Cross-posted at Unified Patriots

In 1884, members of the Republican party’s independent wing rejected their party’s presidential candidate, James G. Blaine, to support the Democratic party nominee, Grover Cleveland. Republican loyalists called the insurgents “Mugwumps,” an Algonquian word for “great man,” used in this context to deride the bolters’ claim to moral superiority. Most Mugwumps were college-educated business and professional men from New York or New England. During the 1884 campaign, they were often portrayed as “fence-sitters,” with part of their body on the side of the Democrats and the other on the side of the Republicans. (Their “mug” on one side of the fence, and their “wump” [comic mispronunciation of "rump"] on the other.)

Flash forward to 2012, and ask yourself if the same mindset is not still in place. Look at the list of early Mitt Romney supporters, and tell me you don’t see a big collection of Mugwumps. For the most part, these are the ones who had fear and loathing about the spontaneous Tea Party development. They don’t like the local GOP filling in the vacant PC slots and working toward the elimination of the reforms that have weakened the local GOP political machine. They have no problem with tearing apart a Republican opponent, but they themselves prefer to speak in lukewarm mushy sound bites responding to questions regarding what they’re going to do about an issue.

Here are some pearls of wisdom from Rush on this subject:

Why does the Republican establishment want back in power? Everybody in Washington wants to be in charge of the money. Everybody wants to run the committees and be the chairman. Everybody wants to be in charge of the budget. Everybody wants to have power over it. Do not discount, ever, the money. Folks, another thing not to fall for: Do not think that however wealthy somebody is, they run around thinking they have enough, because nobody ever thinks they have enough. They don’t think that we are at a point of peril. The idea that the national debt is now greater than the economy? No big deal.

They’ve been hearing all their lives how the national debt’s too high, the national debt’s gonna cripple the country, but it never has. While they are hearing all of this horrible stuff about the debt, the deficits, all the tax rates, they look around and they see people doing just fine. They’re living high on the hog, and the national debt’s not hurting anybody.

I’ll tell you what really woke me up to this (and nobody is more cynical than I am when it comes to Congress, including Will Rogers). I don’t know about you, but when I learned along with the rest of you, when I learned that Congress made it legal for themselves to use insider trading, that’s all I needed to know. When they specifically exempted themselves by statute from the insider trading laws — when Congress passed a law saying, “We can use insider trading,” they have a totally different perception of themselves than we do. When it comes to morality, when it comes to ethics, when it comes to why they’re there. When I heard that? You know, you live and learn. Lights still go off, red flags still get raised, but that told me a lot.

Let me explain at the outset what is happening here within the sacred hollows of the establishment, the ruling class. Their objective, since this campaign began, was to make sure a conservative nominee did not get the Republican nomination. That has been the number one objective of the Republican establishment inside the Beltway, the whole Northeastern corridor, to make sure — not to beat Obama, not come up with somebody that can beat Obama despite all this electability talk. The main objective of the establishment has been to see to it that once again a conservative does not get the nomination.

It is one thing to predict who will win the GOP nomination, and it is quite a different thing to make an endorsement. If Mitt Romney is the nominee spare me the “I told you so.” I will never endorse Mitt Romney nor most of his early endorsers. I will just shrug. This mindset reminds me of a Bible passage.

Rev. 3:15-16.

I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.

Cross-posted at Unified Patriots
In November 2011, Mia Love filed to run for Utah’s newly formed 4th Congressional District based on her demonstrated leadership on conservative principles. She credits her parents with providing the foundation for her ideals. After many years of living in the unstable, regime-torn socialist island country of Haiti, her parents immigrated legally to the United States with $10 in their pockets in hopes of achieving the American Dream.

Mia was born in Brooklyn, New York and eventually moved to Connecticut. Mia recalls both parents working hard to earn a living, her father at times taking on second jobs cleaning toilets to pay for school for their three children. On the day of Mia’s college orientation, her father said something to her that would become the ethos for her life:

Mia, your mother and I never took a handout. You will not be a burden to society. You will give back.

Mia graduated from the University of Hartford with a degree in fine arts. She found the Mormon faith. Then she found Jason Love. And then she found herself in Utah. Her political involvement began in 2002, when she heard talk about taking the phrase “Under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. At that time, Love taught her then 2-year-old daughter to recite the pledge with the reference to deity in it, so she would know it the way her mother had learned it in school. She was elected to the Saratoga Springs City Council in 2003 and has served as its mayor since 2009.

Mia’s leadership and principled decision making during the challenging times her city faced resulted in her election as Mayor in 2009 by an overwhelming majority. One of her first acts as mayor was to reduce the residential property tax. These acts were the basis for Saratoga Springs receiving the highest Standard & Poors municipal rating available to a city of its class, at a time when many cities were being downgraded.

Mayor Love is best known for her conservative positions on limited government, increased citizen liberties and limited restraints on business. She believes the best thing she can do as mayor is stay out of the way of business and out of the lives of citizens. She advocates a return to the personal responsibility and reduced government dependency engendered by her father.

She believes she is the candidate with the best shot to force Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson into retirement. In order to balance the budget while cutting taxes, Love said she would start by abolishing the Department of Education and the Department of Energy, delegating their responsibilities to the states. She would slash regulations and open up federal land to energy drilling.

Love, who became the first black female mayor in the state when she took office in 2009, would become Utah’s first minority to serve in Congress and the only black woman on the Republican side of the aisle. But she does not expect her race to be an issue in her campaign.

Here are a few quotes by Mia on this subject:

I was elected with 60 percent of the votes in this city because people care more about what is happening in their lives, what is happening in their back pockets, what is happening in their homes than they care about the color of someone’s skin.

Love said that, if she is elected, she would gladly join the Congressional Black Caucus.

Yes, yes. I would join the Congressional Black Caucus and try to take that thing apart from the inside out. It’s demagoguery. They sit there and ignite emotions, they ignite racism where there isn’t any. They use their positions to instill fear. ‘Hope and change’ has turned into fear and blame.

I have yet to meet a tea party member who wants to see me “hanging on a tree,” as U.S. Rep. Andre Carson of Indiana recently suggested. He says the tea party considers me a second-class citizen. In truth, as a black conservative woman in Utah, I have been welcomed into the arms of a freedom-loving movement. The tea party reflects the principles of freedom and prosperity black Americans have long fought to win.

The 4th District was created because Utah gained an extra seat as a result of the Census. There is no incumbent, but current Democratic Congressman Jim Matheson will be running in the 4th District. There are three Republicans with whom Mia will be competing for the Republican nomination: long-term State Senator Carl Wimmer, State Senator Stephen Sandstrom, and lawyer Jay Cobb.

The process in Utah is that there will be caucuses with Republican delegates and then a convention in the spring. If no candidate gets 60% of the delegate votes, there will be a primary between the top two.

Mia is pro-life, pro-Tea Party, pro-Israel, and pro-2nd Amendment. Mother, runner, shooter, Mayor, small government conservative who got into politics for the right reasons, unafraid to take on the powers that be all started from the words of her father.

Mia’s website is Love4Utah.com, she’s on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Mia she needs to raise funds pretty quickly to catch up with her competitors, to get her message out to Utah delegates, and to build the infrastructure for a primary race and general election. You can donate here.

I have seen in the past a lot of great black Republican candidates running for a US House seat from New York city, Chicago, and Los Angeles. They could not get enough votes to win. It’s from conservative districts in Oklahoma, South Carolina, and now Utah that we get winners. I am also impressed with children of parents from Cuba and Haiti who understand and appreciate the American Dream more than those who descended from those who were on the Mayflower. I am definitely supporting Mia B. Love.

Cross-posted at Unified Patriots
Jay Cost has written an excellent article at the Weekly Standard, Morning Jay: The Nomination Rules Are Rigged Against Grassroots Conservatives. I encourage you to read the entire article. The title may appear to be just another piece whining and groaning about results, but there is a different message in this one. The message is that conservatives are not active Precinct Committee members in the local Republican Party. The fix is not to write a blog complaining about the situation. The fix is to become a PC and have the power to elect the state committee members who can change the state Republican party rules in favor of the conservatives.
Here is an excerpt from the Jay Cost article.

The lefty do-gooders who spearheaded the reforms of the 1970s thought that they were saving the parties from the machine hacks, but in fact they threw out the baby with the bathwater. They effectively destroyed the party at the grassroots level, and handed the nominating power over to candidates, strategists, donors, the news media, and ill informed voters who dominate the primaries. The biggest losers in this scheme were the kinds of committed citizens who took the time to participate in local party affairs, and on the GOP side that inevitably meant the conservatives.

Here we get to the core flaw in selecting party nominees via primaries. I have written before that without competition between the political parties, we cannot really count on voters to make good decisions; it is the battle between the Democrats and Republicans that forces the electorate to focus on real problems and the partisan differences on how to solve them. Primaries are intra-party contests and thus do not offer that kind of clarification process. Hence, we have poorly informed voters backing a candidate because they like him or her more.

But wait, it gets worse!

Self-identified conservatives tend to be a majority of most primary electorates, so one would think that, even with the limits of primaries, you’d still get a quality conservative nominee. But that isn’t necessarily the case in a three-way race. That’s the final, huge problem with the primaries. They do not build consensus, which ultimately would require the assent of the conservative side of the GOP. Instead, they create a game similar to the show Survivor – “outwit, outplay, outlast.”

If you are a moderate Republican – e.g. Bob Dole or John McCain – you don’t need to win a majority of the conservative vote. You just need to do well enough among moderate Republicans so that you win more votes than your conservative opponents. Then, you simply wait for the media and the party establishment to pressure your conservative challengers into dropping out.

Personally, I believe a game similar to American Idol has been created for the primary process. If you are not too stoned to text message, then your American idol vote counts. The completely overboard openness in the primaries is just about the same.

