06-16-11
Rick Perry. Watch the guy. If he runs, there won’t be any more boring debates. I met him Tuesday in NYC and heard him speak. He is the nation’s longest serving Governor. Half the U.S. jobs created since June 2009 were created in Texas. He understands that deficits cannot be fixed without solid pro-growth, low-tax policies. He connected quite well with his Manhattan audience. And he was wearing cowboy boots.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYavtAuCVr0
Congressman Anthony Weiner.
6-10-11
I take no delight in what happened to the Congressman, and I am not going to pile on. His friends are already doing that.
There are however, lessons in this for all those in public life.
We are human, and we have all said or done something we’d rather not read on the front page of the New York Times. Public officials are fallible, and they do sometimes make colossal errors in judgment.
If you are in public life and make a mistake, here is the rule. Don’t lie. Get your story straight and stick to it. Admit that you made a mistake. Apologize. Take full responsibility, even if others are at fault.
What usually ends a career is not the mistake, because Americans have, and will forgive someone who is truly repentant. What they can’t stand are those who lie about what they did, blame someone else or try to cover up their misdeeds.
If you are thinking about running for office, never assume that some stupid thing you once said or did will remain a secret. It won’t.
Early in your campaign put it out and do it on your terms, because if you don’t your opponent will, and they won’t be nice when they do it, and if the sin in your past is new news to a reporter, I can guarantee you that it will be a story.
Telling the press about your problems up front does not ensure they will never be raised in the campaign, or that reporters will never write a story about the dumb thing you did. But pre-empting your problem with the press will improve your chances of having your side of the story in the story.
You’ll be treated better than if you try to hide it and if you are really lucky, the press will decide that your past problem is not a story at all. I can also make this guarantee. If you don’t mention and explain up front something that could be potentially fatal to your campaign, it will probably be fatal.
For more about the dos and don’ts of dealing with the press, visit the training tools section of my website, JayTownsend.com. I’ll bet Congressman Weiner wishes he’d done that a couple weeks ago.
The Recovering Economy that Isn’t.
6-6-11
Last week’s job numbers sent the Dow tumbling. Unemployment numbers jumped. And the President declared it a mere bump in the road.
Mr. President, it is not a bump in the road. It’s a road block and you put it there.
Any American who knows how to read knows that our deficit spending is on an unsustainable path. Yet when times demand your leadership to stem this tsunami of red ink, you trash talk anybody who dares to suggest a solution.
The price of gas has nearly tripled since you took office Mr. President, yet you now road block any attempt to explore for new sources of fossil fuel. During your tenure we have become even more dependent on foreign sources of fossil fuel and your regulators at the EPA are doing their level best to kill energy exploration on U.S. soil and coastal waters.
The federal reserve is devaluing our currency and creating inflation, which undermines the value of the dollar.
Obamacare is costing the private sector billions, and middle class taxes are going up. Companies are lined up at the White House to get wavers from your health care scheme. McDonalds created nearly 30,000 of the 54,000 new jobs last month after you gave it a waiver from Obamacare. Here’s an idea. Give everybody a waiver.
Your National Labor Relations Board is threatening to close a new billion dollar Boeing facility in South Carolina because it dared to locate its plant in a right to work state.
At every turn you demonize the companies that create jobs, Mr. President, and threaten to raise their taxes, even though our business taxes are already the highest on earth.
In short Mr. President, Americans don’t have much confidence in the economy because they don’t have much confidence in you. That’s not their fault Mr. President. It’s yours.
Ethanol and Iowa.
6-1-11
The U.S. government does a lot of stupid things, perhaps none more stupid than our policy on ethanol.
We subsidize the people who grow corn. We then divert 40% of the corn they grow to the production of ethanol. Then we further protect the corn producers and the makers of ethanol by slapping tariffs on imported sugarcane, which would be a cheaper way to produce ethanol.
Stupid. Yes stupid. Because it takes more fossil fuel to create a gallon of ethanol than we save by producing it.
Stupid. Yes stupid. Because ethanol creates more wear and tear on your automobile engine than gasoline, which shortens the life of your car.
Stupid. Yes stupid.
Because all of us are paying more for food because nearly half our corn crop is being used to produce automobile fuel. Because we are using all that corn for fuel, the price of corn is up more than 70%. Wonder why the price of eggs, chicken, beef, bacon, lamb, and corn flakes have skyrocketed? Now you know. Oh, and let’s not forget that because of the rising cost of food, the cost of food stamps and the number of people using them has also skyrocketed.
Which brings up the subject of Iowa, and the crop of Presidential candidates who are now campaigning there.
