Free speech for me, but not for thee? That seems to be the message in New Orleans. The video is courtesy of the Media Research Center.

And I do love the part where city councilwoman Susan Guidry orders the police to take down the signs (on private property, no less) citing “public safety.” She admits she doesn’t even yet herself know what law the man is breaking by putting up the signs (did I mention on his private property?) and goes on to rattle off a few “maybes” as the cops take them down. “Maybe it’s the size of the signs…” Or, maybe Ms. Guidry is only for free speech that’s not critical of her ideological leanings? And while we’re at it, maybe we should also remove ATMs in the name of public safety too, since that’s were people are commonly mugged. That’s the message she seems to be making — people might do violence to the man, so we’ll punish him rather than those who might do violence.

As to the woman complaining he posted no anti-Bush signs. Seriously? You know how many times I’ve read “Bush Chimp” or “Bush lied” or anti-Bush Katrina signs (including in trips to New Orleans). Pleeeeease!

When the going gets tough on President Obama you can count on him to revise decades of economic history.

[WSJ] President Barack Obama on Thursday said the U.S. has lost some of its competitive edge and gotten a “little soft.”

Mr. Obama, in an interview with WESH-TV in Orlando, said his administration has been tough on the country’s trading partners and tried to strengthen U.S. manufacturing.

“This is a great great country that had gotten a little soft and we didn’t have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades,” Mr. Obama said in response to a question about the country’s economic future. “We need to get back on track.”

Mr. Obama has faced heavy criticism for his handling of the economy, and the high unemployment rate –9.1%– is threatening his re-election bid.

As a wise man once said, you’re entitled to your own opinions but not to your own facts. Obama’s context may have regarded the strength of trade and manufacturing, but don’t think for a second that he’s not attempting to portray our current economic plight as something that has been building for decades. It’s just not true. Every economic indicator of relevance shows increasing and steady improvement over the last 2-3 decades. Those who pine for the days of assembly-line factories also miss the point: Those losses were often due to technological advances or simply cheaper wages overseas (benefiting consumers with cheaper costs). It’s like crying a river for all of those railroad and telegraph jobs we no longer provide. It makes no sense. We’re an IT and service economy, and we’re better off for that transition.

Jim Geraghty sums it up nicely:

Er, rewind the tape. We didn’t have the competitive edge we needed over the last couple of decades? Which ones? The 1980s, when the free world outlasted the socialist model and triumphed over the Soviet Union without firing a shot? The 1990s, when our economy integrated the technological breakthroughs of the Internet age and our economy grew to new dazzling heights? Or the last decade, where we responded to the most devastating attack in our nation’s history, where our enemies unleashed mass death in our biggest cities, by toppling two brutal regimes, and we did it all with the unemployment rate between 4 and 6 percent?

The facts are easy to find. Let’s take a gander over at the federal government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA, Department of Commerce) and Department of Labor (DOL) web pages, for instance.

In the 1980s, gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an average of a whopping 7.8% per quarter (Thanks Reagan!); in the 1990s it grew at an average of 5.6% (another great average); and in  the 2000s (and let’s stop at Bush’s exit, 4th QTR 2008) it grew at an average of 4.4%. Obama’s GDP quarterly growth from 1st QTR 2009 until now? 2.7%

Um, who’s been less competitive?

You can do the same for unemployment too - and it’s truly where the rubber meets the road. The umemployment rate in the 1980s averaged 7.3%, and that’s coming off the late-70s energy crisis and President Carter’s ineptitude. By the time Reagan left office he had it down to 5.3%. In the 1990s, the unemployment rate averaged just 5.8%, and it dropped to 5.1% in the 2000s (again, I’m stopping at Bush’s exit). Indeed, even if you want it averaged by president (which is somewhat a misnomer since the Congress has massive control over an economy), it would read Reagan (7.5%), Bush Sr. (6.3%), Clinton (5.2%), Bush (5.3%) and Obama (9.3%).

This is a great commentary from Jonah Goldberg about the fallacy-laden arguments that occur over time when the government gets its nose into something it never should have and then people attempt to disconnect that market intrusion many years later.

In his 1973 Libertarian Manifesto, the late Murray Rothbard argued that the biggest obstacle in the road out of serfdom was “status quo bias.” In society, we’re accustomed to rapid change. “New products, new life styles, new ideas are often embraced eagerly.” Not so with government. When it comes to police or firefighting or sanitation, government must do those things because that’s what government has (allegedly) always done.

