So with Arkansas famous for political eccentricity that defies the conventional wisdom ruling everywhere else, and even with Barack Obama at the head of the ticket dragging down Arkansas Democrats everywhere, there is a certain semi-logical basis for hope among Democrats.
Republican Rick Crawford got elected there last year in spite of himself and because of:
—The tea party revolt and general antipathy toward Obama and Nancy Pelosi.
—The retirement of Democratic incumbent Marion Berry.
—The emergence as Berry’s would-be successor on the Democratic side of a young congressional aide named Chad Causey, who was a satisfactory candidate but not a particularly strong one.
It is possible that the revulsion over health care reform has subsided a bit. Even Republican pollsters will admit that, while indicators still favor their further gains in Arkansas, the intensity of voter anger is less than in 2010.
Another thing: Congressional redistricting has extended the 1st District southward through the Mississippi River-adjoining Delta all the way to the Louisiana line. That’s a demographic advantage for Democrats, considering the heavy African-American population.
So now Crawford, a farm radio guy transplanted from Missouri and who has a little personal bankruptcy on his resume, could be in for a battle.
I heard Michael Cook say on the Talk Business episode of October 16, 2011 that he expects the Democrats to take back the First Congressional District and Rick Crawford will be an one term congressman. I don’t think that will happen like he thinks. President Obama is the gift that keeps on giving here in Arkansas. Why else are all the Democrats getting beat? Below are some thoughts from the blog Red Arkansas:
Today we turn to The Tolbert Report for the latest news on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s fishing expedition for a challenger for Rep. Tim Griffin’s Second Congressional District seat.
You may remember Mr. Griffin who enraged the left so much that the Arkansas Times’ Max Brantley was forced to publish a crudely-drawn cartoon to bolster Sen. Joyce Elliott to an eventual 20-point loss, and the DCCC’s man in Little Rock, Rep. Clark Hall, couldn’t hold things together during the Fayetteville Finger debate and ended up making AR-02 even more Republican.
According to Tolbert, the DCCC was rebuked by state Rep. John C. Edwards of Little Rock in their effort to recruit him to run against Congressman, Iraqi War Veteran and Army Reserve Major Griffin.
“I have no plans to run for Congress in 2012,” said Edwards. “I am running for another term in the Arkansas House. Earlier this year, I was contacted by the DCCC and told them the same thing.”
In case you haven’t heard of the Iraqi War Veteran and National Guard JAG Corps Colonel (hmmm… that resume sounds familiar), Mr. Edwards defeated Republican Kelly Eichler in 2008 by a whopping 78 votes. He got a pass in 2010.
Mr. Edwards’ previous electoral claim-to-fame was finishing a distant third to Mark Stodola in the 1996 AR-02 Democratic Primary. Mr. Edwards also finished third in the key Democratic area of Pulaski County, trailing Mr. Stodola by nearly 11,000 votes.
So… really? This is the one of the best the DCCC could come up with?
Now that we can scratch Mr. Edwards off the list, here is a list of other would-be Democratic hopefuls that have taken a pass:
This leaves the man who makes Max Brantley come down with a case of the vapors: Surgeon General Joe Thompson, and the man who makes the AFL-CIO have a collective erection for more than four hours: former Lt. Gov. Bill Halter.
Mr. Thompson, whom we hear is looking at throwing his hat in the ring at least a couple of years from now, is now in the middle of selling Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges at the traveling roadshow put together by Gov. Mike Beebe, and that might be to tough a sell in a state so vehemently opposed to President Obama’s health care law.
Mr. Halter? Well, we all know who how Arkansas Democrats feel about him.
MEANWHILE…
According to Roby Brock, the DCCC’s man in Little Rock–Clark Hall–looks like he will avail himself of the opportunity created by the Fayetteville Finger situation and challengeRep. Rick Crawford in AR-01.
No word on whether Mr. Hall’s “granddaughter’s color crayons” were used to design his campaign logo much like they were allegedly used to create the new lines for the First District.
Why not pass the Balanced Budget Amendment? As you know that federal deficit is at all time high (1.6 trillion deficit with revenues of 2.2 trillion and spending at 3.8 trillion).
On my blog www.HaltingArkansasLiberalswithTruth.com I took you at your word and sent you over 100 emails with specific spending cut ideas. However, I did not see any of them in the recent debt deal that Congress adopted. Now I am trying another approach. Every week from now on I will send you an email explaining different reasons why we need the Balanced Budget Amendment. It will appear on my blog on “Thirsty Thursday” because the government is always thirsty for more money to spend.
“The most important element is the cap on spending,” Gohmert told CNSNews.com. “If there is no cap on spending, then the balanced budget amendment is a formula for ever- increasing spending and ever-increasing taxing that will just spiral upward and upward again. So there’s got to be included a cap on spending, and best if it’s related to a percentage of GDP. But, absolutely, if there is no cap on spending, I could not vote for it.”
The actual language of the balanced budget amendment that Congress will vote on before the end of the year has not yet been determined. However, many conservatives fear that Republican leaders may agree to vote on a stripped down amendment that requires Congress to balance the budget but does not cap spending as a percentage of GDP or require supermajorities to raise taxes. They fear that an amendment of that nature–which might win the backing of some incumbent congressional liberals–would become a constitutional lever for sustaining big government via ever-escalating federal taxation.
When the Republican-controlled-House approved the cut, cap and balance plan last on July 19 in 234-190 vote, it included a version of the balanced budget amendment to cap federal spending at 19.9 percent of GDP. The GOP originally sought to hold federal spending to 18 percent of GDP.
The version of the balanced budget amendment in the cut, cap and balance plan also required two-thirds majorities in both houses to approve a tax increase. The amendment also would have prohibited deficit spending unless there was a national security emergency or a supermajority of Congress voted for it. On July 22, the Senate voted 51-46 to approve a procedural motion that blocked substantive consideration of the cut, cap and balance bill in that body.
The debt-limit deal reached by President Barack Obama, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) requires that both houses of Congress give an up or down vote to a balanced budget amendment before the end of the year. However, it does not specify what the language of the amendment would be.
If two-thirds of Congress votes to approve a balanced budget amendment, it would then have to be ratified by 38 states, or three-fourths.
The House passed that debt-limit deal by a 269-161 vote on Aug. 1. Gohmert was one of 66 Republicans who voted against it.
“As far as the supermajority to raise taxes, that’s our preference, but the key element, the most important element is the cap on spending,” Gohmert said. “If there is no supermajority to raise taxes then I’d just have to look at it more closely to see what all was there to see if it was something I could vote for or not.”
Gohmert believes this is a winning issue for Republicans.
“Well, I think it’s like this: We either have a legitimate Balanced Budget Amendment pass with a cap on spending, or I really believe if it does not pass, you will see many of those who voted against it turned out both in the House and Senate in the next election,” Gohmert said. “So I think it’s an either/or. Either people vote for it and it passes, or we have a significant change in the people that are in the House and Senate that voted against it.”
99th anniversary of Milton Friedman’s birth (Part 14)
Milton Friedman was born on July 31, 1912 and he died November 16, 2006. I started posting tributes of him on July 31 and I hope to continue them until his 100th birthday. Here is another tribute below:
November 20, 2006
Milton Friedman: A Tribute
David R. Henderson
“In the course of his [General Westmoreland’s] testimony, he made the statement that he did not want to command an army of mercenaries. I [Milton Friedman] stopped him and said, ‘General, would you rather command an army of slaves?’ He drew himself up and said, ‘I don’t like to hear our patriotic draftees referred to as slaves.’ I replied, ‘I don’t like to hear our patriotic volunteers referred to as mercenaries.’ But I went on to say, ‘If they are mercenaries, then I, sir, am a mercenary professor, and you, sir, are a mercenary general; we are served by mercenary physicians, we use a mercenary lawyer, and we get our meat from a mercenary butcher.’ That was the last that we heard from the general about mercenaries.”
– Milton and Rose Friedman, Two Lucky People, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998, p. 380.
In May 1970, a few days after graduating from the University of Winnipeg with a major in mathematics, I flew to Chicago to look into getting a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Chicago. While there, I went to visit Milton Friedman and he invited me into his office. I had a sense that he had been through this routine before – talking to an idealistic young person showing up and wanting an autograph on his copy of Capitalism and Freedom and, beyond that, simply wanting to meet and talk to him. But he didn’t treat our meeting as routine; we had a real talk for about 10 minutes. When I told him that I’d initially been attracted to libertarianism by reading Ayn Rand, he told me that while Rand was well worth reading, there were many other people worth reading too, and I shouldn’t get stuck on her. He also stated, “Make politics an avocation, not a vocation.” Both were good pieces of advice.
The advice didn’t stop there. I ended up getting my Ph.D. at UCLA and going to my first academic job as an assistant professor at the University of Rochester’s Graduate School of Management. From then on, I wrote Milton a couple of times a year and he always wrote back, sometimes writing in the margins of my letter to comment on my questions and thoughts. When I contemplated my first major career change – leaving academia to work at a think tank – he advised me strongly against it (I didn’t take this advice), referring to himself as my “Dutch uncle.” I had never heard the term before and didn’t bother to look it up until writing this piece, but I understood what he meant from the context: a Dutch uncle is someone who gives you tough love, holding you to high standards because of a benevolent regard for your well-being.
But here’s the bigger point: with his steady and passionate work to end the military draft, Milton Friedman was the Dutch uncle of every young man in the United States. Or even better, he was like a favorite uncle that they’d never even met. He cared more for them than any president, any general, or any defense secretary has ever cared. How so? Because he wanted every young man to be free to choose whether to join the military or not.
