Forget Negotiations, President Obama, Seize the Moment

Newt Gingrich pronounces a “The balls in your court, don’t loose it out of bounds” moment for President Barack Hussein Obama about the voter uprising in Iran.

JRH 6/26/09

Supreme Court Nominee Sotomayor: You Read, You Decide

Not long a go Newt Gingrich called Sonia Sotomayor a racist over her “a wise Latina better than a wise white person” (yeah I know it is roughly paraphrased). I agreed that the Sotomayor comment was a racist comment.

The Left went into its usual conniption fits over anyone daring to call a fellow Leftist a racist. I was a little surprised to read that many Conservative politicians were coming down on Newt for such strong language. It is as if the Republicans are afraid to rock the Obamasiah boat.

So Newt has been raked over the coals by his own yet with a caveat. The caveat being Newt was to strong and that Sotomayor should apologize or at least make up an excuse for her Latina wiser than white guy comments.

Since Newt is a good politician he gave a recant on the Sotomayor is a racist barb yet with his own caveat.

Read Newt’s “yeah but”:

JRH 6/3/09

Gingrich: Pelosi Step Down as Speaker

Well I can see the reason that Newt Gingrich is a politician. His recent e-newsletter castigates Speaker Pelosi without actually calling her a liar. I was not so capable of being so diplomatic.

Speaker Pelosi is the classic example of the hypocrisy of the now devotedly Leftist Democratic Party. The Democrats went on a rampage of vilifying President Bush’s policies of keeping America safe even to the point of calling for a criminal investigation of the Bush Administration and those that acted patriotically to protect American citizens from the reoccurrence of another 9/11.

With the aid of the Mainstream Media, the Democrats unleashed some political venom of propaganda upon American voters to influence votes that placed the Democrats back in the driver’s seat in 2006. Then the voters received another chunk full of propaganda that elected a deceptive Leftist President whose primary goal is to transform America away from her roots of Christianity toward the diversity concept of Secular Humanism and the redistribution of wealth. The term “redistribution of wealth” is MSM code talk for Socialism at best and Communism at worst.

One can see Communism at its worst through the eyes of Comrade Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong.

The social transformation led by President Barack Hussein Obama and the elite cadres of the Democratic Party is subtly validating some of the worst elements of the morally depraved in America. The transformation excuse: The morally deprave are people on par with a race or religion; to discriminate against the morally depraved is thus racism and a denial of civil rights that all the diverse Americans should enjoy.

Okay, I know I digressed on Speaker Pelosi.

Newt neatly rails on Pelosi by putting her political agenda of persecuting the Bush Administration for the Democrats call torture. Is it not ironic the Obama Administration has gone to great lengths not to insult Mohammedans by eliminating such terms as the Global War on Terror (GWOT) or Islamic terrorism to find neutral words? Yet the Obama/Pelosi Democrats have no trouble using the word “torture” rather than Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EIT) against Americans that have devoted themselves to keep other Americans safe. Does anyone see the lunacy on this political vendetta to prevent Conservatives of the Republican Party from ever gaining control of Congress and the White House?

But check it out: Since Speaker Pelosi as the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence committee never protested EIT; does not that make Pelosi an adherent to the practice of protecting Americans?

So you see how Speaker Pelosi has dug a hole for herself by attempting to use plausible deniability to make it look like she was never on board with EIT.

Newt is correct that Pelosi should be removed not because of her political agenda, but because her political agenda has placed America and Americans at risk by diluting National Security.

JRH 5/20/09

Are You an Obama Winner? Or an Obama Loser?

Newt Gingrich has written an awesome evaluation about winners and losers in the Obama agenda for America.

To stoke your expectations some of the Gingrich points are: the Tea Party protests, the Chrysler bankruptcy, Cap and Trade, Closing Gitmo and the Obama standard for selecting a Supreme Court Justice.

JRH 5/7/09

No, We Can't

Here is an excerpt from Newt Gingrich’s “Newt Gingrich Letter” published on HumanEvents.com.

Newt writes about a campaign promise President Obama has already broken pertaining to openness in government vis-à-vis President Bush’s Administration. Newt zeros in on the difficulty of getting American citizen’s opinion about alternate avenues of oil production being used within the USA nation.

READ IT!

JRH 4/8/09

Lose to China and India or Transform America

John R. Houk
© December 18, 2008

Thanks to Newt Gingrich’s e-newsletter entitled Winning the Future, I found a link to a December 5th speech he gave to the American Legislative Exchange Council.

The specific e-newsletter is entitled “Big Government Breeds Big Corruption.” Now this is a good read in itself; however the link to the speech, well let’s just say the speech is awesome.

Newt speaks that America needs more than a “Change.” America needs to sustain its values but more importantly America needs to transform its paradigm of business from planned obsolescence to planned innovation via incentives.

Newt believes if government maintains a mindset of propping up the current paradigm which is based on a half-a-century old paradigm, then America will become substandard because she won’t be able to compete with China and India in capitalistic markets.

Now I am far from an economist, thus I may have not given an excellent summary of Newt’s speech. Nonetheless, just as a Joe American, this speech is remarkably inspiring! I encourage you to click the link above to listen to the speech while it is still up.

Below is the transcript of the speech, but really the verbal inflections coupled with the content will get you to thinking.

If you are a Conservative disillusioned by the majority of American voters falling for the charisma of a prevaricating liberal (who probably does have good intentions for America) then this speech could re-ignite your Conservative fervor.

Listen to Newt or Read Newt, whatever you do contemplate on the potential possibility of true American transformation that will keep America strong for years to come.

JRH 12/18/08
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Entering a New World

Newt Gingrich Transcript
To: American Legislative Exchange Council
December 5, 2008

How many of you find it almost unimaginable that your government has acquired $7.7 trillion of liabilities this year? I once said to somebody I campaigned very hard to stop John Kerry because I knew he was to the left of Teddy Kennedy, and I was afraid he might nationalize the banks.

