Wealth Re-distribution, Taxes and Job Losses!

Syria threatens united action against Israel. (See 1 below.)

Ken Blackwell, a Conservative Black analyst, summarizes his own view of Obama. (See 2 below.)

Elect either Obama or Clinton and you will get wholesale wealth re-distribution. They have said as much.

Not bad if you are on the receiving end but in time it will also cost you your job, if you have one. Why? Because higher taxes on the "wealthy" reduces investment and with reduced investment we become less competitive and if you are not competitive your ability to be employed here is lessened unless you want to work in the service sector, earn less and compete with illegal immigrants. Unions bosses favor tax redistribution as well because it supports their charge about wealth disparity.

There are two ways to improve wealth disparity. Take from the rich and give to the poor, but that will eventually make both poorer, or elevate the bottom and that is best done through improved education and investment.

All politicians resort to emotional appeals to score points but studies have shown Liberals receive disproportionate votes among the less educated where one would suspect emotional appeals might bear greater fruit.

Liberals understand this, or should, because every time they have done otherwise their programs have splattered on the rocks of economic reality and logic. However, they cleverly dupe the unwashed with emotional hand-ringing explanations and accusations. Heartless Conservatives, make perfect foils because they offer an economic message not readily understood and being one of harsh reality fails to mollify the emotional appeal of hearing one's plight is due to: "it's the wealthy, stupid."

Certainly corporate largess to incompetent executives, who have cost stock holders billions and workers thousands of jobs, is an abuse that needs rectifying. "Rarefied metallic parachutes" are "airway" thievery as well as outrageous pay packages like the former head of Home Depot received. That said, neither does it justify jumping off the economic cliff thinking a "wealth re-distribution parachute" offers a soft landing panacea.

When Congress passed a law taxing salaries above a million, corporate America started embracing options. The use of options has become amoebic and beyond justification. It is another rip off of stockholders. Once again the law of unintended consequences is alive and well. If Congress would conduct legitimate investigations that have no hidden agendas beyond finding the truth, highlight the results and let the free market work we would be better off but that does not win votes, build constituencies and pay for election costs.

And so it goes. Never a dull day in lah lah land. I wont even comment on Pelosi's attempt to hang the White House Chief of Staff while she votes against bringing an intelligence survey bill up for vote. Maybe she is busy preparing hand engraved invitations to terrorists to "come on down" as the talk show host used to say!

Have a nice weekend.

Dick


1) Syria vows to strike back at Israel for Imad Mughniyeh’s killing in Damascus and "repeated encroachments"

Military sources report: Thursday night, Feb. 14, Syrian officials fanned out among Arab broadcasting stations with a warning: Damascus will attack Israel shortly following a decision by Syrian leaders to end its policy of restraint against its territorial violations.

Israeli land, sea, air and homeland defense units were earlier ordered to prepare to defend the country’s northern borders against attacks by Hizballah, including rocket strikes, and Syria. Reinforcements were rushed to the north.

Israel has received a stream of intelligence confirmations that Iran, Syria and Hizballah have determined not to let Mughniyeh’s death pass without an immediate response. They are working together to mount a revenge operation.

Western sources watching the funeral of the Hizballah commander Imad Mughniyeh earlier Thursday noted the absence of Hizballah’s entire command echelon and the Revolutionary Guards officers serving at Iran’s Beirut embassy. They were assumed to have gone to ground to plan a combined offensive against Israel whom they accuse of the Mughniyeh killing. Hassan Nasrallah’s threats (‘If Israel wants open war, so bit.”) were broadcast by video

Intelligence sources note that the way Iran’s foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki stood at Thursday’s Beirut funeral between Hizballah’s Dep. Sec. Gen Naim Qassem and the slain terrorist’s father and accepted condolences, confirmed Mughniyeh’s high-value role in Tehran’s foreign terror system. It also informed the thousands of Shiite mourners that Iran will be part of prospective retaliation for his death against Israel.

Iran and Syria have also linked their probes to find out how a hit-team penetrated the heavy security surrounding Imad Mughniyeh in an upscale Damascus neighborhood, planted a bomb in his SUV and detonated it by remote control.

Since Wednesday night, a visiting Iranian team has been at work in the Syrian capital headed by Gen. Ghassem Soleimani, commander of the al Qods Brigades, the Revolutionary Guards foreign terror arm.

