Archive for the ‘Good of The Order’ Category

Posted on April 7, 2012 by Conservative Byte

Claire Waites, an Alabama school teacher who joined the local teachers union to obtain liability insurance, was pressured by her union to donate to the NEA Fund for Children. In reality, she found out later that the funds went to political action groups chosen by the union—which turned out to be in support of John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008. Waites was furious and recently testified about the situation on the House floor.
As it stands, the law empowers unions over employees when conflict arises. This is the opposite of how America should be, and there are several things being done to combat it.
One of them is the Employee Rights Act (ERA), which would protect private-sector workers from union pressure and extortion. This law wouldn’t specifically protect Waites, because she works for a government union, but it would go a long way for those with the same issues in the private sector.
Simply put, individuals would have a say in what kinds of political causes (if any) they care to endorse monetarily through the union. The ERA would require unions to get permission from workers before spending their dues on politics. James Sherk, Heritage Foundation senior policy analyst in labor economics, explains that the act would actually “shift the balance of power in the workplace from unions to workers.”he truth is that most union members oppose their unions’ active political spending. Polling shows that 60 percent of workers object to their money being spent in this way. Unfortunately, the law currently protects the union action. In 2010, the AFL-CIO devoted one-sixth of its national budget to politics and lobbying. Most of that money goes toward liberal candidates who, in turn, do the union’s bidding.
In addition the ERA would guarantee every worker enough time to research the costs and benefits of unionizing before voting—no snap elections. Unions would also have to regularly stand for re-election as workers’ bargaining representatives, allowing workers to hold them accountable.
The House Oversight Committee, lead by Representative Darrell Issa (R–CA) is committed to fighting this rampant abuse with a new site, “Protecting American Workers,” where employees affected by partisan politics in their union are encouraged to speak out against the infringement on their personal freedoms. The home page of the new site explains why individuals should come forward and stand up for their rights:
Workers should decide how their hard-earned money is spent. They should know how their dues are spent…because personal freedom isn’t partisan: it’s American. We are committed to working with everyone—workers, union leaders and each other—to restore workplace freedom and fairness for all Americans.
Already, three individuals have come forward to call out their unions for abuse. House Oversight sent letters this week to their unions—SEIU, UAW Local, NEA and Alabama EA.
Unions spent a reported $1.1 billion on politics and lobbying in the 2010 election cycle (LINK). How much input did the union members—whose dues funded those contributions—get? Many support the individual provisions of the ERA, and that ought to tell you something about how well people feel their rights are currently being upheld. Who wouldn’t want the “paycheck protection” that is included in the ERA? As Sherk explains:
The “paycheck protection” requires unions to obtain employees’ permission before spending dues for purposes—like political activism—unrelated to collective bargaining. Employees would be free to support these activities, but the union would have to get their permission first. Union members support this proposal by a 4-to-1 margin.
Employees should not be afraid to stand up for their rights and demand that their money be spent fairly and transparently. Unions have a chokehold on the American political scene, and the power has gone to their heads. It’s time to restore employee rights and empower individuals to resist union pressure. That’s the American way.

The problem is not knowing when to close your legs and using birth control.
She should go to the nearest clinic and have her tubes tied. She should try to go back to school or get a job. The only person responsible for her situation is her.
She certainly needs to adjust her attitude. No one owes her anything.

Prime minister and cabinet submit resignations to emir following accusations of corruption, state television reports

Kuwait’s cabinet has resigned after protesters and opposition deputies demanded that the prime minister step down over allegations of corruption, state-run television has reported.

“The prime minister [Sheikh Nasser Mohammad al-Ahmad Al-Sabah] has submitted his resignation to the emir,” Kuwait TV said, without specifying whether it had been accepted.

Earlier, opposition member Khaled al-Sultan said the cabinets’s resignation was accepted amid a bitter political dispute between the prime minister and opposition MPs.

“We are waiting for the appointment of a new prime minister before parliament is dissolved in order to be assured of fair elections,” the Sultan told reporters outside parliament.

Parliament speaker Jassem al-Khorafi said he had not been informed about a dissolution of parliament.

If it is confirmed that Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, the emir of Kuwait, has accepted the resignations, he may then also dissolve parliament before setting a date for new elections.

Several opposition MPs welcomed the resignation.

“I hope that the emir will please the Kuwaiti people by dissolving parliament … and forming a transitional cabinet to supervise the elections,” opposition MP Falah al-Sawwagh told reporters.

Multiple resignations

The announcement of the resignations came after the emir chaired an emergency meeting of the cabinet headed by the prime minister to discuss the political crisis.

Sheikh Nasser, 71, had been due to be questioned in parliament by three opposition MPs on allegations of fraud, including charges that he transferred public funds into his overseas accounts.

The government has denied the charges.

The move also came ahead of a planned mass rally later on Monday by the opposition to press demands for the premier’s ousting.

Sheikh Nasser, a nephew of the emir, was appointed to the post in February 2006 and has since now resigned seven times because of political turmoil.

Parliament has been dissolved three times over the same period.

Unprecedented probe

The public prosecutor in September launched an unprecedented probe into the bank accounts of around 15 pro-government MPs who were accused of accepting bribes totalling $350m.

Opposition MPs have claimed the deposits were bribes by the government to win votes on crucial issues.

Some of the concerned MPs have denied any wrongdoing.

Nahaj, an alliance of opposition groups and youth organisations, insisted in a statement that the prime minister be replaced and parliament dissolved.

They also called for opposition detainees to be released. Twenty-four opposition activists are serving a three-week detention pending trial after parliament was stormed on November 16.

Kuwait, which sits on about 10 percent of global crude oil, has amassed more than $300 billion in surpluses over the past decade, but projects and development have been stalled by political wrangling.

By Elizabeth Harrington
Congressman Allen West (R-Fla.) called on the media to “stop being afraid” of President Barack Obama who is “destroying this country.” West made his remarks on Tuesday at a press conference in support of the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline.

“It’s about time that I asked this from the media: Stop being afraid of this president,” said Rep. West. “Stand up to him and call him out on the shirking of his duties and responsibilities. The House Republicans are passing pieces of legislation, after pieces of legislation about jobs.”

“And here we got a president that’s gone off to Australia, playing golf in Hawaii, and you guys allow him to make this decision to shut down this Keystone XL project,” said West. “The media needs to call out this president and stop coming over here to the House Republicans and telling us what we’re not doing. We’re the ones taking action. The guy sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is destroying this country.”
The 1,661-mile, $7-billion pipeline, which would run from Alberta, Canada south to U.S. refineries on the Gulf Coast, was under review by the State Department until last week when President Obama announced that a decision on whether to approve the project would be postponed until early 2013. The White House said it wanted to consider a new route for the pipeline.

The Keystone project, if approved, would have created an estimated 20,000 jobs.

“This is the most important thing we have to understand, America needs leadership right now and America does not have that,” said Rep. West on Tuesday.
“America needs a commander in chief, instead we have a campaigner in chief, and that’s exactly what continues to happen,” said West. “Whether it’s the decision to go to zero troops in Iraq, which gives a green light to Iran, or whether it’s the decision to shut down what you have heard is a win-win situation for the United States of America and for a new trading partner, which is Canada.”

“We cannot continue to send the hard-earned American taxpayer dollars to OPEC — nothing but despot dictators, autocrats and theocrats,” West said.

“For 22 years I served in the United States Military and I’ve been on the battlefields in the Middle East, where the funds we are sending to these countries are in turn being turned on our young men and women in combat,” said the congressman.

“It’s about time that I asked this from the media: Stop being afraid of this president. Stand up to him and call him out on the shirking of his duties and responsibilities. The House Republicans are passing pieces of legislation, after pieces of legislation about jobs.”“And here we got a president that’s gone off to Australia, playing golf in Hawaii, and you guys allow him to make this decision to shut down this Keystone XL project,” said West. “The media needs to call out this president and stop coming over here to the House Republicans and telling us what we’re not doing. We’re the ones taking action. The guy sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is destroying this country.”

At the press conference, other House Republicans criticized the president’s decision on the pipeline, saying it was politically motivated to push it past the 2012 election. Two groups of Obama’s political base, unions and environmentalists, are divided over the issue.

Many of the jobs the pipeline would create would go to union workers, including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which is headed by Obama-supporter James P. Hoffa.

At the press conference led by Rep. Tim Griffin, (R-Ark.), the lawmakers said delaying the pipeline would cost 20,000 jobs, and warned against losing Canadian crude oil production to China.

Virtually since the day President Barack Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, I’ve been reporting in great detail on his disastrous Middle East policy. I believe nobody in the world has written more thoroughly documented words and provided more factually based analysis explaining why this policy is so bad than I have.

And so I am often asked whether I believe this situation is caused by a deliberate, conscious effort to destroy U.S. interests, subvert Israel’s existence, and promote anti-American Islamists on the part of the president and his closest colleagues.

No, I answer, it is the result of ignorance, incompetence, and a ridiculous ideological approach that has nothing to do with reality. But, I add, it certainly says something that the policy is so bad that it makes people think that deliberate treason is a credible explanation.

Recently, an expert I respect who likes my work asked me the following:

At what point do “oblivious,” clueless,” or “misguided” no longer describe what is going on here?

