Some declared the death of journalism during the 2008 Presidential election when Obama’s admitted cocaine and pot use was not worthy of their scrutiny.

I declared obvious liberal bias in 1994 when they referred to Gingrich’s proposals as cuts to this program or that program when there was not one penny cut to any program whatsoever.

Two months later they touted Clinton’s budget as “in balance” after he stole social security and his “reductions in the proposed budget increases” (only months previously every newscaster/talking head called this a cut).

Last week a democrat operative released a secretly videotaped conversation Romney had at a fundraiser. He declared 47% unreachable by his campaign. Let’s see, 49% of wage earners pay no federal income taxes, so across the board tax cuts don’t mean much to them.

When Obama took office there were 30 million people on food stamps and today there are 47 million people on food stamps. I don’t think welfare reform will win many of these voters over either.

We can argue about the percentage (I would put it closer to 40%) that “Romney doesn’t have to worry about” as he will never win their support and he doesn’t need to campaign to get it. Wow, is that some revelation or political reality.

Liberals and the lame stream news media can castigate Romney for not “worrying about the 47%” that won’t vote for him anyway, but we all know that is exactly what Obama did. He doesn’t care about the 54% that don’t want Obamacare and want it repealed.

This president never intended to “please” the 47% that did not vote for him. In 2009, during the $800 billion stimulus package negotiations, the 47% wanted to have some input in the stimulus to what Obama (or Rahm Emanuel) replied with “we won” and immediately dismissed the minority’s suggestions. We never hear about that incident.

When Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell stated he was committed to making Obama a one-term president he was excoriated by liberals and the media. Only now has it been recently reported that that remark was completely out of context.

Over the past couple months we have seen the media dig up stupid high school pranks that Mitt Romney participated in 40 years ago? The news media is making up their own narrative. They report that Mitt Romney was a bully cutting the hair of some kid and that kid was “reportedly” homosexual.

This victim is now deceased so it is very convenient for them to speculate on these 40-year-old details (and ignore the cocaine snorter Obama). His family reported that their son was not a homosexual and think it is pathetic to use their brother to further a political agenda.

Obama’s latest foreign policy debacle is straight out of ‘Wag the Dog’. On September 11, radical Islamist’s planned terrorist attacks in Egypt and Libya where they kidnap and torture four Americans at a consulate in Benghazi. After the White House was notified of the attacks and the Ambassadors whereabouts were unknown, the president chose to go to bed! Four or five days later we see police taking a “C” grade film producer into custody. I swear I thought I saw Dustin Hoffman just off camera directing the camera shots and heard Robert De Niro saying, “The disgusting movie trailer produced by an American was the impetus of mob violence escalating to murder and torture.”

Instead of any pressure put on the President of the United States, the liberals and news media (used interchangeably) hammers Mitt Romney for pointing out this Administration’s acquiescence and apology for a two-minute movie trailer that nobody had seen (until they told the public where to find it).

This column expresses the personal opinions of Michael Fredrickson. If you would like to post your opinion online regarding this column, go to “columns” on our website. Register to post your comment on any column or article or write a SIGNED letter to the editor. Names can be withheld by request with a valid day time phone number. Email comments to Michael@FortBendStar.com.

After my first two or three years of college and after the state’s loss of oil revenue, they tripled the tuition to $36 for a three-hour course. The state’s entire justification for the cost increase was the loss of oil revenue in the Texas Permanent School fund.

Supposedly, the inflation adjusted cost of a barrel of oil is still lower today than during their peak in the early 1980’s. However, aren’t they drilling twice as many oil wells today than 25 years ago?

Has the university’s cost of electricity gone up that much. Have professor’s salaries increased that much? I don’t know of any single factor that can justify that amount of inflation. When I’ve asked some smart finance friends of mine they say there are more people attending college. So what! Build more classrooms, hire more faculty, etc.

A college education is not a commodity like oil that fluctuates depending on supply and demand. When demand increases, just build some more classrooms and hire more professors and bingo – you have increased the supply. Texas public schools educate kids in grades K-12  for about $9,000 per year and that includes the costs of textbooks and busing.

What is the cost of a high school classroom? The only difference between a college classroom and a high school classroom should be the teachers salary versus the professors salary.

I remember a parking permit costing about $35 per semester. Today it is around $500 for the year. Who is keeping an eye on these knuckleheads that are coming up with these rates? Why is it so much cheaper for a three-hour freshman English course at WCJC than at Texas State or the University of Texas?

These costs are absolutely outrageous! To add insult to injury many of the college students are building up huge amounts of student loan debt that they cannot afford to repay after graduation unless they can find a job.

It would seem to me that the Texas Permanent School fund should be decreasing college tuition costs. Doesn’t this revenue source increase in value annually and throw off increasing amounts of revenue to fund education. Why does college tuition just increase. In the financial meltdown of 2008, the recession, etc., etc. I saw lots of costs decrease throughout the economy. When are those tuition costs going to decrease?

When thousands of jobs could be created by building another 1,000-mile pipeline across the country, this president stops job creation.  The pipeline would be added to the ALREADY 200,000 miles of underground pipeline that carries virtually 100% of all petroleum products used in the United States. In California alone there is over 8,000 miles of these pipelines already in use every day.

So, the ultra left wing, liberal, environmentalist wacko state of California has thousands and thousands of miles of underground petroleum pipelines and democrat politicians fear mongered approval of the Keystone pipeline and stopped the project. Twenty-five million Americans looking for well-paying jobs and these politicians shutdown the private sector from creating at least 10,000 jobs on one simple, safe, probably over engineered pipeline from Canada to Texas.

Some of these pinheads said they were just going to pipe it down to the Texas coast to load it on tankers and sell it to China. So what! What business is it of theirs? Who cares what they do with it? Will it be put into the supply chain and increase the amount of oil available that leads to downward pricing pressure?

Remember the president and his blind followers don’t want to talk about the economy or jobs. Just read last week’s Bev’s Burner in this newspaper. There is NO “widespread republican platform” of not allowing abortions in cases of rape. In fact, I have never met a pro-life conservative or republican that believed victims of rape should not be allowed abortion as an option. Todd Akin was chastised by Mitt Romney and republican leaders and was urged to leave the race for his stupid comments.

We have 25 million Americans unemployed, underemployed or stopped looking for work and they want to talk about sex scandals. Who cares about politicians jumping in the Sea of Galilee in various states of dress? One was reportedly naked! Oh my gosh, say it isn’t so. For every republican sex scandal that leads to the defeat of the candidate in the PARTY PRIMARY, there are two democrat sex scandals where the democrat party circled the wagons to re-elect them.

When Obama was sworn into office, the national average of gasoline was $1.80 a gallon, while today the national average is $3.75. When is the last time you heard the lame stream media report the misery of paying at the pump. When gasoline was averaging $2.50 during the Bush administration, they had national news stories on it weekly! That was the only thing you saw the national media report about the economy was the “taxing” effect of gasoline prices on the workingman. Oh, that’s why they don’t report it anymore; the workingman is at home “getting a piece of the pie” without having to work for it. Maybe it is because their guy is in office.

These same democrats harp on 700,000 job losses per month when Obama was sworn in and blame Bush for handing over an economic meltdown. They say the tax cuts didn’t help. What a crock! What they leave out are the seven years and nine months that the average unemployment rate was between 4.2% and 6.3%. Only in the last three months of his eight years did unemployment creep up every month. That was not his economic policy that lead to the financial meltdown.

I admit to suffering from Bush fatigue syndrome during his last two years in office. Or maybe it was both houses of congress being controlled by the democrats that just gave me the fatigue.You hear Obama and the Kool-Aid drinkers constantly say, ‘you don’t want to go back to the eight years of Bush’. Well, yes I do! That would be almost eight years of lower taxes for EVERYBODY, high productivity, virtually no inflation, low unemployment and growing the GDP almost every year.

Romney is a multi-millionaire. I understand he has made two years of taxes public. I haven’t seen them. I don’t really care. Since Romney is already a millionaire, I assume he would have the most honest administration in history. It would be interesting to see how he drains the bureaucratic swamp of entrenched graft that is inherent in Washington D.C.

Unlike the poster child for term-limits, the former democrat congressman from Beaumont Jack Brooks who went to Washington on a bus and came back 40 years later a millionaire, Romney would not have any need to feather his nest. Romney doesn’t even drink caffeinated soda so I don’t really see him ever doing anything illegal.

Just My Opinion… the so-called Republican establishment that did not embrace the Romney bandwagon because when this Boy Scout wins, he will not put up with their shenanigans. Supposedly, they grumbled that he will hurt their chances of keeping control of the House and limit their chances of winning the Senate. As long as Romney wins, I don’t care if they win the Senate. Don’t tell me they need the Senate to overturn Obamacare. They would need a filibuster-proof threshold to guarantee this outcome and not just “control” of the Senate.

I wonder how much the president gave to charities before anybody was looking? Oh, I do know. When he released his tax returns during the 2008 presidential campaign we find he gave a paltry 0.4 percent to charity in 2002, 1.4% in 2003 and 1.2% in 2004.

