Dick Morris’ latest column has some great advice for Republican candidates. Here’s his advice:

Republican negative ad writers always delight in describing the Stimulus package as bloated, wasteful, government-growing, and useless. The adjectives get in the way. The polling we’ve done indicates that the simple words “stimulus package” convey all that and more.

There is no need to call Obama’s health care legislation “a government attempt to take over our health care” or a bill to “slash medical care for the elderly” or an “attempt to force rationing of care.” The simple word Obamacare conveys the same meanings.

Why describe cap and trade as “job killing” or “driving jobs overseas” when the words cap and trade say these same things to voters?

Less is more. Why use words that clutter? It isn’t like the people don’t know what Obamacare is. It isn’t like they don’t already have a negative view of it. Ditto with Cap and Trade. Ditto with the stimulus.

Vice President Biden got his nickers in a knot Tuesday when John Boehner gave a major economic address in which he said that the stimulus failed. Miserably. Biden can whine all he wants but defending President Obama’s stimulus plan is a losing fight. Here’s Morris’ suggestion for an ad that works:

A simple ad along these lines will be far more effective for a Republican challenger to a Democratic incumbent than any elaborately conceived negative commercial:

“Do you support the $850 billion stimulus package Obama passed last year? Joe Democrat voted yes. Harry Republican says no.

The TARP bailout? Democrat voted in favor. Republican is opposed.

Obamacare? Joe Democrat supported it. Harry Republican would have voted no.

Cap and Trade? Democrat yes, again. Republican, no.

Vote for the one that agrees with you.”

People aren’t in a live-and-let-live mood these days. They’re unemployed or underemployed, possibly in danger of losing their home to foreclosure and worrying about their kids’ future. If that isn’t enough, and it is, people feel like the government isn’t listening to them.

Never in my lifetime have I seen a group of people so motivated to throw the liberal bums out, not even in 1994. They’re well-informed, too. Most have done their due diligence and just need to be pointed in the right direction. If that’s the case, just point them in the right direction, then get out of their way. Don’t overcomplicate things.

Most troubling to Democrat strategists is that these voters can’t wait to get to the polls. Either that or it’s that the worst is yet to come. What we’re seeing now is voters expressing their digust with the Obama administration and the Reid/Pelosi regime. We haven’t seen the partisan trend yet and we haven’t seen the new Contract-like document yet.

Republicans are witholding those documents until everyone is fully tuned in. It’s like a distance runner holding a little back until the final half-lap. Think of the races where the favorite is setting a strong pace, then the last half-lap arrives and suddenly he pulls away.

That’s what I predict will happen this year. Call it a crystallizing moment or the moment of realization or whatever. It’s coming and it will break the conservatives’ way.

If Republicans keep working hard and enunciating clear messages, in the manner that Dick Morris said, this election will be a powerful repudiation of President Obama’s and Speaker Pelosi’s agenda.

Technorati: Dick Morris, Stimulus, Obamacare, Cap And Tax, Negative Ads, Job-Killing, Tax Increases, Messaging, TARP, Bailouts, Economy, TEA Party, Republicans, Democrats, Election 2010

Cross-posted at California Conservative

Yesterday, Tim Walz got into a heated debate with Randy Demmer over Walz’s cap and tax vote. This morning, the Strib’s Hot Dish Politics blog has posted an interview they did with Walz. Based on his answers, Walz would’ve been better off not doing the interview:

In an interview after the event, Walz said it is “debatable” whether a cap-and-trade system is superior to other methods of clean energy legislation, such as tax credits or imposing a carbon tax.

“That’s the debate that I think should be asked on this,” Walz said. “I think many of us, Collin included, [are] not altogether comfortable with the cap-and-trade mechanism, but there were so many other things in [the bill] that went the right way.”

He was comfortable supporting the legislation, he said, because he knew it would change substantially before it came back for a final vote, after it had been sent through the Senate and conference committee.

“You’ve got to start somewhere,” Walz said. “I never thought that the final version I would vote on would look anything like it, but it’s to move it forward.”

What Rep. Walz wants us to believe is that he just voted for the largest tax increase in United States history to move the bill along the process. Rep. Walz wants us to think that the tax increases in the final cap and tax legislation wouldn’t cripple farms or raise gas prices or affect the prices at the local grocery store.

The whole idea behind Cap and Tax was to raise taxes so people wouldn’t use fossil fuels. PERIOD.

Here’s an exchange between Rep. Walz and Randy Demmer:

Cap and trade should give farmers a boost, Walz said, by discouraging buying fossil fuels from other countries, often countries that do not like the United States. “They will hate us for free.”

Demmer, a Republican in his second run for Walz’s job, said he thinks cap and trade could cost agriculture $5 billion. “Cap and trade is not an energy policy, it is a tax,” Demmer said. “It is tough on agriculture. We need to grow agriculture, not shrink it.”

