We are surprised each time we hear that presidential candidate Mitt Romney needs to come up with an economic plan if he wants to distinguish himself from President Obama–who has proved he has no economic plan. Certainly, throwing trillions of taxpayer and borrowed dollars at his friends’ companies and organizations has resulted in nothing but record high unemployment rates, burgeoning deficits, and economic downturns.

So does Mitt Romney have a plan to reinvigorate the US economy? Indeed, on his campaign’s website his plan is laid out quite clearly: “Mitt Romney will rebuild the foundations of the American economy on the principles of free enterprise, hard work, and innovation.”

Also, Romney has very clearly stated that his “plan seeks to reduce taxes, spending, regulation, and government programs. It seeks to increase trade, energy production, human capital, and labor flexibility. It relinquishes power to the states instead of claiming to have the solution to every problem.”

In other words, Mitt Romney’s plan is the exact plan that the founders put into place for America through its Constitution; the same plan that elevated our nation from a mere agricultural colony to a major world leader in every category and kept us there for several decades–until the left began its socialistic experiments with our economy.

So why the debate over whether or not Romney even has a plan? Because to the main stream media and the entire left, if the government isn’t managing every aspect of the economy, forcing its will on the people and taking their money and liberty in the process, it is no plan at all. Indeed, centralized control of production, distribution, and labor is the very essence of socialistic government, and it has NEVER succeeded, not anywhere or at any time in the world’s history. This kind of troubled thinking is exactly what got the country into its current mess.

When Obama sidesteps blame for the current state of the economy, he refers to President Bush and republicans in general and says that they are the guys who did this to our economy. Is this true? The truth is that our economy was in a recession when George Bush (II) took office. Later that year the economy took a serious hit with the 9/11 terrorist attacks, shutting down major portions of American transportation and industry. Democratic policies forcing lenders to extend unsecured loans to unqualified borrowers is what has led to the greatest downturn in the US economy since the Great Depression. Democratic high taxes and burdensome over-regulation have crippled our economy, and to the extent republicans have been willing to go along with these democratic policies, they must share responsibility for the problems they have caused.

Lowering taxes always floods the economy with capital–as happened under Presidents Kennedy and Reagan. That is the stimulus that will put Americans back to work–which will be great news to the 15.5% that are currently unemployed or underemployed, and for the rest who are waiting for a raise.

Yes, Mitt Romney has a plan to revitalize the American economy, the American Plan, and anyone who wants to see America come back from the brink would be wise to support his candidacy.

PUBLIUS

We who have watched the transformation of America’s political landscape over the past few decades better understand what has been lost than newcomers to the scene. There have been changes, and many, and most for the worse.

The left’s drumbeat, from the beginning and in all countries they have infiltrated and destroyed has been that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Is that true?  And if so, what is the real cause?

We hear President Obama speak of his unrivaled protection of the “middle class,” as though he invented the idea of the middle class.

Who is the middle class in America? It used to be that it consisted of the majority core of the hard working people who were fulfilling their version of the American Dream—education for children, home ownership, predictable and comfortable retirement, etc. These have traditionally been the majority of the country, tax payers who did their fair share, and wouldn’t take handouts as long as they were able-bodied. Is this the “middle class” of which President Obama now speaks and claims to represent?

In fact, it is no secret that nearly half of all Americans contribute nothing these days to federal income taxes. Is this Obama’s middle class? Certainly, a tax scheme that requires no contributions from half the population is either backed by an incredibly strong economy, has extremely low tax rates, or is grossly unfair in its distribution of the tax burden. In our case, it is the last. In our May 10, 2012 article Bringing Fairness to Taxes we demonstrated that relatively few Americans shoulder the heavy burden of America’s spending addiction, with the top 25 percent of earners paying 87 percent of the total burden, and what can’t be squeezed out of them is merely bought on credit, creating an inevitable collision course with economic Armageddon.

We are compelled to ask the question, if the bottom half of the country doesn’t contribute to the federal income tax base, who is in the middle class? Shouldn’t the middle class be somewhere in the middle? We instinctively imagine that the middle class would consist of those above the bottom, and below the top, forming a bell curve. Although a bell curve is a technical concept with many possible variables, if we are in a class being graded on a bell curve, we would expect that there is a top 20%, a bottom 20%, and 60% distributed throughout the “middle.” There is our true middle class.

In our historical social structure, indeed, we had 1) the wealthy, who got that way through risk taking investment, hard work, or inheriting from one of those, 2) the less fortunate or poor, and 3) the 60% in the middle who worked hard to get an education, pursue a career, buy a home, educate their children, and retire comfortably. In most cases, the upper 80% provided aid and assistance to the bottom 20%, enabling millions to be elevated out of poverty—something our left leaning government has entirely failed to do with $ trillions.

