Hillary's Obama Moment

Don't let anybody, don't let anybody tell you, that, uh, you know, It's corporations and businesses that create jobs.

Yeah, governments can create jobs... like baking bread.  Here the citizenry stands in line to get some:

Government can also run construction, here's an apartment complex in Beijing:

Government can create good jobs.  Just ask former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney:

And remember, you didn't build that.

 

Socialism's Sad Propagandists

The entire Class Warfare agenda collapses under serious scrutiny

President Obama's demagoguery surrounding wealth, taxes and everybody paying their "fair share" (what the hell ever that is) has passed its freshness date, but still it sits there in the public square, rotting like a sack of bloody fish heads in the harsh noonday sun.  

Progressive hopium smokers say things like this...

"We have very little progressivity in our tax code, we have among the world's worst wealth disparity, and when compared to income and wealth, the wealthy pay much less in taxes than do the rest of us." (Jersey McJones)

This is the propaganda that Obama's willfully-ignorant toadies will regurgitate in response to a perfectly good blog post written by blogger buddy Jack Camwell.

The Rich already pay more than the rest of us

The effective tax rate of the median income taxpayer, (due to exemptions, deductions, etc) is 7.4 %,  according to the New York Times, and not 15% or 25% as some have alleged.

Romney, a typical rich man who, like Warren Buffett, makes most of his money off of investments, had an effective rate of 13.9% in 2010. Rich men Obama and Gingrich paid 26.8% and 32.2% respectively. So rich people are paying at least twice the rate as the median income taxpayer, with some paying four times that.

Make the rich pay more?  Even taxing the 1% at 100%, essentially confiscating their entire paycheck every two weeks would yield only another $900 billion or so, a band-aid to Obama's gushing deficits.  Think about that for a moment.  Even complete confiscation would not solve our government's deficit problems.

Earned Income and Capital Gains are taxed at different rates

It is also useful to distinguish between earned income and capital gains. They are taxed at different rates. So the Warren Buffett's secretary argument is one of apples and oranges. And btw, she's not a school secretary earning $30,000 per year; she reportedly makes over $300K/year, which puts some of her income all the way up in the 33% bracket.  So yeah, Warren pays a lower effective tax rate, but he gets his money from captial gains, not salary.  Maybe she should ask to be paid in Berkshire Hathaway shares...

Wealth distribution" rhetoric betrays an anti-liberty, socialist mindset

Who distributes it? Based upon what criteria? Where does the wealth come from?  Who owns it?  Do they really believe Uncle Obama has a stash?  These unabashed socialists are talking about confiscating other people's money and redistributing it as they see fit, plain and simple.

The capitalist form of redistribution is going to work for a rich man in exchange for some of his money.

The US tax code is the most progressive among developed nations:

But a new study on inequality by researchers at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris reveals that when it comes to household taxes (income taxes and employee social security contributions) the U.S. "has the most progressive tax system and collects the largest share of taxes from the richest 10% of the population."

[...]  the U.S. tax system is far more progressive—meaning pro-poor—than similar systems in countries most Americans identify with high taxes, such as France and Sweden.  (The Tax Foundation)

Socialist Propaganda

Jersey's quote at the top of this article is a beautiful slice of sly socialist propaganda:

"...and when compared to income and wealth, the wealthy pay much less in taxes than do the rest of us."

See how Jersey sneaked in "and wealth?"  We do not tax wealth in this country! We tax income!  And did you notice the tautology?  The wealthy are wealthier than the rest of us because they have more wealth...

Here are the bare facts, and they are nowhere near what Jersey would have you believe:  The Top 5% of income earners pay over 50% of all taxes, while the bottom 50% pay just 2.25% Source:  National Taxpayer's Union

Always be sure to carefully parse progressive propaganda. They can't stick to the simple numbers, but must invent categories and sly formulations to make their propaganda points.