At what point do we say that the top levels of the U.S. government and our national security leadership are wittingly complicit in supporting a Muslim Brotherhood takeover of large parts of the Middle East?  As you lay out these events and facts, there is simply no other conclusion to be drawn: this is deliberate.

When does it become treasonous or at the very least an abrogation of constitutional oaths of office and dereliction of duty?

I believe the first and last paragraphs are wrong but the second one is partly right. They don’t fear the Muslim Brotherhood getting into office, because they think it won’t happen or can be turned into a good thing. This is horrible but not consciously evil.

How can we explain Obama’s behavior on the Middle East? I’m not the least bit surprised or baffled. I do not think the fact that this isn’t “treasonous” is a mitigating circumstance. Beyond a certain point, gross incompetence and systematic stupidity are inexcusable sins in politics even if not crimes. The sentence should be voting them out of office as soon as possible.

The great French diplomatist (and thoroughly evil human being) Charles de Talleyrand put it this way: “This is worse than a crime, it’s a blunder.” You can have some respect for an evil genius cleverly following his plan but none at all for a fool putting his country’s interests and the lives of millions of people at risk, refusing to change course even when his strategy is obviously failing.

You just have to sit at dinner with a State Department guy, for example, who tells you in great detail how the battle went within the bureaucracy over accepting Islamism as something good for the United States or watch how the CIA generated studies fixed to exclude truth in arguing Islamism isn’t a threat. It’s only mysterious if you don’t see it up close.

Here is what we should see:

First, Obama thinks he’s very knowledgeable about Islam, based on very limited personal contacts. Aside from his profound misunderstandings, his experiences come from Indonesia, the place where mainstream Islam was more moderate than in any other Muslim-majority country. And even that predates the infusion of Wahhabi and al-Qaeda radical thinking and theology even in that country.

In my opinion, the worst single blunder of Obama in the Middle East was his Cairo speech telling people in the region that they should perceive their primary identity as Muslim rather than in national terms.  The idea that political Islam could be some asset for the United States — rather than an enemy being held back largely by nationalism — was like putting a big bomb next to a fragile dam. Yet Obama thought it was some act of far-sighted genius on his part because he could tame political Islam.

Second, Obama is a narrow-minded and arrogant man who understands little about international affairs or the profound differences of other cultures. He neither listens to ideas outside his own conception nor heeds proof that he has failed. A clever evil genius adjusts himself to circumstances, determined he will always look good. Obama is merely wrong and incompetent, openly displaying ignorance.

Third, his conception of the United States and its role in the world should render him unfit to be president. He views the United States as evil and aggressive historically while also rejecting the most basic concepts of U.S. interests and the conduct of international affairs.

He deliberately refuses to show leadership; doesn’t think American diplomacy should reward friends and punish enemies; believes concessions and apologies can win over enemies; and really doesn’t understand the importance of credibility, deterrence, and leverage to frighten and constrain enemies. He is obsessed with popularity, that least important factor in international affairs. In his mind, there is a sneaking suspicion that the enemies are the good guys.

In these ideas, Obama is similar to the far left in America and Europe. The problem, of course, is that none of those clueless impractical intellectuals is commander-in-chief of the world’s greatest power.

Fourth, he has two sets of people eager to misadvise him. One is the ideologues he has brought into government, especially in the National Security Council and several other appointees (David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel are of little or no importance on these foreign policy decision-making issues). The other is a significant portion of the CIA.

Large elements in the State and Defense Departments are horrified by Obama’s Middle East policy. The Defense Department is burdened with new commitments and handed impossible missions by a man its officials know looks down on them, has little sympathy for their problems, and no appreciation of their professional culture.

State gasps as Obama dismantles a Middle East policy it has spent decades building and nurturing. Briefly, that policy was alliance with relatively moderate states — Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia — to fight radical regimes and movements. They disliked Israel because they thought it got in the way of links to Arab powers. But they certainly don’t want their pet regimes overthrown and systematically insulted, while the president cares more for the very radical Islamists they were fighting to keep out of power!

What is the alternative, now dominant, view? This interpretation considers the virtually sole danger to be al-Qaeda and its terrorist attacks against America. In order to ensure Islamists aren’t radicalized to behave that way, they want to coopt radical Islamists they consider far less threatening. They insist that such Islamists are far less extreme than people like me say and that holding power will moderate them.

This travesty is born of Western ignorance about Islam and Islamism; discounting the power of ideology and the nature of these societies; assuming that everyone thinks alike in wanting more material goods; putting all their effort into stopping another September 11 (even at the expense of massive strategic losses); presuming moderation is inevitable, etc.

These people believe that the “Turkish model” is just fine and dandy rather than seeing it as an extremely dangerous way for radical Islamists to seize and hold power to carry out anti-American and aggressive goals. This misunderstanding is key to their failure to understand Arab politics or Islamism, as is the idea that Facebook, community-organizer yuppies are any match for jihadists.

We’ve seen this before many times.  Major General William Elphinstone, commander of the British army in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1842, was no traitor. He simply believed the Afghan rulers who promised him safe passage back to India. Of 12,000 soldiers and civilians, only about 12 survived the subsequent massacre.

Other examples include pre-World War Two appeasement and the post-World War Two view that Third World Communists could be coopted, or those portraying Fidel Castro as a misunderstood moderate and Mao Zedong as an agrarian reformer. Another case was the idea that Yasir Arafat could be turned into a pragmatic moderate by giving him power and meeting most of his demands.

Then there are the current European domestic policies of funding and backing  radical Islamists in order to “defeat” jihadists. When Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said last February that the Muslim Brotherhood was a harmless reformist group, he meant it. That’s what his CIA briefers told him. The only administration correction was that it isn’t a “secular” group. All the really damaging misconceptions were fully accepted by the Obama administration.

So the administration is either helping Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood to get into power or risking this happening (wrongly thinking they won’t win elections) not because it wants to hurt America but because it is stupid and ignorant enough to think that will ultimately help America. Islamists will be moderated by power and the “need” to be pragmatic; or won’t win because the people want smart phones instead of suicide bombers; or they will love a U.S. government that is so nice to them.

Similarly, this administration doesn’t hate Israel so much as think that country is foolish for not following policies that in fact would risk its existence. If only Israel realized how easy it would be to have a stable peace with a Palestinian state next door based on the 1967 borders, the Obama administration thinks, the Israelis, too, would join the party and be much better off. Why are they such a stiff-necked people?

This is all wrong and disastrous. But as George Orwell — who understood these things — once said, some ideas are so stupid that only an intellectual will believe them.

None of these points makes the current leadership and policy more acceptable or good. Having Gomer Pyle and Forrest Gump in power (without their  humility and moral compass) is not better than having a James Bond villain or Dr. Evil running things.

How much does this debate over motives matter? Not a lot. The motive for having terrible policies is far less important than the fact that the policies are terrible. Moreover, one can prove what’s happening is a disaster but can never irrefutably prove why it is happening. The administration is now telling us that it only spent a couple billion dollars of U.S. taxpayer money to get rid of Muamma al-Qadhafi. What’s imortant is not why they did it but the fact that they might well have given us a radical anti-American Islamist dictatorship in his place.

A fool is worse than a traitor if only because more people will vote for him.

Oh, there is one more thing: If you don’t understand the ideas that a bad policy is based on, then you can’t refute it and explain to people why it is so counterproductive and must be changed as soon as possible.

The state of Florida has repealed its 30-year old growth management law (also called “smart growth,” UN Agenda 21 , “compact development” and “livability”). Under the law, local jurisdictions were required to adopt comprehensive land use plans stipulating where development could and could not occur. These plans were subject to approval by the state Department of Community Affairs, an agency now abolished by the legislation. The state approval process had been similar to that of Oregon. Governor Rick Scott had urged repeal as a part of his program to create 700,000 new jobs in seven years in Florida. Economic research in the Netherlands, theUnited Kingdom and the United States has associated slower economic growth with growth management programs.
Local governments will still be permitted to implement growth management programs, but largely without state mandates. Some local jurisdictions will continue their growth management programs, while others will welcome development.
The Need for A Competitive Land Supply: Growth management has been cited extensively in economic research because of its association with higher housing costs. The basic problem is that, by delineating and limiting the land that can the used for development, planners create guides to investment, which shows developers where they must buy and tells the now more scarce sellers that the buyers have little choice but to negotiate with them. This can violate the “principle of competitive land supply,” cited by Brookings Institution economist Anthony Downs. Downs said:
If a locality limits to certain sites the land that can be developed within a given period, it confers a preferred market position on those sites. … If the limitation is stringent enough, it may also confirm a monopolistic powers on the owners of those sites, permitting them to raising land prices substantially.
This necessity of retaining a competitive land supply is conceded by proponents of growth management. The Brookings Institution published research by leading advocates of growth management, Arthur C Nelson, Rolf Pendall, Casey J. Dawkins and Gerrit J. Knapp that makes the connection, despite often incorrect citations by advocates to the contrary. In particular they cite higher house prices in California as having resulted from growth management restrictions that were too strong.
…even well-intentioned growth management programs … can accommodate too little growth and result in higher housing prices. This is arguably what happened in parts of California where growth boundaries were drawn so tightly without accommodating other housing needs
Nelson, et al. also concluded that “… the housing price effects of growth management policies depend heavily on how they are designed and implemented. If the policies tend to restrict land supplies, then housing price increases are expected” (emphasis in original).
In other words, if growth management policies do not maintain a competitive land supply, house prices are likely to rise in response. This is basic economics. Restricting the supply of any good or service in demand is likely to lead to higher prices, all things being equal.
The loss of a competitive land supply was seen during the real estate bubble in the unprecedented escalation of house prices in California (which was already high), Oregon, Washington, Phoenix, Las Vegas, parts of the Northeast and Florida. In these markets, the demand from more liberal lending standards was much greater than the land available for development under growth management plans and government land auctions. By contrast, house prices generally stayed within historic norms in metropolitan areas where land supplies were not constrained by growth management programs, such as Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Atlanta, Austin, Indianapolis, Kansas City and elsewhere.
Housing Price Escalation in Florida: In 2000, the four Florida metropolitan areas with more than 1,000,000 population had Median Multiples (median house price divided by median household income) near or below the historic norm of 3.0. By late in the next decade, all four metropolitan areas reached unprecedented levels of unaffordability. In Miami, the Median Multiple reached 7.2. In Orlando, the Median Multiple peaked at 5.2, 70 percent above the historic norm. In Tampa-St. Petersburg, the Median Multiple peaked at 4.8, 60 percent above the historic norm. The peak in Jacksonville was a more modest 3.6, though this was still an 80 percent increase.

