No Laughing Matter

The other night Maximum Leader played stand-up comedian at the White House Correspondents' dinner. All good fun, right?

Wrong!

Actually this kind of thing turns my stomach. These black tie affairs in which celebrities mingle with the parasite-in-chief always remind me of the gap between the American royalty in Washington and everyday Americans slaving away in flyover country.

At the dinner Maxie said:

Anyway, it’s great to be here this evening in the vast, magnificent Hilton ballroom — or what Mitt Romney would call a little fixer-upper. (Laughter and applause.) I mean, look at this party. We’ve got men in tuxes, women in gowns, fine wine, first-class entertainment. I was just relieved to learn this was not a GSA conference. (Laughter.) Unbelievable. Not even the mind reader knew what they were thinking. (Laughter.) [emphasis mine]

For the uninformed, the infamous "GSA conference" took place in Las Vegas in 2010. Fox Business describes it as follows:

The government agency, which oversees federal real estate, is now under fire for wasting more than $822,000 in taxpayer money on a lavish conference in 2010 at a luxury resort in Las Vegas for 300 federal workers that included penthouse suites, a mind reader, a clown, a bicycle training exercise, and expensive catering -- spending that was mocked by the GSA’s own workers in videos.

I don't mind the President of the United States making a fool out of himself in front of a bunch of star-struck correspondents. I DO mind Maximum Leader making a fool out of me and all the rest of us American taxpayers.

I took that joke personally, Mr. Maxie!

What the GSA did in Las Vegas was a travesty, a slap in the face to every taxpaying American. The Washington parasites keep sucking the life out of hardworking Americans by demanding more and more tribute. They say they need the extra tax money for urgent and important needs to serve the common good. They say there is no room for responsible spending cuts. And then the employees they are charged to supervise party away the money they are charged to protect and care for...And Maximum Leader thinks the whole thing is funny enough to mock with a bad joke!

My mother used to tell me that some things are no laughing matter. Well, the joke's on you, Mr. Maximum Leader. As I pull the lever in November for your opponent I will think about your line at the correspondents' dinner and I'll enjoy the last laugh!

I hope a huge majority of American voters do the same!

More Cutesy Fluff From Ezra Klein

[EDITOR'S NOTE: An earlier version of this post appeared briefly in this space. That post was in bad taste and I apologize for it. I have a dark and irreverent sense of humor along with a hair-trigger political temper. Combined, they can sometimes result in an embarrassing post. Again, I apologize to my many billions of readers. The post below gets the point across without the shame. SB] 

Ezra Klein's piece in Bloomberg, entitled "Don’t Worry About Deficit That Will Heal Itself," is political and economic nonsense. It's illiterate, illogical, irrelevant and deceitful. I cannot even summarize the point of Klein's printed mush because he doesn't have one, unless maybe it's this:

Nevertheless, I’m confident that we will, one way or another, muddle through. Because when it comes to the deficit, Congress really has two choices: Do something to solve it, or do nothing and let that solve it.

Doing nothing will solve the deficit? How is Congress going to stop short of the "fiscal cliff" Ben Bernanke says the country is approaching in 2012 by doing nothing? Isn't muddling through doing something?

Klein says that Congress has muddled through in the past and will muddle through in the future:

In part for that reason, we don’t balance the budget for 70 years at a time. Indeed, we usually don’t even balance it for 10 years at a time. Instead, we muddle through, striking deals that are smaller than wonks like, but sufficient to keep us out of the woods. That’s what we did in the 1990s, which featured deficit-reduction bills in 1991, 1993, 1995 and 1997. We’ll probably follow a similar path in the decade to come.

So, apparently in the past muddling through meant doing something, i.e., "striking deals...which featured deficit-reduction bills...," but today muddling through means doing nothing. What is Klein smoking?
 
Maybe Klein thinks doing nothing now will "solve" the deficit because Congress has already done something. Klein writes:

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke calls the end of 2012 “a fiscal cliff.” The Bush tax cuts are set to expire. The $1.2 trillion spending sequester, enforcing cuts in the defense and domestic budgets, is set to go off. Various stimulus measures -- including the payroll tax cut -- are scheduled to end. “Taken together,” writes the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, “these policies would reduce ten-year deficits by over $6.8 trillion relative to realistic current policy projections -- enough to put the debt on a sharp downward path."

