It’s Friday, July 13th, 2012….and here’s The Gouge!

First up on the last edition of the week, a most excellent 2-part column in which Thomas Sowell reveals….

The Invincible Lie

 

Anyone who wants to study the tricks of propaganda rhetoric has a rich source of examples in the statements of President Barack Obama. On Monday, July 9th, for example, he said that Republicans “believe that prosperity comes from the top down, so that if we spend trillions more on tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, that that will somehow unleash jobs and economic growth.”

Let us begin with the word “spend.” Is the government “spending” money on people whenever it does not tax them as much as it can? Such convoluted reasoning would never pass muster if the mainstream media were not so determined to see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil when it comes to Barack Obama.

Ironically, actual spending by the Obama administration for the benefit of its political allies, such as the teachers’ unions, is not called spending but “investment.” You can say anything if you have your own private language.

But let’s go back to the notion of “spending” money on “the wealthiest Americans.” The people he is talking about are not the wealthiest Americans. Income is not wealth — and the whole tax controversy is about income taxes. Wealth is what you have accumulated, and wealth is not taxed, except when you die and the government collects an inheritance tax from your heirs.

People over 65 years of age have far more wealth than people in their thirties and forties — but lower incomes. If Obama wants to talk about raising income taxes, let him talk about it, but claiming that he wants to tax “the wealthiest Americans” is a lie and an emotional distraction for propaganda purposes.

The really big lie — and one that no amount of hard evidence or logic seems to make a dent in — is that those who oppose raising taxes on higher incomes simply want people with higher incomes to have more money, in hopes that some of their prosperity will “trickle down” to the rest of the people.

Some years ago, a challenge was issued in this column to name any economist, outside of an insane asylum, who had ever said any such thing. Not one example has yet been received, whether among economists or anyone else. Someone is always claiming that somebody else said it, but no one has ever been able to name and quote that somebody else.

Once we have put aside the lies and the convoluted use of words, what are we left with? Not much.

Obama is claiming that the government can get more tax revenue by raising the tax rate on people with higher incomes. It sounds plausible, and that may be enough for some people, but the hard facts make it a very iffy proposition. This issue has been fought out in the United States in several administrations — both Democratic and Republican. It has also been fought out in other countries.

What is the real argument of those who want to prevent taxes from rising above a certain percentage, even for people with high incomes? It has nothing to do with making them more prosperous so that their prosperity will “trickle down.”

A Democratic president — John F. Kennedy — stated the issue plainly. Under the existing tax rates, he explained, investors’ “efforts to avoid tax liabilities” made them put their money in tax shelters, because existing tax laws made “certain types of less productive activity more profitable than other more valuable undertakings” for the country.

Ironically, the Obama campaign’s attacks on Mitt Romney for putting his money in the Cayman Islands substantiate the point that President Kennedy and others have made, that higher tax rates can drive money into tax shelters, whether tax-exempt municipal bonds or investments in other countries.

In other words, raising tax rates does not automatically raise tax revenues for the government. Higher tax rates have often led to lower tax revenues for states, the federal government and other countries. Conversely, lower tax rates have often led to higher tax revenues. It all depends on the circumstances.

But none of this matters to Barack Obama. If class warfare rhetoric about taxes leads to more votes for him, that is his bottom line, whether the government gets a dime more revenue or not. So long as his lies go unchallenged, a second term will be the end result for him and a lasting calamity for the country.

And now, Part Deux:

The Invincible Lie: Part II 

 

Nothing produces more of a sense of the futility of facts than seeing someone in the mass media repeating some notion that has been refuted innumerable times over the years. On July 9th, on CNN’s program “The Situation Room” with Wolf Blitzer, commentator Gloria Borger discussed President Obama’s plan to continue the temporary extension of the tax rates established under the Bush administration — except for the top brackets, where Obama wanted the tax rates raised.

Ms. Borger said, “if you’re going to lower the tax rates, where are you going to get the money from?”

First of all, nobody is talking about lowering the tax rates. They are talking about whether or not to continue the existing tax rates, which are set to expire after a temporary extension. And Obama is talking about raising the tax rate on higher income earners.

But when Ms. Borger asked, “where are you going to get the money from?” if you don’t raise tax rates, that assumes an automatic correlation between tax rates and tax revenues, which is demonstrably false.

As far back as the 1920s, a huge cut in the highest income tax rate — from 73 percent to 24 percent — led to a huge increase in the amount of tax revenue collected by the federal government. Why? Because investors took their money out of tax shelters, where they were earning very modest rates of return, and put their money into the productive economy, where they could earn higher rates of return, now that those returns were not so heavily taxed.

