30-31 January 2008—Or, “Why I Am Still For Huckabee, Even Now”—Part II Thursday, Jan 31 2008

I submitted a response to the debate thread at RedState.com—mostly made up of Romney supporters and McCainiacs, along with some ‘Huckabites’–the biblical-like term my wife and I have playfully applied to our fellow supporters.  I decided to add it here.  I hope you like it.   God bless.

Yes, I Am Still For Huckabee, Even Now–Part II.”

I have to confess that it is ironic how history has a habit of repeating itself. Abraham Lincoln is not remembered today as a man who was a second choice by his own fledgling party as President in 1860, and that he was considered something of a turncoat by the abolitionist movement both for not proposing outlawing slavery other than in the western territories, as well as for not proposing war against the seceding Southern states until Beauregard fired upon Anderson at Fort Sumter. He was able to win election only because the Democrats split between its Northern and Southern wings, even though the Republicans fell in its vote from the previous election (45% to 40%). Most of us know that his Gettysburg Address was poorly received by many until after his death.

Ronald Reagan’s Farewell Address is now celebrated as one of his greatest speeches and one of the greatest speeches in American politics, with his throat-tightening paean to America as “a city on a hill.” But the truth was, at the time it was considered as anti-climatic, as rather mundane compared to some of his other messages (Berlin Wall, Point du Hoc).

The fact of the matter is that we are getting a situation like that now. I will be vilified, no doubt, just as the candidate I support has been during the course of this campaign. Governor Mike Huckabee, I will say again, is still the right man to become the 44th President. In fact, based upon what I saw in the debate at the Reagan Library on Wednesday night, I believe that Governor Huckabee is the successor to the mantle of spiritual leader of the Republican Party, following Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Senator Robert Taft, and Ronald Reagan.

I say that even with my continued abiding support for President Bush, and that, even though he made mistakes, he has always sought to correct them when he believed them necessary, and that history will judge him far more of a conservative than his contemporaries do now, especially on Iraq. I will even include his efforts on the prescription drug benefit plan, as an attempt to reign in the costs of Medicare under a conservative model in dealing with what seems to many an intractable “third rail” problem. Many will believe me out of my mind for thinking so, but that’s my contention, and a topic for another time.

And it is notable to remind anyone who would read this that, as of last Thursday, Mitt Romney was all but pronounced the probable winner in the Florida primary and expected to steamroll to the Republican nomination. We have had no less than 5 men make it into first place in the presidential opinion surveys run by the Rasmussen polling agency. And four of them (Rudy, Fred, John, and Mitt) all proclaimed as an inevitable nominee. It’s unlike any presidential election I have ever seen, and I have paid close attention to every one since 1964.

And so we now come, the chattering classes on the left have decided, to crown John McCain king of the Republicans on Super Tuesday. And the chattering hordes of the right, so many of whom I had so long respected, even admired, have converged in their rage and desperate fear, seeking to uphold their remaining hero, Mitt Romney. In the last two months they have acted as if the end of the Republic will come if the new king is enthroned.

Somehow these ‘guardians of the Judeo-Christian conservative ethic’ seem convinced that a long-time social moderate, moderate on gun owners’ rights, the son of a moderate Governor of Michigan who was an erstwhile critic of the Vietnam War, who was supportive of gay rights, abortion rights, and embryonic stem cell research right on until—yes, after he gets elected as a typical moderate establishment Republican governor of Massachusetts and then casts his wistful eyes toward the White House, and who, as a Mormon, is a member of a religion which in the eyes of 2,000-year-old orthodox Christian doctrine, is a pernicious cult—should stand as the rightful successor to Ronald Reagan–or as Rush Limbaugh likes to call him, “Ronaldus Magnus.”

