AmericaSpeakOn.org

Cartoon of the Day

2009-04-14T22:34:00.000-04:00

Tax Day! Or as the Administration calls it... "Whoops"

Blakeman: The Foundation of Our Great Nation

2009-04-14T22:30:00.000-04:00

The Administration like the Democratic Leadership in Congress are drunk with power and in a rush to either reverse past administration policy or make their own as fast as they can. They are acting as if they only have 100 days in office rather than 4 years. With regard to Cuba, the President and the State Department obviously gave their blessing to members of the Congressional Black Caucus to visit Cuba last week and meet with the dictator brothers Castro. The Castros put on a show, and the Members of Congress were bit players. They were taken in by Fidel and Raul and their propaganda, as was the President. We should not be rewarding Cuba with unilateral concessions. They have retarded generations of their own people with their brutal regime and they are no friend of the United States. The President’s policy of apology and concession will not work in Europe, the Middle East or in our own Hemisphere.

My advice to the President with regard to the Summit of the Americas is this, democracy and free trade is what made us the greatest Nation on earth and it is those same principles that will make the Americas prosper as well. We need the Columbia Free Trade Agreement. We need to promote democracy and make the people of the Americas feel that they are just as important to us as is Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Bradley Blakeman Op-Ed: Self Defense on the High Seas

2009-04-14T06:23:00.002-04:00

With regard to African Pirates - A bad story that has one chapter that ends well is still a bad story. Thank God the Captain of our U.S. Merchant Ship was rescued. Now that the World's attention has been shone on African Pirating, maybe the international community will finally act to stop it once and for all. It is unacceptable for rag tag criminals to rule the seas with impunity. Isn’t it about time that the United Nations did what they were chartered to do? Shouldn’t they be the ones to rally the World to stop this scourge? Commercial ships must be allowed to defend themselves. Ships should be allowed to travel with trained armed onboard security. The rules of engagement must me retooled to allow a ship's crew to deal with threats themselves if they can. This law enforcement operation by the U.S. Navy was avoidable. The millions of dollars this cost the U.S. Tax Payer should not have been necessary. This is not nor should it be a U.S. Problem alone to solve.

Cartoon of the Day

2009-04-14T06:00:00.002-04:00

Where are the Navy Seals for this one?

Cartoon of the Day

2009-04-12T22:17:00.002-04:00

What color is your nest egg?

South Park Speaks the Truth About “The Economy”

2009-04-12T21:27:00.002-04:00

As I watched the spot-on parody of all-things “economy” and “bailout” on a recent South Park episode (see preview scenes and/or the whole episode here: http://www.southparkstudios.com/), I found myself thinking: Rush Limbaugh was right. Obama’s failures might be what the country really needs to see the foolishness of big government.

I didn’t agree with Limbaugh when he said it. I thought it was borderline un-patriotic – the same kind of unfair treatment that Republican-controlled government has received from the left, i.e. “I’m only proud of America, and only want good for America, when it’s run by liberals/Democrats.”

But a brilliant and funny cartoon television show has actually helped me see an angle on Rush’s inflammatory statement that makes sense. You see, I think we need to be starkly reminded of how clumsy, oafish and insulting big government can be before we can reject it in the next election cycle.

For those who haven’t seen the episode, “Margaritaville,” it is a comedic exploration of just how darned ridiculous Washington, D.C.’s handling of “The Economy” looks right now. One plot line portrays the development of a religious cult whose leader speaks of “The Economy” as if it were a deity whom we have deeply offended and are now suffering its vengeance. Meanwhile, another plot has us following one character (Stan) as he tries to return his father’s “Margaritaville” margarita-mixing machine for cash – an effort which takes him from mall store “Sur la Table,” all the way to the Treasury Department in Washington. Once inside the grand government building, Stan discovers that bailout decisions are, in fact, being made by cutting off a chicken’s head and waiting for the headless bird to run around and collapse on a giant game board that says things like “Socialize it,” “Bailout,” or “Try again.”

Watching the headless-chicken-bingo scene at the fictional Treasury Department was the moment where I thought, my goodness, this illustrates the very real, growing perception of how these huge decisions are being made. Tim Geithner might be the chicken. He even kind of looks like a chicken.

As is the style of all South Park episodes, the ultimate wisdom comes from the mouths of babes when one of the kids, Kyle, explains to his friends that the economy is not a deity, it’s not even a singular thing; it is, instead, an aggregate of all of us, all of our work, all of our spending, all of our businesses and investments.

Which is, well, correct.

This blinding glimpse of the obvious makes the worshippers of “The Economy” look ridiculous, kind of like the Wall-Street-worshipping turds and nerds we see on cable news who babble on about “the economy” without ever recognizing its complexity. Kyle’s simple truth also makes the fictional chicken-bingo game look like a rather accurate representation of the decision-making process in Washington of late.

The collective wisdom of the American people – let’s call it common sense – is simply bound to eventually conclude that relying on a select few mortals in Washington is a really foolish way of saving the economy. We are bound to grow tired of their silly games and turn back to what we know works: our own hard work, our own persistence (not the president’s), and our own innovation. We’re bound to take more of an interest in the things we can control ourselves – our own family’s budget, the budget of our small business if we own one – and turn away from the circus act that’s going on under the big top in Washington.

The more that Obama, Reid and Pelosi tread with heavy, expensive steps on American wallets and independence, the more we’ll miss the successful feeling of handling things on our own. We’re an independent lot, after all.

So Rush may have been right. Obama’s failures might just be the thing that re-ignites the spark of independence – the spark that we clearly need to once again make the city on the hill that is America shine on its own once again.

Cartoon of the Day

2009-04-09T23:15:00.001-04:00

Not what the kids thought was going to happen when the "Easter Bunny" visited...

Talk about a happy meal...

Republican Dream

2009-04-09T23:04:00.002-04:00

Submitted by ASO member: Raynard Jackson

Some people say dreams are for those that sleep; but dreamers have the ability to build worlds others cannot see.

Republicans constantly talk about the “American dream,” but never define what that dream is and how their policies can help that dream become a reality. They constantly use the mantras of: less government, more individual freedom, lower taxes, etc.

The Obama administration and the current financial crises present a great opportunity for Republicans to define the dream to the nation.

But first, Republicans must define who they are. If they don’t know who they are, how can the American people?

Some Republicans describe the party as conservative. But even among conservatives there is no agreement as to what this means. Therein is the problem facing the Republican Party: who are they and why are they here?

If they are a conservative party, what are they trying to conserve? The Democrats have done an excellent job of defining conservatives and conservatism because the Republicans are too busy fighting each other.

If the Republicans are a conservative party, then they are saying that moderates and independents have no place in their worldview. A moderate or independent may be pro-choice or pro-affirmative action, but agree with the party on small government, lower taxes, and a strong defense.

But, Republicans spend all their time focusing on their disagreements on issues like abortion, race, religion, etc!

Before Republicans can talk to America, they must first talk to each other. If they can’t agree on what they stand for amongst themselves, how can they persuade the American people on who they are?

There will never be agreement within the party on abortion, race or religion; neither will there be agreement within the country.

As a whole, I think most Americans agree with the Republican’s position of workers keeping more of the money they earn. Republicans have allowed the Democrats to turn this into a class issue. Republicans will lose this argument every time. The party needs to focus tax cuts more on those making half a million dollars and less. They also must talk more to single taxpayers with no kids. This is an often ignored, but growing demographic.

The American people are with Republicans when it comes to having a smaller, more efficient government. But when Republicans speak, the American people hear “no government.” Thus, Republicans are blamed for the current financial mess.

Republicans have a great opportunity to show the country what is the legitimate role for the government relative to oversight of the financial markets. Up to now, their has been no leadership on this issue.

Americans are willing to be persuaded, but Republicans must present real solutions to real problems. If Republicans truly believe in their principles, when will they take them to the market place of ideas?

Will the party leadership place a pro-choice Republican who is experienced in all things financial as the point to lead the party’s response to the financial crisis? Will the party’s leadership place an anti “don’t ask, don’t tell” general as the point on all things military?

Will the Republican Party place a pro-affirmative action, pro-minority set aside Black businessman as the point on small business issues? I think you get my point.

Americans are willing to listen, provided Republicans have something to say. But, they can no longer scare Americans into voting Republican based on what people are against. If they are the party of less government, then they must stay away from issues like Elian Gonzalez and Terri Schiavo.

What is the Republican vision for preventing the financial crises from happening again? What is their response to the North Korea missile test? What is the Republican response to the seemingly endless shooting and harassment of innocent Blacks by rogue policemen (N.F.L. player Ryan Moats or Oscar Grant, who was shot in the back of the head in San Francisco by a policeman while lying on his stomach unarmed)? What is the Republican response to the one foot policy that allows “only” Cubans who touch U.S. soil to stay in the country, but send Haitians immediately back to Haiti?

If Republicans share their vision with the American people, maybe then they will have a reason to wake up!

Cartoon of the Day

2009-04-08T19:15:00.002-04:00

When the milk runs dry, the Obama farm is known to focus on pork.

Cartoon of the Day

2009-04-07T22:24:00.000-04:00

It is a little bit confusing, isn't it?

Cartoon of the Day

2009-04-06T21:06:00.002-04:00

Taking a chance on GM....

Is Larry Summers Over Already?

2009-04-05T19:57:00.001-04:00

Submitted by ASO member: Bradley Blakeman

It’s time for the sun to set on Summers. The Press is reporting that the President’s chief economic advisor Larry Summers was himself a greedy pig who just this past year was paid by his fellow wall street buds more than 5 Million Dollars in compensation. While these executives were looting their companies and running them into the ground, Mr. Summers did not miss the opportunity to partake from their feedbag. All the economic advisers, treasury secretaries and the like have one thing in common, a incestuous relationship with Wall Street. It is where they came from, it is where they made their riches before coming to government and it is where they go back to, to make more. They “oversee” and “regulate” their friends. There is no arms length relationship. The President talks about aspiring to have the most transparent and ethical administration this country has ever seen and it has been to date everything but. He rails on Wall Street greed and he hires as his chief economic advisor the poster boy for it. He shames corporate executives for taking millions from companies who are going down the tubes and are taking US Bailout Dollars yet, the head person of his economic team is a pig himself. Mr. President you saw fit to fire the CEO of GM and you saw fit to call out Wall Street Execs who paid themselves millions in bonus money, will you fire Larry Summers for the same type of behavior you admonish others for? You can’t make this stuff up, Our Treasury Secretary is a tax cheat, the President’s chief economic advisor is guilty of the same type of greed that he now is charged to stop, the OMB Director this week was on the John Stewart Comedy Show yucking it up on how bad the economy is, Geithner cannot find anyone to work with, and the list goes on. Folks, we are in deep trouble.

Cartoon of the Day

2009-04-05T19:55:00.001-04:00

If President Obama Twittered...

CONservative Roots

2009-04-02T20:07:00.002-04:00

Submitted by ASO member: Raynard Jackson

The root of the word conservative is con. And that's exactly what the American people have received from conservatives.

Modern American conservatism was created out of an alliance between classical liberals and social conservatives at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. Many credit philosopher Edmund Burke as the father of this movement. Former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln stated that "conservatism is adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried." President Reagan is said to have stated, "I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism."

But, for a Republican Party that reflexively quotes Reagan in every other word they speak, I find it quite odd that they espouse an agenda that is antithetical to what Reagan believed.

You have a Republican Party that grossly interfered in the Elian Gonzalez custody case. Republican members of congress tried to pass a bill to give him retroactive citizenship (though his father wanted him returned to Cuba). And this is the party of family values?

Remember the Terri Schiavo case. A case that President Bush, the Republican congress, and conservative activists injected themselves in over the objections of Schiavo's husband (who was the legal guardian).
All this grandstanding took place because these conservatives wanted to score political points at the expense of their so-called conservative principles.

During 6 of the 8 years of the Bush administration, Republicans controlled both houses of congress. What did they do? They increased government spending, increased the federal deficit, decreased government oversight of most federal agencies, and chipped away a many of our rights to privacy (all in the name of national security).

Conservatives vociferously claim that race shouldn't matter. I guess they are right in this regards because one rarely see anyone outside their race within their organizations (congressional staffs, think thanks, newspapers, etc.). So, they are truly color-blind or just blind to people of color.

Conservatives constantly warn of the dangers of "BIG GOVERNMENT," except when it comes to abortion or pharmacists who don't want to fill prescriptions they disagree with. If they can't outlaw abortion, they want to force doctors to show women an ultrasound of the fetus or mandate women receive information on adoption.

