Kudos to Governor Pawlenty for having the courage to speak the truth. 

“All the money that people are asking for from the federal government, and the money they are sending out, is money they don’t have,” Pawlenty said Tuesday.

Very true. The longterm economic problems that simply printing money now is going to have could be more damaging than the current economic problems. If our dollar crashes and is worthless when Obama is seeking reelection, it could make being a consumer in America even harder. Imagine a cup of Starbucks costing $20. 

We need this market to correct, not try to raise the floor (by filling the pool with taxpayer dollars and printed currency) so we can simply touch a false bottom. 

Maybe the Pawlenty of 2003-4, the fiscal hawk, is back. And I for one say, welcome, nice to see you again.

The Nation’s Governor’s are getting their first chance to be greedy. 

Governors to press Obama for help with shortfalls

Fiscal liberalness has run rampant across the country the last few years and the slowing economy has finally proven what many were saying, The spending increases and growth of Government is unsustainable. But that won’t stop the group of executive beggars from asking the Federal taxpayers to bail out their state’s irresponsibility. 

For states, the recession has meant big reductions in tax revenues, which has forced 43 of the 50 states into budget deficits. Since virtually every state has to live under a balanced budget, governors have been forced to cut services, lay off workers and consider tax increases.

It would be interesting to see if any of the Governor’s is a conservative. Oh and by conservative I mean actually going there to simply say Hi, congrats, and we’re going to live with in our own means. No tax increases in a recession, we’re going to just make the tough decisions that our binge spending led to. 

How much is enough? 

That isn’t even in the political lexicon anymore. Now it is who the heck is going to bail our butts out for thinking money grew on trees and businesses and taxpayers were limitless ATMs. 

Not only are we nationalizing corporate failure and home foreclosures, but now we’re going to bail out drunken sailors in State Governments from sea to shining sea. 

Minnesotans will find out Thursday how terribly our leaders have done minding the store for us. Remember last session we had over $2 Billion in surplus, but they spent it all, plus some. But it wasn’t enough according to some of us, and now we stand to face a $4 Billion deficit. 

Maybe if we would have been fiscally responsible, or at least not putting us on the fast track to the nanny state, we’d be in a much better position. But then again, what do I know, I don’t need to buy votes. I just have to live with the consequences. 

God bless America. No seriously, we’re in serious trouble and about to destroy the gift we were given. 

Bailout-A-Palooza is not a form of Federalism.

John McCain was a terrible choice for Republicans in this election. 

[...] McCain said, “I still am committed to comprehensive immigration reform.”

Had we had someone with true consrvative grit who actually believed in the founding conservative principles and could articulate them, as our candidate, the results from November 4th would have been much different. 

What we needed was someone who was more interested in changing the minds of Americans and tapping into our unique Americanism. What we needed was someone like Reagan. I know we can’t dust off what Reagan did and find any old person to try it in the 21st Century, and that’s my point. 

We ended up having McCain thrust upon us. The process by which he was selected still bothers me. I know you’re thinking, “The election is over Andy, let it go.” 

Hooey!

If we don’t have an honest debate over what went wrong and work to prevent it next time, it will be the death blow of the Republican party. Look, if we are just going to try to steal enough issues from liberals and pretend we can do them with out raising taxes, but still increasing spending and entitlements, the voters are smart enough to pick the real deal. 

Reagan is what we conservatives are clinging to because Reagan didn’t play the political game. He lead. He didn’t chase polls, he tried to move them. He had the ability to explain what made him tick (which happened to be the same as the conservative movement) and scores of Americans found out they held those same values close to their heart. 

The economic times Barrack Obama is going to have to navigate will pose a tough fork in the road for Obama. Does he try to create a new socialist’s dream and make a New New Deal and punish the successful with oppressive taxes and regulation? Or does he try to fix the economy? 

Meanwhile, what are Republicans going to do in gameplanning for 2012? Frankly if we let John McCain and the DC powerbrokers set our agenda with Amnesty, more deficit spending, more green Lunacracy, and the growth of government, we’re done for as a party. 

This is what we need to consider as the framework for the reform of our party. We need to find a genuine Republican who doesn’t need to pretend they are a conservative. Frankly if you are a conservative you don’t need to have people run around saying you are. A conservative can spot a real conservative in a crowd of politicians.

