Newt Gingrich Suffers His Gettysburg in Jacksonville Debate

The CNN televised debate in Jacksonville, Florida may go down as Newt Gingrich's Gettysburg.

Yesterday won't be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago. For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances ...

Yesterday many were giving Newt Gingrich a 50/50 chance to win the Florida primary. From there he would stand a good chance of winning the Republican nomination and marching against Barack Obama in the fall election.

But tonight's debate in Jacksonville, Florida was a rout. Newt charged Mitt Romney on unfair ads, on investments, on immigration. And Mitt repulsed every charge. Newt, in full retreat after a Mitt countercharge calling Newt repulsive, couldn't even defend the grandmother ground on immigration:



Rick Santorum did make some inroads against Mitt Romney on health care. And Ron Paul came across extremely well. But for Newt Gingrich, who has lived by the debate, it was death by debate.

The Civil War raged on for 22 months after Gettysburg. The end in Florida will come when voters go to the polls on Tuesday, January 31. If Newt loses, the Gingrich campaign isn't over. But I suspect the moment before the debate opened in Jacksonville will be Newt Gingrich's high water mark.

Would You Tax this Ukulele Player as Much as His Secretary?

President Barack Obama says he wants to tax billionaire Warren Buffett as much as his secretary Debbie Bosanek. But can she play the ukulele? By the way, Mr. President, Deb prefers to be called assistant, not secretary.



Warrens says he has surveyed his staff and they pay between 33% and 41% in combined federal income tax and payroll taxes, whereas he pays just 15% on much of his income.



Deb probably does quite well, and if any of her compensation has come in Berkshire Hathaway stock, she may well be a millionaire or multi-millionaire.

So the Buffett Rule question comes down to this: Should the very rich pay tax rates that are substantially lower than those who are merely very well off? No, they shouldn't. But is the answer to raise the tax rates on the very rich, or to lower the tax rates on everybody else?

The 15% tax rate on capital gains and qualified dividends is what's at issue. President Reagan's 1986 tax reform law put that rate at 28%, the same as ordinary income such as wages. But since then the top tax rate for high earners of wages and business profits has been pushed up to 35%, while the tax rate for capital gains and qualified dividends has been dropped to 15%.

There is another side to this, which involves payroll taxes. Ordinary wage earners pay into social security and that can be as much or more than their income taxes for some lower income taxpayers. High earners pay into social security too on their wages, but not on their investment earnings. Only their wages are counted for social security benefits, so that should even out, except that social security is a not a very good deal.

Fact: Nancy Pelosi Will Never Be President, Newt Gingrich, Maybe

Nancy Pelosi tells CNN's John King she knows something about Newt Gingrich and that is he will never be President of the United States:



I know something too, Nancy Pelosi will never be President. And that's a fact, not just a personal opinion or prediction.

Actually, the people who bet on such things only give New Gingrich a 6.3% chance of being elected President in 2012. Of course, he could also run in 2016, at 72. And long shots do sometimes win, or no one would bet on them.

We must remember that John King was a key part of the liberal media psyops campaign last week that propelled Newt Gingrich to victory in South Carolina last week. The other conspirators were Nancy Hass at Newsweek and the Daily Beast, Juan Williams at Fox News, and Brian Ross at ABC. Motive: Newt Gingrich would be a weaker challenger to President Obama in the fall election than Rick Santorum or Mitt Romney.

So what are Nancy Pelosi and John King up to here? The key may be what Nancy Pelosi also said about Newt Gingrich, "The Republicans, if they choose to nominate him, that's their prerogative. I don't even think that's going to happen."

Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents hate Newt Gingrich, and would never risk entering the Republican primaries to vote for him - unless they believed that was safe, that they could do that without running any real risk that Newt Gingrich might get elected President.

Now wouldn't it be funny if Democrats secured the Republican nomination for Newt Gingrich and then saw him elected President.

Newt Gingrich Still Playing Dog Ate My Homework on $1.6 Million Freddie Mac Contract

Only in Washington, DC can you get a 15 page consulting contract that goes on and on for clause after clause but when it comes to the scope of work only has the barest phrase in a sentence on your compensation:

"Consultant will provide consulting and related services as requested by Freddie Mac's Director, Pubic Policy in exchange for which Freddie Mac will pay Consultant $25,000 for each full calendar month during which Consultant provides services."

For such "consulting and related services as requested" Newt Gingrich reportedly received a total of $1.6 million dollars over 6 years through his K Street lobbying firm the Gingrich Group.

Newt and Freddie Mac have also been asked to provide the deliverables on this contract, so that it can be seen exactly what advice Newt gave to this controversial agency that was at the center of the housing bubble. That of course assumes he actually did any work at all. When the school boy says his dog ate his homework you can be sure the boy never did the homework.

Newt's story has been that he offered his "advice as a historian" and there is one clause in the agreement that may have been directed to just that. Section 5(g) provides:

Suggestions. While providing Services and Deliverables, Consultant may make comments and suggestions that are outside the scope of Services ("Suggestions"). All Suggestions are provided on a purely voluntary basis and, in the absence of a separate agreement executed by both parties, will not create any obligation on the part of Freddie Mac. Freddie Mac will have the right to use Suggestions in such manner as it elects in its sole discretion, without obligation of any kind to Consultant.

You can bet Newt did prattle on with lots of comments and suggestions and alternate history lessons outside the scope of what he was hired to do. Maybe, in fact, offering random musings was all he ever did to earn his firm this $300,000 a year.

The bailout of Fredie Mac and Fannie Mae will cost taxpayers a minimum of $154 billion. The damage to home values in the U.S. due to the financial meltdown has been much greater.