They also want a law to allow pharmacists the right to refuse to fill a prescription that goes against their morals. These are the same people who raised holy hell when it was widely reported that Muslims in Minnesota refused to check out customers at a grocery store if they had pork or alcohol (because of their religious beliefs). Conservatives basically said they should find new work (and I agree with them). I say the same thing to physicians and pharmacists.

Weak people take strong positions on weak issues. Conservatives will raise a stink about abortion, but said very little to this day about the abuse the Catholic Church unleashed on innocent children.

Conservatives always talk about the hypocrisy of the left, but I challenged them on the very same point. Are they for less government? Or Just when it's an issue that they are promoting? Are they for individual freedom, even when it involves something they disagree with (Terri Schiavo's husband's right to remove her from life support or Elian Gonzalez's father's right to have his son returned to him in Cuba)?

Conservatives claim to support the rule of law, but based on the above cases, it seems this only applies if they are in agreement with the actions in question. They are quick to quote Lincoln and Reagan with their words, but with their actions they have become as the tinkling cymbal or sounding brass; full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing.

Cartoon of the Day

2009-04-02T20:03:00.000-04:00

Your mother was a hampster, and your father smelt of Elderberries!

Cartoon of the Day

2009-04-01T22:32:00.003-04:00

...and you're fired

Wait. Dude. I thought you were cool.

2009-04-01T22:31:00.000-04:00

Okay, so President Obama held this electronic town hall thing at the White House last week where he answered questions from ‘regular people’ on topics ranging from health care to the economy to, well, pot.

Online participants voted on which questions they most wanted answered and apparently the issue of legalizing marijuana to “help the economy” was very, very popular – which appears to be the reason that the president answered it. You know how much he likes things that are popular.

Anyway, he essentially made light of it, made a little joke, and said, no, that’s not a good way to grow the economy, and then he moved on.

Pretty un-cool of him, don’t you think? My guess is that there are liberal-to-libertarian pot smokers all over this great nation who voted for the guy and were pretty disappointed in that answer. Because Obama is supposed to be the cool leader. After all, he wrote in his book, Dreams From My Father, about smoking a lot of weed in his young adulthood. So we think he’s cool about weed. So why not seriously look at changing what he surely thinks is an oppressive federal law?

Or maybe smoking pot is only okay for certain people? For the really smart people who think big thoughts?

Munchie minds want to know, President Cool. We thought you were on our side.

-Libertarian Lass

Cartoon of the Day

2009-03-31T22:27:00.002-04:00

Introducing the world's highest profile crash test dummy.

The Reluctant Optimist

2009-03-30T22:01:00.001-04:00

I’m fascinated by the delicate “plate spinning” the Administration is using to avoid a calamitous crash. It feels like they keep adding another plate (a very pretty, shiny, distracting one) to keep us from noticing the three on the other end that are woefully close to coming down. I hear folks talking about the shift in focus from the economy to energy, or health care, or the tax code, or the new herb garden on the White House grounds. But the health care piece, especially, feels like an unnecessary distraction.

I just don’t see a scenario where meaningful health reform happens. Chairman Baucus balked at paying for it out of the deductions of high earners. Many more oppose taxing employer-offered benefits. Even if they could agree on what to do, no one seems to know how to pay for it. I keep hearing individual members of Congress talking about working on “the 80 percent where we agree,” but 80 percent seems like an awfully high bar for agreement. If they truly agreed on 80 percent, wouldn’t they have already done a portion of it?

I’ve always thought the problem was this: we want health care to be both a business, with competition and yes, profit, and we want it to be a state-given right for all citizens. We can’t figure out how to have both. The private sector could introduce all sorts of efficiencies and common-sense to the system, but we can’t get out of our own way as a country to let it happen. We have to stop talking about the system we’d create now, if we were starting from zero. That ship has sailed. Too many stakeholders are too married to some portion of the haphazard system we’ve created to let it be dismantled. Like it or not, this hodge-podge, quasi-entitlement, public/private mess is our system. It’s imperfect, it’s bureaucratic, it’s inefficient, it’s outrageously expensive. But until Washington is willing to allow the sacrifices that would have to be made to undo what we’ve got, I think the best we’ll get is an expensive distraction.

Cartoon of the Day

2009-03-30T21:55:00.002-04:00

The Health Care Come-On

2009-03-29T21:21:00.002-04:00

American taxpayers, right now, are a little bit like a young woman who regrets going a bit “too far” with the wrong guy. As we smooth our collective hair and tuck in our collective blouse, backing gently away from the grabby, greedy federal government, we are probably still hoping for a gesture of caring and genuine affection. Perhaps we think it might come in the form of more affordable health care, making up for the mauling we’ve suffered from bailing out the financial industry.

At this moment, I can only tell taxpayers what I’ve told many young female friends: Girls, be sharp and keep your clothes on.

Here are a few tips to at least de-coding the health-care come-ons that are likely to come out of Washington, DC in the coming months:

1. Don’t fall for the phrase “reform the American health-care system.” We don’t have a health-care system in the U.S. We have a health-care marketplace where insurance, medical services, and pharmaceuticals are bought and sold. Government spending, taxation and regulation impact this marketplace profoundly. A politician that boldly promises to reform “the system” needs to explain him or herself a little more fully. Don’t let them get away with this kind of smooth talk. You’re too smart for that. Ask questions, seek specifics on taxation, regulation and spending.

2. Don’t fall for the big spender; he’s going to stick you with the tab, and his plan isn’t necessarily going to work. Much like efforts to improve education, spending more taxpayer dollars has failed to solve our various health-care problems. So listen to four-star-restaurant-level spending proposals as you would listen to a salesman – after all, you’re paying for this date.

3. “I want what’s good for you, baby,” the “consumer.” Addressing you as a consumer is some sweet, caring, empowering talk. But do you really feel like a consumer? Honestly? Have you ever comparative-price-shopped for a doctor, a diagnostic test, or a prescription? Maybe you’d like to become a consumer. Maybe you’d like to buy your own health insurance or your own medical goods and services. And that’s fine. That would be empowering. But don’t believe that they respect your rights as a consumer before they actually let you become one.

One final piece of advice that applies to girlfriends and taxpayers alike: take a second look at the nerds. They can be better for us.

If a geeky politician, for example, starts talking about the “tax treatment of employer-provided health insurance,” your eyes may start to glaze over. But fight it! The tax treatment of health insurance is actually at the root of most of our health-care problems.

Ever wondered why we rely on our employers for insurance? It’s a tax answer. Here’s a short primer so that the nerd talk might more sense:

Employers can buy health insurance with pre-tax dollars, while individuals have to buy it with money that has already had a bite taken out of it by taxes. The difference in price paid is staggering – and flatly unfair.

Okay, so WHY do employers get this break that individuals don’t? Well, it’s an accident of history. During World War II, there were caps on wages and employers had to find different ways to reward and attract employees. They started offering health insurance as part of compensation packages. Congress later thought that practice was quite nice and should be rewarded – and they used their favorite reward-and-punishment tool, the tax code, to show their approval. The rest, as they say, is history.

So if the geek-y politician or pundit on TV talks about the “tax treatment” of employer-sponsored health insurance, listen up. A nerd can be insightful, and that can be very attractive. He is also likely to be a very respectful date. He’ll let you keep your shirt.

Cartoon of the Day

2009-03-29T21:14:00.003-04:00

Cartoon of the Day

2009-03-26T23:03:00.003-04:00

Obama Drama

2009-03-26T22:56:00.005-04:00

Last year, President Barack Obama ran the closest thing to a perfect campaign ever seen in this country. There was no senior level turnover during the campaign. There was no public feuding from various factions within his campaign (unlike Hillary Clinton's). Even the transition was extraordinarily smooth.

So, I am dumbfounded by all the drama surrounding the early days of his presidency. Seems like Obama went from a serious drama to a sitcom in short order. When he made his announcement in Springfield, IL in 2007, it was All in the Family, with his wife and children. The media portrayed him as the ultimate Family Guy. He campaigned One Day At A Time with his cast of Friends.

He campaigned with a discipline unseen in presidential politics. With his upset victory in the Iowa caucuses, his supporters were feeling Good Times.

But with the unexpected loss in New Hampshire, they felt Bewitched and Lost.

But, he proved to be a Survivor heading into Super Tuesday.

He refused to take his campaign into the Weeds, even when Hillary's campaign went very negative on him. For that, he received Big Love from the voters.

The Obama campaign got hit with The Facts of Life of politics as the Clinton's showed their true Colors in South Carolina.

Bill Clinton basically said welcome to The Real World. Obama tried to knock Hillary out in Texas, but they went down to the Wire. But, he did ultimately destroy the Clinton's Dynasty. They never thought he could win The Office. Their explanation was definitely from Spin City.

The Democratic convention was one of the best run conventions ever. The huge crowds gave him loud Cheers, thereby making him an American Idol.

During the general election, Obama ran an Amazing Race, with John McCain being the Biggest Loser. His campaign made McCain's team look like a bunch of Scrubs and subsequently, they all disappeared Without a Trace.

Now that Obama made his Bones, it was time to move to the West Wing. He found that it was a Different World than he thought. He inherited an economy that was in the General Hospital, but is now in the ER.

There is no doubt that Obama has one of America's Toughest Jobs. But, with 20/20 hindsight, it's quite obvious that his budget will turn our country into a Supernanny state. As the World Turns and Obama searches for his Guiding Light, our country seems to see nothing but Dark Shadows.

Seems the Commander in Chief wants us to live on Fantasy Island-a place where the government is the answer to all that ails us.

But What's Happening is no one trusts the government. We know every president has Different Strokes once they get In the House. But Gimme a Break. Before you start expanding the government, you must reform it and make it functional. The government couldn't protect people from Bernard Madoff. The Securities and Exchange Commission couldn't protect us from Wall Street. If we are not careful, we are all going to end up in the House of Payne!

Raynard Jackson is president & CEO of Raynard Jackson & Associates, LLC., a D.C.-based political consulting/government affairs firm. You can listen to his radio show every Saturday evening from 7-9:00 p.m. Go to www.ustalknetwork.com to register and then click on host, and then click on his photo to join his group.

Salter calls President 'Artfully Dishonest'

2009-03-26T11:25:00.003-04:00

At his press conference Tuesday, President Obama was his usual assured and nimble self. He is one of the most graceful and appealing political communicators to appear on the national stage in my lifetime. He is, also, one of the more artfully dishonest ones.

He used a question about the uncertain prospects for a resumption of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to emphasize his persistence. According to the President, he professes a “whole philosophy of persistence,” and he cited several of his initiatives in which he calmly adhered to that philosophy while impatient critics carped about their lack of immediate success. Among the examples, this:

“When it comes to Iran . . . we did a video, sending a message to the Iranian people and the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran. And some people said, well, they did not immediately say that they we’re eliminating nuclear weapons and stop funding terrorism.”

Now, there are certainly critics of the President’s approach to Iran who worry it is based more on wishful thinking than the hard headed realism he promised to restore to America’s foreign policy. And some of those might have seen his videotaped Nowruz greetings to Iran as evidence of his naiveté. But to the best of my knowledge not even his most outspoken and implacable detractors insisted it produce Iran’s immediate disarmament and a cessation of its support for terrorists.

Nor has anyone criticized the President because he has not “immediately eliminated the influence of lobbyists in Washington.” No one of adult judgment would believe such a Utopian achievement were possible in the near or long term without first suspending the First Amendment. The President was criticized for promising repeatedly that his administration would not permit officials who previously were lobbyists to work on issues they once lobbied on, and then immediately proceeded to allow several former lobbyists to do so. Nor has he been criticized because he has “not immediately eliminated wasteful pork projects.” He has been criticized because he accepted without resistance an omnibus spending bill that was loaded with earmarks.

We had an indication of how the President favors this kind of straw man during debate over the stimulus bill, when he denounced Republicans who balked at the price tag or felt it wasn’t sufficiently stimulative as advocates of doing nothing in the midst of a global recession. Yet, Republicans opposed to the bill offered an alternative that was different in size and kind, but was, arguably, more stimulative and responsible than the bill the President supported.

He also likes to dismiss his opposition as biters of the hand of bipartisanship he has generously offered them. Yet, he declined to pursue genuine bipartisan compromise on the stimulus bill because it was needed so urgently he couldn’t spare the time to negotiate seriously. He ignored Republican concerns about earmarks in the omnibus bill because it was last year’s unfinished business. And he threatens to circumvent the traditional supermajority needed to pass major legislation in the Senate, and the bipartisan negotiations it requires, by putting the most sweeping, expensive and controversial policies proposed in his budget submission into budget reconciliation, which requires a simple majority of 51 votes to pass. His excuse: Republicans had similarly abused the process to pass the Bush tax cuts.

