Just weeks after the presidential election and the GOP is trying to show its newfound bipartisanship by dealing with the “fiscal cliff,” a monster of its own making from way back when they were trying to keep President Obama from being able to raise the debt ceiling. They were being too cute by half, thinking that once their nominee was elected, and they took control of the Senate, they could do their thing to make it go away.

Well, things didn’t go exactly the way they planned, as we now know, and they’re stuck in the corner they painted themselves into. They deserve a little comeuppance, in my opinion. They let their hatred for Obama keep them from doing what was good for the country. And now the president is holding better cards. If I were Obama, I’d let it expire and let them stew in their own juices, but I don’t think the president is that kind of guy.

In the not-so-bipartisan department, several GOP members of Congress are ginning up a new tempest in a teapot over the statements made by U.N. Ambassador and possible Secretary of State nominee Susan Rice about the Benghazi attacks on the Sunday talk shows. Even though everyone actually in the know has said she was only repeating the facts she was given by the intelligence community, Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham seem to have made it their life’s work to block the nomination of a very qualified black woman to be the secretary of state. So much for the new outreach effort to women and minorities.

There was a call for a Watergate-type investigation into the White House supposedly changing the talking points, but that’s been pretty well disproved by both former CIA director David Petraeus and the spokesman for the Director of National Intelligence Shawn Turner in a CNN interview: “The intelligence community made substantive, analytical changes before the talking points were sent to government agency partners for their feedback. There were no substantive changes made to the talking points after they left the intelligence community.”

According to Rep. Adam Schiff in The New York Times, Petraeus in his closed door briefing “was adamant that there was no politicization of the process, no White House interference or political agenda.” (Thanks to Think Progress, “GOP’s Benghazi Conspiracy Falls Apart, White House Didn’t Change Susan Rice’s Talking Points.”)

Another curious thing is the sudden GOP concern about embassy security. In 2002, the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, was attacked and 10 people were killed. In 2004, the U.S. Embassy was bombed in Uzbekistan with two killed and nine injured. Also in 2004, gunmen attacked the U.S. Consulate in Saudi Arabia, killing eight. In 2006, armed men attacked the U.S. Embassy in Syria, killing one. In 2007, a grenade was launched into the U.S. Embassy in Athens, Greece. In 2008, rioters set fire to the U.S. Embassy in Syria. Also in 2008, bombings in the U.S. Embassy in Yemen killed 10. These all happened during the Bush administration. Where was the hue and cry from the Republicans about embassy security then? How did they address this situation? In the fiscal year 2011 budget, they cut embassy security funds by $238 million! At the time, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “The scope of the proposed House cuts is massive. The truth is that cuts of that level will be detrimental to America’s national security. I was very clear with the Speaker about the deep concerns we have with the FY11 spending bill.”

They certainly didn’t seem very concerned then, but now that four people were killed in Benghazi under Obama’s administration, it’s a huge deal. Maybe they shouldn’t have gutted embassy security. Oh well, like everything else, we’ll just blame it on Obama.

In the immediate aftermath of the election, petitions from all 50 states came in seeking to secede from the United States. Coincidentally, these states get far more back from the federal government than they pay in. If I were President Obama, I’d take them up on their offer to leave, after billing them for their share of the national debt, of course, but that’s just me. Good riddance, I say. Unfortunately, this won’t happen and I’ll quote Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on why: “Secession? I cannot imagine that such a question could ever reach the Supreme Court. To begin with, the answer is clear. If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede.”

At least the irony is delicious.

Tags: Barack Obama, Don Burnard, Hot Corner

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 29th, 2012 at 4:28 pm and is filed under Opinion, The Hot Corner.
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The mainstream media say there are approximately 4 percent of people who consider themselves “undecided” about the presidential election. My personal opinion is there are more like four. Not percent — the number four. If there is even that small percentage of voters who haven’t made up their minds yet after the nonstop campaigning and being bombarded by political ads day and night for as long as we can remember, they most likely will just not vote.

The first thing undecided voters need to do to come to a rational decision is to educate themselves on the candidates’ positions. In the case of Mitt Romney, this could take a while because they are prone to changing month to month, week to week or even day to day. And pay particular attention to his statements, which often seem to defy conventional wisdom or wisdom altogether.

