In our fine state of Maryland, the governor, like many others around the country, is anxiously awaiting the first checks to arrive from the Federal Government. Like most states, Maryland is experiencing a budget shortfall due to the contracting economy leading to less revenue just as expenses are going up. For those states that do not have a “rainy day fund”, this poses a severe problem. Unlike the Federal Government, the states cannot just print money when they run out, they are supposed to balance their budgets. Politicians, however, are the same everywhere. If there is a dollar in tax revenue, it must be spent on something because that spending will create goodwill`among the electorate, which is good for reelection. So states all over the union, beginning with the billions and billions California is in the hole, are in dire straits.

     As we know, there are two choices for government when ends don’t meet. They can raise taxes or cut services. They prefer not to do either. The Federal Government, on the other hand, has two other options. It can print money or borrow it. It has been doing a lot of both lately. That is getting us in enough trouble as it is and the repercussions of our profligate spending will be with us for decades to come. If, however, the state budgets are supplemented by the Federal Government, that is a whole new can of worms. The states can go on new spending sprees just like the Federal Government because their budgets will no longer have to reflect fiscal reality. Congressmen will love it because they can point out how much federal money they brought home to supplement their state budgets. The Federal Government will love it because it will give them control over the states, because no money comes from the government without strings attached. The budget for the federal Government will mushroom even more but they will just continue to print and borrow. Everyone will be happy.

     That is until the whole house of cards comes crashing down. If history has taught us anything it is that one cannot deny common sense forever and irresponsible behavior will have consequences, usually in direct proportion to how long and how vehemently such behavior has been engaged in. We have been building up debt and obligation at a steadily increasing rate and with all this stimulus, our level of irresponsibility has gone through the roof.   One cannot print and borrow money indefinitely. Printing will eventually lead to hyperinflation and the devaluing of the currency. Excessive borrowing leads to bad credit and eventually the pool of lenders dries up. When that happens, it all comes crashing down. If we thought the banking and mortgage collapse was bad, just think what will happen when the Federal Government collapses. So many people are intimately dependent on it and such dependency will have disastrous consequences and may literally lead to the death of thousands of Americans. By bringing the states into this insanity, we are just hastening the collapse and ensuring that state and local government fail as well. We have got to say no to this level of spending. You can’t get something for nothing and sooner or later the gravy train will come to an end.

    A few days ago, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi attempted to justify putting abortion funding in the Stimulus Package. For Nancy, killing babies would relieve the strain on our educational and health care systems. Fewer people, fewer expenses, or perhaps better benefits for those who actually survive birth and infancy. She specifically referred to using billions of our dollars overseas to support these policies because since socialism, corrupt dictatorships and our money and technology has not relieved world poverty, we’ll simply reduce the number of people in poverty by reducing the number of people. Absolutely brilliant.

      The question may be raised, why are we responsible for the poverty of....name poor country run by corrupt and brutal dictator? Because in Nancy’s world, we, as the “rich” of the world, need to “give back”. What we were ever given in the first place by all these other countries, I don’t know. But President Obama and his Democrat cohorts want to make us responsible for the rest of the world, their health care and now, their reproductive lives.   They don’t seem to understand that in the vast majority of cases, our aid simply helps to prop up these brutal dictators and warlords. Another question. If we are in such difficult straits right now, why are we not focusing on our own house? How can we afford to start sending billions more dollars overseas for abortions? Is this really a priority?

     I have a suggestion for Mrs. Pelosi, however. If she really wants this money she needs a new angle.   In my humble opinion, she should sell it as part of the war on terror. She should direct the monies specifically at Muslim countries in the Middle east. After all, if we can reduce poverty by reducing the number of poor people, could we not reduce terrorism by reducing the number of Muslims?

     During our family’s recent vacation to sunny Florida, my wife and I had the opportunity to enjoy the magic of Disney’s Epcot park without our children. We enjoyed the rides and shows and the variety of cultural experiences to be found there. There was one show, however, that irritated me not a little. It was a movie billed as the “Circle of Life-an Environmental Tale” and was hosted by those lovable characters from the Lion King, Simba, Pumba and Timor. Al Gore himself might have nominated it for his Oscar.

