Today (2/02), Ralph Nader wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the government had ripped off the Fannie/Freddie stockholders, of which he was one. What delicious irony that the man who has been telling us for decades to trust the government instead of private business was abused by the government. I wonder if he has learned anything.

Another no surprise last week was a report issued by the Congressional Budget Office that the budget deficit is even larger (a mere $1.5 trillion larger) than previously forecast and financial doomsday is getting closer.

Again, having learned nothing, President Obama responded in his State of the Union address by proposing more government spending. He seems to be making a real effort to have the collapse occur in his first term.

Meanwhile, more reports surfaced about the fact that many state and local governments have not been disclosing relevant information about their finances to their bondholders. Executives in private firms would be fined or sent to jail for similar lapses, but government officials are largely immune to rules that the rest of us must follow.

Let's get one thing clear: Obama unquestionably ranks among the bottom five presidents in US history.

In terms of sublime awfulness he's right up there with Britain's late and extremely unlamented ex-PM Gordon Brown - which is quite some doing, given that Brown singlehandedly wrought more destruction on his country than the Luftwaffe, Dutch Elm Disease, the South Sea Bubble, the Fire of London and the Black Death combined.

Agreed: the damage President Obama has done to the US economy with everything from Ben Bernanke's insane money-printing program, to his cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline, to his ban on deep-water drilling to his crony capitalism hand-outs to disaster zones like Solyndra to his persecution of companies like Gibson is incalculable.

And, of course, if he gets a second term the damage he and his rag-bag of Marxist cronies at organizations like the Environmental Protection Agency manage to inflict on the US small businessman trying to make an honest buck will make his first term look like Calvin Coolidge on steroids.

So why do I think this would be preferable to a presidency under Mitt Romney? Simple. Because I've seen what happens, America, when you elect yet another spineless, yet ruthless, principle-free blow-with-the-wind, big government, crony-capitalist RINO squish. His name is current British PM Dave Cameron - and trust me, the cure is far worse than the disease.

Here's free advice for Mitt Romney.

Before bringing up the poor again, read my book, "Uncle Sam's Plantation:  How Big Government Enslaves the Poor and What We Can Do About It."

Romney has been taking a drubbing about his remarks in a CNN interview that he is "not worried about the very poor ... we have a safety net there ... If it needs a repair, I will fix it." And then going on to say it is "middle-income Americans ... that are really struggling" that are his concern.

What the Republican presidential front-runner missed in his off-the-cuff economic analysis of American class is that the cause driving the struggle among both low- and middle-income Americans is the same -- economic stagnation and social breakdown caused by welfare-state socialism.

As I explain in "Uncle Sam's Plantation," America's inner cities offer laboratory results that can be extrapolated to what is wrong today with the whole country.  If you want to know why America is failing, look at why our inner cities are failing.

If America is going to get back on track, we must appreciate that Democrats are doing to our whole country what they did to America's poor.

Do you think your tax dollars should be used to fund organizations that advocate higher taxes on American citizens? Well, that is exactly what has been happening.

The new Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in addition to reducing big, wasteful and unnecessary spending, also needs to go after and defund those programs and activities that are downright destructive.

Here's a handful of examples:

My image of a true conservative is of a bold, honorable, responsible citizen, with just a touch of the swashbuckler. But that image is fading as so many conservatives insist on seeing bogeymen under every bed, cot, sleeping bag and beach chair.  And of all the subjects that excite exaggerated fears, terror of Islam takes the moldy cake.

Let me be clear: I agree with the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (no conservative, that boy) who characterized Islam as "a barracks religion" that stymied cultural growth. Nor do I have the least sympathy with Islam's apologists, subversives or litigious jerks. But let's get a grip, folks. 

Far from taking over the world and making obese Americans stop drooling over internet porn, Islam is pathetically weak, plagued by myriad failures and, especially in the case of Arab Islam, unable to compete successfully in any sphere of organized human endeavor. 

How can American conservatives impute overpowering strength to a religion-crippled civilization that, in the 21^st century, not only cannot build a competitive automobile, but can't even produce a competitive bicycle?

It is hard to make sense of the world without adequate information and the words to explain fundamental concepts.

Some good news for the new decade is that the level of economic literacy is rising, thanks in part to tools being developed at free-market think tanks around the world. Americans in particular have several new tools to evaluate how their tax money is being used and how much they are being forced to spend on what.

There is now a successful a global collaborative effort to increase economic literacy across the planet and reduce miscommunication. Everyone will have the same understanding of what specific economic terms and concepts mean available on cell phones or iPads.

Meanwhile, U.S. think tanks have been building tools so Americans can more readily understand where their tax dollars are going and how much they are paying for specific government programs.