Steven Wilson, an Independence Party candidate for Walz’s seat, agreed with Demmer that cap and trade is more of a tax. “We don’t have to sacrifice our small businesses,” he said.

Walz is right that “Cap and Trade” would discourage us from “buying fossil fuels from other countries.” Unfortunately, it would discourage us from buying fossil fuels.

This shot from Demmer is the right strategy:

One of Demmer’s biggest criticisms of Walz is that he votes for San Francisco liberal Nancy Pelosi to be speaker of the House. Demmer said Walz talks like a moderate back home, then votes liberal in Washington.

But when asked after the forum why he supports liberal leaders, Walz said he may seek a leadership job next year if Democrats maintain House control. “Maybe I will be one of them,” he said. Walz rattled off a list of groups that have praised him for work on veterans and education issues, and hinted he could be in line to lead one of those areas.

Rep. Walz, we don’t care which caucus you join. During the last 2 years, we’ve seen supposedly conservative Blue Dog Democrats cave on Cap and Tax and staunchly pro-life Democrats cave on Obamacare. The notion that there’s such a thing as a moderate Democrat is myth.

Your statement that “voting for health care was the easiest vote I’ve ever taken” speaks volumes about whether you’re a moderate or whether you’re actually a hard left leftie.

After voting for the trifecta, aka the failed stimulus bill, Obamacare and the job-killing Cap and Tax legislation, there’s little doubt but that Tim Walz votes the way Speaker Pelosi wants him to whenever she wants him to.

It’s time to vote for someone who represents southern Minnesota, not San Fransisco.

Technorati: Tim Walz, Speaker Pelosi, Cap And Tax, Obamacare, Stimulus, Tax Increases, Environmentalists, Fossil Fuels, Democrats, Randy Demmer, Agriculture, MNGOP, Election 2010

For the past couple weeks, President Obama’s defense of the failed stimulus bill has essentially been “It could’ve been worse.” Initially, I rejected that storyline but I’ve reconsidered. This WSJ article got me thinking, which ultimately led to my rethinking my position.

The one possibility the President and Congressional Democrats won’t entertain is that their own spending and taxing and regulating and labor union favoritism have become the main hindrance to job creation. Since February 2009, the jobless rate has climbed to 9.5% from 8.1%, and private industry has shed two million jobs. The overall economy has been expanding for at least a year, but employers still don’t seem confident enough to add new workers. The economists who sold us the stimulus say it’s a mystery. But maybe employers are afraid to hire because they don’t know what costs government will impose on them next.

This paragraph reminded me that things could be much worse. Think of what would’ve happened had President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had jammed Cap and Trade and Card Check down our throats, too.

Had this Democrat-dominated congress passed that legislation and had this Democratic president signed that legislation into law, the economy would’ve tanked by now. Had the Democrats passed these items, it isn’t a stretch to think that unemployment might be hitting 12 percent by now.

The Cap and Tax bill, if enacted, would represent the biggest tax increase in U.S. history. What’s worse is that it’s a highly regressive tax, hitting those hardest who can least afford it.

A smart politician would notice how unpopular tax increase legislation is and avoid it like the plague just 15 weeks before the tightly contested midterm elections. That isn’t what Harry Reid’s doing, though:

Reid said he would need to file another motion to cut off a filibuster of the military spending bill, but added, “I think we can work out the time on that so it doesn’t take an inordinate amount of time.”

Time is of the essence, as Reid has pledged to begin the energy debate the week of July 26. That would give Democrats two weeks to pass energy reform and confirm Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan by the August recess, scheduled to begin Aug. 6.

Harry Reid is stupid if he thinks that this legislation will pass. He’s a total idiot if he thinks voting on this legislation will help his incumbents in this fall’s elections. Senators facing tough races will hate taking this vote as much as the average person hates having their wisdom teeth removed.

Let this be a reminder to voters that the Democrats’ definition of energy ‘reform’ is the biggest regressive tax increase in U.S. history. Let’s remember that EFCA, aka the Employee Free Choice Act, aka Card Check, essentially eliminates a worker’s right to cast a secret ballot on whether or not to unionize.

The good news is that we’ll have a huge victory this November if everyone keeps campaigning like we’re 2 points behind with a month left in the campaign. With enough victories this November, then the worst will truly be behind us.

That’s motivation enough for me.

