Chad’s Morning Brief- Newt Gingrich Under Fire From All Sides

Here is your Morning Brief for the morning of January 26th, 2012. Give us your feedback below and tune in to Lubbock’s First News with Chad Hasty for these and many more topics from 6-9 am.

1. Did Gingrich Attack Reagan? (link)

If you've been watching any of the GOP debates, you know that the candidate linking their name to Ronald Reagan the most is Newt Gingrich. It's the smart thing to do if you are running for the GOP nomination. Talk about Reagan and try to paint yourself as a Ronald Reagan disciple. While Gingrich is trying to do that, one man says that Gingrich repeatedly insulted Reagan in the 1980's.

The claims are misleading at best. As a new member of Congress in the Reagan years — and I was an assistant secretary of state — Mr. Gingrich voted with the president regularly, but equally often spewed insulting rhetoric at Reagan, his top aides, and his policies to defeat Communism. Gingrich was voluble and certain in predicting that Reagan’s policies would fail, and in all of this he was dead wrong.

The best examples come from a famous floor statement Gingrich made on March 21, 1986. This was right in the middle of the fight over funding for the Nicaraguan contras; the money had been cut off by Congress in 1985, though Reagan got $100 million for this cause in 1986. Here is Gingrich: “Measured against the scale and momentum of the Soviet empire’s challenge, the Reagan administration has failed, is failing, and without a dramatic change in strategy will continue to fail. . . . President Reagan is clearly failing.” Why? This was due partly to “his administration’s weak policies, which are inadequate and will ultimately fail”; partly to CIA, State, and Defense, which “have no strategies to defeat the empire.” But of course “the burden of this failure frankly must be placed first on President Reagan.” Our efforts against the Communists in the Third World were “pathetically incompetent,” so those anti-Communist members of Congress who questioned the $100 million Reagan sought for the Nicaraguan “contra” rebels “are fundamentally right.” Such was Gingrich’s faith in President Reagan that in 1985, he called Reagan’s meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev “the most dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with Neville Chamberlain in 1938 in Munich.”

You can check out the link above for more Gingrich quotes about Ronald Reagan according to Elliott Abrams. So what did Reagan actually think about Gingrich? According to his diary, not much.

There's one mention of Newt Gingrich in The Reagan Dairies. It's in Chapter 3, which covers 1983. Page 123 in the book:

"Newt Gingrich has a proposal for freezing the budget at the 1983 level. It's a tempting idea except that it would cripple our defense programs. And if we make an exception on that every special interest group will be asking for the same."

2. Newt isn't Bill Clinton (link)

Newt Gingrich had to defend himself on Wednesday after he was compared to former President Bill Clinton.

Pressed during a forum at Univision—the Spanish-speaking television network—about the hypocrisy involved when “at same time he was doing the exact same thing,” Gingrich was indignant.

It wasn’t the same thing, Gingrich repeatedly insisted. “I didn’t do the same thing,” he said. “I didn’t lie under oath. I didn’t commit a felony.” He added that in his own divorce depositions, he told the truth—which Clinton did not when asked about Monica Lewinsky.

3.  New School Lunch Standards (link)

This story from KFYO News:

The nation’s first lady and the agriculture secretary have announced changes to what children will receive for meals at school.

First Lady Michelle Obama and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack introduced new standards for school meals Wednesday morning. The new meal requirements are part of the “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act,” which was heavily supported by Ms. Obama.

A press release from the USDA outlines some of the changes, which include:

• Ensuring students are offered both fruits and vegetables every day of the week;
• Substantially increasing offerings of whole grain-rich foods;
• Offering only fat-free or low-fat milk;
• Limiting calories based on the age of children being served with controlled portion sizes;
• Increasing focus on reducing amounts of saturated fat, trans fats, and sodium.

Implementing the standards is expected to cost about 3.2 billion over the next five years.

Other portions of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act include further regulating food and drink sold in vending machines on school campuses, increasing funding for schools 6 cents per meal, setting new pricing standards, as well as more training and assistance for school employees on the program.

Schools will phase in the new regulations over a three-year period, beginning in the 2012-2013 school year.

Shocking, the day after the State of the Union and here we go again with the Obama's and big government getting into our lives. Just wait until they try to regulate what you can feed your kids. They do know better than you do.

4. Dumb story of the morning (link)

Oh, so that's why she pays so much in taxes...

The IRS publishes detailed tax tables by income level. The latest results are for 2009. They show that taxpayers earning an adjusted gross income between$100,000 and $200,000 pay an average rate oftwelve percent. This is below Buffet’s rate; so she must earn more than that. Taxpayers earning adjusted gross incomes of $200,000 to $500,000, pay an average tax rate of nineteen percent. Therefore Buffet must pay Debbie Bosanke a salary above two hundred thousand.

We must wait for further details to learn how much more than $200,000 she earns. The tax tables tell us about average ranges. For all we know she earns closer to a half million each year, but that is pure speculation.

I have nothing against Debbie Bosanke earning a half million or even more. Buffet is a major player in the world economy. His secretary deserves good compensation. At her income, however, she is scarcely the symbol of injustice that Obama wishes her to project.

Well, good for her. If she wants to pay less in taxes, she should vote Republican!

Other Top Stories:

Texas Pole Tax Court Update

Texas Teen Forced to Urinate in Water Bottle

Tense Words Between AZ Gov. and President Obama

Romney and Gingrich Dead Heat

Religious Symbols on War Memorials

CNN Debate TONIGHT

These and many more topics coming up on today's edition of Lubbock’s First News with Chad Hasty. Tune in mornings 6-9am on News/Talk 790 KFYO, streaming online at kfyo.com, and now on your iPhone and Android device with the radioPup App.