I also believe there needs to be a distinction made between the general election and the primary election. The ill informed voter in the general election can participate because the political party primary process has done its due diligence to winnow down the choices that are on the ballot. There will always be an opportunity for mischief and mistakes. No process is ever perfect, but it was a better process when the committed citizens who made the time available to participate in local party had the leverage now removed by reforms. It’s not gone forever. Conservatives must fill the empty PC slots and undo the damage that has been done.

Cross-posted at Unified Patriots

Vaclav Havel, the dissident Czech playwright who helped bring down Communism in his home country and became a national hero during the Cold War, has died in his sleep aged 75.

An avowed peacenik whose heroes included rockers such as Frank Zappa and Lou Reed, he never quite shed his flower-child past and often signed his name with a small heart as a flourish.

Havel’s arrest in January 1989 at another street protest and his subsequent trial generated anger at home and abroad. Pressure for change was so strong that the communists released him again in May. That fall, communism began to collapse across Eastern Europe, and in November the Berlin Wall fell. Eight days later, communist police brutally broke up a demonstration by thousands of Prague students. It was the signal that Havel and his country had awaited. Within 48 hours, a broad new opposition movement was founded, and a day later, hundreds of thousands of Czechs and Slovaks took to the streets. In three heady weeks, communist rule was broken. Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones arrived just as the Soviet army was leaving. Posters in Prague proclaimed: ‘The tanks are rolling out – the Stones are rolling in.’

Now the other Vaclav, Vaclav Klaus, is a better conservative than Vaclav Havel. Many conservatives would just as soon punch a flower child than pay him any respect. I admire and respect Vaclav Havel because his body of work in words and deeds made for a better life for many people of the former Soviet Union. Below are a few quotes of Vaclav Havel including some things he had to say just nine days before his death.

December 9, 2011, the morning after Czech President Vaclav Klaus declined to comment on the post-election situation in Russia during his Russian counterpart’s visit to Prague, an appeal to Russian citizens and the country’s opposition movements by Vaclav Havel, the first post-communist Czech president, was published in the independent Russian newspaper Novaya gazeta.

There can be no talk of democracy as long as the leaders of the state insult the dignity of citizens, control the judiciary, the mass media and manipulate election results. The opposition should appeal to fellow citizens who through personal experience in the West have seen that democratic freedoms work, and call upon them to remember their roots and support the development of a civil society in their homeland

In an interview just two months ago, Havel rebuked Russia for invading Georgia two months earlier, and warned EU leaders against appeasing Moscow.

We should not turn a blind eye … It’s a big test for the West.

,
Havel also said he saw the global economic crisis as a warning not to abandon basic human values in the scramble to prosper.

It’s a warning against the idea that we understand the world, that we know how everything works.

What became his revolutionary motto which he said he always strove to live by:

Truth and love must prevail over lies and hatred

On Dec. 29, 1989, Havel was elected Czechoslovakia’s president by the country’s still-communist parliament. Three days later, he told the nation in a televised New Year’s address:

Out of gifted and sovereign people, the regime made us little screws in a monstrously big, rattling and stinking machine.

Early in 2008, Havel returned to his first love: the stage. He published a new play, ‘Leaving,’ about the struggles of a leader on his way out of office, and the work gained critical acclaim.

My return to the stage was not easy. It’s not a common thing for someone to be involved in theater, become a president, and then go back.

It’s interesting that I had an adventurous life, even though I am not an adventurer by nature. It was fate and history that caused my life to be adventurous rather than me as someone who seeks adventure.

Man is not an omipotent master of the universe, allowed to do with impunity whatever he thinks, or whatever suits him at the moment. The world we live in is made of an immensely complex and mysterious tissue about which we know very little and which we must treat with utmost humility.

Vaclav Havel appointed Frank Zappa as “Special Ambassador to the West on Trade, Culture and Tourism.” Zappa shared his ideas about increasing tourism to Czechoslovakia, and explained the concept of credit cards which were then an unknown quantity in this part of the world.

Frank Zappa was one of the gods of the Czech underground.

Vaclav met rock star Lou Reed in 1990.

Lou was the first to come to my office from the heaven of stars. No one so famous had come to Czechoslovakia before.

Havel had invited Michael Jackson to Prague Castle in 1996, because he was interested in the pop star as a “civilization phenomenon,” but found him “disappointing.”

Rather than discuss his own cultural significance, Jackson wanted to go to the third courtyard and say hello to the children.

On this Sunday I’m taking a little break from the 2012 campaign for conservative Republicans to rise up. A person who, while not a conservative, was one of liberty’s great heroes has died. I can take some time today to pay him some respect while I watch a video of one of his favorites by Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground.

In the online Wall Street Journal, David Malpass has written an excellent opinion piece, And the Crisis Winner Is? Government. I encourage you to read the entire article. The point he is making is Governments on both sides of the Atlantic are trying to use the crisis to grow rather than shrink. Below is an excerpt:

In February, President Obama will be able to impose another $1.2 trillion debt-limit increase using special voting rules forced through Congress last August to avoid a government shutdown. It should be clear by now that politicians will not voluntarily reduce government or government debt. The so-called debt limit is harmful because it threatens default and broad government shutdowns, both unacceptable, but doesn’t limit spending at all.

The debt limit should be replaced with a new debt ceiling that forces Washington to cut spending. When the debt-to-GDP ratio is above target, Washington should suffer escalating penalties on its power, benefits and spending authority. There should be no threat of debt default or government shutdown. Instead, Washington should face a benefits straitjacket that is so uncomfortable for the president, his senior executives and Congress that they work around the clock to enact spending cuts and asset sales to bring debt back below target. They should get a bonus if they get the job done and embarrassing, escalating penalties if they don’t.

Here are some possible penalties: 1% pay cut per month for the 10,000 highest-paid government employees with a prohibition on it being restored; suspension of limousines for assistant secretaries and higher; market-rate monthly fee for free government parking. During periods of excess debt, the president should have impoundment authority but also be required to write a monthly letter to Congress stating preferred spending cuts equal to 20% of the fiscal deficit.

I like his suggestions for penalties, but unfortunately, I don’t believe there are enough elected constitutional conservatives sent to DC to make it happen. We need to see a heavy ball and chain attached to congress critters as an incentive to cut spending. This also reminds me of something former lobbyist Jack Abramoff said.

Sure. There were Congressmen there – there were very few – such as Congressman Dana Rohrabacher from California, who didn’t play golf, had no interest in it, and whenever he and I would go to dinner, he would pay. He never really cared about raising money, that’s why he never really moved up in terms of the rankings, because it’s all based on the money you raise.

On Dec. 14th at 7PM the House passed the NDAA bill 283-186. Dec. 15th at 4PM the Senate passed the NDAA bill 86-13 to avert the crisis of a government shutdown. On Dec. 16th, the House passed the omnibus bill 296-121, and more Democrats than Republicans voted “Yes.”  Dana Rohrabacher and 48 of the “very few” Congressmen voted “no” to spending additional money the government does not have. The 49 Congressman are listed below.

AZ-1 Gosar, Paul
AZ-5 Schweikert, David
AZ-6 Flake, Jeff
CA-4 McClintock, Tom
CA-40 Royce, Edward
CA-46 Rohrabacher, Dana
CA-48 Campbell, John
CO-3 Tipton, Scott
CO-6 Coffman, Mike
FL-14 Mack, Connie
FL-15 Posey, Bill
GA-7 Woodall, Rob
GA-9 Graves, Tom
ID Crapo, Michael
ID Risch, James
ID-1 Labrador, Raúl
ID-2 Simpson, Michael
IL-8 Walsh, Joe
IL-15 Johnson, Timothy
IN-3 Stutzman, Marlin
IN-4 Rokita, Todd
IN-5 Burton, Dan
IN-6 Pence, Mike
IN-8 Bucshon, Larry
KS-1 Huelskamp, Tim
KY Paul, Rand
MD-1 Harris, Andy
MI-2 Huizenga, Bill
MI-3 Amash, Justin
MI-7 Walberg, Timothy
NJ-5 Garrett, Scott
NC-3 Jones, Walter
OK Coburn, Thomas
SC DeMint, Jim
SC-3 Duncan, Jeff
SC-4 Gowdy, Trey
SC-5 Mulvaney, Mick
TN-1 Roe, Phil
TN-2 Duncan, John
TN-4 DesJarlais, Scott
TX-26 Burgess, Michael
UT Lee, Mike
UT-3 Chaffetz, Jason
VA-4 Forbes, J.
VA-5 Hurt, Robert
VA-6 Goodlatte, Robert
VA-9 Griffith, H.
WI-8 Ribble, Reid
WY-0 Lummis, Cynthia

Notice that there are no GOP Leadership names on the list. If our nation was on the right track, our leaders’ names would be there.

Cross-posted at Unified Patriots

I’m driven to run for president… because I can’t stand the thought that we’re about ready to hand down the greatest nation that ever was to your generation less good, less competitive, saddled with debt, less hopeful than the country I got.

His tax reforms included $110 million in income-tax cuts, and would mandate a state-wide flat income-tax rate. Sales and food taxes were slashed too. The deal included tax credits aimed at attracting new business development, including mining.

He signed bills banning second-trimester abortions, reclassifying third-trimester abortions as a third-degree felony, and requiring abortion providers to explain the pain unborn children can experience during abortion. He signed a trigger law that would ban abortion outright if Roe is overturned. He opposes embryonic stem-cell research. And by establishing a state legal fund to defend these laws, he showed willingness to uphold state prerogatives.

He expanded the rights of gun-owners, abolishing some concealed-carry restrictions and allowing for more transport of firearms on roads. He signed a bill that would grant small-game hunting licenses to children under 12.

His administration routinely fought alongside business interests against the Interior Department and environmental groups to develop an energy economy.

One of the odder accomplishments of his administration was the reform of the state’s liquor laws. Before the reform, restaurants and bars had to comply with an arcane series of regulations that labeled them “private clubs” and required customers to pay extra fees to become members. He held dozens of meetings with business members and ecclesiastical authorities, hammering the message that this was a lost economic opportunity. Eventually he got even the most conservative stakeholders in civil society to give on the issue.

