Greg Sowards, Kurt Bills and Richard Mourdock

Some like it hot. Some like it cold. And the Tea Party likes it red-hot, as in, red states. Three energetic Tea Party candidates are heating up to beat RINOs and help return the U.S. Senate to a true conservative majority.

Rhinoceros horn is popular in Asia for its purported healing powers. Asian demand sends poachers to Africa to hunt the endangered animal. Last November, one Hong Kong poacher surrendered $2 million of illegal rhino horn to authorities. In the GOP, however, RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) are losing popularity. The RINO’s “horn” is compromise and Americans are tired of compromises like Obamacare. Americans want politicians who will just say “no” to socialism.

The GOP needs to gain four seats this fall in order to take majority control of the U.S. Senate. To win these seats, I think the GOP must run authentic Tea Party conservatives. Leave the big-spending, EPA-kissing RINOs behind; they are unelectable. Here are three hot Tea Party Senate candidates that I believe can paint the political map red in November:

1.) Greg Sowards, The Reaganesque Businessman

Greg Sowards is the New Mexico GOP U.S. Senate candidate running against RINO career politician Heather Wilson in the June 5 primary. Like Reagan, Sowards’ easygoing confidence, respect for life, fiscal hawkishness and straight-shooting personality endear him to conservative and independent voters.

When I called Sowards at his New Mexico office to see if he was “for real,” he ensured me: “I’m not going there [the U.S. Senate] for re-election. … I have six children and 20 grandchildren. I look at everything we spend as borrowed from the next generations. I will vote against bills that sound good but are really 5 percent good and 95 percent cancerous.”

My assessment is that Sowards is the fresh, electable voice for the GOP because he is a life-long entrepreneur who has been running successful businesses since college. Sowards is an inventor with five patents under his belt. 24 years ago, Sowards and his wife started a child-care business that today employs over 80 Americans, commands six facilities and cares for over 700 children. In Sowards, I think New Mexicans see a trustworthy, everyday job-creator to represent them in D.C.

Sowards is also gaining traction in New Mexico because his foreign policy views are more reflective of mainstream American sentiment and take into account our nation’s swelling debt. As a U.S. veteran, Sowards understands how to weigh the costs and benefits of multiple elongated wars.

So, what is the New Mexico establishment GOP’s infatuation with Wilson? I’m unsure since she is about as conservative as Nancy Pelosi. Certainly, Wilson has “experience” in politics serving as a U.S. Representative. However, the only thing she seemed to “learn” in D.C. was how to waste money. Wilson voted for: TARP; federal control over healthcare; repeatedly raising the debt ceiling; allocating taxpayer dollars for Abortion Mart (Planned Parenthood) and she really, really loves the unconstitutional EPA.

Wilson voted to allow the EPA to begin implementing anti-business emission regulations recommended under the Kyoto Protocol—even as her respected Republican colleagues at the time like Paul Ryan, Tom Coburn, Jim DeMint, Pat Toomey, Lindsey Graham, Saxby Chambliss, Johnny Isakson and John Boehner voted against implementing Kyoto.

I think it would be a mistake for the GOP to run Wilson. New Mexico’s Senate seat is still considered “in play” by The New York Times. New Mexicans, many of whom are Hispanic, are looking for a new face that is socially and fiscally conservative. Incumbent Democratic Sen. Jeff Bingaman vacated the seat after serving five terms. Since the Democrats are still locked up in their own primary, it stands to reason that independents and conservative Democrats—unattached to an incumbent—will be open to voting for a clean conservative businessman from the Republican party.

2.) Kurt Bills, The Economics Teacher

Kurt Bills is a full-time high school Advanced Placement economics teacher in Minnesota. He has no plans to give up his day job if he becomes Minnesota’s next U.S. Senator (replacing Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar). While he’s teaching young people how to budget in the classroom, he plans to teach his fellow Senators how to budget in D.C. Bills is running against a RINO in the May 18 Minnesota GOP primary.

I combed through the voting record of Bills’ opponent, former Minnesota State Rep. Dan Severson, and I found a pattern of voting for anti-business spending. Severson repeatedly said “yes” to: Massive bonding bills to fund higher education, mass transit and light rail; taxpayer-subsidized collegiate and professional sports stadiums; an anti-business smoking ban and a $9 billion government healthcare spending bill that included a 75-cent per pack tax on cigarettes.

Like Heather Wilson, Dan Severson seems to enjoy telling businesses to go broke in favor of enviro-socialism. For example, Severson voted for a renewable energy standard bill in 2007 that would give Minnesota the toughest energy standard in the entire nation—forcing Minnesota utility companies to obtain at least 25 percent of their power from solar, burned waste and wind by 2025.

Like Sowards, I think Bills is gaining favor with conservatives and independents in Minnesota for three reasons. First, he is not a career politician. Second, he has real-world experience and he understands economics. Third, he embraces mainstream foreign policy that combines hard-nose diplomacy with Economics 101. For example, Bills does not think that the U.S. is “defending” Israel by giving $1.3 billion in military aid to Israel’s foe, namely Egypt. (Just last month, Egypt withdrew from a deal with Israel whereby it effectively denied Israel access to about 40 percent of its natural gas needs.) Bills does not think that places like Egypt are worthy of U.S. military funding—and Minnesota conservatives who support Israel seem to agree.

3.) Richard Mourdock, The Tea Party Favorite

Richard Mourdock ran and won the Indiana GOP nomination for U.S. Senate against establishment RINO Sen. Richard Lugar who had spent 35 years (six terms) in the U.S. Senate. Mourdock has the opposite resume, boasting at least 30 years of direct business experience, including starting and running his own company. Despite Lugar’s name recognition and “experience” in politics, GOP primary voters ditched Lugar and went for the businessman.

Rush Limbaugh explained on his May 4 talk radio show: “In Indiana, Richard Mourdock is a Tea Party candidate. He is going up against the Republican establishment, and the Republican establishment’s trying to destroy him. He’s being outspent ten to one (we’re talking millions of dollars) against a Jurassic Park entrenched incumbent: Dick Lugar. … The Tea Party hasn’t gone anywhere, folks. They’re only getting better and bigger.”

Tea Party Rally. Image copyright Katie Kieffer. All rights reserved.

Mourdock won his party’s nomination, but, as Limbaugh points out, the establishment GOP worked feverishly against him in the primary—despite Lugar’s big-spending history. I think Indiana’s establishment-types should whole-heartedly back Mourdock now—with volunteer hours and funding. As of last month, Obama had a 10-1 financial advantage over GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney. Team Obama is likely to use its financial edge to help Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly compete with Mourdock.

So Long, RINOs

These three hot Tea Party leaders offer a fresh brand of leadership with the potential to end Washington stalemate. They are businessmen, not career politicians. And, because they preach liberty louder than partisanship, I think Democratic congresspeople will be more likely to work with them. For, these leaders do not hold out the RINO olive branch of socialist compromise. Rather, they extend the unifying olive branch of constitutional freedom.

