What’s So Terribly Wrong About Obama’s And Democrat Party’s Socialism, In Words Of Many Great Thinkers (Well, And Two Not So Great Ones)

I was looking for a particular quote (Winston Churchill’s just below) and found it.  I also found a lot of other quotes that I had to do my little part to help preserve for posterity about the evils of everything the modern Democrat Party stands for and the destruction it has already done and surely will continue to do the the United States of America:

On speaking about communism: “We pretend to work; they pretend to pay us.” — Vladimir Voinovich

We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. — Winston Churchill (1903)

The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money. — Margaret Thatcher

Every time government attempts to handle our affairs, it costs more and the results are worse than if we had handled them ourselves. — Benjamin Constant, Brazilian statesman

There are severe limits to the good that the government can do for the economy, but there are almost no limits to the harm it can do.  — Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate

Every time government attempts to handle our affairs, it costs more and the results are worse than if we had handled them ourselves.  — Benjamin Constant, Brazilian statesman

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away. — Barry Goldwater

There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him. — Robert A. Heinlein

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of many by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character and courage by taking away mans initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.  — William J. H. Boetcker.

Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. — Ludwig von Mises

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. — P. J. O’Rourke

There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it, A politician who portrays himself as “caring” and “sensitive” because he wants to expand the Government’s charitable programs is merely saying that he’s willing to try to do good with other people’s money. Well, who isn’t? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he’ll do good with his own money – if a gun is held to his head. — P. J. O’Rourke

The Tenth Commandment [thou shalt not covet] sends a message to collectivists, to people who believe wealth is best obtained by redistribution. And the message is clear and concise: Go to hell.  — P. J. O’Rourke

Government’s view of the economy should be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it. — Ronald Reagan (1986)

Give me control over a man’s economic actions, and hence over his means of survival, and except for a few occasional heroes, I’ll promise to deliver to you men who think and write and behave as I want them to. — Benjamine A. Rooge

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend of the support of Paul. — George Bernard Shaw

If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else’s expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves. — Thomas Sowell (1992)

The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened. — Norman Thomas – Socialist Party Presidential candidate (1948)

No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session. — Mark Twain (1866)

In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of citizens to give to the other. — Voltaire (1764)

No republic has long outlived the discovery by a majority of its people that they could vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. — Alexander Tytler

Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, CONFUSES the distinction BETWEEN Government AND Society. As a result…EVERY time We object to a thing being done by Government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.  — Frederic Bastiat

Here are a few others that expose the corrupt heart of Barack Obama and the Democrat Party:

“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”–Thomas Jefferson

“That the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, is demonstrated by every page of the history of the whole world” — John Adams

Is it not High Time for the People of this Country explicitly to declare, whether they will be Freemen or Slaves? It is an important Question which ought to be decided. It concerns us more than any Thing in this Life. The Salvation of our Souls is interested in the Event: For wherever Tyranny is establish’d, Immorality of every Kind comes in like a Torrent. It is in the Interest of Tyrants to reduce the People to Ignorance and Vice. For they cannot live in any Country where Virtue and Knowledge prevail. The Religion and public Liberty of a People are intimately connected; their Interests are interwoven, they cannot subsist separately; and therefore they rise and fall together. For this Reason, it is always observable, that those who are combin’d to destroy the People’s Liberties, practice every Art to poison their Morals. How greatly then does it concern us, at all Events, to put a Stop to the Progress of Tyranny. It is advanced already by far too many Strides. We are at this moment upon a precipice. The next step may be fatal to us. Let us then act like wise Men; calmly took around us and consider what is best to be done. Let us converse together upon this most interesting Subject and open our minds freely to each other. Let it be the topic of conversation in every social Club. Let every Town assemble. Let Associations & Combinations be everywhere set up to consult and recover our just Rights. — Samuel Adams, 1772

“If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.” — Samuel Adams

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. — Benjamin Franklin

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty. — Thomas Jefferson

Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” –Patrick Henry

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.”  — Thomas Paine

“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”  — Thomas Jefferson

“I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and in our comforts, in our labor and in our amusements. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.”  — Thomas Jefferson

“I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” –Thomas Jefferson

“The Tenth Amendment [i.e., “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”] is the foundation of the Constitution.” — Thomas Jefferson

“He that goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing.”  — Benjamin Franklin, from his writings, 1758

“I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.” — Benjamin Franklin, On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor, November 1766

“Repeal that [welfare] law, and you will soon see a change in their manners. St. Monday and St. Tuesday, will soon cease to be holidays. Six days shalt thou labor, though one of the old commandments long treated as out of date, will again be looked upon as a respectable precept; industry will increase, and with it plenty among the lower people; their circumstances will mend, and more will be done for their happiness by inuring them to provide for themselves, than could be done by dividing all your estates among them.” — Benjamin Franklin, letter to Collinson, May 9, 1753

“To contract new debts is not the way to pay for old ones.”– George Washinton, to James Welch, April 7, 1799

“As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible.” George Washington, Farewell Address, September 17, 1796

“I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse.” — James Madison, to Henry Lee, April 13, 1790

