Politics

Herman Cain: My interview

by Bob Weeks on October 11, 2011

In July 2010, some 15 months ago, I had a chance to interview Herman Cain, who is now at or near the top of the polls of Republican presidential candidates. At the time his name was starting to be seen on lists of possible presidential candidates. Following is what I wrote at the time.

Herman Cain: Conservatives should dream, be united, informed, inspired

Herman Cain

At this weekend’s RightOnline conference at The Venetian in Las Vegas, businessman and radio talk show host Herman Cain delivered an inspirational message to the audience of some 1,100 conservative activists from across the country.

Cain has a nightly radio show and is a frequent guest host for the Neal Boortz show, which is heard in Wichita on KNSS radio. Cain has been an executive at several companies, including serving as president of Godfather’s Pizza, a unit of Pillsbury. He appears on Fox News, and WorldNet Daily carries his weekly column.

He also runs The Hermanator PAC, which seeks to elect economically responsible conservatives to office. His name is mentioned in lists of presidential contenders for 2012, and he may launch a presidential exploratory committee.

Speaking at Saturday’s general session at RightOnline, Cain told the audience “The tragedy in life does not lie in not reaching your goals; the tragedy lies in having no goals to reach for. It’s not a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity to have no dreams.”

Cain said that his dream is that we return to the principles that the Founding Fathers envisioned for what turned out to be the greatest country in the world: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. “It didn’t say anything about a Department of Happy!” It is the pursuit of happiness that is mentioned.

Cain told the audience there are three things the audience must do: First, conservatives and their citizen movements must stay united in their efforts take back our government.

Second, conservatives must stay informed. “Stupid people are ruining this country,” he said, telling the audience that over half the people can be persuaded by a slick speech or a slick campaign ad.

Third, conservatives must stay inspired. Telling the audience the story of his recovery from cancer, he said his inspiration for his work comes from God Almighty.

He also related the story of the bumblebee, and how aerodynamic equations and computer models predict that the bumblebee should not be able to fly. “There’s only one reason the bumblebee flies: He didn’t get the memo that said he couldn’t. The bumblebee believes he can fly.”

Telling the audience that they have “bumblebee power,” he believes that conservatives can take back the government in November 2010.

Cain also mentioned what he calls the “SIN” tactics that liberals employ: First, they shift the subject, then they ignore the facts. “Liberals can’t handle the facts,” he told the audience, and that’s why they shift the subject and ignore the facts.

Finally, liberals resort to name-calling, calling himself and other conservatives racists, a charge he said is ridiculous and has backfired.

Later that day, I had an interview with Cain in his suite at Encore Las Vegas. Casually dressed and sipping a glass of wine, he was more relaxed than during his energetic speech earlier that day, although eventually his engaging enthusiasm broke out.

Referring to his optimism for the chances of conservatives in the upcoming elections, I said I’m not so sure, even pessimistic. Why am I wrong, I asked?

Cain said that callers — both to his Monday through Friday radio show and when he substitutes for Boortz and Sean Hannity — express their frustrations with the direction of the country, the stalled economy, and lack of private sector job creation. That makes him optimistic. Callers say they’ve been duped by the “hope and change” message, and they’re waking up.

Another factor he cited is the ongoing Gallup poll showing conservatives outnumbering liberals two to one, and independents and moderates outnumbering liberals one-and-a-half to one. He said this tells him that the numbers are on our side.

I asked Cain about the controversy about the Civil Rights Act of 1964: As a black man, who at age 64, growing up in the south, faced real and actual discrimination: Is our country better off for it?

“Absolutely we are,” he said, for both the Civil Rights act of 1964 and the Voter Rights Act of 1965, adding that they had historical impact on our country.

The Great Society programs and the rise of the modern welfare state: Are we better off for that? No, he said. He said that these programs didn’t provide enough incentives for people to help themselves. “That’s what’s wrong with most of the social programs today. That’s why they need to be modernized. When you provide incentives, and you provide help, but you also have requirements in there for people to help themselves: guess what? The programs will work.” But people have figured out how to game the system, and then the programs don’t work.

