Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.
Voltaire
Barack Obama Is No Longer the American Idol....
Personally I hope that Obama DOES give up his day job (and we're going to do everything in our power to ensure he goes his wish of going back to his $1.6M "sweet home Chicago" mansion in an upscale Chicago neighborhood after the election this fall). Seeing Mick Jagger up there reminded Obama that "God gave him everything he wants" (well, except GOP capitulation on matters of principle...)
I don't know what Randy "Yo, Dawg" Jackson would say about Obama's vocal performance here, but Obama has always been tone-deaf and pitchy, flat and sharp on delivery. Jackson would no doubt suck air between his teeth and say something like, "Dude, I mean like I don't know. We're looking for the best talent out there to put before the American people to vote on, and the talent has been incredible this year. Sorry, man, it's not your time, at least this year: maybe in four years."
Obama Comes Up With a Business Tax Cut:
NO SALE: Thumbs DOWN!
We've seen Obama play this game before: he's trying to co-opt the GOP on business tax cuts, just like he tried to co-opt Bush's tax cuts (except, of course, for the upper 1%). It literally took me less than a minute to find several issues off the top of my head, and if the GOP Presidential contenders don't know these, for shame:
- First of all, the President hasn't given up one inch on his anti-business demagoguery, trying to pander against Romney's effective tax rate of 15% based mostly on investment income. Any faithful reader to this blog should be familiar with the basic points: in fact, middle-class earners have a lower effective rate (below 10%); investment income often involves a government double-dipping on the same stream of income (meaning individual taxes come on top of business income taxes on distributions); investment taxes, depending on the long-term nature of the underlying transactions, do not really tax "real gains" but "nominal gains" (i.e., in some cases you've lost money on the asset and transaction because of the loss of purchasing power of the original investment, meaning any gain is overstated--and possibly even a loss). Any real broadening gain Obama might get from a business tax cut would be offset by anti-investment tax hikes.
- Obama is, once again, like the sure-loser GOP candidate Rick Santorum, playing winners and losers in terms of taxes, pushing manufacturing at the expense of other sectors of the economy. Go and review MJ Perry's Carpe Diem blog: he is obsessively detailing a long series of positive signs in the manufacturing sector (multiple news items each week, and I don't see the need to reproduce them here). How many times has this blog preached treating businesses broadly and no industrial policy favoring particular businesses and sectors? What part of equal protection does Obama not conceptually understand? He only seems to understand equal protection in the context of minority rights...
- Obama has not given up his hypocritical biased take on "special interests" (in particular, domestic energy companies (by the way, which are most likely to pay the maximum rate of 35% otherwise, an "inconvenient truth")). Do you seriously believe that the Democrats are going to give back the tax breaks favoring their own crony special interests (e.g., the unions maximizing tax-free benefits or green energy companies?)? As John McEnroe would say: "You can't be serious!" I prefer the elimination of special interest tax breaks across the board (including various subsidies, dubious accounting rules allowing exemption beyond an original investment, i.e., oil exploration and production, and let's throw in implicit tax subsidies for home ownership and healthcare insurance while we're at it).
- Obama has STILL not given up his obsessive anti-business rhetoric, renewing his economically-illiterate, populist rhetoric to "punish" companies which already pay full host country taxes on overseas income; the real response is for the US government to assume a win-win pro-growth strategy. I favor a territorial tax system, but Obama rejects that out of hand (his point of view is basically counterproductiive protectionist policy, which is economically inefficient). Let me give a small contrived example just to make my point. Suppose Japan has a 40% tax on American business profits, and the US has a 35% tax rate. There are business reasons for investing overseas, including logistics costs of shipping to be more competitive in the target country. Obama wants to have his cake and eat it, too: he wants a piece of the profits, say, IBM is earning in Japan. But IBM is really already losing profits in the context of this example (versus the same profit taxed in the US). How many times has this blog said: "Money is fungible"? Do you think it's "fair" for IBM to have to pay even more taxes on the same income than they are already paying in Japan? Do you think Obama is going to allow IBM a TAX CREDIT from domestic profits to make up the excess difference from Japan? Are you kidding me?
The fact of the matter is that the President's business tax plan is hopelessly confounded by incoherent policies that mitigate expansion of the business tax base. When is Obama going to realize that the highest business tax policy in the world does NOT attract foreign investment to America, including relevant well-paying domestic jobs, and that we also need to be a player in providing goods and services for the remaining billions of consumers worldwide? Domestic backoffice jobs for global players are just as important...
Obama's rhetoric of rewarding and punishing American businesses is simply another manifestation of his clueless Administration's enabling policies for intrinsically corrupt, rent-seeking, anti-competitive business behavior; instead of accepting the global economy as it is, Obama clings to his megalomaniac conviction that he can manipulate the economy, no less delusional than the vain hopes of past historical figures intent on global conquest.These things, of course, are just the first things off the top of my head, and I'll have more to say on the topic in the future.
Meditation of the Day
Angelina Davis, a Catholic recording artist in her early twenties, who goes by her given name, sings a popular arrangement of a familiar prayer attributed to one of the most beloved Catholic saints, St. Francis of Assisi, in his hometown in Italy. [However, the prayer was first published in 1912 (in French), and St. Francis lived in the thirteenth century]. You can find more of Angelina's videos on her Youtube channel, and her recordings can be purchased from her website here.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Group
Paul McCartney & Wings, "Live and Let Die". Paul has always been a brilliant pop vocalist, but most of the Beatle and post-Beatle songs he's been the lead singer on (including the timeless classic "Yesterday") have been more soft rock; I will say that his lead singing on "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"'s title track remains one of my favorite rock vocal performances ever (and it's a challenging one). There's just something about those opening notes and guitar work... There have been some great James Bond movie tracks over the years. My two favorite ones are Patti LaBelle's "If You Asked Me To" (which Celine Dion remade into a monster hit a few years later) and this one. I don't think there's a Bond theme out there that captured the excitement of various Bond action scenes quite like McCartney's genius for memorable melody, tempo and arrangement--and his rock vocal performance is spot on. I wish I could sing and write great music like Sir Paul.
