A Question For The High Tax Left: What Is 39.5% Of Nothing?

Tax rates effect behavior. Tax rates that are too high result in people taking action to reduce their exposure to them. Examples abound, but the most recent is boxer Manny Pacquiao. He is refusing to fight his next match in the U.S. because he will have to fork over 39.5% of his purse to our government. His solution, hold the fight in China, where, despite a smaller purse, he will come home with $5 million more in his pocket. Tax Prof has the whole story.

When will the left learn that taxation is dynamic, not static. Raising taxes 10% does not mean 10% more revenue except in CBO projections. In fact, it may mean less revenue than before the increase was imposed. Or does the left realize this yet keep up their calls for ever higher taxes anyway because class warfare is their primary tactic?

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A Republican Strategy That Does Not Involve Party Suicide

Obama is set to severely damage our economy - and that is even if Republicans are able to minimize the damage he is set to inflict between tax increases, Obamacare, Dodd Frank, the EPA, and world record profligate spending. In the first four years under Obama, the median net worth of Americans declined 47%, with the middle class hardest hit. Obama's class warfare and redistributionist policies virtually insure that the next four years will only make our dire situation worse.

Republicans should have four goals over the next four years. One, make the economically incompetent Obama and the left own the economy. Theirs is a bankrupt ideology, and they are now at the point of bankrupting our nation. Two, don't let the left do anything else that cannot be undone by simple majority vote. Three, don't let Obama spend us into a hole so deep we become Greece. And lastly, stop Obama from ruling our nation extra-constitutionally.

In January, the Bush Tax Cuts (for the wealthy, don't you know) are set to expire and the Obamacare taxes are set to kick in. To itemize:

- 35% income tax bracket increases to 39.6%

- 33% income tax bracket increases to to 36%

- 25% income tax bracket increases to to 28%

- 28% income tax bracket increases to to 31%

- 10% income tax bracket would be eliminated

- 0% long term capital gains tax would increase to 10% for low income filers

- 15$ long term capital gains tax would increase to 20% for high income filers

- 2.9% Medicare payroll tax increases to 3.8% for people earning over $250k, and it would apply also to all investment income

- 4.2% SSI employee payroll tax increases to 6.2%

- 35% tax on estates over $5 million increases to 55% on estates over $1 million.

- The Alternative Minimum Tax, with no inflation adjustment, will now apply to 28 million taxpayers, about one in five tax payers mostly in blue states.

- Dividends, currently taxed as capital gains, would be subject to much higher tax as ordinary income.

- Health Flexible Spending Accounts limited to $2,500 per year.

- Threshold for deducting medical expenses rises from 7.5% to 10%

- Obamacare reduces payments to doctors and hospitals under Medicare by 27%, effectively gutting the program.

This is not even close to a comprehensive list. Our economy is set to tank, and the reality is that there is next to nothing Republicans can do about it - nor should they try, at least from the tax perspective. Americans knew Obama wanted to raise taxes when they voted for him. They are now getting the government they deserve - and they deserve to get it good and hard.

What Americans will soon learn is that you cannot punish business and expect the economy to grow, that no nation can tax itself to prosperity, and that taxing the rich will not improve the lot of the middle class in any respect. To the contrary, it will merely mean less money in the economy for private investment. They are hard lessons that need to be learned.

If Republicans hold the line and allow our nation to get to January 1 without anything passed legislatively to address the above, the left and the MSM, joined at the hip, will insure Republicans are blamed for all of the resulting problems. That would be catastrophic. Indeed, we are in the mess we are in large measure because the left and the MSM were able to convince people that the economic crash of four years ago, the one that THE LEFT CREATED, was the fault of some vague, unnamed Republican policies.

So what should Republicans do?

1) Pass a bill restoring the Bush era tax cuts for earners under $250,000 and send it to Obama. This will at least keep Republicans from being blamed when the economy inevitably tanks, and conversely it puts ownership of the economy squarely with Obama. There is nothing the right can do to stop any of the other tax increases, so stop trying. What we have is a spending problem; the taxes increases are just going to add to the misery. They may be the straw that breaks the proverbial camel's back, but its all the other straws we need to be worrying about at the moment.

2) Per Prof. Glen Reynolds, pass a bevy of tax increases aimed at ending sweetheart deals for far left constituencies, from Hollywood to far left foundations.

3) Draw a red line on spending. There is massive public support for across the board spending cuts. Give Obama his tax increases today, then call the President on his promise to cut spending. Require that he give the Republicans a plan to cut the deficit by 25% by the end of his term, and refuse to increase the borrowing authority until he does. That is one cliff we should go over.

4) Refuse to allow Obama to rule extra-constitutionally. For the last four years, when Obama has ruled extra-constitutionally, doing end arounds Congress, the Congress has moaned a little and done nothing. That needs to end. They need to shut down the government and go to the Supreme Court. Moreover, Republicans need to figure out how to force passage of the REINS Act - which would go a long way to redressing the Constitutional balance between the Congress, who are supposed to have ALL legislative authority, and the executive branch.

5) As to the rest of us non-elected types, per Bookworm Room, we need to take the spirit of Hanukkah to heart and start emulating the Maccabees.