“Look at systemic poverty, look at crime, look at the quality of education in our inner cities — it’s all worse than it was.” The welfare reform of the 1990s, which required people to do certain things in order to continue to receive a check, shows that when people have an incentive to help themselves, they will use assistance programs more effectively, he said.

Since he mentioned education, I explained that in Kansas we have very few charter schools, and no school choice. What are we missing out on in Kansas? Are we behind the curve?

Yes, he said. “Competition makes everything better.” He told about the success of the Washington DC school choice program, with over 90 percent of the students going on to college. But the Democrat-led Congress and the President would not re-authorize the program. The teachers unions don’t like competition, he said, and this was the reason why.

I mentioned that often liberals are opposed to school choice because they say that poor uneducated parents are not equipped to make decisions regarding schools for their children. This is not true, Cain said. “It’s part of that whole attitude that government can make better decisions for a poor family then they can make for themselves.”

A focus of this conference is that liberty and free markets are superior in creating prosperity for everyone. But many people believe that one person becomes rich only if others become poor. I asked: Why do people believe that? Why have we as conservatives not been successful in getting out that message? Why doesn’t the president seemed to believe that?

Cain said that President Obama doesn’t believe this because he is “at least a socialist.” Republicans have not been good about managing “sharper, clearer messages about certain things.” He said and the Republican National Committee focuses on raising money, which is good, but they don’t do a good job of explaining what the Republican Party stands for. Cain said that while he supported current chairman Michael Steele for that job, he doesn’t know what Steele believes are the priorities or focal points for Republican candidates running for office in November.

While we know that we have to do something about spending, taxes, and education, these are general, broad statements, he said. We even know how to fix most problems. “We just don’t have the political will or the leadership to fix some of these problems. That’s what America faces, that’s our biggest challenge.”

Tagged as: Elections, Politics, Republican Party

{ 0 comments }

Powerline on Bloomberg, Koch Industries

by Bob Weeks on October 7, 2011

The recent piece by Bloomberg Markets on the purported faults of Koch Industries is being revealed as another example of the politically-motivated slash-and-burn pieces that have become common at media outlets with a liberal political agenda.

Koch Industries itself has debunked the reporting in the piece on its KochFacts.com site. Others have too. John Hinderaker of Powerline Blog has a series of pieces that detail problems with the Bloomberg article. It’s a lot to read, as the Bloomberg article itself is lengthy. Here’s an excerpt from the first of three parts that reveals the political nature and motivation of Bloomberg:

Bloomberg’s article offers a pastiche of five or six incidents which took place over a period of decades, are completely unrelated, and were selected by Bloomberg simply because they can be used to put Koch in a bad light. Bloomberg says that “Koch’s history of flouting rules covers more than two decades,” but what that actually means is that Bloomberg had to go back a quarter century to find a handful of examples where Koch had a regulatory problem. (Actually, one of the instances cited by Bloomberg goes back to the Truman administration.) The same attack could be made against any large manufacturing company. Let’s take just one example.

General Electric is the Obama administration’s favorite U.S. company (with the possible exception of “green” energy sinkholes like Solyndra). Yet everything Bloomberg wrote about Koch Industries could just as easily have been written about G.E. G.E.’s foreign subsidiaries have done business in Iran, and G.E., like Koch, has publicly noted that its subsidiaries’ dealings with Iran were legal. Likewise, employees of one or more G.E. companies paid bribes to obtain business in Iraq, and just last year, G.E. paid a $23.4 million fine as a result. And G.E. has had environmental problems, like–to name just a few–contaminating the Hudson and Housatonic Rivers with PCBs, along with the Coosa River Basin, and releasing dimethyl sulfate, chlorine, 1, 1, 1, -trichloroethane, ammonia, and toluene from its silicone manufacturing plant in Waterford, New York. G.E. has had product liability problems, including claims of wrongful death that were, tragically, justified. And, while Bloomberg makes a laughable price-fixing claim against Koch, G.E. was in fact a party to one of the most famous price-fixing conspiracies of all time.

So, is Bloomberg’s story titled “The Secret Sins of General Electric”? Or, in the online version, “General Electric Flouts Law With Secret Iran Sales?” Of course not. G.E. is generally identified with the Democratic Party. Does anyone seriously doubt that Bloomberg wanted to do a hit piece on Koch Industries solely because that company’s owners are prominent conservatives? Of course not.

