Rush's Teachable Moment

When "El Rushbo" called Sandra Fluke "a sl*t" he clearly crossed the line. If the uproar over his repulsive language doesn't chasten his tongue, hopefully the dent fleeing sponsors are putting in his wallet will. This episode should not only be a lesson in civility for Rush, but for all of us. While politics ain't beanbag as the saying goes, it shouldn't be bloodsport either. If our democracy is to survive we need to encourage ordinary Americans to stand up and speak up, not keep their heads down and their mouth's shut. Unfortunately, current discourse is dominated by the easy slur and selective outrage fed by the misconception that the ends will somehow justify the means.

Political opportunism aside, I believe to promote civil and thoughtful debate republican candidates should condemn Rush's comments about Ms. Fluke. Likewise, in the interests of fairness and decency President Obama and democrats should condemn the vile words Bill Maher used to describe Sarah Palin. I hope we can all agree that no woman should ever be called the c-word or a "dumb tw*t" simply because you don't like her politics. Sadly, the president remains silent and Reps. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) who have been outspoken critics of Rush when given the opportunity refused to denounce Mr. Maher. The double standard also applies to the president's version of Karl Rove, advisor David Axelrod who is all over the airwaves trying to pin Rush's words on all republicans, yet he once compared former Miss California Carrie Prejean to a dog and is scheduled to be on Mr. Maher's show in the next couple of weeks. As of this writing Mr. Mahar's use of the c-word hasn't caused the president to call for the Super PAC run by his former deputy press secretary, Bill Burton to return the $1 million donation he made. Since President Obama has pledged that members' of his administration will attend fundraisers for the Super PAC he can certainly call for the return of the misogynist's money. The fact that he hasn't done so should tell you all you need to know about how much he believes in civility.

When the sturm and drang over sl*tgate is eclipsed be the next media frenzy let our discourse be the better for it. No more double standards. If something is beyond the pale judgement and condemnation should be swift and universal. Even a casual observer can see that our political process is broken and that the venom and vitriol used to shout down opposing viewpoints is largely to blame.Conservatives and liberals have very different views on what role government should play in our lives. That debate should be spirited and respectful. We need every American that has tuned out because of the hateful rhetoric to get involved in choosing our country's direction, possibly even running for office themselves. The first step is to listen to opposing views, even if they make you squirm, without shouting "sl*t", racist, teabagger etc.. Believe it or not it's possible to disagree without being disageeable.

Another Year, Another Downgrade

It's doubtful the message makers in the White House found any humor in the Daily Show's Jon Stewart comparing President Obama to a "tax credit Oprah". While the Comedy Central funnyman is right to diagnose Oprah style giveaways as a symptom of why Obamanomics is failing, we should look to Major Phil Cannella and George Donner to find the disease.

Major Cannella was never an A list celebrity, but his words live on as an example of how good people can bring disaster by slavishly following misguided policies. When your mission can be summed up as "It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it." failure can be the only result. As in Vietnam, President Obama's effort to "fundamentally transform America" will end badly.

In January the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal released their Index of Economic Freedom. In it the United States fell to tenth place, indeed we have slipped every year of President Obama's rule as we were ranked sixth in 2009. They attributed our loss of freedom to "rapid expansion of government, more than any market factor, appears to be responsible for flagging economic dynamism." An easy way to gauge the effect of Obamanomics is to compare the first ten quarters of the Reagan recovery with our current economy. Under Reagan the economy grew sixteen percent, under Obama just six. If we were to follow Reagan's policies today the country could be $1.2 trillion wealthier and ten million currently unemployed Americans would have jobs. Instead, President Obama continues implementing policies that promote fairness over growth while our country declines.

If not for his fateful decision to take the Hasting's shortcut the name of Mr. Donner would be lost to history. While it took getting snowbound for the settlers to resort to cannibalism, letting the well-healed feast on taxpayers is a feature of Obamanomics. In a report the Washington Post found "Obama’s green-technology program was infused with politics at every level" and their Robert Samuelson called the rejection of the Keystone pipeline "an act of national insanity.". Maybe Mr. Samuelson was unaware that Obama's billionaire crony Warren Buffet, who just happens to own the Burlington Northern railroad stands to reap a financial windfall with the pipeline's demise. The author Peter Schweizer finds that fifteen companies that are either run or owned by financial backers of President Obama received $16.4 billion in government guaranteed loans. So far the cost to taxpayers: Solyndra $527 million, Ener1 $118 million, Beacon Power $43 million and CBS news found there are eleven more Solyndra's that could cost taxpayers $6.5 billion.

