I was reviewing Sarah Palin’s speech at the Tea Party convention on Youtube and was reminded of her position on the 2008 bailout.  In a September 24, 2008 television interview Palin supported the bailout.  But at the recent Tea Party convention she objected to bonuses that the support she had previously advocated made possible. I think the expression is that she has been shedding conservative crocodile tears.

Conservatives love to hate Saul Alinsky but in fact all activists, conservative, libertarian or left-wing, follow his advice if they aim to succeed.  One of Alinsky’s rules for radicals is that a tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.  This seems to be occurring with the Tea Party.

A reader suggested  this blog by the Alantic Magazine’s Andrew Sullivan.  Sullivan argues that the Tea Party convention was not economically conservative but was rather dominated by Christian activists.  Sullivan writes:

“They have no plans to cut serious spending whatsoever. They love their Medicare, as they screamed at us last August. Do you remember them revolting against Bush’s unfunded, Medicare prescription drug bill, the worst act of fiscal vandalism since the Iraq war?”

I have attended my local Tea Party meeting in Kingston, New York.  I do recall others, besides myself, talking about economic issues. One individual brought up the exit of manufacturing from the US, another talked about corruption in government.  There are frequent references to the nation becoming worse for future generations.  These are all good signs and say to me that the Tea Party has potential left.

Since the Atlantic is not a libertarian source (disclaimer: I read it regularly more than a quarter century ago and not since) my gut would be suspicious of anything its writers have to say about the Tea Party.  However, Sullivan makes a good point.

It was obvious from the beginning that the Tea Party rank and file is largely inexperienced.  Moreover, these are people who have developed a bad habit of voting for big government candidates who say that they are for small government.  They did it for George W. Bush and they did it for George H. Bush.  They nominated John McCain, who lept at the bailout like a terrier at a steak, along with Palin and Obama.  The Tea Party people realize that something has gone wrong after decades of their de facto support for big government and their solution is…to do the same thing once again.  This is seen in their decision to ask John McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, to be the keynote speaker at their convention.  Palin may speak economic conservative rhetoric at times, but she is not schooled in basic economics and can be seen in the September 2008 interview to be in the Progressive tradition.

I believe that libertarians need to work with the Christian right.  However, we have been hammered once before, with respect to George W. Bush.  The tactic of working with the Tea Party has helped expose our views, and it has been successful. But should libertarians continue to support the Tea Party?  I am not certain that the leadership of the Tea Party supports our mission of limited government.  Sarah Palin does not. I don’t think she understands that government activism in the bailout is logically inconsistent with support for limited government. The Tea Party may soon become a drag.

John Tate of the Campaign for Liberty just sent out a press release concerning his group’s opposition to the reappointment of Ben Bernanke.  I agree with him in spirit.

What concerns me, though, is that the left also opposes Bernanke’s reappointment. Given the nature of this term’s Democratic Party-dominated Senate, any alternative to Bernanke could be worse.  I would like to see some specific recommendations for alternatives.

Writing in a Democratic Party outlet, the New York Times, leftist Paul Krugman expresses a similar concern, that it is not clear that Bernanke the devil is worse than some crustacean that Harry Reid might pull from the deep blue sea.

Indeed, Krugman’s deliberations concerning Bernanke emphasize that Bernanke has not inflated enough or “done all he can”.  Unless the Democrats can come up with an alternative (e.g., a 21st century Paul Volcker), I’d prefer to stand pat despite what Krugman calls Bernanke’s “complacency”.

Governor Gary E. Johnson has been called the next Ron Paul.  He has not yet announced his candidacy for president, but has been widely mentioned as a potential Republican presidential candidate who reflects the Tea Party’s and liberty Republicans’ perspectives.

I recently blogged about Governor Johnson’s background.  He received good grades from the Cato Institute when he was governor and has a taste for honesty that is rare in politics and business today.

Besides serving as governor of New Mexico for two terms, he had built a significant corporation from scratch, which he sold in 1999.  Readers who would like to contribute or help Governor Johnson can find contact information on http://ouramericainitiative.com/. He also has a Facebook group page with 2,000 members.

Langbert: Governor Johnson, it is a privilege to interview you.  I teach business administration at Brooklyn College.  What are three things that you learned from your business career that could be applied to the federal government or that you did apply as governor of New Mexico?

Johnson: I started my company in 1974 and I was the only employee.  In 1994 we had 1,000 employees.  Things that I learned and applied as governor include the importance of hiring good people; cutting mistakes short; and sticking to basic principles.

