Last night the President of these United States said, "The people out there need our help." You just don't get it, Mr. President. Government needs to step out of the way so that the people "out there" can help themselves.

Can you Distinguish Between Ordinary People and Fat Cats

Many, including President Obama, are throwing around the word Populism. The President is pounding the lectern as he campaigns for whom he calls the “ordinary people” and against the Wall Street “fat cats.” Populism is supposedly political ideas and activities that are intended to represent ordinary people's needs and wishes. The big question that might be asked is just who are these ordinary people? Some will argue that in modern society, fractured as it is into myriad interest groups and niches, any attempt to define the interests of the "ordinary people" will be so general as to be useless. Let us see if we can find some of these folks in a hypothetical little town in Illinois, population 1,000.

Mary Jones wants to build a microchip manufacturing plant in Pleasantville, Illinois. She is planning on hiring 300 employees, mostly white collar engineers and blue collar technicians. Most of the employees are married with husbands and wives who will be looking for employment in the area, and many have children that will attend school in the area. They will need housing, schools, banks, doctors, grocery stores, gas stations, restaurants, cell phones, electric lights, clothing stores, car dealerships, and access to the internet and radio and TV stations. Teachers will be employed at the schools, along with administrative personnel and cafeteria workers. Doctors will move into the area and hire nurses and office workers. The grocery stores will hire managers and clerks and butchers and bakers. The restaurants will hire cooks and waitresses, and the clothing stores will hire clerks and managers. If enough stores are needed by Mary’s employees then a Mall might appear, with movie theaters and food courts.

The residents of Pleasantville move into apartments or start looking for their dream homes, going to realtors such as Remax and Century 21 which are listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The baker goes to the car dealership to purchase a van to transport baked goods, a dealer in Ford products which is also listed on the NYSE. Trucks from out of town bring in everything from gasoline to french fries, representing companies such as Knight Transportation, also traded on the NYSE. Trains stop and bring fruits and vegetables from California and Mexico and cars from Tennessee and Japan and office supplies and books and car parts and furniture: Companies such as the Burlington Northern Railroad Company, also traded on the NYSE.

Century 21 and Ford and Knight Transportation and the Burlington Northern Railroad are all companies whose boards of directors and shareholders are considered “fat cats” by President Obama. What the President does not understand is that these shareholders are school teachers, businessmen, doctors, pilots, and factory workers. More than 60% of the population of this country owns stock in companies that are publicly traded on Wall Street – are they all “fat cats?”

My question to you, Mr. President, is just who are the “ordinary people” that you are looking out for? You have said, “Democrats work for the little guys on Main Street while Republicans do the bidding of Wall Street.” You just do not understand – it is all tied together! You cannot distinguish between the person eating at McDonalds with the persons working behind the counter at McDonalds with the stockholders of the Wall Street firm and the McDonald’s board of directors. Put excessive controls on Wall Street, which usually equates to higher taxes, and you ultimately hurt the “ordinary people” eating in a fast food restaurant, or buying homes, or going to the doctor, or riding a train, or buying a new cell phone.

But let us finish looking at Mary and her microchip manufacturing plant. Mary goes to the local branch of a Wall Street “fat cat” bank for a loan to start up her company. Unable to compete in the banking industry with the government controls in place the bank cannot make the loan that Mary needs. Mary goes elsewhere to start her company and Pleasantville remains in a state of stagnation or the population begins to decline as people move on to areas where they can find work. Mary might even end up receiving that loan from China and starting her business there.

…In another part of the country John Smith wants to build a McDonald’s in a refurbished area of Detroit. He is planning on hiring 25 employees…

The Preamble to the Constitution

We the people of the United States in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.

This is a Preamble to the Constitution, it is an introduction - not law. When people say that promoting general welfare is written in the Constitution it is not.

In Response to Peggy Noonan

Ms. Noonan,

We are not President Obama's 'people' and he is not elected to lead the 'people.' His job is to make sure the Constitution is faithfully executed, along with various other stuff such as signing bills given to him by the Legislature and appointing ambassadors and signing treaties. He also tells federal offices when to lower their flags to half staff. He is NOT Moses leading his people to the promised land. He is a citizen of the US like the rest of us only he has limits on his job based on voters and/or term limits.

