On Candidates
For Starters, I don’t believe that Tea Party members and other conservative/libertarian grassroots organizations should spawn off into a third party movement; going the third party route would split the Conservative/Republican/Libertarian vote and by default re-elect Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House and Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader. Conservatives and Libertarians, those who seek commonsense solutions to this nation’s problems, should seek to enter the Republican Party, the Original home of Conservatism, and retake it. In Republican Primaries, conservatives should throw their support behind candidates that advocate the principles of limited government and fiscal sanity at both the State and Federal level. Conservatives, Tea Party Patriots, and Commonsense Reagan democrats must remember that although Republicans have made mistakes in the past, they are the country’s only hope at the moment in turning back the tide on President Obama’s Statists agenda. When Republicans become RINO’s, republicans in name only, conservatives should run primary challengers against them; if the conservative wins the party’s conservatism will be strengthened. Even if the RINO wins the primary, the conservative running against him forces him to the Right on many positions away; a perfect example of this would be John McCain’s new found conservative stance in his primary fight with J.D. Hayworth.
On Energy and Jobs Policy
Conservatives should develop a platform by which to judge candidates running for elected office; the platform should include our positions on a variety of policy issues. On energy the concerned Americans should endorse an energy strategy, both national and at the state level, that seeks to cut our dependence on foreign energy sources by more than half. A promising reform would be to transform the way we use energy in America. Today, depending on the estimate, the US spends around $400 billion a year to import energy from nations that don’t have our best interests at heart. The United States, particularly States like Pennsylvania and Alaska are rich in domestic energy resources like oil, natural gas, and coal and by unleashing those resources the US could unleash a booming economic recovery. Candidates running for state wide offices and seeking grassroots conservative support should embrace a plan in which business tax rates are dramatically cut from their current rates; the state of Pennsylvania has a Business tax of nearly 10%, almost double the rate of Florida. The State of Florida has a flat corporate tax rate of 5.5%, providing more incentive for business development within that state and as a result Florida was able to attract a lot of new businesses to the state. Once tax rates are cut, energy rich states would have put themselves on the path to major investment in the state’s natural resources by investors looking to help America diversify its energy portfolio and lessen our dependence on foreign energy. Oil Tycoon Boone Pickens devised a plan in which America would use it vast natural gas resources to fuel and heat its vehicles and homes. For example, there are 18 million tractor trailers (trucks) traveling up and down the interstates of America delivering goods and services; these huge trucks use diesel fuel. Pickens’ estimates that by converting these trucks from Diesel (imported energy) to Natural Gas (domestic), the US could reduce its energy imports by half, bringing that money back home to reinvest in America. Pennsylvania, for example, could embark on a natural gas revolution, bringing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue to the state and employing thousands; Pennsylvania could become a catalyst for the Nation on true energy Independence. Nationally, Conservatives should seek and embrace candidates that pledge changing the way this country uses energy by diversifying into Natural Gas, Liquefied Coal, and Nuclear power.
On The Economy
Conservatives and Tea Party activists should embrace a policy stance of across the board tax cut for individuals and businesses, allowing individuals and businesses to keep more of what they earn. State and Federal officials should convene a series of meetings with leading Business owners and Business Associations to discuss the best way forward on job creation. Candidates should pledge to seek a major reduction in corporate and investment tax rates; these tax reductions should be temporary and only re-enacted if credible job gains are posted. Tax cuts are great, but all tax cuts must be accompanied by spending cuts as well; we can no longer afford to cut taxing while increasing government spending; this leads to deficits. Those running for Congress should pledge to support conservative measures for cutting federal spending. There are those who advocate cutting federal spending in half, and under normal circumstances I’d agree with that. But in understanding our dire financial situation I feel deeper cuts are necessary; however cutting spending in half is a productive start. There are measures currently being presented by Republican members of the House in which spending is capped at 20% of GDP; once again good start but capping spending at 17-18% would be better. Candidates should advocate providing tax incentives to businesses and investors willing to invest in the Manufacturing business. We need to revive manufacturing jobs in America. We should support candidates who believe in the 10 Amendment; candidates who advocate the States taking a lead role in areas such as education, transportation, emergency management, and agriculture; this would drastically reduce the need for federal spending in these areas, saving the American Taxpayer billions.
