Speaking at a White House event to observe the holy month of Ramadan, President Obama stressed his support for a plan to build an Islamic mosque near the ground zero site of the 9/11 attacks that resulted in the deaths of nearly 3,000 people.  The ground zero mosque has met with stiff opposition with little support from the public.

The ground zero mosque is a $100 million Islamic community center that is planned to be built 2 blocks away from the site of the 9/11 attacks that were carried out by Islamic extremists.

Speaking about the ground zero mosque, President Obama indicated that Muslims have the same religious freedom rights as other Americans.  “That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances…”  Obama further elaborated,  ”This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable.”

Obama’s statement supporting the ground zero mosque dodged the question on if the ground zero mosque should be built by asserting the “right” to build the mosque.

The Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;…”  America has a strong history of supporting religious freedom and religious tolerance.

Does the group planning to build the ground zero mosque have the right to build a mosque near ground zero?  Absolutely.  However, the real question is should the ground zero mosque be built.

A recent poll shows that Americans oppose the building of the ground zero mosque.  The question becomes, does the wishes of the community trump the right of others to practice their religion as they see fit.

It is easy to assert the opinion that Muslims have the right to build mosques and worship as they prefer to worship.  It is also easy to assert that Muslims have the right to build a mosque anywhere that doesn’t violate local laws.

The issue of the ground zero mosque becomes complicated when the question shift from “does somebody have the right” to “should somebody exercise that right”.

What do you think?

The latest Obamacare support polls show 58% of Americans against with 37% in favor.  As Americans begin to understand how “unintended consequences” of Obamacare will impact all American families, support will continue to fall.

The healthcare reform bill extended the power of the Federal Government to determine how healthcare insurance companies are run.  Obamacare implemented a mandate that 85% of insurance company revenue is paid outer for healthcare coverage, leaving only 15% of health insurance company revenue to run the company.  The current average runs between 65% and 75%.  Congressional Democrats and other anti-capitalists consider anything over 15% representative of waste and overhead inherent in the greedy capitalist system.

The absurdity of those arguments aside, there is an unintended consequence with the Federal Government mandating the expense ratios of private companies.   Federal bureaucracies are now having to determine what services are covered within the 85% of revenue that must be paid out.

As healthcare insurance companies seek to be more competitive by covering services that may actually reduce costs, the government gets to decide if those services count toward the 85% that must be paid out.  Anything that the government decides does not count toward that level of spending will most likely not be covered.

According to a recent healthcare reform article in the Wall Street Journal, “…how to classify a program to double-check doctors orders to avoid one of the unnecessary surgeries that kill some 12,000 people every year? Or counseling, calls, emails and other types of case management to make sure patients comply with their diabetes regimen? Or investments in electronic medical records? Obviously these programs aren’t the same as an O.R. visit, but they still cost money, often a lot of it, and many insurance programs pay or are starting to pay for them.”  If a healthcare insurance company can not include those costs in the 85% federal mandate, they will not continue to pay for those programs.

Once again, Congress provides an example of why the government is not competent to run the lives of Americans or dictate how private companies can and should be run.  As Americans begin to understand and the negative impacts government overreach into our daily lives and voice opposition, will the government listen?  In the case of healthcare reform, the Congress proves that it is unwilling or unable to listen the American people.

The national debt is the total amount of money that the US Government owes.  This differs from the budget deficit in the the budget deficit  is the difference between what the government takes in through taxes and what it spends in a given year.  In years when their is a deficit, the national debt goes up.  In years with a surplus, the national debt can go down if Congress chooses to apply the surplus to retiring debt.

According the the Congressional Budget Office, the current level of budget deficits predicted for the next 10 years will drive the national debt to over $20 trillion by 2019.

 As reported by CPHQ roughly 6 months ago, the national debt  passed the $12 trillion mark for the first time.  At this pace, the national debt will top $14 trillion before the end of 2010.  This is expected to continue to grow higher in 2011 as the CBO and the White House predict a 2011 Obama budget deficit of over $1 trillion.

According to the national debt clock, that $13 trillion breaks down to $42k per citizen and over $118k per tax payer.  The interest payments alone amount over $195 billion.

Over the last few years, Americans have learned the hard way the taking on too much debt can lead to personal ruin.  The US government needs to learn from American’s personal mistakes and take steps to dramatically reduce the Obama deficits and begin to pay down the debt before it becomes entirely unsustainable.

You can see the new Jan Brewer video here.  The ad is rather cheesy, but that is the point.

There seems to be a new trend in DC to be for or against ideas, but not to know the details of the laws that are being passed.  AG Eric Holder has even stated that he is considering suing the state of AZ even though he has never read the Arizona immigration bill.  The bill is less than 20 pages and several top Government officials can not even be bothered to read a bill that they are going to condemn.

