Photo by Pargon
We need a vibrant and growing economy, but we are being led by someone who believes in all things that make America mediocre.
Jimmy Carter
Phot by Amanda M Hatfield
Congressional members high tailed it out of Washington after passing a debt limit agreement, but Democrats Steve Israel and Tim Bishop wasted no time in holding a press conference at MacArthur airport on Long Island to blame Republicans for a crisis they created.
To no one’s surprise, President Obama followed his lame first attempt at a budget with the same tired class warfare “taxing the rich is the solution plan”. The problem is spending. This problem is not going to get fixed until we: a) stop spending more; b) start spending less; and c) spend less than we take in until the debt is paid off. Yes, I said paid off. We are the wealthiest country on earth. We should be able to live within our means and not have to borrow to keep a bloated, inefficient, unaccountable government in Washington growing and growing.
Let’s take a look at the facts. The following three charts show how much of Adjusted Gross Income is earned by the most productive 1%, 5%, and 10% (the blue bars) and what share of total income taxes they pay (the red bars). This is over a twenty year period:
Share of Income vs Share of Tax Burden of Most Productive 1 Percent
Share of Income vs Share of Tax Burden
Share of Income vs Share of Tax Burden of Most Productive 10%
What is clear from all three of these graphs is that over the past twenty years if you look at the trend lines, while the most productive amoung us produced more, the share of the tax load they paid grew even faster. So let’s stop the sleight of hand about how many dollars the changes in tax law affect Mr. Obama personally and let’s be clear, to use Mr. Obama’s favorite phrase, there was no tax cut voted in December, the vote just maintained the status quo. So, Mr. President, level with the American people. Just what percentage of total income taxes do you want the most productive 10% of Americans to carry? Since you feel 70%, the amount they carry today, is not enough, what do you think is fair? 80%? 90%? 100%? Should the most productive 10% of Americans pay all of the income taxes while the other 90% pay none? Stop dancing around and be straight with the American people and tell us how much of the total pie is fair for the most productive to pay?
But we don’t have enough revenue because of the Bush tax cuts, you say. Okay, let’s put that one to rest as well.
Federal Government Revenue over Time
It is clear that the tax revenue collected hit its peak after the Bush tax cuts. They fell off after the start of the recession, which is expected, but it appears they bottomed in 2010 and the Bush rates were extended (not increased, not decreased). It’s the spending, stupid!
Trying to raise more money through raising tax rates runs into Hauser’s Law. As I explain in Liberty’s Lifeline, W. Kurt Hauser looked at eighty years of revenue data and concluded that tax revenues will not exceed 20% of GDP no matter how high the rates. If spending continues at 24% of GDP where it is now, we will be digging a hole out of which we will never escape. It’s the spending, stupid!
Instead of leading, President Obama, came out yesterday with Budget 2.0, and basically made a campaign speech instead of a serious policy statement demonstrating leadership. Here is Charles Krauthammer’s analysis:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR0E3trOF-k
President Obama ran for office with the promise of bipartanship. He promised to change the tone in Washington. He has not even been able to change his role from campaigner-in-chief to chief executive and instead has become punter-in-chief. He punted his responsibility to put together a budget to a bipartisan commission. He didn’t like the yucky medicine his commission offered up and so he dismissed their recommendation. He now talks of a new bipartisan commission.
He also likes to follow the instructions of his mentor Saul Alinsky, “pick a target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.” He did it to the members of the Supreme Court in his State of the Union address after the Citizens United v FEC decision by calling them out as they sat immobile in front of him. He repeated it yesterday by inviting Paul Ryan and other Republican leaders to this speech and then attacked them.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JjGGnwe6UQ
When I started writing this blog in 2008 it was primarily because I saw the candidate Obama as someone with no executive experience, a few years in the Illinios senate where he voted mostly present, less than a full term as a U.S. Senator before he bailed out to run for president, and the author of a couple of books and I was stunned that people across America actually believed this man, who may be great guy to have a beer with or play a game of basketball or golf, could actually handle the job. Well, as another of his mentors, Reverand Wright, once said, our chickens are coming home to roost. I would much rather have Jimmy Carter sitting in the Oval Office today than this man, and that’s saying something.
