Speaking of which:
The Environmental Protection Agency has said new greenhouse gas regulations, as proposed, may be “absurd” in application and “impossible to administer” by its self-imposed 2016 deadline. But the agency is still asking for taxpayers to shoulder the burden of up to 230,000 new bureaucrats — at a cost of $21 billion — to attempt to implement the rules.
Gee, I can think of a way to save the taxpayers $21B. And millions of jobs.
When poverty is defined as relative want rather than existential need, states decay and societies decline. In the fifth century, Athenians were content to be paid to go to the theater; by the fourth, they were paid also to vote — even as they hired mercenaries to fight and forgot who won at Salamis, and why. Flash mobbing did not hit bulk food stores. The looters organized on Facebook through laptops and cell phones, not through organizing during soup kitchens and bread lines. Random assaults were not because of elemental poverty, but anger at not having exactly what appears on TV.
Obesity, not malnutrition, is the affliction at Wal-Mart. In our strange culture, that someone drives an overpriced BMW apparently means that our own Toyotas don’t have air conditioners or stereos. But that John Edwards or John Kerry or Al Gore has a huge house doesn’t mean that mine is inadequate — or the tract homes that sprout in my community for new arrivals from Mexico are too small.
Of course, the elite have responsibility to use their largess wisely and not turn into the Kardashians. But that a fifth of one percent of the taxpayers are finding ways not to pay at the income tax rate on their large incomes does not hurt the republic as much as 50% of the population paying no income tax at all. The latter noble sorts do not bother us as much, but their noncompliance bothers the foundations of our society far more than that of the stingy, but minuscule, number of grasping rich.
Yup.
…has plummeted. I guess it’s a good time to be a single guy. Not that I’d know.
[Late evening update]
Sorry, here’s the link.
Of course it was.
It’s apparently politically unacceptable to point out that truth, but that’s largely because of decades of political indoctrination in state-run lower and higher education. We were taught in school that Roosevelt “saved capitalism,” which always struck me as a similar phrase to the Vietnam-era “we had to destroy the village to save it.” It started us down the wrong road, and we’re rapidly approaching a cliff if we can’t bushwhack our way back to the right path.
…over at Open Market.
…over at The Corner, to rebut his piece this morning.
Why her “argument” isn’t as compelling as the state schtuppers want to imagine it is. Lots of good stuff in comments over there, too.
Here’s just one more example of why we have trillion-dollar deficits:
…the EAS program has mushroomed into a airline routing program based on political favors. And the subsidy doesn’t go to the traveling public; it goes to the air carriers. The $3,700 per passenger subsidy, for example, has been championed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who fought and won the earmark for keeping open air service for Ely, Nevada (population: 4,000).
How inefficient is the EAS program? While the Feds pay out $3,700 per passenger to airlines to fly from Ely to Las Vegas, Southwest Airlines sells tickets for Las Vegas to Chicago nonstop for as little as $153 one-way — about 10 cents per mile.
And no matter how much they claim to be in favor of small government, you can always find someone who will defend their own pet program:
Faye Malarkey Black, a vice president for the Regional Airline Association, said she believes few federal programs are worth it.
“They call it essential for a reason,” she told the Associated Press. She said her industry group supports “common sense adjustments” for eligibility, but added that rural communities already face many struggles to keep people from leaving.”If you take away air service, who wants to live in those communities?” she asked.
How and when did it become the responsibility of the federal taxpayer to ensure that rural communities don’t die? The American west is dotted with towns that came, and then, when there was no longer any economic justification for them, went. What is the benefit to someone in Florida to make sure that Muskegon, Michigan has air service, or that it exist at all (not that Muskegon is likely to go away for the lack of it — as the article notes, it’s only forty miles from Grand Rapids)? If we are going to solve our fiscal problems, we need to completely rethink the role of the federal government. That is the core of what next year’s election, now barely thirteen months away, should be about.
Thoughts on what they tell us about the collectivist mindset (no, there’s nothing “liberal” about it).
Thoughts on the desperation of the collapsing presidency:
Once again, the president, who earlier extended President George W. Bush’s “tax cuts for millionaires,” is entering self-parody mode. Mr. Obama is like an Apple iPhone commercial but not in a good way. Need jobs? There’s a tax for that. Want health care? There’s a tax for that. Support energy reform? There’s a tax for that. Feel guilty about your success? There’s a big tax for that.
Assuaging liberals’ guilt is never easy, but assuaging billionaire liberals’ guilt is darn near impossible, at least in the case of Warren Buffett. The Oracle of Omaha is the namesake of Mr. Obama’s so-called “Buffett Rule,” which, simply stated, is this: Billionaires like Mr. Buffett who refuse to pay their own billion-dollar tax bills can proclaim moral superiority by calling for increased taxes on hardworking, job-producing Americans who dare to earn $200,000 a year.
Leaving aside the unbelievably poor judgment of naming a tax-increase rule after a billionaire who is in a dispute with the Internal Revenue Service over back taxes (was “Timothy F. Geithner TurboTax Rule” already taken?) the plan is based on the outright false claim that millionaires pay less in taxes than middle-class earners. That claim is “nothing more than an urban legend,” according to an Associated Press fact check. This election ploy will not be mistaken for a serious economic plan. Heck, it won’t even be mistaken for a competent election ploy.
He was mistaken for being competent once, though never by me, but I think the rubes have caught on.