Now what I want to do in a very short time… I’m going to give you an outline rather than a speech. But what I want to start with is a book by Peter Drucker called The Age of Discontinuities, which he wrote back in the 1960’s. And in The Age of Discontinuities what Drucker argues is that you have trend lines until you hit a discontinuity, and when you hit a discontinuity you actually don’t know what comes out the other side, and you don’t know what the new lines are like.

So if you think about being really good at thinking through stage coaches, and then somebody comes along and invents the railroad, railroads aren’t just marginally faster stage coaches. They’re fundamentally different institutions. And if you got reasonably good at transcontinental railroad travel for passengers and somebody comes along and invents the airline, airlines aren’t just railroads that can fly. Airlines have fundamentally different patterns.

I want to argue that I think it would help all of you—and when you go back home it would help your legislatures—if you took a deep breath and stopped. Because what we’re doing right now—and you see this in the bailout process—what we’re doing right now is we are trying to prop up the past rather than accelerate the invention of the future. Now this is strategically a dead loser. And it’s very painful to go through what I’m about to describe to you, so politicians try to avoid the pain. But what they do by trying to avoid the pain is they actually deepen it and extend it.

The Japanese went through a crisis after 1988-89, and they managed to turn it into a 13-year recession because they couldn’t bring themselves to solve their problems. Now we have been piling up problems for at least two decades. I have two missions. One is to ensure that my two grandchildren—Maggie who is nine and Robert who is seven—when they are in their 40’s, I want them to live in the most prosperous, most productive country in the world, which would also make it the safest country in the world. For that to happen we have to be prepared to compete with China and India, and for us to compete with China and India, we have to reform litigation, regulation, taxation, education, infrastructure, energy and health.

So the reason I helped created American Solutions is I think it’s this big. I just want to start with that. You are entering a new world. The sooner you and your fellow legislatures and your governors understand it’s a new world, and the sooner you start thinking anew—to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln in December of 1862 who said "as our situation is anew, we must think anew”—the sooner you can do that the faster you are going to be able to get to real solutions, which will not resemble marginally better or worst examples of the current system because the current system is incapable of competing with China and India.

The second major mission that we’ve undertaken at American Solutions is very simple. If you go to AmericanSolutions.com and you click on Platform of the American People, we took nine national surveys looking for tripartisan issues. That is, issues that had a majority of Democrats, a majority of Republicans and a majority of Independents. We found over 100 so far, so instead of red versus blue we can talk about red, white, and blue. And it turns out that the natural center-right majority of this country runs between 63 and 92% depending on the issue. And yet we are governed by a machine on the left. And so our second major assignment is to reach out on a tripartisan basis to Democrats, Republicans and Independents to develop a governing mechanism that would actually reflect the values of the American people.

I’ll give you three simple examples you can take home with you. The first is that by 89% the American people favor English as the official language of government. That’s an absolute majority of Democrats, Republicans and Independents, and an absolute majority of Latinos. By about 92% the country thinks we should be investing more in math and science education, and by about 91% the country believes that “one nation under God” should remain in the pledge of allegiance.

So you can begin to imagine how you would build a base that said A) I want to compete successfully with China and India economically and B) I want to be able to have my values represented in the courts, and my values represented in the bureaucracy, and to be really daring, I’d like my values to be represented in the classroom so that the people we pay to teach our children actually reflect the country that’s paying them.

Let me talk briefly about the scale of the bailout, which I have consistently thought was a big mistake, and I think it’ll prove to be a total mess. I want to encourage all of you to look at Congressman Louie Gohmert from Texas, who has developed a proposal, because he figured out about a week ago that the second half of the proposed bailout, the $350 billion, actually can translate into an income and FICA tax holiday for all of January and February.

That is, you could either loan the money out to the auto companies, and the banks, and whatever or every American could have all of their take home pay—both income tax and FICA—and every small business could keep their FICA match for all of January and February. Now if you added to it Speaker Pelosi’s proposed $700 billion stimulus package, you would have an income tax and FICA tax holiday through June.

I happen to like this proposal for a couple reasons. Theoretically I’m in favor of a permanent tax cut, I understand that argument. I actually wrote an article a week ago with Peter Ferrara in the Wall Street Journal favoring a permanent tax cut. But I like what Gohmert did for two reasons. The first is he scales the size of the money to a human proportion. He suddenly says: these guys want us to send to Washington for them to spend every penny you’re going to pay in FICA and income tax for all of January and February. And that’s just the bailout. And then they want you to send every penny you’re going to pay in March, April, May and June in order to have a stimulus package designed by politicians, implemented by bureaucrats.

Now you could have a fair argument back home by asking a simple question: which do you think would stimulate America more? Let you keep your own money so you get to pick which auto company you want to bail out, or have the politicians and the bureaucrats do it?

So any of you who’d like to go home and talk about the Gohmert plan, I recommend it highly. I do a newsletter every week, which is free. It’s at Newt.org, it goes out to about 850,000 people, and this week’s was on that topic. If you don’t get it, and you’re interested in what we’re doing, just go to Newt.org and sign up.

Second, all of you are going to face budget problems. Let me suggest a very radical first idea that perfectly fits the reason ALEC was founded. If you would go home and identify every stupid thing the federal government is requiring you to do which wastes money, and offer them a swap: if they would pass the omnibus smart-government-and-waste avoidance act that liberated you from all the federal regulations that are stupid, you wouldn’t need them to pass you a stimulus package to send you cash because you would save more than enough cash by not having to let them micromanage you.

Now my hunch is if you went back home and looked around at every federal requirement that cost you money, for example if you have an idea for a better way of running Medicaid, and you looked at how long it takes you to get CMS to approve it, and you figured out the cost of waiting. But just take all the different things, take all the different federal regulations that make running state government more expensive and simply propose back to Washington that if they would allow you to not suffer from what they are costing you, they wouldn’t have to send you the amount of money they currently have to send you to pay for the stuff they’re making you do. You would start an entirely new debate, and there’s a practical reason this is important. You cannot compete in the world market with the current price structure of the United States and with the current red tape.

We won the Second World War in forty-four months. From December the 7th 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, to victory over Japan in August of 1945 is three years and eight months. We beat Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in three years and eight months. It recently took 23 years to add a fifth runway to the Atlanta airport. You can’t compete in the world if you are determined to be stupid. It’s a very major problem.

