County News Online Blogs

Townhall Finance... Paying the Rates Obama Demands, by Marita Noon
Electricity rates now depend more on public policy and regulatory decisions than on actual costs. Based on a newly released report from Oliver Wyman, a leading global management consulting firm, “There is a growing need to increase electricity prices. These rate increases are largely being driven by environmental, regulatory, and security requirements.” And they are adding to “financial strain at the worst possible moment.” The report, designed to help... read more

Townhall... What Would the Gipper Do, by Cliff May
Back in 1985, Charles Krauthammer, writing in Time magazine, called President Ronald Reagan “the master of the new idea. Among the then-novel notions he was championing: limited government, supply-side economics and developing the technological means to defend America against missile attacks. But it was Reagan’s approach to foreign policy that really caught the young pundit’s eye. In the 40th president’s State of the Union that year, Krauthammer discerned what he dubbed the Reagan Doctrine. .... read more

Townhall... Beyond Thanksgiving by Paul Jacob
Not everything we are taught in school is accurate. In school, as in the papers, when truth and legend vie with each other, too often the legend wins out. Take Thanksgiving. I was taught that it was all about the Pilgrims, and their bounty coming from helpful Squanto and other Indians. Nice story. Great legend. Racial harmony and a big fat turkey, all in one gulp. But the truth is that George Washington declared Thanksgiving as a holiday for reasons arising from.... read more

Townhall Finance... Some Black Friday Data Points, by Jeff Carter
Perusing the published statistics from Black Friday: Online sales were up 20%. America is getting more comfortable with shopping online and having things delivered. Maybe it’s because we are so fat now. 17% of all online shoppers came from mobile devices. Heck, here is even a website devoted to publishing current sales. The brick and mortar stores opened even earlier than ever. Some even on the evening of Thanksgiving. How long before they just stay open 24/7? Even though I think it’s... read more

Townhall Finance... The Broken President, by John Ransom
Being president was always easy for Barack Obama. That is, it was easy up until the time he actually was elected president. Then things got a little tougher. In part, Obama’s troubles stem from the rigidity of his broken ideas. They admit of no compromise. Consequently, he has subsumed his whole personality into an unworkable ideology that was dead outside of academia- and news rooms- until he resurrected it. It’s the idea that a benign government of technocrats and academics can... read more

Townhall... Fannie and Freddie to the Rescue? by Susan Brown
Nov 26, 2011 - I’m not a fan of most television commercials, but in particular, I cannot stand those annoying drug commercials which promise to cure a particular ailment as long as you can live with the potentially fatal side effects. As the saying goes, “Sometimes the remedy is worse than the disease,” and this could not be truer than with this administration’s intervention into companies afflicted with the economic... read more

Cincinnati Enquirer... Guest column: Centralizing tax collections vs. local abuses
I strongly disagree with Andrew Kulesza’s column “Tax collection plan outrage” (Nov. 19) regarding Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s proposal to centralize collection of municipal income taxes. I disagree with Gov. Kasich on most issues, but this proposal is an excellent idea. I have been a CPA in this town for a long, long time, advising clients since 1986 on various financial and tax matters. I believe that this is not an expansion of big government as Mr. Kulesza states, but cutting... read more

Townhall Finance... Not Your Grandfather’s Republican Party; Obama and Romney Nearly the Same
By Mike Shedlock - My lifelong friend and high-school classmate had an wonderful op-ed on iPolitics today. Please consider Not your grandfather’s Republican Party by David Wise. One of the most negative things to have happened to the increasingly dysfunctional political system in the United States has been the transformation of the Republican Party over the last generation into the party of fiscal deficits. At one time, the bastion of balanced budgets and no free lunches, 70%... read more

Townhall Finance... Was it Really a Super Failure? by Bob Beauprez
More than the curious “lead from behind” strategy often preferred by Barack Obama, an apt description of his efforts to steer the Super Committee to an acceptable conclusion would best be described as “in absentia.” Both Republicans and Democrats noted with disappointment the President’s absence in a challenge that was always thought to be difficult at best – even doomed, in the opinion of many experienced... read more

Redstate... Obama Administration and EPA Use Clean Water Act for New Overreach
Prepare To Have That Puddle in Your Back Yard Regulated - by Ben Howe - Monday, November 21st - Just as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has used the Clean Air Act to broaden the scope of their authority way beyond its original intention with rules like MACT and CSAPR, the Clean Water Act is becoming a tool of overreach by the out of control agency. Barack Obama and the EPA’s Lisa Jackson have made it clear through their actions that they will circumvent the legislature... read more

Townhall... The Real Prison Industry, by Jonah Goldberg
I’ve long thought the notion of a prison-industrial complex to be laughable left-wing nonsense peddled by Marxist goofballs and other passengers in the clown car of academic identity politics. For those who don’t know, the phrase “prison-industrial complex,” or PIC, is a play on the military-industrial complex. The theory behind PIC is that there are powerful forces -- capitalist, racist, etc. -- pushing to lock up as many black and brown men as they can to maintain white supremacy and line the... read more

