My Beauty Best Teacher

Here are ten consequences of a victory by President Barack Obama in November 2012 over Mitt Romney:

1. Obamacare will not be repealed. It is already being demonstrated to raise costs of healthcare and as its taxes and regulations sink deeper through the system, it will cause our healthcare system to increasingly be in a crisis, likely resulting in greater and greater government control to 'fix', until we have a massively inefficient and expensive and bad healthcare system.
2. The unprecedented levels of spending in Obama’s first four years will become the new floor, as America continues its experiment in reckless spending and adding up massive debt. The new normal of debt that Obama has established- $1 trillion a year of living beyond our means as a nation- will erode the value of our currency, lead to higher interest rates, lessen our national security, and eventually cause our nation to collapse. Four more years at our current levels might just about do it.
3. Job creators will face massive tax increases and more Americans will come off the tax rolls—resulting in fewer citizens with a stake in keeping taxes low and more with a stake in protecting benefits. The Bush tax cuts and other tax cuts may be allowed to expire while Obama and the Democrats who still support his failing policies will push for more taxes, fees, and fines to pay for the exploding cost of employing more and more government workers and providing ever more 'free' services and products to citizens.
4. Government dependency, already at record levels, will continue to grow. Based on the results of his first 4 years as President in which record numbers of people went on welfare, more people will go on food stamps and bridge cards and lifelong unemployment and other government programs. They will not gain job skills and any skills they have will be eroded by time, rendering them unemployable, unhappy, and dependent on elites above to provide them with what they need to live. They'll become slaves to the state, living in permanent poverty, and I don't think we can afford four more years of accepting this.
5. Four more years that we have already lost in dealing with the looming and inevitable entitlement crisis will become eight. The reforms needed for strong and healthy Social Security and Medicare programs  will need to be in place many years to avoid the collapse that is coming, and the delay of electing Obama on a myth of hope and change has already set our nation back a critical 4 years- another 4 years of Obama might change the conversation from 'implement reforms to keep these programs' to 'its a crisis and we're facing a collapse.'
6. Obama, unworried about the impact of gas and electricity prices on his reelection, will finally wage the regulatory war on fossil fuels the Left demands. As Obama stated in March, no President wanting to win re-election wants high gas prices- but a President not needing to win re-election because he is a lame duck for four years will not need to worry about high gas prices, and he is sure to wage a war to drive up the cost of gas. The cost of gasoline is a very regressive tax, which means when it goes up it hurts the poor more than the rich, and the effects of 4 more years of Obama will be a more unequal society where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
7. He will unleash the Environmental Protection Agency to impose crushing new burdens on U.S. business. Already the EPA is an agency just barely under control, in every way it can waging its green communist war against freedom and liberty and property. Another 4 years of executive orders and ever expanding budgets will make this agency uncontrollable and its regulations and policies will be a corrupting influence on any potential economic growth.
8. President Obama will continue and heighten his administration’s assault on religious freedom, expanding it into other areas in his effort to wipe out the influence of Christians in our nation. Already liberals and progressives speak about removing the 'tax-exempt' status from Churches, closing down all religious schools, and increasing the wall of separation that already exists between church and state. Eventually, once organized religion- mainly Christianity, especially Catholicism-  is walled off and isolated, personalized and demonized, he can finally kill God and replace him with himself or one of his idols.
9. Another 4 more years of Obama will gut the Defense Department, with cuts so deep that America will no longer be a superpower. Already under Obama we have abandoned our long-held policy of fighting two wars; another 4 years of Obama may lead to our inability to fight one war successfully. While the military is cut, Obama as commander-in-chief focuses on making it more gay-friendly and more green, and another four more years of this may result in the US losing its ability to protect its citizens and interests around the globe.
10. Obama could have the opportunity to appoint more Supreme Court justices, and we have seen from President Obama's past two picks for the judicial branch that he does not even pretend to try to appoint moderates and independents, rather fighting hard to advance and appoint the most partisan and extreme judges in our system. If he is given another four more years by winning re-election in November, we could be looking at a majority of the court that agrees with current liberal Justices who argue that the US Constitution is inferior to the constitutions of other states and that we should use international law instead of US law when making decisions for our nation. This extreme and rogue and partisan Court of unaccountable and unelected lawyers will be a great threat to your life, liberty, and property.

You and your family and friends should be opposing President Barack Obama and working to remove him from power because of consequences above, which are all policy options that President Obama freely chooses to engage in. Most of these policies he pushed for when his party controlled all of Congress, and even today his party still controls the Senate. No one forced him to adopt the policies above, which will have the logical and reasonable consequences I detailed. Racism, partisanship, extremism, and dislike for the guy personally are not to be found in my analysis above. Rather my analysis is based on logic, history, reason, and results, from those principles we can see the consequences of President Barack Obama winning re-election in 2012, and knowing this, we should all oppose him and vote for his likely Republican opponent Mitt Romney.

UPDATE: Thank you for linking Right Wing News and Adrienne's Catholic Corner!

If someone has been wronged or there is some sort of problem, a personal phone call from the President of the United States can be an important piece to improved understanding of the problems and can help to get past any sort of communication issues that are out there. The office of the President is one that is filled with prestige and honor, and a phone call from him that carries the weight of that august office can go far in putting pressure on people to overcome problems or calm down inflamed emotions and right wrongs. But the President's time is valuable and important, so it understandable if his personal touch isn't applied to every situation in the form of a personal phone call and it is okay if he sometimes waits several days before talking to people who are important or who have been wronged.

The important quality for the President of the United States to have is the judgement and decision-making skills to determine who he should take the time to call and when he should decide to just sit it out and not get involved. It is important that the President have the sound judgement to focus on the important issues facing our nation and use his office and the power that goes with it to improve situations and smooth past difficult issues. It is important that the President be able to decide when to use his office to bring light to issues and focus public attention on them with a phone call.

President Barack Obama (Democrat) lacks sound judgement and proper decision making when it comes to making personal phone calls and when to make them.

On April 20, 2010, the oil rig Deepwater Horizon exploded, resulting in a severe oil spill from the ruptured well. BP, which had employed Deepwater Horizon to drill on its Macondo Prospect, immediately began to work with the a range of U.S. federal government agencies and assets to try to reduce the flow of oil into the Gulf, figure out what happened, and try to assess blame and responsibility for the large oil spill. There were a lot of moving and complicated aspects of the US government tied up in this effort, and to coordinate them and make sure that they were used properly at some point the President of the United States should have talked with top level decision makers in BP, including its CEO Tony Hayward.

But for over two months, President Obama did not talk to the CEO of BP and did not make a personal phone call to him to discuss efforts to limit the oil spill, to figure out why the oil spill happened, or to figure out how to overcome the important issues that the spill brought up. This represented an important failure in judgement and a bad decision; a phone call between the President and the CEO of BP could have resulted in more coordination between BP and the US and more understanding of how and why the accident happened, resulting in less oil spilled, less wildlife killed, and a quicker resumption of drilling in the gulf and the lower oil prices and greater economic growth that would have resulted form this. Obama eventually did meet with the CEO, but it took him over two months to do so.

In contrast, two days after radio show host Rush Limbaugh called community activist Sandra Fluke a slut, President Obama took time out of his busy day to make a personal phone call to her to "offer his support to her, he wanted to express his disappointment that she has been the subject of inappropriate personal attacks and to thank her for exercising her rights as a citizen to speak out on an issue of public policy."

