It’s Thursday, February 23rd, 2012….and here’s The Gouge!

First up, as these three video clips confirm….

….these fools, and yes, we MEAN fools, haven’t a clue about the economy!  Think about it; Valerie Jarrett is this President’s closest confidante….and this 25-second video clip represents the entire breadth of her economic expertise.

As the WSJ details, John Stuart Mill saw these clowns coming back in 1844 when he wrote “on the supreme importance of stimulating production”….NOT consumption:

Among the [economic] mistakes which were most pernicious in their direct consequences . . . was the immense importance attached to consumption. The great end of legislation in matters of national wealth, according to the prevalent opinion, was to create consumers. . . . It is not necessary, in the present state of the science, to contest this doctrine in the most flagrantly absurd of its forms or of its applications. The utility of a large government expenditure, for the purpose of encouraging industry, is no longer maintained.

Taxes are not now esteemed to be “like the dews of heaven, which return again in prolific showers.” It is no longer supposed that you benefit the producer by taking his money, provided you give it to him again in exchange for his goods. There is nothing which impresses a person of reflection with a stronger sense of the shallowness of the political reasonings of the last two centuries, than the general reception so long given to a doctrine which, if it proves anything, proves that the more you take from the pockets of the people to spend on your own pleasures, the richer they grow; that the man who steals money out of a shop, provided he expends it all again at the same shop, is a benefactor to the tradesman whom he robs, and that the same operation, repeated sufficiently often, would make the tradesman’s fortune. . . .

What a country wants to make it richer, is never consumption, but production.

Liberals, as usual, have it bass-ackwards.

But in the interests of fairness, let’s consider, however briefly, Pelosi’s preposterous claim that every food stamp dollar results in $1.79 being magically pumped back into the economy.

Seriously, you’d have to believe in the practicality of perpetual motion, cold fusion and the availability of the Brooklyn Bridge to believe this bullsh*t.  Assuming for a moment the government is extraordinarily efficient, and miraculously permits every tax dollar to pass through its hands without cost, this still would not explain the former Speaker’s farcical fiscal fraud.

In reality, government is barely 50% efficient, which means food stamp and other “safety net” giveaways would have to multiply faster than Biblical loaves and fishes.  And though we’ve no doubt Liberals believe in The Missiah, were such monetary miracles within his powers, unemployment would stand at zero, the deficit and national debt would be eliminated and The Obamao would once again be on vacation celebrating the certainty of a second term.

Meanwhile, contrary to what the MSM seeks to portray regarding Tick-Tock’s re-electability, yet another act of an increasingly desperate despot, courtesy of the WSJ:

Obama’s Tax Reform Muddle

He endorses lower corporate rates but raises taxes overall.

Yesterday’s release of the White House “Business Tax Reform” marks a watershed in the corporate tax debate. Now nearly everyone acknowledges that U.S. corporate tax rates hurt American companies. The headline that President Obama wants voters to see is his new top statutory rate of 28%. If only the story ended there . . .

Alas, his reform is stuffed with so many offsetting business tax increases that the overall impact of this and other proposals would make the U.S. tax system less globally competitive and raise effective tax rates above what they are today. (Yeah….to the tune of an additional $250,000,000,000; that’s with a “B”!)

But let’s start by praising what Mr. Obama gets right. He’s spot on in acknowledging that the U.S. “statutory tax rate [35%] will soon be the highest among advanced countries” and that the “relatively narrow tax base and a high statutory tax rate” create a tax system that “is uncompetitive and inefficient.” What do you know, tax rates matter.

Cutting the rate to 28% would leave the U.S. above an international average closer to 25%-27%, but it is still welcome. The White House is also right that the current tax code favors debt over equity financing.

The problem is that the tax increases in this and other Obama proposals would add new layers of inequity and inefficiency to the tax code. One principle of tax reform is to create neutrality within and across industries—a level playing field. As the White House proposal puts it, the current code “distorts choices such as where to produce, what to invest in, how to finance a business, and what business form to use.”

But then the plan ignores that advice and picks winners and losers. It offers a sweetheart 25% rate for certain manufacturers and even lower for “advanced manufacturing,” which would invite a lobbying free-for-all in Congress. Meanwhile, the plan punishes those the White House doesn’t like, such as companies in oil and gas or with operations abroad.