Hopefully the establishment GOP will support Tea Party businessmen like Sowards, Bills and Mourdock who can win against Democrats in the fall instead of RINOs who will fall on their horns.

Tea Party rally against Obamacare in Washington, D.C. Image credit: asterix611 on Flickr via Creative Commons.

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Image credit: "Bill Gates" by wolfgang.wedenig on Flickr via Creative Commons.

Stealing from babies is easy and low. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates makes himself feel powerful while negligently ripping off babies.

I am a capitalist. I defend entrepreneurs. However, I think young people and their parents should know that Gates is a sham entrepreneur. Gates openly uses his wealth and influence to push policies that will make entrepreneurial success unachievable for babies (future generations of Americans).

Gates is more dangerous to the free markets than President Obama. Why? Because everyone knows that Obama is a socialist who lacks business experience. However, when a billionaire capitalist like Gates advocates socialist policies, Americans will believe those policies are “pro-business,” “entrepreneurial,” and “fiscally responsible.”

Gates told CNNMoney anchor Poppy Harlow at the World Economic Forum: “It’s absolutely the case that taxes will have to go up to close the government deficit and, ah, I certainly think the rich should pay a larger share of that increase as we ask everyone, ah, to make some sacrifices.”

Let’s compare Gates’ approach to entrepreneurship with that of the late Steve Jobs and the company he founded, namely Apple. I think it will be clear that Gates is hurting future generations of Americans despite his public philanthropic efforts.

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Image credit: --David and Jennifer-- on Flickr via Creative Commons.

1.) Approach to Philanthropy

Sham Entrepreneur:
A sham entrepreneur is a short-term thinker. He uses philanthropy to push socialist policies that will boost his immediate self-esteem and influence while damaging the long-term outlook for entrepreneurship.

Gates partners with Warren Buffett to urge billionaires to take a public “Giving Pledge” to donate at least half of their wealth to charity. Unfortunately, this appears to be a way for Gates to get public recognition while sending the message that charity must be broadcasted. More important, it is counteractive for Gates to encourage voluntary charity and coerced charity (via higher taxes) simultaneously.

Gates is pompous about his philanthropy and he under-appreciates entrepreneurial passion. Gates told Jobs’ biographer, Walter Isaacson: “Here I am, merely saving the world from malaria and that sort of thing, and Steve is still coming up with amazing new products. Maybe I should have stayed in that game.”

Today, Gates is the non-executive chairman of Microsoft (he handed the CEO reigns over to Steve Ballmer). I get the sense that Gates enjoyed competition and making money more than ensuring Microsoft lasted for future generations.

Jobs told Isaacson: “Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. … Bill likes to portray himself as a man of the product, but he’s really not. He’s a businessperson. Winning business was more important than making great products. … Even when they [Microsoft] saw the Mac, they couldn’t copy it well. … I hate it when people call themselves ‘entrepreneurs’ when what they’re really trying to do is launch a startup and then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on. They’re unwilling to do the work it takes to build a real company … You build a company that will still stand for something a generation or two from now. That’s what Walt Disney did, and Hewlett Packard, and the people who built Intel. They created a company to last, not just to make money. That’s what I want Apple to be.”

Overall, Gates pushes for higher taxes as a way to solve U.S. and global budgetary problems. He takes credit for “saving the world” when a big part of what he does is ask the government to tell people how to spend their own money.

Real Entrepreneur:
I think that the best way a company can “help” the world is by being profitable and enduring. Apple helps the world primarily by creating and selling extraordinary products and secondarily via traditional philanthropy. For example:

• The affordability of iPhones and iPads “democratizes” technology and information. Steve Jobs wanted to make technology a tool for freedom by making it affordable to most Americans; by making Apple profitable, he was able to fulfill this goal.
• iPad technology has helped disabled Americans vote in private.
• U.S. troops in Afghanistan heavily utilize iPhones.
• The iPad is an intuitive device that is a blessing to mothers and fathers everywhere. Very young children who have never seen or used computers can instinctively use it. iPads support educational games that, when used judiciously, help teach and engage children. And, iPads playing white noise have been known to soothe cranky children into falling asleep.
• Apple creates or supports 514,000 jobs in America and an additional 23,000 jobs globally.
• As the most valuable company in the world, Apple creates profits for its shareholders and bolsters the U.S. economy.
• Apple pays its legal share of taxes and nothing more; Apple will not bail out the U.S. government’s wasteful spending. Apple is the biggest taxpayer in Cupertino, CA (Apple headquarters), paying over $8 million in annual property taxes. Globally, Apple paid at least $3.3 billion in taxes last year. In order to maximize profits to shareholders, Apple utilizes legal tax incentives to shift some profits overseas to more competitive tax rates and avoid the combined federal-state U.S. corporate income tax rate of 39.2 percent (the highest in the world).
• Apple donates silently. Apple matches employee donations to a long list of vetted charities. Apple also gave “…Stanford University more than $50 million in the past two years. The company also donated over $50 million to an African aid organization,” reports The New York Times.

Image credit: --David and Jennifer-- on Flickr via Creative Commons.

2.) Approach to Public Policy

Sham Entrepreneur: Makes his money and runs. He does not care about defending the free market system for future generations; he cares about his public image. If the president is a socialist who “budgets” by raising taxes, a sham entrepreneur (like Gates) will tell the media that tax hikes are necessary because: “You’ve gotta fund the government somehow.”

Real Entrepreneur: Challenges the government, even if he or she is a member of the ruling political party. Jobs, for example, was a life-long Democrat. However, he was vocal about his capitalistic beliefs and he persistently challenged Obama to decrease business regulations.

Jobs led by example, teaching the next generation of tech entrepreneurs to defend their businesses. Just look at what happened when entrepreneurs like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales publicly opposed SOPA and PIPA; freedom prevailed over big government.

Overall, I think it is unethical for Gates to use capitalism to achieve billionaire status and then publicly advocate tax policies that will destroy capitalism. I think Gates has a responsibility to stand up to our bully government and defend his freedom and private property rights. For, by defending his rights, he will help ensure that babies—future generations of American entrepreneurs—have the same opportunities to achieve success that he had.

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Your doctor won’t tell you this when you’re sitting in his office, so I will: He hates Obamacare. It’s time you know why your doctor is concerned about Obamacare.

Doctors already live in constant fear of malpractice lawsuits. The last thing they want to do is stick their necks out and publicly attack Obamacare. Doctors also do not have an effective D.C. lobby group or public advocate.

A 2011 survey by Jackson and Coker reports that most doctors believe the mega-lobbyist group, American Medical Association (AMA), fails to represent docters’ interests on Capitol Hill. Forbes reports: “Much of that dissatisfaction stems from the organization’s support for President Obama’s contentious health care reform package. … [The AMA] has backed a law that would force some physicians to work longer hours for less pay and others to operate in perpetually overcrowded emergency rooms.”