The quick personal phone call, especially in light of his two month long wait before calling the CEO of BP after the oil spill earlier, and the fact that he would use the office of the President to call a private citizen and apologize to her for the comments of a private radio host represents a failure of President Barack Obama's judgement and decision making with who receives a personal phone call from the President of the United States. His office phone, rather than being used to coordinate the assets of the United States or figure out how to avoid oil spills in the future, was used instead to make a quick phone call to a private citizen to give official support for their views and to side with her in a controversy between her and a radio host who is trying to generate ratings.

President Obama, rather than following important events around the world and with our economy, clearly is just sitting in the White House listening to talk radio and making phone calls to people mentioned on talk radio stations. The President did not call the CEO of BP earlier about the oil spill, even though he was called many names by bloggers, radio show hosts, and comedians, further demonstrating his poor judgement and poor decision making skills.

Our nation needs someone who understands how and when and why the President of the United States should call people, and these two examples clearly indicate that Barack Obama is lacking in judgement and decision making. We need to- and can- replace him in 2012 with someone with better judgement and decision-making skills, someone who understands that the CEO of BP should have been called in two days and that a private citizen who is called a name by a radio show host should not receive a phone call from the President.

In 2008 in my post Obama Intends on Bankrupting all Coal Producers in the US I wrote:

Check out this clip. In it, Obama tells the interviewer that he intends to put in place government policies that will bankrupt anyone who wants to build a coal power plant, and progressively ramp up pressure on coal producers already there in the hopes of bankrupting them too. He clearly states this as his goal as President- to bankrupt coal producers.

Look, a lot of people in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Colorado, or Wyoming work in the coal industry. He is telling you he intends to take your job away.

Look, a lot of our energy in this country is produced by coal. Obama is telling anyone that uses any energy at all that he intends to drive up the price of it. Combine this with his anti-drilling stances for oil, and get used to an economy that is starved for energy- high inflation, low growth, unemployment, and bad times.

The beauty of being a conservative instead of a liberal is that my predictions are usually correct more often, and 4 years ago I predicted exactly what would happen after our nation elected someone who was opposed to life, opposed to liberty, and opposed to the creation and protection of property- high inflation (maybe?), low growth (yup), unemployment (yup), and bad times (yup).

And President Barack Obama (Democrat) has followed through with his stated intentions- via the Gateway Pundit I read this anecdotal evidence that his personally-run agencies are systematically implementing rules and regulations that have caused at least 3 coal-fired plants in West Virginia to close, causing loss of jobs, higher energy prices, more people on food stamps, and more Democrat-dependent voters:

Ohio based FirstEnergy Corporation announces it will close three coal fired power plants in West Virginia by this fall. The closings come directly from the impact of new federal EPA regulations.

The plants to close are Albright Power Station, Willow Island Power Station, and the Rivesville Power Station. The company says 105 employees will be directly impacted.

The three plants produce 660 megawatts and about 3-percent of FirstEnergy’s total generation. In recent years, the plants served as “peaking facilities” and generated power during times of peak demand for power.

The plants operated under subsidiary Monongahela Power. Mon Power recently finished a study of unscrubbed coal fired plants in the system to determine the potential impact of the most recent environmental regulations from EPA. Company officials determined the EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) made it unfeasible to retrofit or continue operating the three plants.

“The high cost to implement MATS and other environmental rules is the reason these Mon Power plants are being retired,” said James R. Haney, regional president of Mon Power and president of West Virginia Operations for FirstEnergy.

Let's not lose sight of these decisions made by the President of the United States that have adversely affected our economy- he'll try to confuse us, attack his opponents, and will point to signs of economic growth (companies that either fought through and past Obama's policies or companies that gave political support and cover to Obama and were rewarded with loans and support), but the reality is that policies that he implements and tries to implement still are bad for America.

There is a choice though in 2012- between President Obama and more of these sorts of policy decisions and the Republican nominee (whomever it is) who will not put in place these sort of EPA policies that force industries to go bankrupt. Let's make the right choice in 2012.

Here are my notes and thoughts as I watched President Barack Obama's 2012 State of the Union address:

• All of the conversation on the channels prior to the address centered on how this address is going to be used as a way to launch the President's re-election bid and as a taxpayer financed campaign speech. I've been watching these things for years and although past incumbents running for re-election have used this speech to speak about all their accomplishments, President Obama appears to be the most brazenly partisan in using this speech as a campaign speech.
• I found a list of past 'special guests' who have been invited by the President- Lenny Skutnik in 1982 (saved passanger from drowning plane), Sammy Sosa in 1999 (relief efforts in Dominican Republic and home run chase), Hamid Karzai in 2002 (Afghanistan President), Julie Aigner-Clark in 2007 (founder of Baby Einstein)... and now Warren Buffet's secretary in 2012 (prop to use to try to bring up point of taxing the rich more). Whereas once President's (both Republican and Democrats) celebrated people who had done things, President Obama celebrates someone who has called on other people to do more things (pay more money) and yet has no real accomplishments of her own (no offense- I'm sure she is a fine person).
• It was amazing and wonderful to see Congresswomen Giffords there- she has made such a great recovery and I wish her the best on her future.
• President Obama begins with his foreign policy accomplishments, which he can take credit for, although he should share this credit with George W. Bush, who put in place the foundations and background for many of these accomplishments (the pull-out in Iraq, the groundwork for catching Osama, drones and catching terrorists in the War on Terror, etc).
• Obama next suggests that private citizens should be more like the military and act as soldiers for the state. Citizens should stop fighting one another, stop disagreeing about the direction of the nation, stop pushing for their individual rights and liberties, stop trying to keep their property and the fruits of their labor, and instead citizens should serve the state, citizens should put aside their differences and just follow orders, and people should give up their wealth and property to the state so that it can redistribute it to those people who it favors. This all sounds vaguely familiar and has strong echo's of fascism in it, although I could sugar-coat it if you'd like.
• In 2008, the 'house of cards collapsed'- banks made loans they shouldn't have (which he pushed for a community activist), regulators didn't do their jobs (which they were not held accountable for), bonuses were paid to these banks and government agencies (to which they were never held accountable for)... he is on the wrong side of the ledger here- he was pushing for the collapse and after the collapse did not hold those people accountable.
• "State of the Union is getting stronger"- as if the mounting US debt is to be ignored and we're all just to pretend that trillions of dollars in my children's spending is not damaging the foundations of our nation and creating a time-bomb that will destroy America.
• President Obama says that he can't get anything done without control of every single aspect of our political system- he decries the 'obstructionism' of the GOP controlling one single house of Congress. No one- no one- should ever be elected President who says that he can't get anything done unless he has total power- that is bad for America and bad for democracy.
• "What is happening in Detroit can happen in other industries"- what happened in Detroit was that the auto companies were bailed out, costing taxpayers $80 billion in loans, debts forgiven, pensions guaranteed, and other loans. GM made $6 billion last year in profits- taxpayers should get that back, plus the next $74 billion in profits, and then we'll claim success in saving a company at no cost. Imagine if he were to bail every unprofitable business out at massive losses to taxpayers- what would that sort of economy look like?
• Proposes new tax on multi-national companies, to be redistributed to companies that 'hire here in America'- some sort of new loan to be administered by Obama officials based on conditions that he'd set. The increased taxes on MNC's will be sure to be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices on goods and services, causing inflation and hitting the poor especially hard. Why does Obama hate poor people so much?
• "We brought trade cases against China at over twice the rate as the previous administration"- but the Chinese just laughed at us because Obama bowed to the Chinese President and begged to borrow trillions more of their money so that he could blow it on his wasteful spending. It's nice that he's suing China though- I'm sure that's employing lots of lawyers.
• President Obama is mystified on why employers don't hire workers- perhaps if he would have had some sort of a job at some point in business or in the private sector or in some sort of productive economic enterprise he'd know that increasing regulations, fees, requirements, red tape, and the such encourage employers not to hire.
• Obama proposes starting a temp agency company... with taxpayer money. This government financed and supported company will compete with all of these Michigan companies.
• Obama is right- good teachers like me matter, and also he's right that teachers like me are attacked all the time- I'm bashed by liberals and progressives who call me all sorts of names. The President's other education policies are pretty- they are nice words that mean nothing since the federal government isn't supposed to be involved in education in any way other than making sure that there is equality in education for different races and sexes (Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965).
• It is almost as if the right answer to everything that Obama says is the opposite of what he says. He says that it is wrong for taxpayers to be giving illegal immigrants a paid education and then sending them home at the end- he suggests we should make these people here illegally citizens after investing all that money into them, while I kind of think that taxpayers shouldn't be investing money into people here illegally. Get a work or education visa or something to stay here or pay your own way.
• President Obama attacks inequality in pay between mean and women in work- that's right Obama, tear this straw man up! That straw man can't fight back- I suggest he go after those who want children to work in coal mines next!
• I followed this line... "need more bullet proof vests... computers chips... innovations... industries... energy..." what???
• President Obama claims that our nation needs an "all out all of the above strategy"- it's double-speak though, because in his next line he clarifies that this strategy means less oil, less natural gas, less coal, and less drilling. His 'all of the above' strategy is going to include additional fees, regulations, and rules on companies that he doesn't like. So, in summary, he is pitching a "some of the below strategy".
• On to exploding batteries discussion... Bryan (the guy Obama referenced) used to build luxury yachts, but when government policies that Obama supported (he wanted a higher tax on yachts) destroyed Bryan's company and industry, Obama was there to throw taxpayer dollars at him to get him restarted building taxpayer subsidized wind turbines, and now Obama is some sort of 'good guy.' He's the bad guy in the story, kiddies. Holland-based Energetx Composites LLC, you just got mentioned by Obama in his State of the Union address- that's the kiss of death.
• Proposed more small fees and regulations and burdens on businesses... I missed what sort of scheme it was supposed to pay for in order to be 'budget neutral'.
• I'm caught up now... "we need smart regulations"... "we need rules"... these rules and regulations "make the free market more free"- LOL. Did he just say "I've ordered thousands of federal agents to spend thousands of man-hours to search for useless regulations that waste taxpayer money"- I must have heard this wrong. He's moving on though to proposing new rules and regulations- I guess he was done with the part about getting rid of regulations and rules after he threw the joke out there. Listening to him talk, I feel like he's a joke of a President.
• Someone add up how much all these regulations, agencies, bureau's, rules, and investments are going to cost America... I'll have to look at the transcript, but I'm pretty sure all he does is to propose these things without any sense of cost. A man (or woman) could spend a hundred years undoing all the damage that this guy is doing to our Republic.
• "The recovery is still fragile"- but earlier he said the "State of the Union is getting stronger"- let's square this round issue, folks.
• Did you know that President Obama has cut the deficit $2 trillion? And not raised it $5 trillion like what really happened? BIZARRO WORLD!
• Let's not forget this people- President Obama hates people earning millions and wants to go after them and confiscate their income redistribute it to people making less. Those who are already wealthy can keep it, those who are on the bottom might like it, but there will be no more moving between classes in Obama's America. This guy wants to slap class systems on us and turn our nation into the rich- those who already made their wealth and who have connections with government- and the rest of us poor. "You can call this class warfare all you want" he says- it's class warfare. It's class warfare. It's class warfare. It's class warfare. It's class warfare...
• The partisan divide is getting worse every year he says... especially over the past 3 years. It must be George Bush's fault or something, right? Or maybe it's because you President Obama are the most bitterly partisan figure in the history of our nation and is tearing our nation into serfs and masters. President Obama attacks running a 'perpetual campaign'- but yet he is the worst offender in this, running continually for office in a way that no President in history has ever done, running campaign commercials a year in advance of the general election, and even trotting out his wife to make frequent partisan attacks.
• He just said-"With or without this Congress I will keep implementing laws and putting in place policies that I want, but if Congress went along with what I was already doing it would give me cover and get us all involved." This guy is a bully and a dictator. Maybe I heard him wrong though; I'll go back and re-read the transcript, maybe I got it wrong.
• The speech must be coming to an end- after spending a couple minutes in the beginning to address our military and veterans, we're now going to end with a couple minutes at the end about the military and veterans- I though think that the military shouldn't just be props in Obama's game of 'we're all in this together' meme; maybe he should talk about military programs in the body of his speech that he wants to cut or increase, about what he's been doing as commander-in-chief, etc. The military is not simply there to make Obama look good. "No one thought about politics on that day" Obama says- but yet the photo of Obama in the war room was staged. Nice words Obama, but in your mouth, they are just words, merely words.
• President Obama says that as long as we are all commoners, living like peasants on the land, serving our masters like serfs, than our nation will be strong. He said 'common' several times at the end- but private property, liberty, and protection of life wasn't mentioned.

UPDATE III: Thank you for linking to this article The Western Experience, The Bitter Americans, and others!

Until 1980, the United States was the world's leading producer of uranium, but today there are only three operating uranium mines left. This may have been due to the fall in uranium prices, which hit a low of $7.92 per pound in 2001. But with the price climbing to over $50 today, there is renewed interest in mining uranium, which is essential to powering nuclear power plants and important for national security- and it gets even better, because there are still considerable deposits of uranium in the United States, including fairly large deposits that were discovered in northern Arizona over recent years.

Uranium mining leads to cheaper nuclear power which leads to cleaner domestic energy production and a better environment- its just the sort of win-win-win scenario that only someone like Barack Obama could reject.

Via RadioViceOnline:

Last week, without much media attention, President Obama, this time via Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, put the nix on certain uranium mining on federal lands in northern Arizona. Sadly, this too, is political pandering, as, apparently nuclear power is as toxic to the left as is coal and oil power. And, per this fiat, the land in question is off limits to uranium mining for the next 20 years.

Let’s look at the process. The Bureau of Land Management is in charge of analyzing whether uranium mining is good or bad for the environment in this area. It found that the

mining would have ‘no direct impacts’ on protected wilderness areas. The impact on drinking-water supply in the Colorado River was also found to be ‘negligible’... The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the northern Arizona parcels [withdrawn from mining] contain uranium that, mined to capacity, would generate enough electricity to power Los Angeles for 154 years.... [t]he land bureau’s impact statement estimates that [the administration's decision] will cost the region $160 million in average annual economic output…

Northern Arizona currently has an unemployment rate of 17%. But, then again, Arizona in general, and northern Arizona in particular, is “red”. Let me suggest an ugly Presidential thought- "I’m not going to win Arizona anyway, so, it makes more sense to appease the left and perhaps pick up some votes."

One of the earlier actions undertaken by the Obama administration was to put in place bans on mining for a range of precious resources. It was bans such as these that have delayed the recovery in our nation and led to tens of thousands of Americans losing their homes and jobs- and even if the economy revives over the next couple months that does not take away from the fact that policy actions such as bans on mining hurt Americans lives, liberty, and property.

