As pre-November primaries come to an end, inquiring political minds will be asking Americans, “What is the singularly most important issue that will drive you to vote this year?”

Almost certainly, the answer will be “jobs.”

Republican proposals to reduce taxes, regulation and government to stimulate growth are right on the money.  But they still won’t overcome one of the GOP’s most serious problems – its post-Reagan divorce from “the working man.”

In April, a bi-partisan poll was released by the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) measuring support by GOP and Tea Party voters for American manufacturing as an agent of job growth.  The results will come as a surprise to no one – except, perhaps, elected Republicans.

Millions of Americans associated with manufacturing have long felt ignored by the Republican Party for many reasons — primarily Democrats’ strong union ties.  But that paradigm could shift in 2010 based on current political trends.

Of the 37 Governors’ mansions currently in play, nineteen are held by Democrats and 18 by Republicans.  Four states – Massachusetts, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan – are big losers in the manufacturing employment race to the bottom and are expected to be swing or trending states in the 2012 Presidential contest.

Since 2000, Michigan lost 434,000 manufacturing jobs; Ohio, 392,000; and 291,000 in Pennsylvania.  Massachusetts, America’s original factory state, shed 150,000.

In these key states the current governor is a Democrat, yet the nation’s top political prognosticators are listing them as “toss up” or “leaning Republican.” Republicans could pick up four to seven governorships overall.

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Happy Birthday!

It’s no secret that ethics means something a little different here in the Land of Lincoln. We’re home to where the last 3 of 6 governors have gone to jail. Our last governor was just convicted of a “Martha Stewart” offense and is awaiting retrial on his own corruption charges. Our current Governor, Pat Quinn, has been a self-styled outsider for decades and became an accidental governor after Blagojevich was impeached. The term “accidental governor” not only describes how he became Governor but in a large part it describes his governing style.

The one amazing transformation has been Quinn, the reformer,  becoming Quinn, the business-as-usual politician. While claiming the need for “shared sacrifice” and insisting on a tax increase, his top political staff received massive payraises (up to 20%). He formed a blue-ribbon ethics commission to reform state government, then largely ignored everything they told him. However, the latest incident is the most disturbing.

His chief-of-staff Jerry Stermer had sent several e-mails from his state e-mail account to coordinate campaign messaging for Pat Quinn during the primary. He had directed the budget director of the state to produce information to be distilled into talking points by the Governor’s campaign PR firm. To his credit, he then turned himself in to the Inspector General of the state for an ethics investigation. The ethics transgression here isn’t peanuts, but it’s certainly not a case of storied Chicago politics corruption. But then things got interesting.

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New York, like most states in the nation, is facing a nasty budget hole which Gov. David Paterson attempted to fix earlier this summer by pushing through a tax hike on cigarettes.  A pack of smokes now costs as much as $13 in Manhattan, but the high taxes being levied may not be helping to close the state’s budget gap.  Revenue from cigarette sales following implementation of the 58 percent increase in tax levied by New York State totaled $125 million last month.  During July 2009, it totaled $119 million.

Now, facing ongoing budget problems, New York is moving to impose taxes on a good the state is known for producing, and which many of its residents consider indispensible: The bagel.

An obscure provision in New York’s tax law allows Albany to tax “sliced or prepared bagels (with cream cheese or other toppings),” and the tax collectors are moving on bagel shops across the state.  A particular target appears to be Kenneth Greene, who owns over thirty Bruegger’s Bagel franchises in New York.  Greene’s customers are livid at the eight-cent per bagel tax being levied.  In response to customer outrage, Greene has posted signs reading “We apologize for this change and share in your frustration on this additional tax.”

Other bagel shop owners meanwhile are holding out hope the tax collectors refrain from targeting them next.  “I hope they don’t come after me for that,” said Florence Wilpon, a founding owner of Ess-a-Bagel in Manhattan, per a quote in the Wall Street Journal.

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55 years ago, Rosa Parks helped launch the modern civil rights movement.

Today, the government is bulldozing her old neighborhood.  Here’s the real kicker:  The homeowners are forced to pay the cost of demolition.

Nobel prize-winning libertarian economist F.A. Hayek famously wrote that “the great aim of the struggle for liberty has been equality before the law.”  There is no better example of this fundamental struggle than Rosa Parks, known today as The Mother of the Freedom Movement.

She refused to be treated as a second-class citizen.  But her hometown of Montgomery, Ala., segregated blacks on public transits.  Minorities were forced to sit in the back, forced to give up their seats to whites, and sometimes were left standing on the side of the road after paying their fare.  Rosa stood up to the Big Government Bullies and said enough is enough.  Her demand for equality before the law forever transformed America.

