http://www.ronaldhart.com en-ushttp://www.ronaldhart.com/display_column.php?column_ID=503Mon, 23 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.ronaldhart.com/display_column.php?column_ID=503 January 23, 2012  

With one response to a CNN reporter's cheap shot, Newt Gingrich resurrected his campaign. When John King asked Newt about the comment from an ex-wife that he had asked for "an open marriage," Newt leveled the guy – and won South Carolina. Newt discovered that evangelical Republicans dislike, even more than infidelity, a smug, biased, leftist "moderator."

Oddly, women seem to let the open marriage thing slide. As for men, the only thing most men would prefer to an open marriage is an open bar. If you combine that with football on a flat-screen HD TV and serve hot wings, you would carry 99 percent of the straight male vote.

Newt getting newer and more blonde wives could be good for the economy. Any time a man marries his mistress it is a job creator, because then he will need to add a new mistress.

Just imagine how much fun it would be to have Newt in the White House and a new First Lady every two years.

Newt was floundering. He apologized for his Obama-like attack against Romney for his success at Bain Capital, then he nimbly pivoted to distinguish himself as a neo-con against the more pacifist, but spot-on right, Ron Paul.

I am troubled by the warlike rhetoric of some of the GOP candidates. The job description of the president comes down to protecting the USA; a close second is assuring China that we are good for the money. Yet "protecting" America, in these candidates' eyes, means – to our detriment – occupying and nation-building in countries that take our money and resent us. Ron Paul has it right. But that still gets you booed in South Carolina, a state that, since 1861, has had an affinity for starting wars that do not end well.

Much of what Newt boldly said resonates with many. He has gone from capturing some of the white vote to cutting into Mitt's lead among the really white vote. This could send Mitt Romney back to the Vineyard Vines catalog from which he sprang. Sadly, Newt's over-the-top comments made him the winner in South Carolina, much like voting for the WWF wrestler who spews the most bravado before a match. It has me thinking WTF?



The Left howled when Newt suggested that overpaid union janitors in schools could be replaced by students working part-time to help their schools, develop work habits, and earn some spending money. The Left thinks kids should work for free at ACORN or at community organizing, calling it "volunteering" or "community service." The Left is OK as long as no one makes any money.

Now that a recount has Mitt coming in second to Rick Santorum in Iowa, all he has is his New Hampshire win. That only gives Romney nine delegates and a lifetime supply of blueberry-maple syrup. Then Rick Perry dropped out and endorsed Newt (which explains Perry's new Tiffany cuff links).

Newt is always willing to seize a political advantage. Using the same capital gains and dividend laws he favored, his campaign is using Obama-like tactics of envy.

"Shame on you, Mitt Romney, for paying the legal 15 percent tax rate, which is barely a tip for good service at a restaurant."

Never mind that Romney's money, estimated at $250 million, was already taxed once when he made it. The dividends he currently pays 15 percent on were already taxed 35 percent at the corporate level before they got to him. Then he pays a Massachusetts state tax of 5.3 percent. And let's not forget that Mitt's estate will have to pay another 55 percent in the death tax when he dies. I find Newt's whining about Romney's taxes disingenuous, but that is the odious nature of politics.

Taxes are so high that economic engines like Mitt Romney and countless other producers, who could be investing in, growing and employing people via new businesses, "go Galt" on us. They choose to be less productive by going into politics or, worse yet, creating an idle, rich heiress like a Paris Hilton or a Kardashian – who then votes Democratic.

The Left has to be giddy with the bloody South Carolina GOP primary. It was like a bar fight in an old Western movie: the candidates kept pounding each other in the face and rolling out the door of the saloon, brawling all the way to the next venue, still a-fightin'. Everyone ended up beaten and dusty, and no one really won.]]> http://www.ronaldhart.com/display_column.php?column_ID=504Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.ronaldhart.com/display_column.php?column_ID=504 January 20, 2012  

The Bain of Mitt Romney's existence now comes from an unlikely source: a fellow Republican. But in Monday's GOP debate, Romney defended free-market capitalism well.

Newt Gingrich, the "smartest guy in the room" (just ask him), has put forth the pandering and preposterous premise that what Romney did at venture capital firm Bain was somehow bad. His narrative, which the leftist media are all too willing to amplify, goes against the very core of what I thought was the philosophy of the Republican Party.

Newt, I like you, but you have let your thirst for power overwhelm what you know to be right. It is time to exit stage right (as an inducement, there is a buffet backstage). It's time to return to what you do best - finding younger and healthier wives and giving "advice as a historian" to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in exchange for millions of taxpayer dollars, which in no way should be confused for lobbying by using one's political connections.

