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It’s become all the rage, especially in this economic climate...couponing. There are countless blogs and websites, even a reality show devoted to it. But just how do all those five-cent coupons add up to big savings? Come along with us on a couponing trip and see for yourself on page 16 in this month’s “Life in Lincolnland”.

Unemployment is all the rage nowadays too, unfortunately. So imagine having employers knocking down your door with lucrative job offers but not being able to accept. That’s exactly what is happening to a man here in Lincolnland. Meet him and see why on page 10.

We go down under for our restaurant review, all the way to Dirksen Parkway and Outback Steakhouse. Travel down to page 20 for this taste of the town.

We’ve added a few more columnists and editorials in this month’s issue as well. Larry Elder is featured on page 14, and economist Lawrence Kudlow on page 18.

Hope you enjoy this month’s issue and, if you do (or don’t), please let us know! Our contact information is listed below.

What’s Inside...

Questions? Comments? Visit www.lincolnlandstandard.com

Columns

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Lil” StandardKids Section

Life inLincolnland

Restaurant Review

Puzzles, Games, Soduku, Trivia

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Page 21Page 16

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Debra J. Saunders Page 4

Pat Buchanan Page 6

Rich Lowry Page 7

Larry Elder Page 14

L. Brent Bozell Page 15

Lawrence Kudlow Page 18

Phyllis Schlafly Page 19

By Debra J. Saunders

Republicans, beware. In 2007 and 2008, Democrats

assured one another, "Anyone would be better than Bush." Now you hear the Republican version: "Anyone would be better than Obama."

Such talk raises impossible ex-pectations. "We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek," Barack Obama proclaimed in 2008. Very inspirational, but it left Democrats disillusioned and flat-footed when President Obama took his oath of office and the seas did not part.

The war in Iraq didn't just stop. The Afghanistan War didn't get easier after Obama sent more troops. The Muslim world did not cozy up to Washington. Wall Street did not be-come more ethical. There are still too many corporate behemoths too big to fail -- and if they do, taxpayers likely will be saddled with the damage. The housing bubble continues to poison the economy. The deficit keeps growing. High unemployment persists.

Such talk paints a party into a corner. Remember all those Democrats who groused about President George W. Bush's excessive use of execu-tive power -- warrantless wiretapping, Guantanamo Bay and military tribunals for terrorists -- and the outrage when Saddam Hussein's executioners took his photo? Now you barely hear a peep out of them. Sure, they'll toss out the occasional statement in support of their erstwhile causes, but their hearts aren't in it. They have no moral authority.

Such talk ignores the many things beyond Washington's control -- such as events in the Middle East, Europe's financial woes, and pledges made by the ghosts of Washington past. You can't just erase everything the other party did.

Such talk fails to recognize the nearly Sisyphean effort needed to reform entrenched institutions. Obama is a smart man, and he saw the 2008 financial tsunami coming -- but he has discovered the chasm between seeing it and fixing it.

Now, I happen to think that John McCain would have been a better president than Obama. McCain would not have passed a universal health care package that scared employers silly and convinced big corporations they'd be better off hoarding their cash than ex-panding U.S. operations. But I never thought McCain was the change Amer-ica had been waiting for.

Nor do I believe that if voters simply oust Obama, everything will change for the better.

As a Republican, I am panick-ing. The best GOP candidates stayed out of the race. Now we're stuck with a flock of salesmen who keep assur-ing voters that their platforms would be easy-peasy. The season's low point occurred during an August debate when all the candidates raised their hands to attest that they would reject a deficit re-duction deal that included $1 in tax in-creases for every $10 of spending cuts.

Obama is no better. He could have chosen to push for tax reform -- lower rates, no loopholes -- to at-tract bipartisan support and kick-start the economy. Instead, he apparently decided that he has a better chance at winning re-election by failing to pass a jobs package -- with a bill-killing millionaire surtax -- and then blaming the state of the economy on naysaying Republicans. Finger-pointing won the White House in 2008, so he's sticking with the formula.

I'd like to see a GOP nominee who could do better. I would like a Re-publican who also could govern.

The Case for Republican Panic

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day, and to be sitting there trying to do Muslim prayers with a big cross look-ing down or a picture or Jesus or a pic-ture of the pope is not very conducive to their religion."

Banzhaf claimed Muslim students had been offended by a suggestion that they meditate in campus chapels "and at the cathedral that looms over the entire campus -- the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception."

Yet it is Banzhaf who appears to be the one with a real problem with Jesus, the shrine and Catholicism, not the Muslim students whose numbers at CUA have doubled in five years.

Moreover, Muslims, while dis-believing that Jesus is the Son of God, regard him as the greatest of the proph-ets before Muhammad, and they revere Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Banzhaf has also filed a com-plaint with the Office of Human Rights that Catholic University discriminates against women.

How so? CUA President John Garvey had decided to put men and women students into separate dormito-ries, a crime against humanity.

The Office of Human rights has said that its investigation of Banzhaf's complaints will require six months.

What does this episode tell us? That there are anti-Catholic bigots

whose stock-in-trade is exploiting civil rights laws to smear the church and her institutions, and drive wedges between

Catholics and other faiths. Second, if the Office of Human

Rights has nothing better to do than spending six months investigating these nonsensical charges, it ought to be abolished. Give the taxpayers back the money these bureaucrats are wast-ing, and let them go and, as Ronald Reagan used to say, "test the magic of the marketplace."

Catholic University, after all, is a private religious institution that, un-der the First Amendment, is as free to pick its students and set its rules as is Bob Jones University in South Carolina or Yeshiva in New York or Brigham Young in Utah.

The episode also reveals how the cause of civil rights has been trivialized and exploited.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act out-lawed segregation by restaurants and corporations. The 1965 Voting Rights Act struck down state impediments to black access to the ballot. The 1968 act forbade discrimination in the purchase and sale of housing.

While these laws restricted the freedom of state officials, restaura-teurs, bar owners, hotel operators and homeowners, that was the price we as a people agreed to pay to end segrega-tion. But civil rights and human rights laws are today being used to compel Christian institutions to conform to anti-Christian agendas that violate their basic principles.

In the district, a new law order-ing all city contractors to recognize gay marriages impelled the archdiocese to terminate its 80-year foster-care pro-gram, rather than let children be adopt-ed by homosexuals. And the people of Washington were denied a vote on ho-mosexual marriage by a District of Co-lumbia judge who ruled that permitting a referendum on gay marriage would violate the district's Human Rights Act.

Nationally, the church is resist-ing an Obamacare mandate that forces Catholic hospitals to provide patients with abortifacients such as the FDA-approved Ella and Plan B, the morning-after pill.

Dr. Ron Crews, executive director of the 2,000-member Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty, has denounced a Pentagon decision to permit military chapels to be used for homosexual mar-riages, a violation, says Crews, of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

"By dishonestly sanctioning the use of federal facilities for 'counterfeit marriages,' that federal law and the vast majority of Americans have rejected, the Pentagon has launched a direct as-sault on the fundamental unit of society -- husband and wife."

Culture wars, rooted in irreconcil-able conflicts about God and man, right and wrong, are disintegrating the moral community we once were -- and will likely never be again.

Appearing the other night on the Catholic network EWTN, I was asked by Raymond Arroyo what should be done about Muslim students at Catholic University demanding that the school provide them with prayer rooms, from which crucifixes and all other Catholic symbols that they found offensive had been removed.

After a nanosecond I replied, "Kick 'em out!"

Let them go to George Washing-ton, the university on the other side of town.

Indeed, had Muslim students shown so little loyalty to a school that welcomed them, and of whose Catholi-cism they were aware when they en-tered, expulsion would have been justi-fied.

Looking further into the matter, that was a rush to judgment.

For it seems that not a single Muslim student at CUA had gone to the District of Columbia Office of Human Rights to file a complaint.

That complaint was the work of John Banzhaf, a professor at GW, per-ennial litigant, and longtime contender for the title of National Pest.

In provocative language, Banzhaf told Fox News, "It shouldn't be too dif-ficult to set aside a small room where Muslims can pray without having to stare up and be looked down upon by a cross of Jesus.

