Lies My President Told Me

Paul Krugman wrote, "We have a society in which money is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people, and in which that concentration of income and wealth threatens to make us a democracy in name only." ("Oligarchy, American Style," New York Times, 11-3-2011).

Psssst … Mr. Krugman, the United states is not a democracy, it is a Constitutional Republid. Just sayin’.

Quoting John Adams (second president of the United States): “Democracy ... while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.” The truth is a democracy lasts only so long as its citizens can vote themselves generous bounties from the public treasury at the expense of someone else. That understood explains why we are not a democracy, because, as understood by the words of John Adams above, the founding fathers were smarter than that.

Having cleared that up, thanks are in order for Mr. Krugman for his brilliant diagnosis of our income disparity woes here in America. I would ask Mr. Krugman, should we blame Joanne Rowling, “Harry Potter” author, with a net worth of $1 billion dollars for the disparity of incomes you have so brilliantly uncovered or should we blame all those children and their respective parents, some probably even low income, who bought so many of her novels, attended the Harry Potter movies, and bought the Harry Potter DVDs? Again, are we to affix the problem of our income disparity here in the U.S. to LeBron James, the Miami Heat’s star forward, who reportedly earns $43 million per year, or are all those fans plunking down $100 and more per ticket to watch him play at the root of our financial problems? (Thanks to Walter Williams for the idea behind this comparison). Disclaimer: I do not follow either of the two personalities in my example but agree that they are entitled to whatever others are willing to give them.

Allow me to make a further comparison for my readers. I read a little story about an exchange between a defensive football player and his coach that may or may not be true, but certainly reveals the problem with this kind of thinking. As the defensive back left the field looking dejected after missing the tackle of the opposing team’s wide receiver that brought the score to 45-7, the defensive coach began to berate his man yelling, “What’s wrong with you? We’re paying you $150,000 a year to make those tackles.” The already-distraught player looked at his coach and said in a low voice, “I get it. The problem is the other team is paying that guy $1,000,000 a year to avoid my tackles.” For the most part the level of one’s salary is usually directly commensurate with the level of skill one brings to the particular job in question. I had a boss that was paying me a decent salary for my services and had just reluctantly agreed to a wage hike that I was requesting who told me more than once that an individual was only worth what someone else was willing to pay for any particular services rendered. Bottom line: Get what you can while you can get it. Who has the right, including the president of the United States who has now piled on, to tell me when I’ve made enough or too much money? Thousands have gone on before us to their deaths to keep secure the liberty that our founding fathers built upon and I, for one, am not prepared to hand it off to anybody. My response to those who would try to tell us such a thing, “Look to yourselves.”

Low income status in America comes with many advantages today that in years past were not enjoyed by even the well-to-do: television, more likely two than one, home air conditioning, cable T.V. and Internet service, a cell phone per resident and usually, at least, one automobile or truck in the driveway. Has anybody twisted your arm lately to make you purchase cable T.V. and Internet services? Sure, I might complain about cable T.V. prices but I have the option of disconnecting from the network. Any of us can do that unless of course you consider it a human right to have T.V. and Internet service which, in fact, some people do … consider it a right, that is. I am currently now comparing cell phone plans because I am ready to cancel my current provider of nearly 10 years at the conclusion of my current contract. You could cancel your TV service and still receive HD over the air from a much smaller group of stations, of course. The salient point here is that choice is the prerogative of the free market.

Okay, I get it; someone might say that the cable services are a monopoly and the rates are artificially high but who is to blame for that? I contend it is the corrupt politicians we keep electing more than the corporations who are greasing their palms and filling their campaign coffers. One has only to look at the hue and cry being raised over citizens’ attempts to render Pay-to-Play illegal in New Jersey to uncover the corruption that exists in government. I’ve heard the topic of Pay-to-Play raised in a local council meeting by a citizen and all but ignored by our elected representatives. They appear to want nothing to do with it. Mr. Obama recognized the problem and stated he would have the most transparent administration yet and would never accept money from lobbyists only to turn his back on his promise and rake in millions for Democratic campaign coffers. In fact, Mr. Obama, friend of billionaires, is the one leading the charge in our present round of class warfare. Do any of the president’s millionaire and billionaire friends and backers really believe they will pay more taxes? I leave that for you to decide. The Los Angeles Times, not known as a bastion of conservatism, covering the president’s speech in Kansas on December 7, reported that his "stab at the wealthy comes even as he is expected to rake in more than any sitting president for his reelection war chest, much of it from the very big-time earners he spent Tuesday deriding.” Again, do you really think Obama’s big-time earning friends expect to pay more taxes?

Allow me to explain the fallacy behind Mr. Obama’s logic. I heard part of the president’s speech made in Kansas on Dec. 7. It was classic class warfare rhetoric. In another lie … er, I mean, line ... from Mr. Obama’s speech in Kansas, we find that some billionaires enjoy a tax rate of 1 percent. How does Mr. Obama know that? Actually, it is reported on “reason.com” that the Washington Post’s fact checker, Glenn Kessler, discovered that this idea was lifted from an assertion made by Bloomberg TV correspondent Gigi Stone in which she was discussing tax strategies used by the very wealthy to avoid paying taxes. No proof was ever offered by Stone or the White House after repeating the claim that any such thing is true. In fact, "an administration official conceded the White House had no actual data to back up the president’s assertion." Unfortunately, in the current attempt by Mr. Obama to cling to his job, providing proof for such rhetoric is all just too much attention to detail. I wonder why the president never offered any explanation as to how such tax evasion could occur in the first place, in other words, how is it that billionaires are managing to pay so little? Permit me to suggest that it’s not because billionaires are taxed at 1 percent or any other rate other than the 35 percent rate that they should be paying, rather, if it is happening it is because these individuals know how to play the system and take advantage of all the available loopholes that Mr. Obama refuses to address. So, why then demonize all who made a billion dollars as if they all only paid 1 percent and suggest raising the top rate from 35 percent to 44 percent to make them pay their share? Isn’t 35 percent a share enough? Considering that the top 1 percent earns 19 percent of the nation’s income but pays 37 percent of all income taxes while 50 percent of wage earners pay no federal income tax at all, 35 percent sounds like a fair share already. The fact is, something Mr. Obama knows but refuses to admit, if billionaires are paying only 1 percent with a top rate of 35 percent, you can be sure they will do the same at any rate until the loopholes are removed. The only people who will pay the increase are those that aren’t playing the loophole game and the whole idea of tax increases becomes a way to punish the wealthy through class envy while our politicians continue to spend our money like drunken sailors. Wake up, America!