Although we still hear much of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, the truth is that since Obama took office, the average American family has lost 40% of its net worth—rich, middle class and poor. With 11 million family homes sinking into the quicksand of foreclosure during Obama’s tenure in office, and the rate climbing fast in 2012, much more of the remaining wealth will be destroyed by the time the next president takes the oath of office. Since taking office Obama has seen the addition of over 6 million Americans to the poverty rolls, with those on food stamps doubling to 47 million, and unemployment averaging 9%.

No, Obama’s rainbow coalition of supporters is not the middle class. It is heavily weighted to that portion of the population that has nothing to lose by raising the taxes on the portion who actually pay all of the taxes, or by spending the income of future generations. It is made up of those who are not part of the historic middle class, but instead those with ideological or racial axes to grind.

Divide and conquer has been the method of despots from the beginning, and the left divides Americans from the middle class by telling groups that their interests are adverse to those of other groups, but that if they all assemble under the umbrella of the Democratic party, their unity will give them political strength.

The scheme has been successful, from the viewpoint of the left and its insatiable appetite for power, but it has come at the expense of the middle class’s American Dream.

It is time for Americans to come together and to reject the lies of the left. We are not a splintered nation with adverse interests that set us against one another, but a unified group seeking what our middle class forbearers sought—liberty, peace and prosperity, with everyone pulling his own weight and contributing to the whole. We should be looking to politicians who believe in the America of Washington, Jefferson, Jay, Franklin, and all those who sacrificed so much so that we would have the opportunity to choose freedom and prosperity over the servitude and poverty offered by Obama’s left.

PUBLIUS

President Jimmy Carter promised Hope and Change to an America dragged through the mud by a media feeding frenzy during the Nixon Watergate era.

The left got the white house handed to them, along with the congress, and nothing could stop the wholesale implementation of liberal-progressive policies. Anyone who lived during the Carter administration knows that it was a horrific time in American history.

Carter began his presidency by apologizing for American success, and it wasn’t long before Arabs began slapping him around like the whimp he told them he was.

OPEC decided the US was powerless to oppose them, and they immediately began cutting oil supplies and raising prices. Carter’s response was classic Democrat, demonstrating a complete lack of understanding of global free markets–impose price freezes on gasoline in the US. World oil markets naturally sought out the more lucrative markets and we well recall the gas lines stretching for blocks as Americans waited for hours to get their tanks filled, reminiscent of the Depression Era shortages and rationing schemes.
In grand Neville Chamberlain style Carter immediately tried diplomatic talks with the Soviet Union feeling that thrill going up his leg as the Soviets put their signatures on pieces of paper with him. Of course, while agreeing to limit expansion, the USSR invaded Afghanistan behind his back, bitch-slapping the president of the United States in front of the entire world.

Carter also withdrew US support of the Shah of Iran, historically a strong U.S. ally in the Middle East, one of few who recognized Israel as a sovereign state. Without our support the Shah was forced into exile, replaced by a fundamentalist government, hostile to the U.S. Iranian students stormed the US embassy and took 53 Americans hostages, and held them as political prisoners for 444 days. Carter had been paring back the US military and saw his duty as Commander in Chief as unbecoming a Progressive President, and when it was time to send in a military extraction team to get our hostages out, the equipment failed in one of the greatest military blunders in history. The hostages were kept in Iran and paraded before the world media up until President Elect Ronald Reagan sent Iran the message, “Let my people go,” and they were brushed up and sent back immediately.

Carter, the Apologizer in Chief, also gave up US control of the American-built Panama Canal, affording China and other nations greater access to our easier trade routes, further harming US trade superiority. Seeing no deterrence, the Soviets further expanded their influence in the Western Hemisphere by helping leftists overthrow governments in Central and South America.

Democratic economic strategies had our US economy spiraling in a tailspin, with the prime rate at 21 percent, killing business expansion and the housing market. Of course, unemployment skyrocketed under these circumstances.

DOES ANY OF THIS SOUND FAMILIAR?

This writer has always said that American politics has been reduced to this: The Democrats take control of government based on promises of throwing a big party, and the next morning the Republicans are called in to clean up the mess.

At what point will America wake up to the reality that the policies of the left don’t work? It’s time to install a conservative government, and to keep a conservative government in place . . . and replace the long-term growth, development and expansion of personal liberty that we enjoyed for the first 100 years. Call me old fashioned.

PUBLIUS

Wisconsin is a state like many others in the Midwest, home to working people just trying to live the American dream. In recent decades the state has been heavily influenced by unions, with Democratic political leaders striking sweetheart union deals in the tradition of leftist politics. The scheme is similar to the Harry Hopkins political plan—Tax, Spend, Elect!—only with a middleman inserted between the politician and the treasury; the union boss.