I guess when he says ‘you are your brother’s keeper’ he really does mean “you” and not him. Have you seen the president’s half-brother, George Obama in the movie – 2016 Barack’s America? You would have learned that his brother lives in the (third world) slums of Nairobi, Kenya. You would also find out “Who is Barack Obama”. What is also apparent in this movie is the lack of media vetting of Obama’s past and political rise.

Instead of reporting that in Barack’s own words, he “ate dog”, they spread democrat talking points that Romney “strapped” his family dog (carrier) to the top of his car on a family vacation. Wow! I was under the impression that Mitt only vacationed on private jets.

By the way, nobody that questions Obama’s Hawaiian birth, contends that 49 year’s ago there was a plot to make this little baby the future president. Instead, they think that nobody knew who he was until that fateful keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and only at that point in time were democrats worried about “anything” in his past that would hurt his (their) future political ambitions.

George Soros and democrats nationwide got their first glimpse of ‘the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.’ and wanted this political neophyte to be president. I believe that democrats were the first to question his birthplace and not “birthers”. After that night in 2004, Barack only voted present in the Illinois state senate except for one bill that he voted to keep in committee. That bill would protect a baby that survived a botched (presumably late-term) abortion from being killed outside of the womb (made it a crime to “dispose” of a living baby).

It really is disgusting that a man that has never made even a single year of his taxes public would chastise a political opponent for only releasing two years of taxes. I wonder when Mitt Romney is President will Dingy Harry want him to succeed?

I guess the Senate Majority Leader would not be fit for or be approved for a cabinet level position since he won’t release any of his tax returns. Even though at least two of the President’s cabinet appointees were actually caught cheating on their taxes, Dingy Harry continues to go down this road.

Then to top it off President Obama will not even release any of his college records or transcripts. In the words of Stretch Pelosi, Debbie Blabbermouth Schultz and Dingy Harry, “until he releases them, we don’t know what he is hiding.”

The same liberal news media that repeatedly brought up Romney’s “high school” prank some 40 years ago, just accepts the president hiding his college transcripts from public scrutiny. Of course this is the same press that dismisses the president’s close association with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. Close enough friends that Ayers hosted meetings at his Chicago home in 1995 to promote Obama for the Illinois state senate. Never even one question.

You won’t hear it in the lame stream media, but remember Obama’s own words. If he didn’t “turn this around in three years, then this (his administration) is going to be a one term proposition.” That, along with the rest of his empty rhetoric such as – no lobbyists in his administration (the most lobbyists of any modern president), the meetings on legislation will be open (when Democrats controlled both the house and senate meetings were not even open to Republicans much less the public), all legislation will be available online for five days before voting appears all but forgotten by the lame stream media.

When the liberal talking head lets the democrat continue with that reasoning without question, keep in mind that they want their viewers to be deceived also.

When Bush or Romney were in executive leadership roles as governor or president, unemployment was between 4% and 6%, while an unemployment rate of 5% is considered full-employment. How can you “encourage” an economy to create jobs that has employed just about everybody that wants to work?

In other words, it is comparing apples and oranges. In other words comparing Bush’s first 42 months as president to Obama’s first 42 months is apples and oranges. Remember it is a lot harder to get people to quit a job and go to work somewhere else (although probably at higher pay) than it is to get unemployed people to find an available job.

These knuckleheads know this. I’m sure it has even been pointed out to them on air before and they know their argument is fallacious, but they can’t help but keep up the lie. It makes too good a sound bite and they seldom get challenged on the logic (or lack thereof).

Then these same knuckleheads say with a straight face that we need to rebuild our infrastructure. No we don’t. Let me make this clear, the United States is NOT in dire need of rebuilding our infrastructure. That liberal democrat campaigning for the U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts is comparing China’s spending on infrastructure to the United States. She states, ‘China spends 9% of GDP while we’re “only” at 2.4% of GDP’.

When China spends billions of dollars on the Three Gorges Dam that is like a mile long and kicks out a couple hundred thousand citizens from their homes (some living in the same dwelling for generations) the democrat nominee calls this progress. Here, those of us that believe in liberty over tyranny call it government takeover while environmentalists call it habitat destruction.

Our infrastructure is pretty good because it was engineered (over-engineered is many cases) and built to last a century or longer. Every time these pinheads say “rebuild infrastructure” just replace it with “rebuild public sector unions”. THAT is where they want money to go. Not to public companies that will hire multitudes of people (some even union workers).

By the way, if you live in Sugar Land or Missouri City, the cities are responsible for 95% of the infrastructure you come in contact with on a daily basis. If you have a problem with infrastructure, you call the mayor or city council and your cities tax rate takes care of, maintains, upgrades all of that infrastructure, and not the federal government. Have you ever called a federal agency for any infrastructure problem?

