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POPSMore on the Obama tax "plan" Because Mr. Obama's tax credits are phased out as incomes rise, they impose a huge "marginal" tax rate increase on low-income workers. The marginal tax rate refers to the rate on the next dollar of income earned. As the nearby chart illustrates, the marginal rate for millions of low- and middle-income workers would spike as they earn more income. Some families with an income of $40,000 could lose up to 40 cents in vanishing credits for every additional dollar earned from working overtime or taking a new job. As public policy, this is contradictory. The tax credits are sold in the name of "making work pay," but in practice they can be a disincentive to working harder, especially if you're a lower-income couple getting raises of $1,000 or $2,000 year. One mystery -- among many -- of the McCain campaign is why it has allowed Mr. Obama's 95% illusion to go unanswered.
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POPSSwift Satire gores both sides I think Jon Swift is one of the funnies guys in the blogosphere. He goes on to say: "But some conservative “intellectuals” like David Brooks subscribe to the canard that the conservative movement was defined by pointy-headed eastern elites like William Buckley, whose “entire life,” Brooks recently wrote, “was a celebration of urbane values, sophistication and the rigorous and constant application of intellect.....Brooks even goes so far as to claim that conservatives once valued “constant reading, historical understanding and sophisticated thinking.” We did? Since when? Does he honestly believe that the conservative movement was based on people who read books? Reagan wasn’t elected by the Harvard faculty. It was an angry mob tired of welfare queens and pinko fellow travelers selling us out to the Soviet Union that put him in office."
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POPS"Welfare State Mentality" at the bottom of our financial woes! He who is ever desiring wealth goes running after money, and does not see that need will come on him. Prov 28:22 (BBE) Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it. Prov 13:11 (ESV) If you work hard for it you will appreciate the fruits of your labor more so then if it is simply handed to you without the toil and the sweat.
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POPSSocial Welfare Spending with regulation and tax bills close behind. According to Burnside and Whitehurst, other than social welfare and a bit of government regulation, "Obama devoted very little time to most policy areas." Conventional wisdom has it that John McCain holds a political advantage over Obama on war and foreign policy issues, while Obama is favored to handle the economy. Yet Obama's economic experience is largely limited to social welfare spending. Indeed, precisely because of his penchant for spending, Obama's fingerprints are all over Illinois's burgeoning fiscal crisis. . . . Illinois's fate may foreshadow the nation's. Obama's small and carefully targeted spending bills were expressly designed to win passage by a Republican-controlled state senate. But if Obama takes the presidency with a Democratic Congress at his back, we'll likely see a grand-scale version of the fiscal mayhem Obama and his colleagues brought to Illinois.
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POPSCoercion and Freedom if you were to ask, say, the average senior citizen whether Social Security, Medicare and prescription drug subsidies should be continued, he would probably answer yes. The same would be true if you asked a college professor whether higher education should continue to be subsidized, or a farmer or a dairyman whether their products should be subsidized, or a manufacturer whether there should be tariffs and quotas on foreign products that compete with his product. The problem with congressmen producing favors and privileges to all interest groups is that it creates what none of us wants: massive control, numerous dictates and micromanagement of our lives.
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POPS Inside Obama’s Acorn ....with a “1960’s-bred agenda of anti-capitalism” to match. Acorn, says Stern, grew out of “one of the New Left’s silliest and most destructive groups, the National Welfare Rights Organization.” The theory, explains Stern, was that an impossibly overburdened welfare system would force “a radical reconstruction of America’s unjust capitalist economy.” Instead of a socialist utopia, however, we got the culture of dependency and family breakdown that ate away at America’s inner cities — until welfare reform began to turn the tide. he targets and strategy have changed. Acorn prefers to fly under the national radar, organizing locally in liberal urban areas — where, local legislators and reporters are often “slow to grasp how radical Acorn’s positions really are.” In Your Face Just think of Code Pink’s well-known operations (threatening to occupy congressional offices, interrupting the testimony of General David Petraeus) and you’ll get the idea.
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POPSAlaskans Protest Palin We need to listen to those who know her best. Notice the sign at the top of this photo? My guess is it says "No More Welfare for Exxon".
