Redistribution of Wealth and "Fairness"

The Obama campaign has repeatedly said that their tax plan is "fair" and that the rich needs to pay more. They contend that the tax policies of the Bush Administration has helped to expand the gap between the rich and the poor, and they essentally need to pay their fair share. The implication is that the middle class pays a disproportionate amount of federal income tax. Lets examine this premise.

According to the National Taxpayers Union, in 2006 the top 10% of wage earners in the USA, (who make over 100,000 per year and up pay 70.79 % of the federal income taxes. Furthermore, if you look back, according to the same website in 1999, the same top 10% paid 66.45%. So the so-called rich are paying a higher percentage of federal income tax than ever before.

There are two facts that must be said. To cut taxes across the board is to give the rich a bigger tax break than the middle class. If you cut taxes by 5% across the board, the rich get a bigger tax break. Why? because they pay so much more in taxes. Take for example a person whose taxable income is $500,000 per year, at 35% they pay $175,000. Take a person who's taxable income is $50,000, at 25%(Which is the tax bracket for this income group)they will pay $12,500. So if the government lowers tax rates across the board by 5%. They person making 50K will now pay 10,000 in federal taxes. The 500K income earner will pay $150,000. The rich person's tax break will be more than the middle class earner's tax bill. Both income earners recieved the percentage of a tax break, but the "rich" person's tax bill goes down by a much higher dollar amount.

Barack Obama wants to redistribute wealth. He said as much to Joe the Plumber. He said that "if you spread the wealth around, it is good for everyone." One the one hand to many, this might sound good. They might think, "Yeah, stick it to those greedy bastards." But one has to understand the consequences of puntative taxes. The fact of capitalism is that the "rich" employ the rest of us. Whether it is a huge corporation like Haliburton or Microsoft, or a small business owner who employs 15-20 people, lower and middle class Americans are employed by people like this. If the government under an Obama administration decides to raise taxes on Corporations and small business owners, these new taxes will drag the economy down. Any company, large or small, is in business to make money, not to employ people. If profits are not there, the company will cease to exist. A company that has its taxes raised, will have to cut jobs to keep its profit margins or risk its ability to compete.

The last thing this country needs, with the economy in its current state, are tax and economic policies that will hurt and push the economy into a deep recession or worse.

Oh, how I wish that Mitt Romney were the man at the top of the GOP ticket. A brilliant economic mind was thrown under the party bus by single issue voters.

Response to David Brooks Comment about Sarah Palin

David Brooks of the New York Times recently said that Sarah Palin "represents a fatal cancer of the Republican Party." His intellectual bloviating can be found here.

I love how he can say this about Sarah Palin when he knows so little about her. I got news for him. She is not a cancer, but rather she is a shining light of conservatism that the Republican Party needs. She has taken on corruption in her own party in Alaska and is wildly popular in her state.

Every intellectual likes to paint any Conservative as a simple minded dolt. If that Conservative is a powerful politician, he gets even more stupid. Ronald Reagan, who was a man of ideas, was anything but stupid. He was a man of ideas, as Brooks puts it, but he was so much more. He also was a man of action who got things done. The left tried to paint him, first as a stupid talking head former "B" movie star, then as a senile old man. Most of the republicans that swept into power in 1994 were dismissed as idiots. George W. Bush (in my opinion not a conservative), is consistently caricatured as a simple minded religious nut. Dan Quayle was destroyed by the press and painted as a stupid idiot.

Since liberals have nothing new to offer, they are going after Sarah Palin in much the same way. She is being painted as a simple minded woman from a the back country. People like Brooks say that she is a cancer, because of her "anti-inellectualism."

Let me explain why the Republican party is in trouble. It is not because of a lack of ideas. It is because Republicans in the House and Senate have 1)become to moderate, and 2)spent like Democrats used to. Had Republicans in the House stayed true to the conservative ideals that got them elected in 1994, they would have not lost control of the House of Representatives. President Bush, apart from trying to keep America safe against Islamofascism, has consistently departed from Conservative principals. Had he adhered to such principles, he would not be nearly as unpopular as he has become.

Sarah Palin scares liberals to death. She, in my opinion, is Ronald Reagan in heels and lipstick. Her weakness is not her lack of experience (She does have more experience than Obamma). Her weakness is that she has to carry the water for Senator McCain. McCain losing the election will not be the end of her. Give her four years to run her country effectively and prepare to run for President and watch out.

Liberals know this, and that is why they are doing everything they can to discredit her. Their attemps to smear and discredit her will not work, and if libs continue to underestimate her, they will find her wonderful family in the White House in 2012.

Keep on truckin' Sarah.

The Truth About Obama's Letter to Secretary Paulson

So, I got tired of Barack Obama claiming that he had written a letter to Treasury Secretary Paulson claiming that he sounded the warning bell of the current financial crisis. Here is the quote from the first debate at the University of Mississippi.

Two years ago, I warned that, because of the subprime lending mess, because of the lax regulation, that we were potentially going to have a problem and tried to stop some of the abuses in mortgages that were taking place at the time.

Last year, I wrote to the secretary of the Treasury to make sure that he understood the magnitude of this problem and to call on him to bring all the stakeholders together to try to deal with it

Obama again said the same thing in the second debate. The key here is the context. His comments were in response to Senator McCain talking about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac how these two GSE's were a major cause of the current financial crisis. Obama has repeatedly said he wrote this letter warning of these problems.

Well, I found the letter. Here is the link to the letter on Barak Obama's Senate website.

http://obama.senate.gov/press/070322-obama_urges_ber/

Barak did write a letter, but it has nothing to do with the context the current financial crisis. The opening reads as follows:

Dear Chairman Bernanke and Secretary Paulson,

There is grave concern in low-income communities about a potential coming wave of foreclosures. Because regulators are partly responsible for creating the environment that is leading to rising rates of home foreclosure in the subprime mortgage market, I urge you immediately to convene a homeownership preservation summit with leading mortgage lenders, investors, loan servicing organizations, consumer advocates, federal regulators and housing-related agencies to assess options for private sector responses to the challenge.

The rest of the letter goes on to detail what he thinks should happen at this "summit" and what should be discussed. Nowhere did the letter point out how these foreclosures are at the heart of a coming financial crisis. He did point out that lower income people were losing their homes, and more would if something was not done. While it is admirable that Obama showes concern for the poor losing their homes, this cannot and should not be confused with Barack Obama sounding a warning bell about sub prime mortgages being at the heart of an impending financial crisis. The closest thing that I found to any warning is in the next excerpt:

Of course, the adoption of voluntary industry reforms will not preempt government action to crack down on predatory lending practices, or to style new restrictions on subprime lending or short-term post-purchase interventions in certain cases. My colleagues on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs have held important hearings on mortgage market turmoil and I expect the Committee will develop legislation.

I have highlighted the latter part of the post to illustrate Obama's lack of leadership on this issue. He speaks of mortgage market turmoil and says that HIS COLLEAGUES will develop legislation. IF this is a reference to the problems at Fannie and Freddie, which I don't think it is, Obama leaves dealing with this issue to his colleagues. I don't know about you, but this is not what I want to hear from someone who is supposed to be leading America.