Archive for the ‘Conservative Heroes’ Category

Artist Jon McNaughton is a man who has a message for America . . .

“Wake Up America!”: Jon McNaughton’s painting on what our national debt is doing to America’s soul . . .

Jon McNaughton explains his “Forgotten Man” Painting . . .

Here Jon McNaughton explains his “One Nation Under God” painting . . .

Here Jon McNaughton explains his “Wake Up America!” painting” . . .

Jon McNaughton is a patriot who is using his great skill as an artist to remind Americans what made our nation great and why America is quickly disappearing as the “land of the free.”

It’s fun to read what liberals like Rachel Maddow have to say about this. To Maddow, conservative are just on another planet.  She really has no clue what patriots like Jon McNaughton are so concerned about. It’s as if conservatives and liberals are different life forms living in different universes, in two completely separate realities. There are just no common frames of reference between the liberal world and the conservative world.

Glenn Beck Comments . . .

For your disaaproval, here was the song . . .

FOX NEWS: Herman Cain takes the lead in the Republican presidential nomination contest as GOP voters continue to deny Mitt Romney clear front-runner status.

A Fox News poll released Wednesday shows support for Cain has quadrupled among GOP primary voters since late August. At that time, he stood at 6 percent. After three September debates, he jumped to 17 percent. And now Cain leads the pack at 24 percent.

While it’s the first time Romney has trailed Cain, it’s the second time he’s been ousted from the lead since July. Romney receives 20 percent — a new low for him but still within the margin of error of 5.5 percent among Republican primary voters. Romney was at 23 percent last month and a high of 26 percent in early August.

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Carville says Perry should do himself and his family a favor and drop out

THE HILL: Democratic strategist James Carville said Mitt Romney is almost certain to win the Republican presidential nomination, and that both Rick Perry and Herman Cain are not serious candidates.

“I don’t think so,” Carville said Thursday on ABC’s “Good Morning America” in response to the idea that anyone other than Romney could get the nomination. “I mean, Rick Perry’s completely blown himself up. There’s zero chance that Herman Cain’s going to be the nominee.”

Carville said the only way Romney won’t become the nominee is if the former Massachusetts governor is unable to win enough delegates to clinch the nomination at the Republican National Convention.

“The only thing that I can see is that Republicans just don’t like him enough, that he can’t accumulate half the delegates as he goes through this,” Carville said. “That these candidates just keep going and becoming such an irritant that he can’t close the deal — but that’s almost impossible to imagine.”

At this point, Carville said, Perry should just drop out of the race.

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Cain’s gaffes and Karl Rove not hurting Cain — who I call “The Black Reagan”

The chattering classes used to be aghast at Reagan’s gaffes too. Remember this: “The bombing [of Moscow] starts in five minutes”

CBS NEWS: CBS News Poll analysis by the CBS News Polling Unit: Sarah Dutton, Jennifer De Pinto, Fred Backus and Anthony Salvanto.

Businessman Herman Cain is now atop the field of Republican White House hopefuls, squeaking past former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in the latest CBS News/New York Times poll.

Cain garnered 25 percent support of Republican primary voters in the poll released on Tuesday, compared to Romney’s 21 percent.

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And here’s how Cain does among Tea Party supporters . . .

This is fantastic news for Cain because Tea Party supporters are the ones most likely to vote in caucuses and primaries. Can’t imagine anyone being real excited about trudging through the snow to vote for Mitt.

Herman Cain is under fire for his confusing answers on abortion.

On CNN’s Piers Morgan show, Cain said “the government shouldn’t be trying to tell people everything to do, especially when it comes to social decisions that they need to make.”

He later issued a statement reiterating his opposition to abortion. But his answers have left many of us scratching our heads, wondering what his position on abortion really is.

I’m a huge fan of Herman Cain.

I believe Herman is pro-life. He has been solidly pro-life in the past. He was endorsed by the Georgia Right to Life Committee when he ran for Senate in the Republican primary in 2004.

Still, let’s face it, he did flub his answer to the Piers Morgan question pretty badly. Almost worse than his meandering, confusing answer is that he did not seem to be familiar with the basic vocabulary and terms that are used in the abortion debate. Tough to fault anyone who will now wonder, in light of this: “How will Cain fare in a debate with Obama?”

