The Plusses, Minuses and Pleasant Surprises From Mitt Romney

Romney Has Looked Better Under The Spotlight Than I Initially Feared....

Did you know that the GOP held five Presidential primaries yesterday? Maybe; maybe not. However, given that data point, you all can tell me exactly who won all five of them. Mitt Romney will be the GOP nominee.

My five or so constant readers know well that I’m not turning handsprings over this final outcome. After deciding Mitt wouldn’t fit, I had to commit. Hence I endorsed the unsuccessful candidacy of Rick Santorum. Needless to say, I was vaguely resigned to four more years of Obamocracy after Santorum failed to break through in Michigan and Ohio.

Yet somewhere out on the trail Romney’s sensory perception broke through the smug cloud of his obnoxious coterie of condescending online strap-hangers. It’s like he actually listened as he shook hands and kissed babies. He’s pleasantly surprised me by learning a thing or two from being challenged in the 2012 primary. He gets partial credit for the speech he gave last night to celebrate his five cake-walk victories.

“Is it easier to make ends meet? Is it easier to sell your home or buy a new one?” he said, as the crowd cheered “NO!” “Have you saved what you needed for retirement? Are you making more AT your job? Do you have a better chance to get a better job? Are you paying less at the pump?” “It’s still about the economy,” Romney added, bluntly. “And we’re not stupid.”

The positive here is the recognition that a lot of us are just no longer included in anything good that happens in America. People get priced out of credit, home ownership, college and even the basic necessities of life such as food and gasoline. This provokes the Obama to describe how “unlike some people” he and Michelle were not to the manor born. They were just regular folks who both had to work outside the home and scrimp and save to get by on $450,000 per year.

This brings us to an argument that Mitt Romney has unfortunately not yet made. The United States truly is becoming a 1% society. (Even #OWS occasionally has a point). He gets close to this reality when he excoriates Barack Obama’s Government-Centered Society. The “moderate” right which apparently objects only moderately to injustice, was quick to criticize Romney for being such a Big, Red Meany.

I hereby criticize Mitt for not jamming this concept further down Barack Obama’s throat. A government-centered society could actually manage to be decent and fair in its bureaucratic ineptitude. What we have today is a Post-Modern Feudalism. Senator Scott Brown, in his reelection campaign against Elizabeth Warren – to the Hahvad Manor born, properly calls the baronial arrogance of the 1% Left. Here he decries Elizabeth Warren’s interest free loans from Harvard

“Let me get this straight: struggling students and families pay more, so multi-millionaire Warren can pay nothing? This sweetheart deal adds insult to injury for the students whose high tuition costs have already made Warren a wealthy one-percenter, and reveals yet again Professor Warren’s hypocritical idea of fairness,” wrote Brown’s campaign manager Jim Barnett

(HT: Boston Herald)

Every time we hear about Bain Capital, we need to hear back about Barack Obama’s Swiss Bank financial backing. All us plain-Jane, Roll-up-the-sleeves working class Americans have the head of UBS out beating the bushes to send us piles of money. It’s as easy as having a relative give us an eight year free ride through The Punahou Academy.

In conclusion, Mitt Romney has shown a pleasantly surprising willingness to go after Barack Obama on the over expansion of central government. I went into this season thinking Romney would welcome just such an activist government. What Romney has missed on has been the proper approbation of the hypocrisy that our elite Leftist Ruling Class has shown in taking liberties that stop just short of Prima Noctem in every area of their lives. Emperor Barack I has not only expanded government, but he has also used it to fuel a Visigoth Holiday for his friends and pet interests. Mitt Romney will have to drive that point home if he wants to unseat our corrupt and dishonest incumbent President.

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The Way Things Are Going, They’re Gonna Crucify Me.

Apologies to John Lennon. Concept by Al Armendariz, Administrator of EPA Region VI. Repair Man Jack posted the video with analysis here.

No apology is necessary, Mr. Armendariz. In a perverse way, your comments reveal the tactics of your agency, and more importantly, the philosophy which motivates Mr. Obama’s entire Administration.

It also speaks of the arrogance of a government that thinks its citizens are its subjects, and whose middle managers find amusement in crushing people’s lives and livelihoods.