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POPSToo Big to Fail and Too Small to Matter
This text was from Norman Solomon. Look closely at the lower left of the pic.... The leverage for the U.S. Treasury to subsidize Wall Street is too big to fail. The leverage to subsidize mothers and children kicked off welfare is too small to matter. The political momentum for bailing out corporate America is too big to fail. The political momentum for funding adequate payment rates from Medicaid to reimburse healthcare providers is too small to matter. The oil conglomerates are too big to fail. Global warming is too small to matter. The prison industry is too big to fail. The need for preschool is too small to matter. Corporate power is too big to fail. The ordeals of working people and want-to-be-working people are too small to matter. Human worth as maximized by dollars: too big to fail. Human worth as affirmed by humanistic values: too small to matter. The current odds of pumping at least several hundred billion taxpayer dollars into corporate America: too b
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POPSToo Big to Fail and Too Small to Matter
(cont.)The leverage for the U.S. Treasury to subsidize Wall Street is too big to fail. The leverage to subsidize mothers and children kicked off welfare is too small to matter. The political momentum for bailing out corporate America is too big to fail. The political momentum for funding adequate payment rates from Medicaid to reimburse healthcare providers is too small to matter. The oil conglomerates are too big to fail. Global warming is too small to matter. The prison industry is too big to fail. The need for preschool is too small to matter. Corporate power is too big to fail. The ordeals of working people and want-to-be-working people are too small to matter. Human worth as maximized by dollars: too big to fail. Human worth as affirmed by humanistic values: too small to matter. The current odds of pumping at least several hundred billion taxpayer dollars into corporate America: too big to fail. The current odds of launching a massive federal jobs program: too sm
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POPSLesson of the Day: How Our Country Should Live More Like the Amish “In Amish life: principles of compassion, empathy, generosity and selflessness are central. When they run their community this way, it is admirable. When we try to solve our country's problems in much the same way, it is degraded and thought despicable.” “As children we are taught to take turns, to share & to treat others as we would want to be treated. These are basic principles that few people would deny are essential to being a kind, compassionate, moral person, whether a child or adult.” “We apply these principles to our personal lives, but when it comes to our country, our government and our communities, we start hearing things about "no free rides" and about how we mustn't become a welfare state.” "What we teach our children, what we challenge ourselves with spiritually, what we know is right in any other context...it all suddenly no longer applies.”
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POPSPalin She opposes same-sex marriage, but complied with an Alaskan state Supreme Court order and signed an implementation of same-sex benefits into law, stating that legal options to avoid doing so had run out. She supported a non-binding referendum for a constitutional amendment to deny benefits to homosexual couples. Alaska was one of the first U.S. states to pass a constitutional ban on gay marriage, in 1998, along with Hawaii. Palin has stated that she supported the 1998 constitutional amendment.
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POPSWhat are Political Philosophies? # Anarchism fails to minimize coercion because it favors liberty's theoretical inviolability over its practical protection. Anarchism fails to * Prevent coercion by strong persons and aggressive foreign states * Prevent aggressive use or pollution of unowned resources * Prevent unfair treatment of creditors by bankrupt debtors * Regulate natural monopolies * Prevent anti-competitive artificial monopolies * Provide aid and sustenance to the indigent * Prevent torture and extinction of organisms
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POPSIs McCain another George W. Bush? "George Bush's record as a student, military man, businessman and leader of the free world is one of constant failure. And the part that troubles me most is he seems content with himself." "He will leave office with the country $10 trillion in debt, fighting two wars, our international reputation in shambles, our government cloaked in secrecy and suspicion that his entire presidency has been a litany of broken laws and promises, our citizens' faith in our own country ripped to shreds. Yet Bush goes bumbling along, grinning and spewing moronic one-liners, as though nobody understands what a colossal failure he has been." "I fear to the depth of my being that John McCain is just like him."
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POPSAmerica Finally Getting Sick and Tired of Hearing About Barack Obama
They aren’t talking about the fact that it was Obama who first trotted out the race card by suggesting we’d all be scared into submission by Republican assertions that Obama didn’t “look like all those other guys on the dollar bills.” As even more complete picture of the candidate begins to emerge, the number of Americans expressing doubt about Obama increases. In the Illinois State Senate Obama sponsored bills to provide universal health care coverage, drastically increase welfare, handcuff the police and burden them with administrative overhead, make it more difficult and time consuming for law-abiding citizens to purchase lawfully-regulated firearms for self-defense and generally expand government, welfare, affirmative action and other entitlement programs. By all accounts, Ms. Hilton’s energy policy, is in fact, more comprehensive than Obama’s, which focuses almost exclusively on the development of petroleum alternatives, tune-ups and tire pressure checks.
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POPSHussein Obama's Stealth Socialism Who would conceive of electing a Marxist President of the U.S. The insane liberals, that's who. The debacle of New Orleans was a direct result of the Welfare State, enslaving negros to the public dole. Hussein Obama would create 10 New Orleans.
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POPSThe Lockheed Connection Go to the site for the House Oversight committee, there are pages and pages of contracts awarded to Lockheed and others with ties to the white house and other politicians. Information is eye-opening once it is deciphered!
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POPSObama's Stealth Socialism Decoded He assumes the economy is a fixed pie, whereby the successful only get rich at the expense of the poor. Following this discredited Marxist model, he believes government must step in and redistribute pieces of the pie. That requires massive transfers of wealth through government taxing and spending, a return to the entitlement days of old. Of course, Obama is too smart to try to smuggle such hoary collectivist garbage through the front door. He's disguising the wealth transfers as "investments" — "to make America more competitive," he says, or "that give us a fighting chance," whatever that means.