In my view, Herman Cain should explain his abortion position this way:

I am 100% pro-life — no ifs, ands, or buts. I believe abortion is the taking of a life of an innocent child. It’s my view that the Roe v Wade case was wrongly decided by the Supreme Court in 1972. That was the ruling that overturned anti-abortion laws in all 50 states. There is no right to an abortion anywhere in the Constitution. So that ruling was clearly wrong, pulled out of thin air by activist liberal justices.

In terms of law and government policy on abortion, what needs to happen is for Roe vs. Wade to be reversed and for this issue to be up to the states to decide. This is not an issue for the federal government. That’s what I meant when I said it’s not up to the government to decide. I meant the FEDERAL government because this should be a state issue.

Remember, the federal government, under our Constitution, is supposed to be a government with specific and enumerated powers. Those powers are spelled out in the Constitution. I am a subscriber to the Tenth Amendment. Unlike most of our political leaders today, I take the Tenth Amendment seriously. If our federal government actually followed the Tenth Amendment, it would not be doing most of the things it’s doing now. Most of the governing and law-making in America is supposed to be handled by the state and local governments.

That’s what federalism is.

As President, I will appoint judges and justices who will follow the Constitution. I will also work to defund Planned Parenthood and stop any and all taxpayer-funding of abortion. I will fight to overturn ObamaCare, which does include taxpayer-funding for abortion.

I will work to create a culture of life in America. I believe we should make adoption much easier in America so that unwanted children will have loving families who will take them in. I will also speak out as President in favor of life and try to show Americans, especially young Americans who find themselves in trouble, why abortion is not the answer.

In an ideal world, I favor a Constitutional amendment to protect life. Actually, in an ideal world we should not even need such a Constitutional amendment because people should know that killing is wrong.  Constitutional amendments, of course, are very difficult to pass, so that would not be my immediate focus. My focus would be steps I could take immediately to save as many lives as possible right now. Ending all taxpayer-funded abortion, ending all funding for Planned Parenthood, and appointing judges who will follow the Constitution — strict constructionist judges — would be priorities #1, #2, and #3 for me.

After that, I think it’s better and most practical to have this issue decided at the state level, which was how this issue was handled for two centuries in America prior to the misguided Roe v Wade ruling by the Supreme Court in 1972.

Cases of homicide, manslaughter, and most crimes are handled at the state and local level, and are not considered federal matters. The issue of abortion should be a state issue as well.”

What do you think of this position, if Cain were to put it this way?

Cain’s poor handling of these kinds of questions is what happens when non-politicians run for President on a big national stage. Ross Perot and Donald Trump were both reduced to looking like babbling idiots because they were not used to answering these kinds of questions.

Cain, Trump, and Perot might be great at business, but running a business is not at all like running for President. These are two totally different ball games. It would be like asking Tiger Woods to compete with Roger Federer in tennis.

What Cain really needs right now is to bring some professional handlers in to help him get his answers straight.  He can no longer wing it, no longer make it up as he goes along.

Mitt Romney is highly seasoned politician. He has an answer for every question. He glides smoothly from issue to issue.  Romney is certainly no conservative, but he is a political pro. Romney is fluent in the language and rhythm of politics.

Herman Cain needs to understand that these are the big leagues now.  Time to bring in some big time campaign pros and get a tighter script. Yes, time to put together a big fat briefing book with well thought out answers to every conceivable question.  And he needs to do this quick.

SOURCE: University of Iowa Hawkeye Poll >>>

RASMUSSEN: Reflecting national trends, businessman Herman Cain has now jumped to the front of the Republican pack in Iowa.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Iowa caucus-goers shows that Cain is in front with 28% followed by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney at 21%. Congressman Ron Paul is a distant third at 10% followed by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at 9%, Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann at 8%, and Texas Governor Rick Perry at 7%. The sixth place finish for Perry is a sharp decline from early September when Perry was the frontrunner both nationally and in Iowa. (To see survey question wording, click here).

Former Senator Rick Santorum picks up 4% of the vote and former Governor Jon Huntsman is at 2%. Another 4% would prefer some other candidate and 8% are not sure.

Only one-third of the caucus-goers (32%) are certain of their vote and don’t expect to change their mind. Among these voters, 30% prefer Cain, 22% Romney, and 17% Paul.