Perhaps the new Brewer video of a singing frog will make them take the leap of actually trying to understand the bill they are going to condemn.  You can be one up on the Obama administration an actually read the AZ immigration bill here.  It has been slightly modified since passing to ensure that civil rights are protected and further silence critics.

A recent artical about Blumenthal’s lies in the NYT documented his various claims of service.  Despite all of his claims of serving in Vietnam, he actual received 5 deferments and took several steps to avoid serving in Vietnam.  In fact, Blumenthal’s Marine unit performed local projects during the war, such as a Toys for Tots drive in Washington.

In a recent press conference, Blumenthal indicated that he merely misspoke a few times.  Although it would be possible to overlook somebody forgetting the details of service over 30 years ago, in 2008 Blumenthal told a group that  ”We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam.”   He did not get the dates incorrect, he did not get a detail about a battle wrong, and he did not merely misspeak.  He said that he “…served in Vietnam”.

The NYT has seemed to reverse course on Blumenthal as they have recently ran an article defending all the great things that Blumenthal has done for Veteran’s groups.  Although his work should be commended, it doesn’t make up the for the lies that he told about his service for political gain.

Prior to this week, Blumenthal enjoyed a 20 plus percentage point lead over all challengers for the open Senate seat in Connecticut.  A recent Rasmussen poll of voters puts his lead at only +3% over his strongest challenger.

Let us all hope that the voters in Connecticut will not choose a liar like Blumenthal to server in the Senate in November.

This week, the results are in and can be found at the You Cut Budget site.

The first winning budget cut is to remove $2.5 billion from the federal budget in the New Non-Reformed Welfare Program. 

According to the You Cut site, “The program was recently created to incentivize states to increase their welfare caseloads without requiring able-bodied adults to work, get job training, or otherwise prepare to move off of taxpayer assistance. Reforming the welfare program was one of the great achievements of the mid 1990s, saving taxpayers billions of dollars and ending the cycle of dependency on welfare. This new program, created in 2009 is a backdoor way to undo those reforms. The program currently costs approximately $2.5 billion a year. (Also proposed as part of the RSC Sunset Caucus.)”

Later this week, house Republicans will attempt to bring this up for a vote.  As voters, we need to pay attention to who pushes to keep this spending in the budget and who votes to remove it.  Although this is only a tiny cut to spending, perhaps it will lead to further cuts of  wasteful spending from the federal budget.

In a recent interview in the Richmond Times Dispatch, House minority Whip Eric Cantor said the program is designed to challenge “Congress’ culture of spending” by engaging the public. “The American people will have a direct input on what they feel is the best way for the government to save money, each and every week,” said Cantor.

The YOUCUT program is a website where Americans are presented with programs to cut from the federal budget each week. The budget item with the highest votes is put into a bill and brought to the floor of the house. The website will track who votes for and against bringing the bill up for a vote.

Liberal groups are blasting the program as an election year gimmick.   Conservative blogs are questioning the impact since some of this weeks cuts are so small. 

However, it is about time that somebody in Washington understands that most Americans are fed up with ever increasing spending and huge budget deficits.  And as some bloggers have pointed out, when you cut budget items as little as a few hundred million, it does not put much of a dent in this year’s almost $1.4 trillion budget deficit.  However, some of the cuts are for spending that it so wasteful, it will be interesting who tries to block removing the spending.

This week’s options allow for voters to pick from 4 options ranging from $1 million to $2.6 billion.

Click the following to see the first week of You Cut budget results.

You can access You Cut at http://republicanwhip.house.gov/YouCut/.  Stay tuned in to the You Cut web site to see the results and who in congress voted against cutting federal spending.

To consider the question, one needs to understand what is a socialist or socialism.  According to Wikipedia “Socialism is a political philosophy that encompasses various theories of economic organization based on either public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources”.  Wikipedia adds “Socialists generally share the view that capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital and derives its wealth through a system of exploitation.  This in turn creates an unequal society, that fails to provide equal opportunities for everyone to maximize their potential, and does not utilize technology and resources to their maximum potential nor in the interests of the public”.

The argument from people claiming that Obama is not a Socialist is that under the Obama administration, there is still private ownership over the means of production.  Many people go on to claim that Obama is really a Corporatist.  Recently, Ron Paul argued that Obama is not a Socialist, but rather a Corporatist.

According to Merriam Webster, Corporatism is “the organization of a society into industrial and professional corporations serving as organs of political representation and exercising control over persons and activities within their jurisdiction”.  To paraphrase, the means of production are still owned privately, but the government exercises a great deal of control over the means of production.

The argument goes that since Obama did not take over the health care industry 100% in health care reform or provide a public option, he is not a Socialist and he fits more in the mold of a Corporatist.

