Fiscal Cliff Deal Is A Raw Deal For The Rich And For America. And It Sets Up ANOTHER Raw Deal In Sixty Days Over Out-Of-Control Obama Spending.

It’s a truly fascinating thing.  Had we “gone over the cliff,” do you know what would have happened?  We would have returned to the Clinton tax rates.

What is truly remarkable is that the Clinton tax rates are now nearly universally viewed by Democrats as having been 98% pure, distilled evil.  Because the Democrat Party has now been saying that Americans can’t afford to pay the stupid and evil tax rates that Democrats once demanded they pay.

But what would have been stupid and evil and harmful to the American economy for 98% of the population is in fact true for 100% of the population.  It is simply a gargantuan lie to try to argue that the laws of economics – that when you tax something you invariably get LESS of it – is true for 98% but is a lie for 100%.

Yes, it is a fact of history that the Republican Party under George W. Bush saved America with the tax cuts that helped the middle class grow more and spend more.  And it is now a fact of history that Democrats are now implicitly saying that the Clinton tax rates were 98% evil and counterproductive to a growing economy.  Democrats were completely wrong about their high tax rates; but Democrats are liars who won’t EVER admit they were wrong.  Instead they merely continually shift their demonization and demagoguery to a different target without ever admitting that it was only a relative few years ago that Democrats were attacking the middle class with high taxes that are suddenly now universally recognized as evil.

Isn’t it amazing how Obama, the Democrats and the mainstream media propaganda actually just claimed credit for 98% of the Bush tax cuts while still blaming Republicans as evil for creating the very thing that Democrats are on record as now being 98% for?  How does this kind of falsehood pass for truth???

Here’s a little bit of fact for you: BILL CLINTON CUT TAXES FAR MORE THAN HE RAISED THEM.  It wasn’t until Clinton CUT the capital gains tax in addition to many other tax reforms that the economy truly took off and the budget deficit shrank.  Versus Barack Obama, who has stratospherically hiked taxes on the rich and on the middle class via massive regulation and the equally massive ObamaCare tax hike.

And keep in mind that Bill Clinton – who largely presided over a good economy with the help of Republicans who controlled both the House and the Senate – said “the era of big government is over.”  Obama reversed that and now America will pay dearly for it.

It is a fact of history that Democrats are now demanding that we keep 98% of Bush’s tax cuts while simultaneously taking credit for them.  While amazingly still saying that the Bush tax cuts – which they now say were 98% good – are still evil.

Democrats claim that their tax hike on the rich, on the other hand, will generate $620 billion in additional revenues.  Here’s the first problem with the deal that Republicans were trapped into: no it won’t.

History is now replete, full, satiated, gluttonously gorged with examples of Democrats’ stupid tax claims doing the very opposite of what they claimed it would do.  The most infamous example is the luxury tax or so-called “yacht tax” on the rich.  Democrats assured Americans that the rich could certainly pay a little more (there’s a line that stupid people keep arguing, isn’t it?) to own luxury items.  Democrats saw the government getting more and the rich paying “more of their fair share” (there’s another stupid line of demagoguery for you).  What in FACT happened was that it turned out that, guess what, rich people AVOID TAXES just like everybody else tends to do.

Falling Tax Would Lift All Yachts
By AGIS SALPUKAS
Published: February 7, 1992

The nation’s luxury-boat builders, many clinging to their businesses after two years of plunging sales, finally got some good news last week.

President Bush, in his budget proposals, asked Congress to repeal the 10 percent luxury tax on yachts priced at more than $100,000 (and also on private planes that cost more than $250,000). The repeal, which Congress is likely to approve, would be retroactive to Feb. 1.

Since the tax took effect in January 1990, hundreds of builders of large and small boats have spoken of it as a stake driven into the heart of an industry already suffering from the recession, tighter bank rules on financing and fallout from the gulf war.

In the last two years, about 100 builders of luxury boats — recreational craft costing more than $100,000 — cut their operations severely and laid off thousands of workers. Some builders filed for protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the Federal Bankruptcy Code.

Now, sales personnel and owners of marine companies are hoping they will be swamped by buyers who have held off in the expectation that the tax will be repealed.

The 10 percent tax applies to the amount of the cost above $100,000, so that a boat selling for $300,000 carries a $20,000 luxury tax. That tax is in addition to any state and local taxes. […]

Also, boat prices have dropped as much as 40 to 50 percent, interest rates have fallen and some lenders have begun to offer financing, though on very strict terms.

In 1991, sales of luxury boats dropped 70 percent from 1990’s level, while overall boat sales fell 18 percent. Relies on Foreign Customers

“The luxury tax really hurt us,” said William J. Healey, the president of the Viking Yacht Company in New Gretna, N.J.

He gestured toward a few big luxury boats being built there. A 50-foot boat costing $800,000 is bound for Italy; a $1 million yacht may be sold in Japan. A 65-foot motor yacht costing $1.3 million is bound for Greece.

The business from overseas, developed in the last two years, is enabling Viking to limp along, its work force cut to 150 workers from 800. “Very fortunately, it has helped us weather the downturn,” Mr. Healey said as he pointed to two production lines that have been inactive for several years.

Domestic demand fell so sharply that a year ago Viking shut an operation in Tampa, Fla., that employed 800 workers. The plant was built in the boom of the 1980’s, when most boat makers could not keep up with demand.

Yeah, that’s right, stupid liberal.  Raising taxes on the rich a few percent won’t hurt anybody.  They can afford it.

And if you’re either stupid or demon-possessed, you still believe that damn Marxist class warfare lie.  But people who prefer the truth and have a clue about something called “history” sure don’t.

The fact of the matter is simple and straightforward: lower tax rates for EVERYBODY creates more incentive to work harder and invest more because you are allowed to keep more of what you earn.  It is a simple truth of American history that every single time tax rates have been cut, we have had growth that generated MORE revenue than we otherwise would have.

There’s a second and even more harmful reason that Obama won’t raise more revenue as he falsely claims: because he’s going to be targeting and attacking the small businesses that create jobs.  Yes, it’s true on one level that 97% of small businesses won’t see their taxes shoot up and force them to lay off workers and cut back to pay the dictator.  But as is often true, another word for “lie” is “statistic.”  Because here’s the thing: THAT THREE PERCENT OF THE BUSINESSES DO MOST OF THE ACTUAL HIRING.

I documented this back in July:

Please take a look at the US government census information on small businesses.  The latest data they have on file comes from 2008:

Out of 27,281,452 total firms, 21,351,320 are listed as “nonemployer firms.”  Which means that 78.23 percent of all small businesses hire ZERO employees.   So when Obama says that 97% of small businesses won’t be affected by his tax hike, please understand that the whopping majority of those businesses that won’t be affected aren’t hiring anybody.  Another 3,617,764 small businesses have no more than four employees.  Those small businesses that hire zero workers plus those small businesses that hire no more than four workers constitute 91.5% of ALL small businesses.

Here’s a more relevant way to look at it.  When you consider the businesses that employ more than four people, you are looking at businesses that hire 94.97 percent of ALL the workers who work for small businesses.  And while not all of the small businesses that hire between 5-9 employees are going to be paying higher taxes as a result of Obama’s class warfare on small businesses, most of them do.  And virtually none of the businesses that hire more than ten employees are going to earn less than $250,000 a year.

So, yeah, the kid who is an “independent contractor” working his paper route won’t be paying more taxes under Obama’s class warfare plan.  That’s great.  But the overwhelming majority of small businesses (defined as businesses employing 499 or fewer workers) are going to get the crap beat out of them.

So Obama and Democrats like to point out that 97% of small businesses won’t be affected by their tax hikes.  But more than 78% of small businesses in his “97 percent” figure are “nonemployer firms” and hire ZERO workers.  So no jobs.  And when you look at the businesses that hire workers, you are looking overwhelmingly at the businesses that are going to be hit by these new tax hikes.  That is simply a FACT.  And it is simply a FACT that they are going to be forced to raise their prices to accommodate their rising costs of doing business, which will in turn reduce demand for their products or services, which will then in turn force them to lay off workers because of aforementioned reduced demand.

So what Obama and the Democrats just did is savagely attack the only people who have any chance at creating more job opportunities and bringing the US economy off its back and onto its feet again.

Keep in mind that in pimping his ObamaCare, Obama promised that premiums wouldn’t go up; he promised that if you like your doctor, you could keep your doctor; he promised that he wouldn’t tax the middle class.  He lied about EVERYTHING.  And he is lying to you now.  Because he has over and over again demonstrated that he is a liar without shame, without honesty, without decency and without integrity.

But we’re just getting warmed up describing how truly godawful this “deal” is.

Obama – even on his regime’s own calculations – will only get 8 1/2 days of additional tax revenue by attacking the rich and sabotaging the US economy by hurting job creators.  The problem when you consider Obama’s trillion-plus dollar deficits every single year of his entire presidency is that he refused to do a damn thing about the OTHER 356.5 days of the year.

We raised $1.8 trillion in income tax revenue in 2012.  It will be a very interesting thing indeed to see if we raise $2.42 trillion as the Democrats claim.  I bet we won’t be anywhere near that because it was a lie from the beginning.

Obama has the blue-whale-sized balls to claim that he cut the deficit by over $1 trillion.  Even the überliberal Washington Post says he’s a Pinnochio-nosed liar.  But let’s just think like people who AREN’T insane and AREN’T demon-possessed for a second: the US national debt is now over 16.4 trillion and will be well beyond that by January 20 when Obama’s first term ends; it was $10.626 trillion the day Obama took office.

Do you remember when our demon-possessed current president demonized his predecessor by pointing out that the debt had grown by $4 trillion over Bush’s eight years in office?  I pointed out back in September:

If Obama is a one-term president, which he himself by his own rhetoric said he ought to be, he will have added more than $6 trillion to the debt in his four years by the time he leaves office.  The same man who viciously demonized his predecessor for adding less than $5 trillion over EIGHT years.  The national debt is over $16 trillion now, and it’s going to keep piling on and piling on until January 2013.  With at least $500 billion in interest to pay on top of that.

Again, Barack Obama is a liar and a hypocrite without shame, without decency, without honor and without integrity.  He is shameless.  The Democrat Party is shameless.  And the mainstream media which protects both with their propaganda machine are shameless.

And our real debt is actually now considerably over a beyond-insane $222 trillion.  And is growing by about one trillion dollars every single MONTH:

The U.S. fiscal gap, calculated (by us) using theCongressional Budget Office’s realistic long-term budget forecast — the Alternative Fiscal Scenario — is now $222 trillion. Last year, it was $211 trillion. The $11 trillion difference — this year’s true federal deficit — is 10 times larger than the official deficit and roughly as large as the entire stock of official debt in public hands.

And why are we that $222 trillion – and actually that is now more like $227 trillion given the rate of growth of that debt and the five months that have passed since that article documenting the true debt was written – you ask?  Easy, 99.99999 percent of that debt which guarantees the collapse of America came from Democrats, and specifically their boondoggle entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

It’s funny, in a sad, pathetic, ironic sort of way: Democrats demonize Republicans for trying to protect America and her interests abroad with a strong national defense.  But the only thing the Constitution specifically ordered the federal government to “provide for the common defense.”  And note that word, “provide.”  It means, “pay for to provide.”  The same liberals who demonize us for doing what common sense and the Constitution alike command us to do point to the phrase “promote the general welfare.”  Do you get that difference between “provide” and “promote.”  If you ask me to provide something, I’m on the hook for it in a financial way.  That’s what it means to be a provider.  If you want me to promote something, I’m going to say nice things about it and cheerlead for it.  But that’s all.  And so like everything else, Democrats turned the Constitution, basic morality and true Christianity on its head and made what is wrong right and what is right wrong.

If liberals were actually to “promote the general welfare,” they would cheerlead the private economy and encourage growth by keeping taxes low for those who are willing to work hard so they can keep what they earn.  And then, with the minimum size and minimum amount of regulation, they would get the hell out of the way.

What Democrats “promote” is the general cancer instead.

And that mindset became a rotting cancer that is just about to consume and kill the patient America.

This nation is doomed.  And if you voted for Obama, you are one of the people who doomed it.   We cannot possibly pay these debts that will ultimately bankrupt this country but only after our children and their children are forced to bear the burden and suffer because of your self-righteous and sanctimonious greed a.k.a. “your entitlement mindset.”  And one day you will stand before a holy God and answer for the fact that you are a toxic human being whose soul swims in every kind of lie.  Because that’s what Obama voters are: bad people who hate the truth and who prefer lies.  Aside from your dishonesty, you are greedy and hypocritical – feeling yourself entitled to seize other people’s money when you would scream if your own money were taken from you.  And aside from your dishonesty, greed and hypocrisy you are hurting the poor who ought to be helped.  Because as I pointed out above – and thoroughly document with the article I linked you to stating it – when you seize the wealth of private citizens who overwhelmingly worked hard and then planned well and then worked hard some more to get that wealth, you end up hurting the very poor you falsely profess to be helping.  Because you force businesses large and small alike to reduce their workers.  You rob the poor of dignity by preventing them from being able to find jobs.  And then you cynically exploit their desperation to get them to vote Democrat so they can be on welfare for life as long as they continue voting Democrat.  Oh, you will one day be forced to give an account for all of it, rest assured.  And you will be giving that account to a Someone who knows the truth from all of your lies and your slander.

In sixty days this “fiscal cliff deal” that the mainstream media is so damn giddy about will come boomaranging back in the form of a massive political crisis caused by Obama’s morally insane and fiscally evil out-of-control spending binge.

Further, this stupid deal did nothing to avert the sequestration that Obama’s White House invented that will cripple our economy.  Just for starters, 1.53 million defense industry workers are going to get their 60-day layoff notices that they frankly should have already received according to federal law that Obama abrogated for cynical political purposes.  The defense industry has already began to suffer because everybody knows that Obama is at war with our ability to defend ourselves against war.  Obama has already cut $480 billion from defense; and his sequestration gimmick will soon devastatingly cut the Pentagon by $500 billion more.

