Conservative Badlands

Where is the Outrage?

2012-01-08T17:39:00.000-08:00

Let's face it, folks, the United States of America, as you and I have always known it, is going to hell in handbasket. We are letting a bunch of self-appointed elites steal our money and redistribute it to their friends and supporters. We are letting this same bunch of snobs micromanage our lives by writing hundreds of thousands of pages of rules and regulations that no one can keep up with without so much as a whimper of protest. Whatever happened to the home of the free and the brave? Are we going to allow ourselves to become the home of government slaves and a bunch of cowards? Why aren't we mad as hell and determined that we are not going to put up with this crap anymore? Where is the outrage?

The standard answer is that there is nothing we can do about it because you cannot fight city hall let alone the federal government. We both know that this is a cop out. Why are we letting a bunch of know nothings who by their own admission constitute 22% of the population tell the rest of us what to do? Why are we allowing these jerks in the media, Hollywood and universities wage war on our way of life and force us to march to their corrupt tune? If Iran landed on our shores with an army of Sharia law demanding Moslems armed to the teeth determined to force their way of life on us, would we stand idly by and submit? How is what is happening to us any different other than it is not an armed army of fanatics but a bunch of home grown fanatics in control of way too much of the country already?

What can we do about this insidious form of attack? We rebelled when the fanatics in Congress jammed a health care bill a distinct majority of us did not want down our throats and sent 63 new members of the House of the opposite party to Congress to teach them better manners. How did that turn out? What did we get but more of same old, same old crap? How could there be any change when these 63 members elected the same "go along to get along" bunch as their leaders? Yes, they passed some sensible legislation only to have it all die in the Senate that has not managed to pass a budget in over 900 days and counting. So the Republicans weep crocodile tears and say there is nothing they can do since the fanatics control the Senate.

The Republican leadership in both Houses of Congress is so afraid of being beat up on by the media that they never hold their ground. Wake up and smell the coffee. The media is part of the invading enemy so you never let them get away with their assault on the rest of us. Shut the damn federal government down if that is what it takes to get spending under control. The federal government is the biggest threat to our individual freedom and public opinion polls show that well over a majority of the public recognizes this. The federal government is a terrible evil and a threat to every American whether they know that or not. It may be a necessary evil but it still is an evil that must be fought at every turn.

This country was founded on the concept of property rights. If your property is not your own then anyone can just help themselves to what you have paid your money to own anytime they please. Since it took money to buy any property you own, your money is also your property and anyone who helps himself to it is a thief. Trying to dress it up as an issue of fairness because you have more money than someone else is total bullshit. Some people are more talented than others as writers, singers, dancers or what have you. Is that fair? It may not seem fair but that is just the way life is. Would you have us all be equally talented and have everybody be just mediocre at everything? Worse yet, would you have us place handicaps on talented people so that they would not be any better than anyone else at whatever they are good at? Then why would you have us handicap people who are talented at making money by stealing it from them since they are just "too" talented than the rest of us and they owe it to the rest of us in all fairness? We excuse this inexcusable behavior by calling these people greedy. All that happens when you handicap the wealthy by taking their money is that we all get poorer. We have been handicapping the wealthy for several years now and while I do not know about you, I am definitely poorer than I was before the socialists took over the government.

All we hear from Congress is how we need more laws, more programs and especially more spending even though we know that this policy is totally insane. The United States government is broke and bankrupt in all but name. We have borrowed from our children's children's children to fund this spending spree that would put an entire aircraft carrier group of drunken sailor to shame. We desperately need to take a meataxe to the federal government budget and lop off several cabinet departments at one fell swoop. Does anyone really think that the present occupant of the White House is prepared to do this to save our country from going belly up? He is busy doing the Alfred E. Neumann bit and saying. "What, me worry?" His answer is to tax the rich and spend even more money. If we took every "rich" person, which by his definition is anyone making over $250,000 a year, and lined them up against the wall, shot them all, confiscated everything they owned, sold it all and gave the money to the federal government how much of a dent would that make? It would mean we could fund the federal government for about a year so what do we do the year after that when there are no more rich people to rob?

Since forming a third party would just guarantee finishing off our country by re-electing the incumbent, we are stuck with electing a Republican president who promises to dramatically cut the federal government down to a size we can live with. Unfortunately, most Republicans only make speeches about doing that but never follow through on their promises. All we get is a little less government than we would have under the Democrats, but still more government and spending than before. Who then can we draft as our David who will venture forth and slay the Goliath of big government that is strangling all of us? It will take someone who has a record of not being afraid of stepping on the toes of BOTH parties who want to keep to business as usual even though it is destroying our country. There is only one person who answers that description perfectly, but when she popped up onto the national scene, the enemy within recognized her as the threat that she was to their way of running the country and attacked her and her family without mercy to an extent never seen before even in the rough and tumble world of politics. What is worse, we stood idly by and let the bastards do it and never stood up for her to our everlasting shame.

Thus it is no wonder that she decided that her family had been vilified enough and being president was not worth what it would cost her family. She also realized that her reputation had been so shattered by the relentless assault on her that to be just one of many Republicans running against Mr. Business as Usual, as demonstrated by his governing of Massachusetts, was an exercise in futility. Perhaps when Romney sweeps New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida and there is no one left to stop him from winning the nomination even though he will only have 5% of the total delegates at that point, she can be prevailed upon to change her mind and do her duty and save us all.

We cannot live on what may turn out to be a vain hope given the stakes. Who then is there left who has a track record of cutting government at all and even balancing the budget for a couple of years? Only Newt Gingrich answers that description. In spite of all his personal failings, his huge ego and his tendency to jump on a new train too quickly, he is the only remaining choice. He is the bull in a china shop of the federal government that is exactly what we need. The point is that Newt is now a necessity or we are all going down with the listing ship of state. That means it is up to the folks of South Carolina to put Newt over the top. If they fail to do that, we are down to the longshot of leaning on Sarah very hard to change her mind and fulfill her duty to her country.

This is just such an unbelievable mess that we have allowed to happen in our country. We truly are in desperate straits. God help us all since we do not seem to be willing to help ourselves by doing whatever it takes to vanquish the enemy within.

Mr. President, How Dare You...

2011-10-22T15:30:00.000-07:00

By Paul N. Marston from www.marstonchronicles.info. I have always thought that any President of the United States of either party, no matter how much I disagreed with his policies, had the best interest of his country and his fellow citizens at heart. He might be going about it the wrong way in my opinion, but there is no way that he would deliberately make life worse for his fellow Americans. Strangely enough, it was an episode in a television series that caused me to change my mind. My wife and I never watch television because we cannot stand the mind numbing insipid commercials we would be subject to if we did. We watch last year's programs that we enjoy on a rented DVD minus the commercials instead.

Thus it was that we watched this week an episode of Criminal Minds called "Coda" that was broadcast last February. During this program I suddenly became absolutely furious as I called our current president every foul name I could think of because I knew what I was seeing was all his fault and his fault alone. It was not that a couple in Louisiana had been kidnapped leaving their autistic son alone that set me off but what the screen was showing had happened to this town in Southern Louisiana instead. This couple was at risk because unlike anyone else in this town they had managed to get a measly $42,000 loan when no one else could do that. This was so unusual that most everybody knew they had gotten this loan and it pushed one desperate man who was losing everything to do something he would ordinarily never think of doing.

This episode was fiction but the economic situation it was depicting is tragically true. What made me so furious was that all this economic misery could be so easily solved by you, Mr. President. The entire Gulf Coast has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs and it is solely your doing, Mr. President. While I know how devastating this has been to the Gulf Coast intellectually, seeing a dramatization of the effects of it really brought it all home. Mr. President, how dare you let these Americans suffer needlessly? Yes, there was an unfortunate oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It has been plugged and in spite of numerous scare stories in the mass media, the damage to the environment has not been catastrophic. You and your appointees totally overreacted and shut down all drilling in the area and have refused to issue all but a handful of permits since. You have done this even in the face of a court order telling you not to do this. Mr. President, how dare you defy a federal court order and put all these people out of work?

All you have to do to fix this is to issue an executive order and tell your Secretaries of Energy and Interior to quit stalling and start issuing permits. You do not need the co-operation of those "obstructionist" Republicans in the House to do this. Indeed, they would be happy to co-operate on this particular subject. You are the obstructionist here and not them. Mr. President, how dare you continue to drag your feet and keep thousands of Americans out of work? What about that pipeline from Canada that would bring in much needed revenue and thousands of jobs? You could get this approved all by yourself by just telling your appointees to do it.

In order to protect some damn little fish that nobody but a bunch of wacko environmentalists gives a damn about, you have allowed hundreds of thousands of acres of the best farmland in America lie fallow. This has caused an economic disaster in the counties containing this land where unemployment is pushing 40%. A lot of these idled workers are Hispanics that you profess to be so concerned about. Mr. President, how dare you leave these Hispanics literally high and dry? With a stroke of a pen you could fix this and yet you cannot be bothered. You seem to be perfectly content to let Americans suffer because of your ritualistic commitment to the environment. Only an idiot fouls his own nest and we all want to see an improved environment but the environment is already greatly improved from 40 years ago. We should not rest on our laurels but there is no need to be so environmentally conscious that you are willing to let millions of Americans lose their jobs all because of one species here and there that is just not all that important in the overall scheme of things.

You and your ilk make fun of hidebound fundamentalists who believe that every word in the Bible is literally true and therefore the Universe was created in 7007 BC in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. Yet you are equally hidebound in thinking that wind and solar power are the answers to our energy needs now when all the evidence says that we are decades away from that happening if ever. In the meantime we need fossil fuels to keep us going. Instead of encouraging more exploration for fossil fuels here at home, you are content to force us to send billions of dollars to countries that hate our guts to buy their fossil fuels. Those billions could stay right here in our economy and provide much needed jobs. Mr. President, how dare you deliberately put us at such a security risk?

