"PRINCETON, NJ -- Small-business owners in the United States are most likely to say complying with government regulations (22%) is the most important problem facing them today, followed by consumer confidence in the economy (15%) and lack of consumer demand (12%).

Rounding out small-business owners' top five problems in the Oct. 3-6 Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index poll is lack of credit at 10% and poor leadership by government and the president at 9%."

"Congress's Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction is struggling to find $1.5 trillion in cuts over the next 10 years. This is a unique opportunity to use tax reform to reduce future budget deficits while lowering individual tax rates. 

"The Tax Reform Act of 1986, enacted 25 years ago last Friday, showed how a tax reform that includes lower rates can change incentives in a way that grows the tax base and produces extra revenue. The 1986 agreement between President Ronald Reagan and House Speaker Tip O'Neill reduced the top marginal tax rate to 28% from 50%. A conservative Republican and a liberal Democrat could agree to a dramatic reduction in top rates because the legislation also eliminated a wide variety of tax loopholes."

"What are we to think about a president and vice president who blow nearly a trillion dollars in borrowed money, accept no responsibility for it and then traverse the nation trying to convince Americans that if we don't spend half that much again, people will die from dilapidated bridges and women will be raped because we can't afford cops?

"What business do these two have lecturing anyone about anything, much less the conditions that might ensue if we were not to spend more printed money to pay for things they failed to finance the first time because they misappropriated the funds? ...

"It's time these two answered some questions themselves about the colossal waste of federal money they've directed toward the stimulus package, Obamacare, Solyndra, other green projects and scores of other boondoggles.

"Until they can give us an honest accounting for their recklessness, they have no standing to be demanding more."

"The Occupy Wall Street folks tell us to blame Wall Street for the nation's financial troubles. Notice the no-fly zone over President Barack Obama. Where are the anti-President Barack Obama signs or the verbal chants denouncing the President? Imagine the protests/sit-ins/rallies/mass marches on Pennsylvania Avenue -- not Wall Street -- if after two years of Republican White House leadership, America remained stuck on over 9 percent unemployment!"

"Maybe it's a sign of the tumultuous times, but the federal government recently wrapped up its biggest spending year, and its second biggest annual budget deficit, and almost nobody noticed. Is it rude to mention this? ... 

"The Obama years have racked up the three largest deficits, both in absolute amounts and as a share of GDP, since Hitler still terrorized Europe. Some increase in deficits was inevitable given the recession, but to have deficits of nearly $1.3 trillion two years into a purported economic recovery simply hasn't happened in modern U.S. history. Yet President Obama fiercely resisted even the token spending cuts for fiscal 2011 pressed by House Republicans earlier this year."

"President Obama and the Democratic leadership are making a critical error in embracing the Occupy Wall Street movement — and it may cost them the 2012 election. ... 

"The protesters have a distinct ideology and are bound by a deep commitment to radical left-wing policies. On Oct. 10 and 11, Arielle Alter Confino, a senior researcher at my polling firm, interviewed nearly 200 protesters in New York's Zuccotti Park. Our findings probably represent the first systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion. 

"Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn't represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, virtually all (98%) say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda."

"The Bigs – Big Wall Street, Big Government, Big Labor, and Big Business – are all protected classes in the American political system. The tax code, regulatory regime, and campaign finance laws are all written by those powerful enough to hire an army of lobbyists to descend on Washington. Labor unions pushed their way ahead of bond holders when the Establishment bailed out Chrysler. Solyndra got venture funding from the middle class taxpayer after spending $1.9 million lobbying the Establishment. ... 

"In 2010, the tea party movement struck the first blow to the Establishment by working within the Republican Party to elect limited government, constitutional conservatives. Because their aim is to return power to individuals and localities, the tea party is the only organic, grass roots movement in this country that is by its very nature subversive to the political Establishment and therefore to the culture of 'The Bigs.' ...

"The central question of this defining period of time in which we live: Will the Tea Party, with all its iconoclastic energy and goals, succeed in defeating the Establishment? For the country’s sake, let’s hope the answer is yes."

"To the villainy-of-the-rich theme emanating from Washington, a child is born: Occupy Wall Street. Starbucks-sipping, Levi’s-clad, iPhone-clutching protesters denounce corporate America even as they weep for Steve Jobs, corporate titan, billionaire eight times over. 

"These indignant indolents saddled with their $50,000 student loans and English degrees have decided that their lack of gainful employment is rooted in the malice of the millionaires on whose homes they are now marching — to the applause of Democrats suffering acute Tea Party envy and now salivating at the energy these big-government anarchists will presumably give their cause. 

"Except that the real Tea Party actually had a program — less government, less regulation, less taxation, less debt. What’s the Occupy Wall Street program? Eat the rich."

"Before his American Jobs Act failed to pass a Senate cloture vote Tuesday, President Barack Obama made a last-ditch speech to talk up his troubled bill. Not once did Obama mention 'green jobs' -- his erstwhile jobs of the future. 

"Smart move. Obama's 2009 $787 billion stimulus package included $500 million for training programs that were supposed to create new green jobs for thousands of middle-class Americans. Last month, however, the Department of Labor's inspector general conducted an audit that found that as of June 30 -- with one-third of the funds spent and more than 50,000 participants -- only 10 percent of trainees were placed in jobs. And only 1,336 participants, or 2 percent, had held jobs for six months or longer. ... 

"Unfortunately, the White House thought that it could stimulate the economy by rewarding favored donors and pet green causes, only to find that you can't build an economic recovery on a bubble of phantom jobs."

"To say that Mitt Romney dominated last night’s Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire wouldn’t quite do his performance justice. By the end of the evening, he seemed to be the only even remotely plausible presidential candidate on the stage.

"In part that was due to the failure of the seven other candidates to rise to the occasion."