“So identified has the State become in the public mind with the provision of these services,” Rothbard laments, “that an attack on State financing appears to many people as an attack on the service itself.” The libertarian who wants to get the government out of a certain business is “treated in the same way as he would be if the government had, for various reasons, been supplying shoes as a tax-financed monopoly from time immemorial.”

If everyone had always gotten their shoes from the government, writes Rothbard, the proponent of shoe privatization would be greeted as a kind of lunatic. “How could you?” defenders of the status quo would squeal. “You are opposed to the public, and to poor people, wearing shoes! And who would supply shoes . . . if the government got out of the business? Tell us that! Be constructive! It’s easy to be negative and smart-alecky about government; but tell us who would supply shoes? Which people? How many shoe stores would be available in each city and town? . . . What material would they use? . . . Suppose a poor person didn’t have the money to buy a pair?”

It’s worth keeping this fable in mind as the reaction to last week’s CNN–Tea Party Express debate hardens into popular myth. Moderator Wolf Blitzer had asked Rep. Ron Paul (R., Texas) what should happen if a man refuses to get health insurance and then has a medical crisis. Paul — a disciple of Rothbard — explained that freedom is about taking risks. “But, congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?”

At this point, a few boneheads in the audience shouted “Yeah!” and clapped, though liberal pundits and activists imagine they saw an outpouring of support.

Paul calmly replied that he’s not in favor of letting the man die. A physician who began his career before Medicare and Medicaid were enacted, Paul noted that hospitals were never in the practice of turning away patients in need. “We’ve given up on this whole concept that we might take care of ourselves and assume responsibility for ourselves,” he observed. “Our neighbors, our friends, our churches would do it.”

Read the rest. It’s great stuff. Government doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It makes one wonder how people think we educated ourselves prior to the advent of the Department of Education.

SARASOTA — Following an apparent shark attack in the Bay area this weekend, the animal rights organization PETA has announced plans to run an outdoor advertising campaign attacking a recent Bay area shark attack victim.

The organization plans to promote an ad that shows a human “drumstick” hanging out of a shark’s mouth, next to the words “Payback Is Hell. Go Vegan.”

The organization will put the ad on benches and billboards near Anna Maria Island, they said will promote their claim that “the deadliest killers in the water aren’t sharks — they’re humans.”

You see, if we just stopped eating fish and all became Vegans then sharks wouldn’t attack people in the wat… oh, wait… I guess we’d have to give up recreational swimming in the ocean too…

Some people are outraged when they see things like this but I think it’s great because it truly shows PETA for the half-baked, illogical, and extreme organization they are. Such PETA ideological campaigns might be great back-slapping material for their monthly meetings, but it hardly wins over more moderate and reasonably-minded people to their organization.

Here’s Jonah Goldberg:

There are many sincere and decent people — on both sides of the ideological spectrum — who are opposed to the death penalty. I consider it an honorable position, even though I disagree with it. I am 100 percent in favor of lawfully executing people who deserve the death penalty and 100 percent opposed to killing people who do not deserve it.

When I say that, many death-penalty opponents angrily respond that I’m missing the point. You can never be certain! Troy Davis proves that!

But he proves no such thing. At best, his case proves that you can’t be certain about Davis. You most certainly can be certain about other murderers. If the horrible happens and we learn that Davis really was not guilty, that will be a heart-wrenching revelation. It will cast a negative light on the death penalty, on the Georgia criminal-justice system, and on America.

But you know what it won’t do? It won’t render Lawrence Russell Brewer one iota less guilty or less deserving of the death penalty. Opponents of capital punishment are extremely selective about the cases they make into public crusades. Strategically, that’s smart; you don’t want to lead your argument with “unsympathetic persons.” But logically, it’s problematic. There is no transitive property that renders one heinous murderer less deserving of punishment simply because some other person was exonerated of murder.

Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people including 19 children. He admitted it. How does doubt in Troy Davis’s case make McVeigh less deserving of death?

We hear so much about the innocent people who’ve gotten off death row — thank God — because of new DNA techniques. We hear very little about the criminals who’ve had their guilt confirmed by the same techniques (or who’ve declined DNA testing because they know it will remove all doubt). Death-penalty opponents are less eager to debate such cases because they want to delegitimize “the system.”

Whenever the mainstream media fixates on a particular phrase or wording as if they were an autistic parrot stuck in an echo chamber my antenna always go up. Such is their coverage in the Troy Davis execution.

For instance, when you Google “Troy Davis seven of nine” you yield page after page of lazy journalists who simply have copy-pasted their fellow lazy journalists’ copy-pasted articles and commentaries. It’s almost comical, until you remember that a cop lost his life and another man was executed because of what appears to be for his poor choices as a young man. The full wording usual runs something like this:

“Convicted murderer Troy Davis has been executed in the southern US state of Georgia despite seven of nine key witnesses recanting or changing their testimony since his trial.”

