America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution
By Angelo M. Codevilla from the July 2010 – August 2010 issue
As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors’ “toxic assets” was the only alternative to the U.S. economy’s “systemic collapse.” In this, President George W. Bush and his would-be Republican successor John McCain agreed with the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual commitment of some 10 trillion nonexistent dollars in ways unprecedented in America. They explained neither the difference between the assets’ nominal and real values, nor precisely why letting the market find the latter would collapse America. The public objected immediately, by margins of three or four to one.
When this majority discovered that virtually no one in a position of power in either party or with a national voice would take their objections seriously, that decisions about their money were being made in bipartisan backroom deals with interested parties, and that the laws on these matters were being voted by people who had not read them, the term “political class” came into use. Then, after those in power changed their plans from buying toxic assets to buying up equity in banks and major industries but refused to explain why, when they reasserted their right to decide ad hoc on these and so many other matters, supposing them to be beyond the general public’s understanding, the American people started referring to those in and around government as the “ruling class.” And in fact Republican and Democratic office holders and their retinues show a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits, opinions, and sources of income among one another than between both and the rest of the country. They think, look, and act as a class.
via The American Spectator : America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution.
MICHAEL P. FLEISCHER: Why I’m Not Hiring – WSJ.com
Why I’m Not Hiring
When you add it all up, it costs $74,000 to put $44,000 in Sally’s pocket and to give her $12,000 in benefits.
By MICHAEL P. FLEISCHER
With unemployment just under 10% and companies sitting on their cash, you would think that sooner or later job growth would take off. I think it’s going to be later—much later. Here’s why.
Meet Sally (not her real name; details changed to preserve privacy). Sally is a terrific employee, and she happens to be the median person in terms of base pay among the 83 people at my little company in New Jersey, where we provide audio systems for use in educational, commercial and industrial settings. She’s been with us for over 15 years. She’s a high school graduate with some specialized training. She makes $59,000 a year—on paper. In reality, she makes only $44,000 a year because $15,000 is taken from her thanks to various deductions and taxes, all of which form the steep, sad slope between gross and net pay.
Daniel Henninger discusses how Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan agree that Americans should send more of their paychecks to Washington. Also, Fannie and Freddie ask for more cash within weeks of an Obama pledge to end taxpayer rescues.
Before that money hits her bank, it is reduced by the $2,376 she pays as her share of the medical and dental insurance that my company provides. And then the government takes its due. She pays $126 for state unemployment insurance, $149 for disability insurance and $856 for Medicare. That’s the small stuff. New Jersey takes $1,893 in income taxes. The federal government gets $3,661 for Social Security and another $6,250 for income tax withholding. The roughly $13,000 taken from her by various government entities means that some 22% of her gross pay goes to Washington or Trenton. She’s lucky she doesn’t live in New York City, where the toll would be even higher.
Employing Sally costs plenty too. My company has to write checks for $74,000 so Sally can receive her nominal $59,000 in base pay. Health insurance is a big, added cost: While Sally pays nearly $2,400 for coverage, my company pays the rest—$9,561 for employee/spouse medical and dental. We also provide company-paid life and other insurance premiums amounting to $153. Altogether, company-paid benefits add $9,714 to the cost of employing Sally.
DICK MORRIS and EILEEN McGANN: THE STIMULUS KICKS IN: HIGHER UNEMPLOYMENT – DickMorris.com
THE STIMULUS KICKS IN: HIGHER UNEMPLOYMENT
By Dick Morris And Eileen McGann 09.3.2010
In our book 2010: Take Back America – A Battle Plan, we write:
“The prospect we now face is not the intermittent up-and-down fluctuations of unemployment we have had since the Great Depression. Thanks to Obama’s policies, we’re confronting the possibility of an unemployment rate that never comes down, just as they have in Europe. If we stay on Obama’s course, lower joblessness in the United States will be a thing of the past.”
The recent rise in unemployment back up to 9.6% and the loss of 54,000 jobs in August, suggests that our prediction is – dismally – coming true.
The Obama stimulus plan has finally kicked in: The higher spending he brought to our nation and the debt levels that are accompanying it are the result.
Why is unemployment remaining so high? Because the totality of Obama’s policies are dragging us into a depression.