One more thing about the Roman analogy — mmm, as I recall, that strategy didn’t work out too well for the Romans. Does Mr. Obama play the fiddle?

If it sounds like I take this issue personally, I plead guilty.

My employer is a small oil and gas company. All of our operations are in EPA Region VI which Mr. Armendiaz oversees. I’m the operations manager, so the threat of crucifixion falls squarely upon me.

Rush Limbaugh characterized the crucifixion comment as a vendetta against Big Oil.

Wrong-o. EPA is after smaller oil and gas companies, like Range Resources (800 employees) and my company (24 employees). Big Oil has unlimited resources and staff attorneys to fight back. EPA can much more effectively achieve their goals by singling out the little guy who they can crush like a bug.

Or crucify, as it were.

I am a citizen. I am a taxpayer.

You work for me.

Don’t threaten me with crucifixion.

This guy Armendariz needs to go. His boss need to go – Armendariz’s comments were recorded in 2010.

We’ll take care of the Big Guy in November.

Cross-posted.

Follow @VladimirRS
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Does Obama Have a Big Stick? #EERS

Joe Biden thinks so.

We’ll discuss it tonight on the radio. You can listen live tonight on the WSB live stream and call in at 1-800-WSB-TALK.

The show starts at 6pm.

At 8pm, Monica Perez is going to rescue me from my root canal and take over.

Consider this an open thread.

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Tech at Night: Barack Obama covering for Lieberman-Collins power grab via CISPA opposition, Darrell Issa does good on Transparency

In an example of lucky timing, the GSA scandal proved why Darrell Issa’s DATA act was needed. Transparency in government allows for oversight. So the bill passed the House by voice vote.

I first floated a while back the idea that this sudden, strident CISPA opposition was roote d in a desire to distract the public from the much stronger and more dangerous Lieberman-Collins bill in the Senate. It’ll work with the libertarian left because hey, they’ll believe whatever the left says about eeevil Bushitlerian Rethuglicans. But it disappoints me when the right, including FreedomWorks, is tricked and puts effort into CISPA instead of Lieberman-Collins. Did we learn nothing from Net Neutrality?

But yeah, when the usual whiny groups along with Barack Obama and the administration are joining together to talk exclusively about CISPA but not at all about Lieberman-Collins, I’m right.

House Republicans may in fact limit the bill in response to the veto threat, but the fact is we need a flexible legal framework to empower the good guys to have information which is critical when countering bad guys who share information all the time.

International attacks are real though. In fact, everyone may want to check into this account by the FBI about a thwarted attack that may still infect your computer.

Let’s do some FCC: They’re already expanding Internet subsidies. Also, while they like to drag their feet on some spectrum sales, one in particular they man aged to approve rather quickly. How coincidental that it’s one that is only happening because FCC rejected an earlier T-Mobile/AT&T deal, eh? Meanwhile, Republicans are on the case of FCC trying to expand its authority again, this time into political speech regulation, even as Chuck Grassley milks all he can to get FCC transparency.

PATENT WARS PAUSED: Hey all. When I started out writing about PATENT WARS, it was fresh and interesting. But, as all this stuff has gotten more and more expansive, with everyone suing or allying with everyone else, it’s becoming too much to cover, and very repetitive. I hope the point is made though, that real patent reform was needed, not the first-to-file mess we passed. So, no more PATENT WARS coverage unless something really big happens.

There’s some more good stuff to cover, but it’s 2am, so… quick hits:

Here we go: Calls to end the light-touch regime of the Telecommunications Act 1996 and replace it with a state-centered model of controlled Internet. Funny how Barry Diller says we need a total rewrite of Internet laws… except when it comes to copyright. Funny, that. Unless it’s all about a power grab, which we know it is, then it makes perfect sense.

Can we please retire Jay Rockefeller? He’s whining about paying too much for the latest in Internet technology even as he pushes for regulation that would only make Internet competition harder. It’s crazy.

Speaking of Internet competition: The desire for a free lunch lives on in the form of Net Neutrality whiners whose goal all along was to get their high-end bandwidth use subsidized by the masses and the taxpayers.

As I’ve been saying all along, state Amazon taxes are unconstitutional, as a Cook County judge ruled this week with respect to the Illinois attempt. If you want interstate sales taxation, you need Congressional involvement in the form of a legal interstate compact. The Marketplace Fairness Act could be a good start to such a deal, assuming it got amended to ensure no national sales tax could ever be imposed through it.