Human Events... Alice in Liberal Land, by Thomas Sowell
11/22/2011 - “Alice in Wonderland” was written by a professor who also wrote a book on symbolic logic. So it is not surprising that Alice encountered not only strange behavior in Wonderland, but also strange and illogical reasoning -- of a sort too often found in the real world, and which a logician would be very much aware of. If Alice could visit the world of liberal rhetoric and assumptions today, she might find... read more

Redstate... The Super Committee Failed The Day It Was Created, by Erick Erickson
Tuesday, November 22nd - The Super Committee has failed to find a way to trim $1.2 trillion from the deficit. The fact is, though, the Super Committee was a failure from the moment it was conceived. Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, could not control itself. So it punted its failures to a Super Committee and even the threat of massive defense cuts could not prompt Congress to kick its spending addiction. Now, some members of Congress are even saying... read more

Redstate... The 2012 Standard: Holding President Obama Accountable, by Chairman Reince Priebus
Monday, November 21st - President Obama did voters a favor. During the 2008 campaign and early in his administration, he laid out the standards by which he should be judged. He made it perfectly clear under what conditions he would deserve re-election. And by his own standard he doesn’t deserve a second term. In February 2009, when employment was at 8.2 percent, he declared, “If I don’t get this done in three years, then this is going to be a one term... read more

Townhall Finance... Pelosi Ridicules Catholic “Conscience Thing”, by Bob Beauprez
Nancy Pelosi frequently likes to remind us that she is a “devout Catholic,” yet she continually finds herself at odds with Catholic doctrine particularly as it relates to innocent human life. The Church has long defended the right for health care providers to refuse to perform abortions or provide contraception devices and procedures as a right of conscience under First Amendment protections. As part of the Democrats... read more

Akron Beacon Journal... Out of pockets
The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services admits responsibility for the errors, overpaying welfare recipients more than 10 years ago. The agency points to administrative miscues, all told costing the state $18 million, plus another $8.4 million in food-stamp overpayments. Now officials have launched an effort to recover the money. How are they doing so? The Columbus Dispatch reported this week that they want the recipients of the overpayments to return the money. The... read more

Redstate... EPA should consider American drivers, not special interests, by Rep. James Sensenbrenner
Decisions about our fuel standards are not inconsequential. They move forward an agenda that rewards some energy sectors while punishing others, and at the same time, moves taxpayer dollars right along with those rules and subsidies. Under the current requirements of the Clean Air Act, the EPA can certify a new fuel for the marketplace as long as it does not increase emissions. As a result, when the ethanol lobby requested the EPA allow a higher concentration of ethanol in gasoline.... read more

Townhall Finance... 85 Call for Kagan Recusal on Obamacare
By Bob Beauprez - The call for Congress to hold hearings on the need for Justice Elena Kagan to recuse herself from the ObamaCare case now on the docket of the Supreme Court has exploded. The number of organizations signing on to a letter to House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith has more than tripled in just 48 hours since our original blog post calling for her to stand aside. Following is a link to the final draft of the letter signed by the leaders of 85 citizens organizations and related other articles.... read more

Put Tax Breaks for Mortgages, Local Taxes on Table, by Michael Barone
Supercommittee members Sen. Pat Toomey and Rep. Jeb Hensarling are taking flak from some conservatives for proposing a deal including increases in “revenues,” and a Washington Post reporter had some fun insinuating that they were backing a tax-rate increase. As this is written, no one knows what the supercommittee will do (or not do), but it’s worth taking a look at what Toomey and Hensarling actually were talking about.... read more

Townhall Finance... Review: A Short History of the Greenback, by Mark Calabria
This short, accessible book about the U.S. dollar by Barry Eichengreen, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, may be one of the most important published this year. Whether the dollar remains king will have a tremendous impact on American businesses, and some will lose, and others will gain. Just as importantly, the relative strength of the buck will help determine the fiscal options available to the U.S. government in the years ahead... read more

Cleveland Plain Dealer... The jobless vote in Ross County, Ohio, predicts the nation’s president
By Thomas Suddes - Feature this: Barack Obama may lose Ohio in 2012 if Republican Gov. John Kasich can’t find “jobs-jobs-jobs” for Ohioans. But if Kasich succeeds, so may Obama. As Brookings Institution scholar William A. Galston recently wrote in a study The Washington Post reported, “Barack Obama’s path to reelection runs through Ohio and the Midwest. . . . And that means taking seriously the concerns of the voters throughout the region who deserted Democrats in droves last year... read more

The Absent-Minded Energy Secretary, by Debra J. Saunders
Nov 20, 2011 - President Barack Obama likes to brag that his energy secretary, Steven Chu, won a Nobel Prize in physics. You would think that means that Chu is a brainiac who makes shrewd decisions and is extremely aware of whatever is happening around him. But as his testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee on Thursday revealed... read more