There are many people who think you are a closet Muslim and have been foisted off on us by some cabal who is intent on destroying this country and everything it stands for. Ordinarily these people would be totally dismissed as wild theory conspiracists. The only reason they have any traction with this idea is because of your behavior, Mr. President. They say that if their theory is incorrect why is it that everything you do seems to be deliberately chosen to make matters worse for America and Americans? A President who was determined to destroy America would do exactly what you are doing so even if you are not deliberately trying to destroy America, you might as well be in their opinion.

Right now most American businesses and especially the finance industry are sitting on trillions of dollars and not investing in new businesses and expanding old ones all because of you. They are not willing to hire any new employees because you demonize business at every turn. Rightly or wrongly, they believe that you are out to make their life miserable. That being the case, they are simply waiting your term of office out in hopes that you will be defeated and your successor will let them get back to the business of making all Americans more prosperous. Mr. President, how dare you do everything in your power to inhibit business and cause them to stop hiring people who are desperate to find a job?

In addition to your counterproductive economic policies you seem to be fomenting further divisions among Americans along racial and class lines. Anyone who opposes you is a racist yet blacks are only one out of eight Americans so how did you ever get elected without tremendous white support? When you and your supporters are not calling your opponents racists, you are accusing them of being willing to let people die and let murder and rape run rampant when they refuse to throw more money into your redistribute the wealth schemes. Mr. President, how dare you deliberately foster divisions among people you supposedly represent?

All one has to do is read the news to see you in constant campaign mode and never doing anything to help put Americans back to work. All you seem to care about is getting your sorry ass re-elected. Do you even care about your fellow Americans anymore if you ever did? Maybe you do care but it sure does not look like it given your actions. Mr. President, how dare you let us all suffer why you, your family and your cronies are riding high on our dime? You might not be suffering but we sure are. I suggest you get busy doing things to encourage businesses to put Americans back to work instead of beating up on them. We can't afford to wait until we can elect someone else who will do something to ease our suffering.

Herman's Achilles' Heel

2011-10-14T15:28:00.000-07:00

By Paul N. Marston from www.marstonchronicles.info

There is a lot to like in Herman Cain's run for the White House. He is a solid conservative and his business experience gives him a big advantage in what it will take to get America back to work again. While it should not matter one bit, the color of his skin matters a great deal. There is no one else on the current political scene who could fundamentally transform American politics like Herman because he is the only one who can make a significant dent in the Democrat's hammer lock hold on black Americans. This is the group that is hurting the most from Obama's policies and Herman is the one who can help them the most. Black Americans who are willing to take a look at what Herman can do for them make up a decent percentage of that group. Herman will never get a majority of their votes in 2012 but all he needs is to convince 20% that he is a better bet than Obama and states like Michigan are suddenly in play.

Unfortunately, this is not likely to happen because unless Herman makes a major change in his proposals, he is never going to get the Republican nomination. The reason for this sad fact is because of one of those three nines in his 9-9-9 plan. People can easily be scared by a new proposal especially when it is so easy to demonize. Look at the ad showing Representative Ryan pushing Granny off a cliff for daring to suggest that some changes to Social Security are necessary to make it financially sound as a case in point. Once a person hears something they do not like in a proposal, they shut their ears to hearing anything else no matter how much sense the whole proposal might make. All a person has to understand is that Herman is proposing to put a 9% national sales tax on top of the state and local sales taxes which are in the 8 to 10% range already and they will stop listening.

The idea of a 17 to 19% sales tax on most things they buy is a total turn off. It will not matter to them that there will be no withholding on their paycheck any more or that corporations will lower their prices due to the huge tax savings for them so they can afford this new sales tax. They have already stopped listening and that is before the Democrats and the mass media never stop pounding on the subject of this huge new sales tax. Herman has to make a change to his plan or he is toast. He is even alienating conservatives because they rightly point out that giving Congress another revenue stream will just encourage more spending. If he drops the sales tax part, there is no way to fund the federal government on the other two nines. Thus a major overhaul is required to save his plan.

We suggest that he switch to a 15-15-15 plan and make the national sales tax a luxury tax instead. Luxury taxes go all the way back to the days of Alexander Hamilton who convinced the U. S. Supreme Court that such taxes, which in this case was on carriages, were constitutional (Hylton vs. United States, 1 Dallas, 171). Rather than try to list all of the items that will be considered a luxury which would always have to be tinkered with, he could adopt whatever price threshold would be needed to raise the required revenue. Certainly he would want the floor to never go below a $1,000 price tag but he might well be able to use a $5,000 floor if all the unnecessary parts of the federal government were eliminated. When the country was founded, we managed to get by with only four cabinet positions: attorney general, defense (war back then), state and treasury. All those other cabinet positions were established because the federal government decided to stick its nose into areas that none of the founders ever envisioned as being a federal responsibility.

There are simply too many problems with a flat national sales tax. What about people who have only Social Security for an income? They have no pay that will suddenly increase because of no withholding. Even if food and drugs are exempted from the sales tax, they will need a big increase in their Social Security benefits to keep them afloat. Then there are the people who are on welfare. They will need a big increase to pay this new tax. That means that the federal government will collect this new sales tax and have to pass a sizable chunk back to the states for increased welfare costs. There will be a sizable brokerage fee to pay the bureaucrats administering all of this and a whole new sets of rules and regulations for the states to follow which is always attached to any federal funds the states receive.

A luxury tax instead of a sales tax throws a bone to the Democrats. They always want to tax the rich people, although exactly who is rich seems to be a matter of opinion. The rich are the ones that purchase big ticket items and they will be paying a 15% surtax on most of what they buy. Herman might want to consider not applying this luxury tax to cars costing less than say $50,000 or homes costing less than $500,000 to help the languishing automobile manufacturers and the home builders out for a while. Herman can sell something like this but his 9-9-9 plan is a non-starter. If he wants to be President he needs to make changes and say that based on input he has received back from supporters, he is making some necessary changes to improve the chances of getting his plan enacted into law.

Redistributing the Wealth

2011-06-05T18:05:00.000-07:00

cross posted from MarstonChronicles.info

One only has to look around to see that some people have a great deal of wealth and some people are desperately poor. Is this fair? After all, the wealthy have more money than they can ever use so why not take some of their excess money and give it to the poor who need it so much? Since the wealthy clearly do not give enough to charity, why not harness the power of the federal government to force a more equitable distribution of the wealth? Before we can answer that question we need to determine why some people have more money than other people in the first place. In order to justify seizing this "excess" wealth which Obama thinks should be making more than $250,000 a year, we need to determine that the wealthy came by their wealth unjustly. We need to determine that they stole it directly or indirectly by taking unfair advantage of other people.

Most of all we need to determine that everyone is equally talented at making money as everyone else. If the explanation is that for the most part, the wealthy simply are better at managing money than poor people then even if we take their excess money and give it to the poor, in a relatively short period of time, the more talented people at making money will soon be the wealthy people again and the poor people will revert to being poor once they have spent the money the government gave them and be no better off than they were before. This in turn forces us to look at the uneven distribution of talent in general among our population.

Some people are more athletically talented than others and make the big leagues. Others are better singers, dancers, mathematicians, etc. Unlike money, we cannot force an even redistribution of those kinds of talents. You are either good at something or you are not. Granted you can practice and become better at most things but some people just seem to be more gifted than others at just about anything you care to name. The only way to adjust for this uneven distribution is to deliberately handicap the more talented by playing favorites with the less talented. We see this in things like little leagues and even admission to colleges where everyone gets a chance to play regardless of their talent. The technical name for this attempt to force an even distribution of talent is egalitarianism. The uneven distribution of talent we see in the real world must be compensated for in the name of simple fairness or justice. Everyone should be just as good as everyone else at everything.

The question then is how this well this tendency towards egalitarianism works in the real world. A simple example will suffice to determine this. Some people are more talented at doing schoolwork than others. It may be that they are smarter or work harder or are driven just to be good at everything. Other people may be lazy or simply just not motivated enough to be good at schoolwork in addition to perhaps being less talented at doing it in the first place. Still this is manifestly unfair so let's see how we can adjust for this in practice. A new teacher comes into the classroom who is determined to right this manifest wrong. Since everyone should be equal to everyone else, he gives a "C" grade to everyone regardless of how good or how poorly a student performs.

It does not take a doctorate in psychology to figure out what the effects of such a policy will have. The good students think to themselves that they busted their butts to get a good grade and all they got was a "C" so what is the point of continuing to put in the extra effort? They promptly stop trying to make an extra effort. The poor students see that they got a "C" when inside their heads they know they did not deserve it. Since they know they will get a "C" anyway, why bother to try at all? It will come as no surprise to any student of human behavior, when standardized tests are given to this class of students; they will score abysmally compared to classes with teachers who are not committed to the doctrine of egalitarianism. All that happens under egalitarianism is that everybody is much worse off than before. There simply is no workable way to use some system to "force" a correction for the uneven distribution of talent.

This simple fact of life is why capitalism always wins out over communism, socialism, etc. because it employs a system of rewards and punishment to provide incentives for outstanding achievement. Communism and socialism do not provide such incentives so everyone is encouraged to "goof off" since there is no incentive to do more than just enough to get by. This can be made even worse by introducing a system where no one can be fired for poor work performance. In such a system, productivity goes out the window. This then brings us back to the question of whether money making ability is a talent that is also unequally distributed or not. There seems no reason to assume that it is any different from any other talent and that some people have a "knack" for making money and others do not.

