Every Man A King

It was one of Huey Long’s favorite slogans. At the height of the Depression with one-third of America unemployed, bankruptcies and foreclosures through the roof, stockbrokers committing suicide and credit paralyzed, the Dictator of Louisiana advocated his Share Our Wealth program to provide a basic level of financial security for every American family. The program would have worked like this:

- Every American family would receive a one-time grant of $5000
--2007 dollars: $76,682.62
-Every American family would receive an annual subsidy from the Federal government of $2000 - $3000
--2007 dollars: $30,673.05 - $46,009.57
-Education, from kindergarten through a bachelor’s degree, would be free
-Senior citizens, veterans and farmers would be subsidized
-The work week would be reduced from forty hours to thirty

To pay for these benefits, personal fortunes would be taxed at the following rates by the Federal government:

The first $1 million of net wealth 0%
The second $1 million 1%
The third $1 million 2%
The fourth $1 million 4%
The fifth $1 million 8%
The sixth $1 million 16%
The seventh $1 million 32%
The eighth $1 million 64%

- All private assets above $8 million would be confiscated
- All annual incomes of $1 million or more would be taxed at 100%

This meant that someone with $9 million in total net assets would have 25.2% of their wealth seized by the Federal government, and someone with $100 million in total net assets would lose 93.27% of those assets. The richer the individual, the more he would lose.

Share Our Wealth and its most vocal exponent were wildly popular among the poor and helped bolster the Kingfish’s chances for the Presidency in 1936, given that so many people were suffering and that so many felt that even President Roosevelt’s radical reforms didn’t go far enough to resolve the country’s most serious economic crisis. It was Long’s view that too much of the nation’s wealth was concentrated in the hands of too few selfish millionaires, industrialists and speculators, and the only way to relieve the nation’s agony was to impose draconian measures. An assassin’s bullet ended Huey Long’s life before he could challenge for the White House but the populist agenda he championed has been echoed through the decades by such luminaries as Lyndon Johnson, George McGovern, Jesse Jackson, Al Gore, Al Sharpton, Tom Harkin and now Barack Obama.

It sounds simple enough. Someone has more money than they need, someone else doesn’t have enough. The government takes the surplus and divides it more evenly. What could be easier? No-one advocates for poverty, right? How could anyone oppose a “fairer” distribution of wealth? But has been demonstrated wherever socialism has been tried, this approach has very limited benefits and very extensive costs. First, the very definitions of “surplus,” “too much,” and “not enough” are relative – how much is “too much” and how much is “not enough”? Second, stiff taxes punish success and reward poverty. Why work harder if your efforts result in someone else taking the profit? Third, as successful people and companies lose their assets and their willingness to take risks (and to profit from those risks), the surplus shrinks until it disappears and the redistribution of wealth becomes the redistribution of poverty. The vast social welfare programs that are the vehicles of redistribution struggle, the families grown dependent on those programs struggle, and the government faces a difficult choice of either slashing the programs it created or increasing taxes again to maintain the level of spending, which only deepens the crisis. These three points form the conservative opposition to redistributionist policies.

So given the volumes of data proving the failure of “soak the rich” schemes, why would Senator Obama endorse another one? Why increase taxes at the very time that the markets need more private capital, not less? For two reasons: The forementioned popularity of such schemes among low wage earners who want someone else to pay for benefits they cannot afford themselves; and a fundamental belief that government should decide how to spend money, not the people who earned it - socialism. Although the liberal elite enjoy the rewards of capitalism (George Soros, Ted Turner, the Kennedys, Nancy Pelosi, Bill and Hillary Clinton and certainly the Obamas themselves), they want to force everyone else to share the mediocrity of socialism, an hypocrisy that never seems to dawn upon them. They see capitalism as inherently unfair because of its emphasis on opportunity and not results, and seek to reverse that unfairness through confiscatory taxes and lavish government spending. Anyone who objects to higher taxes is considered selfish, hence the Obama campaign’s indignant response to “Joe the Plumber’s” simple question about the Senator’s tax policy. An average, middle-class, blue-collar worker, a person that Senator Obama claims to represent, dares to confront him directly about his plan and the liberal smear machine tries to destroy him. This obsession with uniformity, this aversion to excellence characterizes the liberal position on a variety of issues, from taxes to health care, from housing to education, from unions to transportation, from agriculture to energy, from the environment to foreign policy, though not morals: Abortion, homosexuality, drugs and pornography are powerful gods in the liberal pantheon. They prefer the security of sameness to the chance to achieve, an attitude that is regrettable in an individual but catastrophic to a society. This attitude we must resist at all hazards, and though the Kingfish did not deserve to be murdered, his socialist dream – now Senator Obama’s – must be administered the coup de grace.