As the socialist Amon Rubinstein said “On the whole, those systems that have put liberty ahead of equality have done better by equality than those that have put equality above liberty.". Come November we can keep a president devoted to seeing our economic freedom slip slide away taking growth and jobs with it. Or we can send him back to Chicago with Oprah, Rahm and Alinsky's ghost.

Potemkin Statesman

Skipper Kerry has a history of docking his $7 million yacht, the Isabel, in excise tax free Rhode Island. No doubt this millionaire one percenter's careful eye on his own finances earned him a spot on the recently defunct supercommittee. After all, the task of trimming our nation's accumulation of debt by $1.2 trillion over ten years is not the job for a spendthrift New Yorker. Surely, our sober senator and former nominee for president would rise to the occasion and save our republic by making the tough calls to cut projected spending of $44 trillion by a hardly draconian 2.7 percent? As we now know, it wasn't to be.

Post collapse, Senator Kerry took to the hustings placing the blame squarely on the shoulders of one man, Grover Norquist. The problem for our senator is that even a cursory look at the short and ignoble history of the supercommittee proves his charge false. Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania presented a plan that Mr. Norquist called "poison", but was hailed by Democratic Minority Whip Durbin of Illinois as a "breakthrough". The Toomey plan would have raised revenues by $500 billion and cut spending by $900 billion and was supported by all six republican members of the committee. This is exactly the type of balanced approach that President Obama claims to support, yet it went nowhere. As Senator Toomey told Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post "The Democrats insisted on a trillion dollars in tax increases and spending cuts to follow". If that negotiation position sounds familiar, it should. Both President's Reagan and George H.W. Bush took democrats at their word and raised taxes, but the promised spending cuts never happened. Knowing how the story ends republicans justifiably rejected a repeat performance.

While committee democrats never provided a detailed plan for cuts, they did propose more spending. In their proposed framework that entailed $4 in new taxes for every $1in cuts they included $430 billion in spending for Pres. Obama's stalled Stimulus II. Like junkies wanting one last fix they blew up the supercommittee because they just can't quit spending. They also scuttled the Toomey plan because it didn't fit in with President Obama's re-election campaign of running against a do-nothing republican congress. As the left leaning Politico put it "President Barack Obama prides himself on being a clutch player, but he sat happily on the end of the bench as the clock ran out on the supercommittee. Then he took his shot after the buzzer."

Maybe the next time Congress votes to raise the debt ceiling and it will happen sooner than you think; Congress can forgo the charade of a supercommittee and mandate every Washington politician join Spendaholics Anonymous. If the concept of doing right by the American people doesn't motivate them, maybe bruising their egos will. Just picture the next time Senator Kerry graces the set of Meet the Press to rip into evil republicans being compelled to say "Hi. I'm John and I'm a spendaholic".

Occupiers Miss the Mark

You can see it in the eyes of the "99%'s": fear and despair. Their stories are all too common in what has been dubbed the "Lost Generation", massive student loan debt and unemployment or underemployed. It wasn't supposed to be this way. These kids were taught that you go to college(any degree will do) and you punch your ticket to the Middle Class. But, a stagnant economy has created a Darwinian job market that values skills and experience they don't possess. Sadly, these kids have proved easy marks for leftist agitators and community organizers that feed on hopelessness.

Occupy Wall Street is the brainchild of Adbusters an anti-corporate outfit funded by billionaire leftist sugar-daddy and convicted insider trader George Soros. In their words "We felt there was a real rage building up in America, and we thought that we would like to create a spark.." After a month of marinating in Marx, Pol Pot and patchouli that rage is being unleashed. In the Obamavilles that have sprouted across our country one will find: calls for violent revolution(LA), anti-semitism(LA,NY), the occupier anthem "F**k the USA"(Portland), sexual assaults(Portland, Cleveland, Seattle, Oakland) and an assault on a member of our armed forces(Boston). Is this the work of a few "bad apples"? Clinton pollster Doug Schoen went to OWS and spoke to the protesters and found that 98 percent support civil disobedience and 31 percent support violence to advance their agenda. What exactly is their agenda? Here's a sampling of their demands:

Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.

