When I was a teenager back in the 1960's I had a friend whose grandmother lived with his family. She was born in Eastern Europe and genuinely believed in vampires, so much so that she hung garlic bulbs in every window of their house to ward off the evil creatures. When he chided her that it was silly, since there weren't any vampires, she proudly announced, "of course there aren't - the garlic is keeping them away." How do you argue with "logic" like that?

I couldn't help thinking about how much her statement reminded me of the oft-repeated claim by Obama and the Democrats that their failed TRILLION dollar "stimulus" program was actually a success. Because, they say, even though private sector employment has stagnated and no real economic growth has resulted, it "worked" because "the stimulus kept us out of even worse trouble - a depression." In other words, the absence of an economic "vampire" (a depression) is "proof" that the stimulus worked.

This "vampire" politics is nothing new for Democrats - they have used the same argument to justify all sorts of failed initiatives. The massive welfare state that liberal policies have created has been an unmitigated disaster, destroying families, especially in black communities, and creating 2nd and even 3rd generations of people living off the taxpayers. And even after trillions of dollars and over 40 years of welfare, poverty rates have not changed.

So, how do Democrats defend such a system? Easy. "Without it, things would be much worse." The idea that the welfare state might actually be responsible for institutional poverty is never even considered - we are asked to "take it on faith" that the War on Poverty is "keeping the vampires away."

Even something as seemingly unrelated as gun control is defended on the same basis. For example, Illinois is the only state in the country that still does not permit its citizens to carry a gun for self-defense, and the city of Chicago has long maintained even more extreme restrictions on private gun ownership - until the Supreme Court recently overturned a Chicago law, it was illegal to merely own a handgun, even in your own home.

Yet in spite of their Draconian gun laws, Chicago street gangs have no trouble getting guns from the black market - they are armed to the teeth, and are responsible for most of the city's 600 murders each year. But ask the Democrats who run the city to explain why they persist in clinging to their failed policies, and their answer is always, "because without these laws, gun violence would be much worse." Got it?

An especially good example of "vampire economics" is the entire "global warming" scam. Under the rubric of "going Green" we are asked to drastically lower our standard of living, put up with skyrocketing food prices and energy costs, and allow ever more intrusive government control of our lives, all to combat a non-existent (dare I say, "mythical") threat: the "climate change" vampire.

Ironically, it has been the relentless growth of liberal social policies that have created actual "economic vampires" - legions of welfare recipients, corporate parasites like General Electric, government union employees, and an army of Federal bureaucrats, all "sucking the blood" of the private sector tax-payers who ultimately pay the bills.

But as the 2012 election draws ever nearer, "vampire economics" will certainly be part of the campaign strategy of Obama and the Democrats. "Yeah, the stimulus has failed miserably, Obamacare had caused many businesses to put expansion and hiring on hold, and unemployment is unlikely to go below 9% for the foreseeable future, but hey, if we hadn't acted, things would have been much worse."

Oh, and just in case "vampire economics" doesn't persuade you, left-wing Democrat nut-cases like Maxine Waters and Andre Carson of the "Congressional Black Caucus" are already reminding you that if you don't vote for Barak Obama, well then, you're obviously a racist.

Every election cycle, they come out of the woodwork, whining and complaining about every conceivable "flaw" of the current crop of Republican candidates. Mitt Romney is "too slick." Ron Paul is "too old." Rick Perry is "too Texan." You likely have a few friends who claim to be conservatives, but "have a problem with Michelle Bachmann" - perhaps even parroting the media take that she is "too crazy" and thus "won't get the moderate vote."

They even dissect the "imperfections" of people who aren't running - Chris Christie is "too fat" - Marco Rubio is "too inexperienced." And if either of these two non-candidates does decide to run, rest assured that they too will be subjected to even more intense scrutiny and criticism, and not by Democrats, but by their own party.

The problem is that there is a certain segment of Republicans who cannot simply "man up" and get behind the candidate who best represents their views. Instead, they engage in endless agonizing over whether or not a candidate will be able to attract those "swing voters" - the so-called "moderates" or "independents" that have become the Holy Grail of the "strategists" who advise the establishment Republicans.

But do you ever see Democrats do any similar vetting of their candidates? Of course not. On the contrary, they run, and elect, far left wing loons like Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, and Maxine Waters (yes, the same Maxine Waters who ranted, on tape, that the "Tea Party can go straight to hell!"). And Democrats certainly had no hesitation in nominating Barak Obama, perhaps the most radical socialist in the history of the American presidency.

Democrats have no problems running candidates who cheat on their wives, use public money to pay for hookers, and don't pay their taxes. And even after their perfidies are discovered, they don't step down. They run. Again and again. Why not? If they should ever actually be forced from office, they can often get a cushy job at CNN or MSNBC.

After all, one reason Democrats can get away with all sorts or outrageous transgressions (Barney Frank's "roommate" ran a gay brothel out of Frank's condo) is the well documented left-wing bias of the American press. ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC (and their cable affiliate, MSNBC - the worst of the worst) have all but abandoned any pretext of objectivity. As a result, Democrat candidates know that they will never be subjected to the kind of withering attacks from mainstream journalists that any Republican would have to endure.

It is simply a fact that the most vile, even illegal actions by a Democrat will either be ignored altogether or relegated to the "back page" by their friends in the press. Meanwhile, the most innocuous childhood indiscretions of a Republican (or their spouse, and even their children) will immediately be put in the spotlight, and become the subject of endless "panel discussions" on the Sunday morning "news" shows.

You need look no further than the relentless attacks on Sarah Palin for an example. She's no longer even in elected office, nor an announced candidate, but because there is the slightest chance that she might become one, the pack of jackals known as the press corps still hounds her on a daily basis. So obsessed are they with destroying Palin that a "journalist" has gone so far as to take up permanent residence in the house next door to the Palins in Alaska, no doubt hoping to obtain some sort of "gotcha" moment - that is downright creepy.

Unfair? Absolutely. But Republicans need to accept the fact that the press will never give them a fair shake - that's just how it is in today's world. Get over it. And, please stop trying to come up with a suitably bland candidate, in the vain hope that you will avoid "offending" those mythical moderate voters. Such thinking got us John McCain - and we all saw how that turned out.

Ronald Reagan was anything but bland. Yet he won. By a landslide. Twice. Gosh, how did he manage to get all those supposedly "moderate" voters? Simple. First, Reagan spoke out clearly, forcefully, and eloquently in support of unmistakably conservative principles. Second, America is a far more conservative nation than is portrayed in the press - only 19% of Americans describe themselves as "liberal" while more than 40% call themselves "conservative." And third, "moderates" are more often aligned with conservative policies than the Republican elites believe.

Additionally, many of those who engage in "paralysis by analysis" are simply the kind of people who are unable to make a decision. But the country is in crisis. People are out of work. Businesses are hunkering down and not hiring, fearful of what new onerous regulation or taxation will be next. The Obama Administration has run up the national debt to stratospheric levels, and is considering yet another massive "stimulus" plan, while nudging the Fed to print money by the boatload, which will drive inflation even higher in the very near future.

