Al Checchi

Governor Jerry Brown has proposed a "temporary" (seven year) 30% increase in the tax rate on California incomes over $250,000 to close about half of what has become an annual event - a $15-20 billion budget deficit. If approved, ritual smoke and mirror accounting tricks, he says, will close the...

Americans are clearly unhappy with the current state of the country, but there is nothing new about American dissatisfaction with the status quo. We are an upwardly mobile society imbued with a belief that the future will always be better than the past. However, in recent years, rather than rolling...

During the four year period ending in 2012, we, the American people, will have consumed an astronomical $5.25 trillion more government than we paid for. Rather than tighten our belts with everyone taking less and many contributing more, we chose instead to consume at an unprecedented pace -- and leave...

The decision to require employers to provide contraceptives or sterilization, as part of government mandated health insurance and specifically single these out as exempt from co-pays or deductibles runs counter to our political and cultural traditions. There is a significant difference between recognizing a woman's "right" to choose and making...

Both parties have billed the 2012 election as the most important in a generation, a real page turner. Both say that we face a clear choice. Both have done everything possible to obscure exactly what that choice is.

The president and Democrats (brave fellows) appear to be standing with the...

The chickens have finally come home to roost -- the Hostess Company, the maker of the Twinkie, filed for bankruptcy. If anything speaks to the failure of capitalism and our cultural decline, it is the demise of the Twinkie.

Much of who we are as a people is wrapped...

Are we completely nuts? Why are we electing and re-electing people who are hastening us down a path of national economic self-destruction? This year the public debt of the United States passed 100 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). At current levels of imbalance between government revenues and expenditures, our...

Centered in the systemic abuse of the housing markets, the 2008 financial crisis was the culmination of the greatest financial swindle in human history. Yet three years later, little has been done to punish the offenders or prevent a reoccurrence. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, sponsored...

Congress and the administration tied themselves in knots over a two-month, 2% reduction in payroll taxes. This titanic struggle ranks right up there with Gulliver's Lilliputians warring over the proper end from which to eat a soft boiled egg! Can our politicians get any more ridiculous? This may have seemed...

During these difficult times, as the holiday season approaches and we contemplate the forthcoming national elections, the words of Josiah Gilbert Holland penned over a century ago speak to our shared desires for able and worthy leadership:

God give us men! A time like this demands
...

Similar to the presidential election of 1980, America's last period of nerve-wracking economic dislocation, the 2012 election will be concerned with two things: first, a referendum on the incumbent and his policies, and second, the size and composition of government spending. The bottom lines will be, do the American people...

California has long been the nation's bellwether. Americans would do well to take a lesson from its example:

The exposure during the past few years of the true financial condition of some of America's largest financial institutions begs the question of the fiscal condition of the country's largest state. If...

Despite projected federal government spending exceeding $50 trillion over the next 10 years, the so-called "super committee" has failed to reach an agreement on cutting our anticipated federal deficit by a mere $1.2 trillion. As long as charting economic policy is defined as a choice between spending cuts and higher...

Democratic pollsters Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen recently wrote a piece calling for Barack Obama to step aside and allow Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to represent the Democratic Party in the 2012 election. I wrote the following four years ago in October, 2008 just prior to the...

Having written nine blogs for The Huffington Post, I am pleased by the diverse responses they have elicited. Clearly we all want change. Judging from some of the comments, however, before I continue with additional posts, it may be useful to provide some personal context.

I am -- or more...

Liberals and conservatives each claimed "decisive" victories this week in Ohio. Liberals thrilled to the rollback of curbs on collective bargaining rights for Ohio's public service unions while conservatives boasted of the majority vote to "opt out" of the Obama administration's health care mandate. Are Ohioans...

We have around a trillion-and-a-half-dollar annual mismatch between government revenues and expenses. Nearly 20 million Americans are out of work or underemployed. Our oldest allies and NATO partners face a financial meltdown. And Iran, the most fanatical regime on the planet, is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons.

The American people assert their Independence from Washington's political aristocracy

In 1776 our founding fathers met and pledged to each other and to us, their descendants, their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. In the Declaration of Independence, they established that men have been endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable...

America's prospects appear no better today than at the conclusion of the second Bush presidency. Consumer confidence is at its lowest point since the financial collapse preceding the 2008 elections. Only 15% of the American people have confidence in the government. Presumptive Democratic candidate for president, Barack Obama's strongly approve/disapprove...

We hear a lot these days about those evil corporations and their pernicious effect on America. Should we hunt down these malefactors of malice? Perhaps, but on examination, they would be us. Off with our heads?

Every one of us who is not employed by the government but engages in...