What the President Should, But Won’t, Say in his State of the Union Address

When it comes down to it, there are really only five first-tier issues facing America:

1. We need jobs, and fast. The policies enacted by Presidents Bush and Obama have failed to stimulate the economy.

2. We need to eliminate the deficit in the next 2.5 years.

3. We have too many abortions committed every year.

4. We have two conflicts overseas being run ineffectively and inefficiently.

5. Corruption and transparency in government are at unacceptably high and low, respectively, levels. Additionally, Big Government and Big Business collusion is at a level that is entirely unethical.

President Obama should, but won’t, admit that the State of our Union is precarious, and should do the following:

1. He will push for a flat tax or a national sales tax, as well as the concurrent elimination of all other federal taxes in America on our citiWzens.

2. He will push to eliminate or lower the minimum wage.

3. The Federal Reserve will be audited annually, and will have less power.

4. He will follow through on his recent op-ed to eliminate some regulations.

5. He will repeal the Affordable Care Act, and push to institute tort reform and Dartmouth Atlas-style payment reform. He will also increase the size of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) so it can begin to cut down on the $100 billion, give or take, of fraud in Medicare and Medicaid.

6. He will convince his fellow Democrats to make the individual health insurance market less government-influenced.

7. He will try to raise the Social Security retirement age to 70 in the next two decades, and wall off Congress’ ability to take from the Social Security Administration (SSA) trust fund. Means-testing of Social Security will also take place.

8. He will eliminate or cut down the size of the Departments of Education and Agriculture, and eliminate all $90+ billion in private-sector subsidies to various energy, agriculture and other industries.

9. While the President should ban abortions, the fact is that he supports them. Given this reality, he should support H.R. 3, which bans all federal funding of abortions. He should also work to enact more welfare reforms and proper sexual education so that young people don’t think of abortion as a) necessary, and b) birth control.

10. He should get out of Iraq and Afghanistan by the end of this year, or at the latest by the end of 2012. We’ve spent more lives and dollars in those nations than ever expected, and there is no end in sight. Sending more troops to protect one’s political rear end does not count as a “strategy.”

11. He should push for term limits, and complete transparency for all Members of Congress. As an example: All donors to campaigns and Members will be recorded and posted on A Member’s wall and official website. The amount donated will be posted as well, and the issue(s) this person related their funding to. This will be done within 24 hours of the donations.)

12. Cap-and-trade should be off the table, and the lightbulb ban should be ditched.

13. Members should stop receiving pay the day they leave Congress. The idea of a lifetime pension is ridiculous for a public servant.

14. There should never be another TARP-style bailout ever again.

Obviously, I am a rather conservative individual, and President Obama is not. However, I think many of the above suggestions are not extreme, and in fact are things that could be supported on a bipartisan basis. Unfortunately, the event is more about political partisanship than actual results, which is symptomatic of why our nation is headed into deep, deep trouble in the next few years.

Update: Silly me- I forgot to mention in the “jobs” portion of this post that he should allow more opportunities for nuclear power, and in the budget section that he should push for reform of our defense contracting policies.

Linked Fee = Energy Tax

Boxer’s Opponents Scraping The Barrel

A few months ago, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) had an ego trip with a general who called her ma’am. This caused quite a bit of hilarity among conservatives, and wincing among Democrats. Now Boxer’s primary opponent hopefuls are making the most out of it.

The arrogance of Boxer will light a bit of a fire under the seat of the tiny Republican base in California, but it won’t play out in the general election. Boxer is powerful- the current chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee- and a third-term senator. Incumbency is a huge strength in congressional elections, and Boxer isn’t going to lose to a Republican in California, especially one using an example of her arrogance as a primary weapon.

What might work, however is continuing to highlight her major support and substantial role in creating a cap-and-trade bill; highlight how the bill was pushed to next year by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), indicating both how unpopular it is and how there are no major plans to pass it (no, Democrats are not going to pass a job-killing bill in the same year as an election during a major recession); and perhaps how even President Obama has admitted electricity costs will skyrocket and how the EPA Administrator admitted earlier this year in Hill testimony that ?[she] believe[s] that essential parts of the chart are that the U.S. action alone will not impact CO2 levels.? Too, emphasize how it was liberals who created California’s economic and other messes, and how conservatives can fix them.