Related:

Bill Kristol: A Critique of the WSJ's Advice For Congressional Republicans

Larry Kudlow at NRO: GOP's Strategic Retreat

Thomas Sowell: Capital Gains Taxes, and How Quantitative Easing Is Debasing The Value Of Our Currency

Ace of Spades: Ace doesn't agree with my strategy, which in part mirrors that of Sen. Corker

Legal Insurrection - Some Therapy From Rush For Conservatives Who Are Ready To Give Up

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Krauthammer Dissects Obama's WTF Budget

Charles Krauthammer has read the proposed budget and gives us his bill of particulars:

. . . The budget touts a deficit reduction of $1.1 trillion over the next decade.

Where to begin? Even if you buy this number, Obama’s budget adds $7.2 trillion in new debt over that same decade.

But there’s a catch. The administration assumes economic-growth levels higher than private economists and the Congressional Budget Office predict. Without this rosy scenario — using CBO growth estimates — $1.7 trillion of revenue disappears and U.S. debt increases $9 trillion over the next decade. This is almost $1 trillion every year.

Assume you buy the rosy scenario. Of what does this $1.1 trillion in deficit reduction consist? Painful cuts? Think again. It consists of $1.6 trillion in tax hikes, plus an odd $328 billion of some mysterious bipartisan funding for a transportation trust fund (gas taxes, one supposes) — for a grand total of nearly $2 trillion in new taxes.

Classic Obama debt reduction: Add $2 trillion in new taxes, then add another $1 trillion in new spending and, presto, you’ve got $1 trillion of debt reduction. It’s the same kind of mad deficit accounting in Obamacare: It reduces debt by adding $540 billion in new spending, then adding $770 billion in new taxes. Presto: $230 billion of “debt reduction.” . . .

And what of those “painful cuts” Obama is making to programs he really cares about? The catch is that these “cuts” are from a hugely inflated new baseline created by the orgy of spending in Obama’s first two years. These were supposedly catastrophe-averting, anti-Depression emergency measures. But post-recession they remain in place. As a result, discretionary non-defense budget levels today are 24 percent higher than before Obama — 84 percent higher if you add in the stimulus money.

Which is why the supposedly painful cuts yield spending still at stratospheric levels. After all the cuts, Department of Education funding for 2012 remains 35 percent higher than in the last pre-emergency pre-Obama year, 2008. Environmental Protection Agency: 18 percent higher. Department of Energy: 22 percent higher. Consider even the biggest “painful cut” headline of all, the 50 percent cut in fuel subsidies for the poor. Barbaric, is it not? Except for the fact that the subsidies had been doubled from 2008 levels. The draconian cut is nothing but a return to normal pre-recession levels.

Yet all this is penny-ante stuff. The real money is in entitlements. And the real scandal of this budget is that Obama doesn’t touch them. Not Social Security. Not Medicaid. Not Medicare.

What about tax reform, the other major recommendation of the deficit commission? Nothing.

How about just a subset of that — corporate tax reform, on which Republicans have signaled they are eager to collaborate? The formula is simple: Eliminate the loopholes to broaden the tax base, then lower the rates for everyone, promoting both fairness and economic efficiency. What does the Obama budget do? Removes tax breaks — and then keeps the rate at 35 percent, among the highest in the industrialized world (more than twice Canada’s, for example).

Yet for all its gimmicks, this budget leaves the country at decade’s end saddled with publicly held debt triple what Obama inherited.

A more cynical budget is hard to imagine. This one ignores the looming debt crisis, shifts all responsibility for serious budget-cutting to the Republicans — for which Democrats are ready with a two-year, full-artillery demagogic assault — and sets Obama up perfectly for re-election in 2012. . . .

Whatever Obama may be, and I can think of numerous words and phrases to describe him, the words "leader" and "patriot" are not among their number. That is too bad, given his job description.

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Obama's Ridiculous Economic Meme

The biggest lie told over the past century is that the Democratic left are better stewards of the economy than Conservatives. It worked to in 2008. And Obama is trying to sell to America that the right "can't be trusted" to control our economy as "Bush got us into this mess." As proof thereof, he cites to deregulation and "Wall St. greed."

We are now stuck with a President who believes that the profit motive is immoral, that businesses should be soaked of their wealth for redistribution, and that the economy can be successfully micromanaged from Washington. And we are stuck with a far left Congress that is the most profligate of all time.

The truth is that our economy fell apart because of social engineering by Democrats. Over a roughly 15 year period, they ruined our credit rating scheme as part and parcel of a massive push for "affordable housing." Instead of pursuing this laudable goal by market-based programs, they did so by means of punitive, race based social engineering. At every turn, they used the race card to protect the scheme. And in the end, they created a bubble with Fannie and Freddie that got so big that when it burst, it took our economy into the tank.

So either Obama is lying about all of this, or the right is. How can you possibly know which is which? It's easy.