Source: http://www.westegg.com/inflation/

The Long Lens of History

With the seventh anniversary of 9/11 behind us and the election of a new President before us, it may help those who are wavering in their decision and even those who are committed to one candidate or another to provide a frame of reference for their choice, a frame of reference that relies less upon the current economic frenzy than upon the inescapable record of history. That record indicates that it is not our stock market or balance of trade or our tax policy that is most important to our survival but our security. Security is the bedrock of our country, the foundation upon which all else is built. The loss of security would extinguish our national life forever, so as important as our economy may be to us and to the world, it is our national security that is the paramount concern.

We are engaged in a Global War On Terror against agents of Islamic empire, the latest campaign in a war that has raged for nearly 1400 years. Americans of the early 21st century tend to have short memories, tend to focus on the here-and-now, tend to consider war - no matter how necessary - as a gross distraction from the more important goal of self-indulgence. But we are engaged in a fight not only for our own survival but the survival of Western civilization, and the desire of some Americans as articulated by Senator Obama to simply pack up and go home is ludicrously irresponsible. Beyond that, wars conclude when both parties stop fighting, so the supposition that worldwide militant Islam will simply stay put while we retreat is similarly ludicrous. It contravenes both common sense and the historical truth of Mohammed's religion:

circa 610 AD: Mohammed begins preaching Islam in Mecca

630 AD: Muslims capture Mecca

636 AD: Muslims capture Jerusalem

633 - 642 AD: Muslims conquer all of North Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Iraq

710 AD: Muslims conquer Spain

721 AD: A Muslim invasion of Gaul is stopped by Odo the Great, Duke of Aquitaine, at the Battle of Toulouse

732 AD: Another Muslim invasion of Gaul is stopped by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours, likely saving Western Europe from Muslim conquest

1291 AD: Muslims capture Acre, the last Christian stronghold in Palestine, ending the Crusades

1389: Muslims defeat a Serbian army at the Battle of Kosovo, ruining the Serbs' dream of independence

1396: Muslims defeat a Christian coalition at the Battle of Nicopolis, extending Muslim domination of the Balkans

1453: On their sixth attempt since 1390, Muslims capture Constantinople, capital of the eastern Roman Empire for a thousand years, and push Muslim control as far west as Hungary

1492: Christians reconquer Spain

1522: Muslims capture Belgrade and force the Christian Knights of St. John to abandon their base on the island of Rhodes

1529: A Muslim invasion is stopped at Vienna

1565: After a three-month siege, the Knights of St. John defeat a Muslim invasion force at their new base on the island of Malta

1683: A Muslim invasion is defeated again at Vienna, marking the beginning of 250 years of decline in the Muslim world

Let's look closer at just one of these events. On Friday, 18 May 1565, a Turkish invasion fleet appeared off the coast of Malta. Two hundred galleys, the largest and best artillery train in the world and 38,000 men had been sent by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent to destroy the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, the last of the Christian Crusading orders, once and for all. Opposing them was a force of 900 knights and about 8000 native Maltese volunteers. For 113 days, these mortal enemies shot and slashed and burned and stabbed each other to death while the entire Mediterranean hung in the balance. When the Turks overran little Fort St. Elmo after a month of fierce resistance, they massacred the defenders, decapitated them, crucified the remains and dumped them in Grand Harbour to terrify the survivors. In retaliation, the Knights executed their Turkish prisoners, decapitated them, loaded the heads into cannon and fired them back across the harbor. It was war to the knife, savage, ugly and pitiless, but on 08 September 1565, the Turks retreated, having failed to break the Christians' will to resist.