Perhaps, the President is a persistent man because, when it comes to this kind of disingenuousness at least, persistence pays off. Few in the press have been stirred to point out the many obvious discrepancies between the President’s declarations of his intentions and the reality of his actions anymore than they were inclined to do so during the campaign. He gets away with it. And it runs counter to the deepest instinct of most politicians to cease prevaricating when there is no penalty for continuing to do so.

When Ed Henry of CNN asked the President why he waited two days to express his outrage over the AIG bonuses, the President dismissively responded, “because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak.” I doubt there was a single reporter in the East Room that night who believed the President’s explanation for his delayed reaction. They knew the administration had been surprised by the fierceness of the public’s reaction, and belatedly raced to catch up to it.

But there was nary a hint of skepticism offered. They all laughed in appreciation of the surefooted artfulness of the President’s putdown, no doubt offering him further assurance that when it comes to employing straw men and red herrings and other deceptions to promote policies that might very well bankrupt the United States, he would be smart to remain a persistent man.

Cartoon of the Day

2009-03-25T19:52:00.003-04:00

Wouldn't it be nice to always see the

world through rose colored glasses?

Changing the Rules for Past Behavior is Bad Policy

2009-03-24T20:36:00.001-04:00

Changing the Rules for Past Behavior is Bad Policy
The AIG Mess

Submitted by ASO member: Tom Sullivan

Doing business is becoming more complicated by the minute. With a shrinking economy and a growing government , the regulations issued by local, state, and federal agencies, and yearly changes to the tax code are enough to jolt business owners awake at night in a cold sweat.

We know that regulations cost small business more than their larger-business counterparts. And, we have accepted that a certain amount of bureaucracy is the cost of doing business. What do not know is how close we are to creating a regulatory framework so complex it will scare people away from taking risks, the key ingredient to entrepreneurship.

The anger over AIG using a taxpayer-funded bailout to pay executive bonuses has prompted the U.S. House of Representatives to pass legislation penalizing behavior by changing the rules after the fact. We are wise to consider restrictions on corporate behavior when those companies are depending on federal help. There are always conditions, expectations, and qualifications when two parties enter into a contract. When a company enters into a contract with the government to receive billions of dollars, it should expect some pretty tough contract terms.

However, companies doing business with the government should not expect for the rules to change retroactively. Not only is that wrong from a simple understanding of contractual responsibilities, it is bad policy.

The worse thing to happen right now as our country is struggling to get out of a recession is for companies to start second guessing their decisions because the government "might change its mind." Expansion plans, hiring plans, and product innovations will come to a grinding halt for fear of unknown consequences.

Last year, the University of Kansas won the NCAA men's basketball championship. What would happen if tomorrow we decided to ban the 3-point shot? And, what if we decided to make the change retroactive to the 2008 NCAA championship? Who would have won the championship? That is ridiculous. However, we are doing the same thing to the business community by accepting a retroactive tax to fix a problem we failed to address when the government agreed to provide AIG with $152 billion last fall.

With regulatory costs exceeding $1.1 trillion, we can not add to the mess by changing rules retroactively. I am glad that the Senate is considering how harmful retroactive rule changes can be to our regulatory structure and to our economy.

Cartoon of the Day

2009-03-24T20:32:00.003-04:00

U.S. - Mexican Border supply and demand....

Op-Ed: What's the Price Of Toxic Assets?

2009-03-23T21:16:00.001-04:00

Submitted by ASO member: Kimberly Wilcox

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was busy writing his press release from the Treasury Department & editorial in the Wall Street Journal, while other members of the Obama administration chattered on the Sunday political talk shows. But, they all had one goal: going to extraordinary lengths to sell the Treasury Department's new program for "taking toxic assets off the books of the troubled banks." They make it sound like some sort of harmless construction project where the bulldozer will just come in as the private partner financed 95% by YOUR government money and moved these assets from the pile of dirt where they are now, and transform them on the journey into gemstones by the time they reach the books of the "private investor partners." The enormous failure of this entire plan is that no one has defined the PURCHASE PRICE to be agreed upon for the purchase of these assets. In addition, what have all these "private conversations" consisted of between potential investors in the forms of private equity firms, money managers, and hedge funds (the only firms left on Wall Street with capital to invest)? Why aren't the terms and promises being defined to the lenders in this situation...the American people who will be financing 95% of each of these transactions? Should we trust the Treasury Department to oversee the paperwork for these transactions just like they did with AIG? Citibank? Goldman Sachs? Morgan Stanley? All the others? NO is clearly the answer.

The investors are asking if they are going to be subjected to executive compensation limits, new taxes on bonuses, and other controls which they currently aren't governed by. After all, they want the financing & assets at a great price with no strings attached. Isn't it predictable that when something goes wrong with this program, it will be yet another bailout that the federal government will hand out even though it's once again a supposed risk transferred to the private sector? Where are the brilliant financial minds in America to find better solutions that this. I can foresee this debt being traded on a secondary market at pennies on the dollar which is all that some of it is worth.

The price setting of this purchase is THE QUINTESSENTIAL COMPONENT of this program and it is irresponsible NOT to focus on that first. How could any investor remotely express interest or not without a price? Everything on Wall Street is driven by price. There obviously are key parts of these private conversations between the Treasury Department and the potential investors that should be disclosed to the American public prior to the implementation of ANY program. Why isn't this purchase program open to all Americans? No one is rushing to put their shekels in the stock market or real estate and they may want to be part of the program. This program and its full terms should be ironed out and disclosed in a red herring for all to view and purchase & most importantly, the PRICE needs to be on the final copy distributed. After all, we will be lending $950,000,000,000 (that's nine-hundred fifty BILLION dollars for those of you who aren't accustomed to counting with so many zeros) out of the one trillion to purchase these diamonds in the rough that will be relocated from one balance sheet to another. I can only hope these purchasers aren't deemed too big to fail.

Cartoon of the Day

2009-03-23T21:12:00.001-04:00

Ah! To be young and punch drunk!

Cartoon of the Day

2009-03-22T20:17:00.005-04:00

An amzing look at what child's play has become. AIG vs. the rest of us is the new cops and robbers.

Cartoon of the Day

2009-03-19T21:31:00.003-04:00

Who would have thought a business on the brink of failure would make questionable financial decisions?

Are we calling it BonusGate yet?

2009-03-19T21:19:00.001-04:00

Are we calling it BonusGate yet? Ugly, ugly stuff. Will the taxpayers ever know justice? So far, we’ve only gotten half-truths, lies, avoidance and finger pointing (the blaming of Treasury career civil servants by a Treasury spokesman yesterday was a particularly low point, don’t you agree?). Meanwhile, AIG executives – both those who have the gall to keep their bonuses and those who have the class to return them – are all wealthy. They were, they are and they will be.

Here’s an idea to get those executives closer to feeling the pain of being “one of us” – the rank and file taxpayers who don’t make millions of dollars a year. This might get the healing going once the last ounce of political and taxpayer blood has been drawn and dried on this terrible incident:

The Treasury department should put the executives of AIG on the federal government’s general schedule pay scale – the “GS Scale..” These folks are, after all, now government employees. They are paid by the taxpayers, just like the rest of the professionals at the Treasury Department.

Each executive can look up what their pay might be right here on the U.S. Office of Personnel Management website:
http://www.opm.gov/oca/09tables/indexGS.asp

Don’t be too discouraged, AIG guys and gals: the government also offers merit bonuses, known to sometimes be four figures for exemplary performance! Welcome to your life as a public servant. The joy of knowing that you serve the taxpayers will outweigh the pay-cut in due time, I am sure.

-Jean Card

The Day Without End

2009-03-19T21:15:00.002-04:00

$787 billion worth of bailout money – much of it being pumped right into the already behemoth federal government. The thought of those rivers of cash going for more federal workers reminds me of my federal government tenure, which was fittingly encapsulated the day we were invited to “Take Your Sons and Daughters to Work Day!”

The announcement of the great day arrived in an email, fitting communication to a soulless drone glued to a screen in an office cube farm that stretched from Corridor G to Destiny. Wow, I thought, here’s the chance of a lifetime for my three sons to get a load of what the old man does every day of his moribund, monotonous life. In fact, included in the announcement was something magic: the faceless human resource bureaucrats even gave us a check list to follow while emphasizing our career failings to our kids. Here’s what happened…

“On this day, children between the ages of 8 and 12 will visit the agency with their parent to learn about our work.”

“Boys,” I said in dramatic fashion as we sat in my workspace after lurching through an endless traffic jam of public servants, “My work is about changing the world. It’s all about thinking outside and inside the box, playing in the sandbox, expanding parameters, breaking templates, modeling models, framing frameworks, having dialogues with folks above my pay grade, singing off the same sheet of music, bringing my A game, taking it to the next level with my elevator speech, cross walking when I’m not partnering, and leveraging the metrics of everything I see. Now, hand me those rubber bands and paperclips – that’s right, next to the tape dispenser -- and I’ll show you how to make a catapult.”

“Explore with them the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for the future workforce.”

“Hey guys, here’s a skill.” I log onto my computer, whisper to them the secret Caddyshack password I use, and then when presented with a prompt screen, take a short cut to get to my Outlook email box, where there are no new messages for the day as of about 10:00 a.m. “Onwards, gents.” I take a bunch of papers that I haphazardly printed out, staple them together, and place in a wooden Out Box. ”What does that box mean, Dad?” says young Darby. “That means I’m done with that little project.” “What did it do?” he presses me. “Hell if I know,” I say distractedly, checking my empty email account once more.

"Expose the participants to an environment that values the balance of work and family life."

I expose the three to my workspace – they're crowded around my dingy desk in a cube with 6-foot high partitions. “Wow, Dad, you get to have carpet on your walls.” Yep, I tell them, one of the perks of being a key employee. The eldest, Dev, squeezes into a chair, Darby sits on the floor, and Braden crouches on the desk and peers over the low walls at my coworkers. I clear my throat and brush the glazed donut flakes off my tie. “Your dad is quite aware of the balance between work and family life and how the two intersect. For example, we play basketball all the time and I help coach your teams, right? So watch this,” and I wad up a piece of paper and shoot it at the waste can down the aisle outside my work area. It goes in. “See, just like at the gym or in the driveway, I can hit the 3-pointer here at work as well. Get it?”

"Showcase the abilities needed for the future workforce. "

I point to a stapler on my desk. “Dev!” I shout suddenly, “What do you do if that runs out of staples?!” He’s frozen in shock. “C’mon pal, you don’t have an hour to chew on this!” I shriek. “Call the stapler person?” he says hurriedly. ” Exactly, man! Good job.”

“The children will be able to shadow their parent and participate in other hands on and interactive activities."

When I hear the word interactive, I think one thing. So I take them to the copier room. “10 years ago, gents, this room was the nerve center of the modern office. If you had five copies of anything, you were a hero in a meeting. I know, because I often brought seven,” I say matter-of-factly. The boys stare uncertainly at the whirring machinery. “Now listen up, you rascals, because this is important. In the old days, you didn’t have machines that could collate. Can you say that word?” They repeat it with a vapidity that bolds well for following in Dad’s footsteps. I continue: “However, today, you can program the machine to actually staple individual copies together. It remains one of the major technological breakthroughs of our time.”

"The activities will reinforce the importance of education and preparation."

“Education and Preparation are important,” I tell the guys at about 3:30 p.m., reading from the Human Resources prepared statement. By now, all three sons are in daze from the office environment. As we review the day and the numerous coffee breaks, Braden notes, “Dad, you don’t even drink much coffee. You just sit around and chat with people.” “That’s right. It’s called workforce cohesion – everyone you see is in this long, tedious haul together.” “Maybe that’s why no one is smiling around here,” he says as he periodically peers over the partition walls. “Bingo, pal,” I answer.

The theme for this Day without End is “Making Choices for a Better World.” So as the wise father, I break it down for the boys. “My three loyal, optimistic, talented sons. Please look at your old man in his element here and then review all the choices you have before you. Make the right ones and you won’t have to bring my grandsons to this kind of world.”

By Jeff Nelligan

Short-Term Gain for Long-Term Pain

2009-03-18T22:43:00.002-04:00

Author and National Review commentator Jonah Goldberg writes that he’s bullish on Citibank, despite the company’s recent well-publicized financial problems. Goldberg knows politics and, better yet, understands the notion that markets laid bare to bailout fever are ripe for arbitrage. Over the last week or so, he’s purchased 1,500 shares of Citibank stock for as little a dollar a share, betting that government aid and building momentum will buoy the stock and return a handsome profit. Others have placed the same wager. A good bet? That depends on your perspective.

