Moderates United

I keep seeing a leftwing talking point–and they clearly do use talking points–that either tax rates are at their lowest in forever, or that the government is getting smaller.

The core issue with regard to taxes is: how much money is being taken out of the private sector?

The core issue with regard to government size is: how much money is the government spending? 

This should be simple, but as always the Left is able to make traps for fools through disciplined repetition.

Here are the numbers:

You will note that receipts under Obama are less than under Bush in his second term (no one disputes tax cuts take a few years to grow the tax base, and 2002-2003 were largely affected by the recession Bush inherited combined with the 9/11 attacks), since the economy has sucked for his entire Presidency, but that expenditures have gone up steadily.  You will note that we first spent $2 trillion in 2000, under Clinton, but that we collected $2.3 trillion, which is why we had a budget surplus.  Obama in his FIRST year spent $3 trillion, which is a 50% increase over Clinton and his Republican Congress.

Putting a stick in the spokes of the Obama “narrative” is not hard, since there is no narrative other than hating ideological others, and trying to distract people with smoke and mirrors.

Here is a sample, from a post I made at the HuffPo, responding to the farcical continued efforts to make it an issue that a rich man pays taxes at the rate we would expect:

Do you all realize that your children will have to live in the world we
are making, and that we are going BANKRUPT rapidly? For all intents and
purposes, Obama has blocked every budget attempted since the
Republicans took control of the House in 2011. He has grown our
national debt more in four years than Bush did in eight, and Bush’s
spending was ALREADY indefensible. Obama is the first President in
American history to spend $3 trillion. The problem is not a lack of
taxation, but a growing government payroll.

We have not had unemployment this high for this long since the Great Depression.

We have lost most of the Middle East to anti-American zealots, and
invested American lives and treasure to do so. Obama’s foreign policy
has been a dreadful joke.

And we have not even reached the important chunks of Obamacare, which
will cut the profits of many small business in half, and which has
caused 83% of doctors to think about leaving the field.

And you think it news that a rich man whose money mainly comes from
investments is taxed at the rate ALL people are taxed on who make money
on investments? Of course not: you just hope it will distract from
Obama’s failures, and patent refusal to live up to his own promise to do
the job in four years or quit.

Apparently the thesis in “Dreams from my Real Father” is that Obama’s maternal grandfather, Stanley Dunham, was a CIA agent.  But if he were a staunch anti-Communist, as anyone doing that job in the early 1960’s would have needed to be, why grant Obama regular access to a known Soviet agent?  It makes no sense at all, even as a grandfatherly duty.  He would have known what Davis would do to a young mind, cut off from his mother.

It seems more likely that Dunham HIMSELF was a Soviet agent, or even a double agent.  If he was investigated by the FBI, that would have been the reason. 

Obama quite literally spent his entire childhood, in my view, surrounded by people who hated America, and who wanted to impose the tyranny of the few upon the many.

Here
is the analysis of the picture by a professional. The photo was taken
from “Barack Obama’s” Facebook page. 

When you start to think about the
implications of this, they are huge. His name perhaps ought to be Frank
Marshall Davis, Jr. 

We have a President whose mother allowed
pornographic images to be taken of her by a black Communist back in the
early sixties, and who allowed him to impregnate her outside of wedlock
with her (he was apparently already married). You can’t get farther
outside the mainstream than that. 

We have a President who spent a lot
of time with this actual father, who was greatly influenced by his
actual father, and whose actual father was a Comintern agent and card
carrying member of the American Communist Party long after Stalin’s
atrocities were well known. That man sits in the White House, privy to
all our secrets, and capable of controlling large segments of our
private economic lives through fiats not being blocked effectively by
Congress.

We have a media complex which has allowed this to happen.

 Finally, for now at least, we have to consider that the Obama campaign ITSELF might have started the rumor Obama was born in Kenya, to distract attention from the truth that he WAS born in Hawaii, does have a birth certificate, and that on that birth certificate it lists Frank Marshall Davis as the father.  As stupid as the American people are, that would have been too much even for the complicit media to spin into a positive, not once the pictures of Obama’s mother came out, and people started reading “Sex Rebel: Black”, and some of Davis’ old columns.

Plus, the very name Barack Obama would have been shown to have been a conscious fabrication, a deception launched at the very outset of Barry’s life, and continued ever since. 