A particular example just happened to play on a TV commercial even as I’m typing this. Romney states that teachers have nothing to do with building a strong economy, and that smaller classes are just the teachers union trying to get them to hire more teachers! I would be willing to bet that old Mitt never had 40-plus students in his classes in elementary through prep school, so it probably never occurred to him that the quality of education available to the hoi polloi in public schools is directly affected by class size. One teacher can hardly give any student any individual help or attention if she or he has to try to keep a large number of students engaged in the educational process. Those who attended private schools have little or no awareness of the trials and tribulations that the middle class and poor generally face.

Anyone who thinks that a well-educated populace has no bearing on the economy is delusional or simply doesn’t care about the people not in his social set. Romney’s “47 percent” comments have been well reported and seem to bear this out. It’s not just 47 percent that he doesn’t care about, however. The number is probably double that at least. Romney seems to have no real idea what life is like for people who weren’t born with silver spoons in their mouths. He has spent his entire life in a bubble of privilege that has insulated him from the real-life adventure of having to make ends meet.  He’s used to getting his way, and will do or say whatever he thinks the crowd du jour wants to hear to meet his goal of becoming president.  You never get the feeling that he wants to be president to help you and me. It’s more like it’s another notch on his gun handle. It’ll be cool on his résumé, and when he’s done with that, he can probably make some really lucrative bucks by being on some large corporate boards. We’re not his people.

Romney keeps touting how when he was governor of Massachusetts, he worked with an 87 percent Democratic controlled legislature. During his one term in office he vetoed 800 bills; 707 of these vetoes were overridden. Hardly sounds like he was stepping across the aisle to work with the opposition. Add to that the fact that he was gone from the state for 212 days during the last year of his term. He was already moving on. He already had the governor notch. Next!

He did enact Romneycare, which is virtually indistinguishable from Obamacare, but he has dissembled on that saying that while it was OK for Massachusetts, it would devastate the nation if everyone had those benefits. The real reason was the extreme right that he was pandering to considered the one thing he could remotely call a success to be an albatross around his neck. These are the same people who don’t believe in any type of government social programs, such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Since Ohio is now the center of the political universe, we’ve been plastered 24/7 with political ads. My last piece of advice would be to follow the money. Since the Citizens United case gave corporations the same rights as citizens, a lot of big money is paying for those ads. All of those Crossroads GPS ads are Karl Rove’s doing, paid for by anonymous money. Sheldon Adelson alone has invested $70 million to defeat Obama. Do you really think he spent that money because he’s worried about you? The Koch Brothers and Americans for Prosperity and many other groups backed by big corporate interests aren’t investing hundreds of millions because they’re worried about you. The same groups are investing tens of millions to defeat Sen. Sherrod Brown, too. Vote for your best interests, not to enhance their bottom lines. Vote for the real public servants.

Tags: Barack Obama, Don Burnard, Election 2012, Hot Corner, Mitt Romney

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 25th, 2012 at 1:27 pm and is filed under Opinion, The Hot Corner.
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So far, Gov. John Kasich seems to be a shoot-from-the-lip kind of guy. He often makes statements that don’t seem to have a very factual basis, but has rather an almost sanctimonious air that whatever pops into his brain at any given moment is sure to be the answer to all our problems. Of course, if pressed for details, he clams right up and moves on. This has been the modus operandi for his much vaunted JobsOhio program. The more that comes out on this program, the more it seems to be a scam to let Kasich’s financial buddies cut a fat hog in the derriere at the taxpayer’s expense.

The idea of privatizing economic development was sold to us as having great success in other states during the campaign. Florida in particular was held up as a shining example. The blog Plunderbund has reported extensively on what’s in play with this subject and the problems with this entire JobsOhio scam. The newly elected Republican governor of Florida, Rick Scott, recently announced that he was pretty much ending Florida’s experiment with public-private economic development and returning most of those responsibilities to a reinstituted Department of Commerce. This was done with the blessing of the bigger business players in Florida, many of whom led the fight in 1996 to disband the old Department of Commerce.

A Jan. 27 article in Bloomberg stated, “Business leaders Thursday were quick to applaud Gov. Rick Scott’s proposal for reviving Florida’s Commerce Department to streamline economic development efforts. Associated Industries of Florida president and CEO Barney Bishop said attracting new businesses and jobs requires a different approach than what Florida is doing now.”

This is the program that Kasich said was going to completely change the way we do business in Ohio to create jobs. So far, it has created a small number of extremely high-paying jobs for several well-placed cronies, but according to the GOP governor and business leaders in Florida, it is unlikely to do the job we need done in Ohio. Another thing to consider is that the top three states with these types of plans also lead in unemployment rates. I fail to see the upside here for the average Ohioan. Oh well, it’s a good plan if you’re a venture capitalist commuting to Ohio from California to run it.