If the Democrats were actually right, then their solutions to our ailing economy would have worked. Instead, the opposite has occurred. They have used our economic crisis to engage in even more social engineering between healthcare, labor regulations, massive favortism to unions, and new financial regulations. And our economy is on life support. It in serious trouble. Real unemployment is well into double digits and shows no sign of easing. Yesterday's housing report on sales of new and existing homes was the worst in well over a decade. Every day, we are accruing debt at record levels. CNBC reported today that, according to at least one respected economist, we are now in a depression. Indeed, the word incompetent doesn't begin to describe this President and Congress.

This today from John Strossel discusses the current economic situation:

Why isn't the economy recovering? After previous recessions, unemployment didn't get stuck at close to 10 percent. If left alone, the economy can and does heal itself, as the mistakes of the previous inflationary boom are corrected.

The problem today is that the economy is not being left alone. Instead, it is haunted by uncertainty on a hundred fronts. When rules are unintelligible and unpredictable, when new workers are potential threats because of Labor Department regulations, businesses have little confidence to hire. President Obama's vaunted legislative record not only left entrepreneurs with the burden of bigger government, it also makes it impossible for them to accurately estimate the new burden.

In at least three big areas -- health insurance, financial regulation and taxes -- no one can know what will happen.

New intrusive rules for health insurance are yet to be written, and those rules will affect hiring, since most health insurance is provided by employers.

Thanks to the new 2,300 page Dodd-Frank finance regulatory act, The Wall Street Journal reports, there will be "no fewer than 243 new formal rule-makings by 11 different federal agencies." These as-yet unknown rules will govern lending to business and other key financial activity.

The George W. Bush tax cuts might be allowed to expire. But maybe not. Social Security and Medicare are dangerously shaky. Will Congress raise the payroll tax? A "distinguished" deficit commission is meeting. What will it do? Recommend a value-added tax?

Who knows? But few employers will commit to a big investment with those clouds hanging over our heads.

"As much as I might want to hire new salespeople, engineers and marketing staff in an effort to grow, I would be increasing my company's vulnerability to government," Michael Fleischer, president of Bogen Communications Inc., wrote in The Wall Street Journal.

Nothing more effectively freezes business in place than what economist and historian Robert Higgs calls "regime uncertainty."

"(A)ll of these unsettling possibilities and others of substantial significance must give pause to anyone considering a long-term investment, because any one of them has the potential to turn what seems to be a profitable investment into a big loser. In short, investors now face regime uncertainty to an extent that few have experienced in this country -- to find anything comparable, one must go back to the 1930s and 1940s, when the menacing clouds of the New Deal and World War II darkened the economic horizon."

Uncertainty created by Obama's legislative "successes" are comparable to the Depression and World War II? This does not bode well for job growth.

Higgs says: "Unless the government acts soon to resolve the looming uncertainties about the half-dozen greatest threats of policy harm to business, investors will remain for the most part on the sideline ... consuming wealth that might otherwise have been invested."

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Amen - Paul Ryan On Real Economic Recovery

Paul Ryan impresses me every time I hear him.

He appeared on Hardball to discuss the Bush Tax Cuts and plans to put our economy back on a fiscally sane path. Matthews did a hyper-aggressive interview with Ryan and Ryan shined.

Rep. Joe Crowley of NY also appeared on the show - and was about as far out of his element as he could be. His answer to our economic milaise was to tout the Democrats Pay-Go legislation. The problem of course is the left has that new law encased under glass, only to be brought out to wave around on camera before the mid-terms. Matthews didn't push Crowley at all, but its just as well as that gave more time for Ryan.

Do enjoy this one:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

(H/T Noel Sheppard at News Busters)

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Politicians & The Perspective Of Time

An e-mail was sent to me that is making the rounds in the UK. It applies equally as well on this side of the pond - and although the list of new taxes is different, it is no less applicable:

The next time you hear a politician use the word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about whether you want the 'politicians' spending YOUR tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.

- A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

- A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

- A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.

- A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

- A billion Pounds ago was only 13 hours and 12 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.

* Stamp Duty
* Tobacco Tax
* Corporate Income Tax
* Income Tax
* Council Tax
* Unemployment Tax
* Fishing License Tax
* Petrol/Diesel Tax
* Inheritance Tax (tax on top of tax)
* Alcohol Tax
* V.A.T.
* Marriage License Tax
* Property Tax
* Service charge taxes
* Social Security Tax
* Vehicle License Registration Tax
* Vehicle Sales Tax
* Workers Compensation Tax

Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago...and our nation was one of the most prosperous in the world.

We had absolutely no national debt...

we had the largest middle class in the world... and Mum stayed home to raise the kids.

What happened?

Can you spell 'politicians?'

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. . . But You Can't Fool All The People All Of The Time.

Honest Abe he ain't. And while he might have been able to fool most of the people back in November 2008, it would seem, from the latest Rasmussen poll, that Obama's ablities at deception are starting to wear thin.

. . . President Obama this week formally kicked off meetings of his bipartisan deficit reduction commission, but most Americans view the commission as cover for Congress to raise taxes.

. . . 78% think it’s at least somewhat likely that Congress will raise taxes if the commission proposes any tax hikes, including 53% who say the legislators are very likely to do so. Only 14% say Congress is not very or not at all likely to raise taxes if the commission recommends it.