The key lies in the federal government’s subsidy of large ailing banks like Citibank. And if the government continues to prop up Citibank, as it surely will, it is highly likely that the bank will break out of its historically low trading range. Moreover, since Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has on several occasions reaffirmed a pledge that the government simply won’t let big banks fail, the downside risk on this sort of short-term trade seems rather small.

But the scenario presents a decidedly more bearish outlook for our economy. The idea that the billions spent on failing enterprises like Citibank won’t end up hurting the economy by saddling future generations with enormous debt, while simultaneously redirecting capital that might otherwise spur the sort of innovation and growth that could help bring us out of this recession and strengthen our economy in the years ahead, might not be readily apparent. But, the federal government cannot get us out of this recession with more government spending. The money has to come from somewhere, and in this case much of it will be at the expense of current and future innovators, start-up companies and entrepreneurs, and proven industry leaders.

Sadly, a profit turned on a well-timed trade of Citibank stock will have hidden costs that dwarf any such short-term gain.

John C. Kalitka

Cartoon of the Day

2009-03-18T22:33:00.002-04:00

I'm also proposing Dick Vitale as my Deputy Secretary... can I get a "Yeah Baby?"

Tax Payer Teaparty

2009-03-18T11:10:00.002-04:00

Watch this video about taxpayers from all across the country protesting Government spending and the burden it places on future generations:

Taxpayers Gather To Protest Spending, Taxes, Growing Debt

AIG Stands for "ALL I Get"

2009-03-18T06:45:00.002-04:00

As if the American public wasn't horrified enough when a huge number of AIG employees jaunted off to a posh California resort on the taxpayer dime the very weekend after they got their hands on TARP funds, they are now more horrified than ever. AIG employees got their mani/pedis and hot rock massages along with fine bottles of wine and cuisine with your dollar. AIG was the same firm that whined it couldn't meet its capitalization and payroll obligations without bailout number two and then most recently bailout number three. It cried that its employees would be on the street in days if it didn't get bailout money. All together, AIG has received a total of $170 Billion in bailout funds from the American taxpayers. I'm even more horrified by the executives dragged before Congress who assured our representative that they weren't using "taxpayer dollars" for those expenses. WHAT??? They wouldn't be in business if it weren't for "taxpayer dollars" and until and unless "taxpayer dollars" are paid back in full, there should not be another boondoggle, perquisite or bonus doled out at any of these firms that these supposed financial gurus have run into the ground. There aren't separate accounts. Are these chief executives truly so stupid or think that the American public and their Congressmen and Senators are so stupid that they are going to buy this line? Yep! After all, Americans never bothered to understand what hedge funds really were, they just trusted these same people to invest them in the ones making money in the boom market. Neither shareholders nor regulators nor Congressmen, nor Senators, nor taxpayers were asking questions in the good times, they took at face value whatever the financial gurus pedaled their way. Those days are over and the executives at AIG and other financial establishments on Wall Street have the dubious distinction of having run some of the oldest and finest financial institutions into the ground because they bilked them as their personal piggy bank for years all the while deceiving regulators, shareholders, and the American public. Congratulations! Now, are you ready to Speak Out and Speak On America?

So, now AIG declares that it has "contractual obligations" in the amount of $165 million to pay out enormous supposed "performance based" bonuses to the very personnel in the firm in the credit-default swaps department who are responsible for its ruination??? When you don't perform well, you don't get paid. What you haven't read is that this is in addition to $121 million in previously scheduled bonuses for the company's senior executives and another 6,400 employees across the organization. What's wrong with this picture? Run a firm into the ground and lose money and there is no way that you should get anything more than your salary. Before AIG employees go to bed each night, they should thank the GOD in whom we trust on our currency that pays them, along with the American taxpayer and ther future generations who provide that paycheck to them. Yet, we still hear from the bastions of AIG, "Is that All I Get?" They are so used to taking whatever they want at the expense of the firm that they just have continued it, even though the American taxpayers had to re-capitalize the firm.

Whether you are Republican or Democrat, you should be echoing the cries of House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank to put a moratorium on Wall Street bonuses period until taxpayer money is completely paid back and maybe even thereafter. In fact, Senator Christopher Dodd HAD submitted legislation that would have blocked this occurance but it was ignored at the time. Are you kidding me? Contractual obligations? Legalities? Bonuses? There would be no value whatsoever to these supposed bonus contracts with the collapse of the firm without taxpayer bailout money. No taxpayer money, no firm, no bonuses. The other issue here is that it is de riguer for employees of financial services firms to sign "employment at will" paperwork upon employment. While contracts are common in other industries, they are RARE on Wall Street. We can only hope that our representative will be smart enough to truly investigate the validity of these supposed pre-existing contracts. President Obama ordered the Treasury Department to "pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses," when he sensed the rage of the American voters. SOMEONE on Capital Hill or in the Treasury Department ought to be smart enough to foresee these types of shenanigans when drawing up paperwork to dispense these bailouts. The only enforcement that we've seen so far is the New York State Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, who wants to issue subpoenas for AIG employee names, job descriptions and evaluations of employees receiving bonuses. AIG's Mr. Liddy defended these payments as contractual obligations and further added that this is what's needed to have the talented financial employees to run the business. I highly doubt it. I think some of the 10% of unemployed Americans have a whole lot more common and uncommon sense to run a business than the group that is continuing to rape and pillage AIG now. I hope that investigators continue to look at the fraud that was perpetrated on the AIG shareholders, policyholders and the American people and spare these derivative products "gurus" no mercy.

Gee, makes you wonder who controls AIG, especially in light of the fact that the majority shareholder now, with a whopping 80% of outstanding shares, is the U.S. Federal Government -ie the American people. The answer to this hoopla is found in one simple financial equation that I suggest all executives of investment banks use for 2008 year end Wall Street bonuses: nothing form nothing yields nothing...period.

Kimberly Wilcox

Give Me My Bonus!

2009-03-17T21:43:00.001-04:00

It has always be a right of passage for investment bankers on Wall Street and with other financial service industries tied to it to give year end bonuses in February, yes, I said, February. Why you ask February? Because by then, the year end numbers are crunched, documents filed with the SEC and earnings reported to shareholders so that the overall performance for the year prior has been firmly established before the compensation process begins. Meanwhile, over Christmas vacation or when they returned at the beginning of the year, everyone on the professional staff whose work revenue contribution to the firm is not commission-based, but rather some vague definition of "performance based" will be accumulating a list of all the deals that they worked on throughout the year and the commensurate revenue that the sum total of all of those deals contributed to the overall bottom line of the firm financially. The Department Heads usually fight for their share of the bonus pool from the Directors allotting it and then they distribute it accordingly amongst the members of their departments. Salaries are considered to be "low" on Wall Street to ensure that professional employees put out and THEN and only THEN and IF and ONLY IF the firm does well overall, are bonuses to be considered and allocated. Somewhere in the Techboom of the 1990's bonuses began to be seen as more of a "God-given annual right" than earned compensation by the "Big Swinging Dicks," of Wall Street, as they were referred to in Michael Lewis' 1985 book. As the new millennium came and Y2K was something that they had "overcome" and not merely survived like everyone else, bonuses and other perks began to get even more astronomical. In fact, it spread to executives in other industries who prior, were not compensated on the same level. Neither shareholders' value nor dividends, nor consumer pricing was put first, it was ME FIRST from the BABY BOOM GENERATION and it doesn't matter what it does to anyone below me on the compensation food chain. The attitude was feed by greed, immorality and what seemed like endlessly profitably deals and increasing firm stock price. What was underlying all this increase in "supposed capitalization" of these firms which allowed them to do more deals, purchase more risky assets for their own portfolios and continuing supremely compensating, not only executives, but all the professional staff, was the BIG LIE OF DERIVATIVE PRODUCTS. Many on the capital markets desks of these firms knew the truth of the lies underlying these pooled assets, but lived on the high horse in denial and milked that cow until it dried up. Now, the American taxpayer has been bailing out the industry since last year.

Unfortunately, despite cries from the American public and the New York State Attorney General and some members of the Financial Services Committee, evidently with TARP, there weren't safeguards put in place to prohibit the practice of giving bonuses during bad times. Meaning, ok, the firm hasn't performed, therefore there will be no bonus pool and hence no individual executive bonuses from the bonus pool. Makes sense to anyone with a head on their shoulders, except the good men of Wall Street have still maintained this sickening attitude of entitlement that has allowed them once again to overcompensate themselves by paying themselves bonuses for driving companies into the ground. Directors of these firms came begging to Capital Hill for bailouts, claiming that if they didn't get TARP (bailout #1) they would be bankrupt tomorrow and tens of thousands of employees would be spilling onto the unemployment rolls. Both Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch poured millions out to employees in bonuses while they bankrupted the companies over their own greed. AIG employees have yet to pay for their trip to California and spa services they received. For bonuses to be paid to any investment or commercial bank employee in this financial environment is clearly WRONG. There is no spectrum of grey within which to debate the merits, it simply is WRONG. SINFUL. GREEDY. NOT RIGHT. Add your own adjectives. It is black and white, no firm who has accepted funds from taxpayer bailout number one or number two should be paying employees any compensation other than salaries. Perquisites should have been terminated entirely in the conditions of the loan documents in order to get these funds. If the best and the brightest were running the Treasury last year, why didn't they protect American taxpayer interests better? Congress and our President need to intervene on behalf of the American Shareholder/taxpayer immediately to stop these payouts however they have too.

Kimberly Wilcox

Cartoon of the Day: A Change in Tone

2009-03-17T21:23:00.004-04:00

All that negativity was bringing everybody down.

Cartoon of the Day: Speaker of the House Treatment

2009-03-16T21:39:00.003-04:00

The Nancy is currently headlining a tour of fiscal irresponsibility.

Small Businesses Shoulder Burdens

2009-03-16T13:02:00.002-04:00

Submitted by ASO member: Tom Sullivan

Today, President Obama announced some of his plans to help small business. It will be difficult to distract people from pouring over NCAA tournament brackets, but it is worth directing some attention to how the President approaches the sector which we are all counting on to rescue our economy.

Well before newspapers were carrying news of the economic collapse, large companies were shedding jobs and out of the wreckage grew newly self-employed entrepreneurs. This is not a description of some job-layoff silver lining. Rather, it is a statement of what employment data show over the past several years. Now that small and large businesses alike are deep in the trench of an economic recession, the national focus is appropriately how to climb out.

Small businesses have rescued the economy from past recessions. Entrepreneurs grow businesses through innovation, ingenuity, creativity and unbridled energy. Businesses grow as entrepreneurs succeed. As small business goes, so goes the economy. My advice to the President is to carefully examine what policies stimulate entrepreneurial activity and what policies stifle that activity. And, I advise, go full steam ahead with the policies in the “stimulate” category.

Health care and taxes should be the top two issues of focus for President Obama as he details his plans for the entrepreneurial sector. Small businesses will applaud a concentrated effort to address costs when re-shaping the health insurance system. The top question that needs to be answered is, “how do we make it easier for small employers to provide health insurance?” On taxes, the President should acknowledge that the more cash small business has, the more likely those profits will result in new hires. Postpone the rhetoric of “tax the rich” until those wealthy employers hire more people.

Next, I advise the President to focus on how government agencies treat entrepreneurs. Small businesses shoulder a disproportionately high percentage of regulatory burden compared to their larger business competitors. The cost of keeping up with the massive amount of federal rules, regulations, standards, guidance, filings, reports, and permits is 45 percent more for very small businesses compared to businesses with 500 or more employees. Federal regulatory costs for small businesses total $7,647 per employee per year. On a per-household basis, this cost exceeds the cost of healthcare. The President’s small business plan should start with a pronouncement that his White House will hold regulatory agencies directly accountable to small businesses. He can do that by adding a small business empowerment section to President Clinton’s executive order on regulatory planning and review. The small business section should stop federal mandates that unnecessarily stifle entrepreneurial growth and should encourage regulatory actions that unleash the economic potential of small enterprise.

Cartoon of the Day

2009-03-15T22:28:00.004-04:00

In light of the recent stock market bounce, we can see that Obama is sure trying hard... if only that was enough.

