Gaddafi Bounce

Let me ask you a question:  What if a person lied, cheated, and stole a billion dollars but then used the money to help catch and kill a murderer; would that be a net contribution to society?  This is the question we face after the killing of Muammar Gaddafi.  Recall:  UN-1973, which was the basis for US and NATO intervention was a humanitarian effort to maintain a no-fly zone over Libya and protect civilians.  That was a lie.  UN-1973 was regime change.  We were also promised it was a mission of days not 8 months costing a billion dollars.  Regardless of what UN-1973 was or was not, no attempt was made to include congress or even congressional leaders in the decision.  Inexcusable.

Every day in American courts, police who capture criminals are punished for doing so if they employ extra-legal methods.  So too should Barack Obama be punished in the polls for doing a good thing the wrong way.  

Nein! - Nein! - Nein!

I must say I was disheartened by the idiotic attacks on Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan last night in Las Vegas.  It’s one thing to find legitimate issues with Cain’s plan, (and they're there) but it’s another to invent fantasy issues in a lame attempt to ding a front-runner.

As for Herman Cain’s sales skills in defending his plan:  his responses showed he is no Mitt Romney!

I like 9-9-9.  It may be just a tax plan, but it’s a darn good one and it’s not what the naysayers made it out to be last night.  It’s bad enough Herman Cain’s got Barack Obama spewing misinformation about his plan, the last thing he needs is a GOP circular firing squad aiming at him.  

Once again:

9-9-9 is not a VAT.  A retail sales tax is not a VAT.  Many states have retail sales taxes but none has a VAT.  Herman Cain needs to be able to nail this charge in as many words and then stop talking.  This is what a VAT looks like.  See update below.

9-9-9 will not give New Hampshire a state sales tax.  This is just stupid.  Herman’s “apples and oranges” explanation was adequate but he needs to slay this ridiculous charge with a sniper bullet to the forehead:  Texas has no income tax and the federal income tax doesn’t change that.  The same logic applies to sales taxes in NH or any other state.  Period. 

9-9-9 will not increase tax rates on the poor.  Cain really needs to be able to nail this and I’ve heard him almost do it.  He knows pizza, right?  All he needs to say is this: 

“I know pizza.   A $10.00 pizza has about $1.00 of embedded stealth corporate taxes built-in.  The guy who grows the wheat pays a 35% corporate income tax, as does the tomato grower, all the processors, the delivery companies, and the restaurant.  75% of that goes away with a 9% flat business tax and in it’s place is a transparent 9% retail sales tax on a now $9.25 pizza.  Total price:  still about $10.00.”    

Cain calls the stealth taxes issue “sneak-a-tax” and I like that.  In fact, I think stealth taxes are at the root of all tax evils today.

The 9-9-9 sales tax will never result in an ever increasing rate.  Why?  Because it is not a stealth tax.  Only stealth taxes go up inexorably and quietly.  Transparent taxes that hit everyone cannot go up indefinitely lest voters fall asleep.  This one is a slam dunk.  

There are legit reasons to refute Cain’s plan and I think Newt Gingrich nailed it when Anderson Cooper asked him why it was such a hard sell:  “You just watched it” said Newt after watching the Republican field throw clueless flak in Cain’s face.  Revolutions are tricky to sell.  Even good ones take time, and time is in short supply. 

There is a huge industry built around our current tax code and it includes every elected officeholder in Washington.  Cain touched on this last night and it will make changing the tax code next-to impossible.  In today’s Wall Street Journal, Art Laffer, perhaps the most respected voice on tax policy today, writes a full-throated endorsement of Cain’s 9-9-9 plan and disputes the notion that it would be next-to impossible to pass.  As proof he cites Reagan’s success in getting Kemp-Roth passed in the senate with a 97-3 vote.  What he omits is the fact that Reagan had just been shot!  I seriously doubt that vote would have looked anything like that without the “Win One for the Gipper” vibe.  

There are great reasons to like Cain’s 9-9-9 plan:  It eliminates stealth taxes and puts everything right in front of voters for them to see.  The low marginal rates of 9-9-9 will generate huge growth in revenue as per the Laffer-Curve.  The 9% sales tax will finally tax the underground economy at the federal level.   It is exponentially simpler than what we have.  (Unfortunately, when discussing it relative to today’s monstrosity, the complexity of the current system makes comparisons…complex.  A frustrating Catch-22.)

The only thing 9-9-9 needs is a master salesman and 65 votes in the senate (for insurance!).  Short of that, some miracle boost like Kemp-Roth got.  That’s not too much to ask for, is it? 