By 2010, the Median Multiple has declined to hear the historic norm in Orlando and Tampa-St. Petersburg and slightly below in Jacksonville. The Median Multiple remained well above the historic norm in Miami, at 4.7.
When Supply Lags Behind Demand: Florida’s housing cost escalation may have been surprising, since Florida has a reputation for liberal land-use regulation. However, the growth management act had long since turned the state toward a shortage of land supply relative to demand as described by Wachovia Bank in a 2005 analysis.
“While all the stars seem to be perfectly aligned on the demand side, the supply of housing in Florida has been much more problematic. Even though residential construction has soared to new highs recently, the supply of housing has lagged woefully behind demand in recent years. This has been particularly true for single-family homes, where population growth, a rising homeownership rate, and strong demand for second homes and vacation properties created a demand for 560,000 new single-family homes between mid 2000 and mid 2004. During this period builders only delivered 540,000 units. When you add in the growing demand for townhouses and condominiums, buyers were looking to purchase 675,000 new homes during this period, while builders were supplied just 570,000 units. No wonder prices have been surging!
The chief impediment to new construction has been a shortage of developable land. The shortage primarily results from a growing resistance to new development. The state is not running out of space. Nearly every community in Florida and the state itself are looking at some type of limitations on new residential development. While well intentioned, these initiatives are making it more time consuming and expensive to build homes in Florida. Others are taking land off the market, designating areas for green space, or preserving space for industrial development. The net result has been dramatically higher land prices across much of the state.”
The point of the Wachovia analysis is that unless there is a sufficient supply of land, the price of housing is likely to rise. Having a lot of land is not enough. There must be enough land to accommodate demand at affordable land and housing prices (Note).
The Florida action is the most successful reversal of house price increasing growth management regulations to date.
Other Advances: There have, however, then more modest advances.
After taking office in 2003, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty replaced the board of directors of the Metropolitan Council in Minneapolis-Saint Paul. The previous board had been spent on the following Portland style growth management policies, including the enforcement of a variant of the urban growth boundary. The new board exhibited more liberal attitudes toward residential development, and the housing bubble did not produce the extent of housing affordability in the Twin Cities that occurred in growth management areas such as Portland, California and Florida.
The Conservative- Liberal coalition government of the United Kingdom has proposed modest relaxation of some of the world’s most restrictive land use regulations, which could lead to an improvement of housing affordability in the nation. Kate Barker, who was then a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England was commissioned to examine land-use regulation and housing affordability in England and found a strong association between the loss of housing affordability and restrictive land use policies. This association between Britain’s strong land use regulation and higher house prices was noted in the early 1970s research led by Sir Peter Hall of the University College, London.
For the Future: The relaxation of overly restrictive growth management policies could not have come at a better time. With the squeeze on the middle-class getting tighter, fewer households can afford higher housing costs associated with growth management areas. Moreover, responsive to the political consensus for job creation, more home construction will bring return more good-paying construction jobs in Florida.
Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life”
—–
Note: There has been a similar misunderstanding of the housing markets in Las Vegas andPhoenix, where developable land appears to stretch virtually to the horizon. However, what is usually missed is that both metropolitan areas are hemmed in by government land, some of which is periodically auctioned. During the housing bubble, the price per acre of residential land at auction in both metropolitan areas rose as much as the price for land rose over a similar period in Beijing, with its huge land price increases.

There is more to know than you see on your check stub, more than you see on your tax return, more than you see on your quarterly estimated taxes, more than you see at the gas pump. The following numbers from usrevenue.com bring some clarity to taxes in the US.

Federal Budgeted Revenue 2011 (Federal Government Income)

Income Taxes: 1.154 Trillion
SS/Med/Ins .806 Trillion
Ad-Valorem .133 Trillion
Business/Other .079 Trillion
Fees/Charges .001 Trillion
Total: 2.173 Trillion

53% is from personal income taxes paid by citizens
37% is from personal & employer SS, Medicare, or Gov. Ins. paid by citizens & employers
6% is from ad valorem: Fuel, Inheritance, Tariff, Leases, and other value-based taxes
3.6% is from corporate/business taxes
0.04% is from use fees or charges

53 % of all federal revenue is paid up front by us
16 % is deducted from our pay for social insurance
21 % is paid on our behalf by or employer, but ultimately it is passed back in the cost of products
6 % is paid by companies and passed on to us in the cost of products
4 % is paid by companies and passed on to us in the cost of products
Use fees or charges are paid by citizens directly to federal agencies, for the privilege of using (our) public land.

The fact is that we as citizens and consumers pay either directly or through hidden taxes the full $2 trillion in annual federal revenue. Business pays nothing, because they have to cover the cost of taxes in the price they charge for the products or services, which we pay. In addition they must bear the administrative costs for reporting and paying the taxes, again a cost coming to us in the price of the product or service.

There are a total of 311 million citizens, so the average citizen is paying $6987.00 this year in federal taxes. For a family of four the average is $27948.00. Averages however can be deceptive, for taxes are not paid evenly, in fact over 40% of all federal taxes are paid by just 1% of taxpayers, those in the highest income bracket, and a full 97% of taxes are paid by 50% of taxpayers, those of average income and above. Only 3% of taxes are paid by those in bottom 50% of the income scale.

It is just plain ignorance that people believe the rich should pay more taxes; each of us who make less than $410,000.00 are already being heavily subsidized by those who earn more than that.

Those that would increase corporate taxes to “redistribute the wealth” obviously don’t understand that a business tax is just a hidden tax on the consumer, and an overhead cost that takes investment and growth money out of businesses.

To foster a robust economy there should be no taxation of business. People should not have to send their social services money to the government; it should go into their personal accounts. There should be no hidden taxes; citizens should know exactly what they pay in taxes. Business would boom, prices would decrease, consumer power would increase, and personal wealth would increase.

Written on August 17, 2011 by Michael Reagan

If President Obama really wants to get the U.S. economy going again, he could do worse than to study the results of my Dad’s 1981 Economic Recovery Act, which boosted the economy by leaps and bounds.

Take the matter of jobs, for example. Thanks to the 1981 act, an astounding 20 million new jobs were created. Moreover, inflation dropped from 13.5 percent in 1980 to a mere 4.1 percent by 1988, and unemployment fell from 7.6 percent to 5.5 percent.

Moreover, the net worth of families earning between $20,000 and $50,000 annually grew by 27 percent. At the same time, the real gross national product jumped by 26 percent and the prime interest rate was slashed by half — from 21.5 percent in January 1981 to 10 percent in August 1988.

The amount of individual tax revenues rose from $244 billion in 1980 to $446 billion in 1989. Moreover, total tax revenues jumped grew by almost 100 percent, rising by 99.4 percent during the 1980s. The act produced 92 months of healthy economic growth — the longest period of peacetime in the post WWII period.

Under my Dad, marginal tax rates were cut from a top rate of 70 percent to a mere 28 percent, while revenues to the U.S. government from all taxes nearly doubled – increasing from roughly $500 billion to an astronomical $1.1 TRILLION in 1990.

Such stellar economic growth was the result of my Dad’s economic policies, which were rooted in his belief in the ability of the American people to make the right decisions concerning their nation’s economic activity. Contrast that with the Obama administration’s quasi-Marxist policies, which seek to make Washington the center of the nation’s economic activity.

This results in aberrations, such as non-elected government boards seeking to dictate to corporations and business where they can and cannot locate their various operations, as we’ve seen in the case of Seattle-based Boeing’s decision to open a plant in South Carolina, a right-to-work state. Incredibly, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is trying to block that move, claiming that it is based solely on the status of that state as a right-to-work state, putting the government in league with Big Labor, which hates giving workers their rights to work as they see fit and wants to prevent the move.

Ronald Reagan would have been appalled by that outrage. When faced with a similar attempt by a labor union to twist the rules governing the behavior of air traffic controllers, my Dad simply fired them all and replaced them. He would have defied any attempt to prevent a company from moving some of their operations to a new location because .a labor union opposed the move on the grounds that it freed employees from the grip of Big Labor bosses.