When we look at the bill, HB1, it’s even scarier. We’re setting up a taxpayer funded state agency that the bill states specifically is not considered a state agency. Huh? Governor Transparency has set up a program that basically removes all oversight, accountability, openness about where the taxpayers’ money is being spent, and allows the employees to lobby while they work! They are not subject to audits by the state auditor, nor subject to state ethics laws. They are not subject to oversight or investigation by the inspector general. They are not considered to be state employees and are not subject to public records laws, including the governor when he is acting as the chair.

The only reports the public will get will be self-analyses of how they basically feel they’re doing. This is what passes for transparency with King John, evidently. I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Apparently, so do all the major newspaper editorial boards in Ohio, with the exception of The Columbus Dispatch (the newspaper equivalent of Fox News). The only good thing I see coming out of this is watching an interesting fight to see who gets the next Pulitzer Prize for reporting on Ohio corruption. This is going to make Coingate look like Amateur Hour. I can hardly wait for the letters and e-mails from all the self-professed libertarian money managers who write me to start rolling, in explaining how wonderful all this is going to be.

An interesting side note was provided by Mark Kvamme, the aforementioned commuting venture capitalist Kasich chose to lead JobsOhio. In an interview with Ann Fisher on WOSU in Columbus, Kvamme stated that what set Ohio apart was its central location and excellent transportation: “We have rivers, we have railroads.” When Fisher asked him how that squared with turning down $400 million for passenger rail, he said she’d have to take that up with the governor’s office. No mention of the fact that his home state of California got that money.

Another big thank you to the diligent team at Plunderbund for doing the job that the mainstream media is largely ignoring.

E-mail columnist Don Burnard at letters@toledofreepress.com

Tags: Don Burnard, Hot Corner, JobsOhio, John Kasich

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 12th, 2011 at 6:06 am and is filed under Opinion, The Hot Corner.
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I’ve been a student of politics for a few decades now, and in all that time, I’ve never seen a weirder political season than the one we are currently experiencing. The collective nation, regardless of which side you’re on, seems to have lost its mind. On one hand, we have the Right. This year, the moneyed powers have decided that it is in their best interests to ally themselves with some radical fringe elements to raise the collective fear of the following that they can usually dupe, to new heights of fear.

With a hodge-podge of candidates that in most years would be readily dismissed as crazy, and the backing of a number of deep pocketed money interests, like the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch, and the Wall Street bankers who feel their gravy train possibly grinding to a halt, they’ve managed to make a lot of normally bright people believe that they actually have THEIR best interests at heart. They’ve worked up their newly expanded base into a frenzy, assisted by the Supreme Court decision that allows corporations to put hundreds of millions of dollars of unregulated cash into elections.

They are so arrogant about it that Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, can come right out and say he delivered a cool million to the Republican Governor’s Association to benefit his good friend John Kasich, who just happens to be running for governor of our fair state. Yes sir, when an Australian billionaire feels free to attempt to buy the governorship of our state, it’s a sad state of affairs. For decades, all the GOP has had to offer the public at large, is the fear du jour. Their real base doesn’t live in places like Toledo Ohio. Mix in a healthy dose of twisted non-facts in these corporate bought ads, and they’re off and running.

On the other side, we have the Left, a disorganized collection of disparate interests that mean well, but certainly wouldn’t want to offend anyone by actually doing something that might actually go far enough to truly address a problem. The Democrats seem to have this pie in the sky belief that bipartisanship actually still has meaning. To that end, they will water down any bill until it is basically ineffectual to try to get a Republican vote or two. If they fail in their attempt, we’ll become so despondent that large numbers will just give up and not even bother to vote. In the last two years, they managed to squander the largest majority in Congress in decades and pass some well meaning but woefully watered down legislation for fear of offending someone. In a word, basic governance has become nonexistent.

Now I’m just a poor dumb electrician, but here’s the way I see things. I worked heavy construction for 35+ years, so I’ll couch it in terms with which I’m familiar. For eight years, the Bush administration and the Republican controlled Congress, aided and abetted by a number of gutless Democrats, dug this huge economic hole. They gutted regulations and relied on the financial industry to “police” themselves, trusting them to do the right thing. We know how that turned out. In 2008, Barack Obama was elected. He was handed the shovel and tasked with filling in the hole. From a construction standpoint, I know that if you tell the average worker that you have 21 months to fill this hole it took 8 years to dig, he or she will probably tell you where to stick that shovel. Yet, this is apparently what the voters expect Obama to be able to do. Oh, and while you’re trying to fill in that hole, we’re going to hold on to the handle of that shovel so that you can’t fill that hole in. This is what the Republicans did with their blanket obstructionism.

