Washington (CNSNews.com) – Too many absentee ballots, litigation against voter identification laws, and actions by a liberal community-organizer group have disenfranchised some voters while potentially allowing illegal votes to be cast, election lawyers claimed Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C.

In Minnesota -- where the Senate race between Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken likely will not be decided until the summer – at least 12,000 votes were not counted, said Mark Braden, an election lawyer who has been involved in the case for the last several months.

Most of those 12,000 votes were absentee ballots, and most were rural voters.

“There is a push in Minnesota to get so many people in the mail process,” Braden, former chief counsel for the Republican National Committee, said during an election law panel at CPAC.

Because of local government resources there, cities rejected less than 1 percent of absentee ballots, while rural areas rejected more than 10 percent, Braden said.

“This is a clear violation of the equal protection clause,” Braden said. “More mail-in votes results in many disenfranchised voters.”

The Minnesota Senate race is likely headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. But beyond that single state, the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) also poses a threat to clean elections, said Heather Heidelbaugh, vice president of the Republican National Lawyers Association, which brought suit against ACORN in Pennsylvania.

Heidelbaugh said ACORN will probably get money to help conduct the 2010 Census.

“The one thing worse than having Al Franken in the Senate is to have ACORN conducting the Census,” Heidelbaugh said during the CPAC panel.

Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, who supervised that state’s election system, called the effort to move the Census under control of the White House an indicator that “team Obama has its sights set on the greatest accumulation of power we have ever witnessed.”

President Barack Obama’s support for ending the secret ballot in union elections through passage of "card check" legislation would work to “chip away at the moral grasp of the secret ballot” in other areas, Blackwell said. Blackwell also said he thinks the administration wants to regulate talk radio and thus silence opposing viewpoints.

The Obama administration might also try to pack the courts with judges that would oppose voter ID laws, while Democrats in Congress are already calling for same-day voter registration nationally, a system Blackwell thinks is open to fraud.

Blackwell predicted that Obama also would push for amnesty for illegal immigrants, who have been involved in election fraud cases in the past.

“Individually, these are dangerous,” Blackwell said. “Taken collectively, it is the game plan of the left and the Obama administration.”

The left has run a consistent legal assault against voter-verification at the state level, said Hans Von Spakovsky, a former election lawyer for the Department of Justice and a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

The U.S Supreme Court upheld a voter ID law in Indiana. However, liberal organizations sued the state of Arizona for requiring proof of citizenship for voters and sued Georgia for checking voter registration forms against Social Security numbers to make sure a voter is still alive and is a citizen.

“Since 2000, liberal organizations have been pouring money into litigation all over the country,” said Von Spakovsky. “All of the lawsuits are aimed at destroying the ability of states to verify information on voter registration forms. All the laws survive, but unfortunately at great expense. It’s a scorched earth process, to keep litigating until states won’t want the expense.”

Springfield MO Tea Party was a success! 200+ people arrived in the middle of a work day to protest. conservatives usually have much more difficulty attending an event like this compared to liberals. I have been to many rallies and events. many times the left contingent of an event will be employees of left-leaning organizations or people paid to be there to impress the media.

when people on the right show up in any number, it means they took time off from work to be there.

Springfield Mo tea party 12 noon at lake Springfield.

I just read the summary overview of the 2009 omnibus spending bill. it starts off blaming President Bush for cutting programs last year, and ends with the comment "there are no earmarks in this bill"

Ahem.

so anyway, while conservatives are off at CPAC, the republicans in congress, add $31 Billion in "non-earmarks"? or 40% of the total.

cant blame the democrats, they are being themselves, but I'm pretty ticked at the republicans.
http://appropriations.house.gov/pdf/PressSummary02-12-09.pdf

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bill Clinton declared more than a decade ago "the era of big government is over." With his new budget, President Barack Obama has brought it back.

Obama's $3.55 trillion budget proposal represents a gamble that Americans are ready for the sort of change they embraced by electing him in November, including a tax increase on Americans making more than $250,000 a year.