Doctors question how the AMA can represent them in D.C. while cutting back-door deals with the government. Doctors have been effectively forced to fund the AMA by purchasing Medicare and Medicaid billing code books. Dr. Jane Orient, a privately practicing doctor in Arizona, blew the whistle when she discovered that, beginning in 1998, the Health Care Financing Administration gave: “… the AMA the exclusive copyright on the codes…” reports The New American.

Since the AMA does not speak up for doctors, I will try to be a voice for doctors. Here are two primary reasons why your doctor hates Obamacare:

1.) Doctors Need Ownership

Dagny Taggart is the heroine of Ayn Rand’s novel, “Atlas Shrugged.” At one point, Dagny asks a renowned medical doctor named Dr. Hendricks why he left the medical practice. He says: “I quit when medicine was placed under State control … Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquiring that skill [performing brain surgery]? …I would not let them [politicians] dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything—except the desires of the doctors. … Let them discover the kind of doctors that their system will now produce. Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of man who resents it—and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn’t.”

Obamacare removes ownership from the medical field. An individual doctor no longer owns his education, career or even day-to-day lifestyle choices. Under Obamacare, he goes from feeling a sense of caring ownership for his patients and his craft to feeling over-worked, under-paid and micro-managed.

Image credit: "2009_04_24" by DennisSylvesterHurd on Flickr via Creative Commons.

Obamacare effectively steals from doctors by confiscating the skills, energy and time they have devote to medicine. When you steal a man’s life-long passion; his hard-won goal; his lifestyle—do not expect him to be happy or to maintain his conscientious passion for practicing medicine.

2.) Doctors Need Motivation and Compensation

A better name for Obamacare is the “16.7 Percent Paycut,” because that is what it means for doctors. In order to “save” Medicare, Obamacare asks doctors to take a 16.7 percent paycut. And, guess what? Patients will suffer, not just doctors. Patients will suffer because smart and caring young men and women will forfeit their dreams of entering the medical profession and choose alternate careers that promise less stress and higher pay.

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to visit my brother at his medical school and meet some of the other medical students. They were intelligent and hard-working individuals who clearly cared about helping people. I did not get the sense that money was their primary motivation in becoming doctors.

Indeed, 60 percent of doctors are concerned that Obamacare will diminish their ability to care for patients, finds a Feb. 29, 2012 survey completed by The Doctors Company Market Research, America’s largest surgeon and physician medical liability insurer.

Money simply allows smart young Americans, like my brother and his peers, to justify spending an additional four-to-ten years after college holed up in a library or in a grueling residency program just to graduate with $160,000 in debt (the median debt load for medical school grads according to a 2010 Mayo Clinic study).

There are 70 million baby-boomers out there who will be looking for geriatricians soon. But there is only one geriatrician for every 2,600 Americans over the age of 75, according to the American Geriatrics Society. Why is this? Money. Geriatricians made a median salary of $183,523 in 2010, reports the Medical Group Management Association. America desperately needs more geriatricians, but young doctors are choosing to specialize in other areas because they can earn two-to-three times more.

Money is a suitable incentive, especially when you are asking people to give up their youth studying while amassing debt. But Obamacare removes the practical “profit motive” of capitalism and replaces it with the idealistic “poverty motive” of socialism.

A Better Way

I think trying to save something that is hopelessly broken, like Medicare, is a mistake. Ultimately, I think it’s a choice between complete government control over limited medical care resources or a more freedom-based system where prices are lower because competition exists and health insurance is actually insurance (now, insurance covers basic, common care which is ridiculous and causes overall healthcare costs to rise). Insurance should only be involved in major medical care; otherwise, it’s not insurance, it’s maintenance.

When it comes to medicine, you get what you pay for. As patients, I think we should be willing to pay a little more in exchange for the highest quality of care. Sorry, President Obama, but your plan is “JurassicParkCare”—doctors go extinct and their patients go untreated while your buddies in Hollywood cheer.

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President Obama has a mistress. Her name is Amazon. Whereas former Presidents Kennedy and Clinton rendezvoused with female interns, Obama rendezvous with an e-commerce company.

Amazon currently monopolizes e-book sales, controlling 60 percent of the market. And, like a jealous lover, Obama is suing Amazon’s competitors in order to further strengthen her e-book monopoly. Obama may be faithful to his wife, but he is breaking his vow to the American people to defend the Constitution. He is openly abusing his executive powers and giving preferential treatment to Amazon—hoping to curry favor with consumers and ensure his reelection in November.

Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, announced on April 11, 2012 that the Department of Justice is suing Apple and five major book publishers on charges that they violated anti-trust laws by conspiring to raise the price of e-books.

Here’s the catch: Apple and the five publishers were not conspiring to artificially raise the price of the e-books. They were merely switching from an outdated “wholesale pricing model” for print books to an “agency model” that is better suited for e-books.

My assessment is that the agency pricing model (spearheaded by the late co-founder and CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs) can help writers and book publishers stay in business in the digital era and thereby gives consumers more choices by allowing new retailers (like Apple) to enter the market and compete with Amazon.

Image credit: "Amazon.com headquarters" by K. Todd Storch on Flickr via Creative Commons.

Obama Sues After Jobs’ Death, But Before Election

If Steve Jobs—a lifelong Democrat, beloved by Americans of all stripes—were still alive today, I doubt Obama would dare to publicly distort Jobs’ vision or attack Apple. However, Jobs was a capitalist and therefore his life story and his company pose threats to Obama’s socialist platform.

Obama’s go-to scapegoat is “big oil.” His new scapegoat is “big Apple.” American incomes are not keeping pace with inflation, gas prices are rising and jobs are meager. Obama knows that Americans will blame him for the bad economy unless he quickly convinces them otherwise.

Apple is the world’s most valuable company, beating even Exxon Mobil; Obama likely thinks that he has a chance of winning the votes of American consumers if he can pretend that he is “defending” them from a conspiring corporation with a well-timed, high-profile lawsuit.

This is not the first time that Obama has misrepresented Jobs and Apple to advance his socialist political agenda. As I’ve written, Obama used Jobs and his wife in his 2012 State of the Union Address to curry favor for the Buffett Rule—even though Jobs had advised Obama to reduce regulations while he was alive.

Since Jobs’ death, Obama has used Jobs’ name to promote ideas that Jobs never embraced. Now, Obama is suing Apple and attacking the world’s biggest capitalistic success story so that he can look like a hero in the eyes of consumers and spend four more years flying in Air Force One at a rate of $179,750 per hour.

Amazon’s Undeniable Monopoly

The purpose of anti-trust laws is to promote and maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies, including setting unnatural prices that inhibit free competition. When Apple collaborated with publishers, I contend that it did not violate anti-trust legislation because Apple’s agency-pricing model actually brought more competition and consumer choices into an e-book market that was—and still is—monopolized by Amazon.

Back in 2009, Amazon was a lone shark, controlling 90 percent of the e-book market. Today, even after Apple and others have entered the market, Amazon controls the majority (60 percent) of the e-book market. Barnes and Noble controls 25 percent and Apple commands a scant 15 percent. But Obama is suing Apple for conspiring to undermine Amazon? Maybe someone should file an anti-trust lawsuit against Obama for attacking the free markets and protecting Amazon’s monopoly.

