Independents will clobber tea party and occupy Wall Street

You've heard about the tea party.

Now you're hearing about the occupy Wall Street group.

Both have garnered more publicity than they deserve in my view, but that's what national broadcast media gravitates to: a good visual and people angry at the government. It's an easy, uncomplicated story and it gets ratings.

Ultimately, though, I think the same people who've influenced and in fact turned dozens of elections in the past will do it again in the next two years: the independents.

You won't find them at tea party rallies: (they don't go for the extreme radical stuff) and you won't find them at the occupy Wall Street stuff (they don't do much grass roots stuff, pseudo or not).

Nope. They're just average Americans, well educated, who vote for ideas instead of ideologies. They vote for people instead of political sound bites.

It's a lot like The Free Press editorial board if you ask me, but that's not the point here.

I'm no political consultant, but here's my take on how the next president will win the election. They'll appeal to independents on a number of issues as follows.

Deficit reduction long-term, bolster the economy with smart stimulus short-term. Don't take tax increases off the table, make taxes more fair at the same time. Eliminate corporate welfare to big oil as well as farmers.

Don't try to talk these folks into the idea that tax breaks for the rich will create jobs. They know a lo t of rich people, and they haven't seen them creating many jobs. There is not one iota of evidence that these folks have seen anywhere that will convince them of that fallacy and they are not the kind of people who believe a lie, even if you tell it to them 16 times.

But don't also propose ridiculous spending or regulatory ideas in the middle of one of the most prolonged worst economy in decades. Making unemployed workers a class for discrimination is just not going to fly with these folks.

Restricting Tony the Tiger as a longtime brand on cereal boxes to prevent childhood obesity is also not going to fly. It's way too liberal an idea. Besides, parents should be in charge of childhood obesity.

If anything, we should allow insurance companies to charge health insurance rates based on how many obese children in a family.

Ultimately, the independents are not going to be won over with slogans from left or right. They're smarter than that. They need meat behind the ideas. They need substance.

The party that provides it will come out on top.

Tax the rich in the context of a Christian message

As the arguments on taxes and spending rage on in Washington D.C., and we launch into a debate about who has enough, who has a little and who should pay their fair share of taxes, the subject took on a new meaning for me at Wednesday night church listening to the pastor's sermon.

I saw it in a different context that might surprise you.

The sermon was as non-political as one can get, and was not terribly out of the ordinary. It was about how God provides a lot of the things we have, whether it be cell phones or the basics like a roof over our head.

The essential message was related via a story to the congregation about how the pastor knew a man who came up to him one day and said "All I have comes from God."

There are, of course, complications to understanding this message. Why do some people live in million dollar homes and some sleep outside every night in a cardboard box?

Rich or poor. It all comes from God. The pastor said he reacted with skepticism to the man. He, and others like him, and all of us in America, feel we work damn hard for our money and all the things we have acquired.

The American ideal and dream, most of us would say, does not come from God, but it comes from the sweat on our brow, the stress on our face.

That of course, in a nutshell, is the argument playing out in Washington these days. Tax the rich, some say, so they pay their fair share. Others say the rich have earned everything they got, and if we tax them, they will no longer create jobs.

I don't have to repeat the narrative which I'm sure readers have heard play out a thousand times on every cable news show possible.

I have just one thought on this: If we all believed "everything we had came from God" would we even be having the who-pays-their-fair-share debate?

The pastor didn't really have an answer for all this, nor did he need to. One can't explain, really, why some have lots and some have none.

Either way, he said, for those of us who've been given lots of things, "it's what we do with it" that matters.

That might be a good place to start the debate in Washington.