Ask yourself, tax code, do you feel lucky? Do ya, punk?

 Rick Perry stabs the tax system in the heart.  But under the plan, is it dead or simply pining for the fjords?

Steve Forbes must feel like he’s stepped into a time machine.

The 1996 & 2000 GOP presidential candidate briefly electrified the denizens of political wonkdom with his conception of a national flat tax to simplify – and eliminate – the current overcomplicated tax code over 15 years ago.  Forbes’ idea of broadening the tax base while reducing the individual tax burden proved a temporary hit – too much of one as most of his 1996 rivals embraced similar policies.  Unfortunately for flat tax advocates, the only candidate who didn’t rush towards the concept was nominee Bob Dole, and since then the tax as languished as more theory than practice despite its success in many former Soviet bloc countries.

That is until now, as Texas Governor Rick Perry has revived the concept, winning Forbes’ praise and liberal scorn.  The headlines have screamed about Perry’s new tax rate of 20%, but in most reports, the lead has been buried:

“The plan starts with giving Americans a choice between a new, flat tax rate of 20 percent or their current income tax rate,” Perry writes. “The new flat tax preserves mortgage interest, charitable and state and local tax exemptions for families earning less than $500,000 annually, and it increases the standard deduction to $12,500 for individuals and dependents.”

 

The plan also drops the corporate tax rate to 20 percent and will temporarily lower the rate to 5.25 percent to promote companies working overseas to move to the U.S. along with implementing a “territorial tax system,” which will  tax in-country income.

 

The plan will eliminate the death tax and end taxes on Social Security, which would help an estimated 17 million Americans receiving benefits today. It would also cut taxes on qualified dividends and long-term capital gains.

The drop in corporate tax rate would put the U.S. as the lowest in the world (among major competitors; there are a number of nations with no corporate taxes).  And with most foreign economies unable or unwilling to respond in-kind with similar corporate tax rate cuts, the U.S. could be looking at an immediate repatriation of up to $1.4 trillion with the addition of a “territorial tax.”  Does that mean an immediate increase in jobs?  Not exactly, but a similar “repatriation holiday” for overseas corporations in 2004 spurred massive investments in capital and employment.

Lost in the corporate tax discussion has been Perry’s proposal to cap federal spending to 18% of GDP, or what would be roughly $2.54 trillion.  That’s under the projected 2012 revenues of $2.627 trillion and significantly under the Obama adminstration’s desired $3.729 trillion of spending.  Perry is obviously expecting that projected $1.4 trillion to soften the blow as increased income would (hopefully) spur GDP growth, raising Perry’s 18% beyond projected 2012 revenue levels.

The chief compliants from the right, much like with Herman Cain’s “999” plan, are that Perry’s flat tax doesn’t go far enough.  Indeed, both leading economic fixes from the GOP field disembowel the current tax system but keep it wrapped together in some fiscal Eraserhead policy nightmare.  Both Cain and Perry’s proposals have foreign models to work from – Cain’s VATesque vision which has hindered Europe; Perry’s opt-out Hong Kong-like system which has worked well despite the complication of individuals being potentially able to switch back-and-forth from flat tax to the current system year to year.

Ultimately, Perry’s flat tax needs to be seen as the beginning of a new policy discussion, rather than as a destination.  A total overhaul of the tax code, while popular in spirit, likely polls poorly when the roughly 47% of Americans who don’t pay federal taxes figure out they might be forced to actually contribute to the system.  As proposed, few Americans will find themselves benefiting from the policy, but I think critics are thinking too short term and too little on the potential corporate effects of the plan.

Keith at Redneck Crackers And Beer wonders if  Delta Airlines has just been messing with us:.

I posted back in July that the Essential Air Service program was out of date, needed to be repealed, and cost the tax payers millions of dollars.

This is the government subsidy program that keeps airlines flying to cities that otherwise couldn’t support airline service on their own.

With the news that the program was on the chopping block, Delta announced – as they frequently do – that they’d have to start cutting service to these cities.

Whaddya suppose happened next?

 Just out of curiosity I checked Delta’s website recently and noticed that only a few of these towns have been dropped and several have picked up regional jet service who only had turboprop service previously.

Huh.

So the question is, was Delta just playing the people in these small towns to lobby their congress-critters to pass the EAS bill to keep the pork rolling in to places that can’t afford commercial air service, and want the rest of us to pay for it?

Why not?

The tactic – “keep paying us for something that people won’t pay for, or at least pay as much for – naturally on their own”  – is as predictable as every play in the Vikings playbook.  Every school district and Local-Government-Aid-accepting city in Minnesota does it every year at budget time; “keep the swag coming, or we’re going to have to cut you off!”

While at the “Occupy Minnesota” “rally” over the weekend, I saw a few signs saying that “Labor Creates Wealth”.

Now, I’ve got nothing against labor.  I work for a living; without someone to build things to sell, capital and management will be more or less out to dry.

But does labor create wealth?

For those of you who believe this, I’m going to propose an experiment.

1. Do some work.  Any work at all.  Dig a ditch, draw a painting, ride a bike from downtown to downtown, bake a tray of cookies, write a blog post, play guitar in the skyway, build a dog house, make your bed, it doesn’t matter.  Just do some…labor.
2. Check to see if you have gotten any “wealth” – money, food, lodging, coffee beans, green stamps, trading cards, coupons, strings of beads – by simple dint of having labored.

 I’m guessing “no”.  And without wanting to spoil the experiment, I’m going to speculate on exactly why. 

Without someone willing to pay you something for that “labor”, the “labor” you did in #1 above was just something you did for fun (hopefully; I mean, you didn’t really expect to be paid, did you?)

And who is it that finds someone who needs, and is willing to pay for, a ditch or a drawing or for you to ride your bike, or is hungry for cookies or your insight or your music, or needs a dog house?

Management.

Now, you could very well be your own manager – it happens all the time.

And unless you dig with your hands, draw with your blood, inherited a bike, conjure flour and sugar and chocolate chips and butter and heat from pure mind power, can ethically blog from the library, imitate a guitar with your voice, or pound nails with your face, someone needs to “invest” in a shovel, a pencil, a bike, ingredients and a stove and gas, a computer, a guitar, and a hammer and some wood, in the hopes that they’ll generate a “return” on the investment – money or food or lodging or whatever you get for your labor.  Again – you could be the investor!   But without someone – you, your mom, a venture capitalist, or a bank listed on the NYSE – to “invest” in making sure you have the tools you need to make sure your labor produces something to take to market, you’ll be, well, pounding nails with your face, as it were.

It’s called “Capital”.

Tea Partiers:  Leaving the world a little cleaner than they found it.

Occupy Wall Streeters: Filthy spoiled pigs:

The owners of the park – a private park whose compact with the city allows anyone to be there atany time – released a statement that says…:

…“because the protestors refuse to cooperate…the park has not been cleaned since Friday, September 16th and as a result, sanitary conditions have reached unacceptable levels.”

“They’re just making life miserable for the working guy,” bar owner Mike Keane told CBS 2′s Dave Carlin

I wonder how the “Hippies For Obama” rally went?

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes that the group “occupying” the square at Henco Gov’t Center tomorrow will be running rampant:

Well, not rampant. The County will provide portable toilets and bike racks. Alcohol is banned, smoking is allowed on sidewalks only, tents are still being negotiated.

These people fancy themselves the heirs to Kent State or Tiananmen Square – rebels, risking all sticking it to The Man. They might as well be Kiwanis.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Or, y’know, Republicans.

Chris Fields, as we’ve noted before in this space, is running for Congress in the 5th CD.

He’s running a design contest to pick his campaign logo.

Go and chime in!

The “N-Head” “controversy” – which was the most contrived, yellow bit of journalism since Rochelle Olson’s hit piece on Alan Fine back in the ’06 race in MNCD5 – may not be what knocks Rick Perry out of the presidential race.  Indeed, there are months before the fat lady sings, and anything can happen.

But Perry is making some unforced errors.  And it looks as if Mitt Romney is making some moves toward testing the thesis that he’s “the most electable Republican”.

Now, let’s be clear ; Romney’s never been my candidate, but he’d be light years better than Obama.  Indeed, except for John Huntsman and Mike Huckabee, every GOP contender (I know, Huck’s not in the race; work with me, here) would be a better president than Barack Obama, especially if we flip the Senate this next session; on dealing with the economy, Mitt Romney at the head of a Tea-Party-motivated two-house majority to temper whatever flecks of “moderate” impedimenta he still has would be just the cataract of common sense this nation desperately needs.

There is danger here, of course.  “Berg’s Law” – the immutable laws of human and political behavior that I’ve compiled over the years – pretty clearly apply here.

I’ll cite the relevant ones:

Berg’s Eleventh Law of Inverse Viability: The conservative liberals “respect” for their “conservative principles” will the the one that has the least chance of ever getting elected.

The McCain Corollary To Berg’s Eleventh Law: If that respected conservative ever develops a chance of getting elected, that “respect” will turn to blind unreasoning hatred overnight.

The Huckabee Corollary the McCain Corolloary To Berg’s Eleventh Law: The Republican that the media covers most intensively before the nomination for any office will be the one that the liberals know they have the best chance of beating after the nomination, and/or will most cripple the GOP if nominated.

No ambiguity here.

It’s why the media has given the likes of McCain, Huckabee and John Huntsman such “favorable” coverage; in the hopes of building them up into contenders that’d sap the real Republican front-runner, or even fatally weak nominees that they could then turn around and demolish (vide McCain).

Now, I think the Democrats and media (pardon the redundancy) are in a bind here; they hate Perry, obviously; if nominated, he’s win in a landslide, so the media is on full-blown destructo alert; unfortunately, Perry is obliging.   But they really wanted to prop up someone like a Huntsman, who is indistinguishable from a mainstream Democrat, or Huckabee, who is more of the same plus the kind of pro-lifer that’ll get the social libs exercised enough to maybe squeedge out some votes.

Romney?  He’s not a Tea Party favorite, but most of the Tea Party is driven by common sense, not purist ideology; the Tea Party is as much about rejecting socialism as it is adopting pure conservatism.

And that may sum up Romney’s appeal; he’s not a pure libertarian ideologue; nobody will ever mistake him for Ron Paul.  But he’s conservative enough on the issues that matter – the economy, business – and he’s got a lifetime of experience actually executing on that ideology, unlike the current resident.

So yeah, if Romney is the nominee, I won’t need to hold my nose to work and vote for him.  He’s not perfect, but he’s way more than “good enough”.  On a stage full of candidates who would all be better than Obama on every issue, Romney (along with Perry and Cain) stands out from the pack on the issue – the economy.

Could Herman Cain still blow this thing up?  It’s fun to think so; I’d hate to think that our race was already decided 10 months before the convention, 2-4 months before the first caucus or primary.

At any rate, as (I think it was) Mark Steyn noted on the Hewitt show the other day, the GOP race really has devolved  to “who is going to be Marco Rubio’s running mate?”

First things first:  Pardon the fact that I’m linking to Infowars.

But this was just too good to miss:  the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters are truly, truly stupid people:

The zeal for totalitarian government amongst some of the “protesters” is shocking. One sign being carried around read, “A government is an entity which holds the monopolistic right to initiate force,” which seems a little ironic when protesters complain about being physically assaulted by police in the same breath.

One woman interviewed by Kokesh also announces her intention to help Obama to capture a second term. How can a self-proclaimed Occupy Wall Street protester simultaneously support the man whose 2008 campaign was bankrolled by Wall Street, whose 2012 campaign is reliant on Wall Street to an even greater extent, and whose cabinet was filled with Wall Street operatives?

My favorite moment – where by “favorite” I mean “scares the crap out of me” – is the nebbishy little product of, no doubt, an exquisitely expensive post-secondary education at 1:45:   “There are certain things called civil liberties which are limitations on democracy”.

…that they are tired of politicians who “act like politicians” – who calculate everything they say to a fine, calibrated sheen, in order not to lose a single vote.

And then you encounter the exceptions – and you realize why so many politicians do measure what they say so very very carefully.

Paul Wellstone was one of them; he pretty much shot from the hip and said whatever his heart put on his sleeve.  He was, of course, so thoroughly in tune with the the Minnesota mainstream media’s “Wish I coulda been at Woodstock” id that it never really cost him.

And then there’s Michele Bachmann.  A woman who proves the old saying “when a lefty calls you “crazy”, it’s their way of saying “you’re smarter than me” [*], she’s also the exact opposite of a Tim Pawlenty or a Norm Coleman; as I discussed almost three years back, if Coleman and Pawlenty are like political engineers, calculating out all their angles so that they don’t spring any rhetorical gusset plates and get dumped in the political river, then Michele Bachmann is like a jazz saxophonist, improvising, sometimes without a net.  When it works, it works, like Dizzy Gillespie improvising around a theme.  And when it doesn’t?  Gillespie used to repeat sour notes a few times, to make it seem intentional; in jazz, it works.  In politics?

Enh.

At the last Republican debate, Bachmann mentioned some unfortunate claimed outcomes from Governor Perry’s HPV vaccination campaign.

A couple of medical ethicists picked up on that statement, and theatrically demanded the details.

Mr. D from Mr. Dilettante’s Neighborhood found some irony in that:

I would assume that [the ethicists] both understand that releasing medical records is a dicey proposition, given the strictures involved. And it’s hardly surprising that the news media aren’t mentioning that these two ethicists are asking for a course of action that would be considered unethical. Would the parent of a child really consent to havving their child’s medical history splashed across the airwaves and the internet? Would you?

Not sure I’d want it mentioned in a speech, either, but there are different levels of intrusiveness involved here – some of them with legal implications.