Among those absolutely certain they will show up and participate in the caucus, Cain leads Romney 31% to 18%. Many have criticized the Cain campaign for not having a strong organization in Iowa which is seen as essential to turning out the vote. According to such conventional analysis, Cain might be at risk of raising expectations too high and then underperforming.

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This is the most thorough piece I’ve seen so far on Herman Cain’s 999 plan

AXEL D WHITEMAN: Former Pizza CEO, Ex Radio Host, Tea Party favorite; that’s the introduction one usually hears for current GOP Presidential front runner; Herman Cain. The palpable lack of respect Mr. Cain receives is a constant source of irritation for his supporters, but it is also likely to be the undoing of his detractors.

Not even George Bush was this “Mis-Underestimated.”

Herman Cain’s signature tax reform plan 999 has likewise been called; a pizza price, a catchy phrase, and an inversion of the sign of the beast. And that’s all in one debate. We’ve searched the internet for a serious objective analysis of 999; and quite frankly found none. Several publications have written faux analysis pieces which do NO real critical analysis, but quote from other misinformed sources and draw pre-ordained conclusions.

We make no pretense that we’ve supported Mr. Cain’s Presidency, and have done so since our February analysis of a potential field of 25 GOP hopefuls. We decided on our support for Cain based on our objective review of the strengths and weaknesses of the field, and we link to Cain’s web site as a kind of full disclosure. We do however strive to be objective in analysis, and believe that our “objectivity” is infinitely more sincere than the plethora of supposeedly objective news sources that have written brazenly idiotic analysis of 999 – before proclaiming their prejudicial conclusion that; it’s regressive, it kills service business, it can’t pass, or it’s not revenue nuetral.

In our original 999 analysis; we were skeptical of the claim of revenue nuetrality. When we ran some basic “acid test” calculations, we discovered that it was much closer to “revenue nuetral” than we expected. In our original analysis, we applied the 999 plan as follows:

In that piece we were using mostly 2008 data, and hypothesized that one would have to assume a significant rate of growth to reach revenue neutrality. In general however, we were surprised that these rather low rates could get within 400B of revenue neutrality.

To our surprise, we were contacted by the Cain economic staff, who pointed out that we’d made some critical errors in our assumptions and suggested that we “re-run” our acid test calcs changing our assumptions to more closely match the plan’s intent. The logic of the plan’s authors was to define the base in terms of known % of GDP. We found this to be a valid method, rathor than our method of accumulating reported earning and consumption data. The fundamental difference in our differing results were not however, due to the differing means of calculation, but mostly to the different definition of the “Corporate Tax Base.” More on that later, but bringing our assumptions in line we would see the comparative tax yield as follows:

The Personal Income Tax basis changes largely due to reducing the definition to “payroll wages” rather than the more broad “total personal income.” The Gross Consumer Purchases vary largely because it includes business purchases done at a retail level. For example, an accounting firm buys a computer and printer – rather than just personal consumer spending.

By far, the largest conflicting assumption is in the definition of the “Corporate Tax Base.” There has been significant speculation about how this value is defined, and we will admit that we’ve gone through the available literature, and statements from the campaign, and come to different conclusions at different times. However, with a bit of guidance from the Cain camp, I think we’re on the right track. So lets take a look at the “Business Tax.”

The Corporate Tax Base, is defined as a production tax. Corporations will pay taxes on their gross receipts, less the cost of purchases required to produce the good, or perfrom the service. It would NOT exempt the cost of labor. Many have sited this as a fatal flaw which unduly burdens service entities. That seems to be a legitimate issue, so lets compare some examples. Again using “acid test” numbers:

Example 1. The Manufacturing / Construction Company Model

Let’s assume a manufacturer or contractor wins a contract to build or produce a specific amount product for $100,000.00. The Comparitive Tax impact of the current versus the 999 plan is as follows:

The above analysis indicates that the tax burden in a manufacturing or construction firm would be significantly less than the current system. At least on a product by product basis. The current system would allow further deductions for Depreciation expense, but that would largely be offset by the fact that 999 allows capital purchases to be treated as first year expenses. The current system would also allow for general overhead deductions which would bring the two figures closer. It is however, a positive feature of the 999 plan, that it rewards efficiency by disallowing deduction for bloated overhead costs. (We do understand that if one’s salary comes out of “overhead” one wouldn’t use the term bloated!) All in all though, we would have to conclude that the encouragement for efficiency is a positive.

