Marxist Logic

Early in the beginning of the primaries Democrats were complaining that Republicans get help from PAC, 527s and "big corporate" donors and get around financing rules, Obama was one of the loudest critics. Although it was laughable because the Democrats have many more PACs and 527 and a huge benefactor in George Soros who funds or started many of the DNC oriented PACs and organizations.

Once McCain was the nominee he reached out and said he would accept the strict public financing rules and invited the potential Democrat nominees to do the same. Barack Hussein Obama accepted and agreed to it. In the meantime Obama started getting mysterious and untraceable funds from overseas and domestic donors, and Obama realized he would fair better if he retracted his agreement and kept taking this untraceable and seemingly unlimited source of campaign money.

John McCain, being a man of honor, did not go back on his word. In the two months from the end of the GOP convention until November 4th he will receive the maximum $84M from the Federal Elections Committee. Obama demonstrating the lack of value even he places on his own words collected $150M in the month of September alone. Much of it via untraceable pre-paid VISA cards.

So McCain got $42 million and Obama got $150 million. In the name of fairness, and in order to abide by his desire to spread the wealth around he should give the McCain $75 million.
Barack Obama said it is fair and better for everyone when we spread the wealth around, Joe Biden said it is patriotic.

Now some may be tempted to say that is not fair. That McCain had the opportunity to raise as much money as he wanted, but he chose not to. Others might say that they both had he same opportunity but Obama had more skill, worked harder, or was just luckier to get the breaks and earn more money.

Some would propose that the two pool their funds and split it evenly, $91 million for each... but that would be unfair to expect the candidate with the least money to have to give up what little he had while Obama acquired almost 4 times his wealth in just one month.

And in order to oversee this transfer of funds they will need to establish a government agency that acts independent of the FEC; establishing a non-governmental organization to assist this transfer would not be satisfactory. So in order to get John McCain the $75 million from Obama, it will be necessary to tax the Obama campaign 187.5 million dollars since only about 40% of all government programs directly assist the recipients, the balance is overhead.

A fair program and efficiently managed by the government.

The "R" Word

(originally posted October 28, 2008)

A few months back a rumor was started (likely by someone on the right) that there was a telling video of Michelle Obama giving a speech and using "The R Word". The R word in this case was rumored to be RETRIBUTIONS. Then someone started a rumor (most likely by someone on the left) that Sean Hannity had the video and was holding it during the "Stop Hillary Express" campaign he was running, and that he planned to reveal it once Obama won the nomination.

By now most people realize that the video wasn't a video, it was an audio tape. STRIKE ONE!

And it wasn't Michelle Obama, it was Barack. STRIKE TWO!!

And the "R" word wasn't retributions, it was REDISTRIBUTE. STRIKE THREE!!!

But it's not out! Because it was a good rumor, it played into the circus surrounding Rev Wright, a black angry man, and attributed it to Michelle Obama, a black angry woman. Easy to believe.

However, instead of the Black Liberation philosophy of retributions it is the Marxist philosophy of redistribution of wealth that was being discussed.

And what makes that hard to believe is that Barack Obama and Joe Biden started talking about redistribution of wealth before the tape surfaced. And that is the most incredible thing of all. That a candidate from a major party was telling people he was going to spread the wealth around. Well not their wealth, our wealth. Or rather what we consider our wealth to be.

Which brings me to the thing I wanted to write about. When Joe Biden says that he and Obama have no plant to redistribute wealth he is technically correct. That is right, he is correct. mark your calenders, because pretty much everything else Joe says is wrong or a lie... mostly its a lie.

You see, what Obama and Biden are talking about doing is NOT redistributing wealth; they are going to redistribute income.

While they pretend to be "progressive" and "reformers" they are elitists. Oddly enough since neither of them are in the wealthy category, but they are rich according to most people's standards.

But they are not truly Marxist or socialist, they are just borrowing those principles. They are allowing people to keep their wealth (for now anyway) and are increasing taxes on income. Sure they want to reinstitute the estate taxes making sure the government gets their hands on more of a family's wealth after dad dies, but the wealthy have foundations, trusts, and other means with which to protect their assets from the tax man.

What they want to do is increase the tax burden on the middle and upper middle classes while bestowing that money on the lower classes. The sums they are talking about does not begin to relieve the burden on the lower class, but it does increase their numbers. For the last 25 years the percentage of households living in poverty and earning lowest 20% of income has declined. While the top 40% of wage earners has increased. In this period, from 1983 until 2002 the poverty rate has dropped and the middle class has risen. From 2002 until 2008 poverty continued to decline along with the middle class, which declined because the upper class grew.
So when Joe Biden says "Bush devastated the middle class", it is because they moved into the top 40% of wage earners. And while it is accurate to claim that in the Bush administration the middle class shrunk, it is at the same time bit disingenuous, because those people succeeded in moving into the upper class.