I leave you with this, Ronald Reagan’s announcement speech from November of 1979.

Someone once said that the difference between an American and any other kind of person is that an American lives in anticipation of the future because he knows it will be a great place. Other people fear the future as just a repetition of past failures. There’s a lot of truth in that. If there is one thing we are sure of it is that history need not be relived; that nothing is impossible, and that man is capable of improving his circumstances beyond what we are told is fact.

There are those in our land today, however, who would have us believe that the United States, like other great civilizations of the past, has reached the zenith of its power; that we are weak and fearful, reduced to bickering with each other and no longer possessed of the will to cope with our problems.

Much of this talk has come from leaders who claim that our problems are too difficult to handle. We are supposed to meekly accept their failures as the most which humanly can be done. They tell us we must learn to live with less, and teach our children that their lives will be less full and prosperous than ours have been; that the America of the coming years will be a place where–because of our past excesses–it will be impossible to dream and make those dreams come true.

I don’t believe that. And, I don’t believe you do either. That is why I am seeking the presidency. I cannot and will not stand by and see this great country destroy itself. Our leaders attempt to blame their failures on circumstances beyond their control, on false estimates by unknown, unidentifiable experts who rewrite modern history in an attempt to convince us our high standard of living, the result of thrift and hard work, is somehow selfish extravagance which we must renounce as we join in sharing scarcity. I don’t agree that our nation must resign itself to inevitable decline, yielding its proud position to other hands. I am totally unwilling to see this country fail in its obligation to itself and to the other free peoples of the world. 

Inspire Americans to make their world better, a shocking idea for many who covet Government more than they do the country it calls home. Too many in the Republican party have been coerced into believing Government is the answer. 

In 2012 we will have an opportunity to see another Reagan-esque revolution. Obama and the near Super Majority Democrats in Congress will assault the very foundation of our society. It will look and feel a lot like Jimmy Carter’s reign. And guess what came after Carter. 

The only problem is having the right kind of Republican there to capitalize. John McCain, his Maverick friends, and the new more moderate Republican Party strategists - are exactly the wrong kind of Republicans. McCain is a good man, he served his country well, but ….. Well, did you see what he and the professional pundit folks on the right did in the election? Nuff said.

The soon-to-be 44th President is trying to have it both ways. 

WASHINGTON  –  President-elect Barack Obama wants to project fiscal restraint even as his economic team assembles a massive recovery package that could cost several hundred billion dollars. 

A day after introducing the captains of his economic team and promoting a giant jobs plan, Obama on Tuesday was to lay out his budget belt-tightening vision. The dual images — big spender and disciplined budget watcher — were designed to give both political and economic assurances to the public, the Congress and the financial markets.

That’s the kind of nuanced mamby pamby that the main stream media ate up for the last year, but it ain’t gonna get things done. 

Democrats railed on Republicans for deficit spending, and rightly so. But now the Democrats have no one to blame but themselves if the budget gets bigger and more out of balance. 

This Big spending budget hawk stuff from Obama is a bunch of gobaligook. 

Obama is going to be holding a news conference today, and I hope the media wakes up and asks a few questions.

Like…

“Mr. Obama, the cornerstone of your stimulus package is investing in infrastructure. It appears that you plan to create a public works boom in order to create or maintain the 2.5 million you promised over the weekend. But what do you think will happen to these new jobs when they finish building the bridge, highway, or bike trail?”

The Government can’t spend us back into a good economy and if it tries it could make things even worse. There aren’t enough Government contractors and road builders in the stock market to get her back over 10,000. This Government make work plan is simply ignoring the reason we’re in this mess. 

“Mr. Obama, what about helping to save jobs in the rest of the economy? There are a lot of jobs being lost because consumer spending is down. How will paying bloated union wages over the next 4 years going to help people down on mainstreet?”

Look, the Government can’t really do anything to reverse the economic retraction. And frankly if they try to keep plugging all the holes in the sinking ships with taxpayer dollars, they will do more longterm damage. First off they may be saving companies that will just be back in the same position in a few years, and with an even more worthless dollar due to all the deficit spending, it will cost more to pump them up again. 

