Here is an interesting article on the negative economic effects of high taxes and protectionism.



Is our country headed down this destructive path again?



Let's hope not.



http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MzVmMjZkMWM2ZGQ5MTk1N2ZlZDc2NjZmYWYzMWVhZjE=

Tax Hocus Pocus

The flyer below came from Rep. Jeremy Kalin (DFL-17B) in a recent Chisago County Press. Click on it to enlarge.

Rep. Kalin wrote:

Fighting for Property Tax Relief

"Rep. Kalin voted at least 6 times for significant property tax relief for Chisago County. Unfortunately, the Governor vetoed these bills, meaning property tax hikes will continue another year. The most aggressive property tax reform measures would have provided $543 million in tax cuts for property tax payers statewide. Jeremy is already at work looking at other solutions that will deliver real property tax help for our area."

___________________________________________

The knight-in-shining-armor wants you to believe the state will provide property tax relief for you. Apparently this Dem wants you to believe the state magically has money to contribute towards your tax bill so you won’t need to carry the whole load.

Where would the state get the $543 million so that it could reduce your taxes? Duh! The state gets it from you! The state collects taxes from you and then gives it to your city, township, county and school district to pay part of your local taxes. Of course you pay all of it.

Pull your 2007 real estate tax bill out of your file. Look at lines 3, 4, 5 and 6.

• Line 3 is your property tax.
• Line 4 is the "Aid paid by the State of Minnesota to reduce your property tax."
• Line 5 is "Homestead and agricultural credits paid by the State of Minnesota to reduce your property tax."
• Line 6 is your property tax after credits.
• Line 6 is about half of what line 3 is.

If you pay $3,000 of tax, for example, on your home property, the state pays about $3,000 to your local governments as well. In the end, you would be paying about $6,000 to fund local government. Half is paid directly out of your right pocket to the county which disperses it to the other jurisdictions. The other half is paid by you out of your left pocket through sales tax and income tax to the state, which gives it to local government. In the end, you paid all $6,000.

Consequently, for Kalin to be so magnanimous to vote for $543 million of tax relief for you and others, he had to raise tax revenue from you and others to pay for it. Is this tax relief? No it is additional state taxation that is used to supplement local taxation. A tax revenue increase is called tax relief. Kalin and the Dems must think we are dumb.

If residential taxpayers would have to pay for the whole tax bill (for example, $6,000) directly to local government, rather than $3,000 directly and $3,000 indirectly, we would see much more accountability in local government.

If Kalin were honest, he would have stated, "I voted to raise $543 million in taxes from you to give it back to you." Aren’t politicians good to us?!

Hypocrisy at the YearlyKos

In a previous Post we noted a YearlyKos panel shut down a military man's comment. Here is additional information from Melanie Morgan, with a focus on one of the panelists, Jon Soltz.

"Soltz is co-founder of the group VoteVets.org which works with MoveOn.org as part of the umbrella network known as Americans Against Escalation in Iraq.

This weekend Soltz was a panelist at the left-wing "Yearly Kos" convention where he launched into a tirade against U.S. Army Sgt. David Aguina of the 733rd maintenance company. Sgt. Aguina made the 'mistake' of noting the progress being made with "the surge" of U.S. troops in Iraq. He did not express any political opinions; he merely challenged the panel to prove him wrong that civilian casualties in Iraq had dropped."

Often when people (publicly or privately) cannot refute a comment, they drag in an irrelevant issue to sidetrack the unanswerable comment. Soltz contended, "Well look, you don't use the military uniform to talk politics…. I don’t appreciate people using military uniforms in politics." Of course this does not answer Sgt. Aguina's comment. That is significant in itself.

But Soltz is guilty of doing the very same thing he didn't like in Aguina. Ms. Morgan writes:

"One problem, Mr. Soltz – you're a hypocrite and a liar.