The three Powerline articles are here:

Bloomberg Whiffs, Part 1: “So the supposedly explosive charge that Bloomberg chose to headline–Koch ‘flout[ed] the law’ and acted ‘in defiance of a U.S. trade ban’ is simply false. Koch did no such thing; what is more, unlike hundreds of other American companies, it has voluntarily gone beyond the requirements of the law and has, in more recent years, prohibited all subsidiaries from doing business in Iran.”

Bloomberg Whiffs, Part 2: “The Koch subsidiary’s termination of Mrs. Egorova-Farines was held to be amply justified. But Bloomberg didn’t want you to know any of that. Bloomberg, motivated by political animus against the Koch brothers, wanted you to get the impression that she was a heroic whistle-blower who was fired for lifting the lid on another employee’s improper payments. This is the sort of dishonesty that pervades the entire hit piece.”

Bloomberg Whiffs, Part 3: “Like all too many ‘whistle-blowers,’ Ms. Barnes-Soliz was a poor employee who, anticipating termination, asserted false claims against her employer in order to set up a lawsuit. The criminal prosecution that resulted was far from the triumphant vindication that Bloomberg portrays; on the contrary, the prosecutor overreached and his case collapsed when it was tested in court, to the extent that the federal government pleaded for a settlement in which the Koch employees it had persecuted agreed not to sue it for malicious prosecution.”

In his conclusion, Hinderaker wrote: “This is a story from which one can learn a great deal. First, don’t take news accounts of noble whistle-blowers and evil corporations at face value. The truth is usually much different from what is implied by liberal reporters. Second, reporters like those at Bloomberg who write on such topics are generally ill-suited to the task. Typically, they know little about business, let alone the complex legal and environmental compliance issues that were involved here. Worse, they generally don’t know how to research effectively, and — to be blunt — aren’t very diligent. So if someone hands them a story that fits their political preconceptions, they swallow it hook, line and sinker.”

Tagged as: Koch Industries, Politics

{ 3 comments }

Pompeo announces reelection bid

by Bob Weeks on September 28, 2011

In what he described as an informal setting before a small group of supporters on Tuesday, U. S. Representative Mike Pompeo announced his bid for reelection to represent the fourth district of Kansas. Kansas Governor Sam Brownback appeared beside Pompeo and offered his endorsement.

In his endorsement, Brownback praised Pompeo’s work on sensible federal regulations and controlling federal spending. Brownback said the upcoming election is very important, with the budget and the economy being the most important issues.

In his remarks, Pompeo said that top-down direction of the economy from Washington hasn’t worked, citing high unemployment numbers specifically. He said that the good ideas he’s seen have come from governors. The requirements of states to have balanced budgets — a constraint not in effect at the federal level — is a factor, he said.

Pompeo said he’s been doing the things that he promised to do when he campaigned for office — working for small government and controlling regulation, mentioning the Environmental Protection Agency specifically.

Pompeo has been critical of President Barack Obama for his criticism of corporate jet owners not paying their fair share of taxes. Asked if Obama is getting the message, Pompeo said no, the president’s not getting the message. “I don’t think this president understands that just his rhetoric alone is doing tremendous damage to the aviation industry and its suppliers.”

On the tone in Washington, Pompeo said the dialogue in Washington has changed. In the past, he said the thought was: “Can we take this agency, and instead of growing it by eight percent, grow it by three. That talk is gone. It is now about does this agency have any usefulness? Is there a functionality that remains? Should we keep it, keep it at a smaller level, can we make it more efficient, or is it something that we ought to get rid of? We have truly changed the discourse. We are now talking, for the first time in a very long time, about the proper role of our federal government, and what Americans can afford.”

He said this change in attitude was not just his own, but that the large incoming class of new conservative representatives elected last year has shifted the conversation in this way.

Pompeo said it it is important for voters to elect people who are willing to be specific in their plans for shrinking government. Too often candidates run on a platform of smaller government, but won’t specify the methods they will use to cut government, he said, adding that changes in the role of the federal government will affect us all.