His state healthcare reform achieved more insurance coverage for residents without resorting to an individual mandate.

The majority whip in the state’s House of Representatives and perhaps the most stoutly conservative member of the state’s overwhelmingly right-leaning legislature, summing up his feelings on him, says:

I have an easy rule of thumb. If someone walks into the room and you cut $400 million in taxes and do school reform with him, you vote for him for president.

Some of you can name this candidate, and for those who aren’t sure – his name is Jon Huntsman. He is the most moderate candidate of the eight candidates. I want to make it clear that I support Rick Perry, and I will vote for Rick Perry in my state’s primary. I chose the most moderate candidate in the field to make a point. The point of this piece is to refute the notion that the 2012 GOP candidates are all weak and not up to the task of defeating Obama. It’s likely that Huntsman will drop out of the race after the New Hampshire primary. I believe that in the unlikely chance he wins the nomination he will be a better nominee than the 2008 GOP nominee, and he can defeat Obama to become the 45th U.S.President.

The Democrats are going to do more negative attacks than in any previous election. They will make stuff up, and try to destroy the nominee with false accusations. I’m not worried about you getting depressed and dispirited by the other side. What worries me are those Republicans who want you to believe that our nominee is too weak and Obama is too powerful. I don’t know if they think they are earning some respect from the mainstream media by picking the nits, but they are wrong to depress and discourage Republican voters. I will be disappointed if my choice does not win the nomination, but I will not be depressed and discouraged and sit out the 2012 election. It’s just too important for our nation that Obama must be voted out of office in 2012.

Cross-posted at Unified Patriots

You can read the entire transcript of this debate for the first hour here, and for the last half hour here. The portions I’ve noted in this post are, in my opinion, the times when a candidate had an “UP” moment or a “DOWN” moment. I understand there may be other portions of this entire transcript that are more important in your opinion. Included is the time when the remarks were made.

The first UP for Rick Perry and Down for Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann:

8:22 Scott Pelley: Governor Perry, why is Pakistan playing a double game, saying that it supports the United States one moment and then supporting terrorists who are killing American troops the next? What’s going on there?

8:23 Rick Perry: Listen, I– I think we’re havin’– an interesting conversation here, but the deeper one– that the speaker makes a reference to is the whole issue of foreign aid. And we need a president of the United States working with a Congress that sends a clear message to every country. It doesn’t make any difference whether it’s Pakistan or whether it’s Afghanistan or whether it’s India.

The foreign aid budget in my administration for every country is gonna start at zero dollars. Zero dollars. And then we’ll have a conversation. Then we’ll have a conversation in this country about whether or not a penny of our taxpayer dollar needs to go into those countries. And Pakistan is clearly sending us messages, Mitt. It’s clearly sending us messages that they– they don’t deserve our foreign aid that we’re getting, because they’re not bein’ honest with us. American soldiers’ lives are being put at jeopardy because of that country and the decisions that they’re make–

–and it’s time for us as a country to say no to foreign aid to countries that don’t support the United States of America. They’ve been doing this for years. Their political people are not who are in charge of that country. It’s the military. It’s the secret service. That’s who’s running that country. And I don’t trust ‘em. And we need to send clear messages. We need to do foreign aid completely different. I’m tellin’ you, no dollar’s goin’ into those countries. As a matter of fact, if they want any American aid, any country, unless we say differently, the American manufacturing, big companies, small companies, going in to help create economic impacts in those countries rather than just dollars flowin’ into some administration.

8:25 Michele Bachmann: Pakistan is a very difficult area, because they have been housing terrorists and terrorists have been training there. Al Qaeda, as well as Hikani, as well as other militias dealing with terrorist organizations. But I would not agree with that assessment to pull all foreign aid from Pakistan. I would reduce foreign aid to many, many countries. But there’s a problem, because Pakistan has a nuclear weapon. We have more– people affiliated with Al Qaeda closer to that nuclear bomb than in any nation.

8:28 Rick Santorum: Well, let me just stop back and– and– and say I disagree with a lot of what was said up here. Pakistan must be a friend of the United States for the reason that Michele outlined. Pakistan is a nuclear power. And there are people in this– in that country that if they gain control of that country will create a situation equal to the situation that is now percolating in Iran.

So we can’t be indecisive about whether Pakistan is our friend. They must be our friend. And we must engaged them as friends, get over the difficulties we have, as we did with Saudi Arabia, with– with respect to the events of 9/11.

The first UP for Herman Cain:

8:34 Scott Pelley: And that’s time, Mr. Speaker. Thank you very much. Mr. Cain, you’ve often said that you’ll listen to your generals for their advice before making decisions as commander in chief. How will you know when you should overrule your generals?

8:35 Herman Cain: The approach to makin’ a critical decision, first make sure that you surround yourself with the right people. And I feel that I’ll be able to make that assessment when we put together the cabinet and all of the people from the military, etcetera. You will know you’re makin’ the right decision when you consider all the facts and ask them for alternatives. It is up to the commander in chief to make that judgment call based upon all the facts.

And because I’ll have a multiple group of people offering different recommendations, this gives me the best opportunity to select the one that makes the most amount of sense. But ultimately, it’s up to the commander in chief to make that decision.

The first UP for Newt Gingrich:

8:45 Scott Pelley: Speaker Gingrich, if I could just ask you the same question, as President of the United States, would you sign that death warrant for an American citizen overseas who you believe is a terrorist suspect?

8:47 Newt Gingrich: Well, he’s not a terrorist suspect. He’s a person who was found guilty under review of actively seeking the death of Americans. If you engage in war against the United States, you are an enemy combatant. You have none of the civil liberties of the United States. You cannot go to court. Let me be– let me be very clear about this. There are two levels. There’s a huge gap here that– that frankly far too many people get confused over. Civil defense, criminal defense, is a function of being within the American law. Waging war on the United States is outside criminal law. It is an act of war and should be dealt with as an act of war. And the correct thing in an act of war is to kill people who are trying to kill you.

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham asked a question that was a Down for Ron Paul and an UP for Rick Perry:

9:05 Senator Lindsay Graham: Thank you. A comment first. Thank you all for running for president. I’m proud of each and every one of you. Thank you very much. Three-part question. I hope I can remember all three parts. Within days of taking office, President Obama, by executive order, stopped the CIA from using classified enhanced interrogation techniques that are not water-boarding. There’s a presumption that every person at Gitmo, under the Obama administration, should go into civilian court, not military commission. And the Obama administration recently said that any future captors in the war on terror would not go to Gitmo. Would you continue these policies? If you would change them, why?

9:10 Ron Paul: I think that this is a mess. It’s a mess because we have a bad foreign policy. We’re pretending we’re at war. We haven’t declared the war, but we’re at war against a tactic. And therefore– there’s no limits to it. So we create these monstrosities. And we do think outside the law. We come up with assassination, allowing the president to decide who’s going to be assassinated?

And– lo and behold, three Americans now have been on the list. They’ve been assassinated. But they don’t talk about the second one, because the second one happened to be a 16 year old son of Awlaki. So what are we doing here to accept this idea that our president, and this lawlessness, to pursue? And that– we some day will be subject to those same courts.

So no, you don’t. You want to live within– in the law and obey the law. Because– otherwise, it’s going to be very bad for all– all of us. And– this whole idea that– now we can be assassinated by somebody that we don’t even like to run our medical care, and giving this power to the president to be the prosecutor, the executor, the judge and the jury, we better look at that carefully before you automatically endorse something like that.

9:11 Rick Perry: Yeah. Let me just address Congressman Paul. And I– Congressman, I– I respect that you wore the uniform of our country. But– in 1972, I volunteered to serve the United States Air Force. And the idea that we have our young men and women in combat today, Senator, where there are people who would kill them in a heartbeat, under any circumstance, use any technique that they can, for us not to have the ability to try to extract information from them, to save our young people’s lives, is a travesty. This is war. That’s what happens in war. And I am for using the techniques, not torture, but using those techniques that we know will extract the information to save young American lives. And I will be for it until I die.

South Carolina Sen Jim DeMint asked a question the moderator directed Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman to answer. The two establishment candidates gave weaker answers than Herman Cain or Rick Perry would have given. At least we now have Mitt on the record as to what specific cuts he would make.

9:14 Jim Demint: Thank you. And thank you all for being in South Carolina tonight. Federal spending and debt are not only our greatest economic problems, they’re our largest national security problem. Yet the president and the Congress continue to spend and borrow at record levels. Just adjusting the spending on existing federal programs will not solve the problem. What federal functions will you eliminate or return to the states in order to balance our budget?

9:15 Mitt Romney: Absolutely. Right now, we’re spending about 25 percent of the economy at the federal level. And that has to be brought down to a cap of 20 percent. I’ll get that done within my first term, if I’m lucky enough to get elected. How do you do that?

One, it’s eliminating programs. A lot of programs we like, but we simply can’t afford. The first we will eliminate, however, we’re happy to get rid of. That’s Obama Care. And that’ll save us $95 billion a year by my fourth year.

Other programs we like: the Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts– Public Broadcasting. These are wonderful– features that we– we have of the government. But we simply can’t go out and borrow money from China to pay for them. They’re not that essential.

In terms of returning programs to the states: Medicaid, a program for the poor, should be returned to the states. Let the states manage it. And if we grow it, at inflation plus one percent, we’ll save $100 billion a year by returning that to the states. And finally, we have to make the federal government more productive. It is just way too over– over-burdened with– with excessive personnel. I’ll reduce the personnel by at least ten percent, and link the pay of federal employees with the pay in the private sector. We should not pay government workers more than the people of America were paying for it.

9:16 Jon Huntsman: Thank you, Senator Demint. It’s an honor to be with you in your state– as– as it is– many other great leaders of South Carolina. I think it’s absolutely appropriate that– Admiral Mullen would say that our most significant national security threat is right here at home. And it’s our debt. I completely buy into that.

