Obama’s tax cut: New Welfare Deal

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

The “tax-cut plan” of Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama is anything but. In fact, it’s nothing more than another liberaled-up wealth-transference program that, in the “old days,” was known as welfare.

Sen. Obama’s economics plan centers on his claim that he’ll cut taxes for 95 percent of American workers. Left unsaid is that to accomplish this, he’ll have to levy a massive tax increase against the other 5 percent who already pay nearly 60 percent of all taxes.

Just as troubling, however, is this little factoid: Even the one-third of all American working families who pay no income taxes now will receive a government check under the Obama plan. And that number could rise to about 44 percent under Obama’s proposal.

And for most, these payments would exceed even the amount they pay in payroll taxes.

Obama is not offering a tax cut. He’s proposing welfare payments. And it represents an extraordinarily noxious expansion of the welfare state.

Actually, it’s a classic welfare program in that it will only encourage lower-income workers to remain as lower-income workers, given the higher marginal tax disincentive should they improve their employment lot.

By one estimate, this New Welfare Deal would cost more than $1 trillion over the next decade. And that’s $1 trillion less that will be invested and leveraged by the investment class that Barack Obama sees as being so ripe for the picking.

See this article in its original context here.

Final Debate: McCain and Obama Debate Abortion

I think it’s interesting that McCain didn’t reference Obama’s prior comments at their debate at Saddleback Church, when they battled it out over the abortion issue in the Final 2008 Presidential Debate.

If you remember, Obama was asked, “At what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?” Here was his response:

“Above my pay grade?” Seriously?! You want to be President of the United States of America, and you don’t have the balls to honestly answer a question, because the answer will be unpopular with the audience in front of which you find yourself? Give me a break!

McCain dropped the ball on this, tonight. When the abortion issue came up in the Presidential Debate, he should have said, “I really don’t feel this question is fair, as it’s an issue that is above my opponent’s pay grade.”

If Obama honestly didn’t know the answer to the question, he has a lot of explaining to do.

Obama Endorsed by NARAL

NARAL Pro-Choice America PAC endorses Sen. Barack Obama for President!

Sen. Obama is fully pro-choice. In his own words:

“A woman’s ability to decide how many children to have and when, without interference from the government, is one of the most fundamental rights we possess.  It is not just an issue of choice, but equality and opportunity for all women.

“I have consistently advocated for reproductive choice and will make preserving women’s rights under Roe v. Wade a priority as President.  I oppose any constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s ruling in this case.

McCain: Senator Obama, I Am Not President Bush

HEMPSTEAD, NY — The most memorable moment of the debate tonight at Hofstra University was when Senator McCain made his most explicit statement thus far distancing himself President Bush, declaring:

“Senator Obama, I am not President Bush, if you wanted to run against President Bush you should have run four years ago. I will take this country in a new direction.”

McCain usually mentions differences he has had with the President on Iraq and torture but he has never gone this far before, which is something I feel he should have done from the very beginning of the campaign. This nonsense that he has to worry about “alienating his base” is absurd.

I say, forget the base and go for the independents! People respect you when you show you have brass balls, which is what Frank Luntz showed, with his focus group of independents who all responded very favorably to this McCain statement (you might’ve missed this, if you watched the debate on a network other than FoxNews).

Who Is Joe The Plumber?

by Bonney Kapp

HEMPSTEAD, NY – Forget Senators Obama and McCain, Meet “Joe the Plumber.”

During tonight’s debate the candidates mentioned Joe by name more than a dozen times throughout the course of the 90-minute debate.

A sampling:

Sen. McCain: “Joe, I want to tell you, I’ll not only help you buy that business that you worked your whole life for and be able – and I’ll keep your taxes low and I’ll provide available and affordable health care for you and your employees.”

Sen. Obama: “Now, the conversation I had with Joe the plumber, what I essentially said to him was, ‘Five years ago, when you were in a position to buy your business, you needed a tax cut then, and what I want to do is to make sure that the plumber, the nurse, the firefighter, the teacher, the young entrepreneur who doesn’t yet have money, I want to give them a tax break now.”

So who is Joe the Plumber?

Joe Wurzelbacher of Holland, Ohio, might be the most famous plumber in the country after confronting the Democrat earlier this week when Obama was canvassing his neighborhood. Wurzelbacher, who is about to purchase a small business that nets more than $250,000/year – the magic number at which Obama will increase taxes – asked Obama why after working hard for so many years he should be taxed.

