Tag: 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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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.

David Cameron’s New Year Message 2013

Prime Minister David Cameron has issued a New Year message. I think the Prime Minister’s statement “we can look to the future with realism and optimism”, is an interesting sentiment and I think it is well said.

We’re posting the video and the full text of the statement.

2012 was an extraordinary year for our country. We celebrated our Queen with the Jubilee. And with the Olympics and Paralympics we showed beyond any doubt that Britain can deliver. It was a great year. But, if we are honest, it was a tough one too.

We are still dealing with debts that built up over many years. And for many families, making ends meet is difficult. So to anyone starting this New Year with questions about where we are heading and what the future holds, I want to reassure you of this: we are on the right track. On all the big issues that matter to Britain, we are heading in the right direction and I have the evidence to prove it.

This government inherited a huge budget deficit that was dragging our country down. Well, this New Year, that deficit is forecast to be £13 billion smaller than last New Year, down by one quarter since we came to office.

We inherited a welfare system that was frankly out of shape, that paid people not to work. So we made some big changes, and this New Year almost half a million more people are in work than last New Year. That is real progress.

We inherited an education system where too often mediocre was deemed good enough and discipline in many schools was slack. We said we need more discipline, tougher exams and more academies because those schools consistently get better results. Well, this New Year we’ve got more than 1,000 academies open than last New Year. The numbers studying science and languages are going up. And teachers have more power over discipline than they’ve had for years. This is, quite simply, a government in a hurry. And there’s a reason for that.

Britain is in a global race to succeed today. It is race with countries like China, India and Indonesia; a race for the jobs and opportunities of the future. So when people say we can slow down on cutting our debts, we are saying no. We can’t win in this world with a great millstone of debt round our necks.

When people say we’ve got to stop our welfare reforms because somehow it is cruel to expect people to work, we are saying no. Getting people into good jobs is absolutely vital, not just for them, but for all of us. And when there is a fight on our hands to change our schools, we are ready and willing to have it because having a world-class education is the only way our children are going to get on in this world.

And we know what we are doing all this for: not just to get our country up the rankings in some global league table but to get behind anyone who likes to work hard and get on in life. It’s for those people that we made changes to our tax system in 2012, cutting the income tax bills of 24 million workers. It is for them that we have frozen the council tax for three years in a row, to keep bills as low as we can.

And we did the right thing by our pensioners too, in 2012, bringing in the biggest ever increase in the state pension. This is what this government is about: making sure Britain succeeds in this global race and, above all, helping our people succeed, the people who work hard and aspire to a better life for their families.

So this is my message to the country at the start of 2013. We can look to the future with realism and optimism. Realism, because you can’t cure problems, that were decades in the making, overnight. There are no quick fixes and I wouldn’t claim otherwise. But we can be optimistic too because we are making tangible progress. We are doing what’s right for our country and what’s best for our children’s future. And nothing could be more important than that.

So Happy New Year and best wishes for 2013.

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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Ryan, Rubio, Kemp And The Republican Future

By Steve Parkhurst

Last Night, Congressman Paul Ryan and Senator Marco Rubio spoke on the future of the Republican party at the 2012 Jack Kemp Leadership Award Dinner.

It’s no secret I am an avid admirer of the late Jack Kemp, and the man who many have determined to be his protege, Congressman Paul Ryan. I’ve also become a fan of Marco Rubio. The irony is not lost on me that two men who want to bring all Americans into the fold (and both possibly have the best chance to do so) were the featured speakers and the two most recent winners of the Jack Kemp Leadership Award.

Rather than quoting speeches and singling out highlights, here are both speeches in their entirety.

Where Are Those Colorado Professors?

I’m just throwing this out there as I have not researched or conducted a Bing or Google search, but leading up to the election I heard and read plenty about those two Colorado professors. You know, the ones who had a winning electoral model going back to 1980. They had Romney winning in a landslide.

Have we heard from the professors since last Tuesday? Anyone? Bueller?

Romney Ad: Bigger, Better America

At this point, with less than 2 full days of campaign left, this could be Mitt Romney‘s final ad, or close to final ad. I feel the ad presents a positive, optimistic, upbeat message. Romney will be campaigning the rest of today, including in front of anticipated huge crowds in Pennsylvania and Virginia, so there could yet be ads featuring those crowds.