We’re all sick of hearing about the “Bush Tax Cuts”

The Bush Tax cuts did NOT increase the “tax burden on the poor and middle

class.”

Common sense tells you that.  How can cutting taxes on one group while not

increasing taxes on anyone else hurt anybody?

Come on.  You know the answer.  We’re not talking high-level set theory or calculus here, or

Keynesian versus Austrian School economics, it’s just plain-in-your face logic.    

Yet day after day we hear politicians – particularly Democrats and the “99%” pack of crazies

rant about how cutting taxes on “the rich” (and by the way a lot of other not-so-rich people)

“pushed” the tax burden on the poor and middle class. 

What a bunch of misinformation.

Better still – what a load of demagogic, class-warfare crap.  The only people who could believe

that BS are either dumber than a bag of hammers or completely delusional.

To help the misguided, let’s put it in a “see-Spot-run” way even a loon could grasp – we hope.

And we’ll keep the math really simple for those who were “socially promoted” from the first

grade on and had to cheat to pass their GED test so they could get that job as “Fry Chief” at

Burger Biggie.  (And then, of course, bitch and moan about how unfair everything is because

their neighbor who made great grades and got a degree somehow earns more than they do.) 

So here you go kids …

Let’s say you charge a group of rich people $2 for each orange.  For people who have less

money (the poor and middle class) you only charge $1 for each orange.  At some point you

decide to charge the rich folks $1.50 per orange, hoping they’ll buy more stuff from you with the

savings, but keep your price of $1 per orange for everyone else. 

Okay, now here’s the pop quiz – who got hurt? 

Answer (ding!) – Only the one selling the oranges, and maybe not even them if they make it up

on volume.  None of the buyers got hurt.  The rich folks got a little better deal than before but

everyone else still paid less than the rich folks did. 

That’s what the Bush Tax Cuts did.  The only difference here is that the government was the

seller of oranges (financial support of its bloated bureaucracy, wasteful earmarks, and non

stop political theater and chicanery) and charging in the form of taxes.  

Some people who were already paying the lion’s share got a little break along with a lot of

other taxpayers who weren’t as well off.  People who really weren’t paying much of anything

already didn’t have to pay any more than they used to. 

How is that unfair?

The only real outcome of the Bush Tax Cuts to the government and politicians was that there

was a possibility of less slush money down the road to sling around and with which to provide

bread and circuses to the populace, enrich their friends, and punish their enemies.

That's what the true “horror” of the Bush Tax Cuts was to our elected weasels.  Less money to

squander on pet projects and causes.   Less money to curry favor with special interest groups.

Less money to spend on make-work projects to appear to be doing something about the

economy.  Less money to squirrel away here and there for something they’d rather not have

known to the public quite yet.  Or ever. 

Oh, the humanity.  How could we ever expect our government to do with less money?  Spend

less? – are you crazy?  Raise taxes on everyone equally? – again are you crazy; that’s political

suicide. 

So someone came up with the bright idea – apparently after concluding that most people were

so stupid they couldn’t pour piss out a boot with directions on the heel – that the best way to

get more money to squander was to convince people that “the rich” weren't paying enough.  

The villain was clearly those damned Bush Tax Cuts that favored the wealthy.   Oh, and the fact

that capital gains were taxed at a lower level than ordinary earnings. 

Since politicians were pretty certain that most of their constituencies wouldn’t understand what

capital gains were in the first place, except that rich people made money from them and

everyone else obviously didn't, that was an easy mark, too.  All they needed to do was trot out

Warren Buffett who claimed he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary, because most of his

earnings were from capital gains. 

Forget that reversing the tax cuts would affect a lot more people than the rich.  Or that even if

you raised the minimum tax on billionaires to 30% or more, the total amount of money raised

could be a mere spit in the ocean of debt we were already in.  After TARP, the bailouts of the

auto companies, and the goofy “investments in the future and/or infrastructure” (butt-kissing of

special interests), you could take ALL the billionaires’ money, plus wipe out any tax cuts, and

we’d still be in a massive hole. 

Somehow, despite reality, they got traction with the idea of soaking the rich/wealthy even

further, probably because if you suggest robbing Peter to pay Paul, you can always count on

the support of Paul.

Conveniently, “grass roots” movements like OWS ginned up, and made repealing the Bush

Tax Cuts and making the rich “pay their fair share” the cause de jour.