I’m good at hiring people and have a great track record.  But mistakes are inevitable. When you make a mistake in hiring, you need to cut it short.   As governor, I avoided political appointments as much as possible.  There was one instance where I was forced to make one, and I closely monitored the individual’s performance.

The obvious things are most important. The basic principles:  being on time, sticking to principles, telling people to tell the truth.  As governor, I sat down in cabinet meetings and I told people to tell the truth.

L: One of the realities of large organizations is the use of information to manage conflict and improve social compatibility and coordination.  Managers call these patterns interpersonal skills.  Might not 100% truth telling interfere with interpersonal skills? Of course, if everyone in industry tells the truth, costs and performance will be improved.

J: On the contrary, being honest 100% of the time makes it easy.  If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.  What you’re talking about is managing conflict.  Someone once said that honesty is where what you say and what you think are the same as what you do.  But of course you can say things that minimize conflict.

L:  To what degree is it possible to cut the federal budget? How would you go about cutting?

J: I faced the same situation in New Mexico as the president faces.  I could have cut big government in New Mexico drastically and no one would have noticed.  (That is, these government employees produce no value for the economy.) The spending train is out of control.  But the Democratic legislature fought me and the courts handed down adverse rulings.  The legislature was 2 to 1 Democratic.  Common sense has gone out the window.  First you have to stop the spending.  The time is ripe for doing so in Washington, and it’s accomplishable.

We are a bankrupt nation.  We’re not taking care of our own house. Unlike the generation before us, interest and principle payments are due now. The enormous budget deficits will lead to inflation and an ever weaker dollar.

L:  What is your position on the bailout and TARP?

J: I would have opposed both.  Government should not have been involved in this. The Paulson connection amounts to this being an inside job.  Why should Goldman and AIG be saved but not Lehman?

L: What is your position on health reform?  How would you recommend the system control health costs?

J:  I would recommend a free market approach to health care reform.  Increase supply through the free market.  Gall Bladders R Us. We ended up with an insurance entitlement rather than health care.  Extending the current approach will lead to shortages and rationing health care.

The same principle applies to education.  We should blow the lid off publicly controlled education.

L: What is your position on the Fed and the gold standard?

J: The Federal Reserve deserves full responsibility for the housing bubble and as well deserves credit for mitigating the bust.  Overriding that, the dollar is now worth a nickel.  I understand the arguments for a free market in money and I support them.  I shy away from the phrase “regulate the Fed” because I do not want Barney Frank deciding monetary policy.  I wouldn’t say the Fed needs to be abolished.  I understand the argument for a gold standard, though.  The US government should be pursuing a strong dollar policy, which the Fed hasn’t done.

L: What is your position on the Middle East and Israel?

J: I’ve been to Israel and the Golan Heights and I understand the threats Israel faces from outside and within. I can’t summarize my position as the issues are too complex. I do believe in a strong national defense.  But our security is not threatened by Iraq and Afghanistan.

L: Where do you stand on Iraq and Afghanistan?

J: I believe we should pull out of both and return our focus to fighting terrorism. The focus needs to be protecting America. I’m not sure if that is still the mission in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was surprised that Obama increased US presence in Afghanistan.

L: What about Social Security reform?

J:  Social Security is flawed.  When it was brought into existence the life expectancy was  55. Benefits started at 65.  Now, life expectancy is 75, and benefits start at about the same age. It’s a Ponzi scheme.  A combination of benefit reduction and/or privatization are necessary.  At least part of Social Security should include private accounts that are counted in your estate.

L: What do you think of making Social Security voluntary and converting it into a defined contribution plan?

J: That would make it viable.

L: What is your position on states’ rights and state sovereignty?

J: The states are 50 laboratories of democracy.  The burden that the federal government places on the states is outrageous.  The same is true of health care.  A return to federalism is needed.

L: Thank you, Governor.  I am certain that liberty Republicans will be interested in learning more about your ideas.

Walter Weyl was one of the three founders of the New Republic, all of whom were pivotal in the creation of so-called “state activist liberalism”, an Orwellian phrase if there ever was one. Weyl was a professor at the Wharton School of Business and advocate of socialism. His book, New Democracy, is not as popular today as Herbert Croly’s and Walter Lippmann’s, his partners’. But Weyl’s book is the most prophetic and forthright. In it he argues (unlike Croly and Lippmann who were not so explicit) that Progressivism (the ideology of Theodore Roosevelt -R- and Woodrow Wilson -D-) would lead to socialism.