So it is long past the time for all of you hand-wringing "Goldilocks Republicans" to stop agonizing over which candidate is neither too hot, nor too cold, but "just right" to appeal to those "moderate" voters. Instead, ask yourself who best represents the solid, fiscally responsible, conservative policies you would like to see implemented. Then "Butch Up" and support that candidate with your time, your money, and most of all, your commitment.

Because if you don't, you will condemn all of us to four more years of Barak Obama.

And that the nation simply cannot afford.

President Obama's bus tour appears to be falling flat in terms of winning over any converts to his reckless tax-and-spend policies. And no surprise, he continues to blame the current state of the American economy on everyone (and everything) he can think of - except himself, of course.

Just "a run of bad luck" Obama recently opined at a town hall meeting. It was the weather (Japan's tsunami), the "Arab Spring" (which he applauded when it was occurring), European chaos, and on and on. And even two and a half years into his presidency, he's still attempting to blame his predecessor:

"We do have a serious problem in terms of debt and deficit, and much of it I inherited," he said, in spite of the fact that he and his fellow Democrats held the Presidency, the House, and the Senate for the first two years of his administration. With Obamacare and the "stimulus" debacles, Obama and his Democrat majority rammed through more spending and debt than the first 40 American Presidents combined. And we are now hearing rumblings of yet another "stimulus" program.

Thursday's Stock Market drop of more than 500 points was a shock to anyone with an investment portfolio, which includes the majority of Americans. But it may also be a blessing in disguise. It might just serve as a wake up call to those who still do not appreciate the extent of the nation's financial predicament.

Because the unfortunate reality is that in spite of all the discussions of our dangerously soaring debt and out of control spending, a fairly large part of the populace doesn't really comprehend the magnitude of the problem. Some don't even know the difference between "debt" and "deficit" - they use the two words interchangeably. In addition, I talk to people everyday who had no idea that the Federal government borrows 40% of what it spends every month.

But a stock market plunge that wipes out all of the gains over the past year is likely to get the attention of anyone not living in a cave. Whether the crash is a momentary dip or the signal of a longer term trend remains to be seen, but such a dramatic drop surely indicates a lack of confidence in the economic policies of the current administration. Investors know that raising the "debt ceiling" is not the answer. Neither is printing more money - "quantitative easing" as it is called - that merely creates inflation, devaluing everyone's dollars.

Business owners large and small are deeply concerned. Entrepreneurs see no end to the ever-growing mountain of regulations that have strangled our economy for decades. They view Obama and the Democrats as more concerned about Spotted Owls and Snail Darters than they are about the thousands of jobs that have been lost.

The EPA has been a particularly egregious violator of private property rights. It has become a virtual super-legislature, creating laws without having to bother with the pesky business of having our elected representatives actually vote on them. The recent EPA edict that CO2 is now to be considered a "pollutant" is a good example.

Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant - it is an environmental component that is vital to plant growth, and thus essential to all life on earth. But beyond that, when an unelected handful of government bureaucrats can arbitrarily regulate (and in effect, tax) a natural byproduct of virtually all energy consumption, it portends drastically higher energy prices. Which will not only lead to higher costs to heat or cool our homes and businesses, but painfully higher prices for every product we buy.

Then there are the anti-business tax policies that have been the hallmark of the Democratic Party since at least the 1960s - business owners are nervous about what to expect next. Obama has made no secret of his desire to "spread the wealth" - and anyone who owns a business, or is contemplating starting one, is hesitant to invest their money when it may be confiscated by some new tax. So they sit on the sidelines.

Private business is the engine of the American economy. We cannot survive as a nation if we continue to attack businesses with excessive regulations and high taxes. We must repeal the utterly pointless and destructive regulations that do nothing for the public while simultaneously inflating prices. We should reduce, or better yet, eliminate the capital gains tax.

Even more importantly, we simply cannot afford to continue the bloated nanny state that we have become. We can't keep saying "yes" to every demand for a government handout - we don't have the money. We must reduce spending, and drastically. And that means real cuts - not the almost miniscule "reductions in the rate of growth" that the recent "debt ceiling debate" produced.

We should also cut Federal income taxes, especially the top rates that affect small business owners - ideally, states would do the same. Tax cuts are the only proven way to get ourselves on a path that will allow the private sector economy to grow, and eventually pull us out of debt.

So the one silver lining in the Stock Market cloud might be that if stock prices continues to fall, or even merely stagnate, it may send a strong enough signal to both Congress and the American people that it is time to take serious, truly effective action.

Time will tell.

Lost in the argument over whether or not to raise the "debt ceiling" is the real fundamental problem facing the nation, which is that we simply spend too much. We spend more than we take in, then go into debt to pay for it.

Imagine that your annual household income is $50,000, but you spend $60,000, because you just can't bear to say "no" to your children, who want I-Pods, piano lessons, designer clothes, their own car, etc. So you cover the $10,000 deficit by charging it to your credit cards. And since you don't bring in enough money to pay them off, you just make the minimum monthly payments (your "debt service").

Then, each time you reach your card's limit, rather than deciding where you can cut expenditures, you instead raise your "debt limit" either by increasing the credit line on your current cards, or applying for new ones. Or by taking out a second mortgage on your house.

As your household goes deeper and deeper into debt, your monthly payments keep rising. But still you keep spending, even on all those things you don't really need. Obviously, at some point your income will no longer cover even the interest on your credit cards, let alone the truly essential items like food, rent, gasoline, electricity, etc.

That is exactly where the Federal government (and most state governments) is headed today. We have allowed our addiction to ever increasing "entitlements" to run up the bills to the point that we can no longer afford them. The Federal government takes in about $200 Billion a month, but spends over $300 Billion. And how do they make up the difference? They borrow it, thereby running up the country's "credit card bill." Again and again.

And while previous presidents and legislatures (Congress approves ALL spending) were bad, Obama and the Democrat majority he had for the first two years of his presidency took spending off the charts. Contrary to Obama's oft-repeated claim that he "inherited" our problems, "Obamacare" and the failed "stimulus" plans alone added more than $2 Trillion in new spending. As a result, in less than three years, Obama increased America's running debt from $1.5 Billion (under George Bush) to a staggering $4.1 Billion, per day! Total debt is now approaching $16 Trillion, excluding unfunded liabilities (future bills) for Social Security, Medicare, and other programs, which could total $60 Trillion!

But there are two things that government has available to fund its spending binge that the average citizen does not. The first is taxation. You and I can't go up and down our streets, asking our neighbors for donations to fund our continued "deficit spending" mania. But the government can. And government doesn't "ask" for "contributions" from the populace - they take it by force.

After all, when confronted with the choice of either saying "no" to the "children" (all those getting a check from government) or jacking up taxes on those who already pay the majority of taxes, too many bureaucrats, both Democrat and Republican, opt for the latter. And with a majority of Americans now getting some kind of government check, and roughly half of working Americans paying no Federal income tax, raising taxes on "the rich" is seen at the easy way out. It has become the mantra of Democrats, and has been only tepidly resisted by spineless Republicans.

But attempting to cure a spending problem with higher taxes is not only impossible, it makes things worse. Because raising taxes, especially during difficult economic times, depresses growth, often resulting in less revenue to the Treasury. Besides, even when increased tax revenue does flow into Washington, rather than being used to pay down existing debt, the new cash is invariably grabbed up to fund yet one more "absolutely essential" government program. "Revenue" to a politician is like crack to a junkie - they can never get enough.

