Archive for the ‘States Rights’ Category

There was a strong push in the last Arizona election cycle to disenfranchise political parties by turning the Arizona Primary election into a “round one general election” in which there would be a single ballot with all candidates listed on it without regard to party affiliation, but only the top two vote-getters from the Primary would be on the General Election ballot.  Some very good political thinkers were involved at least in conceptualizing this ballot proposition.  The proposition failed by a two to one margin

The main thing the proposition was designed to do was to give independents (voters not affiliated with any party) a greater say in the primary.  There are certain good things about today’s party system; it allows people with common political views to identify their positions on issues (platform) and to select candidates who will run for office in the general election.  The founding fathers were not fond of political parties; but parties in their times were specific special interest factions such as merchants, or lawyers, or veterans, or bankers, or planters.  The political parties spoken of by Washington and his contemporaries were what we would now call lobbyists or political action committees (PACs).

Today’s parties are made up of voters with diverse professions, economic stations, races, educational levels, and lifestyle, and serve primarily as a vetting process for candidate selection. party) more say in Primary elections.  To me that alone doesn’t make any sense because primary elections are elections in which political parties nominate their candidates.  Independents are independents because they don’t support party politics.  Arizona already does something that I think is very bad in that they allow independents to vote in one primary of any party they wish. To me nobody except party members should have a say in who the party nominates..  I’m glad it did because I think it was a very bad idea.

Even minor parties have played a significant role in shaping our politics.  By presenting their views to the public they have caused the two major parties to adjust to attract those voters.  Two examples are the Socialist Party who originated the idea of vast social programs and redistribution of wealth, and the Libertarian Party who has pushed for a more stringent compliance with the constitution and lest government involvement in the lives of citizens.  Both of these minor parties have never reached the number of supporters needed to enact their policies, but the Democrats have adapted many of the aims of the Socialist Party, and the Republicans have adjusted to the right in response to the ideas of the Libertarian Party.

One problem with a top two primary is that it does not give the voter more choices but limits them to only two in the general election.  A second problem is that in a district in which one party dominates, no other party has a chance to make it on the ballot, both general candidates could be from the same party.  It would virtually illuminate all minor party candidates from ever getting on a general ballot.

Many independents say there is no difference between the two parties; however, even the most cursory review of their stand on issues reveals that as false. The main causes of independent discontent with the two major parties can be categorized as: 1) They are all professional politicians who are mostly concerned with feathering their own nest and being reelected, and 2) They can’t work together to get anything done.

I think Item one is partly true; I do believe that many people in congress have a genuine desire to do what’s right, but their view may differ from that of many of their voters.  They have elevated themselves to a special class that is paid much more than the average voter, has amazing perks and benefits, and gives them special exceptions to things the rest of us live with every day.  When congress was first given an annual salary in 1855 it was $3000; comparing the consumer price index of 1855 to 2012, that equates to under $12,000 per year in today’s dollar.  Then, being in Congress was a part time job, they spent a couple of months a year mostly approving a budget.

This brings us to item two.  As the founders intended, the federal government dealt with relatively few departments and programs, they didn’t enact many new laws every year, they took care of business and got back their farm, store, law officer, parsonage, etc.  For the last 80 years congress has gotten along too well, they have passed way to many laws, creating way too much government, and spending way too much public revenue.  Any congress that refuses to raise expenditures or increase taxes is a good congress.  Democrats want to keep using the public revenue to buy votes, and Republics want to reverse that process.  In a nutshell that is the difference between the two parties.  I will vote for the senator or representative who refuses to go along with government programs, trillion dollar deficits, and forever increasing taxes.  A “do-nothing” congress is better than a “do-something” congress unless the something being done is cutting spending, cutting government, and cutting taxes.

So since the main accusation is that Democrats and Republicans are the same, you better look again.  And if you want to save the country you better hope the “do-nothings” outnumber the “do-everythings”.

