Back to Our Roots

Shock: Mitt Romney is quickly falling out of favor with the GOP.

Ok, I’m not really shocked.  In fact while I thought Romney was going to win, it wasn’t what I was predicting when he won the nomination.  In fact, I wrote back in March on Whitehouse12.com that when it came down to it, the election would not be about the economy.  Turns out, I was right.

With a mixture of QE Infinity, a suspect September jobs report, and unemployment applications surprisingly falling (because California failed to report their numbers on time), the argument on the economy became relatively dampened just in time for the election.  Toss in pure media malpractice in their coverage on Benghazi and Sandy, where there was simply the latest in a string of incompetencies by this administration, and come election day Romney’s success as a businessman did not put him over the edge in voters minds.

What did put Obama over the edge was perception.  Obama was the candidate with your lady parts on his mind, and not in a dirty way.  He was the one who didn’t put women in binders, whatever that means.  But he was the one who is making it so that our nation stops killing sick people.  He is the one who cares so much about the poor and middle class, despite taxing them through Obamacare.  And of course, his strategy of divide and conquer worked.  Obama is the President of blacks, Hispanics, women, students, the poor, the middle class, Hollywood, and so on.  Romney’s one failed attempt at divide and conquer was announcing that he was not the guy for the 47%.  Somehow that was less successful than Obama’s strategy.

The Republican establishment has 2012 all figured out.  If only we offered our version of the Dream Act, rewarding young illegal immigrants for good behavior.  If only we were less rigid about what we believed and sounded more like Democrats.  The fact is, we did ok with moderates.  Moderates don’t win elections.  The only reason we keep having it drilled into our heads that they do is because pandering to moderates is a great way to lose conservative votes.

Now, Republicans have an opportunity to communicate with the country.  The Fiscal Cliff should teach the country a few very important lessons.  All the tax hikes in the world won’t solve our deficit problem.  Tax hikes on the rich will hurt the economy, but they won’t cover even one major pork bill.  The problem is spending.  We are spending ourselves broke and not even taxes on the rich can close the gap.

But instead, the lesson coming out of the fiscal cliff is that we all need to do our fair share.  Those of us who make more should pay far more.  Forget deficits and budgets and all that wonky stuff.  If you are rich, you didn’t build that.  It’s time for you to suffer like we are all suffering so that we can all share in this wonderful suffering that is America.  Somehow this is the message that is resonating, and it is probably because we have no Newt Gingrich in Congress to stand up and call the whole concept ridiculous.

Conservatism is not about shared suffering.  It is about freedom and opportunity.  It is about striving for so much freedom and opportunity that poverty becomes a choice.  It is about a people who tell the government what it can and can’t do, not the other way around.  It’s about personal responsibility and the ability to choose whether or not to buy your neighbor the things he or she needs and wants.

Conservatism is about fair, simple taxes.  It is about states rights.  It is about limited foreign engagement only when our national security is at risk.  It is about the right to drink beer and shoot off fireworks in your back yard.  It is about the right to teach your kids the Bible or worship however you want.  It is about the right to live, pursue happiness, own property, earn your way through school and get a job you love.  The outcomes are not guaranteed, but the right to pursue the outcomes are.

This is a message that would resonate.  Freedom gets people to the polls.  The problem is that too many moderate Republicans are so worried about governing that they forget their primary responsibility: to uphold the constitutional protections against their attempts to govern.  We are a nation of individuals governed by states and united under one constitution.  A party that runs on a conservative constitutionalist platform will win.

The Right to Taxpayer Funded Abortion

Imagine if Mitt Romney gets elected, makes polygamy legal and mandates mission trips for young people.  I think we would be pretty shocked at the bold establishment of religion coming from the white house.  Yet we did not have that same gut reaction when Obama established his religion from the white house and got it passed without the required majority support through budget reconciliation. 

