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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (79386)	4/30/2010 1:56:05 PM
From: Sully-	1 Recommendation Respond to of 90947

At a Certain Point, You Really Have Made Enough Money By Mark Noonan on Tax and Spend Liberalism We’ve all heard Obama’s personal proclamation of socialist belief, and now we see how much Obama made in 2009: <<< In a stump speech in Quincy, Illinois, President Obama suggested that “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.” Obama made almost $5.5 million last year, most of which came from book royalties according to his tax return. This comes on top of the other millions of dollars Obama received in previous years. The fact that Obama has been in the public spotlight as a politician has undoubtedly had an impact on the royalties of his two books as well. >>> Living in Vegas it is hard not to consider the possibility of that one pull of the lever dropping millions of dollars in to your lap. It does happen – someone has three dollars burning a hole in their pocked, the drop it in to Megabucks and, presto!, they’ve hit for $15 million or some such. Odds are probably better you’ll get struck by lightening, but it does happen. And with such thoughts comes the immediate follow-on: what would you do with it? Not being rich, most of us have no conception of what to do with a million dollars. We’re happy if at the end of the week we’ve got an extra $100 free and clear to go out to dinner, or see a movie, or something like that. When regular folks ponder such a thing, it usually comes down to pay the bills, pass out some to family and friends and, very often, give a lot to charity. You see, most of us don’t need tens of millions of dollars to be happy – and, in fact, having that amount of money is destructive…makes a person start to think their poop don’t stink. So, quite honestly, there is a point when a person has made enough money. That point is where a person is debt free, owns their home, has at least a couple year’s supply of money in the bank and a secure retirement account. Beyond that, its all gravy – and probably poisonous gravy, at that. So, on the face of it, nothing wrong with Obama’s statement. Except for one thing. You see, he’s not talking about his own money – he’s talking about the money others are making by the sweat of their brow. He’s justifying taking ever larger amounts of other peoples’ money – and, worse than that, taking the money from the most productive part of our citizenry at the time when they are doing the most good for our society, as a whole. President Obama is free to live his morality – once he’s paid for a house, secured a retirement, got a reserve in the bank and set up his daughters for college, then it would be a wonderful thing if he gave away every additional cent. But he has no business telling other people what to do with theirs – and it is actually immoral for him to suggest that the government has a claim on anyone’s surplus wealth. .

To: Sully- who wrote (79386)	4/30/2010 4:01:31 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

They Really Are Gonna Give Us All Microchips Daniel Foster The Corner Yesterday I wrote a little about the "border security" piece of the Democratic immigration reform bill. But there is another part of the bill that is already drawing the ire of civil libertarians — a proposed biometric national I.D. card. Within 18 months of passage, the Democratic proposal would have the Social Security Administration pass out photo I.D.s with micro-chips containing unique biometric identifiers for every American. Within five years, the card would become the sole acceptable form of identification required to begin a new job. The proposal explicitly states that the personal information carried on the cards would be limited, and that it will be unlawful for employers or agents of the state to ask to see an individual's card for anything other than employment eligibility verification. But it also rouses bureaucratic behemoths from the SSA, IRS, DHS, ICE, and DOD to administer the system, and pays for it with a bevy of new taxes, fines and fees on businesses. Not to mention, the program bears the Orwellian acronym "BELIEVE" — for Biometric Enrollment, Locally-stored Information, and Electronic Verification of Employment. .