I would prefer even to fail with honor than win by cheating.
Sophocles
You Read It Here First
In my Jan.5 post (under "Another Urban Legend", in discussing progressive gimmicks (the Fourteenth Amendment, trillion-dollar coins) to work around Congressional approval of a debt ceiling increase, I write this:
If the government could simply define away the problem, there would be no reason to tax the people in the first place.I'm sure other people, in a nation of 310 million, probably independently came up with the same observation, but in the background reading I did on the gimmicks, nobody made that comment. So I'm looking at an investment email today and this heading leaps out to me apparently from the economic collapse blog: If Obama Can Just Create A Trillion Dollar Coin, Then Why Do We Have To Pay Taxes? If Barack Obama can “solve” the debt ceiling crisis by printing up some trillion dollar coins, then why does the federal government need our money? But if the federal government has had the power to create trillion dollar coins out of thin air all this time, then why do we have to pay taxes? Not only that, why do we have a national debt? If the federal government can just create money whenever it wants, then why does the federal government ever have to borrow it from others? "
IPPON!
We May Need to Impeach Obama For Malfeasance:
Gross Negligence of Fiduciary Responsibility
I'm not an ideologue; I'm very tolerant of the idiotic choices made by fellow voters; I live in Maryland: Martin O'Malley, Ben Cardin, Barbara Mikulski, and Elijah Cummings. Are you kidding? I'm not sure, but I think voting for even one of these is grounds for involuntary commitment. What can you do? Move? (I will say that I'm seriously considering relocation to a red state, probably Texas, over the coming year. I no longer acknowledge queries from recruiters for opportunities in New England, NY or California. The only reason I moved to Maryland in 2004, I was staffing a gig at the National Archives in College Park (just inside the north Beltway); I wanted to live in Virginia, but I was heavily pressured because of local traffic issues.)
As to Clinton who was, at best, a mediocre President (I always wonder what if--Jerry Brown had the most interesting tax policies of any Democrat since the JFK/LBJ tax cuts, but in rare moment of political suicide, he pledged to name controversial Jesse Jackson as Veep), he seemed to sense when the country's mood changed, and he learned how to work with a GOP-controlled Congress. There's no doubt in my mind Clinton would have acted far differently than Obama--I don't think he would have played hardball after Scott Brown's victory to shove the corrupt Senate bill through the House losing the votes of 30-odd Dems; I think Clinton was smart enough to know payback is a bitch when you play zero-sum games and he would need goodwill with the GOP on future endeavors. Obama is intransigent (he talks terms like "shared sacrifice", "fair share", and "balanced" solutions, but that is Orwellian doublespeak; he actually believes that he's fooling other people, but that is hubris). (In case the Political Hack-in-Chief gets on your nerves, you can always buy this. No description on whether it heckles you back, e.g., "I get to go on Hawaiian vacations at public expense.", "Can you give me just a little more?", "I spent $1B to buy a job paying $400K a year, and you're wondering how I manage to run up trillion dollar deficits?" or "Elections have consequences.")
I'm rapidly losing patience with this grossly incompetent demagogue; he's playing prevent defense against any meaningful fiscal responsibility. It can't be that he is so ignorant and clueless that he doesn't know after 2 FDR terms of spending just like he has, like a drunken sailor, unemployment was still up over 10%; it can't be he doesn't understand that massive debts and printing money out of thin air has never ended well in the history of mankind; it can't be he doesn't know the consequences of doing NOTHING when his own agencies forecast trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, and he has seen what has happened in the PIIGS in response to belated attempts to control unsustainable public spending.
It doesn't take a PhD to realize Obama's economic policies have been counterproductive; over 3 years of the Obama "recovery" and monthly we have more people dropping out of the labor force than people finding new jobs--and many of the jobs being added are temporary and part-time without benefits--and he has set a world record in food stamp recipients. Yet Obama has increased employee costs for employers through various counterproductive regulations (including health mandate fees or costs).
What particularly irritates me is when the President-in-Name-Only quotes people out of context. Take for example when he quoted George Washington's Farewell Address in trying to rationalize class warfare tax hikes:
It’s always more popular to promise the moon and leave the bill for after the next election or the election after that. That’s been true since our founding. George Washington grappled with this problem. He said, “Towards the payment of debts, there must be revenue; that to have revenue there must be taxes; [and] no taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant.” He understood that dealing with the debt is -- these are his words -- “always a choice of difficulties.” But he also knew that public servants weren’t elected to do what was easy; they weren’t elected to do what was politically advantageous. It’s our responsibility to put country before party. It’s our responsibility to do what’s right for the future.Here is what Washington said in full context:
As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible, avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it, avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertion in time of peace to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear. The execution of these maxims belongs to your representatives, but it is necessary that public opinion should co-operate. To facilitate to them the performance of their duty, it is essential that you should practically bear in mind that towards the payment of debts there must be revenue; that to have revenue there must be taxes; that no taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant; that the intrinsic embarrassment, inseparable from the selection of the proper objects (which is always a choice of difficulties), ought to be a decisive motive for a candid construction of the conduct of the government in making it, and for a spirit of acquiescence in the measures for obtaining revenue, which the public exigencies may at any time dictate.Now let us examine The (Disingenuous) One's commentary on Washington; how fundamentally dishonest does this piece of work have to be to consciously omit material, like use public debt as sparingly as possible, not to unduly throw onto posterity our own expenses. When Washington speaks of debt, he's talking about expenses of a (defensive) war of last resort: when has Obama even talked about working off the debt he inherited? Even if you argue against the Bush tax cuts, how principled is it to say 'we are not going to ask the middle class, which gets 3/4ths of the benefits, to pay even one dime of their fair share'. Not to mention at the time Washington was talking about consumption taxes (tariffs, excise, e.g., whiskey), not income taxes, which penalize labor, saving and investment--the foundation of a growing economy.
Let us recall what the AP put into a fact check: "The 10% of households with the highest incomes pay more than half of all federal taxes. They pay more than 70% of federal income taxes, according to the Congressional Budget Office....[In 2011], households making more than $1 million will pay an average 29.1% of their income in federal taxes, including income taxes, payroll taxes and other taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank. Households making between $50,000 and $75,000 will pay an average of 15% of their income in federal taxes. Lower-income households will pay less. For example, households making between $40,000 and $50,000 will pay an average of 12.5% of their income in federal taxes. Households making between $20,000 and $30,000 will pay 5.7%.
But what is particularly courageous about targeting the upper 1-2%? Who cares if the majority of people agree with stealing money out of the other guy's pocket? This is blatantly unconstitutional on pure principle no matter how many jurists cop out by citing Footnote 4, erroneous precedent or other sophistry. But the middle class would be wise to reflect on Martin Niemöller's 'First they came"; there simply aren't enough 1% ers to pay everybody else's bills. You have the morally bankrupt birth control mandate: everybody can handle their own birth control, aspirins, etc. What sense does it make to have a third party pay for ordinary expenses? You end up paying for it anyway (through premiums): why pay for overhead? Should people not engaging in sexual behavior have to share the cost of other people's immoral activities?
It's not just the point when people are going to have to pay down already incurred Obama debt. We can't grow our way out of this, especially with Obama's anti-saving and investment fiscal and/or monetary policies. If we tax everyone, hypocrites are going to howl it's going to take money out of the economy: is there ever going to be a time it doesn't take money out? Doesn't the same consideration apply to the upper 1-2%? Don't they also consume, save and invest?
Do I really need to point out that mortgage rates are higher in other countries and foreign citizens don't need a tax break to buy a home? Many countries have higher savings and lower consumption rates. I would argue we need to balance tax revenues by taxing consumption more and income (especially unearned income) less.
We need to restore traditional values, like self-reliance, including saving for our senior years. The government should focus on things like catastrophic expenses and the elderly poor in context of poverty programs, including private sector charities.
But Obama hasn't done squat about entitlements beyond demand more and more higher income taxes to shove into an $80T unfunded pit. Over 10,000 Baby Boomers a day are retiring. Even teasing a deferred gradual age eligibility, tweaks on COLA's, and means-testing (GOP proposals) is, at best modest. We need to cap the government's feasible contribution and work backward on allocating funds, based on need.
I think Obama is responsible for doing NOTHING about the all but inevitable bankruptcy of the US government. How much did Bernie Madoff steal? Something like $21B? A mere drop in the bucket compared to the trillions Obama is loading on future taxpayers, never mind unfunded liabilities. Already the Fed is having to pick up the slack for probably half the Treasury bonds being issued.
There is no way this ends well. I am certain that Obama's legacy will be tied to his spendthrift ways, an end to Uncle Sam's pristine credit history, the fall of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. I strongly suspect that the generations to follow will curse his memory and the idiotic voters who returned him to office. In fact, depending on circumstances, it would not surprise me to see Obama, Reid, Pelosi, and other profligate spenders to be indicted for treason, malfeasance or other crimes.
I see another skit based on the famous Pace Picante Sauce commercial, starring the Founding Fathers: Where do the best government ideas come from? Austin, Tallahassee, Baton Rouge.... This law was published in Washington, DC. Washington, DC?......
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
The Carpenters, "Those Good Old Dreams"