That being the case how will taxing the rich to force them to give to the poor work out any better than giving everybody a "C" in a classroom? Why should the rich bother to bust their butts to start up new businesses or expand their old ones using the capital they have accumulated when the government is going to confiscate everything over a certain amount of money per person? Their incentive to put their money to work to make still more money is destroyed. All that happens is that everyone is worse off or poorer than they were before. Are you better off now than you were a few years ago? Most of us are not. Could it be that Obama's policies have discouraged the wealthy from creating more wealth for everyone and that is why everyone but the rich are worse off than ever?

Capitalism works best when the government is no more than a referee to insure that reasonable rules for fair play are enforced. Whenever it gets into the business of meddling with the mechanics of the economy in the interests of enforcing equality, it just makes a mess out of everything. Government then is in the business of picking winners and losers. Not surprisingly, the winners always turn out to be those individuals and entities that support whoever is running the government. All that happens is that crony capitalism runs wild as businesses figure out that there is money to be made by playing the game that those in power want to play by any means necessary. This distortion of the free marketplace causes a recovery from an economic downturn to be very anemic at best or even drives it back into another recession.

Government always screws up everything it touches. It simply is the nature of the beast. Government is an evil. It may be a necessary evil but it is still an evil. It will always pick winners and losers because it is run by humans who want to harness the power of government to reward their friends and punish their enemies. Unlike capitalism that rewards achievers, all government does is reward ass kissers and such people are seldom wealth producers for anyone but themselves. When capitalism works freely, it spreads wealth around to everyone, It does not spread it evenly because it rewards risk takers and producers and not just somebody who has a buddy in the government.

The other problem with government micromanaging everything is that it makes our decisions for us with a one size fits all mentality. All this does besides making us poorer is that we become less free as well. We are no longer in charge of our own lives because government elitists who think they are smarter than everyone else but themselves are making all of our decisions for us in the belief that we are too stupid to make them for ourselves. The fact that their policies are attempting to right "supposed" wrongs that cannot be fixed in the real world, this will not turn out well except for them. The rest of us will just get screwed, blued and tattooed and that we submit is exactly what is happening.

The Republican Messaging Problem

2011-05-29T16:50:00.000-07:00

We find it amazing that the Democrats and the mass media are not making a big deal out of how much trouble the Republicans are in at the moment. Even liberal leaning pundits seem to think that the Bin Laden bounce for Obama has run its course. We do not know where they get this idea because we cannot find one poll that is not positive for Obama and they actually are getting stronger for Obama with every passing day. If the presidential election were to be held now, Obama would be a shoo-in.

Now it is true that the Democrats and the media tried to convince the public that the special election held in New York's district 26 showed that the Ryan budget plan is the kiss of death for the Republicans in 2012 and most pundits did not buy that. The problem is not with the Ryan budget plan but rather with the Republican messaging. They are trying to sell it as as a necessary reform to balance the budget. They keep pushing that line and not only will they not gain control of the Senate in 2012, but they will not defeat Obama and will come close to losing the House of Representatives as well.

At the time of the 2010 elections, the generic congressional ballot was running from 7 to 15 points in favor of the Republicans depending upon which poll you looked at. Right now our average of those polls is actually slightly in favor of the Democrats. Clearly the Republicans have a gigantic messaging problem. How about a message that proclaims they are try to SAVE Medicare before it goes bankrupt? Is that too much to ask of the Republican leadership? The voters voted for Republicans in 2010 in hopes that the Republicans would jam the brakes on all that the Democrats had done in the previous two years.

What have they gotten in exchange for this vain hope? They have gotten Democrat-lite from the Republicans instead. As Obama has said, Democrats bring a gun to a knife fight. The Republicans do not bring a knife or even martial arts to the fight. The Republicans are wimps and they have no clue on how to go for the Democrat jugular. The Democrats run ads proclaiming that the Republicans are trying to destroy Medicare and kill granny. How do the Republicans respond? They point to charts and figures that there is a problem with the financing of Medicare. How about proclaiming that the Democrats are sitting idly by while Medicare goes broke and that this is what will kill granny?

Republicans seem to think that the baby steps they have taken towards controlling government spending are all it takes to win public approval. How about wielding a meat axe instead? Whole departments need to be axed as they are doing more harm than good. Polls showed that a majority of the likely voters did not have a problem with shutting down all but the essential parts of the federal government if that was what it took to get the Democrat's attention to their habit of spending other people's money like a whole carrier group of druken sailors. What did the Republicans give them instead? They gave them cuts that did not even come to the amount the government borrowed while they were arguing about it.

The debt ceiling hike is the last chance the Republicans have to make good on their promises for the 2010 elections. They have just one chance to make believers out of the voting public that they are serious about cutting government spending. They need to refuse to raise the debt limit no matter what cuts the Democrats agree to. The public will support this stand. The folks in Congress need to learn to live within their means just like everyone else has had to do. The Republican leadership (and that means you, Mitch McConnell) need to get in the Democrats' face and stay there no matter how much the media beats up on them for doing that. Frankly, we doubt that the Republicans have the guts to do this and that means that we get four more years of Obama and continued Democrat control of the Senate and perhaps the Democrats regaining control of the House to boot.

How Much Economic Trouble is the U. S. In?

2011-05-21T19:15:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows that the United States government spends far more than it takes in. Indeed, it has been doing that for all but a few years since 1930. Since it has been doing that pretty much all along, why get all that bothered about it at this late date? It would appear that the furor is being caused by the mounting size of this deficit spending in recent years under both political parties. At some point we might reach a point where the government is in so far in over its financial head that it is bankrupt in all but name but there is no bankrupcy court to appeal to. The question is then: are we there yet?

Believe it or not, the answer to that question is neatly compiled in one table provided by that very same government via the Bureau of Economic Analysis in the Commerce Department. That table, number 2.6, is entitled Personal Income and its Disposition, Monthly. That one table gives you all the figures you need to assess where the government is at financially in relation to the people of this country. We have pulled out the critical parts of the data in table 2.6 into the table below. Please do not be deterred by the size of this table and all those numbers. Anyone with an eighth grade education can easily understand what this table tells us and how important it is that everyone understand the implications of what it shows.

The critical part you need to digest is provided by the last two columns in the table. The column marked PRIV CAP shows how much money is made by private individuals in this country divided by our population to provide the per capita private earnings. When this figure increases, the average American is better off and when it decreases, we are worse off. The last column shows the the net financial effect that the government has on us because it is the total money coming in from private individuals and going out to them divided by our population. When the figure is negative, every man, woman and child is providing the government the figure shown each year to run the government. Obviously it should never be a positive figure because that would mean we are not providing any money to run the government but rather instead it is borrowing money to send money to us on top of the expense of running the government. Except for those last two columns, the other columns with money figures are in billions of dollars.

YEAR	MON	PERS INC	TRANS	CONTR	TAXES	PRIVATE	GOVT	PRIV CAP	GOVT CAP
2005	03	10,365.9	1,503.21	869.62	1,181.77	9,732.3	-548.18	32,947.6	-1,855.79
2005	06	10,509.8	1,516.11	873.61	1,209.95	9,867.3	-567.45	33,328.6	-1,916.66
2005	09	10,490.3	1,506.95	869.64	1,217.00	9,852.9	-579.69	33,192.9	-1,952.87
2005	12	10,660.2	1,510.10	875.62	1,248.31	10,025.7	-613.83	33,695.4	-2,063.02
2006	03	10,878.3	1,546.08	901.62	1,306.47	10,233.8	-662.01	34,322.1	-2,220.24
2006	06	10,954.9	1,570.41	861.69	1,306.84	10,276.1	-628.12	34,383.7	-2,101.67
2006	09	11,021.9	1,572.42	893.46	1,320.06	10,342.9	-641.10	34,511.5	-2,139.17
2006	12	11,187.5	1,596.22	907.33	1,366.01	10,498.6	-677.12	34,942.1	-2,253.63
2007	03	11,251.0	1,628.63	912.33	1405.68	10,534.7	-689.38	34,982.9	-2,289.24
2007	06	11,263.8	1,612.61	907.13	1,411.90	10,558.3	-706.42	34,976.2	-2,340.13
2007	09	11,331.5	1,634.35	907.22	1,417.51	10,604.4	-690.38	35,035.4	-2,280.91
2007	12	11,392.1	1,650.32	911.48	1,425.68	10,653.3	-686.84	35,113.3	-2,263.83
2008	03	11,401.1	1,668.54	915.28	1,424.71	10,647.8	-671.45	35,024.3	-2,208.62
2008	06	11,404.9	1,806.52	899.98	1,221.43	10,498.4	-314.89	34,457.3	-1,033.52
2008	09	11,293.3	1,716.60	897.11	1,343.54	10,473.8	-524.05	34,292.0	-1,715.77
2008	12	11,354.0	1,797.74	901.17	1,311.79	10,457.8	-415.52	34,163.9	-1,357.43
2009	01	11,247.1	1,846.59	896.42	1,254.20	10,297.0	-204.03	33,616.7	-666.10
2009	02	11,136.1	1,861.25	887.82	1,121.66	10,162.7	-148.23	33,157.6	-483.62
2009	03	11,119.8	1,898.35	886.91	1,085.82	10,108.3	-74.38	32,959.7	-242.52
2009	04	11,160.2	1,917.88	892.77	1,033.30	10,135.1	-8.19	33,025.6	-26.68
2009	05	11,330.2	2,075.84	896.05	1,022.13	10,150.4	157.66	33,053.0	513.39
2009	06	11,156.2	1,962.14	889.91	1,011.73	10,083.9	60.50	32,812.1	196.86
2009	07	11,111.7	1,956.83	886.49	1,017.29	10,041.3	53.05	32,648.1	172.48
2009	08	11,102.2	1969.22	886.61	1,021.77	10,019.6	60.84	32,550.6	197.65
2009	09	11,083.1	1,984.44	883.75	1,018.45	9,982.4	82.24	32,403.3	266.95
2009	10	11,060.6	1,969.50	883.21	1,014.54	9,974.3	71.75	32,352.2	232.72
2009	11	11,089.8	1,980.72	884.46	1,012.97	9,993.5	83.29	32,391.1	269.96
2009	12	11,128.5	1,999.85	882.81	1,010.37	10,011.5	106.67	32,427.6	345.50
2010	01	11,121.7	2,011.21	890.95	1,022.53	10,001.4	97.73	32,374.4	316.34
2010	02	11,129.1	2,017.32	890.08	1,022.59	10,001.9	104.65	32,356.1	338.54
2010	03	11,158.6	2,045.74	891.01	1,024.40	10,003.8	130.33	32,342.2	421.35
2010	04	11,242.3	2,053.22	899.13	1,030.21	10,088.2	123.88	32,594.2	400.24
2010	05	11,301.2	2,060.81	905.24	1,038.61	10,145.6	116.96	32,757.7	377.63
2010	06	11,321.6	2,070.92	906.35	1,040.06	10,157.0	124.51	32,770.2	401.71
2010	07	11,318.4	2,068.51	908.08	1,055.07	10,158.0	105.36	32,748.2	339.66
2010	08	11,351.7	2,098.86	909.73	1,060.81	10,162.6	128.32	32,736.1	413.35
2010	09	11,341.5	2,087.58	910.02	1,065.68	10,163.9	111.88	32,713.9	360.10
2010	10	11,379.7	2,091.47	912.60	1,076.83	10,200.9	102.04	32,807.9	328.17
2010	11	11,403.6	2,097.62	911.96	1,079.75	10,217.9	105.91	32,839.3	340.18
2010	12	11,428.5	2,096.45	911.62	1,083.64	10,243.7	101.19	32,901.3	325.00
2011	01	11,520.9	2,088.64	824.68	1,127.99	10,257.0	135.97	32,925.5	436.47
2011	02	11,520.9	2,085.60	824.24	1,126.57	10,259.6	134.79	32,915.3	432.44
2011	03	11,534.0	2,099.08	823.32	1,124.26	10258.2	151.50	32,891.2	485.75

