Three days before federal income taxes were due, President Barack Obama declared that tax increases can grow the economy. “Now, this is not just about fairness. This is also about growth,” Obama said in his weekly radio address . “It’s about being able to make the investments we need to strengthen our economy and create jobs.” In other words, if taxpayers — and potential job creators — pay more taxes we can afford more Solyndras. Such boondoggles will create jobs, at least until they go belly up and lay everyone off. There is a word for an economic strategy of taxing some millionaires to give government loans to other millionaires. It can be found in the title of a new book by Grover Norquist and John Lott: Debacle . Naturally, the president vowed to raise only a small number of very wealthy people’s taxes. His current gimmick is the “Buffett Rule,” which assumes that super-rich Warren Buffett pays a lower effective tax rate than his secretary and that this is normal under the current tax code. It might be more accurately described as the “Buffet Rule,” as it advertises all the entitlements the middle class can eat at low tax rates. Think of the Golden Corral commerical where a family seeks steak, endless fried shrimp, and a vast salad bar and then stipulates a low $10 price. Only one restaraunt remains a viable choice as its higher-priced competitors are pushed offscreen. Obama wants voters to believe he can offer universal health insurance coverage, fully funded Medicare and Social Security, and an all-you-can-eat salad bar of green jobs at a 10 percent middle-class tax rate. Mitt Romney can’t offer that bargain. The difference is that Golden Corral isn’t keeping its prices low by adding a surcharge to bills of families dining at Morton’s. More importantly, buffets can actually offer cheap salad and fried shrimp. Obama’s tax increase won’t pay for all the government he promises. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Buffett Rule would raise only $47 billion in ten years. The tax hike could fund about seven days of federal spending. Smarter liberal wonks have pointed out that this baseline assumes the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. Keep the current tax rates and the Buffett minimum tax will raise somewhat more money. Return to the Clinton-era tax rates, Brian Beutler writes, and the “$47 billion would come on top of a flood of new revenue that would swiftly fill the country’s budget hole.” That flood is a $4 trillion tax increase that also soaks the middle class. Turn off the middle-class spigots by letting only the tax cuts for the wealthy expire and the Buffett flood starts to slow to a trickle. Now it may be that once safely reelected, Obama will let all of the Bush tax cuts lapse and then blame congressional Republicans for not sending him a bill that preserved them only for the middle class out of their slavish loyalty to the rich. Some observers think he’ll do just that . Taken at face value, the president’s fiscal policy makes little sense. The president wants the country to believe he can protect middle-class entitlements, along with other domestic spending priorities, without raising middle-class taxes. However much the wealthy exploit tax loopholes, the numbers suggest otherwise. In his book about the Reagan economic recovery, The Seven Fat Years , the late Wall Street Journal editor Robert Bartley tells a story of how the country came to adopt the alternative minimum tax. In early 1969, Treasury Secretary Joseph Barr (an LBJ appointee) told Congress that 21 millionaires had paid no federal income taxes two years before as did 115 other tax filers reporting income in excess of $200,000. To pursue those Bartley called “Joe Barr’s millionaires,” Congress concocted various minimum tax schemes. Eventually, the alternative minimum tax ensnared millions of taxpayers, not just 21 rich scofflaws. According to one estimate, 27 percent of those who paid the AMT in 2008 earned less than $200,000 a year. It takes direct congressional intervention to prevent the tax from hitting 20 million more taxpayers, mostly residing in blue state suburbs. Think the Buffett Rule will turn out differently? As you wave goodbye to your 2011 tax dollars, consider: Obama is campaigning on the idea that only Paul Ryan’s budget plan requires middle-class sacrifice. If the voters knew the benefits he pledges to protect will be paid for by their own tax dollars going to Washington, some of them would surely opt to cut out the middle man.
