Ron Paul’s Economic Plan: Cut 5 Cabinet Agencies, Cut Taxes, Cut President’s Pay - Washington Wire - WSJ

Mr. Paul’s “Restore America” plan calls for a drastically reduced federal government to help spur American business — a familiar theme for the Texas Republican and many of the GOP White House hopefuls. But unlike some of his Republican rivals who have released economic plans, the libertarian congressman mostly avoids the weeds of tax and trade policy, according to excerpts.

But Mr. Paul does get specific when he calls for a 10% reduction in the federal work force, while pledging to limit his presidential salary to $39,336, which his campaign says is “approximately equal to the median personal income of the American worker.” The current pay rate for commander in chief is $400,000 a year.

The Paul plan would also lower the corporate tax rate to 15% from 35%, though it is silent on personal income tax rates, which Mr. Paul would like to abolish. The congressman would end taxes on personal savings and extend “all Bush tax cuts.”

He would also allow U.S. firms to repatriate capital without additional taxes. Some lawmakers have recently proposed such legislation as a way to spur job growth. Its critics argue that a tax holiday for companies with money abroad has not historically led to domestic investment.

But the plan, at its heart, is libertarian. While promising to cut $1 trillion in spending during his first year, Mr. Paul would eliminate the Departments of Education, Commerce, Energy, Interior and Housing and Urban Development. When former Massachusetts Gov. MItt Romney unveiled his economic plan last month, he said he would submit legislation to reduce nonsecurity, discretionary spending by $20 billion.

Ron Paul’s Economic Plan: Cut 5 Cabinet Agencies, Cut Taxes, Cut President’s Pay - Washington Wire - WSJ

News from The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration Friday pulled the plug on a major program in the president's signature health overhaul law - a long-term care insurance plan dogged from the beginning by doubts over its financial solvency.

Targeted by congressional Republicans for repeal, the program became the first casualty in the political and policy wars over the health care law. It had been expected to launch in 2013.

"This is a victory for the American taxpayer and future generations," said Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., spearheading opposition in the Senate. "The administration is finally admitting (the long-term care plan) is unsustainable and cannot be implemented."

News from The Associated Press

The American Spectator : Andrew Jackson: Tea Party President

But, if Roosevelt is no proper model, who among past presidents should Republicans turn to for lessons and guidance? Who is the Tea Party progenitor? Who offers the insight, outlook, and rhetoric for today's GOP?

The answer is Andrew Jackson, who would have slapped down the notion of American greatness conservatism with utter contempt because he believed the country's greatness emanated from its people, not its government. Jackson was the great conservative populist of American history, and his story bears study at a time when the country seems receptive to a well-crafted brand of conservative populism.

Indeed, conservative populism is the essence of the Tea Party -- opposed to big, intrusive government; angry about the corporate bailouts of the late Bush and early Obama administrations; fearful of the consequences of fiscal incontinence; suspicious of governmental favoritism; wary of excessive global ambition.

These concerns and fears were Jackson's concerns and fears 180 years ago when he became president, and his greatest legacy is his constant warning that governmental encroachments would lead to precisely the kinds of problems that are today besieging the country -- and roiling the Tea Party. That legacy deserves attention.

The American Spectator : Andrew Jackson: Tea Party President

GOP eyes tax breaks, loopholes - Richard E. Cohen - POLITICO.com

Last week’s resounding votes on ethanol subsidies were just the start. Republicans are now starting to eye all sorts of tax breaks and special-interest loopholes once considered sacred cows as they seek ways to increase government revenue without actually raising tax rates.

The targeting of long-protected tax breaks — for ethanol, research and development, manufacturing and foreign company income — is a sign that key House Republicans are ready to break with the orthodoxy of past tax debates while ditching special interests that have long held sway in tax reform discussions.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0611/57382.html#ixzz1Pw7MGSiW

GOP eyes tax breaks, loopholes - Richard E. Cohen - POLITICO.com

Boehner: Next fight to be about trillions, not billions - USATODAY.com

The Path to Prosperity is a powerful blueprint for economic growth and fiscal responsibility that will help our economy get back to creating jobs, stop Washington from spending money we don't have, and lift the crushing burden of debt that threatens our children and grandchildren.

