Thursday, October 22, 2009
Butch the Rooster
John the farmer was in the fertilized egg business. He had several hundred young layers (hens), called "pullets," and eight or ten roosters, whose job was to fertilize the eggs. The farmer kept records and any rooster that didn't perform went into the soup pot and was replaced. That took an awful lot of his time so he bought a set of tiny bells and attached them to his roosters. Each bell had a different tone so John could tell from a distance, which rooster was performing. Now he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report simply by listening to the bells. The farmer's favorite rooster was old Butch, and a very fine specimen he was, too. But on this particular morning John noticed old Butch's bell hadn't rung at all! John went to investigate. The other roosters were chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing. The pullets, hearing the roosters coming, would run for cover. But to Farmer John's amazement, Butch had his bell in his beak, so it couldn't ring. He'd sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one. John was so proud of Butch, he entered him in the Boone County Fair and Butch became an overnight sensation among the judges. The result . . . The judges not only awarded Butch the No Bell Piece Prize but they also awarded him the Pulletsurprise as well. Clearly Butch was a politician in the making: who else but a politician could figure out how to win two of the most highly coveted awards on our planet by being the best at sneaking up on the populace and screwing them when they weren't paying attention?
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Where is the Middle Class?
Obama's Middle Class Betrayal
A Commentary By Howard Rich
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
As much as the Beltway chattering class refuses to admit it, Barack Obama's electoral victory last year had nothing to do with his oft-repeated, generic pledge to bring "hope and change" to Washington, D.C. Sure it sounded good at the time, but Americans have always voted based on their wallets and pocketbooks – not lofty-sounding campaign promises or rhetorical flourishes.
The real key to Obama's victory a year ago – indeed his "signature" issue – was his promise not to raise taxes on the middle class.
"You will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime," Obama promised tens of millions of Americans making $250,000 or less. In fact, candidate Obama promised the middle class billions of dollars in tax cuts, part of his whole "spread the wealth around" plan.
"If you're a family that's making $250,000 a year or less, you will see no increase in your taxes," Obama promised. "Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your personal gains tax, not any of your taxes."
Never mind the fact that Obama's plan would have hit income and payroll providers especially hard, rendering "middle class tax relief" irrelevant to the millions of workers heading toward already-crowded unemployment lines.
No matter how you look at it, though, what a difference a year makes.
As an unprecedented string of multibillion-dollar government bailouts and a viral explosion of new discretionary spending continues to wreak havoc on the deficit, does it really surprise anyone to learn that Obama's "middle class tax cut" was the very first thing to wind up on the cutting room floor?
Of course not. "Class warfare" may have succeeded in getting Obama elected, but it cannot pay for the political promises Obama has made with our borrowed billions.
But that is just the beginning of the great middle class betrayal. Not only are middle class American families getting no tax relief, Obama administration officials are refusing to rule out the possibility that taxes on middle class families will actually increase in an effort to help the government pay for all of this new spending.
So much for Obama's plan to "bleed the rich" in order to fund middle class tax relief – now everyone must bleed as the President and his Congressional allies scramble to pay for all that "hope and change" they've created.
Aside from the obvious demerits of "Robin Hood-style" tax policy (it's never a good idea to go after the people creating the jobs, is it?), the reality is that Obama's now-scrapped middle class "tax cut" would have barely made a dent when compared to costly new government mandates being forced upon American families.
For example, according to an unreleased report prepared by Obama's own Treasury Department, the cost of the administration's "cap and trade" energy tax on the typical American household came out to $1,761 a year. On top of that, we learned this week that the latest multibillion-dollar proposal to "reform" the health care industry would cost the typical American family of four over $4,000 a year by the time the plan is fully implemented.
Altogether, that's nearly $6,000 a year in additional energy and health care costs being heaped on American families struggling to make ends meet during one of the worst recessions in our nation's history – again, with no tax relief to offset the additional financial burden.
Based on these numbers, it seems clear that the American middle class was (and is) nothing but a means to an end for Obama. It also seems clear that rich or poor, Obama's plan to "rescue" the American economy involves taxing all of us back to the Stone Age.
A Commentary By Howard Rich
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
As much as the Beltway chattering class refuses to admit it, Barack Obama's electoral victory last year had nothing to do with his oft-repeated, generic pledge to bring "hope and change" to Washington, D.C. Sure it sounded good at the time, but Americans have always voted based on their wallets and pocketbooks – not lofty-sounding campaign promises or rhetorical flourishes.
The real key to Obama's victory a year ago – indeed his "signature" issue – was his promise not to raise taxes on the middle class.
"You will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime," Obama promised tens of millions of Americans making $250,000 or less. In fact, candidate Obama promised the middle class billions of dollars in tax cuts, part of his whole "spread the wealth around" plan.
"If you're a family that's making $250,000 a year or less, you will see no increase in your taxes," Obama promised. "Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your personal gains tax, not any of your taxes."
Never mind the fact that Obama's plan would have hit income and payroll providers especially hard, rendering "middle class tax relief" irrelevant to the millions of workers heading toward already-crowded unemployment lines.
No matter how you look at it, though, what a difference a year makes.
As an unprecedented string of multibillion-dollar government bailouts and a viral explosion of new discretionary spending continues to wreak havoc on the deficit, does it really surprise anyone to learn that Obama's "middle class tax cut" was the very first thing to wind up on the cutting room floor?
Of course not. "Class warfare" may have succeeded in getting Obama elected, but it cannot pay for the political promises Obama has made with our borrowed billions.
But that is just the beginning of the great middle class betrayal. Not only are middle class American families getting no tax relief, Obama administration officials are refusing to rule out the possibility that taxes on middle class families will actually increase in an effort to help the government pay for all of this new spending.
So much for Obama's plan to "bleed the rich" in order to fund middle class tax relief – now everyone must bleed as the President and his Congressional allies scramble to pay for all that "hope and change" they've created.
Aside from the obvious demerits of "Robin Hood-style" tax policy (it's never a good idea to go after the people creating the jobs, is it?), the reality is that Obama's now-scrapped middle class "tax cut" would have barely made a dent when compared to costly new government mandates being forced upon American families.
For example, according to an unreleased report prepared by Obama's own Treasury Department, the cost of the administration's "cap and trade" energy tax on the typical American household came out to $1,761 a year. On top of that, we learned this week that the latest multibillion-dollar proposal to "reform" the health care industry would cost the typical American family of four over $4,000 a year by the time the plan is fully implemented.
Altogether, that's nearly $6,000 a year in additional energy and health care costs being heaped on American families struggling to make ends meet during one of the worst recessions in our nation's history – again, with no tax relief to offset the additional financial burden.
Based on these numbers, it seems clear that the American middle class was (and is) nothing but a means to an end for Obama. It also seems clear that rich or poor, Obama's plan to "rescue" the American economy involves taxing all of us back to the Stone Age.
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