Technorati: Harry Reid, ARRA, Porkulus, Unemployment, Cap And Tax, Energy Reform, Tax Increase, Regressive Tax, Card Check, Secret Ballot, Democrats, Election 2010

Cross-posted at California Conservative

Talk to any conservative pundit and they’ll tell you that they’d love to see Harry Reid defeated this fall. Stephen Moore’s WSJ article provides alot of reasons why conservative pundits, and Nevada residents, want him out of office:

When I ask whether it is really possible to knock off a Senate majority leader, she laughs and replies, “only Reid thinks he’s too big to fail.” Her strategy against the Reid attack machine is to link him to the lousy economy in Nevada. When I ask her if Nevadans want to give up Mr. Reid’s clout in Washington, she replies: “When Harry Reid got to be majority leader, the unemployment rate was 4.4%. Now it is 14%, higher than even in Michigan…What has Harry Reid’s power done for our state?” Her new TV ad, unrolled this week, hammers this message. “We know he is going to attack me constantly,” she says, because “he can’t possibly run on his record.”

I said in this post that Harry Reid’s supposed clout hasn’t helped make life better for Nevada. If anything, his earmarks have helped a tiny sliver of his cronies to the exclusion of others. Here’s more proof that Reid sides with the special interests first, Nevadans second:

Regarding jobs, she points to Mr. Reid’s role in killing three clean coal-fired plants in rural Ely, where she and her husband have lived since 1971. After years of opposition by Mr. Reid in league with various environmental groups, NV Energy halted development of a $5 billion plant in February 2009. That meant the loss of 5,000 jobs, Mrs. Angle says.

“That’s really when we realized Harry Reid doesn’t care about jobs or people losing their homes. And it’s also when ‘Anybody but Harry Reid’ signs first began to sprout up all over the state.”

Reid either believes in letting job-creating opportunities disappear or he sided with the environmentalists in killing this project. I don’t believe for a split second that Reid hates job creation. I don’t have trouble believing, though, that he’d side with Washington’s special interests so that their campaign contributions would keep flowing.

I also think it’s highly likely that he’d side with Washington’s special interests so that he wouldn’t be the subject of their criticism. Thanks to Ms. Angle’s recent fundraising efforts, she’ll be able to remind people day after day after day that Harry Reid sides with the special interests first, Nevadans after that. This isn’t the year where voters will let their politicians ingore their wishes.

This information shouldn’t be overlooked this year:

Sharron Angle’s first foray into activism was when her son was held back in kindergarten in 1983 and “the poor little guy was made to feel like a failure. He hated school.” She wanted to home school him, but the school system and the courts said no. Her response was to open a one-room school with a Christian-based curriculum. It soon had 24 students.

“I didn’t realize how many other parents were angry with the school system,” she recalls. She charged $125 a month to cover the cost of supplies but taught for free. (Mrs. Angle has a degree in education from the University of Nevada, Reno.)

In 1985 she rallied hundreds of parents behind her successful effort to pass a bill through the Nevada legislature allowing parents to home school anywhere in the state. The result of her effort is that in Nevada home schooling has become a popular alternative to the public schools, and Mrs. Angle is referred to as the “home school heroine.”

“I was just a mother, and the government had gotten between me and my child, and that’s like getting between a mother bear and her cubs,” she says. “I think that’s what activates the tea party movement. What they see is the government interfering with their lives, and with the inheritance of their children. Are we going to pass down liberty or deficits? And that’s really what this movement is about.” The cub—her 6-year-old son—now has a masters degree and teaches high school history in Yerrington, Nevada.

Elitist America sneers contemptuously at Sarah Palin’s momma grizzlies. That’s exceptionally foolish. The indicators are there that Republicans will do exceptionally well with women voters this cycle because they’ve perceived, rightly in my opinion, that Democrats care more about pleasing their special interest allies than they care about doing what’s right for the Momma Grizzlies’ children.

It’s one thing to criticize moms. It’s quite another to advocate policies that would give their children a brighter future.

Sen. Reid likes talking about his boxing background. This information from Stephen Moore’s article says that Mrs. Angle is a feisty, combative woman who’s won some fights against Goliaths:

Mrs. Angle’s most legendary fight was within her own party. In 2003, then Gov. Kenny Guinn, a Republican, schemed to raise the sales tax by half a billion dollars. Mr. Guinn declared that anybody who opposed his tax was “irrelevant, irresponsible and cowardly.” The governor seemed to be pointing directly at her, says Mrs. Angle. “He knew from the start I would be against it.”

The frustrated governor couldn’t get the constitutionally required two-thirds vote of approval without her. As she tells the story, “at one critical point, the minority leader asked me: ‘So, Sharron, what’s your number?’ That meant how big a tax increase could I tolerate? And I told them my number was zero.”

When the bullying failed, the Nevada Supreme Court, in a spectacular abuse of the constitution, allowed the tax hike to go through without the two-thirds vote. The justices decreed that the money was needed for the schools and that the right to an adequate education took precedence over a procedural safeguard.