The Obama administration has displayed outright hostility toward Boeing, using the NLRB to harass the company as it attempts to operate free of government interference. Too bad my Dad isn’t around to curb the power of an out-of-control government agency slavishly bowing to the dictates of a powerful labor union, and not the workers it pretends to represent.

Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “The New Reagan Revolution” (St. Martin’s Press, 2011). He is the founder and chairman of The Reagan Group and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his website at www.reagan.com, or e-mail comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com.

©2011 Mike Reagan. Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc., newspaper syndicate. For info contact Cari Dawson Bartley. E-mail Cari@cagle.com, (800) 696-7561.

Reagan inherited economic problems and fixed them. Obama’s strategy is to blame Bush and Standard & Poor’s.

The Wall Street Journal     August 8, 2011 

By American Vision.org

We have seen now how America was originally settled with nearly all governmental sovereignty vested at the local level. This was the legacy of Christian culture, and the better part of it. Early Americans did not have to worry about their wealth and freedom being voted away by alleged representatives far removed by hundreds of miles and two or three levels of government. We have also seen that this ideal of freedom has been lost gradually over time at many junctures, and always in the name of something like “the common good”; but more importantly, we have seen that these several creeping tyrannies were enabled and empowered by that one main instance of centralizing power, force, and money at the federal level—the Constitution of 1787. Nevertheless, whatever the causes are ultimately, it is easy to see that we today have nowhere near the freedom of our ancestors. The question, now, is how to get back to that level of freedom.

In this section, I intent to discuss the new mindset we need, some hurdles to overcome, and some practical actions to take toward restoring local freedom and local sovereignty. By “local sovereignty” I mean freedom of local governments from the dictates of higher levels of government. We must return to local control, and free local institutions from the bands and shackles of the federal and state machineries that entrap locals with grant money, encroachments on power and local decisions, licensing, and regulations. By the similar phrase “local freedom” I mean freedom of individuals from the same encroachments and impositions by their own local governments.

First, there are many hurdles in the way of gaining this freedom. The enemies of freedom have always been those who stand to profit from the public coercive systems. These people—either for the sake of some form of prestige or money (or both)—will consistently scheme and legislate to benefit themselves. These lusts exist at every level of government, but also in the hearts of individuals. So, the remedy for restoring freedom to the local level will mean confronting the many, many ways in which both individuals and government leaders have entrenched themselves in public funding based on taxation. Whether this manifests in publicly-funded construction contracts, public education, exorbitant pensions for public employees, union privileges, grants from higher governmental agencies, or a myriad of other versions of the same evil, the path to freedom means stopping these appropriations and redistributions of money, and derailing the long train of abuses of individual freedoms resulting from the alliance of the plunderers who want the money and the elites who think they can plan our lives better than we can and that they have a right to do so.

The problem ultimately is as much personal and individual as it is political. In this regard, the local and state levels are microcosms of the larger plundering going on in Washington, D.C. right now (with the exception that state and local governments have the formal inconvenience of having to balance their budgets); but local government themselves are a reflection of the lusts and corruption that local individuals choose to allow. Local governments often suffer under corrupt officials, constantly seeking to borrow more money, and constantly seeking grants from State and federal governments. But often the people themselves either agree with taking, taxing, or borrowing more money, or they are oblivious to it and don’t care.

So here’s the hard truth: if you agree with the appropriations (but perhaps you say “only at the local level”), then you’re complicit in a corrupt system that stretches all the way to Washington. Don’t talk about freedom and fiscal responsibility when you make multi-million dollar exceptions for yourself, your business, your industry, your union, your police and fire, or your local schools. Obama’s not the problem; you’re the problem. Until you address this problem, you have no moral authority in regard to people doing way over your head. On the other hand, if you are merely oblivious to the problem or don’t care, then you’re still culpable and complicit by your complacency—and you can bet that the liberals and statists just love you for it, for it helps them get their scheme across with less opposition. It’s been said that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. I agree, although I would add that anyone who sits there and does nothing can’t be considered a good person to begin with. We need to confront both corruption and complacency, which is to say we need to wake up and take responsibility, take action.

Knowing that the problem begins with the individual heart and stretches all the way up to Washington, we’ll need to confront all levels at the same time. But we must concentrate our energy and focus on the areas in which we’ll have the greatest effect—ourselves and our local governments. We have already addressed vitally-needed personal lifestyle adjustments in education and the welfare State. We have emphasized the “don’t take the cheese” principle in those areas for individuals. Now it is time to focus on that concept at the level of local government. We must work to avert all public expenditure, debt, and taxation in local government, as well as all accepting of grants from higher governmental bodies. This is the first step in returning to anything like true local sovereignty to America—her counties must be free of strings attached to all higher agencies. But since that level of freedom does not yet exist, nor will it exist completely for the duration of the process of arriving at it, we must still attend as need be to State and national politics until we reach the desired position locally. We can’t take the chance of complacency at the back door where the Feds can creep in while we’re distracted with only local matters. Even when we achieve the goal locally, however, we cannot rest until surrounding counties, and then the vast majority of counties in the State have reached a similar level of understanding and practice of local sovereignty—for until a majority of counties exist that are willing to assert their freedom simultaneously against higher governments, the few that arrive at near local autonomy will always be exposed to the weaknesses attending their tiny-minority status. In other words, we’ll need a lot of free counties voicing their “nullifications” and independences at the same time, or else the federal government could simply ignore it and squash it with little repercussion. We need mass decentralized (yet legitimate) resistance so that no central authority can easily or effectively answer it. So, until we reach a time in which a growing number of America’s 3000+ counties care more about freedom than State and Federal aid, we must be vigilant in guarding our work and prayers toward that goal—for they are never safe from the threats of violence, force, defamation, and theft from above.

In short, anyone wishing to start a truly grass-roots, bottom-up movement for restoring local sovereignty is going to face multiple levels of opposition—from the higher levels of government, from the vast mainstream media leftist-propaganda machines, from entrenched Statism even in local media such as newspapers, corporate forces that use government to stop comeptition, and also from corrupt local officials. We must be prepared to meet all of this with truth, unwavering commitment to freedom, courage, and yet calmness, confidence, and kindness.

Second, we need to affirm this new vision of decentralized power. This vision must be deep and we must commit to it thoroughly. The vision of mass decentralization was actually voiced in this country at a crucial time by the famous economist F. A. Hayek. Nearing the end of World War II, he noted that western civilization was going to need to be rebuilt, and that this task would have to be done amidst an atmosphere in which Communism thrived as a powerful force, the forces and ideas behind National Socialism and fascism were still very strong, and academia was (as it still is) strongly socialist or even communist throughout the West. Hayek argued in his famous book, The Road to Serfdom, that any attempts at rebuilding along the lines of any large socialized, nationalized State would be doomed to failure sooner or later. His important conclusion was this:

We shall not rebuild civilization on the large scale. It is no accident that on the whole there was more beauty and decency to be found in the life of the small peoples, and that among the large ones there was more happiness and content in proportion as they had avoided the deadly blight of centralization. . . Nowhere has democracy ever worked well without a great measure of local self-government . . .Where the scope of the political measures becomes so large that the necessary knowledge is almost exclusively possessed by the bureaucracy, the creative impulses of the private person must flag. I believe that here the experience of the small countries like Holland and Switzerland contains much from which even the most fortunate larger countries like Great Britain can learn.  We shall all be the gainers if we can create a world fit for small states to live in.[said, “The purpose of meetings is not to record events, it is to protect people.” Go for everything you can find or have a desire to get.

Second, then start a blog or website dedicated to making your local government as public and transparent as possible. You can be as detailed or selective as necessary, as long as it’s honest and open. Post everything you can. Show any clear connections, show every cent that is taxed, how it is assessed and collected, how it is spent; show every cent borrowed and who profits from borrowing against future taxation, and who holds the bond. Show how much elected officials and public employees of all sorts are paid, and what their public pension benefits look like. This is all perfectly legal. WordPress and Blogger are absolutely free and easy to use. It would be great to have at least one such website dedicated to ultimate transparency in each of America’s 3000+ counties. It would better to have several in each county. Variety, choice, and competition will make them better and more effective. These would make fabulous projects for students; but really, anyone could do this, and everyone should.

Then, add video. This can be done merely on a YouTube or other video site’s channel, or better yet, embedded in a website. Record meetings, obtain interviews with officials whenever possible. Some local governments already record their meetings and post them themselves. The point is to have a clear and open public record, and get the word out to as many people, and make everything about local government as accessible and understandable to as many people as possible. This will lead, eventually, to the election of board members, judges, sheriffs, assessors, collectors, etc., who better represent a greater percentage of the population, and better represent local values; it will increase accountability; and it will help end corruption, self-serving, and waste. Taxes will decrease in many localities, choices will open up, people will be freer.

You should know that these ideas and these tactics are being upheld and implemented already with success. Some counties are beginning to assert local sovereignty against State and federal encroachments. For example, the local town of Sedgwick, Maine, recently declared absolute sovereignty over its local food supply. They were tired of state and federal regulations of local meat, raw milk, etc. So they declared their right and determination to be free of the tyranny: their new ordinance says, “[O]ur right to a local food system requires us to assert our inherent right to self-government. We recognize the authority to protect that right as belonging to the town of Sedgwick.” They considered State and federal regulations as “usurpation of our citizens’ right,” and went on to declare, “It shall be unlawful for any law or regulation adopted by the state or federal government to interfere with the rights recognized by this Ordinance.” This was applied also for “any corporation” that would try to interfere. The town argued that these claims to local sovereignty are supported by the Declaration of Independence, the Maine State Constitution, and other Maine statutes. They reserved the right even to secede completely if necessary in the face of a contest.