OK. The something Congress did reduces ten year deficits by $6.8 trillion and puts "the debt on a sharp downward path." Terrific, but a lie by omission. Here is the full quote from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:

At the end of 2012, we face what Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke calls a “fiscal cliff.” Taken together, these policies would reduce ten-year deficits by over $6.8 trillion relative to realistic current policy projections – enough to put the debt on a sharp downward path but in an extremely disruptive and unwise manner.

Notice the phrase I bolded but Klein erased? [Isn't it customary to use an ellipsis when omitting part of a quote unless the part omitted is obvious or irrelevant? Does that phrase seem obvious or irrelevant to you? Maybe Klein couldn't fit that phrase into his 1000 word piece.]

Here is how the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget concludes its report:

At the end of the year, Congress and the President will face what appears to be a daunting choice: either allow the country to go off of a recessionary “fiscal cliff” all at once, or else doom the country to large deficits that will permanently slow economic growth and increase the likelihood of a fiscal crisis.

Allowing the country to hit the fiscal cliff at year’s end would be a dangerous mistake, but adding $7.5trillion to our debt by extending the expiring policies and repealing the sequester, without putting the budget on a more sustainable path, would be a travesty.

But the end of the year provides the opportunity for a third option – one which avoids many (though not necessarily all) of the abrupt changes at year’s end and replaces them with a gradual and thoughtful plan to stabilize and then reduce the debt. As Chairman Bernanke has argued, Congress should “figure out ways to achieve the same long-run fiscal improvement [as the fiscal cliff] without having it all happen at one date.” A comprehensive deficit reduction plan can offer a win-win by giving the economy space to recover in the short-term while enacting long-term reforms to strengthen the economy and put the country’s finances in order. Policymakers should avoid the fiscal cliff and take this course instead.

Whoa! Am I crazy, or does this say that doing nothing wouldn't solve anything and, in fact, would be a "dangerous mistake?" Doing nothing would propel the country over Bernanke's "recessionary 'fiscal cliff' all at once."

In fact, the report's conclusion strongly recommends doing something, the "third option," which involves Congress coming up with "a gradual and thoughtful plan to stabilize and then reduce the debt."

Maybe this is what Klein means by Congress doing nothing. I doubt it. Klein writes:

Of course, you can muddle wisely or muddle stupidly. I worry we’ll choose the latter. Evidence is already mounting: The sequester is a stupid way to cut spending. Letting the Bush tax cuts expire all at once is a stupid way to raise taxes. And repeatedly forcing the country to the brink of default is a stupid way to manage our budget. 

There he goes again with that muddling through nonsense! At first Klein is comfortable that Congress will "one way or another" muddle through. Now he warns us that "one way" of muddling through is wise and another way of muddling through is stupid!

Maybe Klein is stupid. Maybe the deficit won't heal itself. Maybe we should worry about it!

And what is that little, overlooked phrase that Klein did have room to publish? I'm talking about the phrase: "a stupid way to raise taxes."

As it turns out, doing nothing really means doing something...to you, something Klein is, apparently, very comfortable with, and something President Obama promised would never happen: raising your taxes. Remember? Obama was only going to raise taxes on the "rich!"

Yeah? Well both Klein and Obama are jerking you around. Here's another tidbit from the Report of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget that Klein failed to include in his love letter to himself:

Additionally, on the tax side, the fiscal cliff would lead to abrupt increases in taxes for nearly every person without making strategic choices about how to best improve the tax code.

Here's another:

Congress generally “patches” the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) every year to help it keep pace with inflation. As a result, just over four million tax returns currently pay the AMT. If a new patch is not enacted retroactively for 2012, that number will increase to above 30 million for that year and would exceed 40 million by the end of the decade.

If you don't know what the AMT is, you better find out. It's a very, onerous tax meant to penalize "the rich." The problem is in a few years Bernanke's inflation will make us all "rich" on paper. In reality, we'll be poor saps paying a rich man's tax!