He proposes expansion of spending on the U.S. healthcare system, on greater energy independence and on education, hoping Americans weary of paying for a raft of expensive bailouts for banks and the car industry will go along.

"What I won't do is sacrifice investments that will make America stronger, more competitive and more prosperous in the 21st century -- investments that have been neglected for too long," Obama said in rolling out his plan on Thursday.

The tax increase on Americans making more than $250,000 will help pay for a healthcare overhaul that has yet to be formulated.

Some experts worry this provision will have the unintended consequence of adding to the tax burden of small businesses, causing them to lay off workers or stop hiring.

"The taxing aspect of this is worse than Robin Hood," said economist Peter Morici, a University of Maryland professor. "He's resurrecting class warfare for political gain."

http://in.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE51P73W20090226?sp=true

I'm told that in the 2006 tax year, that 2% of Americans paid 62% of all taxes.
those of you not in the top 2% better get ready to pay up...
Dean

Catholic Group Petitions Pope to Excommunicate Nancy Pelosi



http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=43884

(CNSNews.com) – Human Life International (HLI), a Catholic pro-life group based in Front Royal, Va., had a letter from its Rome office delivered to the Vatican this week, in which it called upon Pope Benedict XVI to “formally excommunicate” from the Catholic Church House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). The pope met with Pelosi on Wednesday.

I think that we need to redefine the entire discussion of “climate change” (i.e. “global warming/global cooling).
We need to reject "climate change" because the climate is always changing; it’s the nature of climate. Instead we need to change the wording to something along the line of "good stewardship" because everybody can be active and involved in that. If you look at the environmental websites, when they do show what to do, it’s either expensive or distant, and it would be better to just send money. You can’t plant a tree in the US; you need to send money to us, so that we can plant a tree in Belize. I owned a carbon offset company, and I received a lot of hate e-mails from the enviro-whack-jobs, because I was infringing on their turf and that only trees planted at the equator could possibly help the world.
Good Stewards take care of what is entrusted to them, and that is the message we need to promote. That message, like the blessings of liberty, can be passed on to our posterity.

Dean Moore for Congress
Missouri’s 7th District
Welcome to the Springfield Tea Party

I am seeking to run for congress in 2010. I am as fed up as you about the ever expanding federal government.
Americans have been trained to look to government to solve their problems, yet we as conservatives instinctively know that expansive government is the problem.

I would run for congress for different results than most. I would seek to reduce government control, and return power to the states. The people have more control when the power is local.

The federal government has a wide range of responsibilities, but does many of them poorly, mostly because it is busy micromanaging many aspects of your life and mine.
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”
We need to pare down the federal government and allow the states to administer these programs as they see fit. (Or not)
I stand for a strong federal military, and a strong local militia.
I support free enterprise, but understand the need for some limited regulation.
I support eliminating the IRS, and limiting federal taxes to less than 10%.
I support states rights. Your local politicians should have more power, your federal politicians should have less, and you should have more control over them both.
I strongly support national sovereignty, and strong borders.
I support local education. I would draw the line at national testing and standards only.
I support strong national infrastructure and standards.
I support using OUR national resources. We can eliminate imported energy.
I support personal healthcare. No social healthcare. Ever.
I support LEGAL immigration. I do not support criminal aliens or benefits for them.
I support a strong constitutional federal justice system.
I support honest, fair and just elections. Voter fraud should be punished severely.
I support the environment. We take stewardship seriously, not hype created to cause fear.
I am Pro-Life.
www.deanmoore.us

I want to get the book Living Constitution, Dying Faith: Progressivism and the New Science of Jurisprudence – by political scientist and legal historian Bradley C.S. Watson



A quick read of the heritage foundation website and an interview with VDJ that I heard this morning, it fits well with my position that the whole living constitution movement will destroy our freedoms if left unstopped. Would you tolerate any other contract to be "living" (changeable without notice) how about your marriage license? why would you tolerate it in your nations founding documents?

