Archive for April, 2011

Brett Noel

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David Karki

Donald Trump is not a serious presidential candidate. He’s just being what he’s always been – an egotistical publicity hound. Or, if you prefer, a self-important attention whore. Or fill in your description of choice for a pompous blowhard who loves the limelight almost as much as he loves hearing himself talk.

He’s neither a liberal nor a conservative, though he’s backed politicians of both parties at times in order to buy whomever he had to for the sake of his business interests. If I am forced to put a label on him, I’d call him a Trump-ist. He’s in this for the same reason he’s been in everything he’s ever done – himself.

But in temporarily grabbing the spotlight, The Donald has performed a useful service: he has illustrated the total dearth of guts in the current slate of Republican presidential contenders. Read the rest of this entry »

Dan Calabrese

To normal people, elections matter because they affect things that happen in the course of life. To members of the national news media, things that happen in the course of life matter because they affect elections.

This phenomenon has grown more intense, and more serious, in recent years. I don’t know if it’s because the media confuse political analysts with actual journalists, which would explain why you get politics-obsessed, substance-starved people like Chuck Todd of NBC covering the White House. But if you follow the media’s coverage of just about any major issue, what you’ll find is that they only understand the issue in context of politics.

So it is with the Associated Press in its latest missive about gas prices. Reporter Mark Smith gets to the heart of the matter right away: High gas prices are jeopardizing President Obama’s re-election chances. Indeed, Smith goes so far as to imply that Americans are responsible for their own troubles, and that a wise president who knows better simply has no choice but to be the bigger man and absorb the undeserved blame:

As Obama well knows, Americans love their cars and remain heavily dependent on them, and they don’t hesitate to punish politicians when the cost of filling their tanks goes through the roof. Indeed, for presidents, responding to sudden surges is a recurring frustration.

Ah. The frustrating life of a poor politician, getting blamed for stuff by Americans who love their cars and fail to appreciate their superstar president.

Obama volunteered to a group of supporters during a fundraiser in Los Angeles recently that rising gas prices for the rest of us are resulting in plummeting poll numbers for him. Self-involved and narcissistic? I guess you’d have to say yes, but at least Obama was speaking at a political fundraiser whose entire purpose is to help ensure his re-election. However self-focused the comment was, it was relevant on that part particular evening.

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Herman Cain

President Obama recently said that the economic situation was worse than they expected when he took office. That’s code for “blame Bush” again for Obama’s failed economic policies, which have not stimulated the economy.

He has chastised the business sector for sitting on over $2 trillion in accumulated cash instead of hiring people they do not need. That’s blaming the business sector for not making stupid decisions to prop up his failed policies.

And now that people are feeling the pain at the pump, he blames oil speculators for high gas prices, which are now double what they were two years ago. Remember, that’s about the time President Obama took office. And, he says there is nothing that can be done in the short term to ease the pain at the pump.

With all due respect, Mr. President, there is something you could do to ease the pain at the pump. Namely, declare and implement a “drill here drill now” strategy. And remove the ridiculous restrictions on shale oil deposits available out west.

The very speculators you are blaming for the run-up in gas prices would quickly retreat if they thought you were serious about an energy independence plan to maximize all of our existing natural resources. The problem is supply and demand, and expectations about the changes in those dynamics. That’s what drives gasoline prices at the pump.

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Brett Noel

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David Karki

With each public appearance he makes these days, President Obama sounds more petulant, unhinged, and delusional than the time before.

He compulsively projects the direct negative consequences of his massive overspending onto his opponents, while simultaneously trying to take credit for its phantom accomplishments. He pulls his usual phony strawman routine, presenting his radical leftism as some kind of sensible center between two non-existent extremes.  He is blatantly demagogic, accusing Republicans of cruelty and bemoaning all the catastrophes that have supposedly happened due to their ostensible tight-fistedness or will supposedly happen if they are able to slow his incalculable avalanche of spending.

