October 28-30, 2011
Oct 28 07:34 Why 9-9-9 is Stupid Politically Oct 28 09:21 Mann, Ornstein shed moderate image, tilt to far left Oct 28 11:53 Shrinking college enrollment proof of Higher Education bubble? Oct 29 07:52 George Will: Conservatism has come to this? Oct 29 09:40 Kaiser on Dayton's mining decision: It's about the jobs Oct 29 12:33 A damning indictment against Washington establishment Oct 29 22:37 Ohio Fundraiser Calls for DeWine Resignation Oct 30 08:43 Will insanity kill California? Oct 30 09:22 Sen. Klobuchar's Infrastructure Bill
Prior Months: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep
Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Why 9-9-9 is Stupid Politically
Thursday evening, Dick Morris tried selling Greta on the Herman Cain surge that Morris says is ongoing. According to Karl Rove's reporting, Cain's surge peaked in mid-October, then started falling, albeit slowly. The other thing Morris is peddling is the notion that 9-9-9 is a worthwhile plan that should be taken seriously.
It's a terrible plan, despite what Art Laffer says. When questioned about the federal government collecting both a national sales tax and a federal income tax, Laffer said that Democrats can do that the next time they control the House, Senate and White House.
That's true enough but it's missing the point. If they want to pass that in those circumstances, let them. Then let them take the political beating the next election cycle. Americans won't stand for both a federal income tax and a national sales tax. PERIOD.
Why 9-9-9 is stupid is because it's being proposed by a Republican. If Democrats want to propose it, then they own that proposal. If a Republican proposes and passes it, then Democrats raise that rate, Democrats can rationalize it by saying they're just raising a tax created by Republicans. In essence, they'd be saying 'it must not be bad because Republicans proposed it'.
Republicans couldn't argue that point. They would've essentially picked up a baseball bat, handed it to the Democrats, then said 'Here, hit me with the bat I just gave you.'
Frankly, a pretty impressive case can be made that 9-9-9 is capable of doing alot more damage than the current tax code. A fairly easy case can be made that Rick Perry's flat tax and Newt Gingrich's tax overhaul are significantly better tax reforms than 9-9-9.
For instance, Speaker Gingrich's plan calls for a corporate tax rate of 12.5%. That's only 3.5 points higher than Cain's plan with the added bonus of not featuring a national sales tax.
That's a big deal because it doesn't create a new revenue stream that progressives will use to grow government.
It's time for more people to tell Mr. Cain why his plan is foolish from a political perspective.
Posted Friday, October 28, 2011 7:41 AM
Comment 1 by eric z at 28-Oct-11 08:19 AM
It is a bit hard to track.
As I understand it, so far, Cain and Perry both support a flat tax structure for personal income tax. Yes/no?
None of the others have gone that route. Yes/no?
Or, do any of the others currently embrace a flat tax?
Finally, Gary, do you see any contender wanting to steal Cain's thunder by using the same approach, downsized to two-thirds of Cain's rates?
I doubt a 6-6-6 proposal would fly without some collateral commentary.
Comment 2 by Gary Gross at 28-Oct-11 08:45 AM
1. Cain, Gingrich & Perry support flatter taxes. Newt's plan isn't a total flat tax but it's flatter than what we currently have.
2. I think Michele might have a flat tax proposal. I'm just not sure.
3. None of the other candidates will go the Cain route. in fact, Cain's received intense criticism for his 9-9-9 plan. The criticism has specifically focused on giving the federal government another revenue stream, which it would use to grow the federal government's scope & influence.
Comment 3 by J. Ewing at 28-Oct-11 11:10 AM
I couldn't disagree more. First of all, the big criticism of the FAIR tax (national retail sales tax) is that it couldn't pass Congress. It is "too radical a shift" and its implementation requires repeal of the 16th Amendment (income tax). Cain says that 9-9-9 is an intermediate step, intended to bridge the gap while the 16th is being repealed.
Second thing is that, unlike income tax proposals, the sales tax (national) is essentially price neutral, yet promotes economic growth. It's also perfectly progressive, but its most outstanding value is that it makes plain the cost of government, showing up on every cash register you pass! For that reason, No politician would DARE raise that tax on EVERYBODY, right out in the open!
The problem with flat taxes is that they retain too many artifacts (and IRS agents) of the existing code to determine a) where you got your money and b) where you spent it, so that every dollar can be taxed at a different rate depending on those two sets of "social engineering" rules. This lets the politicians tinker behind the scenes and raise rates much more easily.
Criticize Cain if you want for not making the details and advantages of 9-9-9 far more clear; he should. But we should then criticize Perry for abandoning his total support for the FAIR tax at the first sign of criticism, and flip-flopping to a (very high) flat tax with all sorts of deductions, exclusions, yada-yada.
Comment 4 by Gary Gross at 28-Oct-11 12:05 PM
Any plan that wants to implement a national sales tax without first repealing the Sixteenth Amendment is foolish. Does anyone seriously think that that has a chance of passing Congress? Remember passing constitutional amendments requires 290 votes in the House & 67 votes in the Senate.
