Brief • July 30, 2012
The Foundation
"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it." --Thomas Jefferson
Government
Democrats aim to hike taxes on the little guy
"Senate Democrats passed a so-called middle class tax cut [last] week on a mostly partisan vote, but the move was more political theater than tax legislation. For months, the Democrats, with President Obama leading the charge, have hammered home that they want to preserve lower tax rates for those Americans earning less than $250,000 a year and help pay for lost federal revenues by making wealthier individuals pay higher taxes. ... But who are those 'wealthiest Americans' the Dems keep citing? Illinois businessman Wilson F. Hunt Jr. recently passed on to me the details of how his small business, which he owns with his wife, will be ensnared in this scheme to soak the rich. Last year, his company reported $1.5 million in 2010 income. But because his company elects to pay taxes as a Sub-chapter S Corporation, all the company's profits are reported on the couple's individual income tax returns as the sole shareholders in the company. They paid almost $1.1 million in taxes in 2010, yet the couple paid themselves only a combined salary of $189,000. The rest of the income was put into retained earnings, which the company could then use to expand its business the following year. Hunt explains it this way: 'In order to earn a salary of $189,000 and continue growing our business last year, we had to pledge our house and most of our personal assets to a bank as collateral on a business loan. If the business were to fail, we could lose our home and life savings.' Yet the Democrats vilify people like him as the rich out to cheat the middle class. ... We shouldn't envy people like Hunt; we should thank them for helping build an economy that makes us all better off. But don't try to convince Democratic politicians -- they're too busy stoking class resentment to appreciate that some of those 'millionaires' are the ones out there actually creating jobs." --columnist Linda Chavez
Post your opinion on the Democrats' plan.
Re: The Left
"Economically speaking, no solution to the problem could be simpler than the most obvious one: spend less than one takes in, and start paying down the debt. Politically speaking however, the entire Democrat party and half of the Republican one are dedicated to the idea that dependency on the state is directly correlated with their ability to maintain power. A substantial number of clueless and/or self-entitled Americans are on board, and nothing assuages their sense of clueless self-entitlement more than the notion that someone else is not paying their 'fair' share. Understand how remarkable that kind of thinking is. Not only have such Americans been alleviated of the guilt and shame of living off someone else's effort, they have been told they have every reason to be self-righteous about it. Barring a sea change -- or a watershed election -- thoughtful Americans must face a sobering reality: the ideological bankruptcy of progressivism leads directly to the economic bankruptcy of the nation. Progressives will continue to lie and tell the nation it isn't so. Unfortunately for all of us, the math never lies." --columnist Arnold Ahlert
The Gipper
"I've come to believe there is little, if any, honesty in the media, and ethic is a word they are totally unfamiliar with." --Ronald Reagan
Political Futures
"Does the 2012 campaign look a lot like the 2004 campaign? Many Democrats think so. ... But, as William Galston of the Brookings Institution, an alumnus of the Clinton White House, writes in The New Republic, 'the evidence in favor of all these propositions is remarkably thin.' Galston points out that in 2004 no single issue was as prominent as the economy is this year and that on most significant issues George W. Bush had a clear edge by the end of the campaign. ... But there are at least two other salient differences between 2004 and 2012. One is that the 2004 election occurred during a period of unusual stability in American voting behavior. ... In other words, almost all voters in 2004 were firmly committed to one party or the other. ... But in recent years, lots of American voters, at least by historical standards, have flipped from one party to the other, and in both directions. The conventional wisdom is that we know with certainty the identity of the dozen or so battleground states. But the list has changed since 2008. ... There's another difference between 2004 and 2012 that is salient. In 2004, George W. Bush's Republican base was pretty much united on issues. Foreign policy realists and neocons were all on board. ... Every campaign cycle is different, and 2012 is more different from 2004 than many Democrats think." --political analyst Michael Barone
Opinion in Brief