This was the very reason why tax rates were cut in the first place — to get more revenue for the federal government. The same was true, decades later, during the John F. Kennedy administration. Similar reasons led to tax rate cuts during the Ronald Reagan administration and the George W. Bush administration.

All of these presidents — Democrat and Republican alike — made the same argument for tax rate reductions that had been made in the 1920s, and the results were similar as well. Yet the invincible lie continues to this day that those who oppose high tax rates on high incomes are doing so because they want to reduce the taxes paid by high income earners, in hopes that their increased prosperity will “trickle down” to others.

In reality, high income earners paid not only a larger total amount of taxes after the tax rate cuts of the 1920s but also a higher share of all the income taxes collected. It is a matter of record that anyone can check out with official government statistics.

This result was not peculiar to the 1920s. In 2006, the New York Times reported: “An unexpectedly steep rise in tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy is driving down the projected budget deficit this year.” Expectations are in the eye of the beholder. Tax cut proponents expected precisely the result from the Bush tax cuts that so surprised the New York Times. So did tax cut proponents in the John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan administrations.

If this concept has not yet trickled down to the New York Times or CNN’s Gloria Borger, that is a commentary on the media commentators.

Ms. Borger may simply not know any better, but Barack Obama cannot use that excuse. When he was a candidate for president back in 2008, Charles Gibson of ABC News confronted him with the fact that there was no automatic correlation between the raising and lowering of tax rates and whether tax revenues moved up or down.

His stumbling may be due to the absence of T-1; or could his argument be so nonsensical even he has trouble making it.

Obama admitted that. But he said that he was for raising tax rates on higher income earners anyway, in the name of “fairness.” How higher tax rates that the government does not actually collect make any sense, whether from a fairness perspective or as a way of paying the government’s bills, is another question. The point here is that Obama knew then that tax rates and tax revenues do not automatically move in the same direction.

In other words, he is lying when he talks as if tax rates and tax revenues move together. Ms. Borger and others in the media may or may not know that. So they are not necessarily lying. But they are failing to inform their audiences about the facts — and that allows Obama’s lies to stand.

We’re far less charitable than Thomas Sowell; Gloria Borger understands the relationship between taxes and revenues perfectly well.  She, like the rest of the MSM, will say and do anything to ensure The Obamao’s reelection; even lie….

….like a dog!

Next up, the latest installment of Jay Cost’s Morning Jay, courtesy of The Weekly Standard and George Lawlor:

Why Obama Is in Trouble

 

When you see a new poll, what do you look at first? With the general election campaign nominally underway, most people would say that they look at the head-to-head matchup between President Obama and Mitt Romney. But I’m still intensely focused on the president’s job approval numbers.

The reason has to do with my view of a presidential campaign when an incumbent is on the ballot. Based on my read of the history and the political science research on the subject, I’ve put together a rough outline of how the average voter makes up his mind. It looks something like this:

Basically, the vote choice begins with the broadest consideration of American politics – i.e. which party you affiliate with – and then on to how you think the country is doing. Together, those two factors likely determine whether you think the incumbent president has done a good job.

All of that happens before the campaign has even begun. This serves as the backdrop for how you respond to the campaign. If, for instance, you are a Democrat who thinks the country is on the right track and Obama has done a good job, the hurdle Mitt Romney will have to jump is, for all intents and purposes, insuperable. If, on the other hand, you’re a partisan Republican who thinks the country is in terrible shape and Obama is awful, then the GOP already has your vote in the bag.

The last Democrat to win a majority of the white vote was Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Obviously, Democrats do not need to win a majority of whites to win the White House, but they need more than 37 percent.

Note as well that Obama’s numbers with African Americans and Hispanics are off their highs, at least at the moment. Contrary to what one hears from promulgators of the “Emerging Democratic Majority” thesis, there are swing voters in both groups – and it looks as though Obama is not holding them at the moment, either.

What about partisan identification?

On this front, Obama is really not doing well at all. He has the partisan Democrats mostly locked down, while partisan Republicans are mostly gone. But check out the independent vote. Most independents actually are partisans, insofar as they usually lean toward one group or another. Historically, Democrats have been able to count on at least 40 percent or so of the independent vote to behave like partisan Democrats. And that is about all Obama has right now.

Finally, what about geographical regions?