But the former Southern Baptist megachurch pastor and state denomination’s president, who served as an evangelical organizer for Reagan’s 1980 Religious Affairs Briefings, who served as the most conservative governor in the history of Arkansas and passed its first tax cuts in its 175-year history, took it from $200 million in debt to $800 million in surplus, slashed crime, achieved breathtaking improvements in education, infrastructure and economic development and international trade, firmly defended innocent human life and fought gay marriage and humanism in a 14-year career as both Lt. Governor and Governor (11 in that office), and who after a couple of misstatements concerning Middle East policy has been passionate in his reiteration of an intent to passionately defend Israel, increase defense spending to 6% of GDP, and pursue an eventual removal of the Iranian regime, and who on trade assures that his opinions on ‘fair trade’ involve tax relief, regulatory reduction, maintaining support for NAFTA and GATT but opposing tariffs and other protectionist barriers, while diplomatically confronting Chinese trade abuses, all the while intending, as his signature issue, the end of the IRS and replacement of the income tax system with a consumption tax—this man is demonized as the destruction of the Republican Party!

Only a few things seem to be wrong with the set of the pre-wrapped coronation last night: Mike Huckabee insisted that he receive equal treatment with the ‘two kings’ and he got it (especially in the second half of the debate, directly after the worst of the McCain-Romney catfight). He then spoke both with a clear command of facts, eloquently and insightfully of the interconnectedness of all the issues that face an executive (definite but classy slap at McCain), skillfully defended his strong anti-illegal immigrant position without an overreaching which could hurt him with Hispanics in a fall election matchup, and gave a strenous yet creative defense of the use of the 10th Amendment-guarded place for the states in solving major pressing problems rather than federal involvement. And then, on top of that, Governor Huckabee responded to the hypothetical question about who would Reagan endorse with one of the most soaring and inspirational tributes of the Great Communicator’s greatness I’ve heard in years, especially his love of America. The awesomeness of his eloquence, which connected visably with Nancy Reagan and the dignitaries seated around her and Governor Schwartzenegger, contrasted powerfully with Romney’s pedantic and arrogant recitation of his bullet points of flipped-flopped-to Reaganesque positions, and McCain’s smarmy self-promotion–which was coupled with a true Freudian slip–”I was a leader–ooops!–a soldier in the Reagan revolution.”

A huge attention has been paid earlier in the week at the Kennedy family’s endorsement of Barack Obama, and their pronouncement that the Illinois Senator was the recipient of John F. Kennedy’s memorable metaphorical “torch” of leadership of the liberal-progressive (read European Socialist-globalist)wing of the Democrat party. But from the time that Nancy Reagan came to Governor Huckabee at the beginning of the evening to have him escort her to her seat, to the abovementioned tribute to her revered husband, I felt that the real torch has passed—the mantle of Reagan–long coveted but undeserved, had finally come to its rightful heir–to Mike Huckabee.

Today this pronouncement will merit me significant scorn.
Tomorrow….perhaps the same…or..not.

But consider these states: Georgia, Alabama, West Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Minnesota, Kansas, North Dakota, Montana, Alaska. These are all states where, according to recent polls taken in them, Mike Huckabee is either leading or running within low single digit percentages behind the leader, usually McCain, though a few are with Romney. Time will tell, but I believe that Mike may very well win all of them. 12 states. 12 Super Tuesday states. Maybe not the big states McCain gets: New York, California, Arizona, New Jersey, Illinois (along with R.I., Conn., VT., ME), but they are a huge set up for a devastating end for the Romney campaign. And then a very, VERY, interesting scenario begins to occur. Can you just guess what that would be?

No, I didn’t think you would. But then, there’s a lot of us that are missing it on what should happen during this election.

Hasta al pronto.

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26 January 2008 Saturday, Jan 26 2008

I have had a great opportunity to read an article on a blog by Mr. Donavan Quinn, a lead blogger for Governor Mike Huckabee, concerning what he calls ‘Huckanomics’, the economic plan Gov. Huckabee proposes as a cornerstone of his presidential campaign. It was his dependable stands on social/moral issues over a lifetime (as opposed to inconsistency[McCain] or recent conversions [Romney], or outright opposition [Giuliani]) that caused me to first support Mike Huckabee. But the explanation, simplified and effective, has helped to convince me that his plan, a replacement for the IRS, is superior to the tax plans of the other candidates, which continue a mere tinkering with the tax code that exists, or worse, merely targets the wealthy business class at the expense of the poor and working classes whose investments are not significant enough to be impacted.

