In Rebuttal to Tony Soltani

This week a group of friends and supporters gathered at the home of a State Rep in Amherst to celebrate the sixtieth birthday of the Speaker of the House, Bill O’Brien.  Many State Reps were there to express their appreciation for his outstanding leadership as well as his friendship with the members of the House. … Read more

Gosh, and I thought that Harry Reid would have LOVED the plan – look!

TEA Party Principles: Stop the spending, Fiscal Responsibility, Free Markets, Rule of Law

We worked hard to get the best people in place that would carry those principles forward.  This IS the defining moment – do we let the Progressives ruin us financially, making our kids and grandkids slaves to the debt they have poured onto us, or do we stop the insanity and stop the growth of government?

Which translates to: will the Republicans, especially in the House, stand on principle or will it be the usual DC compromise?  Read this from Cato and you can easily guess:

The Boehner plan also doesn’t cut spending in a more fundamental way. It doesn’t lay out any particular programs or agencies to terminate. I’m in favor of spending caps as a secondary enforcement mechanism, but actual cuts have to come first. A caps-only plan like Boehner’s just kicks the can down the road. At best, it simply nudges future legislators to actually cut something specific.

Why doesn’t the House leadership propose real cuts? They’ve certainly got the resources and expertise to do the job. A single senator — Tom Coburn — produced a 620-page report last week detailing hundreds of programs to cut and terminate. Coburn and his staff read through thousands of articles and reports on the real-world performance of federal programs, and they made a good case for each particular cut they proposed. 

So, does the below chart show that DC has gotten the message and stopped the spending via the Boehner plan? No  Current deficit spending is $1.5 Trillion (give or take).  Does the Boehner plan stop the bleeding?    No.  The Rs are touting $3 TRILLION CUTS!  Er, over 10 years.  Translation – $300 Billion / year.  That’s IF later Congress’s stick to it…they don’t have to.  This STILL means deficit spending of $1.2 Trillion / year.

This is not what the TEA Party fought for in November – just more of the same with the Rs not convinced they have the power (even as the House Rs control the actual Purse Strings) to stand up and stand strong.  Once again, we see the wimp factor snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Once again, we see the GOP action (their votes) failing to meet their philosophy (limited government).

With no respect meant for Harry Reid, this is the reason why I would have chuckled to himself ("those rube Republicans – I STILL get to spend lots!")":

 (H/T: Cato)

Even more charts showing in what bad shape we are in here.

They were sent to do a job –

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Notable Quote – Sen. Jesse Helms

“Compromise, hell! That’s what has happened to us all down the line — and that’s the very cause of our woes. If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?” – … Read more

Americans Deserve Better

Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that, ‘the buck stops here’. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”

The incredible statist global warming scam….

Part of an essay by Walter Russell Mead: 

"The global green strategy was a comprehensive, unified and coordinated one.  Green activists around the world, in some countries empowered because proportional representation gives fringe groups disproportionate political influence, would unite around the push for a single global solution to climate change.  The global solution involved a treaty to be negotiated under UN auspices that would be “legally binding” and subject the emission of greenhouse gasses to strict global controls.  Developing countries would receive massive transfers of official aid ($100 billion or more a year) to compensate them for the costs they would incur in meeting carbon targets; developed countries like the United States would face stricter targets still.  The target for the treaty was to cap global emissions at levels believed to keep the global temperature rise this century to two degrees centigrade.

To reach this Valhalla, a political strategy was put in place; it is the strategy that the former vice president [Al Gore] is still gamely trying to push in his Rolling Stone article.  It has failed."

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Evil Landlords Who Pick On Tenants

“I like to think of my behavior in the sixties as a ‘learning experience.’ Then again, I like to think of anything stupid I’ve done as a ‘learning experience.’ It makes me feel less stupid.“ -P.J. O’Rourke

evictionNotice.jpg

I was at a housing office today dropping off some “required paperwork.” As I sat waiting to review the issues that brought me there, I was forced to listen to a couple of young women talk about how they were going to hire attorneys and, “get their landlords.” Their complaints ran the gamut of being forced to get rid of pets (they were not supposed to have in the first place)… to the landlord’s refusal to repair a door broken by a boyfriend during a quarrel. Those Landlord bastards! The nerve of them! how dare they?

