Dracula was a liberal

Listening to the car radio just now on the way home from Sam's Club, I heard CBS News report that New Jersey has joined NY and California in facing huge deficits. I got to hear Gov. Corsine (NJ) whining about the need for Federal help if his state is to survive this crisis. His sentiments were eagerly seconded by Gov. Paterson of NY, who says his state is facing a deficit of $47 billion over the next four years. I had to pull over for a minute to get my grief under control.

Since taxes in the deficit states are extremely high, the problem cannot be insufficient taxation. That leaves only bloated government spending as the source of the problem, and which taxpayers in other, more fiscally responsible states will be asked to subsidize. Apparently, the people who run the deficit states had never heard of a business cycle, and its effect on tax revenues. Given that they are so much more intelligent than everyone else, that's very odd. All it would have taken was for The New Yorker to have run an informative article about this, but in their defense there really is only so much space left after you've given sufficient and necessary attention to defending Piss Christs, Dung Madonnas, and Mappelthorpe Butt Bullwhips.

Anyway, what is being demanded is that money from taxpayers in the fly-over states that East- and West-Coast liberals love to denigrate and mock should be shoveled to their betters in NY, NJ, and CA.

It makes sense, you see, because the toothless rubes in places like South Dakota, Idaho, and Kentucky really aren't intellectually capable of properly spending their own money by devising their own bevy of Progressive Government Programs. These trogs remain deluded by the idea that things work out better when people keep more of what they earn. Perhaps bleeding them white will serve as a lesson.

Byron

Obama Jabberwocky

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

(Lewis Carroll)


RE: The Obama plan to cut taxes for 95% of working families, even when a big chunk of those families pay no Federal income tax now:

It depends on what you mean by a "tax cut." Can you cut taxes to below zero?

Yes, by Obama's use of the term: When your taxes are cut to $500 below zero, the IRS sends you a check for $500.

For example, Obie wants a 10% "tax cut" for mortgage interest payers, in addition to the full deductibility now provided by the tax code. Someone who pays no Federal income tax is, you see, disadvantaged by not having any taxable income to deduct mortgage interest from. That's so unfair. So, he will get a "tax cut" so that the IRS can send him a check instead.

Obama is pushing for a radical expansion of the Negative Income Tax concept. It will open the spending floodgates, with income redistribution like we've never seen, or even contemplated.

Obama is very slick with words. He gives new meanings to old words.

Most people use the term "investment" not to mean spending in general, but only spending for a future return, rather than immediate consumption. But Obama's rhetoric seems to define virtually all government spending as "investment." It's always a matter of "investing" in the children, in infrastructure, in people's health, in our families, in something or other. It's never passing out goodies, it's always "investing." It's as if government never consumes any money, but only invests it. Who can be against investment? Investment is good. Let's invest more! Maybe only spending on the military is wasteful consumption...

The latest rhetorical flair from BO is to call a check you get from the government a "tax cut." The fact that you paid no taxes to begin with doesn't matter, it's still a "tax cut." John McCain is famously for tax cuts -- but now so is Obama! It's just that McCain's tax cuts mean that people will be sending less money to the government, and that's a bad, selfish tax cut. But Obama's tax cuts mean the government will be sending out checks, and that's "investing"! Tax cuts and investing, all in one swoop. Magic Man!

All this goes beyond the usual political smoke and mirrors. Obama seems determined to screw up the language so completely that meaningful discourse becomes impossible. It will be hard to argue these matters, because no one will know exactly how the terms are being used. Or it will take so long that the audience will get bored and go home. Obama's new meanings, of course, always make increased government spending and income redistribution sound desirable.

Years from now, pundits will look back at Obama's campaign and admit 'Twas brillig, though plenty slithy.

Mystery Solved

Obama promises a tax cut for 95% of working families, but about 35% of families already pay no Federal income tax.

So how can 95% get a tax cut?