Celebrities – who were already rich, but who would apparently fail the emptying-the-piss-in-the

boot test themselves – jumped on board, raging against, we suppose, themselves.   However,

did you ever see one of the ranting celebrities – nor Buffett for that matter – whip out their own

checkbooks and write a great big whopping check to the U.S. government to “pay their fair

share,” huh?  They and you do know Uncle Sam will gladly accept your voluntary contributions

… so why their hesitation to pay their fair share?  It's as simple as writing a check. 

For the real fanatics in this election year’s class-war, it’s not about reality.  It’s not about math

or logic.  It’s not even about making headway on paying down our debt. 

It’s all about politics.  Pitting one side against another simply to get re-elected. 

So please …do us all a favor and stop harping on the tax cuts.  Nobody got hurt by those.  No

children went hungry because someone paid lower taxes.  Nobody’s health was jeopardized

because Warren Buffett only paid 15%. 

Please stop with the tax and income inequality speeches, too.  Taxes are always unequal, by

design, so that those who have more already pay more.  Income inequality is always going to

exist because people and their marketable skills and abilities are unequal, too. 

It would be nice if our politicians recognized – finally – that not everything is a zero-sum game.

In short, when one person is successful, that does not necessarily come at the expense of

another person. 

It would also be a pleasant surprise to see the general population get their collective act

together and realize that most people -- not all for sure, but most -- with a lot of money have

actually earned their success, and their success should be admired and applauded, rather

than envied and reviled.    

Most surveys of public opinion are crap
There are two key elements to surveys – the way you derive a representative sample, and the precise way you frame and ask the question.

However, anyone who has taken a survey research course knows that while there are statistically accurate ways to draw a representative sample, how you ask a question largely determines the answer you’ll get. 

So by stating your question in a certain way, you can obtain almost any answer you want, even within a statistically accurate representative sample. 

If you’re asked if you believe the rich should pay more in taxes than you do, most of us would probably say yes.  If you’re asked whether the tax rate on the rich should be significantly higher than the tax rate most Americans pay, yes votes would drop substantially. 

But if you’re asked if the rich should be penalized with higher taxes for being more successful, very few yes votes would be recorded. 

As another example, if you were asked if people currently not paying any Federal income tax should be compelled now to pay their fair share, most would agree.

However, if you clarified exactly who is not paying Federal income tax – the poor, as well as a large percentage of ordinary taxpayers and businesses through legitimate tax credits and deductions they’ve earned – the response would be quite different. 

So whenever you see survey results that make no sense, see the question.  Chances are it’s heavily weighted toward a desired outcome.  And it’s probably crap.  


Look at the sampling, too.  Drill down to the actual percentages of one group versus another.  Age, education, household income, marital status, etc.  A lot of "independent" pollsters manipulate sampling to get a certain result. So liberals over-sample demographics they think will tend to agree with them in their polls and conservatives do the same.  Almost nobody draws a true representative sample of the population, if they have a predetermined result they want.  


It's a rigged game.  And produces more crap results.  

Also beware of the results from any self-selecting audiences – such as online polls – because:  1) the people who volunteer to take surveys are not usually representative of the norm; and 2) the technology or medium used to acquire and interview respondents may substantially distort the results. 

The greatest historical example of the latter is the Dewey/Truman election: pollsters only surveyed people with telephones, which was not truly representative of the general voting public and especially not true of Truman supporters.  While they predicted a solid win for Dewey based on this bad sampling, Truman actually won.  


Telephone surveys today are probably less representative of public opinion than ever before for a couple of reasons.  


Do you really answer those calls?  Most normal people don't want to be bothered.  So who actually answers those calls and spends 10 minutes or more on the phone with some canvasser?  Do you think they are representative of the general public? They're probably the same people who look forward to getting called for jury duty, look forward to a chat with a telemarketer at dinner time, and have 23 cats and bundles of old newspapers around the house.  


Face it:  they are not you. 


And with the number of people who no longer have land lines and now only have smartphones that limit -- by law -- telemarketer access, the "representative" nature of samples drawn from conventional land-line telephone canvassing is getting weaker every day.  In time, you might as well survey people who heat their homes with coal.   


So beware.  There are lies, damned lies, and public opinion polls, to paraphrase Mark Twain.  

Freedom of speech must be protected, even when you don’t like what’s being said
Some believe in freedom of speech for everyone and accept that what they hear may be hurtful or offensive, but should be protected nonetheless. 

Others believe in freedom of speech only if they agree with what’s being said, and believe their own right to freedom of speech includes abridging the speech of others.

