The Foundation

“A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species.” –James Madison

For the Record

“Supercommittee Democrats argue that income inequality has been increasing and can be at least partially reversed by higher tax rates on high earners. They refused to agree on any deal that didn’t include such tax increases. Supercommittee Republicans offered a plan to eliminate tax preferences and reduce tax rates, as in the 1986 bipartisan tax reform. They argued that high tax rates would squelch economic growth. They didn’t make the case that their proposals would also address income inequality. But House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, in a 17-page paper based largely on a Congressional Budget Office analysis of income trends between 1979 and 2007, has done so. Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, makes the point that the government redistributes income not only through taxes but also through transfer payments, including Social Security, Medicare, food stamps and unemployment benefits. The CBO study helpfully measures income, adjusted for inflation, after taxes and after such transfer payments. Many may find the results of the CBO study surprising. It turns out, Ryan reports, that federal income taxes (including the refundable Earned Income Tax Credit) actually decreased income inequality slightly between 1979 and 2007, while the federal payroll taxes that supposedly fund Social Security and Medicare slightly increased income inequality. … Perhaps even more surprising, federal transfer payments have done much more to increase income inequality than federal taxes. … In effect, Social Security and Medicare have been transferring money from low-earning young people (who don’t pay income but are hit by the payroll tax) to increasingly affluent old people. The Democrats, perhaps following the polls and focus groups, have been protecting these entitlement programs that have done more to increase income inequality than the Reagan and Bush tax cuts put together.” –columnist Michael Barone

Government

“Socialism provides entitlements through massive taxation, and also believes that heavy government regulation leads to a better society. It does all this in the name of ‘social justice.’ No honest person can deny that President Obama’s policies fit these criteria. Government-run healthcare (and calling it a fundamental right, despite the fact that it’s nowhere mentioned in the Constitution). Federal control of education. Government picking winners and losers in the economy. History repeatedly shows that free markets work over time, and socialism does not. But we don’t need to plumb the depths of world history. We have our own recent history. Since Obamacare, employers have reported that they will have to drop insurance policies covering tens of millions of Americans, and Medicaid spending will increase by $434 billion by 2020. After (partially) bailing out the housing market, housing remains a depressed and failing sector, and Fannie and Freddie have the gall to ask for $6 billion is additional taxpayer money while paying $13 million in bonuses to their executives. And this administration deludes itself that it knows how to invest in business. So it gives $535 million in loan guarantees to Solyndra as a good investment, only to see the company promptly go bankrupt. Just for good measure the energy secretary illegally restructured this scam to pay off President Obama’s fundraisers and stick you with the bill. Arrogance and incompetence are a toxic combination. This White House and its cronies are overflowing with both.” –columnists Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski

Opinion in Brief

“President Obama is … a true believer in the European model of the welfare state. Everybody who was listening learned that three years ago. The fact that the European welfare states are crashing is irrelevant to him; true believers are never rattled by facts, not even facts that slap them in the face like a cream pie. The opportunity to impose a failing welfare state on America is what drew him to the presidency in the first place. The congressional elections last year, the Republican rout that Mr. Obama rightly called a ‘shellacking’ of his party, made no impression, either. The results were all about cutting taxes and dismantling government, but not to Mr. Obama. Those elections were merely a few pebbles in the road to Utopia. The president, with a con man’s confidence in the sound of his own voice, is, in the observation of the Wall Street Journal, ‘making it clear that he is running for re-election on a platform of consolidating the expansion of government of his first two years and raising taxes to finance it.’” –Washington Times’ editor emeritus Wesley Pruden

Essential Liberty

“Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner says, ‘We’re facing a very consequential debate about some fundamental choices as a country.’ … The history of the 20th century is a painful lesson on what happens when collective choices replace individual choices. Even leaving aside the chilling history of totalitarianism in the 20th century, the history of economic central planning shows it to have been such a widely recognized disaster that even communist and socialist governments were abandoning it as the century ended. Making choices ‘as a country’ cannot be avoided in some cases, such as elections or referenda. But that is very different from saying that decisions in general should be made ‘as a country’ – which boils down to having people like Timothy Geithner taking more and more decisions out of our own hands and imposing their will on the rest of us. … That way lie unfunded mandates, nanny state interventions in people’s lives, such as banning circumcision – and the ultimate nanny state monstrosity, ObamaCare. The world of reality has its problems, so it is understandable that some people want to escape to a different world, where you can talk lofty talk and forget about ugly realities like costs and repercussions. The world of reality is not nearly as lovely as the world of Liberal Land. No wonder so many people want to go there.” –economist Thomas Sowell

Insight

“[T]hose who are willing to surrender their freedom for security have always demanded that if they give up their full freedom it should also be taken from those not prepared to do so.” –economist Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992)

Looking for Value

So what is The Patriot Post‘s Brief anyway? It’s possibly the most useful thing you could read on Monday.

