TightyRighty.net

I was listening to my podcasts the other day and I came across the April 14 Laura Ingraham podcast extolling the virtues of Texas Governor Rick Perry.  While I wholeheartedly agree with Perry’s support for Texas’ 10th Amendment rights and I do admit he looks pretty good compared to virtually anybody in Washington, I don’t think Rick Perry is the answer to the conservative leadership vacuum.

You were not here Laura, so you did not see Gov. Perry flip-flop on border security before/after his last election.  In his election ads, Gov. Perry stood on the border and talked of the importance of border security and all the great things he was doing to ensure border security.  Within weeks after being elected, he stated that a border fence was a joke.   Perry was also a prime mover behind the Trans Texas Corridor, the one of the biggest land grabs in our lifetimes.  This plan called for taking a very wide swath of land, several thousand miles long, and developing highways, railways, utility right of way as well as private development.

No, I don’t think that a border governor who does not see the utility of a border fence and who thinks that taking a citizen’s private property for someone else’s private usage is acceptable is the guy we need to champion the conservative cause.

Yesterday was the credit card companies.  A few weeks ago was the car companies and a few weeks before that, the big banks.  Pretty soon it will be the pharmaceuticals and insurance companies called down to the White House to be harangued by the mean headmaster.

Does anyone find it strange that the President is using his position to call private businesses into his office and tell them how to run their companies and industries?  When is he going to call in those folks who are strung out on credit card debt because they lived beyond their means and tell them to get their act in order?  I am all for the President using his bully pulpit to drive major initiatives within our country (even though I don’t like most of the Obama proposals to date), but using the White House for this populist scolding of “evil” businesses is just pandering.

Sure, I think credit card companies can be abusive.  I think Capital One runs the most hypocritical ads implying they don’t kill you with late fees when they are one of the worst for that.  But I vote with my feet and if I don’t like what the credit card company is doing, then I don’t do business with them.  Someone might contend that not everyone has good credit and therefore doesn’t have the luxury to pay-off or move balances.  I reply that those folks should not have credit card debt.  Call me cold, but that’s how I see it.

But back to my original point – The President is the President, a leader, a statesman, a visionary, not Mr. Murphy, whose office you were sent to at Brother Rice  HS when you acted up in class. Mr President – quit acting like the principal doling out detentions (or expelling Rick Wagoner, as it were) and provide some leadership on the real issues facing this country.

So as to not sound like an Obama-bashing demagogue, I do want to give credit to the President on a couple of matters where he is deserving of kudos.

First – Staying the course in Iraq and implementing a “surge” in Afganistan are clearly wise moves which will maintain and strengthen national security.

Secondly, boycotting the UN Racism Conference was a good idea. This event is nothing more than a UN sanctioned Israel bashing session for which our absence, along with Canada, Italy, etc, diminishes the luster.   We should not be providing credibility to events such as this which denigrate one of our closest allies.

That said – kudos to you Mr. President for your stand in these areas. You have done the right things here, and I want to recognize you for that.

Whereas former President George Bush courageously put up with slings and arrows for most of his administration in order to stay the course on national security, President Obama has proven that he places politics far and away above national security, and for this we should be very, very concerned.

In his attempt to smear the Bush administration by releasing the memos which detail enahanced interrogation techniques, President Obama has weakened our national security in a number of ways:

He has provided Al Queda and other terrorist organizations with a veritable training manual on how to overcome these techniques.

Although he traipsed down to Langley to provide a pep talk to the CIA, release of these memos will likely have a chilling effect on agents who may be disuaded from using similar enhanced techniques in the future due to the potential prosecution risks.

Release of these memos will likely have a chilling effect on future government attorneys who will be reluctant to take unpopular, yet legally supportable positions in the interest of national security, if there is potentially prosecution risk from future administrations.

Finally, by disclosing these memos and decrying these techniques, he has taken a powerful tool out of the hands of our intelligence service.  How do we know these techniques are powerful?  The memos tell us outright some of the successes, and the silence of the redacted text is deafening.  Mark Thiessen has written an interesting piece at the Washington Post regarding the effectiveness of these techniques.   Additionally, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair acknowledged in a memo to the intelligence community that Bush-era interrogation practices yielded had “high-value information,” then omitted that admission from a public version of his assessment.

