Yet exactly what does the American people get for this expenditure? On the bright side, the beleaguered automotive industry gets yet another shot in the arm. But that cheery argument repeats the common mistake that I addressed two weeks ago: Using tax dollars to stimulate one industry necessarily impairs the recovery prospects of everyone else. To make matters worse, some stimulus payments are just outright gifts, because lots of last week’s eager sellers might have traded in their clunker in the near future anyhow. And no one has a clue as to how many miles would be put on these clunkers anyhow.

The problem with the “Cash for Clunkers” program is that it won’t provide much stimulus, but it will burn through billions in in taxpayer dollars. Is the possible increase in overall gasoline efficiency worth the $1 billion now spent and the billions more that may be spend reviving the program? It’s doubtful we’ll know, because the actual results don’t matter. Congress is essentially buying support by raiding the public fisc under dubious pretenses.

Two thousand years ago, the called it panem et circenses—but “Cash for Clunkers” seems to have much more consonance, even if the concept remains essentially the same.

The cap-and-trade bill, if passed by the Senate and actually implemented over the next few decades, would do more damage to the country than any economic legislation passed in at least 100 years. It would eventually send most American manufacturing jobs overseas, reduce American competitiveness, and make Americans much poorer than they would have been without it.

The cap-and-trade bill will have little, if any, positive effect on the environment — in part because the countries that would take jobs from US industries tend to be bigger polluters. By making the US — and the world — poorer, it would probably reduce the world’s ability to develop technologies that might solve its environmental problems in the future.

Cap-and-trade is a joke—it is a policy that has already failed in Europe and in virtually guaranteed to fail here in the United States. By giving in to the demands of radical environmentalists, Congress is preparing to take our current recession and plunge it into depression.

As the media focuses once again on celebrity, the advent of the next Great Depression comes closer. Cap-and-trade is terrible policy enacted for foolish reasons, and we will all pay the price for it if we allow it to pass.

It is more than mere coincidence that this huge job loss occurred in the same month that President Obama signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law. The Ledbetter Act basically means that employers can be sued for “paycheck discrimination” years after the events occurred. In Ms. Ledbetter’s case, the alleged discrimination happened so far ago that the supervisor involved had not only left the company, but died. This Act, instead of making things “fairer” for employees, puts a massive burden on employers who now have to worry about lawsuits stemming from events decades old.

This is what the business environment will be like under the Obama Administration. There will be more regulations and those regulations will be written by representatives of big industries and radical special interests. There will be higher taxes on everything from corporate income taxes to personal income taxes to the estate tax, and there is a strong possibility of a carbon tax that will raise prices on every single good that needs shipping. The web of regulations, higher taxes, and the way society is treating the very idea of entrepreneurialism is making American business falter.

The result: more lost American jobs.

This “stimulus” bill will not help. It will give hundreds of billions to political contributors, and barely anything to American small business. Big business, the ones with the lawyers and lobbyists, have already gamed the system. The Democratic Party has no room for the interests of American small business, even though their employees are half of the American workforce. The situation for American small business will be dire: not only will there be more taxes, more regulation, and more self-righteous condemnation from Washington, but the credit markets are still tight. Unless you’re in a field that will be the recipient of government spending, like health care or road construction, forget hiring employees, you have to cut expenses to the bone right now.

American jobs are being lost because we are punishing the people who create them.

President Obama and the irresponsible Congressional Democrats are pushing this recession into a depression. Their wrong-headed pro-government economic policy is turning America into a banana republic. It is crucial that they be stopped.

Atlas is shrugging, and the world is at the brink of tumbling right off.

The programs that would meet the bill’s 90-day restriction are, for the most part, an unappealing mix of projects that were either shelved after being fully designed and engineered, and have since become outmoded or irrelevant, or projects with limited scope and ambition. No one’s building a smart electric grid or revamping a water system on 90 days notice. The best example of a shovel-ready project, and what engineers believe could become the biggest recipient of the transportation-related portion of the bill’s funding, is road resurfacing—important maintenance work, but not a meaningful way to rein in a national infrastructure crisis. “In developing countries, there are roads that are so bad, they create congestion, because drivers are constantly forced to slow down,” says David Levinson, an associate professor in the University of Minnesota’s civil engineering department. “That’s not the case here. If the road’s a little bit rougher, drivers will feel it, but that’s not going to cause you to go any slower. So the economic benefit of those projects is pretty low.”

