Last year, my first-born was in enrolled in our local public school in second grade, and although he spent 6 or 7 hours there each day, he came home with tons of homework and a good deal more learning remaining.  I started to think, “Why am I sending my kids to school, when the school sends them back to me to educate?”  A friend later complained to me that when they gave her son a book report, it meant at least 5 hours of her own time working on it with him.  Another parent told me how great the tutoring was at the chain store down the street from her.  All this got me to thinking: if I’m ultimately in charge of my kids’ education, why do I feel so powerless?

SOME FUNDAMENTALS

I assumed that the government knows best what, and how, to teach my kids.  It’s an assumption I was raised with, one I never challenged, until now.  Well, you know what they say about you when you assume…

This recent economic collapse has dragged me, kicking and screaming, to question the efficacy and intelligence of the body comprised of our representatives in Washington.  I mean, since the housing calamity, we now have the lowest percentage of home ownership since the 1960’s.  This, after all the manipulations Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barney Frank, and Fannie Mae implemented to make housing more “affordable”.  (It’s very affordable now!)  Thanks to their good intentions, and the rest of the spenders in Washington, the economy is in the tank, we don’t have a balanced budget, and don’t even get me started on the deficit.  Most of us agree that something is seriously wrong in government.  It cannot balance its own checkbook, so it prints more money.  Call me old-fashioned, but that’s a problem for me.

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Every president has his bête noire.  For Reagan, it was Sam Donaldson.  For Clinton, it was Ann Coulter.  For President Obama, it’s David Limbaugh.

No better book has been written compiling the evidence against a president that Limbaugh’s Crimes Against Liberty.  “This book is about a young presidency,” Limbaugh opens.  “[Y]oung, but already the most destructive in American history.  Everything about Barack Obama’s radical background signals his visceral contempt for America – its culture, its values, and its political and economic systems.  His unmistakable goal is to bring America down to size – an America that has been, in his view, too big for its britches, selfish, exploitative, unfairly wealthy, arrogant, and dismissive.”

That’s a powerful thesis, and Limbaugh spends the better part of 400 pages proving it in painstaking detail.  The amazing thing is that he doesn’t even scratch the surface, as he told me on my radio show in Orlando.  Every day, Obama does something new to destroy the Constitution and undermine America’s founding values.

Limbaugh isn’t calling for impeachment – he doesn’t think Obama has committed impeachable offenses, at least not yet.

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Under pressure from a barrage of bad midterm-election polls, President Obama has gone on the campaign trail to blame Pres. George W. Bush for all our economic problems, and to bash House Republican leader John Boehner as nothing more than a Bush retread.

In Friday’s dreary news conference, Obama acknowledged that economic progress is “painfully slow,” and that voters may blame him for the economy. Yet he nonetheless continued to finger Bush “for policies that cut taxes, especially for millionaires and billionaires, cut regulations for corporations and for special interests, and left everyone else pretty much fending for themselves.”

“Millionaires and billionaires” has become Obama’s favorite phrase as he calls for tax hikes on the wealthy and renews his attacks on Bush. In Cleveland last week, Obama actually blamed the Bush tax cuts for the financial meltdown and severe recession. Now that’s a reach. A big reach.

While Mr. Bush made plenty of economic mistakes, his 2003 reductions of marginal tax rates led to more than 8 million new jobs in the next four and a half years. Under Bush, the unemployment rate dropped to 4.6 percent.

And almost all economists agree that the 2007-08 financial meltdown was a housing-bubble and credit event. It had nothing at all to do with cutting taxes.

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Today, Americans across the country will gather at 9-12 rallies. On 11-2, Americans across the country will vote.

Knapheide Manufacturing

With Congress set to return to Washington, D.C. this week, the number one issue on the legislative agenda is tax cuts.  Most Democrats want to extend some, but not all, of the tax cuts initiated by former President George W. Bush.  Republicans, together with a few Democrats notably including Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), meanwhile hope to extend all of them.

The debate thus far has been framed primarily as a fight between those who want tax cuts for the middle class, versus those who want them for everyone (including wealthy Americans).

However, as with the health care debate, there is some prospect, political analysts say, that the debate could morph into a discussion of whether the Obama administration’s preferred policy would hammer one of the nation’s most coveted voting blocs– senior citizens– and in a circumstance in which Democrats have limited options for pushing back on Republican attacks.

According to IRS data analyzed and published in July this year by the Tax Foundation, “taxpayers over age 55 account for 71 percent of all dividend income earned. The lion’s share of dividend income – 48 percent – is earned by those over 65, and dividend income accounts for 6 percent of all the income earned by these taxpayers.”

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Now that they’ve passed ObamaCare, can we see what’s in it?

Sally Pipes, president and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute and author of The Truth About ObamaCare sits down with Ted Balaker to discuss what’s really on the way courtesy of the recent health care overhaul: higher costs, decreased access to care, and the looming spectre of a single-payer system in America.

Pipes, who hails from Canada, worries that ObamaCare has set the U.S. on a path toward a Canadian-style system. She weighs in on if and how ObamaCare could be repealed and what should replace it.