“With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.” — James Madison

“If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare… they may appoint teachers in every state… The powers of Congress would subvert the very foundation, the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America.” — James Madison

“Then I say, the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. Then, no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence.” –Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789

“Loading up the nation with debt and leaving it for the following generations to pay is morally irresponsible.  Excessive debt is a means by which governments oppress the people and waste their substance. No nation has a right to contract debt for periods longer than the majority contracting it can expect to live.” — Thomas Jefferson

“It is a miserable arithmetic which makes any single privation whatever so painful as a total privation of everything which must necessarily follow the living so far beyond our income.” –Thomas Jefferson to William Hay, 1787

“The same prudence, which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public monies.”–Thomas Jefferson, to Shelton Giliam, June 19, 1808

“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States.” –Noah Webster

“A nation of well informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins.” — Benjamin Franklin

“I am for a government rigorously frugal and simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt, and not for a multiplication of officers and salaries merely to make partisans, and for increasing, by every device, the public debt on the principle of its being a public blessing.” — Thomas Jefferson

“If the debt which the banking companies owe be a blessing to anybody, it is to themselves alone, who are realizing a solid interest of eight or ten per cent on it. As to the public, these companies have banished all our gold and silver medium, which, before their institution, we had without interest, which never could have perished in our hands, and would have been our salvation now in the hour of war; instead of which they have given us two hundred million of froth and bubble, on which we are to pay them heavy interest, until it shall vanish into air… We are warranted, then, in affirming that this parody on the principle of ‘a public debt being a public blessing,’ and its mutation into the blessing of private instead of public debts, is as ridiculous as the original principle itself. In both cases, the truth is, that capital may be produced by industry, and accumulated by economy; but jugglers only will propose to create it by legerdemain tricks with paper.” –Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813.

“I sincerely believe… that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” –Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816.

“To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.”  — Thomas Jefferson

“If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.” — Thomas Jefferson, to Thomas Cooper, January 29, 1802

“We are endeavoring, too, to reduce the government to the practice of a rigorous economy, to avoid burdening the people, and arming the magistrate with a patronage of money, which might be used to corrupt and undermine the principles of our government.”–Thomas Jefferson, letter to Mr. Pictet, February 5, 1803

“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.” –Thomas Jefferson

“To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.” –Thomas Jefferson

“Still one thing more, fellow citizens — a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.”– Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801

“Experience has proved to us that a dollar of silver disappears for every dollar of paper emitted.” –Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1791.

“The maxim of buying nothing without the money in our pockets to pay for it would make of our country one of the happiest on earth.” –Thomas Jefferson to Alexander Donald, 1787.

And in light of our Washington leaders stated goal of re-inflating the housing bubble: “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”–Thomas Jefferson

Mind you, all of these men’s views can be summarily dismissed if you consider the following man a “great thinker”:

“I think that we can say that the Constitution reflected the enormous blind spot in this culture that carries on until this day and that the framers had that same blind spot. I don’t think the two views are contradictory to say that it was a remarkable political document that paved the way for where we are now and to say that it also reflected the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.” — Barack Hussein Obama

A few great non-founding father quotes regarding the socialism of the modern Democrat Party:

“The collectivist mindset, as embodied by the necessity to be organized through a centralized, bureaucratically-dominated, legislatively-driven authority, where accountability for individual welfare is subservient to the required acquiescence demanded by the tenets of Marxism, is contrary and in diametrical opposition to America’s core mandate for personal freedom and the naturally inherent psychological need to have ownership in life’s outcomes. The road to dictatorship can start with the most noble of beginnings and can be, ironically, augmented by the very people it ends up controlling. For it is so that an orientation of dependence becomes an addiction to need.” — O.D. Harrisson

“There are many who are losing faith in God and Government. For some, God may be a question, but for all of us Government is a fact.
Our government was intended by our Forefathers to be a tool of the people, used to facillitate our freedom and provide for our common good. Government was to exist to administer our will, not to become our administrator.

          Because this is the people’s government, not a political party’s government or any one individual’s government, we do not look to it to solve all societal ills or install perfection among us. That is the way our founders designed it, that is the way it has worked for well over two centuries and that is the way we want it.

          When taxed inappropriately we lose our economy, when regulated beyond need we lose our freedom, when treated like children we lose our self respect and when lied to we lose our rights. So when government goes wrong, it is we who are wronged, but also it is we who are wrong for letting it happen” — O.D. Harrisson

“What were the old annual deficits under Republicans have now become the monthly deficits under Democrats.” — Rep. Jeb Hensarling

“Rarely in history has a nation so passively accepted such a radical change in the military balance. If we are to remedy it, we must first recognize the fact that we have placed ourselves at a significant disadvantage voluntarily. This is not the result of SALT. It is the consequence of unilateral decisions extending over a decade and a half. By a strategic doctrine adopted in the ’60s, by the bitter domestic divisions growing out of the war in Vietnam, and by choices by the present administration.