On Entitlements
The Tea Party and other concerned Commonsense America should support candidates who tell the truth about the state of our entitlement programs and who are willing to make the tough decisions regarding reform. The current recession will only pale in comparison to the coming entitlement crisis due to hit this country in just a few short years. The United States has a national debt of more than $12 Trillion and growing and on top of that staggering figure is one even direr. The WWII generation produced the Baby Boom generation, those born between WWII and the early 1960s, and this population of over 70 million Americans is beginning to retire in record numbers; the tidal wave of retirees is due to put severe strain on both Social Security and Medicare. For the next two decades, 10,000 baby boomers will retire everyday leaving the US taxpayer on the hook for more than $50 Trillion worth of promised benefits to these individuals; these are benefits promised that the government does not have the money to pay. Social Security and Medicare in their current form are unsustainable and the current system requires a total transformation. It’s time for financial well-being and medical care to be put back into the hands of the individual. Those 50 years and older, if they choose, may remain a part of a smaller version of the current system (with some reforms) if they feel they may not have enough time to save for retirement due to age. The Heritage Foundation has some tough but effective ways in which to transform this nation’s retirement system:
• Raise the retirement age (currently set to rise to 67 by 2030) by two months each year until it reaches 70, which would allow future seniors an average retirement of 17 years.
• A second option would income-adjust benefits to target needy seniors more effectively. This could be accomplished through "progressive indexing," which would index initial benefit levels for middle-income and upper-income families to price inflation rather than wage growth, eliminating much of the increased Social Security costs driven by higher benefits. This would also target more benefit growth to lower-income retirees. If accompanied by an increase in the retirement age, progressive indexing could eliminate the entire Social Security shortfall.
• Personal accounts by themselves do not reduce the taxpayer liabilities to current seniors. However, if Congress slightly pared back the growth rates of benefits for upcoming retirees and allowed workers to direct a portion of their payroll tax savings into personal retirement accounts, workers could har¬ness enough long-term investment growth to do much better than they can under today's system. This is the most realistic way to fund two genera¬tions of retirement on one generation's payroll tax. Millions of Americans with 401(k) plans and IRAs already understand how even safe investments can grow significantly over several decades
• Congress should reduce the massive Medicare Part B and Part D subsidies for upper-income families. These programs are not social insurance: Enrollees did not earn their benefits with payroll taxes. Rather, they are large subsidies from taxpayers.
• Long-term fundamental reform will likely involve bringing more choice and competition into health care, such as moving Medicare from a defined-benefit system to a defined-contribution system. The Federal Employees Health Benefits Pro¬gram (FEHBP) has held down costs by creating a voucher-type system for fed¬eral employees to purchase coverage from competing health plans that offer differing coverage and costs. By creating more choice and competi¬tion, the FEHBP has held down cost increases and may serve as a model for Medicare reform.
This election year Americans must be willing to hold candidates to the fire on this nation’s most dire issues. We must not fall for business as usual or the talking points and propaganda from the mainstream media. We must be informed and well able to challenge candidates and politicians on a variety of issues that concern us. If the American voter enters the 2010 election armed with commonsense and reason, America may just witness a rare political phenomenon not witnessed since 1994 Republican Revolution and the Reagan landslides: A Conservative Sweep. America would be the better.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Obama’s America: The Change “We The People” No Longer Believe In
Since entering office in January 2009, President Barack Obama, has done everything in his power to fundamentally transform the United States of America. America is a nation that was founded on the principles of individual freedom and liberty, personal responsibility, free market capitalism, and the idea that men were inherently free and imbued with certain rights that government can never take away. If this was what America was founded upon and Barack Obama is intent on fundamentally transforming America, then the question needing to be asked is what is he changing us into? All indicators seem to point to a Western European Social-Welfare state.