Here's the image I downloaded on Thursday from Mr. Soltz's VoteVets.org website – a group that spent nearly $2 million in the 2006 election cycle to defeat Republican candidates for Congress who supported the missions of our troops in Iraq.

There's Mr. Soltz using a picture of himself in his uniform right under a menu bar that shows which political candidates are "VoteVets.org Candidates" – you can view the photograph of Soltz in uniform on the VoteVets.org website until they realize he's busted and take it down."

You can access the above referenced photo by clicking here. There is Soltz's picture in military garb, using it as a platform for his anti-war message. Hypocrisy, hypocrisy, hypocrisy! How can a human being reject a person for doing the very thing that he himself has done? Of course, we all are guilty of this, but perhaps not in such a blatant fashion. Soltz's blind spot is exceedingly large. Soltz probably never even thought about his duplicity when he put down Aguina. And if he thought about it, he never thought he would get caught.

Pictures, quotes and stated positions recorded on paper betray a hypocrit. The same information on the Internet does it quicker and is vastly far more reaching. The Web is indeed a web that catches the fraudulent. It is a tool that exposes fraud to an enormous number of people, most of whom would never have known about this hypocrisy in pre-Internet days. Of course, Soltz will never admit to this duplicity. But now we know.

The Arrogance of Politicians

A day after the I-35 tragedy, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar declared, "A bridge in America just shouldn't fall down."

Within a week, a portion of a mine in Utah collapsed. The structure holding up the roof of a mine tunnel is essentially a bridge. Then three stories of a casino under construction in Nevada came tumbling down. Today part of a bridge under construction fell in Arizona. These things just should not happen, our learned Senator has pronounced.

We knew immediately she was speaking foolishly as she played to the crowd. Within days life has thrown her words back at her. The last two collapses were not aging structures. Even newness does not ensure perfection. Accidents happen even with the best planning. We live in an imperfect world, not a utopia. Not even the Democrats can overcome gravity, the second law of thermodynamics, substandard materials, poor design, poor inspection or plain old human error.

The Dems' enormous inability to understand the failures of people in Socialism is understandable when they do not comprehend the puniness of man in the physical world.

At this point, the cause of the structural failure in each of these four cases is undetermined and may never be known fully. Politicians love to ask us to leave problems in their hands, as if they can solve them, especially by using our money. The world has a way of rebuking the self-important and arrogant through wind, fire, earthquake or simply gravity which keeps tugging until it reveals a man-made flaw in a structure. The world can simply overwhelm us and destroy us. Even the Dems cannot tame the world.

It is flat out arrogance to think that we humans can produce perfection. Reflection on these events of the last week should produce in our politicians a sense of humility and awe at our smallness in the face of a world that can be very brutal. Give us leaders with humility. Wise leaders act and speak with humility because they know the world can make them look foolish in short order.

Kalin on DailyKos

Here's a link to a commentary that I found on the net. The author of this piece describes the hard left stance of the DailyKos, a leftist blog, to which we have referred here and here and Rep. Jeremy Kalin's (DFL-MN 17B) relationship to it.

However, the author is very kind to Kalin, who decribes himself as a progressive (liberal to the rest of us). Rep. Kalin has a long and enduring relationship to the DailyKos. The link found in the author's article, reproduced here, shows Kalin has posted hundreds of times on the DailyKos. These bloggers are his friends. The company a man keeps reveals his politics as well as a host of other things.

It is revealing to spend some time reading Kalin's posts at the DailyKos.

Political Incentives

A Bridge Too Far Gone
By Thomas Sowell

"It took a collapsing bridge in Minnesota to alert people across the country to the fact that many other bridges in many other places have been allowed to deteriorate without adequate maintenance.

If this were just a matter of poor political leadership at various levels of government, we could at least hope for better leaders in the future. But the problem goes deeper than that.

It is not just the people but the incentives that are responsible for the neglect of infrastructure, while tax money is lavished on all sorts of less urgent projects.

In other words, when there is a complete turnover in political leaders over time, the same problem will remain because the same incentives will remain when new leaders take over.

Some people claim that the problem is how much money it would take to properly maintain bridges, highways, dams and other infrastructure. But money is found for other things, including things far less urgent and some things that are even counterproductive.

The real problem is that the political incentives are to spend the taxpayers' money on things that will enhance politicians' chances of getting re-elected."

Finish reading this worthy commentary. Term limits anyone? We have politicians. Now we need statesmen.

More Liberal Bilge

I thought the bridge collapse was Bush's fault. No! It's Reagan's fault! And Pawlenty's!

Roll Back the Reagan Tax Cuts
by Thom Hartmann

"Our bridges are falling apart (among other things), and its Ronald Reagan’s fault....And, most tragically, Reagan’s tax cuts caused America to stop investing in infrastructure."

This lengthy diatribe can be found here.

Hartmann contends Reagan's tax cuts were so severe it forced the government to borrow hugh amounts and there was not enough left for roads and bridges. In reality, Reagan's tax cuts stimulated the economy so much that it produced billions in new tax revenue. The country was awash in so much money that the Democrat controlled Congress went on a social spending spree, consuming all the new tax revenue and borrowing more to spend.

Today's Dems are so mathematically-challenged (as a result of Reagan's education tax cuts!) that they cannot perceive that less is more. A lesser tax rate will yeild more tax revenue. I know it doesn't sound right to a lib, but we conservatives know it intuitively. We know even though Reagan's "tax cuts" affected our education as well!

There isn't any hope these hippy politicians and pundits will ever learn. They run the government like they are still touring the country in their VW bus, smoking pot, engaging in free love, and living on Mom and Dad's handout, all the while complaining about the establishment that made it financially possible for such nonsense to happen. They lived on Mom and Dad's welfare and they still want to live on your welfare. Smoking pot was a priority and Mom and Dad could take care of their VW buses. And for that matter, they could take care of the bridges to Honalee also.

The Word Police are at Work

It’s a Female Dog, or Worse. Or Endearing. And Illegal?
By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM

"The New York City Council, which drew national headlines when it passed a symbolic citywide ban earlier this year on the use of the so-called n-word, has turned its linguistic (and legislative) lance toward a different slur: bitch....While the bill also bans the slang word “ho,” the b-word appears to have acquired more shades of meaning among various groups, ranging from a term of camaraderie to, in a gerund form, an expression of emphatic approval. Ms. Mealy acknowledged that the measure was unenforceable, but she argued that it would carry symbolic power against the pejorative uses of the word. Even so, a number of New Yorkers said they were taken aback by the idea of prohibiting a term that they not only use, but do so with relish and affection."

Read the rest of this report on the oh so civic-minded work of New York City Council members!

Don't they have anything better to do than police people's speech? Aren't council members cruising the streets looking for public works projects anymore? When does a devoted, civic-minded, hard-working, council member find the time to dream up such nonsense? They should be careful about this day dream because they just might end up with a nightmare of a collapsed bridge in their ward. Maybe Ms. Mealy doesn't know which is more important or is her actual responsibility.

The nanny state must shelter all its urchins (adults and otherwise) from verbal insults that might crush their tender psyches. But it takes on a task that is impossible to enforce. Or will they hire a Speech Administrator from the Word Police Department who has all the power of a Zoning Administrator?

In the end, this legislation will turn individual against individual as they seek the courts to resolve hurt feelings caused by heated and demeaning speech. Gone will be the days of settling the matter privately and moving on. When one can be compensated in court, why not sue? Why take the verbal abuse without retaliation and being better for it?