But Mr. D. seems to have had that same feeling I got, too:

Having said that, Bachmann is wrong, wrong, wrong about vaccinations. The anti-vaccination folks are playing a dangerous game and Bachmann was exceptionally foolish to play along in the hopes of gaining a temporary political advantage over her rival, Rick Perry. Whether Perry’s approach to the matter was wise or not is tangential to the larger point, which is that vaccinations have greatly improved public health and saved the lives of millions of people.

To be fair, I don’t think Bachmann was playing to the “anti-vaccination” people so much as the “I’ll see to own kids’ vaccinations without any of your executive-ordering, thank yoiu very much” crowd.

Not that the left or media (pardon the redundancy) will help distinguish the two.

[*] OK, it’s not an “old saying”.  I made it up.  But I don’t think it’s especially inaccurate.

Gibson Musical Instrument Corp. CEO Henry Juszkiewicz will be at President Obama’s “Jobs” speech tonight, to remind His Excellency and the assembled, adoring media that the Administration’s politicized, idiotic policies – enforcing an arcane Indian law – are going to cost the company millions of dollars, and if followed through will cost the Nashville area 40 skilled, high-paying manufacturing jobs.

Close-up of the new re-issue "Eric Clapton 1960 Les Paul". Hint, Santa.

In solidarity with Gibson, I’ll supply them some free advertising.

Indian Freaking Rosewood, Administration Byatches!

I do endorse Gibson guitars (although, to be fair, most guitar players do – even lifelong Fender guys like me; I finally took the plunge on a Gibson product last year, and yeah, it’s niiiice).

Oooh - Gibson provides jobs all over the world!

Gateway Pundit writes:

Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz told reporters today that the federal raid on the popular American guitar maker will cost the company $10,000,000. Juszkiewicz also said that he will attend Obama’s big spending jobs speech tomorrow in Washington DC.

Is that a gorgeous piece of work or what? It sounds even better than it looks. And guess what? Yep - made in the USA. One of those "American Manufacturing Jobs" that lefties are constantly barbering about. Outsource this? Why not outsource guarding the Tomb of the Unknowns to the Pakistani military, while you're at it?

Attorney General Eric Holder said the raid on the Gibson was not political.

And if you believe Holder you are an idiot here’s an excellent Fox News clip summing up the entire story so far.

Remember – the CEO of Martin guitars (sorry – while they make gorgeous guitars, and I also own a Martin product, they get no free ads from me), which builds guitars out of exactly the same Indian-grown, American-finished rosewood as Gibson, which is not illegal under US law and only vaguely-sanctioned under Indian law, is a big Democrat contributor.

A Gibson ES335. A favorite of both jazz musicians and loud rockers who like the ES' excellent feedback characteristics.

Of course, Gibson is just one of many such stories – companies being harried, money being confiscated, jobs being destroyed by our rapacious, power-mad bureaucracy.

Yep, there's parts, too. This is a Gibspon "Soap Bar". I have one sunk into the middle position of my Fender Jazz, wired out of phase with the bridge pickup; when they play together, it sounds more like Mark Knopfler's Strat (think "Sultans of Swing") than Mark Knopfler's Strat does.

I’m working to get Mr. Juskiewicz on the Northern Alliance one of these next few weekends.  Keep your fingers crossed; if you’re a fan of limited government or music, it’ll be a great chat.

Let’s take a trip back to early 2007.

While Minnesota’s conservative blog scene had been been dominating the local alternative media scene since the “Blog” became a household word, it was a series of scattershot phenomena – you had a bunch of huge megabloggers like Powerline and Ed Morrissey, and on the other hand a whoooole lot of people who tried blogging for a few weeks or months, maybe drew a little attention,and then got frustrated at the difficulty involved in actually getting read.

In the meantime, the Big Left blogs had two big advantages; a hive-like reader community that pretty much read what they were told to read, and liberals with deep pockets who were willing to pay bloggers to write the stuff.

We wondereed – what was the way forward?

It was in the summer of ’07 that Andy Aplikowski hatched the idea of a center-right conservative group blog, aggregating material from the full range of center-right bloggers in Minnesota.  He and Derek Brigham and Nancy LaRoche ran with the idea, along with Brian Mason, Matt Abe, Kevin Ecker, the Lady Logician and, eventually, me.

That idea became True North.

The idea?  Give regional center-right bloggers an outlet, and a soapbox, and if all went well, a megaphone – a way for they, their blogs, and especially their writing and reporting,to be seen by a wider audence than they could get all by themselves, an outlet that would be greater than the sum of all our individual parts.

And so it was four years ago today that True North launched.  Then as now, we were based on one simple set of principles – and the mission to get writers who supported those principles out and in front of the public.

Some leftybloggers didn’t know what to make of us. But we’ve had a blast.

Nobody’s ever made a dime from True North – I don’t think we’ve ever accepted advertising – but we’ve had an effect far beyond anything anyone could have expected.  Litlte birds tell me we’re daily reading at the Capitol, on both sides of the aisle.  Beyond that?  One of our former contribs is in the Legislature (King Banaian, 15B); another, Michele Bachmann, is a presidential candidate.

It’s been a great four years – and the best is yet to come!

So thanks, Andy and Derek and Nancy, and Brian, Cindy, Kevin and Matt, and especially everyone that’s written for True North over the past four years!

As we head into America’s annual “Labor Day” holiday, it’s worth asking – all you organized labor members in the private sector, what on earth do you think the government is telling you?

This morning, the AFL-CIO released this statement to the press:

AT&T Will Return 5,000 Jobs to U.S. on Completion of AT&T/T-Mobile Merger 

Company Commits to No Job Losses for Call Center Workers at AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile 

Washington, D.C. — AT&T’s announcement that it will bring back a net 5,000 quality wireless jobs to the United States following the completion of its merger with T-Mobile USA is very good news.

“These jobs will provide quality wages and benefits and good working conditions for U.S. workers — exactly what’s needed to help turn around our struggling economy.  Instead of sitting on more than $2 trillion in assets and sending jobs overseas while millions of Americans are out of work, working people are looking for U.S. employers to follow AT&T’s lead.  If more employers took this kind of action, we could begin to move our economy forward and strengthen the middle class,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

AT&T’s commitment that the T-Mobile merger will not result in any job losses for current call center workers at AT&T Mobility or T-Mobile USA is more evidence of the kind of corporate responsibility we need here in the United States, Trumka said.

CWA President Larry Cohen pointed out that “cuts in wages, benefits, and jobs have become the new normal in America, so that when a company like AT&T takes action to bring back quality jobs, it’s big news.”

In addition to restoring a net 5,000 quality jobs and a commitment that no job losses will occur for U.S. call center workers at either company, the merger has additional positive gains for workers, consumers, communities and the industry.

• It will accelerate the buildout of high-speed wireless broadband to 97 percent of the nation, enabling an additional 55 million people, especially in rural and underserved areas, to share in the benefits of Internet technology.
• AT&T will develop T-Mobile’s assets and offer T-Mobile customers the latest in technology.
• AT&T and T-Mobile utilize compatible technologies.
• AT&T has a demonstrated commitment to workers’ rights, supporting management neutrality that enables workers to make a free and fair choice about union representation and bargaining rights.

