President Obama says no to a short term debt ceiling deal and no deal at all without huge tax increases.

OK, call his bluff – because the polls are damn clear on this. The people want cuts not tax increases. The Obama administration has wasted nearly $5 trillion dollars in additional debt since coming into office – without any positive economic results. DC can no longer be trusted with our money and it needs to be shrunk back down to size. If Obama is dumb enough to think America has not turned the corner after the shellacking in 2010, so be it. The 2×4 will continue to be applied until he does get it.

This is a no brainer. Time for the spines to get stiff and for the GOP to pass a resolution they prefer – and dare the Dems in the Senate to defeat it (they won’t – trust me). Then dare Obama to veto it (he will, he is that politically ignorant).

Then start passing budgets which fit to the current funds available. Do the right thing and the American people will lay the blame at the steps of the White House.

The great recession of 2008 was caused by the failure of liberal social policies. The left imposed a financially reckless effort to increase the home ownership in this country to include the lower middle class and the poor. The naive liberal policy solution was to lower the earning and responsibility standards for home buyers to basically a breathe test on a mirror. This delusional effort did provide unprepared and unready people access to millions of first-time homes, as well as for middle class folks to buy homes well beyond their financial capabilities.

The fact this plan lined the pockets of big real estate, big banking and big mortgage companies was a nice side effect of all this sincere do-gooding.

But the entire pile of risky and outright bad loans was the fault of liberal policies run amok.

The answer to this disaster from the left who came into power in 2009 was another round of naive and reckless liberal policies. It was the ludicrous idea of trickle down government largesse. Sadly for everyone who DOESN’T work for the government, it meant the Feds continued to sap the life blood from the nation’s weakened economy. The results were painfully obvious to many of us. Extended lousy employment, stagnant wages, lost home values (as the market hit from the recession went from temporary to permanent) and mountains of generational debt.

Another liberal fiasco on a grand and painful scale.
Continue Reading »

Just wanted to note that Hot Air posted a very similar view on the fraud and theft discovered in public education testing to the one I posted yesterday. A key snippet:

Evidently state level investigations into Georgia public schools are nothing new, but the new revelations of the attempt to defraud test score results merely for enhanced funding status from the Federal Government–in my mind–should be a RICO complaint, with secondary charges of theft.

The majority of the nation doesn’t know that investigators have turned up a hatched-scheme in which Union bosses coordinated efforts with public education officials. Further that 44 of 56 school districts in the Atlanta Public Schools system strategically convinced Superintendents, Principals and teachers to cheat–primarily by going back and erasing answers on tests and replacing them with correct ones–in order to have a higher means score for the No Child Left Behind funding qualifications.

The evidence is overwhelming.

I agree that these schemes (and others I noted in other school districts) should result in jail time for those guilty of fraud (cheating) and theft (stealing children’s education). I still cannot fathom how anyone could do this, and on such a huge scale. It clearly required union pressure to pull off.

So, unemployment is still ravaging the country:

U.S. employment growth ground to a halt in June, with employers hiring the fewest number of workers in nine months, dampening hopes the economy was on the cusp of regaining momentum after stumbling in recent months.

Nonfarm payrolls rose only 18,000, the weakest reading since September, the Labor Department said on Friday, well below economists’ expectations for a 90,000 rise.

…

he unemployment rate climbed to 9.2 percent, the highest since December, from 9.1 percent in May.

The government revised April and May payrolls to show 44,000 fewer jobs created than previously reported.

Why are we here?

Because of the brilliant left-wing solution that was meant to deal with a left-wing created economic disaster. Instead of giving the private sector breathing room to adjust to the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac real estate implosion (caused by radical loosening of loan requirements on the taxpayer’s dime), Obama, Reid and Pelosi concocted the brilliant scheme wherein the sluggish federal bureaucracy would spend like drunken sailors to stimulate economic growth.
Continue Reading »

The reason unions are on the ropes – especially government employee unions – is their history of poor performance. While police and fire fighters are rightfully held in high esteem, those in the broken public education system are probably running well behind in terms of respect from the citizens of their locale.

This is not a universal damnation. Many know of individual teachers who have had immense positive impacts on their children. Count me as one of that group who can point to wonderful individuals who have fought the broken system and succeeded in spite of it. But I also can point to more individuals who epitomize the broken pubic education system.

But the news out in the past few weeks will cement the image of public education as criminally broken. Because what we have discovered now in three states plus DC (and I would wager will be discovered across the nation) is massive cheating by administrators and teachers. Cheating which was designed to create the fraud that these educators were educating. Fraud that actually won these charlatans praise and monetary rewards for fake results. Fraud on a scale that implies unionized education has taken on the traits one would expect from those Mob run unions of old.
Continue Reading »

The global warming alarmists have clearly decided to throw science aside and simply make up fanciful claims that are ever more incoherent. They have claimed global warming will cause endless flooding and droughts (hard to believe anyone could say this with a straight face). It will cause warming and cooling, more and less weather changes. They have claimed warming has even caused Earth quakes – but have never explained how a supposed 0.8° C increase in the atmosphere’s average temperature (which ranges well over 75°C over the globe) caused the Earth’s crust to be more unstable.

Laughable, incoherent nonsense. Now they are just running around screaming ‘fire!’ – hoping enough gullible people will hand them a couple $trillion dollar$.

Check out this nonsense from the BBC which completely violates all the claims of AGW alarmists and their faulty models:

The lull in global warming from 1998 to 2008 [1] was mainly caused by a sharp rise in China’s coal use, a study suggests.