It is such conversations that so amuse me. For certain, being a landlord is a difficult endeavor. Take Manchvegas, for example where the city mandates Certificate Of Compliance Inspections (COC); A process that takes place every three years for those of us ‘evil bastards‘ who own multi-family residential housing. This can be an annoying process. One year’s COC inspection I was informed of a requirement to upgrade smoke detectors to the AC type with DC battery back-up. The current smoke detectors were already hard-wired so this wasn’t a difficult task. However, upon reviewing the building code, I found myself needing to call the building department for clarification. I was unable to find that specific reference. I was subsequently told the requirement had not been adopted yet.  Guess it didn’t matter, though. I had already spent the 500 bucks to purchase the AC/DC smoke detector units and install them. For me this was an object lesson in (a) waiting for the post-inspection report to arrive in the mail, and (b) verifying the very issues cited in the report.

Window screens are yet another challenge. I mean, how stupid is that? Window Screens? But, a COC inspection cannot pass muster without the proper window screens in place. I always ensure window screens are in place for COC so that is not an issue. But, despite that, there are often tenants who are fundamentally challenged by the mere existence of window screens. They break them, lose them or destroy them. After I’ve replaced a couple and receive yet another request to do so, I demand the screen-challenged tenant “pony up” 22 dollars for an entire frame and screen replacement and 12 dollars for a screen replacement. The tenant gives me a bunch of indignant static. “It wasn’t on purpose!” he or she exclaims… Standing my ground and insisting, the tenant calls the building department to report my, “refusal to replace a missing window screen.”  The building department subsequently issues a “violation of the COC:” “failure to have the window screens in place.”  A landlord keeping proper track of expenses will quickly conclude that spending $700 per year on window screens is excessive and unreasonable.

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Who is the real NO?

Well, sir, where is YOUR plan?  Oh, just TALKING about having a plan?  

It appears that even the stupidest among us may be learning….

A new article from L.A. Times ("New polls confirm Obama’s democrat base crumbles") comes via a Drudge Report headline, "Obama’s Base Crumbles." In the meantime, a with a rather strong opinion made the following comment after the above L.A. Times article: Wasn’t it P.T. Barnum who uttered the famous phrase, "A sucker is born every minute"? Well, guess what? About … Read more

No Debt Ceiling Increase without Cut, Cap, and Balance

To the Editor:  

Both President Obama and Speaker Boehner failed to deliver acceptable proposals for raising the debt ceiling and both failed to explain the real situation to the American people.  

President Obama hasn’t provided specifics for a  plan, he makes no real attempt at compromise, his desired taxes on “the rich” provide a minuscule income, he continues to lie about the Bush tax cuts which actually increased tax revenues and shifted more of the tax burden to the rich, and he continues to threaten seniors and financial catastrophe.  (We hear similar threats every time our leaders try to pressure our representatives into doing bad things.)   

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Guest post by Mac Kittredge: The NH GOP is Forging Ahead Without an ‘Easy-Button’.

To the Editor,                                                                                                                               
The premise of an article in the Nashua Telegraph  (“State GOP facing trouble in paradise” 7/25/2011), is that the New Hampshire GOP, despite overwhelming victories in the legislature and the Executive Council, is basically floundering in Concord, nearly out of cash and rife with “. . infighting and back-stabbing.” It also opines that Governor Lynch’s job-approval ratings should have diminished far more, given the “. . . huge political advantage in the House and Senate.” Really? Does the author think that the luster of NH’s premier ribbon cutter is a good metric for measuring results in the legislature and Executive Council? Or that Republicans forgot that they were sent to Concord to get results and restore fiscal sanity, not to merely polish or tarnish reputations?

A close reading of the article shows naked partisanship by the unidentified author. This collection of carefully tailored facts set among unsupported allegations and hearsay assertions; (i.e. no details on the polls, where taken, questions asked, etc.) are clearly chosen to put Republicans in a bad light.