"They do have to pray five times a

The Coming Church-State WarsBy Patrick K. Buchanan

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Obama’s Keystone XL Kops

Anti-abortion activists in today’s headlines are not politically savvy and don’t care to change. Unless they agree to play by conventional rules of poli-tics, they will continue to lose. And in losing, they won’t save the unborn.

It can be fun to indulge extrem-ism, rejecting compromise and political alliances that may water down the pu-rity of a cause. That’s what sponsors of Mississippi’s personhood amendment have done. As a result, the measure was soundly defeated on Tuesday in what may be the union’s most anti-abortion state.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Bar-bour, who voted for the amendment, expressed frustration that activists placed it on the ballot without building alliances. Barbour, a staunch defender of the unborn, said the measure would likely have passed if activists -- un-der the auspices of Personhood USA -- had asked Mississippi politicians to

introduce it to the heavily anti-abortion legislature. Barbour said a workable personhood proposal would have found easy support in the legislature, and poli-ticians would have “ironed out the am-biguities” that frightened voters.

The measure, like two others that failed in Colorado, defines “per-son” to include “every human being from the moment of fertilization, clon-ing or the functional equivalent there-of.” Proponents hope that defining un-born humans as persons will overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that prevents states from outlaw-ing most types of abortion.

A human embryo lives, beyond scientific dispute, and can be no spe-cies other than Homo sapiens. Debate should center not on settled science, but on which beings deserve protection and which do not. Those who advocate per-sonhood understand that American law applies not to humans, but “persons.”

Our laws protect the lives of most per-sons, but not all. Convicted murders can be killed by states. Victims may kill violent predators in self-defense. Whether legal recognition as persons would imbue the unborn with protec-tion from death remains to be seen. The court could forbid the state-sanctioned protection of “persons” who have not been born.”

As personhood amendments have been written, abortion-rights ac-tivists easily frighten the masses. They warn of personhood causing a ban on all or most contraception. They explain that wives and mothers will die from ectopic pregnancies, as doctors will be unable to save a mother without causing the death of a person. The amendments are designed to fail. They are suicidal.

Unborn humans should be treated with dignity and respect, which precludes mass-convenience abortions. In a perfect world, all unborn humans

would be wanted, loved and birthed into functional families. In the real world, successful advocates of the un-born must win hearts and minds and settle for sequential legal victories that won’t stop all abortions, but may stop tens of thousands.

If Mississippi won’t accept an amendment, as written by Personhood USA, no state will. Abortions will de-crease when activists work with realis-tic goals and stop holding out for all-or-nothing achievements of moral purity that are destined to fail. When they fail, those who could be saved -- by viable and compromising legislation -- pay the ultimate price.

REPRINTED FROM THE COLO-RADO SPRINGS GAZETTE

Abortion Foes Need to Get Real

By Rich Lowry

If the president’s party really cared about jobs, this pipeline would be un-derway.

One of the holiest words in the Democratic economic lexicon is “infra-structure.”

Yet the proposed Keystone XL pipeline represents a big, honking $7 billion, 1,700-mile-long infrastructure project that the Obama administration is delaying and the environmentalists are opposing. If Pres. Barack Obama thinks the country lacks its former eco-nomic verve, he need look no farther than the Keystone XL fiasco for a dem-onstration of one reason why.

Keystone XL meets every possi-ble standard. President Obama wants “shovel ready” jobs. The materials to build the pipeline from Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast are waiting to go. The president rightly notes that construction has been hard hit in the recession. Building Keystone XL will create thousands of construction jobs. The president criticizes our dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Keystone XL is projected to pump as much as 830,000 barrels of crude oil a day from our friendly neighbor to the north.

President Obama should want to

sign the permit himself and send Vice Pres. Joe Biden to take credit at the groundbreaking. At this rate, though, the project will get underway some-time in the second Obama or first Cain administration, if ever. For more than three years, the administration has been dragging TransCanada, the prospective builder of the pipeline, through a review process involving about a dozen federal agencies and a cast of thousands. In the time the federal government has been considering TransCanada’s project, Al Smith and the gang could have built three Empire State Buildings, at one year and 45 days each.

The proposed pipeline crosses an international border, so the State De-partment has been the lead agency in charge of ceaseless bureaucratic delay. Its environmental-impact statement runs to eight volumes. It informs us that “tree squirrels depend on forested habitats, usually deciduous or mixed hardwood forests with abundant sup-plies of acorns and hickory nuts.” It examines the proposed project as “an undertaking under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act,” the implementing regulation of which is “36 CFR Part 800 (2004).” It takes a hard look at the possible spread of “137 federally restricted and regulated nox-ious weeds,” as well as “state and local

noxious weeds.”The upshot is that the pipeline pos-

es little risk to the environment. But the reviewing must go on. The State De-partment is now considering whether the pipeline is in “the national inter-est.” A department official told the Los Angeles Times that the continuing pro-cess will include, “if needed, gathering and assessing additional information.” Such is the fate of 21st-century infra-structure, no matter what gauzy visions President Obama conjures of “nation building at home.”

The environmentalists turned out thousands of protesters to surround the White House over the weekend in op-position to Keystone XL. They charge that the project is a threat to the Ogal-lala Aquifer in Nebraska, although there’s no evidence for this. Their real objection is that Keystone XL is an instrument in the destruction of the planet. It aids and abets the extraction of crude from the oil sands of Canada that enviros worry is intense in carbon emissions and unsightly to boot. (Wired magazine complains of “the apocalyp-tic landscapes” of the oil sands, as if they should be picturesque.)

Whether we allow Keystone XL or not, Canada is going to exploit its natu-ral resources. It’s a question of whether it benefits us, or whether Canada is

forced to build a pipeline to the Pacific Coast instead, and send its oil to China. For us, this shouldn’t be a close call.

In a promotional spot for her show, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow praises the wonders of massive projects like the Hoover Dam. She must have missed that the environmental Left has been busy working to tear down existing dams. The Democrats are the party of the regulations that hamper infrastruc-ture projects and of the environmental-ists who work to kill them outright. If that weren’t so, Joe Biden would have cut a ribbon for TransCanada long ago.

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The odds of Ron Paul being nominated by Republicans and defeat-ing President Barack Obama are, in the words of one news service, "beyond re-mote." Perhaps. But Paul's "Plan to Re-store America" is breathtaking, never-theless. Candidates whose success may be less remote would do well to adopt this plan in large measure.

It's difficult to recall tax-and-spending reforms of this scope pro-posed by any previous, serious presi-dential candidate -- and as long as the media and polls continue placing Paul among top Republicans contenders, he must be considered a serious candidate.

For years relegated to the polit-ical fringe, the libertarian physician and Texas congressman this campaign sea-son is being treated as if what he has to say is worth hearing. We're pleased the media are acknowledging, if grudging-ly, what the Register's Editorial Board has known for years. Paul makes much sense.

We also believe his message can resonate with voters. Indeed, were the Republican field winnowed from its current eight or more candidates to three or four, we would expect Paul to be among the survivors simply because his message is that compelling.

Today we're not advancing Paul's still admittedly long-shot candi-dacy. We are, however, applauding his plan.

Within three years, Paul says the budget can be balanced. He would start by cutting the planned $3.7 trillion government spending by $1 trillion in his first year. His plan does this without fiscal harm to Medicare or Social Secu-rity funding. This is remarkable consid-ering these two entitlements constitute such a huge portion of the budget. But as Paul says, he intends to honor "our promise to seniors and veterans."

He would, however, permit younger workers to opt out of Social

Security, an excellent idea to empower millions of people to control their own retirement investments while simul-taneously relieving taxpayers of the mounting deficit that otherwise could bankrupt America.

Paul would convert the other great federal entitlement, Medicaid, and other welfare programs to state-administered block grants to permit innovation and tailoring to local needs rather than conforming to costly Wash-ington diktats.

Except for Republicans who want to channel tax money to favored constituencies, many of Paul's other cuts should be warmly welcomed. Per-haps not defense. But, as he said in the most recent candidates debate, there is plenty that isn't real defense in the Defense Department budget. Ending foreign wars would go a long way to achieve his modest 15 percent reduc-tion.