There are things that make schools particularly attractive targets for evil men or crazies who want to inflict harm on others or who want to hurt society: Schools contain large numbers of helpless children and a few adults who can pose no threat to an attacker; Being gun-free zones, schools guarantee that the will be no armed person in a school, with the possible exception of a school resource officer; and, once the slaughter starts, the attacker knows that it will take several minutes for the police to be called and to respond. The attacker also knows that if there is a single policeman assigned to the school, he could get rid of that threat to him by simply removing the officer or distracting him in some way; and even if the officer is not disabled the attacker would simply have to begin his attack in one of the more remote classrooms. For these reasons our children are like lambs in a slaughterhouse
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The only real protection against a terrorist (and no matter their motive, the people who stage these attacks are terrorists) is to have numerous people in all parts of the school who can be first responders to an attack. The outcome at Sandy Hook Elementary School would have been very different had the first teacher who confronted the attacker, and the Principle who confronted him had done so with a gun.
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Schools should be Attack Free Zones; meaning that if an unauthorized person enters a school they are considered a deadly threat and if they do not immediately surrender, they will be shot. This means that schools would have to have the ability to control all access to the school and to identify and control visitors or those on authorized business.
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The two most rational objections to arming school personnel are 1) that they would create a confusing battlefield for police who respond- it would become difficult for the officers to identify the perpetrators as opposed to the armed school personnel; and, 2) School personnel are not trained in the needed skills and procedures. I think there is some valid concern on both points. However, if the arming of school personnel is done properly both these points become moot.
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First the personnel would have to pass the normal gun ownership background checks, second, they would have to pass the concealed carry class, and third they would be required to be trained and sanctioned by the local police department, and would operate under direction of the police department as a reserve unit of the police. This takes away the concern about qualification.
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There are probably several employees at most schools who are already competent marksmen and trained in gun safety. There are likely military veterans or reservists, concealed carry permit holders, reserve officers, or shooting hobbyist on the school staff. These people would be the obvious first class of trainees. The goal would be to have most employees, including administrators, teachers, classified staff, custodians, and bus drivers qualified and armed. Since the reasons schools are such enticing targets for evil or crazy people is because they know they will easily be able to do great harm, having this type of reserve protection would take away that primary attraction as a target.
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The second valid concern is identification of school police reservists. First, since they are under the direction of the police, trained by them, and mingle face to face with officers they would be known by sight to the police. Second they would be provided with a recognizable police vest which they would don in the event of an attack anywhere on the school. The teachers in classrooms would lock down their classroom, direct the children to take cover, and then take a defensive position to stop the attacker from entering.
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Teachers involved in other activities with students would move them to designated safe areas and take up a defensive position to protect the children. Administrators and other non-teaching personnel would don their vests and move quickly to the trouble area, firing on an attacker at the moment they are encountered.
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The reserve officer school personnel would be organized into rank leadership based on competency and training and the senior officer (who might be a teacher or a janitor rather than an administrator) would assume command of the crises until a ranking police officer is on the scene.
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Chances are, that in most cases based on this scenario by the time police arrived all school reservists would be “in uniform”’ the threat would be neutralized, and all arms would be holstered, avoiding the chaos envisioned by detractors.
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Chances are good that this would prevent injury or loss of student life; or at the worst would limit the number of such casualties.
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I will cover reestablishing a healthy American gun culture in Part 3.

Published August 27, 2011| Associated Press
AUSTIN, Texas –  Texas Gov. Rick Perry has asked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for nearly $350 million to cover the costs he says Texas has incurred incarcerating illegal immigrants in state prisons and county jails.

In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Perry reiterated a claim he’s often leveled against the federal government: that it’s not doing enough to secure the border with Mexico and as a result, has allowed illegal immigrants to enter the U.S. and use taxpayer-funded resources, including the prison system.

The letter was dated Aug. 10, three days before the Republican governor formally announced he is running for president.

