Editor's note: Glenn Beck, when responding to Michelle Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention, mentioned the below entry in Townhall Magazine's January 2011 as part of a larger point on how liberals operate. Enjoy the post below, and consider ordering this back issue of Townhall Magazine to get the full story.

 

From our January cover story "The 50 Most Dangerous Liberals in America":
 

#4 CASS SUNSTEIN
White House Regulation Czar

Cass Sunstein is Obama's regulation czar, affectionately known to conservatives as the "nudge" czar. As the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs ("the cockpit for the modern administrative state"), Sunstein oversees federal regulations at other agencies. According to the Washington Post's WhoRunsGov.com, his position has become more powerful under President Obama.

His theory, "libertarian paternalism," is light on libertarianism and heavy on paternalism and essentially means incentivizing the masses to do what he deems is best for them. What does this entail? A default to organ donation, First Amendment "reform" (read: Fairness Doctrine), celebrating taxes and giving animals rights.

In 2008, Sunstein wrote an article proposing that covert government agents infiltrate activist organizations that "conspire" to undermine its good deeds. These agents would be charged with infiltrating "chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups," trying to look independent and credible while augmenting the pro-government message. The purpose of this exercise would be to undermine the activists and restore faith in the government. What do you think he wants to do to the tea party?

This is the man who oversees financial, health care, housing, environmental and privacy policies, to name a few.

Nudge.

Order Townhall Magazine today to get the full list.

With the recent successes the Republicans have seen in the Badger State, could the home of the progressive movement actually become a red state?


When Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker threw down the gauntlet to government employee unions in February by threatening to roll back their Cadillac benefits and circumscribe collective bargaining for their members, a reactionary leftist tide of protesters swarmed the state Capitol in Madison and prompted the focusing of a sympathetic national spotlight on the plight of teachers and other government workers in the Badger State.

But three months later, it appears Walker ultimately will prevail in his attempt to carve a notch out of the public unions' power base and set Wisconsin on a course toward fiscal sanity -- a template that already is being emulated in state after state, in Flyover Country and elsewhere.

There's also a strong strain of this new "Wisconsin Idea" in the assault on federal spending in Washington, D.C., by Wisconsinites such as Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, from Janesville, Wis., and Reince Preibus, the new head of the national Republican Party and former chief of the state's GOP.

In "Is Wisconsin GOP Territory?" in the June issue of Townhall Magazine, veteran journalist Dale Buss takes a look at the many Republican victories in Wisconsin (and across the Midwest) and examines the impact these wins could have on 2012.

Is it possible the Badger State is turning red? Could we indeed see Obama lose in the home of progressivism?

Here are a couple excerpts from Dale's insightful examination of the Republican Party and Flyover Country. Get the full analysis only in the June issue of Townhall magazine.


The potential of this new movement to transform politics in the Midwest -- and by extension, in the national realm -- could be profound. Wisconsin Republicans must survive the predictable liberal backlash, including recall elections targeting some GOP state senators this summer and a limp court challenge to the law itself. But it's likely that the Left already has fired their best broadside at Wisconsin's fiscal reforms. It also seems that Walker's achievement will only gain dimension as his bill begins to generate an expected $330 million in contributions toward closing Wisconsin's $3.6 billion budget deficit without raising taxes.

"He's doing exactly what we elected him to do: make the state fiscally responsible and try to make Wisconsin more attractive for business," said Diane Hendricks, owner of ABC Supply, a $4 billion building-materials business headquartered in Beloit, Wis., and an important backer of the governor.

And in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and even in New York and Massachusetts, state government leaders, mostly Republicans, are heading at their own various paces in Wisconsin's fiscal direction. "For government employee unions, the handwriting is on the wall -- that's why they're fighting as strenuously as they are," said Michael LaFaive, director of fiscal policy for the Mackinac Institute for Public Policy, a conservative think tank based in Midland, Mich. "Taxpayers are just unwilling or unable to foot ever-higher salary and benefits costs for public servants."

In some ways, the latest drama is typical of how politics have lurched back and forth over the decades in Wisconsin and of how ideas and movements forged in the land of beer, cheese and the Green Bay Packers often end up comprising a vanguard for the rest of America. ...