So, in summary, the poverty pimps and the class warfare hustlers on the left are full of crap

Yes, social issues and crony crapitalism contribute to wealth disparity, but so does lazy people sitting on their asses all day while entrepreneurs are out finding ways to make money by serving their fellow man.  An efficient market does not distribute rewards equally; it distributes them by merit.  

The rich pay the overwhelming preponderance of taxes in this country, and almost 50% of Americans pay no federal income tax whatsoever. Some even get Earned Income Tax Credit, where the government pays them! Thank President Gerald Ford (a republican) for enacting it, and President Ronald Reagan (a republican) for expanding it.

So put that in you hopium pipe and smoke it!

The King's "New Socialism" Speech

President Obama is a pyromaniac in a field of strawmen.*

In Kansas, Obama railed against nefarious forces …

“They want to go back to the same policies that stacked the deck against middle-class Americans for way too many years,” Obama said of the GOP. “And their philosophy is simple: We are better off when everybody is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.”

Just who are the people who believe this? I don’t know any. Playing by your own rules is perfectly ok in your own domain, but it has no place in a free marketplace. Free market capitalism is predicated upon a known set of rules that everyone must follow. You can’t steal from others or murder your opponents, for example. You can’t lie to your business partners or customers. And what specific policies “stack the deck against middle-class Americans?” Give us specifics!

Mickey Kaus (America's smartest liberal) homed in on Obama’s attempt to shame corporations into what Kaus calls patriotic charity: staying here and hiring people even if you have to lose money or forgo greater profits or productivity gains to do it:

A patriotic Charity Economy is a conveyor belt to corporatism!

After all, what happens when the factory of celebrated businessman X who recognizes his patriotic obligation to employ Americans at $20 an hour is faced with competition from uncelebrated, selfish businessman Y who employs Chinese ex-peasants at $2 an hour? Businessman X is going to need a “partnership” with government, sort of a pre-bailout bailout. Obama doesn’t seem to have a problem with this sort of cozy arrangment. (Kaus – Obama’s Charity Capitalism)

An Unfair Presidency

Obama compared capital gains tax apples to personal income tax oranges, excoriating greedy CEOs for paying less taxes than their secretaries (a blatant lie).

He decried a system of laws that does not treat everyone equally, as his administration favors certain companies (Solyndra, GM) over others.

He hectored companies for using modern technology like ATMs, digital phone switches and that newfangled contraption known as the internet, while his armed agents raid workplaces and he shuts down job-creating factories and pipelines.  And then he taunts his pornographic lover Big Biz for not hiring. The man is a walking, talking BS machine.

But by Obama's own measure, the country has gotten more "fair." The richest 1% now pays almost 40% of all federal income taxes, up from 25% two decades ago, while the bottom half pays only 2%, down from 6%. The federal regulatory state has never been as big, and government spending as a share of the economy is at record levels. (IBD)

Here’s the kicker:

the only winners since Obama took office have been corporations (profits are up 68%) and Wall Street investors (the Dow's up more than 45%). The rest of the country has gotten the shaft. (IBD)

I’d like to see him try to get reelected running on that...

As Socrates would say, let’s define our terms

Just what exactly is “fair?” Or a better question, what specifically is unfair here in the US? Wage disparity? Unequal outcomes? Can it be traced back to a root cause?

East coast Massachusetts kids named Kennedy have about a 100% chance of going to an Ivy League school, regardless of how dull they may be. Silverfiddle kids have about zero chance. Is that fair? Who knows? Who cares? It’s all a waste of time. We are individuals, our needs and wants are unique, and our efforts produce disparate and varied outcomes.

Now, if we find that a certain class of people is rounding up other people and kicking them and their progeny down a hole so as to keep them from pursuing their American dream, that would be unfair. I don’t see that happening in this country. We are not all born into identical circumstances, so equalization would be quite a task. Everywhere it’s been tried, those on top were dragged down, rather than those on the low end being elevated.

Rather than all this inflated fascistic rhetoric designed to whip the proles into a revolutionary frenzy, how about restoring the rule of law? Forcing Big Banking and Corporate America off of the government teat? How about getting the federal government’s snout out of every corner of our lives and allowing us to solve our problems at the lowest level?