Update:  Apparently, some are claiming the 9% business tax is akin to a VAT, not the sales tax part.  (see WSJ Letters 10/25/11) That is because it applies not just to profits but to payroll as well.  This is a good point and one I missed, however it still is not a VAT but rather a combined payroll tax and business income tax.   By the logic of those claiming it is a VAT, we already have a VAT in the payroll taxes for Medicare and Social Security that total over thirteen percent of payroll currently!  This is nonsense.  


A business earning ten percent profits with a payroll running twenty percent will pay about  three percent under Cain's plan verses six percent under current tax law as a percent of gross receipts.  That is a fifty percent improvement versus current law!  Still a stealth tax, but a smaller one by half and certainly not a Value-Added-Tax.  I'd rather see all stealth taxes gone and every cent paid by voters, but no politician is currently recommending that.   

Mitt Romney - Birth of a Salesman

I watched the GOP debate in New Hampshire last night and thought something new happened:  Mitt Romney showed how talented he is as a salesman. Now, when I say “salesman” I don’t mean it in the pop-culture sense like “huckster” or “con-man”. No, I mean it as a huge mega-compliment.

I have the utmost regard for quality salespeople; the people of integrity who bring new products, services, and ideas to a reflexively skeptical audience. (Think Steve Jobs.) And boy are we skeptical when it comes to politicians!

The skills necessary to excel in sales are often misunderstood outside business circles. A good salesman does not trick you into buying something you don’t want. A good salesman does not convince you to act against your interests. No, a good salesman has the skills to understand what is important to you and then explain his product intelligently in those terms. Moreover, a good salesman must have a solid product, be knowledgeable, trustworthy, and likeable.

Selling is just a piece of making a good President, but selling is really important. What if a President had a truly decent product (agenda) but lacked the skills to implement it? Would that person make a good President? What if a President had a really bad product and managed to cynically convince us to buy it against our interests? Would that person make a good President?

Last night Mitt Romney passed the sales test for me in a way he hadn't before, but that doesn’t make him perfect. (No one’s perfect, except of course my wife!)

My problems with Mitt Romney are a bit different than the usual. You see, I’m actually OK with Romneycare. In fact, I’m OK with the individual mandate at the state level. The reason for this, as Mitt has explained, is that we’ve always had a mandate in health care, except it was one-sided. That mandate was always on the providers and it forced them to treat anyone who walked into an emergency room. That forced a reciprocal mandate on responsible, insured folks to cover the costs of those who refuse to pay. (Remember, those who are indigent are covered by Medicaid!)

The debate over Obamacare has been hijacked by the mandate controversy because the issue of constitutionality is seen by opponents as a way to kill it in the courts. That may or may not work, but I think it’s been a distraction. The real evil of Obamacare is that it nationalizes the remaining 50% of the health care market and that will kill innovation, access, quality, and life. I think Mitt Romney gets this and the Massachusetts plan was not a similar takeover.

I’m also OK with being pro-choice and pro-life, even though my views may differ from Romney’s at any given time. I’m OK with choice early in a pregnancy, but I define late-term abortion as taking a life. ‘Nuff said.

No, my problem with Mitt Romney is that he does not seem to understand Obama’s role in the financial meltdown. I’ve heard him say things like: “Obama did not cause this mess. He’s a nice enough guy. But he made it worse!” I find this a fundamental misreading of the biggest issue of the day. As much as any one man, Barack Obama did cause the meltdown in 2008 and has lied about it and blamed others ever since. He was known as the “Senator from Fannie Mae” for Pete’s sake! He worked with ACORN to force banks to make bad loans in the ‘90s. He voted for TARP. His fingerprints are all over this from the get-go. And yes, he did make it worse.

I realize the polls don’t agree with this assessment and Acade-Media-Wood have done a great job of covering Obama’s tracks, but I expect the Republican nominee to at least understand this. And once they understand it, I’d hope they can sell it in a general election.  Based on last night, Mitt Romney is half way there.

(I realize there were others at that debate and I thought Michelle Bachman was the other winner, but this post is limited in scope.) 

Obama's Mob

Just in case you think this Occupy Wall Street protest is unique and spontaneous: Barack Obama has been involved in protesting banks since his early days as a community organizer.

 From Investors Business Daily:

Obama, who once represented ACORN in a lawsuit against the state of Illinois, was hired by the group to train its community organizers and staff in the methods and tactics of the late Saul Alinsky. ACORN would stage in-your-face protests in bank lobbies, drive-through lanes and even at bank managers’ homes to get them to issue risky loans in the inner city or face charges of racism.