Reached after-hours Friday by phone, DHS spokesman Matthew Chandler said he wasn’t in position to comment and said he could not confirm that the DHS had even received the letter.

Perry has been criticized by some fellow conservatives as being too lenient on illegal immigration issues. Unlike fellow GOP presidential hopeful Rep. Michele Bachmann, Perry does not think the U.S. should build a wall spanning the entire Mexican border. Perry also has supported discounted tuition rates for the children of illegal immigrants at Texas universities, and he has said Arizona’s tough-on-immigration law wouldn’t be right for Texas.

As governor, Perry was one of the first to talk about immigration by breaking out the issue of border security, a move that has won him support from conservative Hispanics. But he angered Hispanic leaders in June by endorsing legislation that would have prohibited cities from adopting “sanctuary” rules for handling suspected immigrants.

In his two-page letter to Napolitano, Perry described the formula used to come up with his $349.2 million bill, including $94.4 million to cover costs incurred by county jails.

“During tough economic times, when communities are making difficult decisions about their own budgets, Texas counties are being asked to cover more than $94.4 million in direct costs related to housing illegal immigrants while the state has been left to cover more than $254.8 million in such costs.”

He included a memo from Comptroller Susan Combs in which she supports his calculations but warns that the estimates are conservative.

“The longstanding failure of the federal government to secure our border with Mexico continues to burden local communities and resources in Texas,” Perry wrote. “Because there are not enough troops on the ground, illegal immigrants are able to penetrate the Texas border every day and use taxpayer-funded resources.”

Perry is not the first governor to try to bill the federal government for the costs of incarcerating illegal immigrants. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, sued the DHS in February seeking compensation for incarceration costs, among other things. And Napolitano herself, who preceded Brewer as Arizona governor, regularly sent the Justice Department invoices seeking such reimbursement before she became Homeland Security secretary.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/08/27/perry-bills-feds-34m-for-incarcerating-illegals/#ixzz1WGS9BIdi

The Wall Street Journal                JUNE 22, 2011

Labor Board Proposes Speeding Up Organizing Votes; Employers, GOP Cry Foul

By MELANIE TROTTMAN And KRIS MAHER

The National Labor Relations Board Tuesday proposed the most sweeping changes to the federal rules governing union organizing elections since 1947, giving a boost to unions that have long called for the agency to give employers less time to fight representation votes.

The NLRB’s proposals would likely compress the time between a formal call for a vote by workers on whether to join a union, and the election itself. It is the latest in a series of actions by the board and other agencies controlled by Obama administration appointees that respond to labor leaders’ calls for more union friendly federal labor policies.

The rules governing organizing are the focus of a power struggle between unions and employers after decades of declining union membership. Only 6.9% of private sector workers belonged to unions in 2010, and just 11.9% of all U.S. workers, according to the Labor Department. In 1983, unions represented 20.1% of all workers.

“This is another not so cleverly disguised effort to restrict the ability of employers to express their views during an election campaign,” said Randy Johnson, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s senior vice president of labor, immigration and employee benefits.

Some companies say cutting the lead time before an election would make it harder for them to build a case for opposing a union, because union campaigns often begin months earlier without an employer’s knowledge.

Unions praised the proposal, although Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, called the board’s step a “modest” one that doesn’t address “many of the fundamental problems with our labor laws.”

Unions failed during the years when Democrats had control of Congress to win passage of a remake of union organizing rules known as the Employee Free Choice Act. Since Democrats lost control of the House in 2010, union leaders have stepped up pressure on the Obama administration to use its rule-making powers to achieve some of the same goals as the EFCA.

• NLRB Proposals: Reactions

 The NLRB said its proposed changes aim to curb unnecessary litigation; streamline procedures before and after elections; and enable the use of electronic communications, such as requiring employers to give union organizers access to electronic files containing workers’ addresses and email addresses when available.

Even with more favorable rules, unions could face challenges winning contested elections at a time when even union officials say many workers are more concerned about their own job security. Unions have tried and failed for years to organize workers at Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp. and the U.S. operations of big foreign-owned auto makers, among others.

