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This blog consists mostly of common sense responses to happenings (news articles, political events, etc) that just cry out for someone to say "WHOA! Hang on a second, here!" Too many people get away with just inventing their own facts as they bull-rush their way through an argument.

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Tuesday, September 14, 2010

ObaMATH 102

For weeks, President Obama has been trying to re-educate the American people, to clarify his economic theories.  He has also been lecturing for most of his campaign – er, presidency - on the 101 course.  That was about interposing thousands of additional bureaucrats and 30 million non-contributing new patients into one-size-fits-all national health care, resulting in lower costs. And fixing Medicare and Medicaid by slashing one’s budget by a half trillion dollars and stuffing all previously uninsured folks (including 15 million illegal aliens) into the other. Also seizing the entire student loan industry and taxing real estate sales (no kidding).
The new, advanced course teaches that everything from 250,001 on up is “one million”.  300k = 1m, 400k=1m, etc.  In speech after speech, Obama has regurgitated that he wants to extend expiring tax cuts, only for “the middle class”, to stimulate new job creation. (Please don’t confuse this with a third “Stimulus package”, as the first 2 failed to stimulate.  And don’t mention that the tax cuts were Bush’s)  Finally admitting that small businesses create most jobs and government can’t*, Obama, Pelosi, Reid & Co. want to endorse low taxes for employers, but only those earning less than $250k per year.  Like “Cash for [fill in niche of the week] and the other limited-time, limited access government deals, Progressives like to pick our priorities and when to act on them for us.
[*now, if they would just stop interfering and let free market capitalism run... ]

Meanwhile, Obama says (repeatedly) that everyone earning above $250k is an evil “millionaire” and needs to be singled out.  However, those from $250,001 to $1,000,000 or more (top 4% of Americans) provide half of private industry jobs.  They also pay 70% of all income taxes, while 40% of Americans pay no income tax at all.  If you start with $250,001 and then pay four, $40k per year employees, plus materials, rent and utilities, plus taxes, plus crushing federal healthcare requirements, you’re done.  It leaves just enough to feed and house your own family.  Less than half of small-company employees fall into this micro-company category.  But class-warfare is a handy tool if you profit from division.
History class (if it isn’t taught by a Progressive professor) teaches that the sharp and deep Depression of 1920 was caused by Progressive President Wilson, bloating government and taxing the rich.  (He also re-segregated the military and purged blacks from government jobs.)  When conservative Presidents Harding and Coolidge refused to “spend” their way out of it (lowering taxes across the board and shrinking government), the capitalist system righted itself and boomed into the “Roaring Twenties”.  Progressive Roosevelt reversed this and crushed the prosperity with the Crash of 1929.  His continued big government spending forged the recession into the Great Depression.  Only WWII drove enough production to end it.
Conservative Truman refused to over-regulate at the end of the war, and returning troops found prosperity and built California.  Progressive Carter dragged the economy down by swelling bureaucracy and raising taxes.  Conservative Reagan then slashed government and taxes, creating huge growth in the economy.  In each case, lower tax rates resulted in far more revenue being collected, due to increased prosperity, while higher taxes hurt the economy and lowered revenues.  Our capitalist Republic has grown for 234 years, despite Progressive interference.  No fully Socialist state ever lasted more than 70 years.
Even if “millionaires” were taxed at 100% (every nickel earned), it would not even pay the interest on the $14 trillion debt that Progressive programs will cost by 2015.  But taking an unfair share from them would probably teach them not to hire or produce very much.

- - - -


[ED. NOTE:  When published in the San Gabriel Valley Examiner, this essay drew a retort from a frustrated Leftist, who sought to undermine my primary points by nit-picking a few background notes.   Though he wasn't able to question the basic truths that every Keynesian/Socialist government has failed and wisely (minimally) regulated free markets have almost always succeeded, he did locate an editing error.  I offered the following response; limited space prevented publication.]

Fanmail!  Woo-hoo.

Thanks to Mike B--, writer of the 9-30 letter “History Lesson Upgraded”.  He calls me both “columnist” (waiting for payday) and “Professor” in regards to my “ObaMATH”.  I doubt he is serious, but I appreciate help.

Mr. B-- (B.A. in US History, 1972, San Fernando Valley College [CSUN]) is puzzled by my use of “Conservative” and “Progressive”, apparently thinking those are parties.  My point (not pointed enough, it seems) was that Progressives lurk in both major parties, though they own the DNC.  It’s the ideology, not the parenthetical “D” or “R” that matters.  I’m glad he agrees with the core fact: Socialists ruin economies.

B-- asserts that Progressive Woodrow Wilson could not have brought on the depression of 1920, as he had a stroke in 1919.  [Summary: previous administrations cannot affect economies months later.]

Yes, Wilson had a stroke, on October 2nd 1919, near the end of his second term (after he segregated the military and purged blacks from government).  B-- says it is “strange that the history books” only mention Wilson lying inert in the Lincoln bed (with no one in charge).  Perhaps B--’s books were written by Zinn, Morrison or some other revisionist.  Maybe he was distracted by the 30 faculty members held hostage by the SFVC Black Student Union, or the 10,000+ students burning their draft cards.

In any case, Mrs. Wilson, Edith, took it upon herself to hide Woodrow’s disability from everyone, including Congress.  He remained in office, but didn’t even meet with his cabinet until April 1920.  Edith took ‘important enough’ documents into the bedroom and came out with signatures or instructions.  She has been called the “steward” and the “first female president”.  I prefer “usurper”, since she had no authority to intervene in the Presidency, however, the 25th Amendment’s rules were not ratified until 1967.  But Edith was his confidant and shared his agenda.  So whether Woodrow whispered or Edith ruled, let’s acknowledge that Wilson finished his term and his tax-heavy, regulation-happy, big-government policies brought on the depression of 1920. 

Warren Harding was conservative, as pointed out.  Leftist “historians” (fiction writers) did judge him as a poor president, but that is largely because his reversal of taxes, spending and regulations allowed free-market Capitalism to make short work of the sharp and deep depression.  It gave the lie to their Keynesian theories.  (Maryland’s 2009 “millionaire tax” results prove it again.)

Calvin Coolidge followed (2 terms), and the back-to-back Capitalists produced the “Roaring Twenties” (cars, refrigerators, suits and ties, electrification, etc) despite continuing Leftist obstruction.   Their interference, normal market cycles and a global downturn (European Socialism) caused a banking and stock market crash in 1929, eight months into Herbert Hoover’s administration.

This is where Mr. B-- points out my editing error: the crash caused a recession and Roosevelt’s Leftist, welfare-state agenda drove it into the Great Depression, but he did not personally “crush the ‘20s”; my omitted Hoover intervened. His academic-based, socialist “economic modernization” didn’t avert or end the recession, but dragged it out through his term and into the 1930s.

I’m sorry my already very long ObaMATH didn’t include such in-depth footnotes on every president, Mike, but I’m sure the editor was relieved.  No term paper required, just better educated voters.