With a father like that, though, one can readily see why the Ayers would like him.

 

I
am going to go on record as believing that it is more plausible that
Frank Davis was “Obama’s” father than the Kenyan. I say this based upon this piece, summarizing the book “Dreams from my Real Father”. It answers a lot of
otherwise challenging questions. Two pieces of evidence I find
particularly solid: the airbrushed picture; and the fact that Obama’s
mother was apparently photographed naked on a couch we have a picture of
Davis sitting on; and that Snopes has apparently backed off their claim
that these nudes represent another woman, since while their faces are
similar, their breasts are apparently not.  I remember reading their treatment of it some time ago, and just Searched “naked pictures of Obama’s mother”, and nothing popped up.

 If we survive this period, we
will someday look back in wonder at how we could trust so much power to
someone we knew so little about.

 To be clear, the Communist ideas likely filling Obama’s still-adolescent and unformed mind to this day will, if implemented, HURT most those he claims to want to help.  They will generalize misery, not alleviate it.

 

As I think about it, why not go directly for the jugular: ask lifelong poor Democrats in the inner city: what have the Democrats DONE for you in your lifetime?  Yes, you get little dribbles and drabs of money, but do you have a GOOD LIFE?  Do you see any HOPE of a good life?  Barack Obama promised you hope and change.  Do you really think he EVER thought he could make that much of a difference in your lives?  You’ve been voting Democrat for 40 years.  Were you aware Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican, as were most civil rights leaders back then?

Do you think voting Democrat for ANOTHER 40 years is going to get you a good life?  What do you think, honestly?  My goal is to facilitate, to broker, to enable, to generate new JOBS that pay well, to foster economic growth, and I am quite willing to focus the attention on these areas that Obama has NOT.

Nobody’s food stamps or Medicaid or public housing is going to get cut.  What I want to do is give you an ALTERNATIVE, to having your own house in a neighborhood you choose, to picking a job you want, to paying you own way, and beginning to live a better life.

What do you think? 

As I see it, the worst outcome is complete rejection–which is the status quo anyway, as he more or less rightly noted–but the best outcome is fostering thought in people Obama can count on to vote against their own self interest in every election.

I want to be clear: if we reelect Obama, our economic decline will continue and worsen.  There will be no recovery.  High unemployment will become the new normal, since we are transitioning to a European welfare State, and that at a time when the bank is already broken.  The continued malaise will hurt the already poor the worst, and large segments of our ghettos will become much more hellish than they already are.  Death will walk the streets, and elitists like Obama will not see it, since they sit in the back of limousines, vacation in Martha’s Vineyard and the like, send their kids to private schools, and don’t go within 10 miles of the worst ghettos.

I would like to see Mitt Romney schedule some campaign stops in ghettos.  Obama won’t do it: there’s no money in ghettos, and he doesn’t give a shit about them.  But it would be highly effective symbolically.  And I think he needs to bring ideas.

Here are my own: Kiva.org has already added American small, poor, entrepreneurs to their client list.  Make these contributions tax exempt, and publicize this great organization.

Further, make all business startups within ten miles of a designated “economic development area” exempt from ALL taxation for two years.

Finally, let them choose their schools.  Give them vouchers and let them find what school makes the most sense.  Poor people love this idea.  It is teachers unions and Democrat machine hacks who hate it, as it dilutes their money flow.

Overall, the reality–and hence the truth that needs to be conveyed–is that Republicans will stand by ANYONE who wants to work to improve their life, and that Democrats will stand in their way.  Get this idea out in a big way, and interesting things will start to happen, in my view.

I was watching Thursday football tonight–I will be honest here, and admit beer was involved in this post–and this crazy idea hit me: what if instead of football we dedicated three hours every Thursday and Monday night to substantive policy debates about the future of America?  I know, the future of the most powerful and affluent nation in the history of the world is not exactly “EXCITING”, but what if we could pretend that foreign policy decisions matter, that monetary policy matters, that the fiscal policies of local, State and particularly the Federal government matter?  What if we pretended for some short period of time that the future of our children was important enough for us to tear ourselves away from men in tights throwing an unround ball?

Ludicrous, I know.  We all know that bad things never happen to Americans, and that no matter WHAT we do, everything will turn out swimmingly, since that is what happens in the movies.  We can always rely on that implausible Deus Ex Machina.