All the make work talk from Obama is simply trying to direct attention away from the real roots of the economic mess and what Congressional Democrats are up to. Basically, they are trying to nationalize Corporate America. When the Government (ahem the people) owns/controls the means of production, guess what kind of political system you’re in, yep that’s right, a socialist one. 

Democrats are throwing our money in the mix to make up for the Government losses. If and when this downturn becomes an up tick and these companies recover, and start making a profit, will Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress then go in and grab the profits to spread around? If so, that’d be more like Communism. 

This is a huge opening for Republicans to show off they have learned their lesson and are really fiscally conservative and have a better plan for America.

Obviously there is something in the water of the Potomac.

Neil Cavuto, thank you for trying to stand up for Americans. I know it must be tough since so many have long since forgotten what it is like to live on mainstreet, but you seem to have some sense of personal responsibility and free markets left. 

Kudos my friend, kudos. 

My lord, everyone on the center right seems more interested in bail outs and economic cover ups than they do about the long term stability of the country.

George Will has a great piece on Newsweek (via Real Clear Politics) about the Bailout-A-Palooza. 

Congress has made bureaucrats into legislators; or perhaps it has made Hank Paulson into the fourth branch of government.

It is futile, but not pointless, to note that the federal government’s blizzard of bail-outs is unconstitutional. At least that would be the correct judgment were the policy brought before the Supreme Court to be judged with reference to the doctrine of “nondelegation.”

That doctrine, a necessary concomitant of the Constitution’s separation of powers, usually concerns improper delegation of legislative powers to the executive branch. Robert Levy, chairman of Washington’s libertarian Cato Institute, notes that although the court has condoned some forms of delegation, it has stipulated that Congress “shall lay down … an intelligible principle to which the person or body authorized … is directed to conform.” Can anyone discern the principle implicit—it certainly is not explicit—in the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) that authorizes disbursement of perhaps $1 trillion in bailouts? The original purpose of the exercise, to move “toxic” mortgage assets from the books of financial institutions, is no longer controlling.

Improper delegation is inherent in unlimited government, under which hyperkinetic legislators, for whom Attention-Deficit Disorder is an occupational hazard, are jacks of all trades and masters of none. Their expertise is inadequate to their pretensions of omnicompetence. Their desire to intrude government into every nook and cranny of life requires that their attentions be spread thin. So the “laws” they pass are often little more than endorsements of vague aspirations. If a law is a substantive rule that regulates private conduct or directs the operations of government, many laws are effectively written by the executive branch, exercising vast discretion in administration and rulemaking.

Read the rest before you believe one single Washington Politician or professional pontificator’s bureaucratic anti-capitalistic and unConstitutional blather about how we need to ram the country into unrecoverable debt in order to “rescue” any one.

So Congress will bailout the Big 3 so long as they go nutter green, and just about every “financial corporation” under the sun is begging for fed dollars. And liberals in Congress seem more than willing to hand out the cash, on their own terms. 

And what are their own terms? 

Before you think of that understand that, Capitalism only works if their is risk of failure. Sure companies got greedy. Consumers got greedy and over extended themselves. I’m sure I am not the only one thinking you’d be able to catch up next paycheck after getting bent over the gas pumps all Summer. 

America’s economic woes can be blamed on 2 simple things: Greed that knows no income level, and painfully high energy prices. 

Let’s start with energy: 

I was shelling out $200 a week this Summer for diesel and I know I wasn’t the only one who had to put it on credit. Along with the price of fuel, we paid more for just about everything. Consumer prices and what we have to pay for our staples of existence were all at unprecedented highs. 

That drove down consumer spending and forced many Americans to cut back (and when a lot of people stop spending, the economy reflects it) and put off some bills (and that causes red ink to over extended lenders. 

Greed:

Some corporations got greedy. But so did a lot of Americans. Let’s not forget what we were told was causing this - the subprime mortgage mess. Here we are just 30 days post facto of the most important bill eva in America, and the money they set aside for that isn’t going to go there. 

Industries also got dragged into the red by internal costs. Energy zapped most businesses too. You think only middle class families pay for gas? Please. Your plumber, hair stylist, delivery company, you name it, everyone was paying those high prices and that cost was paid for by you. 