That might be acceptable to people focused purely on fostering rapid job growth‹but, ironically, such stimulus spending could fall short on that measure, as well. “In the 1930s, when you were literally building with shovels, that might have made sense. That was largely unskilled labor. Today, it’s blue collar, but it’s not unskilled,” Levinson says. “The guy brushing the asphalt back and forth is unskilled, but the guy operating the steamroller isn’t. And there’s an assumption out there that construction workers are interchangeable between residential and highway projects. But a carpenter isn’t a whole lot of help in building a road.”

It’s ironic given the I-35W bridge collapse being used as a symbol of America’s “failing infrastructure”—that collapse was the result of a design flaw that should have been spotted in the design phase. And what is our reaction to such problems? Push through a bunch of projects in a hurry rather than perform the sort of painstaking design that needs to be done before a project is truly “shovel ready.”

There is some wisdom to spending on infrastructure, but let us be honest. It won’t make a dent in the unemployment rate unless you believe that you can take a stockbroker and put her into a bulldozer and call that good enough. It won’t stimulate the economy because the money will go to government contractors who are the least affected by the economic slowdown. And what stimulus it does produce won’t be likely to come about until well after the slowdown is past. Justifying this sort of spending on the grounds of economic stimulus isn’t realistic.

If we want to spend money on infrastructure, we should do it right. That means assessing our needs in a realistic manner, spending only on projects that will make a real difference, having a realistic plan to build these projects, building them right the first time, and having a competitive bidding process to make sure that money isn’t being funneled to campaign contributors.

This bill is not about stimulus. It’s about the Democratic Party looting the future to pay off their political supporters. It is nearly 100% pure pork that will saddle the future with at least another $1,000,000,000,000 in debt—not counting interest. Even the Congressional Budget Office finds that the “stimulus” bill will just shift the costs to future generations. We can’t rob Peter to pay Paul and expect to get away with it. Recent history should demonstrate all too well why such ideas don’t work.

We need a real stimulus package, not an act of wanton irresponsibility. If President Obama were to demonstrate real leadership, he would tell Reid and Pelosi to stop playing childish partisan games and send him a bill that is nothing but stimulus and no pork—and if they refuse, he should veto it. We need real infrastructure repair, not political cronyism. The only shovel that’s ready to go is the shovel needed to clear out all the B.S. surrounding this bill.

None of the funds provided by this Act may be made available to the State of Illinois, or any agency of the State, unless (1) the use of such funds by the State is approved in legislation enacted by the State after the date of the enactment of this Act, or (2) Rod R. Blagojevich no longer holds the office of Governor of the State of Illinois.The preceding sentence shall not apply to any funds provided directly to a unit of local government (1) by a Federal department or agency, or (2) by an established formula from the State.

It seems to me that this move is unconstitutional. The federal government may condition receipt of federal funds on doing certain things. For example, the Supreme Court upheld the federal government only allowing for highway funding to the states if they raised the drinking age to 21. South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987). However, that case only allowed the government to do so for reasons related to the “general welfare”. Helvering v. Davis, 301 U. S. 619, 640–41 (1937).

The question is whether Illinois getting rid of Gov. Blagojevich is related to the “general welfare.” Say what you will of the corrupt and profane Illinois governor, he has not yet been convicted of any crime. This probably isn’t an illegal bill of attainder since it’s punishing Illinois rather than Blagojevich himself, but it’s still a gross violation of the principle of federalism. The “general welfare” isn’t a way for Congress to advance narrow issues or play political hardball. It would be blatantly unconstitutional for Congress to condition federal funding on a state electing a Republican governor or electing a female governor. So why should it be constitutional for the federal government to withhold funds from Illinois because they refuse to impeach Blagojevich on Congress’ timetable.

Even though the courts generally defer to Congress on what is defined as being in the national interest, this seems to be a rather clear case of Congress overstepping their constitutional limits.

The problem with Powell’s endorsement of Obama is the same problem with the vast majority of endorsements of Obama: they’re all built on unsound logical ground. Even taking it for granted that the Bush years have been bad for the country (although not because Bush has been a radical conservative—he has not) and that some kind of “change” is needed, I’ve yet to see a coherent case for why Obama’s policies are the right direction.