And if we’re gonna get this nation moving in the right direction, we need to recognize that debt, as 70 percent of our GDP and moving up, becomes a national security problem. You look where Japan is, well over 100 percent debt to GDP. Greece, 170 percent– to GDP. Italy, 120 percent.

So you get a sense of where our tomorrow is if we don’t tackle the debt and spending. My speech was a very short one on debt and spending. It’s three words: The Ryan Plan. I think The Ryan Plan sets out a template that puts– everything on the table. Medicaid– like– Governor Romney, I’d send back to the states. Education, I wanna move closer to the states. You move education closer to the decision makers, the school boards, the families, you’re a whole lot better off.

And I think there are some economic development functions, as well, legitimately that you can move closer to the state. But we’ve got to get our spending closer to 19 percent– of our GDP as opposed to this unsustainable 24, 25 percent.

The last question of the night was to Rick Santorum about how he would respond as president if there were loose nukes in Pakistan. This was a DOWN moment for Santorum and Gingrich, and an UP moment for Huntsman:

9:22 Major Garrett: Senator Santorum, this week, National Journal and The Atlantic magazine reported that, for various reasons, some related to paranoia in Pakistan about what United States might do, they are moving operational nuclear weapons in that country, unguarded, in trucks. If you were commander in chief, and intelligence came to you that one of those nuclear weapons was lost or possibly in the hands of terrorists, how would you respond?

9:23 Rick Santorum: I would be working with the intelligence community within Pakistan. Again, it’s a compromised community. I understand there– there are relationship with ISI, with the Haqqani Network. Again, depending on the circumstances that we’re dealing with here– it– you would hope you would be able to work with the– with the intelligence community and work, if necessary, in support– in a support nature, whether it’s– with– human intelligence or– or– other types of surveillance, and potentially with the special forces– on the ground.

But again, this is clear. This is not one– you don’t cowboy this one. You don’t fly in to Afghanistan– I mean excuse me, to Pakistan and try to interdict a nuclear weapon. You’ve gotta work with the people in the– in power in the government to– to make sure that that accomplish–

9:25 Newt Gingrich: Well, look. This is a good example of the mess we’ve gotten ourselves into since the Church Committee so-called reforms in 1970s. We don’t have a reliable intelligence service. We don’t have independent intelligence in places like Pakistan. We rely on our supposed friends for intelligence. They may or may not be our friends. And the amount of information we might or might not have might or might not be reliable.

This is a very good example of scenarios people oughta look at seriously and say, “We had better overhaul everything from rules of engagement to how we run the intelligence community, because we– are in a very dangerous world.”

9:26 Jon Huntsman: The– lemme just– on Pakistan for one second. Because it’s pretty clear. There’s one man in charge in Pakistan. I’ve negotiated with the Pakistanis before, both in government and in business. They’re a tough bunch. General Kayani’s in charge. He’s head of the military, which is head of ISSI. It isn’t President Zardari, make no mistake about that. And I’d say you don’t have a choice.

Then I would pick up the phone and call Special Operations Command in Tampa and say, “I’ve got a job for SEAL– SEAL team number six. Prepare to move.” You don’t have a choice. When you have a loose nuke, you have no choice. And we have to take charge. That’s called leadership, and that’s what I would do as president.

With– with respect to Europe, we have two problems. One, Europe is our second largest export market. $240 billion we export to Europe every year, second only to Canada, $250 billion a year. As– if Europe goes down, as a metastases spreads, they’re gonna buy less. And we’re gonna lose jobs unless we can find other markets– as those exports begin to diminish. That’s gonna be problem number one, and we need to prepare for that.

Number two, it’s gonna spread throughout the banking system to the point where it’s gonna hit us and the United States. And with banks that are too big to fail in this country, we’re in deep trouble.

This debate did not change my preferences regarding the candidates. I still lean toward Rick Perry, and Herman Cain is my second choice. The answer Newt gave for the last question makes me wonder why people are drawn to him.

Cross-posted at Unified Patriots

“Give that man a Dewey button!” A common saying in the 1950s, you never hear it anymore. Thomas Dewey was the Republican candidate for president in 1948. Most polls had him coasting to victory over incumbent President Harry Truman. The voters said different… Keep this bit of history in mind until all the votes are counted.

He was the Republican candidate in the 1948 presidential election in which, in almost unanimous predictions by pollsters and the press, was projected as the winner. Dewey had seemed unstoppable. Republicans figured that all they had to do to win was to avoid making any major mistakes, and as such Dewey did not take any risks. He spoke in platitudes, trying to transcend politics. Speech after speech was filled with empty statements of the obvious, such as the famous quote: “You know that your future is still ahead of you.”

Dewey was convinced in 1948 to appear as non-partisan as possible, and to emphasize the positive aspects of his campaign while ignoring his opponent. This strategy proved to be a major mistake, as it allowed Truman to repeatedly criticize and ridicule Dewey, while Dewey never answered any of Truman’s criticisms. Dewey was not as conservative as the Republican-controlled 80th Congress, which also proved problematic for him. Truman tied Dewey to the “do-nothing” Congress. Indeed, Dewey had successfully battled Taft and his conservatives for the nomination at the Republican Convention. Dewey was repeatedly urged by the right wing of his party to engage, but he refused.

After the election results were in, an editorial in the Louisville Courier-Journal summed it up:

No presidential candidate in the future will be so inept that four of his major speeches can be boiled down to these historic four sentences: Agriculture is important. Our rivers are full of fish. You cannot have freedom without liberty. Our future lies ahead.

Well 63 years later I question that editorial statement about ineptitude. It seems to me that kind of ineptitude in the Republican Party has blossomed and flourished instead of vanished. The Republican Party nominated Ike instead of Dewey who had been defeated in both 1944 and 1948, but the saneness of the 1950′s Republicans seems to have evaporated.

I am glad there is still time for sanity to prevail, and for the Republican Party to nominate a conservative like Herman Cain or Rick Perry. These conservatives have got to stop beating each other up so much. The Republican establishment wants Mitt Romney to win the nomination ASAP. They are telling the conservative Republicans to just shut up and set aside your ideology. I refuse to just shut up and set aside ideology.

I don’t believe any predictions about who is going to win in 2012; remember people were fooled by predictions in 1948. I want to work on electing constitutional conservatives, and I can’t make that happen by keeping my mouth shut and setting aside my ideology. History does not have to repeat itself. Passion and work are the keys to winning instead of never responding to attacks and empty statements of the obvious.

Cross-posted at Unified Patriots

In the last debate in Tampa, Rick Perry was attacked because Texas allows illegals to pay in-state tuition fees to enroll in a state college. Michelle Bachmann said this

I think that the American way is not to give taxpayer subsidized benefits to people who have broken our laws or who are here in the United States illegally.

Either she overlooked a 1982 Supreme Court decision, Plyler vs. Doe, or she is unaware of it. The court ruled that Texas and the rest of the country must educate illegal immigrant children free of charge in public schools. Some of the most vocal illegal immigration opponents don’t oppose the decision. But they say higher education is different, because it is tuition-based.

Rick Perry defended himself by saying

I’m not for the DREAM Act that they are talking about in Washington D.C. that is amnesty. What we did in the state of Texas was clearly a states right issue. And the legislature passed with only four dissenting votes in the House and the Senate to allow this to occur.

Under the U.S. Constitution, the government of the state of Texas cannot make laws regulating the naturalization or deportation of residents. Only the U.S. Congress can do that.

Attorney David Rogers argues that taxpayers suffer because of the law. It’s unfair, he added, that the state gives benefits that students from Oklahoma or other states can’t receive.

A challenge to a similar law in Kansas failed in 2005 after a federal judge found that out-of-state college students had no standing to challenge the law there, since they had not been harmed by it.

Rogers said states are not supposed to offer benefits to illegal immigrants that are not offered to eligible U.S. citizens. But University of Houston law professor Michael A. Olivas said federal law clearly allows states to draft their own policies, and he believes the Texas case is similar to the Kansas one. “It is a matter for states to determine,” he said. “In-state status is a state issue.”

Illegal immigrant students were never barred from enrolling in Texas colleges, but the higher tuition price tag for nonstate residents often meant they couldn’t afford to attend. State Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, has tried sponsoring a bill denying education benefits to illegal immigrants in the past, but he later realized that went against the Plyler precedent.

The bottom line for me is that a Governor must deal with issues that are very specific to the people living in his state, and this does not always translate into something for the federal government to take up. In that respect both Mitt Romney with his Massachusetts health care, and Rick Perry with his Texas in-state tuition are resorting to 10th amendment rights as their defense. Now one of these two men may very well win the GOP nomination to be President. I personally lean toward Rick Perry as the more conservative of the two. In either case I am grateful that both have embraced the 10th amendment, and want the federal government to intrude less in my personal life.

Cross-posted at Unified Patriots

Too Big? Not Big Enough? These are questions that have been grappled with in American politics from the very beginning. The questions are complicated, and they do not always split nicely and neatly between conservative and liberal ideals. In other words there is a balancing act equilibrium to seek out.  When our founding fathers declared independence from the British, the side that favored a nation of written laws won out over the side of the divine right of kings to do whatever he wished to his subjects.

Patriots 1 and Loyalists 0.

During the time of President Washington, Thomas Jefferson believed the citizens should fight like a mob, if necessary, against a federal government with power to levy taxes and a US Bank.  His opinions  were countered by Alexander Hamilton who argued that a strong federal government and US Bank are absolutely essential for a struggling new nation to remain intact. President Washington sent in an army to put down Shay’s Whiskey Rebellion, and Hamilton’s position on federalism for the new US Treasury prevailed.