We are very interested in gathering up all of the things that the Congress ought to repeal, or modify dramatically, and Fred Asbell and Michael Krull, who are both here from American Solutions, would be delighted to hear from you and to work with you. If any of you would like to get us your favorite list, or if you could get, for example, your legislature at the beginning of January to adopt a resolution calling on the Congress to pass certain things, I think it would start a whole new conversation about downsizing the cost of federal bureaucracy rather than increasing the payment for it. It’ll be a fundamentally new conversation.

I believe politically and historically the number one issue for the next two years is jobs. I would recommend to all of you: erase whatever you were used to thinking about and put in the word jobs. Somebody reminded me recently that Governor Jim Rhodes of Ohio had a 36-year career, and he only had two themes. The first theme was jobs, and the second theme was he would take out his wallet and he would say “you know there are politicians who take money out of your wallet, and there are politicians who put money into your wallet. You decide which kind of politicians you like better.”

I believe that in the kind of economic environment we’re going to be in people are going to want to know: what are you doing to create jobs? And people are going to want to know: what are you doing so I have enough money that I can stay in business or I have enough money so I can pay what the cost of living for my family?

And I would really start re-thinking everything you’re doing, and it leads to a great crisis because frankly the embedded cost of government is so great that all of you are under pressure to find more money for government even at the expense of the entire rest of your state. So you have to confront head-on the requirement of finding ways to do things less expensively.

In terms of jobs let me suggest to you that you should look at what Mitch Daniels has done in Indiana, which has the lowest unemployment rate in the Midwest, what Governor Huntsman has done in Utah, which has the lowest unemployment rate in the West, and what Bobby Jindal has done in Louisiana, where last month in the middle of this economy they added 10,000 jobs.

Now there are people doing the right things. And the right things are: retrain the bureaucracy so it’s pro-investment and pro-business. The right things are: cut taxes and create incentives. The right things are: have the kind of education program that produces people who can actually work. And you start doing those things it turns out people want to increase jobs. And the right thing is to reduce the cost of being self-employed and to reduce the cost of being a small business because those are the biggest job creation centers of the future. So I would urge you to start from a jobs and take-home-pay model.

I believe that in order to save money at the state level, I strongly urge you to—and we’d be glad to help you with this at American Solutions—take a look at Dennis Smith and the concept of metrics. Metrics were used by Rudy Giuliani in New York City and by Chief Bratton to develop a policing model, which is the most powerful ever developed. New York City today has 75% less crime than it had in 1993. It’s the safest big city in America. Chief Bratton took that model to Los Angeles—it is today the second safest city in America. So first of all, if you have a big city in your state that’s not safe, I would urge you to figure out a way to get them to study what Chief Bratton does because it works. It’s only great virtue is it works.

Second, the model of metrics, which we are working very hard to develop and implement at American Solutions, is one I strongly recommend because it allows you to figure out what you want to get done, and it allows you to start measuring whether or not the bureaucracy is being productive. And that forces you to change. I want to suggest to all of you—many of you’ve been friends for a lot of years, and you’ve heard me try to develop ideas—I think there are four words that are going to be the center of American politics for the next twenty years. And I think these four words are fundamentally different than what you’re used to talking about.

The first word is honesty. And I’ll come back to it, but the first word is honesty. The number one reason we have the current financial crisis is we lied to ourselves over and over and over. We said you can give houses to people who can’t pay for them, you can force banks to make loans they’ll never recover, you can have really clever people on Wall Street with paper that has no value, and somehow it’s all going to magically work. Well it doesn’t.

We watched the auto companies and the UAW lie to themselves for 30 years. You go to BMW in South Carolina, you go to Mercedes or Hyundai or Kia in Alabama, you go to Toyota in Kentucky, you go to Nissan in Tennessee, and you go to Honda in Ohio. The fact is for 30 years the big three didn’t want to change. And we’ve got to decide. I am for facing the facts, changing the system, and getting America back to being productive. So the first word is honesty.

And you’re going to find when you go back home, your staff is going to tell you, well you can’t say “X” because it’s better to be pleasant than it is to be honest. Well that’s the road to this country dying, and we had better be honest.

The second word that’s going to really going to matter is effectiveness. When the Detroit public schools graduate 26% of their entering freshman on time, it should be a national scandal, and we should change the Detroit schools today. Not in a year, not in five years. Today. And every one of you has places in your state where you are paying good money to get bad results and nobody has the nerve to challenge it.

The third word is productivity. The key to the Toyota production system—which is frankly Deming’s use of Western Electric— is an 80-year old American model adopted by the Japanese after WWII when we got too lazy to use it. The key to the Toyota production system is continuous improvement. So you show me any part of your state government today, and tell me how much more productive will it be in a year. What’s its plan to be 5% more productive in a year? Take your state university, what’s its plan to be more productive? I mean these universities are grossly over-expensive because we have sloppily allowed them to add administrators and to add faculty who don’t teach in order to have buildings that aren’t occupied so the students don’t have to worry about it because after all it’s essentially a social relationship with occasional brief interactions with knowledge.

You could take 20-40% out of the cost of going to higher education if you had the nerve to actually go out and look at it. Which is different than: how do I load even more money so they can charge even more so they can hire even more administrators?

Take a look at a brand new book that’s out by two young people on the end of adolescence. I wrote an article about this in Business Week about a month ago. Rethink many of your core thoughts about your high schools and rethink many of your core thoughts about what it means to be young because frankly it isn’t working. If you get a chance, every one of you should encourage your state legislature as a group to watch the movie Two Million Minutes. You can see it at 2mminutes.com. Two million minutes is four years of high school. It takes two Indian high school students, two Chinese high school students, and two American high school students, and at the end of the movie you will understand that we are aggressively preparing for the 1956 Olympics. There are no scores in 1956 that would work today.

So you got to really look at that and say to yourself: so how are you going to change things? I’m going to give you one no-cost example: all of you could go back home and pass the following bill, and it would cost your taxpayers nothing. Any student who can graduate from high school in three years automatically gets the fourth year’s account as a scholarship. Any student who can graduate in two years gets two years of a scholarship. This costs you nothing. If you can graduate in one year, you get three years.