The next day, Ms. Angle recalls, “I went into the conference room and was told there’s nothing you can do, Sharron. It’s all over. The Supreme Court has the last word. And I said, ‘No, it’s not over.’”

She spearheaded a movement to get the Supreme Court replaced. In the next election in 2006, voters threw out five of the seven members of the Nevada Supreme Court; the other two had retired. “It was a referendum on that tax increase vote,” she argues. “And the new court came in and reversed that decision and made our constitution whole.”

Sharron Angle sounds just irreverent enough to laugh at conventional wisdom in the morning and smart and determined enough to defeat it that afternoon. Getting 5 members of a state’s Supreme Court isn’t routine. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s unprecedented.

Sharron Angle is exactly the type of senator that’s needed to provide support to Jim Demint and Tom Coburn. If Angle, Marco Rubio, Pat Toomey and Rob Portman are added to the Senate GOP, we’ll finally have the nucleus of a fiscally conservative Senate.

This might be Mrs. Angle’s best weapon in this fight:

To win, Sharron Angle is going to need a major money influx from the conservative groups that pushed her over the top in the primary to counter the $25 million Mr. Reid is expected to spend. What Mrs. Angle has going for her is a contagious optimism that Nevadans would never send Mr. Reid back to the Senate given the fiscal carnage in Washington.

Nevada voters, she says, “are disillusioned, disappointed and disgusted with what had happened since the 2008 election. They are tired of this establishment machine that doesn’t understand that we—the people— are in control. They are saying ‘We don’t care if you’re a Republican or a Democrat. We don’t believe either one of you.’”

If there’s anything that’s motivating voters this cycle, it’s voting out politicians that they perceive to have ignored them. If any politician fits that particular description, it’s Harry Reid.

In an ordinary year, Sharron Angle wouldn’t have this good a shot at winning this election. This isn’t an ordinary year and Sharron Angle isn’t an ordinary candidate. This cycle, she’s the right candidate in the right race at the right time.

What’s better yet is that Harry Reid is the wrong politician who ignored the will of his constituents for far too long. That’s why Nevadans will send Harry Reid to an invuluntary retirement this November.

Technorati: Harry Reid, Unemployment, Special Interests, Crony Capitalism, Earmarks, Obamacare, Democrats, Sharron Angle, Sales Tax, Tax Increases, Supreme Court, Sarah Palin, Momma Grizzlies, Conservatism, Election 2010

Cross-posted at California Conservative

Matt Entenza’s Strib op-ed illustrates perfectly the DFL’s distrust of people. The opening to his op-ed is also typical DFL whining:

We face a huge budget deficit. We have schools so broke they’re shifting to four-day weeks. We need to find $50 billion we don’t have to cover the next 20 years of urgent transportation needs. We’re leaving our most vulnerable citizens hurting, and we’re firing police and firefighters across the state.

Some on the left think we can solve all this by just raising taxes. Some on the right think we just need more cuts. I say we cannot tax or cut our way to greatness; we must grow our way there. The emerging clean-energy economy is the right strategy at the right time.

First, cities that are “firing police and firefighters” aren’t very bright in terms of budgeting. Public safety is the primary responsibility of each level of government. Why would public safety be the first cuts made to city budgets? Why shouldn’t other parts of the city budget get cut first?

While Entenza whines about LGA cuts, nothing in his economic policy speeches speaks to growing Minnesota’s economy. It’s true that Mr. Entenza talks incessantly about building a green economy. That leads to this question: Why doesn’t Mr. Entenza talk about other types of businesses?

Here’s another question for Mr. Entenza: Why do green energy companies deserve preferential treatment? Giving green energy companies preferential treatment is an implicit admission that Minnesota’s tax system hurts businesses. If Minnesota’s tax system helped businesses, green energy companies wouldn’t need preferential treatment.

This paragraph is laughably absurd:

While I have called for an immediate budget-balancing approach, a third through revenue enhancements (targeted at the wealthiest Minnesotans), a third in deferments and a third in cuts, I have not promised billions in new spending. To win the trust of voters, Democrats must avoid the trap of overpromising things that are undeliverable. That is why it is so critical that we embrace clean energy and get our economy going again.

In 2007, the DFL promised that they wouldn’t raise taxes. During the first week of session, Speaker Kelliher promised that she’d run a fiscally moderate caucus. Less than 3 months later, she’d help get some of the biggest spending increases in state history passed.

Now we’re supposed to trust Matt Entenza to not overspend? That’s laughable.

It’s worth noting that the Class of 2006 didn’t initially promise billions in new spending either. Then their special interest allies prevailed upon them. The spending increases, coupled with the DFL’s tax increases, were entirely predictable. In fact, I wrote about Cy Thao’s now infamous quote back then:

“When you guys win, you get to keep your money. When we win, we take your money.”