Beyond the immorality of demanding that a tiny minority of Americans support the rest of us, even if we confiscated ALL OF THE WEALTH of all those people who are already paying 97% of the taxes, it would not even cover Federal spending for one year! And then what would we do to pay the bills next year?

The second, and perhaps even more dangerous method of financing profligate spending is "quantitative easing" - a euphemism for having the Federal Reserve print more money. While Q/E allows politicians to claim that they are "not raising taxes" it hits consumers by devaluing their existing dollars - everything costs more, from food to gasoline.

And the Obama Administration has been authorizing the Fed's printing presses to work overtime, cranking out currency by the truckload. Now, while the recession has blunted the affect temporarily, sooner of later the inflationary bubble will explode, with disastrous results - hyperinflation. Which is why gold and silver prices are soaring - savvy investors see the storm clouds gathering, and precious metals have always been a defense against inflation.

The harsh reality is that "entitlement" spending now consumes 83% of the Federal budget, and similar percentages of most state budgets. Our national debt is now a frightening percentage of the GDP. We cannot continue to spend money we don't have, while mortgaging the future of our children and grandchildren.

We must make spending cuts. Drastic, deep, and permanent cuts. In ALL government programs. Not equally, of course. The primary government services like Defense, Law Enforcement, the Court system, and other operations that are truly vital to the nation's survival, should be cut, but judiciously. Excess layers of management should be removed, and areas of overlapping responsibility eliminated.

Bloated bureaucracies like the EPA, OSHA, the Department of Education, and the almost endless list of "alphabet agencies" that have grown like cancer since the 1960s, should all be either completely eliminated, or have their budgets slashed to a fraction of their current size.

Government employee unions should be eliminated altogether, or at minimum, have their outrageously lavish pension and benefit programs cut back dramatically. Not only have the salaries and benefits of government workers surpassed those in the private sector, it has become almost impossible to get rid of bad workers. A recent study (USA Today) showed that a government worker is more likely to DIE than be fired! Such a situation is simply unsustainable.

Government handouts in the form of welfare, subsidized housing, food stamps, and similar programs should all be cut back, and severely. The modern welfare state has failed. Corruption and fraud is the rule, not the exception. We now have 3rd and 4th generations of Americans who have never worked for a living - they are living off of the taxpayers.

When most Americans are suffering reductions in their own income, not to mention losing their jobs altogether, we can no longer afford to insulate "freeloaders" from any cuts whatsoever. Obama talks about "shared sacrifice" - it's time that the millions of financial parasites feel the pain at least as much as the rest of us.

And finally, entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid cannot be maintained in their current state. Some kinds of restructuring, and yes, cuts, will be necessary. The only thing that remains to be seen is if the legions of "greedy old geezers" have the integrity to finally put the futures of their children and grandchildren ahead of their own.

But whether you are a 20-something starting out in your career, or a "Baby Boomer" about to retire, you need to come to grips with the fact that we must cut spending. If we don't, we will soon find ourselves in financial straights that make Greece's current problems seem tame by comparison.

And raising the "debt ceiling" will do nothing to stop it.

Liberals constantly recite the mantra that "the wealthiest Americans" should pay "their fair share" of taxes, whining about "tax breaks" (which are nothing more than legal deductions) and mythical "loopholes" that prosperous people supposedly use to avoid taxes. But they never talk about the one group of people who enjoy the biggest "tax break" of all - the 51% of working Americans who pay NO FEDERAL INCOME TAX whatsoever (source: IRS). Worse, many of them actually have a "negative tax" burden - meaning instead of paying taxes, they get a check. Talk about "loopholes."

Meanwhile, the higher up you go on the income scale, the heavier your tax burden becomes. Contrary to the media perpetuated myth that "the rich don't pay any taxes" the opposite is true - the top 10% of income earners now pay more than 70% of all income taxes. But even that is not enough for today's Democrats - in their quest to turn America into a European-style socialist state, they want even more. "Fair" indeed.

Our grossly lopsided tax code is all the result of an excessive focus over the last 40 years on cutting tax rates on the lower and middle income groups, while either maintaining or increasing taxes on higher income earners. Democrats are the primary villains in the tactic of pitting one group of Americans against another, demanding "middle class tax cuts" while attacking "tax cuts for the rich," but Republicans are almost as bad - even after their huge victory in 2010, they are still afraid to stand up for the top income earners.

But having fully half of our citizens getting a free ride while the other half pays all the bills is not merely blatantly discriminatory, it is a prescription for political tyranny. Because the real problem is that the half of voters who pay little or no income tax are also the same people who CONSUME the most government services. They are "freeloaders" in the truest sense, and are only too happy to support ever higher taxes on someone else. But as the old saying goes, "When you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can always count on Paul's vote."

Democrats learned this truism a long time ago. States (and cities) with the highest percentages of their populations receiving welfare, food stamps, and other government "assistance" are the ones that have been under Democrat rule for decades. Not surprisingly, they are also the states that are in the most disastrous fiscal condition (see California or Michigan), much of the problem due to the skyrocketing costs of government employee unions. See "14 Cities That Are Being Eaten Alive by Public Sector Workers" at:

http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1852/article_detail.asp

But as long as we persist in a tax structure that "Robs Peter to pay Paul" things will only get worse. We need to dramatically change the way we pay for government.

Ideally, the Federal Income Tax should be completely scrapped, and replaced with a national sales tax. But not a sales tax system like the recently proposed "Fair Tax," which would simply perpetuate the "top loading" of the tax burden by "exempting" the bottom tier of tax payers, via a "rebate" scheme. We need a simple flat sales tax that would apply equally to everyone.

Now, obviously, since higher income earners spend more, even under a national sales tax they would still be paying a disproportionate share of the taxes, but at least everyone would feel the very same "pinch" at the cash register - we would all have "skin in the game." More importantly, under such a system, were a politician to propose "raising the national sales tax" it would be met with an outcry from ALL voters - because they would all be hit in their pocketbooks, not just the wealthy. Unlike today, where it's easy to get support for "raising taxes" when half the people (or more) know that THEY won't be affected.

But even if realpolitik means that we have to stay with an income tax, there is absolutely no way that the current "progressive" tax code is sustainable. The only option with any possibility of dealing with our financial woes is a flat rate tax, with NO exemptions, NO deductions, and applied FROM THE FIRST DOLLAR of income. It is also the only truly fair way to tax income, since everyone would paying the same share of their income.

Now it is true that, just as with a national sales tax, under a flat rate income tax the higher earners would still be paying more than lower income earners, but at least their tax bill would not grow exponentially as their income rises, the way it does today. And here again, should any politician propose a tax increase to fund some massive spending program, everyone would know that they, too, would be subject to the increase, not just "those rich guys." For the first time, people at all income levels would have "skin in the game" - a good thing.

And as we broaden the tax base by putting everyone with income on the tax roles, the rate that all of us would have to pay could be brought down dramatically, some say as low as 10 or 12%. Liberals will doubtless decry it as "tax cuts for the rich," while claiming that the lowest income earners "can't afford" to pay. But one look at the lifestyles of most of the so-called "poor" would make any honest observer sceptical. And in a free society, everyone should pay. Besides, the truly poor, those with little or no declared income, would still pay virtually nothing.