Obama and Wurzelbacher spoke for about six minutes – in front of press – about Obama’s tax plan, after which Obama noted the conversation was “good practice” for his debate with McCain.

Watch the video of the entire conversation here – unedited.

Candidates Hit Hard at Final Presidential Debate

Barack Obama and John McCain are squaring off for their final presidential debate.

John McCain, sitting just a few feet from Barack Obama at the final presidential debate Wednesday, accused his rival of trying to falsely link him to President Bush, raise taxes on hard-working Americans and brush aside “hurtful” comments made by one of his key supporters.

Obama accused McCain of exclusively running negative ads, and repeatedly said he was distorting the facts about his past associations.

The tone of the debate was decidedly more tense than that of their previous two encounters — it was also a key opportunity for McCain to halt Obama’s growing momentum in the polls. The Republican nominee used the intimate format to challenge Obama’s economic policies directly and attempt to refute his campaign’s central argument that he is akin to President Bush.

“Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you want to run again President Bush, you should have run four years ago,” McCain said at the debate.

HOAX: ‘Shocking Development’ Michelle Obama and API

By Noel Bagwell
Oct 15, 2008

One of the top-rated blog articles on WordPress is a total fabrication! The article’s headline reads: “Shocking development: Mrs Obama decides enough is enough: “My husband was born in Hawaii and adopted by his step father, does that make him unpatriotic; she asks”, on a direct telephone to API.”

I said what? Oh no you did'n't!

The Obama Campaign, however, says the Michelle Obama ‘Interview’ on ‘African Press’ Website is 100% Bogus!

The African Press International blog obviously manufactured the rant they allege Michelle Obama made in a phone call to their so-called “news outlet.” In that rant, the “africanpress” poster says,

African press International is supposed to support Africans and African-American view,” and she went to state that, “it is strange that API has chosen to support the racists against my husband. There is no shame in being adopted by a step father. All dirt has been thrown onto my husband’s face and yet he loves this country. My husband and I know that there is no law that will stop him from becoming the president, just because some American white racists are bringing up the issue of my husband’s adoption by His step father.

Down the Drain? Beware of Obama’s Plan to ‘Spread the Wealth Around’

By Betsy Newmark
High School History and Government Teacher/Blogger

If the McCain campaign can’t use this Obama quote to raise doubts about his attitude towards wealth and success, then they deserve the shellacking they seem headed for.

“Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn’t it?” the plumber asked, complaining that he was being taxed “more and more for fulfilling the American dream.”

“It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success too,” Obama responded. “My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody … I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

Plumbers of the country, unite! Forget about the work and effort you put into building up a business or the scummy work that you do that many of us don’t know or don’t want to do. If you have succeeded, you should be willing to give up more of what you earn to help those who haven’t had the great good luck that you have had to be a successful plumber. Remember how Obama is going to give 95% of all of us a tax cut even though over 30% of the population doesn’t pay taxes?

He might call it a tax credit, but what he’s really doing is his vision of “spreading the wealth around.” It sounds a lot like Huey Long’s 1935 plan to “Share the Wealth.” And when he finds that he can’t tax the top 5% of the population to gain enough wealth to spread to the 95% of the rest of us, do you really think that he’ll stop with that 5%?

Remember…This is the guy who said in the ABC debate during the primary season that his approach to raising tax on capital gains is not based on whether it would provide more revenue but on his idea of what is fair:

GIBSON: All right. You have, however, said you would favor an increase in the capital gains tax. As a matter of fact, you said on CNBC, and I quote, “I certainly would not go above what existed under Bill Clinton,” which was 28 percent. It’s now 15 percent. That’s almost a doubling, if you went to 28 percent.

But actually, Bill Clinton, in 1997, signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20 percent.

OBAMA: Right.

GIBSON: And George Bush has taken it down to 15 percent.

OBAMA: Right.

GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down.

So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?

OBAMA: Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.

Just what we need in these fragile economic times — a guy who wants to raise taxes because he thinks it’s a matter of “fairness” and time to “spread the wealth around.”

That will be some incentive for other plumbers who want to work hard and build up a successful business.

But don’t worry – according to Joe Biden, it’s the patriotic thing to do.