Before serving in Congress, I ran a small business. Created jobs. Met a payroll. I understand how important the Path to Prosperity is because I've seen firsthand how irresponsible choices in Washington hamper our economy by creating uncertainty and eroding confidence.

Small businesses are the engine of job creation in America, and every decision a small business owner makes — particularly when it comes to making a new investment or adding payroll — involves weighing risks.

When government engages in policies that rattle confidence or decrease predictability, employers tend to do the logical thing: They sit on their hands. Rather than hiring new workers, launching new ventures, or investing in new equipment, they stand pat, keep their heads down and attempt to ride it out.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2011-04-11-column11_ST1_N.htm

Obama Puts Taxes on Table - WSJ.com

What he shows no awareness of is that it is people who have wealth who are the ones who invest it in business and thus create the jobs he says he wants.  By raising taxes on "the wealthy"--in fact the upper middle class--Obama's policies are anti-growth, anti-wealth, and hurt everyone, especially those at the bottom of the wage scale.  We need those investment dollars.  We need to know that we don't have a government that hates success, hates wealth, and is perfectly willing to sacrifice those who earn a lot for the benefit who live off the rest of us.

In a speech Wednesday, Mr. Obama will propose cuts to entitlement programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, and changes to Social Security, a discussion he has largely left to Democrats and Republicans in Congress. He also will call for tax increases for people making over $250,000 a year, a proposal contained in his 2012 budget, and changing parts of the tax code he thinks benefit the wealthy.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704366104576255282893680792.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

Capitalism Magazine - Shutdown

As usual, right on the money:

The current Congress faces the same risk. While it's important to cut programs and prove you're willing to do so, fiscal discipline is not the overriding purpose. Nancy Pelosi and fellow liberals are already arguing back that cutting government programs will result in the loss of jobs.
In some cases, this may actually be true, since government programs do require jobs and pay salaries. What's the Republican reply to this? It should be: "So what? Government has stolen that money from the private, productive sector. Instead of creating productive jobs in productive businesses that people want, government is taxing people to create jobs for political cronies and pressure groups."
If your sense of purpose stems from the value of individual rights, capitalism and limited government, you can make this argument. If your central purpose is nothing more than "fiscal discipline" and balancing the budget, you cannot.

Capitalism Magazine - Shutdown

The American Spectator : Is Scott Walker the Next Calvin Coolidge?

That attention is coming Walker's way, it is impossible not to note, precisely for the same reason as it gravitated to Coolidge: a highly public -- and distinctly popular -- fight over the rights of bullying public employee unions. Taxpayer-funded unions that have deliberately targeted working families and the American middle class -- communicating a series of messages designed to infuriate: Your money or your kids. Your money or your safety. Your money or a phony doctor's excuse.

The American Spectator : Is Scott Walker the Next Calvin Coolidge?

Abolish Public Sector Unions

There can be no justification for public employees to be in unions, since the employer is the government, not a private business. Government employees have no right to strike against the public, since the public has no alternative to the government. It's not as if the public has an alternative government to provide the services required.

More than this, we have a hugely corrupt system where unions, as in Wisconsin, have the government collect union dues from each employee and then the state funnels those huge amounts of money to the union bosses who then, in turn, support Democratic politicians. Those same politicians then offer cushy benefits to the unions in exchange for union political support. It is an unholy alliance between Democrats and public sector unions that cannot be economically sustained.

It amounts to nothing less than financial rape of the public and the taxpayers, and the public has voted, overwhelmingly in Wisconsin, to make a fundamental reform of this corrupt system which can only lead to economic catastrophe for the state.

In the elections of 2010, we had a vote. In Wisconsin, the voters elected the Republicans to do what they are doing, and the votes expect them to perform and get the system in order.

This is a movement toward fiscal responsibility that is occurring in other states as well, such as Ohio, where there is legislation that essentially outlaws public sector unions.

Public sector unions are an abomination and a threat to our democratic institutions, a point well understood by George Meany, President of the AFL-CIO, and FDR himself, who opposed public sector unions. All responsible public officials should oppose public sector unions for the reasons stated.

The only way we shall have fundamental change in this country is by eliminating the long-term threat to our political and economic institutions by abolishing, or severely reigning in, the monopolistic power of public sector unions.

Even the voters of Wisconsin understand this, finally. Those in California apparently do not and will suffer accordingly.