The Big 3 got screwed by the Unions. Look you can’t have more people in paid retirement than you do actually producing your products. I refuse to believe that if they just built tin box green cars that they wouldn’t be in this situation. 

No the problem is that Americans haven’t been buying cars for years. And if you look at what we were buying, it wasn’t the itty bitty greenies. While gas was cheap we were buying the vehicles we wanted. That was SUVs and trucks. Guess what, any business with a chance of profits is going to build what you want, not what the Sierra Club says you should have. 

For years COngress has been hitting Auto makers with mandate after mandate. They want to dictate what we as Americans can buy. In a free market world, the consumers decide what sells. That can’t be ignored when we look at how we got into this mess. 

Sure there is a lot more to it, but if we ignore these 2 big portions of the cause of the economic collapse, we will not solve the problem. 

Spending a few trillion dollars of taxpayer money bailing out failed businesses and consumers whose eyes were bigger than their income is going to lead to a real economic disaster. We’re talking depression here. 

So what are the liberals in charge now trying to do, sweep the real causes under the rug. Yes, they want us to think that GM’s corporate jet is the cause of their demise. They want us to think that the SUV killed Detroit. They want us to think that a CEO’s salary was the downfall of a $100 Billion company. 

As I watched parts of the Sunday morning shows yesterday, I almost broke into tears as I listened to pundits and high ranking politicians crafting the demise of Capitalism. Folks, I got news for you. An America with out Capitalism will not be America anymore.

Oh sure, we’ll still call it America, but it is going to look and feel a lot more like Europe and the Soviet Union. 

I’m serious, do you really think that Democratic Congressional Committee Chairman really know how to build a better car that Americans would buy? 

Come on folks, wake up. 

You’re seeing the emergence of anti-Capitalistic policies in our very own Government. What needs to happen to most of these businesses is for them to fail. Bankruptcy, firesales, or to renegotiate their contracts with employees or account holders. That’s how to fix a free market.

What Washington is up to is not solving the problem but reshaping our economy into one controlled through Washington. Bureaucrats make terrible businessmen. Politicians even worse. 

And that is what is about to happen. 

Oh and don’t believe the hype. I’ve heard way too many self proclaimed professional pundits on radio and TV lately saying that American auto companies refused to build the itty bitty greeny cars. The fact is that until gas hit $4 a gallon, no one wanted one of them who didn’t hug a tree before they went to bed at night. 

You’re being lied to my fellow Americans. The people who hate the way America works are trying to convince you that change is needed. The change I can believe in is one where Washington stops meddling in the markets and we see businesses rise and falls by their own merits. 

The Bailout-a-Palooza we are in the midst of is an assault of Capitalism. With carrots and sticks the liberals in DC will reshape Corporate America into a socialist utopia. What better way to dictate the way people live and what they have to live with, then but to mandate what can and cannot be sold in America?

And the stupid corporate retards are going along with it. I weep for America. This grand experiment is running its course. I hope I am wrong, but if we don’t wake up and wake up soon we will let our Founders down. 

I will close with this, wasn’t Ethanol supposed to be the solution? 

Yeah, Washington is grasping at special interest straws. Tell them you take their cobs and shove it.

Especially the ones in office and in charge of this party. 

What Went Wrong?
Well, it wasn’t conservatism.

By Victor Davis Hanson

Conservatives have already in the three weeks after the election come up with three competing explanations — and remedies — for their congressional defeats and the victory of the relatively unknown Barack Obama.  Post-election voting patterns and statistical data can be interpreted in various ways to support any of the following three exegeses, which I understand as being roughly the following:

…. yeah, double that. (emphasis mine)

State House and Senate fiscal analysts are predicting a deficit of as much as $4 billion for the coming two-year budget period.

The prediction was contained in a chart shown to members of a legislative planning panel on Friday.

The analysts say their calculations aren’t as comprehensive as those made by state finance officials, who will give an official budget forecast on Dec. 4.

Still, the projections are prompting state leaders to prepare for a tough session next year.

Democratic House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher says the chart is frightening.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty said on his weekly radio show that he expects a multi-billion-dollar deficit and the state will have to tighten its belt.