Meanwhile, true fiscal conserv-atives and limited-government champi-ons should applaud Paul's proposal to eliminate five Cabinet departments, in-cluding one Ronald Reagan unsuccess-fully targeted, Education, along with Commerce, Energy, HUD and Interior. He also would repeal Obamacare, and the onerous financial regulations of Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley, while reducing the president's salary from $400,000 to $39,336, the median U.S. personal income. Paul would cut 10 percent of the federal workforce while reducing corporate taxes 15 percent and extending the Bush tax cuts.

Libertarian Cato Institute budget analyst Tad DeHaven told us Paul's plan should prompt other candi-dates to specify what they would cut. "If not," DeHaven said, "they should be prepared to explain to the electorate why taxpayers should keep funding the departments that Paul would ax." Let the explanations begin.

Ron Paul's $1 Trillion in Cuts

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Royce Davis, a retired Sergeant Major from Tallula who was the commanding officer of Camp Navistar while Mohamed worked there for KBR. “He went above and beyond I can tell you that. He was very useful to us in acquiring intelligence and translating, things of that nature. Anything we needed he was willing and anxious to help.” That’s a familiar theme repeated by those who have worked closely with him. Kevin Mellor, Mohamed’s supervisor at Cargill says “He was outstanding”. In addition to his regular work, he was used extensively as a translator for the many non-English speaking employees at the plant. “We have a lot of French speaking Africans at the plant as well as others so his ability to speak all those languages was very valuable” Mellor says. “Every time there was an orientation I did the translating” Mohamed says, “or I’d translate for the doctor. They even gave me a company car and had me take people to the hospital and translate for them there. Every day they were grabbing me to translate somewhere.”

He could have stayed at Camp Navistar indefinitely but the stress of working in a hostile combat zone was taking a toll. One afternoon American soldiers ordered him to approach a woman with a bomb strapped to her as she tried to enter the camp. Muslim extremists had strapped the bomb to her and ordered her to walk into the camp, and told her they had a detonator to blow her up if she didn’t. She was frantic as the soldiers at the gate drew their guns and ordered her to stop. Mohamed was ordered to approach her attempt to convince her to sit while the bomb squad diffused the bomb. “I knew I was going to die” he says. The bomb team

Stephanie to support the two of them. “That’s what kills me, watching my wife go to work, go to school, and all I can do is sit here” he says.

It wasn’t always this way. Mohamed spent years assisting American forces in his home country and on the Kuwait-Iraq border, translating and working security. He speaks seven languages, five fluently, including English, French and Arabic, making him a valuable asset to employers. He can’t just return home either; He’s been labelled an infidel by his own family for working for the American military, threatened with death by Muslims in his own country, been shot in the leg assisting American forces…he’s done a lot for this country. Now he just wants to work.

His long journey to America began in 2001 when he was hired to work at Camp Lemonierre in Djibouti, Africa, a United States military base. His work there and translating skills were noticed quickly by his supervisors who helped him get hired by KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown, and Root) a private military contractor. He was sent to Camp Navistar on the Kuwait-Iraq border to work security and translate. “I went from making $500 a month to making $7300 a month” he says. “I’m a billionaire in Africa.” He loved the work and loved the American military. “I have so much respect for the American soldiers I served with” he says.

And they respected him. “Hisham was outstanding, a great guy” says

A 1980’s Egyptian VHS movie is playing in an endless loop on Hisham Mohamed’s television in the small one bedroom apartment he shares with his wife, Stephanie, in Jacksonville. He watches it every day. For over a year, his days have been the same: get up, see his wife off to work, and watch movies. He’s not lazy, and he’s not disabled. He’s not playing the system either. He wants to work – is dying to work - but can’t. So he waits, hoping for things to get better, watching television all day or the world go by from a bench outside his apartment.

The reason he can’t work lies buried in bureaucratic red tape somewhere between Springfield and Chicago. He is technically “without status”, a foreigner who entered the country legally but whose status has changed. To get his status changed requires the proper paperwork to be filed and presented to the Immigration Service in Chicago. But his Springfield lawyer (who he does not want named because he still needs his services) refuses to file the paperwork until he is paid more. “I’ve already paid him thousands and thousands of dollars and all he did was fill out the paperwork” says Mohamed, “He didn’t even go with me to Chicago to explain my situation to Immigration when they gave me a hearing. I told him I would pay him more when I get a work permit and can work but right now I can’t even pay my rent, how am I going to pay him more?”

It’s been over a year since Mohamed’s work permit expired and he was told he could no longer work at his job at Cargill, the Beardstown meat processing facility where he’d worked for three years. Now it’s up to his wife

Hisham Mohamed outside his apartment in Jacksonville.

Displaying identification and commendations from military officers. His days are the same: get up, see his wife off to work, and watch movies.10

diffused the bomb but Mohamed knew it was only a matter of time before he was seriously injured or killed. “And that wasn’t even my job. The Army had translators but they made me do all the dangerous things” he says.

S e r g e a n t Major Davis would provide the way out. Davis e n c o u r a g e d Mohamed to come to the United States and even offered him a place to stay. He took Davis up on the offer, staying with him and his family for a year at their home in Tallula, even staying with the family when Davis was deployed again to Iraq. It was during this time that he met a local girl and got married, moved to Rushville and started working at Cargill in Beardstown. “I loved working at Cargill” he says, “I loved it because of the overtime I was getting”. His work there was noticed too, and eventually he was made a trainer.

But by 2008 his marriage was having trouble. He separated from his wife and eventually divorced. By the time his application for a green card

history. But, without a lawyer willing to help on a contingency basis until he can go back to work, he can do nothing. “I don’t want to work illegally even though it’s better for me because I wouldn’t have to pay taxes. I’ve always paid my taxes” he says. “I’ve done everything right and look where I am”.

The endless movies Mohamed watches each day are not enough to keep the worry at bay. He worries about losing his apartment. He worries about his wife. He worries he’ll be sought for deportation – which could mean a death sentence. And he worries mostly that he’ll never be able to work again. “I’ll do anything” he says, “send me to Iraq, send me to Afghanistan, just let me work”.

Immigration policy and reform is shaping up to be a key issue in next year’s presidential election. Most of the arguments, however, focus on immigrants who are here illegally. For the left, government policies are too harsh; for the right, they’re too lenient. For Mohamed, it doesn’t really matter:

was processed he was divorced and had a different address. He was called to appear before the Immigration Service in Chicago to explain his situation. He travelled to Chicago with Davis to present his case but his application

was denied, p r e v e n t i n g him from obtaining a work permit. “That’s what messed everything up. They think I got married just so I could get a green card” he says.

“It was a legal marriage,” says Davis who retired from the military following his last deployment in 2008 and still lives in Tallula. “They lived together, worked together, they had an

apartment. The system ought to recognize this and help him somehow. He’s done everything right, everything they asked him to do, had all the proper paperwork. I don’t understand why it’s so hard to get where we need to be. It’s such a convoluted system.”

As it stands now, he needs his paperwork resubmitted and another hearing to explain his situation and prove his work history and his marriage

“Whatever the law is, that’s what I’ve done and what I’ll do” he says, “I’ve done whatever they asked”. It may be a convoluted system, but that is irrelevant when you can’t afford to pay a lawyer for help navigating it.

In the end, he’s still without an official status. He’s not an illegal immigrant - he came into this country legally - and he’s broken no laws. “From the time I got here I’ve gotten one speeding ticket” he says, holding a single finger aloft. “And I was on my way to work.” He pays taxes here but receives no benefits. He loves America and just wants to work and

contribute. “If I could find a lawyer to handle the paperwork I could go back to work and be able to pay them then” he says, “I pray day and night, just give me hope because right now I don’t have any. How can I do all that I’ve done for America and they can’t give me a piece of paper so I can go to work?” he asks.

That’s a good question.

Congratulations, Americans. You are paying down what you owe. You have reduced household debt, credit cards and mortgages by as much as $549 billion since the beginning of the recession in 2007, according to a USA Today analysis released recently.

Don’t celebrate too quickly. While households have become more responsible, the federal government has increased what it owes by more than $4 trillion during the same period. Unlike the rest of us, government is exacer-bating its already horrendous debt. Its cumulative obligations now total about $15 trillion.

Private citizens have increas-ingly come to realize they cannot con-tinue adding to what they owe. This is not the case in Washington, where the

answer to mounting debt has been to borrow and spend more rather than pay down what already is owed.

