In his State of the Union address this week, President Obama showed up late to the game of ideas. While he offered up a few good notions, they mimicked what Republicans have been championing for two years now. In just three weeks, the new House Republican Majority has taken pro-active steps to refocus our economy in a real way.

As part of that new Congress, I’ve already voted to cut Congressional budgets by 5%, repeal the $2.6 trillion ObamaCare law and cut $100 billion over the next year by reverting back to 2008 spending levels.

President Obama referenced several options for economic prosperity in his address Tuesday night.  But if a spending freeze, earmark elimination and investment in transportation and infrastructure sound familiar, it’s because Republicans have proposed implementing such legislation to save money and create jobs for two years.

Yesterday, the citizen-empowering YouCut program came to life as we voted on a citizen idea to terminate taxpayer financing of presidential election campaigns and Party conventions.

Now that we’ve gained the Majority, Republicans are committed to cut spending and grow the economy in drastic ways. This YouCut vote will put $617 million back in the pockets on of American taxpayers in the next 10 years. It empowers the people and enables our government to do more with less during a scary national debt crisis.

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Prominent current and former members of SEIU local 73 are being investigated for their potential ties to the Hamas and FARC terrorist groups.

Late last year, their homes were raided by the FBI, and they were subpoenaed to appear in front of a grand jury for questioning.

Joe Iosbaker, Chief Steward of SEIU 73, and Tom Burke (former board member of SEIU 73) are among 9 people who are subjects in the investigation. None of them have been charged with any crimes, yet.

Two days ago, they refused again to appear in front of the grand jury.

The interesting thing about these SEIU folks is that they also belong to a violently radical group called the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. From their website:

The Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) is a revolutionary socialist and Marxist-Leninist organization in the United States.

1) We stand for the right to self-determination up to and including secession for the African American nation in the Black Belt South.

While rejecting Zionist claims on Palestine and white supremacist claims to a white southern nation or northwestern nation, we do acknowledge the fact that the most advanced sections of the Black liberation movement, from the 1800s on, have demanded a Black Republic in the South.

It gets worse from there.

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Today, in 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart shortly after liftoff. All seven astronauts aboard were killed.

I agree with the liberal blogosphere- Obama’s State of the Union was “Reaganesque.” Well written and well delivered. Awe-inspiring. Except that it was all distortions, false promises, and bait and switch. Don’t believe a word. It was pure sales and marketing, with zero substance. It was the same old “Cash for Flunkers.” Failed programs renamed “investments” in order to sell the con.

Obama’s State of the Union reminds me of the Taco Bell lawsuit in the news this same week. California consumers are suing Taco Bell for calling an item on their menu a “beef taco.” The class-action lawsuit claims that the “beef taco” barely has any beef in it — less than 35% to be exact. Instead, the lawsuit claims it contains isolated oat product, binders and extenders.

Well, that beef taco would make Obama proud. There’s no meat in Obama’s product either. Obama knows his audience likes meat, so he mixes in a spoonful of meat, along with isolated oat product, binders, extenders and other assorted artificial rubbish that tastes a little like meat. He wins your support with the bait and switch. But there is no substance. Where’s the beef? When Obama is done with the Presidency, he has the perfect skills to serve as CEO of Taco Bell.

Obama’s real State of the Union is just more campaign payola. Can you imagine if we played a game of “What does he really mean?” Just substitute “wasted government spending and debt for the same old failed programs” every time Obama used the word “investment” in the State of the Union speech. That’s the unvarnished truth — without the sales and marketing, without the bait and switch.

Why call it “Cash for Flunkers?” Because spending billions of extra dollars on education is not an “investment.” It’s just more money down the drain for the same programs and ideas that have already led to the disastrous catastrophic failure of the U.S. education system. We already spend the most in the world for the worst results. Why would we reward failure with extra billions of dollars?

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Many of the politicians in Washington, including President Obama during his State-of-the-Union address, piously tell us that there is no way to balance the budget without tax increases. Trying to get rid of red ink without higher taxes, they tell us, would require “savage” and “draconian” budget cuts.

I would like to slash the budget and free up resources for private-sector growth, so that sounds good to me. But what’s the truth?

The Congressional Budget Office has just released its 10-year projections for the budget, so I crunched the numbers to determine what it would take to balance the budget without tax hikes. Much to nobody’s surprise, the politicians are not telling the truth.

The chart below (click here for larger image) shows that revenues are expected to grow (because of factors such as inflation, more population, and economic expansion) by more than 7 percent each year. Balancing the budget is simple so long as politicians increase spending at a slower rate. If they freeze the budget, we almost balance the budget by 2017. If federal spending is capped so it grows 1 percent each year, the budget is balanced in 2019. And if the crowd in Washington can limit spending growth to about 2 percent each year, red ink almost disappears in just 10 years.