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As we mark the ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the controversy of the Ground Zero Mosque has given rise to a conversation that should have occurred many years ago. Beyond question of the proposed Islamic community center’s proximity to Ground Zero, the debate has also brought to light several unanswered questions about the nature of Islam and its relation to terror: Given the radicalization of mosques and Islamic community centers in Europe, how do we know such meeting houses will not foment such behavior here? If the American Islamic community is immune to radicalization, what differentiates it from such communities in the Netherlands and France? How has the moderate American Muslim community reckoned with attacks carried out in the name of its faith? In sum: To what extent is Islam itself to blame in the extremism of the “Islamist” terrorists?

Following 9/11, a certain dogma of permissible rhetoric took hold that did not allow such questions to be answered or even to be asked. Criticize Islam and you recruit more terrorists. Have faith in moderate Islam and you destroy al-Qaeda. Maximal tolerance from us, it was thought, equals minimal hate from them.

A similar dogma took hold in the plans to rebuild Ground Zero itself. These beliefs quickly played out in the strong-arming of a sacred site by the ideologues of tolerance. Long before the attacks of 9/11, so-called enlightened urbanites bemoaned the outsize scale of the Twin Towers. They resented the superblock of the World Trade plaza for interrupting the street grid. The buildings, to them, were symbols of hubris. They objected to the same monumentality that the terrorists set out to destroy.

When an unelected claque of bureaucrats called the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation nominated itself to redesign the site immediately after the attacks, they sought to undo all of the wrongs of the people who had designed the original towers.

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The public is not aware of what’s happening within higher education, and for good reason:  the self-serving universities want to keep it that way.  Even worse, they will excoriate those on the inside who reveal the truth about the scam.

Ben Franklin said that “an example is the best sermon.”  Let us look at a real example from an insider whose name must remain anonymous?  Why?  Because the tenured professor pleaded to me that if the instructor’s name is revealed along with disclosures, “I’m dead.”  There are ways to punish even tenured professors.

I know this to be the case the hard way:  I once crossed a university picket line and encountered the most traumatic experience in my life, exceeded only by my wife’s death.  My professorial colleagues and friends treated me brutally.

Professor X writes in a private e-mail that at X Texas university,  even  despite the state budget crunch, that “tenured faculty will be not be teaching more classes. . . . Regular faculty must pursue research to generate prestige to enhance each college’s ranking.”

Prof. X adds:  “The number of classes offered will decline.  Remaining classes will be much larger and not particularly well taught:  faculty don’t want to take time away from their research. . . . Many courses once taught by competent lecturers will be handed over to graduate students.”

It gets much worse.

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We all remember…

At today’s press conference, President Obama pledged to push Congress to fund the Pigford settlement involving the USDA and black farmers in the South.

April Ryan, the White House correspondent who asked the question, has said that the funding of the Pigford settlement would be seen as a “litmus test” in relation to the President’s commitment to African-Americans.

Transcript:
OBAMA: April Ryan.

APRIL RYAN: Thank you, Mr. President. I want to ask a couple questions. On the economy, could you discuss your efforts at reviewing history as it relates to the poverty agenda, meaning LBJ, and Dr. King? And also, since Senate Republicans are holding up the issue of Cobell and Pigford II, can you make any assurances before you leave office that you will make sure that those awards are funded?

OBAMA: Let me take the second question first. For those who aren’t familiar, Cobell and Pigford relate to settlements surrounding historic discrimination against minority farmers who weren’t oftentimes provided the same benefits as everybody else under the USDA. It is a fair settlement, it is a just settlement, we think it’s important for Congress to fund that settlement. We’re going to continue to make it a priority.

In this week’s edition of Coffee and Markets, featuring The New Ledger’s Francis Cianfrocca, we’re talking about the challenges facing Wall Street, a new survey of consumer sentiment, and Paul Krugman’s call for World War III to rescue us from economic disaster. We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment.com and Stephen Clouse and Associates.

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When in October 2009 Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was asked about the constitutionality of the individual health insurance mandate, her response was a question, twice asked, “Are you serious?” Are you serious?” Lest one think hers was a momentary lapse, Pelosi’s press secretary later reiterated the point by saying of the question about the provision’s constitutionality, “That is not a serious question.”

Madam Speaker, the question posed to you was a serious one.  It is a question so serious, in fact, that it should be question at the beginning, middle, and end of any legislative debate.  It should animate our public conversations, and it should motivate our national legislators to remember the oath they take upon assuming office.  That oath, as follows, is itself serious about the Constitution:

“I, (name of Member), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.  So help me God.”

The original oath of office, adopted in 1789, was even more to the point:  “I do solemnly swear (or affirm),” a member of Congress used to say, “that I will support the Constitution of the United States.”

In 1838, Abraham Lincoln, not yet 30 years old and still eight years away from his own election to the House of Representatives, said that the Constitution and “reverence for the laws” should “be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap—let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs;— let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice.”