The spendthrift Congress and profligate White House should look to Europe to see what lies ahead if they don’t change their ways.

In Europe, the entitlement men-tality has accumulated new government debt until the continent teeters on the brink of massive economic collapse. Greece now shares headlines with Italy, where that government’s debt equals 120 percent of gross domestic product. Italy’s solution? Ask those it borrowed from to forgive its loans.

U.S. debt has risen from 36.9 percent of GDP when the recession be-gan to 67.5 percent on Sept. 30. The U.S. must acknowledge this trend.

“It’s the trajectory that could do us in,” Martin Regalia, chief economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce told USA Today. “We know we’re headed in the wrong direction.”

Nevertheless, despite glimmers of hope sparked by the new Republican House majority, the trend isn’t revers-ing or even slowing much. Despite the record federal deficit and gratuitous talk of austerity, the government is spending at record-high levels. Spend-ing increased 5 percent in the first nine months of 2011 over the previous nine-month period.

Congress touted its agreed-upon $38.5 billion savings supposedly to occur sometime in the future. But according to the Congressional Budget Office, it is in fact not a savings, but

an increase of $170 billion in federal spending in 2011 from 2010. The com-promise that created a congressional supercommittee to create a debt reduc-tion plan by year’s end in reality only slightly slows the deficit growth rather than reverses it. Instead of increasing to $23.4 trillion by 2021, it will increase only to $21.3 trillion.

As Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., put it, “it’s the difference between speeding off a cliff at 91 miles per hour versus 100 miles per hour.”

America’s private households have sense enough to avoid such ca-tastrophe. Unless their elected leaders wise up, what threatens a European col-lapse could be repeated here.

REPRINTED FROM THE NEW BERN SUN JOURNAL

US Still on the Road to Financial Ruin

11

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Answer on page 23

By Larry Elder

"The way I think about it is, you know, this is, uh, you know, a great, uh, great country that had gotten a little soft, and you know, we didn't have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last, uh, couple of decades. We need to get back on track." -- President Barack Obama.

The gall is breathtaking, even from a man who as a presidential candi-date said, "We are the ones we've been waiting for."

This from a President who, in chastising the rich, said, "I do think at a certain point you've made enough mon-ey."

This from a man who, during the brief time he actually worked in the private sector, represented a black woman who accused a bank of redlin-ing her out of a loan. The proximate cause of the housing bubble and melt-down is the notion that the "underrepre-sented" deserve a home, whether or not they qualified under traditional lending criteria.

This from a man who told a To-ledo plumber that government should "spread the wealth around" by taxing "the rich" and giving the money to oth-ers, because "it's good for everybody."

This from a man who blasts any suggestion that young people just might be capable of investing a portion of their Social Security contribution into an account that they manage. Former Congresswoman and vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, in oppos-ing the idea, fretted for those who lack "the knowledge and the wherewithal" to handle the responsibility.

This from a flip-flopper who initially opposed the 1996 welfare re-form -- legislation that resulted in a 50 percent reduction in the welfare rolls, and without a corresponding increase in teen pregnancy. Then-state Sen. Obama called President Bill Clinton's support of the federal bill "disturbing," and a year later -- on the Illinois state Senate floor -- he said, "I probably would not have supported the federal legislation." A decade later, when presidential can-didate Obama was asked if he would have signed or vetoed the '96 reform bill, he repeatedly dodged the question, insisting that he looked to the next 10 years, not the past 10 years. Then his campaign began running ads touting

the reduction of welfare cases made possible by the 1996 reforms.

This from a man who blames corporations for "shipping jobs over-seas," yet shows no concern for the high corporate tax rates -- rates that would be unnecessary were the federal gov-ernment to actually stick to the handful of duties permitted by the Constitution.

This from a man who thinks it's the government's job to "invest" in "green jobs of the future" because the private sector cannot be trusted to take risks.

To the extent America has got-ten "soft," Obama can't mean working hours. The average American works longer hours than other people in the industrialized world, including the Jap-anese, the Germans and the British.

Nor does Obama, by "soft," mean the growing and unsustainable reliance on government. In 1900, gov-ernment, at all three levels -- federal, state and local -- took about 10 percent of the American workers' pay. Today, if one assigns a price to unfunded federal mandates imposed on the states, gov-ernment's take approaches 50 percent. Obama and his party encourage gov-ernment growth and expect Americans to depend on it for health, welfare and retirement. These are, they tell us, "hu-man rights."

So, let's recap the President's playbook.

Step one: Pursue a three-year course of extracting higher taxes; man-dating costly new regulations, not least of which -- in ObamaCare -- represents a breathtaking expansion of federal power; and pass an FDR-like nearly trillion-dollar "stimulus" package.

Step two: Enact "look, we've done something!" regulations to "rein in Wall Street greed" -- regulations that have nothing to do with the Freddie/Fannie/Community Reinvestment Act housing meltdown. Sign "credit card reform" laws that prevent bankers from raising fees on "the defenseless." Never mind that banks roll their eyes and find other ways of keeping profits up. Funny how these bankers and other business-people seem not to consider their ac-tions crooked. They think they operate in a competitive marketplace and owe a fiduciary obligation to shareholders to maximize shareholder return.

Step three: Let the investment community know that -- because they

represent the enemy -- they're a piggy bank from which government can ex-tract more and more without, of course, eroding the business community's willingness to risk capital. Expect the "greedy," "taxed-too-lightly" business community to absorb the higher taxes and costly regulation -- and yet con-tinue to make the same hiring and in-vestment decisions even as the White House vows to impose even more regu-lations and raise taxes even higher.

Step four: After succeeding in undermining economic growth through left-wing, redistributionist, govern-ment-can-capably-invest-in-green-jobs-of-the-future policies, accuse the business community of engaging in risk avoidance. Hammer them for "sitting" on "$2 trillion" in money. Tell them they should "get off the sidelines and expand. ... Get in the game."

Step five: Finally, accuse the American people of failing him, not the other way around.

We end with another quote from then-newly elected Barack Obama: "I will be held accountable. ... If I don't have this done in three years, then there's going to be a one-term proposition."

Obama Scolds Nation: You've Gotten SoftJust

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14

By L. Brent Bozell

National Public Radio proved a long time ago it disdains black con-servatives. Remember when NPR’s Nina Totenberg launched the unprov-en sexual harassment charges against Clarence Thomas? NPR doesn’t even like black liberals who appear on Fox News: They canned Juan Williams. The sexual harassment charges against Her-man Cain aren’t ruining him as quickly as the media hoped, so on Nov. 11, NPR viciously attacked Cain for being an en-emy of blacks and a “minstrel” to white conservatives.

Reporter Karen Grigsby Bates began with Harvard Professor Randall Kennedy. “Black people know that if Herman Cain had his way, their lives would be diminished,” he announced. “And they intuit that Herman Cain’s policies are against their interests.”

Who is this man to judge like that? NPR made no attempt to identify Professor Kennedy as having served on the editorial board of the hard-left Na-tion magazine. They didn’t even call him “liberal.” He is partisan enough to have insisted in April that liberal Su-preme Court justices Ruth Bader Gins-burg and Stephen Breyer should retire now because they couldn’t survive a two-term Republican president.

Kennedy somehow gets to speak on behalf of all black Americans everywhere, that if Herman Cain “had his way,” he would (set ital) want (end ital) blacks to be diminished. This is re-ally rich drivel coming from the Left. They are the ones who placed blacks in dangerous public housing, high-rises in high-crime neighborhoods in the “War on Poverty.” They are responsible for subjecting black children to atrocious public schools with no chance of es-caping to a private school that cared about them. They entrenched a welfare state that chased away black fathers and placed Planned Parenthood clinics in urban neighborhoods for their abor-tion “needs.” But Randall Kennedy and NPR apparently think that’s the Nir-vana of black interests; Cain is evil for opposing their agenda.

NPR then turned to Jack E. White, a former screed-writer for Time magazine. He also wasn’t labeled a liberal, despite working for Time and now for the black liberal website The Root, owned by The Washington Post. NPR’s Bates said White was outraged that Cain, like Thomas, would call un-proven sexual harassment charges a “high-tech lynching.” Bates said, “He believes Cain and his white supporters have struck a bargain.”