Rosa once said:

I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free . . . so other people would be also free.

Indeed, she made the world a better place.  So how despicable is it that today officials in her old hometown are forcing people to give up their homes?  The government is tearing down houses against the property owners’ will and then sticking them with the bill.

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The bizarre and unlikely rebellion known as the Tea Party began with only a few thousand people in a few dozen places on February 27, 2009. Those of us who were there in St. Louis or Atlanta, Chicago, or Los Angeles, feel a bit of trepidation as we approach the November 2 Mid-Term. Will we live up to our promise? Or will we live under the growing tyranny of debt, taxes, regulation, and corruption.

With so much at stake, let us pause one last time.  Like a football team before the championship game, we need a moment to reflect on what we’ve done, to lend strength to our companions, to reinvigorate our determination, and to ask God’s favor.  On September 12, the American conservative movement will clear its throat and prepare to sing to the world.

In Washington, DC, Sacramento, CA, and St. Louis, MO, tens of thousands of Americans will gather one final time before the most important election in a century. We will do what we always do at Tea Parties: pray, speak, listen, sing, and celebrate.  While we may be angry, we are also joyful that our words find so many welcoming ears, and that our voices blend with so many others.

We will gather together as a family, full of the drama and petty disagreements that seemed so important—so life or death—a few weeks ago. They weren’t important, of course. They were frivolous. But human nature makes mountains out of mole hills.  Until fate places a real mountain in the path to our destiny.

That mountain is debt, government, corruption, and depression.  Its malignant foliage is stolen power, plundered treasures, and trampled rights.  And while that mountain looks mighty and strong, we know that Jericho’s walls fell to trumpets and prayers.  We know that faith can move a mountain.

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Congressman Steve King (R-IA) has issued the following statement in response to the press conference held this week between former USDA employee Shirley Sherrod and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. During the press conference, Sherrod revealed that she would not be accepting an offer of employment from Secretary Vilsack.

Other important questions, however, were not addressed by either Mrs. Sherrod or Secretary Vilsack.

“Before the press conference, we knew that Mrs. Sherrod was hired three days after being awarded $13 million in the nation’s largest civil rights case, Pigford v. Vilsack. We knew that Mrs. Sherrod was forced to pull over to the side of the road and send in her resignation. We knew that she had maintained that the White House pressured her to resign immediately.”

“After all the friendly gestures between Secretary Vilsack and Mrs. Sherrod, there are still several questions unanswered. Why is Secretary Vilsack taking responsibility for the decision when Mrs. Sherrod has maintained she was contacted by the White House? Did the White House demand Secretary Vilsack fire Mrs. Sherrod? Is she still being paid by the federal government? Has Mrs. Sherrod agreed not to file another lawsuit against Secretary Vilsack or the federal government? Was Shirley Sherrod granted an additional settlement in exchange for her silence and an agreement not to sue Vilsack again? Why is Mrs. Sherrod filing suit against Andrew Breitbart, but hugging the man who fired her?”

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KABOOM!

Far Left website TPM Muckraker took the offical walk of shame today and admitted that one of their unhinged bloggers was arrested for firebombing Congressman Russ Carnahan’s office. The suspected firebomber blogs at TPM under the name “Ripper McCord.”

When Leftie Bloggers Attack…

Dem operative, Russ Carnahan staffer, TPM blogger and suspected firebomber Chris Powers is the sweaty one pictured here on right during a rally for nationalized health care. Powers reportedly is was a paid canvasser for Russ Carnahan.

TPM reported:

Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-MO) confirmed in a press conference yesterday that the suspect in an alleged arson at Carnahan’s campaign office is a former paid campaign worker named Chris Powers.

Powers has not been charged in the arson case. In a phone interview this morning with TPMmuckraker, Powers denied having any involvement with what local reports have described as a “fire bombing.”

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From the Associated Press:

One in 10 American households with a mortgage was at risk of foreclosure this summer as the government’s efforts to help have had little impact stemming the housing crisis.

About 9.9 percent of homeowners had missed at least one mortgage payment as of June 30, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Thursday.

That number, which is adjusted for seasonal factors, was down slightly from a record-high of more than 10 percent as of April 30.

In a worrisome sign, the number of homeowners starting to have problems with their mortgages rose after trending downward last year. The number of homes in the foreclosure process fell slightly, the first drop in four years.