Unlike traditional printed books, you can’t physically hold an e-book in your hands; you must purchase a special “e-reader” or tablet to peruse them. Amazon’s e-reader is called the Kindle. So, when Amazon monopolizes the e-book market, it also guarantees that people will be more likely to purchase its e-reading device.

Consumers, writers and book publishers have been unhappy with Amazon’s monopoly for some time. From a consumer perspective, Amazon’s monopoly lessens technology options. CNET News ratesthe third-generation iPad tablet as the “best full-featured reading tablet”—functionally superior to even the most advanced versions of the Barnes and Noble Nook and the Amazon Kindle.

Nook E-reader. Image credit: "Nook and Wine" by Let Ideas Compete on Flickr Via Creative Commons.

Publishers were also unhappy with Amazon’s “wholesale pricing model” because it cannibalized their print businesses. As Jobs explained to his biographer, Walter Isaacson: “Amazon screwed it up. It paid the wholesale price for some books, but started selling them below cost at $9.99. The publishers hated that—they thought it would trash their ability to sell hardcover books at $28. So before Apple even got to the scene, some booksellers were starting to withhold books from Amazon. So we told the publishers, ‘We’ll go to the agency model, where you set the price, and we get our 30%, and yes, the customer pays a little more, but that’s what you [publishers] want anyway.’ But we also asked for a guarantee [per a most favored nation clause] that if anybody else is selling the books cheaper than we are, then we can sell them at the lower price too. So they [publishers] went to Amazon and said, “You’re going to sign an agency contract or we’re not going to give you the books.’”

Jobs further explains: “We were not the first people in the books business. Given the situation that existed [Amazon’s 90 percent monopoly], what was best for us was to do this akido move and end up with the agency model.”

Jobs’ Vision Was to Save Journalism and Media, Not Profit

Jobs saw an opportunity to provide consumers with more choices. He knew he could turn a profit by competing with Amazon—but money was not his goal. Jobs’ main goal was to save high-quality print media from going extinct in the modern digital era where fewer consumers will pay for printed newspapers and books because they can get so much information and entertainment for free online.

I think Jobs intuitively understood that if major publishers can’t afford to pay writers and journalists, consumers suffer. I think Jobs understood that without media watchdogs, free speech deteriorates and the government is no longer accountable to the people.

For example, Jobs considered the New York Times to be one of the finest newspapers in America and he wanted to save its journalism for future generations. Isaacson writes: “Jobs was particularly interested in striking a deal with the New York Times, which he felt was a great newspaper in danger of declining because it had not figured out how to charge for digital content. ‘One of my personal projects this year, I’ve decided, is to try to help—whether they want it or not—the Times,’ he told me in early 2010. ‘I think it’s important to the country for them to figure it out.’”

The New York Times on an iPad. Image available on Flickr via Creative Commons from the photo stream of Rubin421

Jobs also had great success working with Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of News Corp., which owns conservative-leaning media giants like the Wall Street Journal and the Fox News Channel. So, I believe that Jobs’ over-arching vision in implementing the agency model was to preserve all high-caliber media.

Sleeping with Amazon Hurts Consumers

When Obama attacks Apple and favors Amazon, he hurts the U.S. economy and American consumers. For example, in the days following Obama’s announcement of the anti-trust lawsuit against Apple, the Nasdaq composite index took a substantial plunge. Since Apple is the world’s most valuable company, it comprises 12 percent of the Nasdaq. So, Obama is hurting the U.S. economy for his own political gain.

Competition always creates more options for consumers. When publishers can stay profitable and new retailers can enter the e-book market, there are more quality options for readers. And when retailers like Apple can enter the market, they will innovate and offer alternative e-reading devices like the iPad so that Americans have more high-tech options for reading e-books than buying an Amazon Kindle.

Mr. President, please stop favoring your mistress Amazon. She already monopolizes the e-book market and consumers deserve high-quality choices.

iPad and Kindle. Image credit: "Set up for the duration" by Martin Burns on Flickr via Creative Commons.

Key pages referenced from Walter Isaacson’s biography, “Steve Jobs:” pp. 503-04, 531 and 533-34.

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This week, Katie heads to Manhattan, New York!

On Thursday, April 12th, you can watch Katie on The Willis Report on the Fox Business Network at 4:30 p.m. Central / 5:30 p.m. Eastern. To see whether you get the Fox Business Network in your area, simply type your zip code into Fox’s channel finder. Please consider recording it if you are unable to watch it live.

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I’m chomping on the chocolate bunny (ears first!) that I found in my basket and it occurs to me that believing in Christ’s resurrection requires a capitalistic mindset. Certainly, you could be a capitalist without believing in Christ’s resurrection since it requires faith to believe in the resurrection. And, Christ’s primary mission on earth was not to overthrow human forms of government. However, Christ recognized as “good” a legitimate form of human government that espouses freedom, private property rights and representative authority. So, if you call yourself a Christian (as President Obama does) then I think you must also be a capitalist.

Increasingly, I hear Christians carelessly mistake the lessons in the Bible for those in Marx’s “The Communist Manifesto.” I hear Christians praising “social justice” like it’s the 11^th Commandment. I want to set the record straight: Jesus Christ was not a socialist and he did not preach “social justice.”

It is unnecessary to believe in the “historical Jesus” to follow the logic of my argument. I personally believe in the passion and resurrection of Christ. However, for argument’s sake in this column, I am not assuming that you, my reader, have “faith” in a historical Jesus.  I merely want you to see that the story of Christ—which politicians like President Obama routinely reference to “back up” their socialist policies (think Obamacare and the Buffett Rule) is a story of capitalism, not socialism.

The obvious “hero” in the Bible is Christ. Meanwhile, an obvious “villain” is a man named Judas Iscariot. (If you don’t know about Judas from reading the Bible, you may know of him from hearing from the Lady Gaga song, “Judas.”)

Basically, Judas starts out as a disciple of Christ. His responsibility is to be a treasurer and carry the common “purse” for Christ and the disciples as they travel and preach together. Unfortunately, Judas ends up loving money more than he loves Christ and the poor. While Judas says he cares about the poor, he is not poor in spirit.

Judas is very judgmental and self-righteous. In John 12:4-6, we read, “Then one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, he that was about to betray him, said: ‘Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?’ Now he said this, not because he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and having the purse, carried the things that were put therein.”

Judas’ attitude toward money is similar to that of a modern socialist politician who thinks that he knows better than the people he is representing—the taxpayers—how to spend their money. A socialist politician like President Obama thinks that he cannot trust us to be generous with our own money. However, ironically, when politicians and federal agents have access to taxpayer money, they often become corrupt and waste our money on things like conferences for federal employees that feature clowns, mind readers and goodie bags filled with costly key chains and commemorative coins. In other words, socialist bureaucrats have a track record of spending our money on worthless junk in the name of helping the poor.