Now what it does is two things. It totally breaks up the current mindless Carnegie Unit curriculum structure that basically says: I don’t care how bored you are, we’re not covering that until Wednesday. And it re-centers the school away from football and away from the prom, and puts the school back to focusing on learning and rewards the kids who learn and doesn’t cost your taxpayers a penny. But it fundamentally changes the underlying value structure of going to school. And you can do that in January, and it wouldn’t cost you a dime, and within two years you would have fundamentally re-shaped what kids pay attention to.

My daughter, Jackie Cushman, just did a project—we’re actually looking for a foundation to help us do it again—but a good friend of ours gave $50,000, and they took two very poor neighborhoods in South Fulton, and they paid the poorest kids the equivalent of working at McDonald’s to do their homework. And it had a dramatic impact because guess what, it turned out really poor children respond to money. I know this is bold. I know it’s out on the edge. But it turns out they watch rock stars, and rap stars, and baseball players, and movie stars, and they see negotiations, and they see how much people get paid, and then we tell them but you ought to be happy because we’re going to give you a piece of paper with letters on it. And they’re poor.

And again all of you could go and look at taking one or two neighborhoods in your state for almost no money. Pay the kids and see what happens. It’s a lot better than sending them to jail. And that’s what we’re doing to them today in poor neighborhoods.

A couple last big points on health. First of all, Senator Judson Hill is here. He is somebody I recommend to all of you. We worked with Judson for the last four years in Georgia—he’s done remarkable work on transforming Georgia.

We are launching at the Center for Health Transformation a health-based health reform model that I’d urge all of you to try to get your committee—whatever committee on health you have in your state legislature—should look at health-based health reform— simple model. The Gundersen Lutheran hospital system in LaCrosse, Wisconsin is the least expensive place in America for the last two years of life. According to the Dartmouth Health Atlas, it cost $13,600 for the last two years of life at LaCrosse. It costs $58,000 dollars at UCLA. They have a higher satisfaction rate than UCLA; families feel better about the experience. And they do four things. Over 90% of their patients have an advance directive, they have an electronic health record so the staff knows what the directive is, they have palliative care so they take care of people who are in pain, and they have hospice care. Now if you simply went out and found the best practices in your state, and insisted that over the next three years all the hospitals and doctors would migrate to best practices, you would take out virtually all the cost increase in Medicaid and in your state employee health costs.

But it’s a new model. It’s a model that says don’t cut across the board, don’t use a meat axe, accelerate the adoption of the best practices to lower the cost and improve the outcome which is what we historically have done in manufacturing for 200 years. But we don’t do in health. So it’s a fundamentally new model.

Second, let me go back to honesty. The New York Times reported a couple years ago in a four part series that Medicaid in New York is 10% pure fraud. Not waste, not abuse, not judgment, but a dentist who filed 972 procedures in one day. A dental office which had a person standing out front who said if you’ll loan us your state Medicaid card for 30 seconds, we’ll give you a free DVD player. We have had no serious effort in taking fraud out in this country. And I’m not saying this is true of every state, but there are a lot of states that would save billions. In New York State by the way, 10% is $4.4 billion a year in fraud. And Jim Frogue, who’s here from the Center for Health Transformation, many of you know Jim from over the years, Jim would be eager to work with you on Medicaid reform because we think there is a ton we can do there.

The third point I’d make is both for Medicaid and for your state employees, go to incentivized systems. Alegent Hospital System in Omaha, Nebraska has 93% of its employees now signed up for incentives, so if you’re diabetic and you’re compliant, you get rewarded. Every person does an assessment of their health every year, every person is rewarded for doing well, and they’re not rewarded for not doing well. They’ve had a very big impact on the cost of health care for their employees—they have 9,000 employees. All of you should have an incentivized system for health so that every person knows their own health status; every person is involved directly in minimizing their costs.

Finally, you look at community-based models, we have a project in Columbus, Georgia which Laura Lynn and the Center for Health Transformation has undertaken on diabetes and on obesity, which we’d recommend you look at. There is also a project in Oklahoma City, where the mayor Mick Cornett decided that he would never lose weight; he’s always been 40 pounds overweight. So he announced last January that the entire city would now lose weight. He has had a citywide project on diabetes and obesity, and the city as of September has lost 176,000 pounds. It is a great case study that all of you ought to look at because obesity and diabetes is now probably the largest single health problem we have in the country it’s really worth you’re looking at.

Let me just say two last things and I’ll get out of your hair. Part of our economic change has got to be energy. We are developing at American Solutions an all-fronts energy solution. We wrote a book called Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less, many of you know that at American Solutions we launched the petition drive Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less. This is the first time in 27 years that it’s not illegal to look for energy offshore.

My wife Callista and I did a movie recently called We Have the Power to make two points. First of all we have the power as the American people to change government when it’s stupid. But the second is we don’t have an energy problem, we have a policy problem.

We have 27% of the world’s coal, and left-wing environmental groups are now running ads against coal. We have three times the oil reserve of Saudi Arabia in oil shale in Colorado, and the Congress made it illegal to develop it. We have in deep shale 1200 years’ supply of natural gas. We have new technological breakthroughs in electric vehicles; I recently drove the Tesla in San Jose, CA, an electric sports car which goes 0-60 in 3.8 seconds, and is faster than any internal combustion car except for the most expensive Ferrari. We have breakthroughs in solar, breakthroughs in wind, breakthroughs in hydrogen, and we have government policies that are just stunningly self-destructive.

We’re developing a project on clean coal being transformed so that you capture the carbon, and you use the carbon for enhanced oil recovery, and there are 100 billion barrels of oil in American reservoirs that cannot be gotten out at the current pressure that you could get out if you had enhanced recovery. So you both get clean coal, which is cheaper, and we have 27% of the world’s supply, and you’d get to recovery in America oil so you don’t have to buy it from Saudi Arabia or Venezuela.

