America likes to put people up on a pedestal and then watch them fall.  Political pundits are especially good at this game.  One of the greatest examples of this was media’s love affair with John McCain.  Because McCain didn’t see eye-to-eye with Bush on everything and proudly wore his maverick independence as a badge of honor, the press felt they could raise McCain up to bring Bush down.  Three elections later and it’s clear that the press was simply using McCain.

They are at it again.  Already the punditry is quizzing Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown on his presidential aspirations and the man has barely taken office.  The last time a state senator became a U.S. Senator and then President didn’t turn out so well.  But I digress.  I think there are several things at play here.

First and probably most likely, the press is filling Brown’s head with delusions of grandeur simply so they can bring him down at some future date.  If he hadn’t thought of running for president before, with various news organizations constantly asking that question, it will definitely be something he’ll start to consider.  Early reports are that he didn’t rule out the possibility of challenging Obama for the job in 2012.  If he did run, the fawning press would quickly bare their teeth and show their true colors.

Another possibility is that the media, which is so completely in the tank with the liberal progressive agenda, is trying to rope Brown into what I call “Beltway Thinking”.  If they can convince Brown that schmoozing other politicians and worrying about what to run for next is more important than representing the people who elected him, they will have succeeded in corrupting yet another good man.   We’ve all seen it – some local talent does well politically and then goes off to Washington only to capitulate on everything they stood for simply to gain more power within their party, be that Democrat or Republican.  The press is fully complicit in promoting Beltway Thinking.

The last reason that I think the media is hounding Brown about presidential plans is that they are desperately looking for a real leader.  They would never admit that, of course.  We all like to get behind someone noble and good.  When we find someone that bears any resemblance to that in any field, be that in sports, in religion, in industry, or politics, we cheer for them and support them.  We all want someone who can show us the way and stand up for our rights, who isn’t afraid of doing the right thing, even if it is the hard thing.  Sometimes the right thing is practicing a skill to become the best.  Sometimes it’s telling people that they are behaving in a manor contradictory to their profession of faith.  Sometimes that’s slipping a product release because the customer deserves better.  Sometimes it’s cutting a budget that’s not balanced by saying no to more government spending.  And most of all, we all want someone, whatever the field, that will make things right, who has a strong since of justice.  Even the media wants this, even if it is only so they can tear that person down.

Could Brown really run for a president run in 2012 and win?  Possibly – it’s been done before.  But just because he could doesn’t mean he is ready. The quicker a politician looks for the next big thing, the sooner you know they have bought into Beltway Thinking.  When that happens, in either party, you can rest assured that they no longer have their constituents’ best interests in mind. When that happens, they are simply in it for their own glory.  Be wary of political phenoms who rise too quickly.

Technology is so great.  Enter the right search terms in Bing and voila, you can get President Obama’s take on fiscal responsibility.  According to a report on MSNBC on February 23, 2009, Obama spoke to the National Governors Association at the White House.  He said the following:

“Contrary to the prevailing wisdom in Washington these past few years, we cannot simply spend as we please and defer the consequences to next budget, the next administration, or the next generation. “

That sounds good because this country desperately needed some maturity in government, some people who aren’t afraid to make spending cuts and realize that there are consequences for out of control spending.  Fast-forward to the State of the Union speech on January 27 last week, where he said:

“So let me start the discussion of government spending by setting the record straight. At the beginning of the last decade, America had a budget surplus of over $200 billion. By the time I took office, we had a one year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program. On top of that, the effects of the recession put a $3 trillion hole in our budget. That was before I walked in the door.”

In a nut shell, he’s blaming the Bush administration for leaving him with a deficit.  Understandable that he wants to set the record straight after all his fancy talk about fiscal responsibility. He wants us to lay the blame of reckless spending on the previous administration.  I get it and don’t fault him for that.  Except that he’s by far more reckless and more fiscally irresponsible than Bush ever dreamed of being.  According to Bloomberg the 2010 federal deficit will be $1.3 trillion and the 2011 federal deficit will be $1.5 trillion.  That’s right – Obama has budgeted almost $3 trillion in deficits for 2010 and 2011.  Sure is a tough thing when your dream excuses get the cold wet of reality splashed on them. 

