As we enter 2012, the presidential candidates would do well to wrap their minds and messages around these seven mathematical facts:

1. Every day, the U.S. government takes in $6 billion and spends $10 billion.  This means that every day the federal government spends $4 billion more dollars than it has.
2. The real unemployment rate is a jaw-dropping 11 percent.
3. Every fifth man you pass on your way to work is now out of work.
4. College graduates are now 34% less likely to find a job under Obama than they were under President George W. Bush.
5. Every seventh person you pass on the sidewalk now relies on food stamps.
6. The ravages of the Obama economy now mean that more Americans live under the federal poverty line than at any time in U.S. history since records have been kept.
7. Under President Barack Obama, every fifth child in America now lives in poverty.

These are not partisan jabs, manufactured statistics, or ideological swipes.  These are mathematical facts.  And the presidential candidate who can most clearly and credibly articulate them—and their concomitant solutions—is bound to win.

Why?  Because these facts point toward the solutions America must implement to avert the kinds of economic and social upheaval seen in Europe and elsewhere.

Start with mathematical fact number one—deficit spending.  No person, family, business, or nation can spend more than it takes in and remain sustainable; it defies the simple laws of math and reason.  And yet even as Washington hemorrhages $4 billion more than it has each day, citizens have watched as the farce that is “Super Committee” has proven it cannot even shave $1.2 trillion from America’s $15 trillion debt.

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Mitt Romney’s weekend interview in the Wall Street Journal seems to add weight to conservative doubts about his candidacy.

Romney doesn’t seem to get it: the 2012 election is about the size and cost of government.

We already have a “smart” president with ambitious plans who thinks he knows better. That hasn’t worked for our economy, and has damaged trust in our democracy.

Romney says “America doesn’t need a manager,” but his plans reflect what the Journal euphemistically calls “positive technocratic thinking.”

Though Romney may be more “sober” than his rival Newt Gingrich (or, less charitably, more timid than the former Speaker), he evidently shares with Gingrich an enthusiasm for what the federal government could do, if only he were put in control.

Given that Ron Paul’s radical foreign policy is a non-starter, and that several other candidates–however well-meaning–could not manage the mundane task of qualifying for the Virginia ballot, or withstand the media scrutiny of a long campaign, Republicans are feeling new doubts about the current field.

They are all better than Obama; the question is–are they the best Republicans can offer?

As Republicans have wrestled with that question, a few have floated the idea of a “brokered convention,” at which the party’s nominee would be chosen through back-room negotiations and contested ballots instead of the pro forma roll calls of recent decades.

Given Romney’s struggle to provide the clear alternative to Obama that Americans so desperately need, the party should consider whether a brokered convention is feasible as a fallback option.

Here, then, are the top ten Republicans who could be nominated at a brokered convention. Some declined to run earlier, and should reconsider; all would provide a stronger contrast to President Obama than Romney or Gingrich is providing at the moment.

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10. Rep. Eric Cantor

The Whip united the caucus against the disastrous stimulus in 2009. In the debt ceiling debate, he reportedly held out against new taxes in any final agreement. Moreover, he has made clear that his vision for the country’s future is plainly different from Obama’s.

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9. Sen. Jim DeMint

The conservative stalwart has provided key support to Tea Party candidates, and has challenged the compromise politics of the Republican establishment.

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8. Gov. Bobby Jindal

Recently elected in a landslide to a second term, he has fought political corruption and brought competence and leadership to a state long lacking both. Despite a rocky national TV debut in 2009, Jindal is a ruthless and effective campaigner.

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Today, in 1945, the World Bank and IMF were created.

On the evening of Sept. 16, 2009, I was invited to a function for Rand Paul’s U.S. Senate campaign at the headquarters of Americans for Tax Reform.

I had been invited by a friend of mine via Facebook who was a passionate supporter of Ron Paul. Within minutes of arriving, I saw Rep. Paul enter the room, followed by an entourage of several college students.

I immediately walked up to Paul and introduced myself, and Paul smiled at me and shook my hand. I told him that I had always wanted to ask him a question, and that it was a hypothetical question, but I would appreciate his answer nonetheless. Paul smiled, and welcomed the question. At this point there were about 15 people surrounding us, listening.

And so I asked Congressman Paul: if he were President of the United States during World War II, and as president he knew what we now know about the Holocaust, but the Third Reich presented no threat to the U.S., would he have sent American troops to Nazi Germany purely as a moral imperative to save the Jews?

And the Congressman answered:

“No, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t risk American lives to do that. If someone wants to do that on their own because they want to do that, well, that’s fine, but I wouldn’t do that.”

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Recent statements by Republican presidential candidate and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich regarding the powers of the Supreme Court have opened up a conversation that is crucial to every American, especially now that the court has agreed to consider the case of the constitutionality of the Affordable Health Care for America Act (Obamacare) and the individual mandate.

The argument that the Supreme Court has been entrusted with the power of judicial review dates back to the case of Marbury v. Madison in 1803, which established the Supreme Court’s power to strike down an act of Congress. Chief Justice John Marshall asserted that it is “emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department, to say what the law is.” The Supreme Court is the arbiter between the people and the legislature and protects the people from unlawful actions by Congress. The dilemma is, and has always been, that the Constitution does not provide a remedy for an overreaching Supreme Court.

