Cut the budget.  Cut spending.  Can’t touch entitlements.  Raise taxes.  It’s a combination of higher taxes and spending cuts.

No, it’s not this hard.  Look, Americans are a fundamentally fair minded people.  A people who now largely agree that spending is out of control and our debt situation is critical.  I think Nov 2 clearly sent that message.  People also know that we’re in for some pain.

What gets people’s panties in a wad is when some folks ox gets gored and others don’t.  Cut everything.  No exceptions.  Defense, education, Medicare, Social Security.  Everything 20% to start.  That will get us back to about 2008.

I’ve worked for a few Fortune 50 companies.  When things got tough, the boss said cut everything some percentage.  We bitched and moaned about not being able to do the work but guess what?  We got it done.  And so will the American people.  They’ll suck it up and get it done.

But let’s help a bit.  Let’s give tax anmesty to the estimated $2 TRILLION being held overseas by American companies to avoid the HIGHEST CORPORATE INCOME TAX RATE IN THE DEVELOPED WORLD.  Let’s cut Corporate taxes to a flat 10%.  You’ll not only see American companies come back with jobs but foreign companies coming here to invest in one of the most secure places on earth where the rule of law means something.

Let’s outlaw public employee unions and cut all gov’t salaries by 15%.  No new gov’t hiring for 5 years.  No more defined pension programs for any new gov’t workers at any level (local, state, or fed).  They can have 401K’s like the rest of us.  If gov’t doesn’t have the people to do some things, don’t do them.  Or move excess people from other departments.  I’ll wait at the Post Office for another 15 minutes.  Give states the right to declare bankruptcy. New York, California, and maybe a few others can’t survive without it.

Drill for energy.  Max it out.  We have resources, let’s get at them.  Eliminate the ridiculous red tape it takes to build a nuke plant.  We spend almost a $800 BILLION a year on foreign oil.  Let’s spend it here.

Make all states right to work.

Implement the Fair Tax…which includes repeal of the income tax.  Not both.

Use any unspent stimulus to pay down the deficit.  Same with repaid TARP funds.

Put tariffs on Chinese goods equal to their currency manipulation.

Quit printing money.  Let’s take our lumps and get past it.  We’re just making the eventual consequences worse. Look at GM and Chrysler.  Somebody should just put them out of their misery.  A REAL bankruptcy might have saved them but now they’re run by unions.  Pathetic.

Repeal Obamacare and replace it with something similar to Mitch Daniels plan in Indiana for state workers.  If you don’t know about it, go here: http://www.heartland.org/healthpolicy-news.org/article/27312/Indiana_Government_Workers_Taxpayers_Saving_Big_Through_HSAs.html  It’s worth your time.

That’s a start.  Do it.  Or we’re Greece.

Does anyone believe that some financial reform/regulation isn’t warranted?  Probably not.  Does anyone believe that members of Congress are competent to do it?  Bizarrely enough, yes…chief among them our President, who in his lifetime, has demonstrated competence in only one field, campaigning.

I mean really, Chris Dodd???  Chuck Schumer???  These are guys we’re supposed to trust to write financial reform?  And Obama, a second rate constitutional lawyer?  Tim Geithner, a guy who cheats on his taxes or is so clueless that “he forgot”?  These guys know best?  It defies rationality.

And the track record for this administration.  Cash for Clunkers, a truly stellar cluster ****.  Health care “reform” which anyone with a brain and a calculator can see is a financial disaster.  Flying Air Force One in a low fly-by photo op without warning NYC.  Terrorist trials in NYC.  Closing Guantanamo Bay.  Our new nuclear weapons policy…the revolutionary Obama Doctrine which is essentially bend over and kiss our collective asses goodbye.  Has there been a more incompetent administration since the Carter years?  In history??

We’re expected to believe that this group of Democrats who couldn’t find their own asses in the dark with both hands and a flashlight can write reform for the incredibly complex financial activities on Wall Street.  Oh, and the timing on the Goldman Sachs case is just a coincidence.

Of course, this assumes that Democratic motives are pure.  That they really have the best interests of us citizens in mind.  Not a Freaking chance.  As people read this bill and the sordid details come out, this bill makes what Wall Street did look like a kindergarten prank.  After shafting the GM and Chrysler secured bondholders in favor of the union bloodsuckers, this government wants to use Wall Street as it’s personal playtoy for dispensing favors and punishing political opponents.