That’s jobs, people!  Not just “living-wage” and “shovel-ready”, but good, solid, technical jobs with real skills and long-term potential – not the “shovel-ready” govenment make-work jobs the Administration and the public employee unions are babbling about.  The kind of jobs you can raise a family, build a career and support a community on!

And so what did the Administration do?

Joined up with Al Franken, and kicked you all, every one of you private-sector union employees, straight in the teeth:

The Department of Justice today filed a civil antitrust lawsuit to block AT&T Inc.’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile USA Inc. The department said that the proposed $39 billion transaction would substantially lessen competition for mobile wireless telecommunications services across the United States, resulting in higher prices, poorer quality services, fewer choices and fewer innovative products for the millions of American consumers who rely on mobile wireless services in their everyday lives.

The department’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks to prevent AT&T from acquiring T-Mobile from Deutsche Telekom AG.

“The combination of AT&T and T-Mobile would result in tens of millions of consumers all across the United States facing higher prices, fewer choices and lower quality products for mobile wireless services,” said Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole. “Consumers across the country, including those in rural areas and those with lower incomes, benefit from competition among the nation’s wireless carriers, particularly the four remaining national carriers. This lawsuit seeks to ensure that everyone can continue to receive the benefits of that competition.”

So there you go, unions; after you spent tens of millions of your dues on getting Obama and Franken elected, what do you get?  Screwed – in favor of a bunch of nutroots whose only agenda is controlling all alternative media!

So whatdya think about that?

Feeling – what’s the word I’m looking for…

…betrayed?

UPDATE:  The CWA is not amused.

The decision by the U.S. Department of Justice to seek to block the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile USA is simply wrong.

In today’s sinking economy, where millions of Americans are looking for work, the DOJ has filed suit to block a merger that will create as many as 96,000 quality jobs. In the U.S., where too many Americans, especially in rural areas, don’t have access to the tools of Internet technology, the DOJ is looking to block a plan to build out high speed wireless access to 97 percent of the country.

In a nation where workers’ rights are routinely violated, as occurs everyday at T-Mobile, the DOJ apparently believes that workers should be on their own instead of having a fair choice about union representation.

The DOJ’s action would put good jobs and workers’ rights at the bottom of the government’s priorities. Just yesterday, AT&T announced that it would return a net 5,000 jobs to the U.S. on completion of the merger. That is the kind of corporate responsibility that more employers in the U.S. should demonstrate if we are ever to have an economic recovery.

Instead of acting to block this merger, our government should be looking to support companies that create, keep and return good jobs to the United States.

They spent millions electing Democrats, and all they got was those lousy, usually awful-colored and ill-fitting, slogan t-shirts.

George Will notes what many upper-Midwest conservatives have been saying since February; the left went all-in on Wisconsin because if they can lose there, they can lose any and everywhere.

I’ll start with Will’s conclusion:

As the moonless night of fa$ci$m descends on America’s dairyland, sidewalk graffiti next to the statehouse-square drinking fountain darkly warns: “Free water . . . for now.” There, succinctly, is liberalism’s credo: If everything isn’t “free,” meaning paid for by someone else, nothing will be safe.

That’s the crux of it all, really – but it wasn’t what the Wisconsin flap was about.

In fact, you could be forgiven for watching the American left this past seven months and having no idea what it was all about:

During the recall tumult, unions barely mentioned either their supposed grievance about collective bargaining, or their real fears, which concern money, particularly political money. Teachers unions can no longer bargain to require school districts to purchase teachers’ health insurance from the union’s preferred provider, which is especially expensive. This is saving millions of dollars and reducing teacher layoffs. Also, unions must hold annual recertification votes.

And teachers unions may no longer automatically deduct dues from members’ paychecks. After Colorado in 2001 required public employees unions to have annual votes reauthorizing collection of dues, membership in the Colorado Association of Public Employees declined 70 percent. In 2005, Indiana stopped collecting dues from unionized public employees; in 2011, there are 90 percent fewer dues-paying members. In Utah, the end of automatic dues deductions for political activities in 2001 caused teachers’ payments to fall 90 percent. After a similar law passed in 1992 in Washington state, the percentage of teachers making such contributions declined from 82 to 11.

Democrats furiously oppose Walker because public employees unions are transmission belts, conveying money to the Democratic Party. Last year, $11.2 million in union dues was withheld from paychecks of Wisconsin’s executive branch employees and $2.6 million from paychecks at the university across the lake. Having spent improvidently on the recall elections, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the teachers union, is firing 40 percent of its staff.

Progressives want to recall Walker next year. Republicans hope they try. Wisconsin seems weary of attempts to overturn elections, and surely Obama does not want his allies squandering political money and the public’s patience. Since 1960, no Democrat has been elected president without carrying Wisconsin.

Will – or the copy editor that wrote his headline, anyway – uses the “Waterloo” metaphor; a defeat that makes further victories impossible (until some sort of radical game-changer):

Walker has refuted the left’s sustaining conviction that a leftward-clicking ratchet guarantees that liberalism’s advances are irreversible. Progressives, eager to discern a victory hidden in their recent failures, suggest that a chastened Walker will not risk further conservatism. Actually, however, his agenda includes another clash with teachers unions over accountability and school choice, and combat over tort reform with another cohort parasitic off bad public policies — trial lawyers.

I can hardly wait for the next session – on both sides of the Saint Croix.

Illinois, which jacked up taxes (making Mark Dayton all green with envy) last January, has seen its unemployment rate rise...:

Illinois lost more jobs during the month of July than any other state in the nation, according to the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report. After losing 7,200 jobs in June, Illinois lost an additional 24,900 non-farm payroll jobs in July.

I tweeted about this last night.  Someone said “but what about as a percent of population!”, they responded with a rhetorical smirk.

Premature, naturally (emphasis added):

The report also said Illinois’s unemployment rate climbed to 9.5 percent. This marks the third consecutive month of increases in the unemployment rate.

Illinois started to create jobs as the national economy began to recover. But just when Illinois’s economy seemed to be turning around, lawmakers passed record tax increases in January of this year. Since then, Illinois’s employment numbers have done nothing but decline.

And for states that reduce taxes?

Well, what do you think?

One of the five second sound bites about Michele Bachmann is her take on her church’s (occasional) commandment that wives be “submissive” to their husbands.

Most non-Christians, and/or more liberal Christians (and I don’t belong to a denomination that preaches it, by the way) for that matter either misunderstand the idea, or know nothing but the distorted idea of “submission” fed to them by people like, well, Bachmann’s critics.

One of the areas where it’s irrelevant is, well, the presidency.  Michael Prell has an answer he’d suggest Bachmann give when she’s asked about the idea of “submission”.

