July 31, 2011
Jul 31 03:01 Martin Frost Was a Moderate? Jul 31 13:57 Economist exposes Ellison
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Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Martin Frost Was a Moderate?
I recall hearing Mort Kondracke calling Martin Frost a moderate during a roundtable discussion on Special Report shortly after Frost lost to Pete Sessions in 2004.
After reading this Fox Nation op-ed , it's impossible to picture Frost as a moderate. In fact, it's op-eds like this that make me think he's part of the far left fringe that's dragging the Democratic Party down. Listen to his visceral attitude towards the TEA Party:
We now have a group of U.S. politicians seeking political purity, who seem to have much in common with the Taliban. They are tea party members; and because of blind adherence to smaller government, they seem intent on risking destroying what American political leaders have constructed in more than two centuries of hard, often painful work. Like the Taliban, they see compromise as an unacceptable alternative.
As part of the House Republican majority, these uncompromising tea party members present an enormous challenge to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) as he seeks to reach a compromise which can avert an unprecedented U.S. default on Aug. 2.
First, the BS about default is a discredited scare tactic frequently deployed by Democrats. Preventing default is child's play at this point. Paying the bondholders first (approximately $29,000,000,000 this month) requires less than 15% of the revenue the U.S. Treasury expects to collect in August.
The time for Democratic Party partisan hackery and scare tactics must stop ASAP.
Next, it's time to expose the fallacy that compromise is automatically virtuous. It isn't. It isn't automatically a dirty word, either, which is why it's important to know what the compromise includes.
It's important to expose Sen. Reid's bill as an utter failure. It includes artificial savings of $1,400,000,000,000, $1,000,000,000,000 from shutting down the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and $400,000,000,000 in interest savings from not spending money on something that we weren't planning spending money on 3 years from now anyway.
That's before talking about the fact that they're basing these savings on the wrong baseline figures.
Third, none of the bills , Sen. Reid's included, deals even momentarily with the GAO report that highlights a first year saving of $300,000,000,000 just from eliminating the duplication that's listed in the GAO's report.
The GAO report should be the starting point for any debt ceiling/spending reduction bill. Still, it should only be a starting point. Sen. Coborn's legislation achieves $9,000,000,000,000 in savings in the next decade. Why isn't that a featured part of these discussions?
When Rep. Frost says that TEA Party activists are demanding political purity, he's intentionally mischaracterizing what's happening. What TEA Party activists are really insisting on is that DC politicians listen to what America is saying. Cutting spending isn't something that only TEA Party activists support. It isn't something that only Republicans support. It's something that the overwhelming majority of Americans support.
In Rep. Frost's paranoid, ill-informed mindset, what he's really saying is that DC, in the good old days, didn't have to pay attention to We The People. It's apparent that politicians don't like the thought that they can't ignore We The People like they did in 'the good old days.'
The most aggravating sentence in that paragraph is when Rep. Frost says that "they seem intent on risking destroying what American political leaders have constructed in more than two centuries of hard, often painful work."
That's pure BS. What's happened during the previous 4 years of Democratic Party control can hardly be considered worthy of a great nation. The notion that running up the 3 biggest deficits in U.S. history in the past 3 years is worthy of a great nation isn't absurd. It's utter lunacy.
The notion that ramming a health care plan down the America people's throats despite the American people's loud, persistent dissent is worthy of a great nation isn't foolish. It's the stuff that historians will laugh at and wonder why the American people voted for such foolish politicians.
It isn't that these politicians didn't work hard. They certainly did. Their hard work wasn't proof of these politicians' competence. In fact, a $14,500,000,000,000 debt, a third of it created in the last 36 months, is proof of the Democrats' incompetence.
This past November, the American people said a collective "NO MORE!!!" They didn't just run 63 House Democrats into involuntary retirement , though that was the headline the morning of Nov. 3, 2010. It isn't that their votes led to a 6-seat gain in the U.S. Senate.
The American people's frustration with the status quo that they voted out 680 Democrats in state legislatures nationwide. They voted to flip 19 state legislative bodies nationwide.
In short, the American people said that they weren't sitting idly by while the Democrats, led by President Obama, Sen. Reid and their special interest allies, spent us into economic oblivion.
If Rep. Frost has a problem with Republicans voting against more reckless spending, there's an easy solution. He should have the fortitude to tell the American people that the politicians they elected in multitudes will hold Americans hostage while taking America down the wrong path.
It's time for America to reject Rep. Frost's status quo, inside-the-Beltway politics as usual. It's time We The People stepped forward and told DC politicians that we're silent no more and we won't be ignored by cheap political hacks like Rep. Frost anymore.