     The film begins with our three heroes enjoying their little piece of paradise on the African plain. Pumba and Timor, however, have dammed up the stream to create a lake. When Simba asks why, Timor unrolls the plan for the “Akuna-Matada Super Resort” the two friends were going to create around their new lake. They were going to make boatloads of money. Simba shakes his head and tells them a story about another species that wanted to follow the same path of money grubbing progress.

     The tale begins with pictures of man in his hunter-gatherer state where he was one with nature and only took what he needed from the earth. Then they settled down and built cities and soon multiplied like locusts and spread across the plant like a plague, destroying the earth as they went. Of course there were the obligatory pictures of smokestacks, burning oil wells, traffic jams, sewage and oils spills with shiny, black birds. Timor and Pumba are horrified and swear they will never be like that. They knock down the dam, which was causing an environmental catastrophe downstream, and vow to help the poor stupid humans clean up their act.

     Does anyone other than me see the problem here? We were watching this environmental lecture in one of several resorts run by Disney. Resorts that created the scar in central Florida that is Orlando. Timor and Pumba dammed a stream, Disney dammed up the Everglades. How much water and energy does Disney and the the surrounding resorts use in their pursuits? And the bit about the oil companies-if it wasn’t for the oil companies making gas to put in all the cars that clog up Interstate 4 and bring tourists to fill up parking lots, Disney wouldn’t be able to charge each of those cars twelve dollars to park and seventy five for the privileged of being lectured.   We constantly hear about the environmental impact of “Big Oil” but what about “Big Amusement Park and Resort”? Central Florida would be nothing without Disney and the environmental impact of all those parks, resorts and the surrounding communities is arguably larger than the Exxon Valdez spill. Has not their success resulted in just as much environmental damage as the poor farmers in Brazil who are cutting down the rain forest?

     I’m not opposed to entertainment. I love a good show and a fast roller coaster as much as the next guy. And yes. we need to be good stewards of the environment and man’s greed and waste has done a lot of damage and we should do better. But listening to Disney lecture me about environmental responsibility is like listing to a prostitute lecture about safe sex.

Inauguration Speech

    My fellow Americans. It is truly a great privilege to have been chosen to fill this hallowed office and I am humbled by the faith you have placed in me to lead our wonderful country for the next four years. We are living is an amazing time where technology is advancing at a phenomenal rate and knowledge is expanding exponentially. Advances in medical science have made our lives not only longer but more fulfilling. I take great pride, as you do, that America has been in the forefront of so many of these advances and has done so much to share our bounty with the rest of the world.   It is our freedom and the resulting creativity and entrepreneurship that have given us these great blessings. God has not only blessed us with a bountiful land but imparted wisdom to the men who founded this great nation, men who recognized that freedom is the natural state of man and when government recognizes its limitations and protects the rights that are endowed to us by God, a happy and prosperous people will be the result.

     It would seem that that happiness and prosperity has been under assault during what can only be describe as a trying time.   The stock market has tumbled, putting many of our retirement savings in jeopardy. Housing prices are down, unemployment is up and the recession is getting deeper. Over the past year your federal government has tried a variety of things to get us out of this economic slump. Stimulus packages, bailouts, rescue packages, and nothing has worked up until this time. I propose to you that there is a good reason why nothing has worked. The government itself has been a major contributing factor to our economic woes. It is government manipulation of the free market systems that contributed to the housing crash and government ineptitude that led to last year’s skyrocketing energy prices. As the great Ronald Reagan once said, government is the problem, not the solution.

     Government cannot spend our way out of these difficult times by borrowing horrendous amounts of money from our children and grandchildren. We should not be burdening future generations with our mistakes.   It is time that we removed the problem and unleashed the power and ingenuity of the American people for it is you, not we who are in government, that is the true and lasting solution. We have strayed far from the founding principles of this nation and its Constitution for it has been the principles of liberty and limited government that made us a great and unique nation we are.   A return to those principles will ensure that America’s best days are still to come.

