Good bye 401k?

In late 2008 we heard of House Of Representatives hearings on the the possibility of the government taking over 401k and similiar plans. Until early January we had not heard of anything, however, in January President Obama proposed a new program based on the Administration's Middle Class Task Force. I will be forwarding you an article that appeared in Business Week and in Bloomberg regarding the proposals. The attached article goes a bit farther.

Please read it and let me know what you think!



Bloomberg
Retiree Annuities May Be Promoted by Obama Aides
By Theo Francis

The government is looking at ways to promote the conversion of 401(k)s and IRAs into steady payment streams after a significant decline in plan balances

(Bloomberg) — The Obama administration is weighing how the government can encourage workers to turn their savings into guaranteed income streams following a collapse in retiree accounts when the stock market plunged.

The U.S. Treasury and Labor Departments will ask for public comment as soon as next week on ways to promote the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams, according to Assistant Labor Secretary Phyllis C. Borzi and Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Mark Iwry, who are spearheading the effort.

Annuities generally guarantee income until the retiree's death, and often that of a surviving spouse as well. They are designed to protect against the risk that retirees outlive their savings, a danger made clear by market losses suffered by older Americans over the last year, David Certner, legislative counsel for AARP, said in an interview.

"There's a real desire on a lot of people's parts to try to encourage something other than just rolling over a lump sum, to make sure this money will actually last a lifetime," said Certner, legislative counsel for Washington-based AARP, the biggest U.S. advocacy group for retirees.

Promoting annuities may benefit companies that provide them through employers, including ING Groep NV (INGA:NA) and Prudential Financial Inc. (PRU), or sell them directly to individuals, such as American International Group Inc. (AIG), the insurer that has received $182.3 billion in government aid...




k.

Health Care Is NOT Dead

Today, to my great dissatisfaction, I learned that Congressional leadership??? and the Administration plan to pass the Health Care bill through what is called reconciliation. This process is to attach the bill to some piece of legislation for which no Senator or Representative would not vote for such as budget or funding the troops. In other words, it will be crammed down our throats even though the American people are thoroughly against the bill.

I wrote the attached letter to my "representatives", however, I doubt they will respond or even take notice as they are so much smarter than you or I and know what is good for us! Does this not bother you or am I alone?


Dear Senator Levin, Senator Stabenow and Representative Peters,

I am writing to you today to express my strong opposition to the planned maneuver by the Administration, Speaker Pilosi and Leader Reed to pass the health care bill. As I understand it, the bill will be attached to a bill for which everyone must vote, such as a budget bill. This tactic will not work. It is devious and subverts the will of the people.

This health care bill which is opposed by the American People in such numbers rarely seen in politics. Any Senator or Representative who votes for this bill will bring down the wrath of the voters onto their heads. They will stand no chance of being elected to dog-catcher, no less to the positions they now hold. This is not only applies to Republican voters but also Democrats and Independents. The person who votes for this bill is completely out of touch with those he/she represents and should be sent packing.

Additionally, I know you think that November is a long time away and that the voters will soon forget. That could not be more wrong. We will remember who votes for this bill whether you stand for election this November or November 2012 or November 2014.The recent Pew poll found that 80% of their respondents indicated they were dissatisfied with THEIR Senators and Representatives, that means YOU. It is time for you to start listening to us.

The American people are tired of being told by their representatives in Washington what is good for them and to sit down and shut up because "we know better." We expect our elected officials to vote for what we want. We are the people who sent you there to "represent" us and not special interests or what ideas you think might be "good" for us. So represent us and vote AGAINST the health care plan regardless of the bill to which it is attached.

We are watching you.

The Deep Roots of the Teaparty member

A good friend asked me about Sarah Palin and although this article does not talk about her, I believe Pat sums up the feeling that many Americans have when it comes to the government. Sarah, at this point in time, is the one person who is expressing what most Americans are thinking. You may not like HER, and maybe she will not be the candidate that pulls most Americans together, but it is her MESSAGE that resonates strongly with many of us diseffected Americans.


THE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW - February 16, 2010

Secession in the Air
by Pat Buchanan

No, it is not 1860 again.

But with all the talk of the 10th Amendment, nullification
and interposition, states rights and secession -- following
Gov. Rick Perry's misstatement that Texas, on entering the
Union in 1845, reserved in its constitution a right to
secede -- one might think so.

Chalk up another one for those Tea Party activists who
exploded in cheers when Sister Sarah brought up the dread
word in endorsing Rick Perry in the primary.