But I would go even further, and put a cap on earnings that are subject to the flat tax rate, say $250,000 - since this is the level that includes the bulk of small business owners who file individual tax returns, the very people who now create the majority of new jobs. You'd pay the flat tax rate on every dollar up to $250,000 - above that, no income tax at all - just like we do with Social Security taxes (FICA). After all, upper income earners don't get any more government services for the extra taxes they pay - on the contrary, their high incomes make them ineligible for most of the programs that the lower income folks utilize.

But more importantly, having small business owners keep more of what they earn would mean more capital for investment and expansion. It could usher in an era of private sector growth and job creation unparalleled in our history. It would encourage existing small businesses to expand, knowing that once they reached that $250K threshold, they would keep every additional dollar they earned. It would also bring in new entrepreneurs, by making it more attractive to start and grow a business. Profit is a wonderful motivator, and as much as Democrats hate to admit it, the best thing you can do for the poor is to cut tax rates on the highest earners, not the lowest - the "poor" don't create jobs.

Ironically, the increased economic activity would also lead to more tax revenue to the Federal Treasury, as more and more people became tax payers, rather than tax consumers - once again, broadening the tax base is good for everyone, even the government.

Naturally, a flat tax proposal will make today's liberal Democrats go ballistic. Because while they have no problem whatsoever using the power of government to impose punitively progressive taxes on the "rich," they recoil in horror at the thought that all those people currently paying nothing would now have to pay at the same rate as the rest of us. And making the income tax "regressive" by capping taxable income as I suggest would make their heads positively explode.

The ugly truth is that today's political Left view "the rich" as little more than golden geese, to be squeezed of every last "egg" in order to fund an ever expanding, and ever more socialist, Federal government. The root of the problem is the liberal view that taxation should be based on "ability to pay" - the "rich" should always pay more. That half the country gets a free ride bothers them not one bit.

That's because while Conservatives see taxation as a matter of equitably spreading the burden of funding the government, liberals instead view the tax code as a means of taking money from one group of people in order to "redistribute" it to another - "spreading the wealth around" as then-candidate Obama told "Joe the Plumber." They seem to forget that IT'S NOT THEIR MONEY - the wealth they want to spread around must first be taken (by force) from someone who created it.

Our current financial crisis is the result of almost 100 years of escalating socialism, with no regard as to how to pay for it. It started with the income tax in 1913, followed by Social Security and the New Deal in the 1930's, then Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" programs and the rise of the modern welfare state. It continued with disasters like Jimmy Carter's "Community Reinvestment Act" which led to the current housing crash, and the numerous "bailouts" of banks, auto companies, and finally, Obamacare and the ill-named "stimulus" bill, all of which have accelerated our inexorable slide into fiscal irresponsibility.

More and more government spending, $4 Trillion of it in Obama's first two years alone, most of it on things the government has no business being involved in at all.

More and more regulations that not only strangle entire industries like oil, coal, and nuclear power, but intrude into every aspect of our private lives, from dictating what kind of light bulbs we have in our kitchens, to what type of toilets we have in our bathrooms.

More and more subsidies and mandates for "green" nonsense like ethanol, which have driven food and energy prices through the roof.

More and more borrowing in order to spend money we simply do not have, raising our national debt to a staggering $14 Trillion - soon to go even higher.

And a tax code that has resulted in an ever shrinking number of our most productive citizens paying the bills, while an ever growing number of people now pay next to nothing.

A regressive income tax? You bet. And the more regressive the better. Because only when we have eliminated "freeloaders" - and everyone has "skin in the game" - will we be able to reign in out-of control spending, and get our fiscal house in order.

The most recent jobless numbers showed an unemployment rate of 9.2% - a really bad number, but the actual number is much worse, somewhere around 15%. The reason for the disparity is that the "official" rate (called "U-3") does not include those who no longer receive unemployment compensation, as well as the millions of "discouraged" workers who have simply given up looking.

You can get a rather lengthy explanation of the survey process at the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

 http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm

Additionally, much of official government reporting of the unemployment rate includes "adjustments" for things like "seasonal" workers, which naturally opens up a whole range of opportunities to "massage" the numbers, especially if pressure from the White House is involved. Some insiders have already suggested that the numbers are being twisted into pretzels in order to keep the official unemployment rate below 10% - at least until after the 2012 election.

But the bottom line is that the real number of unemployed (called "U-6") is always greater than the U-3 number reported by the press. And as the U-3 number grows, the difference between the official number and the actual U-6 number grows exponentially. For example, when the official rate is, say, 4.9%, then the real number is not much greater, something like 6%, because just about anyone who wants a job can find one. But if the base number grows to 7%, the true number is closer to 11%. At an official rate of 10% the spread is more dramatic, with the real number of unemployed being about 18%, perhaps even more.

Thus in states like California or Michigan, where base unemployment rates of 14% or more have been reported, the actual rate is well over 20% - dangerously close to the worst numbers recorded during the depths of the Great Depression. Yes, it really is that bad.

Ironically, government interference like extending unemployment payments only exacerbates the problem - after all, it is essentially nothing more than paying people to not work. And while Obama is banking on getting votes from the unemployed, all the data show that the longer unemployment checks keep coming, the longer most people delay looking for work.

Politicians in general, and Democrats in particular, are fond of talking about what government can do to "create jobs" - but the harsh reality is that government does not, and cannot, create real jobs, meaning private sector jobs. Only businesses can do that. But they need a reason to take the risk of hiring new workers - an environment that is conducive to expansion.

And today, most private businesses are not hiring. Not because they don't want to grow and prosper, but because they are quite simply terrified of the anti-business rhetoric coming from Barak Obama. His relentless attacks on successful corporations, including vilifying anyone who happens to fly on a corporate jet, betray Obama's deep-seated hatred of the very free market capitalist system that he is sworn to defend.

From major corporations to "mom-and-pop" operations like "Joe the Plumber" the fear is that, in a worst case scenario where Democrats regain control of Congress in 2012 and Obama gets reelected, it would mean a second wave of reckless and inflationary "stimulus" programs, combined with huge tax increases on both individuals and corporations. They know full well that this would destroy an already fragile economy. So one could hardly blame business owners for their "wait and see" attitude.

And it need not be so. History and common sense will tell anyone with a rudimentary understanding of business and economics what needs to be done:

Cut Federal tax RATES on businesses and individuals, especially on the top income earners (who just happen to be the very small business owners who actually can create jobs). Reducing tax rates promotes growth and expansion, not only creating jobs, but also yielding more tax REVENUE to the government. Conversely, raising tax rates, especially on those "wealthiest Americans" that Obama and the Democrats continue to demonize, has the opposite effect - it depresses economic activity, forces businesses to lay off yet more workers, and ends up bringing in LESS tax revenue.

Cut local taxes. Local property taxes, supposedly based on the value of the home or business, have remained high, in spite of the fact that home values have plummeted. Most "education funding" comes from property taxes, and reckless spending is pushing homeowners to the breaking point. Taxpayers who are faced with soaring food and gas prices cannot be expected to continue funding lavish pensions and benefits for already overpaid government union teachers.