PERIOD.
Posted Sunday, July 31, 2011 3:01 AM
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Economist exposes Ellison
This morning, I had the displeasure of watching Rep. Keith Ellison trot out the entire Democratic Party arsenal of scare tactics during his interview with Esme Murphy. The good news is that I had the great pleasure of watching St. Thomas economist/professor David Vang demolish Rep. Ellison's scare tactic antics. Let's start with Rep. Ellison's response to Esme Murphy's question on whether he could vote for the rumored compromise:
REP. ELLISON: Well, I don't know, Esme. I voted for the Reid bill yesterday even though I didn't want to. It certainly has custs that I think will hurt alot of people and I think we're going in entirely the wrong direction. We should be trying to create jobs.
This exposes Rep. Ellison as an economic illiterate. If government spending created jobs, Minnesota's economy should be booming after passing one billion dollar bonding bill after another. If spending money created jobs, the U.S. unemployment rate should 2% after Democrats, including Rep. Ellison, enthusiastically spent a trillion dollars on the failed stimulus bill.
As illuminating as that response is, this is the part that exposed Rep. Ellison as employing scare tactics:
REP. ELLISON: I have some red lines. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, I'm not going to vote to harm those programs. I simply will not do it.
MURPHY: So you wouldn't vote for it if you felt there was any measure in the bill that would harm those programs?
REP. ELLISON: Correct. I will not vote to harm those programs. I made a pledge and a promise. I believe in those programs. I think they're important. I think that the people that benefit from those programs have not created this crisis and they should not be the ones who suffer the harm.
I also stand for a private sector and a public sector that work together, not a cut down, scaled back, ineffective public sector.
MURPHY: You talked about during the break about what happens if this deal doesn't get done, the ramifications to ordinary people in terms of mortgage payments, in terms of people getting their Social Security checks, soldiers on the front lines asking their generals if they would get paid, credit card interest rates...
REP. ELLISON: Not to mention damage done to the city of Minneapolis. The city of Minneapolis needs a capital budget to take care of the capital needs. If they are relying on bonds to do that, they could be in a much more difficult position if we have a default.
MURPHY: Because the interests will go up?
REP. ELLISON: Right. And the state of Minnesota, the deal that Gov. Dayton just cut with the Republicans called for about $500,000,000 in bond issue. The price of debt would go up.
Later in the interview, Rep. Ellison got a little more wound up than I suspect he wanted to. Check this out:
REP. ELLISON: But you know what? Elections have consequences. Last November did and 2012 will, too, and I think the American people are seeing what they signed up for and there's gonna be some repercussions politically. But that's not where we are now. Right now, it's Sunday and we've got to do something by Tuesday and I'm hoping President Obama will look at his executive and constitutional authority to raise the debt ceiling if we can't get a deal done.
MURPHY: You're talking about the Fourteenth Amendment?
REP. ELLISON: Well, the Fourteenth Amendment is only one element of this. Remember, we've got soldiers in the field as you mentioned before. We cannnot afford to default while we have soldiers wondering if they'll get paid or not. I think this is a function of his executive authority and his authority as commander-in-chief. I think the Fourteenth Amendment gives him authority and I think he should explore this possibility as a last resort.
Rep. Ellison's shameless scare tactics should be repudiated by his Democratic colleagues. Unfortunately, they won't be repudiated because they're reading from the script that Nancy Pelosi wrote.
Thankfully, St. Thomas Economics Professor David Vang set the record straight during his interview with Esme Murphy:
MURPHY: First of all, are you amongst those that agree that if there is not a deal reached by Tuesday, that the consequences would be devastating for average people?
PROF. VANG: Not really. There's alot of silver linings in this whole thing. One thing, believe it or not, is that the IRS is still working so they're still collecting tax revenues so there's still revenues coming into the government as we speak. So then, the issue is prioritizing, which bills get paid first, just like your own household.
Another thing is, if worse comes to worse, the United States government still has the copying machine to make more money. So they could always make the money to pay its bills.
In other words, talk about defaulting is the Democrats' go to scare tactic. It isn't something that'll happen anytime soon, if ever. Prof. Vang just utterly demolished Rep. Ellison's interview, which amounted to a six-minute long scare tactic rant.
Thankfully, Rep. Ellison was given enough time to hang himself with his mindless recitation of Ms. Pelosi's incoherent talking points. Now it's time to get this deal done so the serious cuts are made to restore fiscal sanity to this nation.
Posted Sunday, July 31, 2011 1:57 PM
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