Image credit: "cityscape from pulaski" by mementosis on Flickr via Creative Commons.Flickr via Creative Commons.

Judas, likewise, became so corrupted by his proximity to money that he was willing to betray those he represented—Christ and the other disciples—in exchange for coinage. Shortly after the Last Supper, Judas betrays Jesus by identifying him before his adversary’s soldiers with a kiss in exchange for thirty pieces of silver.

Jesus was never a part of the government. Nor was he an anarchist; Jesus said: “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” He was not against just human authority and taxation. However, he absolutely defended the right of private businessmen and women to run their businesses, wield their private property and enter into contracts as they see fit—not the way unions or politicians screaming for higher minimum wages and universal healthcare see fit.

Jesus defends free enterprise and private property when he tells the “Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard” in Matthew 20:1–16:

“… And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his steward, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first.’ And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. And on receiving it they grumbled against the householder, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong: did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you, and go; I choose to give to this last as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?’”

I realize that the spiritual meaning of this parable relates to God’s mercy on sinners who repent and reform late in life. However, I think there is clearly also a secular or earthly meaning to this parable. For, Christ would not have used this example if he did believe in the value of private property and free enterprise on earth.

President Obama said at the February, 2011 National Prayer Breakfast that, as a community organizer, “…I came to know Jesus Christ for myself and embrace him as my Lord and Savior.” Obama said: “… that’s why I continue to believe that in a caring and in a just society, government must have a role to play.”

At this year’s National Prayer Breakfast on February 2, 2012, President Obama again misinterpreted Christ’s words to mean that the government should tell private citizens how to spend their money: “… And when I talk about shared responsibility … For me, as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’ teaching that ‘for unto who much is given, much shall be required.’ … I am my brother’s keeper … I succeed because others succeed with me. …It’s also about the Biblical call to care ‘for the least of these,’ for the poor, for those at the margins of our society; to answer the responsibility we’re given in Proverbs to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute….”

I would encourage you to recognize that the Biblical story of Christ is not the same as the abridged version you hear from President Obama and other socialist politicians. Christ did not preach about stealing from one group to give to another. (In fact, his Father gave Moses the eighth commandment.) Rather, Christ taught that private property owners were capable of being generous independently. And, Christ did not merely preach poverty as Judas did—he lived a life of poverty and he befriended the poor and rich alike.

Don’t fall into the trap of confusing “social justice” with Christianity. The resurrection is a story of absolute freedom overcoming human corruption and manipulation.

Image credit: "rum + coke" by summerbl4ck on Flickr via Creative Commons.

Me: “I’ll take a ‘Coal and Rum.’”
Bartender: “What’s that?”
Me: “I’m protesting the EPA.”
Bartender: “Got it. Awesome. Your drink is on the house.”

Coal is my lifestyle. Coal allows me to turn darkness into light at the flip of a switch. Coal allows me to brew a cup of coffee, toast a bagel and pour a class of refrigerated orange juice in minutes. Coal lets me text friends and find directions from my fully-charged iPhone. Coal grants me the ability to use machines to wash and dry my week’s laundry pile while I run on my treadmill. Coal allows me to heat my Minneapolis bedroom to a balmy 72 degrees while snow and freezing winds pelt the roof. Basically, coal means that Americans like you and me can live like kings and queens on a pauper’s budget.

I think every American—progressive, moderate or conservative—should be concerned that the President of the United States is putting coal out of business and raising the cost of ordinary living. His EPA just released new carbon dioxide emission limits that will effectively put new coal-fired electric plants out of business, thereby raising the cost of energy at a time when record numbers of Americans are jobless and homeless.

To ice the cake, President Obama is acting unconstitutionally and ignoring science. The Constitution does not allow the President to create laws via Cabinet-level agencies like the EPA. And, there is no conclusive scientific evidence proving that producing clean coal radically endangers humans or the earth.

A new study shows that young people couldn’t care less about going “green.” Sure, we care about the earth and we dislike pollution; no one wants to live in smog. But don’t ask us to pay to combat climate change while we struggle to pay our bills and compete with hundreds of our qualified peers for the same paltry job openings.

This month, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology published a 40-year study that observed the generational shifts in American attitudes toward environmentalism from baby boomers to Gen Xers to Millenials. Researchers found that the “Steepest [trend] of all was a steady decline in concern about the environment, and taking personal action to save it,” reports The Associated Press.

Key findings from the study:

• Millenials dislike the label “environmentalist.”
• The majority (85-90 percent) of young people are “…not interested in being seriously inconvenienced or paying a cost to…” protect the environment.
• Only 21 percent of Millenials consider it their responsibility to “clean” the earth.

Even though young people like myself have been nagged to “go green” by commercials, celebrities, college professors and employers, we are smart enough to prioritize and read through the conspiracy theories. We are tech-savvy individuals. We want to plug in our iPads and send emails off, not write snail mail letters by candlelight. We want to advance, not regress. Is this so much to ask?

Image credit: "iPad with Dandilion" by JaredEarle on Flickr via Creative Commons.

If President Obama thinks he can fool young people to vote for him by putting coal out of business, he should think again. We know that the dangers of human-induced climate change are still controversial theories. Sure, the earth is warming and cooling but many scientists say this is natural and will happen whether or not humans use coal-powered lights, TVs, smartphones and washing machines. Americans in general, but particularly young professionals, are worried about their own premature extinction—not climate change.

Good science does not emerge from “group-think” exercises. The Heartland Institute points out that it would not matter if 99 percent of scientists confidently held the theory that humans significantly contribute to climate change—one scientist, doing a single experiment, could disprove this theory. And as Rush Limbaugh has said: “There’s nothing democratic about science. The earth does not revolve around the sun because a consensus of human beings says so.”

When Benjamin Franklin performed experiments to verify lighting’s electricity by flying a kite, he was outside interacting with nature—not huddled in a group pushing for political consensus. Franklin invented the lightning rod whereas climate scientists are inventing science to support socialist public policies like the EPA’s coal regulations.