Our mothers, who had an eighth grade education, had far better advice for their children than Ms. Mealy has. "Sticks and stone may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" has been given to many a kid who complained about being called "four eyes." It put backbone in us. We determined all the darts simply would not pierce through our new-found armor. We learned self-discipline by refusing to capitulate to the desire to retaliate. We were taught not to stoop to the level of our tormentor. And we didn't have a court to which we could appeal. We did it ourselves! Dad taught us to settle it ourselves, occasionally with a well-placed punch, but to follow Mom's way in the end. If we have Word Police, we must have official Hurt-feeling-defenders, but then how can one learn by doing the hard work on our own and actually growing up?

Soon we will be hauled into court for calling someone a vixen. Ho-hum, these infantile Word Police make me tired. Oops, I shouldn't have said that!

We are Sick of Complainers

Why the Democrats are losers
By JOHNATHAN R. BURRS

"What a pathetic group of losers those Democrat leaders are. Complain, complain, complain is all we ever hear from them, but we see very little action.

Although part of America may have spoken in the last election by giving them a slight advantage in Congress, what exactly have they done with that advantage? At the end of the day, those very same leaders who claim they stand for a new direction have done absolutely nothing except complain!

When they were the minority in Congress, all they did was complain about the policies of the Bush administration and now that they are the majority the complaining continues. When are they going to stop complaining, step up to the plate and actually do something?

My guess is they will never step up to the plate and do anything because they have no real agenda or strategy for this country other than political gain."

For the rest of his criticism of the Dem's whinning, click here. This link was sent by a friend. If you find an article that you think should be posted, just send me the link and I will consider posting it.

A Problem Behind Failing Infrastructure

More taxes are not the answer to correcting collapsing bridges; setting spending priorities are. The following commentary says it well and the 'toon is a picture worth a thousand words.

Nicole Gelinas
The Crumbling of America

"It’s not clear why a major section of the nation’s interstate highway system collapsed Wednesday night over the Mississippi River in Minnesota, causing a still unknown number of fatalities and indefinitely severing an important transportation link. But one thing has been all too clear for decades: America is neglecting its vital physical infrastructure, and the bill is coming due."

Later she adds:

"It’s easy to see how this happened. If the fifties were the decade of infrastructure, the sixties were the decade of entitlements and social services—and the sixties haven’t ended."

Read the whole commentary.

Jeff Koterba depicts this same scenario with fewer words.

If the bridge collapse is the final call for corrective action, then it is also a call for ending the entitlement attitude among the voters and politicians.

Politicizing a Collapsed Bridge

John Nichols is one example of many who are hyping the need to repair and replace our nation’s bridges. We all have heard for years that tens of thousands of bridges are in need of repair. Have any of us doubted that? We all know every structure wears out to the point of needing repair or replacement.

It is one thing to call attention objectively to this fact. It is another to jump on the bandwagon conveniently at the critical time of a failed bridge. Nichols politicizes basic infrastructure. It’s Bush’s fault that so much money is going to Iraq instead of into bridges. Has Nichols ever called for repair of bridges based on sheer need before this tragedy? If not, then why now? Of course, now is the golden opportunity to point fingers. It’s more fun to play with political footballs than make a rationale, sustained, non-political argument for doing our duty.

The Democrats are just lucky the I-35 bridge did not collapse during the watch of a Dem Minnesota Governor and a Dem US President. The luck of the Dems is comparable to the chance that one person rode the bridge down and another stopped in the nick of time or just drove off the bridge onto safe ground as it was collapsing. While many drivers and riders who made it safely will experience survivor’s guilt, the Dems will sense no guilt for shooting off their mouths. Both the last Presidential and Gubernatorial races were very close. It could have been Dems in both seats today. And then what? Should the Republicans politicize failed infrastructure as if it’s the Dems’ fault?

The Dems are just as guilty as a party as the Republicans are for failing to heed the objective call for a long time concerning aging bridges. Governments, lead by elected, appointed and hired people, have a propensity for building new while failing to maintain the existing, for expanding without preserving the current infrastructure.