That Sedgwick, Maine ordinance is currently being used as a model to resist federal regulation in many other municipalities. These will certainly lead to court battles and possibly intimidation from higher governments, but the fact that they exist and people are advancing them shows that the vision for local sovereignty is growing and can be implemented. The fight is only begun, but it has begun.

This is true in other areas as well, as some local counties and even States have declared that they will not honor Obama’s Health Care Act, but have declared it null within their jurisdictions. Some States have declared all federal firearm laws null and void within their boundaries, for guns or ammo manufactured there. There are at least a dozen or more areas in which States currently are nullifying Federal laws. And as this precedent becomes more prevalent in States, it will only make moral sense to extend it to counties. Local sovereignty, county sovereignty, will grow more viable as well.

This is, after all, the foundation of American freedom: the first American declaration of independence was not that of 1776, but was written by a single county. Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, formally declared independence from Great-Britain on May 31, 1775, saying that “the Authority of the King or Parliament, are annulled and vacated.” They proceeded to set up an interim government all by their lonesome, until (as they expected) the rest of the Colonies should catch up.

Cases of local freedom—individuals asserting control over corrupt local officials—are occurring as well. In one case, a small town council in South Carolina had very quietly been paying itself an extremely rich pension package. When a few local business owners found out, they were outraged. At least one council member was opposed, and the businessmen approached him with a plan. They then showed up impromptu at a council meeting with video camera running. They got them members to confirm the terms of the rich package, and then asked for a show of hands on the council of all those who disapproved of it. The lone honest member of the council jetted his hand high, and the rest were caught on video exposed. The businessmen then simply thanked the council and left with the video. The council was so scared that it called a recess and chased the inquirers into the parking lot, trembling, asking what there were going to do with the video! They knew good and well.

In a similar case, a seventeen year-old kid exposed the appointment of a school superintendant whom a school board tried to rush through because he would be a big spender on behalf of the district. By simply showing up at both the interview process and the board meetings with a digital recorder, the corrupt thugs were caught, and were trembling in fear.

Another local contact of mine has been fighting these kind of battles for several years. He’s watched his community deteriorate with a combination of Federal Section 8 housing and corrupt local investment trusts, much of which came about only after an influx of “free school lunch” programs and Title 1 status gained for local public schools to receive massive federal aid. There is much to discern and sort out here, but the bottom line is corrupt local fat cat officials using government grants to empower and enrich themselves. And they are protected by liberal politicians above them, for several reasons. My contact said he started attending board meetings to record what was said. Very early on, one of these fat cats approached him with suspicious questioning and threatening demeanor—essentially threatening to wreck his career. The man is now very paranoid, because he has seen how deeply the corruption goes in his area, and how serious some of the insiders are about keeping it that way. There is work to be done here.

Another man wrote me telling how he won a seat on his local commission because the local conservatives were raising taxes and spending like crazy. He simply took a strong “TEA-party” stand against spending and corruption, and he was elected—despite overwhelming opposition from the local papers, labor unions, and even the local Chamber of Commerce. The local Chamber opposed him because it was dominated by big businesses that favor big-government for their corporate welfare. In other words, the local Chamber itself was corrupted by the forces of wealth redistribution. It had taken the cheese, and was now entrapped. My friend won the election nevertheless, but still faces an uphill fight against complacent and complicit officials, and, as he put it, “the grip that federal grants place on local units.”

There are some successes out there. But there are currently many challenges. One of the good things about seeing how deep and real the challenges are is that we realize how much more entrenched, powerful, and worse it must be at the higher levels, certainly in Washington, D.C. The nature of the problem is exactly the same; it’s just magnified at the national level. If we can’t dismantle tyranny locally, you can forget it happening in D.C. But this is what is encouraging about the successes we’re seeing: we in fact can have an effect locally, and many people are. There is a lot of work to do, and a lot of hill to climb. It will take time. But remember, we are planning for our grandchildren. It is time to start, get busy, and get a steady pace of reform.

It begins with people caring about the problem. It advances when people get focused, study, and explain the problem. It succeeds when they take action on the problem. This is county rights in action. It will only work when you get involved. For people can only be free if they will be responsible and courageous.

By Don Walker and Mike Johnson of the Journal Sentinel
Gov. Scott Walker has ordered the Wisconsin State Patrol to provide additional law enforcement help at the Wisconsin State Fair after several incidents involving rampaging youths broke out on the fairgrounds and on the streets outside Thursday night.
Cullen Werwie, Walker’s spokesman, said the governor made the decision after reviewing the events from Thursday night, in which at least 24 people were arrested.
“We will continue to evaluate the situation and make any adjustments necessary to ensure a successful and safe event. We will be doing everything in our power to ensure that parents feel that it is safe to bring their children to the world’s best fair,” Werwie said in a statement.
Also, Rick Frenette, CEO of the fair, announced that, because of the violence overnight, the fair would immediately implement a policy in which no youths under 18 years of age would be allowed onto the grounds after 5 p.m. without a parent or guardian who is at least 21 years of age.
Frenette, a veteran of 40 years in the fair management business, said he had never implemented such a policy before.
On Friday, police from three jurisdictions – West Allis, Milwaukee and Wisconsin State Fair – were spending Friday piecing together a series of incidents late Thursday night at the Wisconsin State Fair in which large groups of youths rampaged through the midway and outside the grounds after closing. At least 24 were arrested, and seven officers were hurt, a State Fair official said.
The incidents at the fair also caused confusion among police agencies. Anne E. Schwartz, the Milwaukee police spokeswoman, said West Allis police did not request mutual aid from the Milwaukee Police Department.
Schwartz said Milwaukee police responded to four incidents connected to the fair incidents, but those came from citizens calling police directly. She said one person was arrested by Milwaukee police on a warrant.
Officials could not say what started what witnesses said was a series of racially charged incidents that apparently began as early as 7 p.m. in the midway. The midway is located just east of the Pettit National Ice Center and adjacent to the Hank Aaron Bike Trail.
Milwaukee police confirmed there were assaults outside the fair as the fair was closing down. The fair closes at 11 p.m.
A State Fair official said most of those arrested were cited for disorderly conduct.
Police at all three jurisdictions declined to provide additional information Friday morning about what happened, when and where. Police said they were gathering multiple reports from various locations at the fair in order to determine what may have set off the incidents and hoped to provide a fuller picture later Friday.
“There will be changes tonight with law enforcement,” a State Fair official told the Journal Sentinel.
Witnesses told WTMJ-AM (620) that dozens to hundreds of young black people were beating white people as they left the fair late Thursday night. Patrice Harris, a spokeswoman for the fair, said a police alert she was given indicated four people were hurt.
“It looked like they were just going after white guys, white people,” Norb Roffers of Wind Lake told WTMJ-AM. He said he left the State Fair entrance near the corner of S. 84th St. and W. Schlinger Ave. in West Allis.
One eyewitness, a concession worker who works near the midway area, told the Journal Sentinel that large groups of African-American youths ran through the midway area, knocking over young children and adults, disrupting midway rides and tearing signs up.
“I have never seen anything like it,” the worker said. “It was mob mentality.”
The concession worker said the incidents began at 7 p.m. “All of a sudden a wave of kids were running through the midway,” he said.
The worker said there was police, including officers on horseback, as well as other security, but it was not enough.
“All of a sudden we were hearing whistles,” the worker said.
A 34-year-old Muskego man said he was riding on the Ferris wheel in the midway with one of his children when he heard shouts of “fight.”
“The trouble really started somewhere between 7 and 8 p.m.,” said the man, who did not want to be identified because he was worried about the safety of his family. “We just heard this roar start. It was almost like you’re at a football game and a touchdown is scored and you just hear the crowd start roaring.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. There were hundreds – like 200 to 300 would be my guess. It wasn’t like 10 or 20. There was definitely a fight going on in the middle. There were so many people you couldn’t see who was fighting. There was just this big group that kept growing and chanting, ‘fight, fight, fight.’ ”
“That lasted for one to two minutes. Then when security showed up blowing some whistles, all of this mob started running. It was like a herd of cattle,” he said.
The man described the crowd gathered around the fight as African-American, predominantly male and mainly 15- to 20-year-olds.
Another eyewitness, a Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin worker who was with his wife, a daughter, a friend of his daughter’s, a brother and a sister-in-law, said they arrived at the midway at 9:15 p.m.
At about 9:40 p.m., he said he saw the first of two fights break out.
“I couldn’t see who was fighting but there was an incredible mob mentality,” he said. The eyewitness estimated the mob at between 30 to 50 black youths.
“We felt threatened. Without a doubt,” the eyewitness said.
He said a game-booth operator allowed his group to seek shelter in the booth while fights broke out.
“Fortunately, the police on horses arrived quite quickly,” the eyewitness said.
The eyewitness said he was the recipient of several racially charged comments from the black youths. At one point, he said, he approached a security guard and told him he had better get more security to the scene. He said he told the security officer that “trouble was brewing.”
“The scariest part is that we were trapped between the midway and the exits by the mob, we had no way out. It was very frightening,” the hospital worker said. “It was glaringly obvious something was going to happen long before it did,” the hospital worker said.
One woman, a Marquette University employee, had left the fair with a friend. She said they had just turned onto S. 84th St., across the street from the fair and were headed north toward I-94 when they saw young black youths running between cars on the street.
“Then groups of kids began surging, all running at cars,” she said. “Some kids ran up on the hood of the car in front of us, bounced on it and jumped off. That guy looked like he got out of the car. When he came back his face was bloody.”
She said she wasn’t sure if the man was able to get medical attention. “I saw somebody in the car with cellphones, probably calling police.”
“It was scary and it was confusing,” she added. “We didn’t know what was happening. We didn’t see any law enforcement officer.”
She said she and her friend were concerned that somebody would try to break into their car. “There were so many people coming at you. Yes, it was scary.”
Another woman said she and her boyfriend were leaving the fair on a motorcycle about 11:30 p.m. Thursday when she saw a “mob of black teens picking on a very tall white teen” around S. 84th St. and W. Greenfield Ave.
“I stated to my boyfriend that there is going to be problems over there and I hope the cops are watching this and within seconds I saw the white teen attempting to punch his way out of a circle of black teens,” the woman said in an e-mail to the newspaper. “My heart just fell for him. As we turned, I saw security at the entrance to the State Fair and I yelled get over there! They are beating up a kid! We turned, as we went toward the expressway we then had to witness the police involved in multiple stops and incidents down 84th.”
Harris said Friday that police officers were involved in breaking up numerous fights at the midway. She could not immediately provide a number, but said a number of arrests were made. Most of the arrests were for disorderly conduct.
“Throughout the night we had fights, but that’s not atypical,” Harris said.
Rick Pries of Milwaukee had spent the entire day at the fair with a friend and her two grandchildren.
“We were in the midway and it was very crowded. While the kids were waiting in line I noticed large groups of black males running through the very crowded midway, yelling there was a fight,” Pries said. “There were several of these large groups all converging to this location.”
Pries said he decided to take the two children he was watching out of a line they were waiting in and leave the fair.
“There was very little security,” he said. “And the few that were there would have been overwhelmed by the sheer number of troublemakers,” Pries said.
The concession worker said he was not personally hassled, but he was concerned the youths would attempt to take his cash register. He closed his concession stand early for safety reasons.
“I was planning to take my kids to the fair tonight,” he said Friday morning. “I definitely won’t now.”
The Wisconsin State Fair is located in different jurisdictions. The north side of the fairgrounds from the Hank Aaron Bike Trail north is in the city of Milwaukee. The rest of the fair is in West Allis. Adding to the confusion is that the Wisconsin State Fair Park police has jurisdiction only on the fair grounds, not outside of it.
The fair incidents are similar to mob-like disturbances that occurred over the Fourth of July weekend in Milwaukee.
About 60 young people beat and robbed a smaller group that had been watching fireworks from Kilbourn Reservoir Park. The injured people were white; the attackers were African-American, witnesses said.
Another group looted a convenience store at a gas station at the corner E. North Ave. and N. Humboldt Blvd.
The incidents Thursday night come as the State Fair board over the last decade has worked to increase diversity at the annual fair, expanding its entertainment lineup and marketing to appeal to a younger, more multicultural audience. Diversity was a priority for State Fair Park Chairman Martin Greenberg, who spoke often of making it “truly the people’s park” – a “place of inclusion, not exclusion”
Thursday night’s Main Stage performer was rapper MC Hammer, but a number of people who attended the concert said the show wasn’t to blame at all for the disturbances at the fair. One woman said the crowd watching Hammer was mostly white and adult and any children there seemed to be with parents.
Another woman said the concert was “very laid back and had no craziness that we witnessed at all.” “The craziness was in the Midway,” she said.
Journal Sentinel staff writer Annysa Johnson contributed to this report.

