Category Archives: Barack Obama

Soak The Rich? How About ‘Drench Almost Every American Family’

Barack Obama, Business, Capitalism, Economy, Taxation

Most Americans own shares in major American companies, often through pension funds. “According to the Investment Company Institute,” reports the WSJ, “about 51% of adults own stock directly or through mutual funds, which is more than 100 million shareholders.” However, come 2013, the malevolent freak who inhabits the White House intends to “triple the tax rate on corporate dividends,” hurting these Americans (most of us). The “new dividend tax rate in 2013 would be 44.8%—nearly three times today’s 15% rate.”

…retirees and near-retirees who depend on dividend income would be hit especially hard. Almost three of four dividend payments go to those over the age of 55, and more than half go to those older than 65, according to IRS data. But all American shareholders would lose. Higher dividend and capital gains taxes make stocks less valuable.

A Genuine Journalist in MSM: Jack Tapper (Vs. Jay Carney)

Barack Obama, Fascism, Journalism, Media

Jake Tapper of ABC News is an unusual journalist; he has questioned the Obama administration, and, in particular, on the matter of the suppression of journalistic freedoms stateside.

Via Media(somethingoranother):

At Wednesday’s White House press briefing, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney praised the journalists (Marie Colvin, Rémi Ochlik and Anthony Shadid) recently killed covering the violent unrest in Syria. ABC News’ Jake Tapper then asked Carney about the discrepancy between how the Obama administration treats journalism internationally versus domestically.
The White House “keeps praising these journalists who’ve been killed,” Tapper said, but that is inconsistent with the administration’s actions within the U.S. He asked, “How does that square with the fact that this administration has been so aggressively trying to stop aggressive journalism in the United States by using the Espionage Act to take whistleblowers to court?”
Tapper went on to detail how “this is the sixth time you’re suing a CIA officer for allegedly providing information in 2009 about CIA torture. Certainly that’s something that’s in the public interest of the United States.” Previously, the act had only been used three times in history.
Plainly, Tapper stated, “There just seems to be disconnect here. You want aggressive journalism abroad; you just don’t want it in the United States.”

Tapper has a history of “subversion.”

Save the People; Kill the European Superstate

Barack Obama, Debt, EU, Europe, Federalism, Foreign Policy, The State

The following excerpt is from this week’s column, “Save the People; Kill the European Superstate”:

“An honest man,” wrote Ayn Rand in “Atlas Shrugged,” “is one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced.” Where does this leave the Greeks?

For the second time since 2010, Eurozone finance ministers threw Greece a “financial lifeline,” this time to the tune of $172 billion. The European banks have agreed to write-off more than 50 percent of the money owed by Greece, forgiving a $100 billion in debt.

Still, Athens, like Washington, is corrupt to the core. It continues to spend more than it takes in. Greek labor markets have yet to be liberalized. A high minimum wage impedes hiring. And, by BBC News’s accounting, “a habit of paying a ‘holiday bonus’ equal to one or two months’ extra pay” persists. One need not be a Delphic oracle to divine the next stage in Greece’s unraveling: a downgrading of the country’s credit rating to junk status.

“Austerity,” however, is a euphemism among politicians and their media pack animals for “long term retrenchment and reform” in the public sector. Implicit in their critique of “austerity” is that inflicting pain on the Greek state apparatus will inevitably destroy Greek society.

Au Contraire. State and society should never be conflated.

Try explaining to our president that the bigger the state, the smaller the civil society. …

Read the complete column, “Save the People; Kill the European Superstate.”

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The Adventures Of America’s Alinskyites in Egypt

Barack Obama, Bush, Democracy, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Media, Middle East, Military, Neoconservatism

The following is excerpted from my latest column, “The Adventures Of America’s Alinskyites in Egypt.”:

“The Egyptian Justice Ministry, under the authority of the military council, has detained and indicted 19 American democracy activists. To listen to the malfunctioning media stateside, however, the Egyptians are being petty, picking a fight with their American benefactors for “operating in Egypt without a license.”

Or, if you want ‘expert’ opinion, courtesy of Politico.com, the Egyptian plan to prosecute these ‘Americans and two dozen others’ ‘is more over the future of U.S. aid to Egypt and who controls it.’

Among the Americans detained in Egypt is Sam LaHood—son of Ray LaHood, the Obama administration’s secretary of transportation and a former Republican congressman from Illinois.

Try as it did to obfuscate Egypt’s allegations against LaHood, the New York Times was forced to mention the military-led government’s suspicion that LaHood’s organization had been funneling funds through Washington ‘to stir unrest in the streets’ of Cairo. The Gray Lady nevertheless attributed this preposterous figment of the Arab imagination to an ‘escalating drumbeat of anti-American statements’ in Egypt.

LaHood fell under suspicion in his capacity as head of the International Republican Institute (IRI). And, wouldn’t you know it, he was working alongside the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and Freedom House—described by the Times as ‘a Washington-based group that promotes democracy and open elections.’ Also arraigned were the director of the NDI and one ‘Patrick Butler, vice president of programs at the DC-based International Center for Journalists.’

The IRI and the NDI are excrescences of the Republican and Democratic parties respectively.

Yes, on the foreign-policy front, not much distinguishes America’s duopoly. Republicans and Democrats work in tandem, Saul-Alinsky style, to bring about volcanic transformation in societies that desperately need stability. …

Dr. Ron Paul excepted, conjuring up new missions abroad is a project shared by the incumbent president and his Republican rivals.

To cap it all, the troublesome meddling is paid for by the unsuspecting, overburdened American taxpayer. …

The hypocrisy in all this is that we Americans do not live under the Athenian democracy seemingly promoted abroad. On the contrary, we the people labor under a highly evolved technocratic, militarized Managerial State, which is far more efficient in encroaching on its citizens than are the tin-pot dictators, who’ve been built-up into mega-monsters in infantile, Disneyfied minds.

… Were Americans to run riot, as the spirited Egyptians have done pursuant to the Port Said stampede, they’d probably come face-to-face with the Military. In contravention of The Posse Comitatus Act—and in furtherance of freedom, of course—the 2006 version of The National Defense Authorization Act allowed the Armed Forces to ‘restore public order’ during “major public emergencies.”

Read the complete column, “The Adventures Of America’s Alinskyites in Egypt.”

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