I am reprinting Mr. Quinn’s blog entry, at The Huck Report, along with my reply to his article. Hope it helps some of you out there.

The following was written by guest blogger Donovan Quinn of The Huck Report.

In order to understand Huckonomics, one must comprehend basic economics.

In a nutshell, the science of economics deals with scarcity. If a person were capable of producing everything that he could ever need or desire without any assistance from anyone else, then he would never buy or sell anything. Instead, he would stay at home and live contented with all of his stuff.

The very fact that marketplaces exist is concrete evidence that no man is an island. I need things from other people just as other people need things from me. The marketplace is merely the place where my surplus time and material is matched with your want or need in a reciprocal transaction. In other words, I will scratch your back if you scratch mine.

Sometimes, though, the marketplace does not always work. I may be a wheat farmer with excess grain while you may be a baker who needs grain. Clearly, I have what you need to make your bread. However, if I do not need your bread, then what can you offer me in exchange for my grain? Absolutely nothing! In a complete vacuum, our bilateral transaction could never happen. Nevertheless, if a third person who wants your bread could also provide me with farm implements, then we could create a multilateral transaction: (1) I will give you my wheat if (2) you give him your bread and if (3) he gives me his surplus farm equipment. Basically, I scratch your back, you scratch his back, and he scratches mine. With just a little bit of collective effort and coordination, we all have our needs met by simply bartering our goods and services to each other.

In complicated economic systems where each person needs several different types of goods and services, matching supply with demand by way of bartering would be a yeoman’s task. A multilateral transaction with scores of people scratching each others’ backs in one giant circle might be necessary to supply just one good or service. Moreover, the coordination for such a transaction would make going to market a prodigious chore. Beyond this, each person would have to multiply his or her efforts a hundred times over in order to meet his or her other needs. Therefore, the marketplace needs a means of exchange where goods and services may be converted into a universally accepted unit. Fortunately we have that… its called money.

Our present economic system works this way. The wheat farmer needs farm implements, so he borrows money (i.e. obtains credit); he then spends this money on the equipment he needs. His supplier needs bread, so he uses the money that he got from the wheat farmer to purchase loaves from the baker. The baker needs wheat in order to make bread, so he uses his money to purchase grain from the wheat farmer. The farmer, in turn, repays the bank with interest. The cycle is completed. Like an electric current, money has gone around in a circle meeting the needs of every person it touches.

In a way, money is just like electricity. The electrical engineer tells us that current moves one way while the electrons move the other way. Similarly, money goes one way while goods and services go the other. Moreover, if the economic current is ever broken, just like a flipped switch turns off a light bulb, so will the broken flow of money stop the flow of goods and services. When that happens, surplus goods and services are wasted by one person while needs are left unmet with another person. Accordingly, unnecessary barriers to obtaining credit must be eliminated in order to preserve the economic current.

With that said, however, just as electric currents need some resistance, so do economic currents. If too much electricity flows across a wire, the wire will overheat, possibly causing a fire which, in turn, will destroy the circuit. Likewise, if too much money flows into an economy, inflation and/or devaluation will occur.

Put in the simplest possible terms, too much credit (i.e., borrowed money) will destroy an economy just as quickly as too little credit will. If the farmer cannot obtain credit to buy farm implements, he will suffer, as will his equipment supplier as well as the baker who purchases his wheat. The farmer’s grain will rot in the fields, the equipment dealer’s inventory will rust, and the baker will sit idly by doing nothing. In other words, supply will outpace demand as money becomes scarce, and the economic circuit will break.

On the other hand, if the farmer borrows too much money, he may purchase more equipment than he could possibly use on the plot of land he farms. When he does this, his supplier may use his extra money to purchase more bread; this, in turn, will cause the baker to place an order for grain that the farmer could never fulfill. As demand finally exceeds supply, money will become worthless and the economic circuit will short-out.