On Governor Brownback returning the grant for the formation of a Kansas health insurance exchange, Pompeo said that he voted to overturn Obamacare in its entirety, so he’s not in favor of spending money to implement it. He also said he’d like to see the returned money used for deficit reduction, and that he has introduced legislation that would require this.

Pompeo’s announcement was not unexpected — photos of organizational meetings for 2012 campaign volunteers have been spotted on Facebook and he’s been successful in fundraising — so the real news will be the announcement (or rumors) of opponents. The filing deadline is in June, with the primary election in August followed by the general election in November.

Tagged as: Barack Obama, Government spending, Kansas fourth district, Mike Pompeo, Regulation, Sam Brownback, United States Congress

{ 13 comments }

Pay-to-play laws are needed in Wichita and Kansas

by Bob Weeks on August 18, 2011

In the wake of scandals, some states and cities have passed “pay-to-play” laws. These laws often prohibit political campaign contributions by those who seek government contracts, or the laws may impose special disclosure requirements.

Many people make campaign contributions to candidates whose ideals and goals they share. This is an important part of our political process. But when reading campaign finance reports for members of the Wichita City Council, one sees the same names appearing over and over, often making the maximum allowed contribution to candidates. Their spouses also contribute.

And when one looks at the candidates these people contribute to, you notice that often there’s no commonality to the political goals and ideals of the candidates. Some people contribute equally to liberal and conservative council members. Then, when these people appear in the news after having received money from the Wichita City Council, it snaps into place: These campaign donors are not donating to those whose ideals they agree with. They’re donating so they can line their own pockets.

Some states and cities have taken steps to reduce this harmful practice. New Jersey is notable for its New Jersey Local Unit Pay-To-Play Law. In a nutshell, the law affects many local units of government and the awarding of contracts having a value of over $17,500. The law affects contracts awarded by other than a “fair and open process,” which basically means a contract process open to bidding. For other contracts, here is the summary of the law:

A municipal or county government agency cannot award a contract without using a fair and open process if the contractor …

is a contributor to a candidate committee or a political party committee where a member of the party is serving in an elective public office of that municipality or county, and, either …
made “reportable” contributions (those in excess of $300) during the year prior to the award, and/or …
makes contributions during the life of the contract.

The New Jersey law requires that businesses seeking government contracts certify they have not made contributions that would bar them from eligibility. It also contains provisions that contributions from a business owner’s spouse and children will be deemed to be from the business itself. For corporations, the contributions of principals, partners, officers, and directors, and their spouses, are considered to be from the corporation itself for purposes of the law.

Alabama, Connecticut, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Ohio, and South Dakota are other states with some form of pay-to-play laws. Some of these are being challenged in the courts.

It’s not only states that have such laws. Cities, too, are passing them.

In 2009 Dallas passed a law, as described in a post on the Pay to Play Law Blog: “The ethics package contains numerous changes to existing lobbyist registration and disclosure requirements, City Council zoning powers and the disclosure of gifts to Council members. Most relevant to the pay-to-play space is that anyone bidding on a city contract is now prohibited from making donations during the bid period. Additionally, ‘major’ zoning applicants can no longer make contributions to Council members during the window which begins on the date of public notice of the zoning case, and which ends 60 days after the zoning case is resolved. Such changes are not too surprising in this instance, given that the scandal involving Hill revolved around favorable treatment for developers.”

Notably, the Dallas law was in response to special treatment for real estate developers — the very issue Wichita is facing now as it prepares to pour millions into the pockets of a small group of favored — and highly subsidized — downtown developers.

Smaller cities, too, have these laws. A charter provision of the city of Santa Ana, in Orange County, California, states: “A councilmember shall not participate in, nor use his or her official position to influence, a decision of the City Council if it is reasonably foreseeable that the decision will have a material financial effect, apart from its effect on the public generally or a significant portion thereof, on a recent major campaign contributor.” The population of Santa Ana is 324,528, which is just a little smaller than Wichita.

But Kansas has no such law. Certainly Wichita does not, where pay-to-play is seen by many citizens as a way of life. Those who want money from the council see it that way.

