Politico talks about the how the national parties will be spending thier dollars this fall:

With limited resources and an expansive map featuring at least 10 Senate seats in play in pricey markets, national Democrats and Republicans will soon face a string of tough choices — where to spend their cash heading into the final weeks before the midterm elections — that will make or break some campaigns this fall.

If you give to a candidate that you like, he/she may or may not end up needing it. What if every dollar you donated to politics went to races in which your money was critical to achieving victory for a business friendly, fiscally conservative candidate that favors limited government and opposes all new taxes ?

I’m talking about the Club for Growth, which monitors races nation wide and recommends worthy candidates to their members. But they also have a PAC that throws funds into close races at strategic times, often tilting the balance in favor of a pro-growth candidate.

The most important thing about the Club for Growth is that they are not tied to a political party. In fact, they often causing headaches for RINO Republicans. The Club supports fiscally responsible candidates, even against GOP incumbents.

Says the Washington Times, the “Club for Growth packs a punch“:

The Club for Growth, champion of low taxes, fiscal responsibility and free market economics, isn’t exactly a household name, but it will be a major political force to be reckoned with in the 2010 midterm elections.

It has been around for at least several decades, quietly supporting House and Senate candidates who embrace pro-growth economic policies, but it has begun to play a much more visible role in Republican politics in recent elections – often backing conservative insurgents spurned by the Republican Party establishment.

Their growing power and influence stems from their ability to raise tens of millions of dollars for like-minded candidates to jump-start underfunded campaigns and to pump money into TV ads in key battleground states and district races to advance their agenda.

I quit giving to the GOP when Bush backed Specter against Toomey in Pennsylvania in 2004. Interestingly enough, Obama backed Specter in a more recent primary contest, this time with less success. (Specter didn’t change his voting habits after switch parties. If that does not demonstrate the true extent of the moral bankruptcy of the GOP, then nothing will.)

In fact, I no longer give to individual candidates except at the local level. That’s because my dollars at the federal level go into the coffers of the Club for Growth PAC, where it will be put to the best use possible. I encourage you to do the same.

Even though I consider myself a Libertarian, I don’t always agree with CATO. But they are 100% correct when they say Tea Partiers Shouldn’t Date the GOP:

The quality that gives the Tea Party movement its legitimacy is that it is so fundamentally illegitimate: outside the establishment, bereft of representation on K Street, and without an identifiable face to speak for it on Meet the Press. This is a movement that sprang deep from within the viscera of America, not from some political poll or focus group.

It is not Republican; it is not even conservative. It has no interest in debating the merits of No Child Left Behind, abstinence-only sex education or George W. Bush’s rationale for going to Iraq. Replacing a “spend and borrow” Democrat with a “spend and borrow” Republican is not the goal of the Tea Party movement.

This movement is simply saying: “We are fine without you, Washington. Now for the love of God, go attend a reception somewhere, and stop making health care and entrepreneurship more expensive than they already are.”

Machiavelli once said a republic stays healthy by returning to its first principles from time to time. The Tea Party movement is trying to get our nation back to its first principles to prevent our decline.

Exactly.

I stopped giving to the GOP when they had control of the House, Senate, and White House and started acting like Democrats. Road to nowhere, stalling on reducing capital gains taxes, Bush supporting Arlen Specter instead of endorsing Pat Toomey, and so on. I swore then that the Republican Party would never get another penny. And they haven’t.

I highly recommend giving to the Club for Growth. Every penny of your money will go to politicians that support limited government and lower taxes, no matter what their party is.

Technorati Tags: Tea Party, Taking Back America, Fight for Freedom, CATO, Tax and Spend Politicians, Watch Out for RINOs, Club for Growth, Libertarianism

Marsha Blackburn (my congressman) ranks 11th in the House of Representatives for pro-economic growth voting according to the 2006 Congressional Scorecard from the Club for Growth, receiving an 88.

Not bad to be 11th out of 429 representatives!

For comparison, my senators Frist and Alexander ranked 32nd (73) and 26th (78) respectively.

Unless you are from Oklahoma, one or more probably both of your senators voted to increase prices of virtually everything in America. The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 passed the Senate last week by an astounding 94-3.