Second “Stimulus” Will Be Cap & Trade

I just witnessed Obama on television performing double speak.? I paraphrase…

The stimulus was a success, but we are still losing 70,000 jobs a month.? The economy is in recovery, but it still needs more help.

Then right in the middle he slipped in “cap and trade”.? And began speaking of the millions of jobs this promised land would provide and how it would spur on economic stimulation.? He then introduced some individuals that have “ideas” for jobs.? One of them was a Veep at GE.? Big surprise!

So we can probably expect MSNBC to start ramping up their GE commercials and pushing cap and trade policy again here soon.

Of all the things that Obama can do to ruin your life, cap and trade will be the absolute worst.? It will destroy small business in America by reducing profits to nothing and creating barriers to entry that are too high for new small businesses.? It will increase the costs of everything you buy, and it will strip you of your freedom.

Cap and trade is the government granting you the right to breath.? And if someone owns your right to breath, they can just as easily take it away and they can give it out.

-nick

No Public Option, Be Wary The Ides of September

With the Congressional recess coming to a close it was further reported last night that the Obama Administration would not seek a public option.? Obama may be looking to save his campaign promises for health care reform by coming to terms with what the outspoken nation deems inappropriate.? But I must say, be wary of this tactic, it has been used before.? Magicians use it.? They call it slight of hand.

It stands to reason that exiting the recess, bold, and highly visible claims of back tracking could easily lead to less public attention of a bill that would include a revised or partial public option.? The next several weeks and months will be a key time to zone in, not to zone out based on these initial claims.

Be aware as well that as Congress boots back up, the Al Gore Business Plan cap and trade legislation will also be entering the Senate.? This is another bill to keep a watchful eye on in the Fall season.

-nick

Meet Alan Carlin: The EPA’s Inconvenient Voice

The following was originally published and is the sole property of NewsBusters.org and the Media Research Center.

With the recent narrow passage of the controversial Waxman-Markey ?cap and trade? bill in the House and the ongoing debate over global warming, one should expect balanced coverage of both sides of the issue. However, much of the media has neglected to report on the alleged ?hush up? of an EPA research analyst whose report on global warming prompted his supervisor to warn it could have had a ?very negative impact on this office.?

At 8:45 a.m. EDT on the June 30 edition of “Fox and Friends,” EPA Senior Operations Research Analyst Alan Carlin, told interviewer Steve Doocy that his 98-page study that questioned the science behind global warming and called for the EPA to stop depending on reports from the United Nations, was ignored by his supervisor who refused to forward the report on because Carlin?s ?comments do not help the legal policy or case? for the EPA?s position on global warming.

Ironically, as detailed an earlier NewsBusters posting by the MRC’s Brent Baker, in late January of 2007 the broadcast network evening newscasts quickly hyped ?a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing meant to publicize a report from two far-left groups about how the Bush administration supposedly suppressed science about the dire threat of global warming.?

This caused Matt Lauer on NBC?s Today, to suggest that President Bush was ?hiding the end of the world,? and that, ?A controversy in Washington over what could literally be the end of the world as we know it.? Now that the tables are turned, the media?s bias coverage of environmental issues is even more apparent.

-sam

In Celebration of Cap & Trade Tax…

…or more specifically the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act Tax making its way through Congress at the moment, I thought we could post up some special quotes:

Senator (now President) Barack Obama, SF Gate Interview, January 17, 2008

You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, uh, you know – Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.? …? So, if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can – it’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.

Dr. Peter Orszag, Director of the Congressional Budget Office, now Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Congressional testimony, April 24, 2008

Under a cap-and-trade program, firms would not ultimately bear most of the costs of the allowances but instead would pass them along to their customers in the form of higher prices. Such price increases would stem from the restriction on emissions and would occur regardless of whether the government sold emission allowances or gave them away. Indeed, the price increases would be essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program because they would be the most important mechanism through which businesses and households would be encouraged to make investments and behavioral changes that reduced CO2 emissions.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, San Francisco Chronicle, January 22, 2009

I believe we have to [pass a cap-and-trade bill] because we see that as a source of revenue,” she said, noting that proposed cap-and-trade bills would raise billions of dollars by forcing major emitters to buy credits to release greenhouse gases. “Cap-and-trade is there for a reason. You cap and you trade so you can pay for some of these investments in energy independence and renewables.

Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, Washington Post, April 2, 2009

He called cap-and-trade “the most significant revenue-generating proposal of our time.

-nick