These new taxes, along with all the other somethings Congress did and didn't do in 2011, comprise the "fiscal cliff" we'll tumble over if Congress does nothing between now and then. That tumble will plunge us into another deep recession or worse. But Klein is confident. Forget the cliff, he says. Worry about something that really matters:

The same can’t be said for issues such as infrastructure and loose nukes and climate change and preparing for pandemic flu. On those questions, congressional inaction isn’t enough to make the problem disappear. So those are the issues I worry about.

Wait! If Congress did something to solve these all-important, earth-shaking, progressive-talking-point issues, wouldn't that require Congress to spend a bunch of new [stimulus?] money? Wouldn't this bunch of new "doing something" muck up the "something" that Congress has already done, like the $6.8 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years? Wouldn't that mean Congress would have to muddle through again and...?

You know what? I don't give a damn about what Klein says or thinks or smokes. Rather than writing he'd be better off doing nothing. Logic never muddles through his gibberish.

His is the kind of cute nonsense that the stuffed shirts in Washington salivate over. No wonder the country is speeding toward a "fiscal cliff" with it's foot on the accelerator.

My advice? Fasten your seat belt and start worrying.

Rodney King and Barack Obama

On May 1, 1992, as Los Angeles burned, Rodney King stepped before the TV cameras and made the following rambling appeal to his rampaging neighbors:

"People, I just want to say . . . can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it horrible for the older people and the kids? . . . We've got enough smog here in Los Angeles, let alone to deal with the setting of these fires and things. It's just not right. It's not right, and it's not going to change anything. We'll get our justice. They've won the battle but they haven't won the war. We will have our day in court and that's all we want. . . . I'm neutral. I love everybody. I love people of color. . . . I'm not like they're . . . making me out to be. We've got to quit. We've got to quit. . . I can understand the first upset in for the first two hours after the verdict, but to go on, to keep going on like this, and to see a the security guard shot on the ground, it's just not right. It's just not right because those people will never go home to their families again. And I mean, please, we can get along here. We all can get along. We've just got to, just got to. We're all stuck here for awhile. . . . Let's try to work it out. Let's try to work it out."

King's emotional statement is posted on YouTube here.

King's speech was moving and sincere, but ultimately pathetic. Why? Because King attempted to persuade looters, thugs and murderers to love each other, to just "get along" and "work it out." He didn't understand the contradiction inherent in what he was asking.

Barack Obama's speech to students at George Washington University last Wednesday was riddled with the same nonsense. When a society blurs the line between "what is yours" and "what is mine," property in that society disappears and, consequently, so does freedom and peace. Such a society is organized on the very principle of war: taking what you want from the other guy by beating his brains out, or at least threatening to do so.

Isn't it obvious that war is not a peaceable pasttime? Sure, war is started cordially and reverently by august bodies of harmless-looking, half-senile politicans. But wars always end in death and destruction for those individuals who actually fight in them or are caught up in them. This is not mere opinion. As any rational human being can attest, this is fact.   

Americans are odd fellows. They organize their society on the same basis as war, i.e., on the principle of conking Peter on the head and robbing him in order to pay Paul, and then they expect Peter and Paul to get along famously together after the assault and robbery. Is any idea more absurd?

Obama plays the statesman. He is young, vigorous and mentally astute. Certainly, his vision of society is one based on peace and goodwill, not war. Yet, Wednesday he proposed a plan to fund $-trillions of dollars worth of "key investments in our future" by imposing new and confiscatory tax increases on the American public. Obama's progressive allies claim that his plan really does not amount to Paul declaring economic war on Peter. They insist taxes really are not theft.

In my book any exchange of property between individuals that is not mutually voluntary is theft. I grant that when we agree to live in society, in order to take advantage of the economic miracle of the division of labor, we must agree to certain ground rules that govern our behavior toward each another. We must agree, for instance, not to kill each other with impunity. We must also agree not to take from one another willy-nilly. Think about it. What real advantage would a society offer an individual if murder and theft were not taboo?

Still, we in society make allowances for certain types of killing and stealing which we regard as justified. Killing another in self-defense, for instance, is not taboo in many societies. Taking from another by means of taxation is not taboo in American society. However, the more exceptions made to the rule, the fuzzier the line becomes between killing and murder, taking and theft. How the exceptions are determined also makes a significant difference.