And citizens may remember the 2008 campaign for a bond issue for USD 259, the Wichita public school district. In my reporting of the campaign contributions made in support of the bond spending, I wrote: “One analysis finds that 72% of the contributions, both in-kind and cash, was given by contractors, architects, engineering firms and others who directly stand to benefit from the new construction.”

The firm of Schaefer Johnson Cox Frey Architecture was a standout contributor to the bond effort, both in terms of cash contributions and in-kind contributions. Not surprisingly, that firm was awarded a contract for plan management services for the bond issue. The value of this contract is one percent of the value of the bond issue, or $3.7 million, and the firm will undoubtedly earn millions more for those projects on which it serves as architect.

In Kansas, campaign finance reports are filed by candidates and available to citizens, although some have problems with the timing of the filings. But many politicians don’t want these contributions discussed, at least in public. Recently Wichita Council Member Michael O’Donnell (district 4, south and southwest Wichita) expressed concern over the potential award of a $6 million construction contract, paid for with city funds, without an open bidding process. The contract is likely to go to Key Construction, a firm whose principals — and spouses — regularly appear on campaign finance reports, making the maximum allowed contribution to a wide variety of candidates.

For expressing his concern, O’Donnell was roundly criticized by many other council members, and especially by Mayor Carl Brewer. Video of the mayor’s remarks may be viewed at Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer addresses critics.

I can understand how council members don’t want to discuss their campaign contributions from those they’re about to give money to. It stinks. It causes citizens to be cynical of their government and withdraw from participation in civic affairs. It causes government to grow. It leads to more government planning of our lives, as is happening in Wichita. Pay-to-play laws can help.

Tagged as: Carl Brewer, Downtown Wichita revitalization, Government transparency, Kansas state government, Michael O'Donnell, Schaefer Johnson Cox Frey, Wichita and Kansas schools, Wichita city council, Wichita city government

{ 8 comments }

Public-private partnerships: the problems

by Bob Weeks on July 27, 2011

As the City of Wichita undertakes the revitalization of downtown Wichita, we need to make sure we understand the many problems inherent in the “public-private partnership.” The following commentary by Fred L. Smith, Jr. President of the Competitive Enterprise Institute originally appeared on OpenMarket.org, and it does an excellent job explaining these problems. Some of these I and others have brought to the attention of the Wichita City Council.

The Problem With Public-Private Partnerships

by Fred Smith

In our half-political, half-private world, there are a growing number of public-private partnerships. Almost nothing in the current world can be done without implicit or explicit permission by local, state, federal or (increasingly) global regulators. But the term, public-private is normally used to denote the joint funding and, sometimes, joint management of some “public” facility — streets, water systems, and so forth.

The rationale for “public” investments is that they are “public” goods, whose benefits are not adequately captured by the provider. There are many problems with this concept — in practice, it means that someone wants something and nobody seems to be providing it. Note, from a Coasian/Schumpeterian free market perspective, these are exactly the “lures” that lead mankind to pursue the unexplored entrepreneurial paths to the future. Rushing in with government assistance distorts and preempts those creative forces.

Sometimes, public-private partnerships can be a transitional step toward privatization. The concept of “corporatization” that is, reorganizing an activity now performed by some political agency so that its inherent economic realities become more understandable and transparent, may be a useful step in privatizing the activity.

In most cases, however, public-private partnerships are simply a means of using tax breaks, regulatory easing, taxpayer support and so forth to subsidize some private activity: stadia, light and heavy rail — mass transit generally, sometimes (for God’s sake) hotels and malls, downtown development districts. Where I live in Washington, D.C., businesses are allowed to add a “special tax” to pay for services the city supposedly pays for with normal tax revenues. Such public-private partnerships suffer from the full array of government failures:

Log-rolling and pork-barrel politics: I’ll vote for your PPP if you vote for my PPP.
Weakened market tests: resources are devoted to a project not because it benefits the citizenry but rather because it benefits a powerful interest group and/or because a creative referendum entices a majority of voters to support their special interests.
Weaker Management: Absent market tests, managers are less motivated to find that mix of services and creative array of financing tools to ensure that it proves “profitable” (that is, a rational allocation of capital). Roads, even charter schools, etc all have suffered here immensely.
Lack of innovation: No institution in the private world can allow itself to stagnate – the creative forces of destruction will soon make it obsolete. PPP managers face much weaker innovative forces — if things go wrong, they can always appeal to their “public” nature for taxpayer bailouts.
Corruption: Crony capitalism abounds in the PPP world.
Faddism: Markets sometimes go on kicks — the tech boom, for example — but these soon collapse. Governments go on kicks for many decades — “renewable energy” and “mass transit” being perhaps the best examples but “magnet” investments in downtown malls, stadia and convention centers are perhaps even more persistent ones. Before Walmart became a PPP, it did more for consumers than all the PPP malls in the world.
Crowding Out: Capitalism plays a critical role in allocating capital — planting the seeds for our future. That is a very difficult task, one made much more difficult by the existence of PPPs. Government already seizes a disproportionate amount of our wealth and the PPP concept allows it to further distort the allocation by market forces. I’ve argued that the genius of the Progressives in the late 19th century was to preempt or push large sectors of the emerging future (the environment, schools, electromagnetic spectrum, infrastructure, welfare, the medical world) into the political world. The PPP concept simply exacerbates this tendency.

Our challenge is to find ways to expand the private sector and only very rarely does the PPP concept do that. It allows people to be sloppy — “That would never pay for itself but it obviously has value, thus, we need some government help. Let’s not make it an honest government function, let’s make it a Public-Private partnership and get the best of all possible outcomes!!”

This Mixed Economy model is less honest than true socialism (government acting directly) for many reasons. If as is often the case, things go wrong, it will be capitalism — not government — that will be blamed. PPP activities are less subject to consumer sovereignty (look at airports or schools). The true costs of the activity don’t appear on government budgets — making it appear that PPP arrangements are “bargains.”

Tagged as: Capitalism, Economics, Politics, Subsidy, Wichita city council

{ 1 comment }

Pompeo: No debt ceiling hike without structural changes

by Bob Weeks on July 15, 2011

In a press conference held yesterday, U.S. Representative Mike Pompeo, a Wichita Republican, said the country can’t risk continuing to spend at the present rate. There should be no agreement to raise the debt ceiling absent structural changes, he added.

He called for “real short term savings” in 2012 and spending limitations. He also said he supported an amendment to the Constitution requiring a balanced budget.

On federal spending, Pompeo said “I’ve been here six months now. If there’s one thing that’s become very clear, this town is a place that is addicted to spending.” He described the direction of spending as a “one-way ratchet,” saying the trend has accelerated in the last 24 months. The federal government should do what every state must do, which is to live on a balanced budget. The balanced budget amendment, Pompeo said, would require this.

He criticized President Barack Obama for his “class warfare argument” against the corporate jet industry. Pompeo said the airplanes built in Wichita are business tools used by businesses all over the world. Two-thirds are sold outside of North America, he added.

Pompeo characterized the president’s criticisms as a political statement. The tax provisions Obama criticizes have a cost of two to three billion dollars over ten years. Pompeo compared this to the current deficit for this year and for future years according to the president’s budget, which he said is $1.5 trillion each year.

Pompeo said he sent the president a letter (text of the letter is here) inviting him to Kansas to see our aircraft manufacturing industry, noting that many of the workers are union workers. He added that if the president continues to talk down the industry, “making it politically incorrect to fly in a Kansas-built airplane, we’ll sell fewer all over the world, and we’ll build fewer in America.”

On the possibility of Social Security checks not being sent if the debt ceiling is not raised, Pompeo said that there is money to pay the benefits, and the president has authority to pay. Obama is trying to scare seniors and Americans as a tactic to get the debt ceiling raised, he said.

On the failure of H.R. 2417: Better Use of Light Bulbs Act to pass, Pompeo said he hopes this measure will come back in a form that requires only a simple majority to pass. This bill, which would overturn legislation that essentially outlaws ordinary incandescent light bulbs, was brought to the floor under suspension of the rules, and therefore required a two-thirds majority to pass. The bill received a simple majority, but failed to reach the two-thirds level.