Oh look, The Washington Post is carrying water for Jim DeMint’s opponents as DeMint tries to level the playing field of cable television. Remember Jay Rockefeller’s whining? Regulations biased against cable companies and for broadcast television stations, they’re part of the problem.

North Carolina censoring Internet content. Do you have your blog license?

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Where was the push-back on the Paul Ryan Georgetown speech?

I mean, I see the news van. The protesters that would justify it? Not so much.

(H/T Instapundit) Let me show you this picture: it’s from House Ways/Means [Budget**] chair Paul Ryan’s speech this morning (04/26/2012) at Georgetown.  Specifically, it’s the protest at Georgetown:

Picture via John McCormack (via Twitchy): John is also noting that there weren’t many protesters inside, either, and that things went off without a hitch.  Which is, of course, the way that these things should go; and I have no serious quibbles with the people who showed up with their signs and their long, hysterically demented, giant typewriter ribbon of protest and their pet news media van.  They’re entitled to do it; and, hey, they showed up.

So where’s the rest of them?

Twitchy went into this point a bit, but let’s unpack it a bit more. The Democrats supposedly think (warning: FDL link) that Paul Ryan’s budget plan is a hideous liability for the Republicans – that is, those Democrats that actually know what the word ‘budget’ even means, which apparently excludes the entire Senate Democratic caucus* – so you would think that this speech by Ryan would and should have been a media circus.  Watch the speech: in it Ryan went into how his own Catholic faith informs his fiscal conservatism (Georgetown, remember?), and how his current proposals are not in fact contrary to the Church’s principles when it comes to helping the poor.  Given that this is genuinely subversive of the remaining links between American progressives and the Roman Catholic church hierarchy, it seems amazing that progressives weren’t trying their best to, well, at least show up.

Or did they?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: This is not 2007.  We now know what a populist movement looks like; in late April 2010 the Tea Party was putting thousands in the streets in protests on a regular basis.  I count… twelve?… in that above picture.

PS: Admittedly, the more people that showed up for a counter-protest, the more likely it would have been that said counter-protesters would have ended up acting badly.    Heck, twelve was probably pushing it, at that.  So there’s that.

*But don’t bring that up, or Debbie Wasserman Schultz will be mad at you.  Note: not ‘get mad;’ there are days where DWS seems… frayed.

[**Arrgh!  I was deep in Ways & Means stuff this morning, and it carried over.  Thanks to @Jake_W for catching that.]

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Yet Another Reason Why Today’s Unions Suck: Dues Devour Wage Increases

On the eve of Obama’s NLRB unleashing its new rules giving unions the ability to hold ambush elections—that is, the evisceration of employers’ ability to question or challenge unions in their quest to cherry-pick voting units—more data was just released by the Bureau of National Affairs that calls into question why anyone in their right mind would pay dues to a union today.

In addition to the $369 billion in underfunded union (private-sector) pension plans, the abundant evidence that unions kill companies and destroy jobs, today’s unions are doing such a miserable job at the one thing they’re supposed to do—negotiate contracts—that union members should demand refunds from their union bosses.

According to the April 9th issue of the Bureau of National Affairs Daily Labor Report (subscription required), unions negotiated contracts in 2011 that, in 41% of the contracts, employees received no increase in the contract’s first year.

While 41% of the contracts negotiated by unions in 2011 contained wage freezes, according to BNA’s survey, of the contracts where increases were negotiated, the average wage increase that was obtained for the first year was a pathetic 1.4%.

According to BNA:

A Bloomberg BNA analysis of collective bargaining agreements negotiated in 2011 found that the average first-year wage increase under contracts negotiated last year was 1.4 percent, compared with 1.6 percent reported in 2010. The average second-year increase in 2011 was 1.7 percent, compared with 2 percent in 2010, and the average third-year increase was 2.1 percent, compared with 2.3 percent a year earlier….

Given that union dues for most union members range from around 1.3% to 5% of pay, once union dues are deducted from members’ wages, the negotiated increases unions “achieved” for their members in 2011 are eaten up (and then some) by union dues.

Of course, union bosses continue to blame “the 1%” for their failure to garner anything better for their union members.