Republicans were maneuvered into an impossible rhetorical battle against a master demagogic rhetorician.  They were demonized as “the party who was willing to force everybody’s taxes to go up over the wealthiest two percent of the country.”  When how the hell were the Democrats not “the party who was willing to force everybody’s taxes to go up over the wealthiest two percent of the country”???  Weren’t Democrats threatening to go off the cliff unless they got to attack the top two percent of earners?  How were they not doing the very thing they slandered the Republicans for doing???

This country is going to shut down in sixty days over that “spending issue” that Obama and the Democrats absolutely refused to deal with.  Because this “deal” did nothing to slow down the debt, nothing to slow down Obama’s shocking deficits, nothing to avert a debt ceiling showdown and nothing to avert the REAL fiscal cliff of Obama’s sequestration plan.

The markets that stupidly surged today will just as stupidly collapse then.  Because anybody who isn’t a fool should see this confrontation over insane and immoral debt coming.

Meanwhile, it is God damn America, full speed ahead to ruin.  And then the Antichrist and the Tribulation will come.

For The Factual Historical Record: Democrats Pushing To Take America Off Fiscal Cliff (Which Won’t Stop Democrats From Falsely Blaming GOP)

This fiscal cliff talk is rather interesting to me now that I have a more detached perspective.

I truly believe America is going to collapse now.  I also truly believe that by the time the Republicans get another chance to sweep into power in 2014 (as they did in 2010) it will be far too little and far too late.  I think Americans voted this month to die by national suicide.  And, yeah, I think it serves us right if we implode.  That said, I happen to live here.  My family lives here.  We’ve got children to think about.  I don’t want to suffer and I don’t want any of my family to suffer.  So I’m in that position of believing something is going to happen and that we deserve to have it happen on the one hand, with the realization that not only I but my family will be harmed when it does happen.

The result?  I’m no longer praying for America, or for the wisdom of our leaders or for the wisdom of the American people.  They were fools when it mattered most and I realize they will continue to be fools as it matters most.  At the same time, I’m certainly not praying or hoping for a fiscal implosion that will send America reeling into a depression that will make the Great Depression look like a lovely walk on a sunny beach.  I’m someone who views this as an outsider; I live here, but it has nothing to do with me.  And I’m focusing on claiming my citizenship in heaven more and worrying about my citizenship in America less.

I’m not overly exited about it or overly worried about it.  I already know that Americans have reached that depraved condition in which they demand to be parasites off of someone else’s success until there are no more hosts to parasitically leach off of while borrowing half of everything they recklessly spend until we collapse and the beast comes.

It’s really more an interesting academic question: what precisely will be the mechanism by which the Antichrist comes and Democrats worship him and take his mark?  What will be that final card that gets pulled from the house of cards we call our economy that will send the entire system down the drain so the beast can come riding in on his white horse – as he is depicted in Revelation chapter 6 – to save the day?

But I have seen so many naked lies pass for truth, and I’m at least going to try to document some of those lies at the moment when it matters.

Such as this one: Democrats – that’s right, DEMOCRATS – have been calling for us to go off the fiscal cliff if they don’t get exactly what they want.  And Republicans – that’s right, REPUBLICANS – are shocked by the callous willingness of the Democrat Party to allow implosion and the suffering that will result from that implosion.

From the überliberal Washington Post:

Democrats threaten to go over ‘fiscal cliff’ if GOP fails to raise taxes
By Lori Montgomery,
Jul 16, 2012 01:00 AM EDT

Democrats are making increasingly explicit threats about their willingness to let nearly $600 billion worth of tax hikes and spending cuts take effect in January unless Republicans drop their opposition to higher taxes for the nation’s wealthiest households.

Emboldened by signs that GOP resistance to new taxes may be weakening, senior Democrats say they are prepared to weather a fiscal event that could plunge the nation back into recession if the new year arrives without an acceptable compromise.

In a speech Monday, Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), the Senate’s No. 4 Democrat and the leader of the caucus’s campaign arm, plans to make the clearest case yet for going over what some have called the “fiscal cliff.”

“If we can’t get a good deal, a balanced deal that calls on the wealthy to pay their fair share, then I will absolutely continue this debate into 2013,” Murray plans to say, according to excerpts of the speech provided to The Washington Post.

READ: Everything you need to know about the fiscal cliff

If the tax cuts from the George W. Bush era expire and taxes go up for everyone, the debate will be reset, Murray is expected to say. “Every proposal will be a tax-cut proposal,” according to the excerpts, and Republicans would no longer be “boxed in” by their pledge not to raise taxes.

“If middle-class families start seeing more money coming out of their paychecks next year, are Republicans really going to stand up and fight for new tax cuts for the rich? Are they going to continue opposing the Democrats’ middle-class tax cut once the slate has been wiped clean? I think they know this would be an untenable political position.”

Murray’s address, set to be delivered at the Brookings Institution, is meant to influence both the Nov. 6 election and the lame-duck legislative session in November and December, when the fiscal cliff will be at hand and the fight over taxes will be in full throttle. Regardless of the election’s outcome, President Obama and the current Congress will be in office for the session.

The speech comes less than a week after Obama assured Hill Democrats during a White House meeting that he would veto any attempt to maintain the Bush tax cuts on income over $250,000 a year, according to several people present. It also echoes the dismissive response by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) to Republicans seeking to undo scheduled reductions in Pentagon spending that even Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta has said would be “devastating” to national security.

During the White House meeting, Obama never directly addressed whether he is prepared to let the new year arrive without taking action to avoid the cliff. According to the excerpts, Murray will say Monday that she hopes an agreement can be reached before then: “Democrats are willing to compromise. We just need a partner.”

Still, Democratic lawmakers emerged from the meeting invigorated for the year-end battle to preserve the Bush tax cuts solely for the middle class.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has lambasted the Democrats’ position as an “outrageous ultimatum.”

“At a moment when the American people are reeling from the slowest recovery in modern times . . . and just five months away from the economic body blow that will result if tax rates spike, as scheduled, on January 1st, the president’s solution is to take more money away from the very business folks we are counting on to create the jobs that we need,” McConnell said in a speech Thursday on the Senate floor. “Naturally, Republicans oppose this. The way we see it, nobody should see an income tax hike right now.”

A risky strategy

The term “fiscal cliff” refers to the sharp drop in the 2013 budget deficit that would result from policies in current law. Thanks to a deal Obama cut with Republicans in 2010, the Bush tax cuts — and dozens of other tax provisions — are set to expire in December, raising taxes for virtually every U.S. household next year.

Meanwhile, during the debt-limit showdown last summer, lawmakers approved a plan to implement $110 billion in automatic spending cuts next year. A legislative “supercommittee” appointed to find an alternative deficit-reduction strategy disbanded without reaching agreement.

Republicans say Democrats are responsible for the impasse, noting that GOP members on the supercommittee offered to raise revenue through an overhaul of the tax code.

“We were on the record saying we would agree to a conventionally scored tax increase if they would clear out the tax code, make it fairer, flatter and simpler and begin to take us off the road to bankruptcy on entitlements. And they weren’t willing to do it,” said Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.), the GOP supercommittee chairman.

[…]

Here is a link from the Fox News article: “Democrats Willing to Let Country Fall Off ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Over Bush-era Tax Cuts“:

Senate Democrats appear willing to use your paycheck to play political hardball on taxes unless Republicans agree to President Obama’s plan to raise taxes on America’s top earners.

A top Senate Democrat warned Monday that, if Republicans don’t relent, her caucus is willing to let all the Bush-era tax rates expire at the end of the year — in effect threatening to let the country fall off what many in Washington call the “fiscal cliff.”

That cliff is approaching at the start of 2013, when the Bush tax cuts are set to expire and billions of dollars in automatic spending cuts — spawned by last summer’s debt-ceiling debate — are set to take effect. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are hoping to shift around those spending cuts to spare key areas like defense, and to temporarily extend the Bush tax rates for at least some Americans. Some have warned a failure to do so could send the nation back into recession.

But Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., indicated Democrats are willing to let the deadline pass in order to better their negotiating position.

“So if we can’t get a good deal, a balanced deal that calls on the wealthy to pay their fair share, then I will absolutely continue this debate into 2013 rather than lock in a long-term deal this year that throws middle-class families under the bus,” she said in prepared remarks for a speech she plans to give Monday afternoon at the Brookings Institution. Murray is head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the campaign arm for Senate Democrats.

[…]

Which party has clearly offered compromises?  The Republican Party, which has repeatedly said at the very highest levels (including at the level of GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney during his campaign along with John Boehner and the entire Republican leadership) to allow tax revenue increases by ending many tax loopholes that favor the rich or simply by capping the exemptions at a certain dollar level such as $50,000.  This would raise nearly as much revenue as what Obama called for.

What has Obama offered by way of “compromise”?  Well, he is now demanding DOUBLE what he demanded the last time.  His starting position was to hike taxes on the rich whose investment and job creation is vital to economic growth, and his current position hasn’t changed so much as a tiny smidge.

Somehow, in this age when we are getting ready to worship the Antichrist and take his mark on our right hands or our foreheads if we want to participate in the economy in any way, shape or form, that’s “compromise.”

Meanwhile, the Republicans – who have now offered massive compromise – are “obstructionists.”  Because in this age right before the beast comes not going along with absolutely EVERYTHING the liberals want is “obstructionism.”

“Balance” is letting the Democrats have everything they demand.  “Balance” is threatening economic terrorism and blowing up America if they DON’T get absolutely everything they demand.

My goal was to document this reality.

Because if we go off the cliff, it is a documented historical fact that one party and only one party publicly advocated for going off the fiscal cliff.  And that is the Democrat Party.

When we collapse – notice I don’t say “if” – it will be because of reckless Democrat spending that everybody with a soul knew was utterly unsustainable.  It will be because the Democrats figured out how to successfully demagogue the lowest and basest nature of the American people.  It will be because Democrats have successfully baited and switched the American Dream of becoming independently successful with the Marxist Dream of government redistributionism.  It will be because we turned out backs once and for all time on the notion that we grow when we provide incentives for people to work harder and to invest more and to take more risks and instead punished the people who work harder and invest more and take more risks.  All that said, I believe that Democrats will be successful again: when the system crashes Democrats will exploit that collapse THAT THEY CAUSED to take complete control of the government.  Because hungry, terrified people – particularly given the fact that they are bad people – will demand the government step in to help them.  And that will be the moment that America fulfills the dreams of socialists ever since Karl Marx by truly officially embracing socialism.

It’s all so close now.  And it will take so little to trigger the coming collapse.

Update, 11/27:

And guess what?  Now EVEN MORE DEMOCRATS ARE WILLING TO THROW AMERICA INTO A DEPRESSION TO DEMONIZE THEIR WAY INTO GETTING WHATEVER THE HELL THEY WANT:

More Democrats Willing to Go Over ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Monday, 26 Nov 2012 04:21 PM By Stephen Feller

A growing number of Democrats say they are willing to let the country go off the fiscal cliff if a deal cannot be reached by Jan. 1 that raises taxes on the top two percent of earners while protecting costly entitlement programs.

Their theory in this game of chicken with Republicans is that it will be easier in January to lower taxes for 98 percent of the country while finding the best possible parts of the federal budget to cut — in line with long-held goals of the nation’s liberal party. They also think they’ll be in a better position to save most, if not all, of massive entitlements like Medicare as well as pet projects.

The fiscal cliff, originally created to force a legislatively-appointed supercommittee to make significant cuts to the federal budget, is roughly $500 billion mix of budget cuts and tax increases.

It includes the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts and Obama-era payroll tax cut, massive cuts to the military and jobless benefits, and a decrease in Medicare reimbursement rates.

This will send tax on bond interest to 44.6 percent from 35 percent; on capital gains to 25 percent from 15 percent and on dividends to 44.6 percent from 15 percent, Forbes magazine pointed out Monday.

The average family will pay an extra $2,000 to $3,000 in income taxes if Congress fails to reach an agreement before the Bush tax cuts expire on Jan. 1, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The economy would shrink by 0.5 percent, the CBO has found.

Experts have consistently predicted that the overall economy would take a massive hit if the country goes over the cliff, likely sending it into recession. Still, since July, Democrats increasingly have made the case that it wouldn’t be so bad.

Led by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., Democrats have pushed the idea that the cliff is not as bad as the hype, with it being more of a “slope” than a “cliff.”

Pentagon cuts, they say, would be phased in, and the tax hikes, including the payroll hike, could also be slowed. If this happens, according to The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, there would be a few weeks at the beginning of 2013 for a deal to quickly be reached.

Sen. Charles Schumer backs Murray, also saying that Democrats can’t cave in. He and other Democrats believe that Obama won a mandate for increased taxes with the presidential election.

“[President Obama] campaigned on it clearly,” the veteran New York Democrat said on “Meet the Press.” “He didn’t back off it.”

Also weighing in on Monday in a New York Times Op-Ed was billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who has said he think the country will be just fine going over the fiscal cliff.

While it’s not ideal, the founder of Berkshire Hathaway thinks that Obama must be willing to keep pushing for higher taxes on the wealthy, even if it triggers the automatic onset of tax increases and spending cuts on Jan.1.

The U.S. economy, he said, can weather it for a month or two. “We’re not going to permanently cripple ourselves,” Buffett told CNN last week.

Buffett shrugged off the Congressional Budget Office’s warnings that failure to address the fiscal cliff by Dec. 31 could lead to a recession.

“We have a very resilient economy,” said Buffett, a long-time Democrat and staunch Obama supporter. “The fact that [lawmakers] can’t get along for the month of January is not going to torpedo the economy.”

But even as some Republicans waver on taxes, others have renewed the call for no tax hikes.

“A tax increase never created a new job in this country,” Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., said on “Fox News Sunday.” “It doesn’t make any sense to us to raise taxes on job creators in this time of economic challenge.”

And House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has said raising tax rates will stymie job creation. But he also said he is willing to raise revenue through tax reform and by eliminating “loopholes” in the tax code.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., has not said whether he would vote for tax increases.

“A lot has been said about this pledge,” Cantor said on MSNBC Monday morning, referring to the popular no-tax pledge pushed by anti-tax activist Grover Norquist.

