Jay Carney, the president’s press secretary, blames the Republicans for the Senate’s failure to even submit a budget. I’m serious. He claims it is a lack of bipartisanship on the part of the Republicans that is the root cause of the Senate’s refusal to even submit a budget. This comes from the spokesman for the party that crammed Obamacare down our throats without a single vote from the opposition party. More…
Category Archives: Tea Party
Nomination through character assassination 1
By Tom Quiner
Mitt Romney's multimillion dollar smear campaign against Newt Gingrich is dividing the party
Mitt Romney and the Republican Establishment (RE) are doing grave damage to the Grand Old Party.
Mr. Romney has spent $17 million in Florida alone with a single thrust: to smear Newt Gingrich. Gingrich has spent about $5 million to defend himself and counterpunch against the Romney assault, an assault joined by John McCain, Bob Dole and other members of the RE. These are the guys who lose elections by running as moderates.
Newt Gingrich is a guy who won elections by running as a conservative.
Newt Gingrich is the guy who helped Republicans regain the House in 1994 by promoting a bold, conservative agenda.
Newt Gingrich is the guy who helped balance the budget through conservative fiscal policies.
This is the guy the RE wants to destroy.
Mr. Romney and the RE tell us Gingrich questioned Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies and doubted they would work against the Soviet Union. This is old hat. It was all in the Congressional Record. But for the record, only two men in the world believed at that time that the Evil Empire could be defeated: Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II.
I remember reading Dinesh D’Souza’s wonderful book, “Ronald Reagan, How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader.” He recalled a meeting Reagan had with the RE intelligentsia which included George Will. Mr. Will could be seen rolling his eyes when Reagan suggested that the Soviet Union would fall.
Here’s the point: Mr. Gingrich and most of the party believed that the Soviet Union could be contained, but not defeated. Gingrich was no different than anyone else in the party on this score.
And yet Romney and the RE are spending millions to promote Gingrich’s so-called apostasy as if this is some new revelation. It’s not.
This concocted smear can work for the uninformed who revere Ronald Reagan, as I do, but don’t know the back story.
Romney and the RE continually drudge up the ethics violations levied against Mr. Gingrich. Romney bellows for Gingrich to release “all the records.” The suggestion, of course, is that Gingrich is still hiding something.
Mr. Romney, Mr. Dole, and Mr. McCain all know, and the Wall Street Journal has reported, that all 1280 pages of the records are available online.
The smear works, because most people don’t realize this is all old news; that it’s all out there on the public record and has been for nearly fifteen years; that Gingrich was exonerated of 83 of the 84 charges while still in the House, and was later exonerated on the final charge by the IRS after he left office.
Mr. Romney’s path to the nomination seems to be through the character assassination of his chief rival, regardless of the cost to his own integrity.
The Massachusetts Moderate is doing grave damage in his assault on the standard bearer for The Tea Party, Newt Gingrich,
A party divided cannot win elections, and Mitt Romney and the RE are dividing the GOP.
Like this:
Is this poster libelous? 4
By Tom Quiner
I ran across this poster on Facebook today with this question: ”Is this poster libelous?”
In other words, is it false, and does it bring President Obama into disrepute?
You may think that former President Bush was subjected to much worse. But he had a much healthier respect for the First Amendment than Barack Obama.
You tell me: is this poster libelous?
Like this:
The Tea Party responds to the president: “the time is now!” 2
By Tom Quiner
The president gave his State of the Union address. He says the “time is now” to make change.
The Tea Party movement agrees, only the change they call for is far different than what the president wants.
The Tea Party calls for:
1. A budget. It has been 1000 days since the Senate has presented a budget.
2. Stop deficit spending. The president has increased deficit spending.
3. Real spending cuts.
4. Repeal government-controlled healthcare, aka “Obamacare.”
The president and the Tea Party agree on the timing, “now.” But president is adamant in his rejection of limited government and responsible budgeting.
Who is right? The Tea Party, of course.
How do we create opportunity? 2
By Tom Quiner
Some of the folks participating in the Occupy Wall Street protests have a good point: they need a job.
The official unemployment rate continues to hover above nine percent. That number doesn’t reflect another group, the permanently unemployed. These are the folks that have given up looking for a job. When you factor them into the equation, some economists put the actual unemployment rate at 15% to 20%.
Americans are hurting. They want answers. They want solutions.
There seem to be two camps in America these days. The Tea Party camp sees government as the problem. The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) camp sees government as the solution. Specifically, the OWS seem to view the economy as a zero-sum game, that somehow the rich are rich at their expense. Their solution seems to be for the government to intercede by taxing the rich and redistributing it to the rest of us.
They seem to want more government intervention in the marketplace. And yet it is just that that is the root cause of so many of our problems.
Let me ask you a question. What are two of our most screwed-up market sectors?
I would suggest the housing market and health care. Both have been victims of what I term “politically-correct capitalism.”
The home mortgage market was corrupted by government pressure on the private sector to make loans to folks who weren’t credit worthy. The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 was given teeth by President Clinton and his Attorney General, Janet Reno, who threatened to sue lenders if their client list wasn’t racially balanced. Lenders were pressured to lower credit, income, and down payment criteria by the government.
That was just just the beginning.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-sponsored enterprises, lowered their lending standards which encouraged even riskier loans by mortgage lenders.
President Bush pushed the American Dream Down Payment Assistance Act which required the FHA to subsidize down payments for low income Americans.
Between 2005 and 2007, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac took on a trillion dollars worth of subprime loans and guaranteed another two trillion.
Of course, the market that soared built on politically-correct loans collapsed like a house of cards when home values began to decline.
Government intervention created the problem.
Look at the price of health insurance. Government prevents us from buying health insurance products across state lines, which dramatically limits consumer options. Even more, state and federal governments have systematically created mandates that require health insurance companies to provide (and charge) for coverage that their clients do not necessarily want.
So at the same time government reduced our choices, they ratcheted up the price we pay by forcing us to buy coverage we don’t want. All of this in the name of politically-correct capitalism.
You can see the results of this skewing of the marketplace by what you don’t see on television. Unlike car insurance companies that market across state lines without the burden of undue government mandates, there are no TV commercials touting low-priced health insurance policies.
Government has essentially suppressed competition, the life blood of a healthy market place.
The elites in Washington always know what’s best for us.
So how do we create opportunity for the legions of Americans hurting from the effects of politically-correct capitalism?
We need to reduce the role of government in the marketplace.
We need fewer regulations, not more. Each regulation has a price associated with it. Each excessive regulation costs us jobs.
We need less government spending and less taxation, not more.
We’ve done it Obama’s way.
Are you satisfied with the results?