Looking back in American history, however, these ideas,
these sentiments, decried as insane inside the Beltway,
were once as American as "The Midnight Ride of Paul
Revere."

"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good
thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms
in the physical," wrote Thomas Jefferson to James Madison
from Paris in January 1787, about Revolutionary War Capt.
Daniel Shay's anti-tax rebellion in Massachusetts.


In the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, both of these
founding fathers sanctioned the idea that states could
interpose their own sovereignty and nullify acts of
Congress. Both were enraged by the Alien and Sedition
Acts of John Adams and the Federalists, written into law
to combat sedition during the undeclared naval war with
France.

On taking office, President Jefferson declared the acts
unconstitutional, refused to prosecute those charged and
freed the imprisoned writers.

In 1814, Timothy Pickering, another veteran of the
revolution and secretary of state to both George Washington
and Adams, was a force behind the Hartford Convention,
which argued for New England's secession and reuniting with
Great Britain. Massachusetts opposed Madison's War of 1812
that had caused the British blockade that destroyed their
trade and prosperity.

The war's end and Jackson's victory at New Orleans,
however, aborted the Hartford movement and finished
off the Federalists forever.

In 1832, it was Vice President John Calhoun who inspired
South Carolina to vote to nullify the Tariff of Abomination
that was killing the cotton-exporting South and enriching
Northern manufacturers. To the chagrin of Madison, Calhoun
invoked his and Jefferson's Virginia and Kentucky
resolutions in defense of Carolinian defiance.


In 1845, it was Massachusetts again. Ex-President John
Quincy Adams declared that admission of Texas to the Union
as a slave state might constitute grounds for secession
and civil war.

With Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860 and Republicans,
the Northern party, assuming power, South Carolina,
Georgia and the Gulf states seceded.

But not until after Fort Sumter, when Lincoln called for
volunteers to march south and crush the rebellion, did
Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas secede,
rather than remain passive or participate in a war on
their kinfolk.

Unlike the issues of yesteryear that tore the Union
asunder, Tea Party issues are not sectional but national.
Yet, they are rooted in a similar set of beliefs -- that
the federal government no longer serves their interests,
but the interests of economic and political forces that
sustain the party in power.

In 1860, the South saw power passing indefinitely to a new
regime, a Republican Party that represented high-tariff
industrialists and New England radicals and abolitionists
who despised the agrarian South and celebrated the raid on
Harper's Ferry by the terrorist John Brown, who had sought
to incite a slave uprising, such as had occurred in Santo
Domingo.

What called the Tea Party into existence?


Some are angry over unchecked immigration and the failure
to control our borders and send the illegals back. Some
are angry over the loss of manufacturing jobs. Some are
angry over winless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some
are angry over ethnic preferences they see as favoring
minorities over them.

What they agree upon, however, is that they have been
treading water for a decade, working harder and harder
with little or no improvement in their family standard
of living. They see the government as taking more of
their income in taxes, seeking more control over their
institutions, creating entitlements for others not them,
plunging the nation into unpayable debt, and inviting
inflation or a default that can wipe out what they have
saved.

And there is nothing they can do about it, for they are
politically powerless. By their gatherings, numbers,
mockery of elites and militancy, however, they get a
sense of the power that they do not have.

Their repeated reappearance on the national stage, in new
incarnations, should be a fire bell in the night to the
establishment of both parties. For it testifies to their
belief and that of millions more that the state they
detest is at war with the country they love.

The secession taking place in America is a secession of the
heart -- of people who have come to believe the government
is them, and not us.

Obama's problem, like the Bushes' in 1992 and 2008, is that
one thing these folks are really good at is throwing people
out of power.

END OF Conservative Review

Copyright 2010 by NextEra Media. All rights reserved.
Please feel free to forward this, in its entirety, to others.

The Obama Administration After One Year

Victor Davis Hanson writes a very provactive article today. I post it here for your commentary. What is the next step that Obama will take? I want you input.

As Predictable As Clockwork

By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, (Political analyst extraordinaire)
The Jewish Press, February 5, 2010

I think we could see what was coming. This presidency has about as much subtlety in plot as a grade-B western, soap opera or teenage tantrum. A lackluster McCain candidacy, the September 2008 meltdown, weariness with eight years of Bush incumbency, conservative anger over spending, liberal furor over Iraq, a toady media, and Republican congressional corruption all led to a 50/50 electorate that was open to being mesmerized by Obama’s rhetoric and the dream of the nation’s first African-American president.