“I will tell you when I go to the constituents that re-elected me, it is not about that pledge, it really is about trying to solve problems,” Cantor said. “And as we know, this election we just went through is very much about, number one, what are we going to do to reclaim a momentum in this economy? How do we get us back to that? And, two, how do you solve a problem?”

Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the senior Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, echoed Cantor, saying in an interview that reforming the outdated tax code could stir up new revenues without raising tax rates.

“We need to create growth, which creates jobs, not damaging growth by huge tax increases,” Sessions told Fox News.

A CNN/ORC International poll released Monday shows a solid majority of respondents — two-thirds — supports the Democratic stance that any agreement should include a mix of spending cuts and tax increases. Of that total, Republicans favor such an approach by 52 to 44 percent.

Even if effects of the cliff felt by Americans could be held off temporarily, the markets may not fare so well.

“Markets are going to go into an absolute tailspin, and I don’t think we want to risk that, especially with leadership right now trying to find a deal,” said Gabriel Horwitz, director of the economic program for Third Way, a centrist think tank. “I think the market reaction is going to happen immediately.”

“Rather than stop the country from going over the fiscal cliff and preventing the expiration of the 2001 and 2003 tax relief, they are prepared to Thelma-and-Louise the American economy right over the cliff,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the top Republican on the Finance Committee. “That is an astonishing admission.”

William Galston, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, told CNN that Murray’s form of brinksmanshipis best avoided.

“To be sure, no one believes that non-agreement by December 31 would be the end of the story. After a period of finger-pointing, discussions would resume,” Galston wrote last week in a New Republic opinion piece. “But equally, no one knows how the failure to reach agreement before the end of 2012 would affect the dynamics of the negotiations.”

In addition, “we can be reasonably sure … that national and global markets would react adversely and that businesses, which are already retreating from planned investments in new plant and equipment, would become even more uncertain and risk-averse.”

Murray said in July, and again after the election in November, that without increasing taxes for some Americans, Democrats would balk at any deal Republicans propose.

By waiting until January to cut taxes for the bottom 98 percent, rather than increasing taxes for the top two percent, it may be easier for Republicans to support the concept – based on timing and semantics, Murray and other Democrats seem to think.

“We can’t accept an unfair deal that piles all of this on the middle class and tells them they have to support it,” Murray said on ABC in November. “We have to make sure that the wealthiest of Americans pay their fair share. If Republicans, many of whom were elected after campaigning against tax hikes, won’t agree, Democrats shouldn’t blink… We’ll start over next year and whatever we do will be a tax cut for whatever package we put together. That may be the way to get past this.”

While many Republicans are now saying that they’d be willing to violate Norquist’s pledge under the right circumstances, removing the spectre of actually voting to raise taxes would make it easier for them, she surmises.

Sen. Lindsey Graham said on ABC this Sunday that the pledge was not his major concern, as long as Democrats offer cuts to entitlements and other drains on the budget alongside the tax hikes.

“I will violate the pledge, long story short, for the good of the country, only if Democrats will do entitlement reform,” Graham said.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told ABC that it’s not her “role to go to the table with a threat… I think it’s my role to go to the table with some ideas, to be receptive to what we can come to agreement on.”

However not all Democrats agree that the threat of going over the cliff should not exist.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, have circulated a letter demanding that Obama start negotiations at a 1-to-1 ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases, putting them in line with many in the party who want to see a harder line taken by Democrats.

Increasing federal revenue is the most important part of any negotiation, and though a deal before reaching the cliff is ideal, Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., joined many others in his party and said waiting until January may be the best option.

“If the Republicans can’t see their way to significant additional revenues targeted toward the people who are best off and targeted toward passive income and other things like that, then we’re better off going over the cliff and readdressing this with a better Congress in January,” said Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore. “And we would have plenty of time to fix it.”

.

 

A Week Obama Would Like To Forget Is A Week The American People Most Need To Remember Come Election Day

Let’s call it a crappy week for a turd president:

Obama’s week goes from bad to worse
By Dave Boyer – The Washington Times
Friday, June 8, 2012

When President Obama looks back on the past week, perhaps he’ll remember fondly the pies that first lady Michelle Obama purchased for him at a bakery in Virginia – because the rest of his week was a political nightmare.

Mr. Obama’s week to forget began with a disappointing report on the economy on Friday, June 1, showing that the unemployment rate rose to 8.2 percent in May, up from 8.1 percent in April.

It was hardly the kind of news to give Mr. Obama momentum heading into the final five months of his reelection campaign, and he seemed subdued as he spoke to supporters that night at what should have been a raucous campaign fundraiser in his hometown of Chicago.

“We’re not where we need to be,” Mr. Obama said in the mostly quiet ballroom, referring to the jobs report. “We’ve still got miles to go on this journey.”

The president did get to sleep in his own bed in Chicago that night, something he has yearned to do. And the next day, he went for a stroll in his old neighborhood (watched closely by Secret Service agents), another act of freedom for which he’s clamored.

From there, however, things went bad in a hurry.

After Mr. Obama campaigned with former President Bill Clinton Monday night in New York City, Mr. Clinton gave a TV interview Tuesday in which he supported extending temporarily the George W. Bush-era tax cuts for all Americans to help the economy.

That ran counter to the wishes of Mr. Obama, who wants taxes to increase for families earning more than $250,000 per year.

Republicans promptly called for Mr. Obama to follow Mr. Clinton’s advice.

After Team Obama reportedly made urgent calls to Team Clinton, the former president tried to clarify his comments. It would become a harbinger for Mr. Obama’s week.

Also on Tuesday, Republican Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin won his recall election by a comfortable seven percentage points, dealing a harsh blow to Democrats and their union allies that invested heavily in get-out-the-vote efforts. The election was viewed by many as a tipping point in rolling back the political bond between public-employee unions and Democratic office-holders.

“Bad jobs numbers and the failed Wisconsin recall probably makes this president wish he could either sleep in late tomorrow or go back in time and get things right,” said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean.

Some in the Democratic Party blamed Mr. Obama for staying out of the Wisconsin fight. About the only visible step the president took was to issue a “tweet” in support of the Democratic candidate on his personal Twitter account Monday night.

“It’s Election Day in Wisconsin tomorrow, and I’m standing by Tom Barrett. He’d make an outstanding governor,” the president tweeted, using the personal handle “bo.”

Commented Mickey Kraus at the Daily Caller, “He didn’t even use all 140 characters.” The blogger called the effort “wussy.”

Also on Tuesday, Mr. Obama lost a surrogate race in New Jersey to that pesky Clinton fellow. The president’s good friend and ally, Rep. Steve Rothman, lost his Democratic primary to Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell, who was endorsed by Mr. Clinton. Both House incumbents had been forced to run against each other by redistricting. Mr. Obama had made a show of inviting Mr. Rothman to the Oval Office on June 1 as a signal of his support, but to no avail.

On Wednesday, Mr. Obama took a break from Washington by flying to California for a series of five fundraisers, including a gay-rights gala in Beverly Hills. But on Thursday, fundraising statistics released by both campaigns showed that GOP nominee Mitt Romney had surpassed Mr. Obama for the first time in May, out-raising the president’s campaign $76 million to $60 million.

“We got beat,” said Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, although Democrats said they expected it to be a one-time blip due to Mr. Romney securing the nomination.

Mr. Obama capped off his inglorious week by holding a hastily called news conference at the White House on Friday. It turned out poorly for him.

During a discussion of the economy, Mr. Obama remarked that the “private sector’s doing fine.”

Within an hour, Mr. Romney and other GOP leaders were ridiculing the president for his comment and preparing campaign videos to exploit the gaffe.

“He’s defining what it means to be detached and out of touch with the American people,” Mr. Romney said on the campaign trail, clearing delighting in the opportunity to fire back an accusation that the Obama campaign has used against the Republican.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Virginia Republican, asked the president simply, “Are you kidding?”

By the end of the day, Mr. Obama was forced to clarify his comment, saying “it’s absolutely clear the economy is not doing fine.”

As he walked out of that press conference Friday, a reporter called out to Mr. Obama for his reaction to the Wisconsin recall election. The president kept walking.

But before he reached the door, another reporter shouted a final question, asking Mr. Obama if he’d enjoyed the pie that his wife had purchased for him.

The president turned back momentarily, smiled, and gave a thumbs-up.

I hope you don’t hate America enough to want to inflict four more years of this loser and his loser policies on this country.

P.S. I hope Obama enjoyed his pie as much as I enjoyed watching Wisconsin overwhelmingly reject his ideology last Tuesday.

CBO Warns ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Looms If Bush Tax Cuts Aren’t Continued And Automatic Cuts Gutting Defense Aren’t DIScontinued (Democrats On Wrong Side Of BOTH Issues)

Bush tax cuts good, Democrats bad.  And the automatic cuts that will gut defense bad, Democrats trying to prevent their suspension worse.  That according to the CBO.

The CBO says if the Bush tax cuts aren’t extended – i.e., Bush was right, Democrats and Obama were wrong – and if the automatic cuts that resulted from the last budget impasse aren’t suspended, the U.S. economy will go down the toilet starting January 1st of next year.

The funny thing – at least the funny thing if you can see humor in the Democrat Party destroying America – is that Democrats are on the wrong side of both of these issues.  We all know the Democrat Party’s histrionics over the Bush tax cuts from the day Bush cut taxes in 2003; but you should also know that Obama is not only in favor of the automatic cuts that the CBO is warning are a bad thing, but Obama has in fact promised to veto any bill that would overturn them.  And this in spite of the fact that Obama’s own Secretary of Defense has stated that the cuts Obama is demanding would utterly gut the US military and take America back to pre-World War II levels when we were weak and ripe for a devastating attack.

House Republicans are trying to avert the disaster that both the CBO and Secretary of Defense Panetta have warned us about.  Just as they’re trying to keep the Bush tax cuts in place for every single American and for the overall American economy.

Basically, the CBO is warning you that if Democrats get power in 2012, we’re all pretty much screwed:

May 23, 2012 2:00pm
‘Fiscal Cliff’ Looms for U.S. Economy, CBO Warns

Allowing Bush-era tax cuts to expire coupled with a scheduled round of automatic spending cuts would probably throw the U.S. economy into a tailspin. That’s the dire warning from a new Congressional Budget Office report that says the economy would contract by 1.3 percent in the first half 2013, pushing off a ”fiscal cliff” on Jan. 1.

That’s when a higher tax rate would kick in if the Bush-era tax cuts aren’t extended and more than $100 billion in automatic cuts in domestic spending for agencies such as the Pentagon are kept in place.

“Simply extending all of our current tax and spending policies will produce unsustainable deficits and debt, which will also send the economy into decline,” Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., the top Democrat on the Budget Committee, told the Associated Press. “We need to act and we must do so in a balanced way.”

Though lawmakers are expected to head off a shift in the government’s financial situation later this year or in early 2013, the CBO says if nothing is done it would likely push the US economy into recession and wring hundreds of billions of dollars from the budget deficit. That would “represent an additional drag on the weak economic expansion,” the CBO says.

The CBO is a nonpartisan agency of Congress that produces economic analysis and estimates of the cost of legislation.

Last summer’s debt and budget agreement imposed almost $1 trillion in cuts to agency budgets over the coming decade and required automatic cuts of another $1 trillion or so.

The CBO study comes as Congress is gridlocked over spending and taxes in advance of the fall elections. The White House and top Democrats are refusing to act on the expiring tax cuts and automatic spending cuts unless Republicans show greater flexibility on raising taxes.

If no deal is reached, the CBO projects that the economy would shrink by 1.3 percent in the first half of 2013, which would meet the definition of a recession, which is when the economy shrinks for two consecutive quarters.

“Such a contraction in output in the first half of 2013 would probably be judged to be a recession,” CBO said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The “Bush tax cuts” are named after BUSH for good reason.  He was the one who got them through with the help of Republicans against bitter Democrat opposition.  Those tax cuts helped get America out of one hell of a hell-hole as a result of the Clinton DotCom bust and the 9/11 attacks that were likewise principally the fault of Bill Clinton.  In the DotCom bubble collapse, America lost over $7.1 TRILLION in wealth that was just vaporized; and the Nasdaq valuation saw 78% of its portfolio wiped out as a result of a giant recession that Bill Clinton handed to George Bush.  And the 9/11 attack was the result of Clinton’s gutting both the military and the intelligence budgets leaving America both weak and blind.  And after the humiliating “Blackhawk Down” retreat from Somalia, it was inevitable that under Bill Clinton al Qaeda “realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger” as a terrorist named Osama bin Laden said.  Al Qaeda attacked America because Bill Clinton opened the door for them to attack America.

Contrary to what the Democrats have always wrongly believed, tax rate cuts have ALWAYS increased U.S. tax revenues every single time we have ever cut our tax rates.  It worked when Calvin Coolidge did it; it worked when John F. Kennedy did it; it worked when Ronald Reagan did it; and yes, it worked when George W. Bush did it.

When you allow the American people to keep more of what they earned, they simply make better decisions that improve their own lives and the overall health of the economy far more than when the government taxes and redistributes.  Everybody understands that middle class Americans with more purchasing power is a good thing; but it is equally true that when wealthier Americans are allowed to invest and be rewarded for their investment risks, the net result is economic growth and job growth for everybody.

Mayor Cory Booker – a prominent Democrat and Obama ally – said this of the unrelenting attack on private equity in general and Bain Capital in particular:

“As far as that stuff, I have to just say from a very personal level, I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity. To me, it’s just this–we’re getting to a ridiculous point in America, especially that I know. I live in a state where pension funds, unions and other people are investing in companies like Bain Capital. If you look at the totality of Bain Capital’s record, it ain’t–they’ve done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses, And this, to me, I’m very uncomfortable with.“

Booker is openly acknowledging that private equity is a good thing; that it has an enormous net benefit for cities and for states and for the nation.  As do a growing list of Democrats, from Gov. Ed Rendell to Harold Ford to Obama auto czar Steven Rattner to Gov. Deval Patrick to several prominent Democrat US Senators.

Bain Capital points out the fact that:

Despite political attacks that emphasize the few companies that have struggled, the facts are that during Bain Capital’s ownership, revenues grew in 80 percent of the more than 350 companies in which we have invested.