Is this the kind of change we wanted – trading national security for hardball politics?  I think not.

When is political debate unhealthy?

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Senior White House adviser David Axelrod on Sunday suggested the Tea Party movement is an unhealthy reaction to the tough economic climate facing the country.

Axelrod was asked on CBS’s Face the Nation about the spreading and very public disaffection with the president’s fiscal policies seen at the Tea Party rallies around the country last week.

“I think any time you have severe economic conditions there is always an element of disaffection that can mutate into something that’s unhealthy”, Axelrod said.

How come every Democrat who first voted for the war, when they saw the public turning against it, wrapped themselves in the flag of patriotic dissent  and were named as heroes?

How come when hundreds of violent demonstrators turned out for every G-?? (insert number here) summit or thousands of Mexican protesters turned out, complete with Mexican flags and upside down US flags, that was healthy debate?

So why is it unhealthy when hundreds of thousands of law abiding citizens peaceably turn out to protest the tax and spend policies of the Obama Administration?  Is it because these folks who pay taxes don’t deserve a voice – just shutup and pay your taxes?  Is it because these folks are concerned that the fiscal irresponsibility of the current administration threatens to bankrupt our country?  Is it because these folks don’t want to see future generations saddled with a debt load which will ensure a lower standard of living for our kids and grandkids?

No – it is none of these above.  “Unhealthy” debate is obviously any debate the Obama Administration does not agree with!!

I started reading Ayn Rand’s magnum opus Atlas Shrugged a couple of weeks ago and after a weekend of heavy reading, I am now about 80% thru this 1160 page tome. I was inspired to read this book after seeing where the Obama administration was headed with spreading the wealth, taxing the “rich”, etc.

I am amazed at how prescient Ms. Rand was 52 years ago when this book was first published. Her concept of society’s producers going on strike has come true in NY, where at least one of the “rich” (Rush Limbaugh) has very vocally voted no to higher taxes with his feet and left the state. How many more will it take before the definition of rich is significantly reduced or the rich are so overtaxed they all leave?

The whole “Tax the Rich” and unlimited entitlements to the poor is sounding eerily similar to “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

I just don’t understand how anyone can think that raising taxes on the folks who are the engine behind our economy is not going to damage the economy and cause people’s behaviors to change.  Even mellow (very) funny man Dennis Miller says 50% is the limit at which time he will scale back his work ouput. The WSJ ran an interesting column – The 2% Illusion, which calculated that even if all the folks making over $75K per year are taxed 100%, that will barely cover the enormous budgets put forth by President Obama.

This just leads me to wonder – Who is John Galt?

I have pondered over the last several months whether our President is just corrupt or essentially evil based on his stands with regards to the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, forcing taxpayers (including me) to pay for abortions which we believe are murder of the unborn, and championing the cause of “science” over life regarding stem cell research.  Last week’s speech at Georgetown was just another log on the fire for me to contemplate.

Last week President Obama gave a speech on the U.S. economy at Georgetown University, America’s oldest Roman Catholic university. Prior to his speech, the White House asked Georgetown to cover up visible symbols of its Catholic heritage, and they complied!! (BTW – Does anyone wonder why the Catholic Church is in a shambles when Notre Dame and Georgetown are welcoming with open arms this anti-life President who stands against the Church in arguably the biggest issue facing the Church? (besides salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ))

After asking the Catholic symbols be covered, he then has the gall to refer to the parable of the two builders (Matthew 7:24-27) Jesus told at the Sermon on the Mount!  Unsurprisingly, he did not mention Jesus.

However, it is President Obama’s bastardization of this story that has me wondering whether his man is evil.  In the parable, Jesus contrasted two builders, one of whom built his house of a foundation of sand, and one who built his house upon rock.  When the storm came, the house built on the foundation of sand collapsed, “and it fell with a great crash.”  The house built on the rock stood firm.  We know the house built on the rock is the life whose foundation is Jesus.

However, the rock foundation of Barak Obama’s economic house is the government.