A racist bargain. “Basically,

Herman Cain tells them what they want to hear about blacks, and in turn, they embrace him and say, ‘See, that proves we aren’t racist,’” said White. Then he stuck in the knife: “He’s even willing to be a minstrel for them, referring to, himself sometimes as ‘Cornbread,’ or quoting his father as speaking ungram-matically, as saying, you know, things like I does not care.”

Even Bob Beckel on Fox called the “minstrel” line “obscene.” In Jack White’s mind, we are forever stuck in 1963, and every white conservative is somehow a Southern Democrat racist Bull Connor. But today’s 18-year-old Americans who may turn out to vote for Herman Cain early next year were born in 1993. You can’t endlessly sug-gest that racism is taught in schools, on TV and over every Republican dinner table ... unless you’re a crank or a guest on NPR.

The third black Cain critic was a professor named Vincent Hutchings, who said Cain was “crazy,” but “crazy like a fox.”

There were no black conserva-tive professors allowed -- not Thom-as Sowell, or Walter Williams. NPR doesn’t want blacks to consider it con-ceivable that a black could choose to be a conservative and still be considered respectable.

The only conservative view allowed was a clip of Ann Coulter. (NPR somehow couldn’t acquire an original interview.) Coulter said on Fox that black conservatives have to swim against a very strong tide of black opin-ion, so “our blacks are so much better than their blacks.”

To which “objective” Bates re-plied: “Observations like that may be why their blacks are so few in number.” Bates clearly believes (as her report demonstrates) that black conservatives are metaphorically owned by masters and simply cannot fathom why blacks would want to be released from the lib-eral plantation.

Herman Cain may win the Re-publican nomination, or he may not. But it’s quite clear from all the media coverage that the liberal media don’t want him even standing on the debate stage. It ruins their preferred caricature of the Republicans as an all-white coun-try club that sees blacks as the people who hand them towels in the restroom.

If they can’t push Cain off the stage, then they’ll try to smear him into a cartoon minstrel. As so often happens in liberal media circles, the goal of ac-curacy takes a back seat to victory.

Ask yourself: Would this vit-riol against Cain exist if he were white?

NPR Versus ‘Minstrel’ Cain

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It’s 8 PM and I’m standing at a Target checkout nervously watching the cashier scan my wife’s two inch stack of coupons. She’s clearly not happy, and neither are the shoppers behind us. She slowly takes each coupon, scans it, and we all watch as each one dings and our total plummets in a free fall. My wife meanwhile, stands proudly, hands on hips, and watches me with an eyebrow raised, unable to hide the “I told you so” expression on her face. The only time I’ve seen her this proud was when she held each of our four newborn children, who at present are bouncing around like monkeys. They’ve done this drill before. And just as my wife has described hundreds of times, I watch the expressions of the customers behind us go from irritated to curious to astounded as our total descends into single digits. I take my time conspicuously fetching a ten spot for the cashier, load the last few bags in the cart, then turn and wink at the customers behind us as I receive my change.

My wife is a couponer. Friends have joked for years that someday the cops are going to come to our door and take me away for grand retail theft. The evidence would be easy to find: shelf after shelf of consumer goods in curious quantities: toothpaste, soda, shampoo, dog food, dish soap, candy, condoms. That’s right, condoms. Did you know Trojan® would love for you to try their products and are willing to give you money to, shall we say, do it? Neither did I. Yet in my garage are two Rubbermaid bins full of condoms. Extra large of course.

So how does this all happen? How does she come into possession of this stuff legally? Her answers usually start with: “First you find a manufacturer’s coupon, then you combine that with a store coupon. If the store is doubling coupons, only the manufacturer’s coupon is doubled, not the store’s. That’s important. If you are price matching, you need the original store’s coupon as well as the manufacturer’s which will then be doubled. If the coupon totals more than the price of the product, sometimes you get “overage”.

If you add up the total saved, subtract the overage, and take the square root of the

total after tax, the number matches the expiration date of the third coupon. But that’s not important, the main thing is...”

My eyes and ears have usually glazed over by the time we’re c o m b i n i n g coupons, but I spring alert at the word “overage”. Overage is the holy grail of couponing. The premise is simple, if you have a one dollar coupon for

an 80 cent item, you end up with 20 cents of overage, which can be applied to the rest of your order. Some stores honor overage and some do not. The ones that do are considered sacred ground. My wife and her friends take off their shoes when they enter an overage store.

Twenty cents may not seem like much, but it adds up. Thankfully my wife is not the timid kind. She thinks nothing of filling a cart full of, say, Jell-O, and pushing it around the store with four kids in tow. At twenty cents a pop, a few hundred boxes of Jell-O pays a bill or two and takes a little pressure off daddy to write funny stories.

Naturally when all this couponing started several years ago I was a bit uneasy. The first time my wife came home, filled our countertops full of products, waved her hand over it like Vanna White and declared she hadn’t paid a cent for any of it, I was concerned. Had I married a closet miscreant? Was this her way of dealing with the boredom of suburban houswifery? Her explanation only

added to my exasperation. She started in with the doubling and the combining and the overage and I slowly backed up, feeling behind me for the knife drawer. Who was this woman? I decided I needed to accompany her on a coupon trip to find out.

“Let’s roll.” My wife does not normally talk like this. But when planning and executing coupon trips she takes on an entirely new persona. Gone are the nice, classy clothes she normally wears, replaced with loose fitting sweats and sneakers for better movement. When she pulls her hair back and fastens it with a

scrunchy, I know it’s time to “roll”. My job is to chauffeur, push carts, and load armfuls of merchandise into the appropriate cart when directed. I also make sure the car has a full tank, empty the trunk of toys and trash, making sure there is plenty of room for merchandise, and keep my wife watered and fed with granola bars for energy. I used to be in charge of the coupon box until I

inadvertently forgot to snap it shut one day and spilled all of the contents in the parking lot. The “incident” is still a sore subject between us and as a result I am not allowed to touch it anymore for any reason.

Our first stop is Walgreen’s, affectionately called Walfreen’s, a weekly favorite. Their weekly ads are a gold mine of sales and coupons. They never double but when combined with manufacturers coupons they provide free merchandise plus overage. Our haul this week will be eggs (on sale plus an added bonus of a free Redbox rental with each dozen), those Hawaiian sweet bread rolls which used to be a special treat at our house but now are a staple because of the sales price and the fact that for each package you receive a can of Manwich sloppy joe sauce, and Skittles candy. The Skittles are marked down from $1 to $.75. We have a manufacturer’s coupon for $1 off of two, and a Walfreen’s coupon for $1 off of two. So for every two bags we buy, we get $.50 overage. We buy 60 bags “Let’s roll”

giving us $30 overage which is spent on the eggs and bread. We buy a few small things so our coupons won’t take us under our total and end up paying $2.16.

On to Kmart, or “Ol’ Blue” as we call it, a reference to the old blue light specials. They are not doubling this week but it’s just as well. There is a $2 dog food coupon for a can which is on sale for 78 cents resulting in $1.22 overage. We have 15 coupons so within three minutes of entering the store we’re ahead $18.30. Twenty ounce bags of Teddy Graham’s, mini-Oreo’s, and Chips Ahoy are on sale for a dollar and we have dollar off coupons. We take five bags of each. A 2-liter of Dr. Pepper is $1.25 and we have dollar off coupons. We get six, bringing our overage down to $16.80. My wife buys a 20 oz. diet Pepsi for $1.59 and we find a pair of sandals for our son for $14.99. So with a few other small items we reluctantly paid retail for and tax our total comes to $75.66. After coupon total: $8.39.

“Would you like to use your Kmart Rewards card today?”“No.”My wife looks at me and we laugh wildly, causing the teenage cashier to shrink visibly by our reaction.“I’m sorry,” my wife says, comforting the boy. “We don’t use that, we use coupons. You’ll see.” Relief floods his face and he stops hyperventilating. Teenage boys are the best cashiers by the way. They never ask questions. Or maybe it’s the fact that my wife flirts with them and distracts them as they scan the coupons. Middle aged men whose lives obviously revolve around the store are the worst. Every coupon

is analyzed suspiciously, the expiration date checked, and the total double-checked to make sure the store isn’t being taken advantage of. They are to be avoided at all costs, but once in awhile you’ll be the victim of a random shift change and unable to change lanes. Side note: Did you know that each retail establishment is refunded the price of the coupon plus 7 cents (per coupon)? They end up making more money than if no coupon was used. Somehow this tidbit makes no difference to the middle aged male cashiers of Lincolnland.