Milton Friedman’s work against the draft began in December 1966, when he gave a presentation at a four-day conference at the University of Chicago. Various prominent and less-prominent academics, politicians, and activists had been invited. Papers had been commissioned, and the authors gave summaries, after which the discussion was open to all. Fortunately, the discussion was transcribed. The papers and discussions appear in a book edited by sociologist Sol Tax and titled The Draft: A Handbook of Facts and Alternatives. The invitees included two young anti-draft congressmen, Robert Kastenmeier (D-Wisc.) and Donald Rumsfeld (R-Ill.), and one pro-draft senator, Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.). Also attending were pro-draft anthropologist Margaret Mead and anti-draft economists Milton Friedman and Walter Oi. Friedman gave the general economic and philosophical case for a voluntary military in his presentation, “Why Not a Voluntary Army?” Friedman pointed out that the draft is a tax on young men. He stated:
“When a young man is forced to serve at $45 a week, including the cost of his keep, of his uniforms, and his dependency allowances, and there are many civilian opportunities available to him at something like $100 a week, he is paying $55 a week in an implicit tax. … And if you were to add to those taxes in kind, the costs imposed on universities and colleges; of seating, housing, and entertaining young men who would otherwise be doing productive work; if you were to add to that the costs imposed on industry by the fact that they can only offer young men who are in danger of being drafted stopgap jobs, and cannot effectively invest money in training them; if you were to add to that the costs imposed on individuals of a financial kind by their marrying earlier or having children at an earlier stage, and so on; if you were to add all these up, there is no doubt at all in my mind that the cost of a volunteer force, correctly calculated, would be very much smaller than the amount we are now spending in manning our Armed Forces.”
Reading through the whole Sol Tax volume, with all the papers and transcripts of the discussion, I had the sense that there was a coalescing of views over the four days, as people from various parts of the ideological spectrum found that they had in common a strong antipathy to the draft and found also that the economists made a surprisingly strong economic case. Both Friedman’s speech and his various comments at the conference still make compelling reading. One of his best rhetorical flourishes was his criticism of the charge that those who advocate ending the draft are advocating a “mercenary” army. You’ll recognize the same kind of argument he used against Westmoreland in the lead quote of this article. Friedman said:
“Now, when anybody starts talking about this [an all-volunteer force] he immediately shifts language. My army is ‘volunteer,’ your army is ‘professional,’ and the enemy’s army is ‘mercenary.’ All these three words mean exactly the same thing. I am a volunteer professor, I am a mercenary professor, and I am a professional professor. And all you people around here are mercenary professional people. And I trust you realize that. It’s always a puzzle to me why people should think that the term ‘mercenary’ somehow has a negative connotation. I remind you of that wonderful quotation of Adam Smith when he said, ‘You do not owe your daily bread to the benevolence of the baker, but to his proper regard for his own interest.’ And this is much more broadly based. In fact, I think mercenary motives are among the least unattractive that we have.” (p. 366)
In the margin of my 35-year-old, dog-eared copy of the Sol Tax book containing this passage, I wrote one word: “Wow!” This is rhetoric at its best, a tight argument passionately stated. When I read this at about age 18, just a year before meeting Friedman in his office, I felt cared-for. Fortunately, being Canadian, I wasn’t vulnerable to the draft. But I had the thought that if I had grown up in United States, I would be so thankful that here was this man, himself well beyond draft age and who could probably figure out how to get his son out of the draft, and yet who cared enough to be out in front on this issue.
Two of Friedman’s comments about this conference are worth noting. Writing some 30 years later, Friedman noted that the 74 invited participants “included essentially everyone who had written or spoken at all extensively on either side of the controversy about the draft, as well as a number of students.” (Two Lucky People, p. 377.) Friedman’s other comment is also worth citing:
“I have attended many conferences. I have never attended any other that had so dramatic an effect on the participants. A straw poll taken at the outset of the conference recorded two-thirds of the participants in favor of the draft; a similar poll at the end, two-thirds opposed. I believe that this conference was the key event that started the ball rolling decisively toward ending the draft.” (p. 378.)
Friedman didn’t stop there. He wrote a number of articles in his tri-weekly column in Newsweek making the case against the draft. Friedman was one of 15 people chosen for Nixon’s Commission on the All-Volunteer Force. By his estimate, five started off being against the draft, five in favor, and five on the fence. By the end, the Commission was able to come out with a 14-0 consensus in favor of ending the draft. Black leader Roy Wilkins, in a Feb. 6, 1970 letter to Nixon, stated he had been unable to attend many of the meetings due to a major illness and, therefore, could not support its specific recommendations; Wilkins did state, however, that he endorsed the idea of moving toward an all-volunteer armed force. (The Report of the President’s Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force, New York: Collier Books, 1970; letter from Roy Wilkins.)
It was at one of these meetings that Friedman put Westmoreland on the spot with his comeback about slaves. Knowing that Friedman was persuasive and focused and also a warm human being, I credit him with having swung at least a few of the Commission members in his direction. And although Nixon took his sweet time acting on the recommendations, finally, at the start of his second term, he let the draft expire. Friedman kibitzed in his Newsweek column, never letting up. He once wrote that the draft “is almost the only issue on which I have engaged in any extensive personal lobbying with members of the House and Senate.” (Milton Friedman, An Economist’s Protest, 2nd ed., Glen Ridge, N.J.: Thomas Horton and Daughters, 1975, p. 188.)
And Friedman stuck around as an opponent of the draft when the going got tough. In the late 1970s, high inflation caused a serious drop in real military pay and a consequent increase in difficulty meeting recruiting quotas. Of all the threats to bring back the draft in the last 32 years, the threat in 1979 to 1980 was the most serious. Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) held hearings with the goal of building support for the draft and, at least, registration for a future draft. Hoover economist Martin Anderson organized an important conference on the draft at the Hoover Institution in November 1979 and invited the top proponents and opponents of the draft. (For the papers and transcript of the discussion, see Martin Anderson, ed., Registration and the Draft: Proceedings of the Hoover-Rochester Conference on the All-Volunteer Force, Stanford, California: Hoover Institution Press, 1982.) Friedman was one of the attendees and, at the end, debated Congressman Pete McCloskey on the draft. It was actually the weakest performance I’ve ever seen by Friedman, but Friedman’s “weak” is still pretty good.
In 1980, in response to the threat from Sam Nunn, I wrote and circulated the following “Economists’ Statement in Opposition to the Draft”:
“We, the undersigned, oppose moves toward the reimposition of the draft. The draft would be a more costly way of maintaining the military than an all-volunteer force. Those who claim that a draft costs less than a volunteer military cite as a savings the lower wages that the government can get away with paying draftees. But they leave out the burden imposed on the draftees themselves. Since a draft would force many young people to delay or forego entirely other activities valuable to them and to the rest of society, the real cost of military manpower would be substantially more than the wages draftees would be paid. Saying that a draft would reduce the cost of the military is like saying that the pyramids were cheap because they were built with slave labor.”
Friedman’s speed at signing made it much easier, I’m sure, to get the signatures of almost 300 other prominent and not-so-prominent economists, including Kenneth Boulding, Harold Demsetz, David Friedman, Alan Greenspan, Donald McCloskey, William Meckling, Allen H. Meltzer, James C. Miller III, William A. Niskanen, Mancur Olson, Sam Peltzman, Murray Rothbard, Jeremy J. Siegel, Vernon Smith, Beryl W. Sprinkel, Jerome Stein, and James L. Sweeney.
The statement, with about 150 signatures, was published as a full-page ad in Libertarian Review, Inquiry, and The Progressive.
Milton Friedman and I had our differences about foreign policy. I tried, in vain, to persuade him to be against the first Gulf war. Even there, though, he publicly supported, in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, my economic argument against the war. He stated, “Henderson’s analysis is correct. There is no justification for intervention on grounds of oil.” (Jonathan Marshall, “Economists Say Iraq’s Threat to U.S. Oil Supply Is Exaggerated,” San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 29, 1990.) Friedman did oppose the second Gulf war, as evidenced in an interview in the Wall Street Journal, in which he called it, correctly, “aggression.” (Tunku Varadarajan, “The Romance of Economics,” Wall Street Journal, July 22, 2006; page A10).
As far as I know, though, Friedman did not oppose the second Gulf war publicly when it mattered most – that is, before the March 2003 invasion. But on the draft, Friedman never wavered. For that, many young American men owe him a lot.
Two weeks ago, I attended a conference in Guatemala at which it was announced that Friedman had had a bad fall and was in the hospital. The person who announced it, Bob Chitester, producer of the Friedmans’ 1980 television series, Free to Choose, handed out buttons that read, “Have you thanked Milton Friedman today?” Thanks, Uncle Miltie.
Dan Mitchell, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, speaks at Moving Forward on Entitlements: Practical Steps to Reform, NTUF’s entitlement reform event at CPAC, on Feb. 11, 2011.
This testimony was delivered on September 20, 2011.
Rising Spending Reduces Growth
Let’s take a look at how federal spending damages the economy over the long-run. Federal spending is financed by extracting resources from current and future taxpayers. The resources consumed by the government cannot be used to produce goods in the private marketplace. For example, the engineers needed to build a $10 billion government high-speed rail project are taken away from building other products in the economy. The $10 billion rail project creates government-connected jobs, but it also kills $10 billion worth of private activities.
Indeed, the private sector would actually lose more than $10 billion in this example. That is because government spending and taxing creates “deadweight losses,” which result from distortions to working, investment, and other activities. The CBO says that deadweight loss estimates “range from 20 cents to 60 cents over and above the revenue raised.”19 Harvard University’s Martin Feldstein thinks that deadweight losses “may exceed one dollar per dollar of revenue raised, making the cost of incremental governmental spending more than two dollars for each dollar of government spending.”20 Thus, a $10 billion high-speed rail line would cost the private economy $20 billion or more.
