The Patriot Post® · You Call That 'Tax Fairness'?

The Foundation

“Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands.” –Thomas Jefferson

Editorial Exegesis

“So the 2013 tax cliff is a big enough economic problem that President Obama now wants to postpone it for some taxpayers. But it isn’t so big that he’s willing to curb his desire to raise taxes on tens of thousands of job-creating businesses. That’s the essence of Mr. Obama’s announcement Monday that he wants Congress to extend current tax rates for a year, but only for those making less than $200,000 a year. This is a political gambit designed to protect Democrats who are starting to feel queasy about opposing GOP plans to extend all of the Bush rates as the economy weakens again. … If the Bush tax rates expire as scheduled on December 31, rates on the top two income brackets will jump to 39.6% from 35%, and 36% from 33%. Add the scheduled return of income phaseouts for exemptions and deductions, and the rates go up another two-percentage points – to at least 41% and 35%. Mr. Obama claims this will merely return rates to what ‘we were paying under Bill Clinton,’ but that’s not true either. It ignores his ObamaCare tax increase of 0.9% on top of the current 2.9% Medicare tax, plus a new 2.9% surcharge on investment income, including interest income. That’s an additional 3.8% surcharge on investment income, and added to the Bush expirations would take the capital gains rate to 23.8% from 15% today, and the dividend tax rate to about 45% from 15%. … Congress’s Joint Tax Committee – not a conservative outfit – estimates that in 2013 about 940,000 taxpayers will have enough business income to meet Mr. Obama’s tax increase threshold. And of the roughly $1.3 trillion in net business income, about 53% will get hit with the higher tax rates. This is because millions of businesses report their income as sole proprietors and subchapter S corporations that file under the individual tax code. So Mr. Obama wants these businesses to pay higher tax rates than the giant likes of General Electric or J.P. Morgan. Does that qualify as ‘tax fairness’? … Republicans can win this debate by stressing growth over fairness and jobs over income redistribution.” –The Wall Street Journal

Upright

“Remember in August 2009, when Obama supported extending the Bush tax cuts because, as he then put it, ‘The last thing we want to do is raise taxes during a recession’? Well, here we are with 8.2% unemployment (we haven’t been below 8% for 3-½ years), meager 1.9% average GDP growth with a very real threat of recession on the horizon, trillion-dollar deficits extending as far as the eye can see, and this is a good time to raise taxes? Doubly confusing is the fact that Obama and his Democrat allies are on the record as saying that the Bush tax cuts did not work. Yet he wants to extend them for the middle class, but only for a year. Please tell us, Mr. President, why extend tax cuts you don’t believe worked?” –Investor’s Business Daily

“This continues to be the longest streak – 41 months – of unemployment of 8% or higher since the Great Depression. And recall that back in 2009, Team Obama predicted that if Congress passed its $800 billion stimulus plan, the unemployment rate would be around 5.6% today. … And there are few signs the rest of the year will be any better. And given a) how the eurocrisis is AGAIN flaring up, and b) China continues to slow, it sure seems like 2% growth and 8% unemployment is a best-case scenario with plenty of downside risk – for the economy and the Obama campaign.” –American Enterprise Institute columnist James Pethokoukis

“Barack Obama believes that politics is a knife fight, and the only rule is that he must win. His conduct reflects the unholy mix of a messiah complex with the muscle of The Chicago Way. His goal, he tells us, is to ‘transform’ America, not fix it. This culture clash explains a presidential campaign operating in parallel universes. Romney is making a broad pitch to the nation as a whole, assuming jobs, the debt, deficit and a strong military are what people care about because they should. Obama knows that’s no longer true for a big slice of the country. He gives lip service to those issues, but they concern him only to the extent they could be his undoing.” –columnist Michael Goodwin

“Both employers and consumers are convinced that these are uncertain times, when money is better hoarded and protected rather than risked, given the uncertainty of administration policy and the certainty that profit-making is looked upon as suspicious. And just as many believe there will be no let up until the end of 2012, so, too, they trust that after that date, the long-term outlook – energy-wise, tax-wise, technology-wise – is pretty good, suggesting that they should weather the current storm to be poised for its passing soon. We are now at an impasse: The nation is shrugging, and will the president try to coax it to start lifting again, or in petulance, add more weight?” –historian Victor Davis Hanson

Insight

“The purpose of education is to make the choices clear to people, not to make the choices for people.” –American writer Peter McWilliams (1949-2000)

“There should be a tax on every man that wanted to get a government appointment, or be elected to office. In two years that tax alone would pay our national debt.” –humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935)

The Demo-gogues

The BIG Lie: “[T]hese tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans are also the tax cuts that are least likely to promote growth.” –Barack Obama

Blame game: “Instead of creating more jobs, we had the slowest job growth in half a century, and instead of widespread prosperity, the typical family saw its income fall.” –Barack Obama blaming the Bush tax cuts for the economy

Class warfare: “So we don’t need more top-down economics. We’ve tried that theory. We’ve seen what happens. We can’t afford to go back to it.” –Barack Obama

“So I’m not proposing anything radical. I just believe that anybody making over $250,000 a year should go back to the income tax rates we were paying under Bill Clinton. Back when our economy created nearly 23 million new jobs, the biggest budget surplus in history, and plenty of millionaires to boot. … At the same time, most people agree that we should not raise taxes on middle-class families or small businesses – not when so many folks are just trying to get by. ” –Barack Obama

“Millionaires are just as patriotic as poor people. The very wealthy are just as noble and patriotic as the middle class. But nothing has been asked of them in this horrendous recession. And it’s time we just ask.” –Joe Biden