Its other members are Adm. Mohammad Fadavi, Dep. Commander of the IRGC Navy, who set up the near-clash between Iranian speedboats and US warships in the Strait of Hormuz in January; and Gen. Morteza Rezai, former chief of the IRGC intelligence branch.

They are working with the Syrian team led by acting interior minister Gen. Bassam Abdul Majid.

2)It’s an amazing time to be alive in America. We’re in a year of firsts in this presidential election: the first viable woman candidate; the first viable African-American candidate; and, a candidate who is the first frontrunning freedom fighter over 70. The next president of America will be a first.

We won’t truly be in an election of firsts, however, until we judge every candidate by where they stand. We won’t arrive where we should be until we no longer talk about skin color or gender.

Now that Barack Obama steps to the front of the Democratic field, we need to stop talking about his race, and start talking about his policies and his politics.

The reality is this: Though the Democrats will not have a nominee until August, unless Hillary Clinton drops out, Mr. Obama is now the frontrunner, and its time America takes a closer and deeper look at him.

Some pundits are calling him the next John F. Kennedy. He’s not. He’s the next George McGovern. And it’s time people learned the facts.

Because the truth is that Mr. Obama is the single most liberal senator in the entire U.S. Senate. He is more liberal than Ted Kennedy, Bernie Sanders, or Mrs. Clinton.

Never in my life have I seen a presidential frontrunner whose rhetoric is so far removed from his record. Walter Mondale promised to raise our taxes, and he lost. George McGovern promised military weakness, and he lost. Michael Dukakis promised a liberal domestic agenda, and he lost.

Yet Mr. Obama is promising all those things, and he’s not behind in the polls. Why? Because the press has dealt with him as if he were in a beauty pageant.

Mr. Obama talks about getting past party, getting past red and blue, to lead the United States of America. But let’s look at the more defined strokes of who he is underneath this superficial “beauty.”

Start with national security, since the president’s most important duties are as commander-in-chief. Over the summer, Mr. Obama talked about invading Pakistan, a nation armed with nuclear weapons; meeting without preconditions with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who vows to destroy Israel and create another Holocaust; and Kim Jong II, who is murdering and starving his people, but emphasized that the nuclear option was off the table against terrorists — something no president has ever taken off the table since we created nuclear weapons in the 1940s. Even Democrats who have worked in national security condemned all of those remarks. Mr. Obama is a foreign-policy novice who would put our national security at risk.

Next, consider economic policy. For all its faults, our health care system is the strongest in the world. And free trade agreements, created by Bill Clinton as well as President Bush, have made more goods more affordable so that even people of modest means can live a life that no one imagined a generation ago. Yet Mr. Obama promises to raise taxes on “the rich.” How to fix Social Security? Raise taxes. How to fix Medicare? Raise taxes. Prescription drugs? Raise taxes. Free college? Raise taxes. Socialize medicine? Raise taxes. His solution to everything is to have government take it over. Big Brother on steroids, funded by your paycheck.

Finally, look at the social issues. Mr. Obama had the audacity to open a stadium rally by saying, “All praise and glory to God!” but says that Christian leaders speaking for life and marriage have “hijacked” — hijacked — Christianity. He is pro-partial birth abortion, and promises to appoint Supreme Court justices who will rule any restriction on it unconstitutional. He espouses the abortion views of Margaret Sanger, one of the early advocates of racial cleansing. His spiritual leaders endorse homosexual marriage, and he is moving in that direction. In Illinois, he refused to vote against a statewide ban — ban — on all handguns in the state. These are radical left, Hollywood, and San Francisco values, not Middle America values.

The real Mr. Obama is an easy target for the general election. Mrs. Clinton is a far tougher opponent. But Mr. Obama could win if people don’t start looking behind his veneer and flowery speeches. His vision of “bringing America together” means saying that those who disagree with his agenda for America are hijackers or warmongers. Uniting the country means adopting his liberal agenda and abandoning any conflicting beliefs.

But right now everyone is talking about how eloquent of a speaker he is and — yes — they’re talking about his race. Those should never be the factors on which we base our choice for president. Mr. Obama’s radical agenda sets him far outside the American mainstream, to the left of Mrs. Clinton.

It’s time to talk about the real Barack Obama. In an election of firsts, let’s first make sure we elect the person who is qualified to be our president in a nuclear age during a global civilizational war.