In Praise of NASA's Curiosity Mission

In spite of being a conservative libertarian Republican who wants to drastically reduce government spending, I've always had a soft spot for NASA- I know, everyone has 'their agency' or 'their sacred cow of spending', and that's why the budget is never cut, but in this case, and NASA is mine, so it does need to have its funding cut and do more with less and all that, but I still think is my favorite agency. And even though it's budget is only about $18 billion/year (out of $3456 billion/year total US spending), it is still able to deliver some amazing results.

From BBC News:

NASA is about to launch its latest Mars rover, nicknamed Curiosity, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. At nearly a tonne, the six-wheeled vehicle dwarfs all previous robots sent to the surface of the planet. The machine carries a suite of sophisticated instruments and tools, including a hammer drill and a laser, to find out whether Mars is, or ever has been, suitable for life....

Lift-off is just the start for what Nasa hopes will be a multi-year campaign at the Red Planet.... The rover is equipped with a plutonium battery and so should have ample power to keep rolling for more than a decade. It is likely the mechanisms on MSL will wear out long before its energy supply.... MSL will use its suite of 10 instruments to study the local rock, soil and atmosphere....

This mission looks very cool, and a description of it doesn't do it justice. Check out an animated video for this mission- it should make you feel very proud to be an American to imagine that in spite of our economic downturn, we can still do things like this (at the relatively bargain cost of $2.5 billion, or 1/1382th of the budget for 2010):

I've written about NASA before- check out my posts Obama's New NASA Policy- Yet More Broken Promises and Lies or Obama too Busy to Appoint Public Officials- but mostly check out my post Nuclear Power and Manned Space Flight: Victims of Democrat's Progress Backwards? where I wrote (in part- read the whole post):

Today I watched the movie Apollo 13 for perhaps that hundredth time. As I watched that wonderful movie, I grew a little emotional, but it wasn't because of the drama of the movie- it was because I am upset and angry and sad that America has abandoned manned spaceflight in my lifetime, and seems to be abandoning the larger future too, a future where man would harness the power of an atom splitting and travel among the stars, a future of dreams and inspiration. America instead is collapsing on the weight of promises made to generations past, ruled over by elitist politicians who seek only to control us, and everyday our nation moves farther away from living a prosperous life in the stars in freedom and liberty, however preposterous or unlikely that future may have been.

The current leadership of our nation speaks of 'progress,' but they are abandoning nuclear power and manned spaceflight in favor of providing healthcare insurance to people who are encouraged not to purchase it and spending money they don't have to support railroads and electric motor carriages and windmills. The future that Obama, Democrats, liberals, and Republicans that go along with them is not a future full of cheap safe energy and man roaming freely in the stars- it is a future with man going backward, remembering that once, long ago, before I was born and before my students were born, man built generators that were powered by the atom splitting and man walked on the moon.

Man once walked on the moon! Nuclear power plants were once built! Say it- and then realize that these are events of the past- that the new normal and likely new future of America and the world is a long, slow slide backwards into tyranny, injustice, and confiscation of property by elites. Oh, I know it is 'nice' to give out healthcare to anyone who asks and that we all want teachers to be paid a million bucks and that no job should be insecure and that energy should be provided from dancing on the suns rays or blowing gently on flowers, but that is not reality! The reality is that the future is slipping away, and much like the greatness of Rome was the standard for centuries or the might of Britain was to be envied for generations, ours is a time that is slipping away, slipping away based on the policies pushed for by Democrats like Obama, Granholm, Stabenow, Levin, Rogers, and others. Modern day liberalism has failed to move man into the future- rather, man has been moved backwards through its policies of standing in the way of human liberty and freedom, by embracing the killing of life and babies, and by stealing other peoples property....

Obama and the Democrats may be intent on making America average and poor- but at least NASA continues to dazzle us with great work like this Curiosity program!

Here are some great NASA products to buy! When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions (Limited Edition), Nasa: The Complete Illustrated History, From the Earth to the Moon - The Signature Edition, The Space Shuttle: Celebrating Thirty Years of NASA's First Space Plane, or America in Space: Nasa's First Fifty Years.

Gingrich Attempts to Help Kids Get Jobs by Changing Child Labor Laws, Faces Criticism

Due to minimum wage laws, child labor regulations, more restrictions on driving, and additional costs imposed on employers due to laws passed in recent years, many of my students have been unable to find employment. These government-created barriers to their desire to work has prevented them from making money and paying for college expenses, but even worse, these government-erected barriers have prevented these young students from gaining needed work experience and job skills that will help them in the future.

At a recent speech in New Hampshire, Newt Gingrich took aim at some of these child labor laws, saying that kid janitors “would be dramatically less expensive than unionized janitors.... I’m not suggesting that they drop out of school and become janitors, I’m talking about working 20 hours a week and being empowered to succeed.”

He went on to call child labor laws “truly stupid” at an appearance at Harvard University, saying that he would propose extraordinarily radical changes to these laws that would fundamentally transform the culture of poverty. He further said that children in the poorest neighborhoods are “trapped in child laws” that prevent them from earning money.

The reaction to his comments has been swift and largely negative. Many have accused him of attacking union jobs, suggesting that only unionized employees have the skill set to accomplish all aspects of being a janitor, but these sorts of accusations are not grounded in reality. Of course it would be essential to have a unionized master janitor to supervise and direct the young kids, but many other tasks (such as sweeping, cleaning boards, picking up trash, etc) could be performed by young students without any sort of prior skills. These students could gain job skills, make a little bit of money, and build pride in their school.

Others have accused Gingrich of being insensitive the to the needs and pressures of young children and have tried to paint him as some sort of evil industrialist suggesting that little kids go to work in the mines. This criticism also is misguided- in their desire to protect children from being taken advantage of in the workplace, these kids are being deprived of a chance to make money and earn skills that they want- prevented from doing so by rules and regulations pushed by well-meaning adults that backfire and instead hold kids back and increase their poverty.

My own theory is that many reacted so negatively to Newt's comments because they are trying to protect the monopoly on education and learning currently enjoyed by schools in America. Teachers, administrators, liberals, and Democrats have for years attempted to limit student's abilities to learn outside the classroom, burdening them with massive amounts of homework, making it difficult for these students to miss class to spend time at internships or job-shadows, and putting in place laws and regulations which prevent them from getting jobs. They do this because they want to control what sorts of education and learning these students receive, and recognize that if students were go get out in the real world and begin paying taxes and earning their way in life, they would no longer be as dependent on their teachers and the educational establishment and would be less controllable by administrators.

Much like the communists in Russia and China recognized the threat that religion represented to their absolute control, the educational establishment reacted negatively to Gingrich's suggestions of reforming child labor laws because it is jealously guarding its territory, trying to block students from learning about the outside world so that they will be forced to learn all their information from unionized teachers in the public school system.

UPDATE 11/29: In response to those who are asking me who I endorse... I already wrote about Ron Paul, I don't think Bachman or Huntsman or Santorum have high enough polling numbers to consider further, and Hermain Cain should drop out of the race now before anything else comes out about him. That leaves Gingrich, Romney, and Perry, and Perry demonstrated an inability to communicate his message combined with horrible stumbles in debates, so it's either Gingrich or Romney.

UPDATE 12/2: So, apparently Newt is continuing to work on this theme- memeorandum has linked to several stories now that go along with Newt's getting kids back to work theme- check out Jonathan Capehart's article in the Washington Post called Newt Gingrich's disgusting remarks about ‘really poor children’ or Nick Kalman of Fox News' article Newt: Poor Children Have “No Habits of Working”.

Black Friday: Obama, Robert Frank, and Other Liberals are Wrong for Hating It

President Obama, like most liberals and the party it controls (the once-proud Democratic Party), doesn't like the fact that you make decisions regarding your life- he wants to make them. And now that he has the power of trillions in taxpayer money and thousands of employees, he has the means to tell you how to live your own life. And so he has decided that he doesn't like big stores that thrive by providing goods and services to people in efficient and low-cost ways; rather, he likes small stores and so is going to go around the nation and pay for his administration to fly around the nation making speeches ordering you to not shop for great deals and save money at the big stores, but rather to shop at smaller stores, because he wants you to.

