Republican Debate – My Answers

Two nights ago was the New Hampshire Republican debate on CNN. While I am a big supporter of Ron Paul, I don’t think his message was simple enough for the mainstream voters to consume. He jumped over his simple talking points about the Federal Reserve, Austrian Economics, Sound Money and Blowback among others and went right into rants that were valid, but made him sound more like a fringe candidate than a serious one.

I’m not saying that the two “winners,” Mitt Romney or Michelle Bachmann said anything of substance, but their message was well packaged. If Congressman Paul could just stick to clear, concise points while still spreading his message of liberty and Constitutionalism, he would come out as a clear frontrunner.

I only watched the first part of the debate last night, but if I had to give a response to some of the questions that were asked, here are a few:

1. What is your plan to create manufacturing  jobs in the US?

Currently in the United States, we have a service based economy. We do not have a manufacturing/production based one like we had in the past. Most of the manufacturing of products we import is in China or other Asian countries. The only way we are going to start manufacturing here is that we need the capital and labor to compete with China. In “capital,” I mean machines and resources. We need to invest in these machines so we can be competitive. Even if labor and materials are cheaper in China, we still have to ship all those products across the Pacific Ocean. It’s not really as efficient as we think. There is opportunity for us to start producing products again.

First, we need to cut the corporate tax to zero. There is no need to tax corporate profits and then tax them again when they get distributed to employees as pay. Second, we need to encourage investment in American capital. The easiest way to do this is to get the Federal Government out of economic planning. Stop subsidizing certain industries. Let the market decide what industries and products we should develop. We could be throwing money down the drain because an industry we are supporting might not be able to exist without the subsidies. That makes no economic sense and would never exist in a market based economy.

Bottom line is that we need to make things again, and in order to do that we need to let the market work and the capital invested here at home to do that.

2. What are your feelings on “Right to Work”?

Personally, I believe that the Federal Government should not be involved in the hiring process of a private company. However, we have installed labor laws that call for a closed shop if half of the workers decide to unionize. So, “Right to Work” is a counter to these regulations, but it really doesn’t work. It would be easier to defund the National Labor Relations Board and repeal labor laws that interfere with hiring process of a private firm, union or not.

Let the company, workers, and the market decide what they want to do. If Company A wants to run a closed shop with union employees, let them. If Company B wants to use non-union labor, there’s nothing wrong with that either. The point is that the Federal Government should just stay out of it altogether.

3. How would you build consensus within the Republican Party, not just Tea Partiers?

I feel the message of freedom and liberty are what the Founding Fathers of our nation wanted. This should resonate with every American, not just Republicans or Democrats. To me, it should be easy to build consensus to get the government out of our lives, out of the private sector and out of foreign wars and entanglements.

Then you would be free to live your life the way you want. Businesses will be able to hire people and deliver new and innovative products to the market. We would stop spending hundreds of billions of dollars overseas and would be able to pass that savings along to the taxpayers.

We need to remember the reasons for the Constitution that the Framers had in mind at the time. We broke away from a too powerful and distant foreign central government. This country was founded on the principle of limited central government and if we remember that, building a consensus should not be too difficult.

As I watch more of the debate tonight, I’ll post more answers. Your comments are always welcome. Thanks for reading.

Obama Cuts 0.47% from Budget

Today, word came out that President Obama has cut $17 billion from the 2010 budget.  While that is a lot of money to you and me, it is a measly 0.47% of the $3.55 trillion budget that has been proposed for this year.  Surely, with the way things are going, the 2010 budget figures to be even bigger, so the $17 billion will become an even smaller percentage.

During his campaign, Obama promised to go through the budget, line by line and cut programs that weren’t working or were not necessary.  Looks like he thinks 99.53% of all the government spending is necessary.  And he’ll probably tout this as the “change” he promised and the media and all of his supporters will eat it up.  They’ll just blame the Republicans and Bush for making all the spending “absolutely necessary.”

Just when I think Obama can’t be more of a hypocrite, he does something like this.  Why even announce you’re “cutting” less than one-half of one percent of the budget?  This country is going off a cliff, and Obama isn’t putting on the brakes, he’s flooring the gas.