One such ban was a ban on mining for uranium in northern Arizona, which was originally put in place for 2 years so that officials could study the situation further. Obama officials were hoping that their meme that energy mining was destructive and bad and wrong would be proved true and so they could stop mining permanently, but then when the report came back that the mining wasn't in any way bad, they just shrugged their shoulders and banned it anyways.

And the cherry on to- President Obama then has the audacity to argue that they did this to SAVE JOBS and ENCOURAGE ECONOMIC GROWTH, and that now he is going to campaign on this theme- that by stopping the extracting of valuable resources he actually made our nation more wealthy; that by stopping thousands from being employed to extract these minerals he created more jobs; and that he has protected the environment even though the environmental impact from the mining was declared to be 'negligible' by liberal bureaucratic agencies which were likely pressured by Obama administration officials.

This double-speak, hypocrisy, and lying is characteristic of this administration, and the quicker it is gone, the quicker its actions can be reversed, we can begin to safely and responsibly mine valuable minerals, produce cheaper domestic energy, lower the costs of electricity for poor people, and help the working man to get ahead.

Every month teacher unions from around the nation gather together to pray at the alter of the Democratic Party, offering up the usual sacrifices (unions dues) and saying the usual prayers (another term for Obama). As part of this monthly ritual held in every public school district in the nation, union leaders faithfully repeat the claim that Republicans are anti-education and that President Obama is pro-education. Let's examine this claim in light of the a recent release from the House Education and the Workforce Committee Republicans:

Late last year, the U.S. Secretary of Education took unprecedented action and announced a plan that would allow the administration to unilaterally dictate federal education policy without Congressional input.

Secretary Arne Duncan’s plan to grant waivers for certain requirements under No Child Left Behind in exchange for states adopting the administration’s preferred education agenda has been called “the most sweeping use of executive authority to rewrite federal education law since Washington expanded its involvement in education in the 1960s” by the New York Times. In the Washington Post, George Will likened the plan to “coercive federalism”...

...Already, this conditional waivers plan has generated great uncertainty for state and local education officials. States that opt in to the plan will be forced to dedicate time and limited resources to implement a host of new federal regulations. However, the requirements could be easily changed by Congress, Secretary Duncan, or the next administration, potentially rendering a state’s investment in changing its education system meaningless...

...Making matters worse, the secretary's waiver plan – similar to his ill-fated Race to the Top program – pressures states to adopt common academic standards and tests in reading and math, creating de facto national standards and national tests. This one-size-fits-all approach usurps the power of local superintendents, school boards, and parents who know more about what kids need to learn than bureaucrats in Washington...

...House Education and the Workforce Committee Republicans are determined to fix current education law the right way – with smart legislative policies that will have a lasting impact. Toward that effort, Republicans recently released two pieces of draft legislation to overhaul No Child Left Behind. In addition to provisions that support state-developed accountability systems and a smaller federal footprint in education, the legislation includes four provisions that rein in the authority of the Secretary of Education and preserve state and local control...

...We cannot allow the Obama administration to implement a backdoor education agenda. It’s time to advance real change in our nation’s education system. The Student Success Act and the Encouraging Innovation and Effective Teachers Act provide states and school districts with a clear path forward that will help get more effective teachers in the classroom, enhance accountability, and raise the bar on student achievement.

Our Founding Fathers designed our legislative branch to implement and pass policies and to pass the laws which govern our nation- they clearly did not give the President the power to issue directives and orders establishing policies and laws, paid for out a giant slush fund (stimulus dollars, which were supposed to go for shovel ready projects that would put Americans back to work back in 2009). But this is what we have- a President who thinks he is smarter than the American public and their elected Representatives and Senators, and who thinks that he is supposed to be running our nation as a King, ordering his advisers and czars and secretaries to implement policies and rules and waiver plans without any Congressional authority to do so simply because HE believes it to be the right policies. Process and the means matter, and Obama is not going about implementing education policy the right way (with Congressional approval and direction).

Furthermore, by his actions President Obama does not demonstrate that he is any sort of 'friend of education', deserving of one-sided and considerable support by the National Education Association and its various state chapters. Pressuring states to adopt common core standards is the same sort of 'national standards' that the unions opposed so loudly during Bush's administration- the emphasis on national tests is the same sort of 'national testing' that brought howls from unions and magazine articles in education magazines- and the push for merit pay should be met with a storm of opposition by the education labor unions. On these issues and many others, the labor unions have decided to compromise their positions and policy stances so that Barack Obama can remain as President, and by doing so continue to destroy the property tax base and income taxes on which education depends for its funding.

The truth of the matter is that today, perhaps it is the Republican Party which offers the best path forward for public education in America. A rising tide floats all boats, and Republican policies which encourage economic growth- less regulation, more protection of private property, less fees, less red tape and bureaucratic interference, etc- will likely lead to increased tax revenues that will in turn lead to increased funding and money for education. Further, policies designed in the legislative branch and laws passed by our Congress will have more broad consensus and input from more parties and thus be better designed and implemented that dictates issued by an overbearing and close-minded Executive Branch.

The coming year will give voters a real choice of visions- divide up the wealth in our nation differently or grow the amount of wealth in our nation.

Liberals, including those who have seized control of the modern-day Democratic Party, often talk fondly about China and its economic model. But what they fail to recognize about the economic model employed by China is  that it is inherently unsustainable because of its current methods of energy generation. Oh, I know many watermelons (people who pretend to care about the environment just to advance their statist communist desires) like to talk about China's wind power, nuclear power, solar power, or hydro-electric power, but in reality, the majority of China's energy production comes from coal.

Energy production from coal production does not have to be environmentally damaging or harmful to those who work in the industry. In nations like the United States, where there are clear property rights and freedom of labor, workers are treated better, the environment is better protected, and businesses are free to produce as much coal safely as possible in order to maximize profits. For example, there are only about 30 people killed per year in coal mining in the United States, and the United States has embraced clean coal technology which does a much better job of controlling emissions. The United States has made the difficult transition from energy generation to sustainable energy generation, and only needs to continue and expand its efforts in oil drilling, coal mining, and nuclear technology in order to become the cleanest and safest energy producer in the world.

Sadly, environmentalists in America have a different agenda. In their noble desire to make the world a better place, they are putting in place policies in America which force it and other nations to obtain energy from nations around the world that are producing energy in destructive, deadly ways. Rather than encouraging the expansion of safe, natural, and efficient methods of energy generation such as oil, coal, and nuclear, they are forcing America and nations that could be buying energy from America to turn to nations like China for energy generation and resources. And the end result of these environmentalists policies is a world that is less safe, less secure, and were more people die.

China currently generates around two thirds of its electricity from coal-fired power stations, and is the process of dramatically expanding its coal-fired capacity in recent years with the introduction of 562 new coal-fired plants- in fact, an average of two new plants were being opened every week. China uses this coal-production to satisfy its own energy needs and also export energy to other nations.

To sustain it economic growth and growing energy needs through coal power, China is paying a heavy price. Thousands of people die every year in coal pits, premature deaths due to indoor air pollution is at 420,000 per year, deaths due to outdoor air pollution is estimated at around 300,000 deaths per year, and rural populations in particular are suffering from a range of diseases related to coal production, including arsenic poisoning, skeletal fluorosis (over 10 million people afflicted in China), esophageal and lung cancers, and selenium poisoning. A report by the World Bank in cooperation with the Chinese government found that about 750,000 people die prematurely in China each year from air pollution.