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The Buffet Rule
Charles Johnson has been on a little jihad about racist comments on conservative sites — which is odd for several reasons. Notably, he has no evidence that the comments were left by conservatives, and indeed he used to complain that liberals had planted phony comments on his own site : One type of troll we see all the time at LGF is known as a “moby,” after the pop star Moby—who publicly advocated posting “false flag” comments at right wing web sites, posing as extremist nut jobs, in order to discredit those sites. Johnson complained about this practice again here : But the important thing to note here is: this creep was what we call a “moby,” calculatedly posting over the top comments to discredit LGF. In truth, as you can see by following the link to the “Anti-Neocons” site above, this stalker is rabidly pro-Palestinian—but it was posting rabidly anti-Palestinian comments at LGF. This is solid proof that at least some of the comments at LGF are being planted with deliberate intent to deceive and defraud. That was then; this is now. These days, Charles Johnson trolls sites like Hot Air and Breitbart.com, and trumpets every single comment with racist overtones as evidence of the racism of conservatives in general, and those sites in particular. Indeed, one of Johnson’s buddies (with whom he is still friendly) actually admitted planting racist comments at Hot Air in 2009. Specifically, in September 2009, trusted LGF Lieutenant Killgore Trout went over to Hot Air in the middle of the night to plant some racist comments. Ace described what happened : Apparently CJ’s moderator Kilgore Trout went over there last night and started posting racist stuff. To see, he said, if it would be cleaned up. It wasn’t. Because both Allah and Ed were asleep. It being the middle of the night. Actually, it’s only arguably racist if you yourself believe that wookies = black people, which Kilgore Trout does. So he spammed the threads with this, and it wasn’t cleaned up to until the AM. Obergruppenkommander Charles’ conclusion? They’re racists. Chuckles furiously denounced Killgore Trout for his actions said “I can’t really applaud” Killgore Trout’s actions . . . but claimed that Killgore Trout’s middle-of-the-night actions showed that “his point is absolutely valid. They’re accepting a disgusting amount of racism and extremism at Hot Air.” This despite the fact that within an hour of Johnson’s comment, the comments at Hot Air were starting to disappear, as Killgore Trout (who is apparently still a welcome and valued member of LGF ) reported at the time . In essence, Chuckles’s lieutenant said: look, the conservatives tolerate people pissing on their houses. To demonstrate, I will go piss on their house in the middle of the night, and if they don’t clean it up until morning, I have made my point! Bwa-ha! To which Charles responded: I can’t really applaud him pissing on their house . . . but they sure do seem to tolerate it. I guess Charles, former moby hunter, now believes that Killgore Trout was the only liberal guy who ever planted racist comments on conservative sites. The funny part about Charles being Mr. Racist Comment Nazi is that his site used to be the home of perhaps the most notoriously virulent, ugly, hate-filled set of comments in the blogosphere. For example, here is a piece by Glenn Greenwald documenting several comments by LGF commenters talking about how they wished that Al Qaeda would carry out a planned murder plot against Jimmy Carter. I always defended Charles on this point, because the volume of comments he had was such that it would be unfair to attribute to him the viewpoints of his commenters. Indeed, Charles made the very same point in response to complaints by CAIR that his site was a hate site: If either of you had bothered to do your jobs, you would have learned that: * There are more than 25,000 registered users at LGF. * There are often more than 5,000 comments posted every single day. * It is run by *one* person, and comments such as those quoted by CAIR are policed and deleted as soon as possible. But this is an open discussion forum, and comments do not represent the opinion of LGF — as the disclaimer states on every single page of comments. But Hot Air easily has 25,000 registered users and probably has well over 3 million comments since its founding. I bet I am underestimating this. Yet Charles supported his lieutenant’s argument that comments planted there in the middle of the night demonstrated racism because they were not cleaned up until the next morning. All of this would seemingly make Charles Johnson the least likely person on Earth to lead a charge about comments on conservative web sites. So I decided to confront him with this recently on Twitter. I laid out six simple facts that underpin the argument I made above: Since Johnson really has no response to these arguments, I predicted that he wouldn’t confront my facts, but would smear and sneer. And what do you think he did? Again: he didn’t disappoint: Hm. Does Charles Johnson know that the guy on Twitter famous for using the #winning tag was actually a huge loser whom everyone was laughing at ? Anyone misguided enough to see Johnson as a serious pundit who engages in rational debate needs to stop sniffing glue and read the above exchange. Note the facts I cite, and the sneers, strawmen, and insults I get in response. It really makes you wonder how this guy has any credibility with anyone these days. UPDATE: Thanks to Instapundit for the link . I hope new readers will bookmark the main page and return often. Also, I can be found on Twitter as @Patterico . Make sure to follow me there!
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Charles Johnson: An Unlikely Crusader Against Racist Comments
Giddy up! Via WFB: Media Matters for America’s newly installed Middle East expert is apparently following in the footsteps of disgraced former staffer M.J. Rosenberg, blasting Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.) for pulling out a fundraiser hosted by an American Muslim leader who was placed on the Federal Terrorist Watch List. Earlier today, MMFA
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Far-Left Media Matters Attacks One Of Its Own: “Shame On Debbie Wasserman Schultz” For Bailing On Muslim Fundraiser…
From an ever blame shifting ABC News: High Gas Prices: Should You Blame Your Bank? By Lisa Stark April 10, 2012 Should you blame your bank for high gas prices? A new report out today says it’s not just supply-and-demand and Middle East politics that determines the price of a barrel of crude; Visa and See the original post here: ABC News: Blame Banks For High Gas Prices
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ABC News: Blame Banks For High Gas Prices
Is newly minted Libertarian Gary Johnson an antiwar candidate or just a cheap hawk? The Daily Caller tries to pin him down . While Johnson positions himself as a strong anti-war candidate who wants to cut the defense budget by 43 percent, he told TheDC that he supports America’s efforts to aid African troops in tracking down Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and that he wouldn’t rule out leaving behind American bases in Afghanistan. Johnson said that while he wants to end the war in Afghanistan, that doesn’t mean he would necessarily stop drone attacks against terrorists in Pakistan or Yemen, even though he believes they create more enemies than they kill. Johnson was relatively dovish on Iran but repeated his openness to humanitarian interventions abroad: “I don’t want to close the door that if any of us were president of the United States that we would sit idly by and watch something like the Holocaust go down.” Johnson also signaled that some presence in the Middle East might be necessary. Now, there is nothing wrong with being selective in the use of military force. Being involved everywhere or nowhere may be consistent, but it isn’t necessarily a sound foreign policy. Yet it is difficult to discern an overarching strategy or philosophy here that would influence or dictate when the United States would intervene. Back when Johnson was still running as a Republican, I noted that he was at a disadvantage against Ron Paul because he was less conservative on social issues and less radical on the issues of war and peace that drive Paul’s libertarian base.
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Gary Johnson’s Foreign Policy