Ruling Class 1 and populists 0

During the next 90 years there was not much of a fight over businesses being too big. Alexis de Tocqueville observed the exceptionalism of Americans who loved the opportunity to become rich instead of demonizing any American for being rich. Then in 1890, Sen. John Sherman (R-OH), younger brother of General William Tecumseh Sherman, wrote the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. President Benjamin Harrison, a grandson of President William Henry Harrison, signed it into law in July, 1890. Unfortunately, when it passed the Sherman Act, Congress deliberately used vague terms such as monopoly and restraint of trade, the meaning of which were undergoing substantial changes in the popular and legal culture at the time. Thus Congress left for the courts the crucial task of interpreting the provisions of the law and determining precisely what sort of business practices it made criminal.

If a businessman charges prices which some bureaucratic judge believes is too high, he can be prosecuted for monopoly, or, rather, for a successful “intent to monopolize.”  If he charges prices lower than those of his competitors, he can be prosecuted for “unfair competition” or “restraint of trade,” and if he charges the same prices as his competitors, he can be prosecuted for “collusion” or “conspiracy.” This reminds me of the phrase “Heads I win and Tails you lose.”

Marxist progressives 1 Capitalists 0

Some may rationalize that the breakup of big businesses resulted in the offshoots being successful, but this rationale overlooks the narrative that is fixed in everyone’s mind that capitalists are evil monsters who eventually become “Too Big To Exist.” At the Master Resource website there is a new series of articles. This five part series is about John D Rockefeller, and the first of the series is titled Vindicating Capitalism: The Real History of the Standard Oil Company (Part I: The Fallacious Textbook Story).

In the absence of antitrust laws, the fallacious textbook story goes, Standard attained a 90% share of the oil-refining market through unfair and destructive practices such as preferential railroad rebates and “predatory pricing”; Standard then leveraged its unfair advantages to eliminate competition, control the market, and dictate prices. This article challenges the mythology of the Standard Oil case and, more broadly, the notion that a coercive monopoly can arise in the absence of government intervention. By implication, it illustrates that there is nothing standing in the way of a truly free, competitive energy market–an energy market free of antitrust law.

Rockefeller was no autocrat. The standard lesson of Rockefeller’s rise is wrong – as is the traditional story of how it happened. Rockefeller did not achieve his success through the destructive, “anti-competitive” tactics attributed to him – nor could he have under economic freedom.

Rockefeller had no coercive power to banish competition or to dictate consumer prices. His sole power was his earned economic power – which was no more and no less than his ability to refine crude oil to produce kerosene and other products better, cheaper, and in greater quantity than anyone thought possible.

A shakeout of the efficient men from the inefficient boys was inevitable. In the mid-1860s, no one imagined that the best of the men, by orders of magnitude, would turn out to be a 24-year-old boy named John Davison Rockefeller.

Another man who deserves vindication is James J. Hill. In 1878, Hill joined with partners in the purchase of the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. He planned to take the line westward through the Rockies and northward into Canada. His early efforts were dubbed “Hill’s Folly” by his critics, given that competing transcontinental lines already existed and Hill’s route took his rails through unpopulated wilderness areas.

Undeterred by the doubters, James J. Hill pushed ahead, and reached Seattle by 1893. While most of his competitors failed during the depression, Hill prospered, proving the wisdom of his conservative building plan. He laid track in small increments, usually about 200 miles. He then stopped construction and concentrated on attracting farmers and other settlers to the temporary terminus. He thus built up a population base to support his rail line. This segmented approach required 10 years to complete, but the result was financially sound.

Also noteworthy about James J. Hill’s effort was that he received no government aid — unique among the transcontinental lines. This feat was all the more remarkable because of the difficult topographical challenges posed by the Rockies and Cascades. Hill also prospered because of his willingness to construct “feeder lines” – short tracks that branched out from the main line to serve specific mines, logging enterprises, ranches, and other businesses.

A notorious example of the injustice of antitrust law from the turn of the last century involved James J. Hill. When Hill created the Northern Securities Company, a holding company combining his and his partners’ railroads into a larger company in order to avert a hostile takeover attempt by the Harriman interests who controlled the Union Pacific, the Company was immediately targeted by President Teddy Roosevelt’s “trust-busting” campaign. The Justice Department brought suit under the Sherman Act; and the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 opinion written by Justice Harlan, found the Company in violation of the Act as a “restraint of trade,” even though the creation of the Company in fact had enhanced competition.

The “Too Big To Exist” narrative lasted for about 100 years. By 1999, there were a lot of big Wall Street bankers who were prominent patrons of the Democrats. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac also were big in housing mortgages, and Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin worked with Sen. Phil Gramm and Rep. Leach for new banking laws. “Too Big To Exist” was replaced with “Too Big To Fail” as the legislation with this new language was signed into law by Bill Clinton.

Liberal Fascists 1 Capitalists 0

I am trying to be a Tubthumper optimist, but I am also a little jaded and cynical about any quick changes and destruction of the fallacious textbook story about American capitalism. The best phenomenon of late is the emergence of the Tea Party. It is not a defined political party per se, but it is a refreshing state of mind and attitude toward the course and direction of our nation. Horrific statements have been made recently about the Tea Party by people who have never loved this country. So if we can get involved in the Republican party, and get constitutional conservatives to take charge on the local level, and elect constitutional conservatives to public office, then I will happily recognize the newest best score.

Patriots 1 Loyalists 0

Cross-posted at Unified Patriots

We don’t yet have a GOP candidate winning the primary votes needed to clinch the nomination, but I want to put some thoughts and names out there for the VP selection.  Rush Limbaugh has a sidekick, Mr. Snerdley, who is a great guy, and I truly believe he is Rush Limbaugh’s sidekick for that reason alone. He also shields Rush from being labeled a racist. Rush is the spear point of conservatism, and he is always attacked, but Mr. Snerdley has kept any racist label from ever sticking to Rush.

The GOP nominee should pick for his VP someone who can do no harm to his candidacy. It should be someone who can help the candidate’s support be broadly appealing in more than just one region of the country. Let’s look at the parts of the US, and what percent the GOP is in each region.

Now just for the sake of discussion, let’s say that Rick Perry wins the nomination, and the majority of his support is from the South. This only accounts for 37% of the GOP, and he can perhaps broaden his appeal by choosing a VP candidate who is not of the South. He can also broaden his appeal by choosing someone who is not another white guy for his VP. Below I have three people who I have not heard anyone talking about as a possible VP pick. They all have their own compelling story of success in this land of opportunity, the USA. Give it some thought. A sidekick like this has definitely worked out quite well for Rush Limbaugh.

Ken Blackwell’s professional background includes:

From 1979 to 1980, Blackwell served as Mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio. Earlier, he had been a member of the Cincinnati city council.

Blackwell served in the administration of President George H. W. Bush as undersecretary in the Department of Housing and Urban Development from 1989 to 1990.

President Bush appointed Blackwell ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission. Blackwell served in that post from 1992 to 1993.

Blackwell was elected treasurer in 1994 and was elected Ohio Secretary of State in 1998. Blackwell was re-elected secretary of state in 2002.

Blackwell was national chairman of longtime friend Steve Forbes‘ presidential campaign in 2000.

Ryan Frazier’s professional background includes:

A partner at Takara systems, a small IT business that develops and integrates software

5 years in the U.S. Navy assigned to the National Security Agency where he led a team of analysts and reporters charged with critical missions in support of national security priorities

8 years between Raytheon Corp in aerospace and Avaya Inc in telecommunications leading process improvements that all together delivered over $20million in savings and/or revenue to the respective companies

A co-founder and board member of the public charter High Point academy which currently serves over 400 pre-K through 8th students

Previously appointed to the state of Colorado’s Private Occupation Schools Board which had oversight of nearly 300 schools’ curricula and charters.

Raul Labrador’s professional background includes:

Raul Labrador was born in Carolina, Puerto Rico, raised by a single mother. He has a bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University. Labrador earned his law degree at the University of Washington School of Law. He is a small businessman and is the owner and managing partner of a law firm.

Labrador was elected to represent the 14th district in the Idaho House of Representatives in 2006.

On May 25, 2010 Labrador won an upset victory in the Republican primary, defeating military veteran Vaughn Ward, the preferred candidate of the Washington D.C. GOP establishment. Labrador defeated Democratic incumbent Walt Minnick in the general election. Labrador did well in debates and stuck to his core message: I’m a real conservative, with a record you can trust. Labrador’s biggest virtue was patience, kind of keeping his mouth shut and waiting for Ward to come back to him in the race.

Raul Labrador lives in Eagle, Idaho with his wife Rebecca and their five children. He is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Cross-posted at Unified Patriots

I’ve had it up to here with all the hype and hysteria about what the politicians in Washington are going to do to save our country, and perhaps the world, from doom. The most important thing these politicians need to do is get out of the way, and let entrepreneurs and the private sector do what the private sector does best – create jobs. Unfortunately, it is not in their DNA to do this, and so we need to elect better people to send to Washington who understand and support the private sector.

Another thing that ticks me off is when the politicians try to act like their hands are tied and they are in a straight jacket that limits what they are able to do. They use Washington-speak to describe baseline budgeting automatic triggers of mandated spending, and automatic triggers of raising taxes, and automatic triggers of increasing wages for the federal workforce. This entire process that they created can and should be dismantled. Except for interest on the debt, all of the spending by the federal government is spending that they choose to continue. But for that one exception it is all discretionary spending.

Because of their addiction to spending they find creative ways around the budgeting processes they themselves created so they can spend more. Veronique de Rugy has written recently a working paper, The Never Ending Emergency: Trends in Supplemental Spending. Here is her conclusions:

Supplemental bills are funding somewhat predictable hurricane and war costs. Nonemergency spending is being channeled through supplemental spending. These techniques are enabling Congress to avoid complying with budget limits and have increased spending significantly. A close look at the data and trends in supplemental spending reveals how these budgetcap exempt bills have enabled lawmakers to explode overall spending especially since FY 2002. The data shows that while supplemental appropriations remained at less than 1 percent of discretionary appropriations in 1990, they began to rise after 1998, reaching an all-time high of 16.2 percent in FY 2005. Since then, supplemental appropriations have continued to make up a significant amount of overall discretionary spending. There seems to be no end in sight to the abuse of a process that was meant as a safety valve, not as a way to avoid budget caps and fiscal responsibility. Supplemental bills have become the tool of choice for Congress and the administration to avoid caps set by annual budget resolutions and to increase spending across the board. In addition, because these funds are not subject to the same kind of budget discipline as other appropriations and because of a serious lack of congressional oversight, they have become more than just a loophole, they have become a budget gimmick that enables the president and Congress to spend dramatically more than they would otherwise be allowed to spend. As it is currently practiced, supplemental spending is a shell game, with the president as the operator, Congress as the shills, and the taxpayers as the marks. Like all shell games, the game is rigged in favor of the operators and the shills: the marks will always lose

When these folks in Washington call it “emergency spending” for the 2010 Census, (mandated by the Constitution for the past 200 years), then you doubt these people can really cut, cap, and balance the federal budget. We have only ourselves to blame for voting to send folks like this back to Washington  every election.

We also need to stop looking to Washington as the place where all the great and wonderful things are going to come from. The folks we elect to send to Washington have some things that they should do, but like my title says – these politicians are NOT all that.

When historians look back on the last 20 years of the 19th century for wonderful events that rocked the world, they will not be writing about the politicians. They’ll write about Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and Charles M. Schwab. These are the people who really made the world a better place. The musician who made a lasting impression on culture was Tchaikovsky.

Over a hundred years from now they still won’t be writing about politicians.  They will write about the scraggly looking fellows pictured below. They will write about an American rock band who for some reason made a lasting impression on people in the Soviet Union. Yes, we citizens need to do a better job of electing the folks we send to Washington. We also need to remind ourselves that not all of our hopes, dreams, and happiness depends on what they do in Washington. They are NOT all that.

Cross-posted at Unified Patriots

There are 14 months to go before we vote for who 33 of our 100 US Senators are going to be. There are 37 Rs and 30 Ds who are safe because their term is not ending in 2012. The breakdown of those 33 seats is 23 currently held by the Ds and 10 currently held by the Rs. Eight incumbent Rs are seeking reelection, 17 incumbent Ds are seeking reelection, 6 open seats are currently held by Ds, and 2 open seats are currently held by Rs. The Ds do not have a good record to run on. They have not proposed, let alone passed a budget bill for over 826 days. They will do an all out name calling negative campaign against their R opponents because that is all they know how to do. I would love to see all 33 seats won by the Rs. This would give us a filibuster and veto proof majority of 70 Rs to 30 Ds. Now let me switch from “electing constitutional conservative to public office” cheerleader to political oddsmaker. In short -  Let’s. Get. Real.

According to a prominent political handicapper, Larry Sabato, there are 5 states that a liberal will not be elected in, and 7 states that a conservative will not be elected in. The 5 states safe for the Rs include:
Mississippi: incumbent R running
Tennessee: incumbent R running
Utah: incumbent R running
Wyoming: incumbent R running
Texas: incumbent R retiring

The 7 states safe for the Ds include:
California: incumbent D running
Delaware: incumbent D running
Maryland: incumbent D running
New York: incumbent D running
Rhode Island: incumbent D running
Vermont: incumbent D running
Washington: incumbent D running

This brings the tally to 42 Rs and 37 Ds in the Senate. With my cheerleader replaced by my political handicapper I want to emphasize that defeating an incumbent R or an incumbent D in the primary and winning the general is nearly an impossible task. Yes, it happened in Utah when Mike Lee won. This is the exception and not the rule. Look at what happened in 2006 when Ned Lamont won a primary over Joe Lieberman. Look what happened in 2010 in Arkansas when Bill Halter tried to defeat Blanche Lincoln, in Colorado when Andrew Romanoff tried to defeat Michael Bennett, in Arizona when J.D.Hayworth tried to defeat John McCain, in Pennsylvania when Joe Sestak defeated Arlen Specter, in the Alaska primary when Joe Miller defeated Lisa Murkowski. In each instance there was not a happy ending for either the Ds or the Rs. I am not going to call anyone names or try to dissuade them from trying to primary an incumbent, but history shows us that these attempts are mostly unsuccessful.

Larry Sabato has listed 6 states that should elect a Republican and 9 states that should elect a Democrat. (Please note that I replaced conservative and liberal with Republican and Democrat.) The 6 states expected to elect a Republican include:
Indiana: incumbent R running
Maine: incumbent R running
Arizona: incumbent R retiring
North Dakota: incumbent D retiring
Massachusetts: incumbent R running
Nevada: appointed incumbent R running

The 9 states expected to elect a Democrat include:
Connecticut: incumbent D retiring
Minnesota: incumbent D running
Pennsylvania: incumbent D running
Hawaii: incumbent D retiring
Florida: incumbent D running
Michigan: incumbent D running
New Jersey: incumbent D running
Ohio: incumbent D running
West Virginia: incumbent D running

This brings the tally to 48 Rs and 46 Ds. The Rs still hold a slim 2 seat advantage, but they need 3 more seats to have the majority in the Senate. The fight over the final 6 Senate seats is the battleground that will determine who wins the majority, and for these reasons they are going to be the most important seats to pick the most electable conservative candidate. If there is another wave election like 2010 I believe the GOP can win all 6 seats. The 6 states listed as Toss-ups include:
New Mexico: incumbent D retiring
Virginia: incumbent D retiring
Wisconsin: incumbent D retiring
Missouri: incumbent D running
Montana: incumbent D running
Nebraska: incumbent D running

The only poll that really matters is taken on November 2012 election day. I hope I have not depressed anyone living in one of the 46 states projected for the Ds. That is not my intent. It is late enough now to become involved in choosing these US Senate candidates. It is not nearly enough to attend Tea Party meetings and write blogs. Get active in your local Republican Party. Do not wait for an invitation or assistance in going through the process of becoming a precinct committeeman. Take it upon yourself to attend any meetings you become aware of, and ask people that go to these meetings just what you need to do in order to become more involved. The establishment may not want you this active, but it is your right, and obligation to do so – if you want to make a difference in 2012.

Cross-posted at Unified Patriots

On The Rush Limbaugh Show of July 29th, a tribute was given by Rush to the Tea Party freshmen in the House who put country over party.

There are 25 or 30 courageous Republican freshmen who held out for this. This is the media, befuddled over these Tea Party freshmen. Last night it’s on Anderson Cooper 19 on CNN he spoke to senior political analyst Gloria Borger about the House not voting on Boehner’s debt bill version 2.0. Anderson Cooper said, “What happened? It looked like things were moving in the right direction for Speaker Boehner earlier today. They had the test vote. It went big. What happened?”

BORGER: He ran up against freshmen who don’t owe him anything, Anderson. They were elected outside of the establishment, and honestly a lot of them don’t care if they get reelected.

COOPER: (coughing)

BORGER: They believe they were sent to Congress to make government smaller and, duhh, to cut the deficit, and this is what they intend to do — and they believe that the Boehner bill is not strong enough because they understand that, at some point, there’s going to have to be a compromise. So they want the House to have the strongest possible bargaining position that it can have.

RUSH: So Borger, after she says the House freshmen believe they were sent to Washington to make government smaller and that’s what they intend to do, Cooper and Borger have this exchange. John King is part of this, too.

COOPER: Gloria, it seems when you talk to some they don’t care necessarily about being reelected.

BORGER: (incredulous) No! They don’t! These are –

COOPER: Which is actually kind of refreshing, I gotta say.

BORGER: Well, it is, but — BUT!

COOPER: (chuckling) It is a big “but.”

BORGER: But compromise is the way things get done in Washington, and it shouldn’t be a dirty word, I don’t think. Maybe. But I understand that they’re standing on principle. But they’re also standing on the precipice of something, and that is the country going into default.

RUSH: No, Gloria, the country is not going to go into default. One more audio sound bite before we go to the break with F. Chuck Todd, MSNBC this morning. This is his opinion here of the House freshmen and their steadfast.

F. CHUCK TODD: (haltingly) Boehner … Cantor … and McCarthy were … linked … in this. This isn’t necessarily about John Boehner not being able to corral these folks. The question is could any Republican speaker have corralled these votes at this time. Here’s the issue they had: They can’t buy them off. They don’t want earmarks, they don’t care about their committee assignments — and many of these newcomers didn’t get there raising a lot of money anyway so being promised fundraising all that doesn’t work. It may be refreshing on one hand, but it makes it that much harder to try to arm-twist and get this vote count to happen.

RUSH: Lo and behold! Isn’t that exactly what we wanted to end up in Washington? Can’t buy them off! The media is ticked off. F. Chuck can’t believe the establishment can’t buy the votes of these Tea Party freshmen. That’s why we need to keep winning elections.

I whole-heartedly ditto Rush’s tribute to the Tea Party House freshmen, and I also pay tribute to the 8 Tea Party Senate Freshman and newly appointed Dean Heller of Nevada for caring more about working toward a solution for the country instead of a deal for the Washington establishment. These newest members of the House and Senate have the least amount of money and influence with their colleagues. This is supposed to make them the easiest targets to be whipped into line by the leadership. This is why I single them out for having the courage and strength to walk away from a deal that is not a solution. They are not going to be feeling a lot of love coming their way from the Washington establishment. For that reason I encourage you to contact their offices and express your thanks and gratitude to them for their commitment and service. If you are active in your local Republican party, and you are looking for candidates who represent your values in your congressional district or state, then these courageous members are excellent role models.

There are also going to be some new Republican members of the House and Senate who won’t receive a lot of love from local Tea Party organizations because they voted yes on the debt ceiling limit vote. I am not a member of any of these groups, but I suggest they do not go all scorched earth on these newly elected members over this vote. Hold their feet to the fire on the votes coming up in a few weeks on spending bills, but do not be so quick to brand these folks as traitors. I agree with Bruce Bartlett. . .