Eight out of ten times Mitt Romney stepped up to the plate he hit a home run and grew the businesses he rescued from bankruptcy.  But Obama deceitfully tries to only allow discussion of the two out of ten times that he didn’t.

And then you further find out the sheer duplicity that is Barack Obama: the man who has demonized private equity is at the same time gobbling up MORE MONEY from these firms than Mitt Romney!!!!  And that is primarily because of another profound act of cynical Obama dishonesty: because in blatant contradiction to his promise to reign in lobbyists and special interest pacs, Obama has in fact opened the floodgates to both.

Barack Obama has attended FIVE TIMES more fundraisers THAN THE PREVIOUS FIVE PRESIDENTS COMBINED.  And a lot of corrupt investors are realizing that the most corrupt money-grubbing whore that has ever infested the White House has opened the doors to crony capitalist boondoggles in which you give Obama a few thousand dollars in campaign contributions and rake in millions or even HUNDREDS of millions of dollars in taxpayer money for the next soon-to-be-bankrupt-boondoggle. 

EIGHTY PERCENT of green energy loans somehow ended up in the pockets of OBAMA DONORS.  Here’s a list of who got money.  It is utterly bankrupt.  You can’t find this level of corruption in the entire history of the republic.

It’s implicit from the CBO report: Democrats are the problem and Republicans are the solution to preventing America from going over the “fiscal cliff” that Obama and the Democrats have in store for America.

Pawlenty on Obama: ‘You can’t be pro-job and anti-business. That’s like being pro-egg and anti-chicken.’

Tim Pawlenty just went way up on my list of candidates after that particular remark in my title.

Is Obama anti-business?  Well, how about this for a factoid: 77% of investors think he is.  He was anti-business in 2009.  He was anti-business in 2010.  And he is still anti-business in 2011.  How many eggs are you going to get when you’re out to get all the chickens and when the chickens know you’re out to get them?

Here’s an article that talks about this former governor who has been successful where Obama has failed, failed and failed some more.  What is interesting is how we hear Pawlenty talk about how to fix our broken economy, and Obama talking about wtf???

Republican presidential candidate Pawlenty: ‘We are in deep doo-doo’
By Abdon M. Pallasch Political

How badly has President Barack Obama managed the United States’ economy?

Pretty badly, says plain-talking former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty in a campaign stop in Chicago Tuesday.

“We are in deep doo-doo. We are in deep crap,” Pawlenty said Tuesday, in a locale meant to drive home the Republican presidential candidate’s differences with the president.

In a classroom at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy Studies, located across the street from the law school where Obama used to teach, Pawlenty laid out his tax-slashing, budget-cutting proposal that he says will save the U.S. economy:

There would be only three tax rates: Zero, for low-income earners who currently pay no federal tax; 10 percent, for single people earning up to $50,000, or married couples who earn up to $100,000; and 25 percent, for people who earn more than that (down from a top rate of 35 percent now). He would cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent and end the estate tax.

Those tax cuts, plus a freeze on federal spending, would spur growth of 5 percent a year, he said.

Democrats immediately said Pawlenty’s proposed tax cuts would disproportionately benefit the wealthy.

Obama senior advisor David Axelrod, who finished a speech on the North Side just before Pawlenty started his, credited Pawlenty with “good stagecraft” for holding the speech on Obama’s old stomping grounds. But he said Obama’s budget-fixing recipe is better.

Pawlenty “left his own state with a $5 billion deficit and now he’s counseling the rest of the country on how to handle finances,” Axelrod said. “He proposes massive new tax cuts for upper-income Americans … that would produce huge new deficits. He wants to replay the same formula that got us into the jam in the first place.”

But Pawlenty told the classroom full of students at the university that people should not focus on “whether this makes some group a little more wealthy or a little less wealthy. You can’t be pro-job and anti-business. That’s like being pro-egg and anti-chicken.”

Flirting with the so-called “third rail” of American politics, Pawlenty said he would raise the retirement age for younger workers to start collecting Social Security in the future. People nearing retirement now would not be affected, he said.

“If you’re coming in new to the work force, gradually, over time, we are going to raise the retirement age,” Pawlenty said. “If you’re wealthy, you’re not going to get the cost-of-living adjustment.”

Proposals that can be short-handed as “cutting Social Security” can kill campaigns, but Pawlenty said, “It’s going to be the ‘Jack Nicholson election.’” Referring to the movie “A Few Good Men,” Pawlenty said, “There’s that famous line when he’s on the witness stand and he said, ‘You can’t handle the truth.’ The American people, I think, can handle the truth. It doesn’t mean we freak ’em out. It doesn’t mean we scare ’em. … I’m only doing this because I love the country. We’ll only get it to a better place if people are willing to tell the American people the truth. I am. President Obama isn’t. He’s ducking, bobbing, weaving.”

In a speech at the Misericordia, a home for children and adults with disabilities, Axelrod told the story of how, back in April, he and Obama were crafting a joke about Pawlenty for Obama to use at the White House Correspondents Association dinner. The two were interrupted by a National Security Council staffer who had to brief Obama on something, so Obama asked Axelrod to leave the room.

When Axelrod came back in, Obama rejected a suggestion for a joke about how Pawlenty “could really be a strong candidate but for his unfortunate middle name: bin Laden.”

“ ‘That’s so hackneyed, bin Laden, that’s so yesterday, Why don’t we take that out,’ ” Obama said, Axelrod recalled. “ ‘We’ll put in “Hosni.’’ ’ ” Axelrod didn’t think that was as funny, but he agreed to it.

“It was only the next day that we realized that he had not only eliminated Bin Laden from the joke. He had given the order to eliminate bin Laden from the face of the Earth,” Axelrod told the crowd.

Later, speaking to reporters, Axelrod laughed when asked if he agreed with potential Republican candidate Sarah Palin, who said over the weekend that Paul Revere’s famous ride was an attempt to “warn the British’’ — that the British were coming.

“I think that’s a good reflection of why we can’t abandon education,” he said. “We need good education so everybody knows their history lessons and gets them properly.”

Pawlenty just laughed when asked the same question. He proceeded to a fund-raiser.

Well, first of all,we are – to put it in Pawlenty’s accurate term – ” in deep crap” – and the best Axelrod can do is talk about a joke that Obama’s people are going to go after Sarah Palin for an impromptu remark about Paul Revere when their guy is on the record saying he’d visited 57 states with one more yet to go?

And Obama’s going to talk about Pawlenty’s $5 billion deficit?  Seriously?  And just how many TRILLIONS of deficit does he have just so far???  Obama’s budget just for this term would add THIRTEEN TRILLION DOLLARS to the national debt.  From McClatchy:

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama proposed a $3.73 trillion budget Monday  for fiscal 2012 that he said will start reining in runaway budget deficits, but  his plan envisions the gross national debt swelling by almost $13 trillion over  a decade.

Obama’s budget sets up a clash with the  Republican-led House of Representatives over how to recover from the deep  recession of recent years and strengthen the economic foundation for the future,  with federal spending the pivotal battleground.

Obama added $3 trillion to the deficit in less than two years.  Another way to put it: In just nineteen months, Obama added more to the debt than every single US president from George Washington to Ronald Reagan – combined.

And this idiot is talking about $5 billion???  Like we’re not supposed to laugh our asses off and then impeach Obama as a clear and present danger to the United States?  Particularly when in fact Pawlenty in fact DID actually leave office with the budget balanced?  If you’re going to talk about devastating developments after the guy was gone – especially when that characterization is being made by the guy’s political enemies – at least have the courtesy to do the same sort of redacting with Bill Clinton’s legacy – who managed to take all the credit for balancing the budget but wasn’t in any way responsible for the disastrous Dotcom crisis that unfolded on his watch.

Which is to say, Democrats should either give Tim Pawlenty plenty of credit for balancing the budget or at least shut the hell up.

Tim Pawlenty as a man has a good, solid life.  And he’s got the background and the bona fides to get behind.  He is a candidate worthy of consideration.

On Cavuto’s Fox News program on Friday, Cavuto pointed out that the White House was questioning whether Tim Pawlenty was being realistic about whether he could create the kind of 5% GDP that he is talking about.  Pawlenty’s response was almost as good as his quip in my title.  I don’t have an exact quote, but basically he said “I’m an optimist, and I have an optimistic view of America’s future.  We’ve been great before, and I believe we can be great again.  And if Barack Obama could say that he was going to provide jobs for the all the jobless, slow the rising oceans, heal the planet, end all the wars and basically remake our nation, I think I can talk about doubling our GDP.”

Touché.

Tim Pawlenty wants to increase our GDP and grow our economy and create jobs by NOT being anti-chicken while claiming to be pro-egg.  In other words, the man actually makes sense.

Obama has spent three years demonizing and attacking businesses while demanding that they create more jobs.  That, by stark contrast, is 100% pure insane, no additives or preservatives.

Pawlenty wants profound tax cuts.  And while liberals want to ignore history and argue that the more you tax, the more you collect in tax revenue, Pawlenty cites the fact that every single time we have cut tax rates, we have dramatically increased our tax revenues.  See my article “Tax Cut’s INCREASE Revenues; They have ALWAYS Increased Tax Revenues” for that documented history.

Think of it in terms of gas (as I’ve argued before in more detail).  As the price of gas went up and up and up, did people buy the same amount of gas?  No way; they very quickly cut back on their driving.  If you increase the price of something, you sell less of it.  And in the same way, if you increase tax rates, you invariably end up encouraging counter-productive behavior, as the wealthy find it worthwhile to quit investing and instead pursue tax shelters and loopholes to protect their assets.

It is simply a repeatedly documented fact that every single time we have cut tax rates, we have ended up with increased revenues, as businesses and individuals were encouraged to invest because they were being rewarded with the ability to actually keep more of their own profits.  It comes down to this: if I give you a job, and you work hard, but at the end of the day the tax man comes and takes it all away, you’re not going to bother to take my job.  With total taxes exceeding 50% in a number of states, businesses and individuals are put in a position in which they take all the risks in hiring and investing – and if they lose they lose big – but even if they win they aren’t allowed to keep enough of their money to make the risks worth taking.

Democrats claim that the deficit has increased with lower tax rates.  And that is true.  But that isn’t the fault of the lower tax rates – WHICH AGAIN ACTUALLY INCREASED THE GOVERNMENT REVENUES DRAMATICALLY.  The bizarre argument that Democrats are making is analogous to the argument that the guy who lives in his parent’s basement and makes minimum wage and lives within his modest means actually makes more money than the multi-millionaire who buys multiple mansions, yachts and cars and then finds himself in debt.  It was the reckless spending that put us into the hole, not the tax policies that resulted in the politicians who spent that money having more money to spend.  Pawlenty is arguing that we need to profoundly cut tax rates and simultaneously have a balanced budget amendment and dramatically cut our spending.

That isn’t even mentioning the constant hypocrisy of the Democrats as they fail to live up to their own demagogic rhetoric.

Then there’s the issue of the Bush tax cuts.  Democrats say we’ve had the Bush tax cuts, and look what’s happened.  Two things.

First, consider this: Obama signed the compromise to extend the Bush tax cuts for two more years on December 17, 2010.  Many experts believed Obama would be forced to do this as a result of the Republican landslide victory that changed the political landscape in early November.  So let’s look at what has happened to the jobless rate since November:

November 2010: 9.8%
December 2010: 9.4%
January  2011: 9.0%
February 2011: 8.9%
March    2011: 8.8%
April    2011: 9.0%
May      2011: 9.1%

Interestingly, Obama initially appeared to be reaching out to the business leaders he had been attacking.  After getting his head handed to him in November 2010, Obama began to reach out to Republicans.  And then in mid December, he began to reach out to business – with his signing of the Bush tax cuts extension a major part of that reaching out.  In early January, he appointed as his new chief-of-staff a man who had a “business-friendly” persona.

And the market, the investors, the businesses, ordinary Americans, liked what they heard.  The public clearly, overwhelmingly wanted to see Obama reach out to the party that had just won massively.  Republicans are the party of business; reach out to business.  Let’s get to work growing this economy rather than attacking the people who grow the economy.

But even as people liked what they heard, there was always a question, as asked in this case by CNN Money:

“So is Obama really changing his tune on big business? Or is the president merely glad-handing big business while plowing ahead with his 2012 goal of making the rich pay more?”

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long before the business and investment community realized that Obama hadn’t changed his spots at all.  It’s either “same lies, different tune,” or “different lies, same tune” with this guy.

Before hardly any time had passed, “William Daley” became an afterthought and Obama was right back to attacking business with the same ferocity as before.

Obama’s senior economist Austan Goolsbee – now the FIFTH senior Obama economist to jump Obama’s HMO Titanic (with “HMO” standing for “His Majesty Obama” had this to say shortly before HE left.  And this according to an obvious liberal:

When Amanpour asked [Goolsbee] what the Administration could or should be doing to improve conditions, he ticked off items you’d expect to hear from a typical GOP Presidential adviser:  we’ve got to get the debt under control; we have a White House effort to identify and get rid of governmental regulations that are preventing the private sector from growing the economy; we should pass “free trade” agreements backed by the Chamber of Commerce; and we should leverage limited public dollars to release billions in private funding for investments.

Goolsbee’s bottom line:  “It’s now up to the private sector.”  That’s exactly what you’d expect from President Romney’s economic adviser.

And, of course, that brief flash of clarity was immediately followed by Goolsbee’s resignation.  We won’t be having any anti-Marxist heresies on Comrade Obama’s watch, no sir commissar.

Just in case you’re wondering why the economy seemed to be improving before going back into the toilet, there’s your answer.  The people who actually create jobs began to think that Obama finally had some level of actual awareness about how the economy and business and job-creation works, before Obama slammed the door on that idiotic thesis.  They believed Obama’s lies right after the election, then Obama demonstrated (“dictated” is more like it) that he hates business as much as he ever did, then he renewed his war on business, and it’s right back into the crapper with the U.S. economy.

So there’s the backstory behind the economy appearing to improve before diving headfirst back into the gave.  Obama is right back to being “pro-job” but “anti-chicken.”