Here's how:

The Tax Foundation estimates that under the Obama plan 63 million Americans, or 44% of all tax filers, would have no income tax liability and most of those would get a check from the IRS each year. The Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis estimates that by 2011, under the Obama plan, an additional 10 million filers would pay zero taxes while cashing checks from the IRS.

(A check is a cut to below zero!)

This is The Socialist Dream. (End of history!)

But Byron's version goes in a cycle, like this:

(1) The hated rich pay all the taxes, and everybody else rides free. (Whee!)

(2) That's only fair, because the rich got rich by exploiting everybody else. (Turnabout. Pay-back. High time!)

(3) Elections become auctions, with votes to the one who can promise the most free goodies, paid for by somebody else. (Christmas!)

(4) That's how you get to socialism through the ballot box, without a revolution. (Much nicer. Human face!)

(5) Ordinary people, now so generously provided for, become happier and more productive, and the society surges forward in every way. (All for one, and one for all. Same boat! Community! Heaven on Earth!)

(6) But that vision is based in total ignorance of both economics and human nature, two things that are intimately linked. (Bummer!)

(7) They're linked because, in essence, economics is just a formalization of human nature, and the implications of that nature when it comes to making and distributing things. (Wait, they said there'd be no math!)

(8) So when the economics gets weird and unnatural, none of it turns out to work. (They said there'd be no work!)

(9) Socialists blame the failure on current human nature, for not meeting the requirements of the new system. (Thank God for tautologies!)

(10) To succeed, the new system requires the New Socialist Man, whose human nature is different, and better. (Like Ralph Nader! Like Ben and Jerry!)

(11) Creating him requires increasingly brutal attempts to modify and reform the human raw material at hand. (Eggs! Omelets!)

(12) As a result, and before too long, all but the leadership are oppressed, poor, or dead. (Oh, dear. The leaders weren't New Socialist Men, either?)

(13) Socialists do not count this as a failure, but merely a badly flawed attempt that, naturally, went awry. (That wasn't real socialism! Not what we meant, not what we meant at all!)

(14) The Socialist Dream remains untouched and undiminished, sure to find success the next time out. (Zimbabwe still has plenty of potential!)

The End-Beginning.

Bailout?

Don Surber:

The Dow is down 1,400 points since the House passed the bailout.

Way to toss an anchor to an economy that was taking on a little water.

But who the hell knows? These economies are such a complicated and indecipherable mix of markets and government regulations and interventions, that we'll probably never be able to figure out what should have been done, or not done.

There is an old joke about the chief Soviet economist who was asked to describe his socialist dream world. He answered that it would be one where every country in the world would be run according to socialist economic planning, except New Zealand. Why not New Zealand? "Well, one market economy is needed so we can know where to set the prices of things."

The current mess makes me wish there was one economy someplace on the planet that ran according to pure market principles. I was about to say that it would allow us to see what a recovery would look like without any governmental attempt at a fix. But that's wrong, because an economy that ran on pure market principles could never get into a situation like this in the first place.

Byron

Great Quote

To quote Charley Chan, this hit tack on cranium:

What all his critics fail to admit is that he has enormous charm and sex appeal, and a characteristic man's man way of talking which dominates everyone around him, so that to a person ignorant of politics, he would seem just wonderful. The result is that it's truly terrifying to watch him work, because you wonder how can this man be stopped? Yet, on the other hand, it's possibly not as bad as it seems, for I think a lot of his support is not active enthusiasm for his ideas, methods, etc., but simply the response of ignorant people to his vast and clever charm. The hope is that when all the showdowns come, his minions may be startled to discover the ideas behind this guy they think is so great...Just let him pick up a social program, and he'll be a dictator, because as a demagogue he is really extraordinary. Even hating him, you have to admire him, because he's so good at what he does.

Quoted in the article, In the Ring, The New Yorker, Oct. 6, 2008.

From a letter by Norman Mailer to Charley and Jill Devlin, April 30, 1954, describing Joe McCarthy.