Even the venerable bastion of corporate statism, The Washington Post, gave Obama’s Robespierre acid trip flashback in Kansas three Pinocchios for its bald-faced dishonesty.

* - William F. Buckley’s description of John Kenneth Galbraith

Further Reading:
Harsanyi – Obama vs Capitalism
NY Times – Obama Tongue Bath
IBD - A Lesson in Fairness for Obama
Obama Urges Fair Play

America's Last Stand

The 2012 elections are the last stand.  For progressives as well as small government conservatives and libertarians.  It is America's Last Stand

The economy will not improve

The situation of ordinary citizens will become even more parlous, and government will be forced to "DO SOMETHING!"

That something depends upon which party is in power.  Liberals see the mess we're in and blame free market capitalism, ignoring the fact that we haven't seen that rare bird in a hundred years.

Yeah, we had some variants and hybrid strains, but it's not been a free market, but rather a very locked-down and expensive one.  Just ask entrepreneurial outsiders trying to pole vault in over the regulatory walls governments have erected at the behest of the insiders.  Progressive "solutions" will only make it worse.

Welcome to The Crisis

We are in a crisis, and the progressives see it has their last, best hope.  Hence the desperate cry, "The revolution is here!"   No, it's not, but progressives will keep asserting it, telling the big lie long enough until it becomes the truth.  The Obama campaign, flush with Wall Street Cash and it's own fat cat bankers and plutocrats (Daley, Immelt, etc), will demagogue the Occupy Wall Street protests to its own political advantage

This sums up the Occupy Wall Street agenda pretty well:

But the dominant feature is a fierce hatred of anything capitalistic-individualistic profit seeking, large scale enterprise, banks, joint-stock companies, department stores, "international finance and loan capital," the system of "interest slavery" in general; the abolition of these is described as the "basis of the programme, around which everything else turns."

[...] it is not a proletarian but middle class socialism, and that it is, in consequence, inclined to favour the small artisan and shop keeper and to set the limit up to which it recognizes private property somewhat higher than does communism.

[...] In the case of the wealthier capitalists, state control and restriction of income will leave little more than the name of property, even while the intention of correcting the undue accumulation of wealth in the hands of individuals has not yet been carried out.

That was written by Friedrich Hayek in 1933, and he wrote it about Hitler's socialist party.

They aim for modern-day Germany, but their agenda is from National Socialist Germany

It's scary enough that they aim for present-day Germany as their model, where government takes over half of what you make and spreads it around, and puts a lot more rules on you like no gun ownership and mandatory recycling.  Imagine paying $6 for a gallon of gas and living in half the space you live in now.

Only our government is not efficient like Germany's, so we will end up performing a sclerotic slide reminiscent of post WWII Great Britain, only without the sharp musical mockery of a Pink Floyd or the cultural parody of Monty Python...

... And we'll continue sliding all the way back to 1933...

Public-private partnerships, with governmental panels drawing up business plans and picking winners and losers will be the norm.  Free-market capitalists, libertarians, Christians and other free thinkers will not be marched off to gas chambers; we will instead be either broken to the will of the state or branded enemies of the Brave New Society, unable to find work or participate in the government-controlled marketplace.

Laugh if you want to, but that is where collectivism always leads, without exception.  Again, Hayek explains:

The inherent logic of collectivism makes it impossible to confine it to a limited sphere. 

Beyond certain limits, collective action in the interest of all can only be made possible if all can be coerced into accepting as their common interest what those in power take it to be.

At that point, coercion must extend to the individuals' ultimate aims and ideas, and must attempt to bring everyone's Weltanschauung into line with the ideas of the rulers.  (Hayek - Nazism is Socialism)

* - Hat tip to Fuzzy Slippers for sparking this post.  I am a Hayek fan but had forgotten his short essay on why Nazism is socialism.  Please go read her blog post on this subject here:  Fuzzy Slippers - Everything Old is New Again

Infantile Leftists

We want free stuff!

Socialism is as natural as crapping on a police car...

