Welfare & Poverty

Democrats Hide Socialist Healthcare Foundation in Bill

From the WSJ today…

Tom Daschle is still waiting to be confirmed as secretary of health and human services, not that he’s in any rush. Democrats are already enacting his and Barack Obama’s agenda of government-run health care — entirely on the QT.

[Potomac Watch] Martin Kozlowski

This was the real accomplishment of this week’s House vote for the $819 billion “stimulus,” and is the overriding theme of Congress’s first month. With the nation occupied with the financial crisis, and with that crisis providing cover, Democrats have been passing provision after provision to nationalize health care.

Read the article here

Ignorant Teacher Confronts McCain Kids

This is the quality of teacher they allow in Cumberland, North Carolina. She can’t even put two intelligent words together and yet she beats up a 5th grader.

Cumberland County, North Carolina

Cumberland Schools Superintendent William C. Harrison:

910-678-2300

This genius, Diantha (tehehe) Harris, teaches 5th Grade at:

Mary McArthur A+ Elementary School, 3809 Village Drive, Fayetteville, NC, 28304

http://www.mmes.ccs.k12.nc.us

Principal Lola Williams:

LolaW@ccs.k12.nc.us

910-424-2206

Harris’ contact page:

Tickler on Spreading The Wealth

The Socialist believes in ‘spreading the wealth around’. His methods require an overlord, with naive good intentions, taking from the rich and giving to the poor, but based on tried and failed principles of socialism. The Capitalist, by tried and proven principles of capitalism, knows that the result of staying clear of the machinery of business, and instead stimulating it, will allow business to spread wealth automatically without the overlord, the theft, and without the resentment.

-Tickler

Once Again, the Press Leaves Obama’s Tax Numbers Unchallenged

Another great op-ed from the WSJ on the random tax numbers quoted by the Obama campaign and the loving press’ unwillingness to put up a question mark. Some highlights:

In the last debate, Sen. Obama said, “We both want to cut taxes, the difference is who we want to cut taxes for. . . . The centerpiece of [McCain’s] economic proposal is to provide $200 billion in additional tax breaks to some of the wealthiest corporations in America. Exxon Mobil, and other oil companies, for example, would get an additional $4 billion in tax breaks.”

That $200 billion figure is false. Yet FactCheck.org and most reporters never bothered to ask Mr. Obama where he came up with it. FactCheck.org did discover that Mr. Obama’s claim about “$4 billion in tax breaks for energy companies” came from a two-page memo from the Center for American Progress Action Fund — a political lobby headed by John Podesta, former chief of staff to Bill Clinton, with tax issues handled by two lawyers, Robert Gordon and James Kvaal, former policy directors for the John Kerry and John Edwards campaigns. Those lawyers confused average tax rates (after credits and deductions) with the 35% statutory rate on the next dollar of earnings, so that cutting the latter rate from 35% to 25% would supposedly cut big oil’s $13.4 billion tax bill by 28.5%, or $3.8 billion. That is not economics; it is not even competent bookkeeping.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, by contrast, correctly notes that, “Senator McCain has called for the repeal and reform of a number of tax preferences for oil companies,” which would raise the oil companies’ taxes by $5 billion in 2013.

Read the full article here.

Shift from Capitalism to Socialism, European Style

From the WSJ…

The most basic explanation for why Barack Obama may win next Tuesday is that voters want economic deliverance. The standard fix for this in politics everywhere is to crowbar the old party out and patch in the other one. It is true as well that the historic nature of the nation’s first African-American candidacy would play a big role.

Push past the historic candidacy, however, and one sees something even larger at stake in this vote… The real “change” being put to a vote for the American people in 2008 is not simply a break from the economic policies of “the past eight years” but with the American economic philosophy of the past 200 years. This election is about a long-term change in America’s idea of itself.

I don’t agree with the argument that an Obama-Pelosi-Reid government is a one-off, that good old nonideological American pragmatism will temper their ambitions. Not true. With this election, the U.S. is at a philosophical tipping point.

The goal of Sen. Obama and the modern, “progressive” Democratic Party is to move the U.S. in the direction of Western Europe, the so-called German model and its “social market economy.” Under this notion, business is highly regulated, as it would be in the next Congress under Democratic House committee chairmen Markey, Frank and Waxman. Business is allowed to create “wealth” so long as its utility is not primarily to create new jobs or economic growth but to support a deep welfare system.

This would be a historic shift, one post-Vietnam Democrats have been trying to achieve since their failed fight with Ronald Reagan’s “Cowboy Capitalism.”

Of course Cowboy Capitalism built the country. More than any previous nation in history, the United States made its way forward on a 200-year wave of upwardly mobile, profit-seeking merchants, tradesmen, craftsmen and workers. They blew out of New England and New York, rolled across the wildernesses of the Central States, pushed across a tough Western frontier and banged into San Francisco and Los Angeles, leaving in their path city after city of vast wealth.