The DFL is genetically predisposed to raising taxes, which they use to increase spending for their special interest allies.

I recall watching with my brother a debate during the Carlson years. The state had its biggest surplus in state history at the time. The debate I watched was of 3 DFL legislators arguing over a new tax increase. One DFL legislator said that the new revenue should go towards education. Another said it should go for transportation. The third legislator said it should go towards a combination of health care, transportation and education.

When I looked at my brother, he was just shaking his head in disbelief. The first thing we said was that we’ve got a $4 billion surplus. Why do these politicians need to raise taxes to spend even more money?

This pattern has repeated itself frequently over the years. Unfortunately, two things that haven’t become patterns with the DFL is the habit of setting smart priorities and saying no to their special interest allies. I’m not betting on that happening anytime soon, which is why I’ve never given the DFL a serious thought of supporting.

Technorati: Economy, Green Energy, Matt Entenza, Tax Incentives, Special Interests, Spending, Tax Increases, Cy Thao, Speaker Kelliher, DFL, Election 2010

In a just world, I wouldn’t have believed it had Sen. Boxer criticized Carly Fiorina about creating jobs. Since we don’t live in a just world, I shouldn’t be surprised with this NPR article. Here’s what’s rich to me:

“She laid off American workers without a second thought,” Boxer said at the site of a highway transportation project near the Golden Gate Bridge that is partly funded by federal stimulus dollars. “And if she had been in the Senate instead of me, the economic recovery act would not have passed. And these people would not have their jobs,” she said of the construction workers surrounding her.

If Sen. Boxer wants to argue that California is better off because she voted for the failed stimulus bill, that’s her right. The First Amendment certainly lets Sen. Boxer say extremely foolish things. It appears that she’s just exercised that right. Why anyone would willingly tie themselves to the failed Obama/Pelosi stimulus bill is beyond me.

That’s before we start talking about the damage that the Endangered Species Act, legislation that’s under the jurisdiction of the Environment and Public Works Committee, which she chairs, has had on killing jobs in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Sen. Boxer could dramatically improve the employment conditions in the San Joaquin Valley if she wasn’t such a committed environmentalist. Her not lifting a finger has helped drive up unemployment rates in the San Joaquin, a rate that’s been high for well over a year.

The policies that Sen. Boxer enthusiastically supports are crippling California’s economy. It’s my opinion that she’ll be in deep trouble the minute Carly Fiorina starts her advertising blitz highlighting the policies that Sen. Boxer has advocated and the effect that those policies have had on California’s jobs situation.

When Carly’s ad blitz happens, Sen. Boxer’s pathetic career will be exposed for supporting an endless string of radical, anti-capitalist, job-killing causes. In short, I wouldn’t want to be in Sen. Boxers’ shoes.

Technorati: Economy, Stimulus, Endangered Species Act, Environment, Barabar Boxer, Unemployment, San Joaquin Valley, California, Agriculture, Democrats, Carly Fiorina, Ad Blitz, Capitalism, Republicans, Election 2010

Cross-posted at California Conservative

This week, the DFL and their well-funded progressive allies have tried painting the picture that conservatives, Tom Emmer especially, lack compassion. They point to Tom Emmer’s statements on tip credits, suggesting that Tom Emmer wants to cut wages for people earning a living in the hospitality industry.

Thanks to King’s research, we finally have a study to work from:

Do higher tipped minimum wages boost server pay?
Published in Applied Economics Letters 12 (2005), pp. 391–393; doi 10.1080/13504850500092459
Abstract: Do tipped servers in states with higher tipped minimum wages earn more, ceteris paribus, than servers elsewhere? Using 1999 data on waitpersons and bartenders, little evidence is found of a premium to servers in states with more generous minimum wages.

In other words, there’s little proof that Tom Emmer’s call for tip credits is his calling for wage cuts. It isn’t surprising that the DFL’s special interest allies aren’t interested in knowing the truth.

The DFL wants Minnesotans to focus solely on this issue, hoping that tehy can paint Tom, at least through their eyes, as yet another heartless conservative. I question them on that. I think their portrayal as an inaccurate mischaracterization.

What the DFL doesn’t like getting out is that they’ve added crippling amounts of regulations on everything from health care mandates to the business permitting process and licensing fees.

That’s before talking about the DFL’s penchant for attempting to pick economic winners and losers. This year, as with the past 2 election cycles, DFL candidates are running on the promise of tilting the tax code towards companies towards green jobs.

Is it compassionate to tilt the economic playing field in one direction, leaving the other industries to fend for themselves under an overly burdensome taxation and regulatory burden? Is it compassionate to attempt to keep raising taxes on small businesses?