They’re Both Wrong in the Debate Over Nothing

Over the past week, I’ve heard enough about Rush Limbaugh and the Republican party.  This is a good reminder of why I’m registered as an independent.  Even though I side more with the traditional ideals of the Republicans,  I can’t deal with the two-party bickering that we call “political debate” in this country.

First, Limbaugh said that “every Republican wanted Obama to fail.”  For some reason, not one Republican would tell Rush that he was wrong.  Not even Ron Paul.  It’s like they are too scared to upset him because of the influence he has with the neoconservatives.

The contradiction with Rush is that he supported all of the Bush measures and the increase in government spending.  He supports our foreign policy of nation building and imperialism.  He even supports the Patriot Act and Homeland Security which a true conservative would oppose.

If John McCain were elected president, he would be doing the same thing as Obama anyway.  There is not a big difference between the two parties, and both favor government interventionist policies.  The only thing Rush wants is for a Democrat to fail, and he’s wrong for saying it.

Robert Gibbs, Obama’s White House spokesperson then said, Republicans should ask themselves “whether they agree with what Rush Limbaugh said….Do they want to see the president’s economic agenda fail?”

The question shouldn’t be about if someone wants it to fail.  It should be on the merits of the stimulus and all the spending!

In time, we will probably look back at Obama’s plans and realize that they hurt the economy more than they helped.  I don’t know if that will qualify that as a failure or not.

Rush has taken the debate off of the stimulus package and the huge budget deficit and put it on himself.  That is the ultimate egotistical and selfish move at a time when we need real debate about real issues.  Ron Paul just introduced legislation to audit the Federal Reserve and that hasn’t gotten any coverage.  That is a huge step in the future of the nation!  Instead we’re focusing on Rush and trivial issues that should be in the tabloids.

The Rise of the Libertarians

This election is proof.  Pretty soon, I say within the next 3 election cycles, the “libertarian” party will be a major player in the electoral process.  The reason I put libertarian in quotes is because it’s not going to really be the Libertarian Party that will rise to prominence.  It will be a party that wants small government, out of our everyday lives that is fiscally responsible.  It might start with Ron Paul, the Constitution Party and the Libertarians and morph into a major party, but the seeds are being sown.

The two major parties have become too similar.  They might have differences in certain policies, but they are minute when you think of the entire political spectrum.  For example, they don’t question taxes in the first place, they just want to lower or raise them a little.  They do not consider if we need our military in over 150 countries, they just talk about shifting troops from one country to the other.

They have also become indistinguishable from one another.  The “small government” Republicans have taken away more liberties from us than any “big government” Democrat ever would.  From Congress granting the President the power to go to war, to the NSA to the Patriot Act and now the bailout plan and our new Office of Financial Stability, the Federal Government is growing by leaps and bounds.

In the next few years, we’ll start seeing more of a backlash.  There are enough people out there that are dissatisfied with the direction of our country.  They know that the USA was set up by the Constitution to have a small central government.  After all, our founding fathers were breaking away from the British Monarchy.  The last thing they wanted was an overly strong central government.

Look at the following of Ron Paul.  This is a man who was able to garner 5% of the vote for the Republican nominee for President.  He has a beautifully simple way of politics.  If it’s in the Constitution he’ll vote for it.  If not, he’s against it.

This message spans across race, religion, class, gender or political party affiliation.  It is a message for freedom and taking back control of the country that was given to us in the Constitution.  Also, more and more young people seem attracted to this message.  They see the ways of the political machine and want to take back control.  Maybe it’s the internet or maybe it’s their “against establishment” way of thinking, but you can sense that change is coming.

I’m really excited that we might finally have a challenge to the two major parties, that might eventually morph into one, big government, moderate party.  It won’t happen overnight and it won’t happen in four years, but there is momentum for real change and reform of the central government.

What the Heck is Going on?

So I read today that John McCain is criticizing Obama for not coming up with a plan on how to fix the Wall Street crisis.  Fair enough.

But McCain’s plan wants to put all sorts of new restrictions and oversight on Wall Street banks.  This coming from the party of “small government.”

Then, in Congress, the Democrats are trying to limit the role of the Treasury and the Federal Governement in the bailout plan.  

So we have the Republicans trying to add more restrictions and the Democrats trying to reduce the role of the Federal Government.

If this isn’t proof that the two parties have merged into one, I don’t know what is.