And what about all those 14 Democrats who have abandoned their jobs to represent the people in their districts in Wisconsin? They have a moral and legal obligation to come back to the legislature and vote.

They will lose, but as President Obama has said over legislation he has favored: "We won the election." Precisely. In Wisconsin, the Republicans won, overwhelmingly. In 2012, the voters will get another chance to change their opinion, if that's what they want to do.

The Republicans will win, if they actually do what they've promised to do. Governor Walker is doing exactly what he said he would do. No surprise there, and the public supports him.

Capitalism Magazine - Oprah and Obama

Unfortunately, the new Republican House of Representatives isn't getting it right. Perhaps they mean well, but you cannot accomplish great things merely by meaning to do so.

If the House leaders really wanted to change the direction of American politics and government, they would propose boldly. For example, they'd propose eliminating entire Cabinet departments, such as Education and Commerce. They'd propose this as only a start. They wouldn't squirm and argue amongst themselves over whether or how to return spending to 2008 levels. Returning spending to 2008 levels implies that the Bush Administration and the Congress of his era were right about spending -- the exact opposite of what they claim to believe.

Capitalism Magazine - House Republicans Use a Shovel When a Bulldozer is Needed

Capitalism Magazine - Oprah and Obama

Of course Obama has a hard job. He's trying to do the impossible -- and the immoral. He's trying to turn America's semi-socialist/semi-capitalist democracy into a mostly or totally socialist nation. In his first two years in his office, he went about this as decisively and calmly as anyone in American history has ever done. By the standards of expanding socialism in the United States, Obama has been quite competent. This is precisely why his opponents oppose him. Oprah is either too stupid or too evasive to respond to the real reason that so many Americans don't like Obama: They resent, or even despise, his ideas and his policies. To speak in the language of Oprah: Oprah doesn't get it.
Oprah is doing what liberal partisans typically do. They bypass ideological issues and respond with personal ones. Oprah relies on people assuming that both parties are more or less the same, and that you get more or less the same thing when either one is in office -- so it's merely a matter of personality, style, competence and patience.
Sadly, this is all too true. Republicans have been expanders of and tax collectors for the welfare state no less than the Democrats, for many decades now. But none of this changes the fact that widespread opposition to Obama has come from people who oppose conventional Republicans just as much, for their enabling of the massive socialist, authoritarian democracy America has slowly become.

Capitalism Magazine - Oprah and Obama

Capitalism Magazine - The Hypocrisy Underlying Obama's Speech

Desperate Americans, even some "conservatives," look to Obama during a time of crisis to distract us from the disastrous course we have been on for years, a course which Obama has accelerated at full throttle. They made Obama's speech a litmus test. They fooled themselves into thinking that if Obama didn't use the speech to blast Rush Limbaugh or other opponents, then he must be a good guy after all.
People this naive deserve what they get. What they're going to get in the coming months is more socialism, more taxation, more Big Government and more censorship of people who disagree than this nation has ever seen.
If Obama's opponents in Congress allow this unrelated tragedy to become an excuse for what liberals do best -- promoting raw emotionalism over reason and facts -- then they deserve to lose the ground they worked so hard to gain. Here’s hoping we get back to reality … and soon.

Capitalism Magazine - The Hypocrisy Underlying Obama's Speech

The American Spectator : Caplan's Constitution

"Far from being an obstacle to solving our economic problems, fidelity to the Constitution would have prevented many of them. If the federal government operated within constitutional constraints, we would not stand on the brink of national bankruptcy. Our currency would not be debased. The federal government would not be inflating real estate or investment bubbles. Taxes would be much lower yet there would not be deficits as far as the eye can see."
The American Spectator : Caplan's Constitution

The American Spectator : Opposing Obama

I thought the article was pretty insightful about Obama. I just have to laugh, however, in reading so many of the comments that simply ignore the role of George W. Bush in advancing the cause of Leviathan. Granted, Quinn brings up Clinton, but his focus in on Obama. Yet on and on, the comments spew their disdain and hatred for Clinton, a president, who, with a conservative Republican Congress, gave us some of the best, most limited government we've had for decades.

George Bush wanted to transform the world by using Leviathan to advance "freedom" not understanding how self-contradictory and inconsistent it is to create a Leviathan in order to transform the world. Thus we got the Second Iraq War.