Up above, I said there were “two things” about the Bush tax cuts and their impact on the economy.  The first point is that the extension of the Bush tax cuts DID work for five months of straight improvement – at least until Obama and the Democrats made sure that businesses and investors knew that they were as hated as ever.

The SECOND point about the Bush tax cuts – or ANY other tax cuts, for that matter – is that they have to be consistent and long-term before they will truly succeed.  This is because businesses need to know their operating environment before they will be willing to take risks such as hiring more workers.  They need to have a clear, long-term picture (most think at least five years) of what their tax liability will be.  And they need the same kind of knowledge about their health care liability and their regulatory liability.  If you start or expand a business, you’ve got one primary question: “Am I going to be able to make this work?”  And in order to answer that fundamental question, you need to know what your costs will be.

Obama signed the Bush tax cut extension for two years – and then very quickly went back on that signature by demagoguing the very thing he’d signed.  Will these tax rates be there for them in two years?  Certainly not, if Obama wins.  And there goes the window to make important investment/growth decisions.  Obama made sure that business owners wouldn’t have a long-term understanding of their taxes.  ObamaCare has thousands of pages being written as we speak; Obama’s regulations are being written as we speak; and nobody knows anything about how any of it will affect them.

Hence the paralysis.

Tim Pawlenty knows that no nation and no economy has ever had a recession that lasted forever – save when leftists have been allowed to run those nations/economies.  He also knows that economic growth and expansion are there just waiting for Obama to leave us the hell alone and get off our backs so that business owners can build better lives for themselves and their families – and create the jobs that result from those businesses growing – by allowing wealth creators to keep more of their own money.

He knows that if you really want to be pro-job, you had better be pro-business.  And that is something that Barack Obama has now proven he will never be, regardless of what he might say to the contrary.

[Update, 8/13]: Today, Michelle Bachmann won the Iowa Straw Poll, versus Pawlenty – who had spent a lot more time and money – coming in a very distant third.

I can’t explain why Iowans basically walked away from Pawlenty, but I can tell you why I’ve been annoyed with him.  It’s simple: his non-stop attack on Michelle Bachmann.

You want to go after people, Tim?  Go after Obama.  Heck, go after Mitt Romney like a lot of people said you should have done during the first debate.  But to go after Michelle Bachmann is just dumb.

To not go after Romney and then go after Bachmann makes you look like a guy who was afraid to fight the star quarterback and then started punching a cheerleader to show you were still “tough.”

You’re trying to present yourself as a true-blue conservative.  Everyone KNOWS Michelle Bachmann is a true conservative.  So why go after her when you could be going after a Mitt Romney who has held whatever position made him look good at the moment?

To continue, some of your attacks against her are just stupid.  Like the one that Michelle Bachmann didn’t stop things like cap and trade and ObamaCare being passed in the House.  As if she was somehow the Imperial Queen of the chamber rather than one minority Republican (at the time) in a chamber with 434 other representatives.  That was just a plain dumb attack.

You finished a distant third, Tim.  Which apparently will allow you to survive.  But if you keep tee-ing off on Bachmann, you won’t be around much longer.

The Pathological Stupidity Of Obama’s ‘Fairness’ Meme Of Taxing The Rich

We need to balance our insane budget deficit, Democrats say.  And it’s time the rich paid their fair share.

All the top 10% of earners paid is 73 percent of the income taxes collected by the federal government.  That’s nothing.  It’s those poor poor who suffer the most.  The bottom 50% have to pay a whole bunch of nothing.  It’s just brutal for them every April.  They want to write a check to the government, but only the rich get to do stuff like that.  And the bottom 40% are so screwed by our federal income tax system that they actually are forced to accept free money in addition to paying a whole bunch of nothing.  Unless the Associated Press is lying about it.

Nothing makes me more annoyed than the phrase “give the rich tax cuts.”  Because it presumes that the government owns us and graciously allows us to keep some of what we earn.  The way liberals understand things, they own all the means of production.  They own my labor and whatever I earn from my labor.  And I am lucky if the commissars allow me to keep enough to feed myself.  It derives from a tenant of Marxism: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”  At the core is central planning; government stands above us, it stands above God (which is why consistent Marxists deny God exists and religion is merely an opiate of the masses), and government should redistribute everything according to its divine power.

That is the intrinsic logic of their view that allowing the rich or anyone else to keep more of their own money is considered a cost to the government.  But it ISN’T a cost to the government to allow me to keep more of my own money; anymore than it is a cost to me to allow my next door neighbor to keep more of his own tools.

Obama gave an address in which he paid lip service to reducing spending – even though his budget that he released only TWO MONTHS AGO didn’t reduce any spending at all – and in fact stated that it would be dangerous to do so.  Obama has no plans to cut spending; in fact, the deficit in just the first six months of this year shot up another 15.7%.  Obama is going to do what he’s been doing since he started running for president; he’s going to offer meaningless rhetorical platitudes about cutting spending and reducing costs, while demonizing the rich and demanding that the ONLY people who pay REALLY START TO PAY.

Obama is going to talk about “fairness.”

The ‘fairness’ meme
April 12, 2011 – 4:47 am – by Roger Kimball

We don’t know exactly what Barack Obama is going to say when he fires up his teleprompters at George Washington University tomorrow. The color, we do know, however: it’s red, as in “red ink,” what Mitch Daniels at his speech at CPAC earlier this year called “the new red menace.” (I like to think that the invocation of the old “red menace,” the Communist, socialist one, was deliberate: it is, I would argue, apt.)

The substance of the speech, as ABC notes, is “closely held.” Everybody thinks that there will be at least pro forma acknowledgement that spending on such programs as Medicare and Social Security needs to be reined in. But the big O will also return to one of his favorite themes, a by-word from his 2008 campaign: “increased taxes on the wealthy” (that’s according to “White House officials”).

Here’s my bet: the operative word in Obama’s speech tomorrow night, the mantra that will be repeated endlessly not only by O but also by the left-wing commentariat, is “fairness.” You remember his campaign shtick: the Saddleback Church event, for example, when Rick Warren asked candidates John McCain and B.O. about taxes. “Define rich,” he asked. McCain tossed out an income of $5 million, which elicited derision. But the gravamen of his response came in the elaboration: “I don’t want to take any money from the rich. I want everybody to get rich.”

How different was B.O.’s response: What he was looking for, he said, was “a sense of balance, and fairness in our tax code. It is time for folks like me who make more than $250,000 to pay our fair share.”

“Our fair share.” That, as I noted at the time, is B.O.’s refrain. “[W]e will save Social Security for future generations by asking the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share.” It’s a small step from the invocation of “our fair share” to Obama’s call for a tax on “the windfall profits of oil companies,” a tax increase on capitals gains, elimination of the tax on Social Security tax, etc., etc.

The crucial point here is that what Obama is interested in is not increasing revenue but in promulgating redistributionist policies that make it harder for people to prosper economically. William McGurn, writing in The Wall Street Journal back then, recalled Obama’s response to ABC’s Charlie Gibson when Gibson observed that raising taxes led to decreased revenues: “Well, Charlie,” Obama replied, “what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”

“For purposes of fairness”: that means, “for purposes of economic egalitarianism.”

McGurn observed:

[I]t doesn’t really matter whether a tax increase actually brings in more revenue. It’s not about robbing from the rich to give to the poor. Robbing from the rich will do, especially if it’s done in the name of fairness.

Now there are good reasons Mr. Obama is not likely to pursue the revenue side of the fairness question. As this newspaper noted in a recent editorial, the latest data from the Internal Revenue Service does not show to Mr. Obama’s advantage. As we come to the end of the Bush administration, the top 1% of American taxpayers already pay 40% of all income taxes — the highest level in 40 years. The top 10% of income earners pay 71% of the taxes.

The bottom line is that when Obama invokes “fairness,” he wants us to feel guilty about economic success. This is the secret of his appeal to the socialistically inclined.

It worked in 2008. Let’s see how it goes down tomorrow. Over the last two years, Barack Obama has presided over an economic Armageddon. Everyone knows about that $14 trillion that is the federal debt. Few people, I suspect, really appreciate what that unimaginable figure represents. And the kicker is, $14 trillion is only a tithe of the trouble. As Kevin Williamson and others have pointed out, the country’s real debt, when you facotr in state indebtedness and unfunded so-called “entitlement” liabilities, is closer to $130 trillion. That horror-movie figure is just too awful to contemplate, so I will draw a veil.

[…]

For the record, I wrote an article entitled, “Tax Cuts Increase Revenues; They Have ALWAYS Increased Revenues,” in which I documented that every single time the United States has reduced the income tax rate, federal revenues have gone up.  I go back to Warren Harding to document that.  I include John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush – who increased federal revenues by lowering tax rates.

But this recurring documented fact of U.S. history is tantamount to rocket science to liberals.  Because they adhere to the entirely unrealistic premise that if I were to double your taxes, I would collect double the revenue, because people wouldn’t react to the tax increase by altering their behavior.

Recent developments give me a crystal clear example of why liberals couldn’t be more wrong:

Gas Price Rise, Americans Drive Less
By Rachel Smith
Posted: Apr 12, 2011 10:30 a.m.

Americans are taking rising gas prices seriously. They’re already driving less, “reversing what had been a steady increase in demand for fuel,” the Associated Press writes. “For five weeks in a row, they have bought less gas than they did a year ago.”

The average price of gas is an obvious indicator of why national fuel consumption is dropping. At the end of March, AAA reported that gas reached an average of $3.60 nationally. Today, AAA says the national average is $3.79 for regular grade, a 29 cent jump in about two weeks. Business Week reports that many analysts forecast that these numbers will worsen, and expect that consumers could pay as much as $5 a gallon this year due to political unrest in North Africa and the Middle East, which supply much of the United States’ oil. The $5 per gallon speculation has been floating around the industry for some time, but last year, CNN stated that former president of Shell Oil, John Hofmeister predicted that Americans could pay $5 a gallon by 2012. Analysts have bumped that date up.

“Drivers are already reacting to the change,” writes Kicking Tires. “In the first week of April, consumption was down 3.6%, or 2.4 million gallons of gasoline,” based on data from MasterCard Spending Pulse.

One of the best ways to combat rising gas prices is to drive less, but there are other simple things you can do. […]

Even uneducated, ignorant and frankly stupid people understand this incredibly basic concept: cost goes up, activity goes down.  And yet you have liberals with PhDs staffing agencies such as the Congressional Budget Office utterly fail to understand that if they make taxes go up, they will end up with reactions that will invariably produce less revenue for the government.

If even high-school dropouts understand that if the price of gasoline goes up, they need to drive less, how is it that brilliant businessmen won’t realize that if their tax rates go up, they need to protect their money?

Here’s another analogy that might be spot on the money.  Suppose your going to work and a mugger jumps you and takes all your money.  As he’s walking off, counting your (well, his now) cash, he says, “I hope you’ve got as much dough tomorrow, because I’m going to mug you again.”  Now, if you’re smart, you won’t be happening by that way at all the next day.  But if you’ve absolutely got to go that way to get to work, will you have as much money that next day?  Not if you’ve got a single functioning brain cell.  On my analogy, if you figure out some other way to get to work, that’s tax avoidance.  If you stash your cash somewhere so you don’t have it for the robber to take, that’s tax sheltering.  And if you’re too stupid to understand that this is what people do when their taxes go up, that’s liberalism.

The more taxes increase, the more activities that were previously not worth doing – such as sheltering assets, moving assets overseas, investing in collectibles, purchasing tax-exempt investment vehicles, or just dodging taxes – become worth doing.

And so,what happens every single time happens yet again.  Raise taxes expecting more revenue, get less revenue, and hurt the economy in the process by penalizing productivity and investment risk and thereby restricting growth.  And when you encourage growth by reducing the tax burden and allowing people to keep what they earn, lo and behold, cetaris parabis, there is a surge in activity, an increase in economic growth and a corresponding increase in federal tax revenue.

I say “cetaris parabis” because if you throw in a socialist Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that undermine something as vital as our housing mortgage market by imposing morally and fiscally insane policies until the system comes crashing down, such as what occurred leading up the crash in 2008, the best tax rates in the world can’t save the system.

Here are just a few articles I wrote on that subject, in order of date written with the earliest listed first:

Biden: ‘We Misread The Economy, And It’s All Republicans’ Fault

AEI Article: How Fannie And Freddie Blew Up The Economy

Barney Frank And Democrat Party Most Responsible For 2008 Economic Collapse

More Proof Democrats Destroyed The Economy In 2008: The Ongoing Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac Disaster

We need to have intelligent economic policies.  If we don’t have such policies, we’re going to struggle regardless of our tax rates.

Quickly, another liberal policy that will not even possibly work is the Federal Reserve QE2 (that’s the second shot at quantitative easing) that artificially reduces interest rates by artificially increasing the money supply in order to increase lending.

Here’s the problem with that.  Short term, it might seem to work.  The stock market looks at the apparent backstopping of our economy and follows the leader (Uncle Sam) up until the ship starts to sink.  After which they will sell, sell, sell.  But the ship ALWAYS sinks.  Why?  Because you have a lot more dollars chasing after the same supply of finite goods and services (if anything, in the last few years, we have a LOWER supply of finite goods and services).  So what happens?  More dollars chasing less stuff.  That’s inflation.  It will INVARIABLY require more devalued dollars to buy the same things.  The more you inflate the money supply, the worse that inflation gets.  And we have massively increased our money supply.

Let me go back to what I wrote going on a year ago now:

An increase in the money supply is rather like an overdose of drugs.  And in this case the effect of the overdose will be hyperinflation.  Basically, the moment we have any kind of genuine recovery, our staggering deficit is going to begin to create an ultimately gigantic inflation rate.  Why?  Because we have massively artificially increased our money supply beyond our ability to actually produce real wealth, and that means that money will ultimately be devalued.  There’s simply no way it can’t be.  If simply printing money solved financial problems, the government could just mail everyone several million dollars, and we could all retire.  The problem is that more money chasing a limited supply of goods simply pushes up prices higher and higher without doing anything to solve the underlying economic problems.  If we have a recovery, with increased economic activity, there will be increased demand on the money supply, forcing an upward climb in interest rates as a means of controlling the currency.  And then we’ll begin to seriously pay for Obama’s and the Democrat Party’s sins.  Paradoxically, the only thing preventing hyperinflation now is the recession, because people aren’t buying anything and therefore aren’t competing for those limited goods.

