One of the great conceits of the “elite” left – led, in Minnesota, by the Star Tribune’s insufferable editorial board – is that if Minnesota’s taxpayers don’t pony up to pay for a “better Minnesota” – the “high tax, high service” state model – we’ll be a “cold Omaha”.

Voters around the country are saying back – “If it gets us away from you and your moronic, childish policies, Omaha’s not so bad”.

The LATimes notes that voters are making that exact choice with their feet:

In  America’s federal system, some states, such as California, offer residents a “package deal” that bundles numerous and ambitious public benefits with the high taxes needed to pay for them. Other states, such as Texas, offer packages combining modest benefits and low taxes. These alternatives, of course, define the basic argument between liberals and conservatives over what it means to get the size and scope of government right.

It’s not surprising, then, that there’s an intense debate over which model is more admirable and sustainable. What is surprising is the growing evidence that the low-benefit/low-tax package not only succeeds on its own terms but also according to the criteria used to defend its opposite. In other words, the superior public goods that supposedly justify the high taxes just aren’t being delivered.

The article compares Cali to Texas – but it could just as easily apply to high-tax/high-“service” Minnesota and some of its neighbors:

California and Texas are not perfect representatives of the alternative deals, but they come close. Overall, the Census Bureau’s latest data show that state and local government expenditures for all purposes in 2005-06 were 46.8% higher in California than in Texas: $10,070 per person compared with $6,858. Only three states and the District of Columbia saw higher per capita government outlays than California, while those expenditures in Texas were lower than in all but seven states. California ranked 10th in overall taxes levied by state and local governments, on a per capita basis, while Texas, one of only seven states with no individual income tax, was 38th.

So people in San Francisco tell each other that if they don’t fund every single thing their public employees and special interests want, they’ll become a “cold Austin?”

Did I say “moving with their feet?”

One way to assess how Americans feel about the different tax and benefit packages the states offer is by examining internal U.S. migration patterns. Between April 1, 2000, and June 30, 2007, an average of 3,247 more people moved out of California than into it every week, according to the Census Bureau. Over the same period, Texas had a net weekly population increase of 1,544 as a result of people moving in from other states. During these years, more generally, 16 of the 17 states with the lowest tax levels had positive “net internal migration,” in the Census Bureau’s language, while 14 of the 17 states with the highest taxes had negative net internal migration.

These folks pulling up stakes and driving U-Haul trucks across state lines understand a reality the defenders of the high-benefit/high-tax model must confront: All things being equal, everyone would rather pay low taxes than high ones. The high-benefit/high-tax model can work only if things are demonstrably not equal — if the public goods purchased by the high taxes far surpass the quality, quantity and impact of those available to people who live in states with low taxes.

And it’s here that I hope the author has done his homework; we’ve been through this before.

Refugees from California have already spent the last twenty years fleeing California – for Oregon and for Colorado.  They fled the taxes; they brought their taste for lots of “services”.  Ditto New Hampshire and Vermont; inundated with Massachussetts tax refugees, they have turned their adopted states into high-tax, high-“service” hellholes of their very own.

But what does that get you these days?  (Emphasis added):

Today’s public benefits fail that test, as urban scholar Joel Kotkin of NewGeography.com and Chapman University told the Los Angeles Times in March: “Twenty years ago, you could go to Texas, where they had very low taxes, and you would see the difference between there and California. Today, you go to Texas, the roads are no worse, the public schools are not great but are better than or equal to ours, and their universities are good. The bargain between California’s government and the middle class is constantly being renegotiated to the disadvantage of the middle class.”

You could say the same about Minnesota and its low tax neighbors.

In more ways than one:

These judgments are not based on drive-by sociology. According to a report issued earlier this year by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., Texas students “are, on average, one to two years of learning ahead of California students of the same age,” even though per-pupil expenditures on public school students are 12% higher in California. The details of the Census Bureau data show that Texas not only spends its citizens’ dollars more effectively than California but emphasizes priorities that are more broadly beneficial. Per capita spending on transportation was 5.9% lower in California, and highway expenditures in particular were 9.5% lower, a discovery both plausible and infuriating to any Los Angeles commuter losing the will to live while sitting in yet another freeway traffic jam.

Perhaps people in Texas, Fargo and Miami will start complaining that if the liberals don’t shut up about being “happy to pay for a better Texas, Fargo or Florida”, they’ll turn into a “warm Los Angeles?”

…that for Republicans to win in the age of Obama, they have to run for the center like a bunch of beaten dogs.

The evidence is everywhere:

-In a three way contest Doug Hoffman leads Bill Owens by 19 points. In a two way contest Hoffman leads Owens by 15 points. So the Dede Scozzafava withdrawal and endorsement will probably tighten the race some but not nearly [“]enough[“].

Keep that in mind, all you Minnesota First District Republicans.  And all you Minnesota Republicans who have been taking Lori Sturdevant seriously.

Give people in the middle a reason to move right, rather than an unimpressive ersatz lefty, and…

…well, let’s see what Tuesday brings.

So why is the left – not just the the media and the attack-PR-osphere and the left’s lumped horde of chattering classes, but indeed the Administration itself – so invested in attacking the informational lynchpins of the opposition, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News?

Not to mention slandering the motivations and character of every single dissenter to their polities, on a national, media-wide and systematic basis?

Because the opposition just keeps growing.  The April 15 tea parties drew 600,000 people; the 9/17 parties, millions. 

Dissent from Hope n Change isn’t going away.

And they’d so hoped that it would.

Four years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the 2004 elections, a slew of radio consultants made a zillion dollars telling talk-radio program directors that conservative talk radio was dead.

It was wishful thinking, of course.  And now that conservatives are the underdogs again, we have entered – as I predicted during our election-night broadcast – a second Golden Age of Conservative Talk Radio.

The I Hate The Media blog R unpacks the latest Arbitron ratings nationwide in head-to-head competitions between Rush Limbaugh affiliates and affiliates carrying Ed Schultz and/or Stephanie Miller, the closest the left’s come to “successful” programming so far.

And it’s not a pretty picture – unless you like conservative talk radio.  Then, it’s a very, very pretty picture. 

Note that the ratings below are for the stations as a whole, not for Limbaugh (or Schultz/Miller):

1. New York
WABC Rush 3.7 (8th in market)
WWRL Ed/Steph 0.2 (50th in market tie)

2. Los Angeles
KFI Rush 5.0 (1st in market)
KTLK Ed/Steph 0.4 (48th in market tie)

Catch that?  In two of the nation’s largest and most liberal markets, the conservative talk leader not only beats liberal talk, but does it by an order of magnitude and more.

8. Washington
WMAL Rush 2.7 (17th in market)
WTNT Ed only 0.3 (33rd in market tie)

This, not long after Washinton’s “Obama 1260” all-leftytalk station bit the dust.