Liberals, being the elitists they are, don't really like Black Friday- as E.D. Kain describes it, these liberals reject Black Friday and the larger consumerism that accompanies this season (regrettably) for two reasons

...first, a sense that such overt consumerism is the hallmark of capitalism and that capitalism is somehow morally insufficient; and second, a distaste for the aesthetic of Black Friday – all those plebes rushing about buying things like so much chattel- these denizens of midnight Walmart sales are just icky...

It is the second thing that I believe really strikes me as the case, because most liberals think they are so much smarter than the rest of us and look down their noses at us, wanting to govern and manage us because they don't understand liberty, freedom, private property rights, capitalism, religion, morality, civic mindedness, charity, and all the other hallmarks of the conservative heartland of America. Because they don't understand these concepts, they reject them, pretending that they don't really exist, and that instead everyone who believes in them must be stupid or dumb, and so they wave around their Ivy League diploma's and listen to their pretentious public television or radio, use big words, scold everyone for not having proper grammar, and make fun of all the 'average people' scurrying about on Black Friday getting good deals and saving money and making our economy go around.

You see, you won't catch Barack Obama or other liberals out on Black Friday- he'll be joining the other Occupy Wall Street protesters in boycotting it, because they have enough money not to need deals, they have enough time to spend hours looking for a great deal, and they generally are not thrifty and efficient spenders enough to care about saving money as a family and getting the best deal.

Robert Frank is a great example of the sort of liberal who forms the intellectual backbone of modern day liberalism, the sort that dominates the Democratic Party today. He had time and money to go out and get several degrees in math and statistics, taking time off from his studies to work in government and give lectures, before he settled into an Ivy League school to lecture other elitists and write columns for snooty New York Times and write books with Ben Bernanke. For most of his life he has written and talked about how wealth and prosperity for all has somehow made the poor in America even more poor, and he sees no hypocrisy in doing so as he has flown around the world, eaten in nice restaurants, and lived in a nice house.

In this week's New York Times article How to End the Black Friday Madness, lectures those whom he sees as beneath him with a contempt just hidden (unlike the contempt that I hold him in that I am not hiding). He writes:

ADAM SMITH’S most enthusiastic modern disciples insist that the recipe for economic progress is to push government aside and let unfettered markets work their magic. His invisible hand theory does provide a tidy account of how market incentives can generate enormous wealth. But as Charles Darwin saw so clearly, unbridled competition doesn’t always promote the common good....
....In recent years, large retail chains have been competing to be the first to open their doors on Black Friday. The race is driven by the theory that stores with the earliest start time capture the most buyers and make the most sales. For many years, stores opened at a reasonable hour. Then, some started opening at 5 a.m., prompting complaints from employees about having to go to sleep early on Thanksgiving and miss out on time with their families. But retailers ignored those complaints, because their earlier start time proved so successful in luring customers away from rival outlets...

Frank, being an educated liberal, employs here the usual judgement of other people, feeling that he somehow gets to decide what is a 'reasonable hour' for stores to open, even though he does not run any sort of stores and has never served as a manager of any sort of store at any level his whole life.

From this place of supreme unwisdom and experience, guided by a piece of paper saying that he knows something, he has decided to play God and decide when people should start shopping. He then ignores the overtime that these employees are paid and has no knowledge of the many people hired just for this day- people who are not regular employees but who are given a paycheck on this day purely because the hours are not regular- and with this lack of knowledge of what is going on he has decided that it isn't becoming of employees to go in to work at a job that they choose to be at. Don't worry workers- with a guy like Frank on your side, he'll push for less jobs and less overtime and less hours, and in so doing make you more poor. He's like all other liberals, and the Liberal-in-Chief President Obama, in his utter failure to understand economics, math, statistics, people, or anything else about this world.

Frank believes that if we were all to empower him with the ability to control the world, the collective will would be better served by him controlling when we shop and how much items sell for and all the other sorts of personal decisions made by private individuals that he doesn't understand or know about.

I've never been a big fan of Black Friday, but if the liberals and Obama and Robert Frank are against it, I think that I need to change my tune, and do a little bit of online shopping tonight!

Stick it in Frank and Obama's eye- buy something tonight! Here are a couple suggestions...
Shop Amazon's New Kindle Fire
Shop Amazon's Holiday Toy List
Shop Amazon's Gift Cards - Perfect Anytime
Shop Amazon's Christmas Corner - Holiday decor, tableware, and entertainment

UPDATE: Welcome readers from The Village Voice! Take a look around and learn something!

Romney's Problem: Lack of Anger?

One thing that has troubled me this election cycle is the portrayal of some on the right or conservative side of the ideological spectrum of Mitt Romney as some sort of flip-flopping, unprincipled moderate who would be an enemy to conservative and libertarian interests. In articles, blog posts, and comment sections, many on the right argue that voting for Romney is 'essentially the same thing as voting for Obama' and that 'Romney is the same kind of guy as John McCain or George Bush.' The problem with this portrayal is that it is not accurate.

As reported by Micheal Medved:

...In February, 2008, the most influential (and persuasive) right winger of ‘em all threw his all-important support to Romney’s then struggling candidacy. “I think now, based on the way the campaign has shaken out, that there probably is a candidate on our side who does embody all three legs of the conservative stool, and that’s Romney,” he told his massive audience. “The three legs of the stool are national security/foreign policy, the social conservatives and the fiscal conservatives.”

After Rush highlighted the de facto endorsement in his newsletter with the headline “One Candidate Now Represents All Three Legs of Conservatism” the rest of syndicated talk radio (Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck) largely followed suit. Laura Ingraham introduced Mitt at CPAC as a “true conservative” and “a conservative’s conservative.” Only one lonely, courageous voice among the top-rated national hosts (and that would be me) openly dissented and proudly (and perspicaciously) endorsed McCain. Even Jim DeMint, the most conservative member of the US Senate, fell in line behind the Mittster...

So, if Mitt Romney was a 'true conservative' and 'represented all three legs of conservatism' in 2008, he would have had to have swung considerably to the middle in recent years for conservatives and libertarians and right-wingers to reject him so strongly. But yet, he hasn't- if anything, he has become more conservative since then. As Medved says:

...On no major issue did he move to the center in the last four years and on several (like Medicare reform, or environmental regulation) he moved decisively, even boldly to the right. The conservative commitments he made in 2008 (on social issues and other matters of policy) remain firmly intact, and the notorious flip-flops with which his thinking “evolved” over the years have receded further into the past (mostly before 2005) and so should seem less relevant, not more so.

Furthermore, as a candidate Romney has vastly improved with his self-assured, focused and coherent debate performances and a more genial and engaging, less plastic and patrician, personality. Looking at tape from four years ago and comparing it to the polished, capable candidate on display today, it’s easy to find reasons to rally to Romney’s cause this time, but impossible to discern any change for the worse...

So why don't conservatives like him this time around? Medved continues...

...Romney looks suspect to many activists on the right not because he isn’t conservative enough but because he isn’t angry enough. His real problem isn’t a question of ideology, it’s a matter of attitude. Mitt can’t keep himself from looking self-possessed and unflappable, cool and collected, reasonable and restrained. Rage isn’t part of his emotional repertoire: even when visibly frustrated by Rick Perry’s boorish disregard of all rules of debate in the Las Vegas slugfest, he came across as more pained and perplexed than infuriated.

Like most seriously successful businessmen, Mitt is a pragmatic problem solver, a sensible fixer, a technocrat. It’s easy to imagine him rolling up his perfectly cuff-linked sleeves to begin a process of cooperative, institutional repair in Washington but it’s tough to visualize the perfectly poised governor at the head of an avenging conservative army, laying waste to the opposition in a merciless effort to smash the remaining redoubts of their power....