With congressional majorities, a compliant press, soaring public support, a soon-to-be President Obama was convinced, as he had been convinced by his success in the Ivy League, in Chicago, and in the Senate that he had a left-wing mandate. He believed he could hope and change his way to almost anything he wanted, despite the thin record, self-contradictions, constant inconsistencies and general confusion.

The hard left was salivating that at last it had an effective delivery system that could usher in a long awaited European-style socialism. Therefore, what followed was predictable: In his hubris, Obama cast off the campaign mask of moderation. Thick and fast came proposals for state-run healthcare, government takeovers, talk of nationalizing the student loan program, bailouts, mega-deficits, more, borrowing as stimulus, multicultural mea culpas abroad, loony symbolic appointments, and promiscuous talk of higher income, payroll, inheritance, and healthcare taxes, but only on “them.”

In other words, we saw in a trendy, cool form the age-old attempt to institutionalize equality of result, as freedom and liberty give way to mandated egalitarianism and fraternity. But wait — two thorny problems arose. The country is not quite yet left wing, but voted for Obama for the perfect-storm reasons outlined above. Anyone who had read the history of America could see that it was always a different sort of place than France, Germany, or Sweden — and will be, at least for a while longer.

So to ram down a left-wing agenda, the thespian Obama would have to continue his role as the bipartisan healer, centrist, reformer, purple-state uniter, trans-racial unifier, etc. But, alas, old habits die hard and the public soon began, here and there, to get glimpses of the old reality behind the new mask.

The wages of years with Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers, the easy path through the Ivy League, the Axelrod-at-our throat politics and the snow job that had wowed deans, philanthropists and suburbanites all reappeared. Even as Obama sought to convince the farmer, plumber and insurance agent to accept state healthcare, a landscape of windmills and a EU-foreign policy, he slipped back into his old self. Thus, we got Van Jones and his racist, 9/11 truther bombast. Anita Dunn praised Mao. Commissars at the NEA boasted of the new Caesar.

The Professor Henry Gates incident prompted the president to trash the police first and get the facts second. Creditors were politically rescheduled for bailed-out businesses. The president thoughtlessly weighed in on everything from the Special Olympics and the tea party movement to Fox News and America’s purported sins. Suddenly we were no longer exceptional, but the Muslim world in fact had-jump-started the Renaissance and Enlightenment. The old bad guys — Ahmadinejad, Assad, Castro, Chavez and Putin — earned new, kind talk; the prior U.S. president was reduced to satanic status.

Conservatives are in a “I told you so mood” as the 2008 talk-radio bombast about Bill Ayers, Rev. Wright, “re-distributive” spread the wealth, European socialism, etc., turned out not to be bombast at all. Moderates and independents sigh, “I can’t believe this is happening to me; he seemed just like Clinton with all that balanced budget talk, balanced energy policy, and mainstream help-the-little-guy talk. What happened to the Barack we trusted?” Liberals wonder, “Why is the coolest guy around suddenly flubbing every opportunity to get our agenda passed?” The hard left laments, “This guy is a triangulator who gave us a nibble, then pulled away the bone.”

His supporters counter: “See, he is a pragmatist and centrist who alienates the extremes.” No, No, No. He alienates them, but now the middle as well. What keeps his approval ratings in the forties is only the idea that the American people cannot quite yet accept a failed presidency after a mere 12 months — a presidency in which they had invested such hopes after the poll-crashing of Bush’s final two years.

Finger pointing and blame-gaming have begun because no one can properly address the real and only problem: Obama has had no previous identity or independent ideology. By osmosis (rather than by careful study or lifelong experience) he absorb the trendy left-wing cant that variously manifested itself wherever he traveled, from the Occidental lounge dorm to the Ivy League salon groupthink to Chicago organizing to Rev. Wright’s pulpit to the liberal caucuses of the U.S. Senate.

For a while, it was all as easy as sonorously thundering “hope and change. He never before had to articulate his leftism in any real detail, defend it, debate it, or analyze it. Now as his polls dip, we hear instead gripes over tactics, not the essence of the problem, which is the absence of an identity confidently and honestly expressed. So we get nonsense: “He’s too detached and cool.” He outsourced his agenda to the polarizing, corrupt and inept Reid/Pelosi wing.” “He surrounded himself with one too many shady Chicago polls.” “He took on too much all at once.”

What’s next? We can predict it in our sleep. He will continue the “let me be perfectly clear,” “fat-cat banker” talk to his base, do his selected-audience hope and change rants while trying to do a move-to-the-center light. Oh yes - a commission to balance the budget - sorta. Tough talk abroad — kinda. Health-care reform we can all agree on - maybe.