Still, lets’ continue down this path to crazyland:

What if we could link up conservatives and self-identified Liberals, not for stupid courtroom dramas once every two to four years, but twice weekly?

What if we debated the future of the national debt, on national TV, twice a week for a month?  Would Americans still be ill informed fucking imbeciles?  No, I doubt it. 

How is it we have become so stupid?  Nightly sleeping pills, delivered by the complicit media. It’s very frustrating, not least because the intelligent can plainly see that the policies advocated in absentia by the media (they never place their voice honestly on things; they just condemn through faint praise actually workable ideas) will work TO hurt most the people they claim they are helping.  The whole thing is a goatfuck start to finish, where NOBODY is helped except the elites who did not need helping in the first place.

Then they lie about it, to themselves, and everyone else, and resent INTENSELY those who fail to join them in their fantastic voyage, one at odds with the realities of those they are supposed “helping”.

Come on, y’all, let’s take a ride
Don’t you say shit, just get inside
It’s time to take your ass on another kind of trip
‘Cause you can’t have the hop if you don’t have the hip
 

Grab your gat with the extra clip
And close your eyes and hit the switch
We’re going to a place where everybody kick it
Kick it, kick it, yeah, that’s the ticket
 

Ain’t no bloodin’, ain’t no crippin’
Ain’t no punk ass nigga’s set trippin’
Everybody’s got a stack and it ain’t no crack
And it really don’t matter if you’re white or black
 

I wanna take you there like the Staple Singers
Put something in the tank and I know that I can bring ya
If you can’t take the heat, get yo’ ass out the kitchen
We on a mission
 

Come along and ride on a fantastic voyage
Slide, slide, slippity slide
With switches on the block in a ’65
Come along and ride on a fantastic voyage
Slide, slide, who ride?
No valley low enough or mountain high
 

I’m tryin’ to find a place where I can live my life
And maybe eat some steak with my beans and rice
A place where my kids can play outside
 

Without livin’ in fear of a drive-by
 

And even if I get away from them drive-by killers
I still got to worry about those snitch ass niggas
I keep on searching and I keep on looking
But niggas are the same from Watts to Brooklyn
 

I try to keep my faith in my people
But sometimes my people be acting like they evil
You don’t understand about runnin’ with a gang
‘Cause you don’t gang bang
 

And you don’t have to stand on the corner and slang
‘Cause you got your own thang
You can’t help me if you can’t help yourself
You better make a left
 

Come along and ride on a fantastic voyage
Slide, slide, slippity, slide
I do what I do just to survive
Come along and ride on a fantastic voyage
Slide, slide, who ride?
That’s why I pack my 45
 

Life is a bitch and then you die
Still tryin’ to get a peace of the apple pie
Every game ain’t the same ’cause the game still remains
Don’t it seem kinda strange? Ain’t a damn thing change
 

If you don’t work, then you don’t eat
And only down ass niggas can ride with me
Hop, hop, hop your five quickly down the block
Stay suckafree and keep the busters off your jock
 

You gotta have heart, son, if you wanna go
Watch this sweet chariot swing low
Ain’t nobody cryin’, ain’t nobody dyin’
Ain’t nobody worried, everybody’s tryin’
 

Nothin’ from nothin’ leaves nothin’
If you wanna have something, you better start frontin’
What ya gonna do when the 5 roll by?
You better be ready, so you can ride
 

Come along and ride on a fantastic voyage
Slide, slide, slippity, slide
When you’re living in a city it’s do or die
Come along and ride on a fantastic voyage
Slide, slide, who ride?
You better be ready when the 5 roll by

Just roll along, that’s what you do
Just roll along, that’s right
Just roll along, that’s what you do
Just roll along, that’s right
 

Do you want to ride with me? Do you want to ride with me?
Do you want to ride with me? Do you want to ride with me?
Do you want to ride with me? Do you want to ride with me?
Do you want to ride with me? Do you want to ride with me?

The left wants to spin this as a Romney “gaffe” (Oh, he’s so Joe Biden-like, isn’t he?  If we could admit Biden is a fucking moron, of course), and the right wants to spin it as the truth.

