The 2009 Liberal Scorecard

One of the problems conservatives face in the coming election is that the electorate is largely uninterested in lengthy explanations detailing the nation or state’s current problems. The general populace is much happier with short sound bytes rather than the details. This is one of the areas the American left has mastered. They have for years been able to articulate their talking points in attractive ways that sound good. Conservatives find themselves in the difficult position of going through detail-oriented explanations to counter very vulnerable arguments from their liberal counterparts. A glossy, polished speech that is low on details trumps the less dynamic speech rich with substance. It is a sad fact of contemporary American politics.

If one were to transcribe the liberal demagoguery to golf, liberals would not keep score in a tournament, but would decide on a winner by who hit the coolest shots, who was best dressed, or who was the most charismatic during the round.

The conservative keeps score. On a federal and state level, this has been a disastrous six months. Here are the scores that the conservative can use to prove his or her point.

Federal:
1) American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Remember when the new administration promised transparency? There were earmarks upon earmarks in the bill ranging from additional funding for STD prevention (as if people don’t know where babies come from or how gonorrhea is spread) to $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts (because that will put people right to work). This bill along with the Obama budget also increased federal deficit spending from 3% to 12-13% according to the Congressional Budget Office.
2) Gitmo is still open. Didn’t General O. promise to close it? Even many Democrats saw the peril in doing this and blocked this from happening.
3) Nancy Pelosi vs. the CIA. Yeah, she lied…and then disappeared to China. Nothing to see here…carry on! After all, people will forget that she knew about the waterboarding and then lied about knowing it despite ripping Big Bad Bush for waterboarding terror suspects.





4) Cap and Trade. Gee, here’s an idea…how about we try to lower the global temperature by ourselves by imposing higher taxes on manufacturers and energy producers? No, no…they won’t choose to manufacture in China instead. China and India are not bound by Kyoto, so there is no way that American companies would look to lower costs by outsourcing to China. Nah. Silly conservatives…the United States can easily cool the earth down from its fever on its own…stick it those Big Bad Oil Companies! Just because heating and cooling homes is going to be exponentially more expensive under this plan doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do something to combat a problem that has not been proven to even exits. But don’t take the evil conservatives’ word for it, take The One’s word for it…





5) The AIG tax. Who would have known that the person who introduced language into the stimulus allowing AIG to award bonuses was a Democrat at the blessing of the tax cheat Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner? Remember how angry those guys were at AIG and how they proposed a 95% tax on them? It was as if they did not know about it beforehand…they act well.
6) Nationalization of GM. But wait, Chairman, I mean, President Obama does not want to run GM, but will tell them to keep their headquarters in Detroit. How is the government taking over the nation’s largest auto company not socialism?
7) Proposal of nationalized healthcare. Wow! Free healthcare! Sounds good, right? It does…until the taxpayers get stuck with the bill, patients are excluded from planning their own medical care, and all profit-driven incentive is removed from pharmaceutical companies and health care professionals to practice any kind of innovative experimentation…
8) Iraq. Wasn’t General Barry going to cut and run? U.S. troops are still in Iraq. Maybe Bush wasn’t so crazy…
9) Oh, there’s more (disarmament when North Korea is testing nuclear missiles, sitting and watching instead of taking any stand on Iran, surging the military in Afghanistan when the Taliban is running amok in Pakistan, apologizing to the Arabs and Europeans about American arrogance…), but for the sake of sparing the details, this will have to do.