After that, it goes to the states. If 37 states don't ratify it with a majority vote in both houses of their legislatures within a limited timeframe, we're stuck with a national sales tax & a federal income tax.
Does anyone seriously think that New York, Calfornia, Massachusetts, Illinois, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Washington state, Vermont, Maine, Oregon, New Mexico, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Minnesota most years, Michigan and Wisconsin would vote to repeal the federal income tax? I certainly don't. That stops the repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment dead in its tracks.
I applaud Gov. Perry's flat tax proposal. It's a pro-growth proposal that'll grow jobs. That isn't just my opinion. It's what Chairman Ryan told a bunch of us bloggers Thursday.
Mann, Ornstein shed moderate image, tilt to far left
Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann are old pros in Washington, DC. They're often perceived as left-of-center moderates. Now that they've written this op-ed telling President Obama not to move to the center, it's important to update their profiles. It's important to drop the moderates from their profile.
Obama should likewise know by now that working with a supercommittee whose Republican members are under orders from their House and Senate leaders to oppose all revenue increases is a fool's errand. And imagining that a substantial center in the American public will respond positively to such an approach is pure fantasy. What sense does it make for Obama embrace an agenda without any support on the other side of the aisle, and make nice to a party whose sole objective is to deny him reelection? One should note the reaction, documented by Politico , of a key Republican Senate leadership staffer to Obama's endorsement of the Gang of Six deficit-reduction framework in July - if Obama is for it, we have to be against it.
Mann and Ornstein are right about one thing. Republicans shouldn't oppose something President Obama supports out of spite. They should oppose the things President Obama supports because they're bad policies.
Republicans should make the case for why President Obama's and the Democrats' policies should be ignored. All it takes is a brief short-term history lesson. Has the stimulus worked? Has the stimulus created any green jobs? Have the loan guarantees to the Solyndras and the SunPowers of the world now been dumped into taxpayers' laps? Based on sky-high unemployment, skyrocketing deficits and the mountain of debt, aren't people far worse off now than the day President Obama was sworn in?
Ornstein and Mann argue that President Obama would be foolish to agree with Republicans in ruling out tax increases. Their advice is foolish. The American people know the federal government has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. That's why the American people oppose new taxes to paper over Washington's spending addiction.
This paragraph is totally delusional:
Obama, at the center of today's political spectrum, should therefore be explicit and forceful in communicating the stark differences between the parties and the source of inaction and gridlock in Washington. To do anything less would be a disservice to the public, his party, and his hopes for a constructive and consequential presidency.
People that think President Obama is "at the center of today's political spectrum" simply weren't paying attention to the American people last November, 2010.
The American people spoke with a booming, unmistakable voice. They were tired of the bailouts, the stimulus, Obamacare and the Democrats' spending.
Furthermore, the inaction has been epitomized by Senate Democrats. House Republicans have put together and passed 15 bills they think will lift this administration's counterproductive regulatory regime, cut the Democrats' reckless spending, promote robust domestic energy production while reforming entitlements.
Other than that, House Republicans haven't done much since installing John Boehner as Speaker.
Meanwhile, Senate Majority leader Reid has bottled up "the Forgotten Fifteen" because admitting that Republicans have actually gotten things done would be akin to telling the nation that Senate Democrats are lazy and disinterested in doing the people's business.
Harry Reid's and President Obama's Democrats haven't even passed a budget in over two-and-a-half years. The "source of inaction and gridlock in Washington" is found on the left side of the aisle. This year, it's specifically located in the Senate.
Republicans have said no to foolish, counterproductive proposals like they should. They've said yes to things that they believe in, things that've worked in the past. If Republicans stick with their message of growing the economy, shrinking the size of government and reforming how Washington operates, the American people will side with them the vast majority of the time.
If President Obama and the Democrats continue endorsing the policies they're currently endorsing, they'll get thrashed again in 2012.
Posted Friday, October 28, 2011 9:21 AM
No comments.
Shrinking college enrollment proof of Higher Education bubble?
For some time, Instapundit Glenn Reynolds has talked about the Higher Education bubble and it inevitably popping. This SC Times article might be proof that that bubble is about to pop:
Central Minnesotans focused on this area's quality of life shouldn't hit the panic button, but they should be concerned about the latest enrollment numbers from St. Cloud State University and the St. Cloud Technical & Community College.
As reported last week, St. Cloud State's annual 30-day enrollment number fell almost 6 percent to 17,231, down about 1,100 students. St. Cloud Technical & Community College saw a 3.1 percent decrease, from 4,810 to 4,660 students.
While both universities anticipated declines, the size of St. Cloud State's deserves particular attention, which is why it's good to know university officials are looking for more details about trends in specific programs.
Declining enrollments don't automatically prove that tuition costs are too high. Still, that can't be ruled out as an explanation for declining enrollments. It's quite possible that other factors contribute to the decline. Things like expensive books don't help cash-strapped students.
Perhaps, potential students are staying away to avoid going into debt. They're already staring at the possibility of higher taxes to pay for this generation's indulgent lifestyle and the Democrats' reckless spending.
There's alot wrong with America's Higher Education system. Anytime that a system is top-heavy with administrators, tuition is likely to take a hit.
Newt Gingrich exposes the administrators' bubble in this video . Starting just before the 32:00 minute mark, here's what Speaker Gingrich said:
Why do colleges have so many bureaucrats? There's a study that shows, by 2014, we will have virtually the same number of administrators and clerks that we have teachers in higher education. Now one-to-one might be an interesting model if it's student-teacher but one-to-one as bureaucrat to teacher strikes me as an absurdity.
Go and look through why these schools are expensive. And what we've done with student aid is...with student loans is we've made it possible for students to live beyond their means for longer than they should, selling off their future and then, suddenly, when they get out of school, they realize "Oh, I borrowed that much"?
If you think about it, this is not a very smart model for a country because it sells short the future, maximizes the present and doesn't teach students true cost. And what the president did yesterday is very destructive. It just expands the bubble. Higher Education last year, I think this is correct, the public universities for the fifth straight year, rose in expense faster than private universities.
It seems to me that, before 'investing in higher education', an auditing firm should go through every state's university system, then produce a report outlining the inordinate amount of abuses they find.
It isn't even a matter of asking whether they'd find an outlandish number of abuses. It's a matter of finding out the extent and scope of the abuses and mismanagement in the current higher education system.
Why shouldn't a question be posed to every administrator, asking them to explain what they're doing that improves educational excellence? If they can't give a solid, quantifiable answer justifying their salary, shouldn't that money be saved by eliminating that position immediately?
The next question I'd ask is quite simple. If we started banking the savings by eliminating positions filled by administrators' cronies, wouldn't student tuitions drop significantly? If they didn't, would that, at minimum, save the states' taxpayers money spend on 'higher education'?
The current system is a mess that's needed a major overhaul for a quarter century. If you don't think that's true, think of this: in the 1990's, Newt Gingrich was talking about kids having learning tools that resemble today's Kindles and IPads .
Back then, he was advocating for their use as a 24/7 lifelong learning device to keep pace with the rapidly expanding knowledge base. Back then, people looked at him like he was nuts.
Fast forward to today and the bureaucrats and unions still resist changing to that type of learning , at least in a formal setting, because it'd mean teachers and administrators would lose their six-figure salaried jobs.
As a society, we should demand that the expansive and expensive labyrinth of administrators, agencies and do-nothing bureaucrats be dismantled. We should demand that universities' tuitions drop, the bureaucracies trimmed significantly and that students only have the option of graduating with a degree that actually helps students be a productive part of the private sector.
Anything short of that is unacceptable.
Posted Friday, October 28, 2011 11:53 AM
Comment 1 by Patrick Mattson at 29-Oct-11 06:16 AM
I wonder why no one ever talks about "big education"? Higher education encourages students to take out massive loans so they, the schools, can delay the inevitable: a smaller, less costly organization. New academic buildings are nice but I wonder who really pays for them. College costs have risen 467% since 1985 while the inflation rate has increased 115%. When I worked as an adviser to new, incoming students I was told to ensure the students take at least 15 credits even though some were not prepared or could not afford it.
There is hope as we are getting more light on the subject like Newt has done and these New York Post and Times articles
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/college_loan_scam_nC7ICPN37lYStja83PBSaN
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/03/education/03college.html
Comment 2 by J. Ewing at 30-Oct-11 02:47 PM
What struck me about Newt's pitch was the "class size of 1" achieved through technology, and the Florida Virtual Classroom where one teacher "assists" hundreds of students. That ideal scenario, though, means we need about 20% of the teachers we now have, and could reduce costs by roughly 80%, as well.
George Will: Conservatism has come to this?
Politico offers a sneak peak at George Will's Sunday column. Suffice it to say that he isn't a fan of Mitt's:
Romney, supposedly the Republican most electable next November, is a recidivist reviser of his principles who is not only becoming less electable, he might damage GOP chances of capturing the Senate: Republican successes down the ticket will depend on the energies of the tea party and other conservatives, who will be deflated by a nominee whose blurry profile in caution communicates only calculated trimming.
Republicans may have found their Michael Dukakis, a technocratic Massachusetts governor who takes his bearings from 'data'...Has conservatism come so far, surmounting so many obstacles, to settle, at a moment of economic crisis, for THIS?
With the nation at a crossroads, what this nation needs is a visionary, someone to inspire them with great ideas. We need a real leader.
This week, when Gov. Romney initially refused to support Gov. Kasich's SB5 law, it was proof that Gov. Romney didn't have a spine. When he apologized "if I caused any confusion", he finally said he supported Gov. Kasich "110%". That isn't leadership. That's shapeshifting at its finest.