If the numerous polls and pundits are right, the voters are poised to hand the shovel back to the guys who dug this gaping pit and allow them to resume digging, not only removing all the backfill, but widening the pit even further. If we allow this to happen, then shame on us. Whatever happened to the America that our fathers and grandfathers, the so called Greatest Generation, fought and died to protect? I think that my dad, uncles, and father in law would be appalled at what we are degenerating into. Corporate interests are running the show now and for the foreseeable future. I just hope we wake up from our stupor before it’s too late.

As always, follow the money. Sherrod Brown said it best; “Bring back preexisting conditions. Vote Republican.” The perfect bumper sticker.

Tags: Don Burnard, Hot Corner, Obama

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 21st, 2010 at 2:38 pm and is filed under Opinion, The Hot Corner.
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In previous columns, I have discussed the unfairness of extending the tax cuts for the top of the income ladder. The fact that they, and virtually they alone, have benefited from the Bush tax cuts has contributed greatly to the growing income inequality gap in this country. Recent reports have shown that the income gap is reaching record levels unseen since, well, just before the Great Depression.

A recent report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy organization that works on the federal and state level on fiscal policy and public programs that affect low- and moderate-income families and individuals, shows just how stark this gap is. The nonprofit studied the change in actual incomes from 1979-2007, broken down from the bottom fifth of income earners (average $17,700) and found that this group had lost an average of $6,000 in yearly income by 2007. The second fifth (average $38,000) lost $10,000, the middle fifth (average $55,300) lost $13,000, and the fourth fifth (average $77,700) lost $11,700. The top fifth (average $198,300) posted a gain of $40,700 in purchasing power, and the top 1 percent (average $1,319,700) showed a whopping gain of $782,600.

These figures are based on congressional budget office figures. If income distribution had remained at the 1979 levels, just figure out which fifth you fall into and then add the loss figure to your income to see what you should be making. If you’re in that top fifth, or especially that top 1 percent, congratulations. You got quite a bonus at our expense.

Now, the Republicans, and some Democrats, want to borrow enough money to give the top 2 percent a $700 billion additional gift. Richard Thaler, one of the country’s leading economists, pointed out some of the more salient points about this folly in a Sept. 25 column in The New York Times. As he points out, President Obama has proposed retaining the current tax rates on incomes up to $200,000 for an individual and $250,000 for couples. Under this plan, everyone would receive a tax cut relative to Clinton-era tax rates and even those making $250,000 or more would receive a $6,000 cut. True, their bill would be higher, but fair is fair, right?

The Republican leadership, as Thaler points out, has drawn a line in the sand, saying it will oppose Obama’s bill (big surprise) unless all taxpayers remain at the current rate. He then refutes, rather effectively I might add, the Republicans’ three major arguments. The first is that it is folly to raise taxes in a weak economy. Thaler says, “ … if the primary goal is stimulating the economy, tax breaks to the rich are simply not cost-effective. Numerous studies have shown that the poor spend nearly all their money, while the rich save a significant amount of theirs.”

The second argument is that it would impose an excessive burden on small businesses, according to Thaler. The Obama administration has said that this will only affect 3 percent of small businesses. Republicans argue that the 3 percent earn 47 percent of the income from that sector and the taxes would apply to the bulk of small business income. Thaler says that while this sector includes everything from barbershops and carwashes to hedge funds and law firms, and included Goldman Sachs before it went public, the fact that 3 percent of businesses earn nearly half of the money is precisely what many people are concerned about: growing income inequality.

Finally, the last GOP argument is an oldie but a goodie; class warfare. These guys sound like a broken record. Thaler says his best response to that comes from Warren Buffett in 2006: “There’s class warfare all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

Thaler said, “The question comes down to whether we want a society in which the rich take an ever-increasing share of the pie, or prefer to return to conditions that allow all classes to anticipate an increasing standard of living. Demanding that the rich get a tax cut as a condition for tax relief for others is simply elitist. Tea Partiers take note.”