In the early 1990s, reports Stanley Kurtz, senior fellow at the Ethics and Policy Center, Obama was personally recruited by Chicago’s ACORN to run training sessions in “direct action.” That’s the euphemism for the techniques used under the cover of the federal Community Reinvestment Act to intimidate financial institutions into giving what have been called “Ninja” loans — no income, no job, no assets — to people who couldn’t afford them.

CRA was designed to increase minority homeownership. Whenever a bank wanted to grow or expand, ACORN would file complaints that it was not sufficiently sensitive to the needs of minorities in providing home loans. Agitators would then be unleashed.

Chicago’s ACORN used Alinsky’s tactics against institutions such as Bell Federal Savings and Loan and Avondale Federal Savings. In September 1992, the Chicago Tribune described the group’s agenda as “affirmative action lending.”

How do you think we ended-up writing billions in sub-prime mortgages? Do you think bankers suddenly lost their collective minds in the mid-90s after thousands of years of prudent lending? Who could forget the sub-prime crisis of 1850? Or the sub-prime crisis of 1921? How about the sub-prime crisis of 1952? Of course, there was no such thing as a sub-prime mortgage ever in the history of banking until community organizers like Barack Obama and ACORN began protesting outside banks and accusing them of discriminatory lending. It was a bold attempt to redistribute money and credit to unqualified borrowers and it worked fabulously well. In stepped Bill Clinton in the mid 90’s and through regulation, arm-twisting, and executive orders, out popped a decade of run-away sub-prime, no-doc, and liar-loans, all underwritten by US taxpayers through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Now Obama and his community organizer friends are at it again protesting banks and twisting arms in the name of more redistribution. As a few have pointed out, the timing of these protests coincides exactly with a marked shift in Wall Street’s political donations. Whereas 70% of Wall Street money had been flowing into Democrat coffers and specifically Barack Obama’s war chest, that trend has reversed lately:

From YourBlackWorld.Com:

Wall Street Donors Stop Giving Money to President Obama   August 24, 2011

The soft economy, overbearing regulation, and class-warfare has finally out-bid the crony capitalism and bailout billions which attracted Wall Street to Obama in the first place. This Occupy Wall Street mob is actually Obama’s Useful Idiot Corps throwing a temper tantrum in an unwitting attempt to restart the Wall Street money pump for him. Don’t believe me? Watch the donations. How much you wanna bet, the protests end the moment Wall Street caves and sends a $10,000,000 check to Obama’s campaign? And if the check doesn’t materialize, watch for the protests to get violent.

This is Obama’s play-book and we’ve seen it all before. It never works out for anyone but him. Expect the same this time.

Obamanomics II

Have you taken a road trip lately?  If so, you’ve seen Obamanomics up close and if you have a basic understanding of economics, you should be horrified.  I just completed my third transcontinental drive in a year (Don’t ask.  Suffice it to say a woman and a dog were involved.) and I can attest that in many cases we are digging up thousands of miles of perfectly serviceable road and repaving them with almost no perceivable improvement.  This is not just wasteful.  It is madness.

   

Economists have forever posited that if full-employment is the goal, why not just dig holes and fill them in again?  Everyone in the country can be kept busy and no one would be unemployed, hallelujah!  But of course this policy is never proposed as a real solution to anything, only as a proof that “creating jobs” is not the goal and “creating value” is.  Unfortunately, Obama and his economic team were either golfing or protesting the bourgeoisie when that lesson was taught.

The supposed architect of Obamanomics, John Maynard Keynes, mentions the fallacy of digging holes and filling them in again in his writings but no one would mistake it for a serious remedy.  Then again Keynes never suggested borrowing trillions for stimulus while running huge structural deficits.  Never mind, that hasn’t stopped them from citing him as their guru for these policies.

 

All in all, Obamanomics has proven to be a tragic farce.  Whether we are being ruled by a confederacy of dunces or an evil cabal is open to debate.  But on the matter of measurable economic results, “the science is settled” as they say.   

Anatomy of a Myth V – Obama Deserves Kudos for “Ramping-Up” the Drone Attacks

Even the most ardent Obama detractors manage to offer the President kudos for “ramping-up” the drone attacks on terror targets. Then they usually throw in a nice word or two about him “getting bin Laden” and then it’s right back to berating him for just about everything else. Well, I’m not going to play that game. Nope. I give him no credit for bin Laden OR the increased drone attacks. In fact, I think both are emblematic of perhaps Obama’s biggest failure of all: losing the intelligence war. To understand why, let's go back in time to the very beginning.

The very first item on Obama’s to-do list was to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. This had nothing to do with making America stronger. It was a political promise motivated by a mistaken belief that the prison violated international norms and/or the Geneva Conventions. Some prominent Republicans, including John McCain, were also among those calling for closing the prison. But Obama went much further. He wanted to close the prison, move the prisoners onto US soil, try them in civilian courts, treat them like citizens, offer them defense attorneys, place them in witness protection programs, provide them with high-paying union “green jobs”, and get them all slots on American Idol.  (OK, I made those last ones up.)