The only Senators voting against this item from the liberal agenda:

• Jon Kyl (R-AZ)
• Tom Coburn (R-OK)
• Jim DeMint (R-SC)

Those not voting:

• Charles Schumer (D-NY)
• James Inhofe (R-OK)
• Tim Johnson (D-SD)

Dear Senator [insert name],

I hope that whatever you traded for your “yes” vote on the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 is worth the price increases and lost jobs that are certain to follow.

I hope that whatever you traded for your “yes” vote on this plank from the liberal platform is worth the damage you have done to your relationship with your constituency.

It is often said that Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress because they quit acting like conservatives. Too bad you apparently haven’t learned any lessons from recent history — a trait usually exhibited by liberals.

Regards

In the case of Sen. Corker, who does not have a webform so I can contact him electronically, I wrote the above verbiage in a letter and affixed a big green sticker that says:

My Congressional contributions
will be made through the
Club for Growth
www.ClubforGrowth.org

That should get the message through.

Over at Farmer for Congress (whom I endorse) there is a debate going on about my Congressman, Marsha Blackburn. There are complaints that she votes for omnibus spending bills and globalization.

Marsha takes a lot of heat from a lot of people, including (occasionally) me, but I take slight umbrage at these accusations and feel I must insert some rationality into the debate.

Yes, when bills get to the floor she usually votes along party lines but what you don’t see is the monumental amount of work she does behind the scenes to cut out the fat before the bills get to that point. Why do you think the Club for Growth gives her a score of 95 and ranks her 15th in the House?

Continue Reading »

The Club for Growth blog identifies the 15 “Republicans” that voted against giving the president the power to send individual budget items back to congress to force a vote on that item. In other words, these are the 15 “Republicans” that voted in favor of earmarks, big government and continued congressional waste of our taxdollars:

Those with a gray background in the table above actually sit on the powerful Appropriations Committee.

And so the Club for Growth offers the following points in their analysis:

• 9 out of the 15 GOP “NO” votes came from appropriators.
• With 36 GOPers on the Appropriations Committee, this still means that 25% of GOP appropriators “failed to give up even a modest amount of their now unchecked power” (including the Chairman, Rep. Jerry Lewis).
• Only 2 of the 29 Dem appropriators voted “Yes” on the line item veto, meaning 93% of Democrats who spend our money voted to keep the power to spend without further restraint.

Ron Paul from Texas is the one that puzzles me the most.

Technorati Tags: RINO Watch,
Wasting Taxpayer Money,
Line Item Veto,
United States Budget,
Appropriations Committee,
Club for Growth.

You’ve heard it so often that you’ve quit questioning the veracity: we are indenturing ourselves and our children to foreign investment. First it was the Japanese, now it’s the Chinese. Ask any journalist and they will tell you, soon foreigners will own us.

If you believe that then take a click over to The Skeptical Optimist who posts Pie Chart of Who Owns the Debt, and Bar Chart of Who’s Been Buying It. Fascinating stuff.

Following that, something else you’ve heard so often that it has become accepted truth: our manufacturing base has been eroded by NAFTA and offshoring. Clothing factories have closed and towns are left destitute. Soon America will have no manufacturing base at all.

Except that NewsBusters tells us Psst: The Manufacturing Sector Is on Its Longest Winning Streak in Over a Quarter Century. Money quote:

You have to go back almost 27 years to find a longer streak than the 36-month tear we’re currently on. …

The fact that the current 36-month streak has occurred at a time of unprecedented hypercompetition on a global scale is all the more impressive.

Both stories courtesy of Club for Growth Blog, here and here.

So asks Rich Karlgaard at Forbes.com. In part:

The milder forms of it have yielded economic stagnation where and whenever tried: England in the 1970s; France today. The more impatient strains–”socialism in a hurry,” as Lenin reputedly called communism–did nothing but plunder economies and destroy lives. Their fine leaders ordered the deaths of more than 100 million people–Lenin and Stalin (40 million), Mao (60 million) and Pol Pot (2 million), not to mention that syphilitic dictator of the German National Socialist Party, Adolf Hitler (11 million directly, another 35 million through the war he started).

By all rights socialism should be dead, sealed in a steel vault and buried in Hell. Yet the disease lives. You might even say it’s spreading when you look at the ascent of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Ken Livingstone in London and the “progressive” American Net-based left (which says Hillary Rodham Clinton is too far right). What accounts for socialism’s reappearance? To discover the answer, we must ask another question. Why do so many people around the world hate its opposite–free-market capitalism?