According to the heritage foundation's review, "it will discuss how the contemporary embrace of the “living” Constitution has arisen from the radical transformation of American political thought. This transformation, brought about in the late 19th Century by the philosophies of social Darwinism and pragmatism, explains how and why contemporary jurisprudence is so alien to the constitutionalism of the American Founders, and why today’s courts rule the way they do. Today’s view – rooted in progressivism – is that we have a Constitution that must be interpreted in light of “historically situated,” continually evolving notions of the individual, the state, and society. This modern historical approach has been embraced by the judicial appointees of both Democratic and Republican presidents."

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- With his appointment of Dawn Johnsen, a former NARAL attorney, as the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of the Legal Counsel, pro-life advocates already know they are getting an abortion advocate in the position. But, Johnsen goes further and views pregnancy as slavery.

Johnsen is a professor at the Indiana University School of Law, but she is also a longtime abortion advocate and worked for one of the leading abortion advocacy groups.

Johnsen was the Legal Director for NARAL from 1988-1993.

In an article at National Review, Andrew McCarthy describes the importance of the Office of Legal Counsel.

"OLC, a critically important agency, is the administration’s lawyers’ lawyer," he says. "It authoritatively interprets the law for the attorney general and, in doing so, drives administration legal policy."

"OLC’s credibility is derived from its reputation for apolitical, academic discipline — its commitment to informing policymakers of what the law is, rather than what staffers believe the law should be. Johnsen is, for that reason, a poor fit: She is an ideologue, and an unabashed one," he explains.

McCarthy says that Johnsen's view of pregnancy as slavery wasn't just an off-the-cuff remark.

"It was her considered position in a 1989 brief filed in the Supreme Court," he explains, and the legal papers she filed concerned a Missouri law banning taxpayer funding of abortions.

In the papers, Johnsen said that any restriction that makes abortion less accessible is, in her view, tantamount to “involuntary servitude” because it “requires a woman to provide continuous physical service to the fetus in order to further the state’s asserted interest [in the life of the unborn].”

In effect, a woman “is constantly aware for nine months that her body is not her own: the state has conscripted her body for its own ends.” Such “forced pregnancy,” she contends, violates the Thirteenth Amendment, which prohibits slavery.

"The Court rejected this farcical theory, just as it has rejected other instantiations of Johnsen’s extremism," McCarthy explains in his National Review column.

"In reputable private law offices and U.S. attorney’s offices throughout the country, adult supervision would prevent such a lunatic analogy from finding its way into a letter to a lower-court judge, much less into a Supreme Court brief," he added. "Obama, however, is proposing that Johnsen be the adult supervision at Justice. He would fill a position calling for dispassionate rigor with a crusader for whom strident excess is habitual."

Johnsen goes further and she insisted in her legal papers that, without government-provided abortion counseling, a large number of women would be left without “proper information about contraception.” This, she claimed, would mean they “cannot be said to have a meaningful opportunity to avoid pregnancy.”

McCarthy responds: "The usual rejoinder to such reasoning is that nobody is forcing these women to have sex."

He also explains that, with Johnsen giving the president legal advice, she will surely tell him that any judicial pick -- from Supreme Court on down -- must adhere to a pro-abortion mantra.

"Moreover, as she declaimed in a 2006 op-ed opposing Samuel Alito’s confirmation, opposition to all restrictions on abortion — not just acceptance of Roe v. Wade — should be a litmus test for judicial nominees," McCarthy says.

Johnsen wrote: "The notion of legal restrictions as some kind of reasonable ‘compromise’ — perhaps to help make abortion ‘safe, legal, and rare proves nonsensical.”

Ultimately, McCarthy says he understands the attraction Johnsen has for Obama.

"Johnsen’s attraction for Obama is obvious. The principal target of her Webster brief was the settled principle that the Constitution’s recognition of various fundamental rights (and the judicial invention of such 'rights' as abortion) does not confer an entitlement to governmental aid to exercise those rights," he explains. "For Johnsen, this is anathema, the denial of 'economic justice' and thus of equal protection."

"In Dawn Johnsen’s dizzying jurisprudence, government has no business invading individual privacy and regulating abortion but is obliged to coerce taxpayers into underwriting abortions as a first step in what she unapologetically calls 'the progressive agenda' of 'universal health care,'" McCarthy adds.