State:
1) The Wisconsin State Budget. Jim Doyle signed a budget that increased the garbage tax, eliminated the Qualified Economic Offer (QEO) for public educators, released “non-violent” felons early, provided in-state tuition to illegal immigrants (don’t worry, they can’t get drivers licenses), extended domestic partners of state workers to be eligible for the state insurance plan (not just the gay ones, either), increased fees on cell phones, established a new income tax bracket, lowered the enrollment cap on school choice, increased the hospital tax four months after it was implemented, increased the cigarette tax, increased the capital gains tax, etc. The Joint Finance Committee (composed by a 12-2 Democratic majority) inserted many provisions behind closed doors in the middle of the night and the budget passed the Senate and Assembly before the “little people” (a.k.a. the public) even became aware of it. Remember when Jim Doyle promised not to raise taxes?
2) State smoking ban. Remember when if someone did not like a restaurant or bar, he or she would go to a different one? That was not good enough for the state legislature or the governor. Apparently, private restaurants and bars cannot decide for themselves whether or not to allow smoking.

This is only a partial scorecard. The Obama Administration has been in power for not even six months and look what is happening.

The problem the conservative faces is presenting the disastrous public policy decisions above to a populace that gives Obama a 60% approval rating while the Congress (run by the Democrats) has an approval rating in the 30s. This is a populace that has 40% of people that believe that the government has its own money (that is not paid for by the public).

But then, Obama and his teleprompter sure give good speeches. It is really a shame about those pesky little conservatives busting apart his platitudes and fluff with facts and figures.

Walking Toward a Better Wisconsin

“Whimsically Persnickety” is not a partisan blog. Instead, it is a blog that examines public policy in the interest of the people that pay for the public officials and benefit from their decisions. “Whimsically Persnickety” is not a fulltime or daily blog, but a common observer of local politics of southeast Wisconsin, the state of Wisconsin, and the United States.

After seeing the Wisconsin state deficit spiral out of control to the tune of nearly $7 billion, the bureaucracy of the local and state governments expand obscenely, and the tax levies increase in several communities on the local level as well as statewide, “Whimsically Persnickety” endorses Scott Walker for governor of Wisconsin.

Scott Walker’s leadership of Milwaukee County has been a bright spot in a state that has become a tax hell. Walker has been able to avoid raising taxes and has been able to effectively cut unnecessary items from the Milwaukee County budget. He has done this despite working with a Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors that has been rather hostile toward most of his proposed budget cuts. Its chairman, Lee Holloway, has been one of Walker’s most consistent critics.

Walker’s combination of refusing to increase taxes, accept temporary federal stimulus money, and add unnecessary items to the county budget have enabled Milwaukee County to run a budget surplus in a state that has consistently seen its fiscal number run in the red.

Walker has left the option of school choice as one to be pursued with greater vigor. This has not made him friends within WEAC, but instead offers an alternative for families of students that live within sub-par school districts. This position offers a choice to people that previously did not have a choice when it came to education.

Scott Walker will have a difficult time should he win election in 2010, but he inherited a bloated Milwaukee County bureaucracy and has managed it superiorly. The state of Wisconsin needs this management in order to raise and exceed the existing standards and credibility set by the current administration.

The AIG Hypocrisy

AIG has now become a pejorative. AIG has now become the example of how “big business” has ruined the American economy. AIG received bailout money and then awarded bonuses to some of its executives in its financial products division. This division, especially in its departments of equities and commodities, had proven to be very sound financially. Jake DeSantis, the now noteworthy former executive VP in AIG’s financial products division, cited his own frustration over the misrepresentation of his and many of his colleagues’ work. He and many others working for AIG expressed concerns about the increase in sub-prime mortgages which had been given the green light by Congress’s Financial Services Committee (the chairman being none other than Rep. Barney Frank).

Undeniably, AIG made a large timing blunder in awarding the bonuses. However, the outrage was especially due to the fact that public money had been given to AIG while bailout-mania swept through American economic policy. Now that AIG had received public money, they had to know that they may not be able to make their own decisions since the federal government would now be looking over their shoulders.

When AIG awarded the bonuses according to the contracts the executives within the company had signed, President Obama himself expressed his own disgust for the bonuses along with Chris Dodd, one of the Senators who had changed language within the stimulus bill that ensured the bonuses would be awarded. The stimulus bill had the language? Chris Dodd got caught in a lie. He then blames Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for pressuring him to put this condition into the bill.



