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Saturday, February 12th, 2011 at 11:28am

Why I Like Mitch Daniels

Posted by Tom Skypek in 2012 Elections, American Politics, Conservatism, Economy, National Debt, Tea Party, The American Presidency

Purity in martyrdom is for suicide bombers.  King Pyrrhus is remembered, but his nation disappeared.  Winston Churchill set aside his lifetime loathing of Communism in order to fight World War II.  Challenged as a hypocrite, he said that when the safety of Britain was at stake, his “conscience became a good girl.”  We are at such a moment.  I for one have no interest in standing in the wreckage of our Republic saying “I told you so” or “You should’ve done it my way.”

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, speaking at the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)

I like Mitch Daniels for a variety of reasons including his laser beam focus on the national debt and  his suggestion that we’re…

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Friday, February 11th, 2011 at 11:18pm

U.S. National Debt is new “Red Menace,” says Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels

Posted by Tom Skypek in 2012 Elections, American Politics, Conservatism, Economy, National Debt, Tea Party

From the WaPo’s Aaron Blake:

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels said Friday that the nation’s growing debt amounts to a new “Red Menace”, equating the country’s fiscal situation to its Cold War fight with Russia.

“It is the new Red Menace, this time consisting of ink,” Daniels said at his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference. “We can debate its origins endlessly and search for villains on ideological grounds, but the reality is pure arithmetic.

The Soviet threat during the second half of the 20th Century was the main theme of Daniels’ speech, which lasted just over a half-hour and was chock full of dense rhetoric and almost devoid of applause lines.

Daniels made no mention of his own political plans in his…

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Friday, February 11th, 2011 at 9:01pm

Ron Paul Rocks CPAC, Again

Posted by Tom Skypek in 2012 Elections, American Politics, Economy, National Debt, Tea Party

Once again Texas Congressman Ron Paul has stolen the show at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).  Big government and establishment Republicans can’t stand him.  This is only because he’s true to his principles and calls them out when they misrepresent conservatism or, worse yet, vote to increase the scale and scope of the federal government.  Others, I think, choose to marginalize him because they simply don’t seem him as electable at the presidential level.    

But Ron Paul is the father of the Tea Party movement; many politicians have capitalized off of the movement but it was Ron Paul’s limited government message during the 2008 Republican primaries that kick-started the grassroots juggernaut.  Over the last year, as part of my fellowship…

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Wednesday, February 9th, 2011 at 8:27pm

Appropriations Chairman Releases Partial List of Spending Cuts

Posted by Tom Skypek in Economy, National Debt, Tea Party

Today House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers announced a partial list of 70 spending cuts that will be included in the upcoming Continuing Resolution (CR) bill.  This is a good start but we have a long, long way to go.  Cutting budgets is never politically popular and the knee-jerk response of the left is to demonize those advocating the cuts; denoucning the “immorality” of the cuts is a favorite tactic.  But how is it moral for the government to live beyond its means and spend money that it doesn’t have? 

The List of 70 Spending Cuts to be Included in the CR follows:
  • Flood Control and Coastal Emergencies   -$30M
  • Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy   -$899M
  • Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability  …
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Saturday, February 5th, 2011 at 3:10pm

ABC News Interview with Sen. Rand Paul

Posted by Tom Skypek in American Politics, Current Events, Economy, National Debt, Tea Party

This is a good interview with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), in spite of the interviewer. Of course, the interviewer makes some foolish remarks, suggesting about 25 seconds into the interview that Paul’s proposed spending cuts amounts to “going off the rails.” How about spending $14 trillion that you don’t have? We went off the rails a long time ago. Paul should be commended for proposing serious solutions for a complicated problem. He has the political courage to speak the truth. The phrase “political courage” sounds hifalutin and is invoked too frequently but that’s what this is–political courage.

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Thursday, February 3rd, 2011 at 3:11pm

Stossel on the Budget

Posted by Tom Skypek in Economy, National Debt

Great piece by John Stossel on the budget.  Read the entire piece but here are some highlights:

…eliminate the U.S. Education Department. We’d save $94 billion. Federal involvement doesn’t improve education. It gets in the way.

Agriculture subsidies cost us $30 billion a year. Let’s get rid of them. They distort the economy. We should also eliminate Housing and Urban Development. That’s $53 billion more.

Who needs the Energy Department and its $20 billion sinkhole? The free market should determine energy investments.

And let’s end the war on drugs. In effect, it’s a $47 billion subsidy for thugs in the black market.

I’ve already cut more than six times more than President Obama proposed in his State of the Union…

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Monday, January 31st, 2011 at 9:53pm

What the Situation in Egypt Tells Us: We’re Still Slaves to Middle East Oil

Posted by Tom Skypek in American Foreign Policy, Economy

The situation in Egypt is a stark reminder of why energy independence ought to be a top policy objective of the United States.  If it weren’t for our dependence on foreign sources of oil, we wouldn’t be slaves to the schizophrenic politics of the Middle East.  The threat of $7-a-gallon gas compels our engagement in region dominated by anti-Americanism.  Economic slavery is hardly what the Founding Fathers envisioned for this country.  Solutions exist but this administration continues to stymie progress by opposing the expansion of offshore drilling and nuclear power.

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Wednesday, June 16th, 2010 at 7:28am

National Energy Tax Bill

Posted by Tom Skypek in American Politics, Current Events, Economy

From Politico:

Senate authors of a controversial climate change bill heralded EPA modeling results unveiled Tuesday as proof that their plan would have a limited pinch on Americans’ pocketbooks.

Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) found many reasons to gloat after getting the 74-page study that showed the overall costs from their legislation’s major global warming provisions would cost an average household between $80 to $150 per year.

“There’ll be some people who will want to demagogue that politically, but that’s less than $1 a day,” Lieberman told reporters. “Is the American household willing to pay less than $1 so we don’t have to buy oil from foreign countries, so we can create millions of new jobs, so we…

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Tuesday, June 15th, 2010 at 6:28pm

Two Things the President Shouldn’t Do Tonight

Posted by Tom Skypek in American Politics, Current Events, Economy, The American Presidency

I don’t anticipate that the White House will take my advice, but here’s two things President Obama shouldn’t do tonight in his address to the nation.

  1. Blame BP and Big Oil.  Good leaders focus 80% of their time on the solution and 20% on the problem.  People want to hear about solutions tonight.  They want to hear that the government has relaxed the necessary regulations to ensure a speedier cleanup and resolution to the problem.  Blaming BP and Big Oil will score the president points with the Sierra Club crowd, but that’s about it.  No one wants to hear excuses or listen to the president of the United States point fingers–just what he’s doing to address the problem.
  2. Push a new cap…
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Sunday, June 13th, 2010 at 4:26pm

Hoyer’s Diagnosis: ‘Spending Fatigue’

Posted by Tom Skypek in American Politics, Current Events, Economy

President Barack Obama is trying to push through yet another “emergency” spending bill.  According to The Washington Post,

President Obama urged reluctant lawmakers Saturday to quickly approve nearly $50 billion in emergency aid to state and local governments, saying the money is needed to avoid “massive layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters” and to support the still-fragile economic recovery.

In a letter to congressional leaders, Obama defended last year’s huge economic stimulus package, saying it helped break the economy’s free fall, but argued that more spending is urgent and unavoidable. “We must take these emergency measures,” he wrote in an appeal aimed primarily at members of his own party.

For a president who claims to be serious about deficit reduction, he sure…

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