In the past, every time Obama has been in a jam, two things followed. He first threw under the bus perceived liabilities (yesterday’s Rev. Wright and grandmother will be this year’s Rahm Emanuel, Timothy Geithner and Janet Napolitano). Second, he adopted bipartisan “there is only one America” rhetoric. Yes, soon we can expect to hear of American exceptionalism, and a thing called “the war on terror,” and deficits that must be paid back and “working across the aisle.”

I doubt we’ll get genuine effort at balancing the budget, keeping businesses competitive, cutting waste, restoring American alliances, securing borders, centrist appointments, real bipartisanship, or a simplified tax system.

Instead, we’ve gone from the idealistic-sounding, centrist candidate Obama, to the Carter McGovern President Obama, to the wannabe Clinton triangulator. The only constant is no real identity, no firm belief, no core convictions from which to make the argument that his left-wing vision is good for the country. Obama never had to make that argument. Left-wing dogma was always a state religion in his circles and once Obama the nightingale started his song, few of the hypnotized worried about the inane message that followed. Being president is all so... so unfair!

Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of numerous works on military history.

Economic Flip Flop

Larry Elder writes today on the flip flop of Paul Krugman. What a dishonest, political hack. Anyone can see through this obvious politically oriented "economist" and should disregard anything that Krugman says regarding the economy. Your comments are appreciated.

Krugman: Bush's deficit bad, Obama's deficit good
Larry Elder - Syndicated Columnist - 2/11/2010 9:45:00 AM

Left-wing economist, Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman hates deficits in tough economic times -- when the president of the United States is named George W. Bush.

Krugman, in a November 2004 interview, criticized the "enormous" Bush deficit. "We have a world-class budget deficit," he said, "not just as in absolute terms, of course -- it's the biggest budget deficit in the history of the world -- but it's a budget deficit that, as a share of GDP, is right up there."

The numbers? The deficit in fiscal year 2004 -- $413 billion, 3.5 percent of the gross domestic product.





Back then, a disapproving Krugman called the deficit "comparable to the worst we've ever seen in this country....The only time postwar that the United States has had anything like these deficits is the middle Reagan years, and that was with unemployment close to 10 percent." Take away the Social Security surplus spent by the government, he said, and "we're running at a deficit of more than 6 percent of GDP, and that is unprecedented."

He considered the Bush tax cuts irresponsible and a major contributor -- along with two wars -- to the deficit. But he also warned of the growing cost of autopilot entitlements: "We have the huge bulge in the population that starts to collect benefits....If there isn't a clear path towards fiscal sanity well before (the next decade), then I think the financial markets are going to say, 'Well, gee, where is this going?'"

Three months earlier, Krugman said, "Here we are more than 2 1/2 years after the official end of the recession, and we're still well below, of course, pre-Bush employment." In October 2004, unemployment was 5.5 percent and continued to slowly decline. At the time, Krugman described the economy as "weak," with "job creation...essentially nonexistent."

How bad will it get? If we don't get our "financial house in order," he said, "I think we're looking for a collapse of confidence some time in the not-too-distant future."

Fast-forward to 2010.

The numbers: projected deficit for fiscal year 2010 -- over $1.5 trillion, more than 10 percent of GDP.

This sets a post-WWII record in both absolute numbers and as a percentage of GDP. And if the Obama administration's optimistic projections of the economic growth fall short, things will get much worse. So what does Krugman say now?

We must guard against "deficit hysteria." In "Fiscal Scare Tactics," his recent column, Krugman writes: "These days it's hard to pick up a newspaper or turn on a news program without encountering stern warnings about the federal budget deficit. The deficit threatens economic recovery, we're told; it puts American economic stability at risk; it will undermine our influence in the world. These claims generally aren't stated as opinions, as views held by some analysts but disputed by others. Instead, they're reported as if they were facts, plain and simple."

He continues, "And fear-mongering on the deficit may end up doing as much harm as the fear-mongering on weapons of mass destruction." Krugman believes Bush lied us into the Iraq War. Just as people unreasonably feared Saddam Hussein, they now have an unwarranted fear of today's deficit.

Questions: Didn't Krugman, less than six years ago, call the deficit "enormous"? Wouldn't he, therefore, consider a $1.5 trillion deficit at 10 percent of GDP mega-normous? Didn't he describe the economy with 5.5 percent unemployment as "weak"? Isn't the current economy, at 9.7 percent unemployment, even weaker? If the 2004 deficit was "comparable to the worst we've ever seen in this country," wouldn't today's much bigger deficit cause even more heartburn?