Next up is Target, no nickname needed obviously. Target no longer honors overage, and out of defiance we didn’t shop here for months. But good deals are still to be had for free or near free. Before they changed their policy, Target was the place to shop. It is here that my wife bought many hundreds of condoms, each bringing her two dollars of overage. And bringing me priceless

looks from everyone in the store.We find a watch on sale for a birthday gift for a neighbor’s son, $4.98. We’re down five bucks right off the bat and I’m a little peeved. What am I, an ATM machine? I pretend not to hear when my wife asks me something, and doubletime it to the food section where the good deals are, my wife periodically jogging a few steps at a time behind me in order to keep up. Big boxes of Nabisco products are on sale for $1.50 and we have $1 off coupons. We score a bunch of free juice boxes by combining coupons and a good deal on yogurt with a manufacturers coupon. The tally here: $21.98 for a watch, 10 large boxes of Nabisco products, three cases (a total of 36) juice boxes, and 12 yogurts.

And with that we’re finished. A nice little coupon run. Two hours and hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise, all for $32.53 out of pocket. Not a bad haul.The only downside of all this is that as

her “hauls” have progressed and she has become more coupon savvy, my wife has slowly developed a snobbish air. Suddenly 20 cent overage doesn’t cut it anymore. Not enough of a thrill. I’ve seen her plan a coupon trip with military precision and abandon it because it would only yield a hundred dollars in overage and two crates of free mustard. Who needs the trouble? And she has unwittingly become disgusted with common people who “pay retail”. Suckers.

And slowly, without realizing it, I too have become callous and jaded. I ask piercing questions about each week’s haul. I scan her receipts closely, looking for signs of missed opportunities. And I’ve come to expect a nice surprise every time I open the pantry. What will I find this week? And if she doesn’t deliver each and every week I want answers. Is she getting lazy? How hard can it be to find a few fantastic deals each week and buy your husband a nice treat with the overage? I mean, at least make the effort.

So lately I’ve been trying to step back and appreciate my good fortune, to stop and realize how good I have it. I make it a point to say thank you no matter what, even when her haul is, say, sugar-free candy or cases of condoms that don’t fit. And I figured it was time to give back and share this knowledge with others. That is why I brought you along with us today. To show you how simple and easy it is to coupon, and how fun it can be. And most importantly, to show how you too, dear common one, can avoid paying retail.

Thank you for shopping with us, and have a nice day.The haul. Hundreds of dollars of merchandise for $32.53. Not bad.

America’s Decline: Candidates Just Don’t Get It

The latest news from President Barack Obama’s Labor Department is that a federal grant doled out from the administration’s stimulus program to train and employ people in “green jobs” so far has spent $162 million but resulted in only 8,035 people getting jobs. That would be bad enough. But only 1,033 of them still were on the job after six months.

If that fact alone weren’t irritat-ing, a report from the House Commit-tee on Oversight and Government Re-form says many of those “created” jobs weren’t new. Worse yet, they weren’t even “green.” Some of the jobs sim-ply were relabeled as “green” by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They rather creatively were identified as “green” although they were seemingly as color-less as government regulators working at the Environmental Protection Agen-cy, university professors teaching ecol-ogy and Washington lobbyists seeking government loan guarantees for clients.

This is only the most recent

installment of the Obama administra-tion’s boast to create 5 million green jobs over the next decade. The growth of green jobs from 2003-10, even using such loose criteria, has been 3.4 percent a year, less than the national economy’s 4.2 percent, according to the Brookings Institution.

Taxpayer outrage sometimes is limited to the most catastrophic failures of the green jobs movement, such as the recent bankruptcy of Fremont-based Solyndra, the solar panel manufactur-er under federal investigation after it burned through more than $500 million in loan guarantees and laid off 1,100 workers this summer. But the flaws in government-forced green-job creation are more fundamental, and, we suspect, more widespread than high-profile bankruptcies that leave taxpayers on the hook.

“We should be reviewing every one of these loan guarantee” projects, says Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.

Here’s a better idea: It’s past

time to recognize that redistributing taxpayer money to favored green com-panies that cannot raise enough capital on their own to stay in business makes job creation much more expensive, thanks to government regulations and middlemen, and therefore makes job creation more unlikely. That’s the con-clusion of Matt Welch, editor of Reason Magazine.

Despite the American Re-covery and Reinvestment Act -- the stimulus bill -- and a spate of other similar government-devised, top-down schemes to spur job creation, Welch notes that “fewer able-bodied Ameri-cans are employed as a percentage of the potential work force than at any time since 1983.” In short, the more government helps, the more America hurts.

The Tax Foundation, a nonpar-tisan research group, concludes that the president’s latest job-creation scheme, the American Jobs Act, would deliver few jobs and little economic growth,

but its permanent tax increases to pay for the subsidized jobs “can do perma-nent harm to the economy.”

The government destroys more jobs than it creates, and those it creates often are of questionable value and lim-ited duration. Obama predicted in 2009 that his stimulus package would hold unemployment below 8 percent -- only to see it increase to 9 percent since.

A recent news story in The Washington Post observed that Solyn-dra’s failure “prompted concerns about whether the administration made good bets in the rest of its portfolio of clean-tech projects it had helped subsidize with taxpayer-guaranteed loans.” Whether the government is making good bets is the wrong question. Tax-payers should demand government stop gambling with their money altogether.

REPRINTED FROM THE OR-ANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Leave job creation to the professionals

By Lawrence Kudlow

The latest Gallup poll pegs Presi-dent Obama's approval at a new low of 41 percent. That adds to the thought that the winner of the GOP presidential-primary sweepstakes is going to be the next president.

And inside that Republican contest, the policy pendulum is swing-ing toward pro-growth, flat-tax reform. A new agenda. With Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan and the announcement of a Steve Forbes-type flat tax from Gov. Rick Perry, the GOP flat-tax-reform competition is dominating the headline news.

While President Obama stumps for huge tax hikes -- on incomes of $200,000 to the millionaire and billion-aire level -- and demoralizes businesses and entrepreneurs with his populist at-tacks on success and risk-taking, the GOP is fast coming up with a much better idea.

The handwriting is now on the wall. A huge part of the 2012 cam-paign will be pro-growth tax reform versus "fairness," redistribution and soak-the-rich. In a stalled-out economy, I'll take the supply-side bet anytime. Pro-growth, flat-tax reform is going to win.

The stock market gets this. The flat tax is bullish. In late September, Herman Cain trumpeted his 9-9-9 flat-

tax/fair-tax hybrid reform plan at the Orlando, Fla., debate. Since early Octo-ber, stocks have come out of their funk, rising 12 percent.

Coincidence? Part of the stock rally is based

on strong corporate earnings, the moth-er's milk of stocks. So far for the third quarter, almost three-quarters of report-ing companies have beaten estimates, with overall profits coming in about 14 percent ahead of year-ago. And inves-tors are hopeful that Europe will solve its sovereign-debt and banking woes.

But the sudden stock rally could also be discounting a new GOP growth plan that will replace the dreary Obama tax-the-rich mantra.

Investors read the political polls as well as the earnings results. And investors sense that a rejuvenated Republican Party -- with candidates competing for the most pro-growth, incentive-oriented tax reform -- bodes well for America's economic future. So with the election a little more than a year away, stocks may be thinking about a new Reagan-like era in eco-nomic policy.

An era when success is re-warded, not punished. An era when consumption is taxed more while sav-ing and investment are taxed less. An era when capital formation rises from the ashes to produce a new surge in pro-ductivity, jobs and real incomes. An era when simplicity trumps $450 billion in

compliance costs; when a new Republi-can Party means business when it says it will drive a stake through a tax code that has been a ball and chain to the economy.

Add to that widespread agree-ment among the GOP candidates for strict spending limitations; a regulatory rollback; an unleashing of America's oil-and-gas shale revolution (which will give us energy independence); and the likelihood that a Republican presi-dent will stop the Federal Reserve from devaluing the dollar and flooding the fi-nancial system with an overload of new money. All the GOP frontrunners would replace Ben Bernanke, and at least Cain and Perry have hinted at re-linking the dollar to gold.