Most handicappers believe that next fall and for Walker's reelection bid in 2014 Wisconsin will re-assume its recent role as the flimsiest electoral bet in the country. Wisconsin leads all 50 states in the most presidential outcomes (seven) decided by less than five percentage points since 1968.

"Wisconsin is not a red state," Walker said to reporters in March. "It's not a blue state. In many ways, it's a purple state. And it's divided on these issues." Ditto for at least four other Midwestern states -- Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania -- where the GOP now rules the governor's office and both legislative houses after the 2010 elections.

In fact, the next telling electoral event is scheduled not for Wisconsin but for the Buckeye State, an even more important swing territory in national politics -- with 20 electoral votes compared with Wisconsin's 10. Democrats and Big Labor are plotting a November referendum to reverse Gov. Kasich's public worker collective bargaining reforms. Polls right now suggest they have a shot at overturning the law.

"Big Labor is marching in lockstep, but supporters of the law aren't as well-organized and haven't figured out how to proceed," said Matt Mayer, president of the Buckeye Institute, a Columbus-based conservative think tank. It's easy for "the heavily incented to get unified," he observed, while "those paying the distributed costs at the marginal level -- it's harder to get them moving forward."

But like Gov. Walker in Wisconsin, Gov. Kasich in Ohio believes the case for fiscal sanity will carry the day -- this fall and again in 2012.

To read the full piece, subscribe to Townhall Magazine today.

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened. He will fight savagely.

But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!

I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory!

Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

Despite being separated by nearly a century and a half, the letters of two infantrymen show the spirit and character of the U.S. soldier.


As Americans mark the 67th anniversary of D-Day today, we would like to remind our readers of the character of our soldiers.

They are patriotic, determined and courageous.

They willingly sacrifice themselves for the good of each and every one of us. Would that we each had their understanding of what's important.

In the June issue of Townhall Magazine, we have a very special feature examining the common characteristics our soldiers have shared since our Founding.

In "American Warriors, American Men," veteran journalist Kathy Jessup shares what she discovered when the families of two soldiers who died for their country shared hand-written letters from the two men -- one who died in the Civil War and one who died in Iraq.

It is truly amazing to see what these two heroes, who were separated by more than 140 years, had to say about family and duty to country.

Below is just a brief taste of what only readers of Townhall Magazine are experiencing in the June issue. Order today to make sure you get the full story -- you'll be thankful you did.


Gen. Douglas MacArthur had never met Pvt. Foster Sisson or Sgt. Gabriel De Roo when he delivered a poignant, 1962 speech on duty, honor and country at West Point. Sisson had been dead nearly 100 years and De Roo wouldn't be born for another 19.

"In 20 campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand campfires, I have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation and that invincible determination, which have carved his statue in the hearts of his people," MacArthur described the American soldier. "From one end of the world to the other, he has drained deep the chalice of courage."

De Roo and Sisson, Army infantrymen who served on battlefields separated by cause, continents and more than 140 years, are poignant examples of everyday people who possessed these enduring attributes.

As the United States marks the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War, battlefield letters preserved by the families of Foster Sisson, a Union soldier, and Gabriel De Roo, an Army enlistee deployed twice to Iraq, reflect shared themes of faith and humanity that lose nothing in the translation of time.

Both men enlisted from rural Michigan communities located 60 miles apart.

Both died in battle.

Their stories are best told by them in the letters they wrote home to the people who loved them as husbands, sons and fathers and grieved their deaths as American heroes.


Pvt. Foster Sisson's early letters from boot camp described bland military meals and advised his wife on handling the family farm. But as the Civil War became reality, the letters he penned while armaments screamed overhead revealed an increasingly heavy heart and loneliness for his wife and three children. Yet in the midst of America's bloodiest war, enduring hunger and filth, he kept to his oath to protect the Union.

"Don't let Little Clarry forget where I be," Sisson wrote to his wife Sarah, referring to their 3-year-old daughter Clara. "I am afraid she will forget all about me before I get back."


Gabriel De Roo also longed for news from home and offered assurance he would remain safe in Iraq.