The culmination of Weyl’s ideas has occurred. The close linkage between the Progressivism of the Rockefeller Republicans (of whom Theodore Roosevelt was the first) and the social democracy of the Democrats (that traces back to Franklin Roosevelt and William Jennings Bryan) is now evident. With the bailout we see that both Progressivism and social democracy are, as Weyl knew and advocated, complementary versions of socialism.  The triumph of Progressivism was, as Gabriel Kolko put it, the triumph of conservatism.

One side effect of this is we now know what to call them. They are not  “liberals”, which is what libertarians should be called. They are not “Progressives” because no ideology is more conservative than socialism.  Nor are they “social democrats” because they do not believe in democracy, preferring pandering to Wall Street and other special interests, especially public sector unions, failed manufacturing firms and banks to democracy.  Rather, they are SOCIALISTS.  I therefore say to you now:

KNOW YE BY THESE PRESENTS THAT HENCEFORTH I, MITCHELL LANGBERT, REFUSE TO CALL  ROCKEFELLER REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS BY ANY OTHER THAN THEIR TRUE NAME: SOCIALISTS.

A second side effect is that there is an important struggle ahead: to retake control of the GOP.  In the early twentieth century the GOP was the party of Progressivism.  William Howard Taft was what today would be called a conservative, and Theodore Roosevelt bolted the GOP to start the Progressive or Bull Moose Party by which time he was aggressively socialist.  William Jennings Bryan had captured the Democrats in 1896 on behalf of populism, and these ideas found final articulation not in the Progressivism of Wilson, who was for most of his life a Bourbon or laissez faire Democrat, but of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The fact is that most of FDR’s ideas had already been advocated by TR in 1912.

The GOP never recovered from the harm that TR did. Subsequent presidents, Harding and Coolidge, were not ideologically astute and did absolutely nothing to alter the Progressive institutions that Roosevelt and Wilson had initiated. Hoover was a Progressive from the time he had worked for Woodrow Wilson as his food industry price fixing Czar during World War I.  The New Deal was just a continuation of Hoover’s failed Progressive ideas such as using public works to cure unemployment. Eisenhower did nothing to reduce government and added his share, such as the Interstates.  Goldwater and Reagan were a departure, but George W. Bush was part of the Progressive tradition, and waited until several years into his office to make it clear.

We are left with a situation where socialist extremists are in control of both parties. The pro-bailout Republicans of McCain and Bush and the socialist Democrats constitute a twin-headed hydra.  We can win, though, because a healthy 30 percent of America still favors freedom.  If we align ourselves with various other interests, such as the religious,  we can win.

But there is a big fight ahead. Liberty Republicans need to think about how to convince the Rockefeller Republicans to move to their true home–the Democratic Party.  Yes, let’s get rid of them.  They predominate in the unwinnable Blue states anyway, and the public will not care if oil, health care and insurance executives align themselves with the party of greed, the Democrats.

In any case, we have a good argument:  the pro bailout Republicans lost because of their ideas. They have failed. They should step aside.

Mitchell Langbert blogs at http://www.mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com.

Not surprisingly, Obama, the Democrats in Congress, and the complacent Republicans in Congress recently voted to extend and appropriate additional funds to Cash for Clunkers. The program is just another endless example of a temporary, short-term government solution to a problem that could be solved by the free market.

The late economist Milton Friedman, whose wife Rose sadly passed away earlier this week, used to say that “nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” Generally this is true, but — despite the fact that Congress authorized an additional $2 billion in emergency funding for the bill two weeks ago — there are reports that the Cash for Clunkers program may already be out of cash yet again.

No problem, since the government has an unlimited source of revenue: namely, We the People. Another Friedman quote may be better fitting for this particular case: “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there would be a shortage of sand.”

Okay, so the Cash for Clunkers program is immensely popular — so why the criticism?

The program, administered by the the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (you trust them, don’t you?), was created to help boost the auto industry while helping the environment.

Sounds good, right? Consumers who own a car with low fuel efficiency can receive $3,500 to $4,500 from the federal government if they buy a new car with higher fuel efficiency.

Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron explains several problems with the program, namely: 1) the program pays people to junk cars that still have economic value; 2) the program will cause an increase in driving; 3) Official government policy favors one industry (automobiles, in this case) at the expense of other industries. Miron concludes that Congress “should end the program, not expand it”.