The Union Agenda

Unions were counting on advancing their priorities after the election of President Obama. A scorecard on their progress:

Passage of Employee Free Choice Act to ease union organizing. Failed in Senate.

Getting former union lawyer Craig Becker on the NLRB. Accomplished through recess appointment.

Making it easier for airline and railroad workers to unionize. Approved by the National Mediation Board.

Enabling airport screeners to unionize and collectively bargain. Authorized by Transportation Security Administration.

On Friday, the United Food and Commercial Workers union lost an election 85-137 at a Target store in Valley Stream, N.Y. The union immediately accused the company of illegally intimidating workers.

“The team members rejected the union,” said Target spokeswoman Molly Snyder. “We are pleased that we are going to be able to work directly with our team members and continue to make Target as great a place as it can be.”

“Target believes that we have followed all of the laws and regulations of the National Labor Relations Act,” Ms. Snyder added. She said the company “doesn’t have anything to share at this point” about the changes proposed by the NLRB.

A Wal-Mart spokesman said the company didn’t have a reaction “at this time” to the proposed NLRB rules changes.

The International Association of Machinists and the Association of Flight Attendants lost elections last year involving 50,000 Delta Air Lines Inc. workers. Since then, the National Mediation Board, which oversees elections in the airline industry, opened investigations into allegations that the company unfairly pressured workers to vote against the unions. The NLRB rule changes wouldn’t affect the airline industry, whose labor relations are governed by the mediation board.

NLRB Chairman Wilma Liebman, in a statement Tuesday, predicted the proposals would be controversial, and business groups and Republican lawmakers quickly proved her right.

Rep. John Kline (R., Minn.), chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, urged the board to scrap what he called a reckless and job-destroying agenda.

Brett McMahon, vice president for business development at Miller & Long, a privately held, nonunionized construction company in Bethesda, Md., said the NLRB’s proposal “provides a totally unfair advantage to labor and it deprives employees of a full set of information.” Mr. McMahon, whose company employs about 1,100 people, said the NLRB proposal, combined with a Labor Department proposal Monday to require employers to disclose more information about labor consultants they hire, is “a two-fold attack” on employers.

Republican lawmakers were already attacking the NLRB for its decision in April to accuse aircraft giant Boeing Co. of illegally building a 787 Dreamliner production line at a new nonunion plant in South Carolina, a state where unions are weak, instead of in Washington state where union employees are already building such planes.

Unions reacted positively to the NLRB’s proposal. “At a time when corporations have lawyers and lobbyists speaking for them on Capitol Hill, it’s a good thing when a federal agency wants to allow working people to have a say,” said Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union.

The NLRB’s Democratic majority has the votes to adopt the rules. Ms. Liebman said the board would approach the process with “open minds” and has invited public comment. There will be a public meeting on July 18th and 19th about the proposal.

Union organizing efforts often take years. In 2008, the UFCW won an election to organize 5,000 workers at a Smithfield Foods Inc.’s hog-slaughtering plant in Tar Heel, N.C., after a campaign that consumed 15 years. The union lost a 1997 vote, spurring seven years of litigation. In 2006, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the company had threatened workers and ordered it to reinstate four union supporters the court found were illegally fired.

The cost of organizing efforts has led unions to seek fewer votes. Last year, unions won 1,036, or 66%, of 1,571 elections conducted by the NLRB, according to the agency. In 1990, unions called for 3,536 elections and won 1,773, or 50%.

The NLRB said it couldn’t calculate how much shorter the time could be between when a union files a petition for an election and the election itself. The median time is now 38 days.

Michael Lotito, a partner in San Francisco at law firm Jackson Lewis LLP who advises employers, said the lead time could be shaved to between 19 and 23 days under the proposal.

The power struggle between employers and unions promises to be a factor in the 2012 elections. Unions were significant contributors to President Barack Obama’s 2008 election campaign and played a crucial role in drumming up votes for him and congressional Democrats.