Nope. Now a huge deficit is actually a good thing: "The point is that running big deficits in the face of the worst economic slump since the 1930s is actually the right thing to do. If anything, deficits should be bigger than they are because the government should be doing more than it is to create jobs." The deficit "should be bigger"?! (Read related commentary by Michelle Malkin)

Long term, Krugman says, we've got concerns about revenue and spending. But as for now? "There's no reason to panic about budget prospects for the next few years, or even for the next decade." In 2004, Krugman warned that without a "clear path towards fiscal sanity" before "the next decade," we faced a "crunch." Presumably, we now have this "clear path."

Let's review. In 2004, an unhappy Krugman criticized Bush's "weak" economy and "miserable" job creation. Running an "enormous" deficit was a bad thing. Times were awful -- "by a large margin" the worst job crash and performance since Herbert Hoover. Today the deficit is four times as large in an even weaker economy with much higher unemployment. Times are awful. Now, though, the deficit is a good thing and should be even bigger.

Krugman's flip-flop on the deficit demonstrates a modern economic equation. Hatred of Bush + love for Obama = intellectual dishonesty.



CREATORS SYNDICATE COPYRIGHT 2010 LAURENCE A. ELDER

PIGS

PIGS--no we are not talking the farm animal, we are talking about Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain. These countries are on life support. Their deficits are immense and is causing the EU to come in and save them. Will the United States be next?

Pat Buchanan writes about this today in the Conservative Review.



THE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW - February 12, 2010

The Bankrupt PIGS of Europe
by Pat Buchanan

They are called the PIGS -- Portugal, Ireland, Greece,
Spain. What they have in common is that all are facing
deficits and debts that could bring on national defaults
and break up the European Union.

What brought the PIGS to the edge of the abyss?

All are neo-socialist states that provide welfare for poor
people, generous unemployment, universal health care,
early retirement and comfortable pensions. Most consume
40 percent to 50 percent of their gross domestic product
annually, a crushing burden on the private sector.

Dying populations is a second cause. After two world wars,
the Europeans lost their faith and embraced hedonism and
materialism, la dolce vita. Large families fell out of
favor. Women put off marriage and babies, and went to work.
Birth control and abortion were made readily available in
every country and, if not, just across the border.

For 30 years, the fertility rate of Europe has been below
the 2.1 children per woman necessary to replace a popula-
tion. In Russia and Ukraine, a million people disappear
yearly. In Western Europe, the passing of the native-born
goes on quietly, as Third World peoples come to fill the
empty spaces left by the aborted and unconceived.


Turks are in Germany. Pakistanis, Indians, Arabs and
Caribbean peoples are in Britain. Algerians, Tunisians
and Moroccans occupy the southern coast of France and
the banlieues around Paris.

These newcomers have neither the education nor skills of
the Europeans. Hence, they earn less and contribute less
in taxes, but consume more per capita in social benefits.

As the number of young entering the European labor forces
shrinks, the number of seniors and aged grows. And thanks
to advances in medicine, these retirees live lengthening
lives. Thus the burden of pensions and health care grows
steadily and the need for higher taxes and larger worker
contributions increases.

Then there is globalization. In Europe, wages and taxes
are high, regulations heavy, unions strong, and lawyers
ubiquitous. Manufacturers, to cut costs, have been out-
sourcing production to where the labor is cheap and
abundant, the unions are nonexistent or weak, and health,
safety and environmental regulations are lax. Welcome to
China.

Greece is the first European nation to hit the wall. As an
EU member state, she is obligated to keep her deficit to
3 percent of GDP. But this year's is 12.7 percent, and
Athens needs to issue $75 billion in bonds alone to finance
the deficit and roll over debt.

The markets, however, are rating Greek bonds as risky
bonds. To borrow, Athens must pay more than twice the
interest rate Germany pays. Faced with strikes by public
employees and students, Athens appears to lack the
political will to make the cuts necessary to bring the
budget back toward balance.


As Portugal, Ireland and Spain gaze on, Greece approaches
a moment of truth. Should she default, their bonds, too,
will plunge in value out of fear of a copycat default, and
the interest rate they pay would also rise. They, too,
might then take the Argentine road.

The EU's crisis would then be like a crisis in the United
States should California default on its state bonds and
interest rates on other municipal bonds surged to double
digits.