Free college education.

Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.

Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now!

This anti-capitalist rhetoric has won the endorsements of the communist and nazi parties for the occupy movement, but what about the American people? Gallup finds Americans by 64 percent to 30 percent blame the government, not Wall Street for our current economic problems. These kids need to understand that cronyism, not capitalism is what is wrong with America, that class warfare calls to "eat the rich" won't solve their problems.

They must also understand that the Pied Piper who sold them hope and delivered hopelessness has changed his tune to envy and hate which can only lead to their ruin. Only President Obama would have the audacity to demonize an industry that donated $15.8 million to his campaign in 2008 and $7.2 million so far this cycle. That money bought Goldman Sachs "too big too fail" status in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street "reform" law. Remember, this is a man that would raise taxes on 48 percent of small businesses under the guise of sticking it to "millionaires and billionaires" while his administration guaranteed billionaire campaign bundler George Kaiser(who declared zero taxable income for five years) will be repaid before taxpayers see a dime of the $527 million we sunk into Solyndra.

Same Old Song From Obama

Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I believe old Al's theory is just as applicable in spotting idealogues as it is lunatics. Which brings me to our president's proposal to spend $450 billion on Stimulus II. Compare the laundry list of spending from the $867 billion sinkhole of spending called Stimulus I to Bailout Barry's "new" offering: "Shovel ready" construction projects? Check. Teachers? Check."Green" boondoggles? Check. Considering that 1.7 million Americans joined the ranks of the unemployed after the Stimulus was passed why would Pres. Obama propose throwing more money at a failed agenda?

Simple. He's attempting to show his voters that he has their backs while designing such a partisan plan to pay for it that he knows it will never pass. In fact, the NY Times has found many Democrats wary of the president's plan: "Many Congressional Democrats, smarting from the fallout over the 2009 stimulus bill, say there is little chance they will be able to support the bill as a single entity, citing an array of elements they cannot abide." Yet, this opposition from his own party hasn't prevented him from barnstorming the country blaming republicans for his failure to fix the ecomomy. Former Democratic Rep Martin Frost admitted "The most likely explanation is that his jobs program was a campaign document — not a real plan for putting people back to work". Let's take a look at the members of the president's base set to benefit should republicans fold and his plan pass.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumpka was demanding the creation of an "infrastructure bank" before the ink was even dry on Stimulus I. Needing their votes and millions in dues money for his campaign the president ponied up billions to satisfy big labor's wish. In what would be the third bailout for teachers in his young administration Obama wants more money to "put teachers in the classroom". Since 1970 staffing has increased 83 percent while the number of students in public schools has grown by only 7 percent. The College Board just announced the lowest SAT reading scores in history so it doesn't appear we're getting good value for the money being spent now. Finally,we come to Solyndra and our bright "green' future. Solyndra went bankrupt last week taking $535 million of taxpayer money with it, reminding MA residents' of the millions lost on our "investment" in Evergreen Solar. Instead of being chastened by this waste, Stimulus II promises billions more. From the Hill: "the administration is arguing that the Solyndra incident underscores the need for the United States to double down on investments in clean energy."

How does President Obama propose to pay for this? From the AP: "The bulk of the payment comes from nearly $400 billion from limiting the deductions on charitable contributions and other items that wealthy people can take." So, with 46.2 million living in poverty(US Census)the highest level since 1993, President Obama wants to kill charities that help the poor? John Hinderaker of Powerline stated "The essential effect of Obama’s proposal, with its tax increases, is to transfer wealth from upper-income taxpayers to construction workers, teachers and other public employees–that is, from people who earn $200,000+ to people who earn $60,000+ (or more, if their families have two incomes)." To that I would add taking food and shelter currently provided by nonprofits from the poor. For the 14 million unemployed the president's proposal is deeply cynical, callous and cruel. America deserves better.