There have been so many scandals surrounding climate change “scientists” that it is difficult to take their research seriously. Today’s climate scientists seem to care less about conducting Franklinesque nature experiments and more about manipulating spreadsheet data to help politicians scare voters into letting the government control energy production. For example:

• Climategate: On November 19, 2009, a whistleblower releases thousands of documents and emails on the server for the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. The leaked materials reveal that the same “scientists” aggressively pushing the man-made climate change scare were cutting back-door deals to protect their funding from the global community, exaggerating the number of scientists with PhDs who signed off on their data, hiding data and trying to blackmail scientists who wouldn’t go along.
• Polarbeargate:On July 18, 2009, the biologist who succeeded in getting Polar Bears on the endangered species list and a forefather of the global warming movement, Charles Monnett, is investigated by the Department of the Interior’s Office of Inspector General for scientific misconduct related to both his report connecting polar bear deaths to climate change and his awarding of federal contracts for polar bear research.Although Monnett was allowed to return to work, he was placed in a different department where he no longer oversees $50-million of federal research grants—and the probe over Monnett’s past work was last reported by NPR-online to be ongoing.
• EPA-gate: On September 28, 2011, an internal government watchdog reveals that: “The Obama administration cut corners…” because the EPA issued “controversial and expensive regulations to control greenhouse gases for the first time” despite the fact that the EPA did not conduct sufficient scientific studies to determine whether greenhouse gas emissions “pose dangers to human health and welfare,” reported the Associated Press.
• Climategate 2.0: On November 22, 2011, an anonymous whistleblower discloses 5,000 fresh emails revealing the scientific community’s plot to sell man-made global warming fears to the public.“Several of the new e-mails show that the scientists involved in doctoring the IPCC [UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] reports are very aware that the energy-rationing policies that their junk science is meant to support would cost trillions of dollars,” Competitive Enterprise Institute director Myron Bell told Forbes.
• Fakegate: On February 20, 2012, activist-scientist Peter Gleick, President of the Pacific Institute, admits that he lied to Chicago think tank, Heartland Institute. He posed as one of Heartland’s board members via email in order to access confidential documents. Then, he tampered with the documents and released doctored versions to the public in an attempt to cast doubt on Heartland’s position that the dangers of man-made global warming are overblown and theoretical.

I’m will not give up my high-tech lifestyle so that synthetic climate scientists can keep their global funding. And, I’m unwilling to live through blackouts and pay three times as much to toast my morning bagel so that an unconstitutional agency like the EPA can kill new, coal-fired electric plants.

Heya, bartender! Thanks for that Coal and Rum! I’ll have another.

Image credit: "My rum and coke" by NotoriousJEN on Flickr via Creative Commons.

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Lady Justice. Image credit: "All shall be equal before the law" by siobhanm_baxter on Flickr via Creative Commons.

Gays are not merely bodies desiring homosexual action. Women are not walking uteruses. Gays and women are dignified human beings with reason, spirit and individuality. The Constitution considers Americans with respect to our humanity and citizenship, not our sexuality. So when politicians and sexual minority activists lobby for gay and female “rights” that trump the First and Tenth Amendments, they inadvertently attack equality for all Americans.

The federal government does not need to be involved in sex or marriage—homosexual or heterosexual. Constitutionally, all Americans should have the freedom to get married in their own places of worship. It does not even make sense for the federal government to define marriage because so many Americans believe that marriage is a personal and/or religious benefit, not a “right.”

If a particular state decides to formally legalize gay marriage or to subsidize birth control, this is constitutional albeit unnecessary bureaucracy. And, such state laws must allow for religious and free speech exemptions to protect the First Amendment rights of others.

I hope women and gays come to understand that if they do not quickly discern the difference between political pandering and the Constitution, they will lose their freedom and so will everyone else. Gays are not victims just as I am not a victim because I’m a woman. The Constitution protects our human dignity and equality. We don’t need more federal laws; we need to elect politicians who will enforce the Constitution.

Without the Constitution, nobody wins, including gals and gays

American women and gays are not “more equal” if the federal government recognizes the “right” to female birth control and gay marriage. In fact, the more the federal government gets involved in our sexual and marital lives, the less free and the less human we become. And, if we actively lobby for the federal government to give us something (i.e. a marriage certificate or birth control) at the expense of another person’s First Amendment rights, then we become aggressors (not victims) seeking superiority, not equality.

Equal Justice. Image credit: "Justice" by mindgutter on Flickr via Creative Commons.

The Constitution is intentionally silent on the issues of birth control and marriage. The 10th Amendment states: “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.” In other words, because the Constitution is silent on marriage and birth control, states alone have the constitutional power to regulate marriage and birth control.

Rather than lobbying for federal marriage laws or federal contraception rights, I think gays and women should ask Congress and the President to go back to the original meaning of the Constitution, which allows for the free speech of all minorities—including sexual minorities. The government cannot make people “moral.” The government can only protect individual liberty. Liberty allows for the competition of ideas whereby all individuals voice their beliefs in the public square so that the most rational and moral ideas can rise to the surface.

As “The Federalist No. 51,” founder James Madison writes: “It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. … Whilst all authority in it [the federal republic of the United States] will be derived from and dependent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority. In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects. The degree of security in both cases will depend on the number of interests and sects.”

Basically, the founding fathers wanted the president and the federal government to protect (not control) free speech, religion and private property.

No matter how consummate the Constitution is, morality will come from individuals freely choosing righteous behavior. French thinker and historian Alexis de Tocqueville, observed about the U.S. Constitution: “The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage.”

Pandering politicians

President Obama tells women like Georgetown law school student Sandra Fluke that the only way he can protect female rights is to confiscate the First Amendment rights of free speech and religious exercise from other Americans via his federal mandate for contraception coverage. Oddly, Obama thinks that he, as President, can tell a private American citizen like Rush Limbaugh that his words: “…don’t have any place in the public discourse.” Per the Constitution, the President should be the one to quit talking, not Limbaugh or practicing Catholics.

In a clear political move to help President Obama and the Democratic Party curry favor with gays and women, Democrat congresswomen like Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Sen. Barbara Boxer and Sen. Amy Klobuchar are prematurely pushing Congress to renew and expand the Violence Against Women Act (VAMA) to include “protections” for same-sex couples and illegal immigrants—even though CNN reports that VAMA does not come up for renewal until the end of the fiscal year.

Meanwhile, Rick Santorum wants to unconstitutionally regulate marriage at the federal level, police consensual sex in private homes and approves the use federal money for birth control.

And, last year, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo essentially told gays that the only way he could stand up for gay rights was to push through gay marriage legislation without a complete religious exemption clause to protect the First Amendment rights of others.

I think Obama, Feinstein, Boxer, Klobuchar, Santorum and Cuomo should re-read the First Amendment, The Federalist Papers and John Locke’s Second Treatise of Civil Government. The first piece of private property that every American owns—from the moment of conception—is his or her own body. Owning our body means we have the right to free speech and religious practices—as long as we do not use wrongful force against another.

I realize that when American women and gays read the newspaper, they see horrific headlines of inhumane treatment of women and gays. These are appalling situations that need remedy. However, reading about global tragedies can make women and gays more susceptible to buying into dangerous promises of domestic federal “protections” from American politicians.

Women in Pakistan face abusive spouses and in-laws that scorn them with acid, gasoline and fire. Women in Saudi Arabia face sentences of 10 lashes for daring to drive. Starving women and girls in Somalia face gang-rape and sexual abuse as they walk miles in search of food and refugee camps. Women in China are lucky if they are even born.

Image credit: "Mother and Child" by Feed my Starving Children (FMSC) on Flickr via Creative Commons.

This month, London activist Ali Hili told The New York Times he estimates up to 750 gay Iraqis were killed in a six year time frame. “An Interior Ministry security officer said that in the past two weeks, officials had found the bodies of six young men whose skulls had been crushed. Reuters reported the toll to be 14 or more, citing hospital and security officials. Rights groups say that more than 40 young men have died.” Many of the men were simply wearing emo/Goth/punk/hipster apparel that Iraqi radicals view as embarrassing and threateningly counter-cultural.