While many believe that a Supreme Court justice, with a lifelong appointment, will rule on legislation based on its constitutionality, an unchecked Supreme Court could impose its will on the country against the will of the people.

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Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich has come under fire for his amnesty plan. Most Americans cringe at the word “amnesty.” After all, most citizens view it as government acquiescence for political expediency, and, of course, they are right to feel that way. Amnesty is nothing more than to say that elected officials do not possess the will to enforce federal laws — the very thing they take an oath on before assuming their congressional duties.

With that being said, the details for amnesty make the whole gimmick all the more preposterous. Take Newt Gingrich’s plan, the Pew Hispanic Center concluded in their research that an estimated 3.5 million illegal aliens would qualify for amnesty under Gingrich’s plan. That means roughly 30% of the estimated 11 million illegal aliens would be “graced” into society after arriving here illegally. If the number is much higher than 11 million, which many experts say is very likely, then the prospects of amnesty will never really reveal the actual problem and will offer no incentive to fix it.

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From Richard Winger at BallotAccessNews:

There are currently many news stories and blog discussions about the Virginia presidential primary ballot access law. Some large blogs, such as Red State, have over 300 comments about the story. Some defend the current Virginia ballot access laws on the grounds that in past presidential elections, a fairly large number of Republican presidential primary candidates managed to qualify.

But what has not been reported is that in the only other presidential primaries in which Virginia required 10,000 signatures (2000, 2004, and 2008) the signatures were not checked. Any candidate who submitted at least 10,000 raw signatures was put on the ballot. In 2000, five Republicans qualified: George Bush, John McCain, Alan Keyes, Gary Bauer, and Steve Forbes. In 2004 there was no Republican primary in Virginia. In 2008, seven Republicans qualified: John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, and Alan Keyes.

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From the Associated Press:

With a week to go, the state of the race in Iowa generally mirrors the race from coast to coast.

Polls show Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, having lost ground and Texas Rep. Ron Paul having risen, with both still in contention with formerMassachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at the head of the pack. All the others competing in Iowa—Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum—are trailing.

But, in a sign that the contest is anyone’s to win, most polls have shown most Republican caucusgoers undecided and willing to change their minds before the contest in a state where the vote typically breaks late in the campaign year.

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From The Washington Post:

Since the failure of the company, Obama’s entire $80 billion clean-
technology program has begun to look like a political liability for an administration about to enter a bruising reelection campaign.

Meant to create jobs and cut reliance on foreign oil, Obama’s green-technology program was infused with politics at every level, The Washington Post found in an analysis of thousands of memos, company records and internal e-mails. Political considerations were raised repeatedly by company investors, Energy Department bureaucrats and White House officials.

The records, some previously unreported, show that when warned that financial disaster might lie ahead, the administration remained steadfast in its support for Solyndra.

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Democratic National Committee

Minutes

December 24, 2011

OFFICERS PRESENT

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, National Chairleader

Mike Honda, Vice Chair, UAW Liaison

Donna Brazile, Vice Chair, Hemispheric-Americans Voting Rights Coordinator

Linda Chavez-Thompson, No Relation to Cesar or Fred

OTHERS

Akio Toyoda, President, Toyota Motor Company

James Clyburn, Emissary, Congressional Black Caucus

Diane Sawyer, Network Lackey

Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger, Print Shill, New York Times

Eric Holder, Attorney General for Minority Rights

Dennis Kucinich, Director, Munchkins United for America PAC

Betty Friedan (1921-2006), Founder, League of Dead Women Voters
(Whoopi Goldberg, Channeler))

PROCEEDINGS

Ms. Wasserman Schultz called the meeting to order at 10:14 a.m. after police were called to settle a dispute between Mr. Honda and Mr. Toyoda.

On secure video uplink, President Obama spoke briefly from the Kauai Lagoons Golf Club putting green.  He warned of the hard road ahead.

AG Holder arrived at 10:23, claiming he never received a memo about the session.

OLD BUSINESS

1.  Ms. Wasserman Schultz announced that Planned Parenthood had submitted the winning design for the new Democratic National Committee logo.

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Four of the six leading Republican candidates were given lumps of electoral coal this Christmas season when they failed to gather the signatures necessary to qualify for the Virginia Republican primary held on March 6. This leaves only Governor Mitt Romney and Representative Ron Paul on the Old Dominion’s ballot a few months ahead of the Super Tuesday primary.

Newt Gingrich leads the polls in Virginia, but Michael Krull, his national campaign director, actually compared the “set-back” to the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. The Gingrich campaign naturally plotted a counter-attack–an aggressive write-in campaign–but that will be of limited success because Virginia law bans write-in votes in primary elections. Not one write-in ballot was counted in 2008.

For now, Gingrich is left to grumble about the “system” of authenticating signatures in the Virginia primary. He may have a point.  Candidates are required not only to collect over 10,000 signatures to get on the ballot but have to have at least 400 from each of the state’s eleven congressional districts. Both Perry and Gingrich cleared the first hurdle by at least a thousand signatures, but it appears they may have stumbled on clearing the second. We don’t know this for certain — the Va. GOP hasn’t explained why Gingrich and Perry failed to qualify– but this seems likely.