Richard Thaler is a professor of economics and behavioral science at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, so I think he has the creds to back up these points. This isn’t some “liberal” blogger or blue-collar columnist like yours truly. Think about it!

Tags: Don Burnard, Hot Corner, taxes

This entry was posted on Friday, October 8th, 2010 at 8:24 pm and is filed under The Hot Corner.
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At first, I wanted to respond to the facts in the Aug. 1 Toledo Free Press column by Don Burnard, “The Right’s tax scam,” but after three minutes of research, I realized there were none. It was just the same progressive playbook, the hyperbole and name-calling progressives always use.

Mr. Burnard, why do you oppose tax cuts?  Do you not want economic recovery? Do you not want hard-working Americans to keep more of their money?

The facts: The last three across-the-board tax cuts have led to economic growth — Kennedy tax cuts (1964), Reagan tax cuts (1981) and the Bush tax cuts (2001 and 2002).

According to the National Center for Policy Analysis, the Kennedy tax cuts had the following effects: Between 1962 and 1969, investment grew at an annual rate of 6.1 percent, far higher than the 3 percent annual rate for 1959-1962, and the 2.3 percent rate for 1969-1972, after the JFK tax reforms had been repealed. Real gross national product grew 4.5 percent during the 1960s, higher than the 2.4 percent growth rate seen from 1952-1960. From 1962-1969, government revenue increased 6.4 percent a year, compared with 1.2 percent a year between 1952-1959.

And the Reagan tax cuts? Real economic growth averaged 3.2 percent during the Reagan years, compared with 2.8 percent during the Ford-Carter years and 2.1 percent during the Bush-Clinton years.

Real median family income grew by $4,000 during the Reagan period after experiencing no growth in the pre-Reagan years; it experienced a loss of almost $1,500 in the post-Reagan years. The amount of time the median worker stayed unemployed fell drastically.

The “evil” Bush tax cuts? President Bush’s 2003 tax cuts lowered the rate to 35 percent and created the economic growth that has increased tax revenues each year — by 5.5 percent in 2004 and 14.5 percent — the largest in 25 years — in 2005.

So what effect will letting the Bush tax cuts expire have? According to the U.S. Tax Code. If you:

• make $34,550, taxes will increase from 10 percent to 15 percent.
• make up to $82,000, taxes will increase from 25 percent to 28 percent.
• make up to $171,850, taxes will increase from 28 percent to 31 percent.
• make over $373,650, taxes will increase from 35 percent to 36.6 percent.

So the Bush tax cuts only benefit the wealthy? The tax rate on the wealthy only decreased by 1.6 percent, but the middle-class decrease was

3 percent. And, the tax rate for the poor went down 5 percent. So the tired argument called “tax cuts for the rich” doesn’t work.

The nonpartisan Concord Coalition that Burnard cites as a pillar for his argument that keeping the tax cuts would add to the deficit says only this: Myth: We just need to raise taxes starting with rolling back all of Bush tax cuts. Reality: Even restoring tax rates to pre-2001 levels will not close the gap between spending and revenue. If the wedge between spending and revenue continues to grow, taxes would have to be raised continuously and would eventually cripple the economy.” — Concord Coalition: Taking back our fiscal future.

Finally, let me address Burnard’s name-calling tactic referring to our group as “the Children of Lividity.” First, you think that the Children of Liberty is an extension of the Republican Party? Most of our members are more “livid” at Republicans than Democrats. If you’ll recall, the Lucas County Republican Party tried to get us kicked out of the Toledo Public Libraries last winter (TFP Jan. 24 issue: “Officials: Stainbrook files complaint against conservative group”). But I would not expect anything different from progressives in either party; you resort to name calling because we are challenging the status quo.

As for us being the Children of Lividity? Are we angry? Yes! Are we livid? We leave “lividity” for the progressives at G-20 Summits and the pro illegal alien rallies. You see, that kind of destruction, thuggery and hateful rhetoric is true lividity. The Children of Liberty are just angry that the ruling class doesn’t wish to represent us. We do not take to the streets and burn cars!  We debate and educate. The Children of Liberty choose to awaken Americans to the fact the progressives wish to limit our liberty and freedom.

Scott Allegrini is a co-founder of the Children of Liberty. E-mail him at thechildrenofliberty@yahoo.com.