Newt proves that once someone is in Washington too long, capitalism becomes crony capitalism, even for Republicans. That is why, like diapers, politicians need to be changed regularly - and for the same reason.

I did not even mind when Newt sat on the couch with Nancy Pelosi and said that both parties want to help the environment. I can understand being filmed on a couch with the odious and objectionable Pelosi; Newt was young and needed the money. This proved false the premise that conservatives do not care about conservation. We hunt, fish, camp and live in more rural areas than most liberals, so nature is more important to us. We just do not believe in throwing government money at Al Gore's harebrained theories on global warming.

CNN and Obama's other press agents were all too happy to take their cue from Newt and look into Bain Capital's less-successful ventures in South Carolina. In its pursuit of "objective journalism," for which it is so well known, CNN consulted an unbiased source for an opinion on Romney: the president of Local 7898 United Steel Workers Union.

For Obama or Newt to quibble over private capital, invested by Romney's Bain Capital for themselves and their willing investors, should be a losing strategy. Yet I am astonished what some people fall for when the envy card is played.

Private capital firms are only paid when they succeed, a perplexing concept for politicians. Over the years, Bain created more than 100,000 jobs and saved many companies. Focusing on the few bad deals is like going back in time to harp on Joe DiMaggio's strikeouts. To me, what Newt did to capitalism by touting the shallow Obama line on Bain was a very disappointing, shameful act of desperation.

When Obama forced GM to agree to a loan repayment structure favoring the unions over secured bondholders, he contradicted more than 200 years of business law. Hundreds of automobile dealerships closed; thousands of workers lost their jobs; and brands like Saturn, Hummer and Pontiac were killed.

Have you noticed that industries with perpetual bankruptcy problems are usually heavily unionized --steel in this case, airlines, car manufacturers, etc.? Unions have now bankrupted baked goods company Hostess. Republicans can pick up the pieces: Herman Cain will handle all Ho-Hos and Newt will marry the Twinkies. Even bankrupt businesses find interested suitors eventually.

The media examine Romney's business record, which shows great returns for pension funds and willing investors ($66 billion are entrusted to Bain Capital now), and I am sure they will do the same for "community organizer" Obama. The Southside Chicago neighborhoods (Altgeld Gardens/Roseland) where he first practiced his craft are worse now than when he left them. They have gangs, unemployment at more than twice the national average, and businesses running from the area to more friendly places -in short, the Obama legacy.

Community organizing (as defined by Saul Alinsky in "Rules for Radicals," where he said a successful organizer should be "an abrasive agent to rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; to fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expressions") is Obama's past. It is also his campaign plan for the fall, so get ready for it.

]]> http://www.ronaldhart.com/display_column.php?column_ID=502Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.ronaldhart.com/display_column.php?column_ID=502 January 11, 2012  

Congress found time to have hearings on steroid use in Major League Baseball, and Obama has spent considerable federal time and effort trying to get college football's Bowl Championship Series to do as he wants.

He went so far as to involve the Justice Department, using anti-trust laws to try to pressure the NCAA into "changing" the BCS system. While the president is concentrating on the burning BCS issue, hopefully the NCAA and Major League Baseball can work on the economy, wars, deficit spending and the unemployment rate.

Clearly, college football is much too important in the South to involve the federal government. Like most things that thrive and that people enjoy, there is little-to-no federal government involvement in college football.

The Southeastern Conference has won the national title six years in a row now, and before that the national champion was the University of Texas.This has troubled Obama, spurring him into using the powers of his federal government to start an investigation. I'd prefer powerhouses like Bama drop Troy and Kent State from their schedules to leave room for a playoff, but it certainly is not a federal issue.

It is not even worth starting a bar fight over.

If Obama wants to intervene in college football, he may want to look into stationing Navy SEALs on lifeguard stands in the Penn State football team showers.

Obama has enough issues in the South. The only reason Obama got 38 percent of the vote in 2008 in Alabama was that many voters confused his name on the ballot for "Go Bama."

It must give great comfort to the red states of the South that Obama, an Ivy Leaguer admitted under affirmative action, is on the case.

Somehow, liberals reason that a student like Obama can get into Columbia University with a huge discount on his SAT score and have his schooling paid for, but when a kid from Odessa, Texas, gets a chance to go to college at the University of Texas and play football, he must have been exploited.

At least the young man playing football has a source of pride because he is helping to create revenues for his university in the form of ticket sales to fund his scholarship. There was no one paying Columbia to watch Obama study political science. Even the unions did not fund him back then.

Obama's Justice Department has kicked around many legal strategies on how to gain the control of the NCAA football system that the federal government currently does not have. DOJ is well-versed in the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution, since that is its justification for the individual mandate provision of Obamacare.

