Category: 2012

Country getting desperate for conservative change

By Joe Gruters

The news out of Washington — even at the subdued, unenthusiastic rate of the mainstream media — makes it more painfully clear every day that we have got to get more conservative Republicans in office.

The first goal is to win the U.S. Senate in 2014. Florida does not have a direct dog in that fight, but really everybody does. Here’s why.

Senate President Harry Reid is planning to eliminate some portions of the problematic Gang of Eight bill and insert a substitute amendment that includes the Corker-Hoeven amendment and the rest of the Gang of Eight’s bill. It becomes a 1,200-page bill no ones has read, just like Obamacare.

Then Reid is planning to refuse to allow any other amendments and move straight to final passage of the bill in the Senate. Debate is being cut off Wednesday in time for a final vote, just two days after debate started on the new bill — on 1,200 pages no one is sure of — and final passage is probably before the July 4 break.

Democrats are planning to try to ram another fiasco for the country through. Even if it is stopped in the House, the Democrats will simply use it as a campaign issue. A few Senate victories in 2012 and none of this would be happening.

On the executive branch, the mischief just gets more nefarious.

Fox News reported over the weekend that the Obama administration is suing Dollar General and a BMW facility in South Carolina for the alleged unfair use of criminal background checks for job applicants. The lawsuit comes just a few months after the feds warned companies about how such screenings can discriminate against African Americans.

Yup, under Obama, if you check an applicants’ criminal background you’re racist.

Last year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued new guidelines that cautioned against rejecting minority applicants who have committed a crime and recommended businesses eliminate policies that “exclude people from employment based on a criminal record.”

Wow. That is awful on so many levels. In addition to defying common sense (by people who clearly have never run a company) it is another freedom-squelching intrusion by the federal government into our everyday lives.

The Chicago Tribune, of all places, published an editorial Sunday explaining why the rollout of Obamacare will be a mess. “The rollout of Obamacare later this year is likely to bring a rate shock for many Americans who will buy health insurance from state marketplaces known as exchanges. How much will premiums jump? Officials at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services won’t say. It could be that HHS is keeping a lid on rates because it wants to avoid a California-like debacle.”

The editorial went on to quote one unnamed top Democrat as saying the rollout will be a “train wreck.”

Republicans can’t give up on fighting Obamacare at every turn. Want more evidence?

The Conservative News Services reported that the Internal Revenue Service sent 23,994 tax refunds worth a combined $46.4 million to “unauthorized” alien workers who all used the same address in Atlanta, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

According to CNS: “That was not the only Atlanta address theoretically used by thousands of ‘unauthorized’ alien workers receiving millions in federal tax refunds in 2011. In fact, according to a Treasury Inspector General audit report published last year, four of the top ten addresses to which the IRS sent thousands of tax refunds to ‘unauthorized’ aliens were in Atlanta.”

Remember, and this is critical, the IRS is in charge of enforcing Obamacare. Not only has the organization proved itself corrupt and partisan, it is also apparently grossly incompetent — and in charge of one-seventh of the U.S. economy. What a disaster.

Republicans have to fight and fight and fight against Obamacare at every step. We can’t give up. And we can’t give up on border security and the rule of law. Everything remains at stake. So we need the U.S. Senate back first and get stronger in the House in 2014. That’s only next year, 17 months. Then we can think about 2016.

Thanks for being informed and engaged.

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Steyn: The Benghazi Lie

This is a must read column from Mark Steyn for National Review:

Shortly before last November’s election I took part in a Fox News documentary on Benghazi, whose other participants included the former governor of New Hampshire John Sununu. Making chit-chat while the camera crew were setting up, Governor Sununu said to me that in his view Benghazi mattered because it was “a question of character.” That’s correct. On a question of foreign policy or counterterrorism strategy, men of good faith can make the wrong decisions. But a failure of character corrodes the integrity of the state.