Godfather Politics

July 26, 2011 by Pentangeli

Read more: Requirement to Vote: Pay Income Taxes | Godfather Politics http://godfatherpolitics.com/262/requirement-to-vote-pay-taxes/#ixzz1TEDNe51h

A welfare state that led to permanent austerity would betray the principles that have made American culture exceptional.

The Wall Street Journal         July 25, 2011 

By ARTHUR C. BROOKS

The battle over the debt ceiling is only the latest skirmish in what promises to be an ongoing, exhausting war over budget issues. Americans can be forgiven for seeing the whole business as petty, selfish and tiresome. Conservatives in particular are beginning to worry that public patience will wear thin over their insistence that our nation’s government-spending problem must be remedied through spending cuts, not by raising more revenues.But before they succumb to too much caution, budget reformers need to remember three things. First, this is not a political fight between Republicans and Democrats; it is a fight against 50-year trends toward statism. Second, it is a moral fight, not an economic one. Third, this is not a fight that anyone can win in the 15 months from now to the presidential election. It will take hard work for at least a decade.Consider a few facts. The Bureau of Economic Analysis tells us that total government spending at all levels has risen to 37% of gross domestic product today from 27% in 1960—and is set to reach 50% by 2038. The Tax Foundation reports that between 1986 and 2008, the share of federal income taxes paid by the top 5% of earners has risen to 59% from 43%. Between 1986 and 2009, the percentage of Americans who pay zero or negative federal income taxes has increased to 51% from 18.5%. And all this is accompanied by an increase in our national debt to 100% of GDP today from 42% in 1980.

Nicole Gelinas of City Journal and Jerry Kremer of the Huffington Post on the possibilities for a debt deal.

Where will it all lead? Some despairing souls have concluded there are really only two scenarios. In one, we finally hit a tipping point where so few people actually pay for their share of the growing government that a majority become completely invested in the social welfare state, which stabilizes at some very high level of taxation and government social spending. (Think Sweden.)

In the other scenario, our welfare state slowly collapses under its weight, and we get some kind of permanent austerity after the rest of the world finally comprehends the depth of our national spending disorder and stops lending us money at low interest rates. (Think Greece.)

In other words: Heads, the statists win; tails, we all lose.

Anyone who seeks to provide serious national political leadership today—those elected in 2010 or who seek national office in 2012—owe Americans a plan to escape having to make this choice. We need tectonic changes, not minor fiddling.

Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R., Wis.) budget plan is the kind of model necessary. But structural change will only succeed if it’s accompanied by a moral argument—an unabashed cultural defense of the free enterprise system that helps Americans remember why they love their country and its exceptional culture.

America’s Founders knew the importance of moral language, which is why they asserted our unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness, not to the possession of property. Similarly, Adam Smith, the father of free-market economics, had a philosophy that transcended the mere wealth of nations. His greatest book was “The Theory of Moral Sentiments,” a defense of a culture that could support true freedom and provide the greatest life satisfaction.

Yet today, it is progressives, not free marketeers, who use the language of morality. President Obama was not elected because of his plans about the taxation of repatriated profits, or even his ambition to reform health care. He was elected largely on the basis of language about hope and change, and a “fairer” America.

 

Alberto Ruggieri

 

The irony is that statists have a more materialistic philosophy than free-enterprise advocates. Progressive solutions to cultural problems always involve the tools of income redistribution, and call it “social justice.”

Free-enterprise advocates, on the other hand, speak privately about freedom and opportunity for everybody—including the poor. Most support a limited safety net, but also believe that succeeding on our merits, doing something meaningful, and having responsibility for our own affairs are what give us the best life. Sadly, in public, they always seem stuck in the language of economic efficiency.

The result is that year after year we slip further down the redistributionist road, dissatisfied with the growing welfare state, but with no morally satisfying arguments to make a change that entails any personal sacrifice.

Examples are all around us. It is hard to find anyone who likes our nation’s current health-care policies. But do you seriously expect grandma to sit idly by and let Republicans experiment with her Medicare coverage so her great-grandchildren can get better treatment for carried interest? Not a chance.

If reformers want Americans to embrace real change, every policy proposal must be framed in terms of self-realization, meritocratic fairness and the promise of a better future. Why do we want to lower taxes for entrepreneurs? Because we believe in earned success. Why do we care about economic growth? To make individual opportunity possible, not simply to increase wealth. Why do we need entitlement reform? Because it is wrong to steal from our children.

History shows that big moral struggles can be won, but only when they are seen as decade-long fights and not just as a way to prevail in the next election. Welfare reform was first proposed in 1984 and regarded popularly as a nonstarter. Twelve years of hard work by scholars at my own institution and others helped make it a mainstream idea (signed into law by a Democratic president) and perhaps the best policy for helping the poor to escape poverty in our nation’s history. Political consultants would have abandoned welfare reform as unworkably audacious and politically suicidal. Real leaders understood that its moral importance transcended short-term politics.

No one deserves our political support today unless he or she is willing to work for as long as it takes to win the moral fight to steer our nation back toward enterprise and self-governance. This fight will not be easy or politically safe. But it will be a happy one: to share the values that make us proud to be Americans.

Mr. Brooks is president of the American Enterprise Institute and author of “The Battle: How the Fight Between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America’s Future” (Basic Books, 2010).

 

Turn Your Sound On

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W07bFa4TzM&feature=player_embedded

Ronald Reagan wouldn’t be playing ‘Targeted Catastrophe.’