Although 83% of Americans are concerned about the size of the federal budget deficit, just five percent (5%) think Congress and the president should consider only tax increases when dealing with it. Forty-three percent (43%) say only spending cuts should be considered, up eight points from February. Forty-four percent (44%) say a mix of spending cuts and tax increases should be on the table. . . .

Eighty-three percent (83%) of Americans say the size of the federal budget deficit is due more to the unwillingness of politicians to cut government spending than to the reluctance of taxpayers to pay more in taxes.

Democrats from the start have viewed health care reform as the most important of the budget priorities cited by the president in a speech to Congress last February. Republicans and unaffiliated voters consistently have said the president’s priority should be cutting the federal budget deficit in half by the end of his first term.

Most voters believe the new national health care plan will raise the deficit, which is one reason why 58% support its repeal.

Fifty-three percent (53%) of voters say cutting government spending is good for the economy, and 61% say the same of cutting taxes. Forty-one percent (41%) prefer a budget deficit with tax cuts over a balanced budget that requires higher taxes. Nearly as many (36%) would rather see a balanced budget with higher taxes.

Even if the president and Congress raise taxes to reduce the federal deficit, 58% of voters think they are more likely to spend the money on new government programs. . . .

It would seem that a majority of American have had their eyes opened. If the Republicans are smart, they will unveil a detailed plan to reduce the deficit by July - both to run on against the Democrats who are unable to float a plan of their own and to get well out in front of the Democrat's "budget deficit commission.

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Flotsam & Jetsam In The News

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Thousands of public sector union employees rallied at the Illinois state capital to demand that the state raise income taxes on all Illinois residents in order to fund their jobs and pensions - all of which vastly outstrip the private sector average.



This is exactly in line with what I have written about public sector unions previously.

From across the pond, with elections but a few weeks away, Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats - committed socialists all - claimed that "the British people have a 'more insidious cross to bear' than Germany over World War II" and that Brits "suffered 'delusions of grandeur' and a 'misplaced sense of superiority' over having defeated the horrors of Nazism." What a complete ass. This is precisely what I was writing about when addressing the insanity of Britian's socialists here.

During his campaign for President, Obama made a central plank of his election the promise that he would not raise taxes on the middle class.



Apparently, what he meant to say was no new INCOME taxes - the teleprompter had it wrong. As for an incredibly regressive VAT tax that will completely screw the middle class and the poor, well, that doesn't sound so bad to him.

The Mexican government is mad because Arizona has passed a tough new law that allows them to arrest illegal immigrants. They really can go pound sand. We need the an Infantry Division on the border, preferably one with ties to Gen. Pershing.

The eunuchs at Comedy Central will now not even let South Park use the word "Mohammed" after receiving a threat reminding them of what happened to Theo Van Goh. So Comedy Central will allow comedy aimed at Christianity but Islam - well, that is now verbotten. My disdain for these people could not be any greater.

A rapper addressed school children as part of a sanctioned school event in Henry County, Ga. Parents found out after the fact and complained to the principal, believing the rapper not to be an appropriate role model and asking in the future to be appraised of any such speakers so they could keep their children home that day. The principal responded: "I thought about asking a guy who snorted cocaine and got arrested for DUI when he was 30 to come and speak to our kids, but President George W. Bush was not available." This ass should be fired so fast his head should spin.

I liked Michael Steele when he was a candidate for Congress in Maryland. As the RNC Chairman, I was inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. But he is doing more to hurt Republican's with black voters than all the Democrats put together. A few weeks ago, he played the race card against those on the right critical of his stewardship of the RNC. And the latest:

Why should an African-American vote Republican?

"You really don't have a reason to, to be honest -- we haven't done a very good job of really giving you one. True? True," Republican National Chairman Michael Steele told 200 DePaul University students Tuesday night.

I can think of a thousand reasons why blacks should be supporting Republicans rather than Democrats. If this clown can't think of one, he has to go. Now. Today. Send him to the DNC and let him screw them up.

Nicholas Kristoff, one of the NYT's stable of left wing columnists, has some very harsh criticism of the Obama's weak foreign policy, particularly as regards Sudan:

Until he reached the White House, Barack Obama repeatedly insisted that the United States apply more pressure on Sudan so as to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur and elsewhere.

Yet, as president, Mr. Obama and his aides have caved, leaving Sudan gloating at American weakness. . . .

Actually, Mr. Kristoff, they are laughing from Tehran to Moscow and all points in between. Well, all except Israel.

And lastly, a recent U.S. military report speculated that we could reach peak oil by 2015, after which demand will forever outstrip supply. Well, perhaps there might be something we could DO ABOUT THAT . . .

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A Green Reverse Robin Hood

From across the pond, here is Dr. North at EU Referendum, passing on the UK's new green "feed-in" tarrif program. It is a program where you can install green energy producing "enhancements," such as solar panels, on your property and the UK government will require that all energy you produce will be bought by the energy company at a premium - regardless whether you use all the energy yourself:

. . . So it starts ... the pigs rush to the trough, scooping up the cash by the handfuls. They would be mad not to do so. The government has devised an utterly mad system designed to put £8.6 billon a year into the kitty, available for anyone able to afford the initial investment. AND THE REST OF US PAY.