Before 1974, it was plausible to argue that there was some virtue in having a debt limit because it forced Congress to acknowledge the consequences of deficit spending from time to time. But that year, it enacted the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act, which requires Congress to enact a budget resolution annually that specifies an appropriate level for the deficit and the debt.

Consequently, a separate vote on the debt limit is at best superfluous.

The 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act makes using the baseline budgeting that amounts to automatically having 7.5% increases in federal spending the law. Until there are enough conservatives elected to repeal this there is not much hope in keeping the debt ceiling fixed. The debt ceiling limit is a superfluous useless tool. The problem with doing away with the tool is that no politician from either party can deny the validity of the debt limit without being accused of supporting unlimited debt.

Here is the list of these newest 38 members of the House and Senate who voted No to the deal. They represent 25 states.

Alabama
Martha Roby AL-2
Mo Brooks AL-5

Arizona
Ben Quayle AZ-3
David Schweikert AZ-5

Colorado
Scott Tipton CO-3

Florida
Senator Mark Rubio
Steve Southerland FL-2
Dennis Ross FL-12

Georgia
Austin Scott GA-8

Idaho
Raul Labrador ID-1

Illinois
Joe Walsh IL-8
Randy Hultgren IL-14

Indiana
Senator Dan Coats
Marlin Stutzman IN-3
Todd Rokita IN-4

Kansas
Senator Jerry Moran
Tim Huelskamp KS-1
Kevin Yoder KS-3

Kentucky
Senator Rand Paul

Louisiana
Jeff Landry LA-3

Maryland
Andy Harris MD-1

Michigan
Justin Amash MI-3

Minnesota
Chip Cravaack MN-8

Missouri
Vicky Hartzler MO-4

Nevada
Senator Dean Heller

New Hampshire
Senator Kelly Ayotte

New Mexico
Steven Pearce NM-2

New York
Ann Marie Buerkle NY-25

Pennsylvania
Senator Pat Toomey

South Carolina
Tim Scott SC-1
Jeff Duncan SC-3
Trey Gowdy SC-4
Mick MulvaneySC-5

Tennessee
Chuck Fleischmann TN-3
Scott DesJarlais TN-4

Utah
Senator Mike Lee

Virginia
Morgan Griffith VA-9

Wisconsin
Senator Ron Johnson

Cross-posted at Unified Patriots

For the past five years CNBC has published a report on the top states for business in America. In every one of these reports the number one ranking has been awarded to either Virginia or Texas. It was Virginia in 2007. It was Texas in 2008. It was Virginia in 2009. It was Texas in 2010. It is Virginia in 2011. They changed the emphasis in 2011 from the previous four reports to de-emphasize the cost of doing business in terms of taxes and utility rates, but it did not matter. Virginia and Texas still beat the other 48 states.

Now in 2011, the Republicans are in power in both states, but the political party is not an explanation for both states doing this well over the last five years. I think there are government structural factors that perhaps the other 48 states and the federal government should take a look at.

Neither of these states have term limits on their legislatures. The people limit their time in office by voting the legislators out of office. Virginia prohibits its governors from succeeding themselves, although former governors are re-eligible after four years out of office. I approve of a term limit on a governor. It may seem too drastic to some, but you can not argue with the results of being a top state for business.

Both Virginia and Texas use biennial budgeting. Biennial budgeting states generally enact separate budgets for two fiscal years at once. Texas even takes it one further step by having biennial sessions of the legislature. This means they only meet every two years. I think this is helpful for business because there is more certainty for a longer period of time, and the special interest groups are not packing into Richmond and Austin every year to persuade the legislators to grant them favors. This also helps the legislators to remember they are not as big and powerful as they might otherwise think they are when special interests aren’t constantly visiting their offices.

Texas Governor Rick Perry offers wise advice that Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell heartily endorses.

The keys to success? Don’t spend all the money. Keep taxes low. Keep regulations fair and predictable. Tort reform to prevent frivolous and junk lawsuits. Fund an accountable education system. Then get out of the way and let entrepreneurs and the private sector do what the private sector does best – create jobs. Since 2005, Texas has created far more private-sector jobs than all other states combined.

Cross-posted at Unified Patriots

The Center for American Progress have trumpeted a BIG LIE that kept being repeated again and again by elected Dem big shots like Chris Van Hollen and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. The following is the BIG LIE. source

The Republican-led House of Representatives this week will consider legislation that would effectively endorse restricting federal spending to the arbitrary level of 18 percent of gross domestic product. That would require the slashing of important and popular programs far below even the draconian levels of the 2012 budget approved by the House earlier this year. The United States would be the lowest-spending economically advanced country in the world.

The last time the United States had spending this low was in 1966. Much has changed since then, which makes a federal budget at that level both impractical and undesirable. We are an older country, with more retirees receiving the Social Security and Medicare benefits they’ve earned during their working lives. Social Security benefits have been consciously increased to improve the quality of life for retirees. Health care costs have multiplied so providing Medicare, veterans’ care, and Medicaid is much more expensive. Education has become more costly, and government fuel costs have risen along with everyone else’s.

We are a very different country than we were back then, with very different needs and with stronger economic competitors making investments in their own countries to make themselves strong. We must match those investments to remain the No. 1 economy and the most competitive nation on earth. We simply can’t put a 1966 transmission into a 2012 Mustang.

Rush Limbaugh today spoke about the lies and the hyperbole the tax and spend Liberal dems have been using for years.

It hits you upside the head, a cold ice shower. You realize what suckers they think we are. You realize the patterns — the playbooks, the tactics, the scare tactics, the fearmongering, crisis mongering, all of this — are written down. It’s taught. This is not instinctive. This stuff, I guess, is what these people learn at Harvard and Yale and the Kennedy School of Government, wherever else they go to get educated or how they’re mentored. Not one shred of difference. The difference now is that we’ve reached a point of real crisis. All these years in the past where we said, “Okay, we’ll kick the can down the road. We’ll deal with it later.” We’ve gotten to the point we’re running out of road. We really are. This is different.

Matt Cover of CNS News has written an article that truthfully tells what is written into the Cap Cut and Balance Bill.

While it is true that a House Judiciary Committee amendment would have set the cap at 18 percent of GDP, that amendment was not adopted. The actual caps in the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act never go below 19.6 percent of GDP, eventually settling at 19.9 percent of GDP in 2021.

The Cut, Cap, and Balance bill would increase the debt ceiling by $2.4 trillion while at the same time cut spending in fiscal year 2012 by $111 billion, cap spending in future years at a steadily decreasing level, eventually setting it at 19.9 percent of GDP in 2021, and pass a balanced budget amendment through both chambers of Congress.

The debt ceiling increase would happen only after the balanced budget amendment has been passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification.

So let’s take 19.6 as a cap baseline instead of 18.0 as a baseline. When I looked into the history I discover some interesting years when the federal spending outlays were 19.6 or less as a percent of GDP.

The reason for a NA instead of a name is because the House and Senate Budget Committees did not exist until the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 became law in July of 1974. From George Washington until Richard Nixon’s last year in office, presidents had the power to impound. The president’s power to impound monies was the only way, aside from a presidential veto, that the executive branch could check the otherwise unbridled spending power of the legislative branch. In 1974 congress reformed the budget process and destroyed the impoundment power of the executive. Contrary to the wailing from the obamadems that the budget caps are so draconian the programs for the poor, elderly, and sick will get slashed – history shows that it did not happen. In fact in five of these 12 years the outlays were less than had been budgeted to provide a federal budget surplus. If only the Republican leaders had the stones, like Allen West, to call those lying Dems out instead of their playbook consisting of one word. Duck!

Cross-posted at Unified Patriots

If only Cuba Gooding could school Boehner and McConnell on what they should be asking of Treasury Secretary Geithner. I can add the stiffs like Britt Hume and Bret Baird of FNC to the mix of people Cuba Gooding could school. It saddens me that so many establishment people are taking Tim Geithner at his word about paying our federal debt. Why is it a secret how much money is in the US Treasury? I am not one who believes we have not already authorized more money to be paid out than we have, but how much more? What new spending can the US Congress refuse to authorize? There are no good reasons why this information can not be forthcoming from Geithner. The problem is that the government has refused to cut spending and live within the smaller revenues our high unemployment is generating. The money is on the sidelines and not being invested in job creation because there is so much fear and uncertainty about what the US government is doing. For over 800 days the US Senate has not passed a budget. For us to keep our Republic it is necessary for the US Senate as well as the US House to pass a budget that a US President signs. We need a moratorium from new job killing regulations being promulgated by all of the US programs and departments. If these things occur, then the certainty and confidence will return. Only then are the private sector investors going to start creating jobs.

Cross-posted at Unified Patriots

The 24 year old dude arrived on the train about 3 a.m. on the night of September 7-8. The train stopped in the village of Little Missouri, sometimes called Comba, on the west bank of the Little Missouri River. He spent the rest of that first night at the Pyramid Park Hotel.

The next day he managed to hire the reluctant Joe Ferris to serve as his hunting guide, borrowed from the formidable and shifty-eyed E.G. Paddock a rifle strong enough to kill a buffalo, and traveled seven miles south of Little Missouri in a buck wagon to the Maltese Cross Ranch, occupied by William Merrifield and Ferris’ brother Sylvane. There he spent his second night in the badlands (September 8 ). Although Merrifield and Sylvane Ferris were not at first impressed by the New York dude, they gained some appreciation when he insisted on sleeping on the floor rather than displace them from their beds.

At first they were amused, skeptical, and sometimes derisive. He cut a somewhat ridiculous figure with his designer buckskins and his Tiffany’s knife, his falsetto voice and Harvard accent. He sensed this himself.

When I went among strangers I always had to spend twenty-four hours in living down the fact that I wore spectacles, remaining as long as I could judiciously deaf to any side remarks about ‘four eyes’ unless it became evident that my being quiet was misconstrued and that it was better to bring matters to a head at once.