Obama has stated he wants to let the Bush tax cuts expire... all of them, capital gains, estate tax, and income tax. So that increases taxes on everyone, not just those making more than the $250K figure he has been throwing about. A family that earns $75,000 will see their income tax burden increase by $3,000 a year. Children tax credits? Gone. And of course the marriage penalty is back, Obama has been careful to say taxpayer instead of wage earner in his speeches.

Of course the tax credits that he proposes are nothing more than entitlements for the low end wage earners. The problem is that unless you do not earning anything, those tax credits are being used to partially pay for the increase in your tax burden. And the increase at the corporate end of the spectrum, who pays for that? The consumer. And who, according to progressive theory, does the increased prices (to pay for the increased taxes) affect the most? The most vulnerable end of the low pay scale. But that is OK, because Obama has already accounted for that in his tax credits.

So his tax credits will go for paying taxes. How ironic.

But if his tax credits go to pay taxes, why bother to redistribute income? Because it will increase the number of poor and those in poverty who need to be served by government programs. It will (in the short time at least) decrease the discretionary spending of people who donate the most to private and faith based charities who are far more efficient at tending to those in need than the government. That will increase the number of people who will have to be served by the government.

It is about growing the government and increasing dependence on the government.

You see, if Obama and Biden really planned on redistributing wealth Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, T. Boone Pickens and every major corporation in the country would buy every available minute of air time on TV to run ads against him. But instead they are silent. And they are silent because Obama wants to redistribute income, not wealth.

In the US the top 5% of wager earners represent 22% of all income but 59% of all wealth. Obama's tax plan will tax their income, but not their wealth. Their money is safe. We cannot say the same thing

Integrity

A trait overlooked by many. However, consciously or not, it is a characteristic many seek… at least in others. I have a huge character flaw, I take getting lied to personally. It is one of the reasons that I cannot get behind Obama, although his supporters are saying that Obama is not a liar, he is promising higher taxes and enlarging the welfare state, not issues liberal Democrats have readily admitted in a close election.

But what he is not admitting is the truth about his associations. He is not admitting he is a socialist. And he is attacking people who dare to question his integrity. His supporters used Ohio state computers to dig up info on Joe the Plumber. But savagely attacking a private citizen for asking a question about taxes when you approached him on his street is not an issue of integrity, B. Hussein’s other character flaws are for another blog(s).

The polls are telling.

President Bush’s ratings are dismal, although not the lowest of any sitting President, primarily because the media and his political opponents launched attacks calling his integrity into question. It wasn’t the missteps of the Iraq war that damaged his ratings, it was the perception that he lied about his reasons for getting into the war. It wasn’t low for allowing Congress to ignore his repeated warnings of the imminent failure of the economy, nor , unbelievably, was it the actual failure of the economy… it was the perception that the economy was bad despite all key indicators being up. The Democrats in Congress and the media was telling everyone how bad the economy was for the best 5 year period in American history. People gave him low ratings because they perceived he lacked the integrity to address the faltering economy, that he was ignoring the economy rather than fixing it. Others gave his low ratings for failing to stand up to the lies, letting the deceit go unchallenged is also an integrity issue.

Congress is another example of a lack of integrity affecting public opinion. The 110th session of Congress came in promising to change the way government worked. Nancy Pelosi, the presumed Speaker of the House, promised reform, honesty, and transparency in making earmarks. She then made a grand show of her first “100 Hours”, which took 6 weeks to reach because she was only counting legislative hours. As she celebrated her 6 “essential” pieces of legislation that she rammed through the house without debate people noticed that apart from the raise in the minimum wage people noticed it took 40 days to get to her 100 hours and she is celebrating one accomplishment, the minimum wage increase, the others were partisan window dressing. And in the time it took her to reach 100 hours Congress’ approval rating was below 40%... within a year it would be around 26% and before the end of the 110th Congress she will have guided the approval rating to the lowest of any modern Congress… below 10%. Of course she wasn’t alone, her partner in the Congress, Harry Reid helped. Their phoniness shines like a beacon in the night, they have no integrity and are proud about it… the people understand that.

The third, and most important example of how people expect integrity, is the media. People’s trust for the media exceeds that of the President and eclipses that of Congress, but that is very likely because the polls to gauge people’s trust in the media were also commissioned by the media. In a May 2008 poll 46% of people said they trust the media, with only 19% totally believing them. Instead of stepping back to see where this break in perception lies (media outlets in the US are commercial establishments, loss of market share equals loss of revenue) they dropped all pretences of being dispassionate reporters of events and started creating stories, essentially engaging in yellow journalism. Ironically one of the prime offenders, and one which is bleeding money because of it (but they refuse to admit they are wrong, it must be everyone else), is the New York Times. The New York Times, formally known as the Newspaper of Record, was started in 1851 as a conservative alternative to the yellow journals fighting it out for NYC market share. While Hearst and Pulitzer gained fame and then notoriety for their patently false reporting, the New York Times was given the moniker The Gray Lady, because it used a standard print and format and avoided the bombastic inflammatory headlines the other NYC papers used.

