Obama’s Big Economy Speech: No Hope, No Change

By Ben Shapiro | June 14, 2012 |  Breitbart News

President Obama’s campaign speech on the economy today was an utter disaster for him. It was a bromide of tired old arguments, pathetic blame-placing, and shopworn con tricks. And even liberals like Jonathan Alter had to admit that it was, overall, a dramatic failure.

Obama Thinks the Private Sector is Doing Fine and He Did NOT Walk It Back

By Rush Limbaugh | June 11, 2012 | RushLimbaugh.com

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  Barack Hussein Kardashian, the Celebrity of the United States, went out for a press conference, impromptu on Friday. A State-Controlled Media reporter said, “What about the Republicans saying that you’re blaming the Europeans for the failures of your own policies?”

OBAMA: The private sector is doing fine. Where we’re seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government — oftentimes cuts initiated by, you know, governors or mayors.

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, I think that he meant to say exactly what he said. I don’t see a problem here. The private sector, as far as he’s concerned, is doing fine. If he thinks that the public sector is losing jobs, that’s a problem. If there are fewer government workers, that’s a major problem to Barack Obama. As far as he’s concerned, the private sector’s fine. And as far as he’s concerned, the way he’s been educated and taught, the private sector’s always just gonna be there.

Detroit: The Moral of the Story

By Kevin D. Williamson | Jun 8, 2012 | National Review

The Left’s answer to the deficit: raise taxes to protect spending. The Left’s answer to the weak economy: raise taxes to enable new spending. The Left’s answer to the looming sovereign-debt crisis: raise taxes to pay off old spending. For the Left, every deficit is a revenue-side problem, not a spending-side problem, and the solution to every economic problem is more spending, necessitating more taxes. The problem with that way of looking at things is called Detroit, which looks to be running out of money in about one week. Detroit is what liberalism’s end-game looks like.

Obama Has Signed 923 Executive Orders In 40 Months

By Josey Wales | June 5, 2012 | Before It’s News

THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: Obama has signed 923 Executive Orders in 40 months!

What did Congress do in those 40 months?

The State at the End of the Universe

The current round of class warfare taking place in this country can hardly be called that because it is taking place within a single class. This is no great conflict between the construct of a 1 and 99 percent, this is a civil war taking place within the 1 percent. The very name of the “Buffett Rule” makes that all too obvious. When your class warfare bid relies on 1-percenters like Warren Buffett and Elizabeth Warren, then what you have isn’t a class war, it’s an internal conflict among some of the wealthiest Americans over whether the future lies with an all-encompassing state or a looser libertarian system.

Buffett’s position as the champion of the government class isn’t as irrational as it might seem. For the average taxpayer, the tax code is a vacuum cleaner, but, for Buffett, it’s an investment. The more money people pay in, the more money the government has available to salvage troubled banks that he can swoop in on at a hefty profit. The average taxpayer loses money to the government, but Buffett gets back money from the government.

Are Democrats Finally Seeing What We Knew About Obama Four Years Ago?

By Rush Limbaugh | May 25, 2012 | RushLimbaugh.com

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Last night, PBS, Charlie Rose had as his guest a guy named Donald Gogel, president, chief executive officer at private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice.  Charlie Rose said to Donald Gogel, “You were a strong supporter of the president in 2008.  Are you concerned about the nature of the president’s rhetoric on private equity and Bain Capital and Mitt Romney?

“GOGEL:  I’m concerned that in the noise, in the tornado of politics (and unfortunately it’s become a tornado) we’re gonna lose what is most essential to this country, which is the ability for individuals to band together, free association, free enterprise, create businesses, and create jobs.

Why So Many Americans Still Don’t Know Much of Anything About Barack Obama

By Rush Limbaugh | May 18, 2012 | RushLimbaugh.com

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You know, this Reverend Wright stuff with Barack Obama, it’s back in the news again. Something is happening.  It’s anecdotal, but I happen to think that this might be applicable in a statistical way to the nation at large.  We played the audio sound bite from Obama reading from one of his books a couple of weeks ago, in which he admitted bullying a young girl, in which he admitted trying cocaine, admitted that he drank a lot, basically just lollygagged around.  I know we’ve got new listeners to this program.  It’s been documented by the official ratings companies that monitor such things.

There are tons and tons of new listeners, but even at that, I’m overwhelmed by the number of people — we’re three-and-a-half years into his regime, and I’m getting e-mails from people that the first time they’d heard he’d done cocaine was in the past two, three weeks.  The first time they’d heard that he had bullied a young girl. They didn’t know his college transcripts hadn’t been released.  They just assumed all that had happened and they missed it. They didn’t know any of this.

Bill Clinton Undercuts Obama, Calls for Middle Class Tax Increase

By Rush Limbaugh | May 16, 2012 | RushLimbaugh.com

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: And our old buddy Bill Clinton, who, by the way, Bill Clinton’s back, and Bill Clinton’s back calling for tax increases on the middle class, ladies and gentlemen.  It’s right here in The Politico.

“Bill Clinton said Tuesday that President Barack Obama’s goal of hiking taxes on the rich alone is not enough to solve the country’s fiscal woes and suggested that middle class Americans must also eventually contribute more.” (imitating Clinton) “Look, this is just me now.  I’m not speaking for the White House.  I think you could tax me, you know, Hillary and I, we’re rich now, and I think you could tax me at a hundred percent and you wouldn’t balance that old budget.  The fact of the matter is you could tax me, you could tax Limbaugh, you could tax O’Reilly, you could tax everybody out there, you could tax me and Hillary, and you still wouldn’t balance the budget.  We are all gonna have to contribute to this.  And if middle-class people’s wages were going up again, and we had some growth in the economy, I don’t think they would object to going back to tax rates of when I was president.”

Now, is this guy doing Obama any favors here?  Bill Clinton comes out, calls for tax increases on the middle class.  Let’s take the rates back to when he was president.  I mean what is Obama doing?  Obama’s out there on this class envy tour trying to make everybody believe that the reason we have an economic problem is because we have rich people in the first place.  The second thing is, to solve it we’ve gotta tax ’em, we gotta tax that 1%.  They are the problem.

Here comes our old buddy Bill Clinton. (imitating Clinton) “Well, you know, this is just me speaking.  I mean, I’m not speaking for the White House, but I’m telling you, you could tax me, you could take everything I’ve got and that’s not gonna balance the budget. You can tax all the rich people I know, you could tax Harvey Weinstein, you could tax Spielberg, every one of these people. You could tax Will Smith and you’re still not gonna balance the budget.” I mean, that is the exact opposite message Obama wants, is it not?

And then to close it out by saying, “I think the middle class, if they had some income, they wouldn’t object to paying taxes.”  If they had some income.  If we had some growth to the economy, the middle class wouldn’t mind. Obama’s out there trying to tell the middle class they’re not gonna pay anything.  They’re gonna get and get.  They’re gonna have nothing but benefits.  That’s Obama’s message.  Here comes old Bill.  “Hey, you can tax me all you want, ain’t gonna close the budget.”  In other words, “You know what?  Obama doesn’t know what he’s talking about.  He’s telling you that he can raise taxes on the rich, but it ain’t gonna fix the budget.  He’s gonna have to raise taxes on you.” The thing is, Clinton’s more right than he’s wrong here.  That’s the irony here is that Clinton’s exactly right. You could take everything the rich have and you wouldn’t balance the budget, ever, and if you took everything the rich have, you can only do it once.  By definition, they’ve got no more.

“Yes, Mr. Limbaugh, but they will earn it next year.” Why, Mr. New Castrati, if you take everything they’ve got, why go earn any more of it if it’s all gonna be taken?  You can only take it one time.  Still don’t balance the budget. We gotta raise taxes on the middle class.  And we got it in Ed Klein’s book, Bill wants Hillary to run for president.  He wants Hillary back in there. He wants back in there.  The Politico says here, “The former president’s remarks about his own tax rate seemed to be a reference to Obama’s ‘Buffett Rule,’ which proposes higher taxes for the wealthiest Americans. Clinton asserted that when he was at the White House, ‘very few people’ thought they were being overtaxed.” (laughing)  I know it’s absolutely ridiculous. Clinton is the one who called Obama an amateur, and that’s
the title of Klein’s book.

It was Clinton that called Obama an amateur.  So now he’s out there attacking the Buffett Rule. He’s attacking Obama’s class envy.  He’s telling the middle class that he knows that they wouldn’t object to a tax increase if they had any income.  Clinton said, “Look, we can’t be in a position here where one of the negotiating partners says that that’s not negotiable. I mean, not only will we not raise taxes, we want the Bush tax cuts and we want more tax cuts and we want the right to disregard what the CBO says our budget — you can’t do that.  It’s hard to have a deal if there’s no arbiter.”  Looks to me like — and of course, I could be wrong — it looks to me like Clinton seems to differ on just about every Obama policy.  And yet he’s out there campaigning for him. We got Clinton saying this.  Of course you don’t need to hear Clinton say it; you just heard me do it.

Read the full article here.

Related Articles

• Prediction: Hillary Clinton will be VP (glennbeck.com)
• Romney’s lamest gambit yet (salon.com)
• Obama, Clintons deepen political and policy ties (dailycaller.com)
• Bill Clinton Said President Obama Is Incompetent (inquisitr.com)
• Man who won landslide in 2008: An election is bound to be tight when you have a name like mine (hotair.com)
• Hunger Games Wisdom (spectator.org)
• BREAKING: President Clinton Calls Obama “Incompetent” and “Amateur” (illuminati360.wordpress.com)
• Bill Clinton dubbed Obama ‘incompetent’, urged Hillary to run for presidency: Book (mytechnologyworld9.blogspot.in)
• New theory: Maybe Obama’s too smart and sensitive to be a good president (hotair.com)
• Romney goes after Obama’s core campaign message (dailycaller.com)
• The Buffet Rule (spectator.org)
• Open Thread: Mitt Romney, Busybody (skydancingblog.com)

Demonizing Conservative Thought

By Howard Slugh | May 13, 2012 | American Thinker

The president has adopted an electoral strategy of demonizing conservative thought.  In a now-infamous speech, President Obama referred to his conservative opponents as “stuck in the past,” and as “naysayers” who “don’t believe in the future.”  He scoffed that his detractors were “founding members of the Flat Earth Society” who “just want to keep on doing things the same way that we’ve always done them.”  The president contrasted his critics with people who “refuse to stand still” and who “put their faith in the future.”  In a second speech, discussing Congressman Ryan’s proposed budget, the president implied that liberal policies create “opportunity” and “upward mobility” while conservative policies entrench inequality.  These false dichotomies mischaracterize conservative ideas.

These were not merely off-the-cuff remarks intended to smear political rivals.  This caricature of conservative ideas is popular among liberal social scientists.  In 2012 alone, two well-respected psychology journals published studies perpetuating these smears, citing more than a dozen previous studies.

“Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes: Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing ideology and Low Intergroup contact,” by Gordon Hodson and Michael Busseri, argued that conservatism is linked to low cognitive ability and that it acts as a precursor to racism.  This study described conservatism as characterized by “resistance to change” and “the promotion of inter-group inequalities.”

“Low-Effort Thought Promotes Political Conservatism,” by Scott Edelman, et al., links an absence of critical thinking to conservative conclusions.  He describes conservative positions as evincing “low-effort thought” and as “initial and uncorrected responses” correctable by “overriding and adjusting initial conservative responses.”

Edelman claims that conservatives are marked by an “acceptance of hierarchy” and an “opposition to equality.”  He describes this acceptance as “proceeding in the absence of effortful information processing.”  Hodson and Buseri claim that these apparent cognitive problems are “associated with prejudice” and stem from fear and anxiety.

But this reductionist view ignores reality and the beauty contained in the conservative position.  In fact, the president and these social scientists denigrate conservative thought because its rejection of utopianism and insistence on cautious incremental change denies them the ability to unilaterally design a future that reflects their preferences.

Conservatives recognize that talents, such as the ability to write great novels, paint beautiful paintings, or hit five-hundred-foot home runs, will never be equally distributed.  Inequalities will exist even between people with similar levels of natural talent due to differences in their levels of dedication and pure luck.  Social scientists cannot wish these “hierarchies” out of existence, no matter how many papers they write.

Of course, this says nothing of political and legal equality, which conservatives embrace.  What conservatives do deny is that a society that suppresses the differences between people is attainable or even desirable.  Such an effort eliminates notions of nobility, heroism, and the aspiration for self-improvement.  We can either appreciate the novel, the painting, and the home run — or we can begrudge the “hierarchy” created by inequalities.  We cannot do both.

Only a dystopia, such as the one described in Kurt Vonnegut’s story “Harrison Bergeron,” could achieve perfect equality.  Vonnegut’s story takes place in a time where “everybody [i]s finally equal … every which way.”  This equality is perpetuated by a tyranny that forces intellectuals to place buzzers in their ears to prevent them “from taking unfair advantage of their brains,” hides the handsome behind masks, and encumbers the athletic with weights.

The characters live in a world devoid of joy; everyone is equally uninspired and miserable.  Vonnegut illustrates this dreariness by describing a ballet in which the ballerinas are “burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces [a]re masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in.”  The imposition of equality obliterates everything that makes the ballet worthwhile.  This is allegorical hyperbole, but only because no one actually believes we should truly pursue a world without hierarchy.  The debate between conservatives and liberals is over where to draw the lines and which of our differences are worthy of esteem.

The adoption of universal equality is contrary to the natural human inclination to seek out excellence.  The attempt to deter such behavior cannot destroy that longing.  It merely perverts and distorts it.  This has led to the phenomenon of the celebrity who is “famous for being famous.”  Once people were admonished against recognizing and honoring people for their merits, they transferred that honor to entirely unremarkable people, undeserving of such esteem.  Is society better off because our children revere Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian rather than brilliant minds, moral exemplars, and great leaders?  As a conservative, I think not.

Edelman claims that conservatives have a “preference for the status quo” which requires “little time, effort, and awareness.”  He maintains that conservatives “simply assume that existing and long-standing states are good and desirable.”  Hodson and Busseri attribute this to the fact that “individuals with lower cognitive abilities may gravitate toward … conservative ideologies …  that maintain the status quo and provide psychological stability and a sense of order.”

What these social scientists view as laziness is actually a humble understanding of our own limitations.  Conservatives value tradition because we recognize that our inheritance contains wisdom that we could not quickly or easily replicate.  Conservatives do not view tradition as perfect or final; they see it as a collection of ideas that were successfully implemented throughout the ages and should not be hastily discarded.  The trial and error of generations have delivered a product superior to the one society could design based on current theories and prejudices.

Conservatives recognize that no individual or even individual generation is wise enough to recreate society from scratch.  Society is far too complex to maintain or improve without relying on the knowledge transmitted through tradition.  This, more than anything else, irritates these social scientists because they think it is their job to free us from tradition and to teach us how to remake the world.  They trivialize conservative thought because it counsels prudence and stability, while they think it is their place to lead the revolution.

Read the full article here.

Related Articles

• House Dems Receive Training on Portraying Conservatives as Racist (johnmalcolm.me)
• Missing Link Friday – Conservatism, prejudice and intelligence (clubtroppo.com.au)
• Dim minds and dark attitudes. (mindblog.dericbownds.net)
• Low-Effort Thought Promotes Political Conservatism (psp.sagepub.com)
• A hopeful, youthful, idealistic and optimistic conservatism (dailycaller.com)
• Are Liberals Smarter and Nicer? Just Ask Academia (bigjournalism.com)
• How to Think About the Foundations of American Conservatism (johnmalcolm.me)
• Jonah Goldberg: Obama, Tom Friedman among America’s top cliché artists (dailycaller.com)
• Hatch Despises the ‘Radical Libertarians’ Who Oppose Him (spectator.org)
• Paul Ryan, the Catfish-Wrestling Cult Leader (spectator.org)
• Obama’s evolving morality challenges religious absolutists (my.psychologytoday.com)
• Conservatives Produced By “Low Effort” Thinking: Study (wmbriggs.com)

Eight West Virginia Counties Vote for Federal Inmate Over Obama in Dem Primary

By Rush Limbaugh | May 09, 2012 | RushLimbaugh.com

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Democrats did turn out, however. Well, they didn’t turn out in Wisconsin. They didn’t turn out in North Carolina. But guess where they did turn out?Democrats turned out big time in West Virginia in the presidential primary to vote for an inmate. A federal prisoner, the Boyd Crowder of West Virginia. Federal inmate 11593-051. There’s a picture of the guy. Let me see if it’s still up. Let me check real quick. Yep, there’s a picture of the guy on Drudge, a picture of Inmate 11593-051. This is the guy that gave Obama a run for his money in West Virginia. Now, ask yourself this, folks. Why would Democrats in West Virginia vote for a federal inmate as opposed to a president, a sitting president in their own party?

Maybe it is something very simple, very common sense, and very explainable. Maybe it’s that the people of West Virginia realize that Barack Obama poses the biggest threat to their livelihood of anybody on the ballot this time around. With his attacks on the coal industry, with his attacks on the oil industry, with his attacks on natural gas, with his attacks on conventional energy, with his promotion of green energy shutting down all these jobs that exist in West Virginia.

And even now the media (as we’re doing, too, I will admit) is looking at the results yesterday: “What will be the effect on Obama?” How about this? Could we once look at what the effect be on the country will be? Because that’s what the people voting on voting on. Yes, it’s Obama that’s getting them out. There wasn’t a single, singular Republican leader on a ballot yesterday. You had Mourdock in Indiana and Scott Walker attracting votes, but there wasn’t a presidential candidate on the ballot yesterday.

There were ideas. Ideas were on ballots yesterday. Ideas are what triumphed. And it was conservative ideas that skunked socialist utopianism yesterday. So the Democrats don’t turn out in North Carolina. They don’t turn out in Wisconsin. But they do turn out in the Democrat primary in West Virginia. And in eight maybe more counties, they beat Obama with a federal inmate. If I didn’t know better, I would say there is a War on Obama being waged by the Democrats!

It certainly looks that way to me. It looks to me like Democrats in West Virginia want jobs. It would appear to me that Democrats in West Virginia want lower gasoline prices. They want higher home values. They want more disposable income. They don’t want people telling them what kind of light bulb they have to buy! They don’t want a bunch of nameless bureaucrats running around talking about “crucifying” energy executives. But you see, the Democrats in West Virginia figured out their president put a moratorium on drilling for oil in the Gulf and refused to okay the Keystone pipeline.

Read the full article here.

Related Articles

• Federal Inmate Gets 40% of the Vote Against Obama in West Virginia Primary…. (icanbeatobama.com)
• 42% Of West Virginia Democrats Vote For Federal Inmate In Presidential Primary (theamericanteaman.com)
• Obama loses at least one delegate in WV Democrat primary, doesn’t crack 60% of the vote…against a federal inmate? (crushliberalism.com)
• Federal inmate makes strong showing against Obama in West Virginia primary (radio.woai.com)
• Ouch! Obama loses 41 percent of W.Va. primary vote to federal inmate. (givemeliberty01.wordpress.com)
• 40% Of West Virgina Voters Would Rather Have A Convicted Felon Be The Democratic Nominee Than Barack Obama (minx.cc)
• This Man Can’t Vote in West Virginia, but Lots of People Voted for Him (swampland.time.com)
• WV Dems Not Thrilled About Anti-US Energy Obama, Voted for Felon Instead (wizbangblog.com)

The American People are Fed Up

By Rush Limbaugh | May 09, 2012 | RushLimbaugh.com

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Americans, ladies and gentlemen, are taking their country back — and they’re doing it one election at a time. As was evidenced in Wisconsin, Americans are not afraid of union goons. They’re not impressed with a “slow-jamming” Preezy. They aren’t intimidated by the media anymore. From reconfirming the meaning of marriage, to showing support for a great Wisconsin governor, to humiliating a sitting Democrat president with a huge turnout for a convicted felon, voters demonstrated that the power attributed to Barack Obama and the State-Controlled Media has been overestimated. Conventional wisdom was nuked yesterday.

Tea Party dead and Occupy Wall Street in the ascension? Obama a shoo-in reelection? In fact, the Beltway Republicans, the Republican establishment still think Obama is a shoo-in! They really do. I kid you not. They think… Maybe not a shoo-in now, but before yesterday, “Ah, Rush, don’t get your hopes up. He’s an incumbent. He’s got so much at his disposal,” and that could well be. But the people don’t want to hear that.

The people of this country are not going to allow themselves to be dispirited with phony polls and inaccurate reporting. They’re not gonna be influenced by photo-ops with George Clooney. Being $5 trillion in debt — new debt, given to us by Obama — trumps photo-ops with George Clooney. Years of 8.5% plus unemployment trumps the Preezy slow-jamming the news with Jimmy Fallon.

Out-of-work college graduates are snapping out of their hope and change trance, and they realize all they’re getting is insurmountable student loan debt, not jobs. Voters are continuing to tune out the Drive-By Media in greater numbers. They’re tuning in talk radio, the Internet, Fox News. The people of this country know what’s at stake. They know failure when they see it. They know disaster when they see it. And they know how to stop it.

And they fully intend to.

Last night was a significant aftershock of the 2010 electoral earthquake that rocked the Democrat Party. The Tea Party’s not dead. No, 2010 was a warm-up. The Tea Party’s moved on from a protest movement to an active, vibrant, grassroots movement that knows how to nominate the right people and then get them elected — and that is sending shivers of fear down the spines of professional Democrats, consultants, elected officials, and people in the media.

Democrats are voting against President Obama.

Democrats are distancing themselves from failure.

The cult of personality, the cult of celebrity that this White House has attempted to mine is being overwhelmed by the sting of reality. People’s homes having no value. People’s jobs are paying nothing. People are not able to get jobs. No economic growth. Moratoriums on drilling for oil. Roadblocks on pipelines that would bring oil, which would cheapen energy prices. Attacks on existing, conventional energy sources.

The American people want no part of it.

The American people don’t hate fossil fuels.

Barack Obama might, but the American people don’t, and he has not been able to convince them to. The American people are not going to settle for 8.1% unemployment. The American people aren’t going to settle for 7% unemployment. Vast majorities of the American people understand the greatness of this country. Vast majorities of the American people understand (and listen to me carefully here) that when this nation is on the right track, there’s none better.

When this nation is on the right track, there’s no end to opportunity.

When this nation is on the right track, there’s no end to prosperity.

Our economic and educational opportunity is better than anywhere in the world. But this country isn’t on track, and the American people know it, and they want it back on track. They don’t want this new direction. They don’t want this fundamental transformation of America. They don’t want a silly, impossible socialist utopia. They want reality. They want an acknowledgement of the greatness of this country, not somebody who’s embarrassed of it, or who doesn’t like it, or thinks it’s immoral or unjust.

Read the full article here.

Related Articles

• George Clooney: Obama Is Awesome, It’s Just That He’s Not Awesome At Telling Us How Awesome He Is (wizbangblog.com)
• Mitt Romney, Conservative Cultural Icon (spectator.org)
• Obama, Biden lament Lugar loss as damaging to bipartisanship (dailycaller.com)
• Obama Targets the Tea Party (spectator.org)
• Axelrod lauds Obama’s positive ads, slams Romney’s ‘contract killers’ (dailycaller.com)
• Obama campaigns against the Tea Party (theblaze.com)
• The Art of Political War for Tea Parties (johnmalcolm.me)
• Van Jones: Obama let the tea party ‘set him up’ by being ‘so bipartisan’ [VIDEO] (dailycaller.com)
• A president to unite us (dailycaller.com)
• Sessions says without a budget, American people should not send ‘another dime to this place’ (theblaze.com)
• Krauthammer likens Obama gay marriage stance to ‘flexible’ posture with Russia on missile defense [VIDEO] (dailycaller.com)
• Rush Limbaugh: How to Respond to Obama’s Lies? (johnmalcolm.me)
• Obama thinks the American people don’t understand basic economics (theblaze.com)
• Shocker: Axelrod disappointed in Romney! (glennbeck.com)

The Laughable Economic Fallacies Embraced By Progressives

By Peter Ferrara | April 19, 2012 | Forbes

Persistent economic fallacies hurt working people and the poor the most.  They are the ones most in need of the new jobs and higher wages that capital investment and economic growth produce.  And they suffer the most from unemployment and declining wages and incomes when the economy falters.  Self-styled Progressives are the source of the economic fallacies that are hurting working people and the poor today.

One common fallacy popular among self-proclaimed Progressives is to reply to the point that America now has the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world at nearly 40% with the counter that the average effective corporate tax rate is only around 25%.  But it is the marginal tax rate on the next dollar earned, not the average rate, that influences new investment, business expansion, and hiring.

Pro-growth tax reform would involve reducing that top rate in return for closing many of the loopholes that make the average rate so much lower.  The average rate would rise as a result.  But the lower marginal rate would increase incentives for more capital investment, business expansion and job creation.

Another fallacy among Progressives is to argue that America has enjoyed historically low taxes under President Obama with federal revenues around 15% of GDP compared to the long-term, postwar average of 18.3%.  But that is due to the persistent weakness of the economy under Obama, which lowers federal revenues as a percent of  GDP, as bankrupt businesses and unemployed workers pay little or nothing in taxes.

Again, what influences the capital investment, business start ups, and business expansion that creates jobs and bids up wages for working people and the poor are the marginal tax rates, not taxes as a percent of GDP.  Obama has persistently focused on raising those marginal tax rates across the board, the exact opposite of what Reagan did with so much success, which is a main reason Obama is getting the opposite results of Reagan.  Obama has recently taken to citing Reagan for the opposite of what he believed and implemented as President, in claiming his support for the so-called Buffett Rule.  But the real economy will not be fooled, and working people and the poor will not benefit from dishonest rhetoric.

When the economy recovers, with more businesses making more profits, and more workers earning more in income, federal revenues as a percent of GDP will rise.  That is how Paul Ryan’s budget is scored by CBO as restoring federal revenues to their long term postwar historical average at 18.3% even while cutting corporate and personal income tax rates sharply.  Cutting those rates as Ryan proposes will lead to stronger recovery sooner because of the incentive effects of those lower rates, an effect not even counted by CBO.

Progressives also purport not to understand the multiple taxation of capital.  Under our tax system the earnings from capital investment are taxed not once, but multiple times.  First, by the corporate income tax, then again by the individual income tax through the tax on dividends, then if you sell the capital investment, through the capital gains tax, then when you die, by the death tax.  When Progressives like Obama complain that the rich are not paying their fair share, they are just looking at the rate on any one of these taxes, and not considering all of the others.

The tax on capital gains is especially egregious because the market price of any capital asset just reflects the present discounted value of the future income stream to be produced by that asset, which will be taxed when it is earned.  Progressives claim that they can’t understand all that math, but it means the capital gains tax itself is inherently a double tax.  It is like taxing an orchard not only by taking some of the apples it produces, but also taking some of the trees in taxes as well.

Moreover, it is worse, because some of the gain taxed is just inflation and not real.  It is like assessing a tax on some imaginary apples as well.  These are all reasons why there should not be any tax on capital gains at all.  It is enough to take some of the apples.  Taking some of the trees as well is just abusive, multiple, overtaxation.  That means not just unfair tax piracy, but the squelching of the capital investment at the root of jobs and rising wages and incomes for working people and the poor.

These are the reasons why fourteen out of thirty OECD countries, plus China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and others, already enjoy zero capital gains taxes.  They can understand it, but America’s “Progressives” cannot.  This is part of the reason why these countries have been booming, while America is stagnating.  “Progressives” seem to think of economic growth and prosperity as just occurring naturally, like trees growing in the forest.  They don’t see the decisions made by investors to put their capital at risk, the decisions by entrepreneurs to start or expand businesses, the decisions by employers to hire new workers, and how incentives affect those decisions.  When “Progressives” hold governing power, their blindness becomes America’s blindness, and the American Dream recedes.

Read the full article here.

Related Articles

• Marginal vs Effective Tax Rates (financiallyou.com)
• Hubbard: Obama’s Budget Means 11% Tax Increase on Those Earning (taxprof.typepad.com)
• The Truth about the Rich and Taxes (thecollegeconservative.com)
• Class warfare makes bad economics (virginiaconservative.wordpress.com)
• What’s my tax rate? (business.financialpost.com)
• How is America’s Income Tax Burden Weighted? (turbotax.intuit.com)
• “Notches” in the Marginal Tax Code (briancalbrecht.com)
• Letter: Medicare, Medicaid are heading for insolvency, and costs must be reined in (tcpalm.com)
• Larry Summers is playing economic Jeopardy (blogs.reuters.com)
• The Gimmicks Government Uses to Tax You (usnews.com)

Liberal Bias Starts in High School Economics Textbooks

By Charlie Kirk | April 27, 2012 | Breitbart

All across the country, students are studying for Advanced Placement exams coming in the middle of May. Students in AP Economics are taught with Krugman’s Economics for AP by Margaret Ray and David A. Anderson, adapted from Paul Krugman and Robin Wells’ Economics (Second Edition). Our public education system is supposedly one without bias, a place where any student can come and learn without any form of partisanship. Instead, our classrooms are slowly becoming political lecture halls with teachers being pawns to further the doctrine of liberalism and “equality.”

Throughout the entire textbook, there are historical, factual, and statistical distortions. For example, Chapter 36 (“The modern macroeconomic consensus”) contains 16 sweeping generalizations such as: “Nearly all macroeconomists now agree… There is now a broad consensus… Today, most macroeconomists believe… Almost all macroeconomists now accept…” (pp. 355-58). None of these assertions are backed up with even a single citation. If a student were to submit an essay with such disregard for basic evidence, it would ensure a failing grade.

I find it troubling Krugman’s Economics for AP concludes that Reagan’s “supply-side economics is generally dismissed by economic researchers. The main reason for this dismissal is lack of evidence.” Referring to economic growth and output, our textbook goes on to state there was “no sign of an acceleration in growth after the Reagan tax cuts.”

Read the full article here.

Related Articles

• Krugman: “Keynesians have been completely right, Austerians utterly wrong” (leftfootforward.org)
• Paul Krugman: Death of a Fairy Tale (economistsview.typepad.com)
• Economy Killers | Paul Krugman & Robin Wells | Salon | 15 April 2012 (news.salon.com)
• Is It True that Economists Often Mistake Beauty for Truth? (coordinationproblem.org)
• Paul Krugman: The Big Wrong (mgptpt.wordpress.com)
• CITI: In A Parallel Universe Where Paul Krugman Is Fed Chairman… (businessinsider.com)
• “With How Little Wisdom The World Is Governed” (duanegraham.wordpress.com)
• Krugman and ideology once more (cafehayek.com)
• Inequality and Keynesian Economics (whynationsfail.com)
• Death of a Fairy Tale (readersupportednews.org)

Federal Workers Make Nearly Twice Private Sector Compensation

By Wynton Hall | April 17, 2012 | Breitbart

In their new book, Debacle: Obama’s War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future, Grover Norquist and John Lott, Jr. explain just how bloated the pay and benefits of government workers have become.

According to Norquist and Lott, the average private sector worker in America earns $61,000 annually in pay, pension benefits, and health care benefits.   That compares to state and local government workers who make $80,000 and federal workers who bag $120,000 taxpayer dollars in pay, pension, and benefits.

So how many government workers are there in America?

Read the full article here.

Related Articles

• Three (3!) New Studies on How Public Sector Workers Are Overpaid (reason.com)
• CBO – Comparing the Compensation of Federal and Private-Sector Employees (bespacific.com)
• Many federal workers earn more than private-sector employees (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Pension Squeeze Hits Private Sector Unions (blogs.the-american-interest.com)
• Are Federal Employees Underpaid? (citizeneconomists.com)
• Many federal workers out-earn private sector labor (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Are federal government workers overpaid? (seekerblog.com)
• Are federal government workers overpaid? (gregmankiw.blogspot.com)
• Many federal workers out-earn private sector labor (sfgate.com)
• Federal workers make more for the same job (msnbc.msn.com)

The Ryan Test: Demagoguery Versus Ideas

August 12, 2012 By John Malcolm Leave a Comment

By Jonathan S. Tobin | August 11, 2012 | Commentary Magazine As John wrote earlier today, liberals are convinced that Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan to be his running mate offers them a golden opportunity to savage the Republicans about the Wisconsin congressman’s budget plans. Predictably, the New York Times delivered one of the first such salvos in its editorial posted […]

Smoking Obama’s Crack and Yearning for the Mud

August 12, 2012 By John Malcolm Leave a Comment

By Vanderleun | August 10, 2012 | American Digest [From 2008. Only the names have been changed because the target has changed.] This downward flight of intellectuals has been going on ever since the Romantic movement began its counter-revolution a couple hundred years ago. No matter how much they flap their lips it’s a fall, not […]