We don't need someone who's constantly revising his core beliefs. That's assuming he has core beliefs. Based on this op-ed by Doug MacKinnon, Club for Growth doesn't think Romney has a spine either:
"The big problem many conservatives have with Mitt Romney is that he's taken both sides of nearly every issue important to us. He's against a flat tax, now he's for it. He says he's against ObamaCare, but was for the individual mandate and subsidies that are central to ObamaCare. He thinks that collective bargaining issues should be left for states to decide if he's in Ohio, but he took the opposite position when he was in New Hampshire. This is just another statement in a long line of statements that will raise more doubts about what kind of President Mitt Romney would be in the minds of many Republican primary voters."
Gov. Perry perhaps said it best during his interview with Bill O'Reilly Tuesday night. That's when Gov. Perry questioned how a man in his 50's or 60's could change his mind on so many fundamental issues that late in life.
It suggests that these changing positions weren't part of major epiphany but rather are the determination made by a man who knew he wouldn't stay viable if he kept espousing his real positions.
The TEA Party was the reason for last year's historic defeat of the Democrats. Having a technocrat like Mitt Romney, who is, at best, disinterested in the TEA Party would throw cold water on the TEA Party movement. Most importantly, TEA Party activists demand sincerity from politicians. If a politician says they're going to do X, they'd better get X done or at least say that they worked hard to get it accomplished.
If Republicans want to keep the momentum going that started with the TEA Party movement, they can't nominate the anti-TEA Party candidate.
Mr. Will is right that conservatism isn't informed by "data." The TEA Party's principles aren't determined by data either. Conservatism's principles are rooted in documents like the Constitution and the Federalist Papers. That's why they believe passionately about concepts like federalism and limited government.
Mitt Romney doesn't have deep-rooted principles. That's the message of Mr. Will's column. With respect to Mr. Will's question, no, it shouldn't come to this.
Posted Saturday, October 29, 2011 7:52 AM
Comment 1 by eric z at 29-Oct-11 09:24 AM
Ditto, with a bit more flair:
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/scarce/george-will-romney-republicans-michael-duka
Actually, Gary, it was not Michael Dukakis who ran agains GHW Bush. The media let GHW Bush pick his opponent, and GHW Bush picked Willie Horton.
And won. The "liberal" media did just that.
Comment 2 by Gary Gross at 29-Oct-11 09:43 AM
Actually, the Willie Horton ad was first run by then-Sen. Al Gore.
FWIW, the liberal media knew that Dukakis was a disaster so they destroyed him before he destroyed liberalism.
Comment 3 by James Douglass at 30-Oct-11 06:49 AM
George Will is razor sharp and right on point. Like him or not Ron Paul is the "what you see is what you get" and he is not my candidate.
Even with his flaws Herman Cain is my choice with both my heart and my checkbook.
If Mr. Romney is successful in securing the GOP nomination I think a huge number of conservatives will be reluctant at best and perhaps refusing at worst to follow along this track to the site of the train wreck in November of 2012.
James Douglass
Garden City, Kansas
Comment 4 by Gary Gross at 30-Oct-11 07:10 AM
First, it's important that I state that I love Herman Cain...as VP or Treasury Secretary. He's accomplished alot but he isn't ready to be president.
From an economic standpoint, he's plenty ready. The thing is that POTUS isn't just about the economy. He's the leader of the free world.
When it comes to national security, he frightens the bejesus out of me.
My guy is, to nobody's surprise, Newt Gingrich. He's spent the last 30 years thinking things through, whether the subject was education reform, taxes, national security, the military, health care or energy.
He's got a bold plan to transform the federal budget. He's put policies in place that balanced the budget 4 straight years while creating 11,000,000 jobs.
He's dealt with national security & intelligence oversight as Speaker, too.
Kaiser on Dayton's mining decision: It's about the jobs
This morning, the Duluth News Tribune published this editorial written by Prof. Kent Kaiser on the subject of mining.
Here's what Prof. Kaiser said in his editorial:
This month, Minnesota's State Executive Council, which includes the governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, attorney general and state auditor, voted to delay 77 leases to explore for copper and nickel on private lands in northern Minnesota.
This short-sighted action was initiated by Gov. Mark Dayton and Secretary of State Mark Ritchie. It was unfortunate for the job situation in the Northland, and I know many Minnesotans are terribly disappointed.
After all, the people of Minnesota own the rights to minerals in the state, including those under private land. Anyone from Northeastern Minnesota knows this; I remember learning this fact in elementary school.
Dayton and Ritchie said they were responding to the complaints of a handful of Isabella-area landowners who supposedly didn't know about the state's century-old mineral laws. Yet most of the people testifying against the leases actually live in the Twin Cities area or are only transplants to the Northland. I think most Northlanders would agree: It's inconceivable that someone from the Twin Cities or elsewhere would buy property in Northeastern Minnesota without being astute enough to learn the laws relevant to that land. If they didn't: well, tough.