16. Minneapolis
KTLK-FM Rush 3.6 (13th in market)
KTNF Ed/Steph 1.1 (21st in market)

It’s not “libtalk’s” best performance – that’d be in Seattle, where the Rush affiliate only gets 2.5 times the ratings the FastEddie/MiniIngraham station gets.

But Rush is hampered by the fact that he’s on KTLK-FM, a station that only recently adopted conservatism as a driving format motif, and has otherwise made a royal botch of things until fairly recently. 

Now, there’s a fair point to be made here; liberals don’t need to listen to talk radio; they already have the mainstream media, plus National Public Radio, plus MSNBC, CNN and CNBC, plus the Big Three, plus their real news standardbearer, Jon Stewart.

Andt that’s true.  The real point of this post isn’t so much “how bad is conservative talk clobbering liberal talk” – everyone in their right mind knew it would – as it is “how wrong were the consultants four years ago”, and “how does that inform the Administration’s current campaign to demonize all dissent?”

Very wrong, and very much, which is providing both a mission for the Administration and an inconvenient truth for its mainstream media supporters:

Yes, the release of Arbitron radio ratings for August 2009 created quite a stir in Los Angeles last week when it was revealed that AM news-talk giant KFI had moved into first place.

But judging by the coverage in the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Register and Los Angeles Business Journal, this feat was somehow accomplished without the help of the medium’s star performer, Rush Limbaugh.In covering the achievement, the latter two publications didn’t even mention Rush, while the Times noted Limbaugh only in passing deep into one story and left him out of another entirely.Is it really that hard to admit Rush could be so popular in their own backyard?

Here’s what we know about Limbaugh’s contribution to KFI’s feat, along with some new details on his performance elsewhere during August: The Rush Limbaugh Show gained a full share point overall, from 5.9 to 6.9 to take first place with a weekly cume of 635,700 listeners. With men 35-64, the jump was from 4.7 to 5.6. In the 11am hour, Rush pulled in a mammoth 6.3.

These results are cropping up from coast to coast (read Maloney’s entire piece).

Which tells the media that the peasants are revolting.

And that is why the White House and the media it keeps in its hip pocket have switched into full-blown smear machine mode.

TANGENT:  During the Bush years, the left clutched at its pearls and accused Karl Rove of running a “smear machine” through any number of right-leaning groups – the Swiftboat Vets, Fox News, you name it.  But can you imagine what’d happen if there’d been the faintest hint of Bush Administration involvement in leaning on media dissent – which, unlike the current Administration, was omnipresent and utterly vicious?

This past week Keith Ellison issued a breathless, well-worn and blatantly specious (if not utterly ignorant) monologue to justify the further distension of the bowels of the federal government via yet another bloated agency. As I read his drivel, in my ears rang the sultry voice of classic SNL fixture Jane Curtain, warbling on and on and on; aptly blunted by Dan Ackroyd’s signature catchphrase.

the American dream of home ownership, and borrowing generally, washed up on the shores of a financial disaster — the most serious since the Great Depression.

One cause (there were many) was the failure of our system of consumer financial protection. No one was there to review transactions or protect consumers. The proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency provides the lifeline that consumers need.

Oh, someone was there. Federal regulators were there, telling banks they couldn’t borrow funds at the best rates unless they met certain ratios of mandated risky sub-prime transactions to the prudent and secure deals banks would normally seek.

A free market cannot be held culpable if it is not free.

These so-called predatory lenders Keith, were not only incented to push unqualified home buyers into loans they couldn’t afford, they were strong-armed to do so via quotas and measures put in place during the Carter administration and given teeth during the Clinton administration. Sadly, G.W. Bush failed to preemptively unwind the brewing disaster despite the behest of Senator John McCain, among others.

The government-inflated and guaranteed demand for housing and all the furnishings that go inside created a bubble with all the periphery that usually comes with one. It ended as they usually do – otherwise we’d not know it was a bubble, now would we?

If anyone needed regulatin’ it was the regulators.

The American Dream is just that, Keith. Home ownership, while beneficial to all of us, is not a Government-Given right. With rare exception, when liberals act with politically motivated and self-serving mandates under the auspice of a “lifeline”, disaster follows close behind.

…and that disaster, our Great Recession, is the direct result of exactly the same type of programs Mr. Ellison and his ilk offer as it’s “solution.”

No one around here shall be surprised by the Star Tribune’s confusion of a deliberate expansion of government with the genesis of a sustainable economic recovery.

From new dishwashers for the Albert Lea School District to a new counterterrorism police force to patrol buses and trains, federal stimulus money is pouring in to Minnesota and has directly preserved or created 11,800 jobs so far, state officials reported Monday.

I am sure the dishes at Albert Lea need to be washed and there is no doubt buses and trains need to be kept safe but federal stimulus dollars might just as well be called what they are; broad-based spending of future taxpayer dollars.

Normally called pork but in the heat of a crisis caused by liberal meddling during the watch of another Nobel Prize-winner, the very same wasteful practices that used to give liberals a bad name are now lauded for their “stimulation.”

But of what?

Management and Budget Commissioner Tom Hanson said statistics showed that the stimulus money “puts people to work,” and was having a “snowball effect” by indirectly sparking more job growth. As an example, he said, a highway construction job in Minnesota made possible with federal stimulus money might cause a company to buy a bulldozer from Tennessee that also meant jobs for workers at an out-of-state factory.

…or they might not buy that bulldozer because they might not be stupid enough to think that this economy is coming back any time soon. One project awarded by and funded with government dollars does not a recovery make.

Smart business owners and consumers alike are now finding ways to make the old bulldozer do the work instead of buying a new one simply because the bank will lend them the capital. Easy credit is long gone for the foreseeable future and even if it wasn’t, businesses and consumers will not soon be lured again into the tender trap of “buy today, pay tomorrow.”

The American consumer can no longer drive two thirds of our economy and like their banks, will spend the next several years rebuilding balance sheets by paying off debt, shoring up diminished retirement accounts and accumulating cash reserves to replace buffers formerly consisting of home equity credit lines and credit cards.

As for “Stimulus” spending and it’s true impact, any relief, dubious as it is, will continue only as long as the stimulus dollars keep flowing. Don’t believe that? Just ask your local car dealer how they’re doing now that the Clunkers Cash has dried up.

Government dollars are probably well spent on temporarily extending unemployment and health care benefits until workers claw their way back into the workforce, but continuing to borrow, tax and spend to create temporary relief will cause potentially permanent and devastating damage to our economy, leaving us worse off in the long run.

It is this very prospect, the fallout of our continued fiscal irresponsibility, that is sparking interest in stripping the US dollar of it’s current de facto status as the world’s currency. A national disaster that at best would force us to quickly revert to a low-wage manufacturer nation and at worse result in a catastrophic collapse of the dollar and our economy.

In either case, a catastrophic collapse of the Democratic Party’s reign looms inevitably as the inexorably slow recovery and sustained unemployment will surely outlast the diminishing effects of empty rhetoric, impotent stimulus packages and the patience of unemployed workers.

In the mean time, President Obama and his misguided policies serve only to distract and delay the healing that only the forces of capitalism can effect; the painstaking process of reorienting, realigning, innovating and ultimately forging true and sustainable models for America’s next economic era.

World oil and gas reserves E are vastly, vastly higher than predicted:

The World Gas Conference in Buenos Aires last week was one of those events that shatter assumptions. Advances in technology for extracting gas from shale and methane beds have quickened dramatically, altering the global balance of energy faster than almost anybody expected.

Tony Hayward, BP’s chief executive, said proven natural gas reserves around the world have risen to 1.2 trillion barrels of oil equivalent, enough for 60 years’ supply – and rising fast.

“There has been a revolution in the gas fields of North America. Reserve estimates are rising sharply as technology unlocks unconventional resources,” he said.

Gas reserves in particular are seemingly immense – and, being a clean-burning fuel already, should obviate the need for “clean coal” (which is still on the drawing board).

Downside; pundits are seeing this news and saying it pre-empts the need for new nuke plants.  Let’s not get cocky, here…

Back at my first usability/human factors gig about ten years ago, a very smart systems analyst (who is an occasional reader of this blog) gave me a piece of advice on how to analyze problems.

Any proposed solution exists, really, on two planes – Policy and Mechanism.  Policy is “what you want”.  Mechanism is “how you get what you want”.  Policy is your goal, mechanism is the work it takes to achieve it.  You need both, formally or informally; great work without a coherent goal, or “policy”, is like pushing hose up a hill; great policy that can’t be implemented by any attainable “mechanism” is just baked wind.

The advice was given to me in an engineering context, from someone who worked on the “mechanism” side, to someone who designed and validated “policy” by the ream. 

But it applies in politcs as well.  There are groups in politics who are neck-deep in policy, but who can’t implement anything; the Libertarian Party jumps to mind as a group with lots of policy, but no real ability to implement anything (since they never, ever get elected to anything; Ron Paul was the first Libertarian to actually start to implement some “mechanism” to Libertarian policy, by trying to co-opt the GOP).

Of course, for everyone involved in any place where the real world impacts theory – where “mechanism” and “policy” have to be made to match when they don’t want to, knows that that can be mighty difficult.  In the world of technology, making “mechanism” deliver on “policy” is called “engineering”.  Your policy is “I want to drive across the river”; the initial mechanism says “gravity and fluid dynamics make it literally impossible, and the river is too wide to just throw boards across it”; your job is to solve the problem.

And in “real world” politics, where ideals (“policy”) of necessity get corrupted by political reality (“mechanism”), there is a push and pull between What You Want – often expressed as “What You Believe” – and “What Is Realistic”, or “What Can Happen”, or most importantly “What We Can Either Ram Past The Opposition, Or Get Them To Agree To In Some Form”.  It’s also called “politics”.

The point being, most human endeavor occurs out of the tension between what you want, and what you can actually get.  It’s as true when building a bridge or a ship or a bipartisan compromise as it is when your kids bug you for money for their latest expensive obsession.

When it comes to politics, it hits all sides.  If the world obeyed liberal “policy”, then Lyndon Johnson’s “War On Poverty” would have resulted in a surrender ceremony on the deck of the USS Missouri by 1970. 

And we conservatives have the same battle to fight.  Conservatives all follow, to one degree or another, certain first principles and core tenets of our belief system.  Of course, some of us emphasize different parts of those principles – I’m more a growth and security guy than a social conservative – and others pay them lip service while they focus, to be polite, on the “mechanism” side of the equation (with Duke Cunningham being an extreme example).  

The upshot?  No pure ideal survives its first brush with reality unscathed.

Although Dave Mindeman of “mnpACT” m seems to think conservatism is not only immune from this, but so immune that conservatives should be held to the standard of absolute idealism.

Or at least, that Pat Anderson, GOP gubernatorial candidate and former State Auditor, should:

GOP Governor candidate Pat Anderson wrote an opinion piece in the Star Tribune a few days ago, which gives a pretty good summation of why she could never be elected Governor of Minnesota.Her problem is that she thinks the Free Market is actually “free” and that “limited government” approaches can succeed. The evidence says she is wrong on both counts.

Right – if by “evidence” you mean “the results we have after Republicans have to try to jam their beliefs – “policy” – through legislatures full of people who believe other things“.

Republicans constantly preach to us about the dangers of government expansion. How less government is good government. Yet, their free market and limited government approaches never adhere to any semblance of real principle and the approach they do use is blatantly biased toward corporate America. Free markets? Not here, not now.

Let’s take the so called free market. How is it that Republicans can elmininate government involvement in the societal areas where government really needs to be — such as the social safety net…..and yet can’t eliminate the corporate subsidies that drastically distort competitive forces?

There is actually a good question there, one that has much occupied the Minnesota and National GOPs.  “Corporate Subsidies” are both anathema to real conservatives on a “policy” level, and have been one of those things that have been exacted from politicians (who have been by no means all conservative or even Republican, by the way) at a “Mechanism” level to garner support for differnet initiatives.  Which, for better or (usually) worse is how politics actually works.

There’s also a great counter-question, too; turn Mindemann’s statement around.  “How is it that Liberals can push government involvement into all areas of society regardless of “government need” (whatever that is), and …..and yet can’t eliminate the problems for which they tried to justify eliminating competitive forces?” 

Dave, if you answer that, please feel free to phrase your answer in the terms of the same degree of ideological purity you demand of Pat Anderson.

And without the strawmen, please:

GAMC is cut completely in unallotment. But JOBZ and Tax Increment Financing and building stadiums are never eliminated in the “limited government” approach?

While Tax Increment Financing is a targeted tax cut, which is a core conservative principle (except for the “targeted” part), I don’t know that you’ll find a whole lot of actual conservatives who support JOBZ or stadium subsidies.

Why should large corporations get incentives to move to this state? How does that translate to “free” markets? Isn’t that unfair to smaller but local businesses?

They shouldn’t, it doesn’t, it totally is, and it’s an utterly non-partisan “tool”; the biggest corporate subsidy stories and boondoggles- Target’s Minneapolis development, Best Buy’s conquest of Richfield, the USBank Westside Flats developments, the entire hole that New Brighton dug itself – have been the province of the states’ biggest assemblies of liberal whackdoodles.

And in regards to “limited government”. This libertarian approach that is based on “Constitutional” grounds feels that government should only due what it was originally mandated to do.

So, I assume that means we eliminate Social Security and Medicare for starters. That is not a governmental role — security in retirement is an individual responsibility. If you do not acquire the means to support a retirement, it is too bad. Keep working or live with relatives.