Gathering enough signatures from enough of the different districts proved too tricky. In at least one district that’s a tall order. Virginia’s 3rd and 8th congressional district, for example, are among the most Democratic in the country, with a PVI score of D+20 and D+16, respectively. Woody Allen may be right when he said 90% of success is just showing up, but it is hard to show up when there is effectively no Republican party in some congressional districts.

Worse yet, Virginia’s House of Delegates complicated matters further when voters may not know which congressional district they live in thanks to an ongoing state-wide fight over redistricting. Virginia Republicans submitted a map in April 2011, but Virginia Democrats seemed insistent on pushing the matter to January 2012 and then to federal court if they don’t enough black–and therefore Democratic–congressional districts. They would sue the state under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and toss the matter of redistricting over to the federal courts.

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Happy Boxing Day!

This is the second installment of a multi-part series on suggested economic policies for the next government to consider.  These are meant to be long-term solutions.  Our current economic downturn has some short-term causes but a large part of the explanation lies in the worldview that governments of both parties have adopted, in small ways since maybe Abraham Lincoln but in significant ways since Franklin Roosevelt and in exaggerated extremes since Lyndon Johnson.  The federal deficit, the mess we call a tax code and so forth were created over a long time and while the solutions can be implemented with greater haste it will take some time for the transition and full effects to be felt and the returns to be realized.  The political class has seldom shown signs of long term thinking and the greater population seems less so, we can only pray and hope the message gets through.  My second installment is on federal spending.

The brilliant and humorous French politician and economics writer, Frederic Bastiat may have summed up how government works as well as anyone:

The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.

In line with Bastiat, the three largest expenditure categories in the federal budget are programs that transfer wealth from some people to other people. Federal expenditures (since there is no enacted budget) totals approximately $3.6 trillion.  Over half of that goes to the big three; Social Security, Medicaid/Medicare and income stability (welfare) programs.  Eliminate these three and the budget is in surplus, which is a fascinating statement since these three programs have parallels in the private sector that are profitable.

However, it is not reasonable to make extreme changes to programs people have on which people have counted and planned.  But, that reasoning cannot prevent the sort of long term changes that are needed.  There is no denying the budget math:

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I thought this video interview with Rep. Steve King (R – IA) would be a nice Christmas present for “Dr.” John Boyd and attorney Al Pires, the Pigford Settlement hucksters who have profited at the expense of  black farmers.  They have repeatedly called the people trying to expose their fraud racists, including Congressman King.

When I was interviewing Rep King this past February in his office in Washington, he asked to stop the interview to show me something; a Bible that one of his ancestors carried in the Civil War while fighting to end slavery. I asked him to tell the story on camera and here’s what I shot. Rep. King opposes the fake reparations scam that people like Boyd and Pires are running and as this video makes clear, he also opposes racism and discrimination.

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The hackers known as “Anonymous,” who helped organize and support the Occupy Wall Street protests this past fall, claim to have stolen emails and credit card numbers from Stratfor, the highly respected U.S. security think tank.

Source: Forbes.com

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Hackers on Sunday claimed to have stolen a raft of emails and credit card data from U.S.-based security think tank Stratfor, promising that it was the start of a weeklong assault on a long list of targets.

Members of the loose-knit hacking movement known as “Anonymous” posted a link on Twitter to what it said was Stratfor’s tightly-guarded, confidential client list. Among the list: the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force and the Miami Police Department.

The rest of the list, which Anonymous said was a small slice of its 200 gigabytes worth of plunder, included banks, law enforcement agencies, defense contractors and technology firms.

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As unlikely as it is for OWS to gain power, what would it mean for our nation, and our society, if they did? Michael Bane provided a frank answer. Bane has several decades of experience in the coverage and study of riots and social cavitations worldwide as a journalist. He is also the host of “Best Defense Survival” on the Outdoor Channel.

Bane discussed Occupy’s anarchist collaboration: “If anyone succeeds in bringing down the United States government or creating a social dislocation that breaks this fragile, amazing machine the Founders created, what comes after is not pleasant. What comes is what was before the Dream of America… That was simply survival of the most vicious.”

Bane continues, “What the toy anarchists in the Occupy movement don’t understand is that the best organized people in the country are the criminal enterprises. They’re very good at it. MS-13? Biker gangs? Mexican cartels? These guys are good at anarchy… because they are without conscience or any sense of moderation… That is what anarchy looks like. Anarchy looks like someone’s head on a bed.”

The communist and socialist elements within the Occupy movement believe the elimination of our current system, or at least the collapse of it, will bring about a favorable revolution. What the Occupiers fail to understand is the historical, if not psychological, context behind a revolution. These movements are regularly co-opted by more insidious ideologies. Those who instigated the French Revolution ultimately found their way to the guillotines just as many of the antagonists who toppled the Russian Empire found their way into the gulags of Soviet Russia. (more…)

A very modern Christmas carol. Credit to Riley:

Merry Christmas!