Tags: Children of Liberty, Hot Corner

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 5th, 2010 at 1:53 pm and is filed under Children of Liberty, Opinion, The Hot Corner.
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The Republicans and their Tea Party front groups, like the Children of Lividity or whatever they call themselves, continue to flaunt their hypocrisy on a daily basis. They cry huge crocodile tears about what the Democrats and the Obama administration have done to the deficit in this country and try to scare the public into thinking that any help we give the millions who are out of work — or health care we provide  for anyone who isn’t a banker, oilman or worth millions — will crash the economy forever. We must return control of our country to them to save us all. Huh?

Let’s stop and take a look at where we are and how we really got here. At the end of the Clinton administration, we were running a $236 billion surplus and the general consensus was that we could expect to run surpluses for the next 10 years at least. This represented the largest surplus in history. This was where the country was when the Bush administration took office in January 2001. By 2002, Bush and the Republican controlled Congress had managed to plunge us into a $160 billion deficit, a net swing of $396 billion in one year. This too, was a record, unfortunately. The Republicans presided over the greatest increase in the national debt in our nation’s history. When Obama took office, Clinton’s that surplus had blossomed into a $1.3 trillion deficit.

W. took office with the public debt standing at $5.7 trillion. By the time he left, the public debt had nearly doubled to $10.6 trillion, which represents approximately $35,000 for every man, woman and child in this country. Job growth and the economy stagnated and then contracted and all the while the Republicans spent money like drunken sailors and had no concern whatsoever that deficit spending might be a bad thing.

On top of all this, we have the general corruption, disregard for the law and a disregard for anything that even smacked of regulatory control over anything, that came to define the Bush reign. A disdain for anything governmental was the order of the day. The magic of the marketplace was what would decide what was good for everyone. If it happened to be better for the elite, well that’s just the way of things in the New Global Economy.

These practices inevitably led to the biggest crash since the Great Depression. As soon as it became apparent what was happening,

the Bush administration swung directly into “Leave No Banker Behind mode”, bailing out the banks at the taxpayer’s expense and leaving the taxpayers themselves to flounder in the mess they left behind. This should hardly be surprising. Directly after Sept. 11, the first order of business was to bail out the airlines before worrying about the real victims, and later the first responders who did the real work, once again cleaning up what the government couldn’t be bothered with.

We had a couple countries to attack, one for no apparent reason, and the other with no apparent plan. And the hits just kept on coming until the entire house of cards came tumbling down, threatening the entire global economy.

Into this mess stepped Barack Obama. Not since Hercules had to clean out the Augean stables had such a mess been tackled. What did the Republican leaders do to help out with all this mess? They immediately decided to block any and all initiatives coming from the Democrats and the administration as a policy. This even included initiatives that they had co-sponsored in some cases. They started a program of lies and obfuscation to try to basically bring down the ability to effectively govern or solve any problems. And they found their voices as the newly minted party of fiscal responsibility! What a load of crap. Lately, I’m reminded of an old saying from the 1960s. “If you’re not part of the solution, then you’re part of the problem.”

The Republican Party is a large part of the problem, along with the gutless Democrats who are too beholden to special interests to do what’s right, and the Constitutional crybabies who think that our only problems could be solved if only everyone could interpret the Constitution as well as they can.

E-mail columnist Don Burnard at letters@toledofreepress.com.

Tags: Children of Liberty, Don Burnard, Hot Corner, Obama, Tea parties

This entry was posted on Friday, July 16th, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Opinion, The Hot Corner.
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Liberals are fond of portraying conservatives as “the party of no.” The inspiration for the slogan is conservative opposition to the unconstitutional agenda being forced onto the country by a radical president and a compliant Democrat majority in both houses of Congress.

As if opposition to tyranny is a strike against us. In this, we are proudly the party of “no.” But we are also proudly the party of “know”; we are the ones who do the homework, care about facts, and understand and respect the Constitution.

Granted, there are conservatives who settle for repeating talking points that they see or hear elsewhere. But that is also very true for a great many liberals. Their dear leaders say it, their news media outlets repeat it, therefore it must be true.

But any conservative who is worthy of the label needs to go beyond that and study the facts for him/herself. The results, when applied to confrontation with Obama liberals, can be most entertaining.

Allow me to use local liberal columnist Don Burnard’s musings about the Gulf oil spill as an example of the fun one can have by being in the party of know.

Mr. Burnard chides Republicans for allegedly defending BP’s interests and not holding it accountable for the consequences of the spill because BP was one of their major contributors.

Party of know response? BP was the single largest contributor to the Obama campaign.