"New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg didn't even wait for the bodies in Aurora, Colorado to cool before he began his usual braying for gun control. Well, if guns are the problem, perhaps Mayor Bloomberg could lead by example and disband the armed NYPD security detail that protects him 24-7. Perhaps someone should remind him what armed NYPD men did to Amadou Diallo and Abner Louima. Or remind him about the Happy Land Social Club fire, in which 87 people were killed not by a gun, but by $5 worth of gasoline, or the Oklahoma City Bombing, in which 168 people were killed by diesel fuel and fertilizer, or the 3,000 people killed on 9/11 by box-cutters and airplanes. The numerous journalists who think that we need to enact 'sensible gun laws' like 'other countries' should be reminded that mass shootings have occurred in Germany, Norway, Australia, Canada, and Great Britain, even after gun control laws far stricter than those in the U.S. were enacted. ... The lesson of the 'Batman' shooting is this: where there is a large sheep herd, the wolves will always thrive. Do we want to be sheep, or not?" --columnist Michael Filozof
Faith and Family
"By now the script should be familiar. A bombing or a mass shooting occurs and the media immediately look for a simple cause. Invariably, they turn to talk radio or some other conservative pit of 'intolerance.' ... What is always left out of this familiar scenario is an in-depth discussion of evil. Politicians and commentators almost never speak of evil as something that resides deep inside the human heart. All humans possess the capacity for evil. While it rarely rises to the level of mass murder, the capacity for doing great harm to other human beings lurks within each of us. This is what theologians mean when they speak of a 'fallen' humanity. Violent movies like 'The Dark Knight Rises' do not make all people emulate the Colorado shooter, anymore than a movie about love causes people to love one another. ... Sometimes there are no 'solutions' that can forestall an evil act. ... Calling on [a] Higher Authority is the proper and perhaps only counterforce to this and other expressions of true evil." --columnist Cal Thomas
Culture
"[T]he unstable are not entertained by darkness. They let it in. They are inspired by it. Sometimes they start to live in the movie in their heads. 'I am the Joker,' the shooter is reported to have told the Aurora police. ... Some of the sadness and frustration following Aurora has to do with the fact that no one thinks anyone can, or will, do anything to make our culture better. The film industry isn't going to change, the genie is long out of the bottle. ... A particularly devilish injustice is that many of the wealthy men and women of the filmmaking industry go to great lengths to protect their own children from the products they make. ... One thing about good parents these days is they always look tired. A lot have hard lives -- two jobs, different shifts, helping with homework, cleaning the house. But they also have the exhausted look of hyper vigilance. Once parents could take a break at night, park the kids in front of the TV and let the culture baby-sit. Not anymore. Our culture, they know, is their foe." --columnist Peggy Noonan
Essential Liberty
"Never before has an administration taken such a bold step to strip Americans of the freedom of conscience -- a right for which, over the centuries, many Christian martyrs have laid down their lives, and which our Founding Fathers took great care to protect in a First Amendment that expressly guarantees the free exercise of religion. As the Founders understood, no government has legitimate authority to take this right away, because it does not come from government. It comes from God. The very purpose of government is to protect this right. A government that seeks to strip it away from the people is by that very process stripping away its own legitimacy. What we are seeing from the Obama administration today -- in its attack on religious liberty -- is simply evil. When government seeks to compel individuals to act against their consciences and to engage in activities that, if willfully done, would imperil their immortal souls, there is no other word for it." --columnist Terence Jeffrey
For the Record
"[President Obama] is not charging Nidal Hasan, the accused Fort Hood killer, with violation of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (UVVA). This law was passed and signed in 2004. After the highly publicized conviction of Scott Peterson in California for the murder of his wife and her unborn child, the law was named the Laci and Conner Peterson Unborn Victims of Violence Act. There would seem to be no possibility of controversy in charging Hasan with violating UVVA. After all, it is indisputable that one of those killed was pregnant at the time of her death. Nor did the mother, Army Private Francheska Velez, contemplate an abortion. There would be no question of her exercising 'choice' in this matter. In fact, her last words, most poignantly reported, were: 'My baby! my baby!' It was for just such heinous crimes that the UVVA was passed. It covers only those instances where a crime of violence is committed on federal property, or where other crimes covered by the federal code are being committed. ... Hasan was assigned to Fort Hood. So were all those who died. There could be no question of UVVA not applying in this case. ... The failure to charge Nidal Hasan with violation of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act is another instance of this president's failure to 'take care that the laws be faithfully executed.'" --columnist Ken Blackwell