The president actually met with their CEO and gave a speech from their factory floor while promoting this company as an example of stimulus money creating jobs. What a disgrace. The one-half billion dollars from government guaranteed loans will be used to pay back private investors in front of taxpayers including Obama’s fund-raiser and money-bundler George Kaiser.

So, the president wants to increase taxes by $1.5 trillion while spending $500 billion on a “jobs programs”. Would that be the “shovel-ready” infrastructure jobs that were suppose to be created in the first $800 billion pork-ulus bill?

On Monday he also specified cuts to Medicare and Medicaid benefits of $580 billion, while letting the Bush-era tax cuts expire. According to Obama, ‘it’s only right we ask everyone to pay their fair share.’ The top 1% of income earners pay approximately 40% of all income taxes paid to the U. S. Treasury.

Really, the only people not paying their fair share are the lowest income earners, which is approaching 50% of all income taxpayers. I think most of these untaxed workers realize they get a pass and actually say to themselves ‘thank you income taxpayers, for giving us a free ride and I don’t believe in demonizing you.’

He also buries $130 billion of increased fees (taxes) that everybody will have to pay and not just millionaires. Like I said when he was elected, ‘everybody will pay higher taxes under this president.’

This president has no clue where or how jobs are created. Every dollar the government taxes from anyone is a dollar taken away from job creators. That dollar does not end up in job creators’ hands; it ends up in the government’s big fat belly that belches out dragon fire on our free-market economy.

Just two years ago, Obama said emphatically that you don’t increase taxes on anybody during a recession. On Monday Obama gave false options like, we have to gut education or increase taxes on corporations and billionaires. He repeated this straw man fallacy throughout his pitiful speech.

I have serious doubts about national polls that show this charlatan with a 42% job approval. I cannot believe there is that high a percentage of a kool-aid drinker.

That is stupid! Every dollar the government takes from us is a dollar the private sector does not have to circulate through the economy.

The stupid liberal answer to this is, ‘the government spends and circulates that dollar back through the economy’.

Seriously? These people repeat this lie over and over so it filters down to the voting public that actually falls for that (il) logic. These people equate government spending with private sector investment. There is not one single thing that the government spends money on that is not wasted.

The liberal will say, ‘the private sector wastes money as well on things like over paid CEO’s’. This liberal is prime for being educated. When the private sector wastes money, they go out of business. When the government wastes (or the program fails) money, they expand the program!

You see, federal government bureaucracy just belches and takes another bite from the trough. It is a gluttonous pig that never, ever, ever down sizes. When you and your family have less or take a pay cut, you decrease your expenses.

Not the federal government.

Today, it sees businesses that are too big to fail. It has turned established contract law on its head. Thirty years ago Lee Iacocca borrowed money from the federal government to keep Chrysler in business. He paid it back with interest and met all other obligations (contracts).

When GM could not afford to pay the auto unions all their promises and lifetime guarantees, Barack Hussein Obama took over the company and told everybody that GM owed money to jump off a cliff. Oh, except for all the current and retired union workers pensions and medical insurance. If you owned common or preferred stock or a corporate bond, too bad.

This is how government operates. When it fails, they want more of your money. Take the failed $1 trillion stimulus package that was a payoff to the unions/labor. The president’s defenders say it wasn’t enough. They say it should have been $2 trillion!

I’m serious! And they say it with a straight face.  Now he wants an “infrastructure bank”? to pay for infrastructure. Over a year ago, I told you any government stimulus should be targeted and temporary. These same defenders admit that only 10 to 15 percent of the stimulus was for so-called shovel-ready infrastructure projects. Before the stimulus was passed, they all acted like that was all that was in the stimulus.

In response to last week Bev’s Burner comment about republican’s thinking democrats don’t love their country. We conservatives know that most democrat voters love their country. It is the extreme liberal democrats in congress that spend all their time trying to change our country that obviously don’t love it (Maxine Waters, Democrat, California).

Tell that to Rep. Maxine Waters (Democrat, California). This liberal democrat made sure her husband’s bank received TARP funds even though the bank should have been taken over due to its low capital to asset ratio. Prior to that she berated oil company executives at a Congressional hearings where she admitted, ‘…this liberal will be all about socialize… uh, uh, uh, will be all about basically, uh taking over and the government running all of your companies’. Another proud liberal democrat exposed by the words coming out of her mouth. See for yourself on You Tube.