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POPS10 things all economists believe "If economics is finally a science, what, exactly, does it teach? With the help of Columbia University economist Pierre-André Chiappori, I have synthesized its findings into ten propositions. Almost all top economists—those who are recognized as such by their peers and who publish in the leading scientific journals—would endorse them (the exceptions are those like Joseph Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs, whose public pronouncements are more political than scientific). The more the public understands and embraces these propositions, the more prosperous the world will become."
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POPSSchool Choice in A Socialist Country
Continued: Before the reform, most families depended on state-run schools following a uniform national curriculum. Now they can turn to the "friskolor," or "independent schools," which choose their own teaching methods and staff, and manage their own buildings. They remain completely government-financed and are not allowed to charge tuition fees. The difference is that their government funding goes to private companies which then try to run the schools more cost-effectively and keep whatever taxpayer money they save. "If you run a good operation then you make a profit. But you won't get any students if you are bad," she said. "You have to do a good job to get money; that is even more important for a private school." "Today, I think we have at least as good quality if not better than some independent schools because we have really joined the battle and use our money in a much better way," said Eva-Lotta Kastenholm, who is in charge of public schools, a suburb of Stockholm.
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POPSSchwarzenegger's Wage Slashing Order Won't Be Obeyed I predict that the terminator will end up terminating his harebrained idea about slashing state workers pay to minimum wage level now that he has started a rebellion. It turns out that ol' Arnie was trying to engage in a political stunt since the state does have enough funds on hand to meet its obligations. As to this callous GOPer's disregard to the little guy, one state worker proposed the appropriate corrective action: "I think the governor should fund the budget with his own resources until he and the Legislature can get together," said Paul Ablon, who has been a state attorney for nearly nine years. "And maybe he'll appreciate how it is to worry about paying your expenses."
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POPSTape Recording Reveals Vile Rants Of British Mullah Now Choudary —who once called for the Pope to be executed and described the September 11 hijackers as "magnificent martyrs" — could face arrest under anti-terror laws for his evil ranting on the tape, which was passed to the News of the World. Terrorism expert and author Neil Doyle said: "There is no doubt whatever this a rallying cry to would-be British terrorists. "And this is the evidence from his own mouth. There's no doubt that the message he's preaching will eventually convince some impressionable people they should start planning 7/7-type atrocities. "He's certainly becoming the most high-profile cheerleader for al-Qaeda in the UK." When we spoke to Choudary he refused to discuss our recording but admitted he WAS on a recruitment drive. He ranted: "I would like to recruit enough to turn the whole country into an Islamic state within a month...by tomorrow. "You can put that down. I'm trying to recruit 5,000 a week."
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POPSThe Long March "much of the wacky, upside-down, right-is-wrong, black-is-white stuff we see in the news these days is directly or indirectly inspired by Gramsci: the attacks on Christianity, the family, individual freedom, morality and moral judgements; multiculturalism; the cult of victimhood, "tolerance," political correctness, the replacement of the roles of family, religion, individual responsibility and choice with government rules, laws, and regs; the expansion of the State and the Welfare State and the Nanny State; anti-tradition, anti-capitalism, anti-success, anti-nationalism, anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism, etc - all the stuff that makes me echo Bob Grant with "It's sick out there, and getting sicker." I am sure Antonio never anticipated that a Green movement would emerge to become an ally of the slow, incrementalist and thus less-alarming Gramscian revolution."
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POPSObama's Okie Doke Obama voted against a ban on partial birth abortions. Americans support a ban by a margin of 66% to 28%. Obama supports affirmative action in public employment, contracting and university admissions. Americans oppose giving an advantage in these areas on the basis of race by a margin of 82% to 14%. Obama voted against a ban on partial birth abortions. Americans support a ban by a margin of 66% to 28%. Obama opposed the Induced Birth Infant Liability Act while in the Illinois state legislature, to prevent abortion providers from withholding medical care and sustenance from infants born after surviving an abortion attempt. Despite his equivocal statements regarding the recent Supreme Court decision striking down the D.C. gun ban, Obama has never met a gun ban he didn't like. While in the Illinois state legislature, Obama voted against parental notification requirements for abortions for minors. Americans support parental notification laws by a margin of 79% to 17%.
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POPSBuying Power of Food Stamps Declines The declining buying power of food stamps has not gone unrecognized in Washington. In May, Congress passed a farm bill that would raise the minimum amount of food stamps that families receive, starting in October. The bill, which was passed over President Bush’s veto, will also raise for the first time since 1996 the amount of income that families of fewer than four can keep for costs like housing or fuel without having their benefits reduced.
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