Wisconsin Strategy Going Nationwide

For the past year, I have talked of the Wisconsin Strategy which was simply the left attempting to make governing impossible for conservative governors.  When Governor Walker actually decided to fulfill his campaign promises to balance the budget, keep taxes in line and reform public union hold upon the state purses, the Democratic left engaged in a strategy to prevent Walker by governing. There was massive protest at the capital along with the Democratic legislators escaping to Illinois border in order to prevent a quorum.  The Union added intimidation to their plan as they threaten to boycott any businesses; who did not put a pro-union sign in their stores during the various recall elections.  Will of the people? Yeah right, the will of people would only be respected by the left if the voters made the decision to vote them in.  They tried to undermine the judicial system by attempting to overthrow one of the judges with a recall election to gain a 4-3 advantage with the idea to judicially overthrowing the reforms by fiat.

When that failed, then they tried to recall Republican Senators to gain a majority and when that failed, they went after Walker directly and the drama is being played out one more time.  It will appear that maybe the drama will end with a Walker victory as even the liberal Milwaukee Journal Sentinel have endorsed Walker since they can’t see a reason to recall Walker for his point of view or dispute his efficacy as a governor.  They may disagree with Walker policies but at least they understand that the politics of personal destruction and scorch earth policy is not good for the body politic. What the editorial board doesn’t understand is that their leftist political brethren don’t really care about the body politic. The left wants power to transform America and they view their conservative opponents an evil power that needs to be humbled and eliminated from the public square.

The recent Occupy movement is part of the Wisconsin strategy taken nationwide and with more violence.  Like the storm troopers who attacked their political opponent in Germany’s Weimer Republic in the late 20s and early 30’s, the Occupy movement is giving us a glimpse of the future.   The purposes of Occupy is to make governing difficult and are merely practicing to be the new storm troopers if Romney manages to win the Presidency and Republicans take both houses of Congress.  Organizations like the leftist Institute for Policy Studies, leftist foundations like the Soros funded Tides Foundation and SEIU are involved in the organization and funding of the Occupy Movements, so we can’t really say that Occupy are a fringe group but a full partner within the hard left coalition.

The Occupy movement is the left version of the Tea Party; only their emphasis is not on political reform and shrinking government but to engage in violence and intimidation while helping to expand government.  The Occupy movement is not about providing stock troops to get out the vote; that is what the left has public sector unions for, but it is designed to go into the street to create chaos and the advantage that Occupy movement has in obtaining its goal is a gentle press that has so far covered up much of its violent intent.  (The Tea Party is treated like the second coming of fascism but the irony being that it is the Occupy movement that behaves more like fascist storm troopers than the peaceful Tea Party.  The Tea Party is the complete opposite of fascism represent. Like supporting more freedom!)

As I referenced Frances Fox Piven in a previous piece, who wrote in The Nation, “So where are the angry crowds the demonstrations, sit-ins and unruly mobs?… they have to develop a proud and angry identity and a set of claims that go with that identity…An effective movement of the unemployed will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union, or like the student protests that recently spread with lightning speed across England in response to the prospect of greatly increased school fees.” Ms. Piven was defending violence revolution and Occupy movement has evolved into a violent appendage of the left to push the agenda in the street while others work the political system.

One pundit wrote a nice summary of the contradiction for the left of Ms. Piven strategy and Obama economic plan when he noted, “I propose that President Obama is simultaneously trying to rescue the economy using the Keynesian/Democratic model while at the same time also trying to destroy the economy through the Cloward-Piven Strategy. His two mutually contradictory plans cancel each other out, rendering all his efforts self-negating, and this explains why the American economy has stalled…..I dub this the Obama-Piven Strategy. And it’s the reason why we remain mired in a deep recession. We are neither recovering, as the Keynesian model predicts, nor is capitalism collapsing, as the revolutionaries hope; the Obama-Piven strategy ensures that we remain in suspended animation between the two extremes.”

I will conclude now with the similar thoughts I wrote a few months ago, “The Occupy movement will follow Piven’s strategy of disrupting their opponents and even some of their allies to keep them in line with the idea of transforming America. Occupy has become foot soldiers of the Democratic left along with more radical union members but then what would you expect of a Party headed by a Community organizer?”

Rand Paul Takes over His Dad's mantle

Rand Paul is the future of the libertarian Republican movement as he starts taking the baton from his father of their liberty agenda within the whole GOP. As the Ron Paul campaign eventually winds itself down, Rand Paul begins the process of building his own brand as he campaigns for other congressional candidates.  Paul is now pushing to elect his small government candidate to the House and Senate with the idea of changing the Republican Party and the conservative movement.  In an interview Paul stated, “There’s so much inertia up here, we’d like to see people come up who’d actually try to change the system… I think if we don’t shake off that inertia — you know, everything is mandatory spending, everything has a permanence up here. It takes someone who is somewhat fearless and aggressive to try and change the system.”

Paul has been willing to endorse establishment Republicans just as Connie Mack IV as well as conservative Ted Cruz in Texas and long shot New Mexico Senate candidate Greg Sowards against Moderate Heather Wilson.  Paul backing for candidates is based on whether those candidates support smaller government and take seriously the Constitution.  In a recent Kentucky congressional primary, he recruited Tom Massie, a tea Party candidate for the Kentucky fourth district, who prevailed against two of the local GOP establishment.   Paul commented on this race and others, ““I think people associate me with the tea party; they associate me with having great concern with the debt; having tried to be a leader in the balanced budget movement here. I think that is helpful… We try to choose races where we think there’s a clear distinction between establishment moderate and what we consider to be a more constitutional conservative.”

Paul came in the public focus with his Senate win in 2010 when he won the primary against establishment backed candidate before rolling in the general election. Rand Paul in one way is different from his father, who seemed satisfied to be a loner whereas Paul works to build coalition to promote his agenda.  Rand Paul has showed a more careful path in his Senate career that while he has disagreed with many of his Senator colleagues either on stances or the pace of reform; he has managed to garner respect from his Republican Senators.

One long term Republican lobbyist view Paul as similar to Phil Gramm who was a leading conservative activist within the Senate but played well with others behind the scene.  Paul easy nature and patience is allowing him to advance his cause just as Gramm did when Gramm advance his own cause.  As one Republican Senator noted, ““He has very good personal relations with the Members of the caucus, and I think he’s learning faster than most new Senators how to maintain his principles, but work within an organization that operates by unanimous consent. Some Senators never learn that …Rand has views that sometime are very different than how the rest of us in the Republican caucus thinks. But he’s learned not to lecture everybody. He listens well but maintains his own principles and attitude.”