This is why the conservative movement has been so unprepared to handle charges that they are oppressing women or denying people rights when we object to being forced to pay for abortion.  Being told that by me not paying for someone else’s birth control, I am denying them the right to birth control is like telling a jungle native that they must be born again and put Jesus in their heart.  It just doesn’t translate.  The argument that healthcare is a right and society must therefore provide it is so ridiculous that conservatives reject it automatically.  But for Obama and social justice, liberation Christians it is gospel truth.

I checked, healthcare isn’t in the constitution.  But neither are puppies, and there are certain things you just have to be cautious about when arguing against.

What is in the constitution is religion and guns.  In fact, the private ownership and practice of both are enumerated rights.  What if I am too poor to afford a gun?  What if my community is too poor to support a church?  How is it that social justice does not then require the government or society to purchase my gun for me?  And as simply as that, for the non-liberation theologian, the idea of society owing me healthcare is defeated.

So why doesn’t this concept fall so easily?  If you listen to the liberal argument, Georgetown is denying Sandra Fluke the right to birth control by not buying it for her.  The right has a “war on women” because we want to protect the religious liberty and conscience of churches and religious organizations.  Conservatives have already ceded the rights of the religious employer in a secular field.  And how easily we let go.  I often wonder if Ben Nelson, Democrat from Nebraska who sold his conscientious objection to abortion funding for an earmark, ever wishes he could buy back his soul.

To understand the religious connotations of social justice in healthcare and why this religion shamelessly trumps the constitution, you have to understand liberation theology and James Cone.  Cone was required reading at Obama’s church.  Cone divided his teaching into dogmatic and methodological teachings.  The dogmatic teaching was the paradox that there is no universal truth.  Not even revelation in the Scriptures is absolute truth.  In fact, God is not in control and the very evidence of that is the existence of racism.

Cone’s methodological approach was contextual-dialectic.  What this means is that scripture has value in the way it relates to the reader’s context.  For Cone, this meant that the value of scripture was how it confirmed his own perception of racism against blacks.  From his perspective, there was no value in the original, contextual meaning of the scriptures.

Apply this to Obama’s thinking, and it makes sense that he would think Jesus wanted him to raise taxes, or that healthcare is a social justice right that trumps the constitution.  It also explains a lot about the ambiguity of Obama’s faith, his comfort level with the Muslim faith, and why he is so eager to impose his liberation theology on the country.  Obama is what the media keeps trying to convince us Santorum is.  Obama is a religious fanatic who is seeking to impose his beliefs on the country.  He is not alone, social justice and liberation theology is the spine of the liberal movement in the United States.  Documents like the constitution have value only to the extent that they endorse the liberal readers personal context.

That is why when a religious employer refuses to buy abortion pills for their employees, they are actually denying that employee the right to have abortion pills and are stealing her rights.  This is truth from the liberal perspective.

If Conservatives are going to successfully defend the constitution, perhaps James Cone should be required reading for us as well.

A Fluke? Or A Movement?

In case you have been living under a rock, Sandra Fluke is the college student attending Georgetown University who testified before Congress that her birth control costs $3,000 a year and the only way she can get birth control is if Congress allows the President to force religious institutions (like Georgetown) to pay for it, which they then did.  Rush Limbaugh got himself into some trouble when he used a two naughty words to describe someone who wants others to pay for her to have sex.  Judging by family friendly ABC’s new show GCB (originally titled Good Christian Bitches), if only Rush had called Fluke an SP, he would have been ok.

The left wants us to see Fluke like this:

She is a very young, very poor college student who perhaps has acne or cysts on her ovaries that only birth control can fix.  However, Republicans are voting to make Georgetown revoke her rights to buy birth control because every sperm is precious.  In the end, perhaps she wrote a letter to her senator and her senator actually read it, but somehow Fluke came in contact with Democrats in Washington DC who found her story so compelling that they tried to have her testify before Congress, but Republicans hate women and wanted only men testifying so they said no.