Now, this isn’t a post on the pros or cons of capital punishment. Indeed, this case has brought out the worst of passions amongst us. But I can respect — even if mostly disagreeing (but not all) — those who oppose capital punishment across the board, whether for mass murdering dictators or for burglaries gone wrong.

This post isn’t even necessarily about the innocence or guilt of Troy Davis. But you should be able to form your opinion given all of the facts. This has not occurred, from the coverage I’ve witnessed.

This is about how the media uses a case like that of Troy Davis to further an agenda, generally a left-leaning one.

You might be surprised to learn, for example, that there were no less than 34 witnesses for the prosecution in the original Troy Davis case. Not nine. Thirty-four.

You might also be surprised to learn that of the seven witnesses who recanted, all were fully found lacking by a 172-page opinion written by Judge William T. Moore. (Page 149 in Adobe) While Judge Moore does himself use the phrase “seven of nine” his opinion includes very detailed testimony of at least 28 persons (including Mr. Davis):

Not all recantations are created equal; a witness may recant only a portion of their testimony or the witness may recant in a manner that is not credible. To hear Mr. Davis tell it, this case involves credible, consistent recantations by seven of nine state witnesses. (Doc. 2 at 5-11.) However, this vastly overstates his evidence. Two of the recanting witnesses neither directly state that they lied at trial nor claim that their previous testimony was coerced. Supra Analysis Parts III.B.i (Antoine Williams), III.B.v (Harriet Murray). Two other recantations were impossible to believe, with a host of intrinsic reasons why their author’s recantation could not be trusted, and the recantations were contradicted by credible, live testimony. Id. Parts III.B.iii (Jeffrey Sapp), III.R.iv (Darrell Collins) . Two more recantations were intentionally and suspiciously offered in affidavit form rather than as live testimony, blocking any meaningful cross-examination by the state or credibility determination by this Court. Id. Parts III.B.vi (Dorothy Farrell), III.B.vii (Larry Young) . Moreover, these affidavit recantations were contradicted by credible, live testimony. While these latter two recantations are not totally valueless, their import is greatly diminished by the suspicious (149 Case 4:09-cv-00130-WTM Document 92-1 Filed 08/24/10 Page 87 of 112) way in which they were offered and the live, contrary testimony. Finally, Kevin McQueen’s recantation is credible, but his testimony at trial was patently false, as evidenced by its several inconsistencies with the State’s version of the events on the night in question. Id. Part III.Bii (Kevin McQueen). Accordingly, it is hard to believe Mr. McQueen’s testimony at trial was important to the conviction, rendering his recantation of limited value. Ultimately, four of Mr. Davis’s recantations do not diminish the State’s case because a reasonable juror would disregard the recantation, not the earlier testimony; and the three others only minimally diminish the State’s case.

[Page 169] Mr. Davis’s new evidence does not change the balance of proof from trial. Of his seven “recantations,” only one is a meaningful, credible recantation. Supra Analysis Part III.B. The value of that recantation is diminished because it only confirms that which was obvious at trial—that its author was testifying falsely. Id. Part III.B.ii (Kevin McQueen). Four of the remaining six recantations are either not credible or not true recantations and would be disregarded. Id. Parts III.B.i (Antoine Williams), III..iii (Jeffrey Sapp), III.B.iv (Darrell Collins), III.B.v (Harriet Murray). The remaining two recantations were presented under the most suspicious of circumstances, with Mr. Davis intentionally preventing the validity of the recantation from being challenged in open court through cross-examination. Id. Parts III.B.vi (Dorothy Ferrell), III.B.vii (Larry Young). Worse, these witnesses were readily available—one was actually waiting in the courthouse—and Mr. Davis chose not to present their recantations as live testimony.

Yet, over and again we hear “seven of nine,” “seven of nine,” “seven of nine.” Not 34, and certainly never the judge’s discrediting of those recantations in any detail.

One starts to think that the mainstream media wants you to believe there were only nine total witnesses in this case. In fact, the number nine doesn’t even come from the fact that there were just nine eyewitnesses, or that nine persons identified the shooter. It’s not particularly clear from where the number nine originated. (That also bespeaks of lousy journalism).

Did you know that Mr. Davis was accused not just of the shooting of Savannah Police Department Officer Mark MacPhail, but of earlier shooting and wounding another man earlier in the evening at a local neighborhood party (Michael Cooper)?