Paul has established a good working relationship with Mitch McConnell, who is not only the minority leader but a member of the Republican establishment.  McConnell supported Trey Grayson in the 2010 Kentucky Republican primary but has been willing to allow Rand Paul to promote libertarian amendments as part of parliamentary maneuvers over the past two years.

The biggest difference between Rand Paul and his father is that Rand Paul won a Senate Seat which means he had to sell his libertarian position to a broader audience than his father who won elections after elections in a safer Texas district.  This could aid him if he runs in 2016 as he inherit a base established by his father and he might be able to take has father ideas to a larger audience.  Ron Paul refusal to run as a third Party ticket is due to advance his son’s future political ambition.  Gary Johnson left the Republican this year to run as Libertarian but Johnson never develop the same loyalty among libertarians and some independent as well as Tea Party members like Ron Paul who was engaged in his second Presidential run as Republican.(Paul ran for President as a Libertarian in 1988.)

Paul biggest disagreement with GOP are with social issues like gay marriage (even though both father and son are pro-life) and support what he would describe as a non-interventionist policy.  Most recently at a Iowa Faith and Freedom coalition, Paul stated, “We’ve introduced the Life at Conception Act, the Pro-Life Act, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, I’m also co-sponsor of the Human Life Amendment..I’ve also been trying to defund Planned Parenthood. Anybody hear for that?”

On Foreign affairs, Rand Paul opposes Marco Rubio and other rising conservatives but he does not oppose United States involvement in the World situation.  In Iowa, he noted, “I’m not naïve enough to think we can never have war, but I am conscious of the fact of the horrors of war …I’m conscious of the fact that I think our country needs leaders that understand that and not leaders who think that war is a sports game, that you know, you’re for the New Orleans Saints, and that’s an all-out war on the field, so war is no big deal. War is a big deal. It should be the most important thing we ever vote on when we are in Congress. It should be done very deliberately, and very rarely, when everything else fails.”

If there is a different between father and son, it is style. Libertarian Brian Doherty noted, ““Ron Paul never seems to care what people think, whereas Rand frames his politics to appeal to talk-radio conservatives, and you see the difference when they do dual campaign events. Rand has his own political style.”

Paul goal could be to tie the Libertarian movement to the conservative movement and in the process, expand the movement into mainstream.  The late Richard Nadler once told me that if you get a million listeners; you have a hit radio show but if you get million votes nationwide, you have the Libertarian Party.   There are far more libertarians than Libertarian Party voters.  Paul goal is to expand his ideas beyond the small percentage that vote Libertarian to become a dominant force within the conservative movement.

The Coming Economic Debacle

The CBO recently acknowledge what others have stated, the coming economic debacle facing whoever is elected in 2013.  The massive tax increase along with austerity program with no real growth component added to the mixture will lead to a sharp downturn.  While the CBO sugar coats it with a one of those “oh yeah, growth will return in the second half of 2013”, that is whistling beyond the grave yard.  The reality is that combined with the coming disaster of the collapse of the Euro and European Union, Obamanomics is putting a knife in the chest of the economy and this time, there is no blaming George Bush.  Obama economic plan has already weaken the economy and set in place the worst recovery in the post- World War II era and you can easily make the case that this is the worst recovery over the past century as well.  Obama is leaving his successor an economy with massive debt, massive federal regulation, along with new entitlement programs that will add to future deficit while failing to reform the major entitlement programs of Medicare and Social Security. He has left no room for error and no room for any future administration to maneuver.

Economist Don Luskins noted, “So just by the numbers, the fiscal cliff matters. Investors are wrong to blithely assume that the boys in Washington will somehow do the right thing and it will all work out in the end. …All these tax issues will have to get negotiated in the lame duck session of Congress after what is likely to be an unusually bitter election season. And it's highly likely that an increase in the statutory debt ceiling will have to be negotiated at the same time, in order to avoid a Treasury default—investors would be wise to remember what a near-death experience that was last August….If there's a bargaining failure and the scheduled tax hikes on dividends aren't stopped, we'll be sorry we're spending so much political energy now debating about the "1%" and their supposed privileges. It's the 30% down in the stock market we ought be worrying about.”

Luskins’  point that the cliff is just around the corner and disaster within reach simply because there will be little time after the election to deal with the issue. Luskins and others have added that it is not just the Bush Tax cuts expiration that matter but the other tax increases written into law as results of Obama’s own economic plan. The expiration of the Bush’s tax cuts and the additional Obamacare surcharge will raise capital gain tax from 15% to 23.8% at a time that the market needs more capital. This move by itself will squeeze the capital market and devastate the stock market plus send spiraling downward the retirement nest egg of  the millions of Americans, who are part of the investor class.  He added, “The same logic also applies here to bonds, because at year-end the top tax rate on interest income will rise to 43.4% from 35%. According to our simple arithmetic, if the yield on a 10-year Treasury is 2% today, it would rise to 2.3% with next year's tax rates. That's a whole new version of the Laffer Curve, one in which higher taxes drive higher government debt service costs.” Higher tax rates could actually lead to higher treasury cost and result in higher interest rates! 

Bill Clinton made it clear that a second Obama administration will increase taxes across the board (even though he couched it very carefully to make it seem that he is speaking for himself but his points are logical based on Obama’s own future spending plans and the Middle Class will get soaked.)  Clinton stated, “This is just me now, I’m not speaking for the White House — I think you could tax me at a 100 percent and you wouldn’t balance the budget…We are all going to have to contribute to this, and if middle class people’s wages were going up again, and we had some growth to the economy, I don’t think they would object to going back to tax rates [from] when I was president - before the Bush tax cuts.”   

The key question in 2013, how quickly will Congress react to reform the tax code and entitlement reforms while reducing our debt both presently and in the future?   Romney will inherit an economic disaster and there is no doubt where the blame will lie. Hint: It won’t be Bush’s fault this time.

Life of Julia

If you want to understand how Obama and Democrats view America, a preview of their slide show; The Life of Julia on the Obama-Biden website provides the answer. Little Julia begins her story as a three year old enrolled in Head Start and of course the evil dog hating Romney and his henchman Paul Ryan will cut poor Julia head start education which will prepare Julia for kindergarten and life itself.  (Of course, the good news is that Julia parents did not abort Julia but then no one never really sees Julia parents.)