Townhall... Dear Average American: It’s All Your Fault, by Jonah Goldberg
Nov 18, 2011 - Congratulations, average American! It’s your turn to be blamed for President Obama’s -- andAmerica’s -- problems. This is the biggest honor you’ve won since Time magazine named “you” the Person of the Year. Being the root cause of our dire national predicament puts you in some very august company indeed. You are joining the ranks of George W. Bush, the Japanese tsunami, the Arab Spring, Wall Street fat cats and other luminaries, both living and merely anthropomorphized... read more

From Gov. Kasich... Editorial: Making things, making progress, Cleveland Plain Dealer
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - The aftershocks of the Great Recession aren’t over yet -- far from it, especially with continuing economic turmoil in Europe. But the past few days have brought sharp rays of hope about the prospects for recovery in Greater Cleveland and across the northern tier of Ohio. A new analysis from Team Northeast Ohio found that the 18-county area it serves added nearly 8,000 net jobs during the past year, a boost that helped drop the regional unemployment rate... read more

Townhall... The Fable of the OWS Grasshoppers, by Kathy Fettke
Have you heard the new 2012 version of Aesop’s Fable, The Ant and the Grasshopper? As you may recall, the original version is about an ant that works hard all summer to build its house and gather food for the winter. The grasshopper pokes fun at the hardworking ant, and chooses to dance and play all summer instead. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper, on the other hand, finds itself without food... read more

Townhall Finance... Who Cares About Balanced Budgets, by John Ransom
The Balanced Budget Amendment that was agreed to be presented to Congress as part of the debt ceiling deal late last summer failed of passage in the House gaining 261 votes in favor with 165 opposed. The vote fell 23 votes short of the two-thirds requirement under the constitution to pass out of the House. “The vote Friday ran largely along party lines,” reports the CS Monitor, “with 261 supporters including 25 Democrats and all but four Republicans.” From the National Journal... read more

Townhall Finance... Thanks for the Idiots, by Bill Tatro
I’m very proud to announce that I’ve achieved a special milestone, one hundred candles on my column’s birthday cake. When John Ransom asked me to be a regular contributor for Townhall Finance, I thought that writing one column per week would be a fairly easy task. After all, I’ve been in the media, both radio and television, for over twenty-five years. I’m used to deadlines and being succinct. Give the listener, viewer, and now reader a beginning, middle, and an end. Tell a story that... read more

Human Events... The Accountability Charade, by Michelle Malkin
11/18/2011 - You can’t spell “accountability” without “A,” “C” and “T.” But in Washington, government officials routinely get away with “taking personal responsibility” by mouthing empty words devoid of action. Heads nod in collective agreement that mistakes were made. But heads never roll. The Obama administration has raised this accountability charade to an art form. At a House Energy Committee hearing... read more

Verities & Balderdash: For women… and rednecks, Edited by Bob Robinson
One of the things I like about the Verities & Balderdash is that I can put just about anything I want together in one brief column… and they don’t even have to be related to each other. My first offering is one sent by a CNO reader who is evidently tired of all the “blonde” jokes… watch out, guys, you’re going to need a sense of humor to get through it. The second has been floating around the Internet for years and is for... read more

Townhall Finance... Harry Reid: Regulations Don’t Hurt Economy, By Bob Beauprez
You have to wonder which hole in the sand Harry Reid has his head buried in. Yesterday, in comments on the floor of the Senate, the Democrat Leader said the following: “While it’s proper to guard against and remove onerous regulations, and we need to do that, my Republican friends have yet to produce a single shred of evidence that the regulations they hate so much do the broad economic harms they claim. That’s because there aren’t any.” Reid’s denial is in large part his poor... read more

Townhall Finance... Mr Smith Goes to Washington and Comes Home Rich, By Bill Tatro
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, where is Jimmy Stewart when you really need him? If you remember, the Frank Capra classic features Jimmy Stewart as Jefferson Smith, Boy Scout hero tapped to replace a deceased U.S. Senator. As corruption runs rampant, Smith (Stewart) is assumed to play along with whatever is proposed by the statewide political machine. However, in one of the great Senate filibuster scenes, Smith (Stewart) fights for truth, justice, and the American way... read more

Human Events... Working for Fun Is No Laughs in Market Capitalism, by Michael Barone
11/10/2011 - Some of my friends in the conservative blogosphere have been ridiculing a New Yorker named Joe Therrien. I want to put in a good word for him. Therrien appears in the lead paragraph of a story in The Nation on Occupy Wall Street. He’s an example, writer Richard Kim wants us to know, of the “creative types” ingeniously protesting capitalism. It’s one of those no-violence-or-anti-Semitism-here-just-nifty... read more