Why else report on a State GOP account balance, from several months ago, when the current balances are much more substantial? Why play with the timelines, if the article is supposed to take the pulse and viability of the NH GOP now? Why hint and wink about “back-stabbing” without presenting any detail or juicy evidence? I invite voters to carefully review this rancid political suppository for themselves (it’s almost all innuendo) and to then consider the rest of the story.
For example:

The basic premises of the article are patently false. Having a charming, popular, and largely statist Governor Lynch is not ‘paradise’ for the GOP. On election day,…

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Conservatives believe that the best form of welfare is a job. Govt thinks otherwise.

"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.”

– Robert A. Heinlein

I sat and read "Atlas Shrugged" a couple of summers ago for the first time.  My friend Chan (of WeekendPundit – I always read his Thoughts on a Sunday) warned me to have some kind of anti-depressants around as I read through the first 100 pages or so.  Thought that advice was a bit of an exaggeration.

I was wrong.

Since Obama’s inauguration,  how the Congress has neglected the Constitution more and more and shucked off its law making responsibility, and Federal agencies seem to want to make law by executive fiat more and more in larger and larger contexts, I have become more and more distraught.  Indeed, some are of such consequence, they should be the result of Congressional action, debated in the open, instead of by unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats. This is the Progressive technocrat state and not the governance model promulgated by our Founders. The parallels between what has been building up over the last few decades in our Government and the plot in Atlas Shrugged (even if overdrawn over too many pages) is scary.

This story, of Ronnie Bryant, has gone viral. David McElroy has this story of a coal mine operator that decided to "go Galt", the essence of the book.  Which means, instead of operating his business and providing good paying jobs and providing the fuel that keep our electric lights on, he has had enough:

…Mine operators and state environmental officials say the mine can be operated without threatening the water supply. Environmentalists claim it will be a threat.

I’m not going to take sides on that environmental issue, because I don’t know enough to stake out an informed opinion. (With most of the people I listened to today, facts didn’t seem to matter as much as emotional implications.) But Ronnie Bryant wasn’t there to talk about that particular mine. As a mine operator in a nearby area, he was attending the meeting to listen to what residents and government officials were saying. He listened to close to two hours of people trashing companies of all types and blaming pollution for random cases of cancer in their families. Several speakers clearly believe that all of the cancer and other deaths they see in their families and communities must be caused by pollution. Why? Who knows? Maybe just because it makes for an emotional story to blame big bad business. It’s hard to say.

After Bryant listened to all of the business-bashing, he finally stood to speak. He sounded a little bit shellshocked, a little bit angry — and a lot frustrated.

My name’s Ronnie Bryant, and I’m a mine operator…. I’ve been issued a [state] permit in the recent past for [waste water] discharge, and after standing in this room today listening to the comments being made by the people…. [pause] Nearly every day without fail — I have a different perspective — men stream to these [mining] operations looking for work in Walker County. They can’t pay their mortgage. They can’t pay their car note. They can’t feed their families. They don’t have health insurance. And as I stand here today, I just … you know … what’s the use? I got a permit to open up an underground coal mine that would employ probably 125 people. They’d be paid wages from $50,000 to $150,000 a year. We would consume probably $50 million to $60 million in consumables a year, putting more men to work. And my only idea today is to go home. What’s the use? I don’t know. I mean, I see these guys — I see them with tears in their eyes — looking for work. And if there’s so much opposition to these guys making a living, I feel like there’s no need in me putting out the effort to provide work for them. So as I stood against the wall here today, basically what I’ve decided is not to open the mine. I’m just quitting. Thank you.     

So, 125 families will go without a paycheck and continue dependency on Daddy Government.  Fuel that we need to keep the lights on will not keep those lights on; no energy means no ability to do work.  As David observed:

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The Harry Potter of the debt ceiling debate – that which cannot be named.

Or, at least to this point, hasn’t been talked much at all and if so, in hushed tones – actually paying the $14.5 Trillion debt actually racked up, not to mention the piling onto it by Obama and the Democrats spending?  Instead we’ve heard about:

  • The tax revenue enhancement
  • Closing loopholes
  • Flattening the individual and corporate rates
  • Restructuring the entitlements 
  • The deal is on, the deal is off, there’s a new deal
  • Obama is a petulant President.
  • And today, we know that Obama has been cut out of the dealing.
  • And Obama is one very scared President, with the realization that he’s fast becoming a one term President

Especially if the best efforts of Pelosi, Reid, Geithner, and Obama can’t keep the GOP from a two tiered effort with a short term effort that will result in yet another vote right smack dab in the Presidential general election.