However, the reality is, today’s unions have become nothing more than an albatross riding on the backs of job creators and their employees.

_____________

Originally posted on LaborUnionReport.com.

Follow LUR on Twitter.

“Truth isn’t mean. It’s truth.”
Andrew Breitbart (1969-2012)

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Daily Links – April 25, 2012

Today is April 25th. On this date in 1953, Senator Wayne Morse wrapped up the third longest filibuster in Senate history, at 22 hours, 26 minutes. The second longest was Sen. Alfonse D’Amato in 1986 at 23 hours, 30 minutes, and the longest was Sen. Strom Thurmond, at 24 hours, 18 minutes, in 1957. Morse died in 1974. His last words were … transcribed in the form of a three thousand page book. Also on this date, in 1964, Hank Azaria was born in New York. His first words were “Worst. Delivery. Ever.” On this date in 2003, Sinead O’Connor announced she was retiring from music. Her fan was devastated. And finally, today is World Penguin Day. Tuxedo. That’s my joke. Hey, they can’t all be winners. Consider this an Open Thread.

Kimmel Insists: ‘It’s Hard to Make Fun’ of ‘Cool Character’ Obama | Newsbusters
“‘It’s hard to make fun of Obama in general because he’s a cool character,’ ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel, the ‘headliner’ for this Saturday night’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, told Reuters, insisting that ‘outside of his ears, there’s not a whole lot’ to joke about.”

[NSFW Language] SNL alum Lovitz delivers rant on Obama, taxes | Daily Caller
“In an interview with “Clerks” director Kevin Smith, Lovitz, a registered Democrat who voted for Obama in 2008, bashed the president for his class warfare rhetoric and the notion that the wealthy don’t pay their fair share in taxes.”

Charlotte Hotel Owner: Dnc Business Practices ‘Ruthless, Bullying’ | Free Beacon
“The DNC has filed suit against a Charlotte-area hotel owner, who calls the convention’s business practices ‘ruthless’ and ‘bullying,’ WBTV in Charlotte reports:”

New York Times experiment in self-awareness lasts all of two days | Hot Air
“An understatement to be sure, but any acknowledgement of bias from the Times is a rare event, and so this understandably received a lot of coverage by the conservative media. Well fast forward two days later, and observe Times’ editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal pretty much give Brisbane, and conservatives, the (metaphorical) finger.”

New Moonbat Line of Attack: Rubio Campaigning With Romney is ‘Homoerotic’ | Newsbusters
“Randi Rhodes does what she can to make her presence known in that barren wasteland known as liberal radio. Unfortunately, it usually consists of little more than bloviating inanities.”

Today’s Word of the Day comes via Wordsmith.org.
elan (ay-LAHN): noun A combination of energy, enthusiasm, and style.

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Hope and Change Revisited

But I say it ISN’T backwards, it’s right on…

In 2008, America fell in love with a false bill of goods (Hope).

In 2012, America sees the truth after the Hope has faded, and now we want change.

“There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.” -Adam Smith

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Romney Must Coalesce Around Conservatives, Not Vice Versa

There is an interesting factoid that was overlooked from last night’s largely pro-forma presidential primaries.  According to University of Minnesota’s Eric Ostermeier, Romney was the first GOP frontrunner who failed to reach 60% in contests “conducted after his last major challenger dropped out of the race.”  Romney won just 56% of the vote in Delaware and 58% in Pennsylvania.

Over the past few months, we’ve been implored by the GOP establishment to coalesce around Romney in the all important battle to defeat Obama.  Undoubtedly, despite my serious concerns about the presumptive nominee, I plan to fully support Mitt Romney in the race for the White House.  The alternative is just too perilous. I suspect that there are millions of Republicans who feel the same way.  However, we must remember that ultimately it’s not conservatives who must coalesce around Romney; it’s Romney who must coalesce around conservatives.

During the Bush years Republicans in Congress (and many outside of Congress) abrogated their conservative principles to conform to the policies of the Republican president.  We must not make the same mistake this time around.  Again, it is vital that we replace Obama with Mitt Romney, but we must not corrupt our cherished principles in order to accommodate him.  Quite the contrary, it is he who must accommodate our principles.  After all, he is running as the Republican nominee.

