Yeah, Right, Whatever

OK... as soon as I say "I'll live-blog as long as I long as the battery holds out," the battery dies with NO warning. So... I took notes on Saturday. Here's a summary:

First up, Tim Phillips, President of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation,  spoke. He believes that the climate change "crisis" hoax is one of the greatest threat to the freedoms and pocketbooks of American taxpayers. The climate change "crisis" has caused the following:

• ↑ taxes
• ↑costs
• ↓ jobs (more than one million lost)
• ↓ freedoms (the demise of incandescent lights, as one example)

Peggy Vanable, State Director, Americans for Prosperity Foundation- Texas, was up next. She reappeared several times during the General Session to introduce guests. During her opening remarks, she commented that the Number 1 Texas political news site on either side of the political spectrum was The Lone Star Times. The media was a tad confused when they realized a conservative site trumped the liberal sites out there.

The next speaker was Steve Moore from the Wall Street Journal. He discussed the editorial that appeared yesterday that pointed out the latest tex data:

• The top 1% of taxpayers pay 40% of all taxes. 
• The top 10% of taxpayers pay 72% of all taxes. 
• The top 50% of taxpayers pay 97.1% of all taxes. 

And yet, even with those numbers, Senator Obama, if elected, would raise the top tax rate to 53%. It's interesting... other places (places that have up to a 20% flat tax) have flourishing markets. But the Democrats' answer is always to raise taxes.

Grover Norquist, founder of Americans for Tax Reform, was next on the line-up. (I know that there has been some debate over his religious affiliation, but that's not what he was discussing at the conference, and I'm not sure if I want to trust the op-ed pieces of people who have a grudge against him for some reason.) His talk focused on taxes, which was no surprise. We, as a nation, have had fifteen tax cuts of one form or another in the past eight years. Not bad, but most Americans want more. When asked, most Americans would prefer fewer services and lower taxes. Mr. Norquist has some great points:

• The Right just wants to be left alone with as few rules and regulations as possible. The Left's "list" of things to do is "slightly longer and more tedious than Leviticus." 
• The Left is not made up of friends and allies, but competing parasites. If we just stay out of the way, they will eat each other. 
• Politicians who brand themselves as fiscally conservatives and then vote for tax increases are like "rat heads in Coke bottles."
• More than 2/3 of voters own stock in one form or another, and yet the stock market is a Democrat target. An interesting fund is congressionaleffect.com, which invests only when Congress is not in session.

Merrie Spaeth of Spaeth Communications spoke next.  The one item that stuck out to me about what Merrie said was about the need to use "good words"- positive words, and not negative words. Negative words, mixed in with positive words, stand out, so you need to be consistent about speaking positive words.

Michael Williams was up next. He was great, as always. Here's a brief video of his remarks. He's right. We have an abundant supply of energy in this country- we just have to go and get it. And yet the Left wants to sue OPEC to get them to drill more. Unlike Chairman Williams, I'm not a lawyer, and yet I think I could win that case for OPEC.

More in part 2 of "I Hate Laptop Batteries" (which I will label as earlier, so you can read it straight through).