In actual fact, Sandra Fluke is a 30 year old law student who can afford $50,000 a year for law school, but can’t seem to find her way into Target or Wal Mart where birth control is $9 a month.  She wants to force her Catholic college and all Americans to pay so that she can have as much consequence-free sex as she can fit between classes.  She also is not random.  Fluke has been an activist promoting the idea of forcing others to pay for birth control and morning after abortion pills.  In fact, she was the president of Law Students for Reproductive Justice.  It’s amazing to me that no one blinks at the fact that this seemingly random student somehow ended up as the star witness for the Democrats, even though Pelosi’s office can’t seem to confirm or deny if the two had ever talked previously.  In fact, Democrats pulled their official witness in order to put Fluke in front of the cameras with her false sob story.  The last minute switcheroo violated policy which is the real reason she wasn’t allowed to testify by those mean old women-hating Republicans.

By the way, which is more offensive?  Rush using naughty words to describe her?  Or Obama giving Christian hospitals, colleges, orphanages, churches and other religious institutions the choice of either providing contraception AND morning after abortion pills or shutting their doors?  Even more offensive is Obama’s hardline on religious institutions while he simultaneously cuts military health benefits.

This brings us to the scary question.  What was Fluke doing at a Jesuit-run Catholic university in the first place?  Doesn’t she know the Catholic church’s teachings on contraception?  Actually, she does and that is why she went there.  Fluke reviewed the Georgetown student insurance policies and enrolled in order to change them.  As a liberal activist, she infiltrated Georgetown in order to use the hand of government to overturn their first amendment rights and force her personal, secular ideologies on them.

This line of attack should scare any religious institution.  It’s one thing when liberals are attacking religion from the outside, like ABC’s new anti-Christian show.  I wouldn’t infringe on people’s freedom of speech and I can control my own remote (imagine that).  But this idea that liberal activists are going to be infiltrating religious institutions in order to impose their secular beliefs on the rest of us should be far more alarming than any naughty words used by an entertainer. Should Christian schools start screening students to make sure they are not liberal plants?

I went to a Christian college for two years.  They taught creation.  They would never pay for morning after pill abortions and actually had rules against pre-marriage intercourse.  They had rules against drugs, homosexuality, drinking, and even foul language.  But it was ok.  We knew that when we went there.  I made a personal choice to go there and live under those rules for two years.  That is something people can do in a free society.  This freedom is the core target of the Fluke-style infiltration assault on Christianity.

This is pretty serious stuff.  The Left has a lot to answer for.  Was Fluke a plant?  If so, it is Fluke and Pelosi who should be apologizing to the country for this blatant fraud and attempt to steal our first amendment rights.

Selfishness of the Pro-Abortion Movement

Does the government have the right to tell religious institutions to buy birth control and morning after abortion pills for their employees?  Is it enough to have a religious exemption for institutions whose sole goal is to spread their faith?  If you have been asking yourself these questions lately, you are asking yourself the wrong questions.

First, let’s briefly address the exemption for religious organizations who solely exist to share their faith. Those organizations are few and far between.  Very few religious organizations seek to share their faith without also offering humanitarian aid, social work with teenagers, child services, food and training for the poor.  Aid to the poor is one of the largest purposes for the church and for Christians.

The question we should be asking when it comes to the religious exemption, is what about private business owners who object to birth control and morning after pills based on religious principle?  Why don’t they get an exemption?

Here is what this debate really comes down to.  I am a Protestant Christian and we use birth control.  We oppose morning after pills.  Every month we shell out $9 for our birth control pills, and I guess we forgo a date for two to McDonalds to do it.  I would never ask anyone else to pay that $9 for me.  I especially would never ask someone who objected to birth control on religious grounds to pay for it for me.  That is the epitome of selfishness.

I guess there are people out there who can’t afford $9 a month and can’t keep it in their pants.  Don’t ask religious people to give you that birth control or morning after pill.  Don’t ask the government to violate our 1st amendment rights and force us to provide that.

As far as the pro-abortion movement, if you truly believe that “they are just going to do it anyway”, sex among 13 and 14 year olds is a free expression of love, babies are a disease that kill dreams, or whatever, then set up a foundation that collects donations and pays for birth control and morning after pills.   You could form the organization after a charitable model like Toys for Tots and deliver a year’s supply of birth control to needy teenagers every Christmas.  You could call it Kontraception for Kids.  Or how about Planned Parenthood.