Michael Medved is the author of The 10 Big Lies About America: Combating Destructive Distortions About Our Nation and Right Turns: From Liberal Activist to Conservative Champion in 35 Unconventional Lessons.

The Incoherence of Liberals

Earlier this week I wrote about the incoherence of liberals in my post Teaching and Brain-Dead Liberal Students. Today I direct you to Victor Davis Hanson's article The Imaginarium of Barack Obama, where he touches on the incoherence of the Grand Marshal of the Liberal Parade of Economic Doom, President Barack Obama:

The presidency of Barack Obama is full of funny things that need not follow any sort of logic. Images and ideas just pop in and out, without worry of inconsistency, contradiction, or hypocrisy. It’s a fascinating mish-mash of strange heroes and bogeymen, this imaginarium of our president.

In the imaginarium there are no revolving doors, earmarks, or lobbyists. So Peter Orszag did not go from being OMB director to a Citigroup fat-cat. Once chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel did not make $16 million for his well-known banking expertise. The more you damn the pernicious role of lobbyists and the polluting role of big money, the more you must hire and seek out both. Public financing of campaigns is wonderful for everyone else who lacks the integrity of Barack Obama who understandably must renounce such unfair impositions.

Those who now vote against raising the large Obama debt ceiling are political hucksters and opportunists; those who not long ago voted against raising the smaller Bush debt ceiling were principled statesmen. “Unpatriotic” presidents borrow $4 trillion in eight years; patriotic ones we’ve been waiting for can trump that in three.

Catching known terrorists and putting them in Guantanamo is very bad; killing suspected ones by drone assassinations — and anyone unlucky enough to be in their general vicinity — is exceptionally good. Tribunals, renditions, preventative detention, and all that were bad ideas under Bush-Cheney, but could become good ideas under Barack Obama, the law professor who often sees no need to follow the law when an immigration or marriage statute is deemed regressive.

A million Iranians protesting a soon-to-be-nuclear theocracy is false revolutionary consciousness and to be left alone; a few thousand Israelis wanting to buy apartments in the Jerusalem suburbs is subversive and worthy of presidential condemnation. And when atoning for supposed American lapses, what better place to begin apologizing than in Turkey, the incubator of the Armenian, Greek, and Kurdish mass killings? We need to deny history to make the case that America is not exceptional, and to invent it to persuade us that the Muslim world is extraordinary....

...There are lots of ways to bring Americans together across class and racial lines. One in the imaginarium is to focus on the “teabag, anti-government people.” Another is to encourage Hispanics to “punish our enemies” — or have the attorney general lambaste Americans as racial “cowards” and to defend “my people.” Joining foreign governments to sue a fellow American state is no more red/no more blue state unity. Still another is to divide up the people between the suspect who make over $200,000 and the noble who make less, or yet again target the dubious “1%” at “the very top” who do not pay “their fair share,” a mere 40% of the aggregate income tax.

Inside the imaginarium, the way to demonize the “1%” is to vacation among them — whether at Martha’s Vineyard or Costa del Sol. Buying a corporate jet is a waste of the people’s money — unlike daily flying on a much bigger private jet paid by the people....

...The president regrets that we are not innovative any more, and have gone “soft” and “lazy.” You see, his efforts at ensuring cradle-to-grave health care entitlements, of granting 99 weeks of unemployment insurance, and of extending food stamps to nearly 50 million are apparently incentives that should have led to a “hard” and “industrious” populace that was more self-reliant and willing to take risks on their own. “Spread the wealth” is a time-honored way of galvanizing people to become more self-disciplined and sufficient....

...In the imaginarium, community organizer Barack Obama never lived in a small mansion. John “two Americas” Edwards never lived in a big one. “Earth in the balance” Al Gore never lived in a few of them, and yacht owning John Kerry never lived in lots of them. You see in the imaginarium of Barack Obama you can be whatever you wish to be. Just wishing and saying something can wonderfully make it so.

FYI: Grand Marshal of the Liberal Parade of Economic Doom is going on the list of nicknames for Obama that I've been compiling.

Teaching and Brain-Dead Liberal Students

Of all the students in my class, the ones who are the least intelligent are the liberal ones. As Ronald Reagan once said, it isn't that these students are ignorant- in a great many cases, these students earn A's in all their classes and have a considerable wealth of knowledge on the issues and the subject matter. But what makes them just so darned unintelligent is that they know so much that isn't so.

For example, one of my students every day talks about the right to occupy public places that the people in the Occupy Wall Street movements are exercising. He knows that individual citizens have the right to squat on public places and protest, regardless of time, place, and manner restrictions, and he knows this beyond a doubt in his little mind. But what he knows isn't so- at no time has any court or legal scholar ever argued that people have an unlimited right to live on public lands without being molested- in fact, there are considerable and respected time, place, and manner restrictions on protesting on public property, and this includes not being able to sleep overnight in tents in public parks. My student isn't ignorant of the laws and rules and regulations regarding the First Amendment; rather, it is that he knows things where aren't so.

Another one of my students knows that under President George W. Bush and the Republicans, our nation was plunged into a severe recession that President Barack Obama has had to battle his entire time in office. She knows that the recession began under Republican control of Congress and the Presidency, and here in Michigan she knows that the recession can be blamed on a Republican Governor and state Congress. She is not ignorant- if I were to ask her when Congress was taken over by the Democrats, when President Obama took office, when the Great Recession started, or when Democrats lost control of the Michigan Congress or Governorship, she'd be able to tell me. It is just that when I ask her to put all this information together, she suddenly knows things that aren't so, because the truth of the matter is that the Great Recession began in 2008 during the last year of Bush's presidency, under a Democrat Congress, and in Michigan there was a Democratic Governor and Congress too. What she knew wasn't so!

Another student last week knew that global warming was happening- that is, she knew that ever since the industrial age began, human activity has been causing a steady and progressively accelerating of the global temperatures. She knew this to be so, and she was a good student who every day would quote from the New York Times or Barack Obama, so she wasn't ignorant- it was just that what she knew wasn't so. The temperature of the globe has not been steadily rising in temperatures since the industrial age, and to be honest, it is difficult to determine beyond a shadow of a doubt whether it is rising even now, what with data being manipulated by scientists, a lack in measuring stations, and an overall problem of putting thermometers near industrial and populated areas that naturally emit a lot of heat.

Just why exactly are the liberals and left-wing of our nation brain dead? In an article that appears in the Wall Street Journal called The Brain Dead Left, James Taranto hinted at the reason why this may be when he wrote:

...Obama has multiple degrees from Ivy League colleges and spent a good deal of his career as a part-time professor. At Columbia, Harvard and the University of Chicago, he absorbed the politically correct nostrums of the academic left. But he didn't pick up much by way of critical thinking skills (although at least he doesn't scream at banks).

He didn't have to learn how to think, since he was thinking all the "right" thoughts anyway. So he came to office with lots of ideological preconceptions but no ability to adapt or innovate. As a result, he is simply in over his head intellectually--at the mercy of allies, opponents and events...

The reason that our liberal friends know so much that isn't so may just be the fact that their movement is intellectually bankrupt, starved of critical analysis by supporters who have few thinking skills and are unable to question their own theories and views because of the rigidity of political correctness.

Although they are not ignorant people, they do know so much which isn't so, and that is why as a teacher I have great job in teaching the students above what is really so- that the OWS people have no right to squat on public lands, that the blame for the Great Recession is complicated and unclear, that the global warming theory as advanced by this student was incorrect, and that President Obama is a bad bad President.

UPDATE: Today another liberal student, who is a rather intelligent one and who knows a lot about a range of subjects, again demonstrated that the problem with liberals is not they they are not smart or ignorant, but rather it is that they know so much that isn't true. This student sent me an email that said

"There are two difference between the Occupy Wall Street movement and all other movements in American history- the first is that they represent the views of all Americans, and the second is that the situation today, unlike at other times in the past, justifies any sorts of violent, anti-social, law-breaking behavior."