To Senator Mark Bennett (D-Colorado)

Thank you for your letter this morning asking us to give money, food and clothing to Haiti relief in the form of cash dollars to washington.gov. Thank you for finally sending an e-mail that stops extolling your virtues and the virtues of the health care plan. Thank you for caring so much about us here in Colorado that you, the government, wants to take care of us forever.

We will be glad to give aid to the Haitians when you extend the Bush tax cuts and permanently do away with death taxes. Until then we don't have the money to give any more than we already do. And finally, if you think the voters of Massachusetts were angry just wait until you see how we feel here in Colorado. You might want to start sprucing up that resume for when you join the ranks of the unemployed in 2011.

Concise reporting

Brown won!
According to NPR it is George W. Bush's fault.

Advice to President Obama and the liberal press: Move On!

What are Biden-ism's

OK, here is a quick snapshot of Attorney General of Massachusetts Martha Coakley – a Democrat. She is running for the Senate seat vacated by the late Ted Kennedy, Democrat and liberal from Massachusetts. In the race, in the bluest of blue states, is Scott Brown, a conservative Republican, described by Coakley and the liberal press as a “pickup truck-driving Republican like George W. Bush.” Mr. Brown is leading in the polls at this late date. Aside from spewing the liberal mantra that the pursuit of happiness is morally repugnant and selfish what is Coakley doing that has Democrats scratching their heads and wondering why she was nominated?

Ms. Coakley, in an interview on ‘Nightside with Dan Rea’ in Boston, said that Scott Brown had the support of Rudy Guliani who is a Yankee fan and ALSO has the support of another Yankee fan, Curt Schilling. This seemed really important to point out by Coakley for some reason. Mr. Rea then tried to remind Coakley that Schilling was a pitcher for the RED SOX and pitched the bloody sock game – pitching a great game while the sutures on his ankle were separating causing his sock to fill with blood. It led to a seventh game of the 2004 series and the win by the Red Sox - breaking the supposed Babe Ruth curse. Curt Schilling has since said that in his entire career he has never been a Yankees fan and he is going to vote for Scott Brown.

So Ms. Coakley is not concerned with health care or the economy – she doesn’t like pickup trucks and doesn’t follow the Red Sox. But not wanting to leave hockey fans out Ms. Coakley said that she thought it was silly to stand out in the cold and rain at Fenway Park along with her opponent Scott Brown to shake hands with hockey fans during the recent outdoor game, saying in essence that all of the Fenway fans together were not as important to her election as two Washington insiders she was meeting with that same evening.

The aforementioned are all silly, sometimes stupid things to say (one might even call them Biden-isms) on the part of Ms. Coakley. But she isn’t the only person that has the capacity to speak before thinking. Please keep in mind that Coakley and Brown are running for the Senate seat vacated by Ted Kennedy: Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, CHAIRMAN of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said, and I am not kidding here, “Why would you hand the keys to the car back to the same guys whose policies drove the economy into the ditch and then walked away from the scene of the accident?” Somehow I do not think we will be hearing much from Mr. Van Hollen in the future.

Mr. Brown, if you are elected stay with your conservative ideals as you head to the nation’s Capitol: Good economies are caused by entrepreneurs and not by politicians, and businesses create prosperity and governments create oppression. Whether you are elected or not keep those thoughts in mind and watch with the rest of us as we the people push back against government in the elections next fall.

The Blame Game

The Democrats and their support staff – the national media – are all sustaining the idea that then-President George W. Bush had somehow not responded as quickly to Katrina as President Obama was responding to the Haitian earthquake. Amid all of the suffering that we see televised daily from Haiti our government still has to Bush-bash. But comparing Haiti and Katrina is like comparing apples and elephants.

There is one small detail that the media is leaving out in stating that Bush delayed too long before going into Louisiana and particularly New Orleans – the Federal Government is not allowed to enter a disaster area within a State of these United States unless they are invited by the government of that State – and they were not. Then Governor Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana refused assistance from the Feds for days, stating that Louisiana’s National Guard would be able to handle the situation.

When looking into this I ran across numerous websites that said Governor Blanco declared a state of emergency on the 25th of August and requested troop assistance from the Pentagon on that day. The hurricane did not reach landfall until the 29th of August. It is another case of ‘say anything’, true or not, and someone will believe it especially if it fits into the mantra of a political party.