          All these actions were unilateral-hence avoidable. They were not extracted from us by clever Soviet negotiators. We imposed them on ourselves by our choices, theories and domestic turmoil. It is therefore in our power to alter them.” — Henry Kissinger

“You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.” – Thomas Sowell

“It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense. … They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society.” — Adam Smith, “Wealth of Nations,” Book II, Chapter II

“The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.” – Albert Einstein

“Some ideas are so foolish that only an intellectual could believe them, for no ordinary man could be such a fool.”  — George Orwell

“Life’s tough. It’s even tougher if you’re stupid.” — John Wayne

And one that is particularly important to read and understand today:

“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong… somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises… I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started… And an enormous debt to boot!” – Henry Morgenthau, FDR’s Treasury Secretary, May 9, 1939

An eerie prediction of false messiahs and the stupidity of “intellectuals” who believe them:

A journalist named Stephen Laurant had been jailed circa 1935 for questioning Nazism:
“I am writing this from cell 24. Outside a new Germany is being created. Many millions are rejoicing. Hitler is promising everyone precisely what they want. I think when they wake to their sobering senses, they will find they have been led by the nose and duped by lies.”

Jewish doctor Herta Knotwolf: “So many worship him [Hitler] as their savior, their redeemer from unbearable poverty.  Many are filled with some worry, but all are united in the words, ‘Now things will change.'”

While it is unlikely that posterity will ever regard me as a great thinker in comparison to the numerous great thinkers I cited above (with the one singular exception of Barack Obama above), I hope you don’t mind me quoting myself:

“If you tax people who work and give it to people who don’t work, you will end up with fewer and fewer people who work.”

:)

Do You Truly Love Your Country? It’s Now Official: That Means You’re A Right-Wing Republican

I’ve been saying DemonCrats (that’s “Demonic Bureaucrats,” which is what “Democrat” truly stands for) despise their country.  Now I’ve got über-liberal Harvard to back me up.  Which is to say that this isn’t a case of Sarah Palin blasting away at Democrats and claiming Democrats don’t love their country; it’s an example of the liberal intelligentsia itself claiming that Democrats don’t love their country:

Harvard: July 4th Parades Are Right-Wing
By Paul Bedard
Posted: June 30, 2011

Democratic political candidates can skip this weekend’s July 4th parades.  A new Harvard University study finds that July 4th parades energize only Republicans, turn kids into Republicans, and help to boost the GOP turnout of adults on Election Day.

“Fourth of July celebrations in the United States shape the nation’s  political landscape by forming beliefs and increasing participation,  primarily in favor of the Republican Party,” said the report from  Harvard.

“The political right has been more successful in appropriating American patriotism and its symbols during the 20th century. Survey evidence also confirms that Republicans consider themselves more patriotic than Democrats. According to this interpretation, there is a political congruence between the patriotism promoted on Fourth of July and the values associated with the Republican party. Fourth of July celebrations in Republican dominated counties may thus be more politically biased events that socialize children into Republicans,” write Harvard Kennedy School Assistant Professor David Yanagizawa-Drott and Bocconi University Assistant Professor Andreas Madestam.

Their findings also suggest that Democrats gain nothing from July 4th parades, likely a shocking result for all the Democratic politicians who march in them.

“There is no evidence of an increased likelihood of identifying as a Democrat, indicating that Fourth of July shifts preferences to the right rather than increasing political polarization,” the two wrote.

The three key findings of those attending July 4th celebrations:

• When done before the age of 18, it increases the likelihood of a youth identifying as a Republican by at least 2 percent.
• It raises the likelihood that parade watchers will vote for a Republican candidate by 4 percent.
• It boosts the likelihood a reveler will vote by about 1 percent and increases the chances they’ll make a political contribution by 3 percent.

What’s more, the impact isn’t fleeting. “Surprisingly, the estimates show that the impact on political preferences is permanent, with no evidence of the effects depreciating as individuals become older,”said the Harvard report.

Finally, the report suggests that if people are looking for a super-patriotic July 4th, though should head to Republican towns. “Republican adults celebrate Fourth of July more intensively in the first place.”

Conservatives have American Indendence Day, which we celebrate on July 4th in honor of our Declaration of Independence.  Democrats hate the Declaration of Independence because it bases our separation from Great Britain on GOD and establishes the new nation that would consequently be born as a Judeo-Christian one.  Liberals have Marxist May Day, i.e. DEpendence Day, instead.

It’s rather interesting, actually.  I think of the analogy of the “Naksa”, or Israel’s defeat of Arab armies in the 1967 Six-Day War.  It’s a day of celebration for Israelis, and a day of mourning for Palestinians.  It’s a shame that Independence Day is nothing worthy of celebrating for Democrats.  But when you realize that the independence and liberty the founding fathers created was independence and liberty from big government totalitarianism, and that Democrats yearn for the very thing that our founding fathers delivered us from, it starts to make perfect sense.  Ben Franklin said, “Any people that would give up liberty for a little temporary safety deserves neither liberty nor safety.”  And Democrats who dream of a big government nanny state say, “Amen!  Where can see sign up for that?”