Tagged as: Barack Obama, Government spending, Kansas fourth district, Mike Pompeo, Social Security, United States Congress, United States government

{ 7 comments }

Tweets from RightOnline 2011

by Bob Weeks on June 22, 2011

Some of my favorite tweets I sent during the RightOnline 2011 (#ro11) conference in Minneapolis, a project of Americans for Prosperity Foundation:

It’s great to have 52 Kansans here at RightOnline 2011. #ro11

Michelle Malkin: They stifle us through the criminalization of conservative thought. #ro11

Erick Ericson: The bad economist, like the liberal, sees only the immediate effects, not the unseen. #ro11

S.E. Cupp: New York is all Weiner, all the time. It’s too much Weiner. #ro11

Tim Huelskamp, first member of Congress to bring an Ipad to the speaker’s podium. #ro11

Huelskamp: It is a spending problem, a power problem. It is Washington telling us what to do with our own money. #ro11

Michele Bachmann: At the debate, I was worried they might ask “boxers or briefs?” #ro11

Michele Bachmann: Barack Obama will be a one-term president! (The audience chants along) Her tagline, it seems. #ro11

Michele Bachmann: Barack Obama, as a senator, voted against raising the debt ceiling, calling the need a failure of leadership. #ro11

Michele Bachmann: I introduced the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act. #ro11

Whew! Finished with my two presentations at RightOnline! #ro11

Ken Cucinelli is suing my state’s former governor. #ro11

Minnesota is not a right to work state. I’m sorry I’m here now. #ro11

Obama should reject reject teleprompters so as to employ cue card holders. #ro11

Tagged as: Americans For Prosperity, Politics

{ 0 comments }

Huelskamp at RightOnline: Debt is the problem

by Bob Weeks on June 22, 2011

At the RightOnline conference in Minneapolis, U.S. Representative Tim Huelskamp of the Kansas first district told the general session audience that federal spending and debt is a threat to the future of America, and that we must use the opportunity of the upcoming debt ceiling vote to force spending cuts.

Introduced by Alan Cobb of Americans for Prosperity as someone who — in his first race for the Kansas Senate — beat the best kind of Republican to beat: “one of those squishy ones.” Huelskamp served 14 years in the Kansas Senate, and was elected to the House of Representatives last November.

A leader in technology, he was the first Kansas legislator to have a laptop computer in the chamber, and was instrumental in passing Kansas’ online transparency bill. And, Cobb said, he was the first member of Congress to bring an Ipad to the speaker’s podium.

In his remarks to the audience, Huelskamp said he was one of those new “testy freshmen.” He said he spent the first few months wondering around Washington wondering how he got here, then he started to wonder how those other guys got here.

He described listening to budget debate on the House floor. In response to what a leftist Member said, he turned to a senior Republican and said “Do they really believe what they just said, or are they lying?” The response: They really believe what they’re saying. They really believe that government can do better with your money than you can, and that the stimulus didn’t work because it was too small, he said.

Washington is about hypocrisy, he told the audience. They have a plan for themselves, and another plan for the rest of us. ObamaCare and the health care waiver process is an example of this. Dozens of labor unions spent hundreds of millions to elect President Obama and to push his health care plan through, only later to receive an exemption from its provisions.

Huelskamp said he had held done 58 town halls this year so far. One thing people ask him, he said, is if he’s living under the rules they set for everyone else. He also asks the question “Do you think the next generation of Americans will be better off than your generation?” The American Dream is in jeopardy, he said. We are sitting at the precipice of our nation’s history. “Are we going to go the direction of our Founders — freedom and liberty — or are we going to go the direction of slavery and socialism? That’s the choice we have today.”

In Washington, Huelskamp said that Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve System, says we can “use the debt ceiling as a lever to change America.” Huelskamp said that despite the risk of being accused a contrarian, that’s exactly what we need to do. Calling the debt ceiling an “opportunity of a lifetime,” he said that we must keep on the pressure to extract spending cuts. The votes are very close, he said.

Huelskamp said we must “act as if we have no time left.” We must face our debt crisis now. We can’t put off decisions. It is a spending problem, he said, a power problem. It is Washington telling us what to do with our own money.