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Will the madness ever stop?  Just over two weeks ago, Congress passed a $10 billion “Education Jobs Fund” that gave money to cash-strapped states to keep teachers and other school employees on the job.  It was spun as a victory for the kids, but the real winners were the teacher unions who were spared from making any concessions on pay and benefits that are necessary to balancing school budgets.

Once that $10 billion is spent, the structural problems of school spending will still remain.  A recent study from the Manhattan Institute and the Foundation for Educational Choice finds that “teacher pension liabilities for all 50 states now total almost $1 trillion….almost triple the cost of what state officials have on their balance sheets.”  The study concludes that these unfunded public burdens “could bankrupt state budgets including education programs.”

While the teacher unions won a temporary victory, we have to believe that they are paying careful attention to another, bigger bailout that is lurking in the shadows.   And this time, there is more at stake than just a few billion dollars.  If this latest bailout becomes law, it will mark the first time in American history that tax dollars are used to fund the pension plans of private—unionized—industry.

The teachers unions know that their lavish pension plans will result in a financial tsunami for the states.  Should this new bailout go through, it will pave the way for a massive bailout for the teacher unions, the likes of which have never seen.  This is a very big deal.

In late July, Sen. Dick Durbin (D – IL), the second most powerful Democrat in the U.S. Senate, announced that he is supporting the “Create Jobs and Save Benefits Act of 2010.” This proposed bill that would make certain labor union pension plans the “obligations of the United States.” Put another way, the American taxpayer will be on the hook for financially disastrous pension plans.

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There’s a great new report from the Manhattan Institute emphasizing the role of tort law as a supplement (and alternative) to regulation. If fishermen in the Gulf coast had a right to be free from pollution, perhaps BP would have invested more in preventing the recent disastrous spill. Unfortunately, as the MI piece points out, trial lawyers have tended to focus not on these genuine – and objectively verifiable – harms but instead on hypothetical and highly subjective concerns. A series of class action suits resulting in essentially arbitrary payouts has enriched the trial lawyers but done little if anything to protect individuals or the environment from harm. Indeed, arguably these suits have been counterproductive as they have often led to the elimination of beneficial substances, while diverting resources to lawyers and plaintiffs and away from more productive uses.

One of the examples given in the MI report is MTBE, an additive used in gasoline to make vehicles run more efficiently (and thereby produce less pollution). Oil companies started adding MTBE to fuel in 1979 but its use was increased after 1990 – as the MI report points out “Congress had reached the policy judgement that adding MTBE to motor fuel produced a net benefit, even though the chemical can affect the taste of drinking water if it enters the water supply.” The EPA also evaluated MTBE and concluded in 1997 that “there is little likelihood that MTBE in drinking water will cause adverse health effects” in the quantities present. Given that the EPA tends to err on the side of caution (demanding very wide margins of safety), it seems fair to conclude that MTBE in drinking water really was most unlikely to pose a danger to health.

If historic tort standards were applied, there would be no case: MTBE might have an impact on taste, but that is of course subjective. It does not – according to the EPA at least – cause an “objective” harm to human health. This distinction is important. For the law to act as a guide to human behaviour, it must be based on objective standards. If judges apply subjective standards after the fact, how are we to know the standard against which we will be judged? Taken to its logical conclusion, we enter the world of Kafka’s Josef K, who is tried with crimes he didn’t even know he had committed.

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House Republicans are stepping up to the plate and asking Americans on Main Street what we need to do to get the economy back on track.  On Monday, Members of the Economic Recovery Working Group unveiled a 13-miniute video which takes a look at the debt crisis facing our country, titled “Obama’s Endgame: A Look at the National Debt.”

There’s a real disconnect in Washington these days.  I fear, as so many Americans do, that too many representatives in Congress are secluded in Washington, making laws that will fundamentally shift how our economy operates without considering the real-world consequences.  Americans are rightly frustrated watching the national debt skyrocket while ordinary Americans are trying to keep their heads above water.

Over 1.3 million Americans have used YouCut, a project aimed at introducing commonsense savings measures, as a platform to tell Washington to stop the out-of-control spending.  Folks across America are tightening their budgets and finding ways to save in this tough economy.  And they’re rightly disgusted by the gross abuse of taxpayer money on pet projects and inefficient federal programs.  The President and the Democratic leadership are running out of ways to explain why the government can’t keep its fiscal house in order and they’re hard-pressed to find anyone who believes that growing the national debt by $4.9 billion a day is healthy.