That’s why career diplomat Gregory Hicks’s testimony was so damning — not so much for the new facts as for what those facts revealed about the leaders of this republic. In this space in January, I noted that Hillary Clinton had denied ever seeing Ambassador Stevens’s warnings about deteriorating security in Libya on the grounds that “1.43 million cables come to my office” — and she can’t be expected to see all of them, or any. Once Ambassador Stevens was in his flag-draped coffin listening to her eulogy for him at Andrews Air Force Base, he was her bestest friend in the world — it was all “Chris this” and “Chris that,” as if they’d known each other since third grade. But up till that point he was just one of 1.43 million close personal friends of Hillary trying in vain to get her ear.

Now we know that at 8 p.m. Eastern time on the last night of Stevens’s life, his deputy in Libya spoke to Secretary Clinton and informed her of the attack in Benghazi and the fact that the ambassador was now missing. An hour later, Gregory Hicks received a call from the then–Libyan prime minister, Abdurrahim el-Keib, informing him that Stevens was dead. Hicks immediately called Washington. It was 9 p.m. Eastern time, or 3 a.m. in Libya. Remember the Clinton presidential team’s most famous campaign ad? About how Hillary would be ready to take that 3 a.m. call? Four years later, the phone rings, and Secretary Clinton’s not there. She doesn’t call Hicks back that evening. Or the following day.

Read the entire column here.

Michael Barone Examines The Perpetual Candidate

Washington Examiner logo - GPH Consulting

Michael Barone opens his latest column with the question, “Do we have a president or a perpetual candidate?”.

The obvious answer is that we have a perpetual candidate, an individual so inept at actual governance that all he can do is give speeches to crowds full of delusional sycophants. Like his campaign speeches where the true believers would faint and suffer dehydration, Obama prefers the adoration of the truly troubled.

Barone then goes into a great policy analysis of the current calls by the perpetual candidate to fund universal preschool:

Obama keeps talking about corporate jets because it tests well in polls.

And that’s the reason, I think, he keeps talking about universal preschool, not just for disadvantaged children.

Polls show that large majorities of Americans would be willing to have more government money spent for preschool for disadvantaged children. The impulse to help adorable but needy little kids is very strong.

Unfortunately, the evidence that preschool programs do any permanent good for such children is exceedingly weak.

Preschool advocates point to a 1960s program in Ypsilanti, Mich., and a 1970s North Carolina program called Abecedarian. Research showed those programs produced lasting gains in learning.

But no one has been able to replicate the success of these very small programs staffed by unusually dedicated people. Mass programs like Head Start staffed by more ordinary people don’t work as well.

Kids in such programs seem to make no perceptible lasting gains. That’s too bad, because disadvantaged kids need help.

So why is Obama emphasizing universal preschool, which would cost a lot more than preschool for the disadvantaged? The reason, I suspect, is that you would have to hire lots more credentialed teachers, which means you would get lots more teacher union members.

Teacher union leaders would love to see more dues money coming in, and to channel more to the Democratic Party.

To my suspicious eye, the preschool proposal doesn’t make much sense as policy, but it makes a lot of sense as politics.

Demagoguery about preschool and corporate jets is not going to convince Republicans that Obama can be a reliable negotiating partner.

That is as succinct an analysis as I have read about the issue of the perpetual candidate’s calls for universal preschool. Barone is absolutely right, this universal preschool boondoggle is nothing more than a scheme to build up the Democrat base.

I also want to point out this particular comment by Barone, and it is not to pick on him, but it is to further clarify the actual belief:

Polls show that large majorities of Americans would be willing to have more government money spent for preschool for disadvantaged children. The impulse to help adorable but needy little kids is very strong.

This does not mean that the “majorities of Americans” are willing to have their taxes increased. It means that if they are already sending $20,000 a year to the federal government, the government should direct more of that $20,000 to this preschool boondoggle. That would mean cutting money spent somewhere else. That is a tall task in Washington D.C., a task I do not expect to see come to pass.

America Missed

By Steve Parkhurst

As the new year is now underway, the personal shock of the 2012 election has still not set in for me. In my mind I keep re-playing this brief speech excerpt from Paul Ryan just before the November election:

PAUL RYAN: “Our commitment is really clear. We’re saying here are the solutions; here are the principles we’re going to use; here’s our proven bipartisan track record of actually delivering results and getting things done; here’s what we’re going to do. And I’ve got to tell you, 2013 could be a renaissance in America, in the world and in America. 2013 can be the year we get our economy growing, we start creating 12 million new jobs, we put these pro-growth policies in place and we reaffirm the American idea by electing Mitt Romney the next President of the United States.” – Full kudos to Breitbart for the video and transcript.