While Romney will enact tax cuts for his fellow millionaires, Obama great educational plan prepares our Julia for college and then Julia takes advantage of ton of tax credits and wonderful low interest rates college loans to continue her education.   Because Obamacare will allow her parents to keep her on their insurance until 26; Julia can take her time finishing college and not worry too much about working.  Of course, Julia will have free birth control pill; so she won’t have to worry about getting pregnant while taking her time finishing college and later when she began her first job.   When Julia gets a job, she will be paid equal pay because we all know Republicans have declared war on women and Obama will make sure that she is paid what she is worth and little more.

Throughout Julia life, government helps our sweet lady; providing her with small business loans or wonderful health care and at the end of her life; she is covered by social security and Medicare in which evil Republicans will destroy if they obtain total power.   What can one conclude about Obamanomics and Obama economic philosophy?  Simple, Julia is helpless to take care of herself so government must.  Here is what you don’t see: parents, husband, or even a significant other.   Julia decides to have a child but where is the father? Julia really doesn’t need a man since government is her parent and spouse.   It is the progressive dream with all rights granted by government but the problem with this scenario is the government not only grants rights but the condition that those rights are exercised.  As one pundit quipped, maybe the reason we don’t see Julia beyond the age 67, she was a victim of Obamacare death panels.  Within the quip lies a truth, seniors will see the government rations their health care and that IPAB will act as a defacto death panel as it will determine who gets what treatment. 

Julia can only be an entrepreneur with government aid and at the heart of Obamanomics, government creates wealth and the private sector is but an appendage of government policies.  Government need to direct private investment.  Contrary to actual American ideas that government should be limited in both scope of it can do and what It should do, Obamanomics sees no true limit of government. 

And just to make sure one does not forget Republicans war on women, the slides conclude, “From cracking down on gender discrimination in health care to fighting for equal pay, President Obama is standing up for women throughout the their lives.”  The simplicity of the message is Obama will take care of you and the underneath the surface is the message, women don’t need men for government will take care of their needs.  It is the perfect description of the Obama dependency state in which our desires will be taken care of from the time we are born to the time we die.

South Myths and facts

I made a recent trip to the South Carolina where my mother lives along with my brother.  Actually the rest of my family now lives south of the Mason-Dixon Line and east of the Mississippi.  My sister moved to North Carolina a few years back after retiring where she started a second career as a real estate agent.  I was raised in Northern Virginia but Northern Virginia is hardly the south; located in the shadow of Washington DC. I attended college in the middle of the Shenandoah Valley as James Madison and there I began to living in the South.  (Once one leaves the Northern Virginia area, the real South begins.)

I have found that sin and vice often go hand in hand in the South. When I first traveled to the South, I noticed ads for massage parlors and just a couple of miles down the road, a sign for revivals and coming to Jesus.  Exit 141 off Tennessee I-75 shows this dilemma as you can see an adult book store in the shadow of a big Cross off the interstate.  God and porn are just a few feet away from each other. You can’t get way from showing the paradox of the South by revisiting NASCAR, one of the regional favorite past time.  Many of the original NASCAR stars were former bootleggers who took the skills they learned escaping the law to the race track.  NASCAR roots are plainly in the illegal but today, who would suspect that one of America’s most popular sports was an outreach of driving bootleg liquor?

Kevin Williamson in a recent excellent piece in National Review also dispenses with one of the great myths of the South; that the rise of Republican Party was due to old racists Democrats joining the Party. Williamson makes the point that much of the rise of the Republican had more to do with the rise of the Middle Class in the post-World War II era and this point echoed much of what Sean Trende wrote in The Lost Majority, who also added that the Republican numbers were also aided by transplants escaping the more liberal blue states of the North.  

The mythology that the rise of Republican was based on the movement of racist whites moving toward the GOP is false and a more complicated story.  Williamson noted that 20 of the 21 Southern Senators who voted against the Civil Right bill stayed in the Democratic Party and while many Southerners voted for Republican Presidents, it took several years before the Republican Middle Class developed enough of a voting bloc to overcome Democratic resistance.  It wasn’t until the 1980’s that Republicans made inroads locally within the South. 

In 1966, a noted race-baiting Democrat named John Dowdy was thrown out of office in the Houston in favor of a northern transplant named George H W Bush, showing Mr. Williamson point.  As Williamson noted, “It was in fact not until 1995 that Republicans represented a majority of the southern congressional delegation-and they had hardly spent the Reagan years campaigning on the resurrection of Jim Crow.”

Those 20 Democrats who voted against the 1964 Civil Right bill including Al Gore’s own father were replaced by other Democrats and those who stayed in power a long time like Robert Byrd simply switch their position on Civil Rights from being hardened KKK style segregationists to very liberal voting record.  In 1964, Robert Byrd was nothing more than a hard core KKK racist and when he died some four decade plus later, he was known as the sage of the Senate.  

If sin and God lives hand in hand in the South, so does the balance of power between Republican and Democrats as races are often decided by razor thin margin. While the South is considered Red by most political standard, the Democratic Party is more competitive in much of the South than Republicans are competitive in the North East or California.  Sin may be balanced by the power in God in the South but then so are the Democrats balanced by Republicans and vice a versa.  

Obama world

When Jack Cashill advance his theory that Obama did not write Dreams of My Father but the book was actually written by Bill Ayers, my first thought was that this would end Obama political career if proven true for the simple reason that Obama was promoted as a Philosopher-King.    Cashill made a good case but for most point, no one really pursued this or even explored the idea that while Obama may not have written much of his classic; it would not have surprised me if he had help in editing and maybe a ghost writer aiding in spots.   Now we have found out that Obama literary agents managed to make the birthers, well, less crazy by putting in their PR materials that their client was born in Kenya.  For the record, I am not a birther and I do believe that Obama was born in the United States, but I do find this episode disturbing for either Obama is a liar or filled with a vivid imagination.  Or he is simply so incompetent that he allowed his agents to tell the world that he was born in Kenya for sixteen years.  Maybe it is a mere symbolism that he was really not born in Kenya but he felt so estranged from America that he felt that he really wasn’t born in America either.  Regardless, if this was reported in December of 2007 in Iowa; how long would his campaign had lasted?