Cut regulations. Many industries spend more than 40% of their revenue just conforming to needless, and often destructive, regulatory paperwork. In the average hospital, for instance, nurses now spend more time filling out government forms than they do taking care of patients. Medical facilities also have to hire additional administrative and computer personnel just to keep up with the reports. While some minimal regulations may be required in certain circumstances, the mountain of Federal, State, and local regulations on the books today would sink the state of Florida, and very few of them are genuinely necessary - they only increase the size and scope (and the cost) of government.

Cut government spending. Really cut it. Severely. Obama alone has increased government spending by almost $4TRILLION dollars, in just two years. And let's not stop at Federal spending - we need to slash state and local budgets as well. The real reason we are where we are today is the reckless, out-of-control spending by government officials at all levels. Government bureaucrats  are as addicted writing those government checks as the government-dependent parasites who cash them are. And neither of these groups will go to rehab voluntarily. They will have to be dragged to the bargaining table, kicking and screaming.

But unless we get serious about cutting taxes and slashing government spending, the economy will continue to flounder, and the unemployment rate may get even worse, or perhaps even more ominously, stay at current levels for the foreseeable future. And that will ultimately lead to disaster.

When I first heard the story of the man killed by a female grizzly bear in Yellowstone Park this week, a question immediately popped into my head: was the man armed? After all, hiking in bear country without a gun is more than naive, it borders on suicidal. These are wild animals, not placid pets in some open-air zoo.

When hiking or camping in areas frequented by large, carnivorous animals, savvy outdoor enthusiasts nearly always have a gun. And they carry serious hardware, not the relatively anemic pistols used to defend against mere human predators - they know that a 9 millimeter Glock would likely only anger an 800 pound brown bear.

When I camped in Yellowstone some years ago I kept a Ruger Redhawk 44 Magnum close at hand. In Alaska, most people don't go out to their own mailbox, let alone go for a hike in the wilderness, without a large caliber firearm. Experienced Alaskan guides often carry a 12 gauge shotgun loaded with magnum slugs.

But this was Yellowstone after all - a national park. The very word "park" has a reassuring ring to it, and besides, most people who visit any facility run by the Federal government tend to trust that it will be safe. The media reporting of such events is no help either. Press reports contribute to a false sense of security by invariably downplaying the risk, claiming that such instances are "very rare," often even obliquely blaming the human victims:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43661957/ns/us_news-environment/?GT1=43001

Now, it is certainly true that we shouldn't blame the bears - these are wild animals, after all, doing what they have been doing for thousands, even millions, of years. One cannot "reason" with a grizzly bear, especially one protecting their young.

The real responsibility for such occurrences between people and animals rests primarily with a culture that has become so insulated from the harsh realities of the natural world that otherwise intelligent people seem to have lost any semblance of common sense. They act as if they believe that wild animals are just like they're portrayed in the "The Lion King" animated movie - all those lovable critters living in peaceful harmony. Kumbaya.

"Nature" shows aren't much better. On a typical National Geographic program, for instance, you will often see some guy standing barely twenty yards from a huge Black Rhino or a Cape Buffalo, whispering his excited commentary for the audience, with seemingly no regard for his personal safety. What you will not see is the man positioned discreetly behind the camera crew, with his 460 Weatherby Magnum big game rifle aimed directly at the animal, ready to do what is necessary should the beast suddenly decide to charge.

You didn't really think that the Discovery Channel would send out highly paid cameramen and crews with no protection at all, did you? But reality must take a back seat to fantasy - can't risk offending those more "sensitive" viewers by letting them catch a glimpse of a gun. So once again, the naked truth is camouflaged and sanitized, preventing the public from seeing nature as the genuinely dangerous place that it is, and what is required to deal with it.

Famous big game hunter and writer Robert Ruark was once asked, "Mr. Ruark, what's the secret to surviving in Africa?" In the terse style that was his trademark, he gave his now legendary reply:

"Bring enough gun."
 
Unfortunately, public policy is seldom created by people with Ruark's wisdom and experience. One example is that, for many years, firearms were prohibited in parks like Yellowstone. The affect of such "politically correct" thinking is that the average park patron concludes that a gun must not be unnecessary. As a result, far too many people place themselves in dangerous situations without having any effective means of dealing with what should be a thoroughly predictable risk. And more than a few of them have been horribly mauled, and even killed.

Naturally, when advising people of steps they might take to protect themselves from bear attack, the "experts" recommend every tactic imaginable. Everything that is, except carrying a gun. Seems they just can't bring themselves to even mention the one thing that could actually make a difference in a worst case scenario:

http://travel.usatoday.com/destinations/dispatches/post/2011/07/yellowstone-death-puts-bear-attacks-in-focus/175962/1

When Timothy Treadwell, the "Grizzly Man," was killed in 2003 by a starving bear in Alaska, it was portrayed as a "tragedy"  by the press. But Amie Huguenard, his girlfriend who was helping him on his research, was also killed - literally eaten alive by the same bear. But this was not a tragedy - it was an example of abject stupidity. It also illustrated Treadwell's flagrant disregard for the safety of the young woman who had placed her trust in him. 

If Timothy Treadwell wanted to risk his own life by going unarmed in the presence of massive, powerful, wild animals, that was his prerogative. But when that young woman signed on to be his assistant, he had an obligation to do whatever was necessary to protect her life. And "bear spray" doesn't cut it - in Alaska, protection means a gun. A really big gun.

Because like it or not, in the real world, it is not just every individual's right to protect themselves and their loved ones - it is their responsibility. Whether hiking in the wilderness, or simply walking around the lake in some urban public park, expecting "the government" to keep you safe is not merely foolish - it is downright stupid.

Both the Federal government and most state governments face the same problem - how to keep from going broke. And contrary to the propaganda from the big-government-loving liberal Democrats and their media mouthpieces, the situation is not complicated - we spend too much. Way too much.

And we're not spending it on law enforcement, the military, nor even on infrastructure improvement, all of which are legitimate tasks of government. Today, more than TWO THIRDS of the Federal budget, and similar portions of State budgets are for "social services" which are nothing more than "transfer payments" - taking money from one group of people to give it to another.

At the individual level, it can take the form of cash payments or "free" services like food stamps, housing subsidies, welfare, etc. At the corporate level, subsidizing such things as Ethanol, wind farms, and other "green" nonsense constitute an outrageous waste of taxpayer money, not to mention causing numerous negative side affects - like higher food and energy prices.

The borrowing-spending binge began in the 1930's with FDR, and has been growing worse ever since, regardless of who was in the White House. But we simply cannot afford it any longer. We must get our financial house in order. And no matter how you run the numbers, that means we need to cut spending, and drastically. There is no way around it.

Democrats, of course, react to spending cuts like vampires who have just seen a cross. Because cutting spending is simply incompatible with their mission in life, which is to make as many Americans as possible dependent on government. Which in turn buys them votes from of all the people getting a government check, not to mention all the union government workers who manage those programs - and who coincidentally vote 90% for Democrats.