Example 2. The Service / Janitorial Company Model

Let’s now assume that a company is in a primarily service based industry, in which its primary cost of revenue earned is labor. Many have theorized that 999 is devestating to such firms. Let’s look:

Indeed, it would seem that the tax burden on service industries will go up. Not nearly as much as some have predicted, but we can’t see how this wouldn’t create a slight marginal tax increase for service industries.

So manufacturers get a windfall, and service industries get screwed?

No, not really….

At this point it is necessarry to discuss this tax system in terms of “Impact and Incidence.” That’s the term we used down at the School of Economics when I received my degreee in Economics. It defines the difference of where a tax is levied, and where, or who, is actually paying the tax. One must remember that the price of a good or service in a competitive environment is set by the market. In recognizing this, a manufacturing firm that suddenly found itself with a larger than expected marginal revenue on sales; would tend to lower its price to achieve greater market share and maximize total profit. Competitors would respond in kind, and the eventual cost of the manufactured good would decrease.

Similarly, in the service sector, where contracts for service are largely awarded on a competitive basis, competing service industries would recapture as much of the marginal tax cost as possible and the cost of the service would tend to increase proportionately.

Bottom line, net income to businesses that are currently competing in a fair market scenario, will largely remain unchanged in the long term.

However, those businesses that are tailored around current favorable tax policies by manufacturing Government subsidized products such as wind mills, solar panels, electric cars, and ethanol, would see their taxes rather dramatically increased in the short term. For example, GE would pay around $2 Billion in taxes, rather than $0.00 as it does under our current “progressive” tax system. Perhaps more importantly, GE would be forced to re-channel its investment into productive endeavors that are market supported. These are the endeavors that drive productivity, create wealth, and increase employment – even if they don’t lower the seas or plug the ozone hole.

In conclusion, while much additional detail and accounting practices will have to be hashed out to finalize this “Corporate Tax” we can’t see any significant downside to competitve businesses, and a large potential upside to re-focusing the productive sector of our economy.

Lastly, many have objected to the “Sales Tax” provision; stating that the additional 9% on top of existing sales tax would become a drag on consumption, and would be regressive. To address those particular points, the cost of manufactured goods would tend to decrease, making the “final cost” to consumers less than a pure additive 9%.; and the elimination of the current payroll tax of over 15% combined with the exemption of “used goods” from the 9% tax would seem to more than compensate for the additional sales tax.

More importantly, it seems that the goal of 999 is to define the broadest equitable tax base, and apply the lowest possible rate to fund the Government. This is ultimately what the goal of Public Finance should be. Some have argued that the introduction of a Sales Tax without the elimination of Income Tax just opens the door for greater Government expansion. One must remember though, that part of the goal of the Sales Tax is to capture revene from those who currently survive via the “underground” economy. Without the retail sales tax, there doesn’t seem to be a way of doing that.

To eliminate the income tax entirely, and fund everything with a retail sales tax (Fair Tax) would create a much higher retail sales tax rate, and therefore make the incentive to evade that single point of taxation quite high. That would be the creation of black markets, and yet another underground economy.

Much of the goal of Public Finance, is to create a system that is broad, fair, and predicatble; with rates low enough to make voluntary compliance preferable to evasion. To that extent, it seems 999 represents the LOWEST, and BROADEST, plan of Public Finance yet proposed. It also is illustrative that Government spending is simply too high. Even with this vast and broad tax base, and rates that are in most cases effectively similar to current tax rates (although far more predictable and evenly distributed) there would remain a budget deficit well over $1 Trillion annually.

999 is clearly no “Magic Bullet.” It is would represent a dramatic improvement over current Tax Policy, but at best is “Half a Solution,” as it doesn’t address spending. Undoubtedly, if the plan gains serious consideration, it will be pulled in several directions, and my end up something like 9, 12, 5. Even then, passage will be a steep climb. If nothing else, Mr. Cain has succeeded in refocusing the debate about how we fund Government, and hopefully it will lead to an improvement to the atrocious system under which we now labor.

See more of what Axel has to say here >>>

See also . . .

Reaganomics Architect Art Laffer Calls Herman Cain’s 999 Plan Wonderful >>>

This is why Herman Cain has a great chance to win the Presidency in 2012

Cain sang his ode to pizza to a standing ovation in 1991 at a charitable fundraiser.

The more voters see of Herman Cain, the more they’ll love him.