The problem with the figures in the government table is that they are not adjusted for inflation, but there are figures at the bottom of the table to allow one to do that. We have done that for you in our table. The reason that it is critical to do that is because there is no way to tell if the government or we the people are better off or worse off than previously without making that adjustment. If you get a $5 a week raise but you are spending more than $5 a week more for groceries and gasoline than you were previously, then you are actually worse off in spite of the raise you got. Using the ratio of current dollars to 2005 dollars allows us to adjust all of the other figures in table 2.6 to 2005 dollars so we are not comparing apples to oranges. The population figures in the last line of table 2.6 allow us to calculate any figure to a per capita amount so we can see whether the average American is better off or not compared to a previous time. Indeed, we can do that for the government itself as well to see how much we are receiving from the government in benefits and paying to it in taxes and contributions to things like Social Security and Medicare.

In line 1 of table 2.6 is the combined total income of all of us as individuals in billions of dollars on a month by month basis and that is in the column marked PERS INC in our table adjusted to 2005 dollars. Part of our income is from the government itself in the form of social security, medicare, unemployment benefits, etc. This amount is provided on line 14 in table 2.6 and is in the column marked TRANS, That is because the government calls the direct benefits it provides to us current personal transfer receipts. The amount we contribute to entitlement programs is found on line 20 in table 2.6 and is shown in the column marked CONTR. Likewise, line 21 gives the total amount we pay in taxes and is in the column marked TAXES in our table.

The next column is a figure not provided directly by table 2.6 but is calculated by subtracting the transfers and adding back in our contributions to government benefit programs. We call this PRIV INC since this represents what our total income would be without the government having these benefit programs. We would not be receiving things like social security or Medicare nor contributing to them either. The next column gives us a figure of what effect the government has on us because it is the transfers to us minus the contributions and taxes we pay. Since it costs money to run the government, part of our income should go to the government to keep it going and hence be a negative figure to our own income. We might add that the sum of the private income per capita and the net government action is the total per capita income in 2005 dollars and it should and does agree with the figure provided in line 32 of table 2.6 plus or minus some minor rounding of amounts.

Two things immediately jump out at you from this table. One is that the government benefits (transfers) are way more than our contributions to these programs and as you go down the table towards the more recent months, you will see that it is getting progressively worse. That in a nutshell is why social security is going broke. You will notice that the contributions suddenly drop quite a bit starting in 2011. That is because the two political parties decided to "forgive" part of the social security receipts for all of 2011. Hardly a peep was heard in opposition to this idea but it does mean that social security will go broke that much sooner.

The second conclusion is the most startling and most unbelievable fact from our table found in that last column. At the top of the table back in 2005 through 2007, every one of us, including children, was ponying up between $1,855 and $2,340 to run the government and pay for all those entitlement program benefits some of us get. Suddenly that figure crashes in the middle of 2008 to less than half of that figure in June of 2008. By the first of 2009, this figure is down to $666 apiece. By April, it is down to pocket change. Starting in May of 2009, the figure goes positive and has been that way ever since. In the last two years, the average American has effectively not contributed one dime to run the government or pay for those entitlement programs. On the contrary, the government is sending some of us a lot of money because it is averages out to as much as $513 on an annualized basis for every last man, woman and child in the United States.

How can this be you ask? Taxes have not actually been lowered because all they did was extend the Bush tax cuts already in place last December. Remember all of those give away programs where the government actually sent most of us a check? How about cash for clunkers and the first time homebuyer's credits at $8,000 per pop? Of course, programs like unemployment benefits and food stamps are running up the costs of all of those benefit programs just as tax collections are dropping due to an economy in the toilet as well. So how well did all those programs handing out goodies to some of us, but not all of us, work? Look at the private income per capita column to find out. That figure peaked at $35,113 in December of 2007. It dropped steadily down until it bottomed out at $32,342 in March of 2010. At the peak, we were sending the government $2,263 apiece per year and managing quite well. At the bottom, the government was sending each of us $421 on the average every year.

In other words, our own average private income dropped from $35,113 to $32,342 for a loss of $2,771. The government went from taking in $2,263 to putting out $421 for a total turnaround of $2,684 in loss of income and outlays per person. The government attempted to make up for the loss of income by sending back all of the money we sent it and a whole bunch more. While that is no way to run a railroad, let alone a government, one can argue that the economic conditions justified these emergency measures. However, private income per capita has been increasing for over a year now but the government is still pouring out $485 in borrowed money to each of us on the average. The private income per capita has increased to $32,891 for a gain of $549. At the very least, the government needs to stop sending us money and start collecting some once again.

We can begin by repealing the "forgiving" of part of the withholding taxes. The table shows us that contributions have dropped from $911 billion to $823 billion while the private income has actually started falling again from $32,925 to $32,891 during the same time. Clearly, this is not stimulating anything. We also need to repeal all of the special benefit programs added to "help" the struggling economy. The money is not being spread anywhere near equally. Car buyers and home buyers got huge special benefits and the rest of us got zilch. Not only that but when these programs stopped, they dried up both markets for months as the potential pool of buyers was dried up as all of those who could buy, did so while the getting was good. When is the government ever going to learn that it is doing more harm than good and by the time it gets around to applying a band-aid, the wound is already starting to heal?

The Great Pretender

2011-04-22T21:18:00.001-07:00

Let's face it, people, were are in deep trouble in this country. The country is bankrupt in all but name and most of our politicians are trying to pretend that this is not that big of a problem. The plans put forth by Obama and the Republicans do not come close to dealing with the huge mountain of debt that can never be repaid without resorting to hyperinflation that will finish us off as first world or even a second world country. Not only that but there is no one who seems to have a clue of how to go about fixing all of this in time to save us. Many of us are wondering how the heck did we ever get into this mess?

Of course, it does not help matters any that we have a clueless affirmative action Peter Principled party animal in an empty suit running the country. That is not say that McCain would have been much better but we do have to face reality. Obama could not successfully run a lemonade stand without a government subsidy and probably not even then. His answer to the fiscal crisis is to spend even more money that we do not have. You do not need a doctorate in economics to know that this is totally insane. The only people in this country who will not now admit how incompetent Obama is are the 27% of the individuals who are self described liberals and hence have ideological blinders on and those who are on the government dole. Unfortunately, that describes half the people in this country.

Whatever possessed us to elect this totally unqualified individual to the Presidency? As the saying goes, therein lies a tale and a totally mind boggling one at that. It is now obvious that Obama is not competent enough to have figured out on his own how to become President when he was a total unknown before meeting a small group of extremely dangerous individuals back prior to 1994. Before you go off into wild conspiracy theories about how George Soros was behind this, consider the known facts. There were two married couples active back in the early nineties in Chicago that should have been on the FBI surveillance radar but apparently were not. They were Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn as one couple and Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven as the other one.

In any sensible country the first two should have been executed for sedition a long time ago but then we stopped being a sensible country fifty years ago. What these two couples had in common is that they detested America and everything it stands for and were determined to tear it down and replace it with Marxist socialist state. Ayers and Dohrn had long since learned that violently attacking our government was a lost cause and that they needed a whole new approach. Along with Cloward and Piven, they studied America's weaknesses to see how they could be properly exploited to achieve their ends.

They quickly seized on the idea of how the collective white guilt about the shameful treatment of our black citizens for most of our history was such a weakness but they needed a black individual to serve as their front man. They considered Jesse Jackson who they knew well but he was clearly a race baiter and that would never work. When they met Obama they were pretty sure they had found the right man but they needed to gain Obama some national recognition that would push the white guilt buttons. A biography about Obama's struggle with race relations would fit the bill nicely but Obama was not much of a writer so Ayers had to help him out. The next step was to get him elected to public office.