This is very bad news for President Obama. Most of the swing states are in the Midwest, and he is doing quite badly there at the moment, with approval numbers that correspond roughly to what Dukakis pulled in 1988. His numbers in the South are equally bad, and remember that he won 68 of the South’s 186 electoral votes. He will not do that this time around if he only wins 42 percent of the vote in the region.

Obviously, things could pan out differently. The president’s job approval rating could improve, moving him above that magic line of 50 percent. Alternatively, the campaign this season could go so well for Obama that he does what few incumbents before him have managed, and win a substantial share of those who disapprove of his job performance.

But with the economic outlook looking increasingly glum, and with Mitt Romney being well financed and reasonably acceptable, this president is probably going to struggle to get above 50 percent.

Speaking of the reasonably-acceptable Romney, here’s the WSJ‘s thoughts on Mitt’s obligatory appearance at the NAACP convention:

Romney at the NAACP

Next time he should go over the heads of the liberal black elite.

 

Mitt Romney dared to speak to the NAACP convention on Wednesday, and for his trouble the Republican earned headlines reporting that he had been booed for some of his remarks. There’s a lesson here about Republicans and the black liberal establishment.

President Obama won 96% of the black vote in 2008, and no one thinks Mr. Romney is going to do much better than John McCain did. But the GOP candidate still deserves credit for making the attempt. A President represents the whole country, and voters like to see a candidate who speaks inclusively.

Mr. Romney may even win a few converts with his message, which stressed economic opportunity and education reform. He pushed hard for school choice, especially the promise of charter schools, though it’s too bad he didn’t press vouchers for private schools as forcefully as he did this spring.

The mistake is thinking that the NAACP represents average black voters. While it has a venerable history through the civil-rights struggle, the group has become a partisan liberal operation that is less and less relevant to the real problems of black America.

The group supports the usual government transfer programs that lead to permanent dependency, rather than the empowerment that is the only path to advancement for the black poor. That’s why Mr. Romney was booed. To most of the NAACP activists, the black agenda these days is defined entirely by how much a candidate is willing to tax and spend. The far more important civil-rights struggle of our time is education reform, but that would mean breaking with the NAACP’s union allies.

Mr. Romney is right to fight for the black vote, but he’d probably have more success if he ignored the usual black liberal gatekeepers and went directly to the neighborhoods that need education reform and more economic uplift. Visit a successful charter school that needs a better building, or a community college trying to retrain high school drop outs, or a small business in Detroit struggling against the odds.

The comfortable elites at the NAACP will never support a Republican. The people who understand the hardship of the status quo just might.

 For example, THIS young woman:

Kira’s right: the NAACP was founded to combat, as well as end, racism.  But, like the Reverends Al, Jesse and Louie, the NAACP came to realize declaring victory in this particular battle would spell the end for their cause, and more importantly their power.

Hence, like Cap’n Redlegs, the NAACP will continue the struggle, because….

Moving on, another brilliant piece by Victor Davis Hanson, courtesy of Daniel F. Feeney, EsqE. (Esquire Extraordinaire):

 The World is Changing Minute by Minute

 

We are witnessing a seismic shift in global affairs. The shake-up is a perfect storm of political, demographic and technological change that will soon make the world as we have known it for the last 30 years almost unrecognizable.

Since the mid-1980s there have been a number of accepted global constants. The European Union was assumed to have evolved beyond the nation-state as it ended the cycle of militarism and renounced free-market capitalism. With its strong euro, soft power and nonaligned foreign policy, the EU was praised as a utopian sort of foil to the overarmed U.S. with its ailing dollar.

Germany, ostracized after losing two world wars and struggling with the guilt of the Holocaust, as penance was to be permanently submerged in European alliances, as its economic power was always expected to prop up the eurozone experiment.

The Arab Middle East for the last 40 years seemed to be the world’s cockpit, as its huge petroleum reserves brought in trillions of dollars from an oil-depleted West, along with political concessions. Petrodollars fed global terrorism. Oil-poor Israel had little clout with Europe. In general, the West ignored any human-rights concerns involving the region’s oil-rich dictatorships, monarchies and theocracies, as well as their aid to Islamic terrorists.

Conventional wisdom also assumed that an indebted U.S. was in permanent decline, a cash-rich China in ascendency. The world would increasingly make the necessary political corrections as it pivoted eastward.

But none of that conventional wisdom now seems very wise — largely because of a number of technological breakthroughs and equally unforeseen political upheavals.