Freedom of speech has limitations – you cannot yell “fire!” in a crowded theater is the classic example.  But the courts of the land have generally accepted the right to free speech – especially political speech – as an essential element of our democracy. 

The problems almost always arise when someone is offended by what’s being said –as when the Westboro Baptists brought anti-gay signs to military funerals, clearly offensive to mourners and the public in general.  However, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately upheld their right to protest – no matter how offensive the signs and how obnoxious their behavior might have been to the families and the vast majority of the public.

It was the right decision. 

Recently, the manager of the Miami Marlins was quoted as saying that he admired and respected Fidel Castro, because, as reported in the news, he said that people had been trying to kill Castro for about 60 years and he was still there.

Now that’s not the most politically correct thing to say in Miami as those of us who’ve lived there know, and the Cuban community went ballistic.  The manager was suspended by the team’s management for five games without pay. 

Some people said that was unfair – that he had a right to his opinion.  Others made the point that to praise Castro was – to the Cubans in Miami – akin to praising Hitler.


This is entirely different than the Supreme Court case, although there are elements to protecting free speech in this situation as well. 

The big difference is that while he had a right to express his opinion of Castro, he also bore the consequences of exercising that right – being suspended by the business that employed him for five games without pay.  

If he worked in a 7-11 or an auto-repair shop, nobody would care and he could spout off all he liked about anything.  And probably would.  But the business that employed him – and for which he is a very visible representative – is in the business of selling tickets to baseball games in a community that was certainly going to be ticked off, perhaps enough to not buy tickets anymore. 

Did he have a Constitutional right to say what he did?  Of course, no matter how bone-headed it was in the context of where he worked.  No one denies that.  Was the suspension unfair?  Perhaps, but also understandable in a purely business context.     

As a private citizen, if you truly believe in free speech, and want to protect your continued  right to it, you have to be willing to put up with hearing things you don’t like.  Popular opinion should never dictate what is and isn’t protected free speech. 

That doesn't mean you can say whatever you want and claim immunity from any consequences because free speech is a protected right.  If you do material harm to someone else – like your employer – by exercising your right, you have to expect to bear the consequences.  Which he did. 

So this one isn’t a Constitutional case; it’s just business. 

What’s more worrisome today is the on-going attempt by some to muzzle anything and anyone they disagree with to enforce what they feel is proper political correctness – which is always solely in the eye of the beholder. 

They don’t want to hear any view but their own, nor do they want anyone else to even have access to opinions that differ from their own.  In short, they are totalitarians in the making, be they far left, far right or activists for one cause or another.  They are intolerant of opposition.  

It's their way or no way.  And we know enough history to see what the end game of totalitarians always is – the loss of personal freedom, at the very least.   

Preventing anyone from exercising their right by heckling or shouting down the speaker, or blocking entrances to a venue, are outright attacks on every person’s right of free speech and place us all only a short step away from a Fahrenheit 451 world.  


Muzzling speech and alternative opinions are the precursors.  

“What’s going on in Florida?” (RE: Trayvon Martin …) Part III …

A young man was shot and killed.  That’s bad enough. And his family and others have every right to be upset and horrified by his death. 

But here’s the truly bizarre part of this sideshow:  almost nobody else bloviating about Trayvon Martin – Sharpton, Jackson, and the media talking heads – seems to be as outraged that hundreds of other black kids are shot to death, mostly by other black kids, every year in this country.

No one appears as dismayed that homicide remains the leading cause of death among non-Hispanic African-American teenage males.  For comparison, traffic accidents are the leading cause of death overall for teenagers of all races. 

As tragic as the Trayvon Martin case is, that’s nothing compared to what’s killing the most young black males every year.    

You would think someone would get on that bandwagon.  But no, nobody wants to address that issue.  That might make someone “feel bad about themselves” for revealing the blindingly obvious to them:  the gangsta culture enamored and imitated among many young blacks is yielding deadly returns.    

Instead, let’s divert attention to something else, because if a black person shoots another black person – which happens all the time in Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and DC, hey, that’s not news.  It’s just a statistic. 

And here’s that statistic:  94% of all murders of blacks are at the hands of another black person.  Flip that statistic and it means the probability of being black and murdered by someone of another race – white/Hispanic, Asian or Native American –  anywhere in this country is 6%. 