China's economic model, which people like the head of the SEIU say should be the future of the United States, is unsustainable and killing its own people. It's model emphasizes state control of people and businesses and the de-humanizing of both. It is a model which stands in marked contrast to the economic model of the historical United States, a model which emphasizes little state control, more liberty given to people to make free economic choices, and strong individual and business property rights, and is a model that embraces the humanity of life. We can see the difference in the two models when we look at China's coal mining industry and electric power generation, and see the difference in the contrasting visions.

Elections have consequences- in the coming elections for US President, Senator, Representative, or even at the local level, ask yourself whether the candidate you support has a vision of the future that pushes for more state control over people's lives or less state control. Those who push for more state control will boast of the economic growth in nations like China- while ignoring the enormous cost in terms of human life and damage to the environment. Those who push for less state control over people's lives will point to the United States, which in contrast to those with state control have much better records on life, liberty, and wealth creation- although not perfect, because man is not perfect.

And for readers of my blog around the world, this applies to you as well- although China's economy is growing, there is a real cost to humanity for their growth, and in the end its statist economy will collapse like the Soviet Union's did. Only economic models that give more power to people and more freedom to individuals and more rights to businesses and corporations and individuals are successful in creating wealth in a sustainable manner while protecting life and liberty. You have a real choice to make in your nation too- state control for short term unequally distributed wealth, or less state control for longer term more equal distribution of life, liberty, and property.

For those who are interested in reading more about China and its coal production methods and coal-powered economy, I suggest you check out an article called China’s Dark Power.

A couple weeks ago I read an interesting article in the Telegraph- in it, longtime journalist Janet Daley suggests that the best thing that the British government can do to improve the economy and make people more wealthy and happy and free is to work really hard and be very productive in DOING LESS. The truth of the matter is that politicians have to have real guts and strength to simply say 'no, I will not spend taxpayer money trying to control people and the market,' but that may be exactly the kind of strength and guts we need today- politicians who promise to do more of less. From her article A daring idea to fix the economy: try doing less:

...the myth of government activism – the idea that intervention by the state is the answer to every economic and social problem – had been definitively routed. Apparently not: Mr Osborne and, we must assume, his boss still seem to believe that any unacceptable national situation must require direct action from them.

Or maybe they don’t believe that at all. Perhaps they just lack the political courage to admit that, in our present crisis, the best thing that the Government can do is to get out of the business of running (or subsidising, or initiating, or incentivising) things altogether – not just in the interests of saving money, but because the effects of such interference are counter-productive. What the economy is suffering from is not an insufficiency of overweening, fussy, bureaucratic initiatives that inevitably unleash an avalanche of unintended consequences, but a lack of cash in the hands of people who might spend it in ways that would actually create wealth and stimulate (in the proper sense of the word) economic growth.

If ever there was a time for radical proposals by a governing party, this is it. Rather than the imitative, mealy-mouthed shuffling of dollops of money from one departmental scheme to another, in what will inevitably look like panic in the face of rising youth unemployment and disappointing growth figures, what we need is a display of real insight and nerve...

...There is an urgent need now to rethink the whole relationship between government and populace while there is still the possibility of discussion. In Britain, Europe and America, the questions are remarkably similar. Can a free-market economy support an infinitely growing state? We will have to choose, quite soon, between liberty and the “security” of a society in which government controls the levers of economic life. Washington politicians are getting a terrible drubbing for failing to resolve their implacable differences over the size of the state (to the extent that they are unable to agree a federal budget). The US national debate may seem rough and ready to European ears – but at least they are engaging in the real argument.

She is right- the argument has been joined, and today via memeorandum I read in the Wall Street Journal an article that echo's the very ideas of Ms. Daley. From former Florida Governor Jeb Bush's article Capitalism and the Right to Rise:

...Increasingly, we have let our elected officials abridge our own economic freedoms through the annual passage of thousands of laws and their associated regulations. We see human tragedy and we demand a regulation to prevent it. We see a criminal fraud and we demand more laws. We see an industry dying and we demand it be saved. Each time, we demand "Do something . . . anything."

As Florida's governor for eight years, I was asked to "do something" almost every day. Many times I resisted through vetoes but many times I succumbed. And I wasn't alone. Mayors, county chairs, governors and presidents never think their laws will harm the free market. But cumulatively, they do, and we have now imperiled the right to rise....

....We either can go down the road we are on, a road where the individual is allowed to succeed only so much before being punished with ruinous taxation, where commerce ignores government action at its own peril, and where the state decides how a massive share of the economy's resources should be spent.

Or we can return to the road we once knew and which has served us well: a road where individuals acting freely and with little restraint are able to pursue fortune and prosperity as they see fit, a road where the government's role is not to shape the marketplace but to help prepare its citizens to prosper from it.

In short, we must choose between the straight line promised by the statists and the jagged line of economic freedom. The straight line of gradual and controlled growth is what the statists promise but can never deliver. The jagged line offers no guarantees but has a powerful record of delivering the most prosperity and the most opportunity to the most people. We cannot possibly know in advance what freedom promises for 312 million individuals. But unless we are willing to explore the jagged line of freedom, we will be stuck with the straight line. And the straight line, it turns out, is a flat line.

What Governor Bush is talking about is the same kind of thing that I personally observed during my time as a policy adviser in the state's capital. I remember distinctly one time when a young Republican 'conservative' staffer came in to work one day, upset that the car that she had recently bought turned out to have been a bad purchase. She set about writing a law that would force the state to regulate and control all sellers of automobiles in the state and then tried to convince legislators to sponsor this piece of legislation- she wanted the state to immediately do something, to step in and spend lots of money and time and effort controlling thousands of people's individual decisions just to protect several people from their own stupidity. She proposal was met with great hostility towards me, and I countered her proposal by suggesting that rather than the state doing something about used car dealers, it instead loosen regulations and fees and taxes on all car dealers, making the market more free, so that more fools like her could be separated from their money, as the hand of God in its infinite wisdom is wont to do. I wasn't joking though.

The real courage and intelligent thing to do to create a more vibrant, free market by cutting back government regulations and fees and enabling people to be people, in all their glorious faults and warts, because only by doing so can we also unleash the amazing potential for great and good things that humans contain in them. The safe, stately downward path of state control is not the path for me and is not the path that successful, free, and prosperous people- no, we choose the jagged and uneven and unpredictable path that is the path of less government regulation, taxes, fees, and supervision- that is the only true path for better protection and encouragement of life, liberty, and property.

Here is what Richard A. Epstein, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Professor of Law at New York University Law School, and senior lecturer at the University of Chicago, had to say regarding the major speech that President Barack Obama (one-term Democrat) gave at Osawatomie, Kansas:

The painful ignorance that is revealed in these remarks augurs ill for the long-term recovery of America. With the president firmly determined to set himself against the tides of progress, innovation will be harder to come by. The levels of unemployment will continue to be high as the president works overtime to impose additional restrictions on the labor markets and more taxes at the top of the income distribution—both backhanded ways to reward innovation and growth.

The problem, therefore, with the president’s speech is not that it is demagogic in tone. The problem is that it is intellectually incoherent. As a matter of high principle, the president announces his fealty to markets. As a matter of practical politics, he denigrates and undermines them at every step. It is a frightening prospect to have a president who lives in a time warp that lets him believe that the failed policies of 1935 can lead this nation back from the brink. His chosen constituency, the middle class, should tremble at the prospect that his agenda might well set the course for the United States for the next four years.