Redstate... Senator Coburn: The Agony of a Pragmatic Conservative Amidst Inflexible Liberals
Is more income redistribution the solution? Posted by Daniel Horowitz - Tuesday, November 15th - Senator Tom Coburn released a report, Subsidies of the Rich and Famous, detailing a list of subsidies, transfers, and “tax breaks,” that are paid to individuals with Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) of over $1 million. The report found that millionaires have received at least $9.5 billion in “government payments” since 2003 and $113.7 billion in “tax breaks” since 2006. Accordingly, Coburn concludes... read more

Redstate... A Tale of Two Pipelines, Posted by Steve Maley
Tuesday, November 15th - One of the reasons we’re supposed to be wary of the Keystone XL Pipeline is its alleged threat to the Ogallala Aquifer, the water source for much of the Great Plains. From Wikipedia: The depth of the water below the surface of the land ranges from almost 400 feet (122 m) in parts of the north [e.g., Nebraska - Ed.] to between 100 to 200 feet (30 to 61 m) throughout much of the south. Present-day recharge of the aquifer with fresh water occurs at an... read more

Townhall... How New York Won the War on Crime, by Steve Chapman
One December day in 1984, a man named Bernard Goetz boarded a subway train in Manhattan. Shortly after, he was approached by four young men, all black, who requested money in a manner he took as threatening. Goetz, who had been mugged before, pulled out a pistol and opened fire, wounding all four. Among many New Yorkers and other Americans, Goetz was instantly regarded not as a villain but a hero... read more

Townhall... The USDA-Approved Christmas Tree Cartel, By Paul Jacob
President Barack Obama is not a Muslim; he is not foreign-born; and he’s not taxing Christmas! Glad we cleared that up. The president is, however, taxing Christmas trees. Or, at least, his Department of Agriculture was . . . until the public found out about it. That’s when Matt Lehrich, a White House spokesman, announced, “USDA is going to delay implementation and revisit this action.” Now, like so many other issues, including whether to permit the Keystone XL oil pipeline to be built, a final... read more

Redstate... We Sent ‘Tea Party’ Republicans to Washington for This? by Erick Erickson
Wednesday, November 16th - In the House Republican’s Pledge that I told you was a “Pledge to Nowhere,” you find this language: “tax increases must be prevented” and “We will help the economy by permanently stopping all tax increases”. Got it? The House GOP pledged, also known as a promise, to stop “all tax increases.” It was their promise. According to The Hill, the Republicans are about to give a capital “F” and a capital “U” to the tea party and throw in the towel on their Pledge... read more

Dust in the Wind: Time for the EPA to Go! by Newt Gingrich
The key to eliminating our oppressive regulatory regime is simply to replace the existing bureaucracy rather than try to reform it. The current systems are so entrenched that we need to start over with new organizations and new people. Overbearing bureaucrats are especially prominent at the Environmental Protection Agency. The arrogance, economic ignorance, and dictatorial attitude of the current organization are well... read more

Townhall Finance... Obama’s New Job Plan: Kill 400,000 Jobs Immediately, By John Ransom
The decision by the Obama administration to delay any action on the XL Keystone pipeline until after the election is a fitting development for an administration that has pursued a bankrupt energy policy, a bankrupt jobs policy and is quite literally bankrupting the country with politics thinly veiled as policy. And the beauty for Obama in this latest axe he’s taken to jobs in the USA is that he doesn’t even have consider Congress while he’s swinging it. He can kill close to a half-a-million jobs all on his own. ... read more

Townhall... The Third Party Possibility, By Salena Zito
The only time in modern history that a third-party candidate got more votes than a major-party candidate was in 1912. Nearly 100 years later, Republican John McCain, who lost his own White House bid, suggests voters are angry enough with Washington to do that again. Each generation arrogantly assumes the events of its lifetime are “firsts.” Yet 2012’s election will have nothing over 1912’s electoral drama.... read more

David Axelrod’s Pattern of Sexual Misbehavior, by Ann Coulter
Herman Cain has spent his life living and working all over the country -- Indiana, Georgia, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Washington, D.C. -- but never in Chicago. So it’s curious that all the sexual harassment allegations against Cain emanate from Chicago: home of the Daley machine and Obama consigliere David Axelrod. Suspicions had already fallen on Sheila O’Grady, who is close with David Axelrod and went straight.... read more

Redstate... Dear Herman Cain, Posted by Erick Erickson
Thursday, November 10th - Herman, I owe you a good bit of my present career in radio. You leaving opened the door for me. I still believe you can win the Republican nomination. I still believe you can beat Barack Obama. I still believe you can be one of the most inspiring Presidents since Ronald Reagan. The Herman Cain I know would not and could not do what you are accused of. And I know it is incredibly unfair to ask you, in effect, to prove a negative. How the hell does one prove one... read more

