Considerettes

In the late 1980s, the top 1% of taxpayers — the richest 1% of the country — paid 25% of the total income taxes paid.  This seems reasonable, as those folks make a lot more money than, say, the bottom 95%.  In fact, in the 80s, the bottom 95% paid about 55% of the total taxes. 

But things have changed quite a bit.

The Club for Growth is noting that IRS tax information just released information that the top 1% is now paying more total taxes than all of the bottom 95%, if you can believe that.  CFG highlights a graph of the data to show the continuous track we’ve taken to soak the rich.  Their observation:

This begs the question: At what higher rate do liberals want to tax "the rich" in order to make the tax code, in their eyes, more fair?

Indeed, liberals won’t define the term "fair tax code", other than to say that it’s taking more from the rich than they’re taking now. 

Bruce McQuain over at Q&O, in addition to wondering about the definition of "fair", also wonders about the Left’s definition of "greed".  Who, one might ask, is more greedy than the person who want to pay less and less for more and more government services paid for by other people?  And ye we hear from them cries of "greedy Wall Street" and "greedy corporations".  Pot, meet kettle.  Kettle, this is pot.

I also think it begs another question: How much money does the Left think it can suck out of the rich for things like universal health care?  Are they but a money tree, ripe for the picking?

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James Taranto had a great take-down of all the Obama "birther" brouhaha (is Obama a "natural-born citizen for purposes of running for President) in his "Best of the Web Today" column yesterday.  For those who don’t get his e-mail every day (and you should get it; very highly recommended), here’s a link to the article.  Taranto really does his homework when opining on a subject, and this is no different. 

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This is just too cool not to make mention of.

Oxford scientists have created a transparent form of aluminium by bombarding the metal with the world’s most powerful soft X-ray laser. ‘Transparent aluminium’ previously only existed in science fiction, featuring in the movie Star Trek IV, but the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion.

It was Scotty who gave the molecular formula for the fictional "transparent aluminum" to a present-day Plexiglas guy in the movie.  It includes my favorite line to say to my laptop when it seems to be seized up.  Scotty, before using the "quaint" keyboard, attempts to get the attention of the Macintosh in front of him by speaking into the mouse, "Hello, computah", in his classic Scottish brogue. 

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What kind of advisors is Obama surrounding himself with?  Radicals.

President Obama’s top science adviser said in a book he co-authored in 1973 that a newborn child “will ultimately develop into a human being” if he or she is properly fed and socialized.

“The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being,” John P. Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote in “Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions.”

Emphasis mine, and which is noting why abortion is underemphasized by this administration; they’re not even considered human when they’re born.  There’s much more at the link. 

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Scott Ott, of ScrappleFace blog fame and occasional CNN guest, is running for Executive of Lehigh county in Pennsylvania.  Tuesday night, he went strolling around Allentown, looking to strike up conversations, maybe hand out a few campaign bookmarks; no real agenda in mind.

Turns out that when he enters a store and starts talking to the guys there, a chance to really discuss the issues crops up and he has what he called "an intensely practical, intelligent discussion about political ideology and freedom".  The conversation begins:

"What will you do for me if I vote for you?" the shop owner said. "Will you get me a grant for my store?"

I’m a bad politician.

I said (paraphrasing from memory), "The first thing I’ll do for you is put an end to the idea that public servants should hand out special favors to people who support them."

I told him that the next thing I could "do for him" was to abolish the idea that government is going to save you from your troubles, and to exchange that for the idea that you are responsible and free, and that no one cares more about your children, your business, your home and your neighborhood than you do. In addition, no one is better equipped to deal with the challenges of your neighborhood than you and your neighbors. But it won’t happen until you stop thinking that someone else is to blame, or that some outside agency is going to intervene to fix things.

He looked at me and said, "You’re a Republican."

I was delighted that he associates freedom and responsibility with my party.

His thoughts on that discussion, what the aims are (or should be) of the Republican party, and a sense of community that’s been lost elsewhere can be found here.

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That was then:

BARACK OBAMA: …When you rush these budgets that are a foot high and nobody has any idea what’s in them and nobody has read them.

RANDI RHODES: 14 pounds it was!

BARACK OBAMA:  Yeah. And it gets rushed through without any clear deliberation or debate then these kinds of things happen.  And I think that this is in some ways what happened to the Patriot Act. I mean you remember that there was no real debate about that. It was so quick after 9/11 that it was introduced that people felt very intimidated by the administration.

This is now.

Facing criticism from both sides of the aisle that he’s pushing too hard and fast on health care reform, President Obama on Wednesday defended his "rush" to get it done and said Congress must take advantage of this rare opportunity.