Slip of the tongue: “We need to have a tax code where secretaries aren’t paying a lower tax rate than their bosses.” –Barack Obama getting his own argument about the Buffet Rule backwards

On partisan bickering: “I suspect that most people … would acknowledge that I’ve tried real hard, and we just haven’t gotten the kind of willingness on the part of Republicans to engage on a whole range of issues that I wish had happened. Part of what I think needs to happen in this election is the voters once again have to send a message, ‘We want common-sense ideas. We don’t want folks who are just sayin’ no to everything.‘” –Barack Obama explaining that it’s all Republicans fault that he hasn’t reached across the aisle

Unbelievable chutzpah: “What’s important if you are running for president is that the American people know who you are and what you’ve done and that you’re an open book.” –Barack Obama calling on Mitt Romney to release various documents

Say what? “Republicans have changed the law so you get arrested if you do vote. … No more compassionate conservatism, no more health care for everyone. … They’re saying exactly what they believe, and they mean it.” –Joe Biden on Voter ID laws

Dezinformatsia

The wrong question: “All right, Congress is back to work … after a Fourth of July recess. And in just two days, House Republicans plan to call a vote to repeal the president’s health care overhaul law. … I’m wondering, should Congress people be spending more time helping constituents comply with the law rather than continuing all of this uncertainty about it?” –CNN’s Christine Romans

Government saves: “Many Americans say they’re unhappy about the health care law, but the the popularity of the law is something of a red herring. Sometimes, government must lead. Sometimes, government must demand people accept change that they’re not yet ready for. Those are the moments when leaders with vision can change society and create the crescendos of history. In freeing the slaves, desegregating schools, enacting Title IX, and legalizing gay marriage, government led America into a new world much of the country wasn’t ready for – but in time, we adjusted. And this too shall pass.” –MSNBC’s Touré

Totally backwards: “It speaks to a perception. And I don’t know how fair it is, I’m not a business analyst. I don’t know if Mr. Romney did good things at Bain Capital, but I do know that this is the wrong time to be running as a businessman. It has become something of a dirty word.” –political commentator Keith Olbermann

Newspulper Headlines:

Out on a Limb: “Efforts to Implement ObamaCare Law Raise Concerns of Massive Government Expansion” –FoxNews.com

What Happened to the Eighth Amendment?: “Rand Paul Puts Forward Measure That Would Force the Senate to Read Bills” –TheHill.com

Longest Books Ever Written: “Delusional Thinking on the Left” –PowerLineBlog.com

We Blame Global Warming: “The Government: Mermaids Do Not Exist” –DailyCaller.com

The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations: “Likely Voters: Carter Was a Better President Than Obama” –TheWeeklyStandard.com

Bottom Story of the Day: “Exclusive: President Obama Asks Campaign Donors to Send Him More Money” –TheDailyBeast.com

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto)

Village Idiots

Several BIG Lies: “Since the Affordable Care Act was passed, national health spending is rising at a slower rate, health insurance premiums are rising at a slower rate, small-business coverage is holding steady and Medicare is on a stronger financial footing.” –Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius making claims that are demonstrably not true

Revisionist history: “I don’t think the car manufacturers would be manufacturing the cars they are manufacturing today as hybrids, if it weren’t for what the president did in signing the executive order and what Lisa (Jackson, EPA Administrator) and I have done over the last three and half years about developing C.A.F.E. (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards for automobiles and light trucks that will get 54.4 miles per gallon by 2025.” –Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood (Lexus produced it’s first hybrid SUV in 2004 – when Obama was still a state senator from Illinois.)

Longing for communism: “The Chinese are more successful [in building infrastructure] because in their country, only three people make the decision. … In a country where only three people make the decision, they can decide where to put their rail line, get the money, and do it. We don’t do it that way in America.” –Ray LaHood

Race bait: “Barack had a mama, and she was white – very white American, Kansas, middle America. There was no argument about who he is or what he is. America’s first black president hasn’t arisen yet. He’s not America’s first black president – he’s America’s first mixed-race president.” –actor Morgan Freeman suggesting that the movement to call Obama “black” is a conspiracy to defeat him. (Memo to Morgan: That didn’t work in '08!)

Tired metaphor: “When Barack Obama got the keys to the bus it was trapped in the ditch with three flat tires. We’ve changed the tires, we’ve pulled the bus out of the ditch, and we’re starting up the road to strengthening the middle class. There’s a different theory. Mitt Romney wants to take that bus – probably a bus made in Switzerland or Bermuda – and he wants to turn that bus around, he wants to pick up some millionaires and billionaires and shower them with cash.” –Obama campaign adviser Robert Gibbs (Mr. Gibbs apparently forgot that Obama’s campaign bus was manufactured in Canada.)

Short Cuts

“Romney raised $100 million in June, and there is talk that Obama could be the first incumbent president to be outspent. I don’t know why that’s a big deal, though, because he gets lots of free coverage. Like with these job numbers that just came out, I hear his name mentioned constantly.” –humorist Frank J. Fleming

“So, extreme heat broke 3,000 records. Out of how many? 3,000, 300k, or 3 million? How many records weren’t broken – is a good question.” –meteorologist Dr. Ryan Maue

“The Supreme Court kept intact the individual penalties written into the health care law. It teaches freeloaders a lesson. People who refuse to buy health insurance could go to prison for five years, where they’ll receive free health care and complimentary meals.” –comedian Argus Hamilton

“The Democratic Convention is $27 million in debt. They had to cancel the kick-off event at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. A speedway is the perfect place for the Democratic Convention. You go around in circles, turn left every few seconds, and you end up right where you started.” –comedian Jay Leno

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