Gov. Dayton's decision isn't difficult to figure out. Gov. Dayton is doing whatever he can to support the militant environmentalists rather than supporting miners. That's why Gov. Dayton hired Paul Aasen, a militant environmentalist, to be his MPCA Commissioner.
Prof. Kaiser notes in this paragraph that delaying mining projects is a habit of Gov. Dayton's:
Indeed, Dayton's actions this month were more consistent with his actions two decades ago. At that time, when he was on the State Executive Council as state auditor, he called for the postponement of mining lease votes so he could consult first with the Sierra Club.
Someone should create a sign for Gov. Dayton's office door, perhaps something that conveys the message that job-killing special interest organizations are welcome. It's clear that Gov. Dayton isn't the jobs governor he campaigned as. He's the unemployment governor, especially considering he needlessly laid off 23,000 workers this past July.
Gov. Dayton sided with Mark Ritchie when making this decision. That doesn't mean everyone was on board with Gov. Dayton's decision:
It should be noted that Lt. Gov. Yvonne Prettner Solon, a Duluthian, advocated for approving the leases, saying it was about jobs. Like most Northland residents, she understands. It is noteworthy, too, that State Auditor Rebecca Otto, from rural Marine on St. Croix, outside the metro beltway, also advocated aggressively for the leases.
It's apparent that Gov. Dayton and the DFL don't care about miners or the Iron Range. They care about tree huggers and the Arrowhead. (Yes, there's a huge difference between the Range and the Arrowhead. Tree huggers inhabit the Arrowhead. Miners live on the Range.)
The difference between the two subregions is substantial. It's like the difference between the tonier parts of St. Paul and the meat-packing areas of South St. Paul.
When Gov. Dayton sided with the tree huggers and Paul Aasen, he essentially told the miners 'Go to hell.' Prof. Kaiser highlights Gov. Dayton's hypocrisy in this paragraph:
In an act of utter inconsistency (some might say hypocrisy) Gov. Dayton attended a 'jobs summit' in Duluth just two days after quashing well-paying jobs in the Arrowhead region. (The average annual salary of a Minnesota miner is about $70,000, with benefits fully loaded on, far more than could be made in tourism or other industries in the region.)
Gov. Dayton's decision to deny these hard-working miners the opportunity to make god wages for a number of years would change their lives just like mining would positively alter Minnesota's revenue stream.
What's noteworthy is that DFL legislators from the Range haven't spoken out against Gov. Dayton's giving the Range the finger. What did Gov. Dayton promise to buy their silence? Do Range DFL legislators put the DFL and their special interest allies first, their constituents second?
Based on the Executive Council's decision, it's apparent that the DFL is the Metro Party. They used to care about the Range and Central Minnesota. That can't be said anymore.
They should scrap the DFL name, too. They can't be pro labor, then push union miners under the bus. Catering to the PEU employees working in cushy offices isn't being pro labor. That's being pro special interest. There's a huge difference.
Prof. Kaiser is spot on in highlighting the Dayton administration's anti-mining policies. Likewise, he's spot on with his noting Gov. Dayton's hypocrisy on jobs issues.
Gov. Dayton is the best governor the militant environmentalist's money could buy. It's unfortunate that he'll sell out the miners for a paltry few trinkets.
Posted Saturday, October 29, 2011 9:40 AM
Comment 1 by Terry Stone at 29-Oct-11 10:18 AM
If there are landowners near Ely who failed to do due diligence on the mineral rights, there are also logical consequences and personal responsibilities for poor decisions. Deference to the lowest common denominator makes poor public industrial policy.
Comment 2 by Chad Q at 29-Oct-11 11:48 PM
Come on, Gov. Goofy had a jobs summit this past week so we won't need mining in northern MN because there will soon be so many jobs we won't have enough people to fill the openings.
Comment 3 by Gary Gross at 30-Oct-11 07:11 AM
RIIIIGHHTTT
A damning indictment against Washington establishment
If ever an indictment against was to be written about Washington insiders, you could certainly do alot worse than starting with this article in the National Journal.
The large Republican presidential field, along with the dramatic surges and collapses of several of its candidates, may ultimately be much ado about nothing. That, at least, is the conclusion of the Republican strategists surveyed in this week's National Journal Political Insiders Poll, who almost unanimously identified Mitt Romney as the most likely candidate to win the nomination. In the five times the GOP Insiders have been asked that question in 2011, Romney has never surrendered the top spot.
It's apparent these Washington insiders don't count trustworthiness, leadership and consistency as important characteristics in presidential candidates. If they did, they would've disqualified Mitt months ago. It's apparent that the insiders consider having a spine optional, too.
This part is quite frightening:
Democratic Insiders, meanwhile, largely believe Republicans are on the right track, with more than two-thirds of them naming Romney as the strongest candidate the GOP could nominate for the 2012 election.