Is there a way out?

One option is for the EU to bail out Greece with a huge
loan. But if Greece cannot meet her debt obligations now,
how could she pay back the loan? And if the EU cannot
compel Greece to make deep budget cuts today, what
leverage would the EU have after bailing out Athens and
removing today's pressure on the government?

A second option is to call in the International Monetary
Fund, which imposes tough conditions on nations receiving
IMF loans -- the Third World therapy. But problems would
arise here, too.

First, it would be an admission that the EU cannot manage
its own household. Second, the largest contributor to the
IMF is Uncle Sam.


Why should America bail out Greece, when the EU is larger
and richer and did not help bail out California in 2009?
The stimulus bill did that in 2009, to which Europe
contributed nothing.

Where Greece is at today, however, we shall all arrive
tomorrow.

In every Western nation, government is growing beyond the
capacity of taxpayers to bear. Deficits and debt are surg-
ing. Not enough children are being born to replace parents.
The immigrant poor who consume more than they contribute
are coming to take the empty places. Seniors and elderly
are growing as a share of the population. Companies are
saying goodbye to the West and moving offshore to low-wage
lands.

The West begins to look like yesterday, while the East
begins to look like tomorrow.

The West is approaching a crisis of solvency and of
democracy. We shall see if democracy, which grew popular
lavishing benefits upon all, is strong enough to start
clawing them away. Or will democracy try to keep piling
the burden on the producers until they rebel or depart?

---------------------------------------------------------
END OF Conservative Review

Copyright 2010 by NextEra Media. All rights reserved.
Please feel free to forward this, in its entirety, to others.

Gingrich Has It Right

Once again Newt has it right. If only the Administration would listen, however, in the Administration's opinion they know more than anyone, are smarter than everyone and know that appeasement always works best. The parallels between 1930 Germany and 2010 Iran are so similar that even a blind man can see them. When are we going to wake up?

Gingrich: With Iran, 'It's Like the 1930s'
Robert Costa - Feb 11, 2010
NationalReview.com

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich tells National Review Online that Iran's self-proclaimed status as a "nuclear state" presents a "serious problem" for the United States that must be addressed by President Obama. "The president needs to say to the world that it is unacceptable to have a vicious dictatorship seeking to gain nuclear weapons with the direct goal of genocide," Gingrich says.

Gingrich worries that America's Iran policy is stuck in an appeasement mindset. "It's like the 1930s," he says. "The Iranian regime is dedicated to creating a second Holocaust, in terms of wanting to annihilate Israel. For 31 years, it has been trying to tell us through every method they know - through terrorism, killing Americans, and developing nuclear weapons - that they are trying to defeat us. Yet, while the regime is explicitly dedicated to the destruction of Israel, and the defeat of the United States, there remains an absolute refusal in the Western world to be honest about it. At what point do we decide that what we need is a calm and methodological regime-change policy - which doesn't have to mean war? Why is it so hard for us to see this as a ruthless regime? I think our allies would probably breathe a sigh of relief if we showed courage and determination, particularly if we did it in a steady and non-violent manner."

The U.S., Gingrich adds, should pledge to "aid every ally inside and outside Iran working to replace the regime - with the minimum of violence necessary but with an absolute commitment to replace the regime. No more negotiating, no more talking. We got the message. We know what you want, and it is unacceptable to us."

Gingrich says this is Obama's moment to articulate a new policy. "I've made two films with my wife, Callista, Ronald Reagan: Rendezvous with Destiny and Nine Days that Changed the World about Pope John Paul II's visit to Poland. Both outline how powerful leaders can devise strategies that dismantle entire empires within a decade. The Soviet Union was vastly bigger and more dangerous than Iran. If we could adopt non-violent strategies of coercion to break the Soviet empire, we should be able to help the millions of dissidents in Iran who want to replace the dictatorship."

Gingrich has two ideas for Obama: "We should announce that any person caught on film engaged in violence against protestors in Iran will be brought to trial under a new regime. Let it be known to every Iranian security guard that they are risking their life if they go out and kill a protestor." Second, he says, "if you simply blockade Iran's flow of gasoline, you can bring the country to a halt in 60 to 90 days, since they only have one refinery."

Time is of the essence, Gingrich concludes. "Iran doesn't have to deliver a weapon by some sophisticated missile, but simply could put it in a ship. These are people who will acquire nuclear weapons and will use them. Every day it gets worse and more dangerous. Nothing has changed; nothing will change, until we change the regime."