Governments at all levels have a propensity for taking money that should go for basics and diverting it to unneeded, pet projects. Currently, national politicians are taking advantage of the defense spending bill to attach more than a thousand earmarks to get their pork. Of course, who wants to earmark money for repair of a bridge? That is not glamorous.

Why do the politicizers always want to attack the defense budget as if it is the well-spring for all the money needed to fix the infrastructure? The defense budget is very small compared to the national social budgets. Why not cut the social budget and increase the bridge budget? A Dem is not wired to do that. A Dem wants to cut defense spending and increase taxes to solve any problem. In Minnesota, the road and bridge budget is small compared to the social and education budgets. Why can’t we work with the same amount of money and cut the pie differently? That won’t happen because a Dem never wants a cut in or end of a government program. Expansionism is a must.

Don’t expect anything to change. By the time the I-35 bridge is rebuilt, the yapping hyenas will be hot on the trail of some new crisis that requires new taxes and is an opportunity to lambast a Republican administration. As luck will have it, another bridge will collapse sometime during a Dem’s administration, but it will still be Bush’s fault.

While Democrat politicians and commentators are licking their chops over the opportunity this tragedy has afforded them, they are also breathing a huge sigh of relief that it was not the result of terrorism (so they say). If the bridge had been taken down by al-Qaeda sabotage, Bush’s war on terror would have received a significant boost. As luck would have it, the Dems avoided that. And that just may very well be Bush’s fault!

The Radical Left

A panel discussing "The Military and Progressives" was held today at the YearlyKos. A young man in uniform stood to argue that the surge is working and reducing Iraqi casualties. The panel did not want to hear him because this young man’s view is contrary to what they want to propagate.

"Democratic presidential candidates expected to attend the conference are former Sens. John Edwards and Mike Gravel; Sens. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Chris Dodd; and Rep. Dennis Kucinich. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid also are expected."

Read the account.

When these Leftists attend this far left annual extension of the DailyKos, the media gives them a pass. If the Republican presidential candidates attended a right wing event as far right of center as the DailyKos is left of center, the liberal media would be highly critical and would fall all over themselves in derision. The Republican candidates would be smeared through guilt by association. In contrast, none of the Democrat presidential candidates will be painted as anti-Semitic. See the previous post.

Kudos to the young military man who wore his uniform in the midst of a bunch of military-haters and who dared to attempt to speak his mind.

The YearlyKos Convention

Do the right thing
By Robert Goldberg

"This weekend, all of the Democratic candidates for president (with the sane exception of Joe Biden) will trek to Chicago to speak at the YearlyKos convention, the gathering of those who populate the powerful Democratic blog, the DailyKos.

Defenders of the DailyKos, like Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson, claim "blogs are the 21st century version of the public square." But the DailyKos is not just a blog. It is a political force. It is not, for instance FreeRepublic.com that has its share of racists, cranks and nut jobs. And it is not a talk-show host or celebrity who makes an intemperate remark like Don Imus. The DailyKos is organized to mobilize Democrats around specific policies and force politicians to support those policies. The blog — consisting of the Kos-selected and -monitored diarists and its minions is managed carefully to achieve maximum political power. The DailyKos is closer to Tammany Hall than MySpace.

But instead of handing out turkeys at Thanksgiving for votes the dozens of commentators on the DailyKos are driven by ideological passion and then some. And anti-Semitism is a significant source of that zeal."

The rest of the editorial's comments on anti-Semitism at the DailyKos can be found here.

On the Lighter Side...

"A squirrel in Finland is nuts about "Kinder Surprise" chocolate eggs -- so much so it has taken to shoplifting them from a grocery shop.

Even worse, the furry varmint is a repeat offender, going into the store in Jyvaskyla at least twice a day to steal the treats."

Finish reading about his raids on the candy store. This squirrel likes the finer things in life.

Oh the Courage, the Fortitude, the Leadership

of Senator Harry Reid

Source