Democrats total disregard for unintended consequences was on full display in HC reform (see canceling their own insurance).  I can’t fathom the disasters waiting for all of us if the current Dodd/Schumer idiocy passes.

Excuse me, but ‘fraid so. A reasonable person, after getting hammered in New Jersey, Virginia, and the coup de grace of Massachusetts might be expected to reset their thinking about their policy direction.  Instead, this tone-deaf president makes statements about how the same anger and frustration which swept Brown into office swept him into office…and the only problem is that he hasn’t explained his policies well enough.  He simply cannot conceive that the majority of Americans don’t like his policies. This seems a bit idealogue-ish to me.  While people may have voted for “change we can believe in”, what they got was “change I can’t believe”.  And they don’t like it.

You also claim your not “some kind of socialist”.  Also, false.  Let’s analyze exactly why Republicans didn’t applaud in your SOTU address when you claimed you “cut taxes for 95% of Americans”.  Topline is because they know it’s not true.  According to IRS data from 2007, the most recent data available, slightly less than 50% of Americans pay no income taxes whatsoever. So, explain to me please, exactly how you cut taxes for these folks?  The most obvious answer is you can’t.  So when a check arrives in the mail with a “tax rebate”, what this citizen has received is a welfare check.  This is money which the government has taken from someone more productive and given to someone less productive (or unproductive).  This is absolutely classic socialist redistribution of wealth…and mislabeled as a “tax cut” in Orwellian socialist propaganda style.

Please Mr. Obama, gimme a break.  Give us all a break.

My wife is one of the smartest people I know.  Yet she is a firm believer in AGW.  As my 10 year daugther would say, “Really smart woman say what???!!”  I firmly believe it’s because she doesn’t have the time to pay attention.  She works very hard in senior management at a Fortune 50 southern based company and most of what she reads is mainstream media…notably bereft of even-handed coverage of the debate.

Recently she and I got into a discussion (argument) about the extent of the melting of sea ice.  She quoted to me an article in USAToday about a scientist who claimed the earth doesn’t lie and talked about how all the ice on the planet was melting with the exception of Antartica.  He went on to catalog all the melting going on in the arctic and never again mentioned the antarctic.  He never bothered to cite any specific scientific data or sources.  I printed out an article from Meteorology News (http://www.meteorologynews.com/2009/01/05/global-sea-ice-on-the-rebound/) which contends that not only is sea ice in the arctic recovering, but the Antarctic ice coverage has been growing for the past 30 years.  She pulled up data from NASA which showed the Arctic ice melting.  I showed  her some of the satellite charting from the University of Illinois Cryosphere Today website (http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/) which again illustrated that even while Arctic ice has been melting, it is now recovering and for the past 30 years Antarctic ice has been expanding.  Considering that the Antarctic holds 90% of the worlds ice, I told her I wasn’t too concerned about the goings on in the Arctic.

I felt it counter productive to get into a discussion of the credibility of NASA data given the Climate Gate hoorah as she is only peripherally aware of those events (see above – she’s busy).  So I switched gears.  OK, I said, you have valid data.  I have contradictory valid data.  Does it seem to you as if the science is “settled”?  Her response was intelligent as I would expect from my lovely wife.  If you’re wrong, she said, we’re f—–.  If I’m wrong, no big deal.

Ahhh, finally the point of this post.  The real answers to those two statements are the key.  Her statement that we’re in big trouble if I’m wrong is only true if you assume the most dire consequences from warming, e.g. 20 foot sea level rise, huge increases in hurricanes, droughts in rain forests, loss of most arable land, etc.  However, no credible scientist will contend the worst case scenarios are even remotely likely.  Even the badly flawed modeling warmers use, assign the worst case scenarios a very low probability.  However, if we react irrationally, e.g. cap and trade, regulating C02 as a pollutant, we run a very real risk of shipping hundreds of thousands of jobs to countries without such regulation, spiking energy prices in this country in the midst of a recession, and engendering some pretty catastrophic economic effects on the U.S. population.  Some analysts predict a cost in the trillions which we can hardly afford.