These numbers, incidentally, assume that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are made permanent (they are now scheduled to expire in two years). They also assume that the AMT is adjusted for inflation, so the chart shows that we can balance the budget without any increase in the tax burden.

I did these calculations last year, and found the same results. And I also examined how we balanced the budget in the 1990s and found that spending restraint was the key. The combination of a GOP Congress and Bill Clinton in the White House led to a four-year period of government spending growing by an average of just 2.9 percent each year.

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Meghan McCain appeared on MSNBC’s “The Last Word” with Lawrence O’ Donnell and tried her best to grill Michelle Bachmann by referring to her as a “poor man’s Sarah Palin.”

She said:

I think it’s important to note that Michelle Bachmann is not a leader, and she’s not the leader of the Republican party. Michelle Bachmann in my opinion is no better than a poor man’s Sarah Palin and I think the fact that MSNBC and Fox elected not to run this is admirable to the kind of journalism that Fox and MSNBC is airing. I think CNN should be ashamed of themselves for airing this. This is one rogue woman who couldn’t even look into the camera directly. I take none of it seriously, and I think if the Tea Party wants to put a candidate up for a response why don’t they have someone like Rand Paul who was elected on the Tea Party platform give that.

Oh, I forgot that Meghan McCain is a leader and is in a justifiable position to be passing that sort of judgment. I could say a whole lot more, but I’ll leave that up to you guys.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Ted Cruz to talk about his race to replace Kay Bailey Hutchison in the US Senate.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

My Candidate in Texas
Ted Cruz Makes it a New Game for U.S. Senate in Texas
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Governor Palin Chooses Young America’s Foundation’s Reagan Ranch Center as the Backdrop for her Speech to Honor the 100^th Anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s Birth

Young America’s Foundation announced today that Governor Sarah Palin will give the keynote address on February 4 at its Reagan 100 Opening Banquet at the Reagan Ranch Center in Santa Barbara, California, for the 100^th anniversary celebration of President Reagan’s birthday. Governor Palin was Alaska’s youngest and first woman governor and the first female Vice Presidential candidate in the history of the GOP.

“I am very excited to have been selected to address Young America’s Foundation’s Reagan 100 dinner,” Governor Palin said.  “Young America’s Foundation has been sharing the values of President Reagan with young people for more than 40 years, and there is no organization more committed to preserving freedom’s future.”

To commemorate the 100^th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth, Governor Palin will reflect on the seminal speech by President Reagan, “Time for Choosing,” that discussed the risks and rewards before an America at a crossroads in the early 1960’s. Governor Palin will draw parallels to today while calling for young people to continue the Reagan revolution into the future.

Vice President Dick Cheney will also headline the celebration weekend and deliver the keynote address at the closing Reagan 100 Dinner Banquet on Saturday, February 5 at the Reagan Ranch Center. (more…)

Whether or not you’re buying the sudden, unlikely, belief in American Exceptionalism that Barack Obama displayed during his State of the Union speech, one thing is clear.  However great we, as a nation are, we cannot “win the future.”

In his address, Obama spent a lot of time talking about our “Sputnik Moment.”  In the mid 50’s, the United States was on the receiving end of a space-race smack down.  The Russians had been the first to put a satellite in orbit.  Soon after, they would outpace us again, by putting a human in space and returning them safely to Earth.  Despite the objections from Democrats like Walter Mondale, America funneled its collective will into rectifying the situation.  According to the President, we had recognized our “Sputnik moment” and were on our way to “winning the future” by beating Russia to the Moon.

That was 50 years ago.  In the following decades, we maintained our space-age dominance through multiple lunar missions, Skylab, the space shuttle, and unparalleled advances in satellite technology.   We’re now seeing our leadership status erode.

When George Bush left office, we were on pace to return to the moon – ahead of our new space-rivals, the Chinese.  Barack Obama put an end to that program.  He gutted NASA’s budget and all but eliminated manned space flight, while paying lip service to a nebulous, underfunded, Mars mission that many believe will never come to fruition.  Liberals regularly tell us that there’s nothing a human can do in space that a machine can’t.  According to the scientific mind of Barney Frank, “Manned space travel adds far more cost than is justified in terms of scientific return.”

Predictably, while the left decimates American space exploration, China is ramping up its Space initiative. The CNSA (China National Space Administration) is aggressively pursuing a series of orbital missions and moon shots, which will be funded by the interest paid on the money Barack Obama is currently borrowing. As a result, where space exploration is concerned, China has become the new Russia, and once again we’ve fallen behind.