Throughout 2007 and 08, Obama was one of the least vetted President and much of what we are finding out now could easily have been found out while he was running for the President the first time around.  But if nothing else, maybe we’re finding out that Dreams of Our Father was less an autobiography and more of a creation of a mythology,  the Philosopher-King coming to grip of who he was. How does a multiracial man whose father was from Kenya, a third world country and whose mother was the white daughter of middle class Americans view himself?  

We did not elect a President as much as elected a Messiah whose goal was to transform America into a new Utopia and away from its ugly past.   In 2008, Obama was portrayed as a moderate but he is a man of the left and his economic plan is European social democracy lite (Translation, a democratic socialist, the same ideology that is collapsing Europe.) From essentially nationalizing our health care, Government Motors and the EPA declaring war on our energy productive capacity; we have seen a big expansion of government and even bigger expansion of debt.. 

Power line blogger Paul Mirengoff observed, “We know that as an adult, Obama continued to associate, and started with working, with the same kind of left-wing radicals he had gravitated towards as a youth. And when he found religion, it was in the form of the Black liberation theology of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Moreover, as late as March 2008, Obama said he could “no more disown [Rev. Wright] than I can disown the black community. . .no more disown him than I can my white grandmother. . .Based on the record, the case can be made that Obama still has not resolved the fundamental identity issues that drove him to experiment with weird, obnoxious ideologies that are fundamentally hostile to America and what it has stood for. That’s scary…The case can also be made, and has been by Stanley Kurtz, that Obama has resolved these issues in favor of a radicalism that, though less virulent than that of Rev. Wright, Frank Davis (the Communist who mentored Obama in Hawaii), and Bill Ayers, is ambivalent at best about America and what it has stood for. That’s very scary.” 

Mr. Mirengoff point is that maybe Obama move to the left was always preordained based on those he associated with as a youth and young adult before making his mark as a national figure.  What is starting to become obvious, he has no more disown his radical belief systems but he did keep them well hidden until his Presidency.  Mirengoff added, “His candidacy for high political office likely would have prompted only steps to conceal his ideology. His ascension to the presidency would have imposed constraints on his ability to act, but not necessarily any change in his underlying beliefs.”

The question that remains, what will a second Obama administration look like without the restraint of a having to run again and worse what would a second Obama administration look like if aided by a Democratic run Congress?  These are not insignificant question and a look at Obama’s past would be instructive, especially since it was not done the first time. And what does it say about a President when he felt the need to romanticize his own past? And why invent the need to born outside the United States?  Does the past hold the key to the future of a second Obama administration?

Lessons From Europe

The election of the new Socialist President in the recent France election and the rejection of the two leading parties in the Greek could prove to be a turning point for Europe.  The French President, Hollande announced that ,”The real enemy of the world is finance,” while Communists and Neo Nazis have managed to obtain 15 to 17% of the voter in Greece, meaning the enemies of freedom are now significant players in the Greek parliament.  For the French, the war on capital has begun.

Southern European have decided that they will jump over the cliff into the abyss as politicians are no longer serious about getting their financial house in order as long as Germany is willing to keep financing them.

Many of these countries essentially saw conditions imposed upon them by unelected bureaucracy deciding their fate and the European Union no longer respect national feelings or local governments.  The European experiment was always doomed to failure since to make it work meant that a soft despotism would be required to force Europeans to the dictate of Brussels.  As Wall Street Journal editors noted, what Greece need was not just the budget cuts but a supply side revolution. Austerity combined with high tax rates not only brings instant pain, but it also drives the entrepreneurs out.

Arthur Herman wrote, “Three times in the last century America had to step in to save Europe from itself — in World War One, World War Two, and the Cold War. Now we’ll have to do it again, as Europeans stumble dazed and broke from the rubble created by their EU bureaucrats, politicians, and unions. But this time it won’t be American soldiers, or arms, or even a nuclear umbrella that comes to Europe’s rescue. It’ll be American ideas and policies based on free markets, economic growth, and individual freedom.”

Europe is dying with much of its vitality gone and nowhere to turn.  Europe has been under the influence of fascism and Nazism to be followed by communism over half of continent. The present attempt to try a social democracy and mixed economy evolved into a continent of a bureaucratic state.  What Europe became was a large planned economy with benefits provided from cradle to grave, but while Europe did prosper initially; the eventual collapse is now occurring.  The political ideas that has become the basis of the modern day Democratic Party, is now evaporating in Europe.

So what of America?  The failure of European model is a warning to American voters today.  America has the potential to revive itself with abundant sources of energy; along with a wireless and high-tech innovation industry that is still world leader. We need to learn the right lesson from Europe. 

The first lesson is to understand that Europe has gone through stimulus similar to Obama since 2008 and like Obama’s experiment, it has failed. The austerity program has yet to be truly tried and for the past several years, government spending has actually gone up even in conservative governments like Sarkozy France, Cameron’s Great Britain, and the new Spanish government. Tax hikes were instituted without any benefit in reducing the budget. 

The second lesson is not just run as a conservative but govern as well.  The temptation for any Republican government is to engage a grand compromise that might include increase taxes, in particular increase tax rates upon the wealthy but these compromised rarely hold up since the spending continues unabated or simply return to previous levels.  There is a bipartisan readiness to reform entitlements, tax reforms with lower marginal tax rates and reducing government spending so Republicans don’t need to raise marginal tax rates on the wealthy but actually lower them as part of tax reform. 

Herman concluded, “Who knows. Maybe at the end of all this, Europeans will discover their own culture buried under two centuries of socialist and Marxist garbage: the Europe of Adam Smith and Tocqueville, of von Mises and Hayek, of Aristotle and Aquinas. Maybe they’ll realize their birthright as the original home of liberty and freedom, at long last.” Maybe this election, America will rediscover the wisdom of its founding father.

The final lesson for the political class is that the failure of the political class will lead to rise of extremism on both sides as Greece has shown.  In France, Marie Le Pen is positioning herself as the leader of the right with her anti EU, anti-free trade and anti- immigration stance.   In the United States, Occupy movement is a sign that on the left, radicalism and street violence are just simmering underneath the surfaces. In the United States, the hard left has taken over the party and the more centrist Democrats are being driven from the Party leadership.  In the last Canadian election, the more moderate Liberal has been replaced as the main opposition to the conservative by harder leftist Party.   Radicalism is rising on the left.