The video raises serious concerns over how Washington’s spending spree will hurt the economy.  It’s an in-depth analysis, complete with charts and graphs, showing how specific policies will only continue to perpetuate a culture of irresponsible spending.  One of my favorite segments of the video is when my colleague Mr. Paul Ryan from Wisconsin explains—in simple terms—what happens when the foreign governments who hold our debt start to question whether we’re getting our fiscal house in order; inflation will rise and the middle class will be on the hook.  These are real, serious concerns that our kids will have to face if we don’t curb out spending habits.

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I am not personally acquainted with John Boehner, though I laid eyes on him once. I do not really know Eric Cantor either – though we met in passing in April, 2009 when I was in DC promoting my book Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift. And I have never met Paul Ryan or Mike Pence.

Moreover, I am strongly inclined to fear that they will betray us in the aftermath of November. The Republicans in Congress do have a track record, after all. If the Democrats have a propensity for adding new social programs, their opponents have a no less powerful aptitude for voting to pay for them. It was not for nothing that Bob Dole was once derided as “the tax-collector of the welfare state.”

Like a man about to embark on a second marriage, I am nonetheless inclined to let hope triumph over experience and to entertain the possibility that this time it might be different. When a Democratic pundit such as The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus charges that the Republican opposition to Obama is “irresponsible,” it really does give one hope.

The event that caused Marcus to rise up in high dudgeon was a speech that John Boehner delivered in Cleveland on Tuesday, in which he attacked the latest “stimulus” bill, called for President Obama to submit to Congress “an agressive spending reduction package,” warned against allowing tax increases to take effect that would fall heavily on small businesses, pressed for an immediate repeal of the healthcare bill provision requiring businesses to issue a 1099 every time that they spent $600 or more, and called for the President to fire Tim Geithner and Lawrence Summers. Twelve times, Marcus lamented, Boehner used the phrase “job-killing” – “as in ‘job-killing tax hikes,’ ‘job-killing bills,’ ‘job-killing agenda,’ ‘job-killing federal regulations.’” This is, she charged, “bumper-sticker politics, not a real economic plan.”

Boehner’s speech was shocking, indeed. It might lead one to think that we are in the middle of an election campaign and that the Minority Leader in the House of Representatives is intent on distilling for the voters what the party that controls both houses of Congress and the Presidency has most egregiously done wrong. It might be taken to suggest that he intends to offer voters a choice, not an echo; and though Boehner’s speech was not a plan, it does suggest that he has one.

Ruth Marcus is thoughtful and often worth reading, but when it comes to economics she is completely out of her depth.

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President Obama continues his vacation…enjoy

The suspect who firebombed Rep. Russ Carnahan’s office last week was reportedly a disgruntled progressive activist employed by democrats. An unnamed source familiar with the case released the information. Suspect Chris Powers reportedly was upset because he did not get paid so he firebombed the Carnahan finance offices at 2 in the morning.

What a complete shock.

Dem operative and firebomber Chris Powers is the sweaty one pictured here on right during a rally for nationalized health care. Powers is was a paid canvasser for Russ Carnahan.

The RFT reported:

Congressman Russ Carnahan held a press conference confirming that the person St. Louis police arrested and released for last week’s firebombing of his campaign headquarters did in fact work for his re-election campaign.

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On the national level it seems as if the Unions have changed priorities. No longer is their primary objective to protect the rights of their own rank and file, their objectives has moved into politics and selling the progressive and/or Marxist agenda. Hence their support of many of the Administrations policies such as Obamacare, the auto bailout and the financial regulation bill in some cases (such as Obamcare) over  the objections of their membership.

Fresh from their recent wins, the unions are moving into building the base of Marxist, Communist and progressive voters, as evidenced by the AFL/CIO joining a get out the vote effort run by United for Peace and Justice, an origination established to promote an agenda which is both socialist and anti-war.

The announcement the AFL-CIO move was made in People’s World a magazine for the Marxist and Communist movements in the United Sates:

The AFL-CIO executive committee voted unanimously this morning to join One Nation, Working Together, a new national coalition of labor and civil rights groups that has as its purpose to “reorder America’s priorities by investing in the nation’s most valuable resource – its people.”

The labor, civil rights, environmental, faith and other organizations that have formed the new coalition intend to replace unemployment and economic crisis faced by the country’s majority with “nothing less than a future of shared prosperity for all our people,” the AFL-CIO said in a statement after it voted to join One Nation.

“None of us alone have been able to achieve our priorities,” said Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO.

One Nation’s first official act as a coalition will be a march on Washington on Oct. 2, which unions say will energize an army of tens of thousands who will return to their neighborhoods, churches, schools and voting booths to prevent a Republican takeover of Congress in November and begin building a new permanent coalition to fight for a progressive agenda.