However, the argument misses the mark.  Obama has been very open in stating that he favors a single payer health care system where the government runs the industry.  He believes that our economy is unfair and that one of America’s biggest faults is that our system doesn’t lead to the “social justice” that he believes is lacking in society. 

Obama has also taken over GM and ownership of the company is mostly shared between the Government and Unions.  The Credit Card reform puts strict limits on credit card companies even putting government oversight that will stifle innovation.  The pending financial reform would have the government decide when a company engages in behavior that is “too risky” and enables the government to step in an take over companies that the government deems to not be well run.

Rather than get bogged down in the debate on the various degrees of policies that make Obama a Socialist or a Corporatist, the underlying fact is that Obama is not a Capitalist and would prefer that there is a great degree of government involvement in the markets rather than support the free market system that has dominated the American system since the founding of the country.

America became an economic super power by embracing free market principles for the majority of the history of the country.  Problems often arise in the American Capitalistic free market system when the government steps in to exercise some control of markets.  Obama decries banks that made bad loans, but fails to mention that the government requires banks to make a certain percentage of loans to high-risk low income borrowers if the bank wants to operate on the national level.  This isn’t to say that banks didn’t make stupid decisions that helped lead to the financial melt down of the last few years, but the government played a large role in pushing the behaviours that lead to the crisis.

It is not important to label President Obama a Socialist, Corporatist, Marxist, or Communist.  It is important to understand that President Obama does not believe that Capitalism and free markets are an important part of what makes America great, but rather something that needs to be changed to redistribute power and wealth.

Rather than be against Obama, Socialism, Marxism, or Communisim and argure which philosophy most accurately describes what Obama believes, we need to be for the American free market and the system of Capitalism that made America great.

Obama hinted during the middle of the financial crisis “For top executives to award themselves these kinds of compensation packages in the midst of an economic crisis is not only in bad taste – it’s bad strategy – and I will not tolerate it as president”.

It would seem unfair in the grand scheme of things for some people to be making millions of dollars while some people are out of work.  However, is it the job of the federal government to ensure that when times are tough, some people that are doing well should have their salaries cut or pay some sort of penalty?

Obama’s “pay czar” has stated openly that nobody should ever make over $500,000 except in very rare circumstances.  Odd considering that the President earned over 10 times that much last year (federal salary + other personal income).

Recently, President Obama strayed off teleprompter to say that “I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money”.  The question is, what happens when you get to that certain point where the President thinks that you have made enough money.  Maybe even more importantly, who gets to decide when you have enough?

The Federal Government much less the President, does not have the power granted in the Constitution to decide when an American has enough.  It is quite worrisome that in the Obama vision of America, there are limits on success.  Perhaps even more troubling is that many Americans tend to agree.

One of the key principles that this country was founded on is that individuals are free to experience as much success or failure that they are willing to bring upon themselves.  If I can create a product or service that people just have to have and make millions of dollars doing it, should the government step in at some point and say “OK, you can stop now.  You have enough”?

Granted, as a society in general, Americans feel that those with the means should give back.  However, do the American people or the government have the right to force this upon another individual?

America was founded on the concept of individual rights and not collective rights.  “We” do not have the right to free speech, religion, and to bear arms among many others, but “You” and “I” individually do.  However, when the rights of one are taken away, the rights of each of us are eroded.  If “I” lose my right to make over $500k, then so do “you”.

The problem is that many Americans do not care since they do not see taking away the right of some individuals to earn over a certain amount it also takes away their right to do so.  Since capping pay way into the six figure range doesn’t impact most people, many Americans don’t care.

Americans are just beginning to wake up an realize what has happened to our freedoms over the last 100 years or so.  Let us hope that it isn’t too late.

The trendline of initial jobless claims has been steadily rising since October.  This initial jobless claims chart shows how the weekly number moves up and down, but the trend is continually increasing.

The massive hiring of census workers over the last few months has somewhat masked the worsening picture.  The growth of hiring in the public sector has kept the unemployment rate from moving away from 9.7%.  It is also important to note that the census jobs are temporary and will end is several months.

Small businesses and large corporations need to start hiring in order for the unemployment rate to decline.  Raising taxes and creating new credits a few thousand dollars will not lead to new jobs being created.  Hiring in the public sector is also not the answer as those jobs are funded by taxes collected on the private sector.

The Obama administration needs to get serious about creating jobs.  A first step would be a massive cut in government spending eliminating the deficit and attacking the debt. 

Income tax cuts for individuals and companies would further stimulate the economy.  This would be accomplished through reductions in the tax rates and not through credits which only transfer money from the 53% of people who income taxes to the 47% of people who do not pay income taxes.

Sadly, the odds of this happening are low as these steps place more power in the free market and takes power away from Washington.