It’s about the spending, Mr. President, and if you don’t understand that, wake up Joe Biden and give him a turn at the wheel. It’s time to take your responsibility seriously and make some tough decisions. Right now 2012 is a pipe dream for you.
That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.
To No Fly or Not to No Fly, that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of indecision
Or take arms against a tin pot dictator
And by opposing end him. To golf, to play
No more – and by play to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand responsibilities
This job requires. ‘Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To golf, to play –
To play, perchance to bracket: ay, there’s the rub,
To watch one’s pick, march on the final four
When at last we watch Duke play Pitt,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of getting elected.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of this job,
Bush’s problems, the Tea Party’s contumely
The pangs of despised polls, the Constitution’s stubbornness,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes,
When he himself might his departure make
With an electoral loss? Who would want this job?
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after this office,
The undiscovered retirement, from whose bourn
Only Bill Clinton returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than to fly to others that we know not of?
Thus making decisions does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of
Longing to be a community organizer again
Or to be able to vote “present”
And lose the name of action. – Soft you now,
Jimmy Carter, to you I will be compared
By all my sins remembered.
Apologies to William Shakespeare
That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.
K-12 education is in trouble. A recent report on schools in New York City said that of the 60% or so of students who actually graduate, about half need remedial classes before they can perform at the college level. We have a Department of Education that has spent over $1 trillion since it was created by President Jimmy Carter and school performance has declined.
The common themes in each presidential race turn on a hope and dream for the future, defining a common purpose and a call to action. Candidates usually win on the success of their ability to marshal these themes into a cohesive series of arguments for their nomination and eventually election to office. Few were as effective as Ronald Reagan at recruiting the support of the average listener. If he could get your ear, he could get your vote. Candidate Barack Obama frequently compared himself with Ronald Reagan during his campaign. His media cohorts happily aligned themselves with this maladapted relationship, with the centrist and even right leaning (business friendly and low/fair taxes) themes hinted by Obama’s vague comparisons.
By now you are probably getting pretty tired of the comparisons of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and how Obama is/would/should apply the lessons learned by Bill Clinton and coast to a second term. I, however, have always seen Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as two very different politicians with different goals.
The imagery in my mind was triggered by an editorial in the Wall Street Journal by John Fund, when he described Obama in a “political tailspin.” Close your eyes and picture the pilot Barack Obama screaming, “I’ve never flown a plane before!!!” as he furiously toggles switches and twists dials. Biden in the co-pilot seat is flipping through a copy of Piloting for Dummies, shouting back, “Neither have I. I always sat in the back!!!” At the same time, Jimmy Carter is trying to calm Obama down and talk him through pulling plane out of its deadly dive while muttering as an aside, “It’s all Fox News fault.” Then together they all scream, “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!”
Such is the political landscape this bright Wednesday morning. The sky is clear here in New York, but politically it is anything but that. The news came out yesterday that the recession ended eighteen months after is started in December 2007. That means it was about five months after Obama took office and just three months after the massive stimulus package passed, which means the economy recovered on its own, without the stimulus.
As we approach the mid-point of his term we, once again, hear President Obama with another scheme to create jobs. This time he really, really means it. For a mere $50 billion we can build roads, rails and runways and we can create an “infrastructure bank” to boot. I guess the government wants to get into the banking business now that they have swallowed up two thirds of the domestic auto companies and passed a law to take over health care. But, hey, who are you calling a socialist?
The infrastructure bank has supporters: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ed Rendell the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania and Michal Bloomberg the Democratic, Republican, Independent mayor of New York, but they want it to support more projects such as water and clean energy projects. But here’s the really good news, according to the New York Times “They say such a bank would spur innovation by allowing a panel of experts to approve projects on merit, rather than having lawmakers simply steer transportation money back home.” We get a brand new panel of experts to tell us morons what is good for us!
How about this idea, get the Federal government out of the roads, rails and runways business. Unless the road is part of the Interstate highway system, and that means interstate, the feds should stay away from it. If a road within a city needs maintenance, that city and its citizens should pay for it, not taxpayers elsewhere in the country. That’s how the whole process got screwed up. You build my road, I’ll build your road and nobody will know who pays for what, until we find out we are $13 trillion in debt.