Indeed, like so many states that have handed the reins of government over to union bosses, Wisconsin has become the poster child for union/government collusion to drain the public coffers through graft, corruption, and mandated inefficiency and waste. With a $3.6 billion budget deficit hanging over the state’s head, Wisconsin voters found themselves backed into a corner, and forced to make the ultimate hard choice—vote in a Republican governor to clean up after the party thrown by the Democrats.

Sure, nearly everyone liked things the way they were. High taxes, government over-regulation and unions siphoning the profits off the state’s economy served the purposes of those receiving the money—namely, union bosses, Democratic politicians and their capitalist cronies. They went out every political season and sold their scam to the public, telling them that the “working people” were getting their piece of the pie, and that as long as the status quo was enforced, no one would get hurt.

The $3.6 billion deficit changed the status quo, however, and the voters had to face the reality of the union/government scam. Reluctantly, they brought in Governor Scott Walker and allowed him to do the job that responsible government must do. He and his bare majority in the state capital passed legislation that stripped the most egregious abuses of power from union boss hands. The uproar was heard around the state as militant union thugs “occupied” the capitol building and the streets, while Democrat senators left the state en masse during session to rob the legislature of a quorum to pass its initiatives.

This temper tantrum resulted in tens of millions of dollars in damage to the state, and a recall effort against those who had dared stand up to the corruption that had taken over Wisconsin.

Last night the people of the state spoke. Indeed, in the mere year since Governor Walker and new bare-majority passed their demonized legislation, we discover, yet again, that Republican reality saved the day for Wisconsin, and the crushing debt was eliminated, and tens of thousands of new jobs created.

The political machine that took over our country when unions were allowed into the public employee realm is beginning to cough and sputter. As other states take heart and begin to pull the plug on union/government collusion, we will see similar results—good for states and citizens, and bad for union bosses and Democrats who rely on their forced dues kickbacks to fund populist campaigns.

The Silent Majority is back, and it is taking back its country. The next stop? Washington, D.C., and its union run Democratic Party bosses. We might even take the unions out of teaching, and get our children the educations we are paying for.

PUBLIUS

President Obama ran on hope and change when he asked America to make him the president. On the day he took office gasoline prices were $1.79.

The average unemployment rate under George Bush was 5.2 percent, considered full employment for those seeking work.

Candidate Obama blasted the Bush administration for those “dismal numbers.”

Now gasoline prices are stuck near $4.00 a gallon with no relief in sight and the real unemployment and underemployment rate remains above 15 percent, and it is much worse for American minorities.

Even the government’s official unemployment numbers have the president’s unemployment rate above 8 percent for most of his administration, averaging 9.0 percent. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testified Wednesday that he projects the official rate will remain between 8.2 and 8.5 percent for the remainder of 2012, and that takes into consideration all of the job seekers who just give up and fade away from government statistics.

You may recall President Obama’s famous interview with Matt Lauer on “Today” on February 1, 2009 (we’ve inserted the video below), just after taking office as he asked the congress for his first economic stimulus package—nearly $900 billion.

Lauer: At some point will you say ‘Wait a minute. We’ve spent this amount of money; we’re not seeing the results. We’ve got to change course dramatically.’

Obama: Look, I’m at the start of my administration. One nice thing I find about the situation I find myself in is that I will be held accountable. I’ve got four years. A year from now people are going to see that we’re starting to make some progress, but there’s still going to be some pain out there. If I don’t have this done in three years then there’s going to be a one term proposition.

Does this indicate that Obama will be voting for Romney in November, because despite increasing the national debt a full 50 percent from $10 trillion to $15 trillion in just 3 years, the economy is much worse than when he took the helm. Of course, the President’s re-election team has begun chanting the mantra that if unemployment dips below 8 percent or gasoline prices drop 10 cents, then that is evidence that the President’s leadership is superior. They’re wrong.

Voters are shaky with Obama’s track record, and a new Fox News Poll reveals that Americans aren’t giving him a lot of credit for effort. Here are the answers of those who were asked-

BEST THING PRESIDENT OBAMA HAS DONE TO HELP THE ECONOMY:

15%      Stopped Job Loss/Recession
8%        Loans to Auto Industry
7%        Stimulus Bill
5%        New Health Care Law
43%     Done Nothing to Help

The poll also asked the question that Ronald Reagan posed to voters: Are you better off now than you were four years ago? Of course, as painful a memory as the Jimmy Carter economy was, you may be surprised to learn that the average unemployment rate during his administration was just 7.6 percent–a number that the current administration would claim to be a resounding success.