Like gays, women are treated as sexual minorities around the globe. Only in America do women and gays have equality before the law. I think American gays and women need to realize that they are not victims as long as they defend the Constitution. The second they allow politicians to attack the Constitution in the name of equality is the second they willingly become victims. Warping the Constitution is not a win for gays or women; it is a lose-lose situation because gays and women need the Constitution too.

We are all human beings with dignity and reason. We are already equal before the Constitution. Politicians and activists who stomp on the First and Tenth Amendments to put the government in control of sex and marriage are driving an anti-equality movement that will surely backfire.

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Image credit: "Lady Justice" by KatherineKenny on Flickr via Creative commons.

President Obama speaking at Keehi Lagoon Beach Park. Image credit: "Obama" by Justin Sloan on Flickr via Creative Commons.

A plumpish girl making pizzas behind a counter methodically spreads red sauce on a circle of dough as she vents loudly to the cashier: “Do you drink soda pop? No? Well, I do. They say that pop makes you gain weight. I always gain weight from stress and I’m so stressed out. I don’t have enough money. I need a car for college and I can’t afford one. And gas is outrageous. It’s like $5! I mean, I could buy a bike for $5!”

A few minutes later, the girl hands me my oven-ready pizza without looking up. She is visibly distraught. I feel bad for her as I walk away thinking, “Thanks for ruining our economy, President Obama.”

Obama claims he doesn’t manipulate gas prices. He told Fox News this month: “You think the president of the United States going into reelection wants gas prices to go up higher? Is that—is there anybody here who thinks that makes a lot of sense?”

I say: “Yes, Mr. President, that makes a lot of sense. Your regulations and unconstitutional executive orders have caused the price of gas to skyrocket. So, you do control gas prices. Want examples? I’ll give you five.”

1.) The Department of Insider Trading

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the worst inside trader of them all? President Obama.

I think a better name for the Department of Energy (DOE) is the “Department of Insider Trading.” Obama uses the DOE to cut unconstitutional, back-door deals with taxpayer dollars. End result? Rising gas prices.

Obama gave insider seats on the DOE to venture capitalists backing clean-tech firms. Then, his “administration embarked on a massive program to stimulate the economy with federal investments in clean-technology firms. …  $3.9 billion in federal grants and financing flowed to 21 companies backed by firms with connections to five Obama administration staffers and advisers,” reports the Washington Post. For example, he threw $535 million in the form of a taxpayer-backed loan guarantee at the now defunct solar firm, Solyndra, that shed over 1,000 jobs.

Like the Department of Education, the DOE is an unconstitutional pet project of President Jimmy Carter. Carter wanted to be king and therefore loved creating extra-Congressional, Cabinet-level agencies. He knew he wouldn’t be able to amend the Constitution to properly give himself control over energy, so he bullied Congress to hand its legislative power over to the executive branch; he signed the DOE into law in 1977.

Since 2008, Obama has utilized the unconstitutional DOE to pass out taxpayer funds to his friends in clean-tech firms that go belly-up. This abuse of taxpayer dollars is effectively an energy tax.

2.) Obama keeps his alternative to oil, clean-tech, expensive

Earlier this month, I was a Power Panelist on Current TV and the host asked: “Why do Republicans hate American companies, such as Chevy and its Volt?” I responded by explaining how President Obama ignores and hurts American companies (think tech companies like Apple and any American company that produces “clean-tech”).

Obama says he supports American clean-tech. Correction: Obama keeps clean-tech unaffordable. You need rare-earth elements to create solar panels, wind turbines and electric batteries for cars like the Chevy Volt. But President Obama keeps the EPA in business. And environmental regulations like those coming out of the EPA put the former world leader in rare-earth production, California’s Molycorp mine, out of business years ago. It is the government’s fault that we stopped producing rare-earths at Molycorp, which is just now chugging back to life under stiff environmental standards.

Today, China produces roughly 97 percent of the world’s rare-earth supply and controls prices, charging $130 a pound for elements like dysprosium. It’s hard to blame China for mining its own resources and wielding its market advantage.

For over three years, Obama did nothing to revitalize America’s rare-earth market. He could have eliminated the unconstitutional EPA. Instead, he made the EPA stronger.

Now that gas prices are skyrocketing because Obama won’t drill for oil and his alternative solution, clean-tech, costs too much, Obama needs a scapegoat. On March 13, Obama filed a legal case on behalf of the United States “against the Chinese government over its reported hoarding of rare earth metals used to manufacture an array of sophisticated products,” reports The New York Times.

Obama says: “We want our companies right here in America. But to do that, American manufacturers need to have access to rare earth materials.” Please stop blaming China, Mr. President. China has no obligation to provide us with rare-earths at a certain price. You are to blame for the rare-earth shortage in America. You expect Americans to give up cheap gas and the safety of SUVs for an expensive and risky clean technology like the Volt, which blew up in flames after government crash tests.

Chevy Volt recharging. Image credit: "Plugged in" by Stephen Rees on Flickr via Creative Commons.

3.) Obama blocked Keystone XL

I wrote an entire column explaining how Obama robbed Americans of 700,000 barrels of daily crude, tens of thousands of jobs, energy independence, and lower gas prices—even after the State Department twice declared TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline environmentally safe.

94 percent of Americans love Canada, reports Gallup. Unlike most Americans and President Ronald Reagan, who had a thriving relationship with Canada’s Prime Minister, Obama is ostensibly one of the four percent of Americans who dislike our friendly northern neighbor. And, as one of my Twitter followers quipped, this makes Obama a “four-percenter.”

4.) Obama keeps his “boot on the throat” of big oil

Obama keeps telling us that drilling is up. Drilling is only up if the definition of “up” is “down.” If you want dates, I wrote a column with a detailed timeline showing how Obama has kept American oil production down.

Furthermore, Elizabeth MacDonald of Fox Business News reported on March 16 that up to 20 percent of the price you pay per gallon of gasoline goes toward state and federal taxes. So, Obama has the power to slash the price of gas by pressuring Congress to eliminate federal gas taxes.

5.) Obama fans Middle East tensions, raising market uncertainty

Obama loves to blame oil speculators for high gas prices. He should blame himself.

Earlier in his term, Obama created a special task force to “investigate” possible market manipulation of oil prices. But, blaming Wall Street and capitalists for rising gas prices is a political move. The New York Times points out: “…most energy experts see no support for that theory. They point out that traditional market forces, like growing demand from emerging countries, and limited growth in oil supplies, can easily account for the increase in prices.”

Furthermore, there is significant uncertainty in the market and uncertainty drives speculators to bump up the cost of oil. Global unrest in the oil-rich Middle East and anemic production in stable countries like the U.S. force traders to build a ‘”fear premium” of $15 to $20 per barrel…into the price of oil to account for further disruptions…,’ reports the Associated Press.