Tagged as: Americans For Prosperity, Government spending, Kansas first district, Tim Huelskamp, United States Congress

{ 0 comments }

Center for American Progress starts ideologically driven news organization

by Bob Weeks on April 13, 2011

A common criticism of anyone taking a conservative political position is that they should stop getting all their information from Fox News. Criticism like that works both ways, however, especially now that the Center for American Progress Action Fund, according to Politico, is “ramping up an in-house full-fledged, ideologically driven news organization aimed in part at tripping up Republican candidates on the ground in the early presidential contests.” In the coming weeks the ThinkProgress blog will be relaunched as this news organization.

Some key points:

There are ambitious goals: “The newsroom side is absolutely competing with all the leading news organizations,” said Faiz Shakir, the editor-in-chief of ThinkProgress. “We’re not out there to peddle research — we’re out there to make news.
Disclosure requirements are good for my political enemies, but not for me: “ThinkProgress may quack like a duck, but it’s hardly just another media organization. For one thing, like the conservative groups that have drawn Democratic criticism, its parent 501(c)4 nonprofit doesn’t disclose its donors, which Palmieri justified on the grounds that, unlike those groups, they don’t produce political advertising.”
CAP Action fund is, of course, an arm of the Center for American Progress, a think tank closely associated with President Barack Obama’s administration and George Soros, who advocates many liberal and left-wing political causes: “Further, CAP Action Fund openly runs political advocacy campaigns, and plays a central role in the Democratic Party’s infrastructure, and the new reporting staff down the hall isn’t exactly walled off from that message machine.”
Oh, it’s a moral thing: “Rejecting a question from POLITICO about why CAP declined to reveal its donors while calling out the Kochs for not disclosing their donations, he [blogger Lee Fang, a vocal critic of Charles and David Koch] said ‘It’s fundamentally different when you have wealthy individuals that want to donate to a worthy cause, and the Koch brothers and some of their cohorts that are funding groups that are essentially just advancing their self interests and their lobbying interests.’” Fang and the others at Center for American Progress and its allied organizations are evidently not able to understand that the economic freedom that Charles and David Koch advocate is not necessarily in their own interests, if all they wanted to do is become richer. As Charles Koch recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal: “Too many businesses have successfully lobbied for special favors and treatment by seeking mandates for their products, subsidies (in the form of cash payments from the government), and regulations or tariffs to keep more efficient competitors at bay. Crony capitalism is much easier than competing in an open market.”

It’s the big-government, freedom-killing policies that Center for American Progress supports that are not moral. As seen in the video presented Monday by Walter E. Williams, most government programs exist to take property from one American and give it to another to whom it does not belong, thereby making us all poorer in the process. After these government programs become ensconced, we end up with a country that is not able to care for itself and make arrangements for even the most important things such as retirement and health care, as George Resiman explained.

Center for American Progress news team takes aim at GOP

By Ben Smith & Kenneth P. Vogel

The liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund is ramping up an in-house full-fledged, ideologically driven news organization aimed in part at tripping up Republican candidates on the ground in the early presidential contests.

The group, executives told POLITICO, now has 30 writers and researchers at ThinkProgress, its blog, which is being redesigned and relaunched in the coming weeks. The editorial staff, similar in size or larger than that of many political websites, marks the latest phase in the deliberate, decade-long construction of a liberal infrastructure for reporting, research, and hammering home a message that the right is scrambling to match.

“We see ourselves as a content provider,” said Jennifer Palmieri, the president of The Center for American Progress Action Fund, the group’s advocacy arm. “There actually is an echo chamber now.”

Continue reading at Politico

Tagged as: Barack Obama, Economic freedom, Freedom, George Soros, Koch Industries

{ 4 comments }

Political contributions disclosure said to be harmful

April 13, 2011

Forced disclosure of the identity of donors to political campaigns is a powerful force in favor of incumbents.

Politics

Herman Cain: Conservatives should dream, be united, informed, inspired

The Problem With Public-Private Partnerships

Center for American Progress news team takes aim at GOP

Trending Topics

Recent Tweets

What to Read

Important liberty sites

Resources

Kansas blogs

Miscellaneous

Categories

Meta

Archives

Samsphere friends

Kansas sites

Most Recent Posts

Special sections

Recent comments

Featured thoughts