The criticisms of the government's response to Hurricane Katrina primarily consisted of criticism of mismanagement and lack of leadership in the relief efforts in response to the storm and its aftermath. More specifically, the criticism focused on the delayed response to the flooding of New Orleans.

Within days of Katrina's August 29, 2005 landfall, people were finger-pointing trying to place blame on someone for the local, state and federal governments' role in the preparations for and response to the hurricane. The media televised images of shaken and frustrated political leaders, and of residents who remained stranded by flood waters without water, food or shelter. The media wrongly alleged that race, class, and other factors could have contributed to delays in government response. In some cases it was actually reported that President Bush wanted the levees to fail and for New Orleans to flood.

In accordance with federal law, President George W. Bush directed the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, to coordinate the Federal response. Chertoff designated Michael D. Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as the Principal Federal Official to lead the deployment and coordination of all federal response resources and forces in the Gulf Coast region. However Governor Blanco resisted their efforts. Eight days later, Brown was recalled to Washington and Coast Guard Vice Admiral Thad W. Allen replaced him as chief of hurricane relief.

Criticism from politicians, activists, pundits and journalists of all stripes was directed at the local and state and governments headed by Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco. Nagin and Blanco were criticized for failing to implement New Orleans' evacuation plan and for ordering residents to a shelter of last resort without any provisions for food, water, security, or sanitary conditions. Perhaps the most important criticism of Nagin was that he delayed his emergency evacuation order until 19 hours before landfall, which led to hundreds of deaths of people who could not find any way out of the city.
The destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina raised other issues about emergency management. This prompted a Congressional investigation, which found that FEMA and the Red Cross "did not have a logistics capacity sophisticated enough to fully support the massive number of Gulf coast victims." Additionally, it placed responsibility for the disaster on all three levels of government.

An ABC News Poll conducted on September 2, 2005, showed more blame was being directed at state and local governments. A later CNN/USAToday/Gallup poll showed that respondents disagreed widely on who was to blame for the problems in the city following the hurricane — 13% said Bush, 18% said federal agencies, 25% blamed state or local officials and 38% said no one was to blame.

It is insane to point fingers or cast blame for natural disasters. Rational people know that President Bush didn’t cause Katrina or the Sumatra-Adaman Earthquake and tsunami, just like Presodent Obama didn’t cause the earthquake in Haiti. President Obama needs to stop looking back and bashing President Bush and look ahead to his own administration.

And for those who want to compare disasters? Apples to apples would be the Haiti and tsunami disasters. Our son is a marine and in 2005 he was stationed in Okinawa, Japan. He called the day after Christmas to say he was just walking onto a ship that was taking them to Thailand and Indonesia and other countries in the area for disaster relief. President Bush sent troops and aid within hours of the tsunami because the leaders of Indonesia and Thailand asked immediately for help.

The Power of We, the People

If Brown wins the election in Massachusetts and Congress tries to cram through the Senate version of the health care bill and send it to Obama for signing before Brown can take his seat in the Senate don’t the Democrats realize that they are in danger of even greater losses in the elections coming up this November? Why don't they see it? Is the belief in this huge government control over our lives so strong they are willing to give up their careers as politicians? I do not believe they are that altruistic, which leaves only one answer: They don’t believe in the real power in this country – We the People.

First Harry Reid and Now the Denver School District

A Denver School District has appologized for their insensitivity towards African-Americans when the school cafeterias thought, in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., they would serve fried chicken and collard greens for lunch. I just don't know what else to say.

NPR Endorses new Candidate for 2012

Stop the presses! NPR, that insightful group of news giants that are paid salaries with our tax dollars has endorsed a candidate for President in 2012. American Idol will have to find someone else to MC the show as Ryan Seacrest has what it takes to hold a major office in the United States federal government, like, according to NPR, President.

This morning NPR did two ‘stories’ back to back; the first was about Sarah Palin. According to NPR her only claim to fame is running unsuccessfully for Vice President and writing one book.

The second ‘story’ was about that darling of Hollywood, that intellectual giant - Ryan Seacrest - who works tirelessly 36 hours a day 9 days a week. NPR glowed about how well he introduces people. He introduces Hollywood stars at the Golden Globe Awards, the talented and un on American Idol, and lets not forget the way he introduces oldies but goodies on his radio show.