Old news, but worth repeating (since the mainstream press is in denial): U.S. GDP growth for the first quarter clocked in at a whopping 4.8%. Remember that this figure is typically revised upward weeks later. Look for a final tally of 5.0+%. Gosh, what else is there to say about the roaring U.S. economy? Oh, yes. Unemployment is safely below 5%, and–wonder of wonders–even the New York Times admits that wages are rising faster than inflation.

I am no longer surprised by my liberal friends who still believe that socialism is a good idea, in spite of its horrific track record. They believe that humans are by their very nature “good” (even those that have read Lord of the Flies) and that socialism has just been poorly implemented to date (blaming hundreds of millions of deaths on the individuals, not the system). They continue to have hope that an ideal society is possible and I applaud that. We should never lose our spark of idealism and hope, else we become cynical and bitter.

But what continually astounds me is their insistence that capitalism is evil, and that encouraging capitalism through tax cuts does more harm than good. They ignore history and don’t won’t recognize current conditions — a booming economy as a result of tax cuts in spite of horrendous drains in the forms of a terrorist attack and a protracted war.

Most astonishing is that they refuse to see that a small business-friendly environment encourages innovation and enables movement between classes. And rather than seeing the great opportunities inherent in the capitalist society they decry the “gap” between rich and poor.

Socialism equals stagnation. That is human nature. I don’t weep about it, I celebrate the possibilities created by exploiting ambition coupled with imagination. It is the magnificence of Man.

[HT to Club for Growth]

Technorati Tags: Socialism,
Leftists, Liberals and Other Silliness,
Tax Cuts,
Economy.

For some reason, AlphaWife picked up a phone call even though caller ID said “unknown caller”. For a totally inexplicable reason, she passed it to me when what was obviously a sales call of some sort, but it was pretty short:

“If the election were held today, which party would you rather see win control, Democrats or Republicans?”

I replied, “That would depend on the candidates that were running.” (This is not a lie. I’d vote for quite a few Dems before I’d ever vote for an Arlen Specter or Rudolph Giuliani.)

“Thank you sir, have a nice evening.”

The telemarketers were obviously targeting die-hard Republicans and didn’t want to deal with debating anyone, even a past “you can count on him” contributor.

Yep, no more money for a party that supports liberals instead of true conservatives. Now I donate only to the candidate, especially those backed by the Club for Growth, or select PACs.

Technorati Tags: Political Fundraising,
Politics,
Club for Growth.

I often criticize MSM for being shortsighted, liberal and partisan, and so it gives me great pleasure to tell you that the opinion page of the Sioux City Journal has published a courageous column.

Last September Congressman Steve King cast one of only 11 votes in both houses against the billions earmarked for Katrina relief and rebuilding. King justified his vote by saying the legislation lacked “fiscal responsibility” and that he couldn’t support “… blank check spending without accountability …”

The SC Journal responded with scathing criticism, saying “America needs to get money – both public and private – into the pipeline immediately, then trust that those charged with distributing the funds do so prudently.” The SC Journal actually trusted government to spend billions quickly, yet wisely.

It appears that the Sioux City Journal has not only learned its lesson, but is willing to eat crow:

Well, after reading an Associated Press story about a report that details how perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars in Katrina disaster aid have been misspent, it appears we were wrong and King was right about his vote on the $52 billion.

The report issued Monday by the Government Accountability Office and the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general paint an appalling picture of how huge amounts of federal aid was squandered through overcharges, poor accounting and abuses. Among the GAO findings: 900,000 of the 2.5 million applicants who received aid under an emergency cash assistance program based their requests on duplicate or invalid Social Security numbers or false addresses and names.

Hat Tip to the Club for Growth newsletter, which notes:

Kudos to King, who was elected with Club member support in 2002, for standing up for the taxpayers and to the Journal for recognizing his efforts.

It’s good to see a politician stick to his fiscal promises, especially when it’s a Club-endorsed politician. Which is why every time I get a request for funds from the Republican Party I write, “I give directly to Club for Growth endorsed candidates” across it and mail it back to them.

Technorati Tags: Katrina,
Government Waste,
Club for Growth,
Steve King.