In the final analysis, an efficient economy needs a stable money supply where buyer and seller alike is able to enter the marketplace with confidence, knowing full well their excess supply will be met with the goods and services that they demand.

This is where “Huckonomics” is different from other economic models.

Up to now, there have been two basic schools of economic thought, to wit: (1) supply-side economics and (2) demand-side economics. Supply-siders look at a dollar and see what it has produced; demand-siders look at a dollar and see what it can purchase. For example, if a farm worker earns $6 per hour while picking 300 heads of lettuce, then every dollar that the worker earns represents 50 heads of lettuce to a supply-sider; this is what the worker is trading when he goes to market. On the other hand, if a dollar can purchase a 20 oz Coca Cola, then every dollar that the worker earns represents a cold drink to a demand-sider; this is what the worker can purchase.

Along these lines, supply-siders endeavor to create more goods and services. Supply-siders believe that the government should give people more incentive to produce. By giving tax breaks to the wealthy—particularly business owners—the government will stimulate the economy. When business owners have higher profit margins, they will have more incentive to produce. As such, they will place more capital into the economy, creating jobs and prosperity from the top down. Hence the moniker “trickle-down.”

Conversely, demand-siders operate from the opposite perspective; they believe that the government should give people more incentive to spend. Each dollar is, in effect, a vote for what goods or services should be offered. As greater votes are placed for a new item, businesses will have greater incentive to produce such an item. Demand-siders believe that economic growth comes from the bottom up. To demand-siders, increased spending—particularly increased government spending—is the best stimulus for economic growth. After all, if there exists no demand for a given product, no tax cut will make that item more appealing to the general public, or by extension any more profitable for the business that produces it.

Huckonomics is a hybrid of the two schools of thought. By replacing the income tax with a retail-level national sales tax, businesses will have greater incentive to produce goods and services. Since business income will no longer be taxed, and since businesses will not be taxed for anything it purchases for resale, business owners will see their tax burden lifted. Accordingly, businesses will have greater incentive to produce goods and services along the lines of the supply side model.

By this same token, the demand-side model is also implicated. At first glance, one may think that leveling a national sales tax would create barriers to trade. (Certainly a 23% sales tax seems prodigious.) However, with businesses no longer passing on the costs of payroll taxes and other imbedded costs to their customers, retail prices will drop. Moreover, with an across the board sales tax in place, every good sold will be on an equal playing field with every other good sold; as such, every good will have an equal chance of receiving a dollar vote. (Right now, this is not the case; some items for sale have more imbedded costs than others.) Beyond this, businesses now with surplus income resulting from having to pay little if any taxes will make larger purchases, particularly at the wholesale level. This, in turn, will stimulate the economy from the bottom-up, along the lines of the demand-side model.

Since Huckanomics does not favor the supply-side over the demand-side or vice versa, Huckanomics will not favor inflationary—or for that matter, deflationary—monetary policies.

The logical extension of a pure demand-side policy is to inflate the economy with excessive government spending, creating a weaker dollar and ultimately breaking the economic circuit. Conversely, if marginal tax rates are cut (as supply siders desire), businesses will have greater incentive to produce goods and services. However, if government spending is cut (as supply siders also desire), demand for these products will drop precipitously since the federal government is the single largest purchaser in the country. Therefore, simultaneous tax-and-spending cuts will create a surplus of goods and services, causing recession, and ultimately breaking the economic circuit. Either way, no economic policy can be purely supply-side or demand-side.

In the final analysis, Huckonomics does not favor business over labor, nor does it favor labor over business. Neither the commodities of supply or the instruments of demand are favored. Rather, Huckonomics brings together the supply-side with the demand side. Huckonomics recognizes that we are all in this together. And if we stick together, the rising waters of economic prosperity will lift all boats—for the rich and poor alike.

And consider my response:

Fernandez, Floyd

01/26/2008 04:37 PM

My blog is BelisariusCA (http://belisariusca.wordpress.com) (reason for absence from blogroll explained below).