In the right, the Tea Party is a grass root movement working to reduce government spending, and American conservative with few exceptions have rejected radical ideas afflicting the right in Europe.  This election is a referendum on the Obama’s administration but it is also judgment on the political class.   The European social democracy model is collapsing at a time we have a President whose economic ideas based on a failing model.

Is Being Pro-Choice Racist?

Most recently, I had a left wing writer in a series of exchanges accuse me of race-baiting, writing racist materials and pandering to racists. The reason? I wrote a piece making the case that Romney, even as a member of the 1%, was closer to many Americans than our President. As the Wall Street Journal James Taranto noted, , “The truth is that Romney and Obama are both products of distinctively American subcultures--respectively, the Mormon Church and the academic left. The difference is that whereas the Mormons, for more than a century, have aspired to join the American mainstream, the academic left is aggressively adversarial. It's true that there is much about Mormonism that seems odd to people of other faiths. But a contest over whose opponent is weirder is one Obama cannot possibly win.” So where is the racism in Mr. Taranto’s statement or my own thoughts which ran similar to Mr. Taranto?

Many within the media have made an issue about Romney’s Mormon beliefs and if some of the things said about Romney’s beliefs were said about Islam or the Jewish faith, those individuals would have been fired. When the issue of Romney adventure with his dog riding on top of his car on a family vacation came up, I reminded readers that Obama himself stated he eat dogs when living in Indonesia. Personally I could care less if Obama loves to eat man’s best friend but then if we are going to discuss Romney treatment of dogs, then Obama love for dogs is fair game.  By quoting Obama himself, I was accused of race-baiting. It does show the length that some will go to demonize their opponents. Throughout the Obama Administration, there have been attempts by some on the left to demonize anyone who oppose Obama on policy matters by yelling racism. Oppose Obamacare? It must be racism. Member of the Tea Party? You are obviously a racist. It is easier to yell racism than to deal with the issues at hand.

Here is an exercise for the readers. What if I was to tell you that a particular policy over the past four decades was responsible for the deaths of two times as many Hispanics and African-American babies than white babies? What would your response be? Would you be shocked? Would you wonder how just a thing could happen? Would you be thinking eugenics or genocide?

How many are aware 55% of Abortions are done on Hispanics and African-American women and minority women terminate their pregnancy at double the rate of White women? The New York City Health noted that 60% of African-American women and 40% of Hispanic women end their pregnancy by abortion. (African-Americans and Hispanic abortion rates are two to three times that of white women in New York City.) There are more aborted babies than live births within the New York City African-American community.

Abortion is an emotional issue and I have many friends who disagree with me. They, like me, would prefer that women not abort their children, but we differ on what the laws should be dealing with abortion. To those who play the race card show me a conservative policy that has killed as many minority babies as abortion? Since the individual who accuse me of race-baiting is a pro-choice advocate, is the individual a racist for supporting abortion? In my eyes, no, but if quoting Obama on his dog eating past is racism, could we make the case that those and support abortion are more racist? I will not condemn a person for supporting abortion rights as racist but to those who play the race card are polluting the public discourse and making it more difficult to deal with issues in front of us. Playing the race card is a dangerous thing since it is like the boy who cried Wolf. If you say it often enough in situation where it is not applicable, you simply desensitize the population to properly act when real racism occurs.

Obama was elected with broad base of support among all races because voters felt he was the right man to lead us out of economic problems but many of his policy have failed and now he must defend them. It is part of the democratic process and to yell racism when discussing public policy not only corrodes the public discourse, it produces a division of people along racial lines. The political process requires a little civility and Civility does not mean agreement on issues, only respect for the other side,.  Decorum matters in public discourse since half of us disagree with the other half. The use of the race card is an intimidation tactic to silence opponents of Obama but I will leave the race-baiters of the left with this question.  How could we carry on a civil conversation on abortion if the Pro-life side consistently accused the other side of being engaging in racially motivated genocide?  It would have a chilling effect upon the debate.

There have been a few on the left who have attempted to silent the debate from trying to get Rush Limbaugh off the air, the recent attempt to intimidate Romney supporters from donating (which I  previously discussed in another piece) and of course, playing the race card by making opposition to Obama a racial thing.  This can work both ways, since many of the left’s policies have had detrimental effect upon minority communities including Abortion where aborted babies outnumber live births in some minority communities.  Would it be right of me to accuse my opponents of racism and engaging in genocide? No, no more than being accused of writing racist materials by merely quoting Obama. 

(Sources for abortion data come from Guttmacher Institute and the data for New York abortion data came from the New York City Health Department.)

Narcissism on Parade

In this century, we have seen two of the least qualified Presidential candidate foisted upon the American public, and I am not talking Sarah Palin.  John Edwards may be the most despicable man ever considered for either Vice-President or have the nerve to run for President.  Under the definition of narcissism, there is a picture of Edwards attached.  A trial lawyer by training, Edwards took ambition to new levels as he basically used his dying wife, an elderly millionaire, treated his own staff with disdain along with his mistress. There wasn’t anyone he would step over in the name of ambition, nor was there any evidence that he was particularly knowledgeable about issues.  The great mystery was how just a man could hide his inadequacy so well but then when the much of the media was (and still is) in the tank for the left and Democratic Party; it was even a miracle that the issue got covered.  Edwards’ scandal was first covered by tabloids and ignored by the much of the mainstream media until it became obvious that Edwards was too much of a cad to be ignored. (And his presidency candidacy was over, so his usefulness was over.) 

Then there is Barack Obama, who proved to be the perfect candidate for the celebrity era.  There was a cult like adoration among many of his supporters and even much of the media as he was treated more of a messiah than a politician with many flaws. An Indian writer once noted that democracy is best served by modest men and women running the country and if there is anything that Obama is not, it is modest.  From the time he accepted his nomination for the Presidency under Greek columns in an outdoor stadium, we were given a major clue that this was not a man with too much humility. In her book, The Obamas, Author Jodi Kantors noted, “Obama had always had a high estimation of his ability to cast and run his operation. When David Plouffe, his campaign manager, first interviewed for a job with him in 2006, the senator gave him a warning: ‘I think I could probably do every job on the campaign better than the people I’ll hire to do it …It’s hard to give up control when that’s all I’ve known.’ Obama said nearly the same thing to Patrick Gaspard, whom he hired to be the campaign’s political director. ‘I think I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters, ‘Obama told him. ‘I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”    

Great leaders understand their strength and their limitations and poor leaders overestimate what they can accomplish or do. The day that Obama wrapped up the nomination, he stated that it was the day the planet started healed and economic problems were solved and to paraphrase one of his sayings, “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”  Between Edwards and Obama, I can’t remember any politicians who could match either for their narcissism in modern times.  