The government uses a “leaky bucket” when it tries to help the economy. Stanford University’s Michael Boskin, explains: “The cost to the economy of each additional tax dollar is about $1.40 to $1.50. Now that tax dollar … is put into a bucket. Some of it leaks out in overhead, waste, and so on. In a well-managed program, the government may spend 80 or 90 cents of that dollar on achieving its goals. Inefficient programs would be much lower, $.30 or $.40 on the dollar.”21 Texas A&M University’s Edgar Browning comes to similar conclusions about the magnitude of the government’s leaky bucket: “It costs taxpayers $3 to provide a benefit worth $1 to recipients.”22
The larger the government grows, the leakier the bucket becomes. On the revenue side, tax distortions rise rapidly as marginal tax rates rise.23 On the spending side, funding is allocated to activities with ever lower returns as the government expands. Figure 4 illustrates the consequences of the leaky bucket. On the left-hand side, tax rates are low and the government delivers useful public goods such as crime reduction. Those activities create high returns, so per-capita income initially rises as the government grows.
As the government expands further, it engages in less productive activities. The marginal return from government spending falls and then turns negative. On the right-hand side of the figure, average income falls as the government expands. Government in the United States — at 41 percent of GDP — is almost certainly on the right-hand side of this figure. In a 2008 book on federal fiscal policy, Professor Browning concludes that today’s welfare state reduces GDP — or average U.S. incomes — by about 25 percent.24 That would place us substantially to the right in Figure 4, and it suggests that major federal spending cuts would boost incomes over time.
19 Congressional Budget Office, “Budget Options,” February 2001, p. 381. 20 Martin Feldstein, “How Big Should Government Be?” National Tax Journal, vol. 50, no. 2, June 1997, pp. 197-213. 21 Michael Boskin, “A Framework for the Tax Reform Debate,” in Frontiers of Tax Reform, ed. Michael Boskin (Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1996), p. 14. 22 Edgar K. Browning, Stealing From Ourselves: How the Welfare State Robs Americans of Money and Spirit (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2008), p. 179. 23 Deadweight losses rise more than proportionally as tax rates rise. 24 See Edgar K. Browning, Stealing From Ourselves: How the Welfare State Robs Americans of Money and Spirit (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2008), p. 188
I have written a lot about Steve Jobs recently and I wanted to link those posts below. Here is an interesting article for those who think that government officials are smart as those like Steve Jobs who are able to survive in the private market place and thrive.
The Indian government has launched an ultra-cheap tablet called Aakash (meaning sky) to be sold to secondary school students for just $35. The Aakash, which was designed by DataWind—a company owned by an Indian-Canadian—is the result of a government tender for an inexpensive tablet. The cost of the tablet is $46, and the government is subsidizing the difference of $11. Education Minister Kapil Sibal proclaims this will take cheap computing to the masses.
But hold the champagne. India has launched several ultra-cheap initiatives like the Tata Group’s Nano car that sells for under $3,000, yet that doesn’t mean every one of them will succeed. It’s especially risky if the government picks winners and losers, as in Aakash’s case.
Bureaucrats might believe they know where the future demand will lie, but they are no Steve Jobs.
For one thing, cheapness doesn’t always guarantee customers. The famed Tata Nano, unveiled in 2009, has so far been a disappointment. Yet many in government marveled at the fanfare surrounding private-sector projects like the Nano and wished to replicate them in the public sector, egged on by the belief that Indians care primarily about price because one-third of them live below $1 a day. But like any consumers, Indians care not about price, but about value.
Mr. Sibal seems to be forgetting the government’s own past folly here. In 2005, New Delhi launched a $200 Mobilis computer, based on free Linux software. Before that, in 2002, the government had hailed a hand-held computer called the “Simputer,” which cost $240 as a major breakthrough. Both failed. While politicians were busy thinking of subsidizing older products, the computer industry had itself innovated to push the market price down.
The larger problem is that some Indians think tablets are the technology of the future. This thinking partly reflects the glamour of Apple in the West, but also the belief that low incomes, low literacy and severe electricity shortages in India will make use of larger personal computers difficult. But no tablet launched by the Indian private sector, at prices ranging from $99 to $265, has caught the public imagination. One reason is competition from cellphones.
Chances are these private firms will realize their mistake and correct themselves. But the government has, again consumed by fanfare, invested at least $5 million into a dubious, unproven product. That means funds from taxpayers, who shouldn’t be paying taxes to support the venture-capital-like predilections of the Indian government, which risk going into a sinkhole.
Aakash may prove a failure because, first, used computers are available at dirt cheap prices. Second and more important is the phenomenal rise of cell phones. They can increasingly do things that computers and tablets do.
A basic Indian cell phone costs just $15, far cheaper than an Aakash. In fact, the cost of the cell phone is only slightly higher than the government’s subsidy, and calls are only two cents a minute. Cell phones can be charged by batteries in rural areas with little or no electricity. The Aakash, by contrast, will have an extra charge in the cost of a wireless connection. At this rate, the people most likely to buy the Aakash are better-off Indians—clearly not those at whom the subsidy is aimed.
This magnifies the risks of the Aakash project, not to mention the probable waste and corruption that typically accompanies Government initiatives like this. It may be irrelevant at a time when cell phone applications are multiplying at much lower cost. By promoting the tablet, the government is making a bet that could well go wrong.
Instead, the Indian government’s policies should offer the maximum possible flexibility, and then leave it to the market to work out what suits consumers best. Bureaucrats might believe they know where the future demand will lie, but they are no Steve Jobs.
COUNTER-DEMONSTRATION: At Kappa Sigma house in Fayetteville. The Drew Wilson photo above went viral last night — at least in Arkansas e-mail and social media users — after the Fayetteville Flyer posted it in coverage of an Occupy Northwest Arkansas demonstration in Fayetteville. The 1 percent banner was unfurled briefly on the Kappa Sigma frat […]
(If you want to check out other posts I have done about about Steve Jobs:Some say Steve Jobs was an atheist , Steve Jobs and Adoption , What is the eternal impact of Steve Jobs’ life? ,Steve Jobs versus President Obama: Who created more jobs? ,Steve Jobs’ view of death and what the Bible has to say about it ,8 things you might not know about Steve Jobs ,Steve […]
(If you want to check out other posts I have done about about Steve Jobs:Some say Steve Jobs was an atheist , Steve Jobs and Adoption , What is the eternal impact of Steve Jobs’ life? ,Steve Jobs versus President Obama: Who created more jobs? ,Steve Jobs’ view of death and what the Bible has to say about it ,8 things you might not know about Steve Jobs ,Steve […]
It is strange that the New Yorker Magazine did no research. (If you want to check out other posts I have done about about Steve Jobs:Some say Steve Jobs was an atheist , Steve Jobs and Adoption , What is the eternal impact of Steve Jobs’ life? ,Steve Jobs versus President Obama: Who created more jobs? ,Steve Jobs’ view of death and what the Bible […]
(If you want to check out other posts I have done about about Steve Jobs:Some say Steve Jobs was an atheist , Steve Jobs and Adoption , What is the eternal impact of Steve Jobs’ life? ,Steve Jobs versus President Obama: Who created more jobs? ,Steve Jobs’ view of death and what the Bible has to say about it ,8 things you might not know about Steve Jobs ,Steve […]
Steve Jobs was raised as a conservative Lutheran but he chose to leave those beliefs behind. Below is a very good article on his life. COVER STORY ARTICLE | Issue: “Steve Jobs 1955-2011″ October 22, 2011 A god of our age Who was Steve Jobs? A revered technology pioneer and a relentless innovator, the Apple […]
Some people have called Steve Jobs an atheist. According to published reports Steve Jobs was a Buddhist and he had a very interesting quote on death which I discussed in another post. Back in 1979 I saw the film series HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? by Francis Schaeffer and I also read the book. Francis Schaeffer observes […]
Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address Uploaded by StanfordUniversity on Mar 7, 2008 It was a quite moving story to hear about Steve Jobs’ adoption. Ryan Scott Bomberger (www.toomanyaborted.com), co-founder of The Radiance Foundation, an adoptee and adoptive father: “As a creative professional, [Jobs’] visionary work has helped my own visions become reality. But his […]
(If you want to check out other posts I have done about about Steve Jobs:Some say Steve Jobs was an atheist , Steve Jobs and Adoption , What is the eternal impact of Steve Jobs’ life? ,Steve Jobs versus President Obama: Who created more jobs? ,Steve Jobs’ view of death and what the Bible has to say about it ,8 things you might not know about Steve Jobs ,Steve […]
I loved reading this article below. (Take a look at the link to other posts I have done on Steve Jobs.) David Boaz makes some great observations: How much value is the Post Office creating this year? Or Amtrak? Or Solyndra? And if you point out that the Post Office does create value for its […]
(If you want to check out other posts I have done about about Steve Jobs:Some say Steve Jobs was an atheist , Steve Jobs and Adoption , What is the eternal impact of Steve Jobs’ life? ,Steve Jobs versus President Obama: Who created more jobs? ,Steve Jobs’ view of death and what the Bible has to say about it ,8 things you might not know about Steve Jobs ,Steve […]
(If you want to check out other posts I have done about about Steve Jobs:Some say Steve Jobs was an atheist , Steve Jobs and Adoption , What is the eternal impact of Steve Jobs’ life? ,Steve Jobs versus President Obama: Who created more jobs? ,Steve Jobs’ view of death and what the Bible has to say about it ,8 things you might not know about Steve Jobs ,Steve […]
(If you want to check out other posts I have done about about Steve Jobs: Some say Steve Jobs was an atheist , Steve Jobs and Adoption , What is the eternal impact of Steve Jobs’ life? ,Steve Jobs versus President Obama: Who created more jobs? ,Steve Jobs’ view of death and what the Bible has to say about it ,8 things you might not […]
The ladies on “The View”sit down and talk about President Obama’s commencement speech at the University of Notre Dame and talk about how the crowd got a little riled over Abortion protesters. They then continue on the abortion subject which leads to a heated discussion between Joy Behar and Elisabeth Hasselbeck.