And let me point out that we’re looking at huge inflation now – even as Obama declares victory over the recession – in insanely rising gas prices, food prices, clothes prices, all prices:

Hope ‘n Change Coming To Fruition: Cost Of EVERYTHING About To Go Up

Instability, Food Riots And A Heaping Dose Of ‘I Told You So’

Just like I said would happen.  And just like the long list of economists said would happen when they begged Obama not to do the $3.27 trillion stimulus.

This phenomenon is going on all over the world because most of the world is tied to the U.S. dollar – the currency that Obama has been poisoning hoping for short-term political gains.

And, again, a temporary extension of the Bush tax cuts (which doesn’t help businesses and individuals who are desperately searching for consistency so they can predict their costs) is not going to help us out of this kind of moral and fiscal insanity.

But what we are going to see is Obama now demagoguing all the massive economic failure that his own policies are responsible for creating in the first place to demand that the rich “pay their fair share.”

New Jobs Figures A Real April Fools Day Joke On America

This is a joke that needs a little explaining.  But the real joke is on anyone fool enough to fall for the charades:

U.S. employment jumps in March, jobless rate falls
Apr 1, 2011
Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. employment recorded a second straight month of solid gains in March and the jobless rate fell to a two-year low of 8.8 percent, marking a decisive shift in the labour market that should help to underpin the economic recovery.

Nonfarm payrolls rose 216,000 last month, the largest increase since May, the Labour Department said on Friday. January and February employment figures were revised to show 7,000 more jobs than previously reported.

The strong job gains come amid indications the economy suffered a minor setback early in the year as bad weather and rising energy prices dampened activity.

“All the evidence is pointing to a strengthening labour market,” said Bill Cheney, chief economist at John Hancock Financial Services in Boston.

First of all, remind me never, EVER to do business with John Hancock Financial Services.

Just to point out how incredibly and massively biased the “experts” who are spinning these numbers are, let me quote this same Bill Cheney from the same John Hancock from when Bush was president and the unemployment rate was more than THREE POINTS LOWER:

“We were expecting to celebrate New Year’s and instead got slapped with a pink slip,” said Bill Cheney, chief economist at John Hancock Financial Services.

The subtitle of that CNN Money article was “Jobs grow by just 1,000 in December, although unemployment rate drops to 5.7%.”

So, for those who are keeping score, when liberals are allowed to have a voice, 8.8% unemployment is good; 5.7% is bad.

I’m just saying: this couldn’t be more biased, full-of-crap propaganda by people who write the news based entirely on their leftwing ideology.  And they manage to track down economists who do the same thing.  And voilà: a expert-confirmed news story.

And this is just part of a very long, very well-established pattern of mainstream media “journalists” denouncing Republican economic data and blessing Democrat economic data even when the Republican data is BETTER than the Democrat numbers.

Here’s an interesting factoid that doesn’t seem to get any mention in the mainstream media: Unless I’m seriously mistaken, the unemployment rate has gone down every month since Republicans took control of The House in January:

Unemployment was if anything going UP.  And then Republicans took over, and whammo.  It started going down.  But Republicans didn’t receive so much as a scintilla of credit from the mainstream media.  It’s just amazing.

That’s first.  Second, there’s the facts that you have to dig for:

Still, the job gains haven’t led many people who stopped looking for work during the recession to start again. Fewer than two-thirds of American adults are either working or looking for work — the lowest participation rate in 25 years. […]

The unemployment rate has fallen a full percentage point since November, the sharpest four-month drop since 1983. Stepped-up hiring is the main reason. But a more sobering factor is that the number of people who are either working or seeking a job remains surprisingly low for this stage of the recovery.

People without jobs who aren’t looking for one aren’t counted as unemployed. Once they start looking again, they’re classified as unemployed, and the unemployment rate can go back up. That can happen even if the economy is adding jobs.

Just 64.2 percent of adults have a job or are looking for one — the lowest participation rate since 1984. The number has been shrinking for four years. It suggests many people remain discouraged about their job prospects even as hiring is picking up.

This magnificent unemployment rate success largely reflects the fact that more and more people are just dropping out of the employment picture altogether.  And three of the four years this has been going on have been going on under Obama.

Here’s a graph of the labor participation rate:

Note how it skyrocketed under Ronald Reagan.  Note how it went DOWN under Bill Clinton until the Republicans OWNED the Democrats in 1994 and took over both the House and the Senate.  Note how it went down under Bush following the Dotcom bust (and the 9/11 attack) that Bush inherited from Bill Clinton.

As I point out in a previous article:

George Bush inherited the policies that led to the 9/11 disaster only months into his presidency.  George Bush inherited the Dotcom disaster that wiped out 78% of the Nasdaq index along with $7.1 trillion in American wealth that was just vaporized as a result of Bill Clinton’s economy.  And rather than spend the next two years blaming his predecessor, Bush cut taxes and turned the economy around.  At least until Democrat policies such as the Community Reinvestment Act and Democrat refusal to reform and regulate Democrat-created Fannie and Freddie brought America crashing down.

Why don’t we blame the president who actually sued banks to force them to make bad loans to people who couldn’t afford the home loans that the banks were forced to provide???

By the standard the Democrats used to demonize George Bush in 2004, Barack Obama is the worst president in American history.

But the media prefers “the unexpected” to “the truth.”

You never hear how the first two years of Clinton were such a failure that he got the worst shellacking in fifty years; and then suddenly under Republican control things got mysteriously better as THEY cut spending and balanced the budget mostly over Clinton’s vetoes.  You just keep hearing that “Clinton balanced the budget.”

Note how Bush brought that declining labor participation back up after his tax cuts were passed and began to take effect.  And how that has happened AGAIN as the successful Republican-Bush tax rates were continued and things suddenly got miraculously better.

But let’s consider some other things.

We added 216,000 jobs last month.  Congratulations.  Here’s how many NEW unemployment claims were added every single WEEK in March:

Something just seems so wrong with this picture.  It makes that 216,000 jobs being added during the entire month of March just seem really, really sucky.

Somewhat similarly, the replacement rate due to population growth, etc. is 300,000 jobs a month:

“In order to make a real dent in the unemployment rate, economists estimate that at least 300,000 jobs need to be created each month.”

Meaning, we need to create 300,000 jobs a month just to stay even. But we created 216,000 jobs in March, which caused the unemployment rate to drop.  How’s that?!?!?

For the record, Gallup reported unemployment at a far more believable 10% in March.

What is truly being heralded here as a giant success is that millions of Americans are simply giving up and abandoning the work force altogether in Obama’s God damn America.

Bill Clinton Says Rich Can Afford To Have Their Taxes Raised – But He Won’t Even Pay Hillary’s Campaign Debts

I don’t have the transcript for it, and the closest I could quickly find was this bit from Reuters:

“In my opinion, this is a good bill, and I hope that my fellow Democrats will support it,” Clinton said.

He admitted that as a high earner himself he would benefit from the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans that Democrats, including Obama, dislike. But with an extension of unemployment benefits and a cut in payroll taxes, Clinton said the package was the best bipartisan deal to help the country.

But I directly heard Slick Willy say that he could afford paying higher taxes.  And that even though he would personally suffer, it was the right thing to do for the country.  Because that’s just what a noble guy he is.

And Obama very definitely said it, as the Washington Times article entitled, “Obama: Rich can afford tax hike” should make abundantly clear.

But what Bill Clinton CAN’T seem to afford is wife Hillary’s campaign debts from now more than two full years ago.

The Clinton’s will eventually pay them, I don’t doubt.  With Other People’s Money, of course:

Bill Clinton is giving someone a chance to spend a day with him in New York City to help pay off his wife’s 2008 campaign debt.

The former president has sent out a new fundraising pitch on behalf of his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who still owes her presidential campaign pollster.

Hillary Clinton owed Mark Penn and his firm more than $479,000 as of September, according to a campaign report filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Bill Clinton can pitch for raising income taxes on Other People.  Because he knows damn well he’ll weasel out of them with the help of accountants who are nearly as slick as he is.

He’s not interested in “paying his fair share.”  If he was, he’d write the check for his family campaign debts, instead of trying to sucker you into writing the check to pay off his wife’s debts for him.

Do you think Slick Willy’s going to be digging out his checkbook to pay off YOUR debts anytime soon?

Clinton and other wealthy liberals can say this kind of crap because they are unrelenting hypocrites.  Their souls swim in hypocrisy the way fish swim in water.  And so they know that they can raise taxes to whatever level they can manage, and that they’ll be able to afford every tax dodge and tax shelter and tax loophole that money can buy.

But most people can’t.  They’re forced to basically pay out the maximum rate, because they don’t have the money to afford the tax attorneys who can shelter their assets.  So they get screwed while the Slick Willy’s of the world keep getting other people to pay their debts for them.

And, of course, the Clintons and the Obamas have other little perks that honest people don’t have.  When Bill Clinton was elected as the attorney general for the state of Arkansas, his wife Hillary immediately got hired by the Rose Law Firm.  And when Bill was elected governor, suprise, suprise, Hillary suddenly made partner.  And there was that $1,000 Hillary turned into a hundred grand inside of a year with the painfully obvious benefit of insider trading tips.

And Michelle Obama benefited every scintilla as much from her husband’s political machinery.  Within months of Barack being elected state senator, Michelle Obama received a $195,000 pay increase from the “not for profit” hospital where she worked.  And at that same time, she was suddenly put on boards of companies for lucrative money – yes, including another huge stock payout.

Maybe you get money literally thrown at you on account of your spouse’s political connections.  I don’t.  Maybe the fact that I have to work hard for my money, rather than riding the coattails of a big money political machine and the businesses craving the opportunity to purchase influence makes me less willing to pay more taxes to the government.  Because I can’t tell my political patronizers, “The price just went up.”

And this liberal progressive hypocrisy on taxes and influence peddling with Other People’s Money  is as old as, well, liberal progressivism.

Barack Obama n0minated Tom Daschle to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services – and incredibly powerful position in the advent of the age of ObamaCare.  The only problem was that Daschle the Democrat hadn’t paid his taxes.

This happened again and again with a slew of Democrats who thought that their screed of “paying your fair share” only applied to Other People.  And how DARE you think that Democrats should be held accountable for standards that should only apply to Other People.

Ultimately, Obama’s nomination for Treasury Secretary went through, even though the man who would be in charge of tax enforcement hadn’t bothered to pay his own income taxes.  Because, by that time, it was apparent that finding an honest Democrat was just impossible.

And, of course, we now all know about the history of the Democrat in charge of writing tax laws for everyone else, Rep. Charlie Rangel, the now-disgraced former Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

But, of course, if you think he should be criminally prosecuted for his abject failure to follow his own tax laws, well, you’re just a racist, aren’t you?

If the Congressional Black Caucus really believed that “the rich should pay their fair share of taxes,” they’d have hung Charlie Rangel up by his balls like he deserved, rather than labeling anyone who pointed out that he was a tax-cheating hypocrite fraud as a racist.

And in a way, the racist Congressional Black Caucus is completely right.  Because all Charlie Rangel did was act like a Democrat.  And if every Democrat was arrested for hypocrisy, I mean, there just wouldn’t be any Democrats walking the streets, would there?

Remember, Charlie Rangel is a good Democrat.  A GREAT one, in fact.  Because he was totally true to the Democrat philosophy: he wanted Other People to pay higher taxes, while he himself slept on the beach in front of his villa – which he hadn’t bothered to pay taxes on in SEVENTEEN YEARS.

Amazingly, Charlie Rangel – who was re-elected yet again in spite of the fact that he is a big fat criminal and a fraud, because that’s just the way Democrats roll – was one of the vocal Democrats spouting their opposition to “the rich” getting away with paying lower than communist-level income taxes.  Because, again, Democrats make up for their ignorance with sheer unmitigated chutzpah.

Rangel should do a lot less talking and a lot more shutting the hell up.

The same thing happened the LAST election, in 2004.  John Kerry was lecturing us in that snotty tone of voice of his on paying our fair share of taxes, and how the rich owed more.

Well, George Bush – the guy who believed in LOWER taxes – basically paid income taxes on the maximum federal income tax rate of 35% without taking deductions he qualified for.  What did the Kerrys pay? How double damn DARE you ask!!!

Kerry’s Wife Pays Less Taxes Than Median Family

“According to HUD, the median family income for the U.S. for 2003 was $56,500.  After applying the standard deduction of $9,500 for married filing jointly we end up with a taxable income of $47,000.  This puts the average family in the 15 percent tax bracket.  Kerry’s wife, using tax shelters, managed to pay only an effective federal tax rate of 11.5 percent, compared with the top federal income tax rate of 35 percent.  She paid $587,000 on an income of $5.1M.

“If Kerry wants the rich to pay more he should start with his wife.”

Despite the release of partial financial information, John and Teresa Kerry have not explained why, if it’s so important for the evil rich to pay more taxes, they didn’t add a voluntary addition to their check to the IRS.

So the arrogant and always snooty Kerrys – who demanded that Other People pay far more on their income taxes paid less than one-third (rhymes with ‘turd’) the tax rate they would have paid if they were honest people who WEREN’T full of hypocrisy over their eyeballs.

Because John Kerry and his rabid wife are Democrats.  And to be a Democrat is tantamount to being a vile pile of slime these days.

Has John Kerry learned the error of his ways and reformed from his hypocrisy?  I hate to tell you, but his yacht screams hell no:

Sen. John Kerry, who has repeatedly voted to raise taxes while in Congress, dodged a whopping six-figure state tax bill on his new multimillion-dollar yacht by mooring her in Newport, R.I.

All this to say that Democrats say “the rich should pay more” only because they are vile dishonest hypocrites who know that they won’t have to follow the rules that they afflict honest people with.

The facts are abundantly clear: allowing citizens – ALL citizens, not just the ones who pass Democrats’ Marxist class warfare test – to keep more of their own money which they earned and they deserve to keep is good for the economy, good for job-creation and even good for the government tax revenues.