There are so many things we could do if we were determined to do it. And I would hope all of you would look seriously from the standpoint of your state. That also means you’ve got to rebuild the electric grid because I keep telling all of my left-wing environmental friends: if you want people to drive electric cars there has to be electricity. I know I’ve always gotten a reputation for being out on the edge, but it’s pretty important.

Last thing I’ll just leave you with: all of you at some point should get a copy of an amazing book by Tom Evans called The Education of Ronald Reagan. Which his about the eight years that Reagan spent at General Electric where he gave 375 speeches to General Electric employees and where he learned about free markets and technology while he also learned how to be stunningly effective at answering questions and communicating.

The reason I’d like you to read it is that at American Solutions we’re talking with Michael Reagan about launching a project where we would come into your state—ideally with the help either of your state chamber or some other group—and we would actually train a generation of CEO’s and do what General Electric did. General Electric set out the largest education for their employees ever done in America, and it started in 1949 at the Harvard Business School Alumni day when the head of employee relations at General Electric—which back then had 380,000 employees—a guy name Lemuel Boulware got up and said if we don’t teach our employees, our customers, and our stock holders about free markets and productivity, we will become a socialist country.

I think there has been no time since the election of Ronald Reagan where we have had as deep a need to re-engage the business community of this country as there is today. And I think if you read that book, we’d love to work with you, we’d like to create a series of workshops and training programs starting with CEO’s, and we believe the time has come to fundamentally reset the country; to recognize what you’re currently seeing is a mess. It’s going to get worse not better.

Therefore, let’s talk about building the future, not propping up the past. And let’s talk about demanding honesty, effectiveness, productivity, and creativity because those are the four words that are going to define whether or not we’re successful in government, whether or not we’re successful in the private sector, and whether or not we’re successful as a country. I look forward very much to working with ALEC and to working with you. And again, we look forward to welcoming you in Atlanta in July. Thank you very, very much.
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Lose to China and India or Transform America
John R. Houk
© December 18, 2008
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Entering a New World
http://newt.org/

The Reid-Pelosi-Obama (RePO) Team Vs. The Rest of America

Newt Gingrich takes on the Barack Hussein Obama and the Democratic Party lie that the present economic crisis is totally the blame of the Republicans and Bush Administration ineptitude in managing our economy.

The only true thing in blaming the Republicans for the current economic crisis is that the Bush Administration failed to recognize the bad loans being made and not aggressively bring it to the public to aid the Republican Party in its attempt to reform the lending practices that has tipped the dominoes to a full blown economic crisis.

JRH 10-15-08

Gingrich: The Left is on the Run

Here is Newt Gingrich’s “Winning the Future” (HumanEvents.com version) from yesterday August 5th.

Newt socks it to the Left. He believes the Left is on the run. The essay provides the reasons why Newt believes the Left is on the run.

JRH 8/7/08

Newt Gives His Reasons for not Running, but could he Win?

Newt Gingrich writes about his decision not to run for President in his Winning the Future E-newsletter that is part of HumanEvents.com.

Before it became evident that Fred Thompson was going to throw his hat in the field of candidates, Newt was one of my top favorites. Newt and the Clinton family are not exactly friends. Newt was involved in slick Willie being the second President of the United States to be impeached from Office. The only thing that saved Clinton’s cajones was a Democratic majority in the Senate.

Then Newt became slimed in a scandal himself – one of the greatest Republicans next to Reagan became embroiled in an extra-marital affair. Unlike slick Willie, Newt resigned from the Speaker’s Office in the House while President Clinton received the aid of Democratic Party buddies in the Senate and actually finished his term unscathed. This occurred even though an American President out right knowingly lied to the American people – “I did not have sex that woman.” Either a blow job and ejaculation is not sex or Slick Willie lied.

I can hear the Democratic fringe now: “Bush lied people died.” If indeed Bush lied (I am not totally convinced), it was not knowingly. Bush’s decision about war was based on the same Intelligence reports that the Democrats of high levels read and endorsed the invasion of Iraq.

Here is the thing: Newt admitted his mistake and resigned from one of the most powerful Offices in America – Speaker of the House.

God knows how many people the adulterer sex offender sparkled up the pinnacle of his power. Yet the dirt has slipped of slick Willie like Teflon and his wife rather than divorce him intends to follow Slick’s tarnished but endeared Leftist legacy to the White House.

Newt would have made an excellent Conservative President however I do not think his integrity could withstand the dirty tricks that began to be hurled by a Clinton machine if nominated as expected by the Democratic Party.

Newt would be a good VP or Cabinet member in a Republican Administration; nonetheless let us read the specifics as to why Newt made the final decision not run in 2008.

SUPREME COURT RULES IN FAVOR OF WISCOSIN RIGHT TO LIFE AND ...

Here in Newt Gingrich’s take on the Supreme Court affirmation of Free Speech in America. (SlantRight Editor: This Winning the Future e-newsletter will be abridged to only pertain to McCain/Feingold. Click the link to read more.)

JRH
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Winning the Future
Newt Gingrich
June 25, 2007
(Portions relating Supreme Court and McCain/Feingold)

BREAKING NEWS -- SUPREME COURT RULES IN FAVOR OF WISCOSIN RIGHT TO LIFE AND AGAINST MCCAIN-FEINGOLD GAG ORDER LAW

In a substantial and important victory for democracy and free speech, the Supreme Court just hours ago announced that the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law cannot completely stifle the free speech of citizens and groups such as Wisconsin Right to Life, which brought the challenge to the McCain-Feingold law's assault on liberty.

The case arose when Wisconsin Right to Life was prohibited from running an ad urging listeners to call their Wisconsin senators and tell them not to filibuster President Bush's judicial nominees. Today, this exercise of free political speech has been vindicated by the nation's highest court.

The 1st Amendment to the Constitution says: "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech." It does not say Congress can abridge speech it doesn't like.

By striking the first significant blow against the McCain-Feingold anti-free speech law, the court has struck a blow for the constitutional rights of all of us. Yet there is more work to do. We must continue the vigorous work of groups such as Wisconsin Right to Life to ultimately repeal this pernicious law's censorship of the American people.

Bloomberg Is Proof That We Should Repeal the Rest of McCain-Feingold

The other news this week is that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg changed his party affiliation from Republican to Independent as the first move toward what many people think will be a run for President.