This brings me to a story about Mitt Romney. This man has been running for President for five years and yet this story seem to have missed everyone radar screen.   A family boat sprang a leak and the family members along with their family dog ended up struggling in the lake.  Romney and his sons jumped on jet skis and saved the family and the family dog from drowning.   The question that remains, how does a story like this not get told? Team Romney never even brought this up and you would figure that a candidate who saves the lives of strangers and their dog would be something that a campaign would put out everywhere.  Obama’s people would not only have put this out but we would had Obama saving this family lives without even using a jet ski.  So how does a story like this not get told? I am not saying that Romney is Saint Mitt but the real reason that this story never made it out in the public arena is that Mitt Romney chose not to tell the story. It could be simply that Romney chose that his heroic efforts stay private for he did what was expected.  For years, Romney has given 20% of his earnings to charities and his church but this was never made the public until recently.  There is an aspect of modesty to Romney, a good sign for a leader.   Modesty is a virtue that needs to be restored back to the public life; we need to elect politicians who understand their limitation and what they can accomplish.  Democracy and free market societies are dependent upon leaders whose modesty is a virtue and immodesty a vice.  When Presidential candidate appears under Greek columns and talk of healing the planet, we should fear just a candidate.   These are the politicians who don’t understand their own limitation or the government they lead. 

Obama: New Hoover or New Nixon

Is Barack Obama evolving into Barack Milhous Obama or Barack Hoover Obama?   The only thing that has kept the staggering economy in somewhat positive ground statistically is the Federal Reserve easy money policy and Congress refusal to add any new major programs  or increasing tax rates since 2010 but beyond that, it is difficult to find any policy that Obama has pursued that would lead any sustain growth.  With Europe barely hanging on, this administration may be one more disaster from the whole house of cards come crashing down.   Obama inherited a slumping economy but his policy has delayed a sustain recovery and with job creation virtually nil and less people working as a percentage of the workforce, Obamanomics has been a failure.  Even his own deficit commission rejected his approach and instead, moved closer to Reaganomics.

Then there is Barack Obama evolving in Richard Milhous Nixon, complete with enemy list.   As Wall Street Journal Kim Strassel recently wrote, “Try this thought experiment: You decide to donate money to Mitt Romney. You want change in the Oval Office, so you engage in your democratic right to send a check. Several days later, President Barack Obama, the most powerful man on the planet, singles you out by name. His campaign brands you a Romney donor, shames you for "betting against America," and accuses you of having a "less-than-reputable" record. The message from the man who controls the Justice Department (which can indict you), the SEC (which can fine you), and the IRS (which can audit you), is clear: You made a mistake donating that money.  Are you worried?”  Strassel observed that as President, Obama “ acknowledges no rules.”

Strassel observed that one of Obama’s campaign website named and attempted to shamed eight private citizens for donating to Romney and stated, they have “less than reputable records” and even charged that that a few “have also been on the wrong side of the law and “profiting at the expense of so many Americans.”

Obama is targeting these donors for the simple reason, he wants to defang Republican leaning Super Pacs by discouraging big donors from giving and as Strassel noted, “He's targeted insurers, oil firms and Wall Street—letting it be known that those who oppose his policies might face political or legislative retribution. He lectured the Supreme Court for giving companies more free speech and (falsely) accused the Chamber of Commerce of using foreign money to bankroll U.S. elections. The White House even ginned up an executive order (yet to be released) to require companies to list political donations as a condition of bidding for government contracts. Companies could bid but lose out for donating to Republicans. Or they could quit donating to the GOP—Mr. Obama's real aim.”

Obama is playing hardball with Republican donors but make no mistakes; his attempt to defund GOP Super PACs is Nixon like.  As for Herbert Hoover look like, Obama policies are leading to a potential disaster for whoever is elected.  With massive budget deficits needing to be address, a disastrous health care plan that will add even more to the budget deficits and a massive tax increase across the board affecting every American ready to go in effect in 2013; the new President will act fast to avoid a massive recession.  This doesn’t take account a major economic failure happening Europe that ripple through the United States and lead to a major economic crisis.  Obama has been willing to threaten Republican donors to show that he plays be a different set of rules not seen since Richard Nixon and no one has managed a recession as badly as Obama in the post-World War II era. Take your pick, Barack Milhous Obama or Barack Hoover Obama?

California Dreaming

In the 1960’s, America was “Californian Dreaming” but today, California resembles more a banana republic than healthy state economically. As the more productive citizen’s moves on to more fertile ground, the decline of the state continues.   Joel Kotkin in an article for the Daily Beast observed, “Barack Obama learned the rough sport of politics in Chicago, but his domestic policies have been shaped by California’s progressive creed. As the Golden State crumbles, its troubles point to those America may confront in a second Obama term.” If California is our future, then we are doomed as a nation.

As Kotkin noted, California has collected very little benefit from the Green Revolution except for higher energy prices.  As a percentage of the overall job creation, green jobs provide 2% of the job totals, not much different than Texas but where Texas has surged is in job creations in the carbon based energy sources where Texas produces 10 jobs in this field compared to 1 in California.  Jobs that averaged $100,000 in income, jobs that Obama and California economic planners disparages.  California has one of the most restrictive states when it comes to developing energy sources and the state has been aggressive in pursuing alternative green energy sources.  The result has been slow growth in job creation and as already mentioned higher prices. 

Kotkin wrote, “Over the past decade the Golden State has grown its middle-skilled jobs (those that require two years or more of post-secondary education) by a mere 2 percent compared to a 5.3 percent increase nationwide, and almost 15 percent in Texas. Even in the science-technology-engineering and mathematics field, where California has long been a national leader, the state has lost its edge, growing just 1.7 percent over the past 10 years compared to 5.4 percent nationally and 14 percent in Texas.”  Where California once was a leader they are now behind the United States and the pay gap between the rich and poor is worse in the formerly Golden State than in the rest of the United States; showing that a bureaucratic state with a large public sector union is not the best way to produce economic growth or even a liberal vision of equality.  Some four million Californians have left the state to try their search for a better life elsewhere. 