Oh yes, I’ve seen plenty of ink spilled on why Obama’s personal qualities are so wonderful: everyone says that he’s intelligent, articulate, and vibrant. None of those mean a great deal in the long run. Many very intelligent men and women believe some very idiotic things: visit a college or university campus and ask members of the faculty about basic economic questions and you’ll get some profoundly unserious and utterly misinformed answers. Intelligence alone does not qualify one to be President: Nixon was a very astute thinker, but a lousy President.

Being able to use the bully pulpit of the American Presidency is critically important—look at what Bush’s failure to do so has done to his Presidency. But again, it is not nearly enough to make up for poor policies. Everything Obama stands for, from taxes to the Supreme Court to foreign policy is ill-conceived and often dangerous to the future of this great nation. Crafting lofty speeches will not make it less so. Being a good salesmen does not make the product any more safe.

Would Obama would be a “uniting” force—a “post-racial” President? There’s some good reason to believe that is so. But that is neither assured, nor is it enough. Obama has a history of being a political radical, a member of a virulently racial church, and surrounds himself with members of the extreme left. He has scant little in his record to suggest that he will govern as anything less than a doctrinaire across-the-board leftist—in a country that remains conservative. When Obama has to actually enact his policies, he will do so over the objections of a plurality of Americans who are increasingly seeing themselves as divorced from a left-wing elite. Obama will have to reach across party lines if he wants to avoid being another Clinton or George W. Bush. There is little in his record that suggests that he will do so.

In the end, Powell’s rationales are as superficial as the rest. Obama is a compelling figure, but the messianic nature of his campaign and his virtual coronation by a lickspittle media only makes it that much harder for Obama to govern with anything but a sense of institutional arrogance. Make no mistake about it, contrary to Gen. Powell, Obama will be another divisive and polarizing political figure. We do not need more of that kind of political division.

Sen. McCain, in contrast, has a long record of bipartisan accomplishment, including doing things that have put him against his own party. He stood his ground on campaign finance reform, on immigration reform, on torture, and especially on Iraq and each and every time his stand was based almost entirely on putting principle above politics. McCain can and will reach across the aisle—he’ll have no choice but to do so. Divided government would be healthy for the economy. A government totally controlled by the Democrats would lead to even greater political division than we have now. If an Obama-Pelosi-Reid government passes card check legislation, renews the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” to muzzle criticism of their rule, and enacts legislation repealing the ban on partial-birth abortions, will that heal the nation’s political wounds, or will it make things even worse? The answer should be obvious.

Our Republic is a house divided, and Obama will only expand those divisions. He will not be the figure of “hope” and “change” and the great transformational leader that Gen. Powell would hope him to be. Instead, he will do what he has always done: act as a radical leftist in concert with a radical Congress and arrogantly impose a radical agenda on a divided nation.

That is not the change we need, it is the change that will tear us apart.

The bailout bill was a turd sandwich, but it was a necessary one to keep the markets from going into an absolute freefall. Which, coincidentally, is what’s going to happen now that the bailout is unlikely to happen.

I can understand the class warfare motives for the rejection, but when companies can’t get the money they need to make payroll, the people who were demanding Congress do nothing will face the consequences.

We are looking at a quadruple-digit drop in the Dow and a major credit contraction./p pHow bad could this get? I get the sinking feeling that we will soon find out.

UPDATE: The Dow plummeted 778 points today, the worst single-day drop in history. Yes, people don’t like the idea of bailing out large corporations. If that’s their position, then they should not be surprised when those large corporations can’t afford to pay them their payrolls.

I don’t much like economic hyperbole, but this time it’s true: we could be staring into the maw of a crippling economic depression. It won’t necessarily be like the Great Depression, but it could be the worse downturn in most of our memories. If Obama gets elected and follows his policy instincts, it will probably get worse.

Unfortunately, too many in our party are not yet ready to return to the path of limited government. Instead, we are being told our message must be deficient because, after all, we should be winning in certain areas just by being Republicans. Yet being a Republican isn’t good enough anymore. Voters are tired of buying a GOP package and finding a big-government liberal agenda inside. What we need is not new advertising, but truth in advertising.

Becoming Republicans again will require us to come to grips with what has ailed our party – namely, the triumph of big-government Republicanism and failed experiments like the K Street Project and “compassionate conservatism.” If the goal of the K Street Project was to earmark and fund raise our way to a filibuster-proof “governing” majority, the goal of “compassionate conservatism” was to spend our way to a governing majority.