Not that you can trust Democrats who are too damn dishonest to bother to pay their own taxes while railing at everyone else to pay more to admit that.

Every Democrat who says that “the rich should pay more” should be checking the box on their tax forms and donating whatever percent they want Other People to pay to the government.  That’s right, you hypocrite Democrats: why don’t you put your money where your mouths are for just once in your life and do what you are demanding that Other People do?

That goes for the more than half of you Democrats who don’t pay ANY federal income taxes at all.  You can file a tax form.  You can check that box.  You can give 39.6% of your money – or whatever you demand that Other People pay – to the government.  You’re just too damn full of hypocrite to do so.

So you just eat dirt, you Bill-and-Hillary Clinton John-and-Teresa Kerry Tom Daschle Timothy Geithner Charlie Rangel Democrats.  You can be as self-righteous – or as Barack Obama himself called you, “sanctimonious” – as you want.  But you know and I know that you’re really nothing but a bunch of lousy greedy hypocrites who want Other People to pay YOUR “fair share.”

Obama Demoagogues Boehner While Mainstream Media Misrepresents Him

I’ve already written (and still more here) about increasing numbers of Democrats doing a tacit “credit Bush” move – as opposed to the mindless failure of responsibility inherent in the “blame Bush” garbage – by demanding that ALL of the Bush tax cuts be extended at least temporarily.

So you’ll have to forgive me for changing the emphasis of the following excellent article, even as I preserve its substance.

Yes, Democrats are increasingly starting to change their tune on the Bush tax cuts.  Previously, they were blaming Bush’s tax cuts for the economic collapse; now growing numbers of them are saying they should be extended.  But let’s not forget to examine the classless, tasteless, and clueless demagoguery that is daily spit out of the Obama White House.

From HotAir:

Rank and file Dems to Pelosi: extend all the Bush tax cuts
posted at 2:13 pm on September 13, 2010 by Ed Morrissey

After John Boehner reiterated his call to extend all of the Bush-era tax cuts expiring at the end of the year, the White House once again tried hammering him as an extremist looking to protect the rich at the expense of the middle class.  House Democrats will undercut that messaging with their own call to put off tax hikes for the next couple of years.  In a letter circulating on Capitol Hill and reviewed by Politico, Blue Dogs and other Democrats tell Nancy Pelosi that this is no time to raise taxes or to extend the uncertainty:

POLITICO has obtained a draft of a letter from rank-and-file lawmakers to Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer urging them not to let tax rates rise for Americans at the highest income levels.

“We believe in times of economic recovery it makes good sense to maintain things as they are in the short term, to provide families and businesses the certainty required to plan and make sound budget decisions,” the House members write in a letter that was being circulated for signatures on Friday and is expected to be delivered today or Tuesday.

Reps. Jim Matheson (Utah), Glenn Nye (Virginia), Melissa Bean (Ill.) and Gary Peters (Mich.) drafted the letter and are working to gather support, mostly from the moderate Blue Dog and New Democrat coalitions, for at least a temporary extension of the rates for top income earners as well as those in the lower brackets.

This comes at the same time that Boehner’s remarks have stirred controversy — although largely from the absence of context.  The media originally reported them as a retreat back to the White House petition.  Instead, Boehner said that he would vote to approve a bill that only extended the middle-class portion of the tax cuts if that was all that was offered.  Boehner scoffed at the notion that he was holding those tax-cuts extensions hostage, which a moment’s thought would prove correct.  Pelosi has a 77-seat majority in the House, and can pass anything Democrats want.

Clearly, some Democrats are now wondering if they want a class war right before the election.  That kind of strategy plays well in districts like Pelosi’s, but is falling flat in the rest of the country.  Democrats played that card in 2006 and 2008, and after four years of control in Congress, it’s no longer a trump card.  Democrats need to find a way to generate growth, and the only way to do that is to get people with capital to put it to work — which the coming tax hikes will prevent.

The Obama administration is doing its best to portray Boehner as an extremist.  Unfortunately for Obama, his own party shows that it’s the White House on the extreme, pushing tax hikes in the middle of an economic stall.  It also points to a bigger problem with the strategy, which is that punching down below one’s weight is never a good idea.  Instead of marginalizing Boehner, the White House is practically lending him the bully pulpit by putting Boehner at the same level as the President.  That helps the GOP, because most of the electorate understands that tax hikes will be disastrous for the economy — and Obama doesn’t exactly have a track record of success that gives him the benefit of the doubt.

So Chris Boehner is saying that, as a principled conservative who believes in the radical premises that Americans actually deserve to keep more of the money that they earned, he wants tax cuts for everyone.  But if he can’t get tax cuts for everyone, he’ll vote to give tax cuts to as many people as he possibly can.

Versus Obama (i.e., Obama Akbar!!!), whose position is that he will screw every single American and screw the entire economy unless his Marxist class warfare system prevails.  Because, dammit, he wants to have all the centralized commissar power to “spread that wealth around.”

And Obama calls Boehner the “extremist.”

Meanwhile, the mainstream media is deceitfully misrepresenting Boehner’s principled position into some kind of retreat.

But here’s what Boehner said:

Boehner told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that “If the only option I have is to vote for those at $250,000 and below, of course I’m going to do that.”

But, he said, “I’m going to do everything I can to fight to make sure that we extend the current tax rates for all Americans.”

And, he said, “I’ve been making the point now for months that we need to extend all the current rates for all Americans if we want to get our economy going again and we want to get jobs in America.”

I know, I know, what an “extremist.”  And, of course, Obama – who will blow up the entire country if he doesn’t get absolutely everything he wants – what a “moderate.”

And, of course, the media is clearly accurately representing Boehner’s view as a “retreat.”  Because, as any fool (and only fools, fwiw) knows, no conservative wants tax cuts for the middle class.  They just want tax cuts for the rich.  Because conservatives are evil and they hate the middle class.

When Mark Twain said, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get it’s boots on,” he could have been talking about the American mainstream media.  Because that seems to be their standard operating procedure.  It is most certainly Barry Hussein’s.

I have written about the fact that tax cuts for “the rich” are the best way to increase both jobs and government revenues.  The arguments are on our side.  And in fact rather than being “extremist,” the position of favoring lower taxes for ALL Americans is the reasonable one we can take.  I hope you take time to read that.

The American people are now recognizing that Obama was fundamentally wrong about his stimulus; he was profoundly wrong about his ObamaCare; he was flagrantly wrong about his cap-and-trade system; he was terribly wrong with his green jobs nonsense; he was terrible wrong about immigration issues and the Ground Zero mosque; he endangered America by being completely wrong on Iran; and now he couldn’t be more wrong about his tax policy.

Where has this clown been right about anything?

Obama has said in his usual demagogic way, “If I said the sky was blue, they’d say no.”  The problem with Obama’s analogy is that if he said the sky was blue, it would probably be nighttime and the sky would actually be black.  Look at the sky at 2 AM and tell me it looks blue to you.  Obama began his presidency with a lie, PROMISING he wouldn’t run in 2008.  And not only has he never told the truth since, but he has proven that he is disastrously incompetent, as well.  The other problem with Obama is he’s not saying things like “the sky is blue” that everyone can reasonably agree to; he’s saying extremist, radical things that will implode this country.  If Obama would only pursue semi-reasonable policies, he’d get support from Republicans.

Let’s realize that Obama is a demagogue, a liar, an incompetent, and unfit to be president.  Let’s do an even better job ignoring him.  Let’s realize that if the mainstream media reports something, it is very likely at least mostly untrue.  Let’s realize that cutting taxes for everyone – especially the people who actually create jobs in this country – is far and away the best path to prosperity.  And let’s realize that we need conservative policies if we’re going to get out of this hole and move forward

Tax Cuts INCREASE Revenues; They Have ALWAYS Increased Revenues

We keep seeing the same liberal argument being played over and over again.  As the mainstream media seek to make their case to the American people that the Bush tax cuts should expire, one of the primary strategies being employed is to claim that Republicans are refusing to “pay for” their extension of the tax cuts.  And that therefore the Republicans will hike the deficit.  The problem is that it’s a false premise, based on a static conception of human behavior that refuses to take into account the fact that people’s behavior changes depending upon how much of their money they are allowed to keep, and how much of their money is seized from them in taxation.

As bizarre as it might seem, it is seen as perverse these days to suggest that allowing someone to keep more of the money he or she invests would stimulate people to take more risks by investing in businesses and products, and that such increased investment in business and products would in turn stimulate more economic growth.  Common sense has become akin to rocket science these days.

Then again, liberals aren’t doing much for rocket science, either.

Let’s take a look at the current facts, and then examine the history of our greatest tax-cutting presidents.

The Falsehood That Democrats Are ‘Cutting’ Taxes

Democrats say they are cutting taxes on “95% of Americans, but argue that giving the same tax cut benefits to the remaining 5% would hike the deficit and be fiscally irresponsible.

Well, for one thing, the Democrats are flat-out lying when they say they are cutting taxes for 95% of Americans.  That can’t possibly be true, because as a matter of simple fact a whopping 47% of American households pay no federal income taxes whatsoever.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Tax Day is a dreaded deadline for millions, but for nearly half of U.S. households it’s simply somebody else’s problem.

About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That’s according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization. […]

The result is a tax system that exempts almost half the country from paying for programs that benefit everyone, including national defense, public safety, infrastructure and education. It is a system in which the top 10 percent of earners — households making an average of $366,400 in 2006 — paid about 73 percent of the income taxes collected by the federal government.

What Democrats are doing – deceitful liars that they are – is giving Americans “tax credits” and calling them “tax cuts.”

A  tax cut is a reduction in the percentage or amount of taxes that is being imposed on a citizen.  The government is cutting the amount it had been collecting from taxpayers.  A government cannot “cut” a citizen’s taxes unless that citizen had been paying taxes in the first place.

A tax credit is when you give someone money that has been collected from another taxpayer.  It is redistribution of wealth.  It is what Karl Marx described as “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”  Do you notice that “to” in the middle?  It means, “transferring the wealth from one government-penalized group of people TO another government-privileged group of people.”  It is what Obama described as “spreading the wealth around.”

What Obama and the Democrats in Congress propose is NOT a “tax cut.”  And it is nothing but a lie to call it that.  And every single journalist who has suggested that it is a tax cut is as much of a liar as the Democrats are.

That’s the first point.  Democrats are advancing a central tenet of Marxism and deceitfully and even demagogically relabeling it as “capitalism.”  And the media helps them get away with it.

The Falsehood That Cutting Taxes For the Rich – But NOT The Other Classes – Contributes To the Deficit

Next comes the idea Democrats argue that tax cuts for the rich contribute to the deficit.

Let’s say for the sake of argument (just for the moment; I’ll prove it’s wrong below) that tax cuts for the rich raise the deficit.  Let me ask you one question: how then do tax cuts for the rest of us not ALSO raise the deficit???

Why wouldn’t raising taxes on the middle class and the poor not correspondingly lower the deficit?  So why aren’t Democrats going after them?

Are Democrats too stupid to realize that there just aren’t enough rich people to pay off our deficit, especially when this president and this Congress have raised said deficit tenfold over the last Republican-passed budget deficit?  The last budget produced by congressional Republicans was in 2007.  That year, the deficit was approximately $160 billion; now under Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid it is $1.6 TRILLION a year as far as the eye can see.

Wouldn’t ANY tax cuts raise the deficit?  And shouldn’t we therefore tax the bejeezus out of EVERYBODY to lower the deficit?  Wouldn’t every single dollar collected reduce the deficit correspondingly?

Let me put it concretely: say I took a $100 bill out of the wallet of a millionaire.  And then say I took a $100 bill out of the wallet of a poor person.  If I took both bills to a Democrat, would he or she be able to tell the difference?  Would he say, “Ah, THIS bill will lower the deficit because it comes from a rich person; but THIS one clearly won’t because it clearly came from a poor person.”

Update, Sep. 10: A study by the Joint Tax Committee, using the same static methodology that I refer to in my opening paragraph, calculate that the government will lose $700 billion in revenue if the tax cuts for the top income brackets are extended.  And that sounds bad.  But they also conclude that the Bush tax cuts on the middle class will cost the Treasury $3 TRILLION over the same period.  If we can’t afford $700 billion, then how on earth can we afford $3 trillion?  And then you’ve got to ask how much the Treasury is losing by not taxing the poor first into the poorhouse, and then into the street?  And how much more revenue could we collect if we then imposed a “street” tax? [end update].

Hopefully you get the point: if tax cuts for the rich are bad because they increase the deficit, then they are equally bad for everyone else for the same exact reason.  And so we should either tax the hell out of everyone, or cut taxes for everyone.  And a consistent Democrat opposed to “deficit-hiking tax cuts for the rich” should be for raising YOUR taxes as much as possible.

Republicans don’t fall into this fundamental contradiction (see below), because they don’t believe that tax cuts create deficits.  Democrats do.  Which means they are perfectly content with shockingly supermassive deficits – as long as its 95% of Americans who are creating those deficits, rather than 100%.

Joe Biden said it was a patriotic duty to pay higher taxes.  And yet Democrats are trying to make 95% of Americans unpatriotic traitors who don’t care about their country?

Now, Democrats will at this point repudiate logic and punt to the issue of “fairness.”  But “fairness” is a very subjective thing, when one group of people decide it’s “fair” for another group of people to hand over their money while the first group pays nothing.  Even George Bernard Shaw – a socialist, mind you – understood this.  He pointed out the fact that “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”

Which is to say it’s NOT fair at all.  Paul may think it’s fair, but poor Peter gets screwed year after year.

And it is a fundamental act of hypocrisy – not to mention advancing yet ANOTHER central tenet of Marxist class warfare – to claim to oppose tax cuts for the rich in the name of the deficit, but not to oppose tax cuts for everyone else.

And for the record, I despise both hypocrisy AND central tenets of Marxism.  Which is why I despise the Democrat Party, which is both hypocritical and basically Marxist.