People expect the media to be honest and have integrity. The standard for broadcast newscasters was Walter Cronkite. He was the voice of authority and an icon for generations. At his pinnacle 30 million people a night turned on CBS to hear Walter Cronkite tell them what was happening in the world. Today all three major networks don’t share 30 million viewers. And while apologists can try to point out there is now cable competition, the truth remains that the decline started almost 20 years after CNN came on the scene. It was the birth of FoxNews that gave a home to people who wanted to hear more than what was becoming a more and more leftist distortion of events. The broadcast news and cable stations (along with many local non-affiliated stations) allowed their editorial content to filter the news, and eventually ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and many non-network stations stopped broadcasting news and started airing propaganda.

I’ve blogged in the past about the difference between perspective and spin. But Dan Rather’s airing of the patently false story concerning President Bush’s military records was met with limited outrage because by 2004 people expected the media to lie to them. People on the right were outraged, not so much about the deliberate lie being broadcast, but that no one else was outraged by it.

The media has forfeited their standing in society. Their integrity is gone. And like virginity, once it is gone it cannot be restored. The liberals (why be dishonest, after all I’m talking about integrity), I mean the socialists who hope to get into office with super majorities of both houses and the executive branch of the government, have announced their plans on how to limit dissent. The first plan they have is called “The Fairness Doctrine”. Since talk radio, along with FoxNews has led to the declining viewership and readership of main stream media sources, the MSM is likely to side with them on it.

But if the government’s power is allowed to go unchecked, one day perhaps the main stream media will start to talk about it, attempting to regain its previous status. But it will be too late. No one will believe them as they have already rendered themselves irrelevant. And the last vanguard against tyranny, a free press, will find itself at the mercy of the government, rather than acting as the fourth estate, designed to keep the government in check.

Our founding fathers’ were careful to provide for a free press in the constitution to assure the citizens will always have a free press. The 1st Amendment, like the rest of the constitution, is a protection from the government for its citizens, not the press. And in giving up their integrity and valuing propaganda over substance the media didn’t fail themselves, but the people they were expected to protect.

Best line concerning the bailout

(originally posted September 26, 2008)

While most readily admit the economy is too complex to understand how all of the pieces come together, not to mention how those pieces interact to affect the whole, Mike Pence of Indiana puts things into perspective for the common man.

"There are those in the public debate who say we must act now," said Indiana
Republican Mike Pence. "The last time I heard that, I was on a used car lot. The truth is every time somebody tells you that you have to do the deal right now, it usually means they are going to get the better part of the deal. The American people
deserve a seat at the table in this debate as well."

The Enemies Within the Gates

" A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.

For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lie deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murder is less to fear."

Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106 - 43 B.C.

Since 2006 the liberals in Congress, and running for the Presidency, have promised a lot of programs, entitlements and changing of tax codes to pay for them. But it is not the money I am concerned about, it is the flagrant disregard of the constitution and the core values of our country that these urban limousine liberals want to inflict on thecountry.

They talk of "spreading the wealth", and giving everyone "affordable health care",
all of it couched in lies and deceit.

Compare Obama's 18 month primary run where he was upholding his position as the most liberal person in the Senate with his rhetoric, only to do a 180 degree turn when he began to face off against McCain. It has only been the past three weeks where his campaign has decided to re-energize their leftist base and begin to publicly discuss the increased taxes, generous tax credits, and windfall profit penalties out in the open... they have already deemed themselves unbeatable.

What they want is a socialist society and redistribution of wealth. They want to change our
federal republic into a socialist union. Marxism has failed in every instance it has been attempted. Just as throwing more money at poverty doesn't make people richer, frittering away the country's wealth won't make socialism work either, it will just delay the inevitable.

They want to gut the constitution... they have said as much. They want to change the moral fabric of our country... they have stated our values are anachronistic. They want us to support them as they construct an all powerful state that grants privileges instead of protecting our
liberties.

They believe that everything that this country was founded on is merely prologue, it is not pertinent in this modern world... especially, they say, our constitution. While an Obama victory may not be the end of the world, it may very well be the beginning of the end of the world's oldest constitution based federal republic.

Why deny the obvious?

(originally posted October 21, 2008)

Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Hillary Clinton, Rangel, Schumer, Biden, and a few dozen other elected members of the US Congress are socialists.