The fruit of these efforts is not the hoped-for Republican governing majority, but the real prospect of a filibuster-proof Democrat majority in 2009. While the K Street Project decimated our brand as the party of reform and limited government, compassionate conservatism convinced the American people to elect the party that was truly skilled at activist government: the Democrats.

He’s right. The GOP got too comfortable with power and lost their way. Instead of standing on principle, it became all about a quest for political power. So far the first instinct of the GOP remains to attack “liberal values” rather than uphold an agenda. While there is much to about the values of the Democratic Party that is worthy of attack, that will do nothing to get the Republicans out of their hole. There has to be a real agenda that the Republican Party stands behind from top to bottom. Just hitting the Democrats will not cut it.

The Senator from Oklahoma has the right diagnosis for the political ills of the Republican Party. There’s no agenda, and without something to lead people towards, you’re not really leading. The GOP is making the mistake of thinking that they can run based solely on a brand that is as tarnished as it ever has been. Instead, the GOP must run a campaign based on a sincere promise to reduce the size but increase the efficiency of government. That requires a sincere effort to fight pork and waste. The Republicans have not embraced a reform agenda, and it is killing them.

The GOP must rediscover its own first principles: what is needed is not a Reagan, but a party of Reagans. The problem is that so far the GOP is not such a party.

This blow to the GOP came after two other special congressional election losses in recent months. Republicans lost former House Speaker Denny Hastert’s Illinois seat and Rep. Richard Baker’s Louisiana seat.

Both of those losses can be attributed to bad candidates. But that only shows the GOP can’t take “safe” seats for granted when Democrats run conservatives who distance themselves from their national party leaders. The string of defeats should cure Republicans of the habit of simply shouting “liberal! liberal! liberal!” in hopes of winning an election. They need to press a reform agenda full of sharp contrasts with the Democrats.

He is absolutely right. The GOP simply must have an actual agenda for 2008. Just calling their opponents liberals isn’t enough to cut it. The Democrats have run too many candidates with centrist street cred, and at this point too many people have decided that taking a chance on a liberal is better than risking more Republican incompetence.

If this sounds harsh, too bad. The GOP needs an intervention this year, and the grassroots have to give it.

Every Republican officeholder needs to realize that the Republican “brand” has been utterly trashed. Too many scandals, too many times when GOP lawmakers have failed to stand against corruption, too many times when the GOP has failed to connect with what really concerns the American people—all of these things have taken their toll on the future of the party.

Of course, all is not lost. The GOP’s loss is not an inevitability, so long as the party is willing to reform itself. GOP candidates need to be honest with their constituents: the GOP has not been a party of good governance. We failed to stop the growth of government. We failed to keep the American people in the loop on Iraq and our strategy from 2003–2007 was a failure. We failed to uphold home-town values, but ended up following Beltway values.

The road ahead requires reform. To fix healthcare in this country we need real reform, not another failed top-down approach. Republicans can win on healthcare if they start talking not about why a market-based approach is better in theory, but why the average voter will be better off. Republicans can win on the economy with a very simple message: if you have to tighten your belts in times of trouble, then the government should do the same. The GOP must stand resolute on fighting earmarks and government waste.

The GOP can win on the issues, but first they must set the agenda. That means running on principles, not on bashing the other side. The GOP shouldn’t need to spend their resources convincing the American people that the Democrats are radicals who are out-of-touch with American values: if the GOP makes sure that the electorate knows what we stand for, the contrasts will be obvious.

More of the same will not work. The GOP has to set an agenda and defend its principles. 2006 should have been a wake-up call, and if the GOP doesn’t learn from its lessons then they run the risk of a repeat.

As for the $1 million the National Republican Congressional Committee poured into the district in a vain attempt to save it, the local reviews weren’t good. Even before Mr. Oberweis’ loss I heard comments such as “nasty,” “stupid,” “largely incomprehensible” and “factless” to describe the national ads that saturated the district. “The ads bore no relation to any issues competent polling would have surfaced; they were just schoolyard name calling,” was the opinion of a conservative media specialist in the district.