GWB created the TSA. He's the president who passed the bank bailouts. He's the president who increased spending and vastly expanded the scope and power of the federal government.
Yet one hears not a peep of criticism. Bush was not a conservative. Advancing the unholy alliance between religion and conservatism, Bush demonstrated that philosophies of government have a moral foundation and when that foundation is based on the religious morality of altruism, of the view of man that claims his life has worth only when sacrificed for the benefit of others, then what do you expect?

Obama simply takes Bush and the religious at their word. He argues that we are all our brother's keeper. That's what altruism boils down to in practice, and that is what the Left believes. Everyone should take care of everyone else.

If you wish to advance the cause of true conservatism, i.e. limited government, protection of individual rights, then religion must not be allowed to corrupt the conservative message and the conservative goal of limiting government to the protection of individual rights, as stated in our Declaration of Independence.

Altruism is fundamentally incompatible with capitalism and with any governing philosophy whose goal is the protection of individual rights. Such a philosophy must be based on the moral premise that man has a right to live his life for his own sake, and not for the sake of others. He is an end in himself, morally, and not merely a means to the satisfaction of other men's desires, goals and purposes, no matter how "noble."

The American Spectator : Opposing Obama

Capitalism Magazine - Ideas Have Consequences

Americans have come to realize that it is wrong---morally wrong---for the government to forcibly take the earnings from those who produce values (products and services) and give that money to those who have produced nothing, or are financially irresponsible.


Capitalism Magazine - Ideas Have Consequences

American Thinker: Congressional Earmarks: Embracing and Ignoring a Message From Voters

"House Republicans seem ready to declare at least an earmark moratorium. After early resistance, most senior Senate Republicans accepted the people's November 2 verdict on earmarks, but the body, with eight foolish Republicans defending them, resolved to retain earmarks. Big mistake."
American Thinker: Congressional Earmarks: Embracing and Ignoring a Message From Voters

The Great Sweep of 2010 - Michael Barone - National Review Online

GENTRY LIBERALS: The tsunami swept from the George Washington Bridge to the Donner Pass, but didn’t wash away affluent liberals to the east and west of these geographic markers. Also surviving were the cannibals — the public-employee unions that are threatening to bankrupt states such as California and New York, a prospect that doesn’t faze the left-leaning gentry.
In these areas, Republicans picked up one House seat anchored in Staten Island, two in New Hampshire, and one in Washington State, and they came close in two California districts wholly or partly in the Central Valley. Gentry-liberal territory stayed staunchly Democratic.

The Great Sweep of 2010 - Michael Barone - National Review Online

Poll: Most Want Obama Fired In 2012 - Washington Whispers (usnews.com)

But that personal favorability doesn't translate into re-election support when voters are asked if Obama deserves a second term. Says Schoen: "Despite voters feelings toward Obama personally, 56 percent say he does not deserve to be re-elected, while 38 percent say he does deserve to be re-elected president

." Worse, Schoen adds, "43 percent say that Barack Obama has been a better president than George W. Bush, while 48 percent say Bush was a better president than Obama has been."
Poll: Most Want Obama Fired In 2012 - Washington Whispers (usnews.com)

The Sharp Political Instincts of the Tea Party Should Not be a Surprise

Now, this, my friends, is a profundity, particularly coming from Michael Barone. Let me read this to you again. "The tea party movement today, like the peace movement 40 years ago, has brought many new people into politics -- and many with sharper political instincts than their detractors in the press have been able to understand."

The Sharp Political Instincts of the Tea Party Should Not be a Surprise

There’s No Avoiding ‘Repeal and Replace’ - James C. Capretta - National Review Online

But Washington’s newcomers must not lose sight of the big enchilada on the government-reform menu: the repeal and replacement of Obamacare.
Because the hard truth is that the proponents of a supersized welfare state believe they have already won the fight. Their vision is now the law, with the government on course to control the flow of resources in the entire health sector. Even if every other idea to downsize the government is enacted, Obamacare as passed has us on the road to unlimited government — with America’s middle class increasingly dependent on the benefits they receive from elected political leaders.

There’s No Avoiding ‘Repeal and Replace’ - James C. Capretta - National Review Online