I think Bloomberg has done a terrific job as mayor, and people of New York who've twice picked him to lead their city seem to agree. He has every right to decide to run for President, and I hope he does. He will make a fantastic addition to the race.

But the possible Bloomberg candidacy highlights yet another of the anti-democratic, pro-Washington power structure aspects of the McCain-Feingold so-called campaign finance law.

Michael Bloomberg is a billionaire with plenty of money to spend on campaigning. When he ran for re-election as mayor, he reportedly spent $112 a vote. If Bloomberg enters a three-way presidential race as an Independent and spends just half of what he did per vote for his two campaigns for mayor, the amount would be enormous. In this model, if Bloomberg targeted the same number of votes as Clinton did in 1992 to win 43% of the vote and the presidency, Bloomberg would spend upwards of $1 billion dollars. That's BILLION with a B.

Repeal McCain-Feingold and Give a Middle-Class Candidate a Chance

The tyranny of the anti-free speech McCain-Feingold law is that it cripples any middle-class candidate from matching the resources Mayor Bloomberg has ready in his bank account. While Mayor Bloomberg can simply write a check, McCain-Feingold forces less wealthy candidates to raise money in impossibly small amounts to compete.

The perverse effect of McCain-Feingold is that it has made money in politics more important, not less.

I wish Mayor Bloomberg all the success in the world. But Congress should take this opportunity to level the playing field and repeal McCain-Feingold.

A truly functioning campaign system would take power out of Washington and return it to its owners -- the American people. Such a system would allow individuals to make unlimited contributions to candidates for Congress in their district, so long as it is reported immediately on the Internet and is transparent and accessible.

Copyright © 2007 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.

The President Attempts Reawakening of Senate Illegal Alien Bill

There seemed to be a round of agreement that the Senate legislation on immigration was dead last week. I have come to find out from Newt Gingrich that is not the case. Apparently President George W. Bush in an ever increasing bolt from those who elected him is going to utilize political strong arm tactics in an attempt to push the outrageous immigration bill through the Senate.

It is mobilize the Conservative Forces time and do what I thought would be unthinkable: Oppose the Presidential wishes toward the Senate!

 

Gingrich: GOP Must Transcend its Association with Bush

Apparently Newt Gingrich gave a dismal assessment of the GOP if voter association remains with George W. Bush during the 2008 elections. The meaning of course that the Republicans will not only have lost both Houses of Congress but would lose the White House as well.

Gingrich has accused Bush of screwing the Republican Conservative revolution initiated by President Ronald Reagan.

I agree with Gingrich on the Bush debacle. The early years of his Administration the Bush agenda (at least in the First Administration) had spot on goals. The problem became dismal choices in the decisions to find a path to the goals. Once it became apparent that the execution of Executive decisions was faulty, the Bush Administration kept looking for paths leading away from the debilitating quick sand it always seemed to step into. Anti-Bush bureaucrats in government (Democratic and Republican appointees past and present) and fringe Leftist Democrats made sure the Bush Administration kept finding the quick sand via lies and half-truths and rarely (if ever) the whole truth.

After Congress left the Executive Branch/Legislative Branch alliance by the defeat of the Republican majority, the Bush Administration became an absolute lame duck. The only political leverage the Bush Administration retained was the “veto” and negotiated comprise with Leftists.

Thus early bad decisions on how to reach goals has led to a disastrous Presidency.

Gingrich is correct partly in his assessment of distancing Republicans from George W. Bush, yet not totally. The early aim of fighting terrorism on to wherever it may lead is a good thing. The War on Terror must not be given up, rather the War has to be fought smarter and with the aggressive means to discover the path to victory. A few civilians may die but that is the casualty of a war that Middle Eastern Muslims and global Islamist civilians support (America is viewed as Christian Crusaders). The victory over Nazi Germany and Imperialist Japan in WWII was won with huge enemy civilian causalities. These civilians absolutely supported their government's war goals. Why would anyone expect a difference in the War on Terror? The terrorists (Palestinian and global Islamists) certainly expect that the death of civilians will force Western oriented nations to offer defeat, America and the West should respond in kind.

Anyway that is my passionate belief about the current War. Newt Gingrich addresses other political issues in his GOP assessment.

You can watch the speech given to an American Enterprise Institute location HERE (I am unsure how long that link will be available). You can read the report provided by Fox News/AP HERE.

Towards a 21st Century Governing Majority

Newt Gingrich is one of those guys that sound like he is running for President but has not declared an intention to be a candidate.

Newt is giving a speech at the American Enterprise Institute that is available for a webcast for those interested. Below is a kind of a preview of Newt’s vision for America. It sounds remarkably Presidential.

JRH
**********************************

Towards a 21st Century Governing Majority

by Newt GingrichPosted
06/04/2007 ETUpdated 06/04/2007 ET
HumanEvents.com

I am giving a speech at the American Enterprise Institute this Friday that is so central to where America needs to go if we're going to win the future for our children and grandchildren that I wanted to preview it for you today. I also want to urge you to find out more at the AEI website and to watch it at American Solutions, where you can sign up to get an e-mail reminder here.

We are still more than 500 days from the 2008 elections, but one thing is clear: There will be a future governing majority, and its three key principles can already be defined. What is not clear, however, is whether this next governing majority will be led by Republicans or Democrats.

First, New Deal Democrats, Then Reagan/Contract With America Republicans
From 1932 to 1980, the Democrats clearly led the governing coalition. Republican Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford all operated within the world created by the New Deal and FDR.

Then in 1980, President Reagan broke with that pattern and launched a substantial shift in the core principles of American public policy. Under Reagan, defeating the Soviet Union replaced containing it, cutting taxes replaced government redistribution, and pride in American civilization replaced the left's hostility toward American values.

The 1994 Contract with America deepened and extended the Reagan initiative. The Contract expanded the Republican governing majority through welfare reform, the first tax cut in 16 years, a balanced budget for four consecutive years, paying off $405 billion in debt and enacting term limits for committee chairmen. Republicans controlled the House for more than two years for the first time since 1928, and Republican control of governorships and state legislatures was deepened.