By way of contrast, Democrats made a heavy buy for an ad featuring local Senator Barack Obama touting Mr. Foster’s credentials as a scientist and problem solver. “He represents the change we need,” the Obama ad concluded. Obamamania may not be as strong among the general electorate as it is among Democratic partisans, but in Saturday’s special election it certainly helped the Democratic candidate score a victory. Mr. Foster’s win is a wake-up call to Republicans that this year they will have to step up their game, big time.

The GOP had a chance to take the lead on earmarks. A few courageous Representatives stood up, but the party remains behind. The GOP has a chance to take the lead on corruption, but Speaker Hastert defended corrupt politicos like William Jefferson. In such a tight election season, the GOP has to take the lead. Playing defense on the issues does not work. Attacking the other candidate does not work.

The only way that the Republicans can win is by standing on their principles, and consistent and clearly applying those principles to our nation’s problems. If the Republican Party wants to win, it has to win on the issues, and to do that the GOP has to start talking about real solutions for real world problems.

I know that Republicans by and large don’t believe the spin on global warming, and for good reason. If the GOP runs on the platform that there is no global warming, and we don’t need to take action then the GOP will lose on that issue. That’s politics. Instead, we should be advancing a 21st Century energy agenda that includes a crash program to create safe pebble bed nuclear reactors, embracing Bob Zubrin’s flex-fuel energy independence plan, and generally reduce our dependence on foreign oil while reducing CO2 emissions—without sacrificing our economy and our way of life. Think that’s hard. It is a difficult task to get these policies enacted, but to borrow a phrase from a candidate who knows the value of political rhetoric “yes we can.”

The middle class is feeling the squeeze. The GOP should have a very simple message: you have to tighten your belt during hard times. Government should do the same as well. The GOP should follow the example of brave legislators like Rep. John Kline and Sen. Tom Coburn. No earmarks. If the GOP doesn’t stand strongly against government waste, then the GOP will lose. That includes waste from military contractors. It’s a national security issue. The military procurement system is broken. The GOP needs to fix it. If we don’t lead, we lose.

That’s just two issues. I could go on forever about health care, education and other issues. The basic point stands for all of them: this is not a time for complacency. Republicans need to run like we’re 20 points down, because in some cases we are. Sen. McCain is the right man to lead on some key issues, but he has to have a forward-looking (and dare I say it, truly progressive) agenda to bring to the American people. If Obama gets the nomination, we won’t be able to win on style. Every Republican should be thinking about advancing our agenda, even if all we can do is start moving the ball in the right direction.

A party that stands for nothing but power will lose, sooner or later. The GOP needs to stand for a real agenda and make that agenda the center of every campaign, or the loss of Hastert’s old seat will be but a prologue to yet another annus horibilis for the GOP.

Here’s how to deal with a recession: A federal government which is already spending more than its income should borrow even more money, so as to give lots of people a tax rebate. This is the bipartisan plan of President Bush and Congress. They are taking a leaf from the presidency of Jimmy Carter.

Even accounting for inflation, the Bush-Reid-Pelosi rebate is far more profligate than the proposed Carter rebate of 1977. But the two rebates appear to be based on the same demand-side principles.

He’s right on that. The “stimulus package” is great politics, but absolutely horrendous policy. When we’re already running the budget into the ground, the last thing this country should be doing is trying to jump-start the economy by giving everyone a check. It’s a bit of “bread and circuses” politics that demonstrates just how economically illiterate the government is.

Middle class voters are feeling a squeeze, but that’s a symptom of a larger problem. The reason why the dollar is falling and the markets are volitile is because the US is on an economically unsustainable course: we’re spending too much, regulating too much and we have a massive entitlement crisis looming and no one has the political will to touch it. When even the French are being more fiscally responsible than we are there is a serious problem.

A realistic stimulus plan would involve significant cuts in spending, making the current tax rates permanent, and structural economic reforms like ensuring that depreciation tables don’t artificially increase the taxable assets of a business. However, none of those things are particularly “sexy” and don’t have much impact to the average voter. So instead, President Bush and Congress are planning to bribe the American people.

In the end, this plan is ultimately self-defeating. We can’t get out a problem created by fiscal profligacy by being even more profligate—and while a tax rebate check is a nice thing to have, it’s not going to have the long-term effect necessary to lift the economy. Even if we do get some economic stability in the next few months, that’s more likely due to the sub-prime crisis easing rather than some government check.

This isn’t a stimulus package, it’s a bribe, and while it may be politically popular, it’s not going to fix our underlying economic problems.