The AFL-CIO joins groups such as The NAACP, SEIU 1199, Green for All, National Council of La Raza, US Student Association, and the Center for Community Change in the One Nation, Working Together effort.

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When Senator Chuck Schumer staged an elaborate press conference on the steps of the Supreme Court to unveil his Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections Act (“DISCLOSE Act”) he noted that:

“Anyone who wants to hide, will not do an ad after this legislation passes. And I think there are a lot of people who like to hide … so I think there’ll be many fewer of them.”

His words revealed the true motivation of this legislation – it is not transparency but rather silencing speech in this critical election year.  The Supreme Court in Citizens United v. FEC restored the First Amendment protection to political speech.  Small businesses, corporations, unions, and membership based organizations may now have a voice in the public discourse.  The Democratic leadership that is tasked with re-electing incumbent politicians and trying to minimize Democratic losses this November were understandably fearful of what the public may say now that their voices have been restored.  One issue the Democrats would rather not let the American people be reminded of is the national 9.5% unemployment rate.

Their solution was the DISCLOSE Act, a piece of legislation that creates a burdensome new regulatory scheme as well as requires that political ads feature disclaimers which may be as long as 14 seconds in length.  This will increase the costs to small businesses and membership based organizations that seek to have a voice – many won’t be able to afford the additional compliance costs and will have their voices silenced.

In the four months since Senator Schumer introduced the DISCLOSE Act, we’ve seen it is just one part of a systemic campaign to chill political speech.

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In a very predictable editorial yesterday, the New York Times pontificated in favor of higher taxes. Compared to Paul Krugman’s rant earlier in the week, which featured the laughable assertion that letting people keep more of the money they earn is akin to sending them a check from the government, the piece seemed rational. But that is damning with faint praise. There are several points in the editorial that deserve some unfriendly commentary.

First, let’s give the editors credit for being somewhat honest about their bad intentions. Unlike other statists, they openly admit that they want higher taxes on the middle class, stating that “more Americans — and not just the rich — are going to have to pay more taxes.” This is a noteworthy admission, though it doesn’t reveal the real strategy on the left.

Most advocates of big government understand that it will be impossible to turn America into a European-style welfare state without a value-added tax, but they don’t want to publicly associate themselves with that view until the political environment is more conducive to success. Most important, they realize that it will be very difficult to impose a VAT without seducing some gullible Republicans into giving them political cover. And one way of getting GOPers to sign up for a VAT is by convincing them that they have to choose a VAT if they don’t want a return to the confiscatory 70 percent tax rates of the 1960s and 1970s. Any moves in that direction, such as raising the top tax rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent next January, are part of this long-term strategy to pressure Republicans (as well as naive members of the business community) into a VAT trap.

Shifting to other assertions, the editorial claims that “more revenue will be needed in years to come to keep rebuilding the economy.”  That’s obviously a novel assertion, and the editors never bother to explain how and why more tax revenue will lead to a stronger economy. Are the folks at the New York Times not aware that both economic growth and living standards are lower in European nations that have imposed higher tax burdens? Heck, even the Keynesians agree (albeit for flawed reasons) that higher taxes stunt growth.

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Grandpa Wouldn’t Recognize Today’s Unions.

Nationwide, as many Americans have begun to see, unions have become one of the largest special interest groups in the nation—and often at the expense of taxpayers and, in many cases, other workers. As unions have moved more into politics, this transition from building unions for workers to building a progressive political party to “reorder America’s priorities” has left many union members wondering whether their unions have been hijacked for purposes outside of the betterment of the workplace.  As more and more politicians get bought off by union bosses, it certainly seems clear that today’s unions are more about building a ‘progressive’ political movement than representing many of their members’ interests.

In all, unions collect over $13 billion dollars per year in union dues and fees from workers, the majority of whom have no choice but to pay the union or be fired from their jobs.  Once the money leaves the workers’ pockets, though, union bosses are pretty much free to use the money how they see fit.  For example, in addition to paying themselves and their staffs, union bosses also take the money and spend an astronomical amount of money pushing their progressive agenda.

While hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on direct political activities and lobbying, unions also spend hundreds of millions on funding shadowy groups to push for things like nationalized health care, the job-killing Employee Free Choice Act (which effectively eliminates workers’ right to a secret-ballot election), as well as the effort to nationalize America’s retirement system.

Despite the use of union dues being used with little input from the workers themselves, throughout the country, there are cracks beginning to appear in the more “progressive” (read: socialist) union bosses’ veneer.  As union bosses have pushed open borders and the legalization of illegal immigrants as a means of replenishing their depleted ranks, some have taken exception.

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