That means that if Dodd is right, Geithner obviously knew about the bonuses and that, in turn, the Obama Administration knew about the bonuses in this amendment of the stimulus bill. Does this mean that their outrage was about something they knew perfectly well was going to happen?

This debacle has since led other banks and lending institutions to reconsider taking government money since they are aware of the strings attached to it. AIG’s new CEO, Edward Liddy, was pilloried for these bonuses that he did not create and AIG’s reputation has been severely tainted.

This just tells of the hypocrisy and completely phony outrage of the current administration and Congress. The punitive tax that was being discussed did not pass, but that would have taxed the bonuses at a rate of 95%. Just because Congress does not like how much money someone has, they now have the power to tax whoever they want? Some may think that is a disturbing proposition.

AIG may have timed these bonuses at a bad time. They are learning the hard lesson that goes along with accepting the government’s money.

Where is the outrage over a government that is looking to run a federal deficit that is 13% of its gross national product? Again, this would be like spending $113 per day when only making $100 per day. If this is done for a year, the person making $100 per day makes $36,500 per year, but then spends $41,245 per year. This makes a deficit of $4,745 per year. This is a small scale model of the Obama Administration’s budget.

Does this not sound dangerous? Yet they are lecturing AIG for wasting taxpayer money. A tax cheat (the Secretary of the Treasury) and the Congress presiding over a massive deficit lectures someone for mismanaging money. If it was not true, this would be funny.

Bernie Madoff and the Federal Government

By now, people all across America has heard of the curious, perplexing, and devastating story about the Bernie Madoff scheme that lost money for many investors that had been giving Mr. Madoff their trust with their funds. They were intrigued by Mr. Madoff’s advertisement that he could provide ten percent returns on their investments. Many high-profile people sought to invest in these terms only to find that Mr. Madoff was merely putting on a front.

Mr. Madoff did not have the money behind the investments to give back to his clients. If they had all cashed out at once even a year ago, he would not have had enough money. Sure, he was sending them statements on their earnings, but it was simply a piece of paper. When the bottom of the housing market dropped out this past fall, Mr. Madoff’s clients wanted to cash out and take back their money. There was one little problem: he did not have it and he had been lying to his clients for years that he did have it. Now Mr. Madoff is awaiting trial.

The federal government is now taking quite an investment from the taxpayers and from foreign nations buying American bonds. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, after calculating the interest that goes along with the spending in the bill itself, will cost approximately $1.3 trillion. Under the Bush Administration, the federal budget transitioned from running a surplus to running a deficit where the government was spending between three and four percent of its GDP in red figures. In other words, if one were to make $10 a day, it would be comparable to spending $10.30 to $10.40 per day. It does not sound like a big deal in that context, but take it to what the 2008 figures were: $2.9 trillion in spending versus $2.5 trillion in revenue. That is about $400 billion in deficit for just that one year.

Under President Obama’s new proposed budget and after the new American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 has been signed into law, federal deficit spending will increase to about 13 percent of the American GDP. This does not include the new idea of federal assistance in refinancing sub prime mortgages to protect homeowners from foreclosure. Going back to the $10 per day example: that would be like spending $11.30 per day and running $1.30 in the red every single day.

So the federal government is somehow going to convince Americans to continue to give Uncle Sam more money and convince other nations such as China to buy American bonds to help bankroll these new programs with the guarantee that Americans and foreign investors will see a return in their investments.

Does this not sound a little too similar to the Bernie Madoff story? Is this not like a poker player trying to bluff a pair of sixes to appear as four of a kind? The current administration and Congress will try to sell this as a temporary deficit that promises to yield returns that will increase the GDP and cure the federal deficit.

Will the federal government have a sealed indictment if they have to turn to its clients and say they do not have the money to return the investment?