You might be surprised to learn that four witnesses photo-identified Davis as the MacPhail shooter (but this is the primary basis of the recantations); two witnesses told police that the following day Davis confessed to killing MacPhail (Jeffrey Sapp recanted; but Monty Holmes did not); at least another eight witnessed the shooting (albeit they did not identify Davis by facial recognition). A few of these witnesses included members of the United States Air Force (Lt. Col. Anthony Lolas, Sgt. Robert Grizzard).

At bare minimum the shooting occurred and was related to Officer MacPhail happening upon an altercation between a pistol-whipped victim (Larry Young), Mr. Davis and two of his companions (Sylvester “Red” Coles, Darren Collins). Davis is placed at the Burger King and identified as fleeing to the home of one of the companion’s mother in order to discard his shirt, which Davis does not mention (which does not help his case). According to the judge, Davis doesn’t even seem to be pursuing angles that could best assist his defense: “Further diminishing the value of this evidence is the fact that Mr. Davis had the means to test the validity of the underlying confessions by calling and impeaching Mr. [Sylvester] Coles, but chose not to do s0.”

Again, the document exists. Read it for yourself. You might even decide that Davis is innocent, and that’s reasonable because it’s an imperfect case — albeit terrifying if an innocent man was put to death. I didn’t, however. And again, if the argument is “never execute,” I respect that. But the facts do matter.

Form your own opinion. Because you can bet good money that your mainstream journalists and columnists won’t read that document, and won’t give you all the facts you need. They’ll just keep echoing “seven of nine” while they stir the masses and generate a political distraction to keep your mind off of, say, 9%+ unemployment and awful GDP.

Here’s the former CEO of American Express, Harvey Golub, expressing a less than complimentary opinion on the business savvy of the Obama Democrats:

Meanwhile, [President Obama] he’s ignored entitlement reform, retarded the development of our energy resources, and added new layers to our regulatory burden. He’s also increased the uncertainty inherent in an already dysfunctional and perverse tax code, added trillions to our national debt, spent taxpayer money ineffectively and inefficiently, tried to micromanage the economy, and acted as an incompetent venture capitalist by investing in “green jobs” and high-speed rail. This administration routinely grants and withholds favors by substituting its judgment of what is valuable and good for that of the people. What stimulus spending can do to create jobs is entirely temporary, whether in the public or private sector, and is rooted only in a political calculus.

Well said, sir.

It takes a lot of hubris to believe in the concept of central planning. The idea that a bunch of government “experts” could plan strategies and execute decisions in the free market better than the collective choices of 300 million American consumers — plus millions more globally — takes, to quote Hillary Clinton, a willing suspension of disbelief.

And yet here we are with a trifecta of failures in which the government thought it could determine winning companies.

Let’s start with General Electric, which of course began its crony capitalism relationship with government long before the Obama Democrats too power, but nonetheless continues to receive mountains of taxpayer subsidies based on its “Green” technologies. These are technologies — such as their hyperexpensive light bulbs, wind turbines that provide nothing if the wind isn’t blowing, and absolutely Orwellian carbon credit trading schemes –  which no consumer seems to really want and which wouldn’t survive in an unsubsidized environment.

It is particularly galling, given that the former GE CEO is now Obama’s job czar, and that GE is one of those favored government companies that enjoys paying $0 in taxes — this even as Obama, from the other side of his mouth, attacks “millionaires and billionaires” attempting to do the same. The reason? Because it provides American consumers with things they don’t want and produced with their tax dollars.

But as said, subsidies are as old as the apostles. The next two examples are far more sinister.

First, Soylendra: Despite repeated warnings from private auditors like PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP that the Soylendra solar-panel manufacturing company was a a lousy investment, the Obama administration nonetheless assisted it in receiving $535 million in federal loan guarantees. All that taxpayer money is now gone, Soylendra having declared bankruptcy in early September, and raided by the FBI a few days later.

ABCNews reported that “the White House closely monitored the Energy Department’s deliberations over a $535 million government loan to Solyndra,” and ultimately backed the loan despite warnings from White House employees. Worse, the Obama administration promised that should the company fail they would work to recoup losses of private investors — but we taxpayers are screwed. This is something that should be investigated, says former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy:

As Andrew Stiles reported here at NRO, Republicans on the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee say this arrangement ran afoul of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This law — compassionate conservatism in green bunting — is a monstrosity, under which Leviathan, which can’t run a post office, uses your money to pick winners and losers in the economy’s energy sector. The idea is cockamamie, but Congress did at least write in a mandate that taxpayers who fund these “investments” must be prioritized over other stakeholders. The idea is to prevent cronies from pushing ahead of the public if things go awry — as they are wont to do when pols fancy themselves venture capitalists.