Iowa loves ethanol because it has a lot of corn growers who are doing really well thanks to the subsidies, the protective tariffs, the tax credits and rising land prices.
Kudos to Tim Pawlenty for being the first to say in Iowa that the stupidity must end.
Let’s see if the other Presidential candidates have the courage to follow his lead.
Referendum on the Ryan Plan.
5-25-11
So now the dust has settled in that special congressional election in NY 26, a conservative Republican district in which a Republican was defeated.
Why? The Republican dared to endorse a plan to reform entitlement spending.
Democrats then had a conniption. And won a special election with an ad showing grandma being hurled over a cliff.
Today, the Democrats gloat, believing they have now found a winning message. Instead of talking about how to pay for entitlements that are not funded, democrats will be content to kick the can down the road and tell our kids to deal with the mess they are leaving behind.
*A national debt burden that has grown from 1 trillion to 14 trillion the last 30 years.
*A Medicare trust fund that will be out of money in 13 years.
*A social security system that will go belly up before today’s high school seniors reach the age of 40.
Meanwhile, as democrats chortle at the success of their demagoguery, the debt bomb keeps ticking, democrats in the Senate refuse to pass a budget, and the President demands Congress raise the debt ceiling by another 2 trillion dollars with no discussion of how we stop this tide of red ink.
For some reason I doubt that our kids are going to find anything funny about the mess that we of the me generation have made of the camp site. At some point, the adults in Washington will need to excuse the juveniles from the room and force an intelligent discussion about the kind of country we are going to bequeath the next generation.
Last One Out Turn Out the Light
5-17-11
New York State is a pretty generous place if you need a hand out.
We spend more on Medicaid than Florida, Texas and California combined. A billion dollars a week.
More than a quarter of the 20 million who live in New York are on some sort of public assistance.
Now you’d think with this utopian dream that New York politicians have created that people would be flocking to New York, and indeed we have become a magnet for those who are wards of the state, dependent upon the wage earners and taxpayers for their food, their housing and their health care.
But we are paying a price.
We have the worst business climate in America. The second highest state and local tax burden in the nation.
During the last 10 years, 1.7 million people have fled the State of New York. Half a million jobs have disappeared. And according to a recent Marist Poll, one-third of those under the age of 30 plan to leave New York just as soon as they can.
Little wonder that the young want no part of the price that must be paid for turning New York into a welfare Mecca.
Meanwhile, the newspapers say they are creating a lot of new jobs in Texas.
Would the last one to leave New York out please turn off the lights?
“Medicare’s main trust fund will be depleted by 2024. The Social Security trust fund is now projected to last until 2036. This year also marks the first time that both programs are paying out more in benefits than they collect in revenue…” Oh Well. At least we are in “investing” in high speed rail and subsidizing solar panels.
Obama “announced on Saturday that he was taking several steps to speed oil and gas drilling on public lands and waters.” If this was such a dumb idea yesterday, why does Obama think it is such a great idea today? I’m willing to bet that he finally noticed that we are noticing the price of gas.
“The oil companies charging these exorbitant prices are picking through New Yorkers’ pockets through the tax code, collecting billions of dollars every year in unnecessary taxpayer subsidies,” said Chuck Schumer this week. This from a Senator who specializes in tax code deals for those willing to pony up. Translation. “The oil companies didn’t pay me enough.”
That War in Libya. There being no consensus, Senator John McCain says that Congress will not act before the May 20 deadline to authorize military engagement in Libya. If there is no consensus in Congress to support a resolution authorizing war, why the hell are we waging an unauthorized war against a country that did not attack us, a country in which we have no vital interests?
Democrat Schumer…“…we will be introducing legislation that will promote conservation, that will promote alternative energy and that will do many things to reduce the price.” Democrat Sen Landrieu…if I were (an oil executive), I would be tempted to just shut off the spigots and go elsewhere and maybe America could run everything on solar power for the next decade or two and see what happens.”
Donald. Please Go Away. “All of my life I have heard that very successful people cannot run for high office. I have just heard it many times…I had no idea I would get hammered the way I got hammered over the last three or four weeks. I think it is a compliment. I’m not sure.” In uttering 51 words, Trump used “I” seven times. This guy is a bigger egomaniac than Obama.
I’ve been generous with my praise so far, for Andrew is one of the few (if only) democratic Governors in the country who cut spending and stood down the class warfare clowns in his own party. His next test is the property tax cap. It needs to be ironclad (no exemptions) coupled with mandate relief. Otherwise NY will continue to hemorrhage jobs, and taxpayers.