So if a black person gets shot by someone who isn’t black, that’s a big story.  If that happens in that inbred, cultural wasteland the media considers the South, it’s even bigger news because you can then add racism into the storyline; it’s a natural.    

And that’s primarily because the Northeastern-based media – and, honestly, a lot of their regular viewers – want to believe their own stereotypes about what they think the South must be:  farms, churches, revivals, trailer parks, Mayberry RFD, Green Acres, Bible-thumping rednecks and bigots … and of course segregation and the ongoing oppression of the black population.  

You almost expect for them to use banjos and someone playing the spoons as background music when they cover the South.  Maybe see the Dukes of Hazzard drive by, as they toss longneck PBRs out the window on their way to a date with their first cousin.  

After all, what do you expect the media to think when the majority of the South voted for George W. Bush over more “enlightened” candidates like John Kerry and Al Gore … how smart could the South really be? 

Another sign to the media that Jim Crow is alive and well in the South is that many southern states are trying to crack down on voter fraud by mandating photo IDs to vote.  In the media’s mind this is clearly a naked attempt to disenfranchise black and other minority voters.  (Most of these potentially “disenfranchised” voters apparently have photo IDs to purchase cold medicine at Walgreens, or tobacco or liquor, or get a library card, but would be really put out if they had to show one to vote.)   

We might as well face it:  Whites in the South must spend the majority of their time – when they’re not out hunting squirrels, dodging tornadoes, knocking up their sister, or attending Klan meetings – trying to keep blacks down.  And if some black kid gets in their way, they feel they have the right to shoot them. 

At least that’s how it seems if you take national news accounts at face value. 

Nobody is saying there isn’t racism in the South; but it’s probably no more or no less pervasive than anywhere else in this country.  There will always be redneck cracker bastards not just in the South, but also in virtually every part of the country; ignorance and intolerance know no geographic boundaries. 

Nobody is saying there aren’t murders of blacks in the South, and it’s true that a very small percentage of those will be committed by whites.  But that will be an exceedingly small percentage; not a sign that whites in the South are on a culturally sanctioned jihad against blacks, as some race baiters would have you believe.       

The overwhelming majority of murders of black people in the South – like the country as a whole – will be committed by other black people, not gun-happy white racists.    

Let’s keep things in their proper perspective. 

“What’s going on in Florida?” (RE: Trayvon Martin …) Part II …

Maybe Zimmerman really did just shoot down Trayvon Martin because Trayvon was in the wrong place at the wrong time, which would be inexcusable, and for which Zimmerman should be charged with murder or at least manslaughter. 

Or maybe it happened the way Zimmerman says it did and he was just defending himself and got beat up in the process. 

Some videos seem to support Zimmerman’s claim; others make his injuries appear far less serious.   Audio of the cries for help points – according to a couple of experts – to Martin as the source, not Zimmerman.   There are conflicting eyewitness reports.  

At this point, the only people who really know for certain – because they were there – are Martin and Zimmerman.  Martin is dead, and Zimmerman has his account, so now it’s up to the forensics people. 

In the meantime, the circus continues. 

From the beginning, too much of the coverage of this event has been about stereotyping – the poor black kid shot merely for being in a largely “white” gated community at night while wearing a hoodie.

The hoodie has become a symbol of support for the Martin family’s claims, with the subtext that you can’t judge someone’s intent simply by the clothes they wear.  Even the POTUS weighed on this, when he said that if he had a son he would look like Trayvon. 

Apparently, just because someone dresses like the people you always see in security footage of convenience store robberies, you have no rational reason to be at least a little suspicious. 

From now on you’re not supposed to infer that that some guy behind you at the ATM at midnight wearing a hoodie pulled down to hide his face might be up to no good, for example.  Go ahead and pull out a bunch of cash.  Everything’s good.  Nothing to worry about.

Come on.  If you see someone with a shaved head and swastika tats you’re going to quickly infer that the person is a skinhead, and probably a Jew- and black-hating racist.  Right or wrong, that’s what you’re going to think – the probability that the same person is a mild-mannered, Prius-driving florist who belongs to the local synagogue is pretty slim. 

Now people have the right to wear whatever they want.  They can also decorate their bodies any way they like.  It’s a free country.  And someone’s appearance is certainly no excuse to shoot them.   

But it’s unrealistic to think that how someone appears doesn’t leave you with an impression about them.  If you intentionally send off visual vibes that you’re a gangsta or gangsta wannabe – regardless of whether you think it’s nothing more than a fashion statement – you can’t expect others to know your motives.  You look like a gangsta, you’ll be perceived as a gangsta, and people will react accordingly. 