As if that weren’t bad enough, a key Obama supporter named George Kaiser was also involved in Soylendra, and “contributed $10,000 to the Urban Health Initiative, a notorious program created by now-First Lady Michelle Obama while she was at the University of Chicago Medical Center.” Oh, yeah, nothing to see here.

Rubbing Obama’s nose in this steaming, smelly mess, Forbes Magazine terms it a “teachable moment.” Says Forbes:

The fact that federal loan guarantees were even necessary for Solyndra tells us that few, if any, lenders thought that giving the firm money was a very good idea.  Given the fact that lenders who bet “right” on companies with strong prospects but insufficient capital are lenders who will make money, we can rest assured that hundreds if not thousands of bank loan officers took a long, hard look at Solyandra and said … no thanks.  Are we to believe that President Obama knows more than all of these profit-hungry capitalists about Solyndra’s real prospects in global solar energy markets?  That President Obama has even stronger incentives than private investors to ensure that money parked in this company or that is money well spent? To ask these questions is to answer them.

Next, Michelle Malkin has been all over a similar Obama embarrassment called LightSquared — a company that is crafting an open wireless broadband network that, regrettably to our national security, overpowers our commercial and military satellite-based Global Positioning System (GPS) devices.

Where this becomes scandalous is because the White House attempted (but failed) to curb the damning testimony of U.S. Air Force Space Command four-star general William Shelton and National Coordination Office for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing director Anthony Russo.

General Shelton had noted earlier this year: “Within three to five miles on the ground and within 12 miles in the air, GPS is jammed by [LightSquared’s] towers. . . . If we allow that system to be fielded and it does indeed jam GPS, think about the impact. We’re hopeful we can find a solution, but physics being physics, we don’t see a solution right now.”

Despite industry-wide protests, the firm somehow received fast-track approval for a special FCC waiver that grants LightSquared the right to use wireless spectrum to build out a national 4G wireless network on the cheap. Ken Boehm, of the conservative watchdog National Legal and Policy Center in Washington, D.C., summed up the deal earlier this year: “LightSquared will get the spectrum for a song, while its competitors (e.g., AT&T and Verizon) have to spend billions.”

… LightSquared used to be known as “Skyterra.” In 2005, Obama put $50,000 into the speculative firm — raising eyebrows even among his water-carriers at the New York Times. The paper noted that Skyterra’s principal backers at the time of the investment included four Obama “friends and donors who had raised more than $150,000 for his political committees.”

One of those pals who urged him to buy stock in Skyterra was George Haywood, a major Skyterra investor and campaign donor who chipped in nearly $50,000 to Obama’s campaigns and to his political action committee, as did his wife.

Coincidentally, Obama bought his Skyterra stock the very same day the FCC “ruled in favor of the company’s effort to create a nationwide wireless network by combining satellites and land-based communications systems.” The Times reported that immediately after that morning ruling, “Tejas Securities, a regional brokerage in Texas that handled investment banking for Skyterra, issued a research report speculating that Skyterra stock could triple in value.”

Coincidentally, Tejas and its chairman, John J. Gorman, were also major backers of Obama — flying him in a private plane for political rallies and pitching in more than $150,000 for his campaign coffers since 2004. Obama sold his stock at a loss in November 2005, but his political relationship with the company was cemented. In 2009, billionaire hedge-fund manager Philip Falcone — whose firm Harbinger Capital Partners is reportedly under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for market-manipulation abuses — acquired Skyterra.

Coincidentally, Falcone, his wife, and LightSquared CEO Sanjiv Ahuja have contributed nearly $100,000 between them to the Democratic party during critical White House meeting periods and negotiations over LightSquared’s regulatory fate.

Oh, and coincidentally, there’s $6 billion earmarked for a “public safety broadband corporation” buried in the Obama jobs proposal just as LightSquared pushes into that market, too.

It’s all just one strange quirk of timing, Team Obama shrugs. Except, as we all should know by now: There are no coincidences in Chicago-on-the-Potomac. Just an endless avalanche of quids, quos, and taxpayer woes.

I think it goes without saying that were Obama’s last name Bush or Cheney the term “LightSquared” could be well known in American households.

Yesterday I wrote a post on the number of ways President Obama’s proposed “Buffet tax” — which is based on the faulty and context-lacking premise that Warren Buffet’s secretary suffers a higher tax bracket than Mr. Buffet — was nothing more than a bait-and-switch gambit designed to invoke class warfare at a time when his approval rating is at an all-time low.