After entering the White House in 2009, the Obama Administration quickly moved to pass what we know today as the “Stimulus”. With this stimulus, or so they called it, the Administration promised the nation that unemployment would not rise above 8% and that 3-4 million new jobs would follow. Unfortunately for the president and his democrat party nothing could be further from reality. Since Barack Obama took office in January 2009 the United States has lost more 6 million jobs and “created or saved” nothing. In recent days, due to the March jobs report, the Obama Administration has been touting the 162,000 jobs created as if that were a measure of success on his jobs report card. For starter’s, 48,000 of these “new jobs” are temporary US Census jobs meaning these workers will terminated as soon as the Census is completed. For arguments sake let’s say that all 162,000 jobs were created in the private sector as a result of Obama’s spending, that would mean that on average the administration spent, or more accurately the American people spent, nearly $5 million per every job created last month. So what did the stimulus actual accomplish? A lot according to the administration and so I’ve decided to list a few of those great accomplishments. $850 million for Amtrak; $150 million for producers of honeybees; $7.6 billion for rural community investment programs (ACORN?); $400 million for global warming research; $6.2 billion for weatherization assistance; $350 million for computers for the Dept. of Agriculture; $600 million to convert federal vehicles to hybrids; $4.2 billion for neighborhood stabilization activities (ACORN?); $1.2 billion for youth summer camp; $650 million for digital converter coupons; $90 million to educate “vulnerable populations” about digital television; $3.4 million for a turtle tunnel. I need not go on, I’m sure you get the picture. What does any of this have to do with reviving a bad economy and creating jobs? And for this the President believe he deserves a “solid B” for his job as president. Mr. President, the American people would beg to differ. The unemployment rate stands at nearly 10%, as it has for a few months now, with the underemployment rate well over 20% and this President wants us to believe he is going about the people’s business? This President and his democrat congress seem to have little concern for what the people think or say; it’s as if they disdain ordinary Americans and the values they cherish.
The United States faces a debt crises unseen by past generations and as days go by that crisis worsens. The United States’ current debt on unfunded liabilities alone stands at $108,260,117,865,917 and is ticking upward by the second. For those of you looking at this number trying to figure out exactly what it is, it’s over $108 Trillion. In a breakdown of this figure we have Medicare’s unfunded liability over $75 trillion; Social Security Liabilities over $14 trillion and prescription drug liabilities over $18 trillion. The US national debt stands at $12.8 trillion and counting, with foreign powers owning an ever increasing portion of it. The nation of Japan owns $765 billion of our debt; China owns $755 billion; OPEC owns $218 billion; the United Kingdom owns $206 billion; Brazil owns $169 billion; Russia owns $124 billion. The Federal budget is on course to run a record $1.6 trillion deficit in 2010 with trillion dollar deficits following for the next 10 years. The Federal Budget, President Obama’s Budget, is also projected to add an additional $13 trillion to the national debt and to have dire effects on the economy at large. The President’s Budget would raise taxes on all Americans over the coming decade to the tune of nearly $3 trillion while simultaneously dumping on us an additional $74,000 in debt per household. This nation’s fiscal house is on fire and the President and his liberal allies in Congress are running in with gasoline instead of the water hoses.