But how is a company that makes computer hardware any more deserving of lower rates than one that makes computer software? Why does the company that makes the paper for this newspaper deserve a lower tax rate than the company that publishes the newspaper?

The oil and gas industry has led manufacturers in job creation for four years and already pays at or near the highest effective federal tax rate of any industry. Yet the President’s tax plan raises its taxes but retains (as best we can tell) the credits and other giveaways to his supporters in green energy.

The plan also takes a mercantile view of trade by raising taxes on U.S. corporations doing business abroad but cutting taxes on foreign companies that operate in the U.S. Since about 80% of global business is overseas, it’s not clear how this taxing scheme would make American firms more competitive.

Mr. Obama’s goal is to stop outsourcing and return operations to the U.S. But the main effect would be for U.S. multinational firms to become German, Chinese or Swiss, and thus exempt from the uncompetitive U.S. taxing regime. The best way to prevent outsourcing is to get U.S. tax rates on capital and corporate profits as low as possible.

Other distortions abound. This week Mr. Obama proposes a 28% rate for corporations, but last week he endorsed a 41% tax rate on nearly 30 million businesses that are not corporations and thus pay profits taxes as personal income. (See above.)

Even the boasts of tax simplicity are overstated. One of the biggest revenue raisers in the plan is a new “global minimum tax” applied to corporations, which means Ford and Apple would get to fill out another set of tax forms. Such a tax is likely to lead to the same complexities, extra compliance costs and headaches as the hated Alternative Minimum Tax has for individuals.

What the White House reformers don’t like to admit is that corporate profits are taxed twice—first, via the corporate tax, then again at the shareholder level through the dividend or capital gains levies. Mr. Obama wants to cut the top corporate tax rate by 20% but raise the capital gains tax by almost 60% and nearly triple the dividend rate.

This means overall taxes on most owners of the company (except tax-exempt entities and foreign owners) would be higher. When including the corporate tax, the total tax burden on dividend income today can reach as high as about 45%. Under Mr. Obama’s various tax proposals, the burden would be closer to 58%. Such a deal.

Republicans in Congress should take the 28% corporate tax rate as the opening bid and scrap most of the rest of his plan. Or better yet, apply the 25% corporate rate that Mr. Obama wants for manufacturers to all industries. The President has acknowledged that America’s corporate tax code is a Head Start program for international rivals. Someone else needs to write a reform that is more concerned with growth than with government industrial policy.

Cuz there’s one thing on which you CAN depend:

Two-Face voting “present”.

Next up, in an absolutely must-read commentary, the great Thomas Sowell chronicles….

The ‘Fairness’ Fraud

During a recent Fox News Channel debate about the Obama administration’s tax policies, Democrat Bob Beckel raised the issue of “fairness.” He pointed out that a child born to a poor woman in the Bronx enters the world with far worse prospects than a child born to an affluent couple in Connecticut.

No one can deny that. The relevant question, however, is: How does allowing politicians to take more money in taxes from successful people, to squander in ways that will improve their own reelection prospects, make anything more “fair” for others? (Simple: it doesn’t.  But it allows hypocritical Liberals like Bob Beckel to sleep better at night.)

Even if additional tax revenue all went to poor single mothers — which it will not — the multiple problems of children raised by poor single mothers would not be cured by throwing money at them. Indeed, the skyrocketing of unwed motherhood began when government welfare programs began throwing money at teenage girls who got pregnant.

Children born and raised without fathers are a major problem to society and to themselves. There is nothing “fair” about increasing the number of such children.

A more fundamental problem with the “fairness” issue raised by Beckel and many others is the slippery vagueness of the word “fair.” To ask whether life is fair — either here and now, or at any time or place around the world, over the past several thousand years — is to ask a question whose answer is obvious. Life has seldom been within shouting distance of fair, in the sense of even approximately equal prospects of success.

Countries whose politicians have been able to squander ever larger amounts of a nation’s resources have not only failed to make the world more fair, the concentration of more resources and power in these politicians’ hands has led to results that were often counterproductive at best, and bloodily catastrophic at worst.

More fundamentally, the question whether life is fair is very different from the question whether a given society’s rules are fair. Society’s rules can be fair in the sense of using the same standards of rewards and punishments for everyone. But that barely scratches the surface of making prospects or outcomes the same.