He decries Representative Joe Barton (R-Texas) for apologizing to BP for having to pay into an escrow account for the damage it has done to the Gulf coast. He also condemns senatorial candidate Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) for calling the treatment of BP un-American.

Party of know response? Both Rep. Barton and Mr. Paul were right. Mr. Burnard, not being in the party of know, would rather us not know that BP was forced by presidential decree to establish the escrow fund. Were he in the party of know, he’d know and care that the president has absolutely no Constitutional authority to take this action, hence Mr. Paul is entirely correct.

The party of know would also point out the fallacy of saying BP is solely responsible for the damage. Not after the federal government’s interference with damage containment efforts at turn after turn after doing precisely nothing itself. The EPA banned BP from using chemical dispersants, because of the environmental damage they would do – as if a multimillion-gallon oil spill covering thousands of square miles of seawater and threatening hundreds of miles of coastline was less damaging! BP was banned from burning off the oil early on – too much air pollution. The state of Louisiana was forbidden by the feds from building sand berms to keep the oil out of coastal wetlands. Even efforts to skim the oil from the surface were temporarily halted when the Coast Guard stopped the operations due to lack of fire extinguishers on the vessels involved.

More tidbits from the party of know: The Obama administration passed the Deepwater Horizon rig’s safety inspection, despite documented violations. And Obama’s unconstitutional decree that all deepwater offshore drilling be halted for six months is nothing but a hit to domestic oil producers, as it applies only to American platforms, not to the growing number of platforms being operated near U. S. waters by nations such as Brazil and China.

The boycott of BP gas stations advocated by the party of no knowledge only punishes independent small businessmen and franchisees rather than the perennial bogeyman Big Oil. Typical of Obamaniacs, they don’t care who gets hurt so long as they make meaningless but self-serving Statements. I’m proud to have switched my business to BP gas stations for the duration to offset this idiocy.

And while we’re at it, let’s look at Mr. Burnard’s claim that conservatives blame unqualified home buyers rather than the finance industry for the mortgage meltdown. The party of know points out that the banks were compelled by law, originating with President Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act and compounded by President Clinton, to extend loans to unqualified borrowers under threat of punishment for discrimination. There are also the roles Misrepresentative Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) and Senator Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut) played more recently in the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – a collapse that occurred under their regulatory watch, while they were on the take from the two companies, despite former President Bush’s warnings of impending disaster.

The Constitution was written to limit government power and protect your freedom. Join the party of know, that you may learn to cherish your liberty and to speak out against a government that has abandoned the Constitution on multiple fronts.

Thomas Berry, for the Children of Liberty.

Tags: BP oil spill, Children of Liberty, Don Burnard, Hot Corner, Thomas Berry

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 8th, 2010 at 12:01 pm and is filed under Children of Liberty, Opinion.
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This week, Congress had an opportunity to do a lot of good for a lot of people, including you and me. If the Republicans can quit fiddling while America burns, something of actual value to the average citizen might happen. Wouldn’t that be something! Unfortunately, it appears that all of the Republicans and a number of spineless Democrats who are beholden to the insurance companies will probably miss the opportunity to be a part of history.

The Republican spin machine is in full swing, misleading and misinforming the public. If you listen to them in order on the tube, they sound like Stepford Wives as they repeat, word for word, the same message, carefully crafted to misinform the public. They continue on their quest to obstruct virtually all business that comes before them.

I listened to Bob Latta parroting all the usual points on the local news the other night, droning on about “government run” health care, etc., etc. For starters, if he had actually read the legislation, nowhere in it is anything that even remotely resembles government run health care, other than the obvious, Medicare. Oh, and by the way, this bill will drive up the cost of Medicare to you and decrease your benefits. The American public, by overwhelming margins, doesn’t want this jammed down their throats, yadda yadda yadda.

The polls show that the public does not like the bill, by large margins, as it is portrayed. What they don’t tell you is that if it is broken down into its individual components, they are just as overwhelmingly supported by even larger margins. The Republicans also falsely state that no benefits will accrue for years even though we pay for it immediately. The Democratic Party has finally managed to put together a list of coherent talking points that address some of these misconceptions. Within the first year the bill will:

• Offer tax credits to small businesses to purchase coverage.
• Prohibit pre-existing conditions denials for all children in new plans.
• Provide immediate access for uninsured Americans with pre-existing conditions through temporary high risk pools.
• Prohibit dropping of coverage in individual plans when you get sick.
• End lifetime limits and restrictive annual limits in all plans.
• Provide premium rebates to enrollees for insurers with high administrative costs and require public disclosure of premium to overhead costs.
• Ensure consumers have access to an effective internal and external appeals process to appeal new insurance plan decisions.
• Require plans to cover enrollees’ children until age 26.
• Require new plans to cover preventative services and immunizations without cost sharing.