There were all kinds of things I was afraid of at first, ranging from grizzly bears to ‘mean’ horses and gun-fighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid.

Little Missouri rancher Frank Roberts said,

He was rather a slim-lookin’ fellow when he came out here, but after he lived out here… his build got wider and heavier… he got to be lookin’ more like a rugged man.

He first ventured west to the Dakota badlands to hunt a buffalo. After a very difficult hunt in the remotest region of the stark countryside near the Montana border, he got his buffalo. Meanwhile he fell in love with the badlands and impulsively sank a fair amount of his inheritance into, first, the Maltese Cross Ranch, and then a second ranch, the Elkhorn Ranch, in what is now western North Dakota. He thought he was recreating in his own life the adventures of such American heroes as Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, and George Rogers Clark. He loved riding the Dakota plains in a buckskin shirt at breakneck speed.

After his wife Alice and mother Mittie died on the same day, February 14, he believed that the light had gone out of his life forever. That summer he went out to his ranch in the badlands of Dakota Territory, and threw himself into the strenuous life. At first, dismissed as an Eastern dude, “Four Eyes,” he surrendered to the spirit of place of the Little Missouri River Valley, and found solace and common humanity among the cowboys of the American West. Still grieving from the death of his wife and mother, he said,

Black care rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough.

He killed all sorts of big game during his western years, including a grizzly bear, and he had wild western adventures, such as punching out an abusive gunslinger in a bar, or chasing down the three thieves who stole his boat and marching them overland, under almost impossible spring blizzard conditions, to the nearest sheriff. He had encounters with American Indians that he regarded as potentially hostile. He took long lonely rides in the broken country along the Little Missouri River Valley. He participated in roundups and brandings and he tried unsuccessfully to join a group of vigilantes who were pursuing horse thieves.

In just three years the fragile Harvard narcissist had become a man. The dude who had instructed a cowpuncher to “hasten forward quickly there” eventually came to be accepted by the cowboys with whom he associated. This happened because he realized the virtues of hard work, perseverance, letting actions speak louder than words, and laboring side by side with men who were not his social equals, but who had compensatory virtues that made them his superiors. His Dakota experience gave him the confidence that he was a 100% true-blue American, and not a wealthy, urbanized socialite, comfortable and effeminate, like many of his friends, men who represented the decline of America’s pioneers. He believed the Dakota territory was the arena of American renewal. He went there to be renewed, and he was.

He learned, to his chagrin, that his eastern connections, Harvard accent, and air of superiority absolutely hindered him in North Dakota. He came to understand that he would have to overcome the “disadvantages” of his birth and social station if he wanted to be taken seriously in the badlands. The cowboys eventually saw that he was much more than an eastern dandy – that there were elements of true grit and greatness in his character and a doggedness that was truly remarkable – and they came to respect him as one of their own, or almost so.

In case you have not figured it out yet, I am referring to Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th  President of the United States, and one of four Presidents whose face is carved into Mount Rushmore. In recent years many conservative Republicans have had a very low opinion of TR. I can understand that sentiment, and his third party, Bull Moose, run for President in 1912 did end a Republican era where the GOP occupied the White House for 44 out of 52 years. Those 8 years they did not occupy the White House Grover Cleveland governed as a fiscal conservative guardian of the US Constitution. I am grateful to the folks in North Dakota that did help a fragile 98 pound Harvard narcissist become a man. I wonder if he had married a lady from the Badlands instead of his childhood sweetheart from Boston, would he have become even more conservative and embrace limited government. We will never know. I have vacationed in Medora, North Dakota the last two summers to escape the West Texas heat for a few days. While technological advances have transformed the area from how it was in TR’s day, there are still some wonderful conservative Americans residing there today. Western North Dakota remains an arena of American renewal.

Cross-posted at Unified Patriots

The debt limit is really what filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock used to call a “MacGuffin” – a device used to propel the plot forward, even though it may be meaningless.

The debt limit or debt ceiling concept dates back to 1917. Prior to that date, Congress had to specifically approve any new borrowing done by the federal government. For convenience’s sake, Congress then decided to periodically approve increases in its credit line so that the government could borrow without a vote as long as the total outstanding amount didn’t bust through the cap. The current cap is $14.3 trillion. The debt limit includes both debt held by the public (that is, by outside investors, which comes in at around $9.7 trillion) and “intra-governmental holdings” or debt owed by one part of the government to the other, which comes in at around $4.6 trillion). The debt limit has been increased more than 100 times since it was instituted and 10 times in the past 10 years alone. Both political parties figured out they could spend more by simply voting to raise the limit.

So what happens if the government doesn’t raise the debt ceiling?

The most recent Office of Management and Budget data shows federal revenues will reach $2.17 trillion this fiscal year. Interest payments on the nation’s debt are estimated to be $205 billion this year, or about 10 percent of revenues. Taking that payment off the top leaves $1.9 trillion for Congress to spend. That’s enough to pay for Social Security ($741 billion), Medicare ($488 billion), and Medicaid ($276 billion), with $395 billion left for other programs. The government could still borrow more over the 395 billion with votes by Congress.

Five Uncomfortable Facts About the Wonderful, Horrible Debt-Limit Debate

1. August 2 is an arbitrary date.
2. Reaching the debt limit is not the same as defaulting on the federal debt. When tough financial times hit, families eat out less, go to fewer movies, buy fewer clothes and postpone vacations. They also sell stuff or take them to a pawn shop. If those things don’t save enough, then they might borrow money to pay bills or skip payments. The federal government always pays bills with borrowed money. Congress has largely avoided those vital cost-cutting steps that families take. The government has a number of assets, ranging from cash on hand to gold reserves to TARP assets it could sell to cover all or part of its debt obligations through the end of the current fiscal year.
3. Both sides are using the August 2 deadline to negotiate terms.
4. This is no way to run a country. Improving the link between the spending and revenue decisions that increase the need to borrow and changes in the debt limit would improve the situation. Better alignment could be possible if decisions about the debt level occur in conjunction with spending and revenue decisions as opposed to the after-the-fact approach now used. This would help avoid the uncertainty and disruptions that occur during debates on the debt limit. It might also facilitate efforts to change the fiscal path by highlighting the implications of these spending and revenue decisions on debt. Rep Ann Marie Buerkle has a clock running on her website that shows how long it has been since the US Senate last passed a budget.
5. This is no way to run a country, part 2. We’re out of money because we’ve spent too much for too long. The feds have not reduced spending amid the lower revenues of the recession.

Ronald Reagan’s budget director David Stockman, got this point exactly right. He said that in the best of all possible worlds, we’d have a government that did a lot less than it does now. Well sir, in my opinion, the results of the 2010 election indicate that a majority want a government that “did a lot less than it does now.”

Our nation just had its 235th birthday on July 4th. I think the charts below reveal the best management of federal money took place between the time of the Civil War and reconstruction and WWI. A dramatic growth spurt of the debt occurred because of the Civil War. The debt was just $65 million in 1860, but passed $1 billion in 1863 and had reached $2.7 billion following the war. In the following 47 years America returned to the practice of running surpluses experiencing 36 surpluses and only 11 deficits. During this period 55% of the US national debt was paid off.

The first graph is the Federal debt as a percent of GDP from 1787 to 1999. The second set of graphs is both gross and federal debt and both as trillions of dollars and as a percent of GDP from 1940 to 2010.

Cross-posted at Unified Patriots

In the aftermath of the GOP Presidential debate in New Hampshire, the DC and establishment-centric bloggers have all pronounced the winners and the loser. They have all decided that Romney, Bachmann, and Gingrich won. The biggest loser of the night was Pawlenty. I am going to listen to Rush for his take on this later today. Here are my morning after reflections.

I do not believe any of the candidates hurt themselves last night. For me, the biggest losers of the event were the sponsors and moderators; their agenda – to advance a negative narrative about the GOP – failed. The narrative being…GOP candidates are far right wing nut jobs that can be made to argue with each other over who is the most conservative. This agenda started with who they invited. Gary Johnson does not fit their narrative and so he was not invited.

The obvious pushing of the moderators own agenda was easily seen in their  attempts to start arguments between the GOP candidates. They tried to get Pawlenty into a fight with Romney over individual mandates for health care. Pawlenty didn’t fall for the bait, and simply said that it is Obama who has said he used what Romney did in MA to create Obama care. They tried to get Romney into a fight with Cain about hiring a Muslim to work for you. Cain refused to allow them to misconstrue what he  was saying, and no fight occurred. They tried to get a fight started between Bachmann and Pawlenty, and a fight between Santorum and Romney over who was more pro life. Each time they failed.

The event did help me to discern some differences the candidates have on same sex marriage.  I also observed variations on leadership styles. On same sex marriage, Herman Cain and Ron Paul favored the decision on same sex marriage to be made state by state, and the rest of the candidates favored a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as between a man and a woman. Michelle Bachmann tried to be on both sides of this issue by saying she did not want to fight a state over this issue and she supports a constitutional amendment. On commander-in-chief  leadership questions, I thought that Pawlenty, Paul, Bachmann, and Santorum came across strong.  Cain, Romney, and Gingrich were cautious in giving their answers without first getting information from the generals in the field. While there are major differences between Santorum and Paul on military policy, they were both strong about what they envision.

Two of the most enjoyable moments of the night for me were when they tried to have Pawlenty be critical of Sarah Palin. He did not take the bait, and instead he praised Sarah and slammed vice-president Biden as being wrong and in error on everything he said and did. On another occasion Pawlenty reflected on how his friends and family from the blue collar town he grew up in were Reagan Democrats who are Rush listeners nowadays.

I believe the 2012 group of GOP contenders are stronger than the 2008 candidate offerings.  This group knows how to confront what Andrew Breitbart calls the Democrat Media Complex.  They also know the means by which the Left is going to try and create dissension, divisions, and chaos among the candidates. So far the candidates have refused to allow that to happen.

Cross-posted at Unified Patriots