The absence of a temperature rise over that decade is often used by “climate sceptics” as grounds for denying the existence of man-made global warming.

But the new study, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [2], concludes that smog from the extra coal acted to mask greenhouse warming.

China’s coal use doubled 2002-2007 [3], according to US government figures.

Emphasis and numbering mine because I want to make a few observations.
Continue Reading »

It took this nation decades to run our economy aground by following left-wing fantasies about government trickle down economics, all underpinned by bureaucrat and politician superior motives and skills. Seems so laughable now that we face generations of massive debt, along with the fact everything government tries to ‘fix’ is screwed up (outside the national defense and exploring new science and frontiers – though there are problems here as well).

The one size, one fix, one last (or one more) massive and incomprehensible bill solution is never going to work. All these behemoths do is play cover for political and partisan chicanery.

So I am heartened to see the GOP taking my advice and using the debt ceiling debates to garner numerous concessions from Democrats in small steps:

Bloomberg, Republicans Might Accept ‘Mini’ Deal on Debt Ceiling, Senate’s Cornyn Says: Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told Fox News Sunday that Republicans may accept a short-term debt limit deal that only covers policy changes through the conclusion of the 2012 election: “We’ll take the savings we can get now, and we will re-litigate this as we get closer to the election,” Cornyn said.

As I said back in April, I would actually negotiate the debt ceiling every 3-6 months, taking a little more out of the bureaucracy each turn. Yes, it is would be a challenging and risky PR campaign, but I think America would embrace the debate and respect the effort.

But no matter what, these debt talks should not include long term horse trading. Either get massive cuts in the bloated bureaucracy long term or keep it all short term. We need to get out of the habit of trading bureaucratic reach in one area for cuts in another.

This will NEVER result in a smaller, leaner, more productive federal government.

Tags: 2012 elections, Debt Ceiling, Economy

Sorry for the light posting – having a wonderful family vacation and reading an amazing book on Global Warming. I am half way through Micheal Crichton’s ‘State of Fear’ and I must admit the man was a serious researcher. His general context for the debate about AGW is spot on, and he really does do a number on the global warming alarmists and their shoddy claims. I hope to post on the book after I am done.

But today I want to reflect our America, and the malaise that has crept into its heart as we spend another 4th of July in the grips of economic chaos and DC incompetence.
Continue Reading »

The Chicken Littles on the left in Wisconsin have an inconvenient truth staring the square in the face. And that is the fact the Walker-GOP bill curbing union power and forcing public employees to pay their fair share for their benefits is not only now saving a once-struggling school, but changing its budget picture around by $2 million dollars.

Now the bill is law, and we have some very early evidence of how it is working. And for one beleaguered Wisconsin school district, it’s a godsend, not a disaster.

The Kaukauna School District, in the Fox River Valley of Wisconsin near Appleton, has about 4,200 students and about 400 employees. It has struggled in recent times and this year faced a deficit of $400,000. But after the law went into effect, at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, school officials put in place new policies they estimate will turn that $400,000 deficit into a $1.5 million surplus. And it’s all because of the very provisions that union leaders predicted would be disastrous.

That money will now go to educating Wisconsin’s children, not union coffers. Anyone want to wager how many parents in school districts across this nation are ready to get this same return on legislation? What was the key – competition:

In the past, Kaukauna’s agreement with the teachers union required the school district to purchase health insurance coverage from something called WEA Trust — a company created by the Wisconsin teachers union. “It was in the collective bargaining agreement that we could only negotiate with them,” says Arnoldussen. “Well, you know what happens when you can only negotiate with one vendor.” This year, WEA Trust told Kaukauna that it would face a significant increase in premiums.

Now, the collective bargaining agreement is gone, and the school district is free to shop around for coverage. And all of a sudden, WEA Trust has changed its position. “With these changes, the schools could go out for bids, and lo and behold, WEA Trust said, ‘We can match the lowest bid,'” says Republican state Rep. Jim Steineke, who represents the area and supports the Walker changes. At least for the moment, Kaukauna is staying with WEA Trust, but saving substantial amounts of money.

Good Lord, for once immediate, positive results that directly impact the quality of education. Watch this catch fire.

Sometimes, the best way to defeat someone is to hand them rope and let them run amok until the self destruct. When a flawed concept goes from fantasy theory into implementation, hard reality is the best weapon to burn off naive ideas and assumptions. When this happens, the process leaves a burnt out husk ready for the trash bin of history.

While not the intentions of voters in 2008, the result of that election year has been clearly the same when it comes to the battle between big government liberalism and small government libertarianism. For years – since Regan’s terms – there has been a social issue haze covering the true battle for the heart and soul of America. This battle waged over issues such as abortion, sexual preference, prayer in school, science vs faith, etc.

But underneath all of these cultural frictions was the bigger question – should we have a large, invasive and partisan government or a small, lean and neutral government. The side show of failed social issues, along with the massively dysfunctional government programs and debt we have seen since 2009, have focuses the nation on looking hard at the size and role of government. After the liberals went nuts in 2009-2010 on spending – yet still failed to fix a damn thing – it has become clear it is better for everyone (including those worried about social issues) for government to be lean, neutral and limited. The era of big government is now certainly over.

Here are some of recent signs this is the case. First, a laughable observation from one of the old (and stale) liberal guard in Congress:
Continue Reading »