The liberal student could tell you everything there is to know about other social movements, identifying the main people, years, influences, impact, and other details with these movements, and this liberal student scored very well on Advanced Placement tests in World History and US History and knows all about history.

And yet it isn't what this student knows that is wrong, but what this student thinks they do know that is wrong.

First, OWS does not represent 'the views of all Americans'- there hasn't been a single credible poll that shows that it represents even the majority of Americans, and in fact a lot of polls show that the majority of Americans are against it. Second, there is nothing about the current political situation more so than others in the past that justifies the sort of violent, law-breaking activity that characterizes the Occupy Wall Street movement- today is no more or less unique than the past and the beauty of the law is that it is above the moments of the time and is blind to the passing of the ages. This liberal student's problem is that the things that they think they know are in fact wrong, and so all actions and decisions based on these wrong things are wrong actions and decisions.

Taxpayers Will Lose Nearly $40 Billion on Bailout Out GM?

Via Reason:

...The Treasury Department yesterday revised its loss estimate for the Government Motors bailout from $14.33 billion to $23.6 billion, thanks to the company’s sinking stock price. GM’s Sept. 30 closing price, on which the new estimate is based, was $20.18, about $13 less than its December IPO price and $35 less than what is needed for taxpayers to break even.

The $23.6 billion represents a 25 percent loss on the feds $60 billion direct “investment” in GM. But that’s not all that taxpayers are on the hook for. As I explained previously, Uncle Sam’s special GM bankruptcy package allowed the company to write off $45 billion in previous losses going forward. This could work out to as much as $15 billion in tax savings that GM wouldn’t have had had it gone through a normal bankruptcy. Why? Because after bankruptcy, the tax liabilities of companies increase since they have no more losses to write off.

This means that the total hit to taxpayers, who still own about a quarter of the company, could add up to $38.6 billion. That’s even more that the $34 billion on the outside I had predicted in May....

...GM’s new competitors are not Toyota and Honda that share its cost structure but Hyndai and Kia that have a far leaner one. These companies concentrate on the small car market and don’t offer a full product line so GM and Ford’s most profitable vehicles—those evil, gas-guzzling, greenhouse-gas emitting SUV’s and pickup trucks—are somewhat insulated from the downward price pressure. But the greens and Obama administration want GM to reorient its product mix away from big cars and toward money-losing hybrids and electrics, something that could well put GM back in a hole.

But that’s part of the administration’s long-term strategy for ruining GM....

...But the Ostrich-in-Chief Barack Obama, who had assured taxpayers that their GM "investment" would cost them "not a dime," is drawing the opposite lesson, obviously. He has been trumpeting the success of the bailout—repeatedly....

Read the whole article here- it is very good, and echo's a lot of my earlier comments and thoughts about the whole 'bailout.' From the beginning, I was critical of the bailout. In my post More Thoughts on the Auto Loan Bailout written on December 12, 2008, I wrote:

I don't think that the banks should have bailed out either (auto company), and by bailing them out, Congress created this whole auto loan mess themselves. Second, the reason I'm not in favor of the bailout is out of principle- it is not fair and morally right that some companies are allowed to go bankrupt by the government, and others are saved with loans. Why one company and not another? The only arguments I ever hear in favor of the auto loan is the the auto companies affect a lot of people- that's true, but if you gave out loans of $1 million to 25,000 small companies (total of $25 billion, same as auto companies), that would probably affect a lot of people too.

And also, why now? Why let past companies fail, and then come in and rescue one now? Were the other companies in the past less deserving- were their works less important than the workers now? My grandpa worked for a steel company, and the US government let it go under- why didn't it rescue that company and provide money for my grandpa's pension and healthcare? Why rescue GM now- because it has better lawyers and lobbyists? That's not how America works- that is how corrupt regimes work.

The simple fact of the matter is that under President Barack Obama and the new Democratic Party of Pelosi and Reid, government policy is now to direct money borrowed from China to favored groups in American society, such as auto workers and those who work for 'environmentally friendly' companies like Solyndra and SunPower. Government leaders take a cut of this money to make themselves more and more wealthy-see Frank, Dodd, Obama, Pelosi, Gore, Clinton, etc for a range of Democratic Congressman who have made themselves rich redirecting taxpayer funds. And thus America becomes just like every other corrupt oligarchy in the world, and our life, liberties, and property is less protected.

The only way to stop this is to throw the bums out next election. That means Obama has to go, and Democrats and Republicans who have supported his agenda also have to go- that's pretty much every Democrat and a good number of Republicans too. The most tea-party or conservative candidate who can win the general election must be nominated and we must act to get them elected, or America will continue to slide into the kind of tyranny that is evident when looking back at the sad and unprincipled chapter of the auto loan bailout.

For more information on this subject, check out Crash Course: The American Automobile Industry's Road to Bankruptcy and Bailout-and Beyond or Bail Out or What Would the Founders Say?: A Patriot's Answers to America's Most Pressing Problems or How Capitalism Will Save Us: Why Free People and Free Markets Are the Best Answer in Today's Economy.

Review: RTI for Secondary Schools, by Marc Barlow

Administrators and teacher leaders who are trying to think big might want to check out RTI for Secondary Schools: Implementing a Schoolwide System, by Marc Barlow (93 pages, available through Amazon for $17).

Most schools have some part of the day at least once a week that they have set aside for something other than classes- study hall, seminar, home room, etc- but that time period is probably not being used to its utmost currently, and this book can point you in a direction on how to use that time period better in your school. Marc Barlow helped to implement a time period at his school called Advisory, and in this book he lays out the step by step process on how and why to implement a similar period in your school.

Now, being just a lowly teacher who has been unable to even get his fellow teachers to act as a professional learning community, I am not able to implement this sort of program at my school- but we have a similar period of time in my school that currently is not being fully utilized, and even though I'm not going to make it into an Advisory period, I am going to push to reform it and improve it so that our students and our school can gain more from this time period.

RTI for Secondary Schools will lay out a step-by-step process to implement an Advisory period; but it will also inspire you to do so. Check out the book at amazon.com today-

Obama Administration Pressured Solyndra to Delay Layoffs Until After 2010 Election

Solyndra’s chief executive warned the Energy Department on Oct. 25, 2010, that he intended to announce worker layoffs Oct. 28. Solyndra was bleeding cash and quickly going bankrupt, and the only thing that would possibly save the company, bring confidence to investors, and help protect taxpayers heavy investment in the company would be quick action in trimming its workforce and shutting down factories. It was an economic decision that needed to be made.

But Democratic President Barack Obama disregarded all of those things and made a political decision and urged officers of the struggling solar company Solyndra to postpone announcing planned layoffs until after the November 2010 midterm elections. He didn't want citizens to pick up on the fact that he used his clean energy initiatives to steer valuable taxpayer money to benefit his friends and donors, all under the oversight and supervision and approval of a Democratic Congress that was about to suffer historic losses to to their historic bad governance of the nation's finances.

President Obama made a political decision to bring pressure to bear on private companies to hide their financial position and continue to go further into debt until there was no hope left but bankruptcy and ruin. In many ways, Solyndra is a metaphor for his plan for America- cover up the true reality of the destruction that his policies are doing to our nation and put off crucial economic decisions in a desperate attempt to hold tight to political power.

From the Washington Post article "Solyndra: Energy Dept. pushed firm to keep layoffs quiet until after midterms":

The Obama administration urged officers of the struggling solar company Solyndra to postpone announcing planned layoffs until after the November 2010 midterm elections, newly released e-mails show.

Solyndra, the now-shuttered California company, had been a poster child of President Obama’s initiative to invest in clean energies and received the administration’s first energy loan of $535 million. But a year ago, in October 2010, the solar panel manufacturer was quickly running out of money and had warned the Energy Department it would need emergency cash to avoid having to shut down.

The new e-mails about the layoff announcement were released Tuesday morning as part of a House Energy and Commerce committee memo, provided in advance of Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s scheduled testimony before the investigative committee Thursday.