This one, like so many, has crept in under the radar, a perverted, distorted reverse Robin Hood scheme where the poor are robbed to give to the rich. And even with today's debauched currency, £8 billion plus A YEAR is a lot of money – you could build four aircraft carriers a year with that, every year.

This is money which is going to be siphoned out of our pockets, all to produce electricity in one of the least efficient and most expensive ways known to man. On our backs, will arise a vast, bloated "green" industry, milking the poor and the less-well-off, just to pay homage to a mad obsession. In Zimbabwe, runaway inflation produced scenes such as the one shown. If you see something similar in Britain, you are looking at a solar energy developer.

Keep a close eye on what happens across the pond. It is a laboratory for socialim and green insanity. And it is a laboratory whose results Obama seems to wish to emulate.

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Obamacare, The President's Edition - Bigger, Longer, Taxier, More Expensive

Obamacare rises from the grave yet again. This is like a B-movie horror flick where the beast cannot be killed - at least until November. Obama seems utterly determined to destroy his party - fine by me, as long as he doesn't destroy health care and our economy along the way. Unfortunately, those are two real possiblities. Here are the short facts on the new Obamacare.

- It retains the Senate Bill with some important additions:

- Obama would add more taxes including a 2.9% capital gains tax increase and a doubling of the Medicare Payroll tax for high income earners.

- The Union fix is still there, but now it has been extended to everyone so that the hefty tax on cadillac health plans will kick in about 2018.

- After all Obama's talk that the laws regarding federal funding for abortion should remain the same, we now get to pay for abortions with our tax dollars.

- Taking a page from Hugo Chavez, we get a new bureacratic office, a federal Health Insurance Rate Authority, to effect national price controls on the cost of health care insurance. Price controls lead inevitably to either higher rates as they stifle competition or they end in scarcity. The justification for this are that the evil insurance companies are scamming us - with the most recent example being the 39% increase in premiums by Anthem in California. The problems - there is "virtually no competition in California when it comes to individual health insurance policies. Anthem pretty much has the market sewn up." Further, healthy people are dropping from the insurance rolls because of the horrid California economy, leaving only those with significant problems in the insurance pools. Take a look at Hugo's economy and you can get a good feel for the effect of price controls.

- Obama has tinkered enough with the Senate bill - and done so with sufficient inattention to detail - that the CBO now says that cannot score Obama's bill.

- AP adds the following:

The plan [includes additional] fees on drug companies and other health industry firms. . . .

Like the House and Senate bills, the plan would require most Americans to carry health insurance coverage, with federal subsidies to help many afford the premiums. Insurance companies would be barred from denying coverage to people with medical problems or charging them more.

Bottom line, I didn't think it possible, but Obama has taken the a nightmare of a bill and actually succeeded in making it worse. Again I ask, why in God's name are Republican's going to meet with Obama on this issue on Thursday. Not since Custer decided to meet for a pow wow at Little Big Horn has there been a decision this idiotic. (Note: Custer did not accept an invitation, I just said that for dramatic effect.)

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A Man Of No Substance

During the run-up to the election, I stated repeatedly that Obama, with the help of a left wing media in lust and in love, presented a wholly false persona belied by the reality of his associations. His many pronouncements and promises had not the substance of the wind necessary to utter them. One of those promises - indeed, one of the central promises - was to refrain from taxing people making less than $250,000. Yet having added more than a trillion dollars to our debt and preparing to add much more, he has now decided that he is "agnostic" on the issue of raising taxes on the middle class.

This latest change in yet another core issue has led Victor Davis Hanson at the NRO to opine:

The problem with Obama’s new hedging on taxing those who make below $250,000, or his administration’s taking credit for victory in the Iraq war that they so once fervently tried to abort, or the flip-flop on renditions and tribunals, or the embarrassments over closing Guantanamo and trying KSM in New York or Mirandizing the Christmas Day bomber,or trashing/praising Wall Street grandees, is not that presidents cannot change their minds as circumstances warrant, or even that all politicians are at times hypocritical. No, the rub is that Obama is not merely flipping and triangulating on issues in a desperate attempt to shadow the polls, but he is doing so on matters that he once swore were absolutely central to his entire candidacy and his signature hope-and-change agenda, critical to the future of the U.S., and proof of his opponents’ either ignorance or disingenuousness. . . .

Many are comparing this to Bush I's "read my lips, no new taxes" pledge. Ed Driscoll asks if Obama has decided four years are enough? And are we about to witness the "revenge of Joe the Plumber?"

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Seraphic Secret On Utopianism and Big Government

From Richard Avrech at Seraphic Secret, an insightful essay on utopianism versus reality and Big Government statism versus capitalism that appears as part of a post on the Health Care bill. He captures in a few paragraphs what I struggle in far more to say:

Seraphic Secret believes in the power of the individual, the power of free markets to effect positive results for a majority of the people.

There is no such thing as a solution for everybody.

That is called utopia and utopian models always end in tyranny if not outright genocide.

Seraphic Secret strongly believes in religious charities such as The Jewish Health Care Foundation of Los Angeles.