"I miss all of you very much," De Roo wrote as he began basic training in early 2003. "Please feel free to write if you all get an opportunity; it would be nice to hear about what's going on back home. ... Please don't worry about me, I'll be alright."

As his basic training progressed, it wasn't respite from physical exertion De Roo sought. "Pray that I live as a godly example to those around me and that I give 100 percent all the time," he wrote his parents, later asking, "Send a family picture or two if you have a chance."

It would fall to Sarah Sisson to tell Clara about her "Paw" and Hannah De Roo, Gabriel's wife of two years, to raise the couple's infant son Gabe.

Read the entire compelling piece ONLY in the pages of Townhall Magazine.

Thousands of guns have been sold to Mexican drug cartels under orders from the Obama Justice Department. Now that Americans have been killed by the department's failed operation, the White House is blaming law-abiding gun shops for its deadly scandal. But was that the administration's plan all along?


President Obama is calling for "commonsense" gun reforms, but as a man with a long a history of acting to limit Second Amendment rights and advocating gun control who tapped an attorney general with the same ideology -- and possibly the biggest gun trafficking scandal in U.S. history with his name written all over it -- is the president really calling for reforms or more government control?

In the past, President Obama hasn't been shy about expressing his views against the right to own a handgun and the right to carry concealed and his support for the reinstatement of the assault-weapons ban -- more accurately understood as a ban on semiautomatic firearms. He believes the nation's crime problems lie with gun ownership rather than criminals.

In fact, as an Illinois state senator, Obama endorsed and spoke in support of an outright ban on ownership of all handguns and favored the licensing and registering of gun owners. Before his run for public office in 1996, Obama filled out a questionnaire expressing his support for a ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns.

Considering our uber-liberal president's true beliefs on guns -- and the anti-Second Amendment stance of the leftist base of his party -- it shouldn't surprise anyone to read about the most recent scandal we expose in the June issue of Townhall Magazine involving the Justice Department, guns, and law-abiding citizens.

In "Misfire," Townhall News Editor Katie Pavlich gives an in-depth report on a little problem the administration doesn't want to talk about: Operation Fast and Furious.

Because of this botched operation, thousands of guns have been put into the hands of Mexican drug cartels, Americans have been killed, and now legal gun-shop owners are in the White House's crosshairs.

Here are a few excerpts from the powerful report:


The lethal project [Operation Fast and Furious] was conducted under the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which is overseen by the Justice Department. Operation Fast and Furious is a product of the Obama administration and was conducted under a pilot program started by the Bush administration in 2005 called Project Gunrunner. Project Gunrunner allowed ATF agents to watch the purchase of weapons by "straw men" outside American gun shops, and purchasers were immediately apprehended before crossing back into Mexico. But starting early in 2009, ATF's actions through Operation Fast and Furious had the opposite result: They actually allowed and encouraged the sale of weapons to known straw-man purchasers for the cartels and let the guns flow across the southern border into Mexico.

Reports have shown the ATF told gun shops to sell massive amounts of weapons to known drug cartel buyers, even after gun shop owners expressed discomfort in assisting the government in breaking federal law to arm known violent drug cartels. According to a CBS News report uncovering the scandal:

"In late 2009, ATF was alerted to suspicious buys at seven gun shops in the Phoenix area. Suspicious because the buyers paid cash, sometimes brought in paper bags. And they purchased classic 'weapons of choice' used by Mexican drug traffickers -- semi-automatic versions of military-type rifles and pistols. ...

"[S]everal gun shops wanted to stop the questionable sales, but ATF encouraged them to continue. ...

"ATF managers allegedly made a controversial decision: allow most of the weapons on the streets."

How many guns did the ATF ultimately let go? The same CBS News report revealed that the number is in the thousands: "On the phone, one [Operation Fast and Furious] source (who didn't want to be identified) told us just how many guns flooded the black market under the ATF's watchful eye. 'The numbers are over 2,500 on that case by the way. That's how many guns were sold -- including some 50-calibers they let walk.'"

The project didn't sit well with many ATF agents, either. CBS also reported, "One agent called the strategy 'insane.' Another said: 'We were fully aware the guns would probably be moved across the border to drug cartels where they would be used to kill.' … For months, ATF agents followed 50-caliber Barrett rifles and other guns believed headed for the Mexican border but were ordered to let them go. One distraught agent was often overheard on ATF radios betting and pleading to be allowed to intercept transports. The answer: 'Negative. Stand down.'"

The consequences of the operation have been deadly. ...

This process, better known as "letting guns walk," has left at least two U.S. federal agents dead -- Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and ICE Agent Jamie Zapata -- and has contributed to the deaths of thousands of innocent Mexican citizens.


Though the ATF had hoped tracing the guns into Mexico would lead to the busts of cartel kingpins, the operation hasn't lead to a single arrest of a cartel leader -- or, for that matter, the actual tracing of the firearms. Instead, the guns have been lost in Mexico until they show up at crime scenes.

But was Fast and Furious really about tracing drug cartels? Or was it about "proving" false statistics liberal gun control advocates like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Eric Holder have been throwing out for years? If it was a legitimate operation, who did the U.S. government intend to prosecute after the guns crossed the border, considering officials in the United States don't have jurisdiction in Mexico and the Mexican justice system is essentially nonexistent? It turns out law-abiding gun shop owners wound up in their crosshairs.

In early 2009, when the bulk of the operation got started, Clinton, Obama and Holder all stated that nearly 90 percent of guns in Mexico being used by cartels were coming from the United States. A WikiLeaks cable from the State Department recently showed that 90 percent of guns in Mexico actually come from Central America and others are bought in bulk from Russia and China. The 90 percent figure blaming U.S. gun shop owners has been discredited multiple times by the National Rifle Association, law enforcement officers at the federal, state and local levels and even by ATF officers. ...

Before the public, the media and even the Mexican government knew about what the ATF was doing, President Obama met publicly with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and blamed violence in Mexico on gun shop owners in America, saying the U.S. government needed to do a better job of tracing guns into Mexico. ...

"What we've focused on is how we can improve our enforcement of existing laws, because even under current law, trafficking illegal firearms, sending them across the border, is illegal," he continued, "and that is something we can stop."

But the ATF did it anyway. At the same time President Obama was saying the U.S. government can stop the trafficking of guns into Mexico, that same government's ATF was ordering gun shop owners to sell weapons to cartels.

Holder denies having known anything about the operation, although he is responsible for the oversight of the ATF as the head of the Justice Department, but he did say in a press conference that he believes ATF agents do a good job at stopping the flow of illegal guns across the border. ...

Of course, much of the liberal media have been happy to do the White House's bidding and blame law-abiding gun shop owners, making them scapegoats for violent crimes happening in Mexico and the United States.

Get the full, explosive report ONLY in the June issue of Townhall Magazine.

With guns blazing, Ann Coulter has made a career of blasting and destroying the Left -- and she's having a great time doing it. In an exclusive interview with Townhall, she gets personal about her life, her past and her passions.

Anyone who knows Ann can tell you that the peals of her distinctive laughter are as much her trademark as the slinky dresses and the blond tresses. Judging by her frequent appearances on "Hannity," "Red Eye With Greg Gutfeld," "The O'Reilly Factor," "The View," "The Today Show" and a host of other TV shows, when Ann Coulter is on camera, she always seems to be laughing, or have just laughed, or be about to laugh, or have just made someone else laugh. Why, then, do her critics so often describe her as angry?

Case in point: When she made her first (and only) appearance on the "Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson" in 2005, she entered the studio to sustained, thunderous applause. She was absolutely beaming when she took her seat, even giggling a bit with delight as any normal person would be while basking in such unabashed public approval. And yet, the first thing the host said to Coulter -- the very first words out of his mouth, mind you -- were, "Why are you always so angry?" Ferguson's inane question, naturally, was greeted with yet more laughter from Coulter (and the studio audience), because it was so utterly absurd.

In a highly entertaining and informative piece about the right-wing rock star based on exclusive interviews, Hollywood writer Ned Rice provides readers with an understanding about Ann Coulter that most people don't have and gives Ann a chance to confront her critics.

In "Bombshell" in the June issue of Townhall Magazine, Coulter answers the haters, taking this opportunity to answer some of the charges most commonly lodged against her. And she gives her honest -- and blunt -- thoughts on politics, including the 2012 elections and Gov. Mitch Daniels' idea of taking a "time out" on divisive social issues.

Subscribers will also read Ann's reaction to the charges that she's not winning over any new converts with her books, columns and speeches and that she's merely preaching to the choir? Plus, get to know her personal history: Every right-wing firebrand's story starts somewhere -- find out what Ann was like as a kid, what her family was about, and the choices she made in her youth that led her to where she is today.

Get this rare inside look at the life of Ann Coulter ONLY in the June issue of Townhall Magazine. Here are some excerpts:

So when did Ann Coulter become the Angry Woman of the Right -- and doesn't she find this, well, infuriating? "Not at all", she laughs. "What 'angry' means today is, 'I don't agree with you,'" she adds. "To avoid being called 'angry,' people on our side are always supposed to yield to the Left. Otherwise, we're injuring them somehow."

So what accounts for the gap between Coulter's reputation for being cranky and reality? "It's something the Left does very well," she explains. "Getting people to deny what their own senses -- their own eyes and ears -- are telling them." ...

The proverbial reasonable man might wonder if Coulter would be willing to reveal anything at all about her new book. She would indeed: "It's called 'Demonic: How The Liberal Mob Is Endangering America,' and it's about how liberals act like a mob because they are a mob. Picking up where the brilliant 19th century social scientist Gustave Le Bon left off, I show how similar the Left is to a common street mob in the ways they think and behave."

What examples can she cite of behaviors shared by both a street mob and the Left? "Groupthink -- a reasoning disability to which Christians and conservatives are immune, by the way. An inclination to hold contradictory opinions. A habit of being swayed by images rather than by words and logic. A tendency to resort to violence to advance their cause. And, as I've said, a willingness to disbelieve their own senses."

Asked for a recent example of this phenomena, Coulter cites the banking crisis: "Here's how Obama described the economic collapse: 'The Republicans drove the car into a ditch, and now they want us to give them the keys back.' So instead of a carefully worded description of how the banking crisis unfolded, people remember Story Time when the car went into the ditch and John Boehner climbed out from behind the wheel, with maybe a cut on his forehead, and said, 'Wha' happened?' The End.

"Now, if you explain to liberals that Fannie [Mae] and Freddie [Mac] and the Community Redevelopment Act encouraged banks to issue suicidal mortgages, and Wall Street intermingled those bad mortgages with good ones and sold them in bundles, and when the housing market collapsed, the whole economy tanked, they say, 'OK, but what about the car and the ditch?'

"They also believe that since government intervention and Wall Street got us into this mess, what we need is for the government to step in again and give Wall Street more money. It's textbook mob thinking." ...

The high-water mark of mob behavior, she believes, was the French Revolution. "The American Revolution was a revolution of ideas," she explains. "The idea of a constitutional, representative democracy, based on the consent of the governed, in the form of three competing branches, was revolutionary. The French Revolution -- which hardly deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as the American Revolution! -- was a protracted mob action, which mostly consisted of some French people mindlessly beheading other French people. The French Revolution was not inspired by some groundbreaking political manifesto like the Declaration of Independence. It was more like a street riot that got out of control and went on for years because they let it. As Napoleon said, if Louis XVI had stood up to that mob, even once, he would have won."

So, in SAT test-question form, the French Revolution, with its wanton violence and primitive thinking, is to the liberal mentality as the American Revolution, with its emphasis on ideas and well-crafted arguments, is to the conservative mentality? "Exactly!" ...

The first and most often heard charge against her is that she writes and says incendiary things she doesn't really believe just to sell books. "This is my favorite of all the things people say about me," she begins. "Well, that and when they say that the only reason I'm on TV is because I'm pretty -- and then they turn around and say that I'm extremely ugly. In fact, the mainstream media is constantly telling people not to read my books. The New York Times Book Review has never even reviewed one of my books. And yet, all of them have been New York Times best sellers -- sometimes I think I keep writing just to force the Times to print my name in their best-sellers list, even though their book critics ignore me. Anyway, at the risk of stating the obvious, being an outspoken conservative is about the least likely way of becoming a successful author in this country. Just look at all the terrible writers who've become wildly successful by writing things that liberals like. ... Gail Collins is such an amazingly bad writer that I've stopped reading her completely because I'm afraid some of the inane clich?s she's written might become lodged in my brain and I'd lose the ability to speak. ... Naomi Wolfe's another one. She cranks out one failed, moronic book after another. If you have no talent but you want to become a successful writer, be a liberal!" ...