By PEGGY NOONAN

The Wall Street Journal      July 15, 2011

Related Video

Peggy Noonan on the politics of the debt-limit debate.

So you’d think the hangman’s noose would have concentrated their minds. Instead, of course, it’s a battle. As this is written, the president seems to have the edge. But if he wins—whatever winning looks like—he’ll likely pay a price for his political victory. He usually does. He won on health care, which ruined his first two years in office and sharply accelerated the decline in his popularity.

***

The issues of spending and taxes should be decoupled. The spending crisis is what’s going on and demands attention now; it’s because of out-of-control spending that we are up against the debt ceiling. Taxes—whether to raise them on the wealthy, whether to reform the tax code and how—can’t be satisfyingly dealt with in the next few weeks. It is gameful of the White House to obscure the central crisis by focusing on a secondary one. The American people have very interesting thoughts and views on taxes, and in no way is it certain that this issue will always favor the Republicans. There’s an election in 2012, we can argue it through from now to then.

A central problem for Republicans is that they’re trying to do everything—cut spending, fight off tax increases, win national support—from the House. The House is probably not enough to win a fight like this. In the words of a conservative strategist, Republicans have one bullet and the Democrats have three: the presidency, the Senate, and a mainstream media generally willing to accept the idea that the president is the moderate in the fight.

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Chad Crowe

 

The president is in the better position, and he knows it. Majority Leader Eric Cantor reports Mr. Obama went into enough-is-enough mode during White House talks this week, warned Mr. Cantor not to call his bluff, and ended the meeting saying: “Can you imagine Ronald Reagan sitting here?” I’m glad Reagan is his model for how presidents should comport themselves, but he should know Reagan never tried to scare people into doing things his way. Instead he tried to encourage support, and with a light touch. When locked in battle with a Democratic Congress he didn’t go on TV and make threats. He didn’t say, “Congress needs to know we must rebuild our defense system, and if they don’t, your children will die in a fiery hale of Soviet bullets.”

That was—how to put it?—not his style. It’s not any president’s style. But it’s what Mr. Obama was doing when he told CBS’s Scott Pelley that he isn’t sure there will be “money in the coffers” to send out Social Security checks. Soon he may be saying there won’t be money in the coffers to let students return to college or to pay servicemen. The president is playing Targeted Catastrophe. He’s attempting to agitate and frighten people into calling their congressmen and saying Don’t Cut Anything, Raise Taxes on Millionaires.

Three weeks of Targeted Catastrophe could be pretty effective. But if the president wins this way, there will be residual costs. He will have scared America and shook it up, all for a political victory. That will not add to affection or regard for the president. Centrists and independents, however they react in terms of support, will not think more highly of him.

Which gets me, briefly, to the latest poll on whether Americans think we’re on the right track or wrong track as a nation. The wrong-track number hit 63% this month, up from 60% last month, according to Reuters/Ipsos, which laid the increase to pessimism about the economy and “prolonged gridlock in Washington.”

Fair enough. But there’s more to be said about the nation the president seems to be busy agitating. It’s always assumed the right track/wrong track numbers are about the economy, which makes sense because economic facts are always in the forefronts of everyone’s minds. Will I get laid off, can I pay the bills, can my business survive?

But there are other reasons for American unease, and in a way some are deeper and more pervasive. Some are cultural. Here are only two. Pretty much everyone over 50 in America feels on some level like a refugee. That’s because they were born in one place—the old America—and live now in another. We’re like immigrants, whether we literally are or not. One of the reasons America has always celebrated immigrants is a natural, shared knowledge that they left behind everything they knew to enter a place that was different—different language, different ways and manners, different food and habits, different tempo. This took courage. They missed the old country. There’s a line in a Bernard Shaw play, “Mrs. Warren’s Profession”: “I kept myself lonely for you!” That is the unspoken sentence of all immigrants toward their children—I made myself long for an old world so you could have a better one.

But everyone over 50 in America feels a certain cultural longing now. They hear the new culture out of the radio, the TV, the billboard, the movie, the talk show. It is so violent, so sexualized, so politicized, so rough. They miss the old America they were born into, 50 to 70 years ago. And they fear, deep down, that this new culture, the one their children live in, isn’t going to make it. Because it is, in essence, an assaultive culture, from the pop music coming out of the rental car radio to the TSA agent with her hands on your kids’ buttocks. We are increasingly strangers here, and we fear for the future. There are, by the way, 100 million Americans over 50. A third of the nation. That’s a lot of displaced people. They are part of the wrong-track numbers.

So is this. In the Old America there were a lot of bad parents. There always are, because being a parent is hard, and not everyone has the ability or even the desire. But in the old America you knew it wasn’t so bad, because the culture could bring the kids up. Inadequate parents could sort of say, “Go outside and play in the culture,” and the culture—relatively innocent, and boring—could be more or less trusted to bring the kids up. Popular songs, the messages in movies—all of it was pretty hopeful, and, to use a corny old word, wholesome. Grown-ups now know you can’t send the kids out to play in the culture, because the culture will leave them distorted and disturbed. And there isn’t less bad parenting now than there used to be. There may be more.

There is so much unease and yearning and sadness in America. So much good, too, so much energy and genius. But it isn’t a country anyone should be playing games with, and adding to the general sense of loss.

 

The Wall Street Journal     JULY 12, 2011

Obama will have to answer the question Reagan asked in 1980.

Europeans pay tribute to a great American—and long for another

The Wall Street Journal  JULY 9, 2011 

By Peggy Noonan

What brilliant good it can do a country when the world respects, and will not forget, one of its leaders. What was vividly true 30 years ago is true today: The world looks to America. It doesn’t want to be patronized or dominated by America, it wants to see America as a beacon, an example, a dream of what could be. And the world wants something else: American goodness. It wants to have faith in the knowledge that America is the great nation that tries to think about and act upon right and wrong, and that it is a beacon also of things practical—how to have a sturdy, good, unsoiled economy, how to create jobs that provide livelihoods that allow families to be formed, how to maintain a system in which inventors and innovators can flourish. A world without America in this sense—the beacon, the inspiration, the speaker of truth—would be a world deprived of hopefulness. And so we must be our best selves again not only for us but for the world.

These are the thoughts that follow eight days of celebration, in Eastern Europe and London, of the leadership of Ronald Reagan. History is rarely sweet, but it was last week when they raised statues of him in his centenary year. People old and young stopped for a moment to think and speak of him, and to define what his leadership meant to them and their countries. The celebrations in Krakow, Budapest, Prague and London were a reminder that we are all traveling through history together, that you are living not only your own life but the life of your times, as Laurens van der Post once said. And your era can actually be affected, made better, by what you do.

The subject matter was the fall of the wall, the end of communism, the reunification of Europe—those epochal events the world is still absorbing and that in retrospect seem even more amazing. Good people picked good leaders—the Big Three of the Cold War, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, Reagan—and together they pushed until walls fell. Man is not used to such kind outcomes. A feeling of awe and gratitude colored the ceremonies: “My God, look what was done, I still can’t believe it. Let’s talk about how it happened and take those lessons into the future.” Now of all times we could use the inspiration.

In Krakow, the city from which Karol Wojtyla was called to Rome to become John Paul II, there was a thanksgiving mass celebrated by Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, who said in his homily: “President Reagan . . . took great pains to bring about the demise of that which he so aptly named ‘the evil empire.’ This empire of evil denied many people and nations their freedom. It did so by way of a pernicious ideology . . . the result of this experiment was the death and sufferings of millions.” “There can be no doubt,” he said, that Reagan and John Paul brought about “the collapse of communism.”

Martin Kozlowski

 

In Budapest, in a special session of the Hungarian Parliament, Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjen spoke of the end of Hungary as a captive nation and its beginnings as a democracy. Reagan, he said, “helped Hungary find itself.” Member of Parliament Janos Horvath spoke of Reagan’s style of peaceful liberation. What America did by being strong, by being serious in its focus, by speaking plain and true, not only inspired the victims of communism but weakened their oppressors. Reagan had “the imagination” to understand that the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was a historic event: “He kept quoting Harry Truman’s commitment to the liberation of the captive nations. That, for Reagan, was a more important thing than for other presidents.” Hungary knew Truman had been “infuriated” by what the Soviets did, “arresting people, including myself.” Reagan made clear he “felt the indignation.” And so, “Hungary took seriously what America meant—human rights, democracy.” It left Horvath an optimist. “I have faith that the right thing prevails. This is the Ronald Reagan mentality.”I asked a member of Parliament whether the people of Hungary had felt any bitterness over the fact that President Eisenhower did not commit U.S. military forces to help the Hungarians in 1956. At first he was puzzled. Bitterness? Any residual disappointment, I said. No, he said. “We understood your position.” Meaning, he explained, our position as a superpower in the nuclear age, and our position on freedom. They knew whose side we were on.

A veteran diplomat in the area, an American, said later that everything he’d heard in the speeches left him thinking how the great progress of the past quarter-century had been made not through warfare but through diplomacy, tough decisions, aid, encouragement and rhetorical clarity and candor.

At the unveiling of the Reagan statue in Freedom Square, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Reagan “managed change wisely and preserved peace. This is why he needs to have a statue in Budapest.” In tearing down “the distorted and sick ideologies of the 20th century,” Reagan “remade the world for us.”