______________________
If you claim to be “pro-life” then you must allow the unborn baby to it’s chance at life. Answering the logic of the liberal ladies on “The View” is this video below:
Answering Those Who Are Only “Personally Pro-Life” – Quick Thought
Ana Benderas of Live Action addresses those who are personally against abortion but believe that others should be able to take the life on unborn children. Learn more about Live Action at: http://LiveAction.org
Demonstrators march through the streets of Little Rock on Saturday in a protest organized by Occupy Little Rock. (John Lyon photo) Occupy Arkansas got cranked up today in Little Rock with their first march and several hundred showed up. It was unlike the pro-life marches that I have been a part of that have had […]
The Arkansas Times blogger going by the username “Sound Policy” asserted, “…you do know there is a slight difference between fetal tissue and babies, don’t you? Don’t you?” My response was taken from the material below: Science Matters #2: Former supermodel Kathy Ireland tells Mike Huckabee about how she became pro-life after reading what the science […]
What Ever Happened to the Human Race? Jason Tolbert told a story about pro-life marchers and their tactic of prayer: OWNER TURNS SPRINKLERS ON PRO-LIFE PRAYER VIGIL In July, I wrote about a new movement springing up in Arkansas that seeks to combat abortion not with violent protest, but with peaceful prayer demonstrations. It is called “40 […]
Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop were prophetic (jh29) What Ever Happened to the Human Race? I recently heard this Breakpoint Commentary by Chuck Colson and it just reminded me of how prophetic Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop were in the late 1970′s with their book and film series “Whatever happened to the human […]
A Ronald Reagan radio address from 1975 addresses the topics of abortion and adoption. This comes from a collection of audio commentaries titled “Reagan in His Own Voice.” I just wanted to share with you one of the finest prolife papers I have ever read, and it is by President Ronald Wilson Reagan. I have […]
I have made it clear from day one when I started this blog that Francis Schaeffer, Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan and Adrian Rogers had been the biggest influences on my political and religious views. Today I am responding to an unfair attack on Francis Schaeffer’s book “A Christian Manifesto.” As you can see on the […]
President and Nancy Reagan talking to Mother Teresa in the Oval Office. 6/20/85. Superbowl commercial with Tim Tebow and Mom. Jason Tolbert wrote a great article this week about a pro-life meeting. He mentons William Harrison who I have written about before on this blog. I used to write letters to the editor a whole […]
I wrote a response to an article on abortion on the Arkansas Times Blog and it generated more hate than enlightenment from the liberals on the blog. However, there was a few thoughtful responses. One is from spunkrat who really did identify the real issue. WHEN DOES A HUMAN LIFE BEGIN? _______________________________________ Posted by spunkrat […]
Superbowl commercial with Tim Tebow and Mom. The Arkansas Times article, “Putting the fetus first: Pro-lifers keep up attack on access, but pro-choice advocates fend off the end to abortion right” by Leslie Newell Peacock is very lengthy but I want to deal with all of it in this new series. click to enlarge ROSE MIMMS: […]
The Arkansas Times article, “Putting the fetus first: Pro-lifers keep up attack on access, but pro-choice advocates fend off the end to abortion right” by Leslie Newell Peacock is very lengthy but I want to deal with all of it in this new series. click to enlarge ROSE MIMMS: Arkansas Right to Life director unswayed by […]
“Jane Roe” or Roe v Wade is now a prolife Christian. She’s recently has done a commercial about it. _______________________________ I have often wondered why we got to this point in our country’s life and we allow abortion. The answer is found in the words of Schaffer. Philosopher and Theologian, Francis A. Schaeffer has […]
Modern man’s humanist thought has brought us to the point now that many people realize that they could not find final answers and that would lead to despair. Many people then took leaps into the area of non-reason to find some kind of meaning in life. Some people actually tried to look at communism and […]
Modern man’s humanist thought has brought us to the point now that many people realize that they could not find final answers and that would lead to despair. Many people then turned to trying to find answers in the area of non-reason. There were no fixed values and they just held on to the two […]
Richard Land on Abortion part 3 On the Arkansas Times Blog this morning I posted a short pro-life piece and it received this response: We have been over this time and again SalineRepublican, and I think we all know the issue: when does the right of a woman to control her own body yield to […]
Bob Jordan / Associated Press No. 13: Duke ends UNLV’s perfect season Final Four, March 30, 1991 — The Runnin’ Rebs returned four starters from the 1990 champions and rolled through the ’90-91 season. They entered the Final Four 34-0 and faced Duke, a team the Rebs beat by 30 points in the ’90 title […]
Vice Admiral C. Everett Koop, USPHS Surgeon General of the United States Francis Schaeffer Main page Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop put together this wonderful film series “Whatever happened to the human race?” and my senior class teacher Mark Brink taught us a semester long course on it in 1979. I was so […]
This is such a great video series “The Silent Scream.” I have never seen it until now and I wish I had seen it 30 years ago. Take a look at the video clip below. I wanted to pass along a portion of the excellent article “Bernard Nathanson: A Life Transformed by the Truth about […]
Sherwood Haisty is taking my sons Hunter and Wilson to Grace Community Church in the Los Angeles area this morning where Dr. John MacArthur is pastor. They will be attending both Sunday School and Worship. I wanted to pass along a portion of the excellent article “Bernard Nathanson: A Life Transformed by the Truth about […]
I have been closely following the Simmons saga for several years now. In the story below Gene Simmons says that he does not know why he waited so long to get married. The real reason is that he did not want to be committed to Shannon which would mean forsaking all others. Here is an update followed by links to some of my past posts:
Posted Wed Oct 19, 2011 8:51am PDT by Joseph Brannigan Lynch
After 28 years, two adult children and plenty of drama together, Kiss frontman Gene Simmons wed former Playmate Shannon Tweed in a ceremony broadcast on last night’s “Gene Simmons Family Jewels.” How did the wild rocker feel about finding himself tied down for the first time in his life? “No idea what I’d been scared about all this time,” Simmons mused while talking to his 19-year-old daughter Sophie. “[It was] this stubborn guy thing… it was really stupid.” Smiling and nodding, his daughter simply said, “Yup.”
Simmons’ realization that the woman he’s spent 28 years with is, in fact, “The One” (i.e., life partner, not to be confused with Keanu Reeves’ character in “The Matrix”) was reflected in the no-nonsense, self-skewering wedding vows he wrote. “I always thought I was strong. You made me realize how arrogant, selfish and weak I was,” he admitted. “I’ve never said ‘I love you’ to anybody, but I love you, Shannon Tweed. With all my heart, for the rest of my life.”
Simmons’ 21-year-old son Nick was the best man and longtime pal and bandmate Paul Stanley pulled double duty, toasting Simmons as a groomsman and also rocking the wedding reception on guitar from the confines of his dapper tux (sadly, he left his “Starchild” makeup at home). Yes, Kiss (such as it is, since Ace Frehley and Peter Criss have long since been replaced by new members) actually played its lead singer’s wedding reception for a spell. Simmons took the stage at his own wedding to musically remind everyone that getting married won’t get in the way of his perennial desire to “Rock and Roll All Nite.”
Apparently, though, rocking all night has never meant consuming alcohol for Gene. Although his now-wife Shannon was intent on getting him drunk for the first time in his life, Simmons could barely stomach a small bit of champagne. During the cake-and-champagne toast, Simmons spit back his first sip of bubbly, later describing it as “bitter mouthwash” and asking “What is the matter” with people who enjoy an occasional drink.
(On last night’s episode on Oct 17, 2011, Gene Simmons admitted that he did not have a problem with his head or his heart but with his sexual desires that have been allowed to get what they want anytime they want it with whomever they desired. ) Gene Simmons and Shannon Tweed Shannon Tweed and […]
“Your disrespect for women, you got a daughter and how old is she? (He responds, “19.”) How many 19 yr olds have you slept with. How about some man like you, some rock star take her, what will you do? Do you want her to be treated like that? (Gene Simmons shakes his head no.) […]
Gene Simmons and Shannon Tweed People Magazine reported: You can’t always believe what you see on reality TV. Case in point: KISS bassist Gene Simmons finally proposed to longtime girlfriend Shannon Tweed. Turns out, the proposal scene in Tuesday night’s finale of A&E’s reality show Gene Simmons Family Jewels was taped “several months ago,” […]
Gene had a lot to deal with this in the opening. Gene had to commit to Shannon that he will be faithful and he did finally get around to making that verbal commitment. 30 years ago Gene should have stepped up and been faithful to Shannon or join the “he-man woman-haters club.” There is no […]
Gene Simmons and Shannon Tweed Gene, 61, and Shannon, 54, have been together for 27 years and have two children, Nicholas, 22, and Sophie, 19. The ‘Rock and Roll All Nite’ hitmaker has previously made his views on marriage very clear, saying in 2007: “The problem with marriage is somebody else has a right to […]
I have known Jerry and Sally Johnson since 1983 and they are some great people. Here is an article in today’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette about them. RIGHT TIME RIGHT PLACE God, Uncle Sam in sync when plotting their future By KIMBERLY DISHONGH SPECIAL TO THE DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE LITTLE ROCK — Jerry Johnson joined the Army hoping for a […]
Some will find this next story hard to believe: Gene Simmons and Shannon Tweed have tied the knot in a lavish Beverly Hills ceremony. The wacky KISS rocker and his girlfriend of 28 years, Shannon Tweed, finally said “I do” Saturday night in front of friends and family at the Beverly Hills Hotel. The happy couple – who have their […]
Gene, 61, and Shannon, 54, have been together for 27 years and have two children, Nicholas, 22, and Sophie, 19. The ‘Rock and Roll All Nite’ hitmaker has previously made his views on marriage very clear, saying in 2007: “I don’t believe man is designed to be married. Marriage means nothing to me. Happiness means […]
Gene Simmons and his son Nick (Refer to end of post for more on Nick and Gene) 28 July 2011 Gene Simmons has proposed to long-term girlfriend Shannon Tweed. The Kiss bassist – who claims to have slept with over 2,000 women and has for a long time vowed never to marry – popped the question […]
Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 6 of 6.
Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools
Transcript:
FRIEDMAN: But I personally think it’s a good thing. But I don’t see that any reason whatsoever why I shouldn’t have been required to pay back that money. Individuals pursuing their separate individual interests also provide public benefits. Of course I think that the public benefited from my getting an education, but the primary beneficiary was me. I was the one who got the benefit from it. I was the one who had the higher income.
COONS: We know you benefited from it.
FRIEDMAN: I know I benefited, I don’t know about the public.
McKENZIE: I’d like others of you to react to the idea of moving from state education at the higher level, which is based upon low fees in state universities, in favor of a loan system. This has been hotly debated in many other countries, too. What’s your own feeling about that?
COONS: Being a tenured professor at a state university I suppose you’ve really put me on the spot. I hope none of my friends are listening. But I tend to agree in general with Milton Friedman that we ought to find a way to open up to all classes, all income classes the kinds of opportunities that the middle class have at my university. And I cannot give you __ we don’t have time to go through all of the kinds of ways in which we would do it, but I would just personally, it seems to me we ought to let people come free at the beginning and pay it back out of their income over their life span, so if they make a lot of money, they pay back a lot of money. Perhaps we can run the whole university in the future on their success, to which we contributed with our teaching. And if they don’t make any money, they don’t pay anything back, and that’s okay too.
FRIEDMAN: And you ought to share in the losses if they don’t.
SHANNON: I can’t think of anything __
COONS: Exactly.
SHANNON: I can’t think of anything that would frighten poor people more than the thought at the end of the four years or six or seven or eight years of higher education, they have this albatross around their neck __
COONS: Only if they’re rich. Only if they become rich.
FRIEDMAN: There’s no albatross __ would you say the same thing about people in this country who start private businesses every year. Many of them lose money. Many of them make money. Would you say that nobody is gonna start a business because he might end up with an albatross? You ought to let people decide that for themselves. What I really want to know is a very different thing. How do you justify taxing the people in Watts, to send the children from Beverly Hills to college? That’s a demagogic statement, but it happens to be empirically a correct statement. How do you justify it?
SHANKER: Well I don’t know how we justify taxing all the people of this country to send the GI’s under the GI Bill, but I’m very grateful that we did it. I don’t know what this country would have done in a postwar period without a huge number of educated people in a whole bunch of fields that opened up after that. I doubt very much that the GI’s would have come back at the age that they were and everything else, and would have decided that now they’re gonna take out loans in order to go to college.
VOICE OFF SCREEN: And a lot of them were poor.
SHANKER: Yes, they were poor, and they went because they had government support to go, and because basically there were a lot of state-supported low-tuition schools, and if you didn’t have the state schools, and if you didn’t have the government support we wouldn’t __ we would have been without those people, and I don’t know what would have happened either to our strength or to our economy.
FRIEDMAN: The history of this country goes back a little bit before 1945. It goes back 200 years. The state schools, universities, were a minor part of the total higher educational system for a long time. That educational system did generate a great many educated and schooled people, a great many people who made great contribution to this country.
SHANKER: What percentage of people went to college before World War II in this country?
FRIEDMAN: The percentage that was going to college was going up and rising. You know __ let me tell you one __ another statistic __ I hate to introduce statistics. But let me tell you one more. Do you know that the percentage of the students at private universities who come from low-income classes is higher than the percentage of students at state universities, at government universities that come from the lowest income families.
SHANKER: Because they are there with government assistance.
FRIEDMAN: Most cases they are there with __
SHANKER: They are there with government assistance which in many cases favors the private as against the public schools.
FRIEDMAN: In most cases they are there with private scholarships that have been contributed by people __
SHANKER: Some of them, some of them, yes.
FRIEDMAN: __ which is all to the good.
McKENZIE: Dr. Anrig on this.
ANRIG: We come back to the point that I tried to make earlier with Dartmouth, the reason the public higher education system developed, the reason that you have the UCLA’s and others is not simple that government went amuck or bureaucrats went that way; but because eight of those students were not getting into Dartmouth, and there was not a place for them. And it was public higher education that opened up its doors to those students. Those are the youngsters that now have an opportunity they wouldn’t have had before. I think on the issue of loans that it’s as with all complex human tasks, it’s not an either/or situation. You need a mix of strategies on the issue of alternatives for youngsters in schools. I think you can have, as indeed you do have, alternatives within public school systems. I think you can have alternatives within schools. I think you can have competition through open enrollment kinds of arrangements. I am fearful, however, always for those eight youngsters than can’t get in to something which is basically selective and exclusive. If you can assure us __
FRIEDMAN: Well, let’s go back __
ANRIG: __ that those eight youngsters all will be provided with equal attention, equal opportunity and equal rights. Then I would begin to be more interested in the alternative.
FRIEDMAN: But I want to suggest to you that we’re not proposing, neither Jack Coons nor I, to dismantle anything. We’re only saying, put up or shut up. Either show that you can produce the kind of education people are willing to go and get, or reduce your size, go out of business. We are only proposing that there be a wider range of alternatives. Now, it is not true __ let me put a different point to you. There are a small minority of people who are problems. Is it desirable to impose a straightjacket on a hundred percent of the people, or ninety percent of the people, in order to provide special assistance or special help to four or five or ten percent of the people? Not at all. I think that there’s a big difference between two kinds of systems. One kind of system in which the great bulk of parents have effective freedom to choose the kind of schools their children go to, whether it’s the lower or the higher level. And there are programs and provisions for a small minority. That’s one kind of a system. That isn’t what we have now. What people in the public school system, people like yourselves do, they do not want to give up the monopoly of the public school system any more than the Post Office want to give up the monopoly of delivering mail.
ANRIG: I think you attribute the monopoly desire to the bureaucrat. And I don’t think that’s right. The concern of the public school is for being sure that every youngster in this country gets access to a public education.
FRIEDMAN: Excuse me. You have had an attempt to introduce voucher experiments around the country. Every one of those attempts, as at Alamrock (phonics) and elsewhere, has been prevented by the opposition of the educational bureaucracy.
ANRIG: Oh, but, no, no, you can’t __ that’s a glittering generality.
FRIEDMAN: That was true in New Hampshire, it was true in Connecticut.
SHANKER: It was not true in Alamrock (phonics) because Alamrock was not what you might call a voucher system, it was a kind of a system of free choice within public schools.
FRIEDMAN: I agree, I agree.
SHANKER: And whether one school did better in its scores, others did worse, and when you measured the whole system when it was all over, the scores were exactly the same as they were before, except that some students had moved to other schools and the grades were better in one school as against another. We do very strongly oppose a voucher system which will end up with public schools being abandoned and thereby destroyed. largely. They will become the schools for those who can’t get in anywhere else, or who are expelled elsewhere.
VOICE OFF SCREEN: So if you had a voucher system __
SHANKER: Because if you compel public schools to educate all children, including the most difficult, and if you have other schools, that have _
FRIEDMAN: It isn’t compelling public schools, it’s compelling parents _
SHANKER: No, no, it’s public schools. The public school cannot say to a parent, “Your child is very difficult. Your child throws things. Your child screams & yells. Your child takes all the attention of the teacher, therefore, get out and go find a private school.” On the other hand, you have hundreds of private schools in this country where when they get a very disturbed child, out that child goes. And where does that child go? The public schools must take him.
FRIEDMAN: But look at __
SHANKER: And that’s what we have. We have one system of schools which cream, and which throw out the most difficult __ you know, it would be like the hospital throwing out all the sick patients and keeping the healthy ones.
McKENZIE: Well, there we leave this week’s discussion. We hope you’ll join us for the next episode of Free to Choose.
Following Tuesday night’s GOP debate in Las Vegas, Rep. Michele Bachmann picked up an endorsement from perhaps the Strip’s biggest star – Mr. Las Vegas himself, Wayne Newton.
During a post-debate interview with Fox’s Greta Van Susteren, Newton, who kept his arm around Bachmann’s shoulder for the entire spot, twice called the Minnesota congresswoman a “beautiful lady” and endorsed her candidacy.
“It looks like you’re on a date,” Van Susteren said of the pair.
“I am an entertainer but first of all, I’m an American and second of all, I’m a Nevadan, and third of all, I will support this beautiful lady as long as she wants to go,” Newton said.
“I watched the entire debate, and I don’t have to tell you how proud I was of this lady because not only did she hold her own, but she kind of stood alone, and I’m not talking about being female,” said Newton, who was in the hall where the debate took place. “I’m talking about the wonderful things and views that she has for America.”
“It’s going to take electing this beautiful lady as president for things to really change because what it means is we have to get everybody back to work and we have to get people back in their homes,” Newton said.
Asked if she’d be cruising the strip looking for additional celebrity endorsements, Bachmann said: “Hey, why not?” she said. “We’ll take support everywhere we can, and it doesn’t get better. This is a picture of America right here. This is like John Wayne, Wayne Newton, so I’m just thrilled.”
Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop were prophetic (jh29) What Ever Happened to the Human Race? I recently heard this Breakpoint Commentary by Chuck Colson and it just reminded me of how prophetic Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop were in the late 1970′s with their book and film series “Whatever happened to the human […]
The LA Times reported: As usual, there was nothing confrontational about Jay Leno’s interview with his political guest, in this case, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.). She was on the West Coast on Friday to speak in Orange County and at the state Republican Convention in L.A. and, who knows? Maybe to schmooze some money from […]
Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 39) This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but […]
Both Oppenneimer and Lizza have attacked Francis Schaeffer’s view, but the way to know his views best is to take time to watch his film series. I said that in my first post and I will continue to show all ten episodes of his film series “How should we then live?” This is a series of posts […]
Outstanding rebuttal by Michele Bachmann to President Obama’s speech of September 8, 2011: Unfortunately, it seems, every time the President speaks, his policies have cost the American people jobs and future prosperity. Tonight the President under the veil of one of the most sacred deliberative forums, a joint session of Congress, delivered another political speech […]
Below are several segments of the October 18, 2011 Republican Presidential Debate and the transcript:
pt 3
pt 4
pt 5
SANTORUM: Mitt, the governor of Massachusetts just is coming forward saying we have to pick up the job left undone by Romneycare, which is doing something about cutting health care costs.
What you did is exactly what Barack Obama did: focused on the wrong problem. Herman always says you’ve got to find the right problem. Well, the right problem is health care costs. What you did with a top-down, government-run program was focus on the problem of health care access. You expanded the pool of insurance without controlling costs. You’ve blown a hole in the budget up there. And you authored in Obamacare, which is going to blow a hole in the budget of this country.
COOPER: Governor Romney, I’m going to give you 30 seconds.
ROMNEY: I’m — I’m sorry, Rick, that you find so much to dislike in my plan, but I’ll tell you, the people in Massachusetts like it by about a 3-1 margin.
And we dealt with a challenge that we had, a lot of people that were expecting government to pay their way. And we said, you know what? If people have the capacity to care for themselves and pay their own way, they should.
Now, I can tell you this, it’s absolutely right that there’s a lot that needs to be done. And I didn’t get the job done in Massachusetts in getting the health care costs down in this country. It’s something I think we have got to do at the national level. I intend to do that.
But one thing is for sure. What Obama has done is imposed on the nation a plan that will not work, that must be repealed. And when it comes to knowledge about health care and how to get our health care system working, I may not be a doctor like this one right over here, but I sure understand how to bring the cost of health care down and how to also make sure that we have a system that works for the American people.
SANTORUM: It didn’t do it. It didn’t do it.
COOPER: Speaker Gingrich, you’ve also been very critical of Mitt Romney’s plan not only on Obamacare, but his plan to lower the capital gains tax only on those earning under $200,000.
GINGRICH: I want to say on health for a minute — OK, let’s just focus. “The Boston Herald” today reported that the state of Massachusetts is fining a local small business $3,000 because their $750-a-month insurance plan is inadequate, according to the bureaucrats in Boston.
Now, there’s a fundamental difference between trying to solve the problems of this country from the top down and trying to create environments in which doctors and patients and families solve the problem from the bottom up.
And candidly, Mitt, your plan ultimately, philosophically, it’s not Obamacare, and that’s not a fair charge. But your plan essentially is one more big government, bureaucratic, high-cost system, which candidly could not have been done by any other state because no other state had a Medicare program as lavish as yours, and no other state got as much money from the federal government under the Bush administration for this experiment. So there’s a lot as big government behind Romneycare. Not as much as Obamacare, but a heck of a lot more than your campaign is admitting.
(APPLAUSE)
COOPER: Governor Romney, 30 seconds.
ROMNEY: Actually, Newt, we got the idea of an individual mandate from you.
GINGRICH: That’s not true. You got it from the Heritage Foundation.
ROMNEY: Yes, we got it from you, and you got it from the Heritage Foundation and from you.
GINGRICH: Wait a second. What you just said is not true. You did not get that from me. You got it from the Heritage Foundation.
ROMNEY: And you never supported them?
GINGRICH: I agree with them, but I’m just saying, what you said to this audience just now plain wasn’t true.
(CROSSTALK)
ROMNEY: OK. Let me ask, have you supported in the past an individual mandate?
GINGRICH: I absolutely did with the Heritage Foundation against Hillarycare.
ROMNEY: You did support an individual mandate?
ROMNEY: Oh, OK. That’s what I’m saying. We got the idea from you and the Heritage Foundation.
GINGRICH: OK. A little broader.
ROMNEY: OK.
BACHMANN: Anderson?
COOPER: He still has time. Let him finish.
ROMNEY: I get a little time here.
Number two, we don’t have a government insurance plan. What we do is rely on private insurers, and people — 93 percent of our people who are already insured, nothing changed. For the people who didn’t have insurance, they get private insurance, not government insurance.
And the best way to make markets work is for people to be able to buy their own products from private enterprises. What we did was right for our state, according to the people in our state. And the great thing about a state solution to a state issue is, if people don’t like it, they could change it.
Now, there are a lot of things.
BACHMANN: Anderson?
COOPER: Congresswoman Bachmann.
BACHMANN: Anderson, I think it has to be stated that Obamacare is so flat-out unpopular, that even the Obama administration chose to reject part of Obamacare last Friday, when they tried to throw out the CLASS Act, which is the long-term care function.
Secretary Sebelius, who is the head of Health and Human Services, reported that the government can’t even afford that part and has to throw it out. And now the administration is arguing with itself.
When even the Obama administration wants to repeal this bill, I think we’re going to win this thing. We’re going to repeal it! And I will!
(APPLAUSE)
COOPER: We’ve got to take a quick break. We will continue this discussion on the other side.
We have a long way to go. We’ll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: And welcome back to the continuing debate. We got a Twitter question. We ended talking about medicine, Obamacare. We actually have a Twitter question about it. It was a question left at CNN debate.
If Obama’s health plan is bad for the U.S., what is the alternative, and how will you implement it?
Congressman Paul, is there any aspect of Obamacare that you would like to keep, whether it’s keeping kids to stay on their parents’ insurance until they’re 26 or no pre-existing conditions?
PAUL: Really not, because he’s just adding on more government. There’s been a lot of discussion about medicine, but it seems to be talking about which kind of government management is best. Our problem is we have too much. We’ve had it for 30, 40 years. We have Medicare. We have prescription drug programs. We have Medicaid.
And what we need — I mean, there’s a pretty good support up here for getting rid of Obamacare, because it’s a Democratic proposal, and we want to opt out. I think we’d all agree on this.
But if you want better competition and better health care, you should allow the American people to opt out of government medicine. And… (APPLAUSE)
And the way to do this is to not de-emphasize the medical savings account, but let people opt out, pay their bills, get back to the doctor-patient relationship. There is inflation worked into it. When a government gets involved in an industry, prices always go up. We have tort laws to deal with. And we need more competition in medicine.
But the most important thing is letting the people have control of their money and getting it out of the hands of the third party. As soon as you go to the government, the lobbyists line up, the drug companies line up, these insurance companies line up. And even with Obamacare, the industries, the corporations get behind it and affect the outcome, and already insurance premiums are going up.
(APPLAUSE)
COOPER: Herman Cain, same question. Is there any aspect of so- called Obamacare that — that you would keep?
CAIN: No. I think we all agree that Obamacare must be repealed because it is a disaster. And the more we learn about it and the more time goes along, the more we see. We’re all in agreement with that.
But here’s where I would start in answering that question. It’s called H.R. 3400. This was introduced back in 2009, but you didn’t hear a lot of talk about it. Instead of government being imposed on — on our system, it imposes — it basically passes market-centered, market-driven, patient-centered sort of reforms to allow association health plans, to allow loser pay laws, to allow insurance products to be sold across state lines, and a whole list of other things. So that’s a great place to start.
It allows the patient and the doctors to make the decisions, not a bureaucrat. I’d start with HR-3400.
(APPLAUSE)
COOPER: Governor Perry, in the last debate, Governor Romney pointed out that Texas has one of the highest rates of uninsured children in the country, over one million kids. You did not get an opportunity to respond to that. What do you say? How do you explain that?
PERRY: Well, we’ve got one of the finest health care systems in the world in Texas. As a matter of fact, the Houston, Texas, Medical Center, there’s more doctors and nurses that go to work there every morning than any other place in America. But the idea that you can’t have access to health care, some of the finest health care in the world — but we have a 1,200-mile border with Mexico, and the fact is we have a huge number of illegals that are coming into this country.
And they’re coming into this country because the federal government has failed to secure that border. But they’re coming here because there is a magnet. And the magnet is called jobs. And those people that hire illegals ought to be penalized.
And Mitt, you lose all of your standing, from my perspective, because you hired illegals in your home and you knew about it for a year. And the idea that you stand here before us and talk about that you’re strong on immigration is on its face the height of hypocrisy.
(LAUGHTER)
COOPER: Governor Romney?
ROMNEY: Rick, I don’t think I’ve ever hired an illegal in my life. And so I’m afraid — I’m looking forward to finding your facts on that, because that just doesn’t –
PERRY: Well, I’ll tell you what the facts are.
ROMNEY: Rick, again — Rick, I’m speaking.
PERRY: You had the — your newspaper — the newspaper –
ROMNEY: I’m speaking. I’m speaking. I’m speaking.
(CROSSTALK)
ROMNEY: You get 30 seconds. This is the way the rules work here, is that I get 60 seconds and then you get 30 second to respond. Right?
Anderson?