The U.S. emerged a superpower, and the tool of that ascent was simple — the pursuit of economic growth. Now China, India and Brazil, embracing high-growth Cowboy Capitalism, are doing what we did, only their cities are bigger.

Now comes Barack Obama, standing at the head of a progressive Democratic Party, his right hand rising to say, “Mothers, don’t let your babies grow up to be for-profit cowboys. It’s time to spread the wealth around.”

READ IT HERE, [an itemized list of European yoke-style government policies Obama-Reid-Pelosi will install.]

NY Times Finally Reports on ACORN’s Wicked Ways

I was surprised the New York Times attempting to return to journalism* from 30 years of schilling for the DNC and any other hippie effort it’s staff stubbornly continues to defend, though we’d have thought they’d have grown out of them by now as so many others have. Granted, one article doth not a reformation make, but even a single article with some balance is something for them.

Ms. Kingsley’s concerns about the way Acorn affiliates work together could fuel the controversy over Acorn’s voter registration efforts, which are largely underwritten by an affiliated charity, Project Vote. Project Vote hires Acorn to do voter registration work on its behalf, and the two groups say they have registered 1.3 million voters this year.

As a federally tax-exempt charity, Project Vote is subject to prohibitions on partisan political activity. But Acorn, which is a nonprofit membership corporation under Louisiana law, though subject to federal taxation, is not bound by the same restrictions.

“Project Vote and Acorn have a written agreement that specifies that all work is nonpartisan,” Michael Slater, Project Vote’s new executive director, wrote in answer to e-mailed questions about the relationship.

But Ms. Kingsley found that the tight relationship between Project Vote and Acorn made it impossible to document that Project Vote’s money had been used in a strictly nonpartisan manner. Until the embezzlement scandal broke last summer, Project Vote’s board was made up entirely of Acorn staff members and Acorn members.

Ms. Kingsley’s report raised concerns not only about a lack of documentation to demonstrate that no charitable money was used for political activities but also about which organization controlled strategic decisions

“As a result, we may not be able to prove that 501(c)3 resources are not being directed to specific regions based on impermissible partisan considerations,” Ms. Kingsley said, referring to the section of the tax code concerning rules for charities.

and…

Project Vote, for example, had only one independent director since it received a federal tax exemption in 1994, and he was on the board for less than two years, its tax forms show. Since then, the board has consisted of Acorn staff members and two Acorn members who pay monthly dues.

But George Hampton, who was listed as a board member from 1994 to 2006, said that while he had been a member of Acorn, he had never heard of Project Vote. “I don’t know anything about this,” Mr. Hampton said.

Cleo Mata, listed as a board member on tax forms from 1997 to 2006, also said she was not aware she was on the Project Vote board. “If that’s what you say,” Ms. Mata told a visitor to her home in Pasadena, Tex. “I tell you that I didn’t realize I was.”

Mr. Slater said he “cannot speak to why Mr. Hampton and Ms. Mata fail to recall their involvement on the Project Vote board.” He noted that Ms. Mata, 63, was “in poor health.”

READ IT HERE

Let me summarize…

Project Vote has been on record of affiliating with ACORN since 1994 (i.e. sharing money/resources)
+
Project Vote’s board has been essentially 100% ACORN members/employees since 1994
+
Project Vote (ACORN-governed) hires ACORN (themselves) to do specifically Democrat voter registration since 1994.
=
This means that Project Vote IS ACORN for all intents and purposes. Project Vote, a federally funded tax-exempt charity is a shell company for Democrat/liberal voter activist group ACORN. The financial transaction alone can only be described as money laundering and federal voter fraud.

RESULT? That’s 1.3 million very likely 100% Democrat-only voters registered THIS YEAR ALONE by Democrat group ACORN (under the name of Project Vote). Sure they still have to vote to steal it, but the effort that went into visiting registering and hyping-up voters on only one side, on federal money, is corrupt.

So where does that leave us? Project Vote/ACORN has been using my money, and your money, to recruit 1.3 million potential voters who want to be the recipients of Obama’s spreading of the wealth.

From where I sit, there’s two options…

Option 1 (send a message, what they deserve): All 1.3 million registrations thrown-out due to fraudulent and partisan collection methods with federal funding.

Option 2 (send less of a message, letting them off easy): We need to first discard a little more than half of all ACORN registrations to compensate for the conservatives they failed to represent or suppressed (the pot/kettle thing) in their federally funded canvassing. Second, the remaining votes that came from ACORN registrations should be triple-checked individually against the strictest identification measures, by Republicans. These groups need to be sent a clear message that we don’t do this kind of corrupt thing in our country. We don’t tolerate stuffing ballot boxes on federal funding like the Southeast Asians and the Africans. We don’t tolerate putting puppets in place like the Russians. We elect fairly and legally according to the word of the people, not just angry partisan Democrats with their hands out. We don’t do those things in this country, that is except when Democrats are in power.