While Silicon Valley has rebounded, Kotkin noted, “California’s high-tech job growth, largely in software, has been significant, the rate of increase has been less than half that of key competitors such as Utah, Washington, and Michigan.”  Silicon Valley and Hollywood might be able to withstand the high price of doing business, other businesses can’t.   (Talking with Hollywood producers, even Hollywood is having trouble making ends in meet in the present business atmosphere.)

California policies are dictated by environmentalist extremists and public sector unions to go with local crony capitalists and those policies include more draconian regulations on energy and more restrictive land zoning laws that will result even less single-family homes being built.  As Joel Kotkin observed, “The increasingly delusional nature of the state’s politics is best captured by the urgent political push to build a fantastically expensive—potentially costing as much as $100 billion—high-speed rail line that would eventually connect the Bay Area, Los Angeles and the largely rural places in between. Obama has aggressively promoted high-speed rail nationally, but has been pushed back by mounting Republican opposition. Yet in one-party California, Jerry Brown mindlessly pushes the project despite the state’s huge structural deficits, soaring pension obligations, and decaying general infrastructure. He’s continued doing so even as the plan loses support among the beleaguered California electorate.”

When you add the massive attempt to increase massive taxes on the so call rich (including many families and small businesses) earning over $200,000, California looks to slip ever further behind.  Obama may be a Chicago politician but he models his national policies upon the European social democracy and California. The President is basing his policy on failed economic models, which is enough of reason to make Obama a one term President. 

Easting Dogs

The goal of the Democratic Party will be to portray Mitt Romney as a combination of out of touch with the common folks or just simply weird.  The left attack on the Mormon faith on MSNBC is just part of the strategy.  When Democratic governor Brian Schweitzer mentioned that “is "Kinda ironic given that his family came from a polygamy commune in Mexico, but then he'd have to talk about his family coming from a polygamy commune in Mexico, given the gender discrepancy… Women are not great fans of polygamy, 86 percent were not great fans of polygamy. I am not alleging by any stretch that Romney is a polygamist and approves of [the] polygamy lifestyle, but his father was born into [a] polygamy commune in Mexico.”

Yes, it is true that Mitt Romney’s father was born in Mexico but his grandparents were not polygamist even though it is true that that there are polygamists in the Romney family tree but that would be true for many Mormons since it wasn’t until 1890 that Mormonism outlaw polygamy as part of a condition allowing Utah becoming a state. Guess who else had family members with a polygamist past? Oh yea, Barack Hussein Obama, whose father was polygamist.  New York Times Nicholas Kristof agonized on what to report after he visited Obama father’s hometown. As he noticed, “Frankly, I worry that enemies of Obama will seize upon details like his grandfather's Islamic faith or his father's polygamy to portray him as an alien or a threat to American values. But snobbishness and paranoia ill-become a nation of immigrants, where one of our truest values is to judge people by their own merits, not their pedigrees.” Unless that immigrant is a Republican, then it is all fair game.  If Romney family history with polygamy is fair game so is Obama’s family history with polygamy and Obama family history is more recent! 

Of course there is the dog controversy when efforts were used to shame Romney over his Clark Griswold treatment of his dog on a trip when he put the family pet on the top of the car. This lasted as long as some smart pundit actually read Dreams of My Fathers and noted, Obama not only eat dog meat but even rated it.  So there was fun to be had by all at the President expense about Obama’s dog eating past in Indonesia.

Mormon past about race will certainly be brought up but then didn’t Obama sit two decades in the pew of a noted black racist with views that are or should be out of the mainstream, one Pastor Wright?  You bring up Mormon history with blacks and I will read Jeremiah Wright’s sermons.

The attack by Hillary Rosen on Ann Romney pretty much derailed “the war on women” campaign for the time being as Ms. Rosen comment on Ms. Romney never working for a living fell apart as soon as Ms. Romney, cancer survivor and presently living with MS, simply reminded Ms. Rosen that being a mother can be hard work. 

So we have the Democrats using Romney Mormon past as a means to put him outside the American mainstream but then how weird is a dog eating President?  And yes, Romney is wealthy man and maybe he doesn’t have that deft touch to communicate with common folks but just when did Obama become a man of the people?  When he was not community organizing, he was involved in politics and when Obama was voting present in Illinois legislature, Romney was helping to create jobs for many of those blue collar folks. Obama once stated that many blue collar workers cling to their guns and God, mocking the common man that he is supposedly love to rich Democratic donors in San Francisco.  Romney created jobs for the common man that Obama derided.

Walls Street Journal Jim Taranto summed up both men when he said, “The truth is that Romney and Obama are both products of distinctively American subcultures--respectively, the Mormon Church and the academic left. The difference is that whereas the Mormons, for more than a century, have aspired to join the American mainstream, the academic left is aggressively adversarial. It's true that there is much about Mormonism that seems odd to people of other faiths. But a contest over whose opponent is weirder is one Obama cannot possibly win.”   And as Obama commented, dog meat can be tough so don’t forget maybe slow cooking Fido will make Fido a little more tender.

Cain's Solution

This past week, I participated in the Cain Solutions Revolution on the Hill. Cain’s goal was to reunite the Tea Party leaders, grass roots activist of his campaign and create a new Army of David’s to pound the street for free market reforms.   Cain’s solution is an outreach of the Cain’s presidency and while the focus of the Cain’s solution is Cain’s tax plan 9-9-9; Cain’s solution is not just about 9-9-9.  Cain solution is a well -connected economic plan that includes monetary reforms, energy development of our resources and regulatory reform with the idea of shrinking government and changing the relationship of Federal government to the people.  In many ways, this is what a Ron Paul administration would actually look like but with a more active foreign policy and a peace through strength motif.  

9-9-9 is the spear that propels the agenda and begins the process of reforming Washington. Cain states that his goal is to replace the present tax code with 9-9-9 with the final destination being a fair tax and his tactics is simple. Raise an Army of activists in the hinterlands to promote his ideas and change the balance of power between the ruling class and people.  Cain is proposing an outsider campaign with use of selected issues to lobby and change the present power structure.  9-9-9 is an interesting concept and not just for its simplicity.  It broadens the tax base by lower the business and personal income tax and adds a national sales tax.  Cain’s theory could be that by having a national sales tax added to his plan, it would get people use to the idea of paying a sales tax  on a national scale and make it easier to move to a Fair Tax system.   However 9-9-9 is not a bad endpoint either since it does allow a broader base to collect taxes while ensuring that everyone pays as close to their fair share as any system could be designed.  As Cain noted, Warren Buffet would actually pay 200 million dollars under his plan, far more than Mr. Buffet would pay under the Buffet rule or what he does presently. 