These are going to happen in the first year, and according to the same polls, are overwhelmingly popular. The lesson is that the medium is the message. The method of asking the questions in these polls often gives conflicting results.

Let’s address the other popular Republican scare tactic: that the seniors will have their Medicare benefits cut while raising their taxes. There will be an increase on the taxes of individuals making $200,000 or couples making $250,000 or more, it’s true. The increase however, is slight compared to the rising costs of health care, and will actually extend the solvency of Medicare.

To most middle-class working families, all of these things would be welcomed in these hard times especially.

Some of our most popular programs, such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and many other social programs had similar poll numbers when first instituted. Once they became law, they became not only popular, but programs that are taken for granted today by most of the population. Oddly enough, the same Republicans who try to destroy the social safety net we’ve all come to expect for decades,  posit themselves as its staunchest defenders. They’ve become masters at massaging the message so that it appears to mean the exact opposite of their purpose. One thing is clear, however.

The status quo definitely isn’t working and will not heal itself. It’s time to address these problems, and while the current bill is by no means a be all/end all answer to all the problems, it is a start. Let’s get it done, for all our sakes.

Tags: health care debate, Hot Corner

This entry was posted on Friday, March 19th, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Opinion, The Hot Corner.
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I’ve been discussing the level of discourse on various topics of great importance in my past few columns and have seen the bristling of many readers who, for various reasons, seem to believe that there is some vast left wing socialist conspiracy in play with virtually everything that this administration is trying to accomplish.

This is nothing new. A friend of mine in Buffalo, N.Y. who follows my scribbling sent me an article from 1964 that, with some name changes, could be as relevant today. I wish I could reproduce the entire article here, but I have a limited amount of space.

In the article, the author, Richard Hofstadter, a Dewitt Clinton professor of American History at Columbia University, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his book “Anti-Intellectualism in America,” cited similar behavior dating from 1797 and throughout our political history to 1964. The targets of the animosities changed with the times, but the basic reactions of the dissenters were remarkably consistent. The article, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” was published in the November 1964 issue of Harper’s Magazine.

He states, “American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. In recent years, we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right wingers, who have demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority.

“But behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and is not necessarily right wing. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind … The idea of the paranoid style as a force in politics would have little contemporary relevance or historical value if it were applied only to men with profoundly disturbed minds. It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant.

“Of course this term is pejorative, and it is meant to be; the paranoid style has a greater affinity for bad causes than good. But nothing really prevents a sound program or demand from being advocated in the paranoid style. Style has more to do with the way in which ideas are believed than with the truth or falsity of their content … The paranoid style is an old and recurrent phenomenon in our public life which has been frequently linked with movements of suspicious discontent.”

After offering examples throughout our history (Joseph McCarthy, e.g.), Hofstadter ends with this statement: “We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted by not only the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well.”

This article was written 45 years ago, but is every bit as relevant today. It could help to explain the thought processes of many of the right wing spokespeople who profess that the world is ending as we know it. This Chicken Little outlook on life is nothing new; we’ve been here before, and undoubtedly, will be again in the future. There will always be Joe McCarthys and Glenn Becks to peddle fear and lies to a gullible public.

The important thing is to not let them drown out the voices of reason who want to actually try to do something to try to make our lives better. Coming up with all the old name calling for anything that was around when FDR was in a similar position does not add to the debate. Recycling slogans from the past century isn’t going to get us anywhere.

We’re going to have to get down to business and solve our problems the good old-fashioned American way, with the hard work and ingenuity we’ve used since this country was founded. We’ve done it before and we’ll do it again. Is it going to be easy? Uh-uh. Is it going to be painless? No way. Can it be done? Hell, yeah. This is the land of opportunity and we have an opportunity to come out of this better than ever before, but slogans aren’t going to do it.

We need to ignore the Chicken Littles and get down to business. Because whether it’s health care, global warming, the insane wars were in, or the economy, we’re running out of time. All those old sayings we all heard growing up seem truer today than in my youth: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. Hmm.

E-mail columnist Don Burnard at letters@toledofreepress.com.

Tags: Burnard, Hot Corner

This entry was posted on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Opinion, The Hot Corner.
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