And again with the distinction between “policy” and “mechanism”.  If we were operating from a blank slate, or a slate that could be blanked, then it would be a tenet of purist, limited-government libertarian/conservative policy that huge interventions (and distortions) like Social Security and Medicare should be eschewed. 

But the fact that both of those trains left the station 1-3 generations ago notwithstanding (creating the multi-generational dependency on government that they were arguably intended to in the first place), most conservatives recognize the need, as Winston Churchill put it, to “not level out the peaks to fill in the valleys, but to spread a safety net over the abyss”.  So when you see Mindeman echoing stuff you’d more usually hear from an orthodox big-L Libertarian, like this…:

We must also get out of government welfare of any kind. The poor are on their own. Depend on charities or beg in the streets. Not our collective problem.

…it’s inflammatory, simplistic balderdash, of course; you will find very few conservatives who don’t recognize some imperative to keep people from starving, especially given forces that are sometimes beyond the individual’s control (and usually the “unintended” consequences of government actions anyway – like the Great Depression and our current troubles themselves!).  That liberals confuse “cradle-to-grave entitlement” with “safety net” shouldn’t be held against conservative policy.

Buy why do we give subsidies to Exxon? Why are there farm subsidies to corporate farmers? Why do we prop up grain prices? or dairy prices? or why do we pay farmers to leave land idle?

Why?  Because successive generations of politicians – mostly liberals – enacted programs to make farming “safer” and “more secure”; they created a national farm policy that has destabilized agriculture to the point that the majority of the farmers the program was intended to stabilize are now working in factories and shopkeepers and carpenters, and their children are programmers and teachers and everything-but-farmers.  But where they failed in securing individual farms, they did succeed in making sure the big farmers that are left, and the political establishments they support, conservative and liberal, are utterly dependent on government subsidy.  Again, it’s a bipartisan failure.

Which is why conservative “policy” would be to trash all these corporate subsidies as the debilitating interferences they are – and why reality has these subsidies so interwoven into the farm economy that it’d take a political effort far beyond the attention span and pain threshold of any American politician of any party, to fix.

Government is only limited when the constituency that gets downsized has no power or money to contribute to the political collective. That isn’t limited government — that is special interest government.

Well, no.  It’s a manifestation of De Tocqueville’s classic dictum, “Democracy will only survive until people discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury”. 

And for all the preaching that candidates like Pat Anderson give to us regarding their “limited” government approach and their free market systems, they are never really adovcating either of them….and if elected, they never will.

Tell you what, Dave Mindemann; why don’t you lefties sit back and give actual conservatives a prohibitive supermajority that’d allow us to wipe the slate clean for ten years or so, and get back to us on that, OK?

There’s a war brewing in the Twin Cities metro.

It’s about  trash.

About 2/3 of the communities in the Twin Cities allow or require (depending on your point of view) residents to contract their own garbage hauling.  Saint Paul is one of them.

The rest either run it as a city service, or contract out pieces of the city to private haulers.  Minneapolis treats trash as a city service.

And at all levels governments, lobbing shots about “street repair” and “the environment”, are trying to grab that turf:

When Bill and Mary Simms got a bill for $1,800 to fix the street outside their home, they knew whom to blame — all those garbage trucks.Each week, at least five trucks rumble past to collect trash in their Fridley neighborhood. They show up as early as 6:40 a.m., waking the retirees.Bill Simms, 67, doesn’t understand why his community needs so many haulers when people in next-door Columbia Heights get by with just one. And he’s furious he has to pay to fix streets worn down by all that tonnage. “I’m fed up,” Simms said. 

It’s a common complaint in the Twin Cities, where most communities leave it to residents to hire their own trash collectors. In St. Paul, which is served by 17 haulers, officials could vote on changes this month.

Many homeowners prefer to pick their own haulers, believing that they’re getting the best rate. But they’re wrong, a study commissioned by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) concluded. 

For a 30- or 60-gallon container, those homeowners typically pay at least 50 percent more for garbage service than residents in communities like Minneapolis with organized systems, the study found.

There are other costs, too. City engineers worry about the price of fixing roads damaged by garbage and recycling trucks. Residents complain about the racket, the danger to children, and the emissions.

This is of course nothing but a push to land more unionized government jobs.

Thankfully, some people get it.  People were getting angry about trash long before we had tea parties:

But anytime officials talk about change, they confront angry constituents. Not one community has retaken control of trash collection in nearly 20 years, according to the MPCA study.

Mark Campbell, mayor of Sauk Rapids, was stunned when local officials debated how to reduce the number of garbage trucks on city streets last spring. He said it was the “ugliest meeting I’ve ever participated in.”

And as the honeymoon ends for Hope and Change, let’s hope it gets “uglier” – where “ugly”=”citizens actually exercising their first amendment right to tell government what pier to jump off of”.

I’m going to try to find the MPCA study and the Minneapolis trash budget, and see if I can answer the questions the Strib didn’t.

As Minneapolis’ confronts the idea that its city-driven “improvements” have been either squibs (Gaviidae Common, Town Square) or catastrophic failures (Block E), it’s good – and, for some Minneapolis city councilpeople, counterintuitive – to note that free enterprise is still alive.

Holy Land, a long-time destination for people who like great mediterranean food and groceries, is booming along a tatty stretch of Central Avenue in Northeast Minneapolis:

Holy Land Brand Inc. CEO Majdi Wadi furthered the commercial renaissance of Minneapolis’ Central Avenue corridor and the Minnesota manufacturing economy last week when he opened the state’s first hummus factory, a sparkling-new facility that produces 60,000 eight-ounce containers a month in what had been a crummy bar on 25th Avenue NE.

“We paid $1.25 million for the old Sully’s Bar [in 2007], which was appraised at $950,000 by the bank,” said Wadi. “We were shocked by the drugs and prostitution. But now, Holy Land has another business that is good for our neighborhood and city.

Sorry to hear that Sully’s – which used to make a grrrreat burger – fell on hard times.  But then, the whole neighborhood had been sliding, even when I lived there.  Good to hear that opportunity still knocks. 

Of course, when someone starts a business in Minneapolis, there’s a good chance a fiscal conservative gets his wings:

“Hennepin County rewards me by raising the property taxes. That’s OK. Wells Fargo loaned me some money, and we’re going to make a good business.”

Anyway – someone tell Michael Moore that capitalism seems to be doing pretty well by the Wadis:

A few blocks away, Holy Land, which now employs 140 people in its store, deli, restaurant and other businesses, expanded its bakery in refurbished quarters that was another derelict building at 1617 Central Av. NE.

“The revitalization of Central Avenue is immigrant-based,” said Paul Ostrow, the longtime City Council member from northeast Minneapolis. “Majdi has blazed the trail since he started making these investments more than a decade ago. He’s global with his imports and exports. He’s a success. And he also cares about Northeast.”

In an interview in his cramped, nondescript office last month, Wadi, 44, a Palestinian immigrant, repeatedly expressed thanks to neighbors and America.

Maybe we should thank him.