Liberals have always despised the Constitution, because it gets in their way of imposing their will on society.  A couple of very recent examples:

Time Magazine: “We can pat ourselves on the back about the past 223 years, but we cannot let the Constitution become an obstacle to the U.S.’s moving into the future with a sensible health care system, a globalized economy, an evolving sense of civil and political rights.”

[…]

The Constitution does not protect our spirit of liberty; our spirit of liberty protects the Constitution. The Constitution serves the nation; the nation does not serve the Constitution.”

And let’s not forget Fareed Zakaria, who recently said America should be more like Iceland – which ripped its Constitution up and is now writing a new one on Facebook.

We can go back to Woodrow Wilson, “the father of the progressive movement,” and see how Democrats have always felt about the Constitution:

President Woodrow Wilson was an early progressive who actively rejected what the founding fathers said and intended. He argued that the meaning of the Constitution should be interpreted by judges, and not based on its words.

In his book, Constitutional Government in the United States, Wilson wrote: “We can say without the least disparagement or even criticism of the Supreme Court of the United States that at its hands the Constitution has received an adaptation and an elaboration which would fill its framers of the simple days of 1787 with nothing less than amazement. The explicitly granted powers of the Constitution are what they always were; but the powers drawn from it by implication have grown and multiplied beyond all expectation, and each generation of statesmen looks to the Supreme Court to supply the interpretation which will serve the needs of the day.”

Wilson and other progressives have failed to understand the consequence of rewriting the Constitution’s meaning and ignoring the intentions of the founding fathers. If this generation is not bound by yesterday’s law, then future generations will not be bound by today’s law.

If law is not a body of rules and can be arbitrarily manipulated, then the rule of man trumps the rule of law. And the founding principle that “all men are created equal” is replaced by “some men are more equal than others.” When people are governed by self-anointed rulers instead of elected representatives, they cannot be free.

When the Constitution was written, it was a radical departure from the despotic governments of its time. While Europeans were being ruled by the arbitrary edicts of kings, Americans revolted so they could become a self-governing people.

Because the founding fathers understood human nature, they structured the Constitution to permanently protect the people from the human shortcomings of their leaders. Human nature has not changed since America’s founding. So the need still exists for the protection provided by the Constitution.

And as Mark Levin points out, we can actually go back before that to see how liberals undermined America and undermined the Constitution by finding judges who would “interpret” it rather than just read it.  Consider slavery, and consider the fact that the Democrat Party was the party of slavery and that the Ku Klux Klan was the terrorist arm of the Democrat Party.  And what justified slavery in the face of our founding documents which clearly condemned slavery?  Liberal activist judges:

Levin: Activist Supreme Courts are not new. The Dred Scott decision in 1856, imposing slavery in free territories; the Plessy decision in 1896, imposing segregation on a private railroad company; the Korematsu decision in 1944, upholding Franklin Roosevelt’s internment of American citizens, mostly Japanese Americans; and the Roe decision in 1973, imposing abortion on the entire nation; are examples of the consequences of activist Courts and justices. Far from being imbued with special insight, these decisions have had dire consequences for our governmental system and for society.

And we can go back well before that, too.  We can go all the way back to Thomas Jefferson, who warned us of the horror of judicial activism:

“This member of the Government was at first considered as the most harmless and helpless of all its organs. But it has proved that the power of declaring what the law is, ad libitum, by sapping and mining slyly and without alarm the foundations of the Constitution, can do what open force would not dare to attempt.”
—Thomas Jefferson to Edward Livingston, 1825. ME 16:114

“The Constitution . . . meant that its coordinate branches should be checks on each other.  But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.”
—Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 1804. ME 11:51

“To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.  Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [good justice is broad jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.”
—Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:277

Democrats don’t love America.  They haven’t for a long time.  For my entire life, in fact.

America is based on the idea that man can govern himself, and that man can govern himself and should govern himself, within the just parameters of the Constitution they so painstakingly crafted for us:

The form of government secured by the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution, and the Constitution is unique in history and reflects the strongly held beliefs of the American Revolutionaries.

At the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on September 18, 1787, a Mrs. Powell anxiously awaited the results, and as Benjamin Franklin emerged from the long task now finished, asked him directly: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” “A republic if you can keep it” responded Franklin.

The term republic had a significant meaning for both of them and all early Americans. It meant a lot more than just representative government and was a form of government in stark contrast to pure democracy where the majority dictated laws and rights. And getting rid of the English monarchy was what the Revolution was all about, so a monarchy was out of the question.

The American Republic required strict limitation of government power. Those powers permitted would be precisely defined and delegated by the people, with all public officials being bound by their oath of office to uphold the Constitution. The democratic process would be limited to the election of our leaders and not used for granting special privileges to any group or individual nor for defining rights.

But Democrats have always despised our founding fathers and the republic they gave us.  Thomas Jefferson said:

“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”

I think of Jefferson’s words when I hear the union mobs that shout down others and riot while mindlessly chanting, “THIS is what Democracy looks like!” (See also here).