Maybe now it could say the University of Alabama, in recruiting Flint, Michigan's Heisman Trophy-winning running back Mark Ingram, violated laws against kidnapping, smuggling or transporting a minor across state lines for the purpose of commerce. We have so many laws in this country; there has to be one the Department of Justice can contort into fitting its goal.

If Obama had his way with "equity" in college football, he could work toward his dream of "fairness" so that every team in the country would have a record of 6 and 6. He would love that, because then he would get to decide the national champion. In Obama's view, since he is granted the right under our Constitution to dismiss the head of General Motors, Inc., he should certainly have the right to fire the offensive coordinator at LSU.

Is it fair that Swarthmore College has never had a national football championship? Don't the Fighting Bitter Birkenstocks of Wellesley College deserve a title?

The Supreme Court had sense enough not to hear the University of South Carolina vs. the University of Southern California lawsuit to decide which school gets to have the SC logo. Since there are no Protestants left on the Supreme Court, no one on the court sees a college football dispute for what it is in the South - a freedom of religion issue.

It is clearly stated in Southern Bibles, that SEC football is God, and you are to have no other Gods before it. Not even NASCAR.

Southerners really do not mind that Obama rarely attends church, but the fact that he has not been to a college football game in the South is troubling.]]> http://www.ronaldhart.com/display_column.php?column_ID=501Sun, 08 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.ronaldhart.com/display_column.php?column_ID=501 January 8, 2012  

When Ronald Reagan was president, he had to raise the debt ceiling to $1 trillion. Obama is currently trying to raise it to $16.3 trillion, up $1.2 trillion from last year when he raised it the last time and caused our first-ever credit downgrade.

To put Reagan's total debt of $1 trillion into perspective, in 2009 the Democratic Congress and Obama spent $1.4 trillion more than the government took in, which was 40 percent more than our total debt back then.

Obama thinks he solves our spending problem when he raises our debt limit. He is like a police chief saying he solved his town's drunk driving problem by raising the allowable DUI arrest blood alcohol level from .08 to .12.

Republicans took back the budgeting process when they won a majority in the House in 2010. The last year Democrats had the checkbook, spending went from $ 2.98 trillion in 2008 to $3.52 trillion in 2009. In 2010 it seems spending leveled off at $3.45 trillion – not great, but it is the trajectory we should worry about.

Political spending is always cloaked in some grand rhetoric. Bush had his "slam dunk" wars, and Obama touts "helping the middle class." But they all breathlessly come to us with the conjured-up imperative of the day to spend money. Obama bellows from swing state pulpits, "Pass my bill now!" Here's an economics lesson for the kids out there: Never buy a Rolex from a man who is out of breath.

Democrats cry that some 825,000 non-essential government employees will not get paid if the debt ceiling is not raised. Perhaps that is our problem; we are paying 825,000 non-essential "workers."

Washington takes money by force (taxes) from the most productive part of society, the job creators (business), and redistributes it to the least productive part of society.

Almost all of our bubbles are created by Washington. The Community Reinvestment Act and Fannie Mae mandated that mortgage loans be made to those who could not repay them. Congress pushed sub-prime loans, which went from 7 percent of Fannie Mae's total loan holdings in 2003 to over 20 percent in 2006. With implicit federal backing, Fannie and Freddie, government sponsored enterprises (GSEs), were by far the largest buyers of the sub-prime loans. Before the collapse, they owned $1 trillion in these risky mortgages. Competing with Fannie Mae in that market was like wrestling with a gorilla: You don't quit when you want, you quit when he wants.

Ever the imperialist, Obama spent $4 million of taxpayer money to take a two-week vacation, again flying separately from his family 5,800 miles to a $5.9 million, rented, Hawaiian beachfront home. Upon arrival, he played golf. To be fair, we cannot expect him to break his normal Washington routine on his first day of vacation.

Christmas vacations left only 12 out of 535 members in Congress when the payroll tax cut was extended last week. It was a productive week; how much better off would we be if none of the 535 members was in Washington? It would kill business in D.C., especially bail bondsmen, hookers and liquor stores, but it would be great for the rest of the country. To paraphrase P.J. O'Rourke, the mystery of government is not how it works, but how to make it stop.

With the (still) Democrat-controlled Senate unwilling to put forth a budget for more than 900 days now, and Obama acting above it all and offering no concrete proposals other than class-envy, "eat the rich" rhetoric, gutsy leaders like Paul Ryan step up. Yet, when he offered sensible budget-cutting solutions, he was vilified, predictably by Obama and the Left, but inexplicably by Newt Gingrich. Paul Ryan and Ron Paul are right, but people just do not want to hear the truth. When Ron Paul and others correctly warn about spending and offer solutions, they are universally mocked by the Left, the media and Hollywood (which are one in the same).