Yes!  Thank you, Mr. Wadi!

Note to the city of Minneapolis: don’t thank Mr. Wadi the way Saint Paul and the Met Council is “thanking” all the asian immigrants who’ve done similar work along University Avenue – by building a rail line that runs ’em all out of business.

I tuned into “Fresh Air” with, um, aaaah, um, Terry Gross on MPR last night for a bit…

…and heard what sounded, at first blush, like a typical “lefty goes among the conservatives” story; Gross was interviewing some kind of “mainstream”/lefty journalist about his visit to the Value Voters Summit.

The better news – the part that made me actually stay tuned for most of the episode – was that it was David Weigel of the Washington Independent, one of precious few generally good reporters in the entire Sorosnet “Center for “Independent” Media” chain.

Weigel has an interesting beat…:

Is the conservative right undergoing a transformation? Journalist David Weigel thinks so. Weigel covers the Republican party for the online magazine The Washington Independent, where he’s written about tea party protests, anti-health care activists, the “birther” movement and the recent Values Voter summit.

I’m not sure what’s the most interesting thing about the interview: that the left thinks they need to study conservatism like it’s an anthropology experiment?  That Terry, um, uh, Gross seems to eager to pass on the current A-list of anti-right slanders (lookit all those racist teagaggers!)?
But Weigel’s interview is interesting; it seems that Weigel, almost alone among the media and left (pardon the redundancy), notices what we tea-partiers have figured out, something I noted in my speech to the Minnesota Tea Party last week; the right seems to be focused less on individual issues – life, immigration, security – and more on the contitutional first principles that need to link us.

It’s actually good news.

Sweden, often held up by “progressives” as a model of socialism’s efficiency has collectively come to realize the error of it’s ways and is employing a radical tact to stimulate job growth.

Sweden’s centre-right government on Saturday announced income tax cuts…to stimulate the job market, its primary objective.

[needle scratching on Abba record]

Income tax cuts! To stimulate the job market?!!!

Back here in the U.S.S.A, Obama would be focused on bolstering the job market too if it weren’t for his Magical Mystery Tour promoting health care reform that most of America doesn’t want or need, and the government can’t afford.

The proposal, to be presented to parliament on Monday as part of the 2010 budget bill, is the fourth leg of a tax cut programme introduced in January 2007 to stimulate employment.

Tax cuts stimulate employment? Really? I wonder why Obama and his stooges uber-czars haven’t thought of that (you know, cutting taxes for those that are in a position to hire employees, versus cutting taxes for those that don’t pay them)?

“The coalition government has agreed on reforms for jobs and entrepreneurialism that will increase employment in the long-term. It has to be more profitable to work and more companies should be able to hire employees,” the government said.

Companies hire employees in Sweden? Naw, really? Here in America, under the Obama administration, the government hires employees. Are we missing something?

Since coming to power in late 2006, the government has launched a series of measures aimed at inciting Swedes to return to the job market instead of living off of state subsidies.

But that would require effort. Here in America we are sustained by Hope^® and Change^®.

The government said it would also propose a series of measures in the budget bill aimed at boosting incentives to start companies and improve the business climate.

Seriously, somebody should text TheOneWhoWon this innovative idea.

*from Winner Takes It All (Abba)

…says Michael Moore on Leno, promoting his next documentary “Capitalism: A Love Story.”

Um, Michael, greed actually is legal. I’m sure you’re donating all the revenue from your film to charity then, right?

[crickets]

I can’t wait to go see his latest film because what with the economy and all, I’m a little short on cash and I’m sure a film extolling the evils of greed is…free…right?

[crickets]

Moore explained that his vision of democracy is redistributionist, and he gave no voice to the idea that self-reliance and hard work can propel one to great wealth.

“…we live in a democracy,”

“We’re supposed to have like fairness and equality.

Exactly. One citizen, one vote; and the American dream is *like* still widely available to *like* anyone willing to like do the work, at least *like* for now.

“And you know when you have a pie on the table … there’s 10 slices and one guy at the table says nine of those slices are mine…”

Gee Michael, I wonder who that guy is?

“…and the other nine of you, you can fight over the last slice. I mean that’s essentially the kind of economy we have now.”

Well, not everyone can be Michael Moore, can they?

What Michael doesn’t seem to understand is that the reason the one guy gets the nine pieces is that the other nine people don’t “go” for them, and in fact the one guy actually bakes the pie and gives the one back to the other nine.

It’s called a salary.

In America however, the recipe for the pie is public information. Anyone can bake themselves their own pie, and Moore has been doing it for a long time.

Typical liberal: A prescription for thee but not for me:

“Many people find it tough to swallow Moore’s jokes about the wealthy and then watch him fly first class at his publisher’s or film distributor’s expense to his posh home in New York City’s Central Park West, where he also sends his teenage daughter to an elite private school.”

Michael Moore is a talented filmmaker who like many in Hollywood have confused their success in the entertainment industry with an almighty ordination to entreat and admonish the minions at their feet with the gravity of their omniscient wisdom.

“Hey look everybody, it’s Madonna, arriving via private jet and limousine convoy to teach us how to ‘Go Green!'”

Moore’s hypocrisy is legendary, from investments he has made, people he has hired and then stiffed, to his own conspicuous enjoyment of the larger, juicier fruits of capitalism.

One can only imagine the sacrifices a 500-pound man has imposed on himself.

But the Hungry Hippocrit doesn’t care who knows all of this as there is always an ample supply of sycophants, unconscious objectors and serial protesters to stand in line and pay full price to see his drivel.

Which is to say, his hypocrisy hasn’t cost him a penny, so he doesn’t even bother to lift a hammy finger to conceal it.

…which pretty much makes him…a capitalist…pig.

There’s good news, and there’s bad news.

The good news?  Outrage from Twin Cities’ bar owners over a ham-fisted backdoor tax hike (which we covered last March) got results; the Met Council has cut the regional sewer fee for patio seating:

Twin Cities bar and restaurant owners got a break Wednesday from the Metropolitan Council on fees charged for outdoor patio seating that help pay for the regional sewer system. One pub owner already is planning to add a patio next summer.

The Metropolitan Council approved a 75 percent discount on the fees effective Oct. 1. Restaurateurs had argued that the regional sewer-system fees they pay for outdoor dining seats, on top of what they pay for indoor seating, are excessive.

The Council was charging the same fees for outdoor patio seats – which are really useful from June through August, or April through October for people like me – as they were for indoor, year-round seating.  It made patio seating unaffordable for many restauranteurs and pub owners, like our friend Terry Keegan at Keegan’s Irish Pub in Minneapolis who, unsurprisingly given the outspoken sort he is, turns up in the story.

And therein lies the “bad” news, of sorts:

Keegan’s Irish Pub in Minneapolis shut down its outdoor patio last year after city inspectors said the bar needed to pay $7,200 in regional sewer fees. Keegan’s plans to reopen the patio next year. “We wouldn’t do it at all if they didn’t bring the charge down,” owner Terry Keegan said. “We simply couldn’t afford it.”