The Reluctant Optimist

2009-03-15T21:59:00.001-04:00

This would all be the height of hilarity if it wasn’t actually happening. When the screaming in my head stops, I have quiet time to imagine all these budget-, policy-, and financial services-types in Washington running around like a hundred Charlie Chaplains: leaderless, directionless, and ridiculous. What are they doing?!?! I don’t at all claim to have the answers to these economic problems, but it certainly can’t be the death-by-a-thousand-cuts profligate spending of which we’re suddenly so fond.

Many seem to be saying (you know who you are: thank you) that we can’t simply resolve this situation by throwing money at it, but no one is closing the spending floodgates. I’m as scared as the next person of a prolonged recession, or (God forbid) a full-blown depression, but I’m more afraid of weathering this storm only to face 50 percent income taxes and so much government intervention and regulation that capitalists and entrepreneurs flee for the hills. We can’t afford for the engines of American ingenuity to decide to shut down to avoid conflict with our government.

I wrote last time about the importance of us learning our collective lessons from this crisis. The government is doing us no favors in that regard. We’re being scolded for having spent beyond our means and buying homes our incomes couldn’t support. We’re also being told that only our spending as consumers keeps the economy growing, and until we start doing that again, they’re going to do it for us. That causes me to wonder: when we start spending again, will they stop? And if they stop (or especially if they don’t), how much of our paychecks will be devoured by taxes to pay for it all (including the interest on our national debt)? It already feels like a vicious cycle, and it’s barely begun. Hilarious, huh?

Hey! Feds! Get off of my cloud.

2009-03-12T19:06:00.005-04:00

Submitted by ASO member: Jean Card

Here’s a bit of inspiring news for anyone who is feeling a little bit smothered by the big-government creepiness that is Washington, DC these days: many state governments are re-asserting their rights under the 10th amendment! Check out this story, complete with the language of the amendment.

This is a state government’s way of saying, to their counterparts (not bosses) in Washington: “Hey, I know the constitution was written a long time ago, so you may need a little reminder… that you are supposed to have limited powers! The states are sovereign. Got it? Get off of our cloud, man.”

I’m inspired. I hope the feds get off of my cloud soon, too.

Cartoon of the Day

2009-03-12T19:05:00.001-04:00

A glimpse at the 2012 Word Population...

Three Shocking Scenarios

2009-03-11T20:03:00.001-04:00

Submitted by ASO member: Kimberly Wilcox

I recently became more aware of three shocking tax scenarios. The first starts as Union Bank of Switzerland, A.G., more commonly know as UBS, is being lightly raked over the coals by the U.S. Justice Department. As part of a deal last month UBS was supposed to be forthcoming with the names and numbers of accounts of Americans who have evaded Uncle Sam's tax tables by keeping their wealth in Swiss Bank Accounts in exchange for not having UBS officers subjected to criminal prosecution. This has resulted in UBS executives "confessing" last July 2008 to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that there were 19,000 American accounts at its bank that were evading American income taxes. This past week, Mark Branson, a UBS executive, now confirms that there are "around" 47,000 accounts in their Swiss bank of Americans not paying taxes on income. Last month UBS formally accepted responsibility for helping Americans hide assets from the U.S. government and agreed to pay $780 million in restitution & fines based on the prior disclosure. The bank also turned over the names of ONLY 300 or so American clients of the 19,000 it declared then. The rest of the 46,700 names have yet to be turned over to the IRS or the the Senate Homeland Security & Government Affairs Committee. So, the question is, will these tax evaders eventually have to pay their income taxes like every other American? Should the company face penalties and fines in this country for fronting this operation on an even greater scale than they originally said? Only problem with this is that UBS isn't even the tip of the iceberg in terms of tax evasion and the Swiss may not even be the best at it. American banks and brokerages hold billions of dollars of foreign money for citizens of Latin America, Arab countries, Israel and other nations, not only assisting in tax evasion on the income, but avoiding the asset tax that many countries have on the principal, among other financial scams. Yes, US banks earn hefty fees on these transactions every year. In addition, Luxembourg, the Canary Islands and the Caribbean Islands are well known tax havens. Is anyone going to evenly prosecute all these offenders?

The second scenario is the upper 1% of Americans who don't seem to have to conform to the tax code until they get nominated to serve in high public office, such as Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, who recently ponied up $34,000, Former Senator Tom Daschle, who ultimately declined the nomination to the office of Health & Human Services Secretary because of back taxes owed in the amount of $128,203 and finally Ron Kirk, the former mayor of Dallas who, if confirmed will be the White House chief trade representative, owes over $10,000 in back taxes. Should the well-heeled only have to pay taxes when they're caught not paying them after being nominated for offices of the Federal Government by President Obama? Hardly seems fair to the average tax payer.

Which brings me to the third scenario. Many Americans have family, neighbors, and friends currently without jobs due to the financial shams in our country. Many were unaware that their unemployment checks that they received in 2008 are indeed subject to Federal and in some cases State tax. And, there is no automatic withholding or notification with your check that you might want to institute withholding so that you don't have a big tax bill in 2009 to pay on that money that you already spent.

So, we have the REALLY well-heeled protected by the Swiss and other foreign tax havens' secrecy, the SORT OF well-heeled with their assets in America only getting caught, and the Average Joe who got laid off last year completely exposed with regard to his income and tax obligations. Where's the IRS in this picture? Why isn't the audit process hitting the big timers who with one audit will make up for 1,000's of little guys? Well, right now, the IRS has asked the Justice Department to have UBS respond to its John Doe summons for the names of the rest of their clients. We'll see how this saga plays out.

Nelson Rockefeller, Call Your Office

2009-03-10T22:14:00.000-04:00

Submitted by ASO member: Matthew E. Crow

I may be drummed out of the current version of the GOP for saying this, but Republicans need a Nelson Rockefeller to lead the party, now more than ever. The former governor of New York and Vice President to Gerald Ford was many things – billionaire, art lover, philanthropist, industrialist and ardent anti communist. In this age of political correctness, he would have been classified as a throwback – he could show genuine emotion in public -- he didn’t mind flipping the bird to hecklers. He was a progressive in economics and public works programs, and a staunch believer in the theory that good jobs could be created from private/public partnerships. He was not perfect, nobody is – yet, today’s rudderless GOP had better start looking for a Rockefeller if they hope to beat President Obama, a.k.a. Mr. Man in the Middle (or so he seems to be).

Message to the GOP intelligentsia: It’s the candidate, stupid.

A Dartmouth graduate, Rockefeller was born into one of the 20th Century’s greatest fortunes. However, curious as it appeared, Rocky didn’t seem all that enthralled with his wealth. Liberals will opine he didn’t need to concern himself with the mundane toil of everyday life when those kinds of bucks where at his fingertips, but Rockefeller genuinely didn’t let his riches get to him. He invested quite a bit of himself, personally, and professionally, to helping Middle America gain a larger foothold in the economy. Name one billionaire today willing to get tangled up with politics – there isn’t one willing to do it, save for Ebay’s Whitman.

It is true that Rockefeller tried to buy his way into the Presidency more than once and was shot down – but, it was his money to spend and lose, and not the PAC and union zillions we have to contend with today. In this day and age, Rockefeller would be viewed with suspicion and skepticism just as he was 40 years ago – although a reflective and introspective GOP could look beyond the intellectual decay of the sound bite and the hardliners who inhabit the fringe boundaries of the “party” to recognize that Rockefeller had it right – that government does have a role to play in economic development, that government does have a role to play in the improvement of life in this country – roles that do not bludgeon Americans to their knees with higher taxes but helps them get off their knees with effective government programs – measurable in their results and accountable in their actions.

“Rockefeller Republican” could be the label that wins votes during the upcoming election cycles. It is not important to educate voters who exactly Rockefeller was – it’s probably not important at this point – but his politics seem more interesting than ever.

Cartoon of the Day

2009-03-10T22:11:00.000-04:00

Take a look at today's Cartoon of the Day. Obama and Gibbs sure seem to feel differently about Limbaugh.

Obama Tax and Small Business

2009-03-10T14:42:00.000-04:00

There is a significant problem with the President’s budget proposal to raise taxes on small business owners who earn more than $250,000. Unfortunately, this approach reflects a misunderstanding of how small business operates and how important they are to this country’s economic recovery. High income small businesses are the ones who will be hiring new employees, investing their profits to expand, and starting new ventures. The question should not be on whether the President’s proposal impacts 2 percent or 8 percent of small business. The question should be on whether it is wise to further burden the sector we are counting on to rescue our economy. When our economy is in dire straits, the last thing we want to do is curtail successful small businesses from growing. When our economy is at full strength we can have a debate over what the “fair share” of tax burden should be, but now is the time to encourage successful entrepreneurs to hire, expand, and create new ventures.

Submitted by ASO member: Tom Sullivan

Op-Ed: The Republican Problem

2009-03-09T20:41:00.000-04:00

Submitted by ASO member: Grant Woods

I am an Arizonan. It used to be easy to be a Republican here. We had Barry Goldwater as our leader and we stood for something. We didn’t need focus groups or campaign consultants. We knew who we were and what we believed in and we had the confidence to stand behind those beliefs.

We believed in freedom. It wasn’t freedom as a slogan or an excuse for military intervention, it was freedom as a way of life. For us, being a Republican meant that you thought people should be free to rise and fall based upon their own individual talents and ambition. The government was there to keep things fair and legal and to provide basic services and defense from those who would harm us. But the government wasn’t there to take care of us from cradle to grave or to decide for us the best ways for us to spend our time or money. We wanted government to be limited in its scope, but efficient in its execution of those limited duties.

It’s not so easy being a Republican here or anywhere else anymore. Republicans really don’t stand for anything anymore. They don’t have big ideas and they don’t seem to have a clue how to run the government. They stood and watched as Democrats sold the idea that everyone should own their own home, regardless of ability to pay for it, and under the folly of deregulation allowed their greedy contributors to put the nation’s economy at risk for the sake of padding their own bank accounts. It was an obviously fatally flawed scenario and very few Republicans said a word to try to stop it.

President Bush violated his campaign promises against nation building and Republicans moved in lockstep behind him. Civil liberties that Republicans once held sacred were unilaterally trampled under the name of national security. Spending for the war and spending for things that the government didn’t need or have any business being involved in escalated at a record pace. Surpluses turned to deficits and finally it all exploded. Now the Democrats see this as an “opportunity” to enact all of the policies that Republicans have traditionally opposed over the years and the Republicans bemoan the fact that they are “leaderless.”

Actually, they are without principles. This crew sold out when they had a chance to stand tall for real conservatism. They pounded social issues that the government should stay away from and allowed their big business contributors to do whatever they wanted.

Frankly, they don’t deserve to be in power. But the Democratic ideas of bigger and bigger government, of class warfare and redistribution of wealth will ultimately change this country so as to make it unrecognizable. We broke away from Europe to form this Union. We should not crawl back now.

So how do the Republicans come back? They need new leaders. The old sell-out crowd should step aside or be pushed there. They need to stand for something and stick to it. But what should that bedrock principle be that guides their stands on policies and the proper role of government? Well, from out here in Arizona one word echoes from the Grand Canyon that Barry Goldwater so loved. Freedom.

We don’t need more government, we need better government. We don’t need government to dictate our morality, we need to be the sort of people who make moral choices on our own. We need a country that allows us the freedom rise up or fall down on our own. If the Republican Party could show that it would create such a climate, through competent governing and a philosophy that respected individual freedom, its future would take care of itself.

Click here to learn more to learn more about Grant Woods, former Arizona Attorney General.

Cartoon of the Day

2009-03-09T20:39:00.000-04:00

Wouldn't it be nice if the right hand knew what the left was doing?

Senator McCain And Shelby Say Some Large Banks Should Be Allowed To Fail

2009-03-09T08:39:00.000-04:00

The Senators argue: We've let bad small banks fail, so we should let bad big banks fail as well.

Power to the People!

2009-03-08T20:05:00.000-04:00

Submitted by ASO member: Bradley Blakeman

The greatness of America rests not in our government, it rests in our people. We should not be growing government in trying times; we should be unleashing the creativity and entrepreneurial spirit of our businessmen and women, our scientists, our students, and our inventors.

Growing government, to some how make up for the lost productivity of the private sector makes no sense. At this time, government should be cutting costs and reducing spending. Our lawmakers should be cutting taxes and providing incentives to the marketplace for investment and ingenuity.

Businesses that have been mismanaged should fail. Businesses that need to reorganize under bankruptcy laws, should do so. Government bailouts are not the answer. Our laws are for everyone, the corporation and the individual, the big, the tall and the small.

Our government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers by providing taxpayer funds to finance greedy, corrupt or incompetent businesses and practices.

People and corporations must be held accountable for their behavior, including but not limited to their business decisions. There must be more than a sense of responsibility it must be real and it must be accounted for.

