Charlie Rangel's Congressional Sclerosis

One year ago, The New York Times called for the resignation of the corrupt NY Democrat Representative and Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Charlie Rangel.

Richard Cohen of the Washington Post writes...

[Charles Rangel] suffers from the degenerative disease called Congressional Sclerosis. Its symptom is the belief that the rules, especially the petty ones, no longer apply to you. This happens over time. It comes with seniority and a sense of victimization that combine to produce the onset of entitlement for goodies to which, in the course of things, you are not entitled. All this is abetted by the righteous belief that everyone else is making money and taking private planes and dipping their tootsies in the balmy Caribbean on a given February Friday -- and so why can't you? You have the power and the staff -- just look at all those people! -- and flunkies who will hold the elevator for you, pick you up at Reagan National Airport and on the other end at LaGuardia -- and you ought to have some commensurate luxuries. This is only right.

That's damned good stuff. I wish I could write like Mr. Cohen.

"Politics is the business of gaining power and privilege without possessing merit." - P.J. O'Rourke

Read More: RealClearPolitics - Charles Rangel: Above the Law?
Related: Michelle Malkin - Unhappy Anniversary, Charlie Rangel

Millions March On D.C.

Millions of conservatives marched on Washington D.C. - yes, millions. Don't believe what you're hearing from the left-wing propagandists and sycophants in the Obamedia. Preliminary estimates range from one to two million.

Here's proof...
9/12 DC Time Lapse Video
9/12 Protest Was Over One Million
Media Credibility Plunges; Aerial Views Shows Millions
NYT Reports Thousands, Daily Mail Reports Millions

That's not counting the millions that marched in other parts of this great country. True Americans are tired of, and angry about big government's takeover of America. It's not racism and we're not the fringe.

We want to pass on the greatness that America is to our future generations, that's true compassion. We don't want to hand our children a third world, debt ridden, socialist state.

It ends here big government republicans and democrats. Heed the call or be swept aside. Can you hear us now?

Millions, Billions, Trillions

The looters in Washington D.C. throw these numbers around as if there’s no difference between them. Use a word often enough and it loses its meaning.

How awesome was the last thing you heard described as “awesome?” - not so much, right?

How much is a million dollars, a billion dollars, or a trillion dollars? I wrote them out numerically to try to get a better sense of their true sizes.

One Million Dollars = $1,000,000
One Billion Dollars = $1,000,000,000
One Trillion Dollars = $1,000,000,000,000

That helps a little, but I want a more graphic example. I want to know…

"What does one trillion dollars look like?" and, “How big is an 11 trillion dollar national debt?”

Now that's Awesome.

Related: CNN - Is Trillion The New Billion?
Related: Politico - National Debt Hits Record $11 Trillion.

Pravda: The Death of American Capitalism

American Capitalism Gone With A Whimper
By Stanislav Mishin For Pravda.Ru

Here's part of a recent article from Russia's on-line newspaper Pravda. The word is out, American capitalism is dead.

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

[...]

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American tax dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.

Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.

So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin warned Obama not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.

The last sentence is, for me, the saddest.

The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is - the world will only snicker.

Read More: American Capitalism Gone With A Whimper

Andrew Lloyd Webber on Wealth Creation

America, take note...

I write this article because I fear the inevitable exodus of the talent that can dig us out of the hole we find ourselves in. It is inevitable, given that other countries are bidding for entrepreneurs. The Government must modify its proposals.

[...]

The next few years are going to be horrendous in the UK. The last thing we need is a Somali pirate-style raid on the few wealth creators who still dare to navigate Britain's gale-force waters.

Well said Mr. Webber, as usual, and, you have far too much class to use the the word bastards. I don't - you bastards.

Read More: The Last Thing This Country Needs

Why's the Left so Angry?

By Byron York From The WashingtonExaminer.com

These should be happy times for liberals and the Democratic party as a whole. They control the White House and both houses of Congress, while opposition Republicans are leaderless and lost. So why do some Democrats, particularly those farther to the left, appear so angry?

If you doubt it, just watch a few minutes of MSNBC, where the recent nationwide series of "tea parties" to protest federal spending and taxes set off an angry, almost manic response. The most telling came on Keith Olbermann's program, during which the actress Janeane Garofalo, who plays an FBI computer geek on “24,” denounced the tea parties as "racism straight up."

"Let's be very honest about what this is about," Garofalo said. "It's not about bashing Democrats. It's not about taxes…This is about hating a black man in the White House."

[...]

I asked William Anderson, a friend who is a political conservative, a medical doctor, and a lecturer in psychiatry at Harvard. "They are angry, but I think they are also scared, and I think it's because they have a sense that their triumph is a precarious one," Anderson told me. Democrats won in 2008 in some part because of the cycles of American politics; Republicans were exhausted and it was the other party's turn. Now, having won, they are unsure of how long victory will last.

"They see that they have a very small window of opportunity to do all the things they want," Anderson continued. "They see the window of opportunity as small because they know in their deepest hearts that the vast majority of the American people wouldn't go for all of the things they want to do." So they are frantic to do as much as possible before the opposition coalesces. And the tea parties might be the beginning of that coalescence.

Then there is the question of self-image. Watching Garofalo and Olbermann discuss the tea parties, it was impossible to avoid the sense that they saw themselves as two good people talking about many bad people. "One of the things about narcissism is that it looks like people who are just proud of themselves and smug, but in fact narcissism is a very brittle and unstable state," Anderson told me. "People who are deeply invested in narcissism spend an awful lot of energy trying to maintain the illusion they have of themselves as being powerful and good, and they are exquisitely sensitive to anything that might prick that balloon."

Again, the tea parties could represent a threat. What if the protesters weren't racists, weren't violent, weren't mentally defective? What if their point was legitimate, or even partly legitimate? Those are questions better batted down than answered.

My apologies to Byron York for quoting far more of his article than I should have. My excuses are simply that I really liked the article, and I wanted to capture all of Dr. Anderson’s comments.

Read More: In A Time Of Victory, Why Is The Left So Angry?

Tea Parties Racist and Stupid

Pink Elephant Pundit has a video round-up of liberal media reaction to the April 15th Tax Protest Tea Parties. If you're too busy to watch I've summed them up in the title to the this post.

Read More: Stay Classy Liberal America
Media Bistro's TVNewser: CNN Reporter Takes a Break
Related: Memo to Susan Roesgen

Memo to Susan Roesgen

Conservatives and Capitalism existed long before FOXNews.

Where do you think that money came from? The Government only has the money it takes from the American Tax Payer. It's was our money to begin with! Get a clue girl.

Related: Who Pays Corporate Taxes?

Tea Party Protest

"They've had enough of Democrats forcing taxpayers to pick up the tab for more wasteful spending instead of working together to make the tough fiscal decisions Americans are forced to make each and every day. They've had enough of seeing their hard-earned tax dollars wasted on pork-barrel spending that won't create jobs, rebuild their savings, or get our economy moving again. And they've had enough of Congress and the White House mortgaging our children and grandchildren's future by saddling them with mountains of debt destined to bankrupt our country." - House Republican Leader John Boehner

Read More: Anti-Tax 'Tea Party' Protesters Turn Out in U.S. Cities

Corporate Taxes

According to The Tax Foundation U.S. corporate tax rates, at 39.25%, are the second highest in the world. Here's the chart worth a thousand words. I'm about to offer a few dozen words anyway - just to try and explain why you should care.

Cost: The first reason is that any cost of doing business is passed on to you and me in the form of higher prices. Corporate taxes really do trickle down and are eventually absorbed by the consumer.

Just think how much cheaper that loaf of bread or jar of peanut butter would be if those companies weren't paying 39.25% in corporate taxes. It's not just the individual companies either. Those companies also hire other companies for things like accounting, shipping, advertising, maintanence... the list could continue. It adds up, and it all comes out of your wallet.

Jobs: The second reason you should care is that our corporate tax rates make it cheaper to incorporate in other countries. It also makes it expensive for foreign companies to come to America. Why would a business come here when they can set up shop in Mexico and Canada and still have access to our vast consumer base? We lose jobs to countries with lower tax rates.

The globalized economy has put the American worker in competition with countries that have much lower wage rates. No American I know is willing to lower their salary to the level of Mexico's or China's. Lowering corporate taxes would provide the incentive for businesses to come to America - and bring jobs with them.

Lower prices on everything, more jobs for everybody, sounds like just the kind of economic stimulus we need to me.

Capitalism Magazine: Who Pays Corporate Taxes?

New Stuff

Sorry for not posting lately. Upon returning from South Korea I landed a new job that I’m mostly unqualified for (yes, my new employer is aware of this) and I’ve been doing a lot of traveling and training.

Because I haven’t posted anything since the election I do want to back up a bit and say that I hope we all can support our new president. Let’s not act like those frothy mouthed, mad dog liberals. I am encouraged by most of his cabinet appointments so far and as long as we can keep taxes under control we should get through this okay.

To that end I’ve decided to take a new direction with this blog and spend more time discussing tax and economic policy. The best way to reduce the size of an increasingly intrusive and bloated government is to stop sending so many of our hard earned dollars to Washington. I think it’s obvious by now that much of what we pay in taxes is simply wasted on things that we don't need.

And, because I probably won't be able to post for a while longer, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

Obama's Tax Mathemagic

By Kim Strassell - WSJ.com

And now, America, we introduce the Great Obama! The world's most gifted political magician! A thing of wonder. A thing of awe. Just watch him defy politics, economics, even gravity! (And hold your applause until the end, please.)

To kick off our show tonight, Mr. Obama will give 95% of American working families a tax cut, even though 40% of Americans today don't pay income taxes! How can our star enact such mathemagic? How can he "cut" zero? Abracadabra! It's called a "refundable tax credit." It involves the federal government taking money from those who do pay taxes, and writing checks to those who don't. Yes, yes, in the real world this is known as "welfare," but please try not to ruin the show.

For his next trick, the Great Obama will jumpstart the economy, and he'll do it by raising taxes on the very businesses that are today adrift in a financial tsunami! That will include all those among the top 1% of taxpayers who are in fact small-business owners, and the nation's biggest employers who currently pay some of the highest corporate tax rates in the developed world. Mr. Obama will, with a flick of his fingers, show them how to create more jobs with less money. It's simple, really. He has a wand.

Read the rest of the article here...

Here's a related video where Senator Obama tells a tax-burdened plumber that his plan is to "Spread the Wealth Around."