And Democrats are at the core of this anti-American garbage.  See here.  And here.  And here. And here.  And here.  Democrats were completely at home voting for a president who believes:

“I think that we can say that the Constitution reflected the enormous blind spot in this culture that carries on until this day and that the framers had that same blind spot. I don’t think the two views are contradictory to say that it was a remarkable political document that paved the way for where we are now and to say that it also reflected the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.”

And when you read our founding fathers, and understand their arguments and their worldview, you can readily understand why Obama has to characterize the founding fathers and the Constitution they wrote as “blind.”

Because Thomas Jefferson also said things like:

“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.”

And:

“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

And:

“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”

And:

“If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.”

And:

“To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

And:

“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government”

But these notions are fundamentally incompatible with the vision of “America” Democrats have for this country.  Which is why the founding fathers must be destroyed; their integrity demolished; their wisdom undermined.

Don’t tell me you love America, Democrats.  You hate it.  You’ve hated it for a long time.  That’s why you embrace the following vision of this founding father:

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

The problem is that yours isn’t a founding father of America, but rather the founding father of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.  That quote that Democrats all affirm came from Karl Marx (see Obama’s paraphrase: “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”)  And if you are a Democrat who doesn’t affirm that statement, than explain to me as a Democrat why this central defining statement of communism – which flies in the face of what America’s founding fathers said – is in fact demonic and evil.  And then explain to me how that statement has no part with the Democrat Party.  Please.

Update, July 2: Someone sent me the link to this excellent piece by Ellis Washington which raises some of the same issues I raise above.  It’s worth a read.

Vile Unions Threaten To Molest Governor Scott Walker’s Children As Vile Propaganda Media Looks Other Way

Remember all of 2009 and all of 2010?  The media was all over stories of the tea party saying anything whatsoever that wasn’t the nicest of nice things about Obama.

It didn’t matter if most of what little they found came from leftwing plants who were out to use the biased media coverage to depict the tea party as racist.

As icon of leftwing journalists Walter Lippmann put it:

“News and truth are not the same thing.”

Which of course allows the mainstream media to misrepresent the truth in the guise of reporting “the news.”

As Walter Lippmann believed:

Walter Lippmann described a “revolution” in “the practice of democracy” as “the manufacture of consent” has become “a self-conscious art and a regular organ of popular government.” This is a natural development when public opinion cannot be trusted: “In the absence of institutions and education by which the environment is so successfully reported that the realities of public life stand out very sharply against self-centered opinion, the common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialized class whose personal interests reach beyond the locality,” and are thus able to perceive “the realities.” These are the men of best quality, who alone are capable of social and economic management.

Which gives the mainstream media elite who stand above the rest of us mere mortals the right to serve as “gatekeepers,” and prevent the people from learning anything that might otherwise cause them to discover that conservatives have it right and liberals have it dead wrong.

And as fellow member of the leftwing journalist hall of fame Edward Bernays put it:

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.  Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”

Because what is power if you can’t even manipulate the truth and shape it to serve your agenda?  And if you’re a leftwing liberal progressive journalist – as basically 90 percent of journalists are today – what could be better than being one of the people “who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society” so you can “constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country”???

So the media that crawled over tea party events like cockroaches looking for a scintilla of controversial elements is suddenly absent from the union hate frenzy in Wisconsin.

So the same people who were all over the tea parties being “primarily white” didn’t bother to notice that the Wisconsin union activists are basically exclusively white.  It serve the media agenda to report that fact of the tea parties; it doesn’t suit their agenda now.  So no reporting.  So sorry.

And the same media that hung breathlessly over every word of Nancy Pelosi when she mentioned “swastikas” in connection to the tea party are suddenly just not interested in the many swastikas planted all over the union gathering in Madison, Wisconsin.

And, of course, there’s something that you just don’t see in most gatherings.  It turns out that the public unions that Obama defended and said, “Don’t you dare disparage these magnificent citizens,” love Pedobear the pedophile bear.  And want to molest Scott Walker’s children

Here’s another look you can see via CNN (not that CNN helped Americans understand what this image meant, though):

A sign right above Pedobear in that first picture says, “We need a hero.”

Just to make sure you know who this union hero is:

Pedobear is an Internet meme that became popular through the imageboard 4chan.^[1] As the name suggests (“pedo” being short for pedophile), it is portrayed as a pedophilic bear.^[2]

The image was incorrectly described as a mascot among pedophiles, and cosplay participants dressed as the character were accused of being pedophiles,^[1][3] after the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Department issued a warning that Pedobear was a sign of the presence of pedophiles and other people with inappropriate sexual behavior.^[4]

And lo and behold an instantly recognizable picture of the same Pedobear that people who care about children not getting molested appears.

It’s actually quite amazing.  If you go to the “search” bar for my blog and type “unions,” you’ll see that I have nothing but the worst things to say about these people.  And yet even I’m stunned by just how loathsome and personally despicable these people truly are.

How much more vile can a movement get than depicting and encouraging the molestation of someone’s kids???

It doesn’t matter how loathsome I think unions are; because they’re even more loathsome than that.