Economic justice is a favorite phrase of Obama's and universal health care is one of his prime goals.

Houston TX Mayor Bill White yanked a controversial plan Tuesday (Feb 24th) that called for the city to use taxpayer funds to pay off some personal debts for first-time home buyers, following a flood of outrage and criticism from across the city and beyond.

“I don’t think we ought to be in the business of paying off someone’s debt so they can buy a house,” White conceded during an impassioned City Council meeting. “Paying off people’s credit cards is ridiculous.”

Many council members expressed “embarrassment” over the idea, which received national media attention after the Chronicle wrote about it in Tuesday’s editions. The story appeared to strike a nerve among taxpayers already angry over the recession, the housing meltdown, and federal bailouts of banks and automobile companies.

“Everybody’s outraged about this,” said Councilman Ron Greene, adding that a constituent e-mailed him a copy of a bill and asked him to pay it. “This was not well reasoned.”

The “Credit Score Enhancement Program” would have given up to $3,000 in grants to individuals who are trying to qualify for mortgages through the city’s home buyers assistance program. City officials had said some applicants fall short of eligibility by only 10 or 20 points on their credit scores, and paying off some debt balances can quickly improve their numbers.

Councilwoman Pam Holm waved a thick stack of e-mails from angry residents.

“I do not understand how we can ever justify spending taxpayer dollars to pay somebody’s credit card,” she said. “I don’t understand how it can be even considered to come up. I am truly embarrassed. I think it shows poor leadership.”
National outrage

Kris Errickson, a stay-at-home mom from northwest Houston, appeared before council to voice her indignation.

“This proposal is a slap in the face for the average Joe who is trying to get ahead,” Errickson said. “The government should not punish taxpayers and bail out those who cannot buy homes.”

Errickson said later that she and her family moved recently from the Heights to a less-expensive home near Timbergrove. “We adjusted our living so we could afford to live in a house,” she said.

“If you can’t afford it, and you can’t qualify, then you shouldn’t have it,” she said.

Councilwoman Anne Clutterbuck said news of the plan had hit a nerve across the country.

“Giving people the ability to increase their credit score artificially because we’re allowing them to pay off their credit cards is exactly what got us into this (national economic) crisis in the first place,” she said.


If people in power continue to think programs like this are a good idea, we will never recover.

“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom, by legislating the wealthy out of freedom.
What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that, my dear friend, is about the end of any nation.

You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.”

--Dr. Adrian Rogers (My first Pastor)

North Dakota's House of Representatives has passed a bill effectively outlawing abortion.

The House voted 51-41 this afternoon to declare that a fertilized egg has all the rights of any person.

That means a fetus could not be legally aborted without the procedure being considered murder.

Minot Republican Dan Ruby has sponsored other bills banning abortion in previous legislative sessions - all of which failed.

He also sponsored today's bill and says it is compatible with Roe versus Wade - the Supreme Court decision which legalized abortion.


(Rep. Dan Ruby, -R- Minot) "This is the exact language that's required by Roe vs. Wade. It stipulated that before a challenge can be made, we have to identify when life begins, and that's what this does."

But Minot Democrat Kari Conrad says the bill will land North Dakota in court, trying to defend the constitutionality of a law that goes against the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.

(Rep. Kari Conrad, -D- Minot) "People who presented this bill, were very clear that they intended to challenge Roe versus Wade. So they intend to put the state of North Dakota into court defending Roe vs. Wade"

currently the Greene county prosecutor Darryl Moore (no relation) is having a complaint filed against him, for talking about a case on the radio a while back.

it concerns a case where a local man was found to be presenting himself in an indecent manner (standing on his porch naked calling to the kids) to local schoolkids walking by on their way to school. a judge apparently dismissed the case saying that the conduct "wouldn't up set any one particular child"

http://www.news-leader.com/article/20090219/NEWS01/902190362/1007

this is just another example of the liberal attorney class trying to use the power of the law, and loopholes and procedures within the legal system to promote their social agenda. look at California's courts overturning first a legal voter approved statement that "only marriage between a man and a woman will be recognized in California" so after its overturned with a legal procedure, the voters again bring it up as a constitutional amendment to prevent judges and lawyers from circumventing it again. so now its held up in court, and may get overturned again. twice voted on by a large majority, and twice held up or defeated by a handful of political attorneys for their own purposes.