Some people mistakenly think this year’s election has anything to do with banning contraception on the federal level.  No, it has to do with whether everyone will be forced to pay for each others contraception.  It has to do with whether the liberals are going to force people to go against their religious objections and pay for something they find morally reprehensible in violation of their 1st amendment rights.  Does the constitution still matter?  That is the question in this debate.  Nobody is threatening to ban birth control.

If you are on Obama’s side and think Christians, Muslims and Jews should be forced to pay for your contraception, stop and think about how selfish that request is.

The Solyndra Connection

Incompetence is one thing. Solyndra was criminal.

Ok, so Obama was his normal incompetent self when he lent $529 million in taxpayer funds to a struggling solar manufacturing plant which then went bankrupt. What’s the big deal? I mean besides the fact that he is asking for another $447 billion after admitting that with all the stimulus cash in the last bill he still failed to fix 152 structurally unsound bridges that Americans are driving on every day.

Except, wait, what’s this? The Obama administration specifically restructured the loan agreement so that if Solyndra went under and liquidated the investors would get their money back first. Read that again.

So unlike Chrysler, where the chicago boss stole the company from the bondholders and gave the liquidated funds to the unions, here Obama specifically determined that after giving $529 million in taxpayer funds to Solyndra, if Solyndra went under the owners of the company would get their money back before taxpayers got our money back. Congratulations, You have been officially robbed by the President.

So why would Obama do that? He didn’t care about the Chrysler bond holders who legally should have had first rights to those liquidated funds. What is so different about the Solyndra owners? Here is where this story goes from incompetent theft to 1st degree theft.

One of the two companies who is going to get paid back before taxpayers is Argonaut Ventures I, LLC, the investment firm for billionaire George Kaiser. Kaiser raised between $50,000 and $100,000 for Obama in 2008 and continues to raise significant campaign cash for him now.

Follow the money.

Barack Obama takes $529 million of our money and sinks it in a failing solar panel company. Obama changes the terms of the loan so that when the company goes under, whatever is left goes to the investors instead of back to the taxpayers. The investors donate a kickback of up to $100,000 to Obama’s campaign, that ends up being funded with our tax dollars.

Remember Tom DeLay? DeLay was accused of taking corporate donations of $190,000 to the national Republican party and finding ways of funneling them to the Texas state party, where corporate donations are illegal. DeLay’s sentence was three years in jail (currently being appealed). DeLay took donations willfully given to the GOP and redirected them to the state party. Obama took $529,000,000 of our tax dollars, laundered them through Solyndra, and now is receiving them back into his own campaign coffers through donations from George Kaiser. If DeLay got 3 years, how much time should Obama serve?

Don’t Blink

This Saturday morning, July 23rd, the Senate was originally scheduled to vote on Cut, Cap and Balance, the Republican plan to cut $111 billion out of this year’s deficit, trim $4 trillion over ten years, and present a balanced budget amendment to the states.  Instead, Harry Reid moved the vote up to Friday morning, calling it a waste of time and the worst piece of legislation to ever come to the Senate floor.  It failed to pass on strict partisan lines.

Senator Schumer called the bill “Cut, Cap and Kill” because he insisted that the bill would kill Medicare.  Debbie Wasserman-Schultz declared in the House of Representatives that the bill would kill seniors and that it was the Paul Ryan plan on steroids.   The only problem is that in three different places Cut, Cap and Balance specifically exempted Medicare and Social Security from cuts and caps.  Had Republicans known, some of them might have been a little bit more up in arms about the bill.  It was actually a very good compromise.  It cut and cap wasteful spending on liberal social programs and government bureaucracy, not hot buttons like military, Social Security and Medicare.