Many of us on the right are shocked and saddened at the resurgence of bald-faced socialism, which we believed had been eternally banished from our shores. It shouldn't be such a shock, really.

 Something for Nothing Gimmee-ism and a Desire for The Strong Man forever lurk within the human heart. Especially among those who eschew fundamental concepts like human nature, natural law, free markets,and personal liberties.

The thing that strikes me about the Occupy Wall Street crowd and their demands is how timeless they are.

We lazily think of socialism as something that came up with the Industrial Revolution. In fact, as Eric Voegelin, Igor Shafarevich, and many others have explained, it is a universal human tendency. (John Derbyshire – Everybody will have everything)

That Derbyshire quote reminded me of Michael Medved’s commentary on liberalism that was spurred by a Helen Thomas quote. You know Helen Thomas, the incredibly old and incredibly liberal White House reporter. Well, she was asked in an interview to explain her liberalism, and she replied that, "well, we're all born liberal."

Michael Medved had a wonderful riposte. I'm paraphrasing from memory, and probably embellishing, so my apologies to Mr. Medved:

Of course we’re all born liberal! As babies we expect someone to pick us up and suckle us when we cry. Eating, like every other pleasure, comes with no effort. Babies don't have to earn anything, they pay for nothing, but they deserve everything. Babies pee, poop, drool and spill wherever they want because someone else cleans up the mess.

Puke down the front of your shirt, pee your pants, poop on the carpet; no responsibility, just gimme, gimme, gimme! It's a fantasy world of padded guard rails, warm swaddling, and adults sacrificing mightily for your comfort and safety. A liberal paradise.

Yes, liberals and babies have a lot in common, and all the adults can do is clean up the mess and help the squalling brats grow into responsible men and women.

Czar of Chaos

Creating Chaos… and turning chaos into a new order

Many conservatives miss the mark when evaluating this administration’s actions. We want to believe Obama really wants to do the right thing, but is simply misguided from his liberal past.

The truth is he wants to tear down our current system and implement his own. It’s not a matter of degrees of opinion on the future of this country; but instead a fundamental philosophy that desires to tear down the old system, then usher in a new socialist one.

In almost every area of federal oversight we can see Obama working to create problems in order to bring about a public reaction – with a liberal solution waiting in the wings. From banning offshore oil drilling to massive federal borrowing we see this administration sowing the seeds of trouble and chaos.

Meet Cloward and Piven

From the beginnings of the Progressive Movement it was seen to remake America into a “better” society, certain bulwarks had to be removed. Family ties, Christianity, the Constitution, and American culture as a whole had to be razed to the ground before a Socialist America could be constructed. In other words, the system had to be crashed. Then order out of the chaos.

The theory of creating a new order out of chaos was described by two liberal professors out of Columbia University named Cloward and Piven. The thrust of the theory was to overload the governmental system with welfare freeloaders, and out of that tumult a new socialist order could be constructed. Subvert… destroy… and then rebuild.

We can see this at work during the Great Depression. A created financial crisis… national suffering… a New Deal… and soon most Americans were suckling the government teat. According to Alan Simpson, “Social Security is a cow with 310 million tits!”

Speaking of the Great Depression, it was a manufactured crisis. Ben Bernanke admitted as much when speaking of the Federal Reserve of the 1920’s: “We did it… very sorry, won’t do it again”. The same names were at it then as today: the Federal Reserve and Goldman Sachs.

A Senate staffer recently told me a month ago the system was going to financially collapse. All of us around the table were slack-jawed to get this from officialdom.

The collapse of the entitlement state is coming into view. This year Social Security began to borrow to pay current retirees. To balance the federal budget without cutting Social Security or Medicare poses no obvious solution.

We have passed the point of being able to pay off our debts. All that is left is to wait for the collapse and a massive devaluation of the dollar.

I’ve never expected to collect social security and but a fraction of my military retirement. Instead, I’ve invested in hard assets like land, buildings, precious metals, and even base metals (like lead in 7.62 mm diameter).