In Professor Epstein's analysis of President Obama's speech, he echo's some of the comments that I have been making on liberal blogs like Balloon Juice and others- that in spite of his rhetoric and because of his economic incoherence and illiteracy, workers, school teachers, union employees, blue collar employees, the middle class, supporters of Occupy Wall Street, and related groups are going to suffer the most from President Obama's policies.

As Epstein wrote in his article Populist-in-Chief:

It is a good thing when plants can achieve the same output with less labor. Do we really want an America in which thousands of people work in dangerous occupations to turn molten lava into steel bars? Far better it is that fewer workers are doing those jobs. The jobs lost in that industry will be in part replaced by newer jobs created in the firms that build the equipment that make it possible to run steel mills at a lower cost and far lower risk of personal injury. The former workers can seek jobs in newer industries that will only expand by competing for labor.

And what about those ATM machines? Does the president really want people to have to queue up in banks to make deposits or withdraw cash in order to make a boom market for human tellers? Perhaps we should return to the days before automation, when phone calls were all connected by human operators. And why blast the Internet, which has created far more useful jobs than it has ever destroyed?

You see, if President Obama had his way, we would return to the Great Depression, when people were dependent on government for goods and services because government was in the business of destroying productive business around the world. If President Obama had his way, he would increase taxes and regulations on businesses while giving out subsidies and tax breaks to favored businesses, favoring those who hire lobbyists and special interest groups who redirect wealth over those who create wealth and make products or sell goods and services. If President Barack Obama had his way- a Congress of Democrats that went along with his ideas and ideals- America would be dragged back to the early 1900's, when we had a low standards of living and shorter life spans, and Obama would happily fill up dangerous and inefficient steal mills with 'workers', he would sign praises to the joy of labor while factory workers worked for low wages (compared to today) in dangerous industries, and the working class would have few goods (like cheap cars coming in from the Far East, cheap electronics built in backward nations around the world, and labor-saving devices everywhere built everywhere) just so that he could burnish his protectionist credentials.

When government gets in the business of redirecting wealth and picking and choosing the winners and losers in society, the only people who win and get wealthy are government officials- this lesson has been demonstrated over and over around the world many times over. And yet, that is exactly what Barack Obama and his Democratic Party are proposing to do- increase the power of the government to control wealth, liberty, and property in our society, and that somehow through this 'workers' and the '99%' will get more wealthy and happier. The logic is not explained, the mechanisms by which wealth is created are not explained- rather, the logic is the same logic that is found in every despotic tyranny throughout history- people have earned things that others want, and the government will get those things by playing one side off the other. Obama's magic act of wealth creation is the same sort of tyranny that the world has seen many times over- and has fallen for many times over as well.

Our nation has not only learned nothing from the Great Depression, we have learned the wrong lessons as well (see my post Lessons from Economic Recessions- Introduction and Great Depression), and are going about repeating the same mistakes that turned a recession in 1930 into a Great Depression that lasted to the 1950's (and included in it the collapse of the world into a deadly World War!). We must not allow this guy to enact those same policies- I don't care who does what with the GOP, and it doesn't matter who they are, anyone is an upgrade over this incoherent ideologue whose mind is so filled with mush and mindless platitudes and liberal bumper slogans that he is now unable to effectively design any policies that have a slightly positive effect on anyone.

President Obama, any Democrat who supports him, and any Republican who agrees with his policies needs to join Herbert Hoover on the unemployment line (or better yet, get a job somewhere in the private economy building or making or doing something useful!).

For some reason, my blog has been getting very popular in Ukraine recently- after the US, the second largest source of readers of my blog is coming from Ukraine over the past month, and all-time, Ukraine is the 5th biggest nation of readers of my blog. Why Ukraine?

Perhaps it stems from a post I wrote in January 15, 2010 supporting Yulia Tymoshenko for President of Ukraine. You see, I keep my eyes on a lot of different subjects (just in the last several weeks alone I have written In Praise of NASA's Curiosity Mission, About Black Friday and why Obama, Robert Frank, and Other Liberals are Wrong for Hating It, and about Teaching and Brain-Dead Liberal Students), and one of the nations that I've always been fascinated with is Ukraine. So during the 2010 Presidential Elections in Ukraine, I read about all the candidates (it was a three-way race- between then-current President Viktor Yushchenko, then-former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, and then-current Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko), and came out in support of Tymoshenko.

Tymoshenko ended up losing the race to Yankukovych. Via wikipedia, you can read what happened next:

...In the first round of the presidential election on 17 January 2010, Tymoshenko took second place with 25% of the vote and Yanukovych took first place with 35%. The two proceeded to the runoff round held on 7 February 2010 in which Yanukovych was elected President of Ukraine with 48.95% of the votes, Tymoshenko received 45.4% of the votes. Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc members immediately claimed that there was systematic and large-scale vote rigging in this run-off. However Tymoshenko herself did not issue a statement about the election until a live televised broadcast on 13 February 2010 in which she said that she would challenge the election result in court. Tymoshenko alleged widespread fraud (according to Tymoshenko, a million votes were invalid) and said Yanukovych was not legitimately elected.

...On 3 March 2010 the Ukrainian Parliament passed a motion of no confidence in the second Tymoshenko Government in which the cabinet was dismissed with 243 lawmakers voting in favour out of the 450 (207 against).... Tymoshenko resigned from the Prime Minister post on 4 March 2010....

...Ukraine's prosecutor's office re-opened on 12 May 2010 a 2004 criminal case against Tymoshenko on accusations she had tried to bribe Supreme Court judges.... Tymoshenko also claimed that she was told by "all the offices of the Prosecutor General's Office" that President Yanukovych had personally instructed the Prosecutor General's Office to find any grounds to prosecute her....

...On 15 December 2010 the General Prosecutor's Office instituted a criminal case against Tymoshenko, alleging that she misused funds received by Ukraine within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol. She was officially charged on 20 December 2010. Tymoshenko denied the money had been spent on pensions and insisted it was still at the disposal of the environment ministry and called the investigation against her a witch-hunt....

...A third criminal case against Tymoshenko in connection with alleged abuse of power during the 2009 Russia–Ukraine gas dispute was opened on 10 April 2011.[215][216] This case was labelled "absurd" by Tymoshenko. On 24 May 2011 prosecutors charged her in connection with this (third criminal) case. She was not arrested....

...Tymoshenko's trial (she was charged in May 2011) over abuse of office over a natural gas imports contract signed with Russia in January 2009 started on 24 June 2011.... On 5 August 2011 Tymoshenko was arrested for 'ridiculing the court proceedings'... On 11 October 2011, the court found Tymoshenko guilty of abuse of power, sentenced her to seven years in jail, and ordered to pay the state $188 million. She was convicted for exceeding her powers as Prime Minister, by ordering Naftogaz to sign the gas deal with Russia in 2009.] The judge also banned her from seeking elected office for her period of imprisonment (disqualifying her from participation in the 2012 parliamentary and 2015 presidential elections)....

...A 2001 criminal case on state funds embezzlement and tax evasion charges against Tymoshenko was reopened in Ukraine on 24 October 2011. Since late October 2011 Ukrainian prosecutors are investigating whether Tymoshenko was involved in the murder of Yevhen Shcherban. With that Tymoshenko was under criminal investigation for ten criminal acts; prosecutors have claimed she had committed more criminal acts. On 4 November 2011 the Ukrainian tax police resumed four criminal cases against Tymoshenko. She was charged for these cases on 10 November 2011...