So the patio will not, in fact, be open for Saturday’s fifth anniversary MOB gala.  But what the heck; the sidewalk’ll be nice. 

And we have a victory to celebrate now! 

Given how few and far between victories are for small businessmen, property owners and the little guy in places like the Twin Cities this past few years, it’s worth tipping a pint or two.

Nobel Prize-winning economist James Buchanan recently observed that the U.S. is duplicating many of the policies implemented during the Great Depression. Why? Mainly because politicians lack “any basic understanding of what makes capitalism work.”

The world’s oldest sophomore, Tom Friedman, has discovered the wondrous advantages of one-party autocracy over our current system of government. No, I am not exaggerating.

Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.

If you’re new to Friedman’s writing, or perhaps still nostalgically influenced by his presumably serious position as a columnist for the New York Times, you might think this is merely an attention grabbing opening lede which will be smoothly integrated into an otherwise sensible opinion piece as he develops his thoughts on this. You possibly also still believe in the Easter Bunny.

(more…)

That’s what we are telling our kids when President Barack Obama addresses the nation’s schoolchildren in his upcoming address. Be there, listen, take notes and we will talk about it when you get home.

At the same time, I respect parents that are pulling their kids that day a hell of a lot more than those that are neutral on the issue, or aren’t even aware of it.

This is a teaching, parenting moment.

Some parents have cried “Leave the parenting to us, not the President!”

But guess what, a lot of you are really crappy parents.

Some are absentee. Others are uninformed, lazy or disinterested. Many are physically present but not active; wealthy but won’t invest time. A lot of our nation’s ills can be traced back to a lack of focus, leadership and discipline on the part of parents, fathers especially, coupled with the increasingly fragmented family unit.

If there is one thing to recognize Barack Obama for, he seems to be a pretty good Dad and I think its fair to say it’s a harder job than being President, and certainly while being President.

If the President is true to his mission for this address, it could be of value. The nation’s first African-American President, addressing millions of children, many of whom are without a father, telling them to stay in school, dream big, and make the American dream your dream is good for all of us.

At the same time I understand the disdain many parents have for the President’s address. This is in part due to its timing, amidst a controversial and highly unpopular push for a government takeover of our health care system, soaring deficits, and the predicted bloating of the federal government.

But I also think it can be tied to a growing awareness that the President really hasn’t been the agent of systemic change that he told us he would be; that the actions he and Congress have taken to stimulate the economy have more likely made things worse; and the growing list of broken campaign promises.

A lot of people don’t trust Obama any more and aren’t exactly looking for his advice, especially to their children.

My kids know that we are conservatives, but they also know why. They know we don’t blindly follow or discount a politician of any particular party – my kids also know I’m not a George Bush fan and why. They also know that I am not a Barack Obama fan, but not because he isn’t like us, rather because I don’t agree with his politics. That is not to say that there aren’t things we agree on, and that will purportedly be the agenda for his address.

…and if the President strays into political or ideological territory, my kids will spot it from a hundred yards.

I don’t want my children to blindly follow in my ideological footsteps. I want them to form their own beliefs and philosophies. I want them to own them so that no one can take them away without a fight.

And that is why I want them to watch the President with respect, and with an open but discerning mind.

It would be even funnier if it wasn’t all true. Enjoy.

Click to play!

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple and a flaming liberal (one can assume evidenced by his fawning over Obama via his web site after the election) elected to have his liver transplant performed by a super-specialist surgeon in Tennessee. Job lives near Apple headquarters in Silicon Valley California.

“It’s not gaming the system,” [Jobs’ surgeon, Dr. James Eason] said in the Aug. 18 interview in Memphis. “It’s people choosing where they want their health care. Some people would leave Tennessee to go to California or somewhere else to seek treatment. Now we have people coming from California to Tennessee.”

I am not asserting that Obamacare would force someone like Jobs to seek care within the confines of California, or given his resources, even within the US. The fact that average Americans don’t know what choices they would have or would lose is probably what has derailed Obama’s momentum.

President Obama took his health care message to talk radio Thursday, telling listeners of Philadelphia-based host Michael Smerconish that he wants to overhaul the nation’s ailing health care system out of necessity rather than politics.

That’s a hard argument to make, at least to an informed audience, when Obamacare lacks tort reform. Malpractice litigation represents a large portion of the system’s cost structure and weighs heavily on health care provider decision-making when potentially being sued has to be constantly considered.

…but America isn’t buying it from a President and a Congress that will never be subject to the product of this “necessary” reform. They and their families will retain their private-jet health care.

America has witnessed a government that can’t administer an ill-advised yet simple rebate system for a narrow field of automotive sales transactions and yet aspires to manage the vast and varied intricacies of America’s health care complex.

The public trust of the Obama administration is fast eroding in the wake of White House confirmination that taxpayer dollars were spent on a spam campaign to promote reform most Americans are now resisting.

Liberal elites like Steve Jobs might also consider the fact that Jobs’ liver transplant, an unorthodox treatment of a rare cancer, while leaving 70% of patients healthy after one year, would most surely not be covered by Obamacare.

“It would not be considered the standard of care,” he said July 2 in a telephone interview. “It’s not something that would routinely be done nor is it proven to be a beneficial treatment, but it has nevertheless been tried and I’m sure in some cases been successful.”

However, experimental treatments, even if initially funded by the desperate-but-wealthy, tend to trickle down to the little people eventually once they are found to be beneficial – then widespread adoption drives down costs.

Moreover, at least in the case of Dr. Eason, government hasn’t forced him to care for those that can’t pay or represent a minority. He’s already doing it by his own volition.

While patients of Jobs’s stature are welcome, they aren’t regarded differently than anyone else, Eason said.

“Memphis is a very impoverished city in and of itself, with a large minority population,” he said. “I can tell you our floors aren’t full of billionaires.”

Eason said he’s aiming for better access to transplantation for the region’s poor, black and Hispanic populations.

One has to wonder if Jobs own personal experience might also give him cause for pause for Obama and his policies.

…why the media spends so much time trying to build up “moderate” Republicans?

Because they know the real dirty little secret; America is a conservative nation.

Conservatives – as opposed to Republicans – outnumber liberals in every single state:

According to new data released by Gallup on Friday, conservatives outnumber liberals in all 50 states–including President Obama’s home state of Illinois–even though Democrats have a significant advantage over Republicans in party identification in 30 states.

“In fact, while all 50 states are, to some degree, more conservative than liberal (with the conservative advantage ranging from 1 to 34 points), Gallup’s 2009 party ID results indicate that Democrats have significant party ID advantages in 30 states and Republicans in only 4,” said an analysis of the survey results published by Gallup.