Solyndra’s chief executive warned the Energy Department on Oct. 25, 2010, that he intended to announce worker layoffs Oct. 28. He said he was spurred by numerous calls from reporters and potential investors about rumors the firm was in financial trouble and was planning to lay off workers and close one of its two plants.

But in an Oct. 30, 2010, e-mail, advisers to Solyndra’s primary investor, Argonaut Equity, explain that the Energy Department had strongly urged the company to put off the layoff announcement until Nov. 3. The midterm elections were held Nov. 2, and led to Republicans taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives....

I've written about Solyndra or related topics before- check out my posts Data Reveals that SunPower Employees Donated to Democrats, then Got Massive Loans or Executives as Investors-in-Chiefs: A Bad Idea?

For more information, check out Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies.

Tea Party Compared to Occupy Wall Street

Doug Ross has put up this helpful chart comparing the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movements. As you can see, there are some differences between the two popular movements:

To learn more about the Tea Party movement, try reading Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto. To learn more about the Occupy Wall Street movement, try reading Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.

Emperor Obama Builds Palaces in Washington DC as it Becomes the new Wealthiest City in the US

In July of 2010 in response to a Politico poll that showed how out of touch the elites in Washington DC were from the rest of the nation I wrote "while the countryside is being plundered, the Democratic lords and Emperor Obama are living in a different world based on luxury, hope, and change."

Turns out that I was right- while the rest of the nation has been battling unemployment, falling salaries, and a feeling that things are going in the wrong direction, Washington DC has become the wealthiest U.S. metropolitan area according to recent Census data. Whereas in years past wealthiest metropolitan areas were based on producing goods and services, Washington DC has become the nation's wealthiest area on the backs of booming salaries and employment for government workers and booming employment and a growing concentration of lawyers and lobbyists.

Unlike recently passed Silicon Valley which built its wealth on innovation and production of computers or historic wealthy areas like Oakland County Michigan which was built on money generated from automobile production, under President Barack Obama (Democrat, President since 2009) and the Democrats (control of House from 2006-2011 and Senate since 2006), Washington DC simply vacuums trillions of dollars from taxpayers and trillions more in debt in order to give high salaries to ever more inefficient government employees and to distribute gifts and favors and contracts to special interests.

With about 5.6 million residents, the Washington region has an aggregate household income of about $221.4 billion. The San Jose area (Silicon Valley) has about 1.8 million people and income of $67 billion, according to census figures gathered from the American Community Survey. Although there is considerable income disparity in Washington DC (in the District of Columbia almost 11 percent of the city’s population qualifies as “very poor"), total compensation for federal workers (including health care and other benefits) soared last year to an average of $126,369, compared with $122,697 in 2009 and even less than that in years before that. In addition to soaring federal pay, employment has been stable as well- the unemployment rate in the Washington metro area was 6.1 percent, compared with nationally joblessness at 9.1 percent (source).

In addition to booming salary and jobs for federal workers during this recession, there has also been a stunning rise in the number of lobbyists and lawyers working over the federal government- spending on lobbying efforts reached a new record of $3.51 billion last year and in 2010 there were a new record number of registered lobbyists (12,964), with most working in or around the nation’s capital. This is likely the result of the Democrats crony capitalism policies, which award contracts and business to those who are politically connected and make campaign donations to Democrats (see Solyndra or the bailout of General Motors for examples of this).

I personally saw this sort of corruption when I visited our nation's capitol last. After that visit, I was moved to write this:

Washington DC is booming. I think it is one of the few states in the nation to actually have increasingly employment, job growth, and GDP growth. There are signs everywhere of prosperity and building- roads are being repaired, monuments are being revamped, buildings are adding on, and fresh paint and plaster is in abundance. On a guidebook of DC I read that our capitol was designed to look like the capitols of the Emperors and despots of Europe, but it was okay because we lived in a free nation that celebrated liberty and property. Well, as our country becomes more despotic and tyrannical, it is going to look increasingly like those capitols of the old days, when the Emperor took money from the countryside to build himself new statues and bigger palaces.

There is no way to sugar-coat this sort of thing or make it appear to be some sort of sign of progress. President Obama campaigned on cleaning up Washington, and he has done the exact opposite, making Washington a rising cesspool of corruption and money while the rest of the nation struggles to make ends meet. There needs to be a house-cleaning in 2012 to get rid of the people who have been in charge there over the last couple years when the problem has gotten dramatically worse, and since Bush and the Republicans are not in charge any more, that means the Democrats (who control the bureaucracy, Presidency, and Senate) should be thrown out of their fancy palaces in DC so that they can find real jobs making goods and providing services in good old productive American cities.

Mark Levin probably agrees with me- check out his book Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America.

Moderate Democrats Almost Extinct?

Conservatives and liberals, libertarians and progressives, I have bad news for you- most of the American people are moderates and independent voters and want a candidate who is moderate and independent. Oh, I know you guys all want a purist, someone who is ideologically consistent and always agrees with your every viewpoint- but the truth of the matter is that the American people elect the party that they feel is the most moderate. Of course, this is all subjective, as the American people might view a party as 'moderate' when in reality it is very extreme, but at a certain point in politics perception becomes reality, and so it is important to be perceived as voters as being a moderate and independent party.

And the Democrats of today are not moderates or independent. Via RealClearPolitics comes this article called Moderate House Dems a Vanishing Breed:

Two issues plague Democrats when it comes to congressmen representing swing districts: The moderates don’t get heard in Washington, and centrist districts are rapidly becoming extinct because of the way congressional lines are being drawn....

....Not all of Main Street is on one side or the other, said former congresswoman Kathy Dalhkemper, a Democrat who represented northwestern Pennsylvania until being defeated last year in the wave of moderate-Democrat losses to Republicans. “The Democratic Party is not really the ‘big tent’ it claims to be,” she said of the small space available to represent centrist districts.

Dalhkemper thinks most Americans are pretty centrist: “More people are swing voters than we realize. Take myself, for example. I don't believe in everything that every Democrat stands for, and I am proud to say that I have voted for Republicans in the past.”...

...More than 50 moderate Democrats were in Congress before the 2010 midterm elections. That number is circling the drain at 22, with more disappearing each day.

Rep. Dennis Cardoza of California, one of the fiscally conservative “blue dog” Democrats, announced his intention to retire last week, citing a lack of politicians in the middle as one of his reasons. He joins 12 other centrists who have said they would retire or seek another office. Fellow blue dogs Mike Ross of Arkansas and Dan Boren of Oklahoma have said they won't be coming back when their terms expire in January 2013.

A moderate Democrat such as Boren represents a district with a large number of white working-class, often Catholic traditional Democrats who outnumber registered Republicans by a wide margin, explained Eldon Eisenach, a Tulsa University political theorist.

...A moderate Democrat is almost always against stringent gun control, is personally against abortion, is skeptical about extending affirmative action beyond anti-discrimination, supports a fairly aggressive foreign policy, wears patriotism on their sleeves, and actually sees periodic conflicts between regulation and job-creation....

....David Wasserman, House analyst for the Cook Political Report, points to this statistic: “There are six conservative Southern Democratic House members remaining. After 2012, it’s possible none of them, who are threatened by redistricting, will be in office.”

And the 19 Democrats who voted against Nancy Pelosi for the House Minority Leader position have very little incentive to stay; they’re a minority within a minority in the House, not to mention members of a minority party in their districts. “So they’re triply marginalized,” said Wasserman.

The moderate Democrat is a disappearing breed, which is a problem for Democrats overall – because, in any given election year, those moderates could be the difference between being in the majority or the minority party.

The Republicans might have have a lot of pressure from the tea party and the media might accuse them of being extreme right-wingers- but their Presidential nominee is likely going to be a moderate like Mitt Romney, their previous Presidential nominee was a liberal John McCain, many Senators and Congressman are pretty moderate, and here in Michigan our Governor is a moderate GOP. That might make many of the Tea Party crowd unhappy and drive conservatives to anger, but by being perceived as less extreme has led the GOP to winning large amounts of political power in our nation, where the Tea Party and conservatives in the party can then push their agenda from a position of strength rather than a position of weakness.