Conversely, if I’m wrong, we’re not screwed climatically (is that a word?).  I mean lets say some of the warming affects occur.  The most likely scenario we’re told is the oceans rise 18″ from a combination of melting ice and expanding water (water expands as it heats).  The warmers warn this will happen by 2100.  That gives us 90 years to adapt and figure out ways to mitigate the problem.  Nathan Myhrvold (ex Microsoft Chief Technology Officer) heads a firm called Intellectual Ventures.  They are essentially an invention and intellectual property company and there is an fascinating discussion of the company and some of their efforts and research in Levitt and Dubner’s SuperFreakonomics.  Essentially, they have devised a viable geoengineering method of cooling the planet, endorsed by some leading environmentalists, at an estimated cost of about $250 million per year globally. This is actually less than Al Gore is spending on his “We” ad campaign to promote the dangers of AGW and orders of magnitude less than the economic impacts of some of the irrational proposals such as Cap and Trade and regulating C02 as a pollutant.

Until the science is indeed “settled”, I’m willing to bet on the ingenuity of the American people.

I am so damn proud of the people of Massachusetts.  While knuckleheads like Olberloony, Madcow and Chrissy wonder what happened to the bizarre reality in which they live, normal Americans can take a moment to relish the victory of Scott Brown over the forces of evil.  Well, maybe not evil, but certainly rank stupidity and arrogance.  The brighter bulbs on the left appear to be getting it.  I mean when you catch a 2 by 4 upside the head, you’d better get it.  Even Obama has now come out said don’t try to ram this thing through before Scott takes his seat.  Political reality is a bitch isn’t it?

But what now?  With the current version of Obamacare apparently DOA shouldn’t the focus shift to getting people back to work?  Yes it should.  A good open debate on the best way to do that would be much appreciated by the majority of Americans.  It would certainly make us feel a little more like our elected officials have a clue.

But I don’t think health care reform should drop off the radar.  Amongst the multitude of things Obama has been wrong about, one of the lonely pearls of truth is that the status quo is unsustainable.  We do need to fix health care in this country by bringing the cost curve down and making insurance more available and affordable to the folks who don’t have it, and who want it.  Letting the Democrats take the lead on Round Two would result in Clusterf**k #2.  Instead, Conservatives should take the initiative and develop a detailed set of proposals which would frame the discussion.  We don’t need a brief comprised of principles.  We need firm proposals which can be evaluated by the American people and be scored by CBO.  We do not need 2000+ page of arcane crap with hidden union power grabs, 100+ bureaucracies, and huge amounts of discretionary power given to unelected bueaucrats in HHS to decide what’s best for us vis a vis health care.

Some basic starting points: 1. Tort reform.  Get real, this has to happen. 2.  Let insurance companies compete across state lines.  3.  Make all insurance companies use the same claim system/paperwork.  It’s idiotic to make providers file different paperwork for every insurance company.  3.  Make all doctors and hospitals publish their pricing for all procedures from physicals to pediatrician office visits…oh, and let’s get those pesky, expensive foot amputations in there too.  Providers can even discount for cash versus insurance reimbursement. 4. Expand HSA’s.  In fact, give everyone a $1500 annual tax credit for their HSA account.  Encourage employers to add to it and allow employees to add to it, pre-tax.  Then, all day to day medical expenses are paid from HSA accounts.  Make people shop and providers compete.  Insurance isn’t to pay for prescriptions or pediatrician office visits.  I mean, come on, Kroger has over 400 common prescriptions for $4.00.  Exceptions could be made for specialty, high cost drugs.  Insurance should be for catastrophic illness…those things which threaten your house or life savings.  After your HSA is used up, insurance kicks in but you still pay say somewhere between 20-50% so you still have the incentive to shop.  At some amount, your catastrophic insurance kicks in and pays the bills.  The details?  Let the bean counters figure it out.  The point is, let competition and market forces work.  It does every time.  I’d bet you’d see a Hotwire or Hotels.com service for medical services in no time if you make pricing available and let people shop.  Bad doctors?  Word will get out and the bad docs will get better or fail.  The best docs and hospitals will probably command a premium.  As they should.  For a good example look at LASIK surgery.  It isn’t paid for by insurance and now you can get it for $199 per eye.  It used to be $5,000 per eye.  Personally, I probably wouldn’t go with the $199 guy, by that’s just me.  Same for cosmetic surgery…you can get bargain procedures for literally anything you want fixed because their is real competition.

Airline tickets, hotels, condos at resorts, electronics…all have had prices driven down due to market forces combined with the internet and and the availability of good pricing information.  You want to bend the cost curve, let the market go to work and keep governments function limited to keeping people coloring inside the lines.  Other than that, the less government involvement, the better.