Perhaps that is a more reasonable explanation of why Harry Reid went back on his promise to allow debate on Cut, Cap and Balance and instead moved the vote up.  Perhaps someone in the Senate actually read the bill and told Reid what was in it.  And then, as if scripted, suddenly news outlets started declaring a deal between Boehner and Obama that was so close Reid needed to get this bill off the floor and stop “wasting time” on it.  The only problem is there was no such deal.  Somebody was lying to provide the sense of urgency needed to cut off debate on Cut, Cap and Balance before it got out that Democrats were lying about it killing Medicare.

This has become the name of the game in budget talks.  Neither side is willing to give in because both sides know that 2012 elections hang in the balance.  The difference is that Republicans have actually gone so far as to write a good compromise bill.  Democrats can’t vote yes on it, not because it “kills Medicare” or kills seniors.  They can’t vote on it because passing Cut, Cap and Balance would destroy Democrat re-election hopes for 2012.  It would be a huge Republican victory because Republicans came up with it.

On the other hand, Democrats can’t write a plan of their own.  They haven’t submitted a budget in over 800 days, and they can’t submit one now or that will also destroy their chances of getting re-elected in 2012.  Democrats can’t write a bill that says “We want to raise taxes so that we don’t have to cut spending as much” and still win in 2012 because the vast majority of the country doesn’t want Democrats to raise taxes so that they can spend more.  They are spending enough already, and we are taxed enough already.  On the other hand, Democrats can’t write a plan saying “Ok, no higher taxes, just cuts” or they will lose their class warfare base.  The liberal base of the Democrat party does not want a bill that doesn’t raise taxes on the “rich”.  It’s not about raising revenue, it’s about punishing upper classes more.

Republicans submitted a plan and it was a good plan.  Obama has signaled that he is willing to let the country default on its debt rather than compromise with Republicans.  Democrats have proven that they are the party of no on a budget deal.  If Republicans end up caving in order to save our credit rating, I hope Americans get the right message.  It doesn’t mean Republicans are wimps and we need to get rid of them.  It means they can only do so much with just a majority in the House.  We need to give them the Senate and the Presidency in 2012 if we expect anything to get accomplished.

The Abortion Deduction

In four hours the government shuts down.  Republicans refused to fund abortion both directly in DC and indirectly at Planned Parenthoods across the country.  The result is that after failing to pass a budget in 2010 when Democrats controlled both houses and the Presidency, after failing to even consider HR 1, and after refusing the latest stop gap, Democrats are going to let the government shut down.  Apparently abortion funding is something Democrats won’t compromise on.

But that actually isn’t what this blog is about.  It is about a different abortion bill.  While Obamacare canceled the ability to use HSAs and Flex plans to buy over the counter drugs, and raises the AGI floor for medical deductions from 7.5% to 10%, abortions are still considered medical expenses.

In fact, cosmetic procedures, health club dues, quit smoking programs, non-prescription drugs, weight loss programs, vitamins, acne treatments, and even specially designed cars for the handicapped are non-deductible medical expenses.  But abortion is deductible for taxes.

Republicans are currently working on passing a bill that will add abortion to other non-deductible medical expenses except in the case of rape, incest, or danger to the mother’s life, but Democrats are expected to kill the bill.

That is the country we live in.  You can kill an unborn baby on demand, and then deduct the cost from your taxes.

The fog of not a war

Is it just me, or does entering a war with the expressed mission of not winning seem a little odd?  Actually, it seems like a strategy only the UN could love.  From Rwanda to Darfur to Somolia to Kosovo, the UN has developed a reputation for successful genocide containment.    Wherever tyrants are mass murdering their people, the UN is there to set up some ground rules.  In Libya, the rules are no airplanes, and we get to shoot at you from a distance while you do it.

Of course, what is really strange is how quickly the party in power has completely reversed every principle they held so fast to between the start of the 2004 election and 2008.  I’m not just talking about keeping Gitmo open, restarting military tribunals, and employing a surge strategy led by General Betr…oops, I mean Petreaus.