The DFL legislature’s first goal is to figure out new ways to fund a Twentieth Century government. The state Senate has had a DFL majority since 1972. The running joke with legislators is that the Senate is where good reforms go to die, usually at the hands of Linda Berglin.

Is it compassionate to fight for crippling taxes that send companies scurrying to other states and their employees trodding to the unemployment line? It isn’t in my estimation.

Having sat through more than a few of Tom Emmer’s stump speeches, I know that Tom wants to change government’s mission. It isn’t a stretch to argue that one of government’s jobs is to protect each agency’s budget.

The good news for Minnesota’s taxpayers is that Tom will have help if we elect King Banaian and other conservatives. At King’s announcement, he got a commitment from Kurt Zellers that his bill to change Minnesota budgeting to zero-based budgeting. Follow this link to learn more about how zero-based budgeting works and how it has the potential to save Minnesota’s taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

I’d argue that fiscal conservatives like Tom Emmer and King Banaian are the truly compassionate politicians because (a) they protect the taxpayers’ wallets, (b) they stabilize labor costs at prices that lead to job growth and (c) their policies help Minnesota’s families stay employed in good paying jobs by companies that won’t leave.

Finally, I’d argue that more people would prefer government agencies whose first priority is serving their constituents rather than worrying about whether their budget will get a nice increase.

Technorati: Tom Emmer, King Banaian, Conservatism, Economy, Job Growth, Taxes, Regulations, Permitting, Prosperity, Republicans, Special Interests, Government, DFL, Election 2010

Listening to the DFL’s trio of gubernatorial candidates talk about it, you’d think that a green economy is imminent. Here’s what Speaker Kelliher’s website says about green energy:

Margaret will make Minnesota the national leader in clean energy by promoting policies that support the growth of producers, manufacturers, and maintenance and repair contractors throughout the state.

Here’s Matt Entenza’s comments on green energy:

Minnesota has the opportunity to be an international leader in clean energy. We have the human capital and natural resources to do it; what we need is a leader who’s willing to focus on it. When I’m governor, my administration will focus on clean energy to renew and diversify Minnesota’s economy, create jobs and help our entire country move forward.

In Minnesota we spend $10 billion per year on energy - dollars that mostly leave our state, too often going to hostile dictators in the Middle East or South America. We should instead be spending our energy dollars here, on local energy sources that will never run out, and we should invest the profits on world-class schools and innovative 21st century technologies.

Mark Dayton’s website isn’t finished with their green energy website but they’re undoubtedly interested in green energy:

“Green” technologies mean cleaner energy, a safer environment, and new jobs. As Governor, I will lead the way to that future, and develop incentives that will bring green energy industries to Minnesota.

More to come soon, please check back.

The environmentalists would have us believe that we’ve practically run out of oil, that we must change our habits. That’s what they’ve said since the 1970’s. Back then, they whined about the environmental disaster awaiting us for building the Alaskan pipeline. They said that there was only a couple years of oil underneath Alaska’s frozen ground. Thirty-something years later, they’re still pumping oil our from beneath Alaska’s soil and off its coast.

That’s before considering all the oil in ANWR.

The environmentalists will tell us that we use “25 percent of the world’s oil” but that “we have only 2 percent of the world’s oil.” That’s a bald-faced lie that John Hofmeister exposed in this interview:

HANNITY: All right. Was the president of the United States telling the American people the truth, that we didn’t have enough oil reserves in shallower waters or inland? Because I contend that that was not true.

HOFMEISTER: There is a misquote being used by the president and the administration through the campaign and to today. When they say the U.S. only has two percent of the world’s oil reserves and uses 20 percent, we can’t drill our way to energy independence, that is a myth. Because proven reserves is a narrow technical definition by SCC that doesn’t include probable reserves.

The truth is that there’s more than enough oil and natural gas on the OCS, in ANWR and in the continental United States to last several centuries. That’s before starting the discussion about clean coal technology.

What’s really happening when Kelliher, Entenza and Dayton talk about the imminent green economy is that they’re telling their special interest allies that they’ll favor them through the tax code by picking winners and losers.

These days, that’s known as crony capitalism and it isn’t playing well on the national scene. Instead of playing the DFL’s crony capitalism game, we should instead invest in tax and regulatory policies that favor no one but that help everyone.

In short, though the DFL’s gubernatorial candidates are implying that the green energy economy is knocking at our door, the reality is that it’s anything but imminent.

Technorati: Energy, Economy, Green Jobs, Speaker Kelliher, Matt Entenza, Mark Dayton, Special Interests, Crony Capitalism, Subsidies, DFL, Fossil Fuels, Election 2010

President Obama delivered his first ‘major’ speech on immigration reform. Friday morning’s Rasmussen polling shows that his approval index is nearing its all-time worst:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 24% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -20.