If Democrats had nominated Hillary Clinton in 2008 or the so-called 'Blue Dog' Democrats had had influence or not been wiped out in 2010, then maybe they could have claimed to be the party of moderation and independence- sadly, none of that is true, demonstrating that the Democratic Party of today is a party of extreme left-wing views that has been hijacked by progressives and liberals, and should only represent the citizens of our nation in a few random districts in Congress.

It isn't your parent's Democratic Party any more- for the full reality, read Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America.

My Reflections from the GOP Debate on the Economy at OU

As many of you know, I am from Michigan, and actually live very close to Oakland University, so I was very excited about the Republican Presidential Primary debate that was recently held there regarding the economy and jobs. As a teacher, the way that I approach this debate may be a bit different than some- I imagine in my mind my students- who are learning about government but are coming from a weak background and years of liberal indoctrination- asking me about the debate and wanting me to give my thoughts on it as an impartial political scientist and also as a hip and cool and connected to the youth high school government teacher.

This debate was one of the better ones that I have watched, and I believe it demonstrates the depth and maturity of the GOP field of candidates. While Democrats focus on demagoguery and constantly throw out rhetoric and boilerplate language about hope and change and doing things different, the GOP field from top to bottom displayed in this debate depth of knowledge on a range of issues facing our nation on to the topic of the economy and jobs. Their answers were candid, focused on the points addressed to them, and they took time in their answers to really try to get their points across. There appeared to be much less 'game-planning'- they weren't trying to 'score points' or 'do anything', but were instead doing a great job answer the questions and trying to convince the American people why they would make a great President of the United States. The moderators did a good job too- asking tough questions but staying away from the 'gotchya' questions that really annoy me as a viewer.

To me, the field has clearly separated after this debate into three candidates who are clearly head and shoulders above the other candidates, each having unique strengths and each having a good shot at winning the nomination. The three that I see emerging after this debate are Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Hermain Cain. I'll come back to those three in a moment after considering the other candidates on the stage.

John Huntsman should drop out of the race- he is not the sort of Republican that the Republican Party is looking for or needs this election. In too many of his answers he asserted that he personally knew what the right size of banks should be, or that he could 'right-size' industries, as if he knows what the 'right size' industries should be. He is trying to come off as a sort of GOP caring and trusting candidate, but I don't think people are looking for a hug and a shoulder to cry on this election- they should be looking for leadership and competence to fix the blunders and mistakes of the past administration, and Huntsman does not represent that in any way. He adds little to the discussion and should drop out.

Rick Santorum is a nice enough politician, but his desperation for attention is bothersome to me and he clearly is a one-trick pony. Most of the other candidates listened to the other candidates and bounced off their ideas, but it appeared at times if Santorum was in his own little world, hearing only what he wanted to hear while bouncing up and down whining 'look at me.' His self-promotion was annoying. And government should not pick winners and losers in our nation, even if you think that winner should be manufacturing- that sort of mentality is what got our nation in the mess it is in right now. He's a nice guy, but not President, and also should drop out of the race.

Rick Perry, I hate to say, should also bow out of the race at this time. I really wanted to like Perry- I heard him speak on Mackinac Island at the GOP Leadership Conference and walked away impressed, but he is clearly out of his comfort zone in running for the President of the United States. Yes, not remembering what department he wanted to axe is embarrassing, but it was more than that- his answers on a range of issues were boilerplate and the kind of stuff that I find trite and shallow and lacking in specifics of sophistication. I thought that he would be able to take what he did in Texas and communicate how he would bring that model to our whole nation, but it increasing appears as if he doesn't fully understand or isn't able to communicate what that model is or how he can bring it to our whole nation. He has been measured, evaluated, and found wanting- he is a good Governor of the State of Texas, but I feel nothing more, and should exit stage right now.

Ron Paul I also feel should drop out of the race, although I understand him staying in the race- he still adds something to the discussion and gives the GOP candidates still in the race someone to agree with and disagree with. He is good at stirring the discussion and is a great legislator- although he is not going to the nominee for President because he lacks leadership and executive qualities that are needed to be President of the United States. During this debate he looked good- restrained, having a good time, and trying to teach America views and policies- but in other debates on foreign policy or family values he looks lost, and sometimes in this debate and others he fell back on 'conspiracies' and little black men to explain away our issues and problems. You need a guy like Ron Paul in Congress and running for President- but he should not be the nominee for President.

Michelle Bachman really impressed me- she has really gotten a lot better and a lot more comfortable up there on stage and she now looks like she belongs. She showed depth of understanding on a range of issues and was able to approach issues with a more complex understanding that I am looking for in a President- I liked her stance on lower taxes, on having everyone pay a little something in taxes, reforming healthcare, and focusing on how our spending problem is what is leading to a rising China. She was good and I'd like to see her stay in the race and continue to improve- but I don't think she should be the GOP's nominee. On too many issues, she simply fell back to being critical of Obama rather than articulating a clear position of her own, and I felt at times like she was quoting from articles that I had read on the major newspapers or heard on talkshows rather than being a President. She is a good Congresswomen and commentator- but not yet Presidential.

Hermain Cain did not impress me. 9-9-9 is not the answer to every question that our nation faces- it may be a bold reform plan, but it will not address every issue facing our nation and can't be the answer to every question that he is asked. For example, when asked on how he would get along with Democrats, he tried to answer that that wasn't important and that was important was passing 9-9-9- that's naive and misguided, because there are going to be Democrats in the House and Senate still after 2012 and 2014, and they aren't even going to give 9-9-9 a chance, and most Republicans aren't either. This guy is living in a dream world if he thinks he can just blow by those sorts of questions and shout 9-9-9 at people, and to me this speaks to the fact that Cain has never been in politics and has never run a government and has never had a position of leadership working in an environment where the other side hates his guts and will do anything possible to stop or sabotage his plan. In addition, on a range of answers he lacked knowledge of the details and issues- and this was domestic policy, his strong suit, not foreign policy, where he is very weak indeed in spite of the fact that foreign policy is a huge part of being President in our nation. He's a likable guy and easy-going- but I'd rather have as President a rude and stiff guy who knew what he was doing and could approach complex issues with complex and knowledgeable policy options. Hermain Cain would make a good Senator, but not a good President- increasingly I feel like the GOP likes him because he's the GOP's version of Obama- a weak on details, likable, easy-going fellow who can get off some good lines but has no experience and leadership and will be quickly overwhelmed with how boring and immense the office of the President is.

Newt Gingrich was the candidate that I was very happily surprised by. The best thing about Newt is that he doesn't let the liberals and Democrats frame the debate or control the direction of the debate- if he were the opponent of Obama I really think he would go after the guy and fight the battle on his terms. He has a stunning command of the issues and the complexity of the issues, easily referring to policies adopted by other nations and other areas as examples of what the United States should do while also drawing on history and economics concepts and philosophy with ease. His ideas about firing Bernake, auditing the Fed, reforming Freddie and Fannie, pushing Medicare to the states, expanding FSA's, giving more young people choices in Social Security, reforming student loan programs, and making America more competitive are all great ideas that the Republican party should and can get behind. Newt is a legitimate contender for the nomination, I feel, and would make a good (although wonkish) President of the United States, holding his own against the other party and executives from other nations, pushing for policies that would be innovative and creative to tackle the challenges that America faces in the 21st century. Obama might look for inspiration to FDR and the Great Depression of the 1930's- but Newt is a bold thinker looking ahead and pushing for new policies that could move America into the future. I think he would be a great addition to any ticket the GOP put forward.