And Businessweek explains: “Credit Suisse estimates that each 1¢ uptick in a gallon of gas redirects $1 billion of consumer spending away from other goods over the course of a year. Retail sales in 2012 will probably total $4.8 trillion; so a 50¢ jump would siphon away more than 1 percent of those dollars—$50 billion…” that could be spent otherwise in the economy.

Get ready to watch Obama kiss $50 billion away from the U.S. economy. The New York Times reports that: “gas prices could rise another 50 cents a gallon or more, analysts say, if the diplomatic and economic standoff over Iran’s nuclear ambitions escalates into military conflict or there is some other major supply disruption.”

Obama is fanning tensions in the Middle East. More Americans than ever before are dying at the hands of trusted Afghans, not the Taliban. And Afghan President Hamid Karzai, our purported ally in the War in Afghanistan, wants us to leave by 2013. Yet, Obama seems to think he’s the President of Afghanistan and he is hell-bent on keeping our brave men and women in danger until 2014.

Iran controls nearly one-fifth of the world’s oil supply through the Strait of Hormuz. Despite the fact that American intelligence agencies have found zero evidence that Iran is working on building a nuclear weapon, Obama led the West in placing harsh economic sanctions on Iran.

On February 20, oil prices broke $105 a barrel, a nine-month high, because Iran cut exports to France and Britain. Iran perceives American economic sanctions as an act of war and economic sanctions have hurt global prices because they have increased market uncertainty.

Today, the world draws about 35 percent of its oil from North Africa and the Middle East. So, bringing our troops home from the Middle East, approaching Iran more diplomatically and dramatically accelerating U.S. production could help reduce the world’s dependency on oil from high-tension zones, thereby reducing market uncertainty and lowering gas prices.

Obama is not a businessman or a constitutionalist. He doesn’t understand that socialism makes clean technology like wind, solar and electric unaffordable. He thinks it is fine to ignore the Constitution, use ­­­­­­­taxpayer money to reward his friends and stir Middle Eastern unrest. He is responsible for high gas prices. No wonder the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs warned Obama: “You’re heading toward a one-term presidency.”

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Tim Tebow. Image credit: Ed Clemente Photography on Flickr via Creative Commons.

Tim Tebow and I both blitzed the Department of Education; we were both homeschooled. Tebow became the first homeschooler to win the Heisman Trophy and he’s now an NFL starting quarterback. And, as someone who was homeschooled through eighth grade and attended a private high school before graduating from college, I personally know that young people don’t need the federal government running their education.

I think American children and their parents deserve more than an unconstitutional, one-size-fits-all federal education system. I think local governments and individual parents have the constitutional right to decide how and where children go to school. Let’s eliminate the Department of Education.

The Department of Education is unconstitutional because it violates the Tenth Amendment, which states: “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.” There is no federal mandate for public education in the Constitution, so no one has a constitutional right to an education subsidized by federal taxpayer dollars.

To be exact, since the Constitution does not mention “education” as a federal function, Congress should have voted to amend the Constitution in order to give the federal government the power to regulate education. Since Congress never amended the Constitution, the federal Department of Education remains unconstitutional.

The Department of Education was initially a minor office within the government. However, President Jimmy Carter decided that he wanted to be in charge of education. So, on October 17, 1979, he signed a law promoting the Department to cabinet-level and placing education under the purview of the executive branch.

Initially, most Republicans understood that Carter’s move was unconstitutional. Carter’s successor, President Reagan, tried to eliminate the Department of Education but the Democrats in Congress blocked him. The CATO Institute reports that in 1996, the GOP’s party platform still included this belief: “The Federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in school curricula or to control jobs in the market place. This is why we will abolish the Department of Education.”

After Reagan, some Republicans began swerving off the constitutional path. Former President George W. Bush proposed and signed the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001. This bill helped double the size of the Department of Education and NCLB’s requirements for federal funding effectively seized more authority from States and individuals.

Today, we have a GOP presidential candidate (Rick Santorum) who voted for the No Child Left Behind Act even as he was unwilling to put his own children through the broken public school system. Politicians like Santorum routinely vote for public school funding and then hypocritically send their own children to private schools or tutor them at home. Every politician wants to say he or she cares about educating children, but, at the end of the day, a child’s parents have his or her best interest in mind.

Because the Department of Education is a federal affair, it’s effectively an unjust tax. 33 million Americans (28 percent of all households) live alone, according to 2011 census data. Why should these solo breadwinners be forced to pay for strangers to get an “education?” There are also millions of families who choose to put their children in private schools or homeschool them. How is it just for these families to pay twice—to educate their children and subsidize the neighborhood children?

Image credit: f1uffster (Jeanie) on Flickr via Creative Commons.

I think there is a common misconception that people who send their children to private school or homeschool are über-wealthy and can “afford” to pay taxes for other children to go to public school. Growing up, I remember busybodies asking me, “How can your mom afford to stay home?” Later, when I went to a private high school, the snoops would say: “Oh. Wow. That’s so expensive. What does your dad do?”

My parents were not über-wealthy. They sacrificed a great deal and gave up buying new cars and going on big-ticket vacations so that my siblings and I could get the best education possible. Many other homeschooling and private school parents I knew growing up were the exact same way. As a kid, I remember thinking that it was unjust for my parents to sacrifice and work so hard for my education and to subsidize the next-door neighbor boys’ free ride to public school.

I have no problem with public schools that are managed entirely on a local level. Let’s say there’s a town of like-minded people who want to pool their resources together and build a school: They have a town meeting and the majority of residents—including the retirees and single people in the community—are willing to pitch in funds for a public school. The residents are freely vested in the school’s mission and they will spend their collective funds wisely. That kind of public school is fine by me because it’s locally controlled and 100 percent constitutional.

America’s first public school, in fact, was a perfect example of a local (constitutional) public school. Boston Latin School was established in 1635. It had no national element. It had a strong humanitarian curriculum and students learned how to read, write and multiply—not how to put a condom on a banana. Four signers of the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and Robert Treat Paine, attended Boston Latin. (Franklin dropped out before graduating.)

It costs taxpayers over $10,000 per year to educate the average public school student. For zero cost to the state and under $1,000 a year to themselves, parents can educate their child at home and the child will probably have better academic test scores. Last month, USA Today analyzed a 2009 National Home Education Research Institute study revealing that homeschooled students score higher than public school students by an of average of 37 percentile points.

So, besides the fact that the Department of Education is unconstitutional, there is no evidence that more money and federal control invariably produce smarter children. My brother is in medical school now and he was homeschooled through sixth grade.

Some of America’s most successful people were successful precisely because they avoided the federal education system at some point. People like: Tim Tebow, Jason Taylor, Bode Miller, Venus and Serena Williams, Ben Franklin, Albert Einstein, Claude Monet, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison, Mark Twain, C.S. Lewis, Robert Frost, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Andrew Carnegie and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Let’s help children, parents and taxpayers regain their constitutional freedom. Let’s blitz the Department of Education.

Tim Tebow. Image credit: Ed Clemente Photography on Flickr via Creative Commons.

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