Fellow citizens of Missouri, look around, it's coming your way, the ruling class will have their way with you, and if you don't stop it now while its still small, you will have a real fight on your hands later, if you can even stop it then.
wake up Missouri!!

Politicians that are eagerly looking for face time in front of cameras are ruining our country and society.

the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act could ban children's motorcycles because if the kids eat the motorcycle, they would be getting more than 600 ppm of lead in their system. there were already plenty of laws prohibiting lead in paint and toys. this act was all about getting in front of news cameras, and trying to get more power.

to hell with the hundreds of dealers going out of business, and the ATV parks laying off workers. the cameras were on, proving that they love your kids more than you.

could it be that they worked this to get more kids inside in front of a video screen? they had plenty of advance notice of this side effect, and were not interested in changing it, or passing an overriding bill.

kids that stay inside, and are babysat by the TV will grow up to be much easier sheeple to control when they are adults?

Honda has informed dealers that their inventories of new and used youth motorcycles and ATVs will become worthless and legally unsalable on Feb. 10:

Even more concerning is that the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the agency charged with enforcing the Act, recently ruled that Congress intended the lead content regulations to be retroactive. This means that, regardless of its date of manufacture or the fact that it complied with all applicable laws and regulations at the date of manufacture, any children’s product manufactured with even a single component part containing lead in excess of the limits will no longer be legal for sale as of February 10, 2009.
http://hellforleathermagazine.com/2009/01/consumer-product-safety-improv.html

In the latest symbol of what some are calling "broken Britain," 13-year-old Alfie and his 15-year-old girlfriend Chantelle became parents last week. The news sparked a flurry of handwringing from the media — and even ordinary folk admitted it didn't help that Alfie barely looked 10, let alone 13, as he cradled his newborn daughter.

Alfie's father, who reportedly has nine or 10 children of his own, gamely promised to have a "birds and the bees" chat with his son to prevent him from producing a second child before he grows facial hair.

Somehow that was not reassuring.

Sir Bernard Ingham, once press secretary to former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, told the Associated Press that people from across Britain's political spectrum are in despair over the country's social breakdown.

"It's an indication that we've lost our way, that people don't know the difference between right and wrong," he said of young Alfie. "The plain fact is society can't proceed on this basis. I think this is an indication of broken Britain."

Ingham said Britain's binge drinking and youth violence reflect the same general fall in standards and discipline.

"I think in time there will be a swing against this permissiveness," he said, noting a shift from British debauchery in the 18th century to Victorian straight-laced standards 100 years later.

Binge drinking has produced a rise in liver disease among Britons in their 20s and the unpleasant reputation of British "lager louts" at holiday resorts across Europe.

On any given night, London residents can see drunken teens staggering through the Underground subway system. Usually their friends help them, but sometimes collapsed teens are left on their own until police or transit staff intervene.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090215/ap_on_re_eu/eu_broken_britain

how far behind are we? not much...

Jerome R. Corsi© 2009 World Net Daily

As the Obama administration pushes through Congress its $800 billion deficit-spending economic stimulus plan, the American public is largely unaware that the true deficit of the federal government already is measured in trillions of dollars, and in fact its $65.5 trillion in total obligations exceeds the gross domestic product of the world.

The total U.S. obligations, including Social Security and Medicare benefits to be paid in the future, effectively have placed the U.S. government in bankruptcy, even before new continuing social welfare obligation embedded in the massive spending plan are taken into account.
The real 2008 federal budget deficit was $5.1 trillion, not the $455 billion previously reported by the Congressional Budget Office, according to the "2008 Financial Report of the United States Government" as released by the U.S. Department of Treasury.

When did the United States lose its way?

Just a personal observation, not any official position or anything.