Does this mean NPR feels Obama is a one term President? Or does NPR think Ryan can win the Democrat nomination over Obama? Oh, wait a minute! What? Do they know? Someone might want to tell them that Ryan just might not want to be a Democrat presidential candidate – unless he changes parties – being a big supporter of, dare I say the name aloud, George W. Bush.

So NPR you will just have to spend more tax dollars in trying to find an Obama alternative to keep Sarah and her Conservative ideas out of Washington, D.C. political life. After all, all she knows how to do is to run for office and write books.

p.s. As a recommendation, NPR, you might want to keep you thoughts to yourselves on what are good job qualifications for holding the office of President of the United States. President Obama might take exception since he has less elective office experience than Sarah...but he has written more books.

Congratulations, Blake Benson!! You are a true American hero.

Who is Blake Benson you ask? He is the Dakota Ridge High School student in Littleton Colorado who took on the school system and won.

Here is what happened. Ms. Obama was campaigning for her husband and was scheduled to speak at the high school. Mr. Benson wanted to take the opportunity to hand out literature on his favorite candidate, John McCain, in front of the school. The school took exception, had him arrested and taken away in handcuffs. He was also suspended from school.

Did Mr. Benson take this punishment without a fight? Not a chance. He sued the school district and won, winning an undisclosed monetary settlement.

His response to reporters after the judicial decision was that he hoped it would teach the students of the high school about their right to freedom of speech."

Bravo!

An Open Letter To Our Elected Officials in Washington, D.C.....

I awoke this morning and the headlines were indicating that you Senator Dodd, and you, Senator Dorgon, would not be seeking re-election. Bill Ritter in Colorado was also not going to run for re-election as Governor, and other elected officials that happen to be Democrats were choosing not to run again for public office. For weeks you have all watched as your poll numbers tanked and your campaign funding dried up and you have been asking yourselves, “Why is this happening?” Part of the problem is that you are even asking the question.

This country is about to witness a shake up of the Democrat and Republican parties, and in the process the two major parties will be given a very important lesson on how this country works. Hopefully you will learn that you work for us, We the people! Keep us happy and you are re-elected, start treating us like children and telling us you know what is best for us and you will see us voting you out of office and sending you on your way.

It is really quite simple.

Congress, your job is to make laws, control money, declare war, and some other stuff. Mr. President, your job is to protect and defend the Constitution. You execute the laws created by Congress and you have veto power over laws you don’t like. You spend money budgeted by Congress, create treaties, and some other stuff like deciding when the flag should be flown at half-staff. You, Justices of the Supreme Court, are the supreme arbiter of laws in the United States.

Congress makes the laws, the President executes the laws, and the Supreme Court enforces the laws. Simple. So as long as you all do what you are supposed to do and don’t step around any laws We the people are happy.

So what happened in the Fall of 2009? I am not talking about the election of Barack Obama. A few years back Congress wanted more of We the people’s votes, so they created laws to make sure anyone who wanted a house could have one, whether they could afford it or not. Organizations from Main Street to Wall Street backed the loans for the houses with pressure from Congress. And we all know what happened next: People couldn’t pay mortgages, lending organizations couldn’t figure out who owed what, We the people were told we had to bail out the lending organizations, taxes increased as did unemployment, and the country fell into a Recession.

Congress, Mr. President, are you following so far? We the people are angry. We are being pushed around, at least that is the impression we have. The era of hope and change began, only there was neither. It is politics as usual, which is OK and how the government has run since its inception. But something else is also happening. It seems that our Constitution is being ignored. You are hiding behind locked doors, making laws in secret. We are not allowed to see details of important legislation that will affect all of our lives. Basic freedoms that We the people have enjoyed in this country are being taken away from us. Our personal choices are no longer personal. Our private property is no longer private.

Congress, Mr. President - slow down. Take a deep breath. Open up negotiations on Health Care to C-Span and any other news organization that want to cover the proceedings. Allow the Republicans in on the melding of the Senate and House versions of the bills. And put the final bill out on line and in print for fellow lawmakers and We the people to read before any final voting takes place. Do these things and you won’t be feeling the wrath of We the people in November. Otherwise, don’t let the door hit you on your way out.