PERRY: And they want to hear you say that you knew you had illegals working at your –
ROMNEY: Would you please wait? Are you just going to keep talking?
PERRY: Yes, sir.
ROMNEY: Would you let me finish with what I have to say?
(BOOING)
ROMNEY: Look, Rick –
COOPER: I thought Republicans follow the rules.
ROMNEY: This has been a tough couple of debates for Rick, and I understand that. And so you’re going to get testy.
(APPLAUSE)
ROMNEY: But let’s let — I’ll tell you what, let me take my time, and then you can take your time. All right?
PERRY: Great. Have at it.
ROMNEY: All right.
My time is this, which is I have in my state — when I was governor, I took the action of empowering our state police to enforce immigration laws. When you were governor, you said, I don’t want to build a fence. You put in place a magnet.
You talked about magnets. You put in place a magnet to draw illegals into the state, which was giving $100,000 of tuition credit to illegals that come into this country, and then you have states — the big states of illegal immigrants are California and Florida. Over the last 10 years, they’ve had no increase in illegal immigration.
Texas has had 60 percent increase in illegal immigrants in Texas. If there’s someone who has a record as governor with regards to illegal immigration that doesn’t stand up to muster, it’s you, not me.
(APPLAUSE)
COOPER: Governor Perry, you have 30 seconds.
PERRY: You stood here in front of the American people and did not tell the truth that you had illegals working on your property. And the newspaper came to you and brought it to your attention, and you still, a year later, had those individuals working for you.
The idea that you can sit here and talk about any of us having an immigration issue is beyond me. I’ve got a strong policy. I’ve always been against amnesty. You, on the other hand, were for amnesty.
COOPER: I’ve got 30 seconds, then we’ve got move on to another immigration question.
ROMNEY: OK.
You wrote an op-ed in the newspaper saying you were open to amnesty. That’s number one.
Number two, we hired a lawn company to mow our lawn, and they had illegal immigrants that were working there. And when that was pointed out to us, we let them go. And we went to them and said –
PERRY: A year later?
ROMNEY: You have a problem with allowing someone to finish speaking. And I suggest that if you want to become president of the United States, you have got to let both people speak. So first, let me speak.
(APPLAUSE)
ROMNEY: So we went to the company and we said, look, you can’t have any illegals working on our property. I’m running for office, for Pete’s sake, I can’t have illegals. It turns out that once question, they hired someone who had falsified their documents, had documents, and therefore we fired them. And let me tell you, it is hard in this country as an individual homeowner to know if people who are contractors working at your home, if they have hired people that are illegal. If I’m president, we’ll put in an E-Verify system, which you have opposed –
COOPER: Out of time.
ROMNEY: — to make sure that we can find out who’s here illegally and not, and crack down on people who come here illegally.
COOPER: All right. We’re going to stay on the topic of immigration.
(APPLAUSE)
COOPER: We’re going to stay on the topic of immigration. Everyone is going to get a chance to weigh in.
This is a question that was left at CNNPolitics.com. “As president, will you order completion of the physical border fence along the entire border between the U.S. and Mexico?” That’s from Marilyn L.
Herman Cain, let me start with you. Obviously, over the weekend, you got a lot of headlines by saying you would have an electrified fence. You then later said it was — you then later said it was a joke. And then last night, you said, “It might be electrified. I’m not walking away from that. I just don’t want to offend anyone.”
(LAUGHTER)
So…
(APPLAUSE)
So would you build an entire fence along the entire border, and would you have it be electrified?
(LAUGHTER)
CAIN: Allow me to give a serious answer. Yes, I believe we should secure the border for real, and it would be a combination of a fence, technology, as well as possibly boots on the ground for some of the more dangerous areas. I don’t apologize at all for wanting to protect the American citizens and to protect our agents on the border, no.
(APPLAUSE)
Secondly, the second thing that I would do — see, I believe in let’s solve the whole problem. We must shut the back door so people can come in the front door. Secondly, promote the existing path to citizenship by cleaning up the bureaucracy in Washington, D.C.
Thirdly, enforce the laws — the immigration laws that are already on the books. (APPLAUSE)
And here’s another one of these bold ideas by the non-politician up here. Empower the states to do what the federal government is not doing in terms of enforcing those laws.
(APPLAUSE)
COOPER: Governor Perry, you have — you have the — your state has the longest border with Mexico. Is it possible — to the question — is it possible to build a fence, an — across the entire border?
PERRY: Sure. You can — you can build a fence, but it takes anywhere between 10 and 15 years and $30 billion. There’s a better way, and that’s to build a virtual defense zone, if you will, along that border, which — not unlike what Herman’s talking about, and you can do it with strategic fencing in the obvious places where it matters.
But the way you really stop the activities along that border that are illegal, whether it’s the drug cartels or whether it’s bringing in illegal weapons or whether it’s illegal immigrants that are coming in, is to put boots on the ground.
I will tell you, Herman, you put a lot of boots on the ground. You use Predator drones that are being trained right up here at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada to use that real-time information to give those boots on the ground that information, and they can instantly move to those areas. And that is the way to shut that border down, to secure that border, and really make America safe from individuals, like those Iranians that are using the drug cartels to penetrate this country.
COOPER: Congresswoman Bachmann, do you agree with Governor Perry?
(APPLAUSE)
BACHMANN: Well, I think the person who really has a problem with illegal immigration in the country is President Obama. It’s his uncle and his aunt who are illegal aliens…
(APPLAUSE)
… who’ve been allowed to stay in this country, despite the fact that they’re illegal.
This last Saturday, I was the very first candidate that signed a pledge that said that, by a date certain, I will build a double-walled fence with — with an area of security neutrality in between. I will build that, because this is what we know. This is an economics issue and a jobs issue. Every year…
COOPER: You’re saying you would build a fence along the entire border? BACHMANN: I will build it on the entire border, and I’ll tell you why. Every year, it costs this country $113 billion in the costs that we put out to pay for illegal aliens. It costs the state and local government of that amount $82 billion. For every household of an American citizen, it costs us $1,000 a year. We are robbing the household of Americans who can’t afford that.
I will build the fence. I will enforce English as the official language of the United States government.
(APPLAUSE)
And every — every person who comes into this country will have to agree that they will not receive taxpayer-subsidized benefits of any American citizen…
COOPER: Time.
BACHMANN: Thank you.
COOPER: Governor Perry, does that — can you actually — does that make sense? She says she can build the — the fence along the entire border.
PERRY: As I said, you can build that fence, but by the time that fence gets built…
COOPER: She’s also talking about your taxpayer-subsidized benefits.
PERRY: But my — my point is that, by the time that fence gets built, there is a lot better way than to stand here and to — to play to some group of people somewhere and say, “We’re going to build a fence,” and then wipe our hands of it.
I’ve been dealing with this border for 10 years as the governor. And the reason that we have this issue is because the federal government has failed miserably to defend and secure that border.
BACHMANN: Which is why we build…
(CROSSTALK)
PERRY: You know, for someone that’s been in the United States Congress to — to lecture me on the issues that are going on, on that border is not right. Let me tell you, we’ve had to deal with that issue in the state of Texas. We’ve had to deal with the impact on our state. And I put $400 million on that border of Texas, taxpayers’ money, Texas Ranger recon teams there.
We know how to secure the border. I shared with you earlier how to do it. You put the boots on the ground, the aviation assets in the air, and you secure that border.
COOPER: Governor…
BACHMANN: Anderson, can I respond?
COOPER: He wasn’t talking about you directly.
BACHMANN: No, he did respond.
ROMNEY: Let’s step back. I think it’s important for us as Republicans on this stage to say something which hasn’t been said. And that is I think every single person here loves legal immigration. We respect people who come here legally.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
ROMNEY: And the reason we’re so animated about stopping illegal immigration is there are 4.5 million people who want to come here who are in line legally, we want that to happen in an orderly and legal process.
And in terms of how to secure the border, it’s really not that hard. You have a fence, you have enough Border Patrol agents to oversee the fence, and you turn off the magnets. And that’s employers that hire people who they know are here illegally.
That’s why you have an E-Verify system so they can know that. And, number two, you turn off the magnets like tuition breaks or other breaks that draw people into this country illegally. It is not that hard. We have to have the political will to get the job done.
And, Governor Perry, you say you have got the experience. It’s a bit like saying that, you know, the college coach that has lost 40 games in a row has the experience to go to the NFL.
But the truth is, California — I’ll say it again, California and Florida have both had no increase in illegal immigration and yours is up 60 percent…
COOPER: Time.
ROMNEY: … over the last 10 years.
COOPER: Governor Perry, 30 seconds to respond.
PERRY: Well, the bottom line is that we have a federal government that has failed. There is a clear problem here. And he hit the nail on the head a while ago. He said there was a magnet of people that will hire illegals. And you are number one on that list, sir.
And people need to understand that. You’re one of the problems, Mitt.
COOPER: I think we’ve been down that road.
ROMNEY: Yes…
(CROSSTALK)
ROMNEY: We’ve been down that road sufficiently. It sounds like the audience agrees with me.
COOPER: We are continuing on immigration. We have a question in the audience.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
ROBERT ZAVALA, LAS VEGAS RESIDENT: Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to ask my question. We have 50 million Latinos and not all of us are illegal. What is the message from you guys to our Latino community?
COOPER: Speaker Gingrich? President Obama got I think 67 percent of the Latino vote last time around.
GINGRICH: Look, I think that there’s a very clear message to Americans of all backgrounds. Latinos, Korean-Americans, Vietnamese- Americans, there are hundreds of different groups who come to America.
As Governor Romney said, I think anybody who understands America has to be proud of our record as the country which has been the most open in history to legal immigration.