When I was Blessed to be a youth pastor, I was asked by a magazine published by focus on the family about the current state of the church in the U.S. I said it was a social club instead of its role as the church. I was even quoted.
When the church saw fit to allow the state to do its job. when the American church became a social club instead of the working, active, living Body of Christ, America began its death spiral to where we are going now.

Now Big government positions itself as the official state religion.

Look no further than the messiah-related descriptions of Barak Obama.

the past 230 years of freedom here in the US are not the norm, but the exception in human history, and we have no right to expect it to continue if we do nothing to protect it.

I'm pro-life, I'm pro-American, I'm pro-property rights, Pro-parents rights.

(I think the recent sound quotes from Al Gore telling Jr High students that the kids parents are too dumb to know what going on, Borders on "don't tell your parents what we are doing here" he reminds me of a child molester undermining the parents)

I'm pro-God, and I know that the reason we have gone this long as a nation, with the advancements we have achieved, and the wrongs we have righted, all have their basis in our moral foundation that in turn has its basis in Christian-Judeo values and morals and laws.
That said, I would not force people to convert, yet I do expect them to conform with the moral norms that a coherent society demands to remain cohesive.

Instead we have embarked on a path of destruction and division.
Instead of being a melting pot, we are encouraging people not to "melt" it's more like oil and water, current trends show re-segregation in areas that never suffered with that cancer before. Instead of celebrating honest work, we punish it, we celebrate people who not only don't work, but flaunt lifestyles of filth. The super rich with $50,000 toilets get much more airtime than the working couple with three kids, who cant afford a vacation because their every waking moment is filled up with stuff, and their hard work gets sucked up by the government, rather than being stored away fro their retirement years.

We encourage people who come here from abroad to stay separate, and ignore the American dream that was what likely drew them here in the first place. that separation guarantees that they will not realize the dream they came for, but instead only brings the desperation they were trying to escape by coming here.

We tolerate horrific waste in government programs, and shrug it off despite its waste coming right out of our wallets. I think the reason we have the disconnect, is the huge gap between the people who own the country, and those who run it for them.

Voter registration

I think it is awful that so much voter fraud is going on, and nobody seems too terribly excited about it. whether its 40,000 people voting both in NY and Fl in the 2004 elections, or precincts in MN that had more votes counted than cast, its all easily preventable, and I don't see the problem in verifying voters. the socialists think showing ID of some sort puts people out, makes them go to all the trouble of getting an ID, and it costs money and its just too much trouble. bull. if they have no ID how did they get their last check cashed? sign up for utilities? prove their identity if arrested?
its a big crock. in the 1990 election I was committeeman for my neighborhood in Indiana. several buses of folks that didn't live in my neighborhood filtered through commenting on how much better the last polling place was, and wondering when they would get lunch. these folks are committing a crime, and stealing your vote. you should be mad.

I think we need to have the real ID act, and you should have to scan your state ID, it would go to a database, to verify its not been used elsewhere. if it gets flagged, they could vote, but it would be held for verification, then counted.

most states have provision for poor people that cant afford the $12 to get an ID. if they can get to the polls, they can get to the dmv.

save the auto industry

I would only allow new vehicles to be sold in the US that are both ULEV and pass at least 4-star crash tests. that would weed out a lot of imports, and a few domestic vehicles. then I would eliminate CAFE standards altogether. this misguided act has killed more people than all our recent wars. small cars do not have the laws of physics on their side. let people buy whatever they like and afford. by demanding at least 4-star standards, it would allow for safer cars.
I would also eliminate oxygenated fuels containing posions like MTBE. I would never tolerate misguided programs such as cash for clunkers, as I view our old cars as a resourse both as a tangable sourse for used parts and low cost transportation, and as an intangable resourse as well. we protect artwork, buildings,natural wonders, we should allow for our industrial heritage to be looked after when possible as well.

according to the census right now there is 305,748,303 Americans oh wait, 305,748,304
dang now 305,
according to pelosi we will all be unemployed in 20 days...

Nancy Pelosi says that 500 million Americans a month will lose their jobs if congress doesn't act quickly enough.

is that everybody plus the criminal aliens too?

isn't there only around 300 Million Americans?

