Just like teenagers who start exercising their independence prematurely, and especially when there is no mother or father around to slow those teenagers down and rein them in during their earlier years, it is inevitable that they will go off and mindlessly fall under the influence of their similarly disadvantaged peers. In the current social climate-via blogging on the Internet, Facebook, cell phones, YouTube, iPads, and texting-it’s easy for teens to attract or be attracted to like-minded strangers and engage in mutually irresponsible behavior. It used to be that Mom was the cop on the beat who prevented such transgressions. Now that she no longer around as much as she should be, strangers comfortably ensconced in the computer clouds denigrate core family values and invite anti-social conduct. Governor, is there a simple solution to this cultural breakdown that wouldn’t violate First Amendment rights?


In Governor Huckabee’s ideal world, where abortion is no longer an alternative, we now have a cute little tyke on our hands. Where do we go from there? Should government ignore the mother and her needs and leave her to fend for herself? Well, Governor, if you’re on the side of letting that happen by declaring abortion illegal, don’t complain about what it costs our state and local governments which wind up asking the feds for financial assistance to the tune of something like$300 billion a year.

How about when a government commits itself to undertake an unwinnable war (or wars) and keeps wanting to show how good it is at being the world’s peacekeeper, while at the same time it legislates income tax cuts across the board?

By the way, wasn’t it the Republican poster boy, a guy by the name of Ronald Reagan, who increased our ratio of debt to GDP by 20.6 percent during his two terms of office? And didn’t his successor, George H.W. Bush, take it up another 15 percent? Of course, like father, like son, George W. subsequently increased the ratio by another 27 percent during his two terms. So what’s this about frugality that the Far Right supposedly endorses?

An executive pay survey conducted in late 2007 reported the average CEO’s pay as $10,544,470. That figure represented 344 times the pay of an average American worker. In 2008, the top fifty hedge and private equity fund managers earned an average of $588 million, not to mention that they also benefitted from a special provision in the tax law called carried interest that gave them unique additional tax breaks.