One of the good ideas Jimmy Carter had was to deregulate the airlines. Airlines became competitive and prices came down. The problem is that air travel consists of three components: the airlines, the airports and air traffic control. Complete the process, deregulate the airports and air traffic control. If you do that, airports can charge different prices for takeoff and landing slots. No more will we see thirty-two flights all scheduled to take off at 7:30 AM from one airport. Private investors would also have an incentive to build a state of the art air traffic control system.
By the way, what happened to all those “shovel ready” projects from the first stimulus plan? Did we actually finish building all the turtle crossings that this country needs?
On another front, Obama continues to tinker with the mortgage market rather than getting out of the way, letting housing prices find their bottom and then going from there. George Mason economist Anthony B. Sanders said in the New York Times, ““Housing needs to go back to reasonable levels. If we keep trying to stimulate the market, that’s the definition of insanity.” Even Democrats are piling on:
“The administration made a bet that a rising economy would solve the housing problem and now they are out of chips,” said Howard Glaser, a former Clinton administration housing official with close ties to policy makers in the administration. “They are deeply worried and don’t really know what to do.”
Who would have thought that a president and vice president with no executive experience prior to taking office would not know what to do once they got there? After all everyone knew that Obama was a really nice guy with an even temperament, what went wrong? Now we hear that Fannie Mae wants to back mortgages with nothing down. But not to worry, this time they are actually going to require the lenders to check to make sure the borrower has income. I feel better already.
Since this administration seems to like experts how about listening to these experts:
“We have had enough artificial support and need to let the free market do its thing,” said the housing analyst Ivy Zelman.
Michael L. Moskowitz, president of Equity Now, a direct mortgage lender that operates in New York and seven other states, also advocates letting the market fall. “Prices are still artificially high,” he said. “The government is discriminating against the renters who are able to buy at $200,000 but can’t at $250,000.”
It’s time for President Obama and his administration to get his boot off of the neck of the economy. Ours is the strongest most resilient economy in the world, if you set it free. All of the tinkering and the anti-business threats have pushed employers to the sidelines. The uncertainty over the economy has led businesses to take a wait and see attitude.
The rhetoric the Democrats have been trying to muster to save their skins is that “eight years of failed policies,” yada, yada, yada. The reality is that this recession started one year after Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid took over Congress. This recession started in the last year of the Bush administration, not the first seven. This recession has lasted nearly twice as long and counting under Obama than it did under Bush, and it shows no sign of changing anytime soon. A recent poll in Ohio by Public Policy Polling asked respondents who they would prefer to see in the White House right now and the results were George W. Bush 50%, Barack Obama 42%; what does that tell you?
So, Mr. Obama, keeps your hands were we can see them and slowly step away from the economy.
To say today’s “Restoring Honor” event in Washington will be historic is an understatement. Gauging by the biased reporting on the news pages of the New York Times and the seething, sputtering outrage from Bob Herbert and Charles Blow on the Op-Ed pages should give you a pretty good indication of the focus this event will garner.
Kate Zernike opens her report, titled “Where Dr. King Stood, Tea Party Claims His Mantle”, saying it is the ultimate “thumb in the eye” to stand on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” in the place he stood and talk about restoring honor. How dare he? Isn’t that what racists said of Dr. King when he stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial with these words?
“Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.”
Ms. Zernike reminds us of the case of Shirley Sherrod, who was fired by the Obama administration when a videotape of her redemptive speech about how she first discriminated against a white farmer but later helped him was shown across the Internet. She writes about video tape being heavily edited by failing to show how she mended her ways and helped that farmer. But Ms. Zernike doesn’t finish the story where later in her speech Ms. Sherrod says that those who opposed Obama’s health care plan had racist motives because President Obama is black. Ms. Sherrod’s redemption is far from complete.
She then says that the Tea Party’s talk of states’ rights raises the specter of Jim Crow and George Wallace. But it was the federal government that passed and enforced the Fugitive Slave laws and it was independent states of the north, exercising their states’ rights, who supported the Underground Railroad and refused to actively assist returning slaves to the South. So states’ rights cut both ways.