Fate smiled on them when an Illinois State Senator named Alice Palmer decided to run for Congress in 1995. They persuaded her to back Obama to replace her. Their plan became threatened when Palmer lost in the Democrat primary and decided to run for her old seat after all. Given their history it is no surprise that this group would resort to political dirty tricks that would shame Richard Nixon to further their plans. They repaid Palmer for endorsing Obama by having not only her nominating petitions thrown out as invalid but those of every other candidate thrown out as well. Thus Obama walked into his first political office totally unopposed.

The next step was to get Obama elected to the U. S. Senate but a bunch of millionaires also had the same idea. Reaching into their dirty tricks bag, the Obama group uncovered dirty laundry in supposedly sealed records of some of those candidates and by releasing them at the appropriate time, destroyed their candidacies and Obama once again had a cake walk into another office. Next they got some supporters to convince the officials at the Democrat National Committee to make Obama a keynote speaker at the 2004 Democrat National Convention. They generated some mass media feeds about how Obama was a real up and coming black man and sat back to wait for 2008.

Right from the beginning they knew that the only real obstacle on the Democrat side was Hillary Clinton. How do you attack the wife of your previous President? That was where Obama's skin color really paid off. The Obama folks let everyone know that any real criticism of their candidate would be met with cries of racism. When the Clintons started to bore in on Obama, the racist meme was trotted out in full force. The Clintons could hardly say anything when black adults are the Democrats' most monolithic voting block. That is not true of Republicans who do not get enough black votes to bother about but after seeing what happened to Hillary, the McCain folks abandoned all of their ammunition regarding the truly horrendous associations of Obama to people like their main sponsors. Ayers, Wright and the rest of the gang just denied any real ties to Obama and the McCain folks did not call them on it.

Add in the financial crash of September 2008 and McCain agreeing to the first stimulus package which a majority of the public did not want and Obama waltzed into the White House in a lark. There was still one huge problem confronting the plotters behind Obama and that was that Obama was not a natural born citizen as required by the Constitution. While Obama probably was born in Hawaii, his father was a British and/or Kenyan citizen and since both his parents were not United States citizens, he was not a natural born citizen. The Obama brain trust knew all along that if the matter of what exactly constitutes a natural born citizen ever got to court, there was a real chance that Obama would be disqualified.

Their brilliant solution to the problem was to run a bait and switch scheme to make sure that the case never got to court. All they needed to do was to get the opposition haring after a problem they could defeat in court so they leaked the idea that Obama was born in Kenya. The opposition took the bait and went off chasing the rainbow of an alien President. As a result the natural born part was virtually ignored. The Obama brain trust adamantly refused to provide a copy of the long form birth certificate if there even is one and instead gave a copy of a Certificate of Live Birth to a sympathetic source that reeked of being fabricated. They then stonewalled like mad until Obama had been inaugurated knowing that after Gore vs. Bush and the uproar that caused, there was no way the U. S. Supreme Court would ever disqualify a sitting President. If some court did actually insist on a copy of the "official" birth certificate, they could reluctantly release it knowing that it stated that Obama was born in Hawaii and leaving their opposition with a whole omelet on their faces.

Who would have believed that any group of people could pull off the greatest scam in modern history? Add in the fact that this group never made any secret of what kind of an America they wanted to install and you have to wonder how they ever got away with this. One answer is that our supposedly ever vigilant media was totally in the tank for Obama but that still does not explain why so many Americans were taken in by this unbelievable con game. Why didn't alarm bells ring much more loudly than they did? Another part of the answer is that the McCain folks were totally intimidated by the race issue. In the end though, the real answer was the weakness that Gang of Four first spotted and exploited. Too many Americans were bound and determined to prove that America is not a racist country by electing a black person President before ever electing a female one. Who would have believed that fifty years ago? To accomplish that goal they elected a man who could not have gotten elected national dog catcher if his skin had been white instead.

Is "The Donald" Serious?

2011-04-11T21:03:00.000-07:00

The one word answer is yes. We believe Trump is very serious and plans to announce his candidacy once his television show finishes the season. Now before you instantly proclaim that this is just a publicity stunt consider that this theory does not explain what he has done so far. We have been involved in many political campaigns as even a candidate five times (won four out of five) and as a congressional campaign manager a few times. If Trump had asked our advice (he hasn't), we would advise him to do exactly what he is doing. You need to get the attention of the base of the Republican Party on issues that resonate with them. You need to convince the base that you are one of them. If this was a publicity stunt he would not being wooing the evangelicals. These folks are hardly an audience for his television show or his business deals.

For a candidate with no previous political experience, you have to do what the other candidates with such experience have been taught never to do. You have to take the bull by the horns and do things that the other candidates would not touch with a mile long pole. The "birther" issue is a case in point. No one else would touch that issue because the mass media has made mincemeat out of anyone who has tried to make an issue of it. Thus those people cannot get the time of day from the mass media. They are not "The Donald". He is just about the only person on the planet who can push the issue and make the media cover it precisely because he is "The Donald". Right away he breaks out of the pack by doing something they would never do. Of course, anyone else doing this would kill any chances of their winning any election. Trump only gets a huge jump with the Republican primary voters by doing this.

Many of you will say that even if this view is correct, he has killed his chances in the general election with this "stunt". You are assuming that Trump will continue to push the idea that Obama was not born in the United States and that it was the biggest con in the history of the world. Well it was the biggest con in history but not because Obama was not born in Hawaii. It does not matter whether Obama was born in Hawaii or not because even if he was born in Hawaii and he probably was, he is not a natural born citizen of the United States as required by the Constitution. Native born is not the same thing as natural born. Being born in the United States makes you a native born citizen even if both your parents are citizens of Mexico. That is the whole thing behind the anchor baby issue.

You have to have both parents be citizens of the United States to be natural born and you can be natural born even when your were not born in the United States. John McCain was born in Panama but both of his parents were U. S. citizens so he is still a natural born citizen. Obama's father was a British and/or Kenyan citizen so there is no way Obama can be a natural born citizen. You can bet that Trump knows this difference and will pivot to this position later in the election process after he has milked the "not even native born" issue for all it is worth. In the meantime, he has the mass media playing right into his hands because they are giving him unprecedented coverage thinking they are destroying him over the "ridiculous" birther issue. However, that same coverage allows him to tear Obama to ribbons on every other issue under the sun. This is a brilliant public relations ploy but what else would you expect from a man who is a master of publicity?

When the dust settles, Trump will have a reputation of being willing to take any issue right to Obama and make the mass media cover it. You can ignore any other contender on any particular issue but it is hard to ignore "The Donald" on any issue. As Trump continues to hammer on all of the things that have gone wrong in this country and tie Obama to every one of them whether deserved or not, he will point out that his background gives him the experience to "fix" these problems. Right now the economy is the big issue and Obama's ratings on his handling of the economy are in the toilet. Along comes Trump and says I believe I know something about economics so you can believe me when I tell you I know how to fix these problems. Is that so hard to believe? Trump has proven he knows how to do business and Obama looks like he has no clue because he has no track record in business.

Okay, assume for a moment that our analysis is right and Trump is very serious. Why is he doing this? Is it just for the attention and to prove he can get elected? Those are surely part of his reasons. How about because Trump is convinced that his businesses will go down with the ship of the country if the economy is not fixed and soon? Trump is convinced he can straighten out the mess and save his businesses from going over the cliff. He has convinced himself that he has no choice but to try because he is convinced no one else has a clue about how to fix things so that leaves him. Since he can fund the campaign out of his assets, raising money is not a problem and he can match Obama dollar for dollar. The Obama folks are gleeful at the thought of Trump as the Republican candidate. We suggest that he is more likely to be their worst nightmare.

Redistricting Louisiana

2011-02-27T17:51:00.000-08:00

Since Louisiana has six Republican and only one Democrat Congressmen, when it loses a seat one would assume that it will come at the expense of the Republicans. Analysis shows that this does not have to be the case as a result of the effects of Hurricane Katrina. That caused a lot of damage to homes in New Orleans and resulted in a flight of a lot of people to neighboring states. However, New Orleans is the major Democrat area of the state and the loss of population has come at the expense of the Democrats. You may recall that the Democrat representing the New Orleans area was caught with his hand in the cookie jar or more accurately with the money in his freezer. That allowed a Republican, Congressman Gao, to get elected in 2008 only to be defeated in 2010 when the Democrat candidate was scandal free.

It turns out that ex-Congressman Gao can get his seat back if the Republican controlled state legislature redistricts the state in a certain way. Since there is a Republican governor one can assume he would not veto such a bill. Still when a state loses a seat, unless one incumbent retires, two congressmen have to run against each other, namely the two that live closest to each other. In this case, that turns out to be two Republican congressmen who live in adjoining parishes (that's what they call counties in Louisiana). Perhaps either Congressmen Landry or Boustany would rather retire. Here is how Louisiana can be redistricted to produce six Republican congressmen and freeze the Democrats out:

That blue area below the large white area (Lake Pontchartrain) is New Orleans. The white dots that represent where the various congressmen live and you will see two right together below the lake. That is because Republican Congressman Scalise lives in Metarie which is a suburb of New Orleans where Congressman Richmond lives. By taking the area north of the lake out of Congressman Scalise's district and giving it to Congressman Richmond and giving the area south of New Orleans to Congressman Scalise, the result would be six Republican districts as the following table demonstrates:

**New Congressional Districts Figures**
Incumbents	2010 Population	Deviation	% Deviation	Dem Votes	Rep Votes
Scalise (R)	752,449	-3,113	-0.4120%	60,733	132,377
Richmond (D)	757,037	+1,475	+0.1952%	90,360	122,405
Landry - Boustany (R)	757,466	+1,904	+0.2520%	85,606	133,742
Fleming (R)	757,130	+1,568	+0.2075%	59,108	128,592
Alexander (R)	756,436	+874	+0.1157%	59,371	148,628
Cassidy (R)	752,854	-2,708	-0.3584%	98,201	178,955
Total/Average	4,533,372	+/-1,940.3	+/-0.2568%	453,379	844,699

We never had to split a parish to get totals close enough to the equal population figure of 755,562. Congressman Boustany had no Democrat opposition so we were forced to use the votes from 2008 in his district. We only plugged those figures into parishes than were not part of any other district since we have no idea of how to prorate the split parishes without a precinct map. Thus the foot totals do not add up to the correct total votes for all of the congressional candidates of both parties since no 2010 results were reported for Congressman Boustany's district. Congressman Alexander had no Democrat opponent but he did have an independent candidate in opposition so we used those results for the Democrat column which no doubt under-reports the Democrat total but would not change who won.