But the truth is most Latinos in the United States aren’t immigrants. Most Latinos in the United States now have been born in the United States. And the fact is they want virtually exactly what everyone else wants.
They want an economy that is growing. They want a job that has take home pay. They want access to health insurance that they can afford. They want a chance to get educated that is actually useful and worthwhile. They want to be able to know that their family is going to grow up in safety. And they want to have a chance that their country is going to work to give their children and their grandchildren a better future.
I think we have to have the same message for every American of every ethnic background that we want to make America work again. And you’ll know it’s working because you will have a job and you’ll have a chance to take care of your family.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
COOPER: Congressman Paul, there’s some Latino voters who believe that some of these strong anti-immigration laws — anti-illegal immigration laws are actually anti-Latino laws. What do you say to them?
PAUL: Well, I think some people do believe that. I think a fence is symbolic of that. And I can understand why somebody might look at that. But when we approach this immigration problem, we should look at the incentives and that — or the mandates from the federal government saying that you must educate, you must give them free education.
You have to remove these incentives. But I don’t think the answer is a fence whatsoever. But in order to attract Latino votes, I think, you know, too long this country has always put people in groups. They penalize people because they’re in groups, and then they reward people because they’re in groups.
But following up on what Newt was saying, we need a healthy economy, we wouldn’t be talking about this. We need to se everybody as an individual. And to me, seeing everybody as an individual means their liberties are protected as individuals and they’re treated that way and they’re never penalized that way.
So if you have a free and prosperous society, all of a sudden this group mentality melts away. As long as there’s no abuse — one place where there’s still a lot of discrimination in this country is in our court systems. And I think the minorities come up with a short hand in our court system.
COOPER: Herman Cain, the 14th Amendment allows that anybody born in the United States is an American citizen. Should that change?
CAIN: I want to go back and answer this question first, OK? And that is, my message to Latinos, blacks, whites, and all Americans is that we must first start with significantly boosting this economy, which is on life support.
This is why I have put forth a very bold plan, and I’m not afraid to try and sell it to the American people. I’m not afraid to fight for it when I become president of the United States of America. So that’s my message.
If we have this economy growing, people will be able to take care of their families and go after their American dream. And until we boost this economy, all of us are going to suffer for a long time.
COOPER: Then let me ask the question of Governor Perry.
Governor Perry, the 14th Amendment allows anybody. A child of illegal immigrants who is born here is automatically an American citizen. Should that change?
PERRY: Well, let me address Herman’s issue that he just talked about.
COOPER: Actually, I’d rather you answer that question.
PERRY: I understand that. You get to ask the questions, I get to answer like I want to. And Herman talked about –
COOPER: That’s actually a response, that’s not an answer, but go ahead.
PERRY: — the issue of how we get this country back working. And truly, the plan that I laid out last week, where we talk about the energy industry and this treasure trove that we have under this country, and we need to recognize that the administration that we have today is blocking mining that could be going on in the state of Nevada. I talked to Brian Sandoval before I came in here today. You have an administration that is killing jobs because they want to move us to a green energy. You have a secretary of energy who has basically said he wants to see gas prices up close to the European model. The president himself said electricity rates are necessarily going to skyrocket.
That’s what we’ve got to stop. That’s the reason we got to have a president of the United States that understands that if you get Americans working, and it addresses these issues that we have in this country, then the fastest way to do it is open up these federal –
COOPER: Time.
PERRY: — plants, to pull back those regulations, and get America working again.
COOPER: Time.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: To the question on the 14th Amendment, do you support repealing the 14th Amendment?
PERRY: No.
COOPER: No, you do not?
PERRY: I do not.
COOPER: Congresswoman Bachmann, do you support it?
BACHMANN: I think there’s a very real issue with magnets in this country. And I think the issue that you’re referring to is the issue of anchor babies. And that’s an issue that — I was just in Arizona this last weekend, and the state is very concerned, because when someone comes illegally across the border, specifically for the purpose of utilizing American resources for having a baby here, then all of the welfare benefits then attach to that baby.
This is an issue that we don’t have to deal with the Constitution. This is an issue that we can deal with legislatively. And there are a lot of Americans that would like us to deal with this issue of anchor babies legislatively.
(APPLAUSE)
COOPER: Senator Santorum?
SANTORUM: I’d like to address the issue that the gentleman brought up, which is, what are we going to say to the Latino community? And not one person mentioned the issue of family, faith, marriage.
This is a community that is a faith-filled community, that family is at the center of that community. I disagree in some respects with Congressman Paul, who says the country is founded on the individual.
The basic building block of a society is not an individual. It’s the family. That’s the basic unit of society.
(APPLAUSE)
SANTORUM: And the Latino community understands that. They understand the importance of faith and marriage. They understand that bond that builds that solid foundation, and that inculcation of faith and religious freedom. And I think the Latino community knows that’s at stake in this country.
There’s a lot going on right now that’s eroding our religious freedom, that’s eroding the traditional values of marriage and family. And there’s one candidate up here who consistently sounds that theme.
Look, I’m for jobs, too. I have got an economic plan, and I agree with everything that’s been said. But we keep running roughshod over the fact that family in America and faith in America is being crushed by the courts and our government, and someone has stand up and fight for those institutions (ph).
(APPLAUSE)
COOPER: Time.
Congressman Paul, you were referenced directly. Thirty seconds.
PAUL: Well, I would like to explain that rights don’t come in bunches. Rights come as individuals, they come from a God, and they come as each individual has a right to life and liberty.
But I might add about the border control and the Latino vote, is we lack resources there. I think we should have more border guards on it, a more orderly transition, and run it much better. But where are our resources?
You know, we worry more about the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. We need to bring the guard units home and the units back here so we can have more personnel on our border.
(APPLAUSE)
COOPER: We have a question in the audience.
QUESTION: My question for you is, do you support opening the national nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain?
COOPER: Speaker Gingrich, we’ll start with you.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: Sorry, go ahead.
GINGRICH: Look, we — we worked on this when I was speaker. I think that it has to be looked at scientifically. But I think at some point we have to find a safe method of taking care of nuclear waste. And today, because this has been caught up in a political fight, we have small units of nuclear waste all over this country in a way that is vastly more dangerous to the United States than finding a method of keeping it in a very, very deep place that would be able to sustain 10,000 or 20,000 and 30,000 years of geological safety.
COOPER: Is Yucca Mountain that place?
GINGRICH: I’m not a scientist. I mean, Yucca Mountain certainly was picked by the scientific community as one of the safest places in the United States. It has always had very deep opposition here in Nevada. And, frankly…
COOPER: You were for opening it in Congress, right?
GINGRICH: Huh?
COOPER: When you were in the Congress, you were…
(CROSSTALK)
GINGRICH: When I was in Congress, frankly, I worked with the Nevada delegation to make sure that there was time for scientific studies. But we have to find some method of finding a very geologically stable place, and most geologists believe that, in fact, Yucca Mountain is that.
COOPER: Congressman Paul, you oppose this?
PAUL: Yes. Yes, I’ve — I’ve opposed this. We’ve had votes in the Congress. There was a time when I voted with two other individuals, the two congressmen from Nevada. And I approach it from a state’s rights position. What right does 49 states have to punish one state and say, “We’re going to put our garbage in your state”? I think that’s wrong.
But I think it’s very serious. I think it’s very serious. But quite frankly, the government shouldn’t be in the business of subsidizing any form of energy. And nuclear energy, I think, is a good source of energy, but they still get subsidies. Then they assume this responsibility. Then we as politicians and the bureaucrats get involved in this. And then we get involved with which state’s going to get stuck with the garbage.
So I would say, the more the free market handles this and the more you deal with property rights and no subsidies to any form of energy, the easier this problem would be solved.
COOPER: Governor Romney, where do you stand on this?
(APPLAUSE)
ROMNEY: Congressman Paul was right on that.
(APPLAUSE) I don’t always agree with him, but I do on that. The — the idea that 49 states can tell Nevada, “We want to give you our nuclear waste,” doesn’t make a lot of sense. I think the people of Nevada ought to have the final say as to whether they want that, and my guess is that for them to say yes to something like that, someone’s going to have to offer them a pretty good deal, as opposed to having the federal government jam it down their throat.
(APPLAUSE)
And by the way, if — if Nevada says, “Look, we don’t want it,” then let other states make bids and say, hey, look, we’ll take it. Here’s a geological site that we’ve evaluated. Here’s the compensation we want for taking it. We want you electric companies around the country that are using nuclear fuel to compensate us a certain amount per kilowatt hour, a certain amount per ton of this stuff that comes.
Let — let the free market work. And on that basis, the places that are geologically safe, according to science, and where the people say the deal’s a good one will decide where we put this stuff. That’s the right course for America.
(APPLAUSE)
COOPER: Governor Perry?
PERRY: You know, from time to time, Mitt and I don’t agree. But on this one, he’s hit it, the nail, right on the head. And I’ll just add that when you think about France, who gets over 70 percent of their energy from nuclear power, the idea that they deal with this issue, that their glassification, and that the innovation — and, Congressman Paul, you’re correct when it comes to allowing the states to compete with each other. That is the answer to this.
We need to have a — a — a discussion in — in this country about our 10th Amendment and the appropriateness of it, as it’s been eroded by Washington, D.C., for all these many years, whether it’s health care, whether it’s education, or whether it’s dealing with energy. We don’t need to be subsidizing energy in any form or fashion, allow the states to make the decision. And some state out there will see the economic issue, and they will have it in their state.
According to Roby Brock, the DCCC’s man in Little Rock–Clark Hall–looks like he will avail himself of the opportunity created by the Fayetteville Finger situation and challenge Rep. Rick Crawford in AR-01.
The Daily Hatch 