Not enough rich to pay

The article in the Wall Street Journal titled “Barack Obama’s Expensive Domestic Agenda Will Cost America’s Middle Class” states:

Even the most basic inspection of the IRS income tax statistics shows that raising taxes on the salaries, dividends and capital gains of those making more than $250,000 can’t possibly raise enough revenue to fund Mr. Obama’s new spending ambitions.

Consider the IRS data for 2006, the most recent year that such tax data are available and a good year for the economy and “the wealthiest 2%.” Roughly 3.8 million filers had adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 in 2006. (That’s about 7% of all returns; the data aren’t broken down at the $250,000 point.) These people paid about $522 billion in income taxes, or roughly 62% of all federal individual income receipts. The richest 1% — about 1.65 million filers making above $388,806 — paid some $408 billion, or 39.9% of all income tax revenues, while earning about 22% of all reported U.S. income.

It ought to be abundantly clear that President Obama does not care one bit about how the nation will pay for everything he wants to do.

What he does care about is:

• Moving the United States even further away from our Constitution and capitalism
• Moving the country in the direction of Marxism (i.e. more like the European countries)
• Taking away more and more of our choices (freedom)
• Exerting ever-increasing control of our actions, thoughts and options
• Dividing the population (the haves vs. the have-nots, ethnic groups, etc.) for his own ends
• Seeing to it that the Democratic Party stays in power for a very long time
• His own power
• His own reputation

Consider these things as he comes to us with his proposals over the next few years.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Imagine this situation….

Two guys, Joe and Pete, are just hanging out on a corner.  Joe is smoking a joint as he waves to the police officer passing by in his patrol car.  Pete leans over and whispers, “Hey, man, I am going to the alley.  I really have to have my fix.  Watch out for the cops.”  Pete returns after about ten minutes with mustard on his shirt and asks, “Do you have a mint?  I can’t be caught smelling like hot dogs again.  I have already been busted twice!”

As strange (and moronic) as this scene may sound to most Americans, I believe that the conditions are just about right for marijuana not only to be legalized, but the money brought in from taxing its use will go to rescue governments from their financial woes. Jeff Segal, in a piece titled, “The Audacity of Dope“, writes:

Some legislators in California have pot on their minds, too. That’s because the government of the biggest economy in the United States is facing a massive budget deficit whose pain would be alleviated by decriminalizing marijuana.

California’s current deficit stands at a whopping $15 billion and is expected to reach $42 billion next year. And the state run by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has virtually run out of cash. It recently delayed $3.5 billion of payments to taxpayers and counties.

While nearly all U.S. states currently face budget shortfalls, California’s deficit is more than one-third of its general fund. That’s largely due to its dependence on income taxes, which slide during a recession. And the state can’t easily borrow due to the government bond-market freeze. Moody’s even warned it may downgrade the state’s rating.

There’s no easy fix to the problem, as any solution likely requires cutting benefits and social services—tough political choices for Schwarzenegger. But the state does have an abundant natural resource it may be able to draw on for help.

Marijuana is California’s largest cash crop. It’s valued at $14 billion annually, or nearly twice the value of the state’s grape and vegetable crops combined, according to government statistics. Indeed, a recent report pegged marijuana as two-thirds of the economy of Mendocino County, a ganja hotbed north of San Francisco. That’s not surprising—it costs $400 to grow a pound of pot that can sell for $6,000 on the street.

But the state doesn’t receive any revenue from its cash cow. Instead, it spends billions of dollars enforcing laws pegged at shutting down the industry and inhibiting marijuana’s adherents. Of course, there’s a reason for that. Marijuana’s social costs may include addiction and rehabilitation treatment and lost productivity. Yet these are minute compared with the extensive social costs of alcohol or tobacco.

Of course, just legalizing pot wouldn’t automatically harvest revenues for the state. An organized system of regulating sales and collecting taxes would need implementing.

On the other hand, because of the global warming mammoth hoax, things that Americans took for granted are or are in the process being taken away from them. One of the latest things, the leftists want to deny us (for the good of the State, of course) is beef.

Hamburgers are the Hummers of food in global warming

When it comes to global warming, hamburgers are the Hummers of food, scientists say.

Simply switching from steak to salad could cut as much carbon as leaving the car at home a couple days a week.

That’s because beef is such an incredibly inefficient food to produce and cows release so much harmful methane into the atmosphere, said Nathan Pelletier of Dalhousie University in Canada.

Pelletier is one of a growing number of scientists studying the environmental costs of food from field to plate.

By looking at everything from how much grain a cow eats before it is ready for slaughter to the emissions released by manure, they are getting a clearer idea of the true costs of food.

The livestock sector is estimated to account for 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and beef is the biggest culprit.

Even though beef only accounts for 30 percent of meat consumption in the developed world it’s responsible for 78 percent of the emissions, Pelletier said Sunday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

That’s because a single kilogram of beef produces 16 kilograms carbon dioxide equivalent emissions: four times higher than pork and more than ten times as much as a kilogram of poultry, Pelletier said.