Redstate... The Horserace for November 10, 2011, Posted by Erick Erickson
Thursday, November 10th - There is a difference between being dead and being on life support. Rick Perry is not dead. He has $15 million. He is the Governor of Texas. Donors cannot just ignore him. But he is on life support after last night. It is entirely recoverable. He’s still got something like 2.72 million more debates to suffer through. But wow. How he responds and recovers will tell us more about the man and his potential than his debate performances... read more

Townhall... Fast and Furious Was Not Botched, by Katie Pavlich
Nov 10, 2011 - “Allowing loads of weapons that we knew to be destined for criminals, this was the plan. It was so mandated.” –Special Agent John Dodson ATF Phoenix Field Division. As allegations surrounding Operation Fast and Furious continue to heat up, many major media outlets continue to call the fatal program “botched,” which is a factually incorrect characterization. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines botched... read more

Townhall... Obama Unbound, by Victor Davis Hanson
Nov 10, 2011 - Richard Nixon went to Red China with political impunity. Had a Democrat tried that, he would have been branded a commie appeaser. To this day, liberals cannot conceive that during the two world wars, progressives like Woodrow Wilson, Earl Warren and Franklin Delano Roosevelt trampled on civil liberties in a way unimagined by Dick Cheney. Ronald Reagan signed the most liberal illegal immigration amnesty bill in history, and ran larger yearly deficits than had... read more

Townhall... Waiting out Obama, by Caroline Glick
Nov 09, 2011 - Over the past week, there has been an avalanche of news reports in the Israeli and Western media about the possibility of an imminent Israeli or American strike on Iran’s nuclear installations. These reports were triggered by a report on Iran’s nuclear program set to be published by the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency later this week. According to the media, the IAEA’s report will deal a devastating blow to Iran’s persistent claims that its illegal nuclear program... read more

Investors.com... Look Who’s Singing Along In Karaoke Of Revolution, By Mark Steyn
Posted 11/04/2011 - Way back in 1968, after the riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, Mayor Daley declared his forces were there to “preserve disorder.” I believe that was one of Hizzoner’s famous malapropisms. Forty-three years later Jean Quan, mayor of Oakland, and the Oakland City Council have made “preserving disorder” the official municipal policy. Last Wednesday, the “Occupy Oakland... read more

Fridays with Eric Erickson... Events Change Everything
At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918 the guns of August fell silent across Europe. World War I had concluded. Each year since, European countries have celebrated Remembrance Day and we in this country celebrate Veterans’ Day. Many of the national borders around the world today come from the fall of empires that began with World War I and roughly concluded with World War II. In some cases those border wars and imperial shifts still impact us... read more

Townhall Finance... A Stupid Energy Policy, By Amy Oliver and Michael Sandoval
If lawmakers really cared about consumers, they would ditch expensive renewable energy mandates that require a subsidized market for resources that are not practical on a large scale. It’s a classic case of putting the cart before the horse; policy came before practical application. The Department of Energy (DOE) reports that 24 states and the district of Columbia have renewable energy mandates ranging from Maine’s high of 40 percent to Pennsylvania’s low of 8 percent. Also... read more

AMAC: Q & A with Jedediah... Cain, GOP Debates, 2012 and Moving Forward, By Jedediah Bila
11/01/2011 - What do you make of the Politico story about the sexual harassment allegations against Herman Cain? – Rose D. I’m not a fan of anonymously-sourced columns of that nature. I wasn’t a fan of it when it was done repeatedly to Palin, I’m not a fan of it with respect to Cain, and I wouldn’t be a fan of it with regard to any political figure on the left or right. What I find most interesting is the fact that a media that we... read more

Townhall... Political Cartoon for the Day
From the Editor: Editorial and political cartoons on the “number one conservative news leader,” Townhall.com. Townhall opinions discuss conservative ideals and values and are not necessarily supportive of either of the major political parties. These political humor, jokes, and pictures on current news events in American politics come from the leading satirical political... read more

Redstate... From Insult to Injury: Obama Owes Netanyahu An Apology, Posted by Chairman Reince Priebus
Wednesday, November 9th - Allies are people you work with. Garden pests and leaky faucets are things you “deal with.” President Obama doesn’t seem to know the difference. At the G20 summit last week in France, he let out his true feelings on Israel. And a live mic was there to catch it all. Here’s the exchange between President Obama and French President Sarkozy on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu... read more

Investors.com... Occupy Wall Street Militancy Just Getting Started
Posted 11/04/2011 - Politics: What is the real point of “Occupy Wall Street”? The violence in Oakland offers the first clue. Now with politically connected union bosses and Acorn involved, it might just be worth looking at its links to Democrats. Now that Oakland’s streets have been “redecorated” with shattered glass, cement chunks and burning garbage from the Occupy Wall Street movement, it’s critical to see that these acts are no aberration, but came after calls for force and violence... read more