With so much accomplished, what continues to drive her? ... The answer is simple. It's "The Cause," which Ann describes as follows: "Writing this book has convinced me that you'll never defeat liberals, because, like evil, they'll always be there. We always have to be ready to fight. It can happen here."

Get the full piece only in the June 2011 issue of Townhall Magazine. Order today.

Check out the cover of the June issue of Townhall Magazine. Our profile of Ann Coulter includes exclusive interviews with the conservative firebrand and info about her new book and her life that you won't find anywhere else.


Order today to make sure you don't miss out on this special issue.

How pension promises from reckless politicians have wrecked America's finances.


There is a dirty secret about state entitlements that liberals don't want you to know: The collection of a state pension increases the chances that a pensioner will live in poverty. That's because money put aside for state-guaranteed benefits cannot be safely invested at rates that provide for more than a modest retirement unless the state subsidizes retirement benefits through taxes or if retirement savings are invested in riskier, higher yielding investments. Since governments are loath to raise taxes to subsidize a risk-less retirement, benefits are eventually reduced. It works that way in London and Moscow as well as Madison and Sacramento.

In Moscow, public pensions and social programs helped bankrupt the Soviet Union in the 1980s while "transfer to pension status greatly increase[d] the likelihood of poverty," according to Mervyn Matthews' 1986 book "Poverty in the Soviet Union." In London, former Labour Minister John Hutton's Independent Public Services Pension Commission has recommended changes that would calculate pension benefits on lifetime earnings rather than current salary -- in line with recommendations for pension reform from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Trade unions in the United Kingdom say that such changes will lead to "increased pensioner poverty." In Madison, Wis., public retirement applications have risen 73 percent, according to the Wall Street Journal, as workers try to lock in higher retirement benefits that will likely shrink for those public employees retiring in the future.

Increasingly, state governments in the United States are facing budget shortfalls over entitlements paid to public servants and those on the public dole. And like the Social Security program, the shortfalls have been wholly predictable as government makes bigger and bigger promises to a select number of citizens who then take up a bigger share of the public pie.

As Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has been warning: Entitlements could bury this country if we don't address them soon.

In a powerful and harrowing piece -- "Rates of Ruin" -- for the May issue of Townhall Magazine, Finance Editor John Ransom explains the dire consequences of politicians' pension promises if they remain unchanged.

You can find this special report only in Townhall Magazine's May issue. Here's a small taste of Ransom's warning:


Behind the rhetoric and the rants about state entitlement programs is one simple question: Who wants to pay for expanded public retirement and health care entitlements?

It's a question that union organizers, doctors, teachers, state legislators and governors across the country grapple with as inflation takes a bigger bite of fixed incomes, market returns fizzle and the federal government cuts back on Medicaid payments after expanding welfare rolls through the stimulus and ObamaCare. And while liberals try to make the case that entitlements play little part in the current state budget battles, simple math says otherwise. Medicaid makes up the second-largest part of many state budgets, if not the largest. In fact, if governments used the same math that private pensions are mandated under the law to use to figure their liabilities, experts say the entitlement shortfalls in states' pension systems is two-to-three times larger than has been widely reported.

Federally mandated Medicaid spending that is busting this year's budgets in every state is the biggest story today. But fuzzy pension math is potentially the gravest budget killer. The Heritage Foundation points out that, while it cost less than $1 trillion to shore up the financial system in the bank crisis of 2008, "the IMF expects that, on net, present value basis -- that is, the deflated total of all future costs," the entitlement gap "will amount to about 34 percent of the U.S.'s GDP." That's equal to $5 trillion of today's GDP. Bill Gross, the manager of the world's largest mutual fund, recently sold all of his fund's holdings in U.S. government securities after estimating total U.S. government debt at $75 trillion, including off-the-book items such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

How did we fall into such a hole?