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We’ve got a star driven panel this week as Pat Sajak, and Jonah Goldberg join the show. It’s a fascinating conversation as they talk polling and how they ask the delicate questions, movie marketing, why Obama’s agenda polls terribly, but he himself doesn’t. Also, dogs, liberal economics, Jonah Goldberg’s unintentional impression of a Cylon, the predictable (and gratuitous) Star Trek reference and much more. All this, and Ethel Merman bringing up the rear. Yes, you read that right. Listen in!

For links mentioned in this episode, or to comment, please visit us at Ricochet.com.

Five years ago when Congress was considering a requirement that nasal decongestants be placed behind the counter to combat their use in methamphetamine production, I was one of many policy analysts who argued against this restriction.

I believed it would do little to curb meth use, make the purchase of cold products by law-abiding citizens time consuming and inconvenient, and shift methamphetamine production to Mexican drug cartels.

Since the bill passed, seizures of domestic labs dropped while meth use rose, and consumers now wait behind prescription customers just to buy cold pills. Mexican drug cartels increased in power and violence while becoming the primary supplier of methamphetamine to the U.S.

Unfortunately, I was correct on all counts.  Yet here we go again.

Government is limited in its ability to fight the war on drugs, leading bureaucrats to pick low hanging fruit.  To fight abuse of marijuana, prescription drugs, methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and over-the-counter drugs, it must find producers, identify distributors and catch users – all of whom operate in the shadows.

Cough medicine on the other hand, is easy.  There it is, in plain sight, on store shelves.

In an effort to pass a ridiculous regulation and then declare a victory in the drug war, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is considering a rule that would require a physician’s prescription for your favorite off-the-shelf cough medicine.

Yes, I know; I can’t believe it either.

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This week brought more Subprime Stimulus from an administration attempting to ignite the economy with a burnt-out match.  The Obama proposal to allow the expensing 100 percent of investment in plant and equipment is fine, but something that might’ve occurred to the administration years ago as an obvious first step, in the sense of, you know, just walking through a door before breaking a wall down instead.

Apart from this belated revelation regarding enterprise and the calculus behind why some people might wake up one day and decide to hire other people, Obama’s economic program fundamentally consists of fostering a compulsory “Declaration of Dependence” on the part of America’s wealth-creating sector. Washington is all about the institutionalization of Government Steering While the Market Rows.

Despite bad economic news and Obama’s policy of talking about business like a dog, it’s only 2010, and America’s real wealth is yet to be created if we correct course.

However if policymakers don’t confront regulation as well as spending, they are missing most of the story behind today’s expanding state.

Congressional reformers need to institute massive, unprecedented doses of economic liberalization. America requires massive deregulation in sectors like basic manufacturing, telecommunications, electricity, frontier science, and energy and the elimination of policymakers that stand in the way, regardless of party.  We have to re-appreciate how it was that the U.S.—now only 235 years old—became richer than the rest of the world in a historical eye-blink, and how that remarkable achievement can be recaptured.

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One year ago today, we launched BigGovernment.com. As you probably know, our first posts dealt with the video sting of ACORN, orchestrated by the new citizen journalists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles. It had an impact.

It also marked a new chapter in on-line media. Most of the conservative on-line media are scorekeepers. The provide opinion, but don’t really move the ball forward. I know that sounds both hyperbolic and self-serving, but consider: after the second day of our video release the U.S. Senate voted to defund ACORN and the Census Bureau severed all ties with the embattled organization. All of this happened before either the Washington Post or New York Times had devoted a single column inch to the burgeoning scandal. I’ve been in Washington D.C. for 16 years. Nothing politically happened until one of those papers weighed in. Until last year. The game totally changed and, even today, neither the JournoList-supporting Post nor the hemorrhaging Times understands this. Newsweek is dead. USA Today is shedding staff as fast as it can while Time clings to life as something to glance at on an airplane and every other part of the legacy media retires to “background noise.”  Simply put, no one cares about them anymore.

There was a time that news organizations like the Post and the Times could set the national agenda. They were the arbiters of what was news and what was “important.” A wink from one of their reporters would set off a national debate. If they ignored a story, well, it went nowhere. They were the “casting couch” of all possible news. Those days are over.

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On this date, in 2009, BigGovernment.com was launched. With your support, we have made a difference. Thanks for everything. We expect the next year to be even better.

From the Associated Press:

The minister of a Florida church said he has canceled plans to burn copies of the Quran because the leader of a much-opposed plan to build an Islamic Center near ground zero has agreed to move its location. The agreement couldn’t be immediately confirmed.

The Rev. Terry Jones said Thursday that Americans oppose the mosque being built at the location and that Muslims do not want the Quran burned. He said instead of his plan to burn the books on Saturday to mark the ninth anniversary of 9/11, he will be flying to New York to speak to Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf about moving the mosque.

“We are, of course, now against any other group burning Qurans,” Jones said during a news conference. We would right now ask no one to burn Qurans. We are absolutely strong on that. It is not the time to do it.” (more…)