Anything shy of option 2 and Obama’s secret foot-soldiers may steal this election, much like the claims in 2000, only it’ll be true this time.

*As a post-script: I shouldn’t even give them credit. This is evidence of fraud that the New York Times have been forced to reveal for competitive reasons, to keep up with the report that was released. Unlike gaffe’s and questionable statements, even questionable policy by the Obama camp. The NY Times can’t really ignore crimes if it wants to call itself a newspaper (even the newspaper of soiled record). So we can all safely assume that this was simply a bottom line decision by management; that in the age of dwindling newspaper sales the fact remains, that the truth sells more papers even in Manhattan.

Obama and the Tax Tipping Point

Another great WSJ op-ed piece…

Other nations have tried the ideology of fairness in the place of incentives and found that reward without work is a recipe for decline. In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher took on the unions and slashed taxes to restore growth and jobs in Great Britain. In Germany a few years ago, Social Democrat Gerhard Schroeder defied his party’s dogma and loosened labor’s grip on the economy to end stagnation. And more recently in France, Nicolas Sarkozy was swept to power on a platform of restoring flexibility to the economy.

The sequence is always the same. High-tax, big-spending policies force the economy to lose momentum. Then growth in government spending outstrips revenues. Fiscal and trade deficits soar. Public debt, excessive taxation and unemployment follow. The central bank tries to solve the problem by printing money. International competitiveness is lost and the currency depreciates. The system stagnates. And then a frightened electorate returns conservatives to power.

The economic tides will not stand still while Washington experiments with European-type social democracy, even though the dollar’s role as the global reserve currency will buy some time. Our trademark competitive advantage will be lost, and once lost, it will be hard to regain. There are too many emerging economies focused on prosperity and not redistribution for the U.S. to easily recapture its role of global economic leader.

Tomorrow’s children may come to question why their parents sold their birthright for a mess of “fairness” — whatever that will signify when jobs are scarce and American opportunity is no longer the envy of the world.

READ IT HERE

FT: Most Americans Do Better with McCain Tax Plan

The Financial Times posted a piece comparing the McCain and Obama tax plans in a clearer and more concise way, called “McCain is no salesman on tax proposals”. Here are some highlights…

So much has gone wrong for John McCain that it is surprising he is not further behind in the polls. He has been a victim of circumstances and his own bad judgment. Some of his errors, however, are more perplexing than others. How is it, for example, that Mr McCain has been so thoroughly outmanoeuvred on tax policy?

Both candidates have offered complex tax proposals. Proliferating alternative baselines (with or without the extension of the Bush tax cuts, with or without a “patch” for the alternative minimum tax, and so forth) deepen the confusion. Unable to fathom the details, voters are left to weigh the competing slogans. Mr Obama promises to cut taxes for 95 per cent of working families. Mr McCain says the rich need a tax cut, too. Guess who wins that argument.

Here is a fact you might not have noticed. It certainly seems to have slipped by most Americans. The typical US household would get a bigger tax cut under Mr McCain’s proposals than under Mr Obama’s. I know a few politicians who could do something with that…

Mr McCain wants to abolish the tax-break for employer-provided healthcare and replace it with a refundable $5,000 credit. Mr Obama says that a family health plan might cost $12,000 a year – leaving families who buy their own policy $7,000 worse off. This is incorrect. So far as I know, Mr McCain has never taken the trouble to explain why.

Suppose a family currently has a $12,000 policy provided by an employer. Under the McCain proposal, instead of attracting relief as at present, this benefit would be taxed as ordinary employment income – but the extra tax paid would be more than offset by the new $5,000 credit. In the first analysis, nothing changes so far as employers are concerned: all the action is on the employee’s pay cheque. The policy delivers a net tax cut to middle-income households and is enough to make the McCain tax plan on average a better overall deal for them than the Obama plan

As well as failing to drive this home, Mr McCain has only weakly resisted his opponent’s notion that “wealthy companies” can afford to pay more. Business taxes, in the end, are paid by people – in lower wages, higher prices and lower dividends in their 401k plans. The point is not just that US corporate taxes are high by international standards and that this discourages investment and employment but that the burden eventually falls on ordinary Americans. Perhaps Mr McCain’s recent emphasis on corporate greed makes it difficult for him to point this out.

When Mr McCain misrepresents Mr Obama, he cannot even do it plausibly. Mr Obama is indeed planning to cut taxes for 95 per cent of working families. Rather than saying, “No he isn’t”, Mr McCain could have said: “Look at what his changes do to marginal tax rates, at the bottom of the income scale (as benefits are phased out), as well as at the top.” Rather than saying, “He wants to raise your taxes,” he could have said, “His spending plans will force him to raise your taxes.”

Critical reading…READ IT HERE

Video: Escaped The Plantation, Voting McCain

Perhaps the best speech given during this entire campaign cycle.

The O-Team
More genius by ZO. See more great clips here