Human Events... Ohio Voters Reject Gov. Kasich’s ‘Issue 2’ Labor Reform Package
by John Gizzi - 11/09/2011 - The results of what was easily the most-watched contest anywhere in the nation last night were really no surprise. In a statewide referendum that attracted nationwide funding for both sides and coverage from as far away as the London-based Financial Times, Ohio voters resoundingly rejected Republican Gov. John Kasich’s proposed reforms dealing with state employees that were... read more

Townhall... Jobs Created by the Stroke of a Pen, by Bill Tatro
When it comes to jobs, it all comes down to this: For years, we all thought it was small business that was the heart and soul of the U.S. economy. Most people understood that it was the private sector that created the real jobs – sustainable jobs that were the building blocks for people’s lives, and consequently, the foundation for our country’s solid future. Then, along comes Barack Obama, who firmly, and I am ardently convinced, believes the public sector is the real job creator... read more

Human Events... Obama Hot Mike Moment: I’m Fed Up With Netanyahu, by John Hayward
11/08/2011 - The media follows its new “precise rules of conduct.” President Obama has an interesting history with “hot mike” blunders, in which he forgets his microphone is still turned on, and says something he didn’t want the public to hear. The latest incident occurred yesterday at the G20 summit in France, where Obama and French president Nicolas Sarkozy traded gripes about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Ynet News was almost alone among global media in... read more

Townhall... It Can’t Happen Here! By Pat Buchanan
Friday, thousands in Moscow, giving Nazi salutes and carrying placards declaring, “Russia for the Russians!” marched through the city shouting racial slurs against peoples from the Caucasus. In Nigeria, Boko Haram, which is Hausa for “Western education is sacrilege,” massacred 63 people in a terror campaign to bring about sharia law. Seven churches were bombed. Sunday, The New York Times... read more

Townhall... Why We Don’t Have Better Presidential Candidates, by Bill Murchison
The sagacious editorial page of the Wall Street Journal raised this question the other day of a too-little-noticed point concerning the long-running Herman Cain affair. The Journal addressed the much-discussed question of “why we don’t have ‘better candidates.’” Take a guess. “Because no normal person would risk it.” On the nose! No “normal” person, for the privilege of leading the United States of America, would subject himself, I hereby suggest, to... read more

Townhall... 10 Quotes That Tell You How Bad The Occupy Wall Street Movement Has Gotten
By John Hawkins - With a few exceptions, foremost among them the New York Post, the coverage of OWS protests compared to the coverage of tea-party protests is the worst media double standard in recent history. Nothing compares, because nothing else involves this much distortion on both ends of the coverage. It’s not just that most press outlets (like the protesters themselves) look the other way at depravity happening inside Obamaville, it’s that for years they treated the tea-party... read more

Redstate... Ohio Issue 2: Let’s not over-react or fall for media templates
Posted by Kevin Holtsberry - Tuesday, November 8th - Issue 2 in Ohio has failed. Unions poured a gazillion dollars into Ohio and won. Despite having a sense of this outcome for some time it still stings. Believe it or not, a great many felt that these reforms were important steps in bring fiscal and structural sanity to government. The voters clearly did not get that message. The media is going to... read more

Redstate... Democratic National Convention Outsources Charlotte Jobs to Beltway Union Shop,
By Ben Howe
Posted Sunday, November 6th - On Friday, you met John Monteith, a Charlotte, NC print shop executive who was told that he would not be awarded any contracts in conjunction with the upcoming 2012 Democratic National Convention to be held in his town because his shop was not unionized. Given that Charlotte is located in a right-to-work state, this upset John enough that he sought media attention to shine light on what he viewed to be in stark contrast to the stated goals of Mayor Anthony Foxx,... read more

Townhall... What Occupy Wall Street Gets Wrong , By Steve Chapman
If you want to know what motivates the people involved in Occupy Wall Street, you can get a good idea from Think Progress, a left-leaning website. It offers a map of the continental United States labeled, “If U.S. land were divided like U.S. wealth.” In this representation, 1 percent of the people hold title to most of the West and Great Plains area. Nine percent have a swath about the same size stretching from Minnesota south to Oklahoma and east to Maine. The other 90 percent of the population get only a narrow slice along the southern rim. ... read more

Julia Louis-Dreyfus and the Big, Bad Pipeline. Wasn’t she Meathead’s wife on All in the Family?
By Steve Maley
Posted Sunday, November 6th - The habitual self-loathing of the American Left is perhaps its most endearing quality. Most of us remember actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus from her lead role in the late, lamented CBS sitcom Watching Ellie. Now she’s an expert on energy, international economy, and the environment. Click below for a video in which she expresses her opposition to the Keystone XL Pipeline: “Who can stop this mega-stupid mega-pipeline? You can, Mr. President.” ... read more

Investors.com... Income Inequality Rose Most Under President Clinton.
Posted 11/03/2011 - In his weekend radio address, President Obama decried that “over the past three decades, the middle class has lost ground while the wealthiest few have become even wealthier.” Although he was trying to leverage the Occupy Wall Street movement, the income gap has been a longstanding concern of his. During the 2008 campaign, Obama said, “The project of the next president is figuring out how do you create bottom-up economic growth, as opposed to the trickle... read more