It is very plain that Islam waged an unrelenting war of conquest against the rest of the world, but especially against the Christian West, for over a thousand years. Constitutional democracy did not exist, the United States, Israel and the "Palestinian question" did not exist, the major reasons cited by Muslim extremists to justify their violence, yet militant Muslim armies slaughtered and burned and raped half the known world for Allah. The only explanation for these ten centuries of brutal conquest is the nature of Islam itself, an aggressive and brutal religion driven to enslave humanity and to destroy whatever it cannot enslave. Thus Senator Obama's proposed withdrawal from Iraq and overtures to Iran are a ridiculously naive vision of foreign policy at the very least, certainly betray an ignorance of historical fact, and are an invitation to disaster at the very worst. Listen to the words of Queen Elizabeth I commenting on the Turkish invasion of Malta 443 years ago: "If the Turks should prevail against the Isle of Malta, it is uncertain what further peril might follow the rest of Christendom." Meaning that Islam will not be satisfied until their bloody flag flies over the entire world. Senator Obama, and your near-sighted one-world supporters, take heed.

USSA

We had a very interesting encounter with an Obama campaign worker yesterday afternoon that illustrates the very real and very deep philosophical divide between liberals and conservatives in this country. This young man was canvassing our neighborhood about 3:30 PM when he knocked on our door, and when my wife and son answered, he proceeded to ask them to support Senator Obama's candidacy. When my wife told him that we are registered Republicans and that we intend to vote for Senator McCain, the young man retorted that "we're headed for socialism" and refused to obey my wife's instructions to leave immediately. After my wife called for me and I repeated her order to leave, the young man continued to hover on our front walk and stated that "we're headed for socialism" twice more in a triumphant tone of voice before finally moving on.



This incident gets under my skin for a couple of reasons. First, the kid wouldn't shove off when we told him to do so, as if defying us would convince us to change our minds and support his candidate: Liberals have a problem with private property, after all. Second, and this is the more important aspect, this young man is absolutely convinced that a President Obama will lead us into a sort of socialist workers' paradise. What would excite him so much? Maybe the prospect of higher taxes so the bottom thirty percent of American wage earners who pay no Federal income taxes at all can receive a "rebate" from the Treasury Department? Maybe the prospect of sending another $85 billion overseas every year for "poverty relief" or of negotiating with Mahmud Ahmadinejad "without preconditions"? (As an aside, since the nutcase Iranian president refuses to abandon his country's nuclear program, what exactly does Obama think he would negotiate? Our surrender?) Maybe the prospect of rationed health care or rationed higher education or rationed energy or rationed housing? Maybe the prospect of granting citizenship to illegal immigrants or retreating from Iraq? Are these the facets of an Obama presidency that make him swoon?



Socialism has been a disaster everywhere it's been tried, and please don't offer up Scandinavia as a shining triumph: When an individual in Finland faces combined national and municipal income taxes of 53.5% plus "luxury" taxes of 17% on food and 8% on medications, that ain't success, brother, but highway robbery. Socialism destroys prosperous economies by attempting to redistribute wealth from those who earn it to those who don't, punishing success and rewarding poverty. Businesses fail, unemployment rises, interest rates go up as banks tighten credit, taxes go up to maintain high government spending and the economy stagnates - a very reliable way to commit financial suicide. My family and I lived in Germany for over six years where we saw the result of centralized planning first-hand, and I've seen it in East Berlin and North Korea: What moron would wish that kind of misery on our country? If socialism were such an incredible system, why aren't we watching American boat people risking their lives to sail to Cuba? Why doesn't George Soros work in La Paz, or Barbra Streisand vacation in Pyongyang? Because socialism sucks, my friends...it sucks out loud.

The door-knocker who was so enthusiastic for Obama yesterday was guilty of being young - ignorant, inexperienced, more energy than sense. But the candidate he represents has given him a rather evil hope, that we can be transformed into the United Socialist States of America, and I will resist that hope with all the strength I can muster.






Source: http://www.worldwide-tax.com/finland/fin_other.asp



Source: http://www.worldwide-tax.com/finland/finland_tax.asp