And Then Came Six Years of Republicans' Failing to Perform

The last six years, however, have been a different story. They have been too often punctuated with examples of performance failures that have effectively ended the current attempt at forging a Republican governing majority.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff encapsulated this inability to get the job done when he recently said that the disastrous new immigration bill "bows to reality." In other words: It's too hard, so why not concede defeat and give up securing the border and enforcing the law.

But we hire leaders to change reality to fit our values, not to change our values to fit their failures.

I don't know what "reality" Secretary Chertoff lives in, but the reality of the vast majority of the American people is one of growing distrust of their leaders and growing disgust with the ways things are being done in Washington.

We value limited, effective government, but the reality we get is the failed response to Hurricane Katrina.

We value lower taxes and living within our means, but the reality we get is out-of-control spending on congressional pet projects.

We value enforcing our laws, but our reality is a Senate-sanctioned order to keep local police in the dark about the legal status of those they arrest.

We value protecting our homeland, but our reality is a federal bureaucracy that allows a man with multiple-drug-resistant tuberculosis to enter the country -- after a U.S. border guard ignored a warning that he was so dangerous he had to be approached wearing bio-protective gear. And our reality is the discovery of three terrorists in New Jersey who had been in the U.S. illegally for 23 years and charged 75 times by the police without being identified as having no legal right to be in the United States in the first place.

The Principles of a New Governing Majority

It is quite clear that the next governing majority -- a 21st Century governing majority -- will be required to have the following three major characteristics to be a successful and lasting majority.

 Represent the Values of the People: It will represent the vast majority of the American people in their key values and beliefs (see below for some examples);

 Be Accountable to the Standards of the People: It will insist on a government that is metrics-based, constantly measuring results and changing strategies, policies, bureaucracies and personnel until it actually succeeds in meeting the values, expectations and demands of the American people. A 21st Century government will join the best of the private sector in offering more choices of higher quality at lower cost and with greater convenience; and

 Protect the Lives of the People: It will insist on protecting America and her allies from the threat of the irreconcilable wing of Islam as well as resurgent Russian aggressiveness and the challenge of Chinese economic and scientific development.

Which Party Will It Be?

While either party could become the next governing majority, each has some major hurdles to becoming that majority.

The Democrats are in a better tactical position, because they are the opposition party at a time of public disenchantment with the performance of the Republicans in government.

But the values of the Left, the interest groups of government and the grip of the 20th Century systems of bureaucracy make it nearly impossible for the Democrats to propose effective solutions to how we govern ourselves. It is a better-than-even possibility that Democrats can win the presidency in 2008 but a very limited possibility that they could propose the kind of change that would be necessary to form a governing majority.

Republicans Are in a Bad Tactical Spot, But a Good Strategic One

The Republicans have a bad tactical situation, but they are strategically in an easier place than Democrats. Once Republicans get out from under the current performance problems, they could more easily adopt the favored policies of the vast majority of Americans and advocate the transformation of government and the protection of the United States from a broad set of dangers.

It is unlikely that any new Republican attempts to create a natural governing majority could evolve rapidly enough to be offered as a compelling choice to the American people in the 2008 election. But the election of Sarkozy in France shows that it is possible to produce a decisive national decision in favoring of moving toward more conservative reform -- in spite of the performance failures of the incumbent from the same party -- when combined with an ideological failure on the left and an offering of bold solutions and bold leadership from a newly defined right.

'That Government of the People, by the People, and for the People Shall Not Perish From the Earth'

My speech Friday at the American Enterprise Institute will address this battle to create America's next governing majority in the context of President Lincoln's charge at Gettysburg:

"It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

The speech will examine:

 How government of the people is in danger of being replaced by an iron triangle of tax-funded incumbents, interest group lobbyists and powerful bureaucracies;

 How government of the people and by the people is being threatened by the anti-free speech law of McCain-Feingold and other anti-citizen efforts to strangle public dissent; and

 How government for the people is being replaced by government for the bureaucracies, government for the public-employee unions and government for the trial lawyers.


Restoring 'Government of the People': Making English the Official Language of the United States

The opposition in Congress to making English the official language of the United States is a near perfect example of the failure of the current leadership in Washington to adopt a deeply held value of the American people. Eighty-five percent of Americans want the federal government to join with 30 states in making English the official language of the United States, and yet our elites consider the adoption of this value as a distraction or worse.

Consider last night's Democratic presidential debate. When asked for a show of hands, former Alaskan Sen. Mike Gravel was the only candidate to express support for English. Illinois Sen. Barack Obama said that the question "is designed precisely to divide us" and that "when we get distracted by those kinds of questions, I think we do a disservice to the American people." If 85% of Americans support English as the official language of government, the only division is between Sen. Obama and the American people.


New York Sen. Hillary Clinton responded that she supported English as the "national" language but not the "official" language of the United States, since making English the official language would prevent the printing of foreign language ballots for U.S. elections.

It seems that only liberals can possibly see 85% support for a deeply held American value as divisive and only liberals think it is acceptable to express support for English as long as it does not actually have any meaning, such as ending the printing of foreign language ballots for U.S. elections.

Only a Mass Movement Can Break the Power of the Entrenched Special Interests

The power of the entrenched special interests in Washington, in many state capitals, and in city and county government is such that only a mass movement comparable to the Jeffersonians, the Jacksonians, and the Lincoln Republicans and Progressives could break the hold of the entrenched power structure.

Three are three reasons to believe this mass movement is growing:

First, the gap between the values of the elite on the left and the values of the vast majority of Americans is growing wider. Ninety-one percent of all Americans favor the right to say "One Nation under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Eighty-nine percent believe American workers should have the right to a secret ballot election before being forced to join a union. Ninety-three percent believe Americans should know the price and quality of healthcare before making a decision about it. Eighty-five percent believe English should be the official language of government. The list goes on and on. Certainly, any 21st Century governing majority will be center-right in its values and policies.