I am talking about pre-emptive war.  Of course, here is the disclaimer: we are not at war, our goal is not nation building, in fact our goal is not even to remove Qadaffi.  We all know there are no WMDs in Libya, so no one can say we are going there for a lie.  And of course, outside of CIA and special ops, there will be no boots on the ground.  Actually, as recently as couple days ago, Robert Gates in testimony to the House made it clear that our future intentions are to sit back, sanction them to death and wait for Qadaffi to sort of fall out of power like what has happened with other evil dictators we use that strategy on (you know, Ahmidenijad, Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussein in the 90s).  We could say that strategy worked with Mubarak if by sanctions you meant funding.

Libyan terrorists portrayed in 1985

Speaking of funding, you might be interested to know that about a month before we started spending hundreds of millions of dollars to blow up Qadaffi’s military, we were funding his military so that he could fight terrorism.  You might ask why we would be doing such a thing.  The fact is, aside from the Lockerbie bombing and some other smaller scale recognizable terrorist attacks in the 80s and 90s, such as shooting Doc Brown in the movie Back to the Future, Libya has had a pretty good track record lately.  When we invaded Iraq, we were able to confiscate a nuclear weapons and materials stash, but it wasn’t in Iraq.  It was in Libya and was voluntarily handed over by Qadaffi.  He then paid millions of dollars to the families of Libyan terrorist victims.  Libya has been an ally in the war on terror ever since and Obama had requested an additional $1.7 million for Qadaffi’s military just last month.

Then we started bombing Libya to prevent a genocide against Libyan rebels.  Then we started supplying the rebels.  Unfortunately, we didn’t do our research.  Turns out, the same rebels who are fighting for pro-America freedom and democracy in Libya are the Al Qaida fighters who we were fighting just a few years ago in Iraq.

The embarrassment of going into Libya without a plan, without justification, without consulting congress, and without knowledge of who we were blowing up and who we were aiding has caused the administration to begin tiptoeing as quietly as they can toward the exit.  The answer has been to reframe the mission as a humanitarian NATO mission only to save civilian lives.  This is why now, after arming the rebels, NATO is warning the rebels that if they kill civilians, we will bomb them too.

We are arming both sides, now we will be bombing both sides.  At least we will be saving lives, right?

Why PBS Should Be Defunded

Three words: Stevie Ray Vaughn.

Please keep reading, do not get me wrong.  I absolutely love Stevie Ray Vaughn.  I have several CDs with nearly every song he performed, video of him playing live, and I think by far he is my favorite guitarist ever.  And once a month, PBS plays Stevie Ray Vaughn videos.  Why do they play Stevie Ray Vaughn videos instead of their usual programming of 1950s variety show reruns, heavily left leaning political commentary, the newest garage band, or opera?  Because it’s time for the monthly pledge drive.

And that, my friends is capitalism.  I love the PBS pledge drive shows.  They did a Pink Floyd concert, Queen, and some more cultural stuff like Victor Borga and some classical master pieces.  But seriously, PBS pledge drives are the best time to watch PBS because they bring out the shows you would actually be willing to pay for.  And then they break in for 15 minutes to tell you that for a pledge of $125 you can get your very own Stevie Ray Vaughn CD as a thank you gift.  But they also lie to you and tell you that they need the funds so that they can show great programming like this all the time.

It’s not true.  What they mean to say is pledge money so that they know what to play for their next pledge drive.

I watch PBS a lot.  I love britcoms.  My wife loves the new Dr. Who.  She also loves costume dramas.  My son loves Elmo and nature shows.  If it wasn’t for the leftist political commentary, the fact that my tax dollars are already funding it, and the fact that pledging money gets you more of the Antique Roadshow, cooking shows, This Old House and opera, not more Stevie Ray Vaughn and Are You Being Served, I might actually give to PBS.  I mean, where else can you see Mr. Bean and Hugh Laurie in a comedy about the trenches of World War I.

I would not stop watching PBS if they showed commercials.  After all, in between shows we already have spots for the latest Masterpiece Theatre preview, the corporate sponsors of PBS, the uber-wealthy families and foundations who give PBS  grants, and of course a quick mention of “taxpayers…er, I mean viewers like you”.