Is the world a safer place now that Obama is President? Has his doctrine of “smart power” produced any real results? Have our adversaries grown stronger while our allies are weaken? The truth of the matter is that the world is not a safer place with Barack Obama as President, and judging from his determination to continue his failed policies I fear the world will get a lot more dangerous before it gets better, if it ever gets better. Does the Obama administration truly care rather or not the Islamic Republic of Iran acquires nuclear weapons? Or are they more concerned with the State of Israel building settlements on land everyone acknowledges will be Israel’s in any future peace settlement? Is the Obama Administration more interested in appeasing the Russians for votes they’ll never get on the UN Security Council than insuring the US maintains its arms superiority and nuclear deterrent? What are the crowning successes of this administrations foreign policy that warrant the nation’s approval? The President’s recent summit on Nuclear security produced great photo oops for the president, well except for that one of him bowing to the President of China, but what else is there to show for all the fan fair? Mexico, Canada, and Ukraine agreed to dispose of highly enriched uranium and China agreed to come to the UN Security Council table on Iranian sanctions and in the words of the President “participate”. Addressing the last point, what does it mean for China to agree to “participate” at the Security Council? The White House quickly tried to spin this into news as if China had agreed to impose sanctions on Iran; China agreed to no such thing. Most of the time when the UN Security Council meets all permanent members, meaning the US, United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China “participate” in the deliberations but that doesn’t mean they vote in favor of the motion. The United States repeatedly over the past attended Security Council meetings with resolutions on the table reprimanding Israel but the US has never voted for any of them; the US was there for the sole purposes of vetoing such resolutions. With both China and Russia having lucrative trade deals with Iran totaling in the hundreds of billions, and with Russia in talks with Iran to create a Natural Gas cartel similar to OPEC, why does anyone in the White House believe they will vote to sanction Iran? Unfortunately the “successes” of smart power extent well beyond the Persian Gulf. In Eastern Europe, the nations of Poland and the Czech Republic were stunned to learn Obama decided to pull plans to install anti-ballistic missiles systems in both country’s leaving them vulnerable to Russia’s aggression. Ukraine is moving into a closer relationship with Russia as they see that the Obama Administration has no interest in helping them protect their freedoms. And the nation of Georgia, a staunch US ally, is left to fight the powerful Russian army because the President want to “reset” relations with Russia.
What’s happening to America and is our decline inevitable? America stands at a pivotal moment in time when we can either except the decline the Left in this country has sought for decades or we can retake and then remake this nation back into the image of our Founders. I believe America will choose the latter course and that a new constitutionally conservative revolution will sweep the nation as people continue to see the fruits of the destructive policies of the liberal welfare state and today’s democrat party.
After entering the White House in 2009, the Obama Administration quickly moved to pass what we know today as the “Stimulus”. With this stimulus, or so they called it, the Administration promised the nation that unemployment would not rise above 8% and that 3-4 million new jobs would follow. Unfortunately for the president and his democrat party nothing could be further from reality. Since Barack Obama took office in January 2009 the United States has lost more 6 million jobs and “created or saved” nothing. In recent days, due to the March jobs report, the Obama Administration has been touting the 162,000 jobs created as if that were a measure of success on his jobs report card. For starter’s, 48,000 of these “new jobs” are temporary US Census jobs meaning these workers will terminated as soon as the Census is completed. For arguments sake let’s say that all 162,000 jobs were created in the private sector as a result of Obama’s spending, that would mean that on average the administration spent, or more accurately the American people spent, nearly $5 million per every job created last month. So what did the stimulus actual accomplish? A lot according to the administration and so I’ve decided to list a few of those great accomplishments. $850 million for Amtrak; $150 million for producers of honeybees; $7.6 billion for rural community investment programs (ACORN?); $400 million for global warming research; $6.2 billion for weatherization assistance; $350 million for computers for the Dept. of Agriculture; $600 million to convert federal vehicles to hybrids; $4.2 billion for neighborhood stabilization activities (ACORN?); $1.2 billion for youth summer camp; $650 million for digital converter coupons; $90 million to educate “vulnerable populations” about digital television; $3.4 million for a turtle tunnel. I need not go on, I’m sure you get the picture. What does any of this have to do with reviving a bad economy and creating jobs? And for this the President believe he deserves a “solid B” for his job as president. Mr. President, the American people would beg to differ. The unemployment rate stands at nearly 10%, as it has for a few months now, with the underemployment rate well over 20% and this President wants us to believe he is going about the people’s business? This President and his democrat congress seem to have little concern for what the people think or say; it’s as if they disdain ordinary Americans and the values they cherish.