It's proof that Democratic insiders are as out of touch with America's heartland as GOP insiders. Seventy-one percent of Democrat insiders said that Mitt Romney would be the toughest candidate to run against, followed by 19% saying Gov. Huntsman would be the toughest, with Gov. Perry and "Other" each collecting 5% of Democrat insiders' votes.
This isn't insanity. It's outright stupidity. The 2010 GOP landslide wasn't won because Republicans recruited a great crop of squishy moderates. The GOP landslide was possible because they recruited great conservative candidates.
By picking Huntsman and Romney, the 2 most liberal GOP presidential candidates this year, Democratic insiders are either saying that 2010 didn't happen or that it was just an aberration.
Without a fired up base, the GOP candidate can't win. Without a solid conservative at the top of the ticket, the GOP loses alot of independents. With Romney as the GOP nominee, the TEA Party won't enthusiastically support the GOP candidate. It's that simple.
If these GOP insiders don't care about winning, they should just admit it so we can ignore their opinions. If the GOP insiders like a flip-flopping, spineless, leadership-challenged candidate, that's their right.
Here's a little advice for the insiders from both parties: spend the next 2-3 months away from DC, away from the campaigns. Get into your cars and drive to Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Missouri, Iowa, West Virginia and Wisconsin. That's what Salena Zito is doing , which is why she's staying so connected with political reality.
While you're away from DC, actually listen to real people. Find out what's important to them. Don't reflexively accept the Beltway's conventional wisdom as Gospel fact.
If the DC insiders from both parties did that, most of the crap that's happening in DC would be ridiculed until Beltway CW became a laughingstock.
Posted Saturday, October 29, 2011 12:33 PM
Comment 1 by J. Ewing at 29-Oct-11 06:18 PM
Perhaps it is ascribing too much intelligence to the "intelligentsia" of either party to try to tell the People what they want in a candidate. One might excuse the GOP establishment for being spineless and weak-kneed in the face of the oncoming juggernaut of negative press that will attach the eventual nominee (big secret: REGARDLESS of how squishy he might be), but one also cannot escape the feeling that the Democrats WANT to run against Romney most of all. They are so used to picking our candidates for us, and it needs to stop.
Ohio Fundraiser Calls for DeWine Resignation
A major contributor to Republican campaigns in Ohio has called for Kevin DeWine's resignation . DeWine is the chairman of the Ohio Republican Party.
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A generous Republican donor from Northeast Ohio has called for Ohio GOP Chairman Kevin DeWine's resignation, stoking speculation of a rift between the party's leadership and Republican Gov. John Kasich's administration.
Jon Lindseth, a businessman from Hunting Valley who has contributed about $200,000 to Republican candidates since 2001, sent DeWine a brief e-mail on Thursday expressing his displeasure.
"Enough is enough," said the e-mail, obtained by The Plain Dealer. "You crossed the line. Time for you to resign."
The root of the problem appears to stem from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's now-infamous stop in the Cincinnati area this week .
Kevin DeWine's stunt backfired on both DeWine and Gov. Romney. Ohio Republican insiders say that DeWine's biggest problem is that he's listening to Brett Buerck too much. Buerck is one of the Republicans that helped Ohio Republicans earn the reputation of being corrupt. This article explains how corrupt Buerck is:
Brett Buerck, Householder's former chief of staff, closed his lucrative political consulting firm, First Tuesday, and is now a first-year law student at Ohio State University.
His sidekick, fund-raiser Kyle Sisk, lost his major Republican accounts, sold his home after claiming that records subpoenaed by a grand jury had been stolen from his billiards table and is involved in an undisclosed business venture.
Both declined to discuss the investigation.
At the Statehouse, Householder's hand-picked successor, Jon Husted, has earned plaudits for a more inclusive and collegial leadership style as he works to shed the nickname 'Little Larry.'
Husted, a Dayton-area Republican, fired Buerck and Sisk as consultants to the House GOP in 2004. Since then, he has publicly distanced himself from the pair while quietly helping behind the scenes. He wrote Buerck a letter of recommendation for law school, and his wife, Realtor Tina Husted, was the listing agent for the sale of Sisk's $300,000 home.
'The best and worst of everything'
Householder's meteoric rise from insurance agent in hardscrabble New Lexington to House speaker is due in large part to the political prowess of Buerck, his brilliant, ruthless and hyper-vigilant top aide.
But it was Buerck who ultimately also brought Householder down by alienating colleagues who turned to law enforcement authorities and the news media.
Just 30 years old when he resigned from the House in August 2003, Buerck launched First Tuesday and within two months was pulling in more than $80,000 a month. His clients included two obscure Dayton firms whose goal was Householder's goal, to install Husted as House speaker and Sen. Jeff Jacobson as Senate president.
Their plan nearly worked, but it collapsed the following summer after Husted and Jacobson, a suburban Dayton Republican, admitted they had routed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Buerck and Sisk through a tiny nonprofit called Citizens for Conservative Values and JSN Associates, a consulting firm run by James Nathanson, one of Jacobson's closest friends.