S&P Plays Adult

Our politicians can't say they weren't warned that simply cutting future borrowing to $7 trillion from $10 trillion over ten years would result in a downgrade to our credit rating. Now that the US has been downgraded for the first time in our history the rush will be on to assign blame and avoid responsibility. Messrs. Garvey and Moskowitz will inevitably try to scapegoat those "hostage-taking, terrorist tea-baggers" while ignoring the true culprit, deficit spending. Washington spends $300 billion a month of which $120 billion is borrowed. The S&P looked at those numbers and the lack of a plan from the White House or the Senate(the House passed a budget) to address this imbalance and took the appropriate action. A note to Obama's press flak, unless you're Stacy Keibler "showing a lot of leg" isn't a plan.

Now, to be fair, Pres. Obama pushed heroically albeit futilely to end tax breaks for the corporate jet-set which would've brought $3 billion in revenue over ten years to the federal treasury. This amount would almost cover one day's worth of deficit spending($4 billion). Our largest foreign creditor China, agrees with S&P, it's the spending stupid. For those who believe that tax increases on the wealthy will solve all our problems, the Tax Foundation provides a needed dose of reality. They found that Washington could declare a maximum wage of $100,000, confiscating every penny that American's earn over that amount and it still wouldn't cover current spending. It's time for our representatives to face fiscal reality and drastically cut the size of government. Harry Reid's beloved cowboy poets will need to pay for their own festivals from now on. The next time someone wants to measure the size of gay men's johnsons they'll need to find private financing, not taxpayer funds for the project. Start with cutting discretionary spending which has ballooned by 24% under President Obama and move on to the universe of indefensible subsidies that Washington bestows on special interests. After passing this leadership challenge and proving themselves adults our representatives will need to reform entitlements that currently have trillions in unfunded liabilities to ensure that they continue to provide the safety net for Americans that are depending on them.

Because Congress has been negligent in passing the appropriations bills to keep our government running, they have ample opportunity to show S&P that they are serious about getting our nation's fiscal house in order. They need look no further than the pounding the stock market took when the latest of the PIIGS, Italy and Spain became the latest dominoes to fall due to excessive spending. Europe is screaming that the social democrat, big government model of government has failed and we must change course before it's too late. S&P's downgrade is a wake-up call for Congress, President Obama and the American electorate that the days of reckless spending can't go on any longer and that America isn't too big to fail.

Leave Prop 2 1/2 Alone

Google is a fantastic resource and it's a shame that Ken Woods didn't make use of it before writing a letter criticizing my "math" published on May tenth. If he had bothered to check the source I cited: the Digest of Education Statistics published by the U.S. Department of Education he would have found that all figures are in "constant 2008-09 dollars". If he were to investigate a little further he would have found this footnote: "Constant dollars based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI), prepared by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, adjusted to a school-year basis.". In short, despite Ken's protestations to the contrary, education spending has nearly tripled from $55,000 in 1970 to $150,000 today. Are we getting our money's worth? Data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development finds the answer to be an emphatic no. We spend 81 percent more than Germany, 77 percent more than France and 20 percent more than Britain to educate our children only to get our clocks cleaned. Our education system is in desperate need of reform not funds.

Which makes Ken's assertion that we must dump Prop. 2 1/2 all the more dubious. Without the spending restraint that Prop. 2 1/2 imposes on municipalities reform would be impossible. Even with a cap on property tax increases in place public employee unions have been extremely resistant to make concessions on gold-plated benefit packages that will save city services and school programs. Per our mayor "The co-chairs are not responding to my emails or my phone calls". Without the fiscal restraint that Prop. 2 1/2 imposes the very idea of concessions from unionized public employees who receive $47 an hour accourding to the federal government's national compensation survey would be a non-starter. What Mr. Woods neglects to mention is the impact eliminating Prop. 2 1/2 would have on the diversity of our city. We already pay a premium to live here and without a way to check property tax increases Newburyport would quickly become a playground only the very wealthy could afford to call home.

Nestled alongside the Merrimack we have little hope of checking the $188 million that Washington borrows every hour of every day to cover its reckless spending. We have little more influence on Beacon Hill when our "representatives" hand the public employees' pension fund its annual $1.4 billion bailout while cutting local aid. But if we embrace rather than abandon our rights as taxpayers our voices on matters pertaining to how our city is run can be decisive. Who knows, by demanding reform maybe politicians on every level of government will hear the message that "it's the spending stupid" and we can get our nation on sound footing again. The inflation caused spike in gas and food prices should be enough to educate every American on the dangers of giving politicians a blank check. This is no time to go wobbly on Prop. 2 1/2.