There must be consequences. For those who have violated the public trust, they should be brought to justice and for those who have acted incompetently, they should be removed.

The marketplace is resilient. We will come back stronger economically, if Wall Street and Main Street operate on the same rules and principles.

Now is the time for sacrifice, but out of sacrifice we will be a stronger nation. We have all lost something of value in this past year, but there is nothing more valuable than our collective spirit and that is still in tact and unwavering.

The American People can solve any problem and over come any diversity. My message to my government is simple, "Let my People go"! Get out of our way and lighten our load and we will come back stronger than ever.

Cartoon of the Day

2009-03-08T20:03:00.000-04:00

A look at the way our Administration puts out a fire. Burning good money after bad.

A Look Back at the Stimulus Bill: Why the Hurry?

2009-03-06T17:16:00.000-05:00

In the wake of the Stimulus Bill, that was so hurriedly rushed through Congress that not one Congressional Member read the bill before voting on it, we have encountered more huge economic downturns, many immediately following the follies and falters of Congress and this administration. As we look back, 92 percent of our viewership believes Congress was not justified in passing the bill without allowing themselves or the public time to read the bill.

Congresswoman Bachmann Responds to Big Government Spend-a-thon

2009-03-05T22:10:00.000-05:00

Since the inauguration of President Obama, our country has embarked on a big money, big government spend-a-thon. After passing a $1.1-trillion-plus economic “stimulus” package and a $275-billion plan to address perhaps 9 million American mortgages, Washington’s recent big dollar accomplishment was an appropriations omnibus that represents the largest discretionary spending increase, aside from legislation after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, since the Carter Administration. And yet President Obama has repeatedly expressed a desire to pass fiscally responsible legislation and significantly reduce the deficit.

He can’t have it both ways.

If we look back on the last 19 months, you’ll find that the U.S.
government has pledged more than $11.6 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers to dig our nation out of our economic woes – and that’s not counting the $410-billion omnibus the Senate is sorting out right now.

And now, the President has released his budget for fiscal year 2010 that not only raises taxes, but grows government to new and unheard of heights. President Obama's budget includes nearly $1 trillion just in new health care spending and proposes to pay for it with an economy-crippling energy tax that will cost the average family about $4000 more a year. Our government is like a runaway train that’s speeding down the tracks, barreling through any supposed notion of fiscal responsibility.

Washington is asking Americans to bear down and make sacrifices as our country finds its way out of our economic rut, and Washington would be wise to heed that advice and do the same. If you've cut back your spending, it's only fair that we cut back ours. Taxpayers are struggling enough in this weakened economy and it is time Congress started to show respect for the American people and stop increasing the weight of their financial burdens. The spending spree has to stop.

Submitted by ASO member: Congresswoman Bachmann

Cartoon of the Day

2009-03-04T21:43:00.001-05:00

Hopefully not the future of our retirement plans...

Obama’s Clean Energy Myth

2009-03-04T20:29:00.000-05:00

President Obama has spent the last two years talking about his commitment to clean energy but he has not signaled any desire to expand nuclear power generation. Why? Because the environmental community has spent the past 30 years hyping concerns over the safety of nuclear power – to the extent that no nuclear power plant ordered after 1977 has been completed and brought on line in the United States. Nuclear power is emission-free energy generation. Something the President declares as critical to our future, but yet he is quietly making every move possible to ensure that not a single plant gets built during his Administration, and therefore for the decade to follow his departure. This despite him staring directly into the camera during one of the Presidential debates and conveniently declaring his support for nuclear power.

Nuclear power constitutes 20 percent of the electricity used in the United States. That’s right, one fifth of all electricity consumed. In order to keep pace with the growing demand for electricity in the United States we must continue to expand our energy generation, not shrink it. While the benefits of renewable energy are many, the reality is solar and wind power constitute two percent of all domestic energy production, and to increase it to even eight percent will require massive transmission improvements. All the while the President and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid plan to stand by and let 40 of the current 104 nuclear plants in the U.S. potentially become decommissioned over the next 30 years. That’s a potential decrease in electrical power generation of eight percent.

Nuclear-waste management remains an issue at the forefront of the nuclear expansion debate. There is significant debate as to the responsibility of the Government in the management and storing of nuclear waste. The Federal government has proposed a single deep geological storage reserve for spent fuel in Nevada at Yucca Mountain as a substitute to the national security threat posed by storage onsite at nuclear facilities.

But bottom line, the involvement of Nevada equals Harry Reid equals no Yucca Mountain storage equals no new plants for the next two decades equals dozens of plants will be decommissioned equals an eight percent reduction in clean and safe energy equals another loss for the country. And why? Because of the environmental special interest. The same type of special interests that the President pledged to transcend.
ASO member Ken Nahigian

Rush Limbaugh Invites President Obama To Debate Him

2009-03-04T13:51:00.000-05:00

A transcript of Rush's show today:

"But I have an idea. If these guys are so impressed with themselves, and if they are so sure of their correctness, why doesn't President Obama come on my show? ... So let's have the debate! I am offering President Obama to come on this program -- without staffers, without a TelePrompTer, without note cards -- to debate me on the issues. Let's talk about free markets versus government control. Let's talk about nationalizing health care and raising taxes on small business."

--

"Just come on this program. Let's have a little debate. You tell me how wrong I am and you can convince the rest of the American that don't agree with you how wrong we all are. You're a smart guy, Mr. President. You don't need these hacks to front for you. You've debated the best! You've debated Hillary Clinton. You've debated John Edwards. You've debated Joe Biden. You've debated Dennis Kucinich. You've debated the best out there. You are one of the most gifted public speakers of our age. I would think, Mr. President, you would jump at this opportunity. Don't send lightweights like Begala and Carville to do your bidding -- and forget about the ballerina, Emanuel. He's got things to do in his office. These people, compared to you, Mr. President, are rhetorical chum.

I would rather have an intelligent, open discussion with you where you lay out your philosophy and policies and I lay out mine -- and we can question each other, in a real debate. Any time here at the EIB Network studios. If you're too busy partying or flying around giving speeches and so forth, then send Vice President Biden. I'm sure he would be very capable of articulating your vision for America -- and if he won't work, send Geithner, and we can talk about the tax code. And if that won't work, go get Bob Rubin. I don't care. Send whoever you want if you can't make it. You don't need to be leaking stories to Politico like this thing that's published today. You don't need to have your allies writing op-eds and all the rest. If you can win at this, then come here and beat me at my own game, and get rid of me once and for all, and show all the people of America that I am wrong."

--

"I'm calling. I'm ready. I'll do everything I can to facilitate it. You're a very courageous man, Mr. President. I am, after all, just the Last Man Standing. If you take me out, if you can wipe me out in a debate and prove to the rest of America that what I say is senseless and wrong, do you realize you will own the United States of America? You will have no opposition. You have America's media in your back pocket. It's amazing. In 1972, Richard Nixon had an enemies list, and the media was outraged by this. They were outraged. At the same time, those who weren't on it were a little jealous. But they were outraged that a president would engage in this kind of behavior toward the media. Now they go after a private citizen."

Cartoon of the Day

2009-03-03T21:17:00.001-05:00

Check out today's cartoon of the day. A look at the various stimulus packages that have and will be passed by the Administration. It's back breaking work...

The UN is Unfit to Deal With Terrorism

2009-03-03T21:11:00.000-05:00

How can the United Nations adequately work to prevent and fight terrorism when they don’t even have the will to define it?

Is there any doubt that terrorism is real? We experienced it on our own shores and we have witnessed it take place in every corner of the globe, unfortunately, on an all to frequent basis. The United Nations has neither the will nor the leadership to take the lead to defeat terrorism and it is only a matter of time when terrorists carry out a catastrophic attack that the World will no longer be able to ignore. The only question is where and when it will occur.

The first step to dealing with a problem is defining it and properly acknowledging it. The following are some widely recognized definitions of terrorism:

League of Nations Convention (1937) : “All criminal acts directed against a State and intended or calculated to create a state of terror in the minds of particular persons or a group of persons or the general public”;

US Code: “terrorism means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience”;

Columbia Encyclopedia: “The threat or use of violence, often against a civilian population, to achieve political or social ends, to intimidate opponents, or to publicize public grievances”;

The Arab Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism (1998): “Any act or threat of violence, whatever its motives or purposes, that occurs in the advancement of an individual or collective criminal agenda and seeking to sow panic among people, causing fear by harming them, or placing their lives, liberty or security in danger, or seeking to cause damage to the environment or to public or private installations or property or to occupying or seizing them, or seeking to jeopardize a national resource”.

If other diverse groups and nations can define terrorism,
why then can’t the UN settle on a definition?

The answer is clear. They do not want to.

The United States and other freedom loving nations must now demand that the UN define terrorism once and for all. They must also vow to aggressively thwart it and condemn it wherever and whenever it occurs, not with mere words but with meaningful actions.

The UN stands for nothing if it cannot face up to and defeat a scourge that will be the undoing of civilized society unless it is defeated.

President Obama needs to lead on this issue. To date he and his Administration seems to have banned even the mention of “terrorism” from their public speak. They believe it is inflammatory and insulting. To who? The Terrorists?

There will be another major attack by terrorists. When that occurs, the World will respond with shock and horror and condolence. The question is what did we do to confront it and prevent it in the first place.

Submitted by ASO member: Bradley Blakeman

"The Fairness Doctrine Fight Is Not Over"

2009-03-03T10:04:00.000-05:00

Soren Dayton at The Next Right has a good post warning why he believes the Fairness Doctrine Fight is not over.

Take a look.

Cartoon of the Day

2009-03-02T20:57:00.001-05:00

A look at the Administration's view on responsible spending.

Private Giving in the Age of Obama

2009-03-02T20:40:00.000-05:00

Among others, Larry Kudlow correctly notes that President Obama has declared war on investors, entrepreneurs and businesses. But there is another less heralded group standing athwart the President’s goal of reconstructing the American social contract: givers.

To help pay for President Obama’s enormous new $630 billion health care reserve fund, certain long-standing charitable deductions will be eliminated. CQ Politics describes the proposal as follows:

Obama would raise $318 billion over 10 years by limiting the value of itemized deductions claimed by taxpayers in the top two income tax brackets to the value those deductions would have in the 28 percent bracket. A $100 tax-deductible contribution, for example, would save an upper-income taxpayer no more than $28 in federal income tax, rather than the $33 or $35 savings those in the top brackets would see under current law.

It is a truly awful policy and one that simply robs Peter to pay Paul. I am opposed to the Obama Administration’s health care plan and its incremental approach to single payer, socialized medicine because I do not care for the rise of American statism. But you need not be an opponent of government-provided universal health care to understand the slow erosion of self-directed charitable giving at play here with the new Obama policy—further evidence of a decline in American liberties in the age of Obama.

Under President Obama’s tax policy, individual value decisions about where charity is directed may be tolerated, but the principle of such self-direction will find little encouragement. Rather, the Administration is signaling that those in need of charity should look to President Obama and the federal government as their provider, not private philanthropy.

Lowering eligible charitable deductions effectively taxes the charities now receiving such assistance. After all, when the government raises taxes on an activity, less of that activity is experienced. Charities will receive less under President Obama going forward, and all Americans will be tied closer to and controlled more by their government.

Submitted by ASO member: John Kalitka

You Decide

2009-03-02T14:21:00.000-05:00

The distinctions between democrat and republican, liberal and conservative, can become fuzzy when political parties stake their claims to fiscal responsibility, education, and health care. There are moments, however, when the philosophical differences between parties become crystal clear and the budget announcement by President Obama was one of those moments. The President's cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050 was characterized as a revenue raiser. The President highlighted $646 billion in additional revenue from the greenhouse gas reduction scheme over the next 10-years. Conservatives quickly pointed out that the $646 billion would come from power companies paying for the right to emit greenhouse gases. Those costs would be borne by consumers. So, is cap and trade program a cost or a benefit? You decide.

Submitted by ASO member: Tom Sullivan

Obama Nominates Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius To Head HHS

2009-03-02T08:02:00.000-05:00

President Obama will today nominate Kathleen Sebelius to be his Health and Human Services Secretary.

According to the New York Times, Ms. Seabelius and Mr. Obama plan the largest expansion of taxpayer subsidized health insurance in more than four decades.

ASO will be tracking health care developments closely over the coming months. Stay tuned.