Take the average teacher who enters the work force at 25 years old and who retires at the age of 65. Even assuming Social Security will be there at retirement, the teacher's savings, accumulated at 10 percent of his salary for 40 years, must enjoy rates of return near 6 percent to ensure a retirement income equal to 70 percent of the salary he first enjoyed when he entered the workforce. From 1925-2004, the safest investments -- U.S. treasuries -- have returned only 3.7 percent. Corporate bonds have averaged 5.4 percent (see "Chart 1: Historic Rates of Return, 1925-2006").


The riskiest investments average near 10 percent but are not suitable for a state-managed pension program. Nor are they reliable. Dizzying rates of return in the 1990s, in part, have led to assumptions about market returns that are unsustainable. As a result, politicians have been able to use fuzzy math to hand out bigger benefits to public employees.

It would be nice if everyone could afford to open up a bed and breakfast with their retirement savings, as was depicted in retirement-planning commercials of the late 1990s. However, historic rates of return in markets don't allow for expansive retirement dreams. ...

In Florida, for example, the state currently assumes that its pension system will return 7.75 percent annually, according a report by Milliman, an actuarial consultancy located in Vienna, Va., that tracks pension obligations (see "Chart 2: Estimated Real vs. 'Official' Pension Gap in Florida").

But private pension plans currently can assume only a 5 to 6 percent rate of return -- approximately the same rate of return that corporate bonds get historically. ...


One of the complicating factors of the entitlement crisis is a willful blindness that has government conveniently overestimating tax revenues during recessions, in addition to overestimating rates of return at all other times.

"During the 1990-92 revenue crisis, 25 percent of all state forecasts fell short by 5 percent or more," finds the Rockeller Institute report "States' Revenue Estimating: Cracks in the Crystal Ball." "During the 2001-03 downturn, 45 percent of all state forecasts were off by 5 percent or more. In 2009, 70 percent of all forecasts overestimated revenues by 5 percent or more."

If Bernie Madoff had used such sloppy account methods in his Ponzi scheme as state governments do in estimating pension liabilities and revenues, no doubt his house of cards would have collapsed more quickly. If anything, government accounting methods are hurting those people liberals claim to care so much about -- low-income workers -- by creating huge entitlement deficits that require cuts in benefits that will impact those who will have the hardest time retiring. ...

Tinkering around the edges of our demographics won't help that much if politicians aren't willing to come clean as to the size of the problem that faces us in the future. Neither party has shown a real willingness to tackle entitlement reform yet, although some on the GOP side of the aisle have shown that they understand the scope of the problem and the potential difficulties.


"Is this a political weapon we are handing our adversaries? Of course it is," GOP House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, Wis., said in March. "I think everybody knows that we are walking into I guess what you would call a political trap that arguably we are setting for ourselves ... but we can't wait. This needs leadership."

That passes the verbal portion of the test. Now, if they could just pass the math portion.

Get the full report only in the May issue of Townhall Magazine. Order today to make sure you get your copy.

The liberal green movement has no idea how to actually handle energy and environment issues. Conservatives know that Big Government cannot save the economy or the environment -- private solutions are the answer to both.


While stumping for Rep. Timothy Bishop, D-N.Y., Vice President Joe Biden told a crowd that "every single great idea that has marked the 21st century, the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and government incentive." These "great" government ideas include abysmal programs such as Social Security, the Post Office and public schools where only 35 percent of students are proficient in reading. Biden's misguided comments demonstrate the disturbing trend of turning to tax dollars and federal agencies to address problems that are best handled privately. Nowhere is this truer than with the Obama administration's plan to "win the future" through clean energy initiatives.

The president is leading the progressive charge in forcing environmental conscientiousness upon the masses. He has made it his presidential mission to implement "green energy" and "clean jobs" into the American economy, market signals be damned. Obama believes that the accomplishment of such a wildly noble, unquestioningly beneficial goal must be solely the duty of the federal government, but if he were to examine past governmental efforts to intervene in environmental affairs, he might notice that those experiments did far more harm than good.