The eurozone is unraveling. An aging, shrinking population and a socialist welfare state lead to serfdom, not utopia. War guilt and EU membership will no longer ensure German subsidies, but rather serve to alienate the German public. Europe’s cloudy future hinges not on Brussels technocrats, but on Europeans learning how to deal with a dynamic, increasingly confident and peeved Germany.

The Arab Middle East is now in a free fall. Tyrants in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen were ousted, while one in Syria totters. But while the world hoped secular democrats would follow in their wake, more likely we are witnessing the emergence of one-election Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood. The region will be mired in turmoil whether these upheavals turn out to be like the hijacked Iranian revolution that ended in theocracy, or the Turkish democratic model that is insidiously becoming Islamist.

Horizontal drilling and fracking have made oil shale and tar sands rich sources of oil and natural gas, so much so that the United States may prove to possess the largest store of fossil fuel reserves in the world — in theory, with enough gas, oil and coal soon never to need any imported Middle Eastern energy again. “Peak oil” is suddenly an anachronism. Widespread American use of cheap natural gas will do more to clean the planet than thousands of Solyndras.

If the United States utilizes its resources, (But unfortunately….and inexplicably….that’s a BIG “if”!) then its present pathologies — massive budget and trade deficits, mounting debt, strategic vulnerability — will start to subside. These new breakthroughs in petroleum engineering are largely American phenomena, reminding us that there is still something exceptional in the American experience that periodically offers the world cutting-edge technologies and protocols — such as those pioneered by Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Starbucks and Walmart.

In comparison, China is not only resource-poor but politically impoverished. For decades we were told that Chinese totalitarianism, when mixed with laissez-faire capitalism, led to sparkling airports and bullet trains, while a litigious and indulgent America settled for a run-down LAX and creaking Amtrak relics. But the truth is that the Los Angeles airport will probably sooner look modern than the Chinese will hold open elections amid a transparent society — given that free markets did not make China democratic, only more contradictory.

Even more surreal, tiny oil-poor Israel, thanks to vast new offshore finds, has been reinvented as a potential energy giant in the Middle East. Such petrodollars will change Israel as they did the Persian Gulf countries, but with one major difference. Unlike Dubai or Kuwait, Israel is democratic, economically diverse, socially stable and technologically sophisticated, suggesting the sudden windfall will not warp Israel in the manner it has traditional Arab autocracies, but instead become a force multiplier of an already dynamic society. Will Europe still snub Israel when it has as much oil, gas and money as an OPEC member in the Persian Gulf?

Who would have thought that a few fracking innovators in Texas would change the world’s carbon footprint far more than did Nobel laureate Al Gore — while offering a way for the U.S. to be energy-independent. Or that Angela Merkel, not the European Union, would run Europe. Or that Arabs would be overthrowing Arabs, as oil-rich Israel idly watched.

Frankly, were we Romney, we’d be making a 180 reversal of current energy policy the cornerstone of our campaign.  REAL energy independence is not only possible, it’s the cure for almost every economic and defense ill from which the country currently suffers.

And if you’ve ever wondered why little Johnny can’t read or write, let alone understand the materially adverse impact Dimocratic energy policies have our economy, Todd Starnes, writing at FOXNews.com, offers part of the answer:

Nebraska Educators Debate American Exceptionalism

 

A set of standards that will determine what Nebraska school children will learn about American history is causing controversy after an initial draft left out the Founding Fathers – and another promoted cultural equivalency over American exceptionalism. The debate focuses on drafts of Nebraska’s social studies standards. Every school district in the state must adopt the standards or enact their own of equal or greater rigor, Omaha.com reported.

An early draft has already been rewritten after it excluded George Washington and Benjamin Franklin – along with other Founding Fathers and historical dates.

And while Nebraska Board of Education member John Sieler is glad to see the Founding Fathers restored to the standards, he said there are other serious problems. He said the standards teach global warming as fact, promote cultural equivalency and fail to promote American exceptionalism. “We need to specifically reject this concept that all ideas are equal or all cultures are equal,” Sieler told Fox News Radio. “All cultures are not equal. All ideas are not equal and we need to state that in a positive manner instead of glossing over this and having some ‘Kumbaya let’s all get along, everybody’s wonderful’ feeling.”

Sieler said he’s received at least 30 emails from constituents who are upset that the draft process was not open to the public. Among the chiefs concers — no mention of American exceptionalism. “I strongly believe in American exceptionalism,” he said. Instead the draft instructs schools to make sure high school students can “analyze and evaluate the impact of people, events and symbols upon history in the United States and abroad,” Omaha.com reported. It also called on students to explore history from multiple perspectives.