These liberal fascist pieces of crap couldn’t be any more loathsome.  And the only reason you don’t know that is because the media won’t let you know it, and if you’re like most Americans, you’re just too damn ignorant and apathetic to care.

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

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“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”

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“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”

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“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]

Note To Democrats From Founding Fathers: ‘Please Stop Making Us Spin In Our Graves’

(CNSNews.com) – When CNSNews.com asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday where the Constitution authorized Congress to order Americans to buy health insurance–a mandate included in both the House and Senate versions of the health care bill–Pelosi dismissed the question by saying: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”

Pelosi then shook her head before taking a question from another reporter. Her press spokesman, Nadeam Elshami, then told CNSNews.com that asking the speaker of the House where the Constitution authorized Congress to mandated that individual Americans buy health insurance as not a “serious question.”

“You can put this on the record,” said Elshami. “That is not a serious question. That is not a serious question.”

I can’t help but be reminded by something Thomas Jefferson said:

“The Tenth Amendment is the foundation of the Constitution.”

And what does the 10th Amendment say?  Only this:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”

You can understand why Nancy Pelosi couldn’t care less about the Constitution, or its limitations on the exercise of government power.  Thomas Jefferson also said, “Let’s hear no more about the confidence in men but to bind them down by the chains of the Constitution.”  That phrase was intended to underscore the role of the Constitution as chains to any who would try to impose more government on the people.  But Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat Party have thrown off the “chains of the Constitution.”  They believe that confidence in men is just fine – as long as those men are liberals and socialists who impose massive government and massive bureaucracies through which they seek to empower themselves and control the people.  And everything they are trying to do makes a mockery of the Constitution.

And, after all, Nancy Pelosi’s president — a man liberals believe is greater than Jesus — has pronounced that the Constitution is deeply flawed.

“I think we can say that the Constitution reflected an enormous blind spot in this culture that carries on until this day, and that the Framers had that same blind spot. I don’t think the two views are contradictory, to say that it was a remarkable political document that paved the way for where we are now, and to say that it also reflected the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.”

One wonders how Barack Obama could swear to uphold and defend a document that he himself has publicly held to have deep flaws and reflect an enormous blind spot.  It would seem that his oath amounted to “just words.”

Under Barack Obama and the Democrat-dominated Congress, we are seeing government spending, government debts, and government deficits soar beyond anything ever before seen in the history of the human race.

The excellent work on the Constitution and its history by W. Cleon Skousen entitled The 5000 Year Leap has an amazing thesis in light of what we are seeing from our government today:

Since the genius of the American system is maintaining the eagle in the balanced center of the spectrum, the Founders warned against a number of temptations which might lure subsequent generations to abandon their freedoms and their rights by subjecting themselves to a strong federal administration operating on the collectivist Left.

They warned against the “welfare state” where the government endeavors to take care of everyone from the cradle to the grave.  Jefferson wrote:

“If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.”

They warned against confiscatory taxation and deficit spending.  Jefferson said it was immoral for one generation to pass on the results of its extravagance in the form of debts to the next generation.  He wrote:  “…we shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves;  and consequently within what may be deemed the period of a generation, or the life [expectancy] of the majority.”

Every generation of Americans struggled to pay off the national debt up until the present one.

Let us see what the founding fathers who wrote our Constitution said that liberals so eagerly and so cavalierly wish to dismiss from the people’s attention:

“I am for a government rigorously frugal and simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt, and not for a multiplication of officers and salaries merely to make partisans, and for increasing, by every device, the public debt on the principle of its being a public blessing.” — Thomas Jefferson letter to Elbridge Gerry, January 26, 1799

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“To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.” — Thomas Jefferson

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“As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible.” — George Washington, Farewell Address, September 17, 1796

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“If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.” — Thomas Jefferson, to Thomas Cooper, January 29, 1802

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“[W]ith all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people?

Still one thing more, fellow citizens — a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.” — Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801

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“He that goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing.”  Benjamin Franklin, from his writings, 1758

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“We are endeavoring, too, to reduce the government to the practice of a rigorous economy, to avoid burdening the people, and arming the magistrate with a patronage of money, which might be used to corrupt and undermine the principles of our government.”– Thomas Jefferson, letter to Mr. Pictet, February 5, 1803

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“With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.” — James Madison

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“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.” –Thomas Jefferson

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“To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.” –Thomas Jefferson

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“I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse.” — James Madison letter to Henry Lee, April 13, 1790

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“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” — Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. ME 15:23

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“When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” — Benjamin Franklin

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“Experience has proved to us that a dollar of silver disappears for every dollar of paper emitted.” –Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1791. ME 8:208

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“If the debt which the banking companies owe be a blessing to anybody, it is to themselves alone, who are realizing a solid interest of eight or ten per cent on it. As to the public, these companies have banished all our gold and silver medium, which, before their institution, we had without interest, which never could have perished in our hands, and would have been our salvation now in the hour of war; instead of which they have given us two hundred million of froth and bubble, on which we are to pay them heavy interest, until it shall vanish into air… We are warranted, then, in affirming that this parody on the principle of ‘a public debt being a public blessing,’ and its mutation into the blessing of private instead of public debts, is as ridiculous as the original principle itself. In both cases, the truth is, that capital may be produced by industry, and accumulated by economy; but jugglers only will propose to create it by legerdemain tricks with paper.” –Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813. ME 13:423