She concludes that, “Even if Tea Party members are right that any racist signs are those of mischief-makers, even if Glenn Beck had chosen any other Saturday to hold his rally, it would be hard to quiet the argument about the Tea Party and race.” It’s hard to quiet the argument because those on the left keep falsely making it. They cannot prove racism so they feel that by repeating often enough, they can make it stick.
I was at a street fair manning a booth for a Tea Party organization this spring. An African-American teacher approached us tentatively to ask what we were about. I asked her if she wanted the rumors or the truth and she opted for the truth. I told her that we were a policy based organization focusing on accountable government, fiscal responsibility, limited federal government and following the Constitution. She said she didn’t know any of that, she got e-mails from Moveon.org all the time and before leaving she signed our e-mail list. When the truth reaches the ears of people over the screeching of the New York Times and the main stream media, it is generally well received. The racial of mix of the Tea Party rallies will change over time when we can speak to the folks one on one without the lies of the left.
The Opionators
Bob Herbert begins his Op-Ed piece in a very open minded fashion, “America is better than Glenn Beck. For all of his celebrity, Mr. Beck is an ignorant, divisive, pathetic figure.” Thank you for sharing that, Bob, but there’s no need to pull punches here.
“There is a great deal of hatred and bigotry in this country, but it does not define the country. The daily experience of most Americans is not a bitter experience and for all of our problems we are in a much better place on these matters than we were a half century ago.”
So why to you and your fellow travelers throw down the race card every time someone disagrees with a policy, if they are not of the same race? Object to ObamaCare, that’s racism. Object to the stimulus, racism. Wanting Obama to fail to turn America into a socialist states, racism straight up. Yes there is hatred and bigotry in this country, but it is primarily coming from the left.
Not to be outdone in the outrage department, Charles Blow titled his Op-Ed piece, “I Had a Nightmare.” Mr. Blow said the following, “I find it curious that many of the same people who object so strenuously to the Islamic cultural center proposed for Lower Manhattan, many on the grounds that it is inappropriate and disrespectful, are virtually silent on the impropriety and disrespect inherent in Beck’s giving a speech on the anniversary of King’s address.” This would be an excellent point, if he could point to 3,000 blacks that Glenn Beck has murdered in the name of restoring honor. But Mr. Blow can make no such connection, so his analogy to the Ground Zero mosque falls flat. Curious indeed.
After venting his spleen, Mr. Blow suggests we re-read Dr. King’s speech “and to recommit ourselves to the nobility of righteous pursuits.” Let’s do that.
“But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.” –“I Have a Dream Speech”
How do the actions of the left, throwing down the race card at every turn, accusing everyone who disagrees with Barack Obama to have racism at the core of that disagreement comport with not “drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred”? It arrogantly assumes that it is impossible not to see the glorious benefit of the government running every last aspect of our lives, therefore the only reason to disagree has to be racism. With regard to violence, where do we see the violent demonstrations on the left or the right? Breaking windows, looting, SEIU members beating down street vendors for selling anti-Obama buttons, etc. are all on the left. When the police show up at rallies organized by the left they show up in riot gear, at Tea Party rallies the mounted police have to decide whether to let people pet their horses or not.
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’” –“I Have a Dream Speech”
Didn’t America elect an African American President of the United States with 53% of the vote? More than voted for Clinton either time, or Jimmy Carter? Barack Obama wasn’t elected by minority votes alone.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” –“I Have a Dream Speech”
Who more closely shares that dream, Glenn Beck, or those on the left who insist that forty years after Dr. Martin Luther King gave his speech that blacks can’t get into college or get a job without affirmative action; that black families have not been destroyed by government programs like welfare that drove fathers away; that government run schools that can’t graduate its students are far better for blacks than school vouchers that will let them escape those hellholes? Dr. King’s speech says nothing about racial preferences. Dr. King’s speech talks about color blindness. Dr. King’s speech says give us an equal chance. Glenn Beck believes that. Those on the left do not. It is those on the left who believe African Americans cannot compete without more government programs to help them. Glenn Beck believe they can succeed if government gets out of their way and if the left stops the lies of dependency that hold them back. It is the New York Times, Charles Blow, Bob Herbert who wrap themselves in racial division and then say, “Why can’t we come together?” If you want us to come together, stop standing in the way.