Of course, the government solution does not come without inefficiencies. This article points out that many car dealerships are considering pulling out of the program because they are not receiving payments from the government. Many of the dealerships understandably need that money to pay their bills and meet their payroll. Surprise, surprise — the government is not responding to local car dealerships who are participating in its own program.

Finally, there is today’s headline in The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: “Charities worry that car donations will go clunk” — which is very concerning.  Talk about a good way to stifle the market — let’s just put charities out of business altogether and have the government save us all.

The article highlights how very worthwhile endeavors such as Kidney Cars Program and the Rawhide Boys Ranch are now competing with the government. These private charities — along with scores of others — both use donated vehicles to raise funds for their programs.

This underscores Professor Miron’s point about the negative impact of the government coming to the rescue of one industry and impacting it to the detriment of other industries.

A program like Cash for Clunkers is simply not an appropriate role for a constitutionally limited government to administer in a free society.

Cash for Clunkers is a temporary solution that will soon go broke.

We’ll just have to wait and see how long it takes for the politicians to — once again — rescue the overzealous program with the hard-earned dollars of cash-strapped American taxpayers.

Recently, Newsweek featured a headline claiming that “We Are All Socialists Now.” Perhaps it should have featured a picture of Demetrius Poliorcetes on the cover instead. The history of the ancient Hellenistic cities in what is now Arabia and Turkey might provide more useful knowledge about what is happening in the United States than one can find in newspapers, magazines or on television.

Michael Rostovtzeff was a Ukrainian-born archaeologist and professor of ancient history at Yale beginning in 1925. He died in 1952. He was among the first historians to study the ancient world’s economies and to emphasize the role of capitalism in the rise and decline of ancient societies.

I have just started reading Rostovtzeff’s monumental Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire*, one of a number of massive books that he authored. The text runs to 488 pages but there are in addition more than 200 pages of footnotes. Friends of liberty will do well to consider Rostovtzeff’s work.

He starts the book by discussing the history of Greece and the Hellenistic city states that Greeks founded in what is now Arabia and Turkey. He notes that “class warfare” was common in classical Greece proper. “This class-war made the growth and development of a sound capitalistic system very difficult.” In classical Greece there were widespread movements for redistribution of land and abolition of debts. The problem was so widespread that Athens and Itana in Crete required citizens to swear that they would not put redistribution of land and abolition of debts to the vote. It seems that ACORN has precedents.

Rostovtzeff writes:

“Revolution and reaction followed each other with brief delays, and were marked by wholesale slaughter or expulsion of the best citizens…What was lost by the Greek cities of the European mainland and most of the islands was gained by the Hellenistic monarchies and more especially by the Greek cities of the East.”

Unlike the democracies in Greece proper, the eastern Hellenistic kings of the fourth and third centuries BC were anti-libertarian capitalists, much like more recent rulers of Chile and post-Mao China. “The result was that every attempt at a social revolution within their gates was stopped by the strong hand of the Hellenistic monarchs, and that the cities were very rarely involved in external warfare.”

The kings’ anti-libertarian suppression of revolution had a libertarian effect, at least temporarily. “The accumulation of capital and the introduction of improved methods in trade and industry proceeded more freely and successfully in the East than in the cities of Greece proper. Hence the commercial capitalism of the Greek cities of the fourth century attained an ever higher development, which brought the Hellenistic states very near to the stage of industrial capitalism that characterizes the economic history of Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”

That is mind blowing. In the fourth and third centuries BC Greeks in Asia Minor were attaining 19th century levels of industrialization? In other words, from the year 300 BC until 1900 virtually no consistent economic progress was made? And how easy might it be to revert to the decline that followed the fall of the Roman Empire roughly 1500 years ago? True, these societies depended on slave labour. But recall that the American economy also so depended until 1862.

Rostovtzeff notes that the Greek cities not only had a large internal market and a large, competitive trade, but also:

“They gradually improved the technique of agricultural and of industrial production with the aid of pure and applied science…and they employed both in agriculture (including cattle-breeding) and in industry the methods of pure capitalistic economy based on slave-labour. They introduced for the first time a mass production of goods for an indefinite market. They developed banking and credit and succeeded in creating not only general rules for maritime commerce…but also a kind of common civil law, which was valid all over the Hellenistic world. The same tendency towards unification may be noticed in attempts to stabilize the currency, or at least to establish stable relations between the coins of the various independent trading states.”