Dear Quinn,

I am impressed by your ability to simplify economic concepts, and show how the Fair Tax works. I would mildly take issue with one thing you said, namely, the part where you said:

“However, if government spending is cut (as supply siders also desire), demand for these products will drop precipitously since the federal government is the single largest purchaser in the country.”

My friend (and probably my brother before the only King any man should have), the very point of supply-side economics, at least as Ronald Reagan envisioned it, was to take away the reality of the federal government as a dominant purchaser of goods and services. That’s why he cut taxes across the board. Indeed, it solely due to political realities of his time that he could not succeed in creating a single flat tax, which while holding its deficiencies, contain much of the same benefits that the Fair Tax entails.

Furthermore, it is the gross dependency that the all-powerful federal government has possessed that has helped create many of the pathologies in our society: moral, spiritual, racial/ethnic.

I would add, that if you do not cut government spending, and get our house in order, all the benefit of the Fair Tax would be dried up as debt continues to pile on debt, and the federal government becomes a giant vacuum cleaner on all ability to work, produce, buy, sell, save, and invest. I would point you to the devastation in Europe as the value-added tax there was wasted as the governments there would not end their welfare-state economics.

On balance, I do support the Fair Tax, perhaps at a lower rate such as 17% (Steve Forbes old flat tax rate), but for the very reason that classical economics from the 18th-19th centuries would support: the government would then become dependent upon a thriving economy and a self-reliant people, including the poor (who would become less in number anyway, thank the Lord), rather than a dependent people captive to an all-powerful government.

I have some questions about how the prebate procedure in the Fair Tax is going to avoid creating another large bureaucracy, although I imagine that the net effect will be a revenue-collection-redistribution service would occasion a much smaller IRS (possibly with a new name). However, I do believe that in creating the Fair Tax a huge uptick in investment capital will be poured into the USA, which will cause a huge shift in the economy into overdrive.

That will be critical in two other areas that Mike has proposed: the massive buildup in our armed forces that he wants (to 6% of GDP), and the buildup in infrastructure that he proposes. To do that, there will need to be a serious strengthening of our bond markets, the financiers of so many infrastructure-related activities, which we have seen lately are in serious trouble.

It is almost a strange anomaly, but that to strengthen our high-tech-based society, we will need to emulate China, and rapidly rebuild our manufacturing sector through both transformation of infrastructure and our military. Failure to do so will, unfortunately, cause us to mirror India, whose own rapid high-tech economic growth is being hamstrung by corruption and failure to develop infrastructure.

As I examine the positions of the other candidates (especially Romney), I came to the conviction, that Huckabee is the better choice on precisely what is considered Romney’s strength, economic and business sense.

I have a blog, which after numerous attempts has not been accepted onto Huckabee’s blog roll. So, with your permission, I will post your article and my response on my blog (http://belisariusCA.wordpress.com), and I will copy this same article on the entry you have on the Governor’s website.

Hope we can converse again. God bless.

And God bless us all. Hasta al pronto. Go, Mike, go!

—The Old Alcalde—

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25 January 2008 Friday, Jan 25 2008

I just had a reply from a guy to my post about Mike Huckabee, which I posted on Monday.  He seemed to indicate that the Governor is a not a conservative, because he thinks that Mike advocates blanket amnesty.  I guess it had to do with allowing illegal immigrants who came as children, like 5 years old or younger, and who were outstanding students, to have college scholarships.  This is my reply to him.

Darren, I don’t know who you’re referring to. If it was McCain, I could see that conclusion, but only because he has betrayed his party and the ideology he has professed belief in on numerous occasions besides McCain-Kennedy. If you’re talking about Huckabee, you haven’t paid attention to the man’s 9-point plan that basically involves demanding every single illegal alien to go back to their own country and start all over in the application process, along with practically walling up the border and clamping down on employers and several draconian measures.