You can see for yourself exactly what is going on- Tymoshenko is a pro-democracy former businesswomen who rejects the communist approach of keeping the masses poor while the elites proposer, and the elites manipulated the voting processes and the masses to win, and then turned around and have imprisoned her and likely will kill her while she is in prison. She's one of the good guys and deserves our support. Under Yankukovych, the President of Ukraine has assumed more and more powers and has acted in an ever more autocratic manner, demonstrating that he intends to centralize more power, freedom, and property under his control and his allies control so that they can live good live while the people of Ukraine are poor and taken advantage of. Equally before the law, rule of law, and civil-rights protections have been trampled on, investment in Ukraine has dropped off considerably, economic growth has staggered to a halt, and relations have fallen apart with most nations of the world.

Yulia Tymoshenko is a political prisoner, and deserves the support of every decent nation and the support of the Ukrainian people.


For more information, check out this story from the Telegraph, or a recent letter that Yulia Tymoshenko was able to get out from prison and publish in the Wall Street Journal.

Progressives and Liberals and the Democratic Party that they've seized control over frequently claim that it is under evil right-wing Republicans that the 'rich get richer' and that there is 'rising inequality.' These groups suggest that having the government seize more power over the free people of our nation through increasing taxes and regulations and increased government spending results in a more equitable distribution of wealth and a more equal society. By having the government make choices for people and take property away from others, they argue that a more fair society can be created and that the playing field can be evened; liberals say that government social programs will stop inequality in our nation; and that religion, class structures, education, and traditions make the rich richer and cause inequality and therefore these social structures must be attacked and broken down. The problem though is not that liberals are ignorant of their policies and their arguments- it is that their policies and arguments are just not true.

From Investors Business Daily article Income Inequality Rose Most Under President Clinton:

In his weekend radio address, President Obama decried that "over the past three decades, the middle class has lost ground while the wealthiest few have become even wealthier." Although he was trying to leverage the Occupy Wall Street movement, the income gap has been a longstanding concern of his. During the 2008 campaign, Obama said, "The project of the next president is figuring out how do you create bottom-up economic growth, as opposed to the trickle-down economic growth that George Bush has been so enamored with."

But it turns out that the rich actually got poorer under President Bush, and the income gap has been climbing under Obama.

What's more, the biggest increase in income inequality over the past three decades took place when Democrat Bill Clinton was in the White House.

The wealthiest 5% of U.S. households saw incomes fall 7% after inflation in Bush's eight years in office, according to an IBD analysis of Census Bureau data. A widely used household income inequality measure, the Gini index, was essentially flat over that span. Another inequality gauge, the Theil index, showed a decline.

In contrast, the Gini index rose — slightly — in Obama's first two years. Another Census measure of inequality shows it's climbed 5.7% since he took office.

Meanwhile, during Clinton's eight years, the wealthiest 5% of American households saw their incomes jump 45% vs. 26% under Reagan. The Gini index shot up 6.7% under Clinton, more than any other president since 1980...

That's right- like most liberal policies that have addressed poverty, energy, unemployment, deficits, and helping out minorities, the results of their policies have resulted in the exact opposite of what they have tried to do. The reason for this is quite clear- liberal policies are wrong.

When government takes power and property away from individuals and transfers that power and property to those it favors, of course it results in rising inequality- the rich are of course more connected, and those who are connected prosper and make more money, resulting in the rich getting richer and rising inequality. But when people make free decisions and earn and keep their own property to do what they wish with, it doesn't matter what sort of connections people have and it doesn't matter what their previous status or station or wealth is, and so the rich don't get richer and inequality doesn't rise. As evidence, I submit to the jury real evidence- read the IBD article and you'll see it quite clearly there.

When putting together a list of the best Presidents in the history of our nation, that list would likely include Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, James Madison, Grover Cleveland, and Ronald Reagan. To that list I would like to also include Calvin Coolidge.

Most polls rank Coolidge somewhere in the middle, but this is because most people rank greatness by the number of actions that Presidents make and the number of policies that they as executives force on the nation that are usually contrary to our Constitution. For example, most lists put FDR at the top of the list, but he pushed through unconstitutional policies, dropped our nation into another Great Depression, didn't respond early enough to the rising fascism in the world, and then did the only thing I'll give him great credit for and won WWII. Oh, some great Presidents had to respond to crisis forced on them by others (like Lincoln), but most other so-called 'great' Presidents simply used the office of the President to jam policies on people that moved power and freedom away from them to the government and supervised a nation in crisis.

The best Presidents are those who did very little, ran the executive office smoothly and without problems or corruption, and conformed to the Constitution as closely as possible. Jefferson was President for two terms, and other then the Louisiana Purchase, his administration happily has little to note other than peace and prosperity. James Madison had to respond to the War of 1812, yes- but other than that, peace and prosperity. Calvin Coolidge was like this too- nothing to note during his time in office other than nothing to note- peoples lives were protected, the nation was prosperous, and property was well protected.

Here are some of the reasons that Calvin Coolidge should make the list of one of our greatest Presidents:

1. Coolidge was (for the most part) an opponent of government regulations. “I am in favor of reducing, rather than expanding, government bureaus which seek to regulate and control the business activities of the people,” he explained in the same State of the Union address. During his time in office, he attempted to allow private development of Muscle Shoals, made conservative appointments to federal offices over the objections of liberal Democrats and Progressive Republicans, was opposed to a veterans' bonus, and blocked and to the proposed McNary-Haugen farm legislation.
2. Coolidge criticized the left for its money-spending habits, stating, “Nothing is easier than spending the public money. It doesn’t appear to belong to anyone.” His policies led to a booming economy and increased tax revenues, but Coolidge knew that these additional 'revenues' wasn't the government's money- it was the peoples. So instead of bowing to progressives and liberals and using the surplus funds to create new programs, he put in place tax cuts. His tax cuts targeted largely the wealthy (he believed that the rich would invest their extra funds in ways that would increase production and therefore jobs and wealth at home, and also that American trade would expand abroad which would benefit the domestic economy and help stabilize the world economically and politically), but taxes were also cut on all taxpayers as well, the gift tax was repealed, and the death tax cut in half. These tax cuts led to increasing economic growth in America (and more tax revenues).
3. Coolidge believed that the role of the government was to step out of the way and allow the market and business to prosper. “The business of America is business,” Coolidge famously declared. But unlike many Republicans and almost all liberals, he did not believe the business of government was to control and direct and subsidize business- he believed in the free market and that removing regulations would encourage business more so than subsidies and targeted tax code help.

Coolidge’s tax cuts and deregulations resulted in a budget surplus and the economically booming “Roaring Twenties,” which came to an end during the progressive regulatory administration of his successor President Herbert Hoover. Coolidge said after leaving the White House, "Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business"- but this is the very thing that I love about Coolidge, that as President he minded his own business, operated the machinery of the White House with cool and competent handling, and minded his own business as President. No crisis, no television appearances, no major policy changes, no crazy plans, no wild new ideas- simply doing his job, doing it well, and leaving when he was done with the nation in a better place than it was before.