Charities flourish when government is least intrusive. But when government assumes control of private initiative charity declines because high taxes drain wallets and people assume that, y'know, the government is taking care of everything.

Remember when computers and other innovative electronics cost the earth? Private industry and competition drove prices down and quality up. The same free market model should and could be used for health care reform.

But Obama and the Democrats have no faith in free markets, no faith in a free American citizenry.

Obama and the Democrats believe in big government, they believe in, well, themselves—a ruling elite.

But big government does not innovate.

Big government does not create new jobs or new markets.

Big government is a cumbersome beast that is concerned, primarily, with maintaining and expanding its own power.

And Big government is the enemy of freedom and decency. Because when you relinquish control of your life to government, you relinquish free choice, you give up on the American dream.

And that is the plague called socialism/communism/collectivism, recast by modern liberals as, ahem, social justice.

You—yes you—are about to sink into a world of new taxes and a grim swamp of government health care.

G-d help us.

Do read Robert's entire post. Robert's essay is a good compliment to one of my favorite Thomas Sowell essays: The Prejudices Of The Elite. If you don't already read Seraphic Secret on a daily basis, I would highly recommend you start doing so.

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Analysis Of The ABC Interview Of Gov. Palin Part II – Reform, Earmarks, Abortion, Guns,

Comments -

The second part of the ABC interview is an improvement over Part I. Gov. Palin is more at ease with questions and she comes across as conservative, reasonable and sincere. Again the questions were fair but, as in segment I, there were flaws. Charlie Gibson questioning could have been much clearer on his questions regarding earmarks.

Gibson's opening question was what sets Gov. Palin apart from the Bush regime in terms of "change" and "reform." Her list of what she would change are lower taxes, fiscal restraint, and improved oversight of federal and quasi-government agencies. Fiscal restrain is the big part. I wish she had talked about the need to reform entitlement programs as that is, as Gibson intimates, the major hurdle in restraining spending.

On the economy, the big question in this segment concerned earmarks and the Bridge to Nowhere. Gov. Palin is attempting to make more out her final killing of the Bridge to Nowhere than is justified – probably because it makes for a good sound byte. Yes, she did redirect the funding from the Bridge project. But she did not reject the funding or otherwise return it to the federal government. Pushing this too far will hurt her.

At the same time, Charlie Gibson was making far less out of Gov. Palin’s record for reducing earmark requests in her state. No, she has not killed all of them, but she has reduced request for them significantly and she is clearly on record as intending to reduce such requests for her state in the future. Further, Chalie Gibson’s question on earmarks shows a fundamental confusion on the issue. Gov. Palin’s answer indicates she fully understands it.

There are two different categories of earmarks, and though both are problematic, one is far more problematic than the other. The lesser of two evils is when individual legislators request spending for a specific project within their state or for a special interest that is then debated and voted upon by Congress. But there is another category of earmark abuse that is the preponderance of the problem. The vast majority of earmarks do not go through the process just described. They are never debated and voted upon by Congress. They do not see the light of day in effect. This from the Weekly Standard describes the problem:

President Bush seems to grasp the issue. A year ago he publicly complained that "over 90 percent of earmarks never make it to the floor of the House and Senate. They are dropped into committee reports that are not even part of the bill that arrives on my desk. You didn't vote them into law. I didn't sign them into law. Yet, they're treated as if they have the force of law."

To make the matter worse, these in the latter category are far too often vaguely worded, open ended funding requests. The latter category absolutely must be killed if we are ever to have a hope of getting control on spending and reducing corruption. The former category needs to severely restricted, though there needs to be a lot of thought given to how to do this without unduly restricting reasonable requests for funding. That is a systemic problem that needs to be debated and reformed at the highest level of government. That said, given the abuses of the system at this point, we need to ere for the foreseeable future on the restricting such requests to the minimum possible.

Over at the Next Right, they have a superb example of how the corrupt version of earmarking works. Their example is Dem. Senator Carl Levin who literally is refusing any debate in a matter that will allow $5.9 billion in earmarks pass into law in the Defense Appropriations Bill without every being debated or voted upon in Congress.

Gov. Palin gets this one. I hope the audience watching does also. The fact is Palin and McCain will, I fully expect, make a very good faith effort to impose fiscal restraint, reduce pork and clean up the earmark process. And while all three of those are related, they are also separate - something Gibson seems to muddle in his questioning.

On "social issues," I think Palin hit all the questions out of the ball park. She came across as conservative but reasonable and willing to be flexible. In that regard, she made an important point - she distinguished between her personal views and what she believed would be reasonable policy in light of those who disagree with her.

Gibson's first question concerned abortion. Palin's answer was music to my ears. As she said, she would like to see Roe v. Wade overturned and abortion made a state issue. She does not want abortion made illegal, but she wants to see a greater "culture of life."

Hers is hardly an extremist position on either count (though her personal opinion that abortion is wrong even in cases of rape and incest puts her is not centrist by any means.) Indeed, the position that she articulates on Roe was one shared by now Justice Ginsburgh, a staunch advocate of abortion rights, who also believed that Roe was wrongly decided. Abortion appears nowhere in the Constitution. It is a social issue that the federal government should have no role in authorizing or limiting. Given my own personal opinion that nothing has done more damage to our Supreme Court jurisprudence than Roe v. Wade, it is a position I believe fundamental to putting our nation back on track. Roe opened up the flood gates for judicial activism - and it is a floodgate that has not been stemmed for nearly half a century. You can find much more on the issue in a seperate post that I did - The Supreme Court, Originalism, Activism & America's Future.