The reality is that one could argue that those who get handouts will always want handouts, but I think this is a mistake.  In America, at least since Clinton, our welfare benefits have not really been that generous, from what I can tell.  In Britain you have multiple generations of people where NOBODY has had a job, but I don’t think that is how it works here.  I think single mothers get food stamps, public housing, and in some cases perhaps even a stipend of sorts, but the whole thing pretty well sucks.  It is not good living.  It is not happy living.  It is not “I’m going to go on vacation at the taxpayers expense” money, as they have in Britain and other nations.

We are not, in other words, so far along that we have a FULLY dependent class.  What we have are people who see few jobs in their neighborhoods that are worth a damn, and who tend to drift into poverty and apathy, or poverty and efforts to leverage what good jobs there ARE, which normally is in drug dealing.  High risk, but at least worth it if you succeed.

I think about this song from time to time: Breaking the Law

Here are the relevant lyrics:

There I was completely wasting, out of work and down
All inside it’s so frustrating as I drift from town to town
Feel as though nobody cares if I live or die
So I might as well begin to put some action in my life

Breaking the law, breaking the law
Breaking the law, breaking the law
Breaking the law, breaking the law
Breaking the law, breaking the law

So much for the golden future, I can’t even start
I’ve had every promise broken, there’s anger in my heart
You don’t know what it’s like, you don’t have a clue
If you did you’d find yourselves doing the same thing too

He breaks the law because WHY THE FUCK NOT?  He was promised the good life, a good job, to be taken care of. Everything was supposed to be golden.  But he voted for the good life, and got jackshit.  That is what Obama voters get.

What Romney and Republicans need to focus on is the fact that most poor people want something better, and many–certainly not all–are willing to WORK for it, GIVEN THE CHANCE.  They don’t get the chance, and THAT is why they vote for socialists like Obama.

But whenever they see a real CHOICE, if someone can convince them that they actually will create decent jobs–or to the point of my own political philosophy, not convince job creators not to hire–then Republicans are golden.

Democrats have delivered for Unions, union contractors, and some large campaign contributors.  Everybody else, including the poor, has been shit on and tossed onto the garbage heap.  Every couple years the Dem’s pretend to care about the poor, but they just want votes.

That makes this demographic primed for a take-over, by somebody CLEVER enough, and ARTICULATE enough to pull it off.

Romney, that is your mission, should you choose to accept it.

I can’t claim to know who will win in November–the ninth month in the old Roman calendar–but some things seem certain: the news media will still be highly biased to the Left; entrenched interests will remain entrenched, from those receiving corn subsidies, to banks protected by the FDIC, to welfare recipients, to politicians on one dole or another, to the Federal Reserve; truth will continue to be slanted to serve the needs of the postrational within our educational institutions; and many other negatives, as well as positives, will continue.

For the time being, we retain the rights to free speech, assembly, gun ownership, a fair trial, to vote, etc.  This is to the positive.

What I feel strongly we must look to for a strong, good, future, is a generalized capacity to think.  Within a democratic Republic, nothing can take the place of good thinking.  And I think a case can be made that this capacity has never been generalized anywhere, certainly not outside the educated elites, and our particular malady is that the elites are the worst offenders.

There is so malignant hatred out there, so much venom, so much blindness and deceitfulness, almost all of it on one side of the debate (a fact obscured by the further fact that they invest all their energies accusing their enemies of these traits): it is hard to know how to deal with it.  There is no truth you can speak which cannot, as Kipling had it, be twisted to make a trap for fools.

Generations of fools stand in front of us: generations of leftists who have dedicated their lives and enthusiasms to the task of making government omnipotent.  To what end, they cannot say, but since they long ago renounced concrete improvements in human conditions of life, their sacred duty has become a generalized infantilization of all nations.  Logically, if they can’t help people who are not infants, they CAN help them if they first make them helpless without them.

Again, this is hate, masquerading as love and compassion, and it is hard to know what to do with it.  They want you to quit, they want reason, justice, truth to mean whatever they need it to mean at any given moment.

Here is my truth: you can’t quit, and you can’t use their tactics.  They are good at what they do, which is shrinking minds to the point where they literally believe whatever they are told.  Even if we somehow got everyone to feed such minds accurate ideas, conservative ideas, they would still be infantilized.

We must take the high road.  It is a harder road, and it is an uncertain road.  But it is the only path with dignity, and without dignity, without honor, there is nothing.