“Despite the Democratic Party’s political strength– seen in its majority representation in Congress and in state houses across the country–more Americans consider themselves conservative than liberal,” said Gallup’s analysis.

So it’s in the GOP’s advantage – Lori Sturdevant’s caterwauling notwithstanding – to provide the people an alternative, rather than reinforcement, to the Dems.

Which is why the media is constnatly pushing “moderates”.

“While Gallup polling has found this to be true at the national level over many years, and spanning recent Republican as well as Democratic presidential administrations, the present analysis confirms that the pattern also largely holds at the state level,” said Gallup. “

But what about the “Blue” States?

Conservatives outnumber liberals by statistically significant margins in 47 of the 50 states, with the two groups statistically tied in Hawaii, Vermont, and Massachusetts.”

Massachusetts, Vermont and Hawaii are the most liberal states, even though conservatives marginally outrank liberals even there. In Massachusetts, according to Gallup, 30% say they are conservative and 29% say they are liberal, a difference that falls within the margin of error for the state. In Vermont, 29% say they are conservative and 28% say they are liberal, which also falls within the survey’s margin of error for the state.  In Hawaii, 29% say they are conservative and 24% say they are liberal, which falls within the margin of error for that state.

DC, of course, is the exception.  Even without counting Congress and the White House staff.

America stepped up and took the wind out of the sails of the Obama administration’s plan to socialize America’s health care system.

It was not Republicans nor Blue Dog Democrats that derailed Jimmy II’s grand plan – credit this one to vociferous citizens exercising their rights, rescuing America from the brink of yet another irreversible government entitlement, and indicating a potential mid-term rout of Democratic ranks nationwide if they didn’t reverse course.

Bowing to Republican pressure and an uneasy public, President Barack Obama’s administration signaled Sunday it is ready to abandon the idea of giving Americans the option of government-run insurance as part of a new health care system.

It was never intended to be an option.

Meanwhile, Obama gets off the gas and on the back-pedal.

“All I’m saying is, though, that the public option, whether we have it or we don’t have it, is not the entirety of health care reform,” Obama said at a town hall meeting in Grand Junction, Colo. “This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it.”

I think he said that just as he spied a cream pie with his name on it in the crowd.

No matter how liberal Dems spin this, it is a sound and stinging defeat in the wake of a Democratic super-majority.

The plan now may be to create a member-run non-profit option to compete with private insurers.

…but that may be moot. It may be more over than Obama is willing to concede at this juncture.

On the same day that a Cabinet member signaled the administration’s willingness to forego inclusion of a public health insurance option in the final version of health care reform legislation, a Texas Democrat who is also a registered nurse suggested that the public option might be a deal breaker for at least some House Democrats.

So much for Change^®.

More to come…

It’s interesting, listening to this 1961 speech by Ronald Reagan, how long the idea of socialized medicine/”single payer healthcare” has been knocking around.  He even notes the old “What would you do – throw senior citizens out in the streets” which, being alive in the 1980’s, I thought started in the 1980’s.

And while pining for the old days is a deadly narcotic, it’s amazing to listen to not only how eloquently Reagan trashes the idea, but with with a level of literate details.  They say American’s attention spans are shorter than they used to be – but on this sort of thing?

Anyway – worth a ten minute listen.

I was cutting my grass over the weekend when I was approached by a late-fiftysomething couple bearing clipboards and carrying a briefcase.  She was prematurely gray, ponytailed, wearing a faded “Don’t Park The Bus” t-shirt and a peasant skirt.  Come to think of it, so was he.

The following conversation happened:

WOMAN (Prematurely gray, ponytailed, wearing a faded “Don’t Park The Bus” t-shirt and a peasant skirt): “Excuse me, sir…”

MITCH: Yes? 

WOMAN:  Have you heard about the government’s “Moola for Mowers” program? 

MITCH: Er…no?

MAN: We offer…

WOMAN:  SHUT UP!  (Man shinks).  We offer people $5,000 to get rid of their energy-inefficient lawn mowers.

MITCH: Er – Five thousand dollars?  For lawn mowers?  Like this one?

MAN:  Exactly like…

WOMAN:  SHUT UP!  (Man cowers as if he expects to be struck) Yes, sir.  Exactly like that one.

MITCH:  Um…OK?  So what do I do?

(MAN pulls ball-peen hammer from briefcase).

WOMAN:  We give you $5,000 in cash, and Bhill here will destroy it.

MITCH:  But I got this mower at a rummage sale for like $30…

MAN: Not a…

WOMAN:  SHUT UP AND STOP UPSTAGING ME!  (Man falls mute, looking like a dog that’s been beaten too much) Sir, that’s really not the issue here.  We need to get this mower off the street.  Would you like $5,000, or not?

MITCH: Sure!

(WOMAN peels off fifty $100 bills.  MITCH takes them, stuffs them into wallet).

WOMAN: Yes!  The program is a success!  Bhill?

MAN (trudges to mower, like he spends half his time just covering up, and beats it weakly about the cylinder head)

MITCH:  So…you getting a lot of takers?

WOMAN: Oh, yes!  Everyone we’ve talked to has taken the $5,000 for their mower!  Indeed, one man told his neighbors, and the all brought out mowers and snowblowers!  It’s the most successful government program ever!

MITCH:  I’d imagine…

MAN: (Smacks the head until the spark plug breaks off).

WOMAN:  Yaaaaaay!  Total success!  Complete proof that Obama has brought hope and change!

MITCH: Why?  Because I got $5,000 in taxpayer money for a $30 mower?

WOMAN (happily):  Yes!

MITCH: And because all my neighbors got the same for mowers that maybe ran $50-200?

WOMAN (ecstatic): Yes!

MITCH: But whomever is funding this “program” just got ripped off to the tune of about 99.4% of their “investment”, which…

WOMAN (nonplussed):  But…a gas-guzzling mower is off the street!

MITCH: Right – for 100 times what it could have cost!

WOMAN: (Silent for a moment):  Why do you hate children?

MAN (glares at woman demonically)

Yesterday, I noted that all that talk about companies leaving Minnesota for lower-tax states like the Dakotas is not, in fact, wind in sails.

Over on Twitter, someone thought he had me cornered:

Except taxes didn’t go up & they are still expanding in ND

That’s true, but for purposes of business, irrelevant.  Businesspeople – smart ones, anyway, especially in capital-intensive businesses like the one I highlighted yesterday – don’t plan based on the current year.  They plan ahead.

And what does someone who plans ahead see in Minnesota’s not-too-distant future?