Stimulus Bill to Small Business: Drop Dead

2009-03-01T20:05:00.000-05:00

Remember America’s small businesses? They’re the ones who have served as the reliable job engines for our economy during the past several years but have been ignored in the President’s stimulus bill. In America’s modern history, small businesses have led America’s job generation machine. Fortune 500 companies haven’t actually grown jobs during the last decade and instead have garnered worse press than a Bernie Madoff telethon. Layoffs, hiring freezes and poor leadership have denied job gains to most of the blue chip companies – the same companies with their hands out to the Feds.

Over the past decade, small businesses have created well over half of net new jobs on a per capita basis. Small businesses are more innovative (based on patents) and small businesses have been leaders in technologies that have led to breakthrough discoveries. Those are facts that have been conveniently forgotten in this stimulus bill. We can correctly surmise why this is so – the uber unions who bet big on an Obama administration weren’t in the game for laughs – they went in up to their necks and are now expecting a return on their investment.

In large part, small business owners themselves are to blame for being left out of the biggest payoff to liberal interests in several decades. When you’re cutting the tall trees, you don’t bring an ax – you grab the biggest, meanest chainsaw you can find and have at it like the unions have done. You organize and raise money – you contribute large sums of that money to the candidate or party you think can best represent your interests. It speaks to the lean, mean types of operations that describe most small businesses that they just don’t have extra cash to buy influence – they’re too busy meeting payrolls and funding their own innovations.

Not one member of the senior staff currently working in the West Wing has ever held a for-profit job, signed a payroll check or owned a business. Both aborted picks for Commerce Secretary (of all the jobs!) weren’t business people, unlike their immediate successors. The recent nominee (no surprise) hasn’t a business background. These bits of troubling information make you wonder what they’ve been smoking over at the U.S. Chamber, which merrily endorsed most of candidate Obama’s development agenda. A small ray of hope amidst this business recovery amateur hour is the President’s pick to head the Small Business Administration. A successful venture capitalist, she will have her hands full working within this administration.

America’s hangover on the morning after this spending binge is shaping up to be a real beauty. Mardi Gras in the Big Easy should have so much wanton debauchery. Unfortunately, guess who gets to hose down the gutters and clean the streets after the party is over? The clean-up crew will be our kids and grandkids, deprived of their opportunity to grow small business in a political climate that only favors big unions and their big money.

Submitted by ASO member: Matthew E. Crow

Cartoon of the Day

2009-03-01T19:43:00.001-05:00

Take a look at the "new monopoly board". I wonder who will claim Park Place?

Mark Salter Comments on Governor Jindal Speech

2009-02-27T12:02:00.000-05:00

Jindal’s Pursuit of Happiness Leaves Country Wondering...

Last year, I had the pleasure of watching Governor Bobby Jindal participate in a town hall meeting with John McCain, and was deeply impressed with his command of complex policy issues, and his easy fluency in communicating his views to voters. It was an exceptional performance, which I was reminded of watching the Governor’s recent interview on Meet the Press. Regrettably, those talents were not on display in his nationally televised response to President Obama’s address to Congress.

Granted, it’s not easy following Barack Obama, whose communication skills, especially his appreciation of the physicality of memorable speechmaking, have no equal in politics today. But Jindal is a better speaker than he gave evidence of last Tuesday, and much better at communicating conservative principles and policies in a winning way.
The over thought staging of his speech (he should have appeared at seated at his desk or in an armchair rather than attempt to imitate a presidential stroll into the East Room), and the curiously emphatic and singsong enunciation of certain words in his address suggest too much coaching. That said, I doubt one missed opportunity will seriously cloud this promising young politician’s future, and I still look to him as one of a few prominent Republican officeholders with the talent and vision to help lead the Party out of the political wilderness it now finds itself in.

More disappointing than Jindal’s delivery was the address itself. It failed to offer worried Americans compelling alternatives to the sweeping proposals offered by the President, which considered together, promise the greatest government growth and intrusion into areas of private responsibilities since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Instead, Jindal offered an anodyne recitation of Republican opposition to government spending and high taxes. Americans, even those who are not in danger of losing their jobs or homes, want to know their government has a feasible plan to get us out of the economic mess that has ravaged savings for their retirement and their children’s college education.

Jindal spent a considerable portion of his address decrying government incompetence, using the example of the federal government’s woeful response to Hurricane Katrina as a reason not to trust it to do anything. But in these times, Americans aren’t satisfied with an alternative that only opposes and doesn’t propose solutions to the myriad problems confronting us from ruinously expensive health care to inadequate public education to crumbling infrastructure. They are looking for leaders with ideas for making government do better what it must do. Jindal has a reputation for innovative and effective policy ideas for many of the most pressing public concerns. He should have discussed a few of those Tuesday night as alternatives to the Democrats’ insistence on spending more on government programs that have already lost the confidence of the American people.

Although it would have put considerable pressure on the Governor and his speechwriters, they should have considered drafting his remarks after they viewed an embargoed copy of the President’s remarks. A hurriedly written and less rehearsed rebuttal to some of the President’s proposals that offered and explained conservative reforms that would, for instance, make health care more affordable and accessible or offered dissatisfied parents more educational opportunities for their children or stimulated small business job creation or spent wisely on necessary infrastructure improvements would have made a greater impression on voters than another boilerplate denunciation of government’s many inadequacies.

The argument Republicans should make, and Governor Jindal is well equipped to make, against the ruinous spending and tax increasing proposals of the President and Democrats in Congress is that government can play a competent and efficient role in helping Americans decide for themselves how to pursue happiness rather than President Obama’s bold but arrogant conviction that government should determine what happiness is and who deserves more of it and who deserves less. That is a response to this new age of Obama led government activism Americans will embrace.

Submitted by ASO member: Mark Salter

Cartoon of the Day

2009-02-26T22:18:00.001-05:00

Take a look at today's cartoon of the day. A look at the Administrations desire to be perceived as centrists...

Congressman Pence Writes...

2009-02-26T17:54:00.000-05:00

The American people love a fair fight and so do I, especially where the issues of the day are debated. In a free market, fairness should be determined based upon equality of opportunity, rather than equality of results. Some voices are calling for Congress to enforce their idea of “fairness” on our broadcast airwaves. But our nation should proceed with caution whenever some would achieve their “fairness” by limiting the freedom of others.

The so-called ‘Fairness Doctrine’ is an Orwellian Federal Communications Commission rule that beginning in 1949 required radio and television broadcasters to present controversial issues in a fair and balanced manner. But there's nothing fair about the Fairness Doctrine. To avoid administrative costs and hours of paperwork and legal fees, broadcasters opted to offer noncontroversial programming. As a result, talk radio, as we know it today, simply did not exist.

Putting unelected FCC bureaucrats back in charge of rationing free speech would be dangerous to democracy in America. The free marketplace of ideas – not a government bureaucracy – should determine the content of broadcast media. As a former radio talk show host, I know what the reinstatement of the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ would mean – effectively muzzling American talk radio.

Recognizing the chilling effect that the regulation was having on broadcast freedom, the FCC began to revoke the Fairness Doctrine in 1985. The FCC stated, "the intrusion by government into the content of programming occasioned by the enforcement of [the Fairness Doctrine] restricts the journalistic freedom of broadcasters ... [and] actually inhibits the presentation of controversial issues of public importance to the detriment of the public and the degradation of the editorial prerogative of broadcast journalists.” That statement is just as true today as it was then. Following repeal of the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ and President Reagan’s veto of attempts to reinstate it, the results have been dramatic.

The lifting of the Fairness Doctrine opened the public airwaves to a free and vigorous discussion of controversial issues that never existed before its repeal. When Rush Limbaugh began his legendary career, there were 125 talk radio stations in America. Today, there are 2,000. While Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and other conservative giants dominate the national syndicated market, many moderate and liberal programs succeed admirably at the local level.

Sadly, some of the most powerful elected Democrats in America have said that Congress should bring back this outright censorship of the American political debate. Should the liberals succeed in their effort to reimpose the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ or anything like it they will inflict great damage on the First Amendment and send talk show hosts—left, right and center—packing. Freedom of speech and of the press are cherished pillars of our society and nowhere would their loss be more keenly felt than on our airwaves.

During my years in radio and television, I developed a great respect for a free and independent press. Since being in Congress, I have been the recipient of praise and criticism from broadcast media, but it has not changed my fundamental belief that a free and independent press must be vigorously defended by those who love liberty lest the frank and informative discussions now blossoming on the airwaves of America should one day fall silent.

Together with Congressman Greg Walden, I have authored the Broadcaster Freedom Act, a bill to make permanent the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine by taking away the FCC’s power to reinstate it without an act of Congress.
If the Broadcaster Freedom Act is brought to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, we have every confidence it will pass, because when freedom gets an up-or-down vote in the People’s House, freedom always wins.

Submitted by: Congressman Pence

Fairness Doctrine Prohibited

2009-02-26T17:17:00.000-05:00

Today the Senate adopted an amendment to the DC voting rights bill offered by Senator DeMint and other GOP Senators that would prohibit the Federal Communications comm. from reinstating the Fairness Doctrine that was abolished in the late 1980s. The so-called Broadcasters Freedom Act in the form of the DeMint amendment., was supported today by 46 members of the Democratic side of the United States Senate chamber. The vote to support the DeMint amendment was 87 to 11. This action is welcome news for those who fear the reinstatement of the Fairness doctrine in various forms via the FCC. This strong vote should be a indication that if the FCC were to try to impose various versions of a fairness doctrine through programming limitations and the such, that those 46 Senators, both Democratic and Independent, will once again support overturning those such regs if they do in fact take shape later in the Congress.

The 11 Democratic and Independent Senators that did not support the DeMint amendments are: Bingaman (D-NM), Conrad (D-ND),Dorgan (D-ND),Feinstein (D-CA),Harkin (D-IA),Johnson (D-SD),Kerry (D-MA),Reed (D-RI), Rockefeller (D-WV),Sanders (I-VT), Whitehouse (D-RI)

Pentagon Reverses Itself, Will Allow Photos Of Returning War Dead

2009-02-26T16:53:00.000-05:00

But only if the slain soldier's family agrees to allow the photos to be taken.

The AP has the details.

Senate Prevents F.D. Revival

2009-02-26T15:45:00.000-05:00

From FoxNews...

The Senate approved an amendment Thursday that would outlaw the so-called "Fairness Doctrine," an off-the-books policy that once required broadcasters to air opposing viewpoints on controversial issues.

Republican Sen. Jim DeMint's amendment passed by a wide margin of 87-to-11. The South Carolina senator had attached his proposal, called the Broadcaster Freedom Act, to a bill to give the District of Columbia a voting representative in the House.

It's unclear whether the amendment will survive as Congress debates the voting rights bill. But the measure served to effectively put the Senate on record as opposing a revival of the Fairness Doctrine.

However, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin also won approval for an alternate amendment that would order the Federal Communications Commission to encourage radio ownership "diversity."

A DeMint aide said Durbin's measure will "impose the Fairness Doctrine through the back door by trying to break up radio ownership."

The aide called the Durbin proposal "an attempt to break up companies like Clear Channel and hurt their syndications and therefore putting many local radio stations out of business that depend on those syndicated shows for revenue."

The measure passed by a vote of 57-to-41.

The media control doctrine is a policy created decades ago but abolished in the late 1980s that required broadcasters to provide opposing views on controversial issues of public importance.

Though President Obama remains opposed to any effort to renew it and the Federal Communications Commission claims it is not in any talks to revive the policy, a few Democrats have voiced strong support for the media control policy in recent weeks. Republicans like DeMint in turn pushed legislation to forestall any move to bring back the doctrine.

"We need to make it a law that the FCC or this Congress cannot implement any aspect of the Fairness Doctrine," DeMint said.

Obama: "We Must Add To The Debt In The Short Term"

2009-02-26T11:59:00.000-05:00

Obama lays out his budget this morning, which suffers from a $1.75 trillion dollar deficit.

Cartoon of the Day

2009-02-25T21:54:00.000-05:00

A humorous look at capitalism and our administration...

Cartoon of the Day

2009-02-24T21:10:00.001-05:00

Help President Obama crunch the numbers...

Congress Should Ignore the Fairness Doctrine Distraction

2009-02-24T14:30:00.000-05:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - http://www.freepress.net/node/48369
Date: February 24, 2009 Contact: Jen Howard, Free Press, (202) 265-1490 x22 or (703) 517-6273

WASHINGTON -- Today, Free Press released The Fairness Doctrine Distraction, a policy brief that explains why Congress should ignore any attempts to revive the legislative debate over the long-defunct broadcasting regulation.