Redistricting New Jersey

2011-02-27T00:57:00.000-08:00

New Jersey has lost a house seat so all of the districts in the state will have to be redrawn. When there is a loss of a House seat, unless one Congressman chooses to retire, two incumbents will have to run against each other. Will it be two congressmen from opposite parties or two from the same one and if so, which one? Unless outrageous gerrymandering takes place, where the congressmen live as opposed to where the people now live often dictates the answer. As was the case with Illinois, there are three Republican congressmen who live too close to each other. Both Houses of the state legislature are controlled by the Democrats so they will have to approve the map drawn by an independent commission. Unlike Illinois, New Jersey has a Republican governor, the infamous Governor Christie. Still all he can do is veto any plan that is totally biased in favor of the Democrats. First let's look at what the districts look like now:

As you can tell from the map, these districts have been gerrymandered at some point. The problem is that each district has an incumbent who wants to be protected and in this case, the incumbent Democrats can lean on the Democrats in the state legislature to do just that. Therefore the new map must protect those incumbent Democrats to get passed by the state legislature in the first place. When a congressman lives at one end of such a district, there is no way to cut the pie and not have the result look fairly gerrymandered. Of course, the same is not true for Republican incumbents. However, there is no need to sock it to the Republicans because the geography already dictates that they are going to lose a seat. In the following map, the white dots show where the congressmen currently live:

As you can see the purple and tan districts have three white dots which represent three incumbent congressmen. There is no way without horrible gerrymandering to prevent two of these three from running against each other. Naturally a Democrat controlled legislature has no reason to help these three Republicans out. The fact that each district has to cover more territory is bound to shore up the incumbents of both parties. The Republicans have one incumbent, Congressman Runyan, who is on the endangered list and is in the orange district. The Democrats have two such congressmen, Congressman Pallone in the dark red district and Congressman Holt in the bright green district.

Except for the bright blue district, all of the districts in the lower part of the state are in Republican territory. There is no way to weaken the three Republican incumbents with endangering either Congressman Andrews in the bright blue district or the two already endangered Democrats north of the Republican area. Thus the commission might as well shore up all the congressmen in the six southern districts and let the geography kill off one of the Republicans in the northern part as is suggested in our proposed map. We never split a county subdivision and still got close enough to the required equal population as the following table demonstrates:

**New Congressional Districts Figures**
Incumbents	2010 Population	Deviation	% Deviation
LoBiondo (R)	732,109	-549	+0.0749%
Andrews (D)	733,581	+923	+0.1260%
Runyan (R)	732,907	+249	+0.0340%
Smith (R)	733,625	+1,057	+0.1443%
Garrett - Felinghausen (R)	731,889	-769	-0.0965%
Pallone (D)	733,275	+707	+0.0061%
Lance (R)	731,305	-1,263	-0.1500%
Pascrell (D)	731,559	-1,099	+0.1384%
Rothman (D)	732,431	-227	-0.0310%
Payne (D)	732,119	-539	-0.0736%
Holt (D)	731,832	-826	-0.1124%
Sires (D)	734,722	+2,064	+0.2817%
Total/Average	8,791,894	+/-856	+/-0.1168%

Redistricting Illinois

2011-02-23T21:17:00.000-08:00

One only needs to take a look at the outlines of the current Congressional districts in Illinois to see gerrymandering run wild. This kind of gerrymandering is usually caused by one party that has control of both the state legislature and the governship using their advantage to stack the deck against the other party. In the case of Illinois, both parties collaborated in the gerrymandering since neither party had total control in 2000. This resulted in really weird shaped districts like district 17. It is also a prime example of how gerrymandering can backfire because the whole purprose of district 17 was to give the Democrats control of the district and protect control of neighboring Republican districts. The problem is that redistricting only happens every ten years and a lot can happen in that time like Republicans winning this "Democrat" district in 2010. The following map of the current districts shows what happens when politicians turn into map makers:

No doubt Illinois will again see gerrymandering run wild only this time just for the benefit of the Democrat Party since it controls both houses of the state legislature and the governorship. Actually there is no need for the Democrats to do this because just drawing nice neat districts will cause the Republicans to lose House seats. That last exercise in gerrymandering is what gave the Republicans their current 11 seats compared to only 8 for the Democrats. There is no way the Republicans in a blue state like Illinois should control that many districts and it is only because of gerrymandering that backfired that they do. Illinois has lost a congressional district because of the 2010 Census and all of these districts must be redrawn as a result. The Republicans are going to lose at least two seats and maybe three and at least two Republicans will have to run against each other no matter how much gerrymandering takes place.

That being the case how about a really strange idea? Why not let a geographical area that votes Democrat have a Democrat congressman and an area that votes Republican have a Republican one? That way everyone will get what they are voting for to the maximum extent possible instead of trying to stack the deck in favor of an outcome that will probably change in the next ten years anyway. We have prepared a map that does that as a guide to how playing the game fairly lets the chips fall where they may. Here is our suggestion:

The white dots show the location of the homes of the current congress people from Illinois. As you can see there are four white dots in the area of the purple, brown and dark blue districts. All four are Republican and there is no way they can be separated without more ridiculous gerrymandering. Why should a Democrat controlled state be so kind as to preserve four Republican congressmen? One Republican congressman is history no matter what happens. Two other Republican Congressmen barely got elected in districts 8 and 10 (the two in the upper right hand corner). One of them is in a district that was carried by Obama by 12 points so he is likely history in any case. As to whether Congressman Dold can survive no matter how his 10th district is drawn is questionable but there is no way to insure his defeat without endangering Congresswoman Schakowsky in district 9.

Our plan makes no attempt to draw the 6 districts for Chicago (the bright blue area) since it will come down to what the six Democrat congress people want to do there and it has no partisan political implications in any case. One could gerrymander things so that Congressman Costello (Dem) and Congressman Shimkus (Rep) have to run against each other at the bottom of the state since they live failrly close together but no matter how you drawn the lines, the aqua area will elect a Democrat and the orange area will elect a Republican so why bother? The 2010 Census gave Illinois a population of 12,864,380 and 18 congressional seats so ideally each district should have a population of 714,687.77. Our districts contain whole counties in southern Illinois and whole townships in Northern Illinois. Here is how our districts work out by population:

**New Congressional Districts Figures**
Incumbents	2010 Population	Deviation	% Deviation
Shimkus (R)	718,581	+3,893	+0.5471%
Schock (R) - Schilling (R)	714,010	-678	-0.0949%
Manzullo (R)	713,052	-1,636	-0.2289%
Johnson (R)	715,793	+1,105	+0.1546%
Hultgren (R)	712,455	-2,233	-0.3124%
Biggert (R)	710,287	-4,401	-0.6158%
Costello (D)	717,910	+3,222	+0.5408%
Kinzinger (R)	709,271	-5,417	-0.7580%
Dold (R)	720,446	+5,758	+0.8057%
Walsh (R)	715,176	+488	+0.0683%
Roskam (R)	712,098	-2,590	-0.3624%
Lipinski (D)	707,888	-6,800	-0.9515%
Total/Average	8,566,967	+/-3,185	+/-0.4534%

Redistricting Iowa

2011-02-20T15:07:00.000-08:00

Iowa is one of those states that has lost a congressional seat as a result of the 2010 Census. It had five districts and now it will only have four. In practice, that means that two of the sitting Congressmen will have to run against each other. Right now, Iowa is represented by three Democrats and two Republicans. While both Republicans won handily, all three Democrats won by only from 2 to 5.07%. One way or another, the loss is going to have to cost one of the Democrats his seat unless the redistricting is gerrymandered to favor the Democrats. That is not going to happen because the Democrats only control the State Senate while the Republicans control the State House and the Governorship.

This means that if the Democrat Senate cannot work out a compromise with the Republicans in the House, this whole battle will wind up in court where anything can happen. The court will not care about keeping incumbent Congressmen in separate districts or being opposed to creating a district which has no incumbent in it at all. The Court will only be concerned about making the population in each of the four districts equal to one-fourth of the population of the state, which is 3,053,787. We speak from experience in having designed the first three redistricting plans for the State of Arizona many years ago and then testifying in federal court in behalf of the plans.

The criteria we used was compactness, keeping incumbents separated, equal population and allowing precincts that voted similarly to be clustered together to form districts so as to avoid gerrymandering. The court frowned on any criteria except equal population. Actually the federal courts today would allow the original gerrymander in Massachusetts where all the precincts voting for the Whigs were put into one district so that they would at least be represented by someone who would vote according to their wishes. Gerrymandering today means burning one party at the expense of the other one. You do this by creating districts that have 60% of precincts voting for the party you are helping and 40% of them voting for the other party so that you waste those votes and can create more districts for the favored party.