In the following months, Buerck lost most of his consulting clients as friends and colleagues deserted him.
My Ohio contact said that there wasn't a line Buerck wouldn't cross. Based on this article, that's pretty believable.
In 2006, alot of Republicans lost their House seats thanks to the plethora of GOP scandals that year. There was the Bob Ney-Jack Abramoff scandal, the Taft scandal and, apparently, the Buerck ripoff.
This is the picture of the 'guy behind the guy':
Buerck and Sisk raised millions of dollars for Householder and House Republicans by threatening to withhold financial support from wayward members who didn't vote in lockstep with Householder on key pieces of legislation.
They also strong-armed members to embrace no-new-taxes pledges, using political nonprofits such as the Ohio Taxpayers Association to wage scorched-earth campaigns against Democrats and uncooperative Republican primary opponents.
'When I was trying to put together my first campaign brochure, they kept giving me paragraphs and I kept sending them back and saying, 'I do my own writing,' ' said Rep. Jim McGregor, a suburban Columbus Republican. 'It's the coin of the realm, it's the only thing I have to give my voters, so I told them, 'I can't have you writing my words.' 'It was pretty confrontational.'
It's painfully obvious that Mssrs. Buerck and Sisk are total control freaks. People with that type of personality frequently believe tha the ends justifies the means.
I don't have proof but it wouldn't be difficult for me to think that Mr. Buerck talked DeWine into embarrassing Gov. Kasich. Gov. Kasich has a lengthy history of being a man of integrity. He's consistent to a fault. He started submitting balanced budget blueprints in 1989. He didn't stop submitting balanced budget blueprints until he retired from Congress in 2001.
With Gov. Kasich, what you see is what you get. It's really that simple.
Posted Saturday, October 29, 2011 10:37 PM
No comments.
Will insanity kill California?
California's finances have been a terrible mess seemingly forever. The legislature, combined with Gray Davis and Ahnold, have driven the state into the ground. People are leaving the state with increasing frequency.
If sanity doesn't ensue immediately, California's economy will totally crater. During its best days, California wasn't known for its sanity. Today, the sanity quotient is at an alltime low. Few people have high expectations for California's economy.
That's why this article , despite being filled with bad news, offers a glimmer of hope:
Sacramento is Government Central, a land of overly pensioned bureaucrats and restaurant discounts for state workers. But way up in the North State, one finds a small but hard-edged rural populace that views state and federal officials as the main obstacles to their quality of life.
Their latest battle is to stop destruction of four hydroelectric dams along the Klamath River, an action driven by environmentalists and the Obama administration. Most locals say the dam-busting will undermine their property rights and ruin the local farming and ranch economy, which is all that's left since environmental regulators destroyed the logging and mining industries.
These used to be wealthy resource-based economies, but now many of the towns are drying up, with revenue to local governments evaporating. Unemployment rates are in the 20-percent-and-higher range. Nearly 79 percent of the county's voters in a recent advisory initiative opposed the dam removal , but that isn't stopping the authorities from blasting the dams anyway.
These rural folks, living in the shadow of the majestic Mount Shasta, believe that they are being driven away so that their communities can essentially go back to the wild, to conform to a modern environmentalist ethos that puts wildlands above humanity. As the locals told it during the Defend Rural America conference Oct. 22 at the Siskiyou Golden Fairgrounds, environmental officials are treading on their liberties, traipsing unannounced on their properties, confronting ranchers with guns drawn to enforce arcane regulatory rules and destroying their livelihoods in the process.
These counties are standing up to the federal government in an epic worthy of David vs. Goliath. This administration, coupled with militant environmentalists, apparently wants this part of California returned to its natural state.
This would be a Ghengis Khan vs. little villages fight if not for this:
The evening's main event: a panel featuring eight county sheriffs (seven from California, one from Oregon) who billed themselves as "Constitution sheriffs." They vowed to stand up for the residents of their communities against what they say is an unconstitutional onslaught from regulators in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. In particular, they took issue with the federal government's misnamed Travel Management Plan, which actually is designed to shut down public travel in the forests.
Plumas County Sheriff Greg Hagwood related the stir he caused when he said he "will not criminalize citizens for just accessing public lands." Siskiyou County Sheriff Jon Lopey reminded the crowd that county sheriffs are sworn to uphold the Constitution "against all enemies, foreign and domestic." These are fighting words.
Sheriff Dean Wilson of Del Norte County said he was "ignorant and naive about the terrible condition our state was in." He came to believe that people were being assaulted by their own government. "I spent a good part of my life enforcing the penal code but not understanding my oath." Wilson and other sheriffs said it is their role to defend the liberties of the people against any encroachments, even if those encroachments come from other branches of government.
That's the right attitude on the Constitution. It's refreshing to hear these sheriffs state that they're willing to fight the federal government and the militant environmentalists. The environmentalists' encroachments on people's liberties is stunning.