1. Tim Pawlenty – the state’s sole bulwark against a DFL whose economic philosophy is “spend other peoples’ money like we’re one of those Sweet Sixteen contestants” – is leaving office at the end of this term.
2. The Ventura “Independence” Party – which, in soaking away center-left votes from the DFL, likely kept Pawlenty in power, added a few points of padding to Paulsen’s winning margin, and arguably helped keep Bachmann there – is going to lose major-party status one of these next go-arounds.
3. The Minnesota GOP hasn’t inspired confidence in the past three cycles; the new regime on Park Street (including my friend Michael Brodkorb) has to earn their spurs by winning some elections.  There is hope – I suspect Obama is going to melt down and take a lot of Dems with him, sooner than later – but if you’re a businessman, hope isn’t a plan.
4. If 1 through 3 are true, then the DFL will very possibly seize un-fettered (or barely-fettered) control of this state in the next few years.  The GOP will likely register gains – but eight years of Republican governors, even good years with an excellent governor, could very easily lead to a “backlash” among the same horde of bovines who thought Jesse Ventura would be a good idea, and whose votes count as much as those of smart people.
5. And if/when that happens (heaven forfend), all hell will break loose in this state.  A DFL-controlled legislature with a DFL government will treat Cy Thao’s classic quip (“when you win, you keep your money; when we win, we take your money!”) as gospel; you will be Happy To Pay For A Better Minnesota, or the Minnesota Department of Revenue will do to you what the NYPD did to Abner Louima.

Given that forecast – complete control, over the next 2-4 years, of state government by a party that is less responsible at spending than The Real Housewives of Orange County – where would you put your business?

Pawlenty’s holding of the line on taxes is just the calm before the storm grinds the levees into cat litter.

First, lets be clear. Is our health care system the best in the world? Yes.

Are a majority of Americans satisfied with the system as it is? Yes.

Do most American’s believe our health care system needs change? Yes.

…but if it’s so bad, why are some of the wealthiest people in the world coming here for their health care? Just ask anyone in the hospitality industry in Rochester, Minnesota, who’s privately-owned jumbo jet sits on the tarmac for a week and who’s occupants reserve a whole floor at the Kahler hotel for their annual visit to the Mayo Clinic?

The Saudi Royal Family comes here for their health care.

These people have unlimited resources – and come here?

And yet, often cited are World Health Organization Statistics citing such items as national longevity, live birth rates and such, attempting to paint a bleaker picture and calling for Change^® in America, so we can get in line and be more like the rest of the world.

…but the WHO is an arm of the UN, who brought us the long debunked Man-Made Global Warming scam and thereby disqualifies itself as a source of reliable statistical  basis, let alone scientific integrity.

An interesting WHO statistic often cited in defense of socialized health care are physician salaries in other nations where socialized health care has long been the norm. Lower salaries for physicians is actually presented as an upside!

Riddle me this: how much do you want the guy who has his hands in your abdomen – or better yet your child’s – to earn? Who is going to sign up for eight years of crappy pay, long hours of internship and residency, and a couple hundred thousand dollars of med-school debt only to end up with a lifetime of crappy pay?

I want my doc to be driving a Porsche to deliver my baby or save my wife’s life.

Nonetheless, I think we can all agree, the the two main issues with our current health care system are coverage and cost.

One reason costs are high in America because we are wealthy as a nation. Seriously.

Food is cheap here and we eat a lot of it. Caloric intake and obesity have long been associated with increased morbidity and mortality via type two diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. Maladies our nation suffers disproportionately with much of the rest of the globe.

That’s not the only cause for the high costs, but it is a cause uniquely American. Our current third-party payer system is the culprit. This approach has gradually created a choke point between the consumer and the service. Here is the opportunity for real reform.

The current system has allowed providers and insurance companies to control far too much of the market under cover of little competition and very little consumer data on the cost and quality of care and coverage.

So before you say that the free market has failed health care, let’s actually try a free-market approach first. Because this has not been a free-market for years.

Reform is indicated, but further government encroachment is an absolute last resort.

For liberals however, it’s all they have to offer.

Liberals are attempting to seize the moment by bastardizing a need for reform into a call for a larger federal government. Obama innocently claims his plan just adds another player but true to form his eloquence is betrayed by the fine print. He intends on complete and total government control of the system.

His plan is a single-payer system, pointing health care reform in precisely the wrong direction by actually reducing accountability and market forces when increasing both is the only proven recipe for success.

As for access, there are millions of Americans without health insurance – many by choice – others because of situational factors like The Great Recession brought to you by liberals like Barney Frank. Certainly a great many need help – those that can’t do for themselves.

For those that legitimately don’t have access, government can and should help out by creating a system like unemployment insurance, possibly co-funded by insurers, providers and taxpayers to create temporary coverage with a choice of providers, for those who are unemployed, and a permanent system to bridge access to Medicaid for those that are truly unemployable. These are ideas we need to hear from our conservative leadership.

As unnerving as the socialization of health care is the dearth of alternative offerings on the part of conservatives who have instead put their chips on political polarization. Republicans are attacking the Democrats’ plan without offering a solution of their own, giving rise to calls that “any reform is better than no reform at all,” not to mention doing nothing for their chances in the next election cycle.

We are constantly compared with other industrialized nations and their universal health care systems as if America is expected to follow suit. Following the rest of the world is not what made us the most powerful nation in the world. America should be enlisting the forces of innovation, ingenuity and free enterprise that got us this far.

The answer to our health care ills can be found among the principles upon which this bruised but still great country was founded and which have propelled us to our current level of wealth and prosperity: Limited government and free enterprise.

In the mean time, on the health care issue, Republicans have become one-dimensional naysayers, a role heretofore reserved for Democrats.

Barack Obama is blowing his political capital like Bill Clinton in a strip joint. The Gates controversy coupled with an utter failure to get any health care reform to paper has left Barack Obama in a political crisis.

Now more than ever, the GOP needs to speak up and offer an alternative plan.

Lest this crisis be wasted.

There are a few lessons Republicans, Conservatives, and women who opt not to vote Democrat can learn from the past year in Sarah Palin’s life:

1. No matter how scrupulously you stick to your constitutional role on policy matters, if you are conservative and Christian, your opponents will call you a fundy theocrat.
2. No matter how accomplished you are,  people will insist you’re not very bright.
3. If you are a woman who attempts a life in public service without an Ivy League degree, no matter what you’ve done in the intervening twenty years, the tittering nabobs will call you the kinds of things they’d be excoriated for saying about a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader or a Hooters waitress.
4. If, only other hand, you are a conservative woman who did get an Ivy League degree and went on to huge accomplishments, you’ll be called a bitch who boffed up.
5. If you are a conservative of either gender, no matter how closely your views are tied to those of most mainstream Americans, you will be called “crazy”.
6. If you are a conservative of either gender, the media will consider you guilty until proven innocent of any ethics charges  brought against you.  Note the double-standard; a liberal lothario is linked with exploiting interns on company time and lying about it by a stained blue dress, and we were urged to “Move On”; Crazee McJackal from Otter Giblet Alaska says Sarah Palin took hush money from Venusians, and it’s treated with solemn urgency.

So there you go, conservative women.  Those are the ground rules.

You can thank all those “feminists” on the left for all they’ve done for women.