So with predictable monotony, the Democrats, whether at the state level or in the Congress, propose dealing with the deficits by, you guessed it, raising taxes. But not on everyone, of course, just on those "rich" people that they seem to hate so much. Yet almost half of Americans pay no taxes whatsoever, while those "evil rich" carry the overwhelming tax burden. Even the IRS admits that the top 10% of wage earners already pay 70% of all the income taxes collected.

But no matter. Even President Obama, in his latest press conference, trotted out the same tired old class warfare rhetoric, attempting to caste America's choice as between "tax breaks for those who fly around in corporate jets" and "paying for our kids' college" - despite the fact that one has nothing to do with the other.

Besides, the rich pay for their private jets out of their own money - Obama flies in a $300 million aircraft paid for, in large part, by the enormous taxes paid by those very same corporate executives Democrats want to tax even more. But in their world, neo-socialists like Obama believe that if we would just raise taxes on those successful people, everything will somehow magically work out.

Here in Minnesota, Democrat Governor, Mark Dayton has adamantly refused to accept a balanced budget proposal from the Republican controlled legislature, in spite of the fact that it includes a $2 BILLION increase in spending. But Dayton wants even more, mostly for new social welfare programs, and he also wants to "pay for it" with a tax increase, once again on "the rich" - which according to liberals are taxpayers making $150,000 or more in taxable income ($250,000 for married couples), which includes thousands of small businesses, the very people who create jobs.

Minnesota's high taxes have already driven hundreds of companies, large and small, from the state - Delta Airlines just announced moving 700 jobs from Minneapolis to Atlanta. And now Dayton wants to make the business environment here even more unattractive, by making Minnesota the highest taxed state in the nation.

Dayton is even willing to force the government to shut down to get his way - many have said that was his plan all along. It's a great political ploy, because Dayton knows that his allies in the ultra-liberal local media will help him blame the Republicans for the halt in government services - they are already spinning the narrative to absolve Dayton of any responsibility. And a quick survey of people on the street shows that it's working - most don't even know that Republicans submitted a balanced budget to the governor, or that it contains NONE of the "cuts" that Dayton claims.

Meanwhile, the press has also been remarkably silent on the fact that Dayton's own massive wealth (he is heir to the Dayton-Hudson fortune) is sitting in trusts, apparently located in South Dakota, the Cayman Islands, and other safe havens, protected from any of the taxes the Governor imposes on the rest of us. Like most "limousine liberals" Dayton believes in two sets of rules - one for him, and one for the rest of us.

Make no mistake, while the growth of the socialist nanny-state has been overwhelmingly the result of liberal Democrat majorities in the legislatures over the last 70 years, Republicans cannot hide from their own responsibility. Time and again, Republicans have been elected to reign in the spending by out-of-control Democrats, only to cave in at the last minute, especially when "sacred cows" like education or Social Security are involved.

Now, anyone who owns a business, or just runs a household for that matter, knows full well that while you have only limited control of your income, you have much more ability to regulate your spending. If a business has a downturn in revenue, they compensate by spending less. If the main breadwinner in the household suffers a cutback in pay, or if one of the income earners loses their job altogether, the family has to decide what is essential, and what needs to be cut, and then live within their means.

But there is one fundamental difference. Private businesses and families are managing their own money - government bureaucrats are spending someone else's money. If you are in the top half of tax payers who are paying all the bills, you already understand this. Unfortunately, as pointed out, too many people pay no income taxes at all, and thus don't care if taxes are raised on the other guy. Or they simply don't understand why a tax increase on anyone affects everyone, not just the rich.

Because sadly, any conversation with the average American shows that a disturbing percentage of the public has no understanding of economic realities, nor the cause and effect relationship between taxes and growth - cutting taxes spurs economic growth, while raising taxes retards it. They have been so dumbed-down by the mainstream media that they continue to walk into the voting booth and vote for the very same Democrats whose policies have adversely affected them, from higher gas prices to the housing crash. They are simply clueless.

Think that's an exaggeration? Consider this: a recent poll indicated that more than 60% of voters still do not believe that the floundering economy was Obama's fault. Think about that. In just the first two years of his presidency alone, Barak Obama and a Democrat controlled Congress rammed through a staggering $2 TRILLION in new spending, much of it to create yet more government jobs, with concurrent increases in the national debt to over $14 TRILLION.

Yet a majority of voters still give Obama a pass.

But unless and until majority of the American people understand that we cannot tax our way to prosperity, and that private sector economic growth is the key to solving our deficits and our debt, we will continue to fall deeper and deeper into a financial pit. "Entitlements" like Social Security and Medicare cannot continue to grow unchecked.

Regardless of the pain that will most certainly accompany any real spending reform, at some point the bloated government gravy train must be brought to a halt. If it isn't, then economic disaster, with the ominous specter of social chaos, is virtually inevitable.

When Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed by Mexican drug cartel members using weapons that, under the ATF's "Fast and Furious" program, were allowed to be smuggled into Mexico, it didn't just anger American law enforcement. It also threw a monkey wrench into a carefully planned operation whose real purpose was to enable President Obama to justify major new restrictions on American citizens who want to buy and own guns.

For those unfamiliar with the program, "Fast and Furious" (dubbed "Gun Walker" because it allowed guns to "walk into Mexico" unchallenged) had ATF agents essentially work with cooperating gun stores, recording the serial numbers of guns that were sold to "straw purchasers" who then illegally transferred them to Mexican gang members. The most controversial aspect of the program was that ATF agents were directed NOT to arrest the illegal buyers, but merely track where the guns went.

In their defense, many of the field agents vehemently protested to their commanding officers, who told them in no uncertain terms that they were to "stand down" and let the buyers go on their way. In one case, they described how a 22-year old woman driving a beat up old car was allowed to walk out the door after having paid $10,000 cash for a dozen or more military style rifles. Where they went is anyone's guess.

The alleged purpose of this insane program was to allow American and Mexican law enforcement officials to track where the guns came from and where they went, in order to facilitate identifying and prosecuting members of the drug cartels. But since the likely recipients of these weapons would already be guilty of a whole laundry list of offenses under Mexican law, from drug dealing to murder, such a claim is simply a canard. The real reason behind "Fast and Furious" can be found in the Democrats' almost obsessive hatred of guns.

For decades, the far left wing of the Democratic Party, which includes Obama and most of his Administration, has never given up on their war against American private gun ownership. They genuinely despise the 2nd Amendment, and are always trying to come up with new and devious ways to make owning a gun in America ever more complicated, expensive, and difficult. But they keep their anti-gun scheming behind closed doors - they have learned the hard way that gun control is a loser at the ballot box.

Because when it comes to guns, Americans don't trust Democrats. Note that when Democrats took over the Congress in 2007, gun sales soared. And since Obama's inauguration, Americans have scrambled to buy guns in record numbers - sales jumped more than 40% in the first year of his presidency alone, and have continued at rates well above historical averages, although things quieted down somewhat after the Democrats were thrashed in the 2010 election. The Obama Administration knew that they had to find a new way to justify restrictions on American gun owners, preferably without having to deal with the legislature.