Our team puts together each Brief by sifting through dozens of opinion articles by leading conservative thinkers and looking for the best analysis of the issues facing our great nation. You’ll find the latest on the economy, the Obama administration’s regulatory roadblocks, timeless advice from “The Gipper,” comments from our readers and much more!

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Nate Jackson

Managing Editor

Re: The Left

“[A]m I the only person who appears to notice a strange pattern forming in our nation’s capital? It appears that nobody involved with this administration will read anything but a menu. Several Democrats who voted for the trillion dollar Stimulus admitted they hadn’t read the bill. Eric Holder confessed, after filing a federal lawsuit against Arizona’s immigration bill, that he hadn’t bothered to read the 13-page document. More recently, the Attorney General claimed he hadn’t read any of several memos his underlings had sent him regarding 'Fast & Furious.’ Energy Chief Steven Chu, while defending the half billion dollars given to Solyndra, claimed he hadn’t read any of the memos his underlings had sent him, warning him that Solyndra’s chance of success weren’t half as good as that snowball that somehow found itself in Hell. The most egregious example, though, is Barack Obama, who, rumor has it, once started reading the Constitution, but quit as soon as he saw that it didn’t deal with the redistribution of wealth.” –columnist Burt Prelutsky

Political Futures

“As Republican presidential candidates rise only to fall when their imperfections are brought to light, Republican voters risk disappointment in 2012 by playing the left’s game on their turf and by their rules. What they must do instead is to protect their ‘product’ at a time when the opportunity to hold Barack Obama to one term, while taking the Senate and increasing their House majority, has never looked better. The best candidate would clearly be a composite of the eight still standing…. Unfortunately, Republicans can’t vote for a composite; they’ll have to choose one candidate, hopefully one they won’t come to regret. … Looking for a perfect candidate will end in disappointment. Consider President Obama, his falling poll numbers and the misplaced faith too many voters had in him in 2008. Republicans should not make the same mistake in selecting the next GOP presidential candidate. By realizing the imperfections in every candidate – and every person – and focusing on the ability of the one who is nominated to do what he promises, Republicans will have a better candidate and the country could have a better (but not perfect) president.” –columnist Cal Thomas

The Gipper

“You know that some cynics like to say that the people vote their pocketbook. But that’s not quite the point. Economic issues are important to the people not simply for reasons of self-interest. They know the whole body politic depends on economic stability; the great crises have come for democracies when taxes and inflation ran out of control and undermined social relations and basic institutions. The American people know what limited government, tax cuts, deregulation, and the move towards privatization have meant. It’s meant the largest peacetime expansion in our history, and I can guarantee you they won’t want to throw that away for a return to budgets beholden to the liberal special interests.” –Ronald Reagan

Culture

“Certainly part of the solution to our American ‘malaise’ is political. A change in the Presidency will reboot the economy and replace failed economic policies with pro-growth incentives and leadership. But that’s down the road. What about today? What can we do to preserve the American dream in our own families and communities, even in the face of personal and societal challenges? To hear the Wall Street Occupiers tell it, the solution is for others to do more. They whine, complain, and demand. Sitting in tents, waiting to be fed, they entertain themselves with self-important conversations, sex, music, and drugs. They can’t even keep the peace or wipe up their own messes. They expect the government to do it – funded by other people’s (taxpayers’) money. That’s not the American spirit that made this country great. Nor will it generate growth and prosperity. Consider another group: our veterans. Even though nearly one in five return from Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD or other traumatic injuries that hinder their return to work, they’re not out trashing their country, bemoaning their fates, or telling the government to do more. Instead, they live the American spirit of gratitude, resilience, and hard work.” –columnist Rebecca Hagelin

Reader Comments

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The Last Word

“Aside from spending the summer negotiating a deal that increases runaway federal spending, those stingy, cheeseparing Republicans also forced the Democrats to agree to create that big ol’ supercommittee that would save $1.2 trillion – over the course of 10 years. Anywhere else on the planet that would be a significant chunk of change. But the government of the United States is planning to spend $44 trillion in the next decade. So $1.2 trillion is about 2.7 percent. Any businessman could cut 2.7 percent from his budget in his sleep. But not congressional supercommittees of supermen with superpowers thrashing it out across the table for three months. So there will be no 2.7 percent cut. That means the ‘sequestration’ from defense and discretionary spending will now be enforced, starting in 2013. That would be so brutal and slashing that by 2021 it would reduce U.S. public debt by $153 billion! Which sounds kinda big if you say it in a Dr. Evil voice and give a menacing mwa-ha-ha laugh, but in fact boils down to about what we borrow currently every month. But don’t worry. Slashing a month’s worth of spending over a decade is way too extreme. So that’s not going to happen, either. Instead, CNN and ‘Meet The Press’ will just interview big-shot senators and congressmen about it day in, day out, and then normal service will resume.” –columnist Mark Steyn

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team