     To implement these ideals I will work with the congress on the following proposals. First, we will suspend all current bailout payments. We need to stop this horrible bleeding from the treasury that will only lead to a crushing burden on our children. Businesses will succeed or fail on their own, not because of any favoritism or lack thereof shown by the federal government. We will not leave businesses out in the cold, however. For businesses to have a fighting chance, we must remove the tax and regulatory burden from them so they will have a free hand to pursue the most profitable course. I am therefore proposing an elimination of the corporate income tax and an elimination of the following federal departments as a start, OSHA and the EPA, and a suspension of all regulations pertaining to them. Such oversight will be returned to the state and local governments where it belongs. I propose eliminating all subsidies of any kind for any business, including agriculture. Government should not be in the business of showing favoritism or propping up failing or obsolete enterprises.

     It is time that we turned our back on the idea that a one size fits all approach implemented by your federal government and returned power and control over your life to you and your local and state representatives. I propose abolishing the Department of Education that has shown itself to be completely inept at improving education.   Based on last year’s energy crisis, the Department of Energy has shown itself equally incompetent and should be eliminated. The government should get out of the energy business and let the companies that provide it do so free and unencumbered in the marketplace.   The federal government should get out of the mortgage and insurance business, the transportation business and the delivery business. These are just a few examples of government getting involved in areas in which it does not belong and creating bureaucracies and programs that just waste money and create problems and dependencies. Those programs and and their budgets should be eliminated as quickly as possible so they are no longer a burden on the American people or our economy.

     Thomas Jefferson once said that Government should not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. Philosophically and practically, the federal income tax is just wrong as a way to support the functions of government. Your wages should be your own, they do not belong to the government first. I would ask the congress to consider a repeal of the sixteenth amendment and the adoption of a consumption tax that will not exceed fifteen percent.

     It is a domestic policy that supports freedom and capitalism with low taxes and minimal regulation, adhering the principle of equality under the law that will draw us out of this ditch and set us high on the hill once again.

      Our interaction with the rest of the world needs to undergo some profound changes as well. We can no longer afford, fiscally or militarily, to be the world’s policeman. It is time we brought our troops homes from places where they are no longer needed. Europe is certainly able to take care of itself and it is time they started paying for their own defense. Do we need troops in Japan or even Korea a half century or more after the fact? We need to support our democratic allies but we do not have to replace their defense budget with our own.

     To our enemies, a warning. We will defend ourselves, our allies and our interests with all the means at our disposal.   It is our responsibility, however, to ensure our freedom of action when necessary. Two situations hinder our ability to act freely in our self interest when necessary. The first is our debt. The fact that adversaries like China hold so much of our debt ties our hands in economic negotiations and our ability to take a stronger stance on behalf of human rights and other important issues. Debt is a burden on our economy and a national security issue and it is time not only to eliminate the deficit but begin to pay that debt down to a level where it does not hang over our head. The second is our dependence on foreign oil, particularly oil from the middle east. There is no question that the greatest threat to our security comes from radical Islam and terrorists are supported in a large part by countries that sell us a lot of oil. It is very hard to tell a county like Iran or even Saudi Arabia to crack down of terrorists when they know they literally have us over a barrel. It is time we opened up our great reserves of energy, oil, coal, alternatives, and nuclear and weaned ourselves off of middle eastern oil at least. Neither Macmuhd Amidinijad or Hugo Chavez should dictate our foreign policy because of our dependence on their resources.

     My administration will be marked by the following. Domestically, we will dramatically reduce the size and influence of the federal government allowing the free market to operate at it most efficient, unencumbered by burdensome taxes and regulations. Our foreign policy will be characterized by our support for governments around the globe who respect and support the natural rights of man, a comprehensive war on terrorism, and a strong stance against those who adopt an adversarial relationship with us, economically or militarily. For over fifty years we have walked the road to socialism and it has not worked. We have given up freedom and huge sums of money by slowly relegating the Constitution and the founding principles of our nation to irrelevancy and we have nothing of value to show for it. I will not fulfill the role of a properly elected despot who may do as he pleases with the government and its power. I have taken the oath of office and have sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States. That Constitution placed severe limits on the power of the federal Government and I see it as my duty to uphold those laws and principles. That means returning freedom and responsibility to you, the American people and by placing liberty and duty upon you I have complete faith that we will quickly emerge from these difficult times and become the shining city on a hill that the founders and all the great men who have led this country envisioned. God Bless America.