In practice gerrymandering creates long skinny districts that reach from the part of town that favors one party down into the part that favors the other party but not as deeply in one end as in the other favored end. Neutral redistricting will create districts that are more or less square or at least combine counties that have similar economic and social outlooks. Gerrymandering in Iowa is easy because we have two sets of pairs of incumbents that live quite close to each other. It is easy to dump these two pairs into the same district and then create an open district. It is possible to keep these two pairs separated but there still has to be one district that has two incumbents running against each other.

The Democrats in Iowa will want to have the two Republicans run against each other in hopes of getting three Democrats and only one Republican in 2012. The Republicans will want two of the Democrats to run against each other in hopes of beating the third one and winding up with three Republicans and one Democrat. The fair way to do things would be to have one of the Republicans run against one of the Democrats so that the Democrats and Republicans each get one district and the other two will be up for grabs. Given where the various incumbents live, there is only one way to do this although one can make some agjustments around the edges.

Right now, population data is only available down to the county level but it is still possible to create four districts of just about equal size without crossing any county lines. In the spirit of getting a discussion going we have created a proposed redistricting of Iowa into four districts that the Republicans and Democrats might be able to compromise on to avoid winding up in court where all bets are off.

The above map shows the districts we are suggesting that the Iowa legislature could compromise on at least as a starting point. The five towns shown are where the five incumbents live. The four districts break down with the following figures:

**New Congressional Districts Figures**
Incumbents	2010 Population	Deviation	% Deviation
Loebsack (D)	765,897	+2,450.25	+0.3209%
Braley (D) - Latham (R)	764,647	+1,200.25	+0.1572%
Boswell (D)	760,819	-2,627.75	-0.3442%
King (R)	762,424	-1,022.75	-0.1340%
Total/Average	3,053,787	+/-1,825.25	+/-0.2391%

Reapportionment and the House

2011-02-16T16:00:00.000-08:00

One of the big problems in predicting how the House races will turn out in 2012 is that all of the states except Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming must reapportion their House districts to allow for changes in where the people in their state now live according to the 2010 Census. Those seven states have such a small population that they only have one Congressional District that is the entire state so there is nothing to adjust. Making matters even tougher is that many states have either lost or gained House seats and must then change every district to allow for that.

The other pertinent fact is that this reapportionment process will be gerrymandered to benefit one political party if that political party controls the state legislature and the governorship. To see how all of this will effect the partisan balance in the House in 2013, we need to know several things. Which states are controlled by which party or is it split? What is the present partisan breakout of a state's congressional delegation. Is there a change in the number of seats that the state has? What was the margin in 2010 of all the House seats added together in favor of one party or the other. All of that information is set forth in the following table:

State	2010 Margin	Legis Control	Governor	House Dems	House Reps	Change	Net Gain
Vermont	32.54%	Dem	Dem	1	0		0
Massachusetts	27.70%	Dem	Dem	10	0	-1	0
Maryland	26.93%	Dem	Dem	6	2		0
Hawaii	24.57%	Dem	Dem	2	0		0
New York	21.20%	Split	Dem	21	8	-2	DR-1
Connecticut	18.97%	Dem	Dem	5	0		0
Rhode Island	18.46%	Dem	Dem	2	0		0
Delaware	15.74%	Dem	Dem	1	0		0
Maine	12.07%	Rep	Rep	2	0		0
California	10.81%	Dem	Dem	34	19		0
Illinois	7.14%	Dem	Dem	8	11	-1	R-1
Washington	6.75%	Dem	Dem	5	4	+1	D+1
Oregon	3.99%	Split	Dem	4	1		0
New Mexico	3.32%	Dem	Rep	2	1		0
Minnesota	2.04%	Rep	Dem	4	4		0
Pennsylvania	0.53%	Rep	Rep	7	12	-1	D-1
New Jersey	0.64%	Dem	Rep	7	6	-1	R-1
South Dakota	2.23%	Rep	Rep	0	1		0
Colorado	5.27%	Split	Dem	3	4		0
New Hampshire	6.88%	Rep	Dem	0	2		0
Nevada	6.90%	Dem	Rep	1	2	+1	D+1
Michigan	7.68%	Rep	Rep	6	9	-1	D-1
North Dakota	9.81%	Rep	Rep	0	1		0
Mississippi	10.02%	Rep	Rep	1	3		0
Ohio	11.75%	Rep	Rep	5	13	-2	DR-1
North Carolina	11.78%	Rep	Dem	7	6		0
Wisconsin	11.90%	Rep	Rep	3	5		R+1
Arizona	12.46%	Rep	Rep	3	5	+1	R+1
Virginia	12.57%	Split	Rep	3	8		0
Iowa	13.12%	Split	Rep	3	2	-1	D-1
West Virginia	13.21%	Dem	Dem	1	2		R-1
South Carolina	16.14%	Rep	Rep	1	5	+1	R+1
Arkansas	17.28%	Dem	Dem	1	3		0
Indiana	18.78%	Rep	Rep	3	6		R+1
Missouri	19.71%	Rep	Dem	3	6	-1	R-1
Florida	20.70%	Rep	Rep	6	19	+2	DR+1
Montana	26.57%	Rep	Dem	0	1		0
Idaho	27.82%	Rep	Rep	0	2		0
Kentucky	28.41%	Split	Dem	2	4		0
Tennessee	28.75%	Rep	Rep	2	7		0
Georgia	31.29%	Rep	Rep	5	8	+1	R+1
Utah	31.29%	Rep	Rep	1	2	+1	R+1
Kansas	31.45%	Rep	Rep	0	4		0
Louisiana	33.79%	Split	Rep	1	6	-1	R-1
Texas	34.72%	Rep	Rep	9	23	+4	R+3
Oklahoma	35.27%	Rep	Rep	1	4		0
Alaska	38.44%	Split	Rep	0	1		0
Nebraska	40.02%	Rep	Rep	0	3		0
Alabama	43.03%	Rep	Rep	1	6		0
Wyoming	45.94%	Rep	Rep	0	1		0

So what does all this information tell us? If you see two Dems in the party columns, then the Democrats can gerrymander the reapportionment process to benefit their party and hurt the Republicans. Likewise if you see two Reps in those columns, the opposite is true. There are 12 states controlled by the Democrats, but in 7 of them, the Republicans do not have any seats to be taken away from them. There are 22 states controlled by the Republicans but 6 of them do not have any Democrat seats to damage. The rest are split and the reapportionment process most likely will wind up in court if a compromise cannot be hammered out in the state legislature that also gets the governor to sign the bill.

It is the states that are gaining or losing more than one seat where gerrymandering can have the biggest effect. Texas is gaining 4 seats and is controlled by the Republicans but since the Democrats only have nine seats, it is hard to see how the Republicans can pick up any of the Democrat seats especially when they need to shore up districts 23 and 27 where the winning margin was under 5%. On the contrary, if they try to get greedy and make all four new seats Republican, they endanger holding ones they already have. The wisest course is to go for three to be Republican and let the Democrats have the fourth one. Thus the best the Republicans can hope for is a gain of 3 seats.

Florida is gaining two seats and it is controlled by the Republicans. Since the Democrats only have six seats it is hard to see how the Republicans can do any better than to split the two new seats with the Democrats. The same thing is true in Ohio only each party will have to lose a seat. If the Republicans controlled New York both seats that must be lost would come out of the Democrat majority. Since control is split, the most likely result will be a compromise in which each party loses a seat. Our best guess is that reapportionment will give the Republicans four new seats on top of whatever other gains or loses they might otherwise get.

Republican 2012 Presidential Candidate

2011-02-10T16:01:00.000-08:00

In a previous article entitled Who Will be President in 2013, we discussed what the impact of reapportionment will have on the next Presidential Election. We never really answered the question of which individual will be President in 2013. That is because in large measure, it depends upon who will be the Republican candidate in 2012. The hard fact of the matter is that you cannot beat somebody with nobody and the Republican candidates are pretty much a collection of nobodies. Other than Romney, Huckabee and Palin, the rest of the candidates do not have enough name recognition to get elected.

Palin has the strongest base support but unless things change radically, she would lose as badly as Goldwater did in 1964 for the exact same reasons. Goldwater was successfully painted as a racist and too stupid to become President by the mainstream media. This was in spite of the fact that Goldwater's book, Conscience of a Conservative, was a best seller. Likewise Sarah Palin has best seller books but that will not help her when her approval levels are seriously upside down. They have gotten worse since the shooting in Tucson even though she had nothing to do with the shooter. It is a sad commentary that intelligent, brave and principled people can be so easily marginalized by the mainstream media but it does not change the results any.