If they replaced 15 minute pledge breaks with commercials and showed stuff people wanted to see, just like every other TV station, they would come out ahead.  I believe that’s true even if they showed a symphony performance or a nature show.  Surely no one can make the argument that Elmo would struggle for viewership.

At least that would be true for my household.  Of course, NOVA might have some difficulties with the majority of our country believing in God and on the fence about Global Warming, and Frontline might have to cast conservatives in a positive light at least once a year.  Oh yeah, and NPR would have to work on just how much they sound like a mouthpiece for the DNC.  After all, Air America showed that liberal talk radio struggles in the free market.

Ron Schiller may be an anti-Semitic, hateful leftist who thinks all Tea Partiers are racists and all mainstream media groups are Zionists, but he is not the reason PBS should be defunded.  PBS should be defunded so that they can compete in the free market and have to show good programming, like Stevie Ray Vaughn and ‘Allo, Allo!’, all the time.

Scott Sinks Obama’s Titanic

Return to sender.  That was Governor Rick Scott’s response to Obama’s offer of $2.4 billion in borrowed stimulus funds to create 48,000 green energy jobs through the construction of European style high speed rail connecting the sprawling cities of Tampa and Orlando.

Scott’s decision was attacked immediately by the administration, Bill Nelson, Corrine Brown, and others, while poorly managed, broke states like California quickly started begging for the funds.  I knew right then Scott made the right decision.  Scott was also sued bipartisanly by Florida state politicians, but the Florida Supreme Court ruled in Scott’s favor yesterday, effectively killing high speed rail.

So why would I be so happy about the state writing void on the Fed’s $2.4 billion check and mailing it back?  Because if you look beyond the pile of green, all you can see is red.

Every politician and newspaper (depending on what Florida city it is from) has their own math for calculating the costs.  The government estimates that after Obama’s check for $2.4 billion, the state would have to either fund or find private investors to pick up another $280 million.

Then there is the unanticipated costs of figuring out whose property needs to be bought in order to lay the rail. Scott’s own team of advisers refigured the costs  of the project based on the realities of California’s own experiment with high speed rail and found the Federal estimates to be a little optimistic, to the tune of another $3 billion dollars. Experts have also balked at government estimates of ridership.

One issue I see with ridership that not many are talking about is the size of the destination cities.  I have been to Tampa and Orlando.  They are not walking around cities.  Once riders arrive in either city, they will need to secure local transportation.  If it were me, I would prefer to have my car once I got to either destination.  Obama, coming from Chicago and sitting in his office in DC, might think there is a large market for commuters between the two Florida cities.  Having driven the rush hours between them, I don’t see it.

For Scott, this decision to cancel delivery on the Obama golden goose may also stem from the budget battle he is preparing to have in Florida’s capital.  Scott is being accused of getting ready to cut $3 billion in education in Florida.  But the reality is that Scott is simply refusing to continue paying the obligation that the Federal Government created with unfunded stimulus money last year.  He is not changing Florida’s budget for education.  It would be like deciding not to include one time lottery winnings in your future monthly budget.

Obama’s stimulus was designed to put broke states on the hook for higher spending on a social agenda that the Federal Government couldn’t even afford when they passed the stimulus bill.  It was a bill designed to change America, create jobs for the sake solely of creating jobs with no sustainability, and set up a monumental legacy to Obama of green energy and government control.  The President did not count on voters demanding fiscal responsibility.

But what about the 48,000 potential jobs lost that this $2.4 billion was going to secure for us?  Fortunately Scott has a better plan.  Instead of spending $280 million to $3 billion in state funds on a redundant transportation system between two cities, Scott is requesting $77 million to dredge Miami’s port so that they can start receiving larger ships from the expanding Panama Canal and expand trade with Asia.  It is a project that will create 30,000 jobs and an agenda that will expand to Jacksonville’s Jaxport with likely the same results.

It is an idea that trades legacy building and big government agenda with private enterprise and economic growth.  And it saves the government about $55,500 per job created.