Here’s the conclusion (read the whole thing here):

“Finally, as president, I will not be submissive to union bosses, to billionaire puppetmasters like George Soros, or to militant anti-American leftists who demonize our soldiers and preach ‘God damn America.’ And, unlike President Obama, I will not be submissive to indicted or convicted special interest groups like ACORN, or to Weatherman terrorists, or those who want to see Israel wiped from the map.”

“Instead, as President, I will be submissive to the American People, and to the Constitution, because as President I will honor my oath to serve both the Constitution and the People—unlike the current president of the United States and his minions who demonize patriotic and Constitution-loving Americans as ‘terrorists.’”

Submission is not the issue. It is who, and what, you submit to that matters.

That’s the real issue, and comparison, here; every tin-pot tyrant and banana-republic strongman is Barack Obama’s dominatrix.

Poor “Progressives”.

They can’t win elections.  Their politicians can’t do budgets (or, if they do, can never, ever make them work.  Even with years of unfettered control (from 2008 through 2010),  they can’t do anything useful with the economy.

And now even their protests suck:.

“We’re trying to find a caddy,” said a protester posing as Boehner. The Boehner impersonator stood beside impersonators of Minnesota Reps. Michele Bachmann, Erik Paulsen, Chip Cravaack and John Kline.

The “impersonators” were actually people wearing large cardboard cutouts of unflattering photos of the various politicians’ heads, looking like they were cut out from “Dump Bachmann” and blown up.  After eight years of constant caterwauling, they can’t even muster the energy to do those annoying papier-mache puppets anymore.

Cravaack wryly noted…:

“The people that we were speaking with were the job creators. They’re the people who employ Minnesotans,” Cravaack said of the attendees. “So we’re asking the question to them, ‘What is it going to take for you to invest in yourselves and create jobs?'”

He added that businesses are skittish about making that investment with the threat of new taxes and regulations from the Obama administration.

“Taxing companies right now in a recession is not going to create jobs,” Cravaack said. “It’s going to take jobs away.”

But to the progressive worldview, it’s government’s job to create jobs.

How?

By hiring lots of people who’ve never used shovels for a living for “shovel-ready” jobs? (What the hell is a “shovel-ready” job?  Outside of patching streets, what job in the world today actually uses shovels?)

By waving the magic government wand, perhaps?

They can’t even think of original chanting points:

Protesters accused the Minnesota congressmen of meeting with wealthy donors while proposing cuts to the middle class and not creating jobs. One sign read “People before profits,” and the crowd chanted “Hey-hey-ho-ho, corporate greed has got to go.”

Criminy – even Saul Alinsky is rolling in his grave.

“Paris Paramus”, a NARN listener and Romney supporter, sends a 14 point list of reasons to stay off the Perry bandwagon:

Supporters of Texas Governor Rick Perry are not going to like this article at all. Right now, Republicans all over the United States are touting Rick Perry as the “Republican messiah” that is going to come charging in to save America from the presidency of Barack Obama.

Any conservative that speaks in terms of “political messiahs” is as dumb as one of those slack-jawed, dreamy-eyed Obama bots three years ago.

No, Rick Perry is not going to save America. In fact, he would likely be very, very similar to both Bush and Obama in a lot of ways.

So let’s check this out:

#1 Rick Perry is a “big government” politician. When Rick Perry became the governor of Texas in 2000, the total spending by the Texas state government was approximately $49 billion. Ten years later it was approximately $90 billion. That is not exactly reducing the size of government.

It’s true – it’s not.  But; it amounts to about 7% a year.  Minnesota’s state budget grew 50% in the same period, mostly under spending-hawk Pawlenty – down from 10-20+% annual increases under Arne Carlson.  And it’s interesting to see that Texas, with almost 25 million people, has a state budget only three times as large as Minnesota’s.

Let’s call that a partial point against.

#2 The debt of the state of Texas is out of control. According to usdebtclock.org, the debt to GDP ratio in Texas is 22.9% and the debt per citizen is $10,645. In California (a total financial basket case), the debt to GDP ratio is just 18.7% and the debt per citizen is only $9932. If Rick Perry runs for president these are numbers he will want to keep well hidden.

While Texas is likely much better able to service the debt than California, because it’s not a basket case, it’s certainly a point against.

#3 The total debt of the Texas government has more than doubled since Rick Perry became governor. So what would the U.S. national debt look like after four (or eight) years of Rick Perry?

Worth a look – and I’lll roll it into point 2.

#4 Rick Perry has spearheaded the effort to lease roads in Texas to foreign companies, to turn roads that are already free to drive on into toll roads, and to develop the Trans-Texas Corridor which would be part of the planned NAFTA superhighway system. If you really do deep research on this whole Trans-Texas Corridor nonsense you will see why no American should ever cast a single vote for Rick Perry.

This is kind of a schizoid point.  On the one hand, privatizing roads is an eminently libertarian/conservative solution – switching roads from tax burdens to private fees.

On the other, you have the whole “trans-whatever highway” thing, which is something that glassy-eyed Paulbots chant about at meetings until everyone else is ready to mace them.

There may be a point against Perry here, but I’m not seeing it.

#5 Rick Perry claims that he has a “track record” of not raising taxes. That is a false claim. Rick Perry has repeatedly raised taxes and fees while he has been governor. Today, Texans are faced with significantly higher taxes and fees than they were before Rick Perry was elected.

Specifics would help, here.  What taxes?  Applied to whom?  How has the average Texan’s tax burden changed in ten years, and from what basis?

I’m willing to be convinced – but anyone who talks about “trans-Texas highways” had better bring actual numbers to atone for it.

#6 Even with the oil boom in Texas, 23 states have a lower unemployment rate than Texas does.

Right – and how is that Perry’s fault?  Specifics, people.

#7 Back in 1988, Rick Perry supported Al Gore for president. In fact, Rick Perry actually served as Al Gore’s campaign chairman in the state of Texas that year.

This may be the least convincing point of them all.

So what?  In 1980, I was a liberal.  In 1940, Ronald Reagan was a New Dealer.  Many of the best conservatives started out as liberals.  And in 1988, Algore was seen, and positioned himself, as a blue-dog, believe it or not.

Of all the shots I’ve heard against Perry, this is the dumbest.

#8 Between December 2007 and April 2011, weekly wages in the U.S. increased by about 5 percent. In the state of Texas they increased by just 0.6% over that same time period.

Again – context?  It could very well be that wages in Texas grew slower – although it seems unlikely, or at the very least that someone is comparing apples and blowtorches.

This – and #6, above – echo the lefties’ “where are the jobs?” chanting point; as if any conservative would, or any government could, create jobs and raise wages by decree.

I suspect other factors are at work here.

This next one is a big one:

#9 Texas now has one of the worst education systems in the nation. The following is from an opinion piece that was actually authored by Barbara Bush earlier this year….

•  We rank 36th in the nation in high school graduation rates. An estimated 3.8 million Texans do not have a high school diploma.