And yes, Pelosi is scratched out as she has become irrelevant.  And yes, I scratched the GOP.  Sure, it is Republicans Cantor, Boehner and McConnell that are driving the bus up front.

But they ain’t the engine – the TEA Party is.  From a rag tag collection of fed up regular type folks that started off complaining that the Govt was going to pay their neighbor’s mortgage to staging rallies attracting <tens| hundreds |tens of thousands> of people to influencing municipal, county, and state level officials and elections.

And then on to getting Federal candidates elected to both the US House and the US Senate. The TEA Party was ALWAYS the force that could derail the Progressive train-wreck-to-happen right from the get/go, and the Progressives knew it at the start.  They realized that as soon as there was no one single leadership, they were doomed – it was only a matter of time.  And this past November, the TEA Party doomed a lot of the Progressive politicians (mostly Democrats but a fair number of Republicans as well)

And it is the US House that is in the driver’s seat and Obama knows it.  And Obama knows that it is this populist uprising against his expansion of Government to full blown Socialist levels & a vast expansion of the welfare state. And this is the nexus of raising or not raising the debt ceiling:

Are we going to allow the foundational philosophy of a limited government evaporate?

Mark my words – unless the spending is racheted down NOW, at THIS point in time, there may no longer be an environment where we, rather than government, can determine our future (or our present).  The spending has to stop – either…

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Can We Agree On The Value Of Broadband?

The most recent such move is the purchase of T-Mobile by AT&T. (Would that make them AT&T&T?) The debate is on whether or not this is good for broadband. Potential competitors say no, obviously, but most almost everyone else seems to think yes.

TeleTown Hall with Frank Guinta

Got a call and was joined onto Congressman Frank Guinta’s TeleTownHall event.  In listening to some of the others, a couple folks had some things to say that, of COURSE, I have opinions on: Al basically said to just tax the rich; they need to pay their fair share.  Well, All, using the latest numbers … Read more

Facebook Doodlings – Obama’s mini-speech

A couple of observations from Facebook as President Obama spoke to the nation at 9pm this evening (and once again, gave the networks agina): Obama’s Presser: " I think these Patriotic American willing to pitch in. In fact over the last few decades, they’ve pitched in every time we’ve passed a bipartisan deal to reduce … Read more

A Brief History of President Obama’s Fiscal Record

A Brief History of President Obama’s Fiscal Record

Setting the Record Straight
July 15, 2011

 
 

Despite newfound concern with the debt overhang stifling economic growth, President Obama’s record falls far short of his rhetoric.  Let’s review the decisions made by President Obama and Congressional Democrats over the past couple of years, and the disappointing results of their policy choices:

January 20, 2009 
President Obama sworn into office

  • President tells the American people in his Inaugural Address: “Those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.”

  • Debt Held By Public = $6.31 trillion

February 17, 2009
President Signs into Law the Spending Stimulus

  • The stimulus adds $821 billion in new spending according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

  • The White House promises this infusion of spending and borrowing would keep unemployment rate below 8%.  As millions of Americans are painfully aware, that promise was broken.

  • Debt Held by Public = $6.48 trillion

February 26, 2009
President Issues FY2010 Budget

  • The President’s budget adds $2.7 trillion in new debt in FY2010 and imposes $1.4 trillion in new taxes.

  • Debt Held by Public = $6.58 trillion

March 11, 2009
President Signs FY2009 Omnibus Appropriations Act

  • The massive spending bill includes 8,696 earmarks at a cost of $11 billion.

  • The spending bill adds $19 billion in new spending above the baseline – an 8.6% spending increase.

  • Debt Held by Public = $6.66 trillion

April 29, 2009
Congressional Democrats Pass FY2010 Budget

  • The Congressional Democrats’ budget calls for a $2 trillion debt increase in 2010, and another 8.9% increase in non-defense discretionary spending.

  • The reconciliation process is abused to later pave the way for health care overhaul to be jammed into law.

  • Of note: this is the last time Congressional Democrats will bother budgeting.

  • Debt Held by Public = $6.85 trillion

continued on the jump…

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