What Is Newt Hiding in Gingrich Holdings, Inc.?

Should politicians running for office have to release their tax returns? The argument that they shouldn't is outweighed by the fun of pawing through the politician's personal business.

Take Newt Gingrich, who released his 2010 tax returns last week. First, there are little things like seeing that he had $200,000 stashed in Bank India. Nothing illegal about that, and there's probably an innocent explanation. Maybe Newt did some consulting for that TV show Outsourced. I thought it was karma when that show got cancelled after two seasons last spring. Or maybe Newt got paid to do some outsourcing.

Newt's tax return also shows alimony of $19,800 and household employee wages of $14,774. That may shed some light on the motives of Newt's his ex-wife Marianne, the one who accused him of proposing an open marriage. Yep, my bastard ex-husband makes over $3 million a year and barely pays me more than his housekeeper.

Then there're the various Gingrich enterprises with names like Gingrich Holdings, Inc., Gingrich Productions, Inc., and Lubbers Agency Inc. (apparently named after a married daughter). Newt and his current wife Callista derive $2.97 million of their #3.14 million in income in the form of salaries and corporate earnings from the closely held companies, with no solid information as to where all those earnings came from. We do know a few years back that Newt did earn some serious money consulting for mortgage giant Freddie Mac, which subsequently had to be bailed out by taxpayers. But just how many other Freddie Macs are hiding in Gingrich Holdings? We'll likely never know.

And then there is the mystery of who actually owns Gingrich Holdings, Inc. The tax returns don't say, but cross-checking some of the numbers is revealing. Newt's Form 1040 Schedule A lists $68,493 in cash contributions to charity from his various companies. However the Form 990-PF for the Gingrich Foundation shows that it received a cash contribution from Gingrich Holdings, Inc. in the amount of $152,609. Since Newt and Callista only deducted 45% of that amount on their tax return, the inference is that someone else must own the remaining 55% of Gingrich Holdings, Inc.

That's a pretty powerful inference. Because if Newt and Callista's share of the $2,453,409 earnings from Gingrich Holdings, Inc. is only 45%, that means some unnamed person or persons earned $3,013,023 from Gingrich Holdings, Inc. So who owns Newt Gingrich? We already knew that he could be bought, that was the point of those ethics charges that caught up with him in the late 1990s. The question still to be answered is who may now own him (or 55% of his company).

Another tidbit is that when you add up all the taxes Newt and Callista paid in 2010 you come up with the princely sum of $1,159,260, or roughly 37% of their combined gross income. We should say thank you for that.

Also Newt and Callista, through their personal donations and Gingrich Foundation grants, gave $132,640 to charity in 2010. Again, they deserve a big thank you.

The View on Newt's Open Marriage

Newt Gingrich's ex-wife Marianne has a supposed bombshell. She says back in the 1990s Newt wanted an open marriage. It becomes clear from listening to her that what Newt really wanted was to continue seeing his then-mistress Callista without getting a divorce from his then-wife Marianne.

But is that an open marriage? To me, that term implies an ongoing non-monogamous romantic relationship with one's spouse. Husband's who continue to support their wives financially and perhaps even socially while also keeping company with a mistress are doing something different.

Putting this in the best light for Newt, he gave his wife the option to stay married if that's what she wanted. Marianne wanted a divorce, which he gave her, and he married his longtime mistress. And a marriage, as they say, is always respectable.

Now here's where I'm going to engage in some speculation. One part of Marianne's bombshell was that Newt told her that Callista was down with the open marriage idea. If that's true, is she still down with it now that she is Newt's current wife? I mean, one reason you might have a $500,000 credit line at Tiffany's is to smooth over any jealousy issues from such an arrangement. Because nothing says I really love you more than an expensive trinket that can be taken straight to the pawn shop.

So, can we expect more questions to Newt on this subject? John King from CNN tried at the South Carolina debate last night and got booed for his trouble.



But let's parse Newt's denial:

"The story is false. Every personal friend that I have who knew us in that period says the story is false. We offered several of them to ABC to prove it was false."

I think that proves too much. Marianne says she turned Newt down on the open marriage. So how would the personal friends know anything about there being an open marriage, if no one says there ever was one?

Here's the whole ABC interview:



It's not news that Newt has gone through two divorces. The unasked question is not whether Newt Gingrich wanted an open marriage then but whether he is in one now and would be in one if he were elected President. Speculation aside, no evidence has been offered on that yet.

But don't worry too much about that. Back in December Newt made an unprecendented pledge that as President he would "uphold the institution of marriage through personal fidelity to my spouse and respect for the marital bonds of others." So there will be no swingers night at the Gingrich White House. But if he loses the election, all promises are off.

Newt Gingrich Beats Juan Williams in South Carolina Debate

Newt Gingrich won the Republican Debate in South Carolina last night. Newt won by beating down Fox News commentator Juan Williams who was on the media panel asking questions to the remaining five candidates (Jon Huntsman, who dropped out over the weekend, was not missed).

Juan asked whether it was racist to call President Barack Obama the "Food Stamp President." That wasn't his exact wording but certainly the import of his question. The debate audience responded by giving Newt's answer a standing ovation.

But did Newt beat the other candidates?

Mitt Romney - did good enough to still be the man to beat.

Newt Gingrich - cemented his second place status.

Ron Paul - no real dent in his constituency which should be good for third.

Rick Santorum - he's the worst hurt by Newt's win and may have to settle for fourth.

Rick Perry - last chance to regain his credibility in the VP sweepstakes.

Update: Rick Perry may have sealed his VP fate by starting a beef with the country of Turkey by refering to it as "a country that is being ruled by what many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists."