-Caveat Lector-
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Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
CONGRESS ACTION: February 11, 2001
=================
READ OUR LIPS: Taxes cost Americans more than food, clothing, and shelter
combined; an average in excess of $10,000 for every man, woman, and child in
the nation. The latest figures from the Congressional Budget Office project
that the federal government will run a budget surplus -- collecting more tax
money than it needs to fund all projected spending -- of $5.6 trillion over
the next 10 years ($3.1 trillion not counting Social Security surpluses).
Which is why President Bush has proposed an across the board tax cut, which
many democrats predictably demagogue on the basis of their usual
class-warfare rhetoric of "tax cuts for the rich" -- and how come nobody ever
asks Tom Daschle or Dick Gephardt to define "the rich", anyway? As it is, the
top 5% of income earners pay 54% of all taxes, the top 50% of income earners
pay 95.8% of all taxes, and those percentages have been going up for at least
a decade; while the bottom 50% of income earners pay only 4.2% of all taxes,
and that percentage has been going down for at least a decade. That's right
-- five percent of taxpayers pay more than half of all taxes, while half of
the American population pays virtually no taxes at all. Of course those who
pay more in taxes will realize a larger dollar benefit from a tax rate cut
than those who pay less. Or those who pay none. And according to the tax cut
plan submitted by Bush to Congress, upper income earners will shoulder an
even larger percentage of the tax burden. But even most democrats agree with
the need to cut taxes. So amid all this, what is President George W. Bush
proposing to do? Raise taxes.
Mr. President Dubya, read our lips -- Are you nuts?
With the government collecting trillions of dollars more than it needs,
financing bloated federal bureaucracies and enormous federal programs that
have no Constitutional legitimacy whatsoever; with Americans under an
enormous tax burden, the highest as a percentage of GDP since World War II;
with a "progressive" tax structure that punishes fiscal prudence, saving,
investing, and high income earners; Bush is reportedly considering a plan to
collect even more taxes from long-suffering taxpayers. According to the Wall
Street Journal, Bush is contemplating increasing taxes by imposing a capital
gains tax on the appreciated value of assets that are inherited -- in order
to mollify tax-and-spend democrats into accepting his overall tax cut
package. Bush's plan already over-weights the benefits of his tax cuts for
those who pay very little in taxes as it is, in Bush's words, ".the bottom
end of the economic ladder receives the biggest percentage cuts.". Or, to
paraphrase the democrats, "tax cuts for the poor". And now, because there is
one aspect of wealth accumulation that has escaped the grasping claws of the
Tax Man, there may be a huge new tax bill for heirs of appreciated assets.
This tax will probably not be payable until that investment is sold (the way
an ordinary capital gains tax is applied), and might be offset if the estate
tax is reduced or eliminated, as is being proposed, although that reduction
is now in question. However, given the current status of the budget and the
current level of taxation, is it really necessary to say that a tax can only
be reduced or eliminated if it is replaced by another tax?
There is one additional, philosophical problem with the Bush tax cut plan --
the exacerbation of the trend for a smaller and smaller percentage of the
population to bear the burden of taxation, while increasing numbers of people
bear little or no tax burden at all. In effect, there is a growing army of
what can only be called "freeloaders", who are being told that they can have
something for nothing. All of the services provided by government -- and
those have grown legion -- are received by many for little or nothing. And
when benefits cost the recipient nothing, it is human nature to continue to
demand more and more. That army of takers look upon their benefits as
entitlements, rather than as the gifts from the taxpayers that they really
are. Bush's tax cut plan only expands that army of takers who suck up from
the public trough while giving nothing back in return. Americans are a
compassionate people, which is clear from the nearly $200 billion dollars
contributed to charities every year, even clearer from the hundreds of
millions of hours of unpaid voluntary work performed every year by millions
of Americans to benefit their communities. And there is no question but that
the recipients of individual, private, and personal compassion are thankful
for what they receive; but many who receive largess from the impersonal
government have the attitude -- cultivated by pandering politicians -- that
the nation "owes them". That attitude shone forth in all its ugly glory
during the Medicare debates several years ago, when plans were advanced to
stem the rate of growth of the program to double the rate of inflation. Not,
as was repeated ad nauseam at the time, to actually cut payments in any way,
just to slow the rate of increase. Yet slowing the increase was branded a
"cut" nevertheless, a lie that has taken its place in the pantheon of
erroneous conventional wisdom. Those Medicare reform plans were greeted with
outrage from the recipients as being too stingy. What is the appropriate
response to the recipient of a gift, who looks at the gift and chastises the
giver because the gift is smaller than the recipient wants? What are the
consequences for a culture when those who pay the vast majority of the bills
are told, by those who pay virtually none of the bills, that they are greedy
for objecting to the unequal burden they bear? Or, in the case at hand, what
is the appropriate response from taxpayers, who already pay 95% of all income
taxes to a bloated government that is collecting trillions more than it
needs, when they are called greedy and heartless by demagogues like Tom
Daschle, for wanting at least some of that excess back?
There is a solution for those who don't think there should be a tax cut, or
who think the cuts should be smaller and "targeted". After the tax cut
passes, let them calculate what their taxes would have been under the old
schedules, and they can then send a check to the IRS at the end of the year
for the amount that they saved. The IRS will certainly take it. Suggest that
idea to your leftist friends and demagogues like Tom Daschle, and see how
many are eager to do that.
"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry has acquired too
much, in order to spare to others who have not exercised equal industry and
skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the
guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits
acquired by it." -- Thomas Jefferson
DISENFRANCHISED: In the 2000 presidential election, African-American voters
gave 90% -- or better -- of their votes to Al Gore. According to both the
Washington Post and the Miami Herald, many of those votes were spoiled by
overvoting (voting for more than one candidate for president). According to
those sources, democrat voters were three times more likely than republican
voters to improperly mark their ballots. Many of those democrat voters were
first time voters who, apparently, simply didn't understand the process. And
because of their mistakes, some African-American voters claim that they were
"disenfranchised", because their votes didn't count. Well, they were not
disenfranchised, because they had the opportunity to go to the polls and cast
a vote for the candidates of their choice. It's nobody's fault but their own
if they rendered their ballots useless by marking several different
candidates for the same office. If they were disenfranchised, they did it to
themselves. But that was then. Last week, African-Americans really were
disenfranchised, and it was done to them by the Democrat Party. The occasion
was the election of a new Chairman for the Democratic National Committee.
There were two candidates -- Maynard Jackson, former Atlanta mayor, a black
man; and Terry McAuliffe, Bill Clinton's soft money fundraising guru, who is
white. Normally this page is loathe to analyze anyone, whether in terms of
candidacy for office, ideas, ideology, or anything else, in terms of
something as superficial as skin color, preferring to judge people by their
ideas, their policies, and content of their character. But democrats are the
party of skin color analysis, they are the so-called champions of diversity,
the pretend defenders of minorities. So the election of the new Chairman of
the DNC must be analyzed in the terms by which democrats themselves analyze
each and every issue in American life -- color and minority quotas. The
Congressional Black Caucus pushed for the election of Maynard Jackson. Many
other democrats also disliked the idea of Terry McAuliffe running their
party, because of the clouds about questionable fundraising from Clinton's
1996 campaign that his presence would bring to the office. But Bill Clinton
wanted McAuliffe to run the DNC. Top congressional democrats wanted McAuliffe
to run the DNC. Dick Gephardt wanted McAuliffe to run the DNC. So Maynard
Jackson was convinced to withdraw his candidacy, leaving democrats with one
candidate, and one candidate only, to run the DNC -- Terry McAuliffe. If
something similar occurred within the republican party, there would be cries
of "racism" all around. Of course there were no such cries from rank and file
party democrats, or from the normally bean-counting media. But because the
African-American candidate was eliminated from the contest, African-American
democrats really were "disenfranchised", by their pals in the Democrat Party.
They couldn't vote for their candidate, because their candidate wasn't even
in the race. He was driven out of the contest by their pals in the Democrat
Party. Those African-American voters who were so loyal to Al Gore, so loyal
to democrats, were stiffed. By their pals in the Democrat Party.
Yet African-American voters continue to support the Democrat Party, and they
will likely continue to vote for democrats en masse. And they will continue
to get stiffed by their "friends" because their votes are taken for granted.
The question is -- will African-American voters ever look to their own
self-interest? Or will they continue to blindly follow the lead of the Jesse
Jacksons and the Al Sharptons and the other victimology gurus of the Democrat
Party establishment? And continue to get stiffed as thanks for their loyalty.
PARDONS: Here we go again. Dan Burton's House Committee on Government Reform
and Oversight has been holding hearings on Bill Clinton's last-minute
pardons, to see if they were motivated by anything other than a desire for
fairness and to see justice done. When did Bill Clinton ever do anything
simply for the sake of fairness and justice? Arlen Specter has called for
more hearings before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, which Chairman
Orrin Hatch has scheduled for next week, and Specter is reportedly pushing
for a Constitutional amendment to let Congress overturn presidential pardons.
Section 2 of Article 2 of the Constitution says, "The President shall.have
Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States,
except in Cases of Impeachment." The pardon power is absolute, and nothing
discovered by Burton's or Hatch's inquiries will enable anyone to revoke
those pardons. It is time, in the phrase of the Clintonoids, for Burton and
Hatch to "just move on". Move on to matters they and their committees can do
something about, such as the absence of anything resembling justice at the
Justice Department over the past eight years; such as the shameless political
use of the Internal Revenue Service over the past eight years; such as the
last-minute Executive Orders issued by Bill Clinton that are not yet law,
that have no basis of legitimacy, and that can and should be rendered void.
And if Arlen Specter is so concerned about the Constitution, he should pay
closer attention to the threats to the existing document now heading our way
-- such as John McCain's campaign finance reform assault on the First
Amendment, such as the continuing abuse of private property rights by
environmental extremism, such as the ongoing totalitarian campaign to disarm
law abiding citizens. Investigating Bill Clinton just keeps him in the public
spotlight -- precisely where he wants to be. It is time to relegate him, and
his presidency with its never ending whiff of corruption, to the dustbin of
history. The best way this country can show that it has recovered from the
eight years of Clintonian sordidness is to treat Bill Clinton as irrelevant,
and simply ignore him.
FOR MORE INFORMATION.
========================
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) revenue projections:
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=2727&sequence=2
House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight:
http://www.house.gov/reform/
Senate Judiciary Committee: http://www.senate.gov/~judiciary/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mr. Kim Weissman
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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