Limited focus on education is a problem throughout the South, though, and it’s a problem that long predates Rick Perry.  It predated Jefferson Davis, for that matter.  It starts with the Scots-Irish tradition, filtered through white “white trash” plantation culture, that still drives many facets of southern culture (like the south’s incredibly high violent crime rate), to say nothing of the other education problems plaguing urban school districts nationwide (including states with “good” education systems, like Minnesota).

If the author wants to make the case that Rick Perry could and should have turned this around, I’m all ears – but it seems like a stretch.  To be honest, 36th is higher than I’d expected.

•  We rank 49th in verbal SAT scores, 47th in literacy and 46th in average math SAT scores.

This is Rick Perry’s fault how?

•  We rank 33rd in the nation on teacher salaries.

If the point here is that teachers are overpaid for the performance they get out of the schools, it seems a stretchy one.

#10 Rick Perry attended the Bilderberg Group meetings in 2007. Associating himself with that organization should be a red flag for all American voters.

“Guilt by association” is an even bigger flag for any logical thinker.

Show me that Perry did anything.  Show me something incriminating that he said.

I was at the RNC when John McCain was nominated.  It doesn’t mean I was responsible for Barack Obama being elected.

#11 Texas has the highest percentage of workers making minimum wage out of all 50 states.

Given their SAT scores, that seems completely appropriate.

I’m a kidder.  I kid.  This is redundant with 6 and 8, and again, I’d need to see why this is supposedly the case.

#12 Rick Perry often gives speeches about illegal immigration, but when you look at the facts, he has been incredibly soft on the issue. If Rick Perry does not plan to secure the border, then he should not be president because illegal immigration is absolutely devastating many areas of the southwest United States.

Now we’re on to something.  Point against.

#13 In 2007, 221,000 residents of Texas were making minimum wage or less. By 2010, that number had risen to 550,000.

Again – so what?  Is it government’s, much less The Governor’s, job to see to everyone’s income?  In a recession?

And this is redundant with 6, 8 and 11.

#14 Rick Perry actually issued an executive order in 2007 that would have forced almost every single girl in the state of Texas to receive the Gardasil vaccine before entering the sixth grade. Perry would have put parents in a position where they would have had to fill out an application and beg the government not to inject their child with a highly controversial vaccine.

Now we’re on to something.  I’d have serious questions for Perry about this campaign; so, apparently, does Perry.

So out of fourteen ten points (six were redundant), we have one guilt by association, one aspersion based on out-of-context campaign positions from over 20 years ago, some things that I have trouble seeing as government’s responsibility much less the Governor’s, some social issues that no governor can control and that take generations or centuries to fix, and call it four actual problems – Gardasil, immigration, the state debt and the state budget.

And all of them are questions that need asking.

No, the title’s not bad grammar on my part.  It’s a great Steve Earle tune, from 1985 or so:

But yeah – since we’re on the subject, Dave Mindeman at mnpAct sniffs that “Minnesota Conservatives Are Not Satisfied“.

The conservativve [sic} wing of the Minnesota Republican Party is never satisfied. Shutting down the state government and a budget which focuses on massive cutting is not enough.

(It’s also fiction; the budget rose, the only things that got “cut” were for the most part the projected increases that the DFL-dominated bureaucracy demanded in 2009, and Dayton shut the government down, engineering it from the very start.  But let’s just let that slide for now).

Can you believe it? They are upset with the House committee chairs and are talking (get this) about subjecting some of them to primary challenges.

That takes cajones. (sic)

Well, think about it. If you’re a conservative, you spent a lot of time and energy working for Tom Emmer and a big slate of Republican candidates; though you were outspent by at least 2:1 by Big Labor, Big Oligarch and Big Dayton, you almost won the governor’s office, and you flipped both the House and the Senate.  You busted your butt, you wore out your shoes and your dialing finger.

And what did you get?  You got a GOP majority that…

• …raised spending, using the money from the February forecast, first, rather than making Dayton negotiate like hell for it.
• …dealt away Voter ID, Cornish’s Stand your Ground Law, and Zero-Based Budgeting, and…
• …to be fair, won a lot, and deferred some provisions important to conservatives ’til the less-charged, out-year session.

Politics in Minnesota put together an article that focused on the conservative angst. Three chairs in particular are mentioned:

They direct their anger at three high ranking House Republican committee chairmen in particular: Reps. Jim Abeler of Anoka, Pat Garofalo of Farmington and Steve Gottwalt of St. Cloud.

I was also interviewed in the piece – more on that in a bit – and while I haven’t read it (because I’m not a PIM subscriber), the bits I”ve seen made me sound a little more the zealot than I tried to present (not to knock Charley Shaw, the reporter, who does a great job with these things).

More on that in a bit.

Abeler has never been forgiven for voting for the gas tax override.

As I pointed out to Shaw, Abeler needs to earn his forgiveness.  He made a start this session.  He has a way to go.

As to the other two potential primary challenges Shaw mentioned – Pat Garofalo and Steve Gottwalt – I’ll believe ’em when I see them.  I operate under the phrase “perfect is the enemy of plenty good enough”, which drives some conservatives nuts, but that’s life, and Garofalo and Gottwalt are both imperfect and plenty, plenty good enough.

But here’s the part Mindeman doesn’t get; it’s none of his business.  It’s inside MNGOP baseball!  If the conservative wing of the MNGOP wants to flex whatever muscle it has, and either try to nominate more conservative candidates or drive the ones we have farther to the right, that’s our affair.  If it’s the wrong choice, electorally?  Well, Mindeman should be happy about that.

He’s not, and either is anyone else – because the conservative brand is waxing, and Obama and liberalism in general have coattails shorter than Daisy Duke.

Mindeman:

The logic of conservative thought processes is difficult to understand. The election was, in theory, all about jobs. But conservatives are most concerned about ideology.

It’s hard to know what Mindeman means by that. Does he believe that creating a healthier, free-er market – hence, jobs – isn’t part of our “ideology?”  Or doesn’t he believe that a bunch of competent adults can pursue fiscal issues and chew non-fiscal gum at the same time?

So no.  I, conservative, am not “satisfied” with the GOP today.  I’m happier than I was four or eight or twenty years ago – but we have a way to go.

And I’m having a lot more fun getting there than I used to.

That is satisfying.

Ahem.

At the risk of dispersing some of this blog’s usual decorum:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

(breathe)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I’m not usually one for end-zone happy-dancing.  But after all the “you are teh racist/sexist/anti-worker/anti-middle-class/teabagger!/Koch-sucker/crap all of us conservatives have had to sit through since the last election, frankly, I think we’re entitled.

Last night’s victory in Wisconsin, like the “budget compromise” in DC and the Minnesota state budget, weren’t unalloyed victories – but in this case, it wasn’t even as close as it looked for the Wisconsin Democrats.

Think about it, “progressives”; you just spent $40,000,000 of your unions members’ dues – twice as much as the entire campaign for the entire Wisconsin State Senate cost in 2010.

Twice as much as the GOP spent.

You did it, you said, because you just knew Wisconsinites, deep down inside, were a bunch of liberals!  Not without reason; Barack Obama won every single one of those districts in 2008.