People raised in different homes, neighborhoods and cultures are going to behave differently — and those differences have consequences. The multiculturalist dogma may say that all cultures are equal, or equally deserving of respect, but treating cultures as sacrosanct freezes people into the circumstances into which they happened to be born, much like a caste system.

While talk about “fairness” may provide a fig leaf to cover politicians’ naked attempts to grab more and more of the nation’s resources to spend, there is no assurance that raising tax rates on “the rich” will result in any more tax revenue for the government. High tax rates have too often simply caused wealthy people to put their money into tax-free securities or to send it overseas.

Four years ago, TV interviewer Charles Gibson pointed out to candidate Barack Obama that raising capital gains tax rates had on a number of occasions led to less capital gains tax revenue being collected — and, conversely, lowering the capital gains tax rates had on other occasions increased the amount of capital gains revenue collected by the government.

Obama readily admitted that. But he said that “fairness” justified a higher tax rate on “the rich.” Yet how does a higher tax rate on paper, without a real increase in the amount of taxes actually collected, promote fairness? However, raising tax rates on “the rich” pays off politically, even if the government loses revenues when the rich put their money into tax shelters.

High tax rates in the upper income brackets allow politicians to win votes with class warfare rhetoric, painting their opponents as defenders of the rich. Meanwhile, the same politicians can win donations from the rich by creating tax loopholes that can keep the rich from actually paying those higher tax rates — or perhaps any taxes at all.

What is worse than class warfare is phony class warfare. Slippery talk about “fairness” is at the heart of this fraud by politicians seeking to squander more of the nation’s resources.

Since we’re on the subject of squandering the nation’s resources, here’s the latest on Team Tick-Tock’s surrender to the invasion from South of the Border, courtesy of Jeff Foutch:

Immigration enforcement program to be shut down

The Obama administration is starting to shut down a program that deputized local police officers to act as immigration agents. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have trained local officers around the country to act as their agencies’ immigration officers. Working either in jails or in the field, the officers can check the immigration status of suspects and place immigration holds on them.

The program, known as 287(g), reached its peak under President George W. Bush, when 60 local agencies signed contracts with ICE to implement it. But that trend slowed significantly under President Obama— only eight agencies have signed up since he took office, and none has done so since August 2010.

Now, in their proposed budget for the upcoming year, Department of Homeland Security officials say they will not sign new contracts for 287(g) officers working in the field and will terminate the “least productive” of those agreements — saving an estimated $17 million. All the contracts between ICE and local police agencies run for three years, so that portion of the program could be finished by November when the last contract for field officers expires.

In its budget request, DHS said officials instead will focus on expanding Secure Communities, a program that checks the fingerprints of all people booked into local jails against federal immigration databases. The followup work in those cases is done by ICE agents, not local police….

A study last year by the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank, found that immigrants developed “fear and mistrust of authorities” when they realized that local police could act as immigration agents.

Sorry….were those that developed “fear and mistrust of authorities” immigrants….or ILLEGAL immigrants?  Though the distinction is lost on Dims, it’s rather pertinent to prospective policies.

On the Lighter Side….

Finally, in News of the Bizarre:

Animal Rights Activists Charged in Murder Fur Hire

Federal authorities say an Ohio woman who describes herself as an animal-welfare activist has been charged with soliciting murder in a plot to kill someone wearing fur. Court records show 27-year-old Cleveland Heights resident Meredith Lowell appeared Tuesday in federal court in Cleveland and was ordered held by the U.S. Marshals Service pending a hearing next week.

Investigators say the FBI was notified in November of a Facebook page Lowell created with an alias offering $830 to $850 for the hit. Investigators say an FBI employee posing as a potential killer learned via email correspondence Lowell wanted the victim to be at least 12 years old and wanted to be on site when the slaying took place so she could distribute “papers” afterward.

A defense attorney has declined to comment.

No SH*T!  She “wanted the victim to be at least 12-years-old and wanted to be on site when the slaying took place”.  Sniff….sniff, sniff; gee….anyone else smell an insanity plea on the horizon?

And by the way….don’t look for Little Miss Lowell’s animalistic activities receiving any airtime or print in the MSM.

Magoo