Well, as more time passes we find evidence that some of his typical defenders, fellow Democrats and mainstream media outlets, are also calling him out on the ridiculous notion. Ridiculous because while one can contend there may be extreme examples where this scenario occurs, it is hardly evidence upon which to base a tax code change.

[WSJ] Even New York’s Chuck Schumer, of all unlikely partisans, has objections—notably to Mr. Obama’s plan to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire on taxpayers earning more than $200,000 (or $250,000 for married couples): “$250,000 makes you really rich in Mississippi, but it doesn’t make you rich at all in New York, and there ought to be some kind of scale based on the cost of living on how much you pay.”

Mr. Schumer didn’t mention that one reason for the cost-of-living differential is the Empire State’s own sky-high taxes, but the important political point is that the Democratic Party’s chief Wall Street fund-raiser is tacitly acknowledging that raising taxes on the not-so-rich isn’t popular.

Other Senate Democrats don’t like the President’s basic priorities. “Tax increases have to come second to cutting [spending],” said Ben Nelson of Nebraska, perhaps the most vulnerable Democrat up for re-election next year. “I was just home over the weekend and that’s what [my constituents] were all talking about.”

… Not all of the objecting Democrats are concerned about their own re-election. Virginia’s Jim Webb, who is retiring, called the President’s tax proposals “terrible,” adding: “We shouldn’t increase taxes on ordinary income. . . . There are other ways to get there.”

It gets worse for Mr. Obama, as the Associated Press details in their video above. After all, President Obama has with rare exception always been able to count on it and other mainstream media outlets to defend his positions, deflect criticism and counter arguments with tried and true non-sequiturs.

The 10% of households with the highest incomes pay more than half of all federal taxes. They pay more than 70% of federal income taxes, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

There may be individual millionaires who pay taxes at rates lower than middle-income workers. In 2009, 1,470 households filed tax returns with incomes above $1 million yet paid no federal income tax, according to the Internal Revenue Service. But that’s less than 1% of the nearly 237,000 returns with incomes above $1 million.

This year, households making more than $1 million will pay an average 29.1% of their income in federal taxes, including income taxes, payroll taxes and other taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank. Households making between $50,000 and $75,000 will pay an average of 15% of their income in federal taxes. Lower-income households will pay less. For example, households making between $40,000 and $50,000 will pay an average of 12.5% of their income in federal taxes. Households making between $20,000 and $30,000 will pay 5.7%.

So, because there are 1,400 filers who earn income solely from means other than income-taxed salary, the Obama Democrats think we should craft a whole new tax bracket for people “making more than $1 million”? That’s asinine. The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) was supposed to do just that, but in 40 years has expanded thanks to inflation to affecting at least 4 million people earning far less than $1 million annually.

And going back to prove the point that this is indeed class warfare, it needs to be reiterated that the amount of money the Treasury stands to gain from such a “millionaire tax” is miniscule, in part because the number of millionaires is drastically shrinking. The more Obama’s economic policy saps the country, the less wealthy there are to tax!

[WSJ] In 2007, 390,000 tax filers reported adjusted gross income of $1 million or more and paid $309 billion in taxes. In 2009, there were only 237,000 such filers, a decline of 39%. Almost four of 10 millionaires vanished in two years, and the total taxes they paid in 2009 declined to $178 billion, a drop of 42%.

As I’ve argued many a time on this webpage, liberal Democrats love to demonize the rich, citing examples of Warren Buffet or George Soros, but while their words paint a picture of the elite wealthy, in reality their tax code aims far, far lower — at the Middle Class.

Consider when Democrats use the term’s top X percent:

Of the top 1 percent of income earners, only 23 percent are millionaires. A household income above $380,000 puts you in the top 1 percent of income earners. Of the top 10 percent of income earners, only 2 percent are millionaires.

A household income above $114,000 puts you in the top 10 percent of income earners. That means that a cop making $60K married to a teacher making $60K make it into the top 10 percent.

That’s most of us, not Misters Buffet or Soros.

I’ve long said that the liberal super-rich elites like George Soros and Warren Buffet are disingenuous phonies. (Go ahead and add Barack Obama to that list).

Both supremely successful businessmen and investment bankers, they made his bones with the tax code we have, but now seek to further stifle other entrepreneurs who would seek to do the same.

A few weeks ago George Soros sat before Congress and urged higher regulations on the investment world. Shortly after that, however, Soros announced that his group was taking advantage of a Congressional loophole — or what he called in a letter to investors, “exception” — by restructuring his firm as a “family office” and return outside investors’ money in order to avoid the pain that comes with complying with new Frank-Dodd regulations.

But even worse is Warren Buffet — his influence is so great he attempts to craft tax policy with Obama Democrats.

Never mind that even as Buffet argues for paying more taxes he could cut a check to the U.S. Treasury to pay whatever extra he sees fit as “fair.” And never mind that, like Soros, Mr. Buffet lobbies for and takes advantage of tax breaks that benefit he and his fellow Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, such as was done in Berkshire’s recent investment in Bank of America.

The real charade involves a clever bait-and-switch upon those ignorant of tax policy. Consider that only one of the following statements is true:

1. Warren Buffet pays a lower capital gains tax rate than his secretary’s income tax rate.
2. Warren Buffet pays a lower tax rate than his secretary’s tax rate.
3. Warren Buffet pays a total tax amount that is less than his secretary’s total tax amount.

Statement 1 is the only truth. But it is only true because Mr. Buffet doesn’t earn his fortune from a salary, and hence isn’t taxed with an income tax (a max rate of 35%), such as his secretary. Rather, Buffet earns his fortune off of the buying and selling of stocks, which is taxed under capital gains (a max rate of 15%). It’s comparing apples to oranges. (Oh, and while we’re at it, since Mr. Buffet and his secretary get to craft tax policy de facto, shouldn’t the American public be privy to their tax records?)

Even if somehow Buffet paid a total tax pecentage (all taxes) less than his secretary, it’s just not the rule for the vast majority of high-income earners. Adds a WSJ analysis:

[According to IRS data] But nearly all millionaires still paid a rate that is more than twice the 8.9% average rate paid by those earning between $50,000 and $100,000, and more than three times the 7.2% average rate paid by those earning less than $50,000. The larger point is that the claim that CEOs are routinely paying lower tax rates than their secretaries is Omaha hokum.

What makes it all particularly slimy is how Mr. Buffet, like most expert liars, drapes himself in half-truths, in this case to take advantage of the public and to portray himself as the champion of the middle class. But even comparing his capital gain tax rate to his secretary’s income tax rate, it doesn’t hold water. It’s simply untrue:

What he doesn’t say is that much of his income was already taxed once as corporate income, which is assessed at a 35% rate (less deductions). The 15% levy on capital gains and dividends to individuals is thus a double tax that takes the overall tax rate on that corporate income closer to 45%.

Notice that Warren Buffet never said to raise his “capital gains tax rate” to be more than that of his secretary’s “income tax rate.” Nor did President Obama propose the same. Instead, the president defines his new “Buffet tax” to raise taxes on th0se “making more than $1 million a year.”

That could mean a great many things of course, but one suspects the president has no intention to touch capital gains so much as raise income taxes. He’s already detailed his plan to end the Bush tax cuts for those families make more than $250,000 — or as Obama calls them: “millionaires and billionaires.”

But it’s not class warfare, Mr. Obama promises. Yet if it’s not class warfare why bother at all?

Were the federal government to tax everyone making $1 million or more at 100%, they would only net $400 billion in revenue, which is 2.7% of the national debt, or just 11% of Obama’s 2011 budget, or enough to fund the government for a few months.

Meanwhile, the top 1% of wage earners already pay 38% of all federal income taxes while the bottom 50% paid only 3%. At what percent would Obama Democrats consider the top 1% taxed as “fair”?

And if it’s not class warfare then how is it that the gains won’t make a dent in the national debt or federal deficit?

According to the New York Times, the president’s plan to abolish the Bush tax cuts for those making more than $250,000 is expected to bring in merely $0.7 trillion over the next decade, or about 0.4 percent of Gross Domestic Product per year. As a comparison, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the deficit over the same period is going to be $13 trillion, more than 6 percent of GDP per year.

While not many details are yet know, any tax on “making more than a million” could crush small businesses, because unlike investment bankers most small businesses are organized as such that they pay a personal income tax rate (this includes sole proprietorships, partnerships, s-type corporations and limited-liability companies [llc]).

In other words, Obama isn’t going to raise Warren Buffet’s taxes at all, rather he’s going to raise taxes on business.

And let’s say Obama does plan to raise the capital gains tax (which is the opposite of what President Clinton did to spur the economy) there’s every reason to believe that the rich will simply do what Soros and Buffet did above to reduce their tax bill, while those less savvy investors (i.e. the middle-class investors) would suffer.

Or, take Obama’s plan to eliminate taxation loopholes. While most would be all for this if it meant a truly fair tax policy (for example a flat tax, or elimination of the income tax in favor of a national sales tax) eliminating tax loopholes would not harm the George Soroses and Warren Buffets of the world — but it would definitely hurt the middle class:

[Washington Post] As President Obama and congressional Republicans argue over how to rewrite the U.S. tax code, the debate has revolved around “loopholes” for corporate jets and ending “carve-outs” for well-heeled special interests. But if the goal is debt reduction, that’s not where the money is.