The article goes on to say “part of the problem is people are eating far more meat than they need to”.

“Given the projected doubling of (global) meat production by 2050, we’re going to have to cut our emissions by half just to maintain current levels,” Pelletier said.

“Technical improvements are not going to get us there.”

That’s why changing the kinds of food people eat is so important, said Chris Weber, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania.

I bet you thought the Leftists were going to stop at seeing to it that Detroit produced more fuel-effecient cars.

Ah well.  In a very few years, we might not be free to buy the car that we want or have a cheeseburger for lunch.  Look at the bright side, though.  We will be able to abort our children and smoke marijuana.

We’re All Fascists Now II: American Tyranny

In Part 2 titled “We’re All Fascists Now II: American Tyranny“, Michael Ledeen writes:

Most of us imagine the transformation of a free society to a tyrannical state in Hollywood terms, as  a melodramatic act of violence like a military coup or an armed insurrection.  Tocqueville knows better.  He foresees a slow death of freedom.  The power of the centralized government will gradually expand, meddling in every area of our lives until, like a lobster in a slowly heated pot, we are cooked without ever realizing what has happened.  The ultimate horror of Tocqueville’s vision is that we will welcome it, and even convince ourselves that we control it.

There is no single dramatic event in Tocqueville’s scenario, no storming of the Bastille, no assault on the Winter Palace, no March on Rome, no Kristallnacht.  We are to be immobilized, Gulliver-like, by myriad rules and regulations, annoying little restrictions that become more and more binding until they eventually paralyze us.

Read the rest of what Ledeen has written.

We Are All Fascists Now — Part 1

On February 12th, Michael Ledeen posted, We Are All Fascists Now (Part 1).

Newsweek magazine, which has given us many of the most damaging deceptions about America in recent years (remember the “Koran-Down-the-Toilet” hoax?), now weighs in with a pretentious and embarrassingly ignorant cover story, “We Are All Socialists Now.”  To be sure, the basic theme–that the huge “stimulus” and the big big big TARP is leading once-capitalist America down the dangerous road to socialism–is not limited to the skinny weekly.  You hear it all over the place, from Right to Left, from talk radio to the evening news (or so I am told;  personally, I haven’t watched an evening news broadcast since 1987).

There’s a element of truth to the basic theme (although not to the headline):  the state is getting more and more deeply involved in business, even taking controlling interests in some private companies.  And the state is even trying to “make policy” for private companies they do not control, but merely “help” with “infusions of capital,” as in the recent call for salary caps for certain CEOs.  So state power is growing at the expense of corporations.

But that’s not socialism.  Socialism rests on a firm theoretical bedrock:  the abolition of private property.  I haven’t heard anyone this side of Barney Frank calling for any such thing.  What is happening now–and Newsweek is honest enough to say so down in the body of the article–is an expansion of the state’s role, an increase in public/private joint ventures and partnerships, and much more state regulation of business.  Yes, it’s very “European,” and some of the Europeans even call it “social democracy,” but it isn’t.

It’s fascism.  Nobody calls it by its proper name, for two basic reasons…

Read the rest of Ledeen’s piece.

Excellent piece on Socialized Medicine

Way back in November, Tony Blankley wrote, “Daschle-Obama Health Care Possibilities“.

As President-elect Obama’s apparent choice for health and human services secretary and as White House health care czar, it is a fair guess that Tom Daschle’s view on health care legislation may be decisive.

So it is worth reading his book “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis,” in which the gracious former Senate leader lays out without equivocation both the policy he recommends and the tactics for how to pass it. . . .

I think everyone ought to care enough to investigate what President Obama and the other Democrats want to do to our health care system.

[In] the section in which he identifies “losers” under his plan, Daschle is admirably candid. Among the explicit “losers,” he includes: “Doctors and patients might resent any encroachment on their ability to choose certain treatments, even if they are expensive or ineffectual compared to alternatives. Some insurers might object to new rules that restrict their coverage decisions. And the health-care industry would have to reconsider its business plan (emphasis added).” That is to say, they can stay in business and deliver their services, but only as the government bureaucrats say they may. They no longer would be genuinely independent.

One of the things that Daschle says will have to change is the “technology arms race” he claims hospitals are engaging in “to attract aging baby boomers with the latest diagnostic imaging machines.” Imagine that, offering customers the latest technology, which, as Daschle admits on Page 125, “help(s) doctors estimate the spread of cancer or the extent of cardiac disease without surgery.”

Of course, for Daschle, the problem with such high-tech diagnostics is that it leads to treatment. On pages 123-124, he cites a study approvingly for the proposition that there are too many angiograms being performed. By too many, he specifically cites a study of 828 angioplasties in which only a third were likely to benefit the patients. Another half might or might not, and 14 percent were not likely. Now I might conclude that if 85 percent of the patients receiving the treatment might benefit (the one-third who definitely would and the 50 percent who might) and if I were one of them, I might want the procedure. But for Daschle, that would be a waste of money, and “the imaging test that shows narrowing of the arteries was to blame (for the excessive treatment).”

What followed is my favorite line in the book: “When the test revealed a narrowing of the artery, however slight, cardiologists couldn’t resist doing something about it.” Imagine a doctor trying to cure his patient.

Healthcare in the so-called “Stimulus” package?

I want to excerpt “Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan” by Betsy McCaughey on Bloomberg.com. McCaughey writes:

Republican Senators are questioning whether President Barack Obama’s stimulus bill contains the right mix of tax breaks and cash infusions to jump-start the economy.

Tragically, no one from either party is objecting to the health provisions slipped in without discussion. These provisions reflect the handiwork of Tom Daschle, until recently the nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department.

Senators should read these provisions and vote against them because they are dangerous to your health. (Page numbers refer to H.R. 1 EH, pdf version).

The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors.

But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

Keeping doctors informed of the newest medical findings is important, but enforcing uniformity goes too far.

Seniors hardest hit

McCaughey continues:

Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt.

Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective. The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost- effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council (464).

The Federal Council is modeled after a U.K. board discussed in Daschle’s book. This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.

In 2006, a U.K. health board decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye. It took almost three years of public protests before the board reversed its decision.

Read the rest of McCaughey’s piece.

Related pieces:

Despite Daschle, Health Reform To Be a ‘Central Focus’ of Obama Budget

‘Too Old’ for Hip Surgery: As we inch towards nationalized health care, important lessons from north of the border.

RFK Jr.: Hog Farmers More Dangerous than Osama Bin Laden

Finding this video and accompanying story in The Washington Times, I knew I had to show it to others WITH the video. Otherwise almost NOBODY would believe it.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday said he thinks hog farmers are a greater threat to Americans than Osama bin Laden.

Mr. Kennedy, son of the the slain New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, is an environmental law attorney who was testifying before a House Judiciary subcomittee when Rep. Steve King, Iowa Republican, asked him if a quotation attributed to him in 2002 about hog farmers representing a greater threat than the leader of al Qaeda was accurate.

“I don’t know if that [quotation] is accurate, but I believe it and I support it,” said Mr. Kennedy, who has been involved in a vigorous legal effort against the meat industry for some years, arguing that manure and other products associated with large livestock producers emit toxic wastes that threaten the environment.

No wonder President Obama wants to cut the Defense budget by 10% and Democrats cheer.

All I have to say is, “Please, pass the barbecued pork. This made me hungry!”

Read the rest of the Washington Times piece and see the video there.

Obama Calling for Defense Budget Cuts

Last Friday, Fox News reported that the “Obama administration has asked the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff to cut the Pentagon’s budget request for the fiscal year 2010 by more than 10 percent — about $55 billion…”

Before that, President Obama signed an executive order that orders the Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp to be closed within a year.

It’s clear that President Obama doesn’t view national security as a priority. Everything else is going to grow. However, defense is going to be cut by 55 billion.

However, what continually surprises me is even after September 11, Democrats still don’t understand:

• that people want to really hurt us
• that our enemies tend to target big cities or anything big
• that for the most part, there are more Democrats living in big cities than there are Republicans (see the election results)
• If we are attacked again, it is likely that there will be just as many, if not more, Democrats who will get hurt in the attack than Republicans

One would think that average Democrats would get these points and actually want to protect themselves and their families.

Too bad, they are listening to Democratic leaders and other liberals such as most of what passes for the media INSTEAD of using common sense.

Have more than two children? You are irresponsible!!!

Think that the political left is harmless?

In a piece in the Sunday Times, titled “Two children should be limit, says green guru“, Sarah-Kate Templeton, Health Editor, writes:

COUPLES who have more than two children are being “irresponsible” by creating an unbearable burden on the environment, the government’s green adviser has warned.

Jonathon Porritt, who chairs the government’s Sustainable Development Commission, says curbing population growth through contraception and abortion must be at the heart of policies to fight global warming. He says political leaders and green campaigners should stop dodging the issue of environmental harm caused by an expanding population.

Yep, you read it right. In order to hold off Global Warming (a theory which is so in dispute — check the temperature outside lately? check the amount of snow we have had this winter?), this British leader says that a family should limit themselves to TWO children! He further says that British society should encourage contraception and abortion.

Right now, it is merely a recommendation. But how long before they enforce it under penalty of law? Forced abortions like China? How long before it makes it to America?

Freedom? Methinks freedom ought to be registered under the Endangered Species Act.

Read the rest of Sarah-Kate Templeton’s piece and shudder.

The Sanctity of Human Life

On January 18th, Dr. Albert Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Seminary, delivered a sermon titled “The Sanctity of Human Life”.

If you want to hear an extremely clear explanation why abortion should be unthinkable for anyone, you will definitely want to listen to or read this sermon.

Get the MP3 | Read the text