"The stars are aligned," Obama said in prime-time news conference, and the American people are depending on Congress to reach a compromise promptly. He wants a deal by Congress’ August recess.

"If you don’t set deadlines in this town, things don’t happen. The default position is inertia," the president said, singling out his critics for playing political "games" with health care reform.

Versus, say, playing political "games" with national defense (without which, health care soon becomes moot). 

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From a post at Redstate comes word that a liberal go-to guy for examples of a utopian society is now backing away from, what turned out not to be, the perfect world.  Quoting the Redstate writer "Skanderbeg":

Having run the “progressive experiment” for a few decades, the Swedes have figured out that it’s a dead end that does not work - and they want out.

What are they doing?  Cutting taxes, capping spending and privatizing health care.  What are we doing?  Raising taxes (or coming up with new ones), uncorking spending, and "publicizing" health care.  We’re meeting Sweden on the road going the opposite direction, and they’re telling us to turn back.  Will we listen?

I guess the first question is will they listen.  My underlying issue with public health care is that people will believe, at some point, that they are entitled to it, hence the term used for so many welfare programs; "entitlements".  But a poor choice of terms it is, because it engenders a sort of "right" that doesn’t really exist; your right to my money.  Living in that culture for 30 years, will Swedes let go of class warfare and "soaking the rich" to embrace financial independence?  We can only hope.

I linked only to the Redstate article, because it covers another topic as well, worth reading.  The link to the original article is in there, though.

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A new peer-reviewed study claims that "[v]irtually all changes in global atmospheric temperatures in the late 20th century were the result of nature rather than human activity". 

Yeah, that "settled" science continues to get unsettled.

“It goes against the orthodoxy,” said climate scientist Chris de Freitas of New Zealand’s Auckland University. The new findings called into question the politically-correct, politically-motivated assumptions driving the climate change debate, he said.

De Freitas and Australian scientists John McLean and Bob Carter reported that at least 80 percent of climate variability tracked over the past half a century could be attributed to internal climate-system factors including the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Pacific warming phenomenon and its cooling twin, La Nina.

This left little room for human-caused factors like emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other so-called greenhouse gases. Intermittent volcanic activity, producing significant cooling, was found to have been a factor.

The paper was published Thursday, following a six-month peer review process, in the American Geophysical Union’s Journal of Geophysical Research.

All of our efforts trying to stem this may be for naught.

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Shire Network News #167 has been released. The feature interview is with Charles Winecoff, a contributor to the Big Hollywood blog for conservatives working in the creative arts. He says coming out as a conservative was harder than telling people he was gay. Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

Below is the text of my commentary.

Hi, this is Doug Payton for Shire Network News asking you to "Consider This!".

Candidate Barack Obama said that we needed health care reform in the US, but blasted fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton for proposing a mandatory insurance requirement.  President Obama now thinks this is a feature, not a bug; a benefit that we just need to get on board with.  But there’s more, much more!  If you act now…  (Oh, sorry, I was channeling Billy Mays for a second there.) 

Anyway, while there are many positives to the proposal, here are the Top 9 Benefits of ObamaCare(tm):

9 - No more pesky Canadians crossing the border to avoid their long waiting lines.  Ours will be just as long.

8 - We’ll be the envy of the third world.

7 - Health insurance will be just like car insurance; you have to have it, it’ll cover less as you get older, and your children can trade you in during our Cash for Clunkers program.

6 - Getting rid of of Grandma & Grandpa sooner means cost savings to you, not including the Christmas & birthday presents you don’t have to buy anymore.

5 - Electronic records means that your medical history will soon have its own Facebook page.

4- Medicine will no longer be prescribed subject to, as Scott Ott has called it, "diagnosis discrimination"; simply based on a doctor’s opinion.  Government bureaucrats will now be on a level playing field.

3 - It’ll make David Letterman forget all about Sarah Palin.

2 - Cost-cutting measure: close rural hospitals.  It’s OK that farmers will be travelling farther for health care, because we’ll mandate they buy an electric car.

And the #1 benefit of ObamaCare(tm):

If we had already had it, Michael Jackson would still be alive.

Yes, and Christopher Reeve, too, I imagine.  Consider this.

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The old phrase goes, "What if they gave a war and nobody came?"  Well, here’s another:  What if they gave a universal health care support rally…

Local MoveOn.org members had penciled in on today’s schedule a protest in front of Senator John Cornyn’s Spring Valley Road office, during which they had hoped to pressure the senator to support President Barack Obama’s public health care legislation.

…and a tax protest broke out?  (I know, not as catchy.)

But when Paula Anderson, a MoveOn.org member and spokeswoman, showed up at 11:30 a.m., she found another contingent had beat her to the proverbial punch: A large number of Dallas Tea Party members were already set up, voicing their opposition to the proposal.