“It’s a foundation built upon five pillars that will grow our economy and make this new century another American century: new rules for Wall Street that will reward drive and innovation; new investments in education that will make our workforce more skilled and competitive; new investments in renewable energy and technology that will create new jobs and industries; new investments in health care that will cut costs for families and businesses; and new savings in our federal budget that will bring down the debt for future generations. That is the new foundation we must build. That must be our future – and my Administration’s policies are designed to achieve that future. “

Keep in mind that when the Pharisees tried to trick Jesus regarding government vs God, Jesus clearly delineated the difference – “And Jesus answered and said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Mark 12:17)

So Jesus states He is the rock foundation upon which we should build our house and Barak Obama states the government is the rock foundation.  Whom do you think is correct on this matter?

Congress has shown its true face(s) on this AIG matter.

First, AIG was “too important to fail” so Congress threw $150 billion + at it to keep it afloat.

Then, Congress royally screwed the folks who kept AIG afloat during this period.

Witness Jake Desantis, executive vice president of the American International Group’s financial products unit.  You probably saw or heard about his resignation letter to AIG CEO Edward Liddy, reprinted on the Op-Ed page of the NY Times.

Here is a guy who is a very high ranking executive in a profitable unit of AIG.  As the company gets in very serious trouble, it comes to him and asks him to do the following things in exchange for a retention bonus:

• Take a salary cut to $1.  I don’t know what he was making before, but I would guess he had a $350K+ base salary so this is a pretty substantial salary reduction.
• Don’t quit – stay with the company so it remains viable and can be restructured, components sold, etc.
• Work your ass off in a very dysfunctional environment where the company is under the microscope, is on  the verge of failing, and is trying to recover from some very complicated and very bad transactions previously entered in a different division than Mr. Desantis’.

Mr. Desantis does all these things and what does he get?  Screwed by AIG (Gee, can you please repay the bonus since I have to go talk to Congress in a few hours and it’s going to look bad? –  Edward Liddy).  Screwed by Congress (Yes, I added the provision to the stimulus package which would allow payment of these bonuses, but that was before I knew how unpopular these bonusses would be and how bad I would look. – Sen. Chris Dodd).  Screwed by the state (I want to know how much each of these AIG people make so I can publicly shame them for making so much money at the taxpayers expense. – Andrew Coumo).

This is an outrage!  This guy did everything he was asked and in return he gets pilloried in the public square.  Congress, in its infinite wisdom and pure spite, passes a law to tax this bonus at 90%.  Keep in mind that some portion of the “bonus” is actually the salary he had foregone in order to help the company!  And it would be taxed at 90%.

This proves how out of touch Congress is with the real world.  When Excel Communications was known to be on the block, I was one of a number of executives deemed important to the company’s viability so I was paid retention pay until a buyer was found and a deal completed.  This is the way business gets done. 

I would venture that had AIG not established a similar retention program, it would have been Katy bar the exit door and the company “too important to fail” would have folded like a cheap tent without any leadership.  Then we would have nothing to show for all the taxpayer dollars invested in the company and if it truly was “too important to fail” then our financial mess would be much worse.

p.s. In an interesting aside, the NY Times has over 900 comments on this op-ed.  The editors have highlighted 32 as the Editor’s Choice (“most interesting and thoughtful comments that represent a range of views”).  Of the 32, I’ll bet 28 are vehemently against these bonuses because this is so much more than the average American makes, once AIG ate at the government trough contracts don’t matter, etc.  This is about the “range of views” I would expect from the old gray lady.  What a hag she has become.

There is an excellent article by Gary Halbert at Investorinsight.com from which I copied the title of this note.  He details the following items and how they are killing investor investor enthusiasm for stocks and therefore killing the market:

1. The Economy Continues To Slump Badly
2. US Stock Markets Continue To Plunge
3. Obama’s Multi-Trillion Dollar Spending Spree
4. Obama’s Budget – The First $2 TRILLION Deficit?
5. Obama’s Plan To Nationalize Health Care This Year
6. Obama’s “Cap-and-Trade” Environmental Proposal
7. Conclusions – Why The Stock Markets Are Collapsing

Unfortunately, some of this reads like our administration is the Keystone Kops, but that is the government we voted in.  As someone once said, we get the government we deserve.