Second, the gap between the world that works (largely but not entirely private sector) and the world that fails (largely but not entirely government bureaucracy) is growing wider and wider. In the 21st Century private sector, we routinely expect MORE choices of LOWER cost with HIGHER quality and GREATER convenience. But in government we continue to be told about higher taxes, slower implementation, greater error rates and "hard choices." A 21st Century governing majority will be allied with the American people in insisting on the delivery standard of the world that works being applied to the government systems that currently fail.

Third, as the world visibly grows more dangerous, the natural desire of the American people to be protected will reassert itself. The implementation failures in Iraq combined with the Bush Administration's inarticulateness have led to a temporary resurgence of the "Peace at Any Price" Left. But this will rapidly disintegrate as the problems of the modern world persist. Cyber attacks on Estonia, Chinese activities in space, Russian assertiveness against Lithuania and Poland, Iranian seizure of American hostages, the six terrorists in New Jersey and the four terrorists who were planning to blow up the jet fuel at JFK airport in New York are early indicators that any future governing majority will have a very strong national and homeland security component.

I will explore all these ideas in my speech at AEI on Friday, June 8. I hope you'll join me. And then, all these concepts will be expanded into practical, workable solutions in the American Solutions "Solutions Day" workshops on September 27 and 29. It's going to be the start of a great and meaningful adventure. I hope you'll choose to be a part of it.

Copyright © 2007 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.

Republican Presidential Ifs all Surrounding a Thompson Entrance

I was reading an article attributed to Dick Morris and Eileen McGann in the Jewish World Review today. The article seemed very supportive of Fred Thompson to commit for a run for the Republican nomination for President. I myself believe that Thompson is an articulate persona as President Reagan was. I believe he will appeal to the Christian Right, right wingers such as the NRA and so forth.

The Morris/McGann article questions Thompson’s reluctance to enter the race early might be a death knell to a later entry. The article reasons a later entrance will imply an image of lack of stick to it-ness which portrays leadership fragility in confronting a wild cat say like Hillary Clinton.

Morris/McGann point out that an early entrance by Obama circumscribed a Gore entry on the Democratic side; thus Thompson entrance NOW could circumscribe a possible Newt Gingrich (who I also like) entrance into Presidential politics.

Then Morris/McGann goes into all the what-ifs the Republicans and Thompson might face as Super Tuesday approaches in February 2008. Morris/McGann accuses Rudy Giuliani as being in the mold of old Rockefeller (pro-business yet center/left). The implication being if Thompson does not enter soon, Giuliani will have nearly unstoppable momentum. Giuliani is quite popular with everyday Joe Republican because of the strength of leadership he demonstrated during 9/11.

I personally think that Giuliani has too many skeletons in his closet to defeat a cagey Clinton gang. Because of Giuliani’s skeletons it would be tough to attack Clinton skeletons. I don’t think Newt Gingrich can defeat the Clinton Gang, he just comes across as too nice of guy for the old wild cat gang. I do believe Gingrich would make an excellent leader as President; one does not acquire Speaker of the House without skills. Unfortunately those are closed door skills that politicians rarely show publicly. I do not think Newt’s open door election skills can compete with the Clinton gang. I betray my disdain for Mormonism as a cultic off-shoot from Christianity that has the appearance of ancient Gnostics more than the orthodoxy practiced by Christians. Mitt Romney morals may be impeccable, but it would be like voting for an anti-Christian. However I have to tell you, I would vote for Romney before I would for any Left Wing Democrat.

I am sure there are other Republicans I am leaving out; however the ones I have written about are the ones I am thinking about (I guess I could throw Brownback in there and maybe others). It is the idea of a slick speaker and a quick wit like Fred Thompson that I am really drawn to. In that I am like Morris/McGann: RUN FRED, RUN…NOW!

Time to Put English First

In Newt Gingrich’s most recent “Winning the Future” e-newsletter he writes that English should be the language of Citizenship in America.

Gingrich also writes that English should not be made an exclusive language in America. The reasoning behind NOT making English exclusive is America’s history of a melting pot. America had a generation or space of time in which immigration was actively promoted. During this time many Western Europeans immigrated to America: Irish, Scandinavians, Italians, Germans, Jews and Chinese (oops) and more.

Unfortunately there was also some forced immigration in the de-humanized marketing of Black slavery.

Most of the succeeding generations of these immigrants learned English as their primary language. It is called assimilation. That is the hall mark America should aim for immigrants to acquire citizenship: American cultural history and the English language. The American culture of the Revolutionary War period is what has set up the most prosperous and liberty conscious society the world has EVER known. This is a fact regardless of Left Wing America haters and the very reason Mohammedans hate America.

For an immigrant to seek citizenship, that immigrant should assimilate to what has made America great. A lack of willingness to do so should exclude an immigrant from American Citizenship.

Gingrich points out that Australia has already moved in the direction of the emphasis of Citizenship over validating multicultural validity. Canada appears to be exploring options to follow Australia’s path. These are friendly Western style democracies. America should move in the path of Citizenship more than multicultural diversity.

Will America and Israel Survive?

Newt Gingrich is acting like a Presidential candidate. This week’s Winning the Future installment offers a quite remarkable plan. Whether or not Gingrich wins the Republican nomination or is a part of a Republican Presidential Administration in 2008, he has very legitimate ideas to consider. Gingrich is not locked into a “hate Bush syndrome.” The syndrome of if it comes from Bush, the idea must be fought with all political clout available.

Newt’s thesis is a common enemy should unite Democracies of which little Israel has been on front lines since it’s modern inception.

That enemy is radical Mohammedanism. The West must find the common ground to be one to end this Islamofascism once and for all.

Newt has a plan.

Gingrich: Free Speech Should Be Curtailed To Fight Terrorism

I am a huge believer of free speech and the various rights that protect property and unlawful searches and seizures. I would be the first to stand up for someone’s rights to express his thoughts and live by them, even if I disagreed with the person.

BUT …

In war rules must change for security – both national and personal. America’s society is like ripe cherries waiting to be picked by an islamofascist terrorist. In fact radical Mohammedans utilize our Laws and Constitutional Rights to subvert and destroy the lives of Americans. Radical Mohammedans exploit Western Style democracy in other nations in the same way.

Newt Gingrich has seen the light on Rights VS Terrorist War.