These impressive advances, a globalization that occurred nearly 2,500 years ago, very quickly “stunted” and then was “atrophied” by “constant warfare which raged almost without interruption all over the Hellenistic world.” It didn’t take long for the military-industrial complex to assert itself.  ”The wars forced the Hellenistic states, both great and small, to concentrate their efforts on military preparations, on building up the largest possible armies and navies, on inventing new devices in military engineering, and thus wasting enormous sums of money as, for instance, in the case of the siege of Rhodes by Demetrius Poliorcetes.”

Rostovtzeff notes that this led to:

“Nationalization of both production and exchange, which was carried out in some, at least, of the Hellenistic monarchies, especially Egypt. By nationalization I mean the concentration of the management of the most essential branches of economic activity in the hands of the state, that is to say, of the king and his officials. Profitable at first for the state, this system gradually led to dishonesty and lawlessness on the part of the officials and to the almost complete elimination of competition and of the free play of the individual energy on the part of the population.

“Hand in hand with this tendency towards state control went the minute elaboration of a highly refined system of taxation, which affected every side of economic life. It was based on the experience of the Oriental monarchies, but it went much farther both in inventing new taxable objects and in improving the mode of collecting the taxes. The burden of taxation lay heavily on the population of the Hellenistic world…

“This disastrous economic system of the Hellenistic monarchies produced ever-growing discontent among the masses of the natives. From the end of the third century onwards the native population of Egypt, for example, rose repeatedly against its foreign oppressors…”

Naturally, the warfare and economic dislocations due to taxes and socialism in the Greek world opened the city gates to a rising new republic: Rome. Might the United States’ ever-expanding government spending; subsidization of corrupt and inefficient financial institutions and corporations; and its military-industrial complex open the door to the ascendancy of a new power, this time from the east?

*All quotes in this blog are taken from chapter 1, “Italy and the Civil War”.

Mitchell Langbert can be visited at http://www.mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com.

The Republican Liberty Caucus of California’s Executive Board approved a resolution calling on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state legislature to fix the state’s budget problems by rolling back excessive spending, not by seeking a federal bailout.

The full text of the resolution:

Whereas California’s current budget crisis is the result of more than a decade of irresponsible spending by the state legislature, and also the result of billions of dollars of bonds and other spending requirements approved directly by California voters; and whereas

California would have a multi-billion dollar budget surplus if the rule limiting the growth of spending to inflation plus population growth were still in effect; and whereas

California is already one of the most taxed states in the nation; and whereas

It would be deeply unfair to the taxpayers of other states to send their tax dollars to bail out California, or to burden those other taxpayers with additional debt to finance a Federal bailout of California; and whereas

Hand-waving and vague invocations of so-called “Keynesian economics” are no substitute for honest fiscal discipline; and whereas

It is inappropriate for the great State of California to become dependent on or addicted to injections of Federal taxpayer dollars; and whereas

Governor Schwarzenegger loudly foretold over $9 billion of “deep and painful cuts” if propositions 1A through 1E failed to pass in the May 19th special election; and whereas

The voters heard Governor Schwarzenegger loud and clear and responded by voting nearly 2 to 1 against propositions 1A through 1E; and

Governor Schwarzenegger said, “I heard the message of the people loud and clear, and I’m sure that the legislative leaders and the legislators also heard the message loud and clear”;

Therefore be it resolved the Republican Liberty Caucus of California hereby urges Governor Schwarzenegger and the state legislature to neither seek nor accept any federal bailout, but instead to address California’s budget crisis by reducing government spending to a sustainable level.

Using some of the same survey data that I used last week to analyze a potential shift in Republican priorities in the libertarian direction, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com cites a Gallup poll that claims 80% of Republicans believe Big Government is the largest threat to the country, while just 10% believe big business is the greatest of threats. Just 9% of those surveyed said Big Labor is the largest threat.

In an article earlier this month, libertarian Tim Carney documents how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has given low rankings to liberty-minded Republicans as of late.   According to Carney, “Rep. Ron Paul — the most steadfast congressional opponent of regulation, taxation, and any sort of government intervention in business—scored lower than 90% of Democrats last year on the Chamber’s scorecard.

Carney correctly points out that the agenda of big business is often much different than the agenda of liberty-oriented Republicans such as the members of Congress endorsed by the Republican Liberty Caucus.  According to Carney’s research, eleven House Republicans failed to win the Chamber’s award — a mixture of libertarian/conservative members like Paul and liberal members like then-Rep. Wayne Gilchrest.