Contrary to what many believe, in American society property is not sacred. If Americans don't fork over their annual property taxes, their city government will legally confiscate their home. If Americans don't cough up their annual income taxes, the IRS will seize their wages, take their property and put them in jail. Moreover, the level of these property and income taxes is not written in stone, and it is the level of these taxes which determines how likely it is that Americans will lose their property to government bureaucrats or keep it for themselves.

In America the level of taxes is determined by duly elected politicians acting on behalf of their constituents. There is no Constitutional protection that guarantees a proper level of taxes. Politicians can hike the level of taxes as high as they want so long as a majority of politicians agrees and so long as their constituents tolerate the hike. I ask you, dear reader, how secure is your right to property when the next gang of politicians to win election is legally able to raise the level of taxes to extreme levels, say 100%? I contend that under such a system you have no right to property at all because the line between "what is mine" and "what is theirs" is blurred beyond recognition.

Imagine a society in which the next elected band of political cutthroats had the power not only to hike taxes to whatever level it liked, but also was able to kill whomever it wished, legally, and with impunity. Imagine Saddam Hussein's Iraq or Kim Jong-il's North Korea, if your imagination requires a tangible example. Americans -- I trust-- would not tolerate such a system of legalized murder, yet they tolerate their system of legalized theft by taxation.

Progressives will object again, saying that Obama is proposing to steal only from the rich who can more than afford the loss of property. Moreover, as Obama said in his speech, the rich don't care if they're taxed to death. "I believe most wealthy Americans would agree with me," he said. "They want to give back to their country...."

But such an objection is illogical and beside the point. "Most" does not mean "all." If it did, Obama would not be talking about a tax. He would be talking about a "gift." Furthermore, the level of taxes is still being arbitrarily determined by a band of elected politicians. Obama arbitarily taxing "millionaires and billionaires" today only validates the principle that he is able to arbitrarily tax you tomorrow.

But let's consider Obama's proposals in a wider context. When the federal government in Washington spends money on anything, it is money first obtained by taxing some individuals, whether millionaires, billionaires or you. By the process of taxing and spending the government takes away from you that which was formerly your private property. Had the government not taken your property, you would have had the freedom to do with that property what you wished. If you no longer have that property, you no longer have that freedom. Because of the government's taxing and spending, you no longer have the freedom to decide. The government decides for you. And expects you to like it!

Why do you suppose Obama said that "most wealthy Americans would agree" with his proposal to tax them? He also said that rich people "want to give... ...It's just Washington hasn't asked them to." Why did he say this?

Because most Americans understand that a voluntary exchange is morally superior and eminently more satisfying than a forced confiscation. Voluntary exchange between individuals is a principle of peace. Millions of individuals make billions of peaceful and voluntarily exchanges everyday. Such is the norm in societies where property, freedom and peace are respected. On the other hand, Americans understand that forced confiscation is a recipe for conflict and a principle of war. By couching taxation in the language of voluntary exchange Obama was trying to pass off a sow's ear as a silk purse.

But such verbal deception is the norm for Washington politicians. They perceive that voters want them to cut "spending," so they attach the Orwellian label "spending" to tax cuts and tax deductions. The property you own that goes untaxed is, by the government's twisted logic, spending that they must cut! They call taxation "investment." They call increases in appropriations that are less than desired "spending cuts." They call grants, subsidies and transfer payments "gifts" or "benefits." They call Social Security "insurance." All this official doublespeak is intended to hijack the language of free and voluntary exchange and, thereby, pawn off legalized theft as acceptable and sensible to moral people.

The whole of Obama's speech was an attempt to make Americans believe that their country was founded on the principle of robbing Peter to pay Paul, instead of on the principle of free and voluntary exchange! His visionary American Dream is of a time when virtually all property is forcefully expropriated from American individuals by the federal government, then spent by the federal government as it sees fit, not as the former owners of that property see fit.

The beautiful irony of Obama's vision -- as he sees it -- is that Rodney King was right after all. We can "work it out!" How? By simply working together! We can just "get along."

*Sigh* Personally, I didn't think Obama's speech to the nation on Wednesday was as moving or sincere as Rodney King's speech to his neighbors in 1992. But you know what?

It was every bit as pathetic!