On enforcement I agree with him. On eviction of 15 million people without exception I do not. What do you do with the young woman who comes with her parents as 1-year old (I know this woman), and she is now a 25-year old wife of a Marine Corps captain? Deport her from the only country she knows to a Mexico she has never been to? She doesn’t even speak Spanish! And what about the hundreds of thousands who came here as virtual slave laborers from Communist China, or Christians fleeing Muslim republics in the former Soviet Union? To send them back would be tantamount to a death sentence! I am willing to support him on the basis of a lot of other positions, as well as his character, but even Huckabee is not immune to giving in to the unwarranted pressure on this issue.

And Darren, since I have been a conservative since I was 8 years old (yes, and I am 52), I would be a little careful on who you decide is or isn’t a conservative. You can’t just unload a check list and demand 100% compliance before you give them the benediction of conservatism. There may be positions you have that I would believe are not conservative. It was Reagan himself who said that the one who is 80% in agreement with him is his ally.

Huckabee isn’t granting amnesty, I would not grant amnesty, Giuliani isn’t for granting amnesty. Significant fines, long waits to qualify for legal residence, even longer waits (17 years or longer) for citizenship, double-fence border barriers (totally for Hunter’s solution), crackdowns on crooked employers and smugglers and removal of drug dealers and potential terrorists and those who committed felony crimes and offenses besides illegal border entry, and eliminating by attrition on job crackdowns millions of recent arrivals who came thinking that they were getting amnesty like a fire sale because the Mexican government told them so, forcing those otherwise long-time law abiding residents to learn English and get no Social Security for work done while illegal and for some years afterward—-all of these are not amnesty Darren.

And they are not liberal ideas. They are pragmatic, just, and fair. Do not let Tom Tancredo and Pat Buchanan determine the bar of conservatism solely at the issue of immigration, disqualifying Iraq, Islamofascism, limited government, taxes, abortion, gay marriage, rebuilding the military, intelligence and interrogation techniques, federalism, 2nd Amendment, education (I disagreed with ‘No Child Left Behind’), and China and trade and sovereignty (Law of the Sea Treaty).

I am conservative on all those things. And with the possible exception of Guantanamo (Supreme Court has yet to rule finally on that), Huckabee is conservative on all of them. Even where he is supposedly populist, on trade, he is still for NAFTA and opposed to tariffs–he prefers to deal with the tax and regulatory barriers to American competitiveness.

We are out of line when we deal with quick and dismissive labels. The only thing that makes me madder on the issue of immigration than the catch phrase “Illegal means Illegal,” is the much more dangerous motto of the other side “No One is Illegal.” It is way too irresponsible to deal with this issue with slogans. There are ways to insist on abiding with the rule of law than to simply try to deport a population equal to the population of Ohio, without exceptions or regard to varying circumstances.

I know this was like unloading the dump truck and pouring all on you. But I have heard this expressed for too long, as if the only way you can oppose amnesty is not only stopping any more illegals coming in, but deporting EVERY single illegal alien without exception. And Mike Huckabee shouldn’t be held to that standard either. The issue of scholarships in Arkansas to illegal ‘minor children’ was based upon children who had been in school for 12 years or longer, and his new proposals more than undo any mistakes he may have made before on that issue.

Please reconsider your conclusions about Mike and other conservatives, if I have read them correctly. And thank you for considering my remarks as well.

I am revealing myself more than I am defending Mike Huckabee, no doubt.  But I felt like it was long overdue.  This was as good an occasion as any.  So there it is.

Hasta al pronto.

—The Old Alcalde—

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24-25 January 2008 Friday, Jan 25 2008

I saw what was probably the 99th Republican candidates’ debate last night in Florida.  Saw it on MSNBC.  If I saw a rigged debate before, I sure saw it tonight.  How much did that network so insist on making sure that Mitt Romney and John McCain got a chance to look like they were the only serious candidates left?  Rudy Giuliani was mishandled to where he no doubt will see his candidacy go down in flames.  And Mike Huckabee probably got half the questions the main “frontrunners” were getting.