Broad tax breaks granted to millions of families at all income levels dwarf the corporate giveaways. Over the past two years, largely because of these popular benefits in the federal income tax code, the government has reached a rare milestone in tax collection — it has given away nearly as much as it takes in.

The number of tax breaks has nearly doubled since the last major tax overhaul 25 years ago, with lawmakers adding new benefits for children, college tuition, retirement savings and investment. At the same time, some long-standing breaks have exploded in value, such as the deduction for mortgage interest and the tax-free treatment of health-insurance premiums paid by employers.

All told, federal taxpayers last year received $1.08 trillion in credits, deductions and other perks while paying $1.09 trillion in income taxes, according to government estimates.

Only about 8 percent of those benefits went to corporations. (The write-off for corporate jets equals about .03 percent of the total.) The bulk went to private households, primarily upper-middle-class families that Obama has vowed to protect from new taxes.

Finally, there’s every reason to believe that a “millionaire” tax today will simply hit the middle class many years from now, as has already happened with the 1960′s Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), which while constructed for just 155 people, now affects 4.5 million American filers, and would affect another 20 million were it not for an annually passed Congressional bill to exclude them.

Any way you cut this, it’s tax warfare — tried and true for a president who spent $3,820,000,000,000 in 2011 alone, and is about to run for re-election with near 10% unemployment.

You know when you’re watching a football game, and the spunky, sprite running back is twisting and juking, amazing the crowd, and all of the sudden, at the worst possible moment, the running back fumbles, giving momentum to the other team, and then the coach sits the distraught player down for the rest of the game. Well, this week that running back was Michelle Bachmann and her fumble was a backfired attack on Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

While it’s legitimate or at least debatable to score points against Perry for his cronyism with Merck (et. al.) or his mandate that all schoolgirls receive the Gardasil HPV vaccine, it comes off as downright wacky McCarthyism (Jenny, not Joe) to imply a link between vaccination and “mental retardation.”

Here’s Ed Morrissey:

[Bachmann] “There’s a woman who came up crying to me tonight after the debate. She said her daughter was given that vaccine. She told me her daughter suffered mental retardation as a result of that vaccine.”

Huh? “Mental retardation” typically takes place in a pre- or neo-natal event. Autism becomes apparent in the first couple of years of life — and primarily affects boys. Gardasil vaccinations take place among girls between 9-12 years of age. Even assuming that this anecdote is arguably true, it wouldn’t be either “mental retardation” or autism, but brain damage.

The FDA has received no reports of brain damage as a result of HPV vaccines Gardasil and Cervarix.  Among the reports that correlate seriously adverse reactions to either, the FDA lists blood clots, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, and 68 deaths during the entire run of the drugs.  The FDA found no causal connection to any of these serious adverse events and found plenty of contributing factors to all — and all of the events are exceedingly rare.

The “mental retardation” argument is a rehash of the thoroughly discredited notion that vaccines containing thimerasol caused a rapid increase in diagnosed autism cases.  That started with a badly-botched report in Lancet that allowed one researcher to manipulate a ridiculously small sample of twelve cases in order to reach far-sweeping conclusions about thimerasol.  That preservative hasn’t been included in vaccines for years, at least not in the US, and the rate of autism diagnoses remain unchanged.

The most charitable analysis that can be offered in this case for Bachmann is that she got duped into repeating a vaccine-scare urban legend on national television.  It looks more like Bachmann sensed that she had won a point and wanted to go in for the kill, didn’t bother to check the facts, and didn’t care that she was stoking an anti-vaccination paranoid conspiracy theory, either.  Neither shines a particularly favorable light on Bachmann.

Rick Santorum took the correct position on the Gardasil issue.  We mandate certain vaccines in children because we mandate children be gathered for educational purposes for many years (in private or public schools), and certain diseases are easily communicable in those settings.  By mandating vaccinations against whooping cough, measles, and mumps, we are protecting children who would otherwise get exposed without any action on their part except compliance with the law.  That’s not true with HPV, and parents should decide for themselves whether to inoculate their sons and daughters with Gardasil or Cervarix.  If Perry wanted to make those inoculations more accessible, he could have crafted an opt-in system rather than forcing parents to opt out.

Other than solid backing from Tea Partyists I don’t think Bachmann had much chance for a presidential bid. However, this fumble may have eliminated her from the VP slot as well.