WEEK OF FEBRUARY 8, 2009 Perhaps they voted according to the consciences. I am referring to
Republican Senators Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Arlen Specter, as they indicated
their willingness to support on Friday President Obama’s economic stimulus package,
inappropriately titled The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Since I cannot
see into their minds, I will give them the benefit of the doubt. The problem, however, is
that their consciences violated every Republican Party principle, and the Bill is unlikely
to bring about any real or lasting “Recovery”. Republican politicians who support legislation calling for vast
deficit spending should drop any pretense of being Republican and change their party.
Based on the past performances of this trio, the affect on the Republican Party would be
minimal. As the old saying goes, “if it walks like a duck, etc.” Bipartisanship
is one thing, but driving the country into bankruptcy is another. By the time all is said
and done, this Bill will increase the national debt by almost ten percent, and Democratic
control of government is just getting started. They must be comfortable knowing that they
can count on some weak-kneed Senate RINOs to join them in their journey down to road to
European Socialism for Just a week earlier, Republicans in the House hung together in
sending a strong message to the president and the majority congressional leaders that they
would have no part in supporting this assault on our economy and limited government. For a
brief time, conservatives were proud of this staunch opposition to the government takeover
of our society and our economy. In just one day, Collins, Snowe, and Specter were able to destroy
that euphoria. One can only wonder what their thoughts were as they looked at themselves
in the mirror this morning. Republicans across RETURN TO ARCHIVES LIST RETURN TO HOME PAGE
We have all heard it; or at least those of us who have gone through
the process of raising teenagers have heard it: “Everyone else is doing it” or,
“Everyone else has one.” In the typical teenage mind, these words justify
anything and everything. My thoughts went back to those magic years of raising teenagers when
I heard a man comment on the radio, when asked about President Obama’s Stimulus Bill,
with words to the effect that he opposed spending all of that money, but what difference
does it make? The Republicans would do the same thing. Whoa, Nelly! As anyone who could
score over 40% on the IGI Civics Literacy Test would know, if it were left up to the
Republicans, there would not be an $870 billion stimulus bill before Congress right now.
It was really this guy’s own way of saying, “Okay, I know I screwed up by voting
for Barack Obama, but it’s not my fault. Everyone else I know was doing it.” So now we are a nation of excuse-finding teenagers, not old enough,
wise enough, nor mature enough to take responsibility for our own actions. The only
exception is that group of old, white men who call themselves conservatives and go around
preaching what is, to use Obama’s own words, those “tired and worn-out”
concepts such as frugality and responsibility. So, Man, pump the volume so we don’t have to listen to ‘em, and let’s get it on with some serious music! Like, I won’t be thirty-five forever, you know? RETURN TO ARCHIVES LIST RETURN TO HOME PAGE
Sean Hannity is on a tear this afternoon after learning that the
Michigan Democrat Senator Debbie Stabenow, in an on-air interview with liberal talk show
host Bill Press, has once again called for hearings on “Fairness Standards” (her
term), reinstitution of the “Fairness Doctrine” (neutral term), or “the end
of Freedom of Speech in America” (Sean’s term). He invited her to come to the
studio and tear out his microphones. Of course, she did not respond, probably out of fear
for her life. Sean did provide both her According to the report at politico.com,
the good senator stated that, "Whether it’s called the Fairness Standard (sic),
whether it’s called something else – I absolutely think it’s time to be
bringing accountability to the airwaves." I would ask the good senator,
“accountability to whom?” She went on to say that she "think(s) it’s
absolutely time to pass a standard" and indicated that she had "already had some
discussions with colleagues" about Fairness "Standard" hearings and that
she "feel(s) like that’s gonna happen. Yep." Sieg heil , mein oberfuhrer! The politico.com article
also pointed out that Sen. Stabenow is married to Thomas Athans, the co-founder of the
liberal TalkUSA Radio network and now the Executive Vice-President of liberal Air Long ago I came to the conclusion that those institutions, be they
political, religious, or any other, that attempt to stifle dissent of any type, are the
possessors of irrational ideologies that cannot in any way be defended against rational,
logical, and intelligent arguments. Their leaders live in fear and are victims of a
suppressed inferiority complex. This was the case in Nazi Germany and the Talk radio and the internet are the lone remaining bastions of
conservative thought in From time to time, I ask myself if all of the time and effort involved with keeping a conservative website going is worth the few readers that stop by for a visit. Then something like this comes along, and like Sean Hannity, I recommit to putting out the conservative message until my hands can no longer reach the keyboard, then hope that someone else can pick up the banner. RETURN TO ARCHIVES LIST RETURN TO HOME PAGE
Is Income Disparity the Cause of Recessions? In the past I have described here an ongoing, e-mail based
“discussion group” with a small group of my Academy classmates and one or two
other interested participants. We discuss a wide range of issues, but tend to focus our
attention on either military or political issues. Since all of us have long since left our
military careers, the discussion is fairly free-wheeling and we get opinions from people
on both sides of the political spectrum. This is not to suggest that it is always a fair
fight. Because we are all former members of the military, the conservative opinions
outnumber the liberal opinions about two to one. But yet the libs can hold their own quite
well. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal entitled For 'Fortunate 400,' a
Tumbling Tax Rate , by Jesse
Drucker, launched a new round of discussion over the country’s current economic
situation. The first sentence of Drucker’s article provides a good description of the
article’s tenor, “The nation's top 400 taxpayers made more than $263 million on
average in 2006, as the stock market was rallying, but paid income taxes at the lowest
rate in the 15 years that the Internal Revenue Service has tracked such data, according to
figures released Thursday.” The article was sent to members of the group by one of
the “left-of-center” members who I will refer to as “Bob” in this
piece. In his own words in a follow-up message, he had sent the article out to illustrate
the growing disparity between the rich and poor in this country, then asserted that this
gap always increases more rapidly immediately preceding an economic recession and provided
some examples. This disparity, he implied, is what causes recessions. Many of us who hold more
conservative opinions saw this as yet another example of the “class-envy”
diatribe that we had witnessed during the recent presidential campaign. One of the group
members, who I will refer to only as “Ed”, had furnished in his response IRS
information pulled from the internet which presented 20 years of data showing the
comparative income tax rates that had been paid by the various income level groups.
Unfortunately, the last year of data was for 2005. It did, however, clearly illustrate
that higher income people pay far more in income taxes and at a much higher rate than
those in the lower income brackets. What follows is my response
to Rob’s assertion that income disparities cause recessions. To All: This blurb is in response to Bob’s piece regarding income
disparities in While Bob was doing his analysis of the IRS data furnished by Ed, I
was doing the same, but looking at a wider range of reported results. I only wish that the
data that Ed provided had covered the last three years as well, because it might have
provided more insight, but I understand why it did not. Let me say first that Bob’s findings regarding income
disparities were correct, as far as they went, in that there was a increase in the
disparity of income between the “top 1%” and the “bottom 99%”. The
same is true when you compare the top 5% and 10% with the bottom 95% and 90%,
respectively, although the disparities are not as great. In the old days this phenomenon
was considered to be part of the reward for competitive risk taking, and was associated
with the positive characteristics of hard work, intelligence, incentive and ambition. In
our egalitarian, social justice-oriented society
of today (off with their heads!) these traits are not always considered by many to be
“good”, especially if their benefits are not distributed around to those who are
less generously endowed. Eventually you reach a point where the Marxian philosophy of
“from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” becomes
acceptable, despite history’s clear lesson that this economic maxim has proved to be
a colossal failure. No economic system is perfect. Free Market Capitalism, as well as
Soviet-style Communism and middle-of-the-road European Socialism, all have a cyclical
nature. The difference is that Capitalism has been able to provide more prosperity to more
people than any of the others. One reason for this is because it includes the least
governmental intervention. The common misconception that people who are elected to office
(or get there at the point of a gun) somehow have a monopoly on intelligence and wisdom
has always gotten societies into trouble, and that is a major part of the problem in the
good old Where I part company with Bob’s assertions in his previous
e-mail is with the causal relationship between disparity in incomes and the occurrence of
economic recessions in our history. While there may be a relationship between the two in
that the increasing disparity is an indicator that a recession is coming, it is not the
cause of the downturn. Therefore slowing the disparity by increasing the top tax rates,
for example, would only hasten the onset of a recession as employers, who make up most of
higher income people, would seek to make up for the tax increases by cutting costs, which,
of course, would include laying people off at a faster rate. It would also slow down
investment in new plant and capital, again hastening a recession. In my analysis of Ed’s data, I looked at the entire 20-year period for each income group, and arrived at the following summarized results: Click HERE to view table While these figures can be used by political junkies (like us) on
both sides of center to justify our arguments, they do not tell the whole story. For
example, they do not take into account the state of the overall economy as measured by the
growth of the GDP, the affects of inflation, or the mobility of individuals into and out
of the various income categories. They allow only for sweeping generalizations such as you
would hear during a presidential campaign. Based on data supplied by the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the
Department of Labor, I put together a spreadsheet, which can be seen HERE
(open at your own risk; it might put you to sleep), that shows the growth of the GDP,
personal income in the U.S., and the rates of inflation for the same 20-year period as
Ed’s chart covered. The spreadsheet shows that our nation’s Gross Domestic Product
increased by almost 180% during that 20-year period, an adjusted average increase of over
5% every year, with a high of 7.7% in 1988 to a low of 3.2% in 1991. Similarly, unadjusted
Personal Income across the board rose by just over 175%. During that time, the average
annual inflation rate was 2.7%. After adjusting Personal Income by the amount of
inflation, as reflected in the Consumer Price Indexes, it shows that Americans’
“Buying Power” rose by 166.5% for the entire period, an average of 5.2% per
year. The data shows that the The lower you stand in the economic categories, the more likely it is
that your income is derived solely through wages/salary. Conversely, the higher you go,
the more likely it is that greater parts of your income are derived from investments in
stocks and other securities, or from entrepreneurial profits. Therefore, during good
times, it is only logical that income disparities will increase. These increasing
disparities do not in themselves cause the next recession, but rather it is caused
by some other event, such as a high rate of mortgage foreclosures brought about by
government programs that encourage people to buy homes that they can not afford.
‘Nuff said. If anyone is interested in reading more about these issues, check out: Capital and Income in
Democratic Socialism
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