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“It is a [disputed] question, whether the circulation of paper, rather than of specie [gold,silver], is a good or an evil… I believe it to be one of those cases where mercantile clamor will bear down reason, until it is corrected by ruin.” –Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813. ME 13:409

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“To contract new debts is not the way to pay for old ones.”– George Washington letter to James Welch, April 7, 1799

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“The maxim of buying nothing without the money in our pockets to pay for it would make of our country one of the happiest on earth.” — Thomas Jefferson to Alexander Donald, 1787. ME 6:192

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The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. — Thomas Jefferson

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“I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.” — Benjamin Franklin, On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor, November 1766

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“Repeal that [welfare] law, and you will soon see a change in their manners. St. Monday and St. Tuesday, will soon cease to be holidays. Six days shalt thou labor, though one of the old commandments long treated as out of date, will again be looked upon as a respectable precept; industry will increase, and with it plenty among the lower people; their circumstances will mend, and more will be done for their happiness by inuring them to provide for themselves, than could be done by dividing all your estates among them.” — Benjamin Franklin letter to Collinson, May 9, 1753

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“I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and in our comforts, in our labor and in our amusements. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.” — Thomas Jefferson

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“I hope a tax will be preferred [to a loan which threatens to saddle us with a perpetual debt], because it will awaken the attention of the people and make reformation and economy the principle of the next election. The frequent recurrence of this chastening operation can alone restrain the propensity of governments to enlarge expense beyond income.” — Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1820.

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“If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare… they may appoint teachers in every state… The powers of Congress would subvert the very foundation, the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America.” — James Madison

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“I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” –Thomas Jefferson

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“The same prudence, which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public monies.” — Thomas Jefferson letter to Shelton Giliam, June 19, 1808

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“It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense. … They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society.” — Adam Smith, “Wealth of Nations,” Book II, Chapter II

“Every discouragement should be thrown in the way of men who undertake to trade without capital.” — Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Tracy, 1785. Papers 8:399

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“It is a miserable arithmetic which makes any single privation whatever so painful as a total privation of everything which must necessarily follow the living so far beyond our income.” –Thomas Jefferson to William Hay, 1787. ME 6:223

Barack Obama and the Democrats have been offering a disingenuous and dishonest thesis: that they are spending insane amounts of money to save money.  They touted their massive $787 billion (and really $3.27 trillion!!!) stimulus as an “investment” in jobs.  Jobs that never came.  And now a solid plurality of Americans agree that massive stimulus pork bill HURT the economy.  That realization is coming even as the facts are increasingly emerging that the Democrats have been using the stimulus to reward themselves in pork-style politics EXACTLY AS THOMAS JEFFERSON WARNED.

And now they are touting their health care bill – and the gimmickry they have played to make it appear “deficit neutral” over the long haul – and their cap-and-trade legislation, to say that their massive spending is really an “investment” in the future as well.

Don’t buy their spin.

Stop the madness.  Stop the depraved and insane spending.  Stop the Democrats from imposing a socialist agenda that will take away our freedoms and tax us into oblivion all in the name of helping us.

Stop the founding fathers from having to spin in their graves.

It has often occurred to me these past months that the founding fathers were willing to fight in order to throw off tyranny that were virtually nothing compared to the onerous ones we are being fitted with today.

The Obama Media’s Dishonest Attempt To Smear Rush Limbaugh

Barack Obama’s White House Communications Director said that Fox News is not a legitimate news organization.  Apparently, in order to BE a “legitimate” news organization, a media outlet must engage in leftwing propaganda, demagoguery and lies.

Anita Dunn went on to say:

“They take their talking points, put them on the air; take their opposition research, put them on the air. And that’s fine. But let’s not pretend they’re a news network the way CNN is.”

The news organization that determined itself to fact check an SNL sketch critical of Barack Obama – after having done absolutely nothing to verify the accuracy of weekly withering attacks on Sarah Palin throughout the presidential campaign that went on and on for months – is what passes for “legitimate” today.

And, it turns out, reporting flat-out lies and character assassinations against a conservative without bothering to perform even the most rudimentary check of the sources is what passes for “legitimate” today.  Amazingly, the network that “fact-checked” an SNL comedy sketch refused to engage in the most rudimentary of fact checking before smearing Rush Limbaugh.

Stop and consider: only days after looking like the in-the-Obama-tank-propagandists they truly are for “fact-checking” Saturday Night Live, and the VERY NEXT DAY following Obama’s White House Communications Director demonizing Fox News and holding up CNN as the model of legitimate journalism, CNN YET AGAIN proved how biased and in fact dishonest it truly is.

CNN joined MSNBC in “quoting” Rush Limbaugh to effect that he is a racist.  And as a result of these “bigoted remarks,” Rush Limbaugh was thrown out of an ownership package to purchase the St. Louis Rams.