The controversy over the Fairness Doctrine heated up recently after a handful of Democratic legislators publicly entertained its return, though no legislation to bring it back has been introduced in Congress. Despite President Barack Obama's statement last week reaffirming his longstanding opposition to the Doctrine, bills have been introduced by Republicans in both the House and Senate to prohibit the FCC from reinstating the regulation.

The Fairness Doctrine Distraction argues that the public interest is not served by revisiting an outdated policy that was taken off the books in 1987. The policy brief notes that it is untenable for the government to regulate political speech. It also points out that the Fairness Doctrine is unlikely to produce viewpoint diversity and would likely be overturned in court. Finally, the brief dispels assertions falsely equating the Fairness Doctrine with other media reform policies such as ownership limits, localism and Net Neutrality that have nothing to do with content regulation.

"There is so much that can be done with broad bipartisan support to promote free speech and diverse viewpoints in our media marketplace," said Josh Silver, executive director of Free Press.

"We encourage Congress and the administration to ignore the Fairness Doctrine distraction and pursue media reform policies that matter."

Read The Fairness Doctrine Distraction: http://www.freepress.net/files/fp-FairnessDoctrine.pdf

Ugly, Democrats Seek Billion More For 2009

2009-02-24T09:08:00.000-05:00

The Democratic Congress (with a lot of Republican help) is seeking a 6.7% budget increase over 2008.

Ugly.

Politico has the full story.

Tonight Obama Addresses Joint Session Of Congress

2009-02-24T09:04:00.000-05:00

Politico has a preview of what to look for in Obama's speech at 9 pm ET tonight.

Cartoon of the Day

2009-02-23T23:20:00.001-05:00

Take a look at today's Cartoon of the Day. Stock markets....

I'm just not that into you.

2009-02-23T21:26:00.000-05:00

I’m just not that into you.

I’m weary of reading about all the provisions in the stimulus/spending bill. It makes my stomach hurt in that angry-but-helpless way. I’m irritated by politicians of all stripes who think they should decide how MY money is spent and how MY life should be lived.

So, I want to tell the leaders in Washington, DC, en masse:

“I’m just not that into you.

“I mean, I know you mean well, or you think you mean well. And I’m sure that some countries would be thrilled to have you as their significant other. But, honestly, you just make me feel smothered. Please stop calling me and asking for more money. Please stop promising to do things for me when it seems like I’m always the one paying the bill. Stop boasting about the decisions you’re making to change my life. I don’t think my life is so bad!

“I’m really looking for a government that isn’t in my face all the time. A government that gives me my space. One that respects my individuality and ideas. One that doesn’t judge me or talk down to me. But you… you aren’t that government. So. I’m sorry, but I’m just not that into you.”

Submitted by ASO member: Jean Card

'And now for something completely different, please'

2009-02-23T11:36:00.000-05:00

From an article in the Washington Times today:

As CPAC begins in the nation's capital later this week, the conservative movement has much to contemplate as it attempts to reestablish itself as a dominant force in American political life.

Actually, "relevance" may be a more reasonable short-term goal.

The timing of the yearly Conservative Political Action Conference could not be better suited for evaluating the strategies of the standard bearers of free markets and limited government as free-spending and nanny statist Obamaism runs amok with nary a media check or a legislative balance.

Click here to read more.

Nancy Pelosi Blocking Obama's Plans For Entitlement Reform

2009-02-23T09:47:00.000-05:00

According to the New York Times, Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is trying to stop President Obama's plans for Social Security reform.

The article may be found here.

Cartoon of the Day

2009-02-22T21:00:00.001-05:00

Take a look at today's Cartoon of the Day. A humorous look at how our legislature operates.

Governor Bobby Jindal Interview

2009-02-22T11:08:00.000-05:00

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal was on NBC's Meet The Press this morning. On the show, Governor Jindal explained why he planned on turning down a portion of the federal stimulus money currently allocated to go to his state:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The full interview is worth a look and may be found here.

The Case For Nationalization?

2009-02-21T13:39:00.000-05:00

The Wall Street Journal ran an article yesterday about New York University economics professor Nouriel Roubini and Mr. Roubini's case for a government takeover of American banks.

An excerpt:

Mr. Roubini tells me that bank nationalization "is something the partisans would have regarded as anathema a few weeks ago. But when I and others put it in the context of the Swedish approach [of the 1990s] -- i.e. you take banks over, you clean them up, and you sell them in rapid order to the private sector -- it's clear that it's temporary. No one's in favor of a permanent government takeover of the financial system."

There's another reason why the concept should appeal to (fiscal) conservatives, he explains. "The idea that government will fork out trillions of dollars to try to rescue financial institutions, and throw more money after bad dollars, is not appealing because then the fiscal cost is much larger. So rather than being seen as something Bolshevik, nationalization is seen as pragmatic. Paradoxically, the proposal is more market-friendly than the alternative of zombie banks."

In any case, Republicans must now temper their reactions, he says. "The kind of government interference in the economy that we saw in the last year of Bush was unprecedented. The central bank -- supposed to be the lender of the last resort -- became the lender of first and only resort! With our recapitalizing of financial institutions, and massive government intervention in the markets, we've already crossed a significant bridge."

So, will the highest level of government be receptive to the bank-nationalization idea? "I think it will," Mr. Roubini says, unhesitatingly. "People like Graham and Greenspan have already given their explicit blessing. This gives Obama cover." And how long will it be before the administration goes in formally for nationalization? "I think that we're going to see the policy adopted in the next few months . . . in six months or so."

The whole article is worth a read.

The Friday Laugh

2009-02-20T11:01:00.000-05:00

"Loewe Sound"

A funny and clever commercial.

Happy Friday ASO community!

h/t Sullivan

Rush Limbaugh Says "Barack Obama Should Not Impose Fairness Doctrine on Talk Radio"

2009-02-20T09:21:00.000-05:00

Dear President Obama:

I have a straightforward question, which I hope you will answer in a straightforward way: Is it your intention to censor talk radio through a variety of contrivances, such as "local content," "diversity of ownership," and "public interest" rules -- all of which are designed to appeal to populist sentiments but, as you know, are the death knell of talk radio and the AM band?

You have singled me out directly, admonishing members of Congress not to listen to my show. Bill Clinton has since chimed in, complaining about the lack of balance on radio. And a number of members of your party, in and out of Congress, are forming a chorus of advocates for government control over radio content. This is both chilling and ominous.

Read more here.

Cartoon of the Day

2009-02-19T23:12:00.000-05:00

Matt Drudge Highlighting CNBC Clip Of Chicago Traders' Disgust With Obama Mortgage Plan

2009-02-19T11:58:00.000-05:00

The video clip may be found here.

Fairly incredible footage.

Meghan McCain Discusses The GOP's Use Of The Internet

2009-02-19T11:43:00.000-05:00

On her blog at Daily Beast.

As a blogger and daughter of the 2008 Republican Presidential candidate, Ms. McCain knows of what she speaks.

The post is worth a read.

The Intolerance of Ideas and Bipartisanship

2009-02-19T11:42:00.000-05:00

Because of near unanimous opposition to the poorly planned and poorly developed economic stimulus bill many Republicans are facing the ire of the Democrats and some in the media who have decided that their opposition equates wanting America to fail. Editorials to this affect suggest that believing the economic stimulus bill is wrong, is un-American. Instead, the ridiculous expectation that some Americans must concede their beliefs and support this bill is not bipartisan; it is intolerant of our principles.

Instead, the real news should be the ridiculous notion that if this Administration reheats and rehashes the archaic and misguided policies of the FDR and Carter presidencies the results will be different this time around. And while this Administration, like FDR’s, was not responsible for the economic mess it inherited, they will be held responsible for prolonging an economic crisis through poor policy. Remember, this is not the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and those comparisons amount to nothing more than fear-mongering for the purpose of passing a bill.

Furthermore, the idea that Republicans should not oppose the stimulus because of the fiscal irresponsibility on their watch is preposterous. Someone, anyone, especially an elected public official who is salaried by the American taxpayer has the duty to stand in the way of fiscal irresponsibility. And while it may be the case that W. and the Republicans turned left in a crisis, the logic of following fiscal irresponsibility with more fiscal irresponsibility is incoherent.

So what amounted was a stimulus bill that was not bipartisan, and President Obama’s efforts in that regard were a failure. But to hold Republicans responsible for the lack of bipartisanship on this bill reminds me of a good quote from The Audacity of Hope:

"Genuine bipartisanship assumes an honest process of give-and-take, and that the quality of the compromise is measured by how well it serves some agreed-upon goal, whether better schools or lower deficits. This in turn assumes that the majority will be constrained – by an exacting press corps and ultimately an informed electorate -- to negotiate in good faith.

"If these conditions do not hold -- if nobody outside Washington is really paying attention to the substance of the bill, if the true costs . . . are buried in phony accounting and understated by a trillion dollars or so -- the majority party can begin every negotiation by asking for 100% of what it wants, go on to concede 10%, and then accuse any member of the minority party who fails to support this 'compromise' of being 'obstructionist.'

"For the minority party in such circumstances, 'bipartisanship' comes to mean getting chronically steamrolled, although individual senators may enjoy certain political rewards by consistently going along with the majority and hence gaining a reputation for being 'moderate' or 'centrist.'"

Thanks to the WSJ for drawing attention to this, it is shocking that this is not a quote from a bitter Republican complaining about the stimulus bill, it is President Obama, suggesting that he understands bipartisanship and would understand why his stimulus was nowhere close to being bipartisan.

And so, in all likelihood, the rest of this Administration will follow suit: blame for the promise and failure of bipartisanship does not belong to Republicans, the past few weeks are evidence that for all their noise they have no power, but to Democrats. It is misguided to believe a genuine hand of bipartisanship was extended only to be met with a clenched Republican fist; instead, the Republicans were offered an accomplice’s role to which most, finally, displayed some principles. The Democrats responded not with tolerance, but with claims of a mandate from the American people.

The idea that the American people gave the Democrats authorization to repeat the failures of past administrations neglects the reality that over 46 percent of Americans did not vote for Obama, none of us voted for the Stimulus (none of us even had the chance to read it), and, for perspective, only .15 percent of American voters voted for Nancy Pelosi, hardly a mandate. For Congressional Leaders to feel empowered by the American people is a crime, the Congressional approval rating recently skyrocketed from 19 percent to a whopping 31 percent (from historically poor, to a mere pathetically low), meaning, of course, that 7 of ten Americans don’t believe they gave Pelosi and her cronies any type of mandate. And while this is the reality of the American Republic, it illustrates the illusions of grandeur with which some politicians are dealing. Someone should send Pelosi and the President the writings of John Stuart Mills, because this is the tyranny of the majority in a very vulgar form.

Cartoon of the Day

2009-02-18T23:57:00.000-05:00

Obama's Silver Lining

2009-02-18T14:43:00.000-05:00

For all the criticism of the early Administration, President Obama should be commended on one thing, his opposition to the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine. If only his own party would listen to him as Democratic leaders and figures have supported reinstatement of the FD. The list so far includes: Speaker Pelosi, Sen. Schumer, Sen. Stabenow, Sen. Harkin, and former President Clinton.

Obama's War On Terror Is Starting To Look A Bit Like Bush's War On Terror

2009-02-18T13:11:00.000-05:00

The more things change, the more things stay the same?

Obama Administration To Host Fiscal Responsibility Summit

2009-02-18T12:22:00.000-05:00

The summit will be next week at the White House.

The New York Times has the preliminary details:

The White House is finishing plans for what it is calling a “fiscal responsibility summit,” a three-hour bipartisan wonk-fest. Invitations are going out this week to 90 people: 30 members of the House, 30 senators and 30 scholars and representatives of advocacy groups such as AARP, according to a person familiar with the plans.

The afternoon session is not expected to yield any policy decisions, but to “underscore how big the problems are” and to air potential solutions, this person said. Administration officials have put out the word that the summit will not be the occasion to announce a task force on keeping Social Security solvent for the long-term, as they had considered, though such a panel may be formed eventually.

After Mr. Obama opens the summit, the assemblage will break into six groups. Each will discuss separate topics that encompass the range of fiscal challenges that would exist even without the current recession and will endure once the economy recovers. The topics include health-care costs, Social Security, tax reform, defense procurement and the federal budget process.

From Congress, invitees include House and Senate leaders of both parties, the Democratic chairmen and senior Republicans on several committees, and representatives of some caucuses, including the fiscally conservative Democratic “Blue Dogs” in the House.

Cartoon of the Day

2009-02-17T20:47:00.000-05:00

Fairness and Localism

2009-02-17T14:40:00.000-05:00

O'Reilly and Beck clip on the Fairness Doctrine and Localism: