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Liberalism: Why think when you can “feel”?

Wealthy pay more in taxes under Bush tax cuts

You all are painfully aware that Democrats are functional economic illiterates.  Every time you turn around, you hear some leftist halfwit claim that Bush gave tax cuts to the vile rich, and thus the rich are undertaxed.

Ignoring the reality that the top 1% of income earners already pay over 39% of all income taxes and that the top 50% of income earners pay a whopping 97% of all income taxes, there’s another fundamental flaw in leftards’ line of thinking: it just ain’t freakin’ true!  From the WSJ:

Every Democrat running for President wants to raise taxes on “the rich,” but they will have to do something miraculous to outtax President Bush. Based on the latest available tax data, no Administration in modern history has done more to pry tax revenue from the wealthy.

Last week the Congressional Budget Office joined the IRS in releasing tax numbers for 2005, and part of the news is that the richest 1% paid about 39% of all income taxes that year. The richest 5% paid a tad less than 60%, and the richest 10% paid 70%. These tax shares are all up substantially since 1990, and even somewhat since 2000. Meanwhile, Americans with an income below the median — half of all households — paid a mere 3% of all income taxes in 2005. The richest 1.3 million tax-filers — those Americans with adjusted gross incomes of more than $365,000 in 2005 — paid more income tax than all of the 66 million American tax filers below the median in income. Ten times more.
…
Notably, however, the share of taxes paid by the top 1% has kept climbing this decade — to 39.4% in 2005, from 37.4% in 2000. The share paid by the top 5% has increased even more rapidly. In other words, despite the tax reductions of 2001 and 2003, the rich saw their share of taxes paid rise at a faster rate than their share of income. How could this be?

One explanation is that the Bush tax cuts reduced the income tax liability of middle and lower income households by more proportionately than the rich. The average family of four with an income of $40,000 saw its income tax liability fall by about $2,052 a year from the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts.

This part is sure to piss off life’s losers:

The IRS statistics also tell a more complicated economic story than the media claim. First, America continues to be a society of upward income mobility. Over the past decade, millions of Americans have joined the once highly exclusive club of six- and seven-figure earners. Some 304,000 Americans earned $1 million or more in annual income in 2005, compared to 110,000 in 1996 and 176,000 in 2000. Because there is no cap on the top income share, this increase in millionaires pushes the top income (and taxes paid) share higher. The number of millionaire households in net worth also increased to nine million in 2006, up from six million in 2001, according to TNS, a global market research firm.

Liberals decry this as proof of a new “gilded age.” But we’d say these gains are a sign that more Americans are joining the ranks of the truly affluent. More than 13 million American households, or about one in 10, had an income of more than $100,000 a year in 2005. This is the kind of upward mobility that a dynamic society should want because it means that incomes aren’t stagnant and opportunity continues to exist.

Well, slap my chiseled tush and call me Sally!  You mean that we don’t live in an oppressive society that only affords select people the opportunity to succeed with the help of big government?  Who knew?

The icing on the cake:

The amount of capital gains declared on tax forms has doubled since the tax rate was cut to 15% from 20% in 2003, which has also contributed to more Americans being “rich.” Dividend income has also increased by at least 50% since that rate was cut to 15% from nearly 40% in 2003. So part of the income gains of the rich are simply a result of assets that have been converted into taxable income — in part because of lower tax rates.

We hate to break up the media’s egalitarian chorus with these details, but facts are facts. If Democrats really want to soak the rich, they’ll keep tax rates where they are, or, better, lower them some more.

See, tax cuts are NOT a zero-sum game, people!  I’m trying to determine if liberals are that economically stupid, that deceitful, or some combination thereof.

December 18, 2007 Posted by | economic ignorance, taxes | 6 Comments

Hillary camp trying to polish a turd

Her Highness has set up a web site, called “The Hillary I Know”, to launch her new campaign initiative: likeability.  In the South, we have this saying: You can’t polish a turd.

Here’s a tip: people who are truly likeable do not have to start a campaign to convince people that they are likeable!  The fact is that Shrillary is a cold, calculating b#tch, and everybody knows that.  The fact that she has some leftist shills on a web site asserting the opposite is irrelevant.

By the way, as Newsbusters points out, one of the aforementioned shills on Her Highness’ new turdpolishing site is Jim Blair.  While CNN was busy touting the Hildebeast’s new site, others noted that one of the testimonials there belongs to “one of her closest friends in elementary school”…Jim Blair.  Via Newsbusters:

Political junkies should know that name: Jim Blair is the Tyson Foods lawyer who mysteriously set rules aside and massaged Hillary’s $1,000 investment into a $100,000 bonanza in the cattle futures market over nine months in 1978 and 1979. 

Yeah, that little tidbit didn’t quite make its way onto “the reality-based community” candidate’s site, did it?

December 18, 2007 Posted by | Hillary | 6 Comments

Ron Paul separates fools from their money

Captain Crazy and his Merry Morons are giddier than Larry Craig in a bathroom stall at The Blue Oyster Club at the amount of jack they drew in the other day: $5.5 – $6 million.  With that kind of fundraising prowess, dude may finally crack double digits in the polls.  Then again, calling Christians “fascists” isn’t gonna score the Bircheresque crank many brownie points in a Republican primary, now is it?

There are those who are certain that a candidate’s ability to raise money quickly will translate into electoral success.  Two words for those folks: Howard Dean.  He raised a boatload of dough in 2003 and early 2004, only to flame in every state (save Vermont).  The same thing will happen here, without question.

December 18, 2007 Posted by | Ron Paul | 11 Comments

The left’s enviro-fascism

In addition to the Fairness Doctrine and campus speech codes, we now have another example of a kind of totalitarianism of which the left is fond: enviro-fascism.  From David Thompson:

Transport policy-makers should start preparing now for a dramatic reduction in motorised travel that will be brought about by carbon rationing, one of the country’s leading environmental thinkers told LTT this week. “Just start reading the runes because what’s going to happen is the demand for road, rail and air travel is going to start falling away just as soon as we have rationing,” says Mayer Hillman in an interview with the magazine.

Hillman, senior fellow emeritus at the Policy Studies Institute, says carbon rationing is the only way to ensure that the world avoids the worst effects of climate change. And he says that the problems caused by burning fossil fuels are so serious that governments might have to implement rationing against the will of the people. “When the chips are down I think democracy is a less important goal than is the protection of the planet from the death of life, the end of life on it,” he says. “This has got to be imposed on people whether they like it or not.”

Hillman’s anticipated Tyranny That Cares™ will, reassuringly, also apply to its author, as reported in a glowing Guardian profile from 2002…

Oh, please!  These greenie weenies have a different (and higher) set of standards by which they live, all while preaching to us to lower our own standards.

December 18, 2007 Posted by | big government, environuts, global warming | 6 Comments

Dems’ idea of “fiscal responsibility”

When Democrats won control of Congress last year, one of their promises was to restore some semblance of fiscal responsibility.  Those of us with brains knew they meant “raise taxes to pay for bloated big-government spending”, but others actually believed they would stop wasteful spending.

Instead, we’ve seen the Democrats thwart efforts at curbing earmarks (pork) and publicizing pork votes.  It seems that regardless of who is in power, the thirst for taxpayer dollars for vote-buying pet projects is one that cannot be quenched.  NRO has further evidence (as if you really need any):

Sen. Jim DeMint’s (R., S.C.) office is the first with a press release in my inbox:

  • Earmarks: Instead of reducing the number of pork projects in the federal budget, the bill drives the number of earmarks up from last year. The bill contains over 8,000 earmarks, bringing the total for 2008 up to over 10,000 earmarks compared to just 2,658 in 2007.
  • Spending Gimmicks: Instead of cutting wasteful spending out of the bill to bring its cost down to the President’s level, the bill uses budget tricks and gimmicks to hide at least $14 billion in extra domestic spending.
  • Policy Riders: Instead of limiting the package to spending needed to fund government operations, the bill includes unrelated policy items. Many of these riders are backed by special interests, such as organized labor, and could not win passage on their own. 

Cut spending?  That’s just crazy talk!

December 18, 2007 Posted by | big government, hypocrisy, pork | 1 Comment

NJ bans death penalty, spares Megan’s killer

New Jersey just recently banned capital punishment and commuted the sentences of all death row inmates to life in prison.  In and of itself, that doesn’t bother me.  After all, the 10th Amendment says that states are free to set their laws as they so choose, provided the laws are not unconstitutional.

However, this part does bother me:

The man who raped and killed 7-year-old Megan Kanka — the 1994 crime that inspired “Megan’s Law” — is one of eight men whose sentences were commuted to life in prison this week as part of New Jersey’s new ban on execution.

The Garden State on Monday became the first state in more than three decades to abolish the death penalty after a commission ruled the punishment is “inconsistent with evolving standards of decency.”

Gov. Jon Corzine the day before commuted the sentences of eight men sitting on the state’s death row. They will now serve life in prison without parole, according to the governor’s office.

Among the eight is Jesse Timmendequas, 46, who was sentenced to death in June 1997 for Megan’s murder.

Prosecutors said Timmendequas lured Megan to his home by saying he wanted to show her a puppy. He then raped her, beat her and strangled her with a belt. A day later, he led police to her body.

“Megan’s Law,” introduced after her death, requires that authorities notify neighbors when a sex offender moves into an area. Timmendequas had twice been convicted of sex crimes — on 5- and 7-year-olds — before he murdered Megan. 

The cretin who is responsible for the creation of Megan’s Law gets to continue drawing air through his piehole, despite having been sentenced by a jury of his peers (in a state that rarely executes anyone, just to get an idea of how heinous his crimes were).  What also bothers me is that 53% of New Jerseyans opposed abolishing the death penalty, and only 39% supported banning it (poll here).  Yet the liberal politicians knew the fallout of ignoring their constituents would be minimal, and so ignore them they did.

Maybe you support capital punishment, and maybe you don’t.  That’s cool, since reasonable people exist on both sides.  Most complaints that I have heard against capital punishment involve cases were the innocent are wrongly executed.  That is a completely legitmate concern, and it’s actually one that I share.  However, in the case of this scumbag Timmendequas, he confessed to everything, so there’s no doubt about his guilt.

If NJ wanted to implement a ban, my own personal opinion is that it would have been less controversial to have implemented it from this point forward, not retroactively to those who are currently condemned.

December 18, 2007 Posted by | capital punishment, shameful | 5 Comments

   

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