CNN anchor Rick Sanchez did the following:

CNN anchor Rick Sanchez read a disputed racist quote attributed to Rush Limbaugh about antebellum slavery on Monday’s Newsroom: “Limbaugh’s perceived racist diatribes are too many to name. Here’s a sample- he once declared that ‘slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back. I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.’”

And that certainly wasn’t all that Rick Sanchez said.  Go to the link for more, and for the embedded video of the “reporting.”

Now, Rick Sanchez is a very different creature than, let’s say, Glenn Beck.  Rick Sanchez is paid to be a journalist, and in fact a NEWS ANCHOR.  Fox News’ Glenn Beck, by stark contrast, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Fox News’ news division.  He offers OPINION and analysis.  There’s a fundamental difference.  News anchors are supposed to report the facts, and ONLY the facts.  Fox News distinctly separates their journalists from their commentators.  Few other networks bother.

But that’s not all.  I mean, think about it.  Sanchez all but labels Rush Limbaugh as a racist, and says Limbaugh’s “perceived racist diatribes are too many to name.”  And as PROOF of that claim, he then proceeds to offer unsubstantiated LIES as his “evidence.”

Here are a couple of other “statements” by Rush Limbaugh and their “source” which were uncritically offered by Obama’s “legitimate news networks” as fact:

Here are two quotes attributed to Limbaugh in a 2006 book, 101 People Who Are Really Screwing America, by Jack Huberman.

• “You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray (Dr. King’s assassin). We miss you, James. Godspeed.”
• “Let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: Slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back. I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.”

Well, it turns out that Huberman’s “source” was a Wikiquote that appeared, and then was later removed.  Rush Limbaugh has decades of audio available, and he has never said these things.

Such was the “reporting” of the mainstream media.  So much for their “legitimacy.”

Media Research Center President Brent Bozell issued the following statement:

“CNN and MSNBC must immediately and publicly source when Limbaugh uttered this phrase. He has unequivocally denied it. Now it is up to the same news media that reported it as fact to prove that it was, indeed, stated. […]

“Either Rush Limbaugh is lying or these networks – willfully or not – are participants in the worst form of character assassination imaginable.   They can prove their innocence by documenting this accusation. If they can’t, then they are 100% guilty of character assassination.

And what was the conclusion of this false and malicious reporting, in what amounted to an obvious act of character assassination?

First MSNBC ‘fessed up with a non-apology:

DAVID SHUSTER: And Tamron, speaking of influence, we do have an update involving talk show host Rush Limbaugh and the controversy over his effort to help buy an NFL football team. Limbaugh denies he said quote, ‘slavery has its merits,’ it was a quote that appeared on MSNBC this past Monday and Tuesday. MSNBC attributed that quote to a football player who was opposed to Limbaugh’s NFL bid. However, we have been unable to verify that quote independently. So, just to clarify.

Then Rick Sanchez of CNN offered a similar non-apology apology:

Earlier this week we provided quotes attributed to Rush Limbaugh to illustrate why some people and players felt that Limbaugh was too divisive to be an NFL owner.

One of these quotes, which was in a column in the St. Louis Post Dispatch and in a book largely about conservatives, was refuted by Limbaugh. We have been unable to independently confirm that quote.

We should not have reported it and for that, I apologize. I feel it is important to hold folks accountable when they make mistakes, and that should include myself and my team.

Sorry we tried to destroy you.  Our mistake.  And we can assure you that it won’t happen again until next time.  The tone of the “apologies” was that the networks were trying to illustrate something that they wanted you to continue to think was still true, but due to some minor glitch they merely happened to use false facts to prove it.

Virtually everything they reported were lies.

There’s a little more to say.  Newsbusters reported this:

During Wednesday’s Morning Joe program on MSNBC, host Joe Scarborough warned of false Limbaugh quotes being touted by his own network: “And a lot of those comments were actually not true.  The quotes that we heard the most of, the people we interviewed on our shows came with articles, waving articles with quotes – completely made up.  And Mike Barnicle, the dangerous thing is, that the media just flew right into it.”

So the media outlet that features Keith Olbermann and the media outlet that fact checks SNL sketches for one political party “just flew into” a demagogic propaganda campaign that was literally right of of the Coach Joseph Goebbels playbook.

And those are the “legitimate” networks for Barack Hussein Obama, a man who has taken his own cues right out of the Nixonian “enemies list” to attack and damage a privately owned company and a member of the press that has constitutional rights.  Rather than respect those rights, the Obama White House has used taxpayer dollars to attack a major news organization.

I can’t end this without pointing out that it is a fact that Barack Obama’s Communications Director is a self-acknowledged Marxist.  And Marxists have never once in history been kind to a free and fair press.

I also can’t end it without saying that if you want to see what documented racism and bigotry that ought to be exposed really looks like, you should go to Barack Obama’s own official website.  Big Government – the people who exposed ACORN for the slime they are – provided the evidence that Obama’s people are antisemitic bigoted haters.  Whereas Rush Limbaugh’s “bigotry” is a media-created lie, the liberals’ racism is very real, indeed.