And all these policies mark a return to the Reaganesque principles that rejuvenated free-market capitalism 30 years ago and could ignite an eco-nomic-growth surge once again -- even amidst all of today's doom and gloom.

Cain's 9-9-9 is not perfect. But it embodies important growth incen-tives along with simplification. Perry's plan comes out this week, and it's likely to feature a single tax rate that resem-bles Steve Forbes's 17 percent flat tax for individuals and corporations.

Both Perry and Cain include 100 percent cash expensing for new-business investment. Both Cain and Perry would eliminate the double tax on capital gains and other investments,

as well as the double tax on the foreign earnings of U.S. companies. Cain re-cently amended his plan so that people living under the poverty line will pay a zero personal tax, while businesses lo-cating in "opportunity zones" may get tax-free investment and even tax-free wages. This borrows from the late Jack Kemp's empowerment-zone idea.

Earlier in the campaign, Jon Huntsman came out with a flatter tax, with a top rate of 23 percent and three brackets, which is similar to a number of Republican congressional proposals that would cap the top rate for individu-als and corporations at 25 percent. Now it remains up to Mitt Romney to unveil a much bolder tax-reform measure that can compete effectively for the Repub-lican nomination.

And all these ideas would represent a complete reversal from Obama's vision of taxing the rich and penalizing successful small-business owners. In fact, on taxes, regulations, spending, and monetary policy, the expected GOP economic platform will represent a total repudiation of Obama-nomics -- a stark contrast for voters.

Stock markets and the general public are taking notice. GOP tax-re-form competition will produce an out-standing pro-growth plan. And that is going to defeat Obama in the ultimate competition next November.

The GOP Pro-Growth, Flat-Tax Competition

18

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Despite the inordinate quan-tity of press coverage about next year’s presidential election, attention to TV debates and the consuming desire of the media to predict who will win in 2012, the polls show that no candidate in either party is reaching 50 percent of public support. Meanwhile, the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, conducted jointly by Democrats and Republicans, reports that 74 percent of Americans think our government is taking us in the wrong direction, and only 17 percent think we are on the right track. Other polls are similar, with Gallup reporting 85 percent dissatisfied with the way our country is headed, and only 13 percent satisfied. The locals are restless, the grassroots are demanding change and the Tea Partiers are expecting results, but Congress is stalemated and Presi-dent Obama spends his time fundrais-ing and campaigning for his own re-election. Why hasn’t any candidate been able to ride citizen dissatisfaction into majority support? I recommend that every presi-dential candidate read three books to understand why they don’t get it. First, they should read the best book about Barack Obama, “Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism,” which explains how he became a Socialist while at-tending Columbia University.

Nobody knew anything about what was called the “lost chapter” of Obama’s life until a real scholar, Stan-ley Kurtz, did the original research. The highlight of the research was a 1985 So-cialist Scholars Conference addressed by Frances Fox Piven (known for ad-vocating the Cloward-Piven strategy of killing capitalism by loading more and more people on welfare). The presidential candidates should then read two books that explain in depressing detail why grassroots Americans are convinced that our gov-ernment is taking us in the wrong direc-tion and over a cliff before our children and grandchildren will ever achieve the American dream. Those two new books are “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?” by Pat-rick J. Buchanan and “After America: Get Ready for Armageddon” by Mark Steyn. Those books will help the can-didates understand and maybe even de-velop some empathy for the Americans whose votes they seek and must have if they are to win. Buchanan explains how the America most adults grew up in is fast disappearing. Americans resent the dictatorial, undemocratic way that elit-ists in the media, academia, the bureau-cracy and the courts have spit on the

foundations of our culture. Those elite opinion sources have carried on a war against our Judeo-Christian faith, traditional marriage and our patriotic belief that America is exceptional and should be militarily superior. They have trashed and tried to abolish symbols we cherish such as the Pledge of Allegiance, the Ten Com-mandments and a cross erected in a public place to honor our veterans. Those same elitists, using the power of government, have destroyed the economic stability of the family by legalizing unilateral divorce, giving enormous taxpayer subsidies to single moms that discriminate against mar-riage, adopting so-called free-trade pol-icies that shipped millions of good jobs overseas, importing millions of foreign-ers from Third World countries to take the remaining jobs away from Ameri-cans, and enforcing so-called affirma-tive action policies that discriminate against white men. They are replacing e pluribus unum with what Theodore Roosevelt warned against: unrestrained immigration that will make us “a poly-glot boarding house for the world.” Buchanan is eloquent in de-scribing the coordinated attack on Christian America and its replacement with the new religion of diversity, us-ing the language of political correct-

ness. Equality, a French-Revolution word, has been elevated to become our national goal instead of liberty. Buchanan cherishes the hope that our political leaders will, in time, recognize that enough Americans still want to remain one nation under God and one people united by history, her-itage and language. He gives specific suggestions for how we can avoid driv-ing off the cliff into national suicide. Mark Steyn’s book delivers the same message, but in his uniquely different and delightful style. As Ann Coulter said, “Only Mark Steyn can write about the decline of America and leave you laughing.” Steyn is particularly critical of the failure of our educational system. In 1940, a majority of Americans were schooled only from grade one to grade eight, and they grew up to be the great-est generation. Now the plan is to keep kids in school from pre-Kindergarten until their mid or late twenties, laden with debt and coached to accept dependence rather than liberty. And worse, it isn’t clear they have learned anything useful. Steyn puts it to us bluntly: We can rediscover the animating principles of limited government, a self-reliant citizenry, and the freedom to exploit our talents, or we can join the rest of the world in terminal decline. His message is, “If you want a happy ending, it’s up to you. Your call, America.”

By Phyllis Schlafly

America’s Decline: Candidates Just Don’t Get It

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The first time I ate at an Outback Steakhouse in Florida in the early 90’s I ordered the Outback special - a sirloin steak with baked potato, Caesar salad and dark bread. It was so good that, I kid you not, I’ve never ordered any-thing besides that for close to 20 years now. And I’ve eaten there quite a bit.

Why would I order something dif-ferent? For 20 years I’ve known exact-ly what I was getting when I patronized the Australian themed restaurant – a tender, juicy, perfectly flavored piece of meat, a giant baked potato, a fresh Caesar salad (I’m super-picky about salads), and a warm loaf of dark bread with lots of butter. It was always good, always cooked just right and never failed to meet my expectations. So why change? Why break precedent?

For you, dear readers, that’s why. It’s common knowledge that Outback has the best steaks right? It would be too easy to enjoy another one and tell you it was fantastic. You know that. You also know The Standard doesn’t do fluff pieces. We’re committed to hard hitting, in-depth journalism. We dig hard to bring you this stuff. So I de-cided, for the first time since I stepped inside an Outback all those years ago, to look at the menu again.

Just reading the menu makes one feel like more of a man (or bloke I should say). Bloomin’ Onions, Walka-bout soup, Ribs and Chicken on the Barbie, and of course, Chocolate Thun-der from Down Under. I wanted to take out my “knoife”, tap a picture of a Fos-ter’s on the menu with it and say “Keep these coming and give me the thickest, toughest, gamiest piece of meat you got back there. And where’s my Bloomin’ Onion?!” But I didn’t. I set down my cell phone delicately and asked my wife what she’d be having.

Now, you have to understand my wife. She couldn’t order a peanut but-ter and jelly sandwich without asking a dozen questions about it. Do I have a choice of bread? Can I substitute

strawberry jelly for grape? Why not? You don’t know what brand the peanut butter is? Is it served on a warm plate or room temperature? What’s your idea of “warm”? Your hair looks fabulous, who do you go to?... you get the idea. So when she narrowed her choices down to two combination platters – and started working through the endless options – I said “you’ll be having the Alice Springs Chicken if you know what’s good for you”.

Actually, I waited. By the time she and the server had come to an agree-ment -- at least I think they had, I had zoned out and watched the Bears score ten points before realizing they were both looking at me and waiting -- I had forgotten what I had decided to or-der. Forgotten is not the right word. I had forgotten how to pronounce what I wanted to order which is always em-barrassing. I usually just avoid ordering whatever it is, even if I want it, and go with something I’m confident with. But the picture of the Filet “Focaccia” sand-wich with garlic herb “aioli” and a side of “au jus” was too tempting to pass up. So I played dumb, pointed to the picture and said “I’ll have one of those”.

