The Thoughtful and Compassionate Conservative

Monday, May 7, 2007

Wall Street Journal, Opinion Section, page A14 Title: “Assault on the investor Class”
After reading numerous articles on taxation, it’s difficult not to imagine a group of liberal congressmen and senators huddled together every morning in a communications bunker being fed the latest data on which class of Americans or American companies are making the most money. The purpose of this daily exercise is to come up with a blatant or disguised form of new tax laws to divert that money away from those citizens and into the government’s bank accounts, which they the dole out to get getting elected. There is no better way to describe “wealth redistribution”.

Well, they’re at it again. This article describes a new tax law to increase the taxes on private equity firms by 133% and proposed by Senators Max Baucus-D Montana and Charles Grassley-R??? Iowa, the chairman and ranking minority member of the Finance Committee. Note that “tax and grab” is not limited to Democrats.

In summary, they want to convert the capital gains at 15% on deals to ordinary income at 35%. Guess what’s next. Why not just convert all capital gains tax to ordinary income? It’s investors in these deals that take the capital risk. Private equity deals created 600,000 new jobs from 2000 to 2003, during the recession. Do we really think that investors will continue put money into deals at 35% tax rates? But socialist don’t understand and/or don’t care about the economy. Don’t expect the U.S. to give birth to any more Googles, Yahoos, Microsofts or Home Depots if the liberals continue to rule the government.

Wall Street Journal, Opinion Section, page A14 Title: “Importing Price Controls”
Here’s another great example of liberals, lead by Senator Byron L. Dorgan-D North Dakota and liberal republican Olympia J. Snow-R??? Maine, to cleverly disguise economically disastrous legislation into legislation the people want. Last week the senate voted 63-28 to add a re-importation amendment to the FDA Revitalization Act. The bill sounds great in that it eliminates the ban on cheap imported drugs from foreign countries determined to have safe drugs, including Canada. Who doesn’t get upset with high drug prices? This especially affects senior citizens. Here’s the catch, the new law prohibits American companies from charging foreign exporters higher prices or limiting supplies to those who do not export. After spending billions on R&D, U.S. companies will be competing with drugs coming in to the U.S. at very low prices from foreign companies who are subsidized by their governments and their low purchase price capability. Why not let the market sort it out? Not good enough for liberal socialists! Why will pharmaceutical companies continue to spend billions on new drugs to sell them at a loss? They won’t. So how will we get new drugs? Hillary government run companies, unsuccesful at producing efffective new drugs and squander our increased tax dollars is where this is heading.

Saturday & Sunday, May 5&6, 2007

Wall Street Journal, Opinion Section, page A14 Title: “Chavez Moves Suggest Inflation Worry”
Venezuela has an economic problem that you do not hear on CNN’s nightly news. Inflation is ramped at 20% and rising and shortages of goods are getting critical. Remind you of the U.S. in the late seventies under the Nobel Prize winner Jimmy Carter? Chavez’s social spending binge, to win the hearts and minds of the people, has caused him to transfer $15 billion in central bank reserves in the past two years. He has imposed price and exchange controls in an attempt to keep the country afloat. He is also nationalizing the countries industries and banking. These actions are not working. In fact they are just making things worse. Here we have the perfect laboratory experiment. Why the American liberal left wing senators, congressmen and liberal citizens can’t see the damage caused by Carter’s policies and now Chavez’s is beyond me. They still push the same agenda expecting different results. Wasn’t it Albert Einstein who said that those who expect different results from the same actions are “idiots”. Maybe our politicians do know the outcome, but are so absorbed by their short term desire for power, that they are willing to use this “smoke and mirrors giveaway ploy” on the common citizen who does not pay attention to much beyond today’s paycheck or government hand out.

Monday, April 30, 2007

Reading the Wall Street Journal today there are three articles with a common thread. The problem is no one has bothered to connect the dots. The first is on the front page “Companies Shift More Donations To Democrats”. The second is on page A14 “One Righteous Gringo”, and the third is on page A15 “$650 Billion Tax Hike”.

The front page article “Companies Shift More Donations To Democrats”goes on to provide statistics on how corporate America is loading the coffers of the Democrats presumably to gain influence with the future ruling administration in 2008.

The authors of the article, Brody Mullins and Dean Treftz, merely provide statistics and fail to mention the irony in these new campaign donations. Corporations are giving money that will help elect a legislature that views corporations and their executives as “evil”. This potentially new administration has publicly announced its intention to increase regulations on businesses, oppose free trade and to increase the corporate and individual tax burdens.

So the bottom line is that American corporate executives are convinced that there is no way the Republicans can win the next election. It’s amazing how people act to make their biggest fears become realities. Rather than donate the money to help a party that supports their corporate agenda, they are assuring defeat of that party to try to convince the Democrats to go easy on them when they win the election with the help of the corporate funds donated. Take a look at history and you can only conclude “Fat chance!”

After reading this article one should go directly to the Opinion page A15 and read the article by Stephen Moore “$650 Billion Tax Hike”. The House Democrats in appearing to be heroes by exempting most of the 25 million workers who will be facing a whopping ATM tax bill next year, are orchestrating the demise of the U.S. economy. If they have their way, with the help of all that corporate money being donated to their campaigns (see front page article I commented on above), they will severely increase taxes on most of the key drivers of the economy. Among the proposed increases are the AMT itself from 28% to 31.5% capital gains from 15% to 31%, and individual tax rates from 35% to 40%.

The top 50% income bracket pays 96.7% of all taxes. The top 25% income bracket pays 84.6% of all taxes. The top 1% income bracket pays 36.89% of all taxes. Guess who creates all the jobs in the U.S.? So let’s tax them more so they stop creating jobs. Liberals see no problem with this logic.

Now do you see the irony in the first article?

The third article is also in the Opinion section on page A14 by Mary Anastasia O’Grady. She gets it. Al Gore refused to appear with the President of Columbia on the allegations of human rights violations by that government. The outcome of this insult could well be to kill the US-Columbia Free Trade Agreement, which is supported by a vast majority of Columbians. Here’s another “well meaning, feel good” liberal actually making things worse for the people of Columbia. “How ironic that Columbia’s anti-American hard left, normally obsessed with trashing Uncle Sam, is now rushing to Washington to get help in defeating the will of its own people.” And who do they find waiting with open arms? Al Gore and the AFL-CIO.

This third article underscores the damage that liberals in power will do to not only the this country’s economy, but the global economy.

And in conclusion for today, let’s not forget the real irony of first article “Companies Shift More Donations To Democrats”. It should have been titled “Companies Hell Bent On Committing Group Suicide”