Sieler said the state needs to adopt a specific statement recognizing American exceptionalism. “That is the key to the whole thing,” he said. “We need to teach that we are the good guys. That doesn’t mean we have to hide some of the things that we are not proud of as a nation. We’ve made some mistakes but we are on the right course. We’re not out to conquer countries and enslave people.”

Donlynn Rice, the state’s administrator of curriculum, instruction and innovation, stressed that the draft is “not a completed document.” “Certainly the standards are very strong in the fact that America is a great country,” she told Fox News Radio. “What exact terms we use remains to be seen as we work with the draft.”

Rice said she was not sure if the term “American exceptionalism” is in the draft. “We’re talking about the importance of understanding different cultures,” she said. “We certainly want students to be aware there are many different cultures both in our country and across the world.”

Rice said they are listening to public input and used the re-inclusion of the historical figures to illustrate that point. “It was a bit premature for people to get so concerned that they weren’t going to be there when in fact they were looking at a very, very early draft of the standards,” she said.

Sieler also expressed concern about how capitalism and free market enterprise are conveyed in the standards. “We need to say free market enterprise is good,” he said. “Socialism is bad. To me, it’s black and white.

He also said the standards teach global warming as fact instead of a theory and incorrectly used the terms democracy and republic. “We are a representative government,” he said. “We don’t have direct democracy and there’s a big difference.” Sieler also said the standards promoting “global government.” “The U.S. Constitution does not recognize a global government,” he said. “We recognize the government of the United States.”

Rice said the standards are meant to focus on what students should know and be able to do. “We don’t teach beliefs in our standards,” she said. ‘We teach the content, knowledge and the skills.”

But Sieler said it’s necessary to know and learn some facts before you can talk about concepts. “How can you discuss something like the Civil War if you don’t know who Abraham Lincoln is?” he wondered.

Rice said the draft will be in development for several more months – and welcomed the heated discussions on the document. “I think it’s wonderful that people are interested,” she said. “Of all the content areas, social studies is citizenship in action. Social studies is about our history and our government. It’s really an area we live every day. The fact that people are interested and people are passionate is a great thing.”

Sieler said he worries that political correctness might be behind some of the controversy. “The other side would say I’m being conservatively correct or whatever,” he said. “Maybe I am. But I think we need to teach the right standards.”

It’s not only providing our children the right standards, but teaching them the truth.

Note the two classic Liberal dissimulations: “It was a bit premature for people to get so concerned that they weren’t going to be there when in fact they were looking at a very, very early draft of the standards“, and ““We don’t teach beliefs in our standards”.

Bullsh*t!  First, absent objection, these WERE the standards; they just weren’t able to surreptitiously put them into practice.  Second, of course kids are learning beliefs; the Liberal goal is simply to replace those Americans have embraced for generation with Progressives replacements.

Which brings us to another sterling example of political correctness overcoming common sense:

The Co-Ed Navy: No Urinals on New Aircraft Carriers

 

A couple decades after the U.S. Navy started deploying women on its ships, the restroom designs of the newest aircraft carriers are reflecting the females’ presence. The new Gerald R. Ford class of carriers – starting with the namesake carrier due in late 2015 – will not have urinals, the Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington said this week.

The decision is part of an effort to give the new carriers a more gender-neutral layout, according to the Navy Times, which first reported the story. Using only toilets, a first for U.S. carriers, will allow ship personnel to easily switch the designation of any restroom – or head, in naval parlance – from men to women and vice versa as needed, the Navy Times reported. . . 

Soooo….what?  The women would be offended by utilizing a head equipped with urinals?  Once again, the Navy is advocating unneeded changes to solve a problem that doesn’t exist; urinals require far less space than toilet stalls, and are quicker to use.  As the percentage of women on board ship will never remotely approach the number of men, why not build ships to address the requirement of the many, rather than the non-existent needs of the few?

Next thing you know the Brass is going to advocate buying grossly overpriced biofuels rather than oil to appear environmentally friendly.

On the Lighter Side….

And in News of the Bizarre….

Water addict guzzles up to 25 litrers a day

 

“No health problems”?  Yeah….

….other than carrying about 8 or 9 stones worth of excess baggage.  We’re relatively certain agua frio isn’t the only thing Ms. Kennedy guzzles; that isn’t all water weight she’s wearing!

Magoo