Townhall Finance... Too Big to Jail, By Kathy Fettke
During Obama’s election campaign, he won hearts when he declared, “”We cannot only have a plan for Wall Street. We must also help Main Street.” Unfortunately three years later, Main Street Americans are still paying a heavy price for Wall Street’s insatiable greed. Millions are still out of work, facing foreclosure, and/or have lost their hard-earned savings and retirement funds. Even so, not one of the Wall... read more

Townhall Finance... No More Minutes With Andy Rooney, By Jeff Carter
Sorry to hear Andy Rooney passed away. Barely a month past his resignation from 60 Minutes. He was 92. One of the reasons I am involved with building the National World War Two Museum in New Orleans is because of people like Andy Rooney. His generation isn’t getting any younger. The museum should have been built in the 1960’s, when memories were fresher. But, Rooney’s generation came home from the war and went to work. They raised families and built businesses. Few talked about... read more

Townhall Finance... Official: Total Unemployed at 16.2 Percent, By Mike Shedlock
Yahoo!Finance reports Most of the unemployed no longer receive benefits - Early last year, 75 percent were receiving checks. The figure is now 48 percent -- a shift that points to a growing crisis of long-term unemployment. Nearly one-third of America’s 14 million unemployed have had no job for a year or more. Congress is expected to decide by year’s end whether to continue providing emergency unemployment benefits for up to 99 weeks in the hardest-hit states. If the emergency benefits... read more

Daily Events... Fridays with Erick Erickson
Hold on to your wallet. Republicans and Democrats are starting to talk about a bipartisan budget deal from the Super Committee that never should have been empowered. Speaker Boehner is saying there won’t be tax increases, but there will be revenue increases. No one can quite explain how revenue increases if taxes do not increase. One rumor is that they will flatten the tax code, but wipe out so many deductions... read more

New Issue 2 campaign slogans and other missed opportunities in 2011
Editor’s Note: Tired of the rhetoric on Issue 2? Take a deep breath and enjoy a little election “tongue-in-cheek,” courtesy of the Cleveland Plain Dealer... The 2011 election was supposed to provide voters a respite from hardball politics, sandwiched between the contentious midterm election of 2010 and the exhausting presidential campaign of 2012. Thanks to a fight over a new... read more

Redstate... A Moment for Two Deep Breaths, Posted by Leon H. Wolf (Diary)
Thursday, November 3rd - “These are the two natures of man,” she said. “Never forget them, because someday you will be King, and Kings grow to be great and tall – as tall as dragons in their ninth moltings.” “Father isn’t great and tall,” objected Peter. Roland was, in fact, rather short and bowlegged… Sasha smiled. “He is, though. Kings grow invisibly, Peter, and it happens all at once, as soon as they grasp the scepter and the crown is put on their heads . . . Kings grow most awfully... read more

Townhall... GOP Flip-Flopping Over Mitt Romney, By Rachel Alexander
Three years ago, conservative Republicans were falling all over themselves to support Mitt Romney in the Republican primary over John McCain. McCain was considered too moderate, and by the time the Republican primary came around, many conservatives had soured on Mike Huckabee, having heard rumors he was staying in the race as a spoiler purposely to help McCain win. Fast forward to 2011. What has... read more

Townhall Finance... Gov Scott Walker, Grown-Up, Spanks Occupy Chicago Children, By John Ransom
Don’t count me as very sympathetic to Occupy Chicago. They aren’t a symptom of a problem. They are the problem. Not just for Illinois, but for the nation. But finally a grown-up has shown up and slapped around the brats at Occupy Chicago. While the union-led protestors march and chant and clap in unison over their own spilled milk, the rest of us are trying to get the country back to work. Governor Scott Walker chastised union-led Occupy Chicago protestors who interrupted his speech... read more

Investors.com... Education Vs. Bureaucracy
Posted 10/31/2011 - Waste: How can a 375% education spending increase over four decades result in flat-lined reading, math and science scores? Because all that largesse feeds a bureaucratic monster sheltered from competition. According to Neal McCluskey, the associate director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, the education spending much of the American public believes to be a vital investment in the country’s future, actually “gives money to a catatonic heap of warm... read more

Human Events... Cain Catches Flak, but Will It Sink His Candidacy? by Michael Barone
11/03/2011 - Washington was all a-Twitter (literally) Monday over Politico’s story about the sexual harassment charges against Herman Cain -- and about Cain’s serial self-contradictions. Faithful Fox News viewers saw him in the afternoon saying he didn’t know the terms of a settlement reached with the complainants and then saw him tell Greta Van Susteren in the 10 p.m. hour that he did. The Politico story, quoting... read more