Most cognitive people long for the days when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher ran the U.S. and Europe. Keen interest and Oscar buzz have preceded the opening of "The Iron Lady," with Meryl Streep as Prime Minister Thatcher. She should win the best actress award, because a Hollywood liberal playing a tax-cutting, anti-union, free-market, right-wing woman whose policies led a nation to economic growth deserves the highest award for "acting."

]]> http://www.ronaldhart.com/display_column.php?column_ID=500Wed, 28 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.ronaldhart.com/display_column.php?column_ID=500 December 28, 2011  

This usually elicits many e-mails, but I am going to do it again anyway. Here is my annual look back at the year:

• Our military ended Bill Clinton's "don't ask, don't tell" policy this year to little fanfare. There has been no fighting or rancor in the Army barracks to date, yet the real test will be when "Glee" is on the same night as the Alabama-LSU national championship football game.



• Many in the black community, including BET's Tavis Smiley, blasted Obama for being insensitive to African-Americans. To make matters worse, when he came back from Martha's Vineyard to make amends at a Congressional Black Caucus cocktail party, Obama kept handing his empty cocktail glass to Maxine Waters.



• Dick Cheney hit all media outlets promoting his memoir. He miscalculated one appearance on MSNBC where he felt he would be greeted as a liberator.



• Approval numbers are not good for Obama. Yet, after watching the first few GOP presidential candidates' debates, he sent a text upstairs to Michele Obama in their bedroom and told her she could stop packing.



• Obama had his campaign conduct an online $5 raffle. The winner got a dinner with him; second prize was a dinner and a speech.



• Obama angered Native Americans, but agreed to make it up to them. He pledged to address the issue that is most hurting our Native Americans: card-counting.



• California, with businesses leaving the state over taxes, saw unemployment over 12 percent. With free internet porn and an AIDS scare, the adult film industry has slowed down, resulting in laying off half their workforce of 4,000 "actors" and one writer. I think his name is Murray.



• Unlike Barry Bonds, pitcher Roger Clemens seems to have skated on steroid-use charges after testifying before Congress. He was such an accomplished liar that both parties are recruiting him to run for office.



• TSA is continuing to overstep the bounds of reason. Yet they somehow maintain they are stopping criminals at airports, yet merchants there still charge $5 for a bottle of water.



• Obama visited England and was hosted by the queen. Turns out he likes tea parties there better than the ones in America.



• Oprah retired. She made women "spiritual" rather than religious and left millions of unread Maya Angleou books on middle-American women's Wal-Mart-purchased bookshelves – right next to "How to Lose Forty Pounds in Forty Days."



• The Herman Cain-train derailed in December after touching so many. He surged in the polls after five women came out with sexual harassment charges. Then one woman said they had a 13-year affair and it was over. A GOP candidate's campaign crumbles under a consensual relationship.



• Governor Chris Christie had quite a following early in the year and not just by ivory poachers. Then he said he was not running. Now he said he is not doing sit-ups either.



• Bernie Madoff has 147 years to go in prison, but if not get "revenge embezzled" in the yard working out, Bernie should be in killer shape when released.



• If you do not have an excuse, Obama will continue to provide one for you. Obama recently blames the "last few decades" for our economic woes. As we know, there is no more dangerous threat to this country than Gerald Ford thirty something years ago.



• Al Gore turned 63 and celebrated quietly by spending the evening giving lady massage therapists directions to his house.



• Democrats will play the race card, yet again, against the GOP nominee. I am sure he will not even be able to separate his laundry without being called racist.



• Bin Laden was shot around the time Nancy Grace exposed herself on "Dancing with the Stars." Wisely, Obama refused to release the pictures of either.



• Republicans did 50 debates. For a group that says they dislike government interfering, they certainly have interfered a lot in our lives. Mitt Romney said Newt Gingrich is "too zany to be president." Newt responded by honking a bike horn, hitting him in the face with a pie and chasing him around the podium with seltzer water.



• Barney Frank retired after giving us a housing crisis. He says he was never in bed with Fannie, but was mum about his involvement with Freddie.



• The Democrats sent out protesters as a preamble to their campaign in the form of the Occupy Wall Street crowd attacking "the rich." They were angered when winos in the park started stealing their iPods, iPhones and money. Socialism is all cool until some losers started wanting to take your stuff.

(Enlarge)

File: Nancy Grace performs on the celebrity dance competition series "Dancing with the Stars," Monday, Oct. 10, 2011 in Los Angeles. ADAM TAYLOR, AP

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