Problem / Reaction / Solution

A societal manipulation technique by those in power is to first define an end-state solution. Then a problem is created (by a bureaucracy or useful idiots) that alarms the population and leads them to the end-state solution.

We can see this administration is adept at supporting rabble-rousers and troublemakers, from union thugs in Wisconsin to the Muslim Brotherhood. The administration even sent out Jimmy Carter and the DNI to exclaim the “Muslim Brotherhood is secular”. That doesn’t even pass the giggle test.

This President is still a community organizer at heart. I believe he wants to create a climate of financial chaos in order to usher his version of a New Deal II. A climate where the American people will cry out for a new solution. I believe the solutions Obama will offer will shred the Constitution.

Don’t fall for the Hegelian Dialectic, as fellow blogger Rev. Gregori reminds us. Let your fellow citizens know that a crisis usually doesn’t just happen, but is made to happen with a goal in mind. Fight back by supporting conservative causes that stall the “solution” offered by the administration. Write your congress-critter. Slow the beast down. Stall the plan. Frustrate The Man.

The Problem / Reaction / Solution process has a shelf-life. If it is slowed down, and the American people are educated, the whole dialectic falls apart. Those apologists for the “solution” are seen for the destructive individuals they are. They then will have a choice: shrink into the shadows or become oppressive. If they become oppressive, the mask is finally off and even more Americans will be woken up.

Hegelian Dialectic: "If you want to take total control over large populations, first you devise a solution to a problem that does not exist. Once you know that your solution will work, you then cause or allow the problem (or incident), for which you devised your solution, to take place so that you can implement your solution."

A question: Is there a group using Liberals as useful idiots to destroy America, in order to bring in something quite different than Socialism?

- Hugh Farnham

photo chop courtesy of Chicago Ray

The King's Speech

No, not the Hollywood movie, I'm talking about our philosopher king, Barack Obama.  Although his Alinskyite Marx-channeling did make me want to scream the F-word more than once.

His central theme? 

"From each according to their ability, to each according to their need"

Like almost everything out of this man's mouth, his speech was pure excreta.  He took bricks of leftist dogma, mortared them together with BS, and built a house of lies.

President Obama has racked up more publicly-held debt that all previous presidents combined, and he has the temerity to lecture us about fiscal responsibility, shaking his finger at Bush and Reagan.

Progressive America:  Brought to You by Lies & Propaganda
Obama repeated the lie that tax cuts increased the national debt.  As always, he is wrong.  Every time we cut taxes, the economy grew and actual taxes collected by the federal government increased.  Revenue is defined as the money the federal government takes in from taxes.

To refute the shameless lefty lies told to us by our president, here are the facts on taxes, revenues and economic growth

Tax Cuts Resulted in More Revenue
Contrary to the unhinged liberal propaganda, the data show that revenue did increase after the Reagan tax cuts and the Bush II tax cuts. The chart below is for the Reagan years and it shows the growth in constant 2005 dollars.  The same happened after the Bush tax cuts.   You can go here and run the numbers yourself.

The data plainly show that revenue increased after each tax cut, and GDP also kept climbing. So clearly, the culprit in all of this is the spending.

So Reagan and Bush tax cuts resulted in more tax money pouring into the government coffers.   Unfortunately, this goaded politicians on to even wilder spending orgies, resulting in the growth of the national debt.

The Liberal Lie
This is where the mischief comes in.  Liberals scream and point to the debt chart, ignoring the first chart showing the increase in revenue.  To them, this "proves" that tax cuts cause debt.  They have to leave out the fact that revenue increased and the economy grew in order to "prove" their lie.  That tax cuts caused the debt is patently and provably false.  Too much spending is what exploded the debt.

I defended John Boehner a few days ago, and I retract not one word.  I think he's a good man.  However, I now stand with the torches and pitchfork brigade. We need to cut trillions, not billions from the federal budget and the money needs to be returned to the people who earned it.  If the progressives insist on buying votes, they can do it with their own damned money.

Cool picture yoinked from IntelBook