Time will tell, but as of now, I feel like America missed as great opportunity with a Romney Presidency. Not only would Barack Obama not be a President with nothing to fear as he will never again appear on a ballot, but we still do not have a credible business, a CEO-type in the Oval Office. We have an excuse maker with no track record of accomplishments and no history of being held accountable for failure. Mitt Romney may not have turned out to be the next Ronald Reagan or Calvin Coolidge, but he would have been a tremendous improvement over the current President.

Now, we’ll never know. This video keeps reminding me of the great opportunity we had in 2012 and beyond.

America missed.

Jack Kemp, Poverty and the Road Ahead for the GOP

The Sacramento Bee has a column today about the Republican party and its need to show it “cares about people”. There are any number of analyses since the November election about how the party can reform itself. At this point, I have not seen the exact right “silver bullet” theory that in my mind would turn the GOP ship around. In this column today, I was struck by the reference to Jack Kemp, at which point I think the author made some of his strongest points:

When Jack Kemp was on the national stage he addressed the real issues of poverty in our country, and once again, it is time for this debate. The real issues of poverty are the focus of resources on the people who actually need them, communities so lacking in resources that the ladder of opportunity is not stable, and crimes or unethical business practices that happen only because the people being disadvantaged are not in a position to negotiate or draw political attention.

While many of Kemp’s proposals proved to be too costly, he forced Republicans to critically think about an issue that affects millions of Americans.

Any debated policy that impacts the lives of millions of Americans is most likely good politics. A serious discussion and policy proposals aimed at reducing poverty will give Republicans the opportunity to break the stereotype that they are only for the rich. This is a path based on principle that also allows the Republican Party and its leaders to move into demographic areas it needs to win elections.

Read the rest of the column here.

There are some real opportunities here for this effort to show the Republican party “cares about people”. The Republican party has always had the right position on welfare reform. The idea is to reform the system so that those who are able and willing can return to work. Instead, the system cripples those with initiative or desire. The welfare system needs to be looked at as an investment in a future, an investment in American workers. There should be skill training or jobs training that goes along with a check from the government.

Anyway, show me a democrat thinking along these same lines, and then we’re onto something. Until then, Jack Kemp and his proteges like Congressman Paul Ryan are the only ones with real answers and real solutions.

What are your thoughts? Share them with us here on the blog, or tweet us @GPHconsulting.

Gun Control Ad From 1981; They Never Quit

By Steve Parkhurst

It was interesting recently to happen upon this anti-gun/pro-gun control ad in an issue of Time Magazine from 1981. This ad took up about half of a page in Time magazine, I’m sure that cost a pretty penny at the time. Plenty of shoddy, nonsensical “facts” were used here to attempt to state their case for gun confiscation.

This ad just goes to show that some phony arguments never go away. The gun is not the issue, the person in control of the gun is the issue. Timothy McVeigh…did he have a gun? Did the 9-11 hijackers have guns 1) to take over the airplanes, or 2) to use the airplanes themselves as weapons? There are numerous other examples of mass murders being committed, yet the pathological Leftist politicians, with the help of the media and their friends in Hollywood, never get around to the facts.

Remember Benghazi, and how the media did not want to report on anything related to Benghazi until they knew all the facts? If only such high standards were in place after Newtown. Apparently three months is all it takes to abandon media integrity.

The argument is not really about guns, is it? It is about control. It is about the limits to which the government can take away more freedom in the name of safety. Like the boiling frog, they’ll keep trying until we’re cooked. A little at a time, inch by inch, they’ll keep trying. They’ve waged this phony war for nearly 32 years and then some.

1981 Gun Control Ad - GPH Consulting

Scott Brown For Senate In 2010, 2012, 2013, and 2014?

I saw this tweet earlier, and it really made me think about the road Scott Brown has traveled. It’s pretty crazy. Assuming Senator John Kerry gets the nod for Secretary of State, the next two years for Scott Brown, may be like the last three years.

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