Akron Beacon Journal... Confirmation of income inequality, By Michael Douglas
Writing in the spring issue of the journal Democracy, Ezra Klein of the Washington Post noted a recent survey that found most Americans aren’t aware of the deepening income inequality in the country. They believe wealth is distributed far more equally than it actually is. Are they becoming more aware? Look at the expanded Occupy Wall Street movement, even the opposition in Ohio to Issue 2, the referendum on narrowing collective bargaining for public employees, and the answer appears... read more

Columbus Dispatch... Quick response
Local colleges are stepping up to challenge of the shale-gas boom - The shale-gas industry in eastern Ohio and other eastern states is developing at an accelerating pace, so the fact that colleges and universities in the region quickly are adding experts to their staffs and developing programs related to the industry is good news. Efforts already under way are helping connect people to good jobs in the gas industry. Higher-learning institutions will serve their communities even better in the long run... read more

Investors.com... Loudmouth 1% Are Trashing Rights Of 99%, By Thomas Sowell
Posted 10/31/2011 - In various cities across the country, mobs of mostly young, mostly incoherent, often noisy and sometimes violent demonstrators are making themselves a major nuisance. Meanwhile, many in the media are practically gushing over these “protesters,” and giving them the free publicity they crave for themselves and their cause — whatever that is, beyond venting their emotions on television. Members of... read more

Verities & Balderdash... A look at today… and tomorrow, Edited by Bob Robinson
Many, including me, have questioned what the future is going to look like for our descendants. Before we look at two possible options, let’s take a look at how we have resolved the transition from “working-Dad-stay-at-home-Mom” to both parents working to make ends meet (or, of course, to satisfy personal and/or sociological needs)… Working Wives - Mary was married to something of... read more

Akron Beacon Journal... Degrees of borrowing
The prospect of carrying for decades a load of student debt hardly encourages advanced learning. On Wednesday, President Obama took a well-advised step in issuing the “Pay As You Earn” executive order. There are many reasons postsecondary enrollment has increased 22 percent nationwide the past five years. In its recent “Trends in College Pricing” report, the College Board illustrated one of them, noting: “In 2010, the $99,716 median family income for families headed by... read more

Townhall Finance... Obamaland: American Mules Must Eat Certified Weed-Free Hay, By Marita Noon
Nevada has the highest unemployment rate in the country and is one of the worst in foreclosures. “In my district,” Nevada Assemblyman Hansen reports, “one in seventeen houses is in foreclosure. One in eight is vacant. The people are economically desperate. Meanwhile we have an industry that would love to open up mines and create jobs with an average salary of $80,000. Unfortunately we also have a government that takes ten years to permit a mine... read more

Townhall... Occupied with jobs, jobs, jobs, By Paul Jacob
Has the country gone mad? No need to answer; the question is rhetorical. (In other words, I know the answer, too.) According to the Bureau of Labor, 14 million Americans together make up our dismal national unemployment rate of 9.1 percent. That figure doesn’t include the 9.3 million who have uncomfortably settled into part-time work, or the million additional folks who have become discouraged and... read more

Townhall... Fair-Share President, By Mark Baisley
Editor’s Note: If you haven’t read the Declaration of Independence lately (or ever), maybe now is a good time. Baisley closes his column with exactly that. Give it a try… won’t take that long.
I have concluded that the ultimate consideration for those vying for the office of President of the United States is their ideology surrounding the purpose, and therefore the size, of the federal government. ... read more

Canton Repository... Exotic pets: We don’t get it, either
The issue: Ownership of exotic animals in Ohio
Our view: Lax stance on regulation puts animals, neighbors, law enforcement at risk. Is it possible that Gov. John Kasich and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals agree on something? Kasich, asked this week if he wants to ban all Ohioans from owning wild animals, said, “I have a really hard time understanding why somebody ought to have a grizzly bear on their private compound, or lions or Bengal tigers. I just don’t get it.”... read more

Redstate... Ohio Democratic Party Targets Pro-SB5 Businesses
Ohio’s SB5 (collective bargaining reform) goes to a vote on November 8th, pressure is being ramped up in the final week and a half. According to the Columbus Dispatch, unions and their fellow reform opponents have bankrolled the We Are Ohio anti-SB5 campaign to the tune of $19,048,680, dwarfing the pro-reform Building A Better Ohio’s $7.6 million. Democrats and their union cronies have dominated Ohio for decades and the collective bargaining reforms signed into law earlier this year pose a very real threat to their continued base of power.... read more

Townhall... Tax Ethics For Smarties, By Katie Kieffer
I have tax reform guidelines, and they’re not for dummies. My guidelines are for smart people who think rationally. Irrational folks like Warren Buffet may need to eat a bag of Halloween candy before they’re alert enough to understand my conception of ethical taxation. Tax reform is one of the hottest topics in the news. Americans are feverishly debating tax proposals like Cain’s “999” plan, Perry’s... read more

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