to helping families at the pump in the medium and long term is clean energy. That’s how we’ll save families money” they recognize they are being lied to in a way that seems almost impossible to believe coming from a President.

Perhaps the President thinks the government’s education industrial complex has eradicated the critical thinking or skepticism gene from the average American so that they will simply believe something because it’s delivered by a man with a smile and an air of confidence. As much damage as government schools do, I don’t think they’ve succeeded in that yet.

At the end of the day most Americans are willing to look past the defiant words of a college student looking to make his mark on the world. I think they are less likely however to accord the same deference for equally nonsensical words uttered by someone old enough to have learned that the world does not actually operate like the ivory towers of academia, where theories and speeches and a lack of real world consequences rule the day. As much of a headache his words at Harvard might be causing for the President, his more current words are causing a much bigger one for the American people. This will take more than aspirin to fix…

From the moment that Barack Obama threw his hat into the ring for President, Democrats have been accusing those who disagree with him of being racists. They are of course being disingenuous, pernicious and at the end of the day, most importantly, wrong.

But what if they weren’t? Let’s say somehow the entire universe of conservatives was made up of racists… so what? Does it change the veracity of their stated disagreements with President Obama? If it were in fact the case that conservatives hate him because he is black does that mean that their well thought out, reasonable and clearly articulated reasons for opposing him are somehow less valid? No, of course it doesn’t.

This issue makes me think of hate crimes. I’ve never been a supporter of hate crime legislation. Not because I like crimes or hate, but because it’s the act that makes something a crime, not the real or imagined hate. If someone beats up someone else because of their race or sexual orientation or religion, they should be prosecuted for assault, period. Is a victim any less injured or dead because the perpetrator assaulted them for their money instead of their – fill in the blank characteristic? No, obviously not. That’s ridiculous. The criminal justice system should deal with the crime and not worry about trying to look into the soul of the criminal.

In the same way, politics should focus on people’s words and actions and not try and look into the souls of the various participants. Why? Because that is all we can really know about a person. As George Bush discovered with Vladimir Putin, it’s impossible to look into someone’s soul and know what is going on in there. Along those same lines, when Steve Jobs died I wrote that it was possible that he was selfish son of a bitch, but I’d never know. What I do know however is that his words and actions did a great deal of good for hundreds of millions of people around the world. It didn’t matter if Jobs thought PC users were mental dwarves when compared to the Mensa like intelligence demonstrated by those who use Macs. He opened up iTunes to everyone and changed the world of music. It’s what he did that changed the world not what was going on in his soul. But of course race plus politics is something altogether different.

Race has been an issue swirling around Barack Obama since he first declared his candidacy and then continued once he became President. There was the whole Jeremiah Wright deal and Obama’s spending two decades in his church but somehow inexplicably never hearing a single racist comment. There was his knee jerk reaction that the Cambridge police department “acted stupidly” without knowing the facts of the case. There was his attorney general dropping voter intimidation charges against the demonstrably guilty New Black Panther Party. And just last month the President revived African-Americans for Obama. Can one imagine the outrage if Mitt Romney created a Whites for Romney organization?

To the degree that race is an issue for President Obama, it’s either been because he is making it so or because his party is using it as a red herring to deflect criticism of their agenda. The most obvious example of the latter was during the ObamaCare debate when the Democrats famously accused protesters of using racial epithets and spitting on black congressmen. The late Andrew Breitbart did a good job of dispensing with those charges.

That brings us to the basic element of liberal politics. Their default position towards anyone who opposes Barack Obama and the Democratic Party’s socialist agenda is to accuse them of being racist and that is supposed to be the end of the conversation. In that kind of an environment a conservative simply cannot win – how do you disprove something for which the mere accusation itself is seemingly enough to prove guilt? You can’t. My suggestion therefore is to take a different tack altogether: Don’t try. Rather, I suggest playing the hypothetical card. Instead of trying to disprove the undisprovable, instead suggest: “Ok, let’s pretend I am what you have painted me to be, and let’s assume that’s not going to change… now let’s talk about the issues.”

Now of course many of the good and principled liberals will demure to discuss the issues because they feel it’s inappropriate to discuss politics with racists other than to demonstrate their own non-racist bona fides. In that case you might then suggest to them that if their leader can advocate sitting down and talking with people who want to wipe the United States off the face of the planet they might deign to talk with people who simply want to discuss things like the tax code, the EPA and healthcare.

Don’t hold your breath however. Apparently liberals / Democrats believe that if one is racist (or more accurately, is labeled racist by them) then you are simply not qualified to have a voice in the political arena and your issues need not be addressed. That’s quite a leap for a party whose Senate leader for a decade was a man who had been an Exalted Cyclops of the KKK and filibustered to block the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Conservatives need not acquiesce to the liberal’s attempt to stifle public discourse. By calling their bluff and taking the non sequitur of racism off the table, conservatives have the opportunity to expose the liberal agenda for what it is, nothing but a recipe for disaster of a cleptocratic nanny state. In doing so and by discussing the facts rather than letting Democrats malign the messengers of the messages they fear, perhaps we can once again allow the American people to focus on the real issues facing the country rather than parrying with shadows of a Democrat created illusion with no basis in reality.