It’s been a week President Obama wishes he could forget. He botched his immigration speech badly, getting criticized for delivering a GOTV speech in what was supposed to be a major policy speech. Instead of laying out a blueprint for moving forward on the issue, he criticized Republicans for not giving in to his policy demands. He criticized them for not accepting his special interest allies-driven immigration ideas.

The oil continues to spill into the gulf, infuriating Gulf Coast residents and his environmental base. His ineptitude in controlling the oil spill and his insisting that his ineptitude is proof that we need to pass the biggest tax increase in the history of the United States isn’t winning voters over.

That’s before talking about President Obama’s handling of the economy, which shed 125,000 jobs in June. The administration is trying to put its best spin on this, saying that 83,000 private sector jobs were created. The American people aren’t buying that. This far into a supposed recovery, the economy should be creating at least double that, if not triple.

That’s before considering his disastrous speech in Racine, WI, in which he said that it’s difficult to argue that his stimulus bill was working with the national unemployment rate at 9.7 percent. He then said that it could be worse, that the unemployment rate could’ve been 12, 13, possibly even 15 percent.

President Obama’s advance team should be fired for not prepping him better. Racine’s unemployment rate is 14 percent. Can you say OOPS?

Finally, the American people are figuring it out that the Obama administration is a solutions-free zone. He doesn’t have a solution for cleaning up the Gulf, which is his administration’s responsibility. He didn’t enunciate his administration’s solution to preventing the rampant violence in Arizona. It’s painfully, painfully obvious that he doesn’t have a plan for reviving the economy.

In the 1980’s, Wendy’s ran commercials with an old lady asking “Where’s the beef?” Today, people are asking President Obama “Where’s the competence?”

The jury is very much still out on that.

Technorati: Polling, President Obama, Economy, Unemployment, Immigration, Drug Cartels, Kidnappings, Human Trafficking, Gulf Oil Spill, Cap And Trade, Speeches, Stimulus, Racine, Democrats, Elections

Cross-posted at California Conservative

When President Obama gave his speech about the BP oil spill, much was made of his using war terminology. Weeks later, it appears that, like everything else Obama, it was just talk. Actually, it’s pretty obvious that the only war he’s waging in the Gulf is with Gulf state governors, fishermen and environmentalists. Rep. Dan Burton’s op-ed in Human Events highlights some things that the American people need to know about:

On the 65th day of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the crisis continued unmitigated, with hardly any talk of capping, containing, or cleaning the spill. Rather, the headlines on day 65 were about the federal court’s rejection of the Obama Administration’s moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

While the President’s legal team mounts their appeal and drafts a new explanation for why we need a “pause” in drilling across the gulf, they should include a chapter about Brazil. Specifically, why the “pause” excludes a multi-billion dollar, U.S. taxpayer-funded loan program designed to assist Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, in drilling off the coast of Brazil in waters deeper than the Gulf of Mexico.

As you might expect, Brazil and Petrobras will benefit substantially from the U.S.-government loans, but the real boondoggle lies within President Obama’s gulf drilling moratorium. If the gulf becomes off-limits, much of its $124 billion offshore drilling industry, and the jobs and technology that come with it, will transfer from the Gulf of Mexico to Brazil. In fact, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation is already making plans to relocate its rigs to Brazil if they are idled by the U.S. drilling ban.

President Obama is helping the economy. Unfortunately, the economy he’s helping with his inaction is Brazil’s. It’s unconscienable that President Obama has declared war on the economies of Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida and Alabama. Tourism was already floundering before the oil spill. It’s essentially nonexistent now.

What’s worse is that the Obama administration has done everything in its power to prevent Gulf coast governors from protecting their states’ natural resources by insisting on scuttling Louisiana’s plans to build berms to protect their fragile wetlands. They’ve also grounded skimmers because the Obama administration beached them to make sure they had the requisite number of lifejackets onboard:

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has spent the past week and half fighting to get working barges to begin vacuuming crude oil out of his state’s oil-soaked waters. By Thursday morning, against the governor’s wishes, those barges still were sitting idle, even as more oil flowed toward the Louisiana shore.

“It’s the most frustrating thing,” the Republican governor told ABC News while visiting Buras, La. “Literally, [Wednesday] morning we found out that they were halting all of these barges.”

Watch “World News” for David Muir’s report from Louisiana tonight.

Sixteen barges sat stationary Thursday, although they had been sucking up thousands of gallons of BP’s oil as recently as Tuesday. Workers in hazmat suits and gas masks pumped the oil out of the Louisiana waters and into steel tanks. It was a homegrown idea that seemed to be effective at collecting the thick gunk.

Experienced executives know that the first thing you do in a crisis is you waive certain rules if they’re getting in the way of a swift response. Unfortunately, we didn’t elect an experienced executive. For that matter, we didn’t elect any type of executive. We elected Barack Obama instead.