Recently Obama and Biden have dropped all pretences at being socialists except one; they deny it when it is painfully obvious to most everyone else. Like Bill Clinton lying to the bitter end about not having sex with "that woman", then having to redefine oral sex as not being sex, then questioning the definition of the word "is", piling on the lies until everyone felt sorry for him and even Clinton's worst detractors wished Starr would let the guy off the hook.
First Biden said that people making money should feel patriotic about paying more taxes. Then Obama told Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher that it is only fair to take some of his wealth and spread it around.

To quote Karl Marx: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

Which is great if you are the one who chooses to need. What about those who chose to exercise their abilities to succeed? Obama says paying more in taxes to give some to those in need is only fair.

Fair to whom? The person who earned the money to make a better life for them and their family? Or to the person who through choice or circumstance did not exercise their talents or abilities?

The people supporting Obama are some of the same people who hate George Bush. One of the reasons for their irrational rage is what they perceive to be how Bush misused the power of the government. Imagine the use of the government to raise your taxes, and here is a fact check for you, Obama supported raising the tax rates on taxpayers earning as little as $42,000/year during the primaries. What makes anyone think his $250,000 tax hike will stay that high? Obama, a proven liar, is more likely to drop the rate as he called for during his short tenure in the Senate and in his primary run.

Another quote from Karl Marx: "Democracy is the road to socialism."

In this case the Democrat party is intent on bringing socialism to the shores of the US. Instead of being a world leader, they want the US to take a position secondary to that of the UN. Everything these socialists say they want to do runs contrary to the Constitution of our country.

Using words such as "fair", "spread the wealth", ironically wrapping themselves in the flag to guilt people into feeling bad about not paying enough in taxes, are typical strategies employed to convert democracies to socialist states.

Since Obama/Biden and Democrat "leaders" in Congress are slowly revealing their plans, and using the jargon of socialism, why don't they just admit that is what they are?

Why are they embarrassed about who they are? Perhaps because instead of having the intelligence or economic acumen to do justice to their idol Karl Marx, they more closely resemble the Marx Brothers.

(originally posted October 3, 2008)

So the bailout bill passed. The US steps one closer towards socialism and the government grows one bureau larger. And the debt grow by over $1,000,000,000,000. The GDP grew by a meager .7%, and the deficit grew by 14.28%.

And this I promise you, the deficit spending and unbridled growth of governemnt is just beginning... this is not a one shot deal.

$700B in unfunded monies to go to purchase toxic mortgages. But they tell us that once the banks get healthy they will buy those loans back at a profit. Why? Those loans caused the problems, why would banks waste good capital on those turds.

Another $105 billion in rescues monies for flood victims, earmarks, buyouts, tax rebates and reductions in taxes… only $30 billion of which were funded.

On the positive side, and a giant kick in the rocks to all the Republicans that voted for the bill because of the tax breaks… you can rest assured they will be repealed in the first piece of legislature of the next congressional session. Well, all except the AMT since every congressperson is subject to that.

Now I understand that many Republicans were afraid to vote against this bill because many of the goodies thrown into the bailout bill were targeting Republican areas to get them to flip. I also don’t doubt that the Wicked Witch if the West had Steny remind the 95 Democrats who voted against it the first time that Queen Nancy would remember them when she is deciding committee assignments over the break.

But the reason I am angry is not because Congress ignored 82% of the population who was against the bill. I am angry for two reasons.

The first is that not one single leader took time to explain why the bail out was necessary to the American public. In a moment straight out of the Joe Biden playbook the Congress decided it was smarter than us… so smart in fact this issue was above our ability to understand. So instead they bought off each other in a series of payoffs and reach arounds. The comtempt they show for us is amazing… abso-freaking-lutely amazing.

The second is that not one of the 338 legislators who voted to support the bill in the House and Senate stopped to consider fixing the problems that caused the economy to lock up. The problem was not a lack of $700B dollars, the problem was not a lack of regulation (the regulators warned of this and were dismissed out of hand) the problem is the government had their hands in the affairs of private business by forcing the banks to issue these bad loans in the first place.

The problem that led to this crisis was Congress sticking their noses where it didn’t belong… and their solution is to become more involved in the problem. The solution is less interference, not greater interference.

This bailout… and make no mistake, it is not a rescue… is addressing a symptom and not the disease. It is akin to bailing out a sinking boat without patching the hole in the bottom of it; no matter how much you try the water will keep coming in until you patch the hole. Congress’ plan is to make the hole bigger so the water drains out of the boat faster.

I believe there is room for these 338 Congresspersons who put their own self-interests about that of the nations at Guantanamo. They can use part of the $700 billion dollars to buy the orange jumpsuits… maybe Sheriff Joe can donate a few pairs of pink undies for them.