There was one other telling comment in that State of the Union quote where Obama briefly took his pretty centrist mask off and exposed the socialist monster underneath.  He admitted, right there for all to see, that we don’t own our time or money.  Did you miss it?  “Most of this was the result of not paying for… two tax cuts.”  A tax cut isn’t something the government has to pay for.  Taxation is the means by which the government takes our money from us to pay for everything from essential services like coastal defense to the insane extremes of studying bovine flatulence.  Liberals of Obama’s ilk think they are using government money to pay for a tax cut when in reality a tax cut is simply taking less money from us to begin with.  That Obama continues to propose budgets with deficits shows just how hypocritical he is.  Instead of playing the schoolyard blame game, Obama needs to man up and start telling Democrats they can’t continue to spend like there is no tomorrow.  America is already getting tired of him blaming the previous administration.  If he doesn’t man up soon, 2010 is going to be a great year for the GOP and Obama will end up another one term failure like Jimmy Carter.

I thought of a way to make both conservatives and liberals happy.  Social conservatives want to see abortion outlawed.  Liberals want to fund bigger government programs like nationalized healthcare.  Why not heavily tax the abortion provider?

Before you think I’ve lost my mind suggesting something so insane, consider these quotes:

• Barack Obama - “let us work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions” at the Notre Dame commencement, May 16, 2009. 
• Nancy Pelosi - “And we want abortions to be safe, rare, and reduce the number of abortions.... If you want to reduce the number of abortions, and we all do…” in an interview with Tom Brokaw on Meet the Press, August 24, 2008
• Hillary Clinton - “I think abortion should remain legal, but it needs to be safe and rare.”  - at Messiah College, during the Democratic Compassion Forum, April 13, 2008

These current generation liberal icons have paved the way – they admit that abortion needs to be rarer.  Like everything else they tax, they just need to be told how they can justify taxing it in order to actually legislate the tax into existence.  The justification for taxing abortion providers is simple mainly because taxing the woman receiving the abortion is probably a non sequitur for legal reasons.

Taxing women who have abortions probably wouldn’t withstand a legal challenge because of case precedent, specifically Planned Parenthood v Casey, 1992.  That ruling stated that states couldn’t place an undue burden on a woman seeking an abortion.  In that case, the “undue burden” was notifying the spouse that the woman wanted an abortion.  Since the Supreme Court considered it an undue burden for a woman to tell her spouse that she wanted to abort his child, it’s a no-brainer to think that wouldn’t also be adverse abortion cost prohibitive.

Rather than putting any burden on the woman at all, we can do what liberals like to do best, tax the company (or doctor) that provides the service.   The logic behind taxing the abortion provider is simple - the abortion provider is going to be removing a potential tax payer from the pool of available future tax payers. Additionally, since liberals agree that it should be safe, we need better federal oversight of abortion facilities to ensure compliance.  In order to do manage that, the provider should be required to pay a (huge) fee to offset that potential loss of federal income and the costs associated with oversight. Depending on the stage of the pregnancy, an abortion costs anywhere from $300 to $5000.  If the provider had to cough up at least $1000 for each unborn life that they take, that would be quite a chunk of change coming into federal coffers.  The Guttmacher Institute reports that for 2005, 1.3 million abortions were performed in the United States.  Consider that if each of those abortions had been taxed, the federal government would have brought in 1.3 billion dollars!  While that may be pocket change to your average liberal, it would go a long way to funding some of their pet projects.  This would place no direct burden on women seeking abortions, but it would probably have a chilling effect on the doctors who discredit their profession by performing the ghastly procedures.  It would no longer be cost effective for them to perform abortions so many would stop providing them.  However, even if the provider passed that fee on to the woman, it would be no worse than any other tax that Congress chooses to levy on an industry that ends up being passed on to the consumer.

Since the Congress wouldn’t be levying the tax directly, they could wash their hands of doing anything that would infringe on the so called right to abortion, while at the same time, be certain that they were doing something that would indeed make abortion rarer.  Unless all that talk about making abortion more rare is just that – talk.  Although it wouldn't be an outright prohibition against abortion, it would go a long way towards making them more rare, and that's something most conservatives would be happy about. 

What do you think?  If you have an opinion, leave a comment.  If you think I’m crazy, let me know.