Oh, and I’ll say it to Chris Matthews—there were WMD in Iraq held by Saddam Hussein, and programs set to start up again, once U.N. sanctions were lifted, which they would have been had there been no invasion.  So don’t tell me about him being hammered about it—Mike Huckabee is right.  Rather than hurting him, it probably helped Huckabee with a lot of the Republican base that he stuck up for the wisdom of the invasion of Iraq.

Get ready, for we’ll see whether there is a move to or away from the guerrilla candidate.  But I wouldn’t put my money away from Mr. Huckabee just yet.  He’s the candidate that won’t die.  Get ready, for he’s going to win a lot of states before this nominating process is done.  You may just get more than a little surprised.

Hasta al pronto.

—The Old Alcalde—

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23 January 2008 Thursday, Jan 24 2008

I am monitoring what is going on in the Florida primary, as a supporter of Mike Huckabee.  I have noticed that according to a new poll out of Tampa-St. Petersburg, Mike has pulled back into a third place tie with Rudolph Giuliani, which at 15-17% is less than 10 points behind frontrunners John McCain and Mitt Romney (25-23%).

Mike has also begun to accelerate the amount of fundraising he has done, with over $150,000 raised in the last 24 hours, to over $2.4 million.  With his effective use of funds, the amount of campaigning Mike can do will be considerable.

More to come.

—The Old Alcalde—

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22 January 2008 Wednesday, Jan 23 2008

Well, I’ll be to the point. Today I wrote in my other blog, ‘Shiloh House CA’, rather heatedly about today, the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. I don’t regret any moment of rage I expressed. But I hope that it helps bear fruit.The world is spinning toward war. And I think that it has more to do with a God who will not be mocked, nor His creatures slaughtered in unrestrained carnage, without retribution.

Unfortunately, the innocent will suffer with the guilty. Not because He wants to, but because man sees to it that they don’t go down alone.

Hasta al pronto.

—The Old Alcalde—

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21 January 2008 Tuesday, Jan 22 2008

Well, hello everybody. I’m back. I have been a long time away from this particular blog. I have been involved in the development of another blog, which I hope to be a foundation for a renewed law practice I have just begun, particularly in the area of immigration and international consultation services. That blog resides as http://floydjfernandez.wordpress.com, under the name of Consigiliari Pacifica.

However, I am here today to start, or I should say restart, this blog’s emphasis on matters of politics and international relations, both political and economic. I am excited to get involved, and it’s good timing, I believe.

I have chosen to vote for Mike Huckabee. It would be a choice that would be derided as late by many political analysts, coming two days after his narrow (33-30) loss to John McCain in the South Carolina primary. These individuals are also beginning to write the political obituary for former Gov. Huckabee, claiming that South Carolina was the best place for an initial win, and that his chance is gone. However, they will find that he has probably more than 20 states where he can do at least as well, if not better, than he did in the Palmetto State, mostly in the South, Border, lower Midwest and the Farm Belt states of the Great Plains. These are, for the most part, states with even larger populations of evangelical Christians than that in South Carolina, and areas that can be still covered by a grass-roots campaign, rather than large urban states like California and New York (a notable exception to that is Texas).

But why have I chosen to support a candidate who, frankly, has been derided as “not a true conservative” by most of the major pundits and politicians coming from my Republican Party? I have been a great admirer of Rush Limbaugh, the top talk show commentator in the U.S. It is he who has led the chorus of critics of Gov. Huckabee. So why am I parting company from “El Maharushi?” Let me lay down a few, just for starters:

First, those who criticize Gov. Huckabee’s performance as Governor of Arkansas for over 11 years (1995-2007), after serving almost two prior years as Lt. Governor, simply do not know circumstances in the South in general, and Arkansas in particular. In more than 160 previous years of statehood, including its years as a member state of the Confederate States of America, the state of Arkansas had exactly zero instances of tax reductions in its history. That’s right. Zero, nada, zilch. All they had known was tax increases. Most of them were absolutely wasteful. Some of them were necessary. And the ones that Mike had to do were very necessary. I used to live in Arkansas, as a college student. I knew what the roads were like, they were practically primitive. I had friends who were school teachers in Arkansas, they were disgraceful. And if you would have ever seen the old Robert Redford movie Brubaker, you would be aware of the fact that, for a long time, the prisons of Arkansas were synonymous with corruption and places where death and criminalizing of young offenders were the norm. State-run nursing homes were often nothing more than rotten-stench-filled dumping grounds for the dying and neglected. I know. I used to visit some of these homes as part of a ministry from the church I attended while I was in college. Pathetic is an apt term to describe it.