DFL Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller says lawmakers might start by reorganizing the Department of Employment and Economic Development, where he says a shakeup is needed.

But Pawlenty spokesman Brian McClung says cutting job creation programs during bad economic times is a bad idea.

Watch for the DFL to target every free market capitalist program we have, not that we have many. Oh and it will be interesting to see if they will bring up the Southwest Corridor and Viking’s Stadium. 

Afterall, the Vikes will soon be the loan inhabitants of the Dome and well, these people are addicted to mass transit boondoggles.

The Strib is reporting that Minnesota lost another 55,000 jobs. Given that we are beginning the process of budgeting for the State Government, I think it is very important to take a look at what 55,000 lost jobs means to how much money will be available for the Legislature and Governor to spend. 

(This is a handy little site I found to play around and see just how much tax burden you already have for living in Minnesota and how you can compare that to other states. )

Let’s pretend that the 55,000 jobs all make the same amount. We’ll take the per capita income ( using 06 Census info from WaPo) $29,027 and we’ll round it up to $30,000 just so math is fun. 

55,000 * $30,000 = $1,650,000,000

That’s how much income WAS generated by those jobs. Now let’s find out how much tax revenue that created (past tense) for the state of Minnesota. 

The income tax rate for someone earning $30,000 a year is: 7.05%

1,650,000,000 * .0705 = $116,325,000

So if those people made just the per capita income, they’d pay a combined $116,325,000 into the state coffers. 

Now the reality is that some of those jobs earn more, some earn less, so it is hard to say exactly how much tax revenue the state will really be using. Of course I am an amateur economist (ha!) and we really should be letting the professionals handle this, but I’m doing this so people will understand why simply demanding more state spending is so dangerous. And using a per capita average is still a safe number to describe just how dire the state revenue problem really is. 

Years of out of control binge spending is coming home to roost. 

We are already facing a $1 to $2 BILLION forecast deficit just as the budget is currently structured. That’s right we went from a $2.2 BILLION surplus just 2 years ago to now facing almost as much in deficit. That would be a $4 BILLION swing for those keeping score at home. 

We all know that the Democrats have been crying that the state budget is getting cut and that we aren’t spending enough money on their pet projects. Oh and don’t forget they love tax increases and often blame things, or the lack of new things on the lack of new and increased taxes. Don’t forget, many prominent DFLers blamed the 35W bridge collapse on no new taxes groups and Republican politicians.

We know that since the DFL basically own the Legislature right now, and that they have for the last 2 years,  they will try to spend and tax more. Their record matches the shadow rhetoric you never heard from the local media. 

Do you see why I am doing this yet? 

There are less taxpayers paying into the state coffers. We have a balanced budget amendment in Minnesota, which means they can’t deficit spend like Washington DC does. So if less people are paying in, and the DFL Legislature still wants to spend more instead of cut spending (live with in its means), those taxpayers who are paying in to the system still, will have to pay more in order to end up with a $0. 

If you remember the Democratic rhetoric and talking points from the not-so-long-ago election, you say well simply tax the rich and those corporations with windfall profit taxes. Sounds pretty harmless and unlikely to really affect you, so you think. 

But keep in mind the facts on the ground, businesses are tanking left and right in the national economy and most likely these jobs lost here in Minnesota are, at least partially, from failed businesses who no longer exist in order to pay taxes to the state. 

That’s a double whammy of revenue “shortfalls” and budget donuts to fill. 

Democrats are going to try to pass a tax increase. They’ve already murmured about their Robin Hood-esque brand new 4th income tax rate in Minnesota which would give us the highest taxes in the nation. Now that may help fill their revenue problems, but it will hurt those paying it in this bad economy who have the ability to spend. Another daunting question is can they get away with raising business taxes in this economy? 

Can the State of Minnesota live with in its means, or do the citizens and taxpayers have to live to pay for the Government? 

Be ready to call your Legislators and the Governor to let them know that enough is enough, and it is time to live with in our means as a state.

55,000 unemployed means millions upon millions in less tax revenue. And if we see pushes for unemployment and entitlement program increases, the question is, who is left to pay for it?

Just to give you a little idea of how Politicians (a Congressman in this case) views taxpayers and what they earn.