On homosexuality, her answer ought to give the gay rights community a warm fuzzy feeling. She simply said that she will not judge people's lifestyle. Although she did not mention it, I recall that she also supported gay friendly legislation in Alaska. Gibson did not ask her about her stance on gay marriage.

On guns, Gibson prefaced his question by stating that 70% of Americans support a ban on assault rifles. I would love to know where he got that number - that sounds like pure bull. Nonetheless, Palin's answer here was I thought very strong. They cut some of her answer to this line of questioning that I have seen in another video where she makes the very valid point that gun laws take guns out of the hands of the law abiding, not the criminals.

And the PUMA's ought to appreciate Gibson raising the fact that Palin spoke so highly of Hillary long before she was on the radar for the VP slot. That certainly makes her praise of Hillary on the campaign trail seem genuine and not cynical. And you have to love her dig at Obama - that he should have chosen Hillary as his VP pick.

Overall, I would grade Gov. Palin’s performance a solid B in the economic segment, an A in the social segment. I wish she would have expounded more upon the Obama tax plan and I wish Charlie Gibson’s questioning on ear marks and pork had been much clearer.

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A Mayoral Mess - The Land Under The Wasilla Sports Complex

Two of the Democratic talking points going around conern Gov. Sarah Palin's time as Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. The first is that she raised taxes. Not quite true. There was a referendum on whether to increase the sales tax by .5%. The people of the city raised their own taxes by approving the increase in a democratic vote. The second talking point is that Mayor Palin came into office with the city having no long term debt, she left with the city owing $20 million. That number is overly high, but regardless, what the dems in their talking points don't do is explain the cause of the debt. It has nothing to do with Mayor Palin's incompetent handling of the local budget. The people agreed to the sales tax rise in order to fund a capital improvement - a $14+ million dollar sports complex for the residents to exercise during the long, cold Alaskan winters.

The talking points are bull - as to be expected really, given the Palin Derangement Syndrome (PDS) going around the left like it was the 1918 Spanish Flu. That said, the left is missing the one real issue in all this that has some bearing on Mayor Palin's fitness. It appears that Mayor Palin gave the go ahead to break ground on the sports complex before the City had clear title to the land on which it was to be built. I've been waiting to hear the whole story - whether she ignored the advice of her city attorney or whether the city attorney screwed this one. The WSJ weighs in with more information today.
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This from the WSJ:

The biggest project that Sarah Palin undertook as mayor of this small town was an indoor sports complex, where locals played hockey, soccer, and basketball, especially during the long, dark Alaskan winters.

The only catch was that the city began building roads and installing utilities for the project before it had unchallenged title to the land. The misstep led to years of litigation and at least $1.3 million in extra costs for a small municipality with a small budget. What was to be Ms. Palin's legacy has turned into a financial mess that continues to plague Wasilla.

. . . Litigation resulting from the dispute over Ms. Palin's sports-complex project is still in the courts, with the land's former owner seeking hundreds of thousands of additional dollars from the city.

Hockey is much loved in Wasilla, and Ms. Palin, whose son was a star player, wanted to build an indoor rink, with a track, basketball courts and soccer field. In the late 1990s, the city sought a 145-acre parcel owned by the Nature Conservancy, which wanted to sell the land to buy more environmentally sensitive property elsewhere. City officials negotiated a price of $126,000. Months passed without the city's securing a signed purchase agreement, according to the city's attorney, Tom Klinkner of Birch, Horton, Bittner & Cherot.

At the same time, Gary Lundgren, a Fairbanks real-estate investor, was in talks with the Nature Conservancy to buy a larger adjacent property. As discussions between the environmental group and the city dragged on, Mr. Lundgren said, he purchased the entire site for about $1 million.

The city sued Mr. Lundgren and the Nature Conservancy, arguing that Wasilla had had a deal. In 2001, a federal district court judge ruled in Wasilla's favor. Mr. Lundgren appealed, but the city believed it would prevail, according to Mr. Klinkner.

Ms. Palin marched ahead, making the public case for a sales-tax increase and $14.7 million bond issue to pay for the sports center, which was to feature a running track, basketball courts and a hockey rink. At the time, the city's annual budget was about $20 million. In a March 2002 referendum, residents approved the mayor's plan by a 20-vote margin, 306 to 286. The city cleared roads, installed utilities and made preparations to build.

Later that year, Ms. Palin's final one as mayor, the federal judge reversed his own decision and ruled that the property rightfully belonged to Mr. Lundgren. Wasilla had never signed the proper papers, the court ruled.

Mr. Lundgren said he had offered to give smaller parcels to the city free of charge, but the city held out for a larger tract. The former chief of the city finance department, Ted Leonard, says he doesn't recall such an offer.