We started with a Bloomin’ On-ion of course. You have to start with

one when visiting Outback, it’s a rule -- like seeing Lincoln’s home when visit-ing Springfield or laughing hysterically when Obama talks about job growth. You just have to. They are so good, either alone or dipped in that perfect sauce, but is it just me or are they about half the size they used to be? You used to look at one and go “Wow, now that’s a bloomin’ onion!”. Now you look at it and go “I believe that’s an onion, and it appears to be... blooming or some-thing”. Same goes for the bread. They used to be large, manly sized loaves. Now they’re tiny. They come with a thimble of butter but I challenge any-one to slice that bread and be left with anything large enough to butter. It’s still good - I love dark bread and it is flavor-ful - but come on Australia, quit being so stingy.

Anyway, the “Focaccia”, in lay-man’s terms, is a steak sandwich with some spices and “dippin’ sauce”. And it was good. It didn’t quite measure up to the picture of it on the menu but then what does? The meat itself was thicker than appeared in the picture but still very flavorful and juicy. And the melted Provolone cheese was a perfect com-plement to the steak and spicy bread. It was packed with flavor. The fries were

a disappointment though, limp and chewy and lukewarm. I can’t say for certain if they’re always this way as this was my first experience with them, I’ve always ordered a baked potato before. But if that’s what Aussie fries are I’ll stick with American thank you.

My wife evidently did order the Al-

ice Springs Chicken, but I had nothing to do with it I swear. It came smothered in mushrooms and bacon and cheese and after repeated threats she allowed me a bite. Actually, she was unable to finish it after her salad and bread and the Bloomin’ Onion so I got a taste. I’m not a mushroom fan, but the rest was great. Outback somehow squeezes eve-ry ounce of flavor out of everything it serves, even the garnishments. It makes you want to separate the various items and enjoy them individually. The chick-en by itself was good and flavorful and I wanted to eat it by itself, but the bacon and cheese did add a special something to it. She chose the baked potato for her side and it was huge and dripping with butter and sprinkled with salt -- just how I like them. Wish I could have had a bite.

We avoided the Chocolate Thunder from Down Under, choosing instead to be able to get to our car without assis-tance. We were stuffed. I’ve had it be-fore though and it’s nearly as good as the picture of it on the menu. Our server did go a bit overboard trying to get us into one, but other than that was a fine hostess.

All in all, I would have preferred the Outback special again -- and will definitely order it next time -- but this visit, as always, was full of good, tasty food at a good, decent price. Come to think of it, in 20 years I’ve never left Outback disappointed. Now that’s say-ing something. My Sheila enjoyed it too. She and this bloke will be making like a boomerang and returning there again soon. If she allows.

RestaurantReview

Have a Restaurant Review idea?www.lincolnlandstandard.com

Outback SteakhouseBy Doug Brady

All answers on Page 23

21

“There I said it”

Trivia BiTsAs the story goes, Michigan earned its statehood by naming nine of its counties for members of Andrew Jackson’s cabinet. The complication was a dispute with Ohio about a tiny sliver of land, which includes the city of Toledo. In 1835, Michigan Territory and Ohio even “fought” the To-ledo War over the dispute. Ohio won, and in exchange, the Upper Peninsula was pushed westward, which some people in Wisconsin still gripe about.

Black and Decker make power tools. But Bud Black and Steve Decker were the pitcher-catcher battery for the San Francisco Giants in the 1990s. There are a number of other combos like this. There’s Brooks and Dunn, not the country duo, but Tampa Bay Buccaneers Derrick Brooks and Warrick Dunn. The Florida

Marlins even had Abbott and, well, Castillo: Kurt Abbott and Luis Castillo.

A few years ago, people had a great deal of fun smirking at Rev. Joseph Chambers, a Pentecostal radio host, who fulminated over “Sesame Street’s” secret gay agenda, since Ernie and Bert were “two grown men sharing a house -- and a bedroom.” Well, in 2011, things had come full circle. Now some gay activists are

petitioning to force “Sesame Street” to out their characters.

What Chicago Bear lost his Super Bowl ring in a dorm room couch, where it was found five years later? A) George Blanda B) Dick Butkus C) Walter

Payton D) Gale Sayers

Answer on page 23

Lord knows I love the ladies (es-pecially you Jennifer!), and I’m espe-cially fond of their, um, chest areas (es-pecially yours Jennifer!), so when I go to a professional sporting event I don’t want or need to see my team wearing pink uniforms to raise my awareness of breast cancer. There I said it.

Don’t get me wrong - breast cancer is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad disease and I am all for raising awareness and support. But is there not a better way to do it? Paint a pink ribbon on the 50 yard line if you must. Plaster the stadium with signs. Give away pink towels. Do what you have to do but please -- leave the uniforms alone.

Is there anything more beautiful than to see your team in their colors on NFL grass (with the exception of the Chiefs of course)? If you’re a Bears fan don’t you want to see that orange and that special blue (or is it black)? Or black and silver if you’re a Raiders fan? Do you really want to see the Vikings in anything but purple and yellow? When I go to a stadium, that’s what I want to see.

Do you really want to see Brian Ur-lacher wearing pink socks? Do his pink

wristbands really raise your awareness level of anything? Be honest.

Here’s the thing: when I go to a game I want to forget about cancer for awhile. I want to forget about every-thing for awhile! I want to relax and see my team. There is something nostalgic about seeing your team in person, and seeing them in the same uniforms and colors you’ve loved for years. That’s what I want to see.

So Imagine walking into Soldier During the late summer and early autumn of 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt and top senior advisers as-sumed that an attack by the Japanese was imminent. U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull observed that Japan was actively engaged on "a mission of con-quest of the entire Pacific" and that its government had a "long record of du-plicity in international dealings."

Roosevelt, after reading secret cod-ed messages from the Japanese in early December, knew that the chance for peace had been lost, but believed the Japanese target would be British Ma-laya, the Dutch West Indies or perhaps the Philippines. Little did he realize that the attack would occur much closer to home.

This Dec. 7 marks the 70th anniver-sary of the attack on Pearl Harbor and our entry into World War II. Although dozens of books have been written about the subject, two new accounts are exceptional pieces of historical report-ing about one of the defining events of the 20th century.

"Pearl Harbor" by Steven M. Gil-lon, a professor of history at the Uni-versity of Oklahoma, documents the 24 hours that followed the attack, begin-ning with the first dispatches received at the White House through FDR's ad-dress to Congress the next day. As fast paced as any novel, Gillon provides readers with a dramatic examination of this crucial juncture in our history.

Stanley Weintraub, a National Book Award finalist, reveals that the smoke had hardly cleared from the at-tack on Hawaii when Winston Church-ill dodged enemy subs across the Atlan-tic so he could meet in Washington with Roosevelt and discuss strategy with his new war ally. Churchill arrived on Dec. 22 and remained through the holidays, attending the lighting of the national Christmas tree on the South Lawn and enjoying a traditional Christmas dinner in the White House.

"Pearl Harbor: FDR Leads the Nation Into War"by Steven M. Gillon(Basic Books, $25.99)

"Pearl Harbor Christmas: A World at War, December 1941"by Stanley Weintaub(Da Capo, $24)Reviewed by Larry Cox

Field with your 9 year old son -- your 9 year old, die-hard Bears fan son. Then imagine trying to come up with the words to explain to him why the play-ers are all wearing pink:

“No, son, they didn’t change the

colors.”“I know they’re pink, but they

didn’t change them permanently I mean.”

“Well, it’s hard to explain. They’re trying to get us to think about a cancer that women get.”

“Yes at an NFL game.”“Yeah, I think the Packers are wear-

ing them today also.”“That would be funny if we were

playing the Pack and they were wearing pink and we weren’t. Very funny.”

“Probably next Sunday. I think they only wear pink today.”

“Yes, son, the only game I’ve brought you to all year is the day the Bears wear pink uniforms.”

“Yes I’m sorry. Very, very sorry.”“Now wipe your eyes on that pink

towel they gave you.”

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Trivia Bits answer: C) Walter Payton

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