What’s become painfully obvious throughout this crisis is that President Obama didn’t take charge, he didn’t waive the Jones Act, he didn’t accept help from the countries that offered to help skim the oil and protect the environment. In short, he failed to live up to his responsibilities.

Just like President Obama can’t plug the well, BP can’t waive the Jones Act or accept help from other nations. If I was BP, I’d file a lawsuit against the federal government for failing to live up to its responsibilities. Had the Obama administration done what other administrations would’ve done, the widespread environmental damage wouldn’t have happened, at least not to this extent.

I empathize with President Obama’s environmental allies. He’s let them down in a big way. They understand that his inaction significantly contributed to the worst environmental catastrophe in U.S. history.

What’s worse is that, if the moratorium is granted by the courts, the rigs will be shipped to Brazil’s coastal waters, Gulf state workers will lose their jobs and the Gulf states’ economies will be ruined for a decade.

Instead of meeeting with lawyers to soak BP, President Obama should’ve been meeting with engineers and people with solutions to the then-impending environmental catastrophe:

“The Coast Guard came and shut them down,” Jindal said. “You got men on the barges in the oil, and they have been told by the Coast Guard, ‘Cease and desist. Stop sucking up that oil.’”

A Coast Guard representative told ABC News that it shares the same goal as the governor. “We are all in this together. The enemy is the oil,” said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Dan Lauer.

But the Coast Guard ordered the stoppage because of reasons that Jindal found frustrating. The Coast Guard needed to confirm that there were fire extinguishers and life vests on board, and then it had trouble contacting the people who built the barges.

The governor said he didn’t have the authority to overrule the Coast Guard’s decision, though he said he tried to reach the White House to raise his concerns.

“They promised us they were going to get it done as quickly as possible,” he said. But “every time you talk to someone different at the Coast Guard, you get a different answer.”

This is a catastrophe in search for a point person. Thus far, the Obama administration has failed miserably in that respect. Naming Adm. Thad Allen hasn’t improved emergency operations by any significant amount. The Jones Act still hasn’t been waived. Foreign skimmers still haven’t been invited in to any meaningful extent. The Coast Guard still is doing more harm than good.

I haven’t seen proof that the Obama administration will get these things done anytime soon. Each day that his administration’s response to the crisis is found lacking, the less likely it becomes that voters will grant President Obama a second term.

In fact, the longer the Obama administration mishandles this catastrophe, the more likely it is that President Obama will be seen as a failure. It’s also more likely that congressional Democrats will get hurt by his plummeting job approval ratings.

In Alabama Thursday, Gov. Bob Riley said that he’s had problems with the Coast Guard, too. Riley, R-Ala., asked the Coast Guard to find ocean boom tall enough to handle strong waves and protect his shoreline.

The Coast Guard went all the way to Bahrain to find it, but when it came time to deploy it? “It was picked up and moved to Louisiana,” Riley said.

The governor said the problem is there’s still no single person giving a “yes” or “no.” While the Gulf Coast governors have developed plans with the Coast Guard’s command center in the Gulf, things begin to shift when other agencies start weighing in, like the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“It’s like this huge committee down there,” Riley said, “and every decision that we try to implement, any one person on that committee has absolute veto power.”

I wrote in this post about President Obama’s speech to the nation from the Oval Office. Here’s what President Obama said then:

But make no mistake: We will fight this spill with everything we’ve got for as long as it takes.

From the very beginning of this crisis, the federal government has been in charge of the largest environmental cleanup effort in our nation’s history, an effort led by Admiral Thad Allen, who has almost 40 years of experience responding to disasters. We now have nearly 30,000 personnel who are working across four states to contain and clean up the oil. Thousands of ships and other vessels are responding in the Gulf.

Adm. Allen hasn’t pulled the agencies and bureaucracies together, possibly because President Obama didn’t give him that authority. The EPA and Coast Guard are still operating as though this wasn’t a crisis situation.

If this were an indictment of President Obama’s crisis management, we’d be at the point where President Obama pleads guilty to gross mismanagement and throws himself on the mercy of the court.

This won’t be the last crisis we’ll see before 2016. Based on President Obama’s mismanagement of this crisis and the economic crisis, part of which he’s responsible for creating, I don’t see any rationalization or justifification for his re-election.

He’s in way over his head. What’s worse is that I don’t see him learning from the experience.

Technorati: Crisis, BP Oil Spill, President Obama, Thad Allen, Coast Guard, Environmental Catastrophe, EPA, Jones Act, Unemployment, Bureaucrats, Skimmers, Brazil, Petrobras, Democrats, Bobby Jindal, Bob Riley, Republicans, Elections

Cross-posted at California Conservative