Obama is announcing that he is demanding pay caps for executives involved in the bailouts. I disagree, mostly because this will eventually spread to others not connected to any bailout. the government should not have any say in what anybody not employed by the government makes. people should be able to earn as much as they are worth. If you do a great job, you get paid well, you do a bad job, you dont get paid well, or you dont get paid at all.
I don't think company executives that let their companies fall to a point deserve to have jobs. I do realize that the government FORCED the banks to take these junk loans, and so I would have to give the banks a break. if we have caps on bank presidents, who is next? athletes? that wouldn't be a big stretch.

Stolen from Glenn Beck

GLENN: So I'm going to just ask you right now just to think of these things and just answer out loud. Just say to yourself yes or no. Yes or no. Is this who I am? Is this what I believe? Because I believe you and I agree on most of these.

1) Yes or no: Do you believe America is a good place, that we've lost our way over the years, that we have done bad things but generally speaking we tried hard. We try to make amends. We have tried to do the right thing. Just like everybody else, we fail from time to time and we have truly lost our way in the last 20 years. But gosh, if you look at America, she's good and our founders were good and our founding documents are good. We've just strayed too far away from them. Yes or no.

2) Yes or no: I believe in God. I may not go to the same church or synagogue or mosque as the majority of people in America, but I believe in God and he is the center of my life, and God does not tell people to behead others or to persecute others that see God in a different way. As long as that god is not telling them to persecute others.

Yes or no.

3) Yes or no: It is my responsibility to try to be better and a more honest person than I was yesterday. Sometimes I fail, I'll make mistakes, but it's my main mission to be better than I was personally than I was yesterday.

4) Yes or no: The family is sacred. I and my spouse are the ultimate authority under God when it comes to my family. I raise my family, and that comes with a grave responsibility. If I fail, I answer to God.

5) Yes or no: If you break the law, you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.

6) Yes or no: I have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but that is not a guarantee of equal results.

7) Yes or no: I work hard for what I have, and I will share it with others that I choose when I choose, should I choose. Government cannot force me to be charitable.

8) It is not un-American for anyone to disagree with my opinion, but my opinion or others' opinions may be anti-American. Anti-American rhetoric would be anything that is destructive to the Constitution and our country as our founders understood it.

9) And the last one is the government works for me. The government answers to me. I do not answer to the government.

How many are there? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. There are nine of them. Do you agree with seven of them?

I agree with all 9

Infrastructure. we need better roads, more buried utilities to reduce outages, and continuous maintenance on our aging pipelines, high voltage transmission lines, etc.
recent consolidation of railroads has led to near-monopolies, and loss of service to customers.

Education. we need to shift power down to the states, and local districts. If I had my way, the dept of education would be whittled down to a fraction of what it is today. its primary role would be to administer quarterly standardized tests taken in every government school and private schools who desire to compare themselves to other schools. government schools have a generally dismal record, with 1/3 dropout rates, politically biased textbooks, and culture-shifting agendas. your local superintendent should have more influence on your child's education than a Washington bureaucrat.

Federal government. If I were elected to congress, I would be going against the grain, because I would seek to decrease the scope and power of the federal government in areas it isn't given constitutional power to do so. I believe that local and state elected officials should generally have more power over the typical citizen's lives, than federal officials. state agencies should be the first call, with the power available closer and more responsive to the people who own it anyway.
I believe in much smaller government in general, but even if nothing was cut, it should still be shifted to the states, with a corresponding cut in federal taxes and spending to match. states would have to increase taxes and spending to maintain programs, but I believe that states are better suited to determine the needs of their citizens than a central government could ever be.
Because we are the United States, all the states need to be on the same page on many things, the federal government fills that role, providing infrastructure and guidelines, but letting the states do the actual enforcement of its own laws and measures.

I am thinking about the possibility of running for congress in 2010 in Missouri's 7th district. I have downloaded several hundred pages of forms and regulations, and have spent the past several weeks researching, and bookmarking sites and pages of interest.