So I know nothing about blogging, but here's my finest effort. In the interest of full disclosure, I am a conservative who will cast a vote in two weeks for John McCain and Sarah Palin.
Barack Obama has recently said that he believes that this economy has to be built from the "Bottom Up". One would have to be intoxicated to believe that this economic strategy of "spreading the wealth" will lead to anything other than shared misery.
In a campaign filled with mistruths, Obama's most damning may well be his assertion that under his tax plan, "95% of Americans will receive a tax cut". All the while, his running mate Joe Biden is telling us that it is "patriotic" to pay taxes. So which is it? Lets take a closer look at the Obama tax plan, but before we do that, a few facts:
The top 1% of wage earners in this country pay 40% of all income taxes.
The top 50% of wage earners in this country pay 97% of all income taxes.
The bottom 50% of all wage earners in this country pay only 3% of all income taxes.
Now, we can get into the merits of a "Flat Tax" another day. But for now, this progressive tax system is what we have to work with.
Obama thinks the "wealthy" should pay more. Understand, Obama categorizes "The Wealthy" as anybody making more than $250,000 annually. I ask, how do you give a "Tax Cut" to many folks who don't pay any taxes to begin with (see statistics above, verifiable on the IRS website)? Isn't that in fact, just another form of welfare? Don't we already PAY TAXES to fund welfare?
Getting back to Mr. Obama's tax proposals...He has said that he will raise the capital gains tax. Capital gains taxes are those taxes one would pay on the difference between what one paid for an investment, and what one gained on that investment when sold. These taxes are levied on the sales of mutual funds, bonds, stocks, real estate, precious metals, etc. In this market, is it really wise to discourage investment by raising the tax rate on profits made on such investments? We need people who are financially capable, to continue investing in our markets. Discouraging investment by raising taxes would be catastrophic to an already suffering economy. By the way, John McCain has recently suggested cutting the capital gains tax in half, to 7.5%, for the next two years.
Let's talk a minute about corporate taxes. What was the last corporation you knew that actually PAID taxes? That's right - not a one. That's because as their taxes increase, they pass that little gift from the government on to you and I (Like the toaster oven in "Old School" - the gift that keeps on giving!). Your Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks suddenly goes from $3.89 to $4.05. Or, they may also be forced to lay people off in order to offset their suddenly higher costs of doing business. I cannot stress enough - corporations do not pay taxes...we pay their taxes for them. Barack Obama will raise taxes on all businesses making more than $250,000. There are approximately 25 million small businesses in the U.S., accounting for 99% of all employers, and employing more than 50% of the private work force (http://www.eeoc.gov/ada/adahandbook.html).
I received a call from a local democratic volunteer last week. He seemed like a very nice guy, and we had a good conversation. After a few minutes, the conversation transitioned from local to national politics. He was making his points about raising corporate taxes and how that would be good for everybody (again, the fairness theme)...I asked him, "what would keep those businesses from either laying people off or moving operations to a more "tax friendly" country?". His response was startling..."Well, I think there are certainly carrots that we can throw out there to keep companies here...And you understand, MEN AND WOMEN make the laws...So there's legislation we can put in place to keep them here". What?!?!? You're going to raise their taxes, then implement laws that will require that they stay, or face even stiffer penalties? Is this the United States of America, or the old Soviet Union?
For those who have read to the bottom, I thank you and hope I haven't offended anyone too much. I live in Connecticut, a state where Mickey Mouse would have no trouble getting elected if he were the democratic candidate. So, this is a forum that allows me to say the things I'd like to say, without shoving my thoughts down anyone's throat.
The last point I will make on this initial entry...Barack Obama loves to compare himself to John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Somebody should remind Mr. Obama that it was none other than John Kennedy who said:
"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, January 1963
Put in a more concise manner, President Kennedy was saying that the only way to increase revenues to the federal government, is to decrease taxation.
This economy cannot be built from the bottom up, and there is no such thing as "fairness" in life.
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Hello Russ,
ReplyDeleteYou make many valid points, but I am afraid Obama kool aid drinkers will continue to drink until they vote in his 'socialst doctrine.' I think the comment the Obama follower made to you on the phone speaks loudly to the type of philsophy and people he reaches out to and connects with. Here is what someone emailed to me:
AYERS: RADICAL LOON WHEN OBAMA WAS ONLY 47
October 22, 2008
The media are acting as if they completely and fully vetted Obama during the Democratic primaries and that's why they are entitled to send teams of researchers into Alaska to analyze Sarah Palin's every expense report.
In fact, the mainstream media did no vetting. They seem to have all agreed, "OK, none of us will get into this business with Jeremiah Wright, 'Tony' Rezko, Saul Alinsky, Bill Ayers and everyone's impression of an angry Michelle Obama on 'The Jerry Springer Show.'"
During one of the Democratic primary debates, Hillary Clinton was hissed for mentioning Syrian national Rezko, and during another, ABC moderator George Stephanopoulos nearly lost his career for asking Obama one question about William Ayers.
In the past week, TV anchors have taken to claiming that Obama "refuted" John McCain's statement that Obama launched his political career at the home of former Weather Underground leader Ayers.
No, Obama "denied" it; he didn't "refute" it. If "denying" something is the same as "refuting" it, then maybe the establishment media can quit harping on Palin's qualifications to be president, since she too "refuted" that by denying it.
Back before the media realized it needed to lie about Obama launching his political career at Ayers' house, the Los Angeles Times provided an eyewitness account from a liberal who attended the event.
"When I first met Barack Obama, he was giving a standard, innocuous little talk in the living room of those two legends-in-their-own-minds, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. They were launching him -- introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread."
The Times has now stripped this item from its Web page, but the great blogger Patterico has preserved it for posterity on his Web page.
Obama's glib remark that "Bill Ayers is a professor of education in Chicago; 40 years ago when I was 8 years old he engaged in despicable acts with a domestic group. I have roundly denounced those attacks" -- doesn't answer anything.
First of all, the fact that Ayers is a professor of education proves only one thing: He is dumber than any person without an education degree.
Ayers is such an imbecile, we ought to be amazed that he's teaching at a university -- even when you consider that it's an ed school -- except all former violent radicals end up teaching. Roughly 80 percent of former Weathermen are full college professors -- 99 percent if you don't include the ones killed in shoot-outs with the police or in prison -- i.e., not yet pardoned by a Democratic president.
Any other profession would have banned a person like Ayers. Universities not only accept former domestic terrorists, but also move them to the front of the line. In addition to Ayers, among those once on the FBI's most-wanted list who ended up in cushy college teaching positions are Bernardine Dohrn (Northwestern University), Mark Rudd (a junior college in New Mexico) and Angela Davis (History of Consciousness Department, University of California at Santa Cruz).
While others were hard at work on Ph.D.s, Susan Rosenberg was conspiring to kill cops and blow up buildings, and was assembling massive caches of explosives. This put her on the fast track for a teaching position at Hamilton College!
Despite having absolutely no qualifications to teach, having earned only a master's degree in "writing" through a correspondence course, Rosenberg was offered a position at Hamilton within a few years of President Clinton pardoning her in 2001, releasing her from a 58-year prison sentence for participating in the murder of cops and possessing more than 700 pounds of explosives.
But Obama thinks it's a selling point to say that Ayers is a college professor.
Hundreds of college professors have signed a letter vouching for Ayers, which would be like Lester Maddox producing a letter from George Wallace assuring us that Maddox is a respected member of the community. No, really, I've got the letter right here!
The media keep citing the fact that the money Obama and Ayers distributed to idiotic left-wing causes came -- as The New York Times put it -- "from Walter H. Annenberg, the billionaire publisher and philanthropist and President Richard M. Nixon's ambassador to the United Kingdom."
Great Republican though he was, Walter Annenberg died in 2002. The money came from the Annenberg Foundation, which, like all foundations, distributes money to projects that its founder would despise. John Kerry ran for president on the late John Heinz's money. That didn't mean Republican Heinz was endorsing Kerry.
As John O'Sullivan says, any foundation that is not explicitly right-wing will become a radical left-wing organization within a few years. It could be the Association of University Women, the American Association of Retired People, the American Rose Growers, the Foundation for the Study of Railroad Engineers or the Choral Society of Newport Beach.
Left-wing radicals swarm to free foundation money, where they can give gigantic grants to one another and they will never have to do a day's work. That's exactly what Obama and Ayers did with Annenberg's money.
None of the Annenberg money went to schoolchildren. It went to Ayers' left-wing crank friends to write moronic papers that we hope no one ever reads.
Instead of teaching students reading and writing, Ayers thinks they should be taught to rebel against America's "imperialist" social structure. In 2006, Ayers was in Venezuela praising communist dictator Hugo Chavez, saying, "We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution."
He has backed a line of schoolbooks such as one titled "Teaching Science for Social Justice."
Forget about Ayers' domestic terrorism when Obama "was 8 years old." Does he agree with Ayers' idiot ideas right now?
So Russ, you and I may have problems seeing the truth, but I am afraid the left will never see 'right' because their 'hearts' are clouded with 'lies'...rather then 'think', they react and attack anyone who questions Obama to cloud the real truth which simply is: The MEDIA wants Obama to be president, so they don't ask him or inquire into any real issues or questions that they should In THEIR minds, they already have 'elected Obama' president and are in the BUSINESS of telling everyone they can that McCain doesn't have a chance...when we who believe in what is right, do not only know he has a 'chance'...but he is more 'qualified' then Obama as is Palin. How difficult is it to see the sexism, double standard, racism, lies and vindicativeness in Obama and his followers..not hard at all if you are 'objective'. Obama, Biden and his committee should be ashamed of themselves for what they say and do, but instead, the continue to spout the very hate doctrine they accuse the McCain campaign of...should I continue! Go ahead, democrats follow the sheep hearder to the cliff...and remember it won't be HE that falls off, but you and your family, etc....if you can't see that the country is at 'risk'..then all we have left is prayer and the mercy of God! And we'll need it if Obama is elected.... Peace bill
Russ ....here is something you and other bloggers might like to read:
ReplyDeleteBy Charles Krauthammer
Friday, October 24, 2008; A19
Contrarian that I am, I'm voting for John McCain. I'm not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it's over before it's over. I'm talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they're left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.
I stand athwart the rush of conservative ship-jumpers of every stripe -- neo (Ken Adelman), moderate (Colin Powell), genetic/ironic (Christopher Buckley) and socialist/atheist (Christopher Hitchens) -- yelling "Stop!" I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go down with the McCain ship. I'd rather lose an election than lose my bearings.
First, I'll have no truck with the phony case ginned up to rationalize voting for the most liberal and inexperienced presidential nominee in living memory. The "erratic" temperament issue, for example. As if McCain's risky and unsuccessful but in no way irrational attempt to tactically maneuver his way through the economic tsunami that came crashing down a month ago renders unfit for office a man who demonstrated the most admirable equanimity and courage in the face of unimaginable pressures as a prisoner of war, and who later steadily navigated innumerable challenges and setbacks, not the least of which was the collapse of his campaign just a year ago.
McCain the "erratic" is a cheap Obama talking point. The 40-year record testifies to McCain the stalwart.
Nor will I countenance the "dirty campaign" pretense. The double standard here is stunning. Obama ran a scurrilous Spanish-language ad falsely associating McCain with anti-Hispanic slurs. Another ad falsely claimed that McCain supports "cutting Social Security benefits in half." And for months Democrats insisted that McCain sought 100 years of war in Iraq.
McCain's critics are offended that he raised the issue of William Ayers. What's astonishing is that Obama was himself not offended by William Ayers.
Moreover, the most remarkable of all tactical choices of this election season is the attack that never was. Out of extreme (and unnecessary) conscientiousness, McCain refused to raise the legitimate issue of Obama's most egregious association -- with the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Dirty campaigning, indeed.
The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.
Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who's been cramming on these issues for the past year, who's never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of "a world that stands as one"), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as "the tragedy of 9/11," a term more appropriate for a bus accident?
Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory?
There's just no comparison. Obama's own running mate warned this week that Obama's youth and inexperience will invite a crisis -- indeed a crisis "generated" precisely to test him. Can you be serious about national security and vote on Nov. 4 to invite that test?
And how will he pass it? Well, how has he fared on the only two significant foreign policy tests he has faced since he's been in the Senate? The first was the surge. Obama failed spectacularly. He not only opposed it. He tried to denigrate it, stop it and, finally, deny its success.
The second test was Georgia, to which Obama responded instinctively with evenhanded moral equivalence, urging restraint on both sides. McCain did not have to consult his advisers to instantly identify the aggressor.
Today's economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I'm for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.
Bill
Good job keep it up
ReplyDeleteWaterguy
Great start to your blog. I am new at this so I'm just starting too. BTW I chose as my photo one of me on our verandah when we went to Alaska in 2005. We went through Wasilla on the train. Great place! Sarah Palin was a great pick for John McCain.
ReplyDeleteNice to see your blog!
ReplyDeleteTeresa_Rae