In the 2010 election cycle, labor unions overall contributed $73.4 million to federal candidates, parties and outside groups, down from $74.55 million in the 2008 cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics’ calculations of the 20 biggest union contributors at the time. In both cycles, at least 90% of the unions’ party-related contributions were to Democrats. Unions also spend money on political efforts not directly tied to a candidate.

Unions are heading into the 2012 election cycle facing moves in several states to curtail collective-bargaining rights. Labor leaders have turned to the Obama administration for help, and warned that union members would withhold campaign contributions for Democrats who don’t  support the union cause.

The Wall Street Junl     APRIL 11, 2011     By GEORGE P. SHULTZ
 

Unaccountable White House aides are a product of a broken cabinet-nomination process. This is not the form of government the Founders intended.
A pattern of governance has emerged in Washington that departs substantially from that envisaged in our Constitution. Under our basic concept of governance: (1) a president and vice president are elected; and (2) the departments of government are staffed by constitutional officers including secretaries, undersecretaries, assistant secretaries and others who are nominated by the president and confirmed for service by the consent of the Senate. They are publicly accountable and may be called to testify under oath about their activities.

Over time, this form of governance has changed. Presidents sometimes assume that the bureaucracy will try to capture a secretary and his or her immediate staff so that they will develop a departmental, rather than a White House, point of view. So presidents will name someone in the White House to oversee the department and keep a tight rein on its activities.

In national security and foreign policy, the National Security Council (NSC) was established after World War II by the National Security Act of 1947. As late as 1961, under President Dwight Eisenhower, the NSC was supported by a small staff headed by an executive secretary with a “passion for anonymity” and limited to a coordinating role. In subsequent administrations, that passion disappeared and staff members took on operational duties that formerly were the responsibility of constitutionally confirmed cabinet officials. This aggrandizement of the staff function then spread into fields far beyond national security.

Lt. Col. Oliver North, 1987: Iran-Contra is an example of what can happen when cabinet-level decision making is bypassed.
More recently, the situation has been worsened by the difficulty of getting presidential nominees to cabinet and subcabinet positions approved and in place. The White House vetting process has become exhaustive, with potential appointees required to fill out extensive questionnaires on such things as foreign travel and personal acquaintances, let alone financial matters. Mistakes are potentially subject to criminal penalties. The result is a drawn-out and often disagreeable process from the time a person agrees to a job to the actual nomination.

Formal nominations do not necessarily receive quick consideration by Senate committees, which routinely request additional information. Sometimes a nomination, voted legitimately out of the committee, can be put on hold indefinitely as one member of the Senate uses the hold as a bargaining chip to get some matter, often unrelated, settled to his or her satisfaction.

These long delays make for great difficulty in assembling an administration, particularly in its crucial first year. The result has been appointment of people to the White House staff with de facto decision-making power over all the major areas of government. This practice also extends to foreign affairs, as a variety of special envoys and “special representatives” are appointed, often with ambiguity about whether they report directly to the president or to the secretary of state.

The practice of appointing White House “czars” to rule over various issues or regions is not a new invention. But centralized management by the White House staff has been greatly increased in recent years.

Beyond constitutional questions, such White House advisers, counselors, staffers and czars are not accountable. They cannot be called to testify under oath, and when Congress asks them to come, they typically plead executive privilege.

The consequences, apart from the matter of legitimate governance, are all too often bad for the formation and execution of policy. The departments, not the White House, have the capacity to carry out policies and they are full of people, whether political appointees or career governmental employees, who have vast experience and much to contribute to the making of ­policy. When White House staffers try to formulate or execute policy, they can easily get off track in a way that would not happen in a regular department.

As secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan, I experienced this with great pain when White House people developed and ran an off-the-books program of arms sales to Iran. It erupted in the Iran-Contra scandal involving the unconstitutional transfer of funds not appropriated by Congress to the Contras, and with close to devastating consequences for the president.