The 9-9-9 plan is one of those plans not designed by theoretician or economists but by folks outside academician. Rich Lowrie and Herman Cain, the two men responsible for 9-9-9 are not academicians, but they are men who live in the real business world. Lowrie is a trained accountant and financial planner, who told me that he often viewed how government policies would affect selected businesses when making investment decisions.  As he noted, “Business react to incentives and are affected by policies directed by Washington.”  Lowrie, the accountant, and Cain, the business executive, developed a plan based on the real world experiences.  Cain Solution is a haven for street wise folks who toiled in the hinterlands and understand both grassroots politics and how government decision affects Main Street.  Linda Hansen and Mark Block, two of Cain’s closet advisor, cut their teeth on Wisconsin grass roots politics which can be rather brutal.  Ms. Hansen has developed a free market learning units for workers in explaining how free markets benefit them, so she had her own experience in educating the grassroots.

Beyond 9-9-9, Cain Solution moves in a rather logical and straight forward matter. Cain understands that 9-9-9 is the first step and the most easily known but it also allows him to move from tax reformation to reformation of the whole economy.  What Cain understands, the economy is not just about debating taxes but the negative impact of excessive regulations on business, monetary policy and how easy money can rob the middle Class of their savings. Energy Independence can be describes as drill baby drill and frack, baby, frack.  It is an agenda that goes beyond 9-9-9. 

Cain states that he is for a “solutions Revolution,” a revolution that fits his personality as a businessman who solves problem.  While the free market conservative ideals are self-evident, he treats them as solutions not as ideology.  He is marketing free market conservatism as he explains it to the people.  Cain’s Solution concentrate on economics and national defense but travels very little beyond that but this strategy does one advantage; it can attract an wider audience and in particular the younger generation who have seen nothing but failure over the past five years from the ruling class of both Parties.  Cain has put his talent to work with a think tank run by businessmen and grass roots activists with experience in the real world and Main Street. In the process, he is helping to shape the conservative movement into the 21^st century.

Claiming the Middle

It is often said that general election is won by claiming the middle and the GOP can grabbed the center of the political core.  Take economics as the Democrats depend upon the Buffet rule to take mantle of sticking up for the little guy.  Obamanomics is finished as a believable set of economic principles as Obama lack of ability to get even one vote for his recent budget shows even Democrats won’t defend it. (Democratic controlled Senate has even bothered to pass a budget for the past three years.)  The Obama own deficit commission report ended any intellectual case for Obamanomics as Bowles-Simpson essentially surrendered to the logical of Reagonomics of lower tax rates, entitlement reforms and set in stone that even Liberals accept that government spending need to be restrained to a certain level, accepting the premise that there is a limit to government power.  The commission goal for government spending as percentage of the overall GNP is far less than what Obama presently has it.  Spending cuts combined with tax rate reduction on both the individual and businesses is hardly modern day Democratic tenet but it does reflect surrender to the real world.  (In fairness, the Simpson-Bowles does include overall tax increases but that is mostly through the elimination of deductions.  The individual top tax rates are actually lower than the Ryan Plan.)

If the intellectual case for Obamanomics is over, the political case for Obamanomics is not.  The Obama economic plan has nothing to do with stimulating private growth but replaces private growth with government growth accompanied by government controlled private growth.  The latter is nothing more than crony capitalism with the government playing favorites while attempting to control the outcome of “private” decision. Some would call this socialism or at least, European social democracy.  Obama emphasis on subsidizing green technology is a byproduct of this thinking (Think Solyndra) and the government involvement in the auto industry with a dependence upon newer “environmentally” control cars like the Volt is another example of this.  Irony is that much of GM growth has come not in the Volt but the bigger and less environmentally correct automobiles. As for the Volt, its sales have not even measured on the Richter scale.   

On the energy front, most Americans are ready for drill, baby, drill and frack, baby, frack. The United States may have more recoverable carbon based energy than any other nation with the bonus that Natural Gas being a clean alterative. As CNBC analyst Jim Cramer noted, natural gas is perfect competitive alternative to oil as it may be less expensive to operate a natural gas built automobile and this could force a significant price reduction in oil. It doesn’t hurt that United States is awashed in Natural Gas.  Energy development is an easy position or should be since if we have enough supply to provide our own energy needs and even become an energy exporter. Combined with Canadian sources, we could be provided enough energy for our usages and no longer dependent upon unstable governments overseas. 

There is universal acceptance that entitlements need to be reform and Ryan has already put together with Democrat Ron Wyden a bipartisan Medicare reform, so there is a bipartisan consensus to develop a plan after the election, providing that Obama is defeated. Nor can Obama truly stake out the claim that he stands between Medicare and the barbarians at the gate.  Obamacare cuts half a trillion of dollars from Medicare and move those funds toward Obamacare, a shift of funds from the elderly toward younger workers.  And Obama payroll tax cuts are cutting funds that is financing both social security and Medicare.  Obama can make the case that this was needed to provide this tax relief but it also undermine the funding for those entitlements. Obama and the Democrats can no longer be the guardian of the entitlements since they have already undermine the funding process and Obamacare has already set in principle that funds will be transferred from the elderly toward younger workers; setting the stage for a generational political combat.  

With debt total reaching 100% of the GNP, the American people now understand that something is seriously wrong and financial Armageddon is a reality.  So the case for reducing the deficit can easily be made a winning issue and Romney can easily ask the question, if Obama has yet to produce a budget that comes any near to balancing the budget and his last budget was rejected by his own Party, can he be trusted in a second term?

The Republicans have the opportunity to turn free market ideas as the new political center and force Obama to the extreme.  The intellectual case for Obamanomics is over but it is up the Republicans to come with an alternative nor can it be based strictly on reducing the budget deficit but it needs to emphasize economic growth.  There is bipartisan support for tax reform featuring reduce tax rate reduction and eliminate deductions to encourage individuals and businesses to based their investment decision on what is profitable as oppose to what they can gain through the tax deductions.  There is bipartisan consensus that federal government should be a smaller part of the economy but we only disagree on where those lines to be drawn.  It is up to Romney and the Republicans to draw those lines in this election.