Anderson was stunned: "We really did not expect them to show up." She estimated the crowd at about 130. "From our perspective we took names of everyone there, and we had about 30 people," she told Unfair Park. "And I would assume they maybe had 100."

The Tea Party movement ain’t going away so easily.

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If good intentions were dollars, TennCare would be turning a profit instead of failing in its financial and moral responsibilities to the people of Tennessee.

And so begins an article dealing with the financial problems of a universal health care insurance program that has failed, and of a government that hid the fact that it was failing.

Now I’m sure that there are plenty of folks who would come forth and say that this time, with ObamaCare, it would be done right. 

The article lists a number of people and groups to blame for the failure, but I find this to be the foundation of it all, and why a little government intervention inevitably leads to a lot.

Then blame the entitlement industry that has grown up around TennCare like weeds choking a garden. These strident advocates believe they have the right to reach into our pockets and take as much money as they need to turn TennCare into what they want it to be — universal insurance — instead of what it is supposed to be — a safety net.

That is precisely what happens when a new entitlement comes into play, and why Ronald Reagan said that the closest thing to eternal life this side of heaven was a government program.  Promoting this entitlement to the federal government will, make no mistake about it, get larger than even its proponents dare to believe.  And ultimately it won’t be as good as what we have now.

Just ask all the Canadians that come over the border.

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Those campaign promises are reaching their expiration dates quite quickly.  Back during the campaign, Obama ran hard against Hillary Clinton’s mandatory health insurance.  PoliFact.com has the quotes.

"Hillary Clinton’s attacking, but what’s she not telling you about her health care plan? It forces everyone to buy insurance, even if you can’t afford it, and you pay a penalty if you don’t," said one of his television ads .

His mailings made similar claims, which we rated Half True . At one campaign stop, Clinton waived the mailers and declared, "Shame on you, Barack Obama!"

"Meet me in Ohio," she added. "Let’s have a debate about your tactics and your behavior in this campaign."

Obama was vigorous in his attacks on Clinton for including an indvidual [sic] mandate in her plan. Now that the Democrats in the House have included a mandate in health reform legislation, he’s fine with it. He admitted he changed position in the interview with CBS. Full Flop!

All that talk of Hope and Change is really just subject to political expediency.  If you believed what he said, what you need to hope for is that he doesn’t change.  (If you didn’t, well then, this is not a real surprise.)

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Y’know, that whole "signing statement" thing wasn’t apparently so bad after all.  So says one man who used to decry the use of it.

Congressional Democrats warned President Barack Obama on Tuesday that he sounded too much like George W. Bush when he declared this summer that the White House can ignore legislation he thinks oversteps the Constitution.

In a letter to the president, four senior House members said they were "surprised" and "chagrined" by Obama’s statement in June accompanying a war spending bill that he would ignore restrictions placed on aid provided to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Obama said he wouldn’t allow the provisions to interfere with his authority as president to conduct foreign policy and negotiate with other governments.

The rebuff was reminiscent of Bush, who issued a record number of "signing statements" while in office. The statements put Congress on notice that the administration didn’t feel compelled to comply with provisions of legislation that it felt challenged the president’s authority as commander in chief.

See, it’s not that it’s a bad thing in and of itself.  It’s just that it sounds so much like…well, you know.

"During the previous administration, all of us were critical of the president’s assertion that he could pick and choose which aspects of congressional statutes he was required to enforce," the lawmakers wrote. "We were therefore chagrined to see you appear to express a similar attitude."

Let’s see if this matters to him.

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One thousand words, meet picture:

And according to the article, we may dip even below all other estimates.

The federal deficit has topped $1 trillion for the first time ever and could grow to nearly $2 trillion by this fall, intensifying fears about higher interest rates, inflation and the strength of the dollar.

Neither the Congressional Budget Office nor the White House estimated those kind of numbers.  As I’ve said before, complain all you want about how Republicans overspent (and I did), Obama and the Democrats make Bush and the Republicans look like amateurs.  Nobody who complained during the Bush administration should be shouting for joy at all this new government spending on new government programs.  But most Democrats are.

Oh, by the way, this is not counting the Obamacare bill.

That has many Republicans and deficit hawks worried that the U.S. could be setting itself up for more financial pain down the road if interest rates and inflation surge. They also are raising alarms about additional spending the administration is proposing, including its plan to reform health care.

Look your children and grandchildren in the eye and tell them this is for their own good.

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Headline: Clinton likens North Korea to unruly children

Well, except for the nuclear bomb stuff.  But yeah, otherwise they’re just like ‘em.

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