The United States faces a debt crises unseen by past generations and as days go by that crisis worsens. The United States’ current debt on unfunded liabilities alone stands at $108,260,117,865,917 and is ticking upward by the second. For those of you looking at this number trying to figure out exactly what it is, it’s over $108 Trillion. In a breakdown of this figure we have Medicare’s unfunded liability over $75 trillion; Social Security Liabilities over $14 trillion and prescription drug liabilities over $18 trillion. The US national debt stands at $12.8 trillion and counting, with foreign powers owning an ever increasing portion of it. The nation of Japan owns $765 billion of our debt; China owns $755 billion; OPEC owns $218 billion; the United Kingdom owns $206 billion; Brazil owns $169 billion; Russia owns $124 billion. The Federal budget is on course to run a record $1.6 trillion deficit in 2010 with trillion dollar deficits following for the next 10 years. The Federal Budget, President Obama’s Budget, is also projected to add an additional $13 trillion to the national debt and to have dire effects on the economy at large. The President’s Budget would raise taxes on all Americans over the coming decade to the tune of nearly $3 trillion while simultaneously dumping on us an additional $74,000 in debt per household. This nation’s fiscal house is on fire and the President and his liberal allies in Congress are running in with gasoline instead of the water hoses.
Is the world a safer place now that Obama is President? Has his doctrine of “smart power” produced any real results? Have our adversaries grown stronger while our allies are weaken? The truth of the matter is that the world is not a safer place with Barack Obama as President, and judging from his determination to continue his failed policies I fear the world will get a lot more dangerous before it gets better, if it ever gets better. Does the Obama administration truly care rather or not the Islamic Republic of Iran acquires nuclear weapons? Or are they more concerned with the State of Israel building settlements on land everyone acknowledges will be Israel’s in any future peace settlement? Is the Obama Administration more interested in appeasing the Russians for votes they’ll never get on the UN Security Council than insuring the US maintains its arms superiority and nuclear deterrent? What are the crowning successes of this administrations foreign policy that warrant the nation’s approval? The President’s recent summit on Nuclear security produced great photo oops for the president, well except for that one of him bowing to the President of China, but what else is there to show for all the fan fair? Mexico, Canada, and Ukraine agreed to dispose of highly enriched uranium and China agreed to come to the UN Security Council table on Iranian sanctions and in the words of the President “participate”. Addressing the last point, what does it mean for China to agree to “participate” at the Security Council? The White House quickly tried to spin this into news as if China had agreed to impose sanctions on Iran; China agreed to no such thing. Most of the time when the UN Security Council meets all permanent members, meaning the US, United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China “participate” in the deliberations but that doesn’t mean they vote in favor of the motion. The United States repeatedly over the past attended Security Council meetings with resolutions on the table reprimanding Israel but the US has never voted for any of them; the US was there for the sole purposes of vetoing such resolutions. With both China and Russia having lucrative trade deals with Iran totaling in the hundreds of billions, and with Russia in talks with Iran to create a Natural Gas cartel similar to OPEC, why does anyone in the White House believe they will vote to sanction Iran? Unfortunately the “successes” of smart power extent well beyond the Persian Gulf. In Eastern Europe, the nations of Poland and the Czech Republic were stunned to learn Obama decided to pull plans to install anti-ballistic missiles systems in both country’s leaving them vulnerable to Russia’s aggression. Ukraine is moving into a closer relationship with Russia as they see that the Obama Administration has no interest in helping them protect their freedoms. And the nation of Georgia, a staunch US ally, is left to fight the powerful Russian army because the President want to “reset” relations with Russia.
What’s happening to America and is our decline inevitable? America stands at a pivotal moment in time when we can either except the decline the Left in this country has sought for decades or we can retake and then remake this nation back into the image of our Founders. I believe America will choose the latter course and that a new constitutionally conservative revolution will sweep the nation as people continue to see the fruits of the destructive policies of the liberal welfare state and today’s democrat party.
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