Rather stunningly, the leader of Hungary’s government bluntly ended his speech with a sentiment often heard in Omaha, Tucson, Morristown and Tallahassee: “We need a Ronald Reagan. Is he there, somewhere, already?” The world misses him as much as we do. It misses grand leadership as much as we do.

***

In Prague they named a street for him. In London, on the Fourth of July, 235th birthday of the United States, they unveiled a statue in front of the U.S. Embassy in Grosvenor Square. Two other presidents grace that square: a heroic FDR in flowing cape, and a steely-eyed Eisenhower in army uniform. The day was nonpartisan, non-narrow. A great American was being justly honored by his British friends who, as Foreign Secretary William Hague said, “will never forget” him. A statue, he said, is not just a remembrance. With statues we come “face to face” with the great men and women of the past, and ponder their greatness.

That night, members of Parliament gathered for a formal dinner in London’s magnificent Guildhall. There were speeches, some beautiful. Among the packed tables there was a former member of Mrs. Thatcher’s cabinet, who in his day had taken heavy blows for his unrepentant conservatism. Now, white-haired, he listened to the speeches, as across the room a woman watching him remembered the greatest speech in English history: “Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot/ But he’ll remember with advantages/ What feats he did that day.”

And so Mr. Reagan’s centennial nears its close. We remember him—and Thatcher, and John Paul—for many reasons. To reinforce and reinspire. To keep fresh our knowledge that history can be made better. To be loyal to the truth.

And another reason. That night in conversation, former Prime Minister John Major asked how our teaching of history was in America. Not good, I said. He said in Britain it was the same, and it concerned him. We were across from a huge, heroic sculpture of the Duke of Wellington. If we don’t teach who he was and what he did, we will not make any more Wellingtons. Glory lives only when you pass it on.

 

By: Byron York 05/16/11 8:36 AM
Chief Political Correspondent Follow Him @ByronYork

This morning Republicans are just beginning to assess the damage that former House Speaker and current presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has done to the GOP budget plan currently before Congress.  On “Meet the Press” Sunday, Gingrich denounced House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan’s plan to restructure Medicare, saying, “I don’t think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering.  I don’t think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate.”

On his radio program Monday morning, former Education Secretary Bill Bennett, who knows Gingrich well but is also close to Ryan, reacted angrily to Gingrich’s remarks.  Referring to Ryan’s Medicare plan as “right-wing social engineering” is, Bennett said, “an unforgivable mistake, in my judgment.”  Bennett went on to say that Gingrich “has taken himself out of serious consideration for the [2012] race.”  [Full disclosure: I appear on, and sometimes serve as guest host of, the Bennett program.]

Gingrich’s remarks rankled for three reasons.  One, they hurt the Republican plan.  Two, they were particularly disdainful; Gingrich didn’t just said that he disagreed with Ryan, he referred to Ryan’s plan as “right-wing social engineering.”  And three, they contradicted what Gingrich himself has said about Ryan’s budget.

To make that last point, Bennett played a clip of an interview he conducted with Gingrich on April 5, barely more than a month ago.  At that time, Gingrich was full of praise for the Ryan budget. “Paul Ryan has stepped up to the plate,” Gingrich said.  “This is a very, very serious budget and I think rivals with [what] John Kasich did as budget chairman in getting to a balanced budget in the 1990s, just for the scale and courage involved…”

“Paul Ryan is going to define modern conservatism at a serious level,” Gingrich continued on April 5.  “You can quibble over details but the general shape of what he’s doing will define 2012 for Republicans.”

Well, not for Gingrich, at least not for now.  On the air, Bennett said he has talked to Ryan about Gingrich’s remarks and that Ryan felt, in Bennett’s words, “blindsided” by the attack.  Republicans are particularly angry about the timing of Gingrich’s “Meet the Press” remarks because they came the day before Ryan was scheduled to make a high-profile defense of his budget plan in a speech in Chicago.  Gingrich’s attack, those Republicans say, makes it much easier for Democrats to attack Ryan, too.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/05/gingrich-reaction-republicans-livid-accuse-former-speaker-hypocri#ixzz1MYhUthAp

Presidential Candidate Calls It ‘Right-Wing Social Engineering,’ Agrees With Obama About Need for Insurance Mandate

By LAURA MECKLER

White House hopeful Newt Gingrich called the House Republican plan for Medicare “right-wing social engineering,” injecting a discordant GOP voice into the party’s efforts to reshape both entitlements and the broader budget debate.

In the same interview Sunday, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mr. Gingrich backed a requirement that all Americans buy health insurance, complicating a Republican line of attack on President Barack Obama’s health law.

The former House speaker’s decision to stick with his previous support for an individual mandate comes days after former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney defended the health revamp he championed as governor, which includes a mandate.

The moves suggest the Republican primary contest, which will include both men, could feature a robust debate on health care, with GOP candidates challenging the Democratic law while defending their own variations.

Later Sunday, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he also acknowledged that many Republicans are uncomfortable with requiring insurance coverage but challenged them to offer an alternative solution. “Most Republican voters agree with the principle that people have some responsibility to pay for their costs,” he said.

As Mike Huckabee exits, Newt Gingrich takes a shot at Paul Ryan’s plan, and like Mitt Romney, supports the concept of a mandate to buy insurance.

Mr. Gingrich also said he would like to see the mandate implemented at the state level, with states experimenting with alternative approaches. But he said he should apply to all Americans. The Republican presidential field is beginning to take shape after an unusually long delay, with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee saying he would skip the 2012 race and the other candidates beginning to engage in substantive policy debates.

Mr. Huckabee declined to endorse any of the remaining candidates. His decision opens the door for other Republicans to court the Christian conservatives who fueled the former Baptist minister’s 2008 campaign.

Mr. Gingrich, who has fashioned himself as a policy wonk in recent years, instantly roiled an already controversial debate over the U.S.’s long-term budget picture. He said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that seniors should not be required to use a new Medicare program, as envisioned by the House GOP, but should be persuaded to voluntarily migrate to a better system.

“I don’t think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering,” he said when asked about a Medicare plan championed by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) as an element of the party’s 2012 budget proposal. He said he was against “radical change” on the right and the left.

The House GOP budget would privatize Medicare for Americans under age 55. When they reach retirement age, they would receive a government subsidy to buy a private insurance policy instead of participating in the existing government-run system. The subsidies’ value likely would not rise as quickly as health care costs are expected to rise.

Ryan spokesman Conor Sweeney said in response to Mr. Gingrich that Mr. Ryan’s plan is the only serious proposal for Medicare, which faces long-term financial crisis as health costs rise and Baby Boomers join the program’s ranks. “The most ‘radical’ course of action on Medicare is to continue to cling to the unsustainable status quo,” he said.

The GOP budget cleared the House as part of a budget outline without a single Democratic vote, and Democrats have sought to use the policy as a line of political attack with voters.

Republican leaders have said they do not plan to write legislation that would flesh out details of the concept. But they also say the Ryan plan remains their position in budget talks with the White House and the Senate.

Other Republican candidates for president, including Mr. Romney and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, have applauded Mr. Ryan for showing leadership in putting together a budget plan, but have declined to endorse its elements.

In the interview with the Journal, Mr. Gingrich also said that in advocating for big changes to Medicare, House Republicans have failed to both come up with the right policy, and to properly sell it to the country. He said bad salesmanship was part of President Obama’s problem in pushing his own health care plan. “Republicans should learn. There’s a big lesson there,” he told the Journal.

Mr. Gingrich also stuck with his past support for the central plank of the Obama health plan—the mandate to buy insurance.

In 1993, Mr. Gingrich said Americans should be required to have health insurance just as they are required to have automobile insurance. Back then, he endorsed the use of vouchers to help everyone buy insurance. He also endorsed the use of income-based vouchers to help everyone buy insurance.

On Sunday, Mr. Gingrich said he opposes the Obama plan because it creates a “Washington-based model, a federal system” with exchanges that try to “replace the entire insurance system.”

He also contended that people should be required to buy coverage or post a bond to cover their costs should they need care and lack insurance. Like Mr. Romney—and Mr. Obama—Mr. Gingrich spoke of the “free rider” problem: those who go uninsured and then don’t pay their bills when they get sick, spreading the costs across the system.

“All of us have a responsibility to help pay for health care,” he said Sunday.

When Mr. Gingrich endorsed the mandate in 1993, many Democrats were pressing for a government-run health system without private insurance companies. The mandate—a badge of individual responsibility—was seen then as a conservative alternative.

In 2012, Mr. Gingrich may find these views problematic in the Republican contests, where a large number of voters view the Obama health plan as Exhibit A in government overreach. A lawsuit brought by mostly GOP governors argues the Obama mandate is unconstitutional.

“I’d like Speaker Gingrich to show me in the Constitution where the government has the right to force people to buy health insurance,” said Debbie Dooley, state coordinator for the Georgia Tea Party Patriots. “That’s going to hurt him among tea party activists, extremely.”

Write to Laura Meckler at laura.meckler@wsj.com

On Monday’s edition of Laura Ingraham’s nationally syndicated radio show, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) responded to Newt Gingrich’s criticism of his Medicare plan, telling guest host Raymond Arroyo “with allies like that, who needs the left?”