Enter the "Fast and Furious" program, a plan that would let a bunch of weapons cross the border into Mexico, knowing full well that eventually, some of those guns would be bound to turn up in criminal hands there, perhaps being used in violent confrontations between gangs, or even in shoot-outs with Mexican law enforcement. With the levels of drug and gang violence in Mexico, it was a good bet.

Then, after a number of the tracked guns were used in criminal acts, the plan was that Mexico would make a very loud and vigorous "protest" to the U.S. government, demanding that "something be done" about all those American guns that are "flooding into Mexico" - giving Obama a talking point in order to ratchet up U.S. gun control, while providing Mexican officials with a convenient scapegoat for their own inability to stop the carnage. Both the American and the Mexican administrations win.

Which brings us to the essence of the strategy behind "Fast and Furious." Once the "gun problem" involved relations between two sovereign nations, it would then no longer be merely a domestic matter, it would be an international "crisis" -  a matter of foreign policy. And in case you forgot your high school civics, foreign policy is the sole province of the Executive Branch, in other words, the President.

Which means Barak Obama would have had a whole range of options previously unavailable in his war on guns.

The president could push through an international agreement with Mexico, which would naturally involve "measures to control the flow of illegal guns" - like closing down gun shows, for example. He could also sign on to an even broader "small arms" treaty like the one the U.N. has had simmering on the back burner for several years. Or, he could simply issue a series of  Executive Orders - one can only imagine what sort of "emergency measures" that Obama and his equally anti-gun Attorney General Eric Holder might produce.

But then Agent Terry was killed, placing both the ATF and the Obama Administration in an embarrassing predicament, exposing the fact that the United States government was "holding the door open" for gun runners, who had now killed an American, enraging civilians and law enforcement alike. That was not in the plan.

Things got even worse when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata was shot while sitting in his car in Mexico. As it turned out, guns from the "Fast and Furious" program were not used in Zapata's shooting. But it didn't matter, because the program had already attracted the kind of intense scrutiny that neither Obama nor Holder wanted.

Naturally, the Administration, including Obama himself, has denied any knowledge of the "Fast and Furious" program, and Attorney General Eric Holder has basically been mum. And no doubt there will be hearings and investigations, after which one or more in the upper levels of the ATF will dutifully "fall on their swords" - and the Obama-friendly media will echo the feigned outrage of the administration.

But one would have to be terminally naive, or simply clueless, to actually believe that an operation of this magnitude, especially one that involved allowing guns to illegally flow into a foreign country, could have been created, let alone implemented, without the direct involvement and approval of both the Attorney General's office and the White House. That Obama and Holder weren't even aware of it is simply inconceivable.

Thus we are left with only one inescapable conclusion, and that is that the President of the United States and his Attorney General Eric Holder were complicit in an attempt to fabricate an international crisis in order to advance their anti-gun agenda, and in doing so, have facilitated the deaths of an untold number of innocent victims. Which also means that, in a very real sense, Agent Brian Terry's blood is on their hands.

The ignorance and misunderstanding displayed by Barak Obama when it comes to the private sector is nothing short of astonishing. Time and again, he has demonstrated his inability to comprehend even basic economic realities. Even more disturbing, from Obamacare to his failed "stimulus" program, he has also shown utter contempt for the free market.

One reason for this is that, like most liberals, Obama sees a private business as a social welfare vehicle, whose primary reason for existing is to "provide jobs" to people. The idea that a business is a commercial enterprise, created and managed to make a profit for its owners, is completely foreign to liberals like Obama. To them, a business has a "social responsibility" - the same kind of thinking that produced the Community Reinvestment Act, which forced banks to lend money to people who would normally never be able to qualify. The entirely predictable result was the housing bubble, as many of those "sub prime borrowers" defaulted, sending housing prices tumbling.

Obama himself recently lamented that so many business owners today are having the audacity to "do what is best for their companies" instead of doing what he wants them to do - i.e. recklessly hiring more workers in the middle of a recession. Now there's a shocking revelation - companies look out for their own best interest. Imagine that. Naturally, Obama also has no clue that one of the biggest reasons that so many companies are reluctant to hire is their uncertainty over what kind of anti-business policies he and his Democrat colleagues are going to come up with next.

In spite of the abject failure of his quasi-Keynesian approach to get the economy back on track, he still just doesn't get it. That is because Obama's view of government as the solution to every conceivable problem in life is so entrenched in his thinking that he cannot extricate himself from it. Which is why his horribly misguided ideas like the $800 Billion dollar "stimulus" package come as no surprise. And why there are now rumblings of yet another round of spending, using money we don't have.

Adding to his own ignorance of economics and the free market, Barak Obama's cabinet has fewer members with actual private sector business experience than any president in U.S. history. Instead, he has surrounded himself with the same kinds of left-wing academics and lawyers that made up his circle of friends throughout his life. The results of such "group think" are predictable - more of the same socialist policies that have left us owning more than $14 TRILLION dollars, most of it to the Chinese.

Predictably, government interference in private markets, other than to prosecute things like outright fraud, is invariably detrimental to everyone involved - except, of course, to the legions of new government workers such policies produce. But Obama, like most liberals, sees more and bigger government as the solution to every problem in every area of life. So don't look for any flash of economic insight to suddenly halt Obama's headlong rush to destroy the American free enterprise system.

In fact, Obama made almost back to back gaffes that showed him to be either incredibly out of touch with the American people, or just plain clueless. On Monday at, ironically, his Jobs and Competitiveness Council meeting in North Carolina, Obama crassly made light of the lack of jobs created by his "stimulus" program, saying "shovel ready is not as shovel ready as we expected" - his sycophants in the media chuckled. I wonder if the 18% of Americans who are out of work (the REAL number) thought Obama's remark was funny.

Then, only one day later, on the June 14 edition of the Today Show, he tried to blame unemployment on, of all things, technological progress - he cited ATM's as one of the reasons that so many people are out of work. Apparently, Obama believes that if we brought back manual elevators, happy days would soon be here again.

I was (proudly) attacked by none other than the New York Times for referring to Barak Obama as our "Trainee President" - but after more than two and a half years even a trainee would be expected to show some signs of improvement. Not our President. Even when confronted by the cold hard facts that his programs have failed miserably, his abject refusal to change course shows that he clearly has learned nothing.

It is becoming blatantly obvious to any rational person that our only hope as a nation is to make sure that Obama and his Democrat majority in the Senate are replaced in 2012. Failing that, America's "best days" may no longer be ahead of us.

In what is almost a cliche, yet another Democrat gets caught with his pants down (in Congressman Anthony Weiner's case, literally), yet stubbornly refuses to step down from his political position. But why would he? Weiner is a Democrat, and for decades, no matter how badly Democrats misbehave, they have invariably kept their jobs.

Absolutely nothing happened to Democrat Barney Frank when it was discovered that his gay roommate was running a prostitution ring out of Frank's house. There was little more than a yawn, and Frank is still in Congress. In spite of serious ethics issues, Democrat Charlie Rangel still has his job. Tim Geithner "forgot" to pay his income taxes, yet continued in his job as, ironically, Obama's Treasury Secretary. And the list goes on.
 