Iran-Contra is a dramatic example, but the more general problem is the inability to take full advantage of available skills and expertise in policy making, and the difficulty in carrying out the functions of government nationally and internationally.

What must be done?

To return to a more effective and constitutionally sound use of cabinet members and their departments in helping the president formulate policy, cabinet secretaries could be grouped into important functional categories—national security and foreign policy, economics, natural resources, human resources, the rule of law, education, health and others. All of these subjects involve more than one department. Sometimes the natural convener is obvious; in other instances the leading role might simply rotate.

With the help of staff coordinators in the White House, cabinet members might convene by themselves and then with the president. This would involve the departments and, at the same time, ensure that a presidential, rather than a departmental, point of view would prevail. Policy execution would be improved, as would support for legislative initiatives.

The main goal is to assure that a cabinet member—not a White House aide—is always in charge. The result would be not so much cabinet government as presidential government with the heavy involvement of accountable officials in the administration.

Then, and foremost, the appointment process must be moved back to what it was even as recently as the Reagan administration. The assumption is that honorable people want to serve honorably. Reasonable vetting, such as a review of Internal Revenue Service and Federal Bureau of Investigation records, can be done quickly. A bad apple will surely be discovered and can be discarded.

I remember a passage in the late great American statesman Paul Nitze’s autobiography. A friend in the FDR administration called and asked him to work in government—he would receive no pay, only an extra desk and an assistant. In this wholly illegitimate way, he began his career in the federal government.

Nitze’s record of public service is legendary. I was lucky to serve with such a great and honorable man. I am not recommending that today’s vetting process be like his, but I worry: Could we attract a Paul Nitze to the government today?

Today’s problems are daunting and of critical importance. We need today’s Paul Nitzes involved in the process of governance. It’s imperative that we get back to a constitutional and accountable form of government before confidence in our capacity to govern further erodes.

Mr. Shultz, former secretary of labor (1969-70), secretary of the Treasury (1972-74) and secretary of state (1982-89), is a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

In my last article (Part 3) I evaluated the two presidential candidates from the 2008 Republican primary, Mike Huckabee, and Mitt Romney, giving Romney the edge on both his business experience and his governorship. Today we will look at the remainder of my favorite candidates, Jon Huntsman, Sarah Palin, and Allen West, ending with a ranking of my favorite five potential candidates.

Jon Huntsman, Jr. Huntsman gave the vice-presidential nominating speech for Sarah Palin, and has all but been endorsed for a presidential run by John McCain. To most of America Huntsman is an unknown. He has been an insider in Washington since the 1980s serving in the Reagan, G.H.W Bush, and G.W. Bush administrations as (respectively) White House Staff Assistant, Deputy Secretary of Commerce then Ambassador to Singapore, and Deputy US Trade Representative. He is currently serves in the Obama Administration as Ambassador to China.

He was Governor of Utah for two terms, winning the second term with almost 78% of the vote. The Cato Institute rated him the top governor on tax policy, and the fifth highest on overall fiscal policy. During his administration Utah was listed as the best run state government by the Pew Center on the States.

His business experience includes an executive with the Huntsman Corporation, an international Chemical Company with annual revenues topping $8 billion and over 10,000 employees; and CEO of Huntsman Family Holdings Company. He has also headed major philanthropic organizations including the Huntsman Cancer Foundation, the Utah Opera, Envision Utah, and The Family Now Campaign.

His stand on fiscal matters, taxation, and business is strongly conservative. He is more mixed on his social positions, being strongly conservative on abortion, and gun rights, but he has liberal positions on climate change, same sex domestic unions, the Department of Education, and the Obama Stimulus. He signed Utah up in the Western Climate Action Initiative, basically a western states cap and trade arrangement. He has shunned the Tea Party conservatives but has broad appeal to old school Republicans.