All but Gilchrest in this group of “business unfriendly” Republicans earned a black mark from the Chamber for voting against the Wall Street bailout twice.  And conservative or libertarian Republicans Paul, Ted Poe of Texas, Jeff Flake of Arizona, Jack Kingston of Georgia, Paul Broun of Georgia, and Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin voted against the college aid bill, while seven of the 11 voted against Bush’s stimulus.

Concludes Carney: “Advocates of bigger government like to assail their opponents as pawns of big business. The Chamber’s shunning of DeMint and Paul will hopefully help put that lie to rest.”

All true.  Unfortunately, only 11 members of Congress had the courage to vote against the Bush stimulus package and only 17 Republicans did not vote for any of the bailouts — including Paul, Jeff Flake, Paul Broun, Jack Kingston, and Ted Poe.

It seems a majority of Republican legislators are corporate pawns when it suits their interests.  There are a few principled outlyers — Republicans with a conscience.  Most of those folks have been endorsed by the RLC for many years.

The new Alabama affiliate of the Republican Liberty Caucus is off and running!

Members of the Alabama Republican Liberty Caucus assisted with the coordination of three Tax Day Tea Parties held in Alabama. RLC Alabama Secretary Shana Kluck and RLC Alabama Media Coordinator Steve Gordon helped secure speakers, provide professional advice, and assisted with other logistical concerns for the Tuscaloosa and Birmingham Tea Parties, respectively. Additionally, RLC supporter Matthew Givens was a coordinator for the Montgomery event while Alabama RLC Chair Scott Boykin was involved in the Shelby County Tea Party logistical efforts.

While crowd estimates vary, approximately ten thousand people attended these three events, with the Birmingham Tea Party receiving national television attention on Fox News.

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Last week, Steve Gordon was on the Rachel Maddow show discussing the Tea Party movement (see above video) and the rift between Big Government Republicans and liberty-minded Republicans. Gordon caught Maddow off-guard and clearly explained that the liberty movement has been working for many years to change the direction of Washington.

According to HotAir.com’s Green Room, Gordon took “hard shots at Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee and Alan Keyes” which “should suffice to dispel any notion that the Tea Party movement is a ‘neocon/Republican/Fox News’ conspiracy.”  As Maddow explained, Sean Hannity was not welcome at the Atlanta Tea Party — at least not if we had our way!

On Thursday, Alabama RLC Media Coordinator Steve Gordon spent an hour as an in-studio guest along with national political journalist Robert Stacy McCain on WYDE’s Lee Davis Show. Discussing the topic of recent Alabama Tea Parties, McCain stressed a point which Gordon had made to him during Ron Paul’s recent presidential bid: “The Ron Paul movement wasn’t about Ron Paul. It was about a movement.”

It looks like anyone remotely near Alabama needs to join these folks today. They mean business!

According to the latest National Taxpayer Union rankings of Congress, RLC-endorsed Representative Jeff Flake is the top friend to taxpayers in Congress. Representative Flake (R-AZ) has always been a RLC favorite.  In the photo at right, RLC interim Arizona Chair Roy Miller handed a RLC PAC check to Jeff Flake for his 2008 re-election bid.

Flake has earned the top spot in NTU’s ranking for six years in a row, tying Ron Paul’s six-year stint from 1979 to 1985. Drs. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Paul Broun (R-GA) followed Flake closely in the 2009 ranking.

Other RLC-endorsed incumbents also scored well: Jim Jordan (89%), Mike Pence (88%), Ed Royce (88%), Doug Lamborn (88%), Jimmy Duncan (87%), Scott Garrett (85%), John Shadegg (84%), and Dana Rohrabacher (82%).

Representatives Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Doug Lamborn (R-CO), in particular, should deserve our support, as they are fairly new members in Congress.  They have found a way to resist the temptations that come along with being a new member of Congress.

That said, Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA) and John Shadegg (R-AZ), while still receiving “A” grades from NTU, have fairly low scores for Congressional veterans who are supposed to be champions of less spending.  I would urge RLC members in Arizona and California to build relationships with these members and ask them to hold the line on spending — 82% is not good enough, Mr. Rohrabacher!  And Mr. Shadegg’s bailout vote is simply unacceptable.

As I posted earlier, only 17 members of Congress did not vote for one of the bailouts. RLC-endorsed members Flake, Paul, Broun, Duncan, Royce, and Garrett can be trusted to hold the line on spending and did not support any bailouts.  They are true champions of liberty.