During the republican presidential debate last week not one of the candidates would agree to $10 in spending cuts for $1 in increased taxes. Every political talk-show host quoted that as an example of the Tea Party running the Republican Party. I was pleasantly surprised that every candidate was smart enough not to fall for that trap. It was the only moment in the debate that I cheered out loud.

They could see the headline… Candidate so-in-so agrees to tax increase.

Every tax dollar out of our pocket is a dollar poured down a rat-hole. The over-reaching federal government does not create one job with that money.

They are trying to disguise a tax increase by calling it tax reform. When the talking heads on TV or a politician says the words “tax reform” just “hear” the word “tax increase”. You see, there is no reform, just deduction take-aways and nothing else.

Call your congressman today and tell him the only tax reform you want to see is a flat tax or replacing the federal income tax with a national sales tax. These measures are true tax reform. Anything else is just a tax increase.

Remember, the Bush tax cuts gave a tax cut to every single income taxpayer in the United States. That is not enough for the liberal democrats. Bush really got their goat when he gave an income tax cut to everyone instead of just the rich. You can tell because they still repeat that lie today.

He brought down the highest marginal rate from 39.6% to 35% and revenue to the treasury increased. Just 4.6 percentage points has driven these democrats crazy. That 4% is your money, not the governments and not the liberal democrat that argues with you that the government should have that money (to pour down a rat-hole).

The liberal democrat that argues for this tax increase wants to redistribute wealth and nothing more. Let me tell you something, we redistribute wealth ourselves. We distribute it to our churches and charities and non-profits that deserve our wealth and actually get it to people that need help.

These haters of wealth creation will site statistics that “prove” the highest income earners are increasing wealth while the lowest income earners are losing wealth and then say ‘see, we need to increase taxes on those evil rich people’. All they want is to redistribute wealth and nothing else. In fact, the Bush tax cuts for everyone, decreased the percentage on the lowest marginal rate more than on the highest marginal rate.

Never mind what will happen to job creation after the government takes $500 billion a year out of the private sector through tax increases if they let the Bush tax cuts expire.

Don’t forget, if you let the Bush tax cuts expire there will be a higher tax rate on the lowest income taxpayers. So, whenever anyone complains about the Bush tax cuts just ask him or her why they want a tax increase on the poor.

I hate to break this news to you, but you are not entitled to one cent. You did not pay into anything. You merely paid a tax. Yes, it can be broken out on your pay stub separately but that does not mean doodle squat.

That amount itemized on your pay stub is not placed into an account with your name on it. Therefore it is a tax – plain and simple. That is the amount you are taxed to give freebees to senior citizens. That amount is not figured based on what it will cost to put food on your table when you turn 62. It is the amount needed to provide money to TODAY’S seniors.

That amount is deducted from your check because our politicians have promised to give every single person 62-years-old or older approximately $1,200 per month for the rest of their natural lives. In other words, that is the tax you have to pay for the politicians to keep getting the seasoned citizen vote (vote buying).

The first year that Social Security was established, benefits were paid for an average of five years. Today, the average payout is 20 years. Where in the U.S. Constitution does it say that workers should pay for any individual’s retirement lifestyle for any length of time?

Of course when Social Security was established by the Social-ist, Franklin D. Roosevelt, working people probably only had to pay a dollar a month TAX to pay for those current retired persons that were only going to live five more years.

Social Security was supposed to be a safety net, not a retirement plan. Since it was established, forward-looking, hard-working Americans have discovered this thing called the 401K, which is a retirement plan. That is supposed to pay for food on your table, your RV, your other travel plans, etc. So, why are we paying those seasoned citizens that did plan for retirement a Social Security check?

In the not too distant future we won’t. In fact I hear political pundits bring it up frequently.

This is known as means-testing and this is the future of the Social Security program. The first thing a retired person will start squealing like a stuck pig is ‘I paid into the system, so I am entitled to get a check’. Relax! This won’t go into effect for anyone on social security or anyone 40 or older.

As I stated earlier, you paid a tax and that tax should not and will not (when they eventually start means-testing) benefit those of us that chose to establish a retirement plan that does not rely on a $1,200 check each month, courtesy of current workers. In other words, you will not be able to opt-out of Social Security and provide for your own retirement. We will all have to pay the TAX but if you have a well-funded retirement plan, then you don’t get a Social Security check.

You see, they say we will have an effective tax rate of over 90% in about 20 years in order to pay social security and Medicare benefits to every retired person at the same rate we pay today. That is not going to happen.

Either we slash everybody’s social security benefits DRAMATICALLY or we only hand it out to those that really need a safety net. If benefits are slashed enough to keep everybody on the dole, then the people that truly need a safety net will not receive enough to keep them from eating dog food.