You – every damn one of you – just knew that you’d flip three, four, maybe even all six seats!  Because – you just knew this – Wisconsin just BLEEEEEEEDS “progressive”!

Or at least you had to hope so – because this, along with this autumn’s vote in Ohio on a slate of reforms similar to Walker’s – could mark the beginning of the end, not of public unions, but of public unions as a critical, game-ending force in national politics.

Because in a few years, with more stories like this floating around out there, even more voters will see what a crock of crap you “progressives” have been selling for so long.

Your platform – which, when you strip away all of the happy-talk, is “we will force private sector workers to work ’til they’re 72 so public union members can retire with full benefits at 55” – just isn’t working anymore.

And what did you get for your tens of millions?

You got two – one that everyone knew we were going to lose, and one squeaker against a guy with lots of personal electability issues,  The rest of them – even the Darling-Pasch race, which started the evening’s returns with Pasch winning – weren’t even close.

And Shelly “MAKE NO MISTAKE, WE ARE IN A WAR” Moore?  Yep, you were in a war.  And you were Italy.  And even with all that union money for those obnoxious, “A Better Minnesota”-style TV ads, and all those union people trawling the streets, and all those Twin Cities “progressives” coming across the river to help out?  Not to gloat, but that was the sweetest victory of them all last night, at least for a Twin Cities conservative who got to watch that race close-up from across the Saint Croix.

Sixteen points.

And the Democrats’ Holperin seat is looking kinda squishy in next week’s round of recalls.  Your two pickups could very easily turn into one by this time next week.

Scott Walker has been affirmed; Barack Obama has been refudiated.

You want to call this a war?  You know how those end, right?

It’s been one of the left’s counter-tacks both in St. Paul and DC this past few months; they get that knowing, smug little curl in their lips (you can see it even if they’re writing on Twitter or a blog) and that semi-animated look that says both “Ooh, I have a chanting point that is just going to Pwn3 you!” and, almost inevitably, they are about to get rhetorically shredded (although they never know that in advance.  Never, ever) and titter “Oh, yeah, GOP?  So where are the jerbs?”

To which one responds “What jobs do you want?  A bunch of government jobs – perhaps those “shovel-ready” “infrastructure” jobs that The One was yapping about two years ago?  Which were at best glorified temp jobs designed to buff up union dues collections, and at worst just more money to be spent after being extorted from the private sector or the private sector’s grandchildren, to help the government pick the desired winners and losers?”

Which generally makes them pause a moment, and repeat “where are the jerbs?”

“You want jobs…er, “jerbs”?  Deregulate large swathes of our economy; the energy sector, for starters, if you wanna make the whole western half of this country and the Gulf Coast perform like North Dakota.  That’d put hundreds of thousands of Americans back to work and, more importantly, do something no government “jerb” has ever done; create new weatlh, make a bigger pie for us all to split”.

The usual response, after a slack-jawed moment or two, is “your ugly”, including the spoken bad punctuation (don’t ask me how, they just do it), but every once in a while you get one who just sits with that vegan deer in the headlights look.

I take pity on them.  “Government can create “jerbs” by deregulating industries”.

“Hah!”, they respond.  “I told you government could create jerbs!”

It’d be a worthwhile trade.

Shelly Moore – the Dwight Schrute of Wisconsin politics – lies so blatantly, even the left-leaning Politifact can’t help but notice.  One of Moore’s recent flyers drew Politifact’s attention:

For one, Moore plays loose in stating the impact of Ryan’s Medicare proposal. At one point, her flier says it would “eliminate Medicare as we know it.” In another, it says the plan would “end” Medicare.

For those who turn 65 before 2022, the program would not change. And for the others, Medicare would change dramatically but it would still exist, PolitiFact Wisconsin noted in ruling False a MoveOn.org claim that Medicare would be abolished in 10 years.

And best of all, her flyer misquotes an actual person:

And, last but not least, we called the woman pictured under the flier’s headline: “Lyda Haskins of River Falls Can’t Afford For Medicare to End.”

Haskins, 85, told us that she would have no trouble without Medicare even if it were taken from her — which it would not be, under the plan.

“It’s laughable that I wouldn’t be able to afford it,” Haskins said. “They should have not have done that.”

Haskins, whose daughter Alison Page ran unsuccessfully against Harsdorf in 2008, is well known in the area.

Haskins said she was not told her name would be used, and was not aware that Medicare would be an issue in the direct mail piece. She said she agreed, along with her grandchildren, only to be pictured generically as a Moore supporter.

Which earns Moore an unplaudit:

The flier’s claims are false, barring new information, and the misleading nature of the presentation pushes this into ridiculous territory.

That’s a Pants on Fire.

If you live in the greater Hudson / St. Croix River area, you have a chance today – to help continue saving Wisconsin from its ruinous, California-like fixation on spending, and from forcing the private sector to work ’til it’s 72 so the unions can retire at 55.

While this blog doesn’t do endorsements, I’m just going to say vote early and often for Harsdorf.

I’ve been listening to some of my fellow conservatives – especially Tea Partiers – complaining about the debt ceiling deal, in terms that start with “it’s awful” and often as not end with “well, it was a great run – time to start hiding gold under the mattress”.

To which I answer, as appropriate, “what did you expect when we only control the House?” and “if you’re not storing gold, ammo and food even in the good times, you’re nuts”.  But I digress.

Ed Morrissey – with whom I co-host a radio show every Saturday on AM1280 – notes in The Week that it wasn’t a perfect victory for the Tea Party – there was no way for that victory to happen, at least not via democratic means, in this Congress with this President – but it was a victory nevertheless:

Who won, and who lost? Did anyone win? If we gauge winners and losers by the reaction from politicians and activists across the political spectrum, no one was satisfied with the deal reached between Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress and President Obama. Though it is arguably true that few actually advanced their agenda much in the deal, that doesn’t mean everyone came out of this deal equally worse off. Indeed, despite some dissatisfied rumblings from within the Tea Party, one lesson is clear: They succeeded in transforming Washington.

The codecil to that – one that the Tea Party needs to remember?  Politics is not like a championship game, with a final end result that stands for all time.  It’s a season – one that never actually ends.  It’s one where everything that happens in this game – hurt quarterbacks, momentum gained and lost, everything – affects the next game, and the game after that, and games played after your children take things over.

The example I keep coming back to: handgun carry reform in Minnesota.  When Concealed Carry Reform Now first formed, and started trying to change Minnesota’s racist, sexist, patriarchal weapon carry laws, they couldn’t even get time to talk with legislators – with “friendly”, Republican ones.

I can’t help but feel that some of the Tea Party conservatives who are complaining about the debt ceiling deal today would have fumed about the unfairness of it all back then, thrown in the towel and spent the next six years silently stewing.  But I’d hope it’d be a teaching moment.

Because the next year…well, only a few legislators talked with CCRN.  But it was more than the previous year.  And CCRN’s mailing list bloomed, and outstate voters started paying attention.