I've written that militant environmentalists have done 100 times more damage to this nation's economy than Wall Street fat cats. I've written about Houston County's attempt to prevent land owners from using their land as they see fit.
As you can see, California isn't the only place where militant environmentalists are attempting to strip landowners of their livelihood and their private property rights.
These particular types of environmentalists don't hesitate in crippling a person's lands rights usage. They'll use any tactic at their avail. That's why I call them militant environmentalists. I don't use the term evil very often. The militant environmentalists, whether they're waging war with land owners in California, Colorado or Minnesota, are evil.
That's why it's important for people to get off their duffs and fight these groups in whatever arena they choose to compete in. It's time we noticed that militant environmentalists are committed to waging war against private property rights. It's time we noticed that militant environmentalists are waging a war against prosperity.
I know that sounds melodramatic but it's easily proven. In fact, I proved that fact in this post :
Along with our allies at the Izaak Walton League of America, the Union of Concerned Scientists and Wind on the Wires, the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy and Fresh Energy argued, first in South Dakota, then before the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC), that the new plant was a bad idea. Our message was simple: The utilities had not proven the need for the energy, and what energy they did need could be acquired less expensively through energy efficiency and wind.
We kept losing, but a funny thing happened. With each passing year, it became clearer that we were right. In 2007, two of the Minnesota utilities dropped out, citing some of the same points we had been making. The remaining utilities had to go through the process again with a scaled-down 580-megawatt plant.
This time around, the administrative law judge ruled in our favor, saying the utilities had proven the need for, at most, 160 megawatts and had failed to prove that coal would be the least expensive way of providing the electricity. The Minnesota PUC approved the transmission lines into Minnesota, and we filed an appeal that is pending with the Minnesota Court of Appeals.
That's what Paul Aasen, currently our MPCA commissioner, wrote in a Strib op-ed about his attrition litigation tactics in killing the Big Stone II power plant in Minnesota. It wasn't about litigation. Aasen freely admits that MCEA and other militant environmentalist organizations that they kept suing until they killed the project.
If people didn't understand how destructive the militant environmentalists, the EPA, this administration and the US Dept. of Interior are to the US economy before this, they should see it after reading this:
The people in Siskiyou were echoing points I've heard throughout rural California. As they see it, government regulators are pursuing controversial policies, i.e., diverting water from farms to save a bait fish, the Delta smelt, clamping down on carbon dioxide emissions to address global warming even if it means driving food processors out of the Central Valley, demolishing dams to increase a population of fish that isn't endangered, without caring about the costs to rural residents.
Where the federal government shut down the flow of water to protect the Delta Smelt, unemployment shot up to 20-30%. It's stayed there, too.
This economic terrorism must stop ASAP. Hopefully, these sheriffs and the determination of the people of northern California can defeat the federal government and the militant environmentalists. Hopefully, they can restore a measure of sanity to an insane, foolish state.
Posted Sunday, October 30, 2011 8:43 AM
Comment 1 by Bob J. at 31-Oct-11 09:48 AM
R-nulled Schwarzenegger is a classic example of what happens when Republicans say "let's vote for the electable candidate". No more.
Sen. Klobuchar's Infrastructure Bill
Photo Op Amy is offering pork-filled legislation in the form of a mini-transportation bill. That's what this Strib article is reporting:
Klobuchar says the infrastructure bill is not about partisan politics, but addresses an important need, fixing the country's aging infrastructure.
"These truly have had bipartisan support in the past," said Klobuchar, who said her interest in infrastructure dates back to the Interstate 35W bridge collapse. "I believe there's some merit within the chamber for this, whether passes on the first try or not."
In Minnesota, Republican Party Chairman Tony Sutton said that "it's not surprising that Sen. Klobuchar is the 'sweet' being trotted out to complement Harry Reid's 'sour' proposal for yet another massive federal stimulus bill."
Among the bill's $50 billion in infrastructure spending is $27 billion for road, bridge and rail infrastructure, $9 billion for transit and $4 billion for high-speed rail.
There are undoubtedly some worthy projects included in the bill. I'd be surprised if most of the projects weren't pork-filled 're-election specials'. I'd be surprised if they didn't help a Democrat brag how he brought home the bacon for his state.
The fact that $4,000,000,000 is targeted for high-speed rail tells people that Sen. Klobuchar isn't listening to the will of the people. Governors and average people on Main Street are rejecting spending money on projects like the Northern Lights Express, aka the NLX. The NLX is a pet project for both Tarryl Clark and Sen. Klobuchar. They want that project badly. (Rumor has it that they both need another photo op to attend to embellish their image.)
Spending money we don't have on things we don't need while not fixing damaged roads and bridges is foolish. Doesn't Sen. Klobuchar understand the need to set intelligent priorities? Apparently not.
It's a sad state of affairs that a sitting US senator doesn't have a clue about setting wise policy priorities.
Posted Sunday, October 30, 2011 9:22 AM
No comments.
