Understanding High Taxes

Obama's trade rep pick owes almost $10,000 in taxes - CNN.com

How simple the Democrat love of high taxes is. They have no morals, so they simply don't pay them and leave that up to us foolish Republicans!

I guess I thought that SOME of them paid them, but apparently not. It seems a bit hard to imagine the BO and company could be so foolish as to just pick out the few bad apples unless the problem was virtually universal!

Message In Here Somewhere?

Power Line - Protesting Global Warming in the Snow

It just seems to happen too often for pure coincidence -- Al Gore seems to regularly give his speeches on Warming in some sort of "freaky cold weather".

Sharing the Fixed Pie

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Do We Want a More Equal Society?

"Over the past two or three decades, the top 1 percent of Americans
have experienced a dramatic increase from 10 percent to more than 20
percent in the share of national income that's accruing to them," said
Peter Orszag, Obama's budget director. Now, he said, was their time "to
pitch in a bit more."

• US GDP in '82 - $5 Trillion, 90% of 5 Trillion = $4.5 Trillion

• US GDP in '08 - $12 Trillion, 80% of 12 Trillion = $9.6 Trillion

Now, I ask you, would you rather have $4.5 Trillion or $9.6 Trillion? How about if it meant that someone else went from having $500 Billion to having $2.4 Trillion? Would that bother you? If so, why? You more than doubled what you had, why does it bother you if someone else got 5x what they had? How about if the choice was either that, or you got $2.25 Trillion, and they got only $250 Billion? Does that make you feel better, because it is more "just"? Can't you do a whole lot more good with $9.6 Trillion than you can with $2.25 Trillion? If you can just ignore those awful people that got more money?

EITHER, Democrats don't understand growth at all, OR, their envy exceeds their common sense -- or I suppose both.

What they ALSO apparently don't understand is contraction! When their policies seek to "take a little more", the tendency is for all that wealth to simply disappear, because a lot of it is based on expectations for the future. In case you haven't noticed, the market isn't very positive on the future at the moment!

Democrats and Sweaters

George F. Will: FDR's Sweater Fable | Newsweek Voices - George F. Will | Newsweek.com

Do all Democrats have some fascination with sweaters? This little fable does a good job of explaining why things got so bad in the '30s and late '70s:

The factory, which FDR said was the town's only industry, normally
employed about 200 people who "had always been on exceedingly good
terms" with the owners. However, "it was difficult to sell enough
sweaters to keep them going because there were so many sweater
factories" in the nation, all of which had had only about six weeks'
worth of work in the past year. The town, FDR said, was "practically
starving to death." So the people decided that they all could work if
they reduced everyone's wages 33 percent. That would cut the cost of
their sweaters and enable them to undersell competitors. FDR said the
factory's sales agent went to New York and "in 24 hours" sold "enough
sweaters to keep that factory going for six months, 24 hours a day,
three shifts.

A heartwarming triumph of community solidarity over adversity? Not as
seen through the pince-nez of Roosevelt, who pronounced it "bad
business, in all ways." Granted, "they get a good deal of cash into the
community." But "they undoubtedly, by taking these orders, put two
other sweater factories completely out of business." So:

"That brings up the question as to whether we can work out some kind of
plan that will distribute the volume of consumption in a given industry
over the whole industry. Instead of trying to concentrate production to
meet that consumption into the hands of a small portion of the
industry, we want to spread it out … It might be called the regulation
of production or, to put it better, the prevention of foolish
overproduction."

In other words, competition is bad and centralized control can do better! Once one moves to a leveling redistribution strategy, there is no end to what needs to be controlled. Rather than a system that runs imperfectly but well on natural principles, you get one that lurches all over the place on conflicting commands from a bunch of bureaucrats.

The end result has been seen over and over in the world in the past century -- the poor economy starts kicking and hitting itself and running into things like some macabre slapstick clown or failing horror movie robot and soon the wreck that remains is unable to even feed the bulk of the nation that has been so foolish to turn down this path.

Put on a sweater!

Extremely!

Power Line - How Dumb Does He Think We Are?

Some words from our supreme odiferous unifying leader:

These steps won't sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who
are invested in the old way of doing business. I know they're gearing
up for a fight as we speak. My message to them is this: So am I.

I give BO more credit than PowerLine here -- the OLD "special interests and lobbyists" may not ALL be happy -- but there are certainly a whole bunch new ones that are positively ecstatic! TRILLIONS of pork being larded out is a bounty that hasn't been seen since the Johnson era!

Fight, oh yes, it is clear that BO is way ahead in the fight to turn a $14 Trillion economy into one that is $7 Trillion or much less!

Mission Accomplished

Barack Obama Commits to a U.S. Transitional Force in Iraq - WSJ.com

BO naturally doesn't say anything positive about Bush, but he really doesn't have to -- his actions are speaking louder than words.

Though the headlines from the President's speech mostly focused on his promise to end all U.S. combat operations in Iraq by August 31, 2010 -- and withdraw U.S. forces fully by the end of the following year -- there was considerably more to it than that. For starters, Mr. Obama again acknowledged that our forces in Iraq had "succeeded beyond any expectation," not least his own.

Everyone loved it when BO said "I made a mistake" relative to the appointment of the tax cheating lobbyist Tom Daschle -- but of course he never stated WHAT that "mistake" was, nor did the media see it as worthy to ask.

Based on his direction now, it was CLEARLY a mistake of the highest order to oppose the Surge -- but one that the media is willing to give him a pass on like everything else!

The End of Growth

Economic Scene - Obama’s Budget Plan Sweeps Away Reagan Ideas - NYTimes.com

Remember the 70's? If not, no matter, you are going to get to live at least that level of want again, if not the 30's. Why? Because ideas are important, but reality is even more important. The "genie" that improves all lives is GROWTH, and "income" is just one small part of that improvement. There are lies, damn lies and statistics, and while statistics are a useful tool, they ought to be looked at as being as dangerous as firearms. Guns are fine, but if someone is explicitly using one to do harm, they are very bad indeed. That is pretty much what this article is doing with statistics.

As a result, the average post-tax income of the top 1 percent of
households has jumped by roughly $1 million since 1979, adjusted for
inflation, to $1.4 million. Pay for most families has risen only
slightly faster than inflation.

Before becoming Mr. Obama’s top economic adviser, Lawrence H. Summers
liked to tell a hypothetical story to distill the trend. The increase
in inequality, Mr. Summers would say, meant that each family in the
bottom 80 percent of the income distribution was effectively sending a
$10,000 check, every year, to the top 1 percent of earners.

This kind of thinking from an economist who is now a top economic adviser is like having his top medical advisor announce that evil spirits cause disease. This is envy incarnate and frightenly wrong! The bottom 80% didn't send ANY check, in fact, the bottom 50% paid nearly NOTHING in income taxes! The income of BOTH groups went up because of GROWTH!!!

Mr Summers HAS to realize that, so his story is a bold faced lie of the most obnoxious kind. What kinds of "income growth" does he expect in a country that is CONTRACTING at 6% a quarter??? Well, he better expect NONE -- in fact, the top will fall faster than 6% and the bottom will approximate the 6% decline, so yes, it reduces "income inequality", but at the expense of everyone having FAR less.

In the past 30 years, neither Europe or Japan has achieved "income growth slightly faster than inflation" for the bulk of it's population. The fact that a country of 300 Million has been able to do is AMAZING!!

This has to rank on my new list of the scariest things I've read in the "past month". To not understand that is has been growth that has driven all the good things of the last 30 years for this country and we have now turned to naked redistibution and forgotten the advantages of growth is extremely sad for all Americans.

The Picture Is No Illusion

Barack Obama's Expensive Domestic Agenda Will Cost America's Middle Class - WSJ.com


The picture of BO's broad smile and Joe and Nancy sharing a moment of triumph is very real -- all of BO's tax and balance the budget claims are pure sham.

One of the big dings on Bush and the Republicans is that they were "arrogant" -- I don't think they even got started compared to one address to congress of BO. Nancy and Joe alone would get whistled in the NFL for an "unsportsmanlike end zone display"!!!

That nothing BO proposes as any chance of working really goes without saying. It is my contention that he has no intention of it working! He is seeking failure, the destruction of the US systems, and totalitarian takeover.

Or, he is such a complete clueless buffoon that he simply has no idea of anything at all.

BO Is A Strong 2nd Amendment Supporter

ABC News: Obama to Seek New Assault Weapons Ban

Uh, and he believes in campaign finance funding controls. He is going to close Gitmo the first day in office. He isn't going to put lobbyists on his cabinent ... oh well, the list goes on.

Welcome to Amerika ... Comrade!

Waking Up To Radical BO

RealClearPolitics - Articles - A Radical Presidency

I wish my predictions weren't so correct.

Gov. Bobby Jindal's postspeech reply did not come close to recognizing the gauntlet Mr. Obama has thrown down to the opposition. Unless the GOP can discover a radical message of its own to distinguish it from the president's, it should prepare to live under Mr. Obama's radicalism for at least a generation.

I'd argue that in terms of what America was supposed to be, Reagan wasn't "radical" at all -- he was a mild return to a TINY bit of our roots. He CONTINUED to prop up the corrupt Ponzi scheme called FICA that makes it perfectly common and acceptable for people to live their entire lives saving nothing and often live BETTER in retirement than they did during their working years. Thus we get a savings rate less than zero vs China where people have FAR less and save 30% privately, 50% when national savings are added in.

Living beyond our means and shirking responsibility for our own lives has become "the American way".

BO feels that our tiny feint back toward just a SMALL bit of realization that "delaying gratification / making good decisions in life" can have significant differences in income and overall life results. BO wants to change that and punish those that are successful and reward the failures. The markets are already responding. Why invest and get yourself over the level of government help? All that risk and work for no reward? Why?

Barack Obama is proposing that the U.S. alter the relationship
between the national government and private sector that was put in place by Ronald Reagan and largely continued by the presidencies of Bill Clinton and the Bushes. Then, the private sector led the economy. Now Washington will chart its course.

Mr. Obama was clear about his intention. "Our economy did not fall into this decline overnight," he said. Instead, an "era" has "failed"to think about the nation's long-term future. With the urgency of a prophet, he says the "day of reckoning has arrived." The president said his purpose is not to "only revive this economy."

There we have it. Unless by some MIRACLE some political voice can rise from the right and get a movement going again in a HUGE hurry, we are lost for at least a decade and probably two.

Day of Reckoning

William Kristol - Republicans' Day of Reckoning - washingtonpost.com

Well, I think we already had that --November 3, 2008. We failed as a nation, miserably. Now the issue is just "how deep the damage", and so far the answer is "very deep indeed".

I think the big question is really "can it be survived" at least with anything like even the horribly damaged post New Deal / Post Great Society America that looks nothing like what the founders intended, nor nothing like what is needed to compete in the ever more sophisticated technocratic world.

But it is a good article. BO is indeed "the anti-Reagan". I hope we don't find he is "The Anti-America" as well:

Obama's speech reminds of Ronald Reagan's in 1981 in its intention to
reshape the American political landscape. But of course Obama wishes to
undo the Reagan agenda. "For decades," he claimed, we haven't addressed
the challenges of energy, health care and education. We have lived
through "an era where too often short-term gains were prized over
long-term prosperity." Difficult decisions were put off. But now "that
day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future
is here." The phrase "day of reckoning" may seem a little ominous
coming from a candidate of hope and change. But it's appropriate,
because it's certainly a day of reckoning for conservatives and
Republicans.

Gitmo Carts and Horses

AG Holder says closing Guantanamo won't be easy

"It's going to take us a good portion of that time to look at all of the files that we have to examine, until we get our hands around what Guantanamo is, and also what Guantanamo was," he said.

Uh? A press that wasn't a complete lapdog might point out that doing that kind of analysis might be worthy BEFORE you decide to close the facility!

This paragraph could have been written by Cheney without the foolish "but I'm closing it anyway".

WASHINGTON – Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday the Guantanamo detention center is a well-run, professional facility that will be difficult to close — but he's still going to do it. Holder visited the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Monday and spoke to reporters about his trip during a news conference Wednesday.

A more truthful statement would be:

 "The Bush Administration created a well-run, proffessional facility that will be difficult to close and is needed for our nations defense , but because my boss said a bunch of stupid things to get elected, we are going to waste a few billion dollars and the time of a bunch of people that could be better spent elsewhere to close it so BO doesn't look stupid.

We are thankful to have a liberal press. This would look really bad if we didn't"

State of Survival

Power Line - He is my shepherd

Power Line does a good job of capturing my thinking on the BO speech last night. It was the first time I've sat through one of his speeches, and it will likely be the last. He is still campaigning -- reality has no appeal for BO, although it is my guess that he actually is intelligent and aware, and his true goal is the destruction of America so he can "re-build" it as sort of a Pagan, Communist, Tribal "thing" that nobody would even recognize as what used to be America.

My wife had decided over the weekend that things are iffy enough that we ought to lay in a bunch of bulk staples for survival if it all breaks down, and we got them all unloaded last night. So I sat and watched BO charm the sheep with a big rubbermaid roller container of rice, beans, flour, oil, powdered milk, sugar, etc in front of me. It seemed very symbolically correct.

My God, Joe Biden watching "every dollar" to be sure "none is wasted"! That is like putting the biggest weasel in charge of watching the henhouse, Slick Willie in charge teaching "morality for young women", or having Teddy Kennedy as secretarial combination driving/swiming instructor!! It would be extremely funny if it were not so horribly sad.

Safe Computing

New scareware sends you to fake Download.com reviews | The Download Blog - Download.com

I spent a few hours over the weekend nursing a virus/spyware ridden relatives PC back to health. I'm probably one of the few Techie Geeks that actually finds this sort of thing kind of like a "puzzle challenge", so the time spent is better for me than most. A few observations:

• The linked article points out that the Viruses are getting more sophisticated, including messing with your links, hosts, etc so you actually end up going to a fake site to supposedly download software to help you!
• Malwarebytes Anti-Malware was one of the tools that I found I needed to use to remove "Antivirus XP 2009" from the machine.
• The other took that I really needed was The Ultimate Boot CD for Windows" (UBCD4W). The box would not run, and most of what was needed to be done could not be done from Safe Mode, at least not in the machines state of infection.
• One of the things that I was surprised had happened to the machine (I assume a virus did it) is that the ability to get to the Task Manager via Ctl-Alt-Del was disabled. Here is a link to the Registry entry to fix.
• I ended up running SpyBot Search and Destroy under the UBCD4W boot from CD then booting and finding out I couldn't get to Task Mgr, so did the registry hack to get that fixed, and then started finding bad tasks running. One thing nice about the net is that as long as you have another working machine (and it is hard for me to even IMAGINE only having one computer!! ;-) ) you can just Google things that "look wrong" and if they are, you go out and do a Registry / Disk Search and try to get rid of any remaining ones. My guess is that for most folks it might be easier to just try another free download of something that you trust rather than the manual approach. Since I "mixed", I can't be SURE that if I'd found Anti-Malware earlier, that might have just done the whole trick rather than me mixing in some hacking around.

Epistemological Modesty

Op-Ed Columnist - The Big Test - NYTimes.com

David Brooks was a big BO supporter, but apparently now he is starting to see where his "hope went wrong".

These experiences drove me toward the crooked timber school of public philosophy: Michael Oakeshott, Isaiah Berlin, Edward Banfield, Reinhold Niebuhr, Friedrich Hayek, Clinton Rossiter and George Orwell. These writers — some left, some right — had a sense of epistemological modesty. They knew how little we can know. They understood that we are strangers to ourselves and society is an immeasurably complex organism. They tended to be skeptical of technocratic, rationalist planning and suspicious of schemes to reorganize society from the top down.

"They knew how little we can know"! There we have it, the crux of the problem! Liberals were always saying that "Bush was arrogant". Why? Well, because he looked like he smirked, and they thought he was too stupid to be President. Did he think that he (or any human) could address ALL of them? No, in no way.

Compare that with this quote from BO:

“We cannot successfully address any of our problems without addressing all of them.”

Uh, hello? Like that would meant that in the SHORT run we are all DEAD!!

It is too bad the following aren't nearly the only possibilities:

All in all, I can see why the markets are nervous and dropping. And it’s also clear that we’re on the cusp of the biggest political experiment of our lifetimes. If Obama is mostly successful, then the epistemological skepticism natural to conservatives will have been discredited. We will know that highly trained government experts are capable of quickly designing and executing top-down transformational change. If they mostly fail, then liberalism will suffer a grievous blow, and conservatives will be called upon to restore order and sanity.

It’ll be interesting to see who’s right. But I can’t even root for my own vindication. The costs are too high. I have to go to the keyboard each morning hoping Barack Obama is going to prove me wrong.

Among the other obvious ones -- we don't recover, we sink into being some sort of "fallen nation" status like many liberals liked to predict would happen after Reagan. BO and company turn us into a totalitarian socialist gulag. Terrorists attack us with smallpox or some other worse bio weapon and the vast majority of Americans die -- who knows what comes out the other side.