Huckabee was ordered by a federal appeals court to make those institutions fully-funded.  And he was given that order at a time when the state had a huge budget deficit, which suddenly occurred as a result of the combination of Bill Clinton’s recession started at the end of his term in late 2000, the attack on Sept. 11th, and the war against Islamofascism.  He had already cut spending, and done an 11% across-the-board spending cut.  Conservatives, you don’t say “No” to a federal court injunction, unless you later get that order reversed by a higher court.  Huckabee tried.  He couldn’t get it.

So, he got together with the Legislature and got a tax increase passed.  Here were the tax increases passed, which has the likes of Rush Limbaugh so convinced he’s a “big-government liberal”:

1.  The only instance of a temporary income tax increase that really was temporary, eliminated within a year.

2.  A highway diesel gas tax, imposed solely upon interstate truckers, in a law that was passed in a referendum by 80% of Arkansas voters.

3.  An increase in the sales tax of the awesome and huge rate of $.01 per dollar.  That was the largest increase of all, about $500 million.

All of those tax increases amounted to about $880 million, a lot in Arkansas.  Oh, but did I mention that Mike Huckabee pushed through about $380 million in tax cuts.  Those were the first tax cuts in the more than 160 years of Arkansas’ statehood.

And it was done with a legislature that, when he took office, was 85% Democrat, the most lopsided legislature favoring a single political party in the country, one of the few Southern states that still held onto its old Democrat heritage that had dominated Southern politics, at least at the state and local level, from the 1830s until the 1980s.   Even though his party increased its numbers while he was governor (itself in record levels for Arkansas), it was still heavily loaded against Republicans.

And yet he got those changes made, along with a string of reforms in education, as well as legislation that supported the family, from abortion to defending the institution of marriage from gay marriage (which only stands about 7,000 years of civilization’s understanding of the family on its head), to upholding the proper place of the Judeo-Christian ethic in the public schools, to actually doing creative things to cutting welfare dependency, teen pregnancy, and illegitimacy by about half.

And when he left office, Arkansas had gone from a $500 million debt to a $800 million surplus.  I remember another Republican governor who did something like that, with a Democrat legislature, only in California in the turbulent 1960s and 70s.

His name was Ronald Reagan.

Mike Huckabee is not pretending to be Reagan.  He is simply a man who knew how to make conservative politics succeed, not simply as a puristic ideologue, but as a man who had to make it work for people who are interested in whether their kids are educated, if health care is available to the poor, or if the state’s infrastructure and economy is working, so that they’re able to work in theirs.

And his proposal to increase defense spending to 6% of GDP is significant in more ways than all but a few will know, not the least is in the area of restoring our national manufacturing strength.  And it doesn’t mention our ability to fight a future world war against Islamofascism, led by Iran, and deter another war with other possible adversaries, such as China.  Being a great deterrent has a great way of turning potential enemies into lasting friends.

The man will make a great President.   Trust me.

Oh, did I tell you that I knew him before he was anybody.  Yeah, I spent several hours with the man on two occasions, back in 1991 and 1992.  I’ll talk about that later.

Hasta al pronto.

—The Old Alcalde—

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12-13 January 2008 Sunday, Jan 13 2008

Well, hi.  I’m back.  I have been away for entirely too long, but I have had lots of different situations and circumstances to keep me away.  But I have a great reason to come back, and I will.  I’ll talk about it more as time goes along.

Hasta al pronto.

—The Old Alcalde—

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