Which leads to the use of pictures in this case. 

The media has gone out of its way to paint Martin as this skinny, likable young man by using the smiling pictures of him in his high-school football uniform, with his family, and what seems to be his class picture from junior high.  Zimmerman’s most-used picture, on the other hand, shows him scowling in what appears to be a police mug shot taken years ago when he was heavier.    

Neither accurately portrays Martin nor Zimmerman the way they were at the time of the shooting.

In reality, Martin was not some skinny kid; he was about 6’3” tall and about 200 lbs – a rather formidable young man at 17.  Zimmerman is 28 years old, not a big guy, and not a racist by any accounts according to his neighbors; in fact he is the product of a mixed marriage of a white father and a Hispanic mother.  There are pictures surfacing now that show Zimmerman as a smiling, affable kind of person. 

Now more recent pictures are also emerging of Martin that show him with a lot of tats, gold veneers on his teeth,  and others of him wearing a hoodie and a gangsta expression. 

The media hasn’t shown those much because that might water down the persona of Martin they and Martin’s family – which BTW is moving to trademark his image and “I am Trayvon” as well as “Justice for Trayvon” – have been carefully cultivating. 

Go figure. 

The tragedy in all this is that a 17-year-old guy was shot and killed.  Which is sad. 

That so many people continue to try to take advantage of this to further their own personal and political agendas makes it sadder still. 

Eventually we may learn what really happened that night.  We can only hope. 

In the meantime, everyone needs to back down the rhetoric, the accusations and the manufactured outrage and marches so the investigators can do their jobs.

“What’s going on in Florida?” (RE: Trayvon Martin …)

Someone asked me this the other day and wondered if Florida was like the Wild West, with everyone armed and shooting each other for the slightest provocation, while the police stand aside.    

Florida has its faults, but it’s not the Wild West.  Nor is anyone there allowed to just shoot people for no apparent reason.  But it’s easy to see where this mistaken impression comes from. 

The media has recently painted a picture of Florida as a mecca for gun-toting vigilantes, with laws that seem to encourage people to shoot first and ask questions later; a place where police look the other way when a citizen guns down anybody, especially if the shooter is white and the victim isn’t. 

Sharpton, Jackson and others are now feeding this perception with the Trayvon Martin incident.  The national media – who almost always paint the South generally as an ignorant backwater of prejudice and intolerance – are eating it up.  This is, of course, before all the facts of that case are in.   

Those of us from Florida or still living there are used to see our state in the news for one outlandish thing or another.  Whether it’s walking catfish, alligator attacks, fundamentalists threatening to burn Qurans, old people plowing into the front of a Dunkin’ Donuts, setting people on fire in Old Sparky, whatever, we’re all kind of used to the media’s obsessions with everything strange in Florida. 

Now it’s Trayvon Martin. 

The media love this one.  It’s got everything they want – the innocent, attractive black youth, shot down in cold blood with no provocation by an overweight, gun-crazy, “town watch” amateur run amuck, who may get off scot free because of some crazy law only the NRA and their supporters could like.  And best of all, it happened in the South.  The only thing better would be if the shooter were lily white; unfortunately, the shooter is just Hispanic.  But you can’t have everything. 

Still, it’s enough of a platform to walk out every politically-correct, race-baiting, gun-hating, and potential “setback in race relations” sidebar.  And need we (the media) remind you, it happened in the South … but don’t worry; we’ll remind you again, and again, and again.  We’ll probably even pull up some old footage from the civil rights era just so you don’t forget.   Remember black people being sprayed with hoses, the shooting of Martin Luther King, Klansmen in the streets?  How ‘bout we bring up the Civil War? 

Oh the injustice. And see, it just continues with poor Trayvon and too many people with guns, in the hands of racist rednecks, abetted by NRA-backed laws that encourage this senseless carnage.

This is all without conclusive evidence of what really happened that night.  The only “fact” is that Martin was shot and killed by George Zimmerman.  That’s known.  The “why” and the specific circumstances surrounding this tragedy are still conjecture. 

But that hasn’t stopped the media and race-baiters from convicting Zimmerman of the cold-blooded murder of Martin, simply because Martin was black, in the court of public opinion.   

That’s the storyline and they are not only sticking to it; they continue to amp it up.

The only thing they’ve left out is George Bush.  But rest assured at some point it will be his fault, too.