Only this time, we’ve done so by choice.

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In his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, the President joked about the fact that House Republicans have repealed the Healthcare law, and affirmed his commitment to his administration’s signature piece of legislation.

Just one day later, however, the fate of the same Healthcare law appears more doubtful, perhaps, than the President and the Democrats imagined.

According to Foxnews.com, Medicare’s Chief Actuary Richard Foster told House Budget Committee members on Wednesday that the two central premises of the Healthcare law, upon which the President and Democrats have been defending the law, are not likely to come to fruition.

Foster responded to two “True-False” questions, posed by Rep. Tom McClintock (R-California): 1) whether the law will keep down healthcare costs; and 2) whether the law will allow people to keep their health insurance if they choose.

Foster responded, “I would say false, more so than true,” to the question about costs, and “Not true, in all cases,” to the question about keeping coverage.

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Liberals will tell you they support freedom of choice, but they won’t tell you that freedom they are willing to extend you begins and ends with abortion. Try to exercise it in any other aspect of your life and they’re there, ready to pounce with some regulation or law forbidding you from moving forward with your liberty workout. It doesn’t matter to them what the impact is, they want what they want and they’re willing to step all over you to impose it.

The latest whipping boy in the crosshairs of these statists is the post-secondary for-profit education system. Odds are this battle won’t impact your life directly, but their attacks rarely do. They never attack the heart of that which they seek to control or destroy, they chip away at the edges until it no longer resembles that which it was. It still exists, but in such a way so as to no longer function effectively and eventually dies. Look at what they’ve done to off-shore drilling without so much as passing a law.

For-profit education is the choice for millions of Americans who, for any number of reasons, can’t or choose not to matriculate to traditional colleges and universities. The reasons vary – poor grades in high school, young children at home, etc. These schools serve mostly poor, underprivileged students who have very limited options. You’d think liberals would be for anything that helps the very people they claim to champion. But their rhetoric rarely matches their actions.

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The child porn allegations made against MTV for its “Skins” show must be investigated by the Obama Justice Department. Child Pornography is not protected by the First Amendment, and producing child porn is a crime.

Whether these allegations are true or not, even allegations of it are something most responsible businesses don’t want to be associated with, and they’re chasing advertisers away from this latest attempt to redefine what’s allowed on television.

The latest TV scandal is over MTV’s new show, “Skins.” The show casts child actors (not adults who play children on camera) with a plot where kids are involved in drugs, sex and reportedly even prostitution. It’s pushing the envelope in terms of coarsening society, evidently going for the shock value of being one of the edgiest shows on cable television.

But MTV might be in colossal trouble, because “Skins” is being accused of involving child porn. Child pornography laws don’t just cover explicit sex between children. Among other things, they include simulated sexual conduct by minors. If the actors were actually adults who just looked young, then the Supreme Court says child porn laws would not apply. But because the actors are really children, if they’re depicted in sexual acts then MTV has crossed the line.

It’s beyond dispute that the child actors are pretending to have sex in this show.

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The general attitude towards immigration emanates from a place of fear. Many people like the way that America is and are afraid that immigrants will change our culture for the worse. Well, those people would be wrong. This argument has been made over and over throughout the history of America.

The Germans, Irish, Chinese, Italians and others were all looked upon as threats to “The American Culture”. Well, were they threats? Are they now? No. And people fail to grasp the reality that most immigrants are coming here to become part of us and not change us. There is no evidence that if you allow immigrants to assimilate into your country that they change the national identity in any significant way. They want to learn to speak English, they want to be American. We won’t let them. Isolating people in a black market underworld prevents them from being assimilated; welcoming them is the answer.

Other than the American Indians, everyone here is the descendent of an immigrant and yet we somehow think the immigrants today are different. Look at the early part of the 20th century, dirt poor and starving immigrants with no education came over in droves from Ireland. They had nothing and were dying like flies in their home land. The people already here thought they were going to ruin America. What could those uneducated poor Irish do? Well, a hell of a lot actually.

Turns out that they didn’t want to be uneducated and poor but needed the fertile soil of freedom to prosper. How about the Germans? We went to war with them twice and threw a bunch of them into camps and last time I checked the masses of German born immigrants did pretty well too. The same with the Japanese, the Chinese, the Jews, the Italians and the list goes on. Most all of these groups were met with fear as outsiders, but it was irrational and unsustainable fear.

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Today is the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. On this date, in 1945, the Soviet Red Army liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. In a weird and unnerving coincidence, today is also the birthday of Wolfgang Mozart. That the heirs of Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven, Mozart and others could produce the Holocaust is sobering. Always remember the very thin layer of civilization that protects us.