In a special report in the May issue of Townhall Magazine full of inconvenient facts that are sure to annoy and frustrate the enviro-Left, Helen Whalen-Cohen and Erika Johnsen explain exactly why bigger government will not save the economy or the environment but private solutions will.

"The Great Green Gaffe" exposes much of the nonsense that comes from the liberal environmentalist movement. Their plans serve only to hurt both the environment and the economy -- but there is hope. You can bet the Left won't hearing this, but it must be told. Order today to get the full report.

Here are a few excerpts from this important feature:


The Solyndra solar panel plant in Northern California has served as a poster child of the supposedly burgeoning solar energy industry. In the spring of 2010, President Obama visited the solar plant to check up on the green "investment" he made in the form of a $535 million stimulus loan the plant received under the 2009 Recovery Act.

"The promise of clean energy isn't just an article of faith," said President Obama. "It's not just some abstract possibility for science fiction movies or a distant future or 10 years down the road or 20 years, it's happening right now."

"Article of faith" and "abstract" are, in fact, great terms to describe the solar panel industry. The bailout only buoyed an industry that is not economically viable on its own. The day after the November 2010 elections (how convenient!), the solar plant announced that it needed to lay off 17.5 percent of its workers. ...

The Solyndra solar debacle demonstrates the imprudence of a government that believes itself able to create green jobs from nothing but its imagination. Instead of leaving citizens free to make their own economic decisions, the feds pick the winners and losers of the marketplace, based on nothing but political ambitions and ideologies.

Wind power presents a similarly frustrating story. The American Wind Energy Association, a D.C.-based lobby, asserts that "[f]ederal and state policies will unleash [wind's] potential," according to a report titled "Wind Energy is Good for America." The lobby does not seem to have an interest in nurturing an independent, profitable and efficient industry; instead, they would rather chase subsidies. According to U.S. Energy Information Administration data, wind barely accounted for 0.7 percent of U.S. energy consumption in 2009 (see "U.S. Energy Consumption by Energy Source, 2009"), and the number was only that high because electricity companies are required by law to purchase some energy from alternative sources. [...]


No doubt President Theodore Roosevelt had (in his own mind) good intentions when he accelerated the federal land grab that gradually led to federal ownership of more than 25 percent of the United States' lands.

Conservation, both for posterity and for the sake of conservation itself, is an admirable goal. As in all other enterprises, however, basic economic principles apply. As soon as land belongs to everybody in common, it belongs to nobody in particular.


Instead of land-maintenance and conservation decisions made by localities, the out-of-touch bureaucrats in Washington dictate the ways in which money is spent, resulting in inefficiencies, oversights and environmental degradation (for instance, untended forests become overly dense and prone to ravaging wildfires).

According to a report by the Cato Institute, the National Park Service alone estimates a backlog of more than $10 billion in deferred maintenance projects, and the U.S. Forest Service loses an average of 77 cents for every dollar it spends on land (mis)management.


In a moment of economic crisis, the other President Roosevelt also attempted to assert new responsibilities for the federal government at the expense of the American taxpayer. FDR first instituted farm bills during the Great Depression, when millions of small farmers were suddenly bankrupted.

Ever since, the federal government has cosseted the agriculture sector to no end -- in theory ensuring the survival of the small family farm, low food prices and environmental stewardship, but in practice achieving the opposite effect. Government farm subsidies encourage overproduction, often at the cost of the environment, and two-thirds of direct agricultural payouts go to the wealthiest 10 percent of growers. ...

The success of the agribusiness lobbyists in keeping bureaucrats under their collective thumb, while swindling the free market economy, is a testament to the power of small interest groups in influencing an over-regulatory, bloated government. If the agricultural sector can be so damagingly defective, why would environmentalism be any different? [...]

With the proper incentives, individuals and businesses can accomplish any number of honestly green initiatives. Instead of the convoluted, unintended-consequence-laden, environmental jeopardy that results when politics and environmentalism mix, private ownership and entrepreneurship are the best methods to conserve the American landscape and protect our natural resources.

Get the full report on "The Great Green Gaffe" only in the May issue of Townhall Magazine.

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