Archive for September, 2010

Republican House leaders hadn’t even made their announcement, officially presenting their new “Pledge to America”, when the Twittersphere, blogosphere and journ-o-lists had begun to give their 1 ½ cents about it.

And of course, it still wasn’t enough for the tea party, or at least the most vocal of all of them. Frankly, I don’t know whose side they’re on anymore. Maybe they want to become a fringe third party, because this debate is starting to get into Jefferson v. Hamilton territory.

Note: Jefferson’s party became the Democrats. Now that Karl Marx and Keynes have taken over, the libertarians (i.e., Jeffersonians) have been surging the GOP. And they’ve become buddy-buddy with the populists, a strange alliance that eventually attacks Republicanism rather than the wrongs of government overreach.

The GOP is the party of Hamilton. Actually, America runs on Hamilton. George Washington endorsed most of Hamilton’s positions. Yeah, Hamilton got his way and we’re living in Hamilton’s country.

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What is the purpose of business? Most people’s quick answer to that question would be that it’s to make and sell products or services. Maybe you’d say that it’s to generate a profit for its shareholders. Perhaps you’d say that it’s to create jobs for people.

But that’s not how people who run municipal governments think about business. When a big company opens a big facility in their community, local officials think one thing:

Tax base.

The bigger the operation, the more economic value on which to tax the company, and for local officials, that means money for everything from police and fire to schools and parks to salaries and benefits for the building inspector and the city clerk.

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Lovely.

Maybe it’s just their “medicine.”

Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey also posted this earlier today, and for what it’s worth, a commenter going by the name “Not Coach” posted the following comment:

I used to work for GM. Nobody was ever unaware of anything. Management knew who the drunks or stoners were. And nothing was ever done about it. Why? Because the union and GM management worked hand in hand to create a horrible company.

The only reason that GM or Ford or Chrysler have stayed in business this long is because a smaller company cannot compete because of the prohibitive costs of government regulations. The large auto makers have the economies of scale that can absorb government regulation gone wild. Smaller companies do not.

Anything negative you ever hear about the work environment of these companies is 99.9% likely to be true. I have experienced it first hand and I know just how screwed up these companies are. Drinking and pot smoking at one plant is indicative of all auto plants in Michigan.

These guys though will lose their jobs and not get them back. When I worked for GM you could do anything and still keep or get your job back. The only exception to that rule was bad PR. Get your name in the paper in relationship to your poor work habits and you would not get your job back. So these guys will have all the time in the world now to sit around and get stoned.

Republican congressional candidates have done good work in developing a 21-page agenda, and putting it in front of the American people, in advance of November’s mid-term elections. This is what they should do – make the case for how they would govern.

But I’m not sure they’ve done great work, and given the seriousness of the nation’s problems, that’s what we need.

The pledge hits all the important points about spending restraint, and reveals in stunning detail how the rules and culture of Washington have made it impossible to cut spending, and almost as impossible to avoid increasing it. The pledge is also specific about how the GOP would replace ObamaCare and what it would do to enhance national security. (Interesting that vowing to keep Guantanamo Bay open is now a campaign selling point. How things change.)

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Large version for newspaper publication.

Greyscale version for newspaper publication.

OK, I confess.

I’m a pack rat.

I’m also a saver of silly stuff; a collector of clutter. Lots of people clean out their attics, basements and garages every month or at least once or twice a year, anyway.

I do mine daily but, alas, every time I do I end up keeping more things than I throw away. Consequently, totally useless items continue to pile up around me.

The last time I cleaned out my garage I got two boxes to put things in. I labeled one “THROW AWAY” and the other “SAVE.” When I was done the “THROW AWAY” box had six items in it.

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“Christine.  Christine O’Donnell.”

“I was in high school, for goodness sake … oh.  What?  Huh?”

“It’s Paula Hawkins.”

“The first woman Senator ever elected without a family connection?”

“One and the same.”

“Why are you here?”

“I just wanted to let you know what you’re really up against in the years to come.”

“What do you mean?”

“The press and the pundits have the whole issue about you all wrong.  It’s not about your electability.  In a tsunami election like this, there’s no telling what will happen.  After all, 12 new Republican Senators were swept into office on Ronald Reagan’s coattails in 1980.  Folks like me, Jim Abdnor, Dan Quayle, Chuck Grassley, Mack Mattingly, Admiral Jeremiah Denton, John East.”

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With the smoke still clearing in the first act of Republican infighting (that would be the one over the Tea Party Princess of Delaware), the next act is right around the corner.  One of my intellectual heroes, Jonah Goldberg, has essentially declared that the “shortest civil war ever” has come out

victorious in the name of tea partiers, although he does not deny that yet another one may be on the horizon.  My sentiments are the same on the second coming, but I may differ in my opinion over the definition of the war that began in Delaware.

For one thing, tea partiers haven’t won yet.  If it’s November already, I’ve got some serious apologizing to do over my mother’s birthday.  Personally, I don’t even consider the most prominent, likely to win ”tea party” candidates to be tea partiers at all.  Tea party supported, yes, but not a party host.

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With the resignation of Lawrence Summers, Obama’s chief economic advisor, the count for Obama’s economic team now stands at 1-for-4. They are droppin’ like flies. That’s right, three of the four economic team appointees selected by Obama have stepped down.  First it was budget director Peter Orszag, followed by the chairman of the council of economic advisers, Christine Romer. Now Larry Summers. Yep. The only tax-cheat, errrr, man, left standing is Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

What is that sound? Could it be the tiny claws of the rats as they scamper and scurry to find their way to the upper deck of this rapidly sinking vessel known as the Obama Administration? Yes, I believe it is – scurry and scamper they will, in greater and greater numbers, lest they perish within the frigid waters of political and economic failure brought on by a serious case of sheer stupidity in D.C.

Or is that political and economic suicide? Either way, even the rats, in most cases, have an instinct for self-preservation.

I’m really not sure what’s more depressing here – the fact that Summers will be returning to Harvard to mold young minds with the same failed economic principles he helped the current administration implement, or the fact that these failed economic principles will continue to chug along under the watchful tutelage of the Obama Administration, wreaking havoc as they go.

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A forerunner of America’s expected electoral tidal wave could occur on Sunday in Venezuela. The presidency is not on the line, so Marxist dictator thug Hugo Chavez is safe for now. But he needs a two-thirds majority of the legislative assembly to maintain the absolute power with which he is so swiftly destroying the country.

Venezuelans appear poised to take it away from him – if everything is on the up-and-up. Manny Lopez, my colleague at The Michigan View, is of Venezuelan descent, and recently visited the homeland for some interesting discussions about what may be coming: