Black activist Bishop Council Nedd II, a member of Project 21’s national advisory council, is calling for Rep. Rangel (D-NY) to step down from his position as Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee until the House Ethics committee completes its investigation. Nedd said . . .
It’s galling that the head of the committee in charge of levying taxes has either a profound ignorance of tax law or a disinterest in adhering to the laws he wants others to follow.
In your wildest imagination, do you think that if Rangel was a Republican that he would still be Chairman, if not still in the House itself? It isn’t going to happen, but wouldn’t it be cute to see a reporter ask Rangel how many homes he has? Oh, and whether he is paying the proper taxes on them? The double standard is more than a little obvious.
The FairTax plan is a comprehensive proposal that replaces all federal income and payroll based taxes with an integrated approach including a progressive national retail sales tax, a prebate to ensure no American pays federal taxes on spending up to the poverty level, dollar-for-dollar federal revenue neutrality, and, through companion legislation, the repeal of the 16th Amendment.
Do yourself a favor and get educated on The Fair Tax. The Fair Tax is the result of $22 million worth of research by credible economists from around the country whose task was to come up with another way to fund the operations of the country. The task was qualified to the extent that the result would be ‘revenue neutral.’ That is to say the system must be able to generate as much money as the government is currently generating with the current system through federal withholding and payroll taxes, self-employment taxes, alternative minimum tax, estate and gift tax, and capital gains tax, all of which would be replaced by the Fair Tax. And from that point as the economy grows, so grows the treasury. It is a pro-growth, as opposed to punitive growth, taxing system.
Consequences paramount to converting to the Fair Tax system are three-fold.
First, your individual take-home pay increases dramatically. Without the federal withholding and payroll taxes being deducted from your pay, you get all your pay in every paycheck. This alone is the biggest stimulus to your personal economy as well as our national economy. And it doesn’t put the nation further into debt in the process. Because the taxing revenue is generated by consumption, the tax base includes everyone who buys anything new, not just the working people in America. ‘Everyone’ includes citizens and non-citizens including illegals, foreign diplomats and tourists. And because it is a sales tax, the so-called underground economies are no longer exempt from contributing. Everyone will contribute to funding the government and our Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs.
Secondly, it takes the ‘tax hammer’ away from politicians who use it to control every aspect of our lives and business and industry in the United States. It transfers the power from Washington politicians directly back to you. It is this stripping of power from the political class that generates the most objection from the political class, and the most outrageous criticism and unfair demagoguery, of the Fair Tax. Under the Fair Tax, our politicians will be left with nothing to do except their job of governing and living within their means, just like you and I have to do. And since filing of your personal income taxes will cease, April 15th becomes just another day to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
While it is still fresh in your memory, take a look back at the presidential campaign and the amount of press and attention that was given to taxation by both candidates. Besides energy, the other topic was ‘my tax plan is better than your tax plan.’ And polarizing political tactics like class envy and class warfare became all too prominent. Absent tax laws to talk about, the voters would have learned more about the candidates and ‘the real issues.’
Third, but certainly not last, the change to the Fair Tax alone would bring back foreign-held capital, estimated at between $10 to $15 trillion, that economists predict will flow into the US economy with enactment of the FairTax. That is trillions of dollars of business that has fled this country because of its taxing system, the second highest in the world. As an added bonus, companies looking to do business in the United States that have not yet come here, would have the incentive to come here. The job creation and wealth creation associated with it will spur the economy more than any tax-and-spending Democrat or Republican in Washington could dream of.
Does his victory mean that America is now officially beyond racism? Does it finally complete the work of the civil rights movement so that racism is at last dismissible as an explanation of black difficulty? Can the good Revs. Jackson and Sharpton now safely retire to the seashore? Will the Obama victory dispel the twin stigmas that have tormented black and white Americans for so long — that blacks are inherently inferior and whites inherently racist? Doesn’t a black in the Oval Office put the lie to both black inferiority and white racism? Doesn’t it imply a “post-racial” America? And shouldn’t those of us — white and black — who did not vote for Mr. Obama take pride in what his victory says about our culture even as we mourn our political loss?
White Guilt Emancipation Declaration
We, black American citizens of the United States of America and of the National Black Republican Association, do hereby declare that our fellow white American citizens are now, henceforth and forever more free of White Guilt.
This freedom from White Guilt was duly earned by the election of Barack Hussein Obama, a black man, to be our president by a majority of white Americans based solely on the color of his skin.
Freedom is not free, and we trust that the price paid for this freedom from White Guilt is worth the sacrifice, since Obama is a socialist who does not share the values of average Americans and will use the office of the presidency to turn America into a failed socialist nation.
Granted this November 4, 2008 – the day Barack Hussein Obama was elected as the first black president and the first socialist president of the United States of America.
Where the Left and the so-called ‘gay rights’ movement is concerned, it appears that the only kind of elections they accept are the ones that go ‘their way.’ There have been ballot initiatives in 30 states so far that felt compelled to legislate the definition of marriage as a union between members of the opposite sex, and those measures passed in all of them. Given the opportunity to vote on it, it passes every time. Most recently in California and Florida.
Yesterday, we got a chance to see just how tolerant proponents of ‘gay marriage’ can be by staging protests, some not so peaceful, all around the country.
At Mount Hope Church in Michigan, a radical homosexual group disrupted an evangelical church service last Sunday. The activists rushed the pulpit, throwing condoms and buckets of glitter, using noisemakers and megaphones to scream at churchgoers and frighten children. Women ran to the pulpit and began to kiss; others shouted, “Jesus was gay!” Protests erupted outside Mormon temples in Utah and Seattle to protest the church’s support for the California marriage amendment.
Their strategy to link their cause to ‘civil rights’ simply does not fly with Americans, and certainly not with Black Americans. There is no right that straight Americans have that gay Americans do not have when it comes to marriage.
A gay man is just as free to marry a woman as I am. Similarly, a gay woman is free to marry a man. No problem. No one is preventing gays from getting married. Gays need to get a grip on the fact that they are not the mainstream of general society and learn to live with that fact, rather than trying to turn society upside down to suit their purpose, using judges that should be disbarred and politicians that should be arrested for blatantly violating the law.
I don’t believe ‘marriage’ has anything to do with rights. If it’s rights they’re after, then legislate some rights, call it a civil union, or even ‘gay married,’ but not simply ‘married.’ The latter being reserved for respect and preservation of traditional family values. Marriage is something that happens between members of the opposite sex. A judge can’t change the definition of marriage. Society via legislatures can, and I hope I’m not around if/when that ever happens.
Getting ‘rights’ for the gay lifestyle isn’t, on its face, a bad idea. Trying to equate it to normal heterosexual marriage however, is.
If gays were as proud of their situation as they seem to be, then one would think they would also be proud of that which defines them. Why not invent another hyphenated class to further delineate us? Along with ?-Americans (insert your word of choice), we’ll now have Gay-Americans. And Gay-Americans can be “gay married.” That seems to me to be a fair solution for gays that are tolerant of societal norms.
That would work, if only “tolerance” wasn’t missing from the lexicon of the gay “movement.”
Among the first items on President-elect Obama’s agenda will be to pay back labor unions for their generous campaign contributions in the name of the Employee Free Choice Act. As if government is not already involved in all kinds of things of a socialist nature that it should not be involved in, but is, Democrats in Washington, if not by executive order itself by our new President, will resume the effort to boost labor union membership by enacting new legislation. Since when does boosting labor unions membership become a responsibility of the government? The easy answer to that is to follow the money. If you do that then you’ll know why the bill was sponsored solely by Democrats including Barack Obama.
The bill was mis-named on purpose. Had it been named correctly, it would have been named the Employee Forced Choice Act. The meat of the bill will remove the private ballot in union organizing and replace it with a public one. It is more than a little ironic that Democrats would have such contempt for a private ballot when every other kind of vote Americans participate in is a private one.
And be prepared also for the Left to attach this bill to their favorite political tact, class warfare. Last year, Sen. Hillary Clinton was speaking for this bill and said that it is for ‘the middle class’ because, she asserts, labor union members are middle class. Although Democrats purport to support ‘the working people,’ what they really support are labor unions.
Didn’t we just learn that small businesses create something like 80 percent of jobs in this country, and that most of these small business owners and their employees are ‘middle class?’ And that’s why Obama wants a ‘middle class’ tax cut while raising taxes on ‘the rich.’
Let’s examine Barack Obama’s economic theory. He wants to increase minimum wage to over $9/hr. He wants to increase taxes on small businesses with incomes higher than $120,000. He wants to enable labor unions to unionize small businesses. Does this sound like a pro-growth economic policy to you? It sounds like disaster that will only worsen our economic woes.
In 1983, 20 percent of workers in the U.S. were union workers. In 2007 that percentage was 12.1 percent, up .1 percent from 2006.
Much of last year’s growth came in the West. California’s rate of union membership rose one percentage point, to 16.7 percent, an increase of more than 200,000 members. Nevada showed an increase of 15,000 union members, reflecting the organization of casino and construction workers.
As you might expect, union membership in the Midwest decreased.
In the Midwest, manufacturing job losses reduced union membership. Michigan lost 23,000 union members. The largest decrease came in Illinois, where union rolls dropped 89,000. Ben Zipperer, research associate at the Center for Economic Policy Research, said the manufacturing sector — long the stronghold of U.S. unions — is being supplanted by the construction and private health-care fields, where union membership is growing.
The reason union membership has declined over the years is that employers have negated the need for them by paying more and offering benefits that employees want, without them having to pay dues to a union. This so-called Card Check legislation is a mistake for a number of reasons. Not the least of which is that it is not the government’s job to increase labor union membership. The other reason is the negative impact on business that come with unions in vastly increased overhead and payroll expense.
Look what labor unions do the the auto industry. Did you know that . . .
At a time when the average American company requires workers to pay more than $2,000 a year toward family health insurance premiums, the auto industry is among the 4% of employers that offer free family health coverage.
And these figures are from 2005, it is only worse now . . .
The cost of providing health care adds from $1,100 to $1,500 to the cost of each of the 4.65 million vehicles GM sold last year, according to various calculations. GM expects to spend at least $5.6 billion on health care this year, more than it spent on advertising last year.
Granted that it was the management of these automakers that agreed to such extravagant benefits, at the threat of a strike, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how labor unions can put not only the auto industry, but any industry at a competitive disadvantage, including small businesses that need all the help they can get. If unions go away, no one suffers. If small businesses go away, everyone suffers.
Below is a video of the Charlie Rose show the night after the election. Rose’s guests are Newsweek’s Editor Jon Meacham and Editor-at-Large Evan Thomas. The video is further evidence, or justification if you will, that what got this man elected as our next President and Commander in Chief was more a charade or illusion than what we know. And where the media is concerned, Rush Limbaugh characterizes it this way . . .
[t]his is just indication all they knew that they didn’t report about Obama and his associations and his alliances and how Obama was playing the game.
At 2:30 (two minutes, 30 seconds) into the video, Evan Thomas honestly puts the whole Obama campaign into its proper perspective, one day after the election, by going to the roots of community organizing and its founder, Saul Alinsky. From the transcript, Thomas says . . .
Saul Alinsky is, uh, really was a model from this, er, famous community organizer in Chicago, and this whole idea that Alinsky had that it’s not gonna work if you offend large groups of people. You know, we think of community organizers as having their fist out and, you know? Ah, no, no, no, no, no. You have to win over the majority by being peaceful and nonthreatening. Saul Alinsky used the word “nonthreatening.” This is key to Obama. There’s no militancy involved. This is very important and — and his chief strategist, Axelrod, really understood this. Especially if you’re running a black guy for president, you cannot threaten the whites.
At 6:15 into the video, the discussion goes into the ‘creepiness’ of Obama’s performance . . .
MEACHAM: He’s very elusive, Obama, which is fascinating for a man who’s written two memoirs. At Grant Park he walks out with the family, and then they go away.
ROSE: Mmm. Mmm-hmm.
MEACHAM: Biden’s back, you know, locked in the bar or something.
ROSE: (haughty chuckle)
MEACHAM: You know, they don’t let him out. And have you ever seen a victory speech where there was no one else on stage?
ROSE: Mmm.
MEACHAM: No adoring wife, no cute kid. He is the messenger.
THOMAS: There is a slightly creepy cult of personality about all this. I mean, he’s such an admirable —
ROSE: Slightly. Creepy. Cult of personality.
THOMAS: Yes.
ROSE: What’s slightly creepy about it?
THOMAS: It — it — it just makes me a little uneasy that he’s so singular. He’s clearly managing his own spectacle. He’s a deeply manipulative guy.
At 8:30 into the video, Meacham recounts Obama’s writing in the Audacity of Hope, where he begins to set the stage. At around 9:30 into the video, Rose and his guests begin to get that tingly feeling in their legs in describing Obama’s ascension to greatness, ‘watching us watch him.’
In their continued adoration of Barack, Evan Thomas says, around 10:30 into the video, that Obama says in his book, ‘I’m not sure I am Barack Obama.’ Meaning, according to Rose, that Obama knows that he has created a persona that he thinks the American people want, then questions whether he fits the image he has created on the ‘projection screen’ of American opinion. From the transcript . . .
ROSE: Watching him last night in that speech, he finishes —
MEACHAM: Yeah.
ROSE: — and he sort of — it’s almost like he then ascends to look at the circumstance.
MEACHAM: He watches us watching him.
THOMAS: Watching him!
ROSE: Exactly!
THOMAS: He does —
MEACHAM: It’s amazing.
ROSE: It is amazing.
THOMAS: He writes about this metaphor being a screen upon which Americans will project. He said they want of Barack Obama; I’m not sure I am Barack Obama.
ROSE: Mmm.
THOMAS: He has the self-awareness to know that this creature he’s designed isn’t necessarily a real person, and he’s self-aware enough —
ROSE: Ahhhhhh.
Listen as Jon Meacham explains that Barack’s ‘whole life is a narrative’ at 15:10 into the video.
The video then turns to a discussion as to whether the United States is still a ‘center-right’ country. What is illustrative here is that Europe is used as the measure of whether or not it is. Whether he will be able to ‘expand the power of the state.’ We know how popular Obama was, and is, to Europeans. They are, in a political sense, soul brothers.
Evan Thomas says that after the economy tanked in mid September, Obama was ‘risk averse, he was laying back in the weeds.’ But that’s alright because as Rose then proclaims, ‘we’re in an age of Obama right now.’ Where were these geniuses a few months ago? Oh right, they were carrying the water for him. They were ‘in an age of Obama.’
Rose ends the segment with this question, ‘Who will be the principle opposition? Where will the voice of the opposition come from?’ Jon Meacham suggests that it will be Gov. Sarah Palin. He and Thomas then proceed to trash Gov. Palin with their anonymous sources from within the McCain campaign over the clothing issue. Real presidential stuff you know. And befitting of Newsweek.
Update 1/23/2013: For reasons known only to the Charlie Rose Show, this video from Nov. 5, 2008, “A conversation with Jon Meacham & Evan Thomas” is no longer playable. Here is the link to it, http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9341 Is it now a media cover-up?
Watch twenty minute video segment here.
In discussing Obama’s victory at 11:30 in the video, Meacham makes an incorrect statement that shall be corrected here. He says that Obama got the majority vote which had not been done since George H.W. Bush twenty years ago. In 1988 Bush 41 got 53.4% of the vote. Actually, George W. Bush got 50.7% in 2004. Obama ended up with 52.6%.
Have you ever heard the statement, ‘what’s bad for America is good for Democrats?’ It is a statement that Katrina at Katrina Limited, Resources for All Women, posed as a question. ‘Why do the Democrats benefit from our pain?’ I emailed my answer to Katrina at DemsBenefit@katrinalimited.com and you can too. I answered it this way.
In calling attention to problems, whatever they may be, the assumption was always that they could do better. It is an assumption that gets perpetrated by Democrats and perpetuated by their willing accomplices in the media. And like anything else, if the unsuspecting masses keep hearing it and hearing it, they will begin to believe it. And it will believed even faster when there is no one on the Republican side to set the record straight. It was Bush’s ‘compassionate’ side of his compassionate conservatism that led to him being such an easy target to demagogue. Admittedly, Bush didn’t help the cause by doubling the size of government and entitlement programs that we can’t afford, and refusing to use his veto pen. The crazy thing about this is that Democrats want to do more of both while running a campaign against Bush instead of McCain.
Pick any relevant example of this.
The war on terror. With the exception of the first 90 days after Sept. 11, 2001, this has been ‘Bush’s war.’ An unnecessary one. That and, ‘Bush lied.’ The ‘surge’ was condemned as a failure even before it started. That is all we heard from the media. Never any good news. All the bad news suggested that Democrats had ‘good news’ ideas. (retreat and surrender) When in fact, the surge was not a failure and things began improving in Iraq so much so that Democrats and the media have stopped talking about it, with one exception. Barack Obama would rather spend the cost of the war, $10 billion/month, on entitlement programs. Remember a few years ago, Dems were saying this $10 billion/month would bankrupt our country? It has perhaps saved our country but they can’t take their eyes off of the price of freedom to use as vote-buying insurance.
On the economy. Sure, the party in charge always takes the hit for the condition of it. That has more sway with voters than the fact that the solution Dems propose will worsen the economy. Democrats and the media benefit by demagoguing ‘tax cuts for the rich.’ It doesn’t matter to them that it was the Bush tax cuts that reversed the recession that Clinton gave Bush, and reversed the hit that was caused by the 9/11 attacks, and reversed the hit that natural disaster after natural disaster like Katrina gave us, and created over 8 million new jobs. But because the economy tanked near the election, largely caused by the Democrat sponsored sub-prime mortgage debacle, they were successful in hanging that on Bush and Republicans, including ‘McSame’ (McCain), as well.
The sad thing about this phenomenon is that Democrats are not ashamed of themselves for doing everything they can to hurt the country for the sole purpose of regaining power. How so? By fighting Bush every step of the way in prosecuting the war. And by resisting all attempts to reel in Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae a few years ago when the problem we face today was actually trying to be prevented (by Republicans) from happening. They are not ashamed at their use of class envy, class warfare, and playing the race card whenever they see an opening to peel off a few more seats in Congress.
Unfortunately, it is easier for them to be the naysayers than to share the credit for doing the right thing. Obama got elected by running on ‘no more of the last eight years’ and ‘hope’ and ‘change.’ He wanted what everyone wanted and had. We all hope things will be better, and we would need to see things change to make it so. He just happened to be successful in convincing a majority of Americans that they would have only hope and change to hang their vote on, because he offered nothing concrete to be responsible for. His campaign was the grandest of illusions of all time.
There is plenty to blame John McCain for, for his loss in the race to be President. No question the Obama campaign and his organization won, but there is something to be said about not that Obama won it, but McCain lost it. He lost it by handicapping his own campaign when he decided from the start that he wasn’t going to bring up all of Obama’s nefarious alliances involved with his political career. No surprise that the media wasn’t going to either.
Another of his shortcomings was his attacks on his own supporters who did bring them up, and also to those who dared to use Obama’s own middle name. He was quick to defend Obama at every occasion. That chivalrous action was not appreciated, except by his opponent.
Now that the campaign is over, his own campaign staff is trashing Gov. Palin. We are still being told about anonymous sources from within his campaign that are showing their respect, or lack thereof, for Gov. Palin. And also showing their lack of respect for the one who hired them, McCain himself. Loyalty? Forget it. Some weasels are still talking about her wardrobe, now questioning her intelligence, to the willing ears of the media. The Left should be grateful that the McCain campaign is taking the first shot at handicapping Palin for any future political endeavor. The question here is, why isn’t John McCain out there coming to her defense? Why isn’t he out there telling his own people to stop?
If there is anything to be learned from this whole episode, it is that John McCain is just as much a chameleon as Barack Obama. And the next time the good senator reaches across the aisle, he should just stay there.
Now that Sen. Barack Obama has become President-elect Barack Obama, and Congress has beefed up its Democrat majority, what can we expect?
We have elected the most liberal senator in Congress. Do we expect that he will govern that way too? He talks eloquently about uniting this country. It makes everyone feel good when he talks that way. Who could argue with rhetoric like that? Yet, I haven’t heard him elucidate exactly what it is about the American people that need uniting.
Now, as Obama moves through his transition to the White House, this effort to square the political circle becomes the defining challenge in the months ahead. Which Barack Obama will dominate as he begins to govern?
Too much of the ambitious liberal, and he rekindles partisan squabbles he was supposed to transcend.
Too much the cautious mediator who reaches across the aisle to compromise with Republicans, and he risks losing the energy and idealism that attracted millions to his candidacy.
The historical significance of America’s choice is inescapable. Has Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream been realized? And what impact will this have on the race industry for Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton? An industry that ought to go bankrupt, with no federal bailout.
For a legislator that has no record of reaching across the aisle, President-elect Obama certainly has his work cut out for him.
The results are in. Although Escambia County remained red, the state went blue this time. City Council got some fresh faces to work with the new mayor-elect Mike Wiggins. The sheriff’s department got a new face as well in David Morgan. So the team is set. Let’s support them. Now let’s move forward.
On the national side, looking at the percentage of popular vote over the last twenty years, Barack Obama didn’t do too bad. At least he got over the 50% mark. As in the mid-term elections in 2006, any talk of a ‘mandate’ is wishful thinking. And by mandate, I mean that in a political sense, not a night out in San Francisco. We shall see how good a job he can do, among other things, as a uniter. He wasn’t my choice. But he will be our President. Now let’s move forward.
All the results are not yet in, but this is how it stands right now.
Obama is at 51%.
George H.W. Bush, 53.4% in 1988
Ronald Reagan, 50.7% in 1980, and 58.8% in 1984.
Bill Clinton, 43% in 1992
Bill Clinton, 49.2 % in 1996
George W. Bush, 47.9% in 2000
George W. Bush, 50.7% in 2004
The only scary thing I noticed in the presidential rundown is that there are 58 people living here that voted for Cynthia McKinney.
gay woman is free to marry a man. No problem. No one is preventing gays from getting married. Gays need to get a grip on the fact that they are not the mainstream of general society and learn to live with that fact, rather than trying to turn society upside down to suit their purpose, using judges that should be disbarred and politicians that should be arrested for blatantly violating the law.