President Calvin Coolidge may be the first U.S. president appeared to also appear in a "talkie" -- a movie with sound.In this four-minute clip (viewable on YouTube), Coolidge says that he wants to

"cut down public expense. I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. This is the chief meaning of freedom. Until we can re-establish a condition under which the earnings of the people can be kept by the people, we are bound to suffer a very severe and distinct curtailment of our liberty."

Before we go to the polls in 2012 to pick nominees for political parties and for President, I just want everyone to re-examine Calvin Coolidge and his Presidency and decide for themselves what exactly makes a President great.

UPDATE: The Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation contacted and reminded me of another reason why Coolidge is possibly one of the better Presidents that we've ever had- his views on education. Coolidge believed strongly in education and he often commented on the subject throughout the course of his political career, believing in the importance of having an educated citizenry and impressing on young people the importance of lifelong learning. Here is one of his quotes from a newspaper column in 1930:

"While it is easy to waste money on education, it is the one thing which we cannot afford to curtail. The true ideal would seem to be a system that supplies those in the lower grades with certain basic information and those in the upper grades with the power to think… The school is not the end but only the beginning of an education. Yet its place cannot be filled in any other way. The best thing the millions of our youth can do to assure their future success is to work faithfully at their studies. That opportunity for improvement and discipline will never return.”

For your next vacation, take a trip to Plymouth Notch, VT to see the President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site for yourself and experience the world in which President Coolidge was born and raised.

For good books about President Calvin Coolidge, check out Silent Cal's Almanack: The Homespun Wit and Wisdom of Vermont's Calvin Coolidge, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, or Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge, The.

The number one goal in the Presidential election of 2012 for every conservative, moderate, independent, Republican, Tea Party, and patriot should be the defeat of President Obama and his radical liberal progressive agenda. And as an incumbent nominated by one of our two major parties who is going to raise over a billion dollars and has spent his entire presidency creating dependencies and voting blocs dependent on him and who is going to run the most negative campaign in history, it is not going to be very easy to defeat Barack Obama, regardless of what the economy is like or how bad he has protected our citizens life, liberty, and property.

So to me, rather than dreaming of pies in the sky and putting my bets on unicorns and leprechauns and supporting GOP candidates who are all hopey and changey, I'm looking at the polls and doing the math and figuring out how to best beat this guy, and supporting the candidate who does that the best.

Remember, a Republican Congress dominated by real conservatives and Tea Party views can drive the agenda, passing legislation, cutting deficits, and putting in place the changes our nation needs. If the GOP puts the right person at the top of the ticket, the GOP may be able to slightly grow its majority in the House, which they already control by a wide margin, and take back control of the Senate, perhaps even getting a filibuster proof majority if Obama is wiped out by the right GOP candidate at the top of the ticket.

With this sort of reasoning, I put a lot of stock in guys like Jay Cost or Nate Silver and sites like FiveThirtyEight because they run the math and look at the numbers and factor in the power of polls and demographics to predict elections accurately. Here then for your consideration are some of the highlights from a good column that Nate Silver just wrote for the New York Times called Is Obama Toast? Handicapping the 2012 Election:

...Instead we should think big, and focus on the three fundamentals...

...A president’s approval rating toward the end of his third year, therefore, has been a decent (although imperfect) predictor of his chances of victory... In fact, since 1944 (when approval ratings first became reliable), there have been five cases in which the incumbent party’s president had an approval rating below 49 percent a year ahead of the election — as Obama almost certainly will, unless he finds the cure for cancer after our issue goes to print — and each time the incumbent party lost.... The correct conclusion, then, is that other factors being equal, an approval rating in the low 40s a year before the election makes a president a slight but not overwhelming underdog....

...If Obama’s approval ratings were in the low 30s or worse instead of the 40s, that would be another story. The three presidents to fit this description — Carter in 1979, George W. Bush in 2007 and Harry Truman in 1951 — saw their parties take big defeats the next year. It would also be another matter if Obama’s approval rating were closer to 50 percent. Of the six presidents to have approval ratings in that range a year ahead of the election — Nixon, Clinton, Bush the younger, Truman in 1947 and Reagan in 1983 and 1987 (with Bush the elder running as his proxy in the latter case) — all six won...

...The good news (for Obama) is that voters have short memories. If there are hopeful signs during an election year, they may be willing to forget earlier problems. Reagan, Nixon, Eisenhower and Truman all won despite recessions earlier in their terms. Moreover, voters’ evaluations of the economy are relatively forward-looking. Even if the economy is below its full productive capacity — as it was in November 1984 when the unemployment rate was 7.2 percent, and as it certainly was in 1936, when it was still around 17 percent — voters may be willing to overlook this, provided it seems headed in the right direction....

...Growth rates during an election year are a good but imperfect indicator of electoral performance. The two times that economic activity actually shrank during an election year, 1980 and 2008, the incumbent party lost badly. The two times that it grew by more than 6 percent, 1944 and 1972, it won overwhelmingly. But Eisenhower won a landslide in 1956 despite tepid 1.8 percent growth, and George W. Bush won in 2004 with only 2.9 percent. The economy grew about 5 percent in 1968, but that wasn’t enough to save Humphrey....

....The other major unknown is the identity of the Republican nominee. This year it could make an unusually large amount of difference. In recent polls against Mitt Romney, Obama’s lead is just 1 percentage point — but he leads Herman Cain by 8, Rick Perry by 11 and Michele Bachmann by 14.... In this case, though, the relative standing of the Republican opponents against Obama aligns neatly with their perceived ideology. Obama does worse against more moderate candidates like Romney — and better against staunch conservatives like Perry and Cain....

...The bigger problem for Republicans might come if they nominate a candidate further to Romney’s right, like Perry, who has an extremism score of 67 (for comparison, Romney's 'extremism' score is 49 and Cain's score is 60). The difference between Romney and Perry amounts to about 4 percentage points at the ballot booth. If conditions were otherwise very favorable (or very unfavorable) to Republicans, this wouldn’t be enough to matter: an election that Romney would win by 10 points, Perry might win by 6. But an election that Romney might win by just 2 or 3 points, Perry could easily lose....

...By combining these factors — approval ratings in the year before the election, G.D.P. growth during the election year itself and the ideology score of the opposition candidate — we can come up with a forecast of next year’s election...

The article goes on to project the results of 4 different scenario's in great detail. Here is a quick summary of the results of those 4 scenario's.

If the nominee is a moderate like Romney and the economy is weak, Silver projects the GOP's probability of winning the popular vote at 85% and Obama is toast. If the nominee is more conservative like Perry or Cain and the economy is weak, Silver project's the GOP's probability of winning the popular vote to be only 59%- the Republican would still be a favorite, although Obama would only be a slight underdog here and might pull out a win based on money and dirty tricks.

If the GOP nominee is a moderate like Romney and the economy is improving in 2012, then Silver project's the GOP's probability of winning the popular vote to be only 40%- they could still pull it out if voters decide that the Republican offers more calm and secure leadership after the protests and partisanship of the Obama years, but Obama would be the favorite to hold on and keep his administration. If the nominee is a conservative like Perry or Cain in 2012 and the economy is improving, Silver thinks that the the GOP's chances of winning the Presidency are pretty poor- even after how bad things have been over the last couple years, voters belief in an improving economy and hesitation about a more extreme GOP candidate gives the GOP only a 17% probability of wining the Presidency.

Of course, these are just Silver's projections and you are free to draw your own conclusions about who to support in the upcoming election based on these sorts of projections, but for one find his analysis to be very insightful and helpful to me in trying to figure out who to support in the upcoming Republican primary election.