[Update, September 20] Brit Hume demolished the Obama-Democrat argument regarding the Bush tax cuts being a “cost” to the government, saying:

“But the very language used in discussing these issues tells you something as well. In Washington, letting people keep more of their own money is considered a cost. As if all the money really belongs to the government in the first place in which what you get to keep is an expenditure.”

And, again, that mindset about government control and in fact government ownership over people’s wealth represents a profoundly Marxist view of the world. [End update].

For what it’s worth, Democrats will only maintain the massive contradiction of “tax cuts for the rich raising the deficit” for so long.  Obama already admitted he was willing to go back on his promise to raise taxes on the middle class.  And his people are already looking to tee off on middle class tax hikes.  In addition, if you have any private retirement funds, they may well be coming after you soon.

The Falsehood That Tax Cuts Increase The Deficit

Now let’s take a look at the utterly fallacious view that tax cuts in general create higher deficits.

Let’s take a trip back in time, starting with the 1920s.  From Burton Folsom’s book, New Deal or Raw Deal?:

In 1921, President Harding asked the sixty-five-year-old [Andrew] Mellon to be secretary of the treasury; the national debt [resulting from WWI] had surpassed $20 billion and unemployment had reached 11.7 percent, one of the highest rates in U.S. history.  Harding invited Mellon to tinker with tax rates to encourage investment without incurring more debt. Mellon studied the problem carefully; his solution was what is today called “supply side economics,” the idea of cutting taxes to stimulate investment.  High income tax rates, Mellon argued, “inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw this capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities. . . . The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up, wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; and capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the Government nor profit to the people” (page 128).

Mellon wrote, “It seems difficult for some to understand that high rates of taxation do not necessarily mean large revenue to the Government, and that more revenue may often be obtained by lower taxes.”  And he compared the government setting tax rates on incomes to a businessman setting prices on products: “If a price is fixed too high, sales drop off and with them profits.”

And what happened?

“As secretary of the treasury, Mellon promoted, and Harding and Coolidge backed, a plan that eventually cut taxes on large incomes from 73 to 24 percent and on smaller incomes from 4 to 1/2 of 1 percent.  These tax cuts helped produce an outpouring of economic development – from air conditioning to refrigerators to zippers, Scotch tape to radios and talking movies.  Investors took more risks when they were allowed to keep more of their gains.  President Coolidge, during his six years in office, averaged only 3.3 percent unemployment and 1 percent inflation – the lowest misery index of any president in the twentieth century.

Furthermore, Mellon was also vindicated in his astonishing predictions that cutting taxes across the board would generate more revenue.  In the early 1920s, when the highest tax rate was 73 percent, the total income tax revenue to the U.S. government was a little over $700 million.  In 1928 and 1929, when the top tax rate was slashed to 25 and 24 percent, the total revenue topped the $1 billion mark.  Also remarkable, as Table 3 indicates, is that the burden of paying these taxes fell increasingly upon the wealthy” (page 129-130).

Now, that is incredible upon its face, but it becomes even more incredible when contrasted with FDR’s antibusiness and confiscatory tax policies, which both dramatically shrunk in terms of actual income tax revenues (from $1.096 billion in 1929 to $527 million in 1935), and dramatically shifted the tax burden to the backs of the poor by imposing huge new excise taxes (from $540 million in 1929 to $1.364 billion in 1935).  See Table 1 on page 125 of New Deal or Raw Deal for that information.

FDR both collected far less taxes from the rich, while imposing a far more onerous tax burden upon the poor.

It is simply a matter of empirical fact that tax cuts create increased revenue, and that those [Democrats] who have refused to pay attention to that fact have ended up reducing government revenues even as they increased the burdens on the poorest whom they falsely claim to help.

Let’s move on to John F. Kennedy, one of the most popular Democrat presidents ever.  Few realize that he was also a supply-side tax cutter.

Kennedy said:

“It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now … Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.”

– John F. Kennedy, Nov. 20, 1962, president’s news conference

---

“Lower rates of taxation will stimulate economic activity and so raise the levels of personal and corporate income as to yield within a few years an increased – not a reduced – flow of revenues to the federal government.”

– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 17, 1963, annual budget message to the Congress, fiscal year 1964

“In today’s economy, fiscal prudence and responsibility call for tax reduction even if it temporarily enlarges the federal deficit – why reducing taxes is the best way open to us to increase revenues.”

– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 21, 1963, annual message to the Congress: “The Economic Report Of The President”

---

“It is no contradiction – the most important single thing we can do to stimulate investment in today’s economy is to raise consumption by major reduction of individual income tax rates.”

– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 21, 1963, annual message to the Congress: “The Economic Report Of The President”

---

“Our tax system still siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power and reduces the incentive for risk, investment and effort – thereby aborting our recoveries and stifling our national growth rate.”

– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 24, 1963, message to Congress on tax reduction and reform, House Doc. 43, 88th Congress, 1st Session.

---

“A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced federal budget. Every taxpayer and his family will have more money left over after taxes for a new car, a new home, new conveniences, education and investment. Every businessman can keep a higher percentage of his profits in his cash register or put it to work expanding or improving his business, and as the national income grows, the federal government will ultimately end up with more revenues.”

– John F. Kennedy, Sept. 18, 1963, radio and television address to the nation on tax-reduction bill

Which is to say that modern Democrats are essentially calling one of their greatest presidents a liar when they demonize tax cuts as a means of increasing government revenues.

So let’s move on to Ronald Reagan.  Reagan had two major tax cutting policies implemented: the Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA) of 1981, which was retroactive to 1981, and the Tax Reform Act of 1986.

Did Reagan’s tax cuts decrease federal revenues?  Hardly:

We find that 8 of the following 10 years there was a surplus of revenue from 1980, prior to the Reagan tax cuts.  And, following the Tax Reform Act of 1986, there was a MASSIVE INCREASE of revenue.

So Reagan’s tax cuts increased revenue.  But who paid the increased tax revenue?  The poor?  Opponents of the Reagan tax cuts argued that his policy was a giveaway to the rich (ever heard that one before?) because their tax payments would fall.  But that was exactly wrong.  In reality:

“The share of the income tax burden borne by the top 10 percent of taxpayers increased from 48.0 percent in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988. Meanwhile, the share of income taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers dropped from 7.5 percent in 1981 to 5.7 percent in 1988.”

So Ronald Reagan a) collected more total revenue, b) collected more revenue from the rich, while c) reducing revenue collected by the bottom half of taxpayers, and d) generated an economic powerhouse that lasted – with only minor hiccups – for nearly three decades.  Pretty good achievement considering that his predecessor was forced to describe his own economy as a “malaise,” suffering due to a “crisis of confidence.” Pretty good considering that President Jimmy Carter responded to a reporter’s question as to what he would do about the problem of inflation by answering, “It would be misleading for me to tell any of you that there is a solution to it.”

Reagan whipped inflation.  Just as he whipped that malaise and that crisis of confidence.

This might explain why a Gallup poll showed that Ronald Reagan is regarded as our greatest president, while fellow tax-cutting great John F. Kennedy is tied for second with Abraham Lincoln.  Because, in proving Democrat policies are completely wrongheaded, he helped people.  Including poorer people who benefited from the strong economy he built with his tax policies.

Let’s move on to George Bush and the infamous (to Democrats) Bush tax cuts.  And let me quote none other than the New York Times:

Sharp Rise in Tax Revenue to Pare U.S. Deficit
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
Published: July 13, 2005

WASHINGTON, July 12 – For the first time since President Bush took office, an unexpected leap in tax revenue is about to shrink the federal budget deficit this year, by nearly $100 billion.

A Jump in Corporate Payments On Wednesday, White House officials plan to announce that the deficit for the 2005 fiscal year, which ends in September, will be far smaller than the $427 billion they estimated in February.

Mr. Bush plans to hail the improvement at a cabinet meeting and to cite it as validation of his argument that tax cuts would stimulate the economy and ultimately help pay for themselves.

Based on revenue and spending data through June, the budget deficit for the first nine months of the fiscal year was $251 billion, $76 billion lower than the $327 billion gap recorded at the corresponding point a year earlier.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated last week that the deficit for the full fiscal year, which reached $412 billion in 2004, could be “significantly less than $350 billion, perhaps below $325 billion.”

The big surprise has been in tax revenue, which is running nearly 15 percent higher than in 2004. Corporate tax revenue has soared about 40 percent, after languishing for four years, and individual tax revenue is up as well.

[Update, September 20: The above NY Times link was scrubbed; the same article, edited differently, appears here.]

Note the newspaper’s use of liberals favorite adjective: “unexpected.” They never expect Republican and conservative polices to work, but they always do if they’re given the chance.  They never expect Democrat and liberal policies to fail, but they always seem to fail every single time they’re tried.

For the record, President George Bush’s 2003 tax cuts:

raised federal tax receipts by $785 billion, the largest four-year revenue increase in U.S. history. In fiscal 2007, which ended last month, the government took in 6.7% more tax revenues than in 2006.

These increases in tax revenue have substantially reduced the federal budget deficits. In 2004 the deficit was $413 billion, or 3.5% of gross domestic product. It narrowed to $318 billion in 2005, $248 billion in 2006 and $163 billion in 2007. That last figure is just 1.2% of GDP, which is half of the average of the past 50 years.

Lower tax rates have be so successful in spurring growth that the percentage of federal income taxes paid by the very wealthy has increased. According to the Treasury Department, the top 1% of income tax filers paid just 19% of income taxes in 1980 (when the top tax rate was 70%), and 36% in 2003, the year the Bush tax cuts took effect (when the top rate became 35%). The top 5% of income taxpayers went from 37% of taxes paid to 56%, and the top 10% from 49% to 68% of taxes paid. And the amount of taxes paid by those earning more than $1 million a year rose to $236 billion in 2005 from $132 billion in 2003, a 78% increase.

Budget deficits are not merely a matter of tax policy; it is a matter of tax policy AND spending policy.  Imagine you have a minimum wage job, but live within your means.  Then you get a job that pays a million dollars a year.  And you go a little nuts, buy a mansion, a yacht, a fancy car, and other assorted big ticket items such that you go into debt.  Are you really so asinine as to argue that you made more money when you earned minimum wage?  But that’s literally the Democrats’ argument when they criticize Reagan (who defeated the Soviet Union and won the Cold War in the aftermath of a recession he inherited from President Carter) and George Bush (who won the Iraq War after suffering the greatest attack on US soil in the midst of a recession he inherited from President Clinton).

As a result of the Clinton-era Dot-com bubble bursting, the Nasdaq lost a whopping 78% of its value, and $6 trillion dollars of wealth was simply vaporized.  We don’t tend to remember how bad that economic disaster was, because the 9/11 attack was such a huge experience, and because instead of endlessly blaming his predecessor, George Bush simply took responsibility for the economy, cut taxes, and fixed the problem.  The result, besides the above tax revenue gains, was an incredible and unprecedented 52 consecutive months of job growth.

Update September 12: Did somebody say something about “jobs”?  Another fact to recognize is the horrendous damage that will be done to small businesses and the jobs they create if the tax cuts for the “rich” aren’t continued.  As found in the Wall Street Journal, “According to IRS data, fully 48% of the net income of sole proprietorships, partnerships, and S corporations reported on tax returns went to households with incomes above $200,000 in 2007.” Further, the Tax Policy Center found that basically a third of taxpayers who are expected to be in the top tax bracket in 2011 generate more than half their income from a business ownership.  And while Democrats love to point out that their tax hikes on the so-called rich only impact 3% of small businesses, the National Federation of Independent Business reports that that three percent employs about 25 percent of the nation’s total workforce.  “Small businesses that employ 20 to 250 workers are the most likely to be hit by an increase in the top two tax rates, according to NFIB research. Businesses of this size employ more than 25 percent of the U.S. workforce.”  So if you want jobs and an economic recovery, you simply don’t pile more punishing taxes on those “rich” people.  Especially during a recession [End update].

We’re not arguing theories here; we’re talking about the actual, empirical numbers, literally dollars and cents, which confirms Andrew Mellon’s thesis, and Warren Harding’s and Calvin Coolidge’s, John F. Kennedy’s, Ronald Reagan’s, and George W. Bush’s, economic policies.

Harding and Coolidge, Reagan and Bush, with Democrat JFK right smack in the middle: great tax cutters all.

The notion that small- and limited-government conservatives who want ALL Americans to pay less to a freedom-encroaching government are somehow “beholden to the rich” for doing so is just a lie.  And a Marxist-based lie at that.

[Update, 12/15/10]: Check out these numbers as to how the Reagan tax cuts INCREASED the taxes paid by the wealthy, and REDUCED the taxes paid by the middle class and the bottom 50% of tax payers:

Income tax burdens (from the Joint Economic Committee for the US Congress report, 1996):
1981: top 1% of earners paid 17.6% of all personal income taxes
1988: top 1% of earners paid 27.5% of all personal income taxes (+ 10%).

1981: top 10% of earners paid 48% of all personal income taxes
1988: top 10% of earners paid 57.2% of all personal income taxes (+ 9%).

So rich clearly paid MORE of the tax burden when their tax rates were LOWERED.

For the middle class:
1981: middle class paid 57.5% of all personal income taxes
1988: middle class paid 48.7% of all personal income taxes (- 9%).

The middle class’ tax burden went DOWN by 9%.  They paid almost 10% LESS than what they had been paying before the Reagan cuts.

For the bottom 50%:
1981: bottom 50% paid 7.5% of all personal income taxes
1988: bottom 50% paid 5.7% of all personal income taxes (- 2%).

So the Joint Economic Economic Committee concludes that if you lower the tax rates on the rich, the rich wind up paying MORE of the tax burden and the poor end up paying LESS.  When you enact confiscatory taxation policies, the people who can afford it invariably end up protecting their money.  They do everything they can to NOT pay taxes because they are getting screwed.  When the rates drop to reasonable rates, they don’t shelter their money; rather, they take advantage of their ability to earn more – and improve the economy by doing so – by investing.  If you take away their profit, you take away their incentive to improve the economy and create jobs.

Some articles to read:

The Reagan Tax Cuts: Lessons for Tax Reform

The Historical Lessons of Lower Tax Rates

Income Tax Cuts Increase Revenues and Help Low Income Families

[End Update, 12/15/10]