Sarah Palin The candidate for vice-president on the 2008 McCain ticket has a strong appeal to deeply conservative Republicans, the religious right, Libertarians, and the Tea Party movement. The fact that she shared the ticket with McCain has given her some standing with moderate and old-line Republicans.

Upon becoming Governor of Alaska, Palin embarked on two gutsy missions: To clean out corruption in Alaska politics and to cut spending; she did this with gusto rooting out criminal activity and cronyism not just from the state government, but even within her own party. She pared back government programs, size, and waste starting with getting rid of the perks of the office of the governor.

Besides being governor, Palin served on the town council, then as mayor of Wasilla, and as a member of the Alaska Oil and Gas Commission.

Her time on the commission gave her a good practical insight into natural resource issues. Her political position is solidly conservative on both fiscal and social issues. She has experience in operating family businesses and has worked as a correspondent on Alaskan TV Stations. She has shown a great sense of fiscal responsibility and is business friendly.

Because of her run for vice-president, authoring two books, hosting an excellent documentary series on Alaska, being supportive of and responsive to the Tea Party movement, and being a frequent topic of conversation and controversy on talk shows and news commentary she is now well known. In fact, she might be too well known; she is as disliked by the left as she is liked by the right.

While I really like her positions on all the issues, she doesn’t have the level of leadership that most of the other candidates have, and certainly not the degree of financial education and experience of most of them.

Allen West  The newly elected congressman won his seat on the strength of Tea Party support. Some would point to this, his only elective office, as being not enough political experience. However, one does not work as a battalion commander in a war zone without learning a lot about practical politics. He holds a master’s degree in political science from Kansas State and a master’s degree from the Military Command College in political theory, military history, and military operations. So is probably better versed in political processes and institutions than 90% of congressmen.

He served twenty-two years as a commissioned officer in the military including both Gulf Wars serving in Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He earned a bronze star, Meritorious Service Medal (2 oak clusters), Army Commendation Medal (2 oak Cluster, Valor Device), Army Achievement Medal (1 oak cluster), Valorous Unit Award, Air Assault Badge, and Parachutist Bade, as well as ten service medals. After his retirement he worked as a high school history teacher, a college ROTC instructor, and a regional director for a military consultancy to the Afghan army.

West is both a fiscal and social conservative. He sees the last fifty years of liberal social programs and policies as trapping the poor in a culture of welfare and dependency. He has an overriding respect for the U.S. Constitution and is a deeply committed patriot. He has probably the clearest understanding of any person in Congress of the Muslim religion and the threat of both conquest by migration and conquest by aggression that exists from the radical elements of the faith. He has great clarity of thought and a direct and unapologetically sincere mode of speech. He is a motivator and is himself very motivated – he is able to think on his feet, does not need a teleprompter, and is unafraid of debate and discussion.

So the way I rank my favorite five candidates is:
1. Mitt Romney
2. Allen West
3. Sarah Palin
4. Mike Huckabee
5. Jon Huntsman

I could happily support a ticket that has any two of these five on it, but feel the strongest ticket would be Mitt Romney and Allen West, because they nearly perfectly complement each other with their individual strengths. Romney is excellent in economics, business, fiscal responsibility, Administration, and practical day to day politics. West is excellent in international politics, national security, the military, crisis management, and Middle East issues, a critical gap in the current administration.  It is important that the ticket have truely qualified candidates, that they form a strong team, and that they appeal to voters accross the broad spectrum of Republican politics.  To win the must pick up independents, Libertarians, and Democrats.

If this ticket should come about, I could see Palin as Secretary of Interior, Huntsman as Secretary of State, and my preferences for Huckabee include chairman of the FCC (this wouldn’t be possible if he still has ownership in radio and TV stations), or as a white house assistant for reducing government, combining and eliminating cabinet positions and moving functions that belong to the states back to the states, or as transitional Secretary of Education or Energy to transition the department out of existence.

The final segment, part 5, of this series of blogs, will look at those not on my list who are considered or are considering becoming candidates.