Moreover, he mouths the words he knows people want to hear, even as he does the very things that cause the opposite to happen. For example, yammering about deficits and debt even as he purposely runs them up to incalculable levels that will destroy the economy and the country. Or, telling college students that the GOP wants to “balance the budget on their backs” even as he spends their future away. Read the rest of this entry »

Dan Calabrese

It’s always entertaining to hear people who don’t know the slightest thing about economics, waxing philosophic on the subject nonetheless. And rarely has such a character come forward with a more clueless offering than did U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Illinois) this past Friday afternoon.

Congressman Jackson recently purchased an iPad, which I guess he now regrets, because it has occurred to him that the iPad is singularly responsible for destroying “thousands” (but to hear him talk it could have been millions) of jobs:

“Now Borders is closing stores because, why do you need to go to Borders anymore? Why do you need to go to Barnes & Noble? Buy an iPad and download your newspaper, download your book, download your magazine.”

It gets worse, he explains. Chicago State University, in his district, wants to go to a textbook-free campus in which all the students can simply download information on their iPads. What, he frets, will become of publishing companies? What will happen to other jobs associated with paper? Sure, he acknowledges, it may be more convenient and efficient for Americans to get their information this way, but there are 13 million unemployed. And that’s where he’s really going with this, because they are “counting on this Congress to do something.”

Ah, the march of progress, and the inevitable hand-wringing of the statist politician who can’t wait to step in and yell, “Halt!” Sure, it makes it easier and more convenient to get your books (no more driving to Barnes and Noble . . . stops global warming!), and sure, it lightens the load in those college students’ backpacks (no more shoulder injuries . . . makes ObamaCare more affordable!), and sure those poor saps who lost their jobs at Borders can always go get a job selling iPads at Best Buy.

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Brett Noel

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Large version for newspaper publication.

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Herman Cain

While the budget drama in Washington, D.C. went back and forth last week over the federal fiscal year 2011 budget, lawmakers and the mainstream media missed the real opportunity. It’s not whether President Obama or House Speaker John Boehner won on the deal, or the paltry savings they agreed on.

It’s also not whether the real savings are $352 million as scored by the Congressional Budget Office, or the $38 billion in savings claimed by Obama and Boehner, or the $100 billion expected by Tea Party-minded people.

No! It’s the $1,000 billion (that would be 1 trillion) they did not even talk about.

One trillion dollars in foreign profits is what could have come back into our economy if the tax on repatriated profits were zero. Multi-national companies could have redeployed those dollars at no cost to anybody.

It makes no common sense to leave $1 trillion on the table!

Now that fiscal year 2011 is more than half over, I wonder what we can expect when they try to reach an agreement on a fiscal year budget for 2012, which starts on October 1 of this year. Maybe those negotiations will become “Let’s make a Deal – The Movie.”

The sad part through all of this is that the taxpayers are the biggest losers. We lost out on some truly substantive spending cuts. We lost out on potentially $1 trillion into the economy. Some very valuable time our president and members of Congress could have used on a real economic stimulus plan was lost, and we lost the opportunity to solve the many other real crises we face.

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Liz Carter

President Obama wants to raise revenues, aka raise taxes, instead of cutting spending, again. We are creating a system that makes the majority of our citizens dependent upon the same organization they pay into, either through entitlement or employment. For those who are not dependent upon the government, Obama and Democrats want to raise taxes, and they believe those households who have been fortunate can afford to pay higher taxes to raise revenues to make up the gap.

Be honest with yourself: How long would you put up with paying more, just because you can, for others who, more often than not, have not worked as hard as you? Remember, you are not allowed to say where your money goes, what individual, what charity, or what church you give it to. Instead legislators in D.C. will decide where your money goes. And by the way, if you have a bad year or are in need of financial support, you can’t have your money back or receive any government help. Because you make enough, or did the previous year.

If you are one of the “fortunate” that Obama has identified, that he has deemed “able to pay more”, how long are you going to stay silent?

If you are one who is dependent upon the government with an entitlement program, look around, put yourself in the “fortunate” shoes for a day, look at the individual in line at the grocery store purchasing filet mignon and paying with food stamps that are pulled from a designer hand bag, which finds its way into a new car. When you see this, how long are you willing to pay that individual’s way? Will you or are you OK with allowing your children to pay their way and yours?

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