• The prospect of dramatically higher taxes next year is freezing consumer spending, particularly in the upper income ranges which spend a third of America’s consumption.
• The huge changes that are looming in medical care brought about by Obama’s health care legislation are freezing new employment and expansion in the medical sector which accounts for 16% of GDP.
• The financial reform legislation has so raised the prospect of a federal takeover of any bank that makes “imprudent” loans that financial institutions are afraid to lend, freezing new job creation.
• The looming possibility of cap-and-tax legislation in the name of halting climate change is freezing any expansion in the manufacturing and energy sectors since these policies will force jobs to move overseas to locations that do not impose such a tax (e.g. India and China).
• The massive expansion in the deficit and in the resulting debt has so eroded confidence in our nation’s future that Americans are now saving 6% of their income, up from 1% in the past, sapping consumer spending.
• The threat of new rules for union elections that will spread private sector unionization is freezing business expansion plans.
via THE STIMULUS KICKS IN: HIGHER UNEMPLOYMENT at DickMorris.com.
Abel Maldonado for Lt. Governor of California – 2010 Campaign
Our distracted commander in chief
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, September 3, 2010
Many have charged that President Obama’s decision to begin withdrawing from Afghanistan 10 months from now is hampering our war effort. But now it’s official. In a stunning statement last week, Marine Corps Commandant James Conway admitted that the July 2011 date is “probably giving our enemy sustenance.”
A remarkably bold charge for an active military officer. It stops just short of suggesting aiding and abetting the enemy. Yet the observation is obvious: It is surely harder to prevail in a war that hinges on the allegiance of the locals when they hear the U.S. president talk of beginning a withdrawal that will ultimately leave them to the mercies of the Taliban.
How did Obama come to this decision? “Our Afghan policy was focused as much as anything on domestic politics,” an Obama adviser told the New York Times’ Peter Baker. “He would not risk losing the moderate to centrist Democrats in the middle of health insurance reform and he viewed that legislation as the make-or-break legislation for his administration.
via Charles Krauthammer – Our distracted commander in chief.
KEVIN A. HASSETT AND ALAN D. VIARD: The Small Business Tax Hike and the 97% Fallacy – WSJ.com
The Small Business The 97% Fallacy
The president’s plan to raise top marginal rates is holding back the very people who should be leading the economic recovery.
OPINION SEPTEMBER 3, 2010
By KEVIN A. HASSETT
AND ALAN D. VIARD
When Congress returns from its summer recess, members will face a pivotal decision about the expiring Bush tax cuts. President Barack Obama has called for their permanent extension for singles with incomes below $200,000 and married couples with incomes below $250,000, but has proposed that most of the tax cuts for households with higher incomes be allowed to expire.
To buttress this position, the president and his supporters have repeatedly asserted that the expiration of these cuts will have little impact, because they affect only a tiny fraction of the wealthiest Americans, people who “can afford it.”
Recently, for example, Vice President Joe Biden harshly rejected House Minority Leader John Boehner’s assertion that the hikes would harm small businesses, saying that “he has created this myth that a tax cut for millionaires is actually a tax cut for small business. There aren’t 3% of small businesses in America that would qualify for that tax cut.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi flipped the number around, saying that the planned tax increases would exempt “98% of American families and about 97% of small businesses.”
The impact is far more severe than Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Biden suggest. In fact, the sound bite about 3% of small businesses, which has been picked up by numerous pundits, is one of the more misleading statements in the long history of economic propaganda.
The 3% figure, which is computed from IRS data, is based on simply counting the number of returns with any pass-through business income. So, if somebody makes a little money selling products on eBay and reports that income on Schedule C of their tax return, they are counted as a small business. The fact that there are millions of people in the lower tax brackets with small amounts of business income may be interesting for some purposes, but it is irrelevant for the assessment of the economic impact of the tax hikes.
via Kevin A. Hassett and Alan D. Viard: The Small Business Tax Hike and the 97% Fallacy – WSJ.com.
BYRON YORK: New evidence undermines feds’ case against Arizona – Washington Examiner
New evidence undermines feds’ case against Arizona
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
September 2, 2010
You’ve heard a lot about the Justice Department’s lawsuit to stop the new Arizona immigration law. But that’s just one part of the Obama administration’s multi-front war on immigration enforcement in Arizona.
In addition to the drive to kill the new law, Attorney General Eric Holder is also suing the Maricopa Community College system in Phoenix, alleging it broke the law by requiring a job seeker to provide a green card before being hired. And on Thursday the Justice Department filed suit against the Maricopa County Sheriff’s office, run by the flamboyant Joe Arpaio, as part of an extended investigation into alleged civil rights violations there.
Despite the splash of attention from the newest lawsuit, the Justice Department’s investigation of Arpaio could end badly for Holder. When the Department first informed Arpaio that a probe was under way, back in March 2009, it sent a letter saying the investigation would focus on “alleged patterns or practices of discriminatory police practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures.” But now we learn that just six months before that, in September 2008, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE, did its own investigation of Arpaio’s office — and gave it a clean bill of health. Arpaio’s lawyers recently got a copy of the ICE report through the Freedom of Information Act.
ICE officials evaluated how the sheriff’s office performed under a law that allows specially trained local law enforcement officers to enforce parts of federal immigration law. The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, which is the largest sheriff’s office in the Arizona, has 189 officers who have been trained by ICE to enforce federal immigration statutes.
via New evidence undermines feds’ case against Arizona | Washington Examiner.
MARK HEMINGWAY: White House said to be considering tax cuts ahead of midterms – Washington Examiner
White House said to be considering tax cuts ahead of midterms
By: Mark Hemingway
Commentary Staff Writer
09/03/10 1:30 AM EDT
There’s a pretty good chance this will be seen as cynical or an admission of defeat — possibly both. But hey, they’ve got to do something right?:
With just two months until the November elections, the White House is seriously weighing a package of business tax breaks – potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars – to spur hiring and combat Republican charges that Democratic tax policies hurt small businesses, according to people with knowledge of the deliberations.
Among the options under consideration are a temporary payroll-tax holiday and a permanent extension of the now-expired research-and-development tax credit, which rewards companies that conduct research into new technologies within the United States.
Administration officials have struggled to develop new economic policies and an effective message to blunt expected Republican gains in Congress and defuse complaints from Democrats that President Obama is fumbling the issue most important to voters. Following Obama’s vacation and focus on foreign policy in recent weeks, White House advisers have arranged a series of economic events for the president next week, including two trips to swing states and a news conference.
After throwing $812 billion down the stimulus bill rat hole, I’m not quite sure how you “combat Republican charges that Democratic tax policies hurt small businesses” by adopting the policies the GOP has been advocating all along. Oh and just a reminder, the total cost of a payroll tax holiday for one year would have been right around $800 billion, and it would have likely been a much more timely and efficient stimulus had it been adopted from the outset.
via White House said to be considering tax cuts ahead of midterms | Washington Examiner.
FCC’s Genachowski: We won’t address net neutrality this month
By Mike Riggs – The Daily Caller | Published: 09/03/2010 |
FILE – Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski speaks at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock, Ark., in this Nov. 24, 2009 file photo. (AP Photo/Danny Johnston, File)
Despite enormous political pressure from congressional Democrats and the progressive netroots, the FCC isn’t making any moves to regulate the Internet. At least, not this month.
On Wednesday, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski published a statement saying that his office would spend more time collecting public comment before making any decisions regarding net neutrality, the regulatory principle which progressives say will “save the Internet” and industry leaders say would chill investment and innovation.
And on Thursday, the worst fears of groups like Free Press and Public Knowledge were confirmed: Genachowsk’s list of items for the FCC’s next open meeting, to be held at the end of September, won’t include net neutrality. It’s now anyone’s guess as to when — or if — the FCC will move to implement a new policy for Internet service providers.
“Over the past months we have worked to preserve the freedom and openness of the Internet, based on the conviction that an open Internet is vital to innovation and private investment, competition, and free speech,” Genachowski wrote just one day before the FCC announced its September agenda.
McConnell says Dems short tax votes – POLITICO.com
McConnell says Dems short tax votes
By MEREDITH SHINER | 9/2/10 12:38 PM EDT
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell thinks Democrats might not have the votes to repeal Bush tax cuts. | AP Close
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) believes Senate Democrats and the White House might not have the votes to roll back the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthiest two percent of Americans.
McConnell — who has stated repeatedly that raising taxes in a recession will be destructive — said Thursday that three Democrats expressed reservations about the tax cuts before recess and the question now is whether more Democrats will jump ship. President Barack Obama has called for an extension of nearly all the 2001 income tax cuts, but wants to let tax cuts for households making more than $250,000 expire at the end of the year.
“We know there were at least three Democrats who thought this was a bad idea,” McConnell said on ABC News’s Top Line web cast. “Will there be a larger group of Democrats who come back and think maybe this isn’t a great debate for us?”
McConnell pointed to Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Sens. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) as three members across the aisle who have expressed reservations about letting upper income taxes increase.
As recently as Wednesday, a top Democratic aide asked POLITICO, “[I'm] not sure what Ben Nelson has to do with it — we need Republicans and they’re not giving us anything these days.”
via McConnell says Dems short tax votes – Meredith Shiner – POLITICO.com.
REP. SUE MYRICK: Hezbollah car bombs on our border – Washington Times
MYRICK: Hezbollah car bombs on our border
Why isn’t Obama’s Department of Homeland Security concerned?
By Rep. Sue Myrick
The Washington Times 6:59 p.m., Wednesday, September 1, 2010
An indictment was handed down Aug. 30 by the Southern District Court of New York that shows a connection between Hezbollah – the proxy army of Iran and a designated terrorist organization – and the drug cartels that violently plague the U.S.-Mexico border.
In short, a well-known international arms dealer was trying to orchestrate an arms-for-drugs deal in which cocaine from FARC – the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which works with Mexican drug cartels to take cocaine into America – would be traded for thousands of weapons housed by a Hezbollah operative in Mexico.
This most recent case brings up several questions: Why would a member of Hezbollah be in Mexico? Why would Hezbollah need thousands of weapons in Mexico? Why are members of Hezbollah willing to work with FARC? Perhaps to exchange weapons for drugs? If Hezbollah has guns in Mexico and wants drugs, isn’t it logical to assume that it is trading with more accessible Mexican drug cartels?
This is just the most recent incident in which it’s clear that Hezbollah may have a presence in Mexico and along our southern border. There have been more incidents – which have been ignored by the Obama administration and the Department of Homeland Security.
On June 23, I sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano asking her to establish a task force to investigate the presence of Hezbollah along the U.S.-Mexico border.
via MYRICK: Hezbollah car bombs on our border – Washington Times.
DANIEL HENNINGER: If Saddam Had Stayed – WSJ.com
If Saddam Had Stayed
Saddam would have joined the nuclear bad-boys club with Iran and North Korea.
We ought to be a lot prouder of our troops coming home from Iraq than we are showing this week. They deserve a monument. That war wasn’t just about helping Iraq. It was about us. The march across the nuclear threshold by lunatic regimes is a clear and present danger. The sacrifice made by the United States in Iraq took one of these nuclear-obsessed madmen off the table and gave the world more margin to deal with the threat that remains, if the world’s leadership is up to it. A big if.
By DANIEL HENNINGER
From the vantage point of history, Barack Obama’s prime-time speech announcing the Iraq war’s end is less important than the speech he gave eight years ago as a state senator in Illinois. This was the October 2002 “dumb war” speech to an anti-Iraq war rally in Chicago’s Federal Plaza. Back then, Mr. Obama had a more complex view of the stakes in Iraq than he does now.
Today, the Iraq war has been reduced to not much more than a long, bloody and honorable gunfight between U.S. troops and various homicidal jihadists and insurgents inside Iraq, a war sustained by George Bush, Dick Cheney and some neocon advisers mainly to “impose” democracy on the Iraqis.
I think it is a profound mistake to confine the war’s significance to the borders of Iraq. Mr. Obama himself raised the central question about Iraq in that 2002 speech: Did Saddam Hussein pose a danger beyond his borders, or not?
“Let me be clear,” State Senator Obama told the Federal Plaza crowd, “I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. . . . He has repeatedly thwarted U.N. inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons and coveted nuclear capacity. . . . But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States. . . [H]e can be contained.”
This is a widely held view. The Economist’s editors this week said Mr. Obama was largely right that Iraq was a dumb war. What the war did, they say, was “rid the Middle East of a bloodstained dictator.”
It did a lot more than that.
Let us assume that Mr. Obama’s “smarter” view had prevailed, that we had left Saddam in power in Iraq. What would the world look like today?
Mr. Obama and others believe that Saddam and his nuclear ambitions could have been contained. I think exactly the opposite was likely.
KARL ROVE: Obama’s ‘Come Home American’ Speech – WSJ.com
Obama’s ‘Come Home America’ Speech
A dangerous world needs stronger U.S. leadership.
By KARL ROVE
At times Tuesday night, it sounded as if President Barack Obama didn’t know what kind of speech he wanted to give. Was it a foreign policy address aimed at assuring a world-wide audience of America’s resolve in the war against militant Islam? Or was it an election stump speech to confirm to voters that the economy is job No. 1 for this president and his party?
The speech’s best moments were those praising the commitment, courage and sacrifice of America’s military. The president powerfully said that “our troops are the steel in our ship of state,” and all who serve join “an unbroken line of heroes that stretches from Lexington to Gettysburg; from Iwo Jima to Inchon; from Khe Sanh to Kandahar.”
For someone who had been such a vocal war opponent, he was generous in acknowledging what our troops accomplished—defeating “a regime that had terrorized its people” and helping “Iraq seize the chance for a better future.” Because of our troops, he said, “Iraq has the opportunity to embrace a new destiny, even though many challenges remain.”
As a foreign policy address, however, the speech missed the mark. While Mr. Obama did acknowledge that the U.S. “intends to sustain and strengthen our leadership” in the world, most foreign observers will probably remember the president’s tone of haste, withdrawal and even retreat. His phrase, “It is time to turn the page,” caught many an ear around the world—and not to America’s advantage.
via Karl Rove: Obama’s ‘Come Home American’ Speech – WSJ.com.
ROBERT COSTA: Caddell on the Midterm Elections – National Review Online
Caddell on the Midterm Elections
The polling figures paint an astounding picture — and not just for Democrats, but for the political class as a whole.
SEPTEMBER 2, 2010 4:00 A.M.
In Jimmy Carter’s White House, Patrick Caddell was, in the words of Teddy White, the “house Cassandra” — an all-too-candid pollster whose prophecies spooked the president’s other advisors. Three decades later, Caddell again is warning his fellow Democrats about electoral doom. As he sips an iced tea over lunch in midtown Manhattan, Caddell sighs and tells me that the lessons of the Carter years appear to be all but forgotten by the current crop of Democrats in Washington.
“President Obama’s undoing may be his disingenuousness,” Caddell says. After campaigning for post-partisanship, Obama, he observes, has lurched without pause to the left. “You can’t get this far from what you promised,” Caddell says, “especially when people invest in hope — you must understand that obligation. The killer in American politics is disappointment. When you are elected on expectations, and you fail to meet them, your decline steepens.”
In 1979, as Carter’s poll numbers slid south amidst a sagging economy, Caddell drafted a memo to the president urging him to recognize that the nation was “deep in crisis.” Gazing upon today’s electoral landscape, Caddell paints an even bleaker picture. “We may be at a pre-revolutionary moment,” he says, unsmiling. “Everything is in motion.” This November, he predicts, “will be more of a national referendum than any [midterm election] since Watergate.”
The polling data show how restless the country is. “A Rasmussen poll from earlier this year showed just 21 percent of voters believing that the federal government enjoys the consent of the governed — an astounding figure,” Caddell says. “Then a CNN poll showed that 56 percent of Americans worried that the federal government poses a direct threat to their freedom.”
via Caddell on the Midterm Elections – Article – National Review Online.
A Personal Message From MB…
As you all know our country is going through a critical time and it is my belief that the upcoming election is going to be the most pivotal of my life.
I am posting two very important articles today and I hope that you take the time to read them… they will be our only posts this weekend
American Spectator Article: America’s Ruling Class – And the Perils of Revolution…By Angelo M. Codevilla
WSJ Article: Why I’m Not Hiring…By Michael P. Fleischer
Thanks to all of you for your continued support. I will be launching a completely revamped version of PoliticalNewsNow in the near future. It will be an expanded news website to help keep all of you up to date on current issues.
Cheers…MB