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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sandintoes who wrote (39941)	12/25/2009 10:54:14 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

Fox is much more believable than CNN or the other liberal networks.

To: sandintoes who wrote (39941)	12/28/2009 9:44:32 AM
From: Peter Dierks	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

December 28, 2009 The War Against the Wannabe Rich By Victor Davis Hanson There is class warfare going on in this country -- but it's not against the established rich. It's against those who are trying to become wealthy. President Obama has declared that those who make over $200,000 will pay higher income taxes. Caps on payroll taxes are supposed to come off as well for the upper class. Envisioned estate taxes will take 45 percent of individual inheritances valued over $3.5 million. Many states have also hiked their income taxes on the upper brackets. Again, most of those targeted are not the already rich - a Warren Buffett or Bill Gates - but millions of the wannabe rich. They may have achieved larger-than-average annual incomes, but they're not the multimillionaire speculators on Wall Street who nearly wrecked the American economy in search of huge bonuses and payoffs. Most are instead professionals and small-business owners who take enormous risks in hopes of being well-off and passing their wealth on to their children. Oddly, much of the populist rhetoric about the need to gouge the newly affluent is voiced by the entrenched wealthy, who don't have to care how high taxes go, given their own vast fortunes. Take Bill Gates Sr. who is clamoring for higher estate taxes on inheritances. But such advocacy comes easy for him. After all, he is the father of the richest man in the world -- someone who clearly needs no inheritance. Billionaires also often set up charitable foundations to ensure their estates are channeled to their own preferences rather than simply given over to a needy U.S. Treasury. In contrast, moderately affluent business owners or farmers often leave enough property for their heirs to pay death taxes, but not enough to set up tax-exempt charitable foundations. Warren Buffett also wants higher income taxes on the wealthy. He once confessed that thanks to all sorts of write-offs, he had paid only about 17 percent of his gross income in federal taxes, a lower rate than many employees in his office. But Buffett like Bill Gates Jr. is worth many billions of dollars. In truth, he has so much money that no amount of taxes would affect him much. A combined tax bite of 60 percent of his annual income would still leave Buffett each year with millions. Yet the same rate could cripple a business owner making $300,000 in annual income. Often those in government claim that their higher tax proposals are simply targeting the affluent like themselves - proof of their own selflessness. President Obama, for example, has complained that the well-off like himself could afford to pay more. But unlike politicians in Washington, most upscale Americans in private enterprise do not receive free government perks and lavish pensions. Nor are they guaranteed lucrative post-political lobbying and speaking careers. Focusing tax hikes on those who in some years make between $200,000 and $500,000 makes no sense in a recession for a variety of reasons. They are neither the speculators who caused the panic of 2008 nor the Washington politicians who are bankrupting the country. Instead, most are small-business owners who hire the majority of the nation's employees. But faced with the talk of higher taxes, more regulations and hostile rhetoric, they will remain confused, and so retrench rather than expand. With the proposed new income, payroll and health-care tax rates, along with increased state and local taxes, many business owners fear that 60 percent to 70 percent of their income will go to the government. That does not seem a good way to convince small businesses to hire more workers in hopes of greater rewards. Income is also not the only barometer of affluence. Two-hundred thousand dollars is quite a lot of annual money in Kansas, but does not always go so far in San Jose, where modest houses often cost well over half a million dollars. For those whose children do not qualify for need-based scholarships, a private liberal-arts education can easily set a parent back $200,000 per child over four years. Why the war against the productive classes who want to be rich? Maybe it is because they are not as numerous as the proverbial middle class. Perhaps they do not earn our empathy that is properly accorded to the poor. They surely lack the status and insider connections that accrue to the very rich. Yet continue to punish and demonize them, and the country will grind to a halt - as we are seeing now. Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War." You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com. realclearpolitics.com

To: sandintoes who wrote (39941)	1/3/2010 11:24:50 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

Pork Nicknames? Posted on Dec. 22, 09 \| 01:49 PM by Andrew Roth \| Topic: Health Care Reform -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So the various sweetheart deals in ObamaCare are getting immortalized in our American lexicon with clever nicknames. Here are a few: Louisiana Purchase: For her vote, Sen. Mary Landrieu got $300 million for her home state. UConned: For his vote, Sen. Chris Dodd got a $100 million construction earmark for a University of Connecticut hospital. Florida Flim-Flam: John McCain nicknamed this one. He criticized this $5 billion deal that is tied to Sen. Bill Nelson. Cornhusker Kickback: For his vote, Sen. Ben Nelson got a permanent Medicaid exemption for Nebraska, among other things. Vermont Vig: For his vote, Sen. Bernie Sanders got at least $10 billion in funding for community health centers. Does anybody else have any other examples? When it moves to the House, will there be examples of Pelosi Payola? Hoyer Hush Money? Permalink: clubforgrowth.org

To: sandintoes who wrote (39941)	1/26/2010 9:32:27 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

A Small GOP Litmus tests are for minority parties. JANUARY 26, 2010. Scott Brown's Massachusetts upset shows that Americans want an alternative to a liberal Democratic majority, but some Republicans are still intent on reminding voters what they don't like about the GOP. The Republican National Committee holds its winter meeting in Hawaii this week, and party activists may offer a resolution imposing a litmus test on GOP candidates. The brainchild of Indiana lawyer James Bopp Jr.—who has done yeoman work fighting campaign-finance limits—the resolution would bar RNC support or cash to any candidate who agrees with fewer than eight of 10 conservative principles. The litmus list includes: support for smaller government and lower taxes, troop surges in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Defense of Marriage Act, containing Iran and North Korea, and gun rights; as well as opposition to ObamaCare, cap-and-trade legislation, "amnesty" for immigrants, union card check and government-funded abortion. We're not sure Mr. Brown would have made this cut. Supporters call this "Reagan's Unity Principle," but that's unfair to the Gipper. If the elections in Massachusetts and 2006 and 2008 showed anything, it's that Republicans can't win with their base alone. They need independent voters. Those independents don't want to be told that every GOP candidate must first bow to big-shot party vetters. President Obama's agenda has alienated enough independents that Republicans have the opportunity to compete again in New England, the Upper Midwest and even parts of the Pacific Coast. The National Republican Congressional Committee is vowing to field a candidate in all 435 House districts. Yet the party will be wasting money and credibility if it intends to make candidates in Illinois or Oregon meet a test crafted by Republicans who can win in South Carolina. The better route is the pragmatism the GOP showed in uniting behind Mr. Brown. The Massachusetts Republican is a fiscal conservative, but his more moderate cultural views made it difficult for Democrats to define him as out of step with most Bay State voters. Mr. Brown's promise to be an independent voice for his state was crucial to giving Republicans their 41st Senate vote. The purity resolution got rolling last fall, amid tea-party activism and discontent over the GOP's handling of an upstate New York special Congressional election. The party's mistake in that case was its backroom nomination of the liberal Dede Scozzafava without holding a primary. Any party needs principles, and the failure to live up to those principles cost the GOP control of Congress in 2006. But imposing a litmus test is itself an act of elitism that will make it harder for candidates to forge a winning coalition. Let the candidates sort out their disputes in vigorous primary campaigns. For example, GOP Representative Mark Kirk's vote last year for cap and trade may hurt him with some voters in the looming Illinois Senate primary, but other voters may put a higher priority on taxes or health care. A 10-point list gives no room for such priority setting or the electoral context. It also reminds voters of the unattractive cast-the-first-stone side of the party's personality. RNC Chairman Michael Steele has remained publicly neutral on the litmus list, though it clashes with his promise to "listen" to voters and to court independents and Democrats. The 168 RNC members should keep in mind that litmus tests are for losers online.wsj.com