Mitt Romney with this debate should have solidified his spot as the front runner. His knowledge of the issues and comfort with attacking problems with sophistication is only surpassed by Gingrich; his ability to attack Obama and roll of 'red-meat' lines that the base likes is surpassed only by Bachman; his experience as an executive and record of success in government is surpassed only by Perry; and his moderation and appeal to all-important middle-class voters is only surpassed by Huntsman. But put together all of these assets, combined with his general positive nature and range of experiences and Presidential look, and he makes a good nominee for the Republican Party. Not the best one- but on a lot of levels, a better nominee than McCain or Dole or Ford or Goldwater was, and comparable to others too. I believe that he speaks to the 'silent majority' in America that is always the key to winning elections- conservatives might not like this and might want him to be fully owned by the conservative movement, but the 'silent majority' of slightly right middle-class moderates is the group that really determines the President in our nation, and we'll need to win over that group to win the Presidency, and Romney can do that. Frankly, I don't know why conservatives hate him so- he was against the bailouts, against the auto bailouts, wants government to follow laws and processes, wants a flatter and broader tax base with less deductions, will cut the deficit, believes in federalism, talked about injecting the free market more into healthcare policies, and said that he'd push for more free trade. Oh, I know he also talked about keeping in place a safety net for the poor- but so did Ronald Reagan. And he was the only person who talked about he moral reasons for balancing the budget- about how it isn't right to pass that sort of debt down to our children. And he knew what sort of levers and buttons to push as President to get China to 'cheat' less in international trade while the other candidates didn't. I'm not endorsing him at this point- but there is a lot to like about him from this debate.

The best thing is that all of the candidates- from RINO Huntsman to libertarian Paul and everyone in between- all want to lower taxes, all were against the bailouts, all wanted to get rid of Obamacare, and all wanted to expand energy production in the United States. Right there, we know that whomever the nominee is, they will be a better President than the Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, and will make America a better place for us to live, a more free nation for us to live in, and will create and protect our prosperity better.

UPDATE: Welcome readers from The PJ Tatler and from The Hill! While you are here, please take a moment to look around my site and check out some of my other posts or look through my archives and read anything that catches your interest. Bookmark my site or link to it on your own or subscribe by email and become a regular reader!

Data Shows Democrat Presidents Leads to More Inequality and Rich Getting Richer?

Progressives and Liberals and the Democratic Party that they've seized control over frequently claim that it is under evil right-wing Republicans that the 'rich get richer' and that there is 'rising inequality.' These groups suggest that having the government seize more power over the free people of our nation through increasing taxes and regulations and increased government spending results in a more equitable distribution of wealth and a more equal society. By having the government make choices for people and take property away from others, they argue that a more fair society can be created and that the playing field can be evened; liberals say that government social programs will stop inequality in our nation; and that religion, class structures, education, and traditions make the rich richer and cause inequality and therefore these social structures must be attacked and broken down. The problem though is not that liberals are ignorant of their policies and their arguments- it is that their policies and arguments are just not true.

From Investors Business Daily article Income Inequality Rose Most Under President Clinton:

In his weekend radio address, President Obama decried that "over the past three decades, the middle class has lost ground while the wealthiest few have become even wealthier." Although he was trying to leverage the Occupy Wall Street movement, the income gap has been a longstanding concern of his. During the 2008 campaign, Obama said, "The project of the next president is figuring out how do you create bottom-up economic growth, as opposed to the trickle-down economic growth that George Bush has been so enamored with."

But it turns out that the rich actually got poorer under President Bush, and the income gap has been climbing under Obama.

What's more, the biggest increase in income inequality over the past three decades took place when Democrat Bill Clinton was in the White House.

The wealthiest 5% of U.S. households saw incomes fall 7% after inflation in Bush's eight years in office, according to an IBD analysis of Census Bureau data. A widely used household income inequality measure, the Gini index, was essentially flat over that span. Another inequality gauge, the Theil index, showed a decline.

In contrast, the Gini index rose — slightly — in Obama's first two years. Another Census measure of inequality shows it's climbed 5.7% since he took office.

Meanwhile, during Clinton's eight years, the wealthiest 5% of American households saw their incomes jump 45% vs. 26% under Reagan. The Gini index shot up 6.7% under Clinton, more than any other president since 1980...

That's right- like most liberal policies that have addressed poverty, energy, unemployment, deficits, and helping out minorities, the results of their policies have resulted in the exact opposite of what they have tried to do. The reason for this is quite clear- liberal policies are wrong.

When government takes power and property away from individuals and transfers that power and property to those it favors, of course it results in rising inequality- the rich are of course more connected, and those who are connected prosper and make more money, resulting in the rich getting richer and rising inequality. But when people make free decisions and earn and keep their own property to do what they wish with, it doesn't matter what sort of connections people have and it doesn't matter what their previous status or station or wealth is, and so the rich don't get richer and inequality doesn't rise. As evidence, I submit to the jury real evidence- read the IBD article and you'll see it quite clearly there.

Calvin Coolidge, One of the Best Presidents?

When putting together a list of the best Presidents in the history of our nation, that list would likely include Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, James Madison, Grover Cleveland, and Ronald Reagan. To that list I would like to also include Calvin Coolidge.

Most polls rank Coolidge somewhere in the middle, but this is because most people rank greatness by the number of actions that Presidents make and the number of policies that they as executives force on the nation that are usually contrary to our Constitution. For example, most lists put FDR at the top of the list, but he pushed through unconstitutional policies, dropped our nation into another Great Depression, didn't respond early enough to the rising fascism in the world, and then did the only thing I'll give him great credit for and won WWII. Oh, some great Presidents had to respond to crisis forced on them by others (like Lincoln), but most other so-called 'great' Presidents simply used the office of the President to jam policies on people that moved power and freedom away from them to the government and supervised a nation in crisis.

The best Presidents are those who did very little, ran the executive office smoothly and without problems or corruption, and conformed to the Constitution as closely as possible. Jefferson was President for two terms, and other then the Louisiana Purchase, his administration happily has little to note other than peace and prosperity. James Madison had to respond to the War of 1812, yes- but other than that, peace and prosperity. Calvin Coolidge was like this too- nothing to note during his time in office other than nothing to note- peoples lives were protected, the nation was prosperous, and property was well protected.

Here are some of the reasons that Calvin Coolidge should make the list of one of our greatest Presidents:

1. Coolidge was (for the most part) an opponent of government regulations. “I am in favor of reducing, rather than expanding, government bureaus which seek to regulate and control the business activities of the people,” he explained in the same State of the Union address. During his time in office, he attempted to allow private development of Muscle Shoals, made conservative appointments to federal offices over the objections of liberal Democrats and Progressive Republicans, was opposed to a veterans' bonus, and blocked and to the proposed McNary-Haugen farm legislation.
2. Coolidge criticized the left for its money-spending habits, stating, “Nothing is easier than spending the public money. It doesn’t appear to belong to anyone.” His policies led to a booming economy and increased tax revenues, but Coolidge knew that these additional 'revenues' wasn't the government's money- it was the peoples. So instead of bowing to progressives and liberals and using the surplus funds to create new programs, he put in place tax cuts. His tax cuts targeted largely the wealthy (he believed that the rich would invest their extra funds in ways that would increase production and therefore jobs and wealth at home, and also that American trade would expand abroad which would benefit the domestic economy and help stabilize the world economically and politically), but taxes were also cut on all taxpayers as well, the gift tax was repealed, and the death tax cut in half. These tax cuts led to increasing economic growth in America (and more tax revenues).
3. Coolidge believed that the role of the government was to step out of the way and allow the market and business to prosper. “The business of America is business,” Coolidge famously declared. But unlike many Republicans and almost all liberals, he did not believe the business of government was to control and direct and subsidize business- he believed in the free market and that removing regulations would encourage business more so than subsidies and targeted tax code help.

Coolidge’s tax cuts and deregulations resulted in a budget surplus and the economically booming “Roaring Twenties,” which came to an end during the progressive regulatory administration of his successor President Herbert Hoover. Coolidge said after leaving the White House, "Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business"- but this is the very thing that I love about Coolidge, that as President he minded his own business, operated the machinery of the White House with cool and competent handling, and minded his own business as President. No crisis, no television appearances, no major policy changes, no crazy plans, no wild new ideas- simply doing his job, doing it well, and leaving when he was done with the nation in a better place than it was before.