And the next year?  A few more legislators opened their doors.  And CCRN’s mailing list started having an effect – legislators started hearing from more people, which opened still more doors.

And the next year?  There was talk of a bill.  It never happened, but legislators were getting the message in droves; CCRN’s volunteer lobbyists were getting audiences with key legislators.

And the next year?  Well, the CCRN mailing list grew some more, and the DFL had to start playing defense.

And the next year?  And the following?  More of the same.  The DFL – and their point man on the issue, Wes “Lying Sack of Garbage” Skoglund – had to crank the smear and lie machine up into full force, since it was becoming clear they had no basis in fact.

And the next year?  There was a bill – and it died on the table (as I recall – I could very well have the specifics wrong, but it doesn’t really detract from the point).  And CCRN’s mailing list told voters which legislators voted against it.  And they got an earful, and a few of them – outstate DFLers who’d voted against the bill – lost their return tickets to Saint Paul.

And the next year?  We won.

(And two years later, we won again, after a DFL-pet judge struck down the law on ludicrously selective grounds).

Viewed from the perspective of 1995, and 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002, we lost, lost, lost, lost, lost, lost, lost and lost again.

And yet without all the effort – and there was a lot of effort – expended from 1005 through 2002, there would have been no victory.

And the victory wasn’t won by simply wanting it badly enough – although you gotta have that.  It was won by playing grassroots politics better than the other side.  We – the pro-Second-Amendment movement – had to win over a lot of hearts and minds in the legislature, the media, and on Mainstreet Minnesota.

The Tea Party did transform American politics – once. It did it by convincing the American people last Fall that they had the best ideas for taking this nation forward.

And now they need to do it again – to win the Senate, the White House, and a bunch of State Houses and Legislatures, enough to really, seriously, totally revamp the way this nation views the relationship between The People and government.

And it’s not a sprint, or a single game; it’s a marathon, an endless season.  Something that’ll challenge many Americans’ addled attention spans.

All the better.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The question I’d like to see asked:

 

If Congress doesn’t reduce spending to less than or equal to realistic revenues, creditor nations will decline to buy more debt and the President will be forced to decide which checks his administration won’t mail.

 

If you were President, which checks would you hold back, and why?

 

The question is merely a hypothetical today. But if the economy doesn’t recover soon . . . well, military planners run war games all the time, trying to anticipate problems and create solutions before we’re facing disaster with only moments to react in panic. Why not politicians?

 

Joe Doakes

Como Park

It’s a tough question.  Tougher still because I’ve been told (haven’t looked it up myself, yet) that we could shut down the entire daily operations of our government – Congress, the SCOTUS, and the entire Executive Branch, including all the Cabinet departments, including Defense and Health and Human Services, and still not attack the deficit; it’s the entitlements. (I need to look that up, obviously).

All the usual conservative suggestion – shutting down the Department of Education, defund NPR, privatize the National Endowment for the Humanities – aren’t even a whiz in the wind.  What we need is to cut entitlements – Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, Obamacare – and cut them radically.

Which means not just cutting spending, but changing the way this nation looks at retirement and health insurance.

OK.  So go to it.  What do we do?

Back in 1994, I left the GOP; I was angry that they’d caved in to Clinton on the 1994 Crime Bill.  I joined the Libertarian Party.

I came back to the GOP in 1998.  It wasn’t that I didn’t agree with the Libertarians, at least in the broad outlines.  It was that the Libertarians had no chance of ever governing anything – and no idea how to effect any governance even if they did  manage to win an election.

Rock-ribbed principle is a great thing; it drives movements that move mountains.  But once that movement gets into office, those same people have to work with other people who believe very different things.

And it’s there that the hard part begins; upholding one’s princples, and meeting people who also got elected to office, to uphold very different prinicples, halfway to do the job of running a government.

The problem is, there is no way for anyone to remain absolutely pure to principle, if by that you mean “never play ball, on any level, with the opposition”.

It’s how you get all the influence of a Libertarian Party.

Gary Gross writes over at True North:

Apparently, some TEA Party organizations are slamming people like Col. Alan West for being RINOs. That’s led to Col. West defending himself on Laura Ingraham’s show this morning. Bully for him and bully for Ms. Laura for her steadfast support for Col. West. Here’s the tape of their conversation:

Go ahead and listen.

And remember – if you win you have to govern.  If you can’t govern, you won’t win again.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you have to ditch your principles to govern; it does mean you should bargain them at the highest price possible.

Paul Krugman – who is to Nobel Prizes what John Kerry was to Vietnam – wants to prove that Ronald Reagan never did anything useful for the economy, and he doesn’t care how sharply he has to shave the facts and the historical context to do it:

Reagan did not start an era of unprecedented growth by any measure: employment, GDP, productivity, whatever. But maybe the easiest way to see what didn’t happen is to look at median family income in constant dollars:

The NYTimes helpfully provided a graph:

Krugman:

 A spectacular increase during the high-tax, strong-union postwar generation; fitful improvement since, with the only sustained rise during the Clinton years. That’s the story; it’s amazing how many people don’t know it.

“That’s the story” Krugman says; high taxes (and unions, he adds in a non-sequitur) cause prosperity.

Like household income exists in a vacuum, affected only by taxes (and union membership).

I’m tempted to drive to New York, collar Krugman, and ask “what else happened during this timeline?”

What else happened between 1947 and 1971, besides unfettered taxes and government growth?  Like, the German and Japanese economies starting the period in ruins, and spending the entire period rebuilding?  China and India starting as third-world countries, enduring forty years of socialist governments that couldn’t feed their own people?  And,  respectively, a mass-murdering socialist dictatorship and civil wars?

Did Germany and Japan only get their economies rebuilt, and start to seriously compete with the US, in the late sixties and early seventies – about the time America’s rise in income leveled off?

Did America’s unions develop their high-salary, high-benefit, often low-skill paradigm perhaps because America’s economy had no competition?  The whole world was America’s market for those 25 years!

(And when Germany and Japan’s economies took off, they adopted high-tax, high-“service”, strong-union systems.  And when did their performance start levelling off?

That’s right, it shot up like a rocket from reconstruction until 1990…

…until China and India and Taiwan and the Republic of Korea started performing.

But don’t mind that.  According to “nobel-prize-winning” economist Paul Krugman, none of that matters.  Just taxes.

Media academics:  Distrust, then verify. Then, usually, distrust some more.

UPDATE:  I almost missed this:  Krugman also noted that the US prospered during the relatively high-tax Clinton era, and had troubles during the relatively low-tax Bush administration.

Right.  And Clinton benefitted from cashing the “peace dividend” won during the low-tax, high-prosperity Reagan administration.  And while Bush presided over prosperity from 2003-2007, he suffered from the deflation of the tech bubble early in his administration (exacerbated by a terrorist attack some of you may remember, but which Krugman clearly does not) and, of course, the housing crash, neither of which had anything to do with Bush’s tax cuts.