Now, contrast the fates of "teflon" Democrats with what happened to another New York Congressman who found himself in a situation almost identical to that of Congressman Weiner. In 2010, Congressman Chris Lee was embarrassed by revelations that he sent a picture of himself without a shirt to a young woman. Not in his underwear. Not naked. Just without a shirt. Ho hum, right? Aaaah, but Chris Lee was a Republican, so of course it was a "major scandal" which ultimately resulted in Lee's resignation, paving the way for a Democrat victory in his former 26th Congressional District seat.

So don't hold your breath waiting for Weiner to resign on his own. While far more trivial transgressions by a Republican will be "big news" in all the major press outlets, Democrats know that the overwhelmingly liberal talking heads at the major networks will always do everything possible to ensure that any scandal involving a Democrat dies as quickly as possible. Unless some new, more damaging evidence is discovered that the Democratic leadership simply can't ignore, then "Weinergate" will be allowed to quietly fade away.

The sorry truth is that today's media view protecting Democrats and their liberal viewpoint simply as part of their job. They are no longer even subtle about it. When a Democrat does something illegal, immoral, or just unethical, the press will often go beyond sweeping the story under the rug, including attacking the people who dared to expose the scandal with far more vigor than they bring to covering the suspected miscreant. Even in the unusual case where a Democrat does finally have to step down, the media practically leaps to their aid - when disgraced former New York Governor Elliot Spitzer had to resign over his escapades with prostitutes, CNN gave him his own show!

Now, if the additional revelations, including new photos, that are now surfacing turn out to be as damning as they sound, Congressman Weiner may in fact be forced to resign at some point - Nancy Pelosi has indicated that an "ethics investigation" may be in the offing. But the larger point is that the double standard that exists in politics today needs to end. Scandal is scandal - the party affiliation of the offenders should not matter.

In a perfect world, any man (or woman) caught in a situation like Weiner's would not wait to be forced out - their sense of shame would lead them to "do the honorable thing" and resign. But as long as we have Democrats like Weiner who seem to have no capacity for shame, and who are aided and abetted by a complicit media, we will continue to see Democrats "get a pass" when it comes to malfeasance in office.

If it weren't such a serious matter, listening to all the media types expressing "surprise" at the "unexpected" bad economic news would be almost laughable. Because none of what is happening is unexpected to anyone with a basic understanding of economics. Whenever government interferes with the private sector, the result is almost always ultimately disastrous.

Take food prices. The main drivers of the increase in food prices are:

Ethanol - by subsidizing the production of corn for fuel instead of food, corn prices have more than doubled. And since corn, and corn based products like corn starch and corn syrup, are used in so many of the food items Americans consume, the affect has been to drive up prices at the store. Beef and pork, which depend on corn feed for production have been hit especially hard - beef prices in particular have more than doubled in just two years.

"Quantitative Easing" - Government doublespeak for "the Fed printing money by the truckload," which has the inevitable result that every dollar you have in your pocket is worth less, forcing you to pay more dollars for the same product you bought last month or last year. This is nothing more than a "stealth tax" which hits the poor the hardest.

Rising fuel costs - most of the American food supply is ultimately delivered by truck, so it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the cost of getting food to the grocery store is going to be passed on to the consumer. And the primary reasons for rising fuel costs are the government's stubborn refusal to allow drilling for oil, government restrictions that prevent the construction of new refineries, and the ridiculous number of expensive government mandated fuel "recipes" depending on what part of the country where gasoline and diesel fuels are sold. Then there are the taxes on fuel - government makes 5 TIMES as much on a gallon of gas as EXXON or BP do.

"Food Stamps" - We now have more than 40 million people using taxpayer dollars to compete for the same food supply, which unavoidably forces prices up even further. Whenever government subsidizes any product or service, it drives up prices. If you do not understand this fundamental economic reality, you are likely part of the problem.

Then there is the "housing crisis" -  beginning with the "Community Reinvestment Act" of 1977, government forced banks and mortgage lending institutions to give loans to people who could not possibly afford them. The predictable result of this artificial increase in the number of buyers competing for the same houses was to drive prices up drastically.

Inevitably, substantial numbers of these "sub-prime" loans began to default, creating a huge increase in the number of homes on the market, causing plummeting prices. And as many home prices fell below the amount owed on the loan, people simply let the banks foreclose - they walked away, which drove prices even lower.

But did politicians recognize the error of their ways, and decide to let the housing market go through the painful, but necessary, process of correcting itself? Of course not. Instead, they interfered even more, demanding that lending institutions "forgive" substantial portions of the outstanding loans. While this artificially kept some people in their homes, the result was that lenders had less money to lend to genuinely qualified buyers, further depressing housing values.

Finally, there is probably no better example of the destructive result of government interference in free markets than the skyrocketing cost of health care. While politicians do their best to blame pharmaceutical manufacturers and insurance companies, the real culprits are stifling government regulations and the billions of dollars of government money injected into the market - almost half of all the money spent on health care comes from the government. This increases demand, driving up prices.

Naturally, those who advocate government run healthcare falsely claim that "the free markets have failed" - but the truth is just the opposite. The United States has not had a free market in health care since the 1960s, when Medicare and Medicaid injected massive federal money into the health care market. Once again, this caused a huge, and completely predictable, increase in costs.

No matter how good the intentions, whenever government interferes with the free market, the result is inevitably to distort it, and prevent the natural forces that keep prices in line from operating. Unfortunately, when this happens, the "solution" proposed by politicians is always the same, more government subsidies to "help" those "in need" - which simply exacerbates the problem by forcing prices even higher. Which leads to demands for more government "assistance" and on and on. When America needs "root canal," politicians instead prescribe Novocaine.

But masking the symptoms will not solve the underlying problem. Unless and until we have the courage and fortitude to accept the inevitable pain and discomfort that comes from allowing free markets to function, we will continue on a path that can only lead to economic disaster, and ultimately, to the further erosion of our personal freedoms.

Perhaps it is merely age, or the wisdom that comes with it, but Memorial Day has come to mean more to me every year. It may also have something to do with the people I have met in my life who have served in the U. S. military - World War II vets like my dad, the young men just back from Afghanistan or Iraq, the Korean War vet who now does my taxes, or the Navy Seals, both young and old, that I have encountered along the way.

And, because it was my era, I cannot help but have a special place in my heart for the Viet Nam vets I have come to know and appreciate, today more than ever. Now in their 60s, they were the 18 year old "grunts" who went to war. There were the thousands who were drafted into the Army. And more than a few others who enlisted in the various branches of the service, like the Navy pilots who braved Soviet made surface to air missiles - and wound up as prisoners, to be beaten, tortured, and even killed.

Then there were those who joined the Marines, including the "crazy brave" who volunteered for Recon duty - the "tip of the spear" in the truest sense. They were not only the "first to fight" - they were often the first to die. Their ranks experienced some of the most vicious close quarters fighting of the war, and, not surprisingly, some of the highest casualty rates as well.

But no matter what their job, or how they got there, all of these warriors had one thing in common - they put their lives on the line for the people of the country they loved. They did not go to war for Democrats or Republicans, for liberals or conservatives - they risked everything for each and every one of us. 

So on this, yet another Memorial Day, let all of us simply vow to live our lives in such a way as to be worthy of the sacrifice of those who paid the ultimate price to protect our freedoms - the fallen.

To do any less would be to dishonor their memory.