President Calvin Coolidge may be the first U.S. president appeared to also appear in a "talkie" -- a movie with sound.In this four-minute clip (viewable on YouTube), Coolidge says that he wants to

"cut down public expense. I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. This is the chief meaning of freedom. Until we can re-establish a condition under which the earnings of the people can be kept by the people, we are bound to suffer a very severe and distinct curtailment of our liberty."

Before we go to the polls in 2012 to pick nominees for political parties and for President, I just want everyone to re-examine Calvin Coolidge and his Presidency and decide for themselves what exactly makes a President great.

UPDATE: The Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation contacted and reminded me of another reason why Coolidge is possibly one of the better Presidents that we've ever had- his views on education. Coolidge believed strongly in education and he often commented on the subject throughout the course of his political career, believing in the importance of having an educated citizenry and impressing on young people the importance of lifelong learning. Here is one of his quotes from a newspaper column in 1930:

"While it is easy to waste money on education, it is the one thing which we cannot afford to curtail. The true ideal would seem to be a system that supplies those in the lower grades with certain basic information and those in the upper grades with the power to think… The school is not the end but only the beginning of an education. Yet its place cannot be filled in any other way. The best thing the millions of our youth can do to assure their future success is to work faithfully at their studies. That opportunity for improvement and discipline will never return.”

For your next vacation, take a trip to Plymouth Notch, VT to see the President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site for yourself and experience the world in which President Coolidge was born and raised.

For good books about President Calvin Coolidge, check out Silent Cal's Almanack: The Homespun Wit and Wisdom of Vermont's Calvin Coolidge, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, or Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge, The.

NYT's Silver Handicaps the 2012 Election and Gives Insight on Who the GOP Should Nominate to Defeat Obama

The number one goal in the Presidential election of 2012 for every conservative, moderate, independent, Republican, Tea Party, and patriot should be the defeat of President Obama and his radical liberal progressive agenda. And as an incumbent nominated by one of our two major parties who is going to raise over a billion dollars and has spent his entire presidency creating dependencies and voting blocs dependent on him and who is going to run the most negative campaign in history, it is not going to be very easy to defeat Barack Obama, regardless of what the economy is like or how bad he has protected our citizens life, liberty, and property.

So to me, rather than dreaming of pies in the sky and putting my bets on unicorns and leprechauns and supporting GOP candidates who are all hopey and changey, I'm looking at the polls and doing the math and figuring out how to best beat this guy, and supporting the candidate who does that the best.

Remember, a Republican Congress dominated by real conservatives and Tea Party views can drive the agenda, passing legislation, cutting deficits, and putting in place the changes our nation needs. If the GOP puts the right person at the top of the ticket, the GOP may be able to slightly grow its majority in the House, which they already control by a wide margin, and take back control of the Senate, perhaps even getting a filibuster proof majority if Obama is wiped out by the right GOP candidate at the top of the ticket.

With this sort of reasoning, I put a lot of stock in guys like Jay Cost or Nate Silver and sites like FiveThirtyEight because they run the math and look at the numbers and factor in the power of polls and demographics to predict elections accurately. Here then for your consideration are some of the highlights from a good column that Nate Silver just wrote for the New York Times called Is Obama Toast? Handicapping the 2012 Election:

...Instead we should think big, and focus on the three fundamentals...

...A president’s approval rating toward the end of his third year, therefore, has been a decent (although imperfect) predictor of his chances of victory... In fact, since 1944 (when approval ratings first became reliable), there have been five cases in which the incumbent party’s president had an approval rating below 49 percent a year ahead of the election — as Obama almost certainly will, unless he finds the cure for cancer after our issue goes to print — and each time the incumbent party lost.... The correct conclusion, then, is that other factors being equal, an approval rating in the low 40s a year before the election makes a president a slight but not overwhelming underdog....

...If Obama’s approval ratings were in the low 30s or worse instead of the 40s, that would be another story. The three presidents to fit this description — Carter in 1979, George W. Bush in 2007 and Harry Truman in 1951 — saw their parties take big defeats the next year. It would also be another matter if Obama’s approval rating were closer to 50 percent. Of the six presidents to have approval ratings in that range a year ahead of the election — Nixon, Clinton, Bush the younger, Truman in 1947 and Reagan in 1983 and 1987 (with Bush the elder running as his proxy in the latter case) — all six won...

...The good news (for Obama) is that voters have short memories. If there are hopeful signs during an election year, they may be willing to forget earlier problems. Reagan, Nixon, Eisenhower and Truman all won despite recessions earlier in their terms. Moreover, voters’ evaluations of the economy are relatively forward-looking. Even if the economy is below its full productive capacity — as it was in November 1984 when the unemployment rate was 7.2 percent, and as it certainly was in 1936, when it was still around 17 percent — voters may be willing to overlook this, provided it seems headed in the right direction....

...Growth rates during an election year are a good but imperfect indicator of electoral performance. The two times that economic activity actually shrank during an election year, 1980 and 2008, the incumbent party lost badly. The two times that it grew by more than 6 percent, 1944 and 1972, it won overwhelmingly. But Eisenhower won a landslide in 1956 despite tepid 1.8 percent growth, and George W. Bush won in 2004 with only 2.9 percent. The economy grew about 5 percent in 1968, but that wasn’t enough to save Humphrey....

....The other major unknown is the identity of the Republican nominee. This year it could make an unusually large amount of difference. In recent polls against Mitt Romney, Obama’s lead is just 1 percentage point — but he leads Herman Cain by 8, Rick Perry by 11 and Michele Bachmann by 14.... In this case, though, the relative standing of the Republican opponents against Obama aligns neatly with their perceived ideology. Obama does worse against more moderate candidates like Romney — and better against staunch conservatives like Perry and Cain....

...The bigger problem for Republicans might come if they nominate a candidate further to Romney’s right, like Perry, who has an extremism score of 67 (for comparison, Romney's 'extremism' score is 49 and Cain's score is 60). The difference between Romney and Perry amounts to about 4 percentage points at the ballot booth. If conditions were otherwise very favorable (or very unfavorable) to Republicans, this wouldn’t be enough to matter: an election that Romney would win by 10 points, Perry might win by 6. But an election that Romney might win by just 2 or 3 points, Perry could easily lose....

...By combining these factors — approval ratings in the year before the election, G.D.P. growth during the election year itself and the ideology score of the opposition candidate — we can come up with a forecast of next year’s election...

The article goes on to project the results of 4 different scenario's in great detail. Here is a quick summary of the results of those 4 scenario's.

If the nominee is a moderate like Romney and the economy is weak, Silver projects the GOP's probability of winning the popular vote at 85% and Obama is toast. If the nominee is more conservative like Perry or Cain and the economy is weak, Silver project's the GOP's probability of winning the popular vote to be only 59%- the Republican would still be a favorite, although Obama would only be a slight underdog here and might pull out a win based on money and dirty tricks.

If the GOP nominee is a moderate like Romney and the economy is improving in 2012, then Silver project's the GOP's probability of winning the popular vote to be only 40%- they could still pull it out if voters decide that the Republican offers more calm and secure leadership after the protests and partisanship of the Obama years, but Obama would be the favorite to hold on and keep his administration. If the nominee is a conservative like Perry or Cain in 2012 and the economy is improving, Silver thinks that the the GOP's chances of winning the Presidency are pretty poor- even after how bad things have been over the last couple years, voters belief in an improving economy and hesitation about a more extreme GOP candidate gives the GOP only a 17% probability of wining the Presidency.

Of course, these are just Silver's projections and you are free to draw your own conclusions about who to support in the upcoming election based on these sorts of projections, but for one find his analysis to be very insightful and helpful to me in trying to figure out who to support in the upcoming Republican primary election.