Of course, Gitmo is still up and running but the administration has pledged to add no new prisoners there. No prisoners? What to do? The answer: kill them all. Rather than engaging in the hard work of capturing live terrorists and interrogating them, Obama prefers dropping bombs on them and their villages from un-manned drones at thirty thousand feet. To the left, indiscriminate death from above is morally just, but capture and interrogation, while perhaps saving hundreds of innocent lives, is unthinkable! The result of this kill-all policy has been a dearth of new first-person intelligence. Are we safer? Are we morally better-off executing suspects than we were holding and questioning them? Are we making more friends in Pakistan and Yemen this way?

Bin Laden’s assassination was part of that same pattern. By now everyone accepts that bin Laden would never have been found were it not for the policies of George W Bush which Obama universally opposed. Moreover, Obama had no way of dealing with a live terrorist, so his only option was execution. Had he been interested in learning as much as he could about al-Qaeda and preventing future attacks, he would have captured bin Laden and dealt with the political ramifications. But his interest was to make the headline and avoid the sticky politics. As for any intelligence gathered from that raid, its value was instantly undermined by the administration's leaks. Why tell the enemy what we found? Why not keep hush or say everything was destroyed?

No, on this 10th anniversary of 9/11 if I’m going to praise President Obama, it will have to be on the grounds that he seems to be a decent father. In fact, he’d make an excellent full-time father!

Save the Guitars!

Obama Hates White People!

Remember when George W Bush was accused of not caring about black people after Katrina hit New Orleans, a city with a nearly 70% black population, and prominent blacks and Democrats rushed to his defense pointing out that the city and state, who are the first responders in a disaster were both run by Democrats? Yeah, me neither.  Pass it on.

Well, it turns out that Vermont, devastated by Irene, is the whitest state in America.  Has Obama been there yet? How many FEMA trailers are on the ground today? Has power been restored to everyone? Is everyone in a shelter? Has the US Army or Navy been mobilized? Does everyone have food and water?   Look, we had a whole week of dire warnings to prepare for this thing.  This was not a surprise!  Was Obama on vacation or something?   I think Obama doesn’t care about white people!

Of course, both the accusation against Bush and my parody against Obama are ridiculous. The difference being I understand the idiocy, but Democrats including Obama rode that ginned-up hatred to electoral victory. Shameful.  And dangerous.

Kanye West Accuses Bush of Not Caring About Black People
http://youtu.be/zIUzLpO1kxI

Vermont ranked as whitest state on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_American

Spike Lee bashes Bush on Katrina response
http://www.bvnewswire.com/2011/05/24/spike-lee-calls-out-george-w-bush-for-katrina-response/

The Gibson Blues

First they came for Non-Union Toyota but I didn’t care because I drive a UAW pick-up.
Next they came for Non-Union Delta Airlines but I didn’t care because I don’t fly.
Then they came for the Non-Union Boeing Plant but I still didn’t care because I still don’t fly.
Now the Feds have raided Non-Union Gibson Guitars and I am really pissed-off because I’ve been saving my damn unemployment checks for a smokin’ Les Paul Custom which I could never afford if the price goes any higher!
These Reds are beginning to give me the Blues.   (Apologies to Martin Niemoller)

Yesterday Gibson Guitars in Nashville Tennessee was raided by federal agents.  At first, based on early reports, I thought this was a minor issue about exotic imported wood. NOT ON YER LIFE! This is friggin' serious and I believe it is about UNIONS and OBAMA'S JIHAD against non-union companies and right-to-work states.  Here is a comment clipped from my research on the subject:

“Companies don't move south for the weather.
Tennessee is a Right to Work state and the reason Gibson moved operations there (from Michigan) was to avoid unions. They picked Tenn. over all the other union-unfriendly Southern states because of tax incentives offered to them, but they moved because of labor.”*

This is ominous and Gibson may be fighting for its non-union life, just like Toyota, Boeing, Delta, and others before it. Can you believe we live in a country where the full power of the federal government is blatantly used to selectively harass non-union businesses? I still can't believe it has come to this in our once "Free Country".

*Hat Tip: “Wyatt” on Harmony Central Forums
Update:  If you are unfamiliar with the Toyota/Union connection, please follow the above Toyota link.  Read it and weep.   

Jobs Leaving!

The big news today was: "Jobs Leaving"!  Isn't that the same headline we've had ever since Obama got elected?  Jus askin'...