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.

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[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 2^nd 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 25^th 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.

Ideas. Dreams. IDEALS...

...I couldn't write it any better than Andrew said it on 9-11-2009:




[Courtesy, PJTV]

God's grace guarantees those who believe a place in the presence of the Almighty, but not an Earth free of weeds, stones, tragedy or misguided humans.  Our Constitutional Republic guarantees the ideal (administered by imperfect people) of freedom to do your best, but not certain success.

NOVEMBER is coming!

...the People are coming back to their rightful place as the source of authority in the United States; one nation, under God.


[thanks to the BluesFuzion Band]

Oh, so simple…

How easy it would have been.  Assuming the builders of the “Cordoba House” Mosque and training center overshadowing Ground Zero really are sincere peace-seekers, they could easily have avoided all the angst and enmity that the project has spawned.

Imagine a truly “multicultural” facility, instead of a totally Islamic Mosque, cultural center, training facility and communications hub; with "multicultural" and a promise of  “space for Christian and Jewish prayer” tossed in late in the game (note that the Quran does not permit “infidels to approach the Mosque”).

A site other than the closest available real estate could have been selected.  There could have been a clear statement of support for America and condemnation of all terrorists.  Why not openly offer the sources of funding to allay fears of extremist infiltration?  Or perhaps show the blueprints, with the equal spaces for non-Muslim use clearly delineated.  What if there was a plaque outside, dedicating the facility to the “2,416 innocent victims and their 403 heroic rescuers murdered by cowardly perverters of Islam”?  Imagine a bronze sculpture in the lobby, depicting a man, woman and child being pulled from wreckage by a FDNY firefighter and a P.A. or NYPD officer.  If this were the case, there would have been no outcry.  People would have lined up to donate and NY construction workers would have fought for space on the building crew.

Instead, the financing is hidden and has still-unclear links to Iran, Hamas and other terrorists.  The Imam says that the U.S. is to blame for its own attack and should adopt Sharia law.  He threatens the U.S. with violence from the anger of “exploding Islam” if the site were changed.  The facility is named “Cordoba House” after an 8^th century, triumph-celebrating Mosque in Spain (Islam has dozens of towers at victory sites).

As a result, Americans, tired of being targets, are enraged at the insults and perceived threat.  American Muslims have fueled violence before.  They groan as their own President endorses the Mosque and hires its Imam to represent their views in other countries and pedal his book*, while spending taxpayer money to build more mosques across the Middle East.   They know about Constitutional Rights of property owners, but exercise their own right to express their opinions, only to be set upon by Leftist politicians and moronic columnists.  Their story is that America is populated by bigots and religious intolerants - - though we welcome legal immigrants, elected a Black President and invented freedom of religion and speech.

One spun-out “pastor” (only 50 followers) intends to throw fuel and Qurans on the fire in protest and will probably cost more Americans their lives.  Every conservative leader and commentator decries this decision.  But there is no comment from the Socialists press and “representatives” or “moderate Muslims” about Christians kidnapped and beheaded for years, or their churches banned from entire countries.  A small arson at a Sufi Mosque in Tennessee, likely set by Shias, is instantly blamed without evidence on Christians.  Mere possession of a Bible is a serious crime in Middle Eastern countries, while there are thousands of unmolested Mosques across the U.S.  American flags are burned and threats are shouted; no change from previous decades.  Evidently, American “property rights” in their minds means only “possession of land for a Mosque” and not “possession of a book for whatever I want” and, right or wrong, transfers to everyone in America.

I pray that sensible and peaceful Muslims will yet prevail and we can welcome a legitimate house of God to some other neighborhood.


*[ED NOTE: Since the publication of this blog, SophosArchaeus has learned that the book written by Imam Rauf in 2004, now titled "What's right with Islam is what's right with America", was originally published in Arabic (in Indonesia) under a slightly different name.  It was originally titled (English translation), "A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of America Post-9/11".  "Dawa" is a complex Islamic term amounting to the tenet that Islam "shall" cover all the Earth, by whatever means.  Proselytism that is green-lighted for lying, threatening and murder, as well as patience and masked stealth, as Progressive Socialists advance.  Here is a little gem that demonstrates DAWA in it's "friendly face": http://www.dawanet.com/methods/publicschool.dawapublic.asp]