Taxes for Deployed Personnel?

Jim asked: "Why, oh why do we have to pay Maryland State and Local taxes?! And why do we have to pay capital gains on dividends when our stocks are so devalued?"

My, my. The scales begin to fall from his eyes...

State and local taxes? Because Maryland, being long run by Democrats, naturally has one or more well-funded programs for every conceivable voting group. That's how they buy votes to stay in power (Al Gore: "A'hm gonna fight for YOU!"). Your group, unfortunately, is not included because you are The Rich -- the ones Al was going to fight against. The Democrats know that they don't need to buy your vote, because you will vote for them out of liberal guilt, which they cultivate at every opportunity. The richest members of Congress are Democrats, not Republicans, and they have you convinced it's all about The Homeless. Heh.

Taxes on dividends (after those dividends have already been taxed at the corporate level, so they are already smaller than they should be)? Gee, that's a hard one. Because Democrats have successfully demagogued the issue to say that only The Rich get dividends?

The more general answer is that Democrats always against any kind of tax cut or any cut in any government program. Why is that? Could it be because they use tax money to buy votes by offering new or expanded entitlements to anybody who might cast a ballot? This is why they always oppose any form of privatization or any plan that does not involve a government program to deliver services. The very last thing in the world the Democrats want is for people to be self-sufficient, independent, and not in need of government services. The day that happens, the Dems are out of business.

If they did not get 90% of the black vote, and a huge margin among unmarried women due to the GOP's poor stand on abortion, the Democrats would be finished.

OK, here's one for you: The Democrats voted almost unanimously against the Gulf War, and they are heavily against going to war against Saddam now. Why is that?

Powell Makes the Case

Mary McGrory may be convinced, but "The Nation" editor Katrina vanden Heuvel is not. Her editorial in USA Today declares that "Powell fails to make the case". Here is an example of the force and quality of her editorial:

"To justify U.N. Security Council authorization for war, the administration would need to show that Iraq's brutal dictatorship poses such a serious and immediate threat to U.S. security and world peace that it must be overthrown by force. It has failed to do that. Containment and robust inspections have worked in the past and can in the future."

In fact, Resolution 1441 nowhere mentions U.S. security, nor does it requires anything like she describes for a material breach to be declared and serious consequences to be invoked. It's embarrassingly apparent that Katrina has not read the resolution and has little idea what it says. Anyway, it is not true that inspections have worked in the past. Saddam from the beginning concealed his weapons programs, continued their development, and finally kicked the inspectors out of his country altogether. The recent Blix report depicted in damning detail the Iraqi regime's continuing and largely successful efforts to frustrate the current inspections regime. The massive build-up of US military forces around him is the sole reason that Saddam has agreed to allow inspectors to be reintroduced at all. That kind of containment is extremely expensive and cannot be maintained; the notion that the US military should be indefinitely tied down serving as a babysitter for Saddam Hussein, in the process becoming a hated presence in the region and a permanent target for Islamist attacks, is an absurdity.

Byron