It is in this vein that I call attention to this article from Alexander Bolton at the Hill about Republicans caving on the issues of Violence Against Women Act  (VAWA) and student loans:

Senate Republicans, seeking to avoid a public policy dispute with Mitt Romney, will let legislation on domestic violence pass the upper chamber despite having concerns about its constitutionality. […]

Senate Republicans lost political leverage last week when Romney’s campaign said the candidate supported the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. He stopped short of endorsing the bill Democrats crafted, however. […]

Senate Republicans have also closed ranks with Romney on Obama’s proposal to extend for one year low-interest loans for low- and middle-income college students, despite misgivings about the program.

Romney endorsed Obama’s proposal on Monday. On Tuesday, McConnell told reporters that Republicans would likely support it.

As we noted earlier this week, VAWA is unconstitutional and socially corrupt.  The student loan boondoggle will merely continue the inflationary pressure on the costs of higher education, engendering a further need for government assistance in a circuitous cycle of government/Big Education collusion.  Nonetheless, congressional Republicans are ready to go along to get along in order to accommodate Romney’s election strategy.

Yes – we know that this is all a grand strategy to take Obama’s demagoguery of “popular” issues off the table until the elections.  After Romney wins the election, we’ll really stand by our principles.  But will we?

At some point we have to be willing to draw a line in the sand and tell Romney not to cross it – before we endure 5 or so years of compassionate conservatism.

Cross-posted from The Madison Project

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President Obama: ‘encouraging’/planning to tax into oblivion start-up businesses.

Never mind the fact that Obama got yoghurt splashed on him last night – that’s just an ongoing hazard of being a politician running for re-election in this country. The real story here is this: the President went to Colorado to, essentially, lie to a bunch of kids about how they can get themselves out of this mess that they’re in. And it is a mess. 50% of college graduates are unemployed/underemployed; couple that with student loan debt levels that should really be frightening more people and we end up with a situation where millions of kids are getting out of college and staring DOOM right in the face. And while they are adults – and thus, responsible for their own fates – guess what? The people that connived to put them in this mess are adults, too. We expect twenty-somethings in this culture to make poor life choices, sometimes; what we don’t expect is for the generations above them to so ruthlessly take advantage of that.

Anyway: Obama’s answer in Colorado, last night? …Entrepreneurship. That’s what he was telling the kids. Start that restaurant! Develop that smartphone app! Make your own destiny! Get slammed with a tax hike on small businesses in the form of tighter restrictions on payroll tax exemptions!

…Yeah. One of these things is not like the others.

For the morbidly curious, here’s the situation: there’s a bill in Congress that would freeze student loan rates. It’s stalling because, well, that’s going to cost us $5.9 billion and the money’s got to come from somewhere. So the N-dimensional geniuses over at the White House went to Congressional Democrats and found six billion worth of pork to cut… Oh, I am quite the comedian! They’re Democrats: they never cut spending. No, what Obama and the rest of his merry crew did instead was come up with a plan to generate the revenue via increased restrictions for S Corporations re: eligibility for payroll tax exemptions.

If you’re wondering “So what?” …well, you’re probably not a small business owner: S-Corps are a common method by which small companies – mom-and-pop stores, individual professional workers, START-UP BUSINESSES – file their taxes. Essentially, S-Corps file as individuals – which is, by the way, why Obama’s proposed tax hike on $250K earners is actually a tax on many small business owners, despite the best efforts of his apologists to downplay that minor little detail. But never mind that right now; the point is, by making it harder for S-Corps to be exempt from payroll taxes President Obama is proposing an effective profits tax on them. You can argue whether that’s a good idea or not – it’s not – but if you are planning to hike tax rates on small businesses just starting out then basic etiquette suggests that you not also encourage people to start small businesses.

Because that’s a lie: you don’t want to encourage them. You just want to get some of their money to keep things going until after the election’s over.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: This issue is related to the re-authorization of the student loan rates that my RS colleague David Horowitz is criticizing: but just because we may lose the battle on the loan rates themselves doesn’t mean that we have to lose the battle on how the government plans to pay for them.

[UPDATE] I have just had it pointed out to me via private email that the Obama administration has been gunning for S-Corps for years.  And with very little concern over the legal niceties, either.

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