I felt the same as cartoonist Michael Ramirez (and likely many of you) when congress made a spectacle of themselves with their SOTU prom:

I’ve spoken to several legislators who played up to the PR gimmick of reaching across the aisle and choosing “dates.” I’ve watched them giggle about it on the morning talk shows and Tweet each other.

“It’s symbolic,” said Democrats. You know what else is “symbolic?” Bringing the popular health control repeal bill to the senate floor for a vote. So spare me the ridiculously fake bipartisanship.

I asked this question of Rep. Mike Pence (honestly, my motivation was to later softly ridicule his answer if he bought into the faux-unity hype) and received a refreshing answer, a little more than six minutes in.

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We now have a new Congress, the 112^th, or the “Tea Party Congress,” as it has been called, owing to the large number of conservative challengers who beat liberal incumbents on Election Day. This presents a tremendous opportunity to help Congress hold corrupt politicians — especially the out-of-control Obama administration — accountable to the rule of law.

After all, a large number of these new members of Congress focused their campaigns on the issue of cleaning up corruption in Washington. And so, to help these new members keep their campaign promises and abide by the dictates of American voters, Judicial Watch this week released its list of “investigative priorities” for the 112^th Congress.

Our list, in alphabetical order, includes:

• ACORN Corruption: Including, but not limited to, ACORN restructuring and rebranding; unethical activities by ACORN affiliates; incidents of voter registration fraud (Project Vote); and new Obama administration grants and funding for ACORN-linked groups.
• Financial Solvency: Including, but not limited to, the impact nationally if individual States should begin to default on their debt.
• Government Bailouts: Including, but not limited to, the government’s legal and constitutional justification for authorizing the bailouts of private financial institutions; government deliberations regarding which institutions received grants from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP); the decision by the Federal Housing Finance Authority (FHFA) to place Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under “conservatorship;” and the government takeover of the American automotive industry.

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During Tuesday’s State of the Union address President Obama mentioned the word “jobs” 31 times, topping last year’s tally by two. Back then he promised to make jobs his “number-one focus in 2010″ and then promptly focused on passing ObamaCare, regulating Wall Street, slapping a moratorium on drilling for oil in the Gulf–he even made time to chat with the gals on The View (Prez doesn’t know who Snooki is!).

Although Obama did make some attempts to fight unemployment directly (especially for public-sector workers), today the unemployment rate stands at 9.4 percent, almost as high as it was one year ago.

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During his State of the Union address, the President said, “If you have ideas on how to improve this law by making care better or more affordable, I am eager to work with you.”

Mr. President, I accept your invitation. As a small business owner, I know the devastating impact the current law will have on our economy. We all agree that the system is broken and health care reform is necessary. I would love to speak with you about the concerns I have with the law and work together to create health care solutions that serve all Americans. I’m eager to begin the dialogue and work with you to give consumers more choice in their health care decisions.

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The Hamas-tied Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) is viciously going after Congressman Peter King (R-NY), who is planning on holding hearings about the radicalization of Muslims in America.

On Monday, CAIR’s daily “American Muslim News Briefs” mailing contained no fewer than three shots at King:

Rep. King Turns Dispute with Mosque into Personal Vendetta

King Hearing Witness: ‘We Are at War with Islam’

Video: GOP Rep. Bashes Islam, First Muslim in Congress

You might get the idea from this that King’s hearings are actually going to do some good. After all, if the Hamas group CAIR is angry, King must be doing something right. Yet last week I called King’s hearings a “show trial” after King told Politico that he was “not planning to call as witnesses such Muslim community critics as the Investigative Project on Terrorism’s Steve Emerson and Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer.” I wrote that “for King not to avail himself of Emerson’s knowledge and Spencer’s scholarship is an astounding case of willful blindness.” Even worse, King (R-NY) said he was going to call Muslim Brotherhood-linked Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN).

I support increasing awareness of the jihadist threat in our midst. Who more than I? But when Politico reported that King, who is the new chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, plans to take “testimony primarily from Muslims” during his upcoming hearings, I thought, why? The media considers it its mission to take its spin primarily from Muslims. The cultural elites are constantly haranguing us with the Islamic supremacist narrative of calling any candor or criticism of jihad “Islamophobia.”

Islamophobia amounts to the enforcement of blasphemy (sharia) laws. In Muslims countries the punishment for “blasphemy” is death. In the West, the punishment of “blasphemy” (candor aboutIslam) is character assassination. News is edited, rearranged, and altered to deliberately omit the motive behind attacks on nations and non-Muslims, whether it’s Russia, Egypt, Lebanon, Thailand, Nigeria, Somalia, India, Pakistan…or Fort Hood, Texas.

What we need is sunlight, not more obfuscation.

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