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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (550891)	2/18/2010 1:14:22 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1575414

Selling Freedom Cheap By: Thomas Sowell National Review Online If eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, incessant distractions are the way that politicians take away our freedoms, in order to enhance their own power and longevity in office. Dire alarms and heady crusades are among the many distractions of our attention from the ever-increasing ways that government finds to take away more of our money and more of our freedom. Magicians have long known that distracting an audience is the key to creating the illusion of magic. It is also the key to political magic. Alarms ranging from “overpopulation” to “global warming” and crusades ranging from “affordable housing” to “universal health care” have been among the distractions of political magicians. But few distractions have had such a long and impressive political track record as getting people to resent and, if necessary, hate other people. The most politically effective totalitarian systems have gotten people to give up their own freedom in order to vent their resentment or hatred at other people -- under Communism, the capitalists; under Nazis, the Jews. Under extremist Islamic regimes today, hatred is directed at the infidels in general and the “great Satan,” the United States, in particular. There some people have been induced to give up not only their freedom but even their lives, in order to strike a blow against those they have been taught to hate. We have not yet reached these levels of hostility, but those who are taking away our freedoms, bit by bit, on the installment plan, have been incessantly supplying us with people to resent. One of the most audacious attempts to take away our freedom to live our lives as we see fit has been the so-called health-care reform bills that were being rushed through Congress before either the public or the members of Congress themselves had a chance to discover all that was in them. For this, we were taught to resent doctors, insurance companies, and even people with “Cadillac” health-insurance plans, who were to be singled out for special taxes. Meanwhile, our freedom to make our own medical decisions -- on which life and death can depend -- was to be quietly taken from us and transferred to our betters in Washington. Only the recent Massachusetts election results have put that on hold. Another dangerous power toward which we are moving, bit by bit, on the installment plan, is the power of politicians to tell people what their incomes can and cannot be. Here the resentment is being directed against “the rich.” The distracting phrases here include “obscene” wealth and “unconscionable” profits. But, if we stop and think about it -- which politicians don’t expect us to -- what is obscene about wealth? Wouldn’t we consider it great if every human being on earth had a billion dollars and lived in a place that could rival the Taj Mahal? Poverty is obscene. It is poverty that needs to be reduced -- and increasing a country’s productivity has done that far more widely than redistributing income by targeting “the rich.” You can see the agenda behind the rhetoric when profits are called “unconscionable” but taxes never are, even when taxes take more than half of what someone has earned, or add much more to the prices we have to pay than profits do. The assumption that what A pays B is any business of C is an assumption that means a dangerous power being transferred to politicians to tell us all what incomes we can and cannot receive. It will not apply to everyone all at once. Like the income tax, which at first applied only to the truly rich, and then slowly but steadily moved down the income scale to hit the rest of us, the power to say what incomes people can be allowed to make will inevitably move down the income scale to make us all dependents and supplicants of politicians. The phrase “public servants” is increasingly misleading. They are well on their way to becoming public masters -- like the aptly named White House czars. The more they can get us all to resent those they designate, the more they can distract us from their increasing control of our own lives -- but only if we sell our freedom cheap. We can sell our birthright and not even get the mess of pottage. -- Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. © 2010 Creators Syndicate, Inc. article.nationalreview.com Message 26325756

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (550891)	2/18/2010 1:46:27 PM
From: bentway	Respond to of 1575414

Top 400 Earners in U.S Averaged $345 Million in 2007, IRS Says Each household in the top 400 of earners paid an average tax rate of 16.6 percent news.yahoo.com

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (550891)	2/18/2010 1:47:52 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575414

"Go ahead, Republicans, tell us again about why we should question the Obama administration's approach to national security and counter-terrorism. Because it's exactly the same as Bush's approach, which you guys questioned ad nauseum?" Really? What country that didn't attack us and was no threat to us did Obama invade? Why wasn't it on the news?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (550891)	2/18/2010 3:57:32 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575414

Ted, > Go ahead, Republicans, tell us again about why we should question the Obama administration's approach to national security and counter-terrorism. Because it's exactly the same as Bush's approach, which you guys questioned ad nauseum? Double-standard No double standard.....Obama is getting things done. Bush sat there with his finger up his arse.