That leaves us with Romney and Huckabee who might be able to beat Obama. Right now, neither of them could do that. The only polling firm that has been steadily testing various Republican possibilities by state is Public Policy Polling. They are a Democrat oriented firm but their polls are generally reliable and show little signs of partisan bias. As we pointed out in our last article, everything depends upon what happens in the new battleground states. If the election were held today, Obama would carry the same states he did in 2008 with the possible exception of Indiana and be easily re-elected as the following table demonstrates:

Party	State	2008 Margin	2010 Margin	Obama Poll %	Huckabee Poll %	Romney Poll %	2012 Votes	Party Totals
D	District of Columbia	85.74%					3	3
D	Hawaii	45.26%	24.57%				4	7
D	Vermont	37.01%	32.54%				3	10
D	Rhode Island	27.85%	18.46%				4	14
D	New York	26.69%	21.20%				29	43
D	Massachusetts	25.81%	27.70%				11	54
D	Maryland	25.44%	26.93%				10	64
D	Illinois	25.10%	7.14%				20	84
D	Delaware	25.00%	15.74%				3	87
D	California	24.06%	10.81%	54%	39%	36%	55	142
D	Connecticut	22.37%	18.97%				7	149
D	Maine	17.32%	12.07%				4	153
D	Washington	17.18%	6.75%				12	165
D	Michigan	16.47%	7.68%				16	181
D	Oregon	16.35%	3.99%				7	188
D	New Jersey	15.57%	0.64%	53%	36%	37%	14	202
D	New Mexico	15.13%	3.32%				5	207
D	Wisconsin	13.90%	11.90%	46%	41%	42%	10	217
D	Nevada	12.49%	6.90%	51%	41%	46%	6	223
D	Pennsylvania	10.32%	0.53%	46%	44%	42%	20	243
D	Minnesota	10.24%	2.04%	47%	40%	42%	10	253
I	New Hampshire	9.61%	6.88%				4	257
I	Iowa	9.53%	13.12%	47%	43%	41%	6	263
I	Colorado	8.95%	5.27%	47%	42%	41%	9	272
I	Virginia	6.30%	12.57%	48%	44%	43%	13	285
I	Ohio	4.54%	11.75%	45%	44%	42%	18	303
I	Florida	2.82%	20.70%	46%	44%	44%	29	332
I	Indiana	1.03%	18.78%				11	343
I	North Carolina	0.33%	11.78%	47%	45%	44%	15	358
R	Missouri	0.13%	19.71%	42%	49%	47%	10	180
R	Montana	2.26%	26.57%	41%	51%	50%	3	170
R	Georgia	5.21%	31.29%				16	167
R	South Dakota	8.41%	2.23%	41%	47%	46%	3	151
R	Arizona	8.52%	12.46%	44%	48%	49%	11	148
R	North Dakota	8.63%	9.81%				3	137
R	South Carolina	8.98%	16.14%	43%	49%	49%	9	134
R	Texas	11.77%	34.72%	42%	55%	49%	38	125
R	West Virginia	13.12%	13.21%	37%	54%	50%	5	87
R	Mississippi	13.17%	10.02%				6	82
R	Nebraska	14.93%	40.02%	38%	51%	49%	5	76
R	Kansas	14.96%	31.45%				6	71
R	Tennessee	15.07%	28.75%				11	65
R	Kentucky	16.23%	28.41%				8	54
R	Louisiana	18.63%	33.79%				8	46
R	Arkansas	19.85%	17.28%				6	38
R	Alaska	21.54%	38.44%				3	32
R	Alabama	21.58%	43.03%				9	29
R	Idaho	25.43%	27.82%				4	20
R	Utah	28.18%	31.29%				6	16
R	Oklahoma	31.29%	35.27%				7	10
R	Wyoming	32.24%	45.94%				3	3

On the other hand, Romney and Huckabee are within striking distance in the battleground states. Romney pulls better in the blue states but not enough to carry them. As a practical matter, right now Huckabee does better in the purple states and is the only Republican who might beat Obama in those battleground states. Obviously all of this could change and we would like to see Rasmussen poll these purple states and do match-ups between Obama and the leading Republican candidates as a cross check on Public Policy Polling.

The column marked 2012 Margin is the margin that the Republican candidates collectively got in the various states. As you can see, those Republican candidates even carried some blue states like Michigan, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Nevada and Pennsylvania. That explains the huge number of seats that the Republicans picked up in 2010. Still notice that the Obama margin always beats the House margin in the blue states. That is because the minorities that tend to support Democratic candidates turn out poorly in midterm elections but do show up much better in Presidential elections. On the other hand, the purple states have the House margin better than the Obama margin except in New Hampshire and Colorado.

If Huckabee could do as well as the Republican House candidates did, he would eek out an electoral college win 272 to 266. That would mean he would have to carry Iowa in addition to the Republican leaning states of Virginia, Ohio, Florida, Indiana and North Carolina. The PPP poll results show that Obama is ahead by only three points in Pennsylvania 47 to 44% so that is another possibility. A lot will depend on who is the Republican candidate against Senator Bob Casey in Pennsylvania and right now only Rick Santorum has any chance and he is behind 48 to 41%. The open Senate seat in Virginia favors the Republicans and a win there might put Huckabee over the top. Likewise if Jeb Bush will run against Senator Nelson in Florida, that could likewise help Huckabee in Florida. It is also possible that Senator Lugar will help Huckabee in Indiana since he should win easily. North Carolina does not have a senator up for election in 2012 so a strong showing by Republican House candidates will be required there.

Doubling Down on Stupid

2011-02-07T00:35:00.000-08:00

It is amazing how often you see political activists and politicians from both parties doubling down on stupid. One definition of insanity is to keep repeating the same mistake and expecting different results. It may not be insane to do that but it sure is stupid. Since both sides of the political aisle are guilty of this, let's first pick on the Democrats. We just saw an election in which the Democrats got their worst drubbing since 1938. While a lot of factors led to this debacle, it seems fair to conclude that the voters felt that the Democrats were not listening to them. Nothing annoys the electorate more than to be ignored and it makes the voters inclined to teach politicians better manners by voting them out of office.

At the top of the list of voter complaints about not being listened to was the imposition of Obamacare on that same electorate. A clear majority of the voters have been opposed to Obamacare since day one. So what did the Democrats do? They jammed it through anyway and effectively told the voters that the Democrats didn't care whether the voters wanted it or not because they were going to pass it anyway. So why should the Democrats be so surprised when the voters sent them a message about how really annoyed they were about being treated that way? The message was as loud and clear as any message that has ever been sent to a political party.

Consider this data: out of 18 Democrats who won by less than 5% in 2008, only Jim Himes of CT-4 survived. Of the 10 Democrats who won in 2008 by more than 5 points but less than 10, 6 lost in 2010. Of the 19 Democrats with 2008 margins between 10 and 15 points, 9 lost in 2010. Ordinarily a 15 point margin in politics makes for a safe seat but in 2010, 24 Democrats lost out of 51 with that supposedly safe margin. That is a ton bricks that fell on the Democrats last November. So they got the message and straightened out, right? No, they doubled down on stupid.

The Republicans who did get the message tried to repeal Obamacare recently. So how many Democrats showed they got the message the voters sent them? Only three Democrats in the House of Representatives voted to repeal Obamacare and not one Democrat in the Senate voted to save their own skins. Apparently all but three House Democrats who survived in 2010 figure they do not need to worry about 2012. Yes, they are right to figure that the Republicans will be hard pressed to make further gains other than the ones they will pick up from reapportionment in states where the Republicans control both houses of the state legislature and the governor as well.

Still any Democrat who won by less than a 5% margin is considered vulnerable in any year and there are 20 such Democrats. So how many of those Democrats showed they did not get the message? If you guessed not one single one, you got it right. The three Democrats who did get the message are Boren (OK-2) who won by 13.05%, McIntyre (NC-7) who won by 7.36% and Ross (AR-4) who won by 17.38%. Boren and Ross had nothing to worry about but they listened anyway. McIntyre would probably have survived even not voting to repeal Obamacare but he was not taking any chances. As for the rest of the Democrat who won by less than 10% and who voted and should not have doubled down on stupid, 37 of the 38 did just that.

In the Senate, it was even worse. There are five Senate Democrats who are in real trouble in 2012. They are Nelson of Nebraska, Testor of Montana, McCaskill of Missouri, Webb of Virginia and Nelson of Florida. The first three just committed political suicide by voting against repealing Obamacare. The Republicans were already going to pick up North Dakota when Conrad retired so this doubling down on stupid just gave the Republicans control of the Senate in 2013. Nelson of Florida will lose if Jeb Bush is the Republican candidate but otherwise might survive. There are another three Democrats who should be worried, namely Manchin of West Virginia, Stabenow of Michigan and Brown of Ohio. Manchin ran ads against Obamacare and then voted to retain it. If Hoekstra runs against Stabenow, she could easily lose. If DeWine runs against Brown, he could also lose. These Democrats could have made sure that did not happen but instead they doubled down on stupid and put nine Senate seats at risk.

Now let's pick on the Republicans and the insistence of some of them on ideological purity tests. This is a center-right country, but some Republicans ignore the center part and think they can control Congress and the White House with only bone fide conservative candidates. That is not possible because there are not enough reliable red states to accomplish that. Republicans must win some seats in the purple states and a smattering in the blue states as well. The political activists in the Republican Party threw away three Senate seats in 2010 that they should have easily won by picking a right-wing candidate in purple and blue states. Sue Lowden would have beaten Reid in Nevada, Jane Norton would have beaten Bennet in Colorado and Mike Castle would have beaten Coons in Delaware. So instead of three more yes votes to repeal Obamacare, the Republicans got three no votes.

Some of the no votes they got came from moderate Republicans like Brown in Massachusetts, Collins and Snowe in Maine, Graham in South Carolina and Kirk in Illinois. So what are the right wing Republicans going to do about these RINO Republicans? You guessed it. They are going to try and defeat Snowe and Brown in 2012 by running a more conservative Republican in the primary election and throw away another two seats. That is doubling down on stupid. Didn't they learn anything in 2010? They could have had a 50-50 Senate with Biden having to cast a vote to break a tie and thereby tie Obama-Biden to every vote along party lines in the Senate.

Here is factoid for these purists: Only one Republican came closer than a 10% margin in the House in Massachusetts in 2010 and that one lost by 4.49%. Yet Scott Brown carried Massachusetts in a special election with a 4.76% margin. He will not do that well in 2012 because all the Obama voters who did not vote in the special election will vote in 2012. The only reason Brown won was because it was a special election which favors Republicans and because Scott Brown is a candidate manager's dream come true. The Republican Party had very little to do with Scott's victory because Scott did it his way. Scott may survive since he is ahead in the polls but if he has opposition in the primary, he will lose in the general. By doubling down on stupid, the Republicans can throw away another Senate seat.