After Ms. Palin left office, the city decided to take 80 acres of Mr. Lundgren's property through eminent domain. An Alaska court confirmed the city's right to do so and ordered that an arbitrator determine the appropriate price.

Last year, the arbitrator ordered the city to pay $836,378 for the 80-acre parcel, far more than the $126,000 Wasilla originally thought it would pay for a piece of land 65 acres larger. The arbitrator also determined that the city owed Mr. Lundgren $336,000 in interest. Wasilla's legal bill since the eminent domain action has come to roughly $250,000 so far, according to Mr. Klinkner, the city attorney.

Mr. Lundgren has appealed the decision, arguing that the arbitrator should have awarded him more interest. "It has been 10 years; it's just insane," said Mr. Lundgren, who now lives in Panama. "All [Ms. Palin] had to do was close the transaction."

The McCain-Palin campaign referred questions about the sports complex to Mr. Leonard, the former city finance chief. He blamed the Nature Conservancy for dealing with two different potential buyers at one time. "That's what caused the confusion," he said.

"At the time, with the information she had, [Ms. Palin] made the right decision," Mr. Leonard said. "But you know what? Litigation happens."

The sports facility is finished, set against forest and mountain ranges. Inside, locals kick soccer balls and skate laps on the rink. Last year, it hosted a statewide wrestling tournament.

"All I can say about the sports complex is that it was done on time and under budget," said Donald Moore, a Palin ally who managed the construction. "It was done legally, and for someone else to say it could have been done differently in a better way, that's strictly their opinion."

Ms. Palin cited her mayoral duties as partial evidence of her executive experience. Dianne Woodruff, a Wasilla city councilwoman and critic of Ms. Palin's performance, agreed.

"If people are going to be voting on her based on her experience as Wasilla's mayor, then they should know how she did in the job," Ms. Woodruff said, "the good, the bad and the ugly."

Read the entire article. Palin may well have to explain this one in more depth. It is not clear why the city did not resort to eminent domain in the first instance. That was a mistake compounded by the decision to break ground before title was quieted. Perhaps she can justify her decisions. Or perhaps she just owns the screw-ups and leaves it for us to decide their importance. It seems worthy of note, but hardly an indicator of unfitness.

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McCain Passes Economics 101 With High Marks

Some time ago, McCain admitted that his weakness was economics. At the start of the semester / campaign season, he was pushing an economy busting cap and trade plan and refusing to allow drilling even in the face of our energy crisis. Today, cap and trade is dead, taxes are to be lowered, the dollar to be made stronger, and McCain has a sensible energy plan. Even Larry Kudlow's giving him a gold star. The Danes don't even think we need an election, from their viewpoint. I fully concur with their logic.
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On Monday at a town hall in Denver, John McCain laid out his "Jobs for America" plan that you can find here. You can also find an online briefing detailing the plan here. Then there is this from Larry Kudlow writing at NRO:

After writing favorably about Sen. McCain’s recent economics speeches, where he clearly shifted toward the supply-side both on tax cuts and producing more energy, I went back last evening and carefully read his 15-page policy pamphlet called “Jobs for America.” Here’s what I found:

There is no mention of cap-and-trade. None. Nada. There is a section about “Cheap, Clean, Secure Energy for America: The Lexington Project.” But that talks about expanded domestic production of oil and gas, as well as the need for more nuclear power and coal along with alternative sources. Then it has the $300 million battery and flex-fuel cars. But nope, no cap-and-trade. So I picked up the phone and dialed a senior McCain official to make sure these old eyes hadn’t missed it. Sure enough, on deep background, this senior McCain advisor told me I was correct: no cap-and-trade. In other words, this central-planning, regulatory, tax-and-spend disaster, which did not appear in Mac’s two recent speeches, has been eradicated entirely — even from the detailed policy document that hardly anybody will ever read. So then I asked this senior official if the campaign has taken cap-and-trade out behind the barn and shot it dead once and for all — buried it in history’s dustbin of bad ideas. The answer came back that they are interested in jobs right now — jobs for new energy production and jobs from lower taxes. At that point I became satisfied. . . .

. . . I might add that in this lengthy policy document there’s a strong statement about appreciating the value of the dollar. “John McCain’s policies will increase the value of the dollar and thus reduce the price of oil.”This is good. It’s not perfect. Neither is McCain’s tax plan and new energy plan. But it is excellent progress.

Read the entire post. (H/T Classical Values.) Now it would seem time for Econ 102.

This is all quite good news. Though even without these big strides, the worst McCain could do is far less than the far left who seem prepared to sing the requiem for capitalism and enact socialism in one fell swoop, shades of Britain in 1946.

Not surprisingly, there is a tremendous amount of interest in the U.S. general election overseas, though there is also some confusion as shown in this e-mail from some individuals in Denmark:

We in Denmark cannot figure out why you are even bothering to hold an election.

On one side, you have a bitch who is a lawyer, married to a lawyer, and a lawyer who is married to a bitch who is a lawyer.

On the other side, you have a true war hero married to a woman with a huge chest who owns a beer distributorship.

Is there a contest here?.

This joke cribbed, with great appreciation, from fellow Watcher's Council member The Colossus of Rhodey, with a hat tip to Soccer Dad.

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