Democrats cower
The Islamic community center two blocks from ground zero has made a mockery of the ‘conservative values’ of Republicans and tea party activists.
But it hasn’t shown the Democrats in a positive light either.
Senator Reid, Senate majority leader, acquiesced to bigoted fears and came out in opposition to the Islamic community center in NYC.
President Obama gave a great speech upholding our most cherished constitutional principles in regards to the mosque, only to step back a bit.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi wants to investigate who’s funding the opposition to the mosque, an absurd reaction that brings up questions of limiting free speech and a waste of congressional time.
And the seeming silence from the party itself.
One party mongers fear and bigotry against their ostensively conservative principles and the other party cowers.
Sad to watch.
The GOP vs Gays And Latinos – The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
The GOP is now doing to Latinos what it did to gays. Its leaders – by backing the Federal Marriage Amendment in the last decade and now the Arizona law in this – are essentially saying that they do not understand how these measures could impact a minority’s collective psyche. Whatever the technical merits of either measure – and there were intellectually coherent (if, to my mind, unpersuasive) defenses of both – the lack of empathy or understanding is the real issue. It places the Republican “us” against the minority “them.” This is not just a failure of empathy; it is failure of judgment. The votes of Latinos will be massively important in the very near future, and the number of people who know and love gay people grows daily.
There’s more, read it:
The GOP vs Gays And Latinos – The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.
47% of Americans don’t pay income taxes
Interesting, I never new this. This is income tax, not SS or Medicare, still, that’s a lot of people. As this post suggests though, most of that is due not to deductions, but to ‘tax credits’ given tax payers, namely the “Earned Income Credit” (affecting a small portion of the population who are poor) and the “Child Tax Credit” (affecting low and middle income families). The former is Democrat-supported, the latter is a bipartisan-supported credit and the biggest portion and contributor to the numbers of people who don’t have to pay federal income taxes. In fact, Republican congresses (with some Democratic help) have been part of this move towards “socialism” (the top half income earners paying for the bottom half). From the post linked above:
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- In 1997 every “normal” married couple with two children that earned $24,000 or more (in today’s dollars) had to pay at least some income taxes. The top nonpayer threshold for a family of this size was just under $24,000. This means there were some four-person families with income just below $24,000 that owed no income taxes.
- In 1997 a Republican majority Congress and President Clinton enacted the Balanced Budget Act. At the insistence of Congressional Republicans, this law created a $400-per-child tax credit which began in 1998. This caused the top nonpayer threshold to jump more than $7,000, to about $31,300. Millions of families with kids with incomes between $24,000 and $31,300 were “taken off the rolls” because the child tax credit wiped out the small income tax liability they owed.
- As a result of the 1997 law, in 1999 the child tax credit automatically increased to $500 per child, and the threshold for a married family with two kids grew to $32,800 in today’s dollars.
In 2001 President Bush and the Republican Congress enacted a major tax law that increased the child tax credit to $600. This law also introduced the 10% income tax bracket, which lowered by 5 percentage points the lowest income tax rate. The combination of these two tax changes raised the top nonpayer threshold to $38,700. That law further phased in over time increases in the child credit to $1,000 per child.
- The 2003 tax law enacted by President Bush and the Republican Congress accelerated the $1,000 per child amount to be effective immediately. This increased the threshold to $47,400 in 2003. That’s a huge jump. It was incredibly popular, and it helped create political impetus for the 2003 law which also accelerated rate reductions and cut capital gains and dividend rates.
Of course the Democrats have had a hand in increasing this too (keep reading the article).
I’m afraid that most people, Republicans, Tea Party, Democrats and the like, would not go for a cut in this credit. It would be political suicide.
We need to cut spending, but that will not balance the budget (unless you want to cut defense and a few other huge expenses) so we need to change the tax code. I suspect that’s not going to happen.
Why do so many Americans pay no income taxes? | KeithHennessey.com.
All part of the plan
Yep, it looks like I was right as this hill staffer suggests:
Obama preempts the other side’s most resonant arguments, which forces them to come up with more and more extreme claims in order to differentiate themselves…
…At the same time, the policy is a tailored, measured version of what the Republicans have urged — so, yes, the headline is, ‘Obama Allows New Offshore Drilling/Presses For Energy Independence,’ but at the same time, California/Oregon/Washington where opposition is strongest isn’t included, and there are environmentally-friendly changes to Alaska leasing policy announced at the same time. And again, as we’ve seen before, Republicans are sort of forced to twist and parse, and even to oppose things they have long supported, just because the Administration hasn’t gone far enough.
As I said yesterday, Obama is playing chess and all his opponents and supporters are playing a bad game of checkers. Of course the purity progressives do their part, as do the Republicans through Boehner.
CPAC
The CPAC is now, I guess in full swing. This year, the John Birch Society is one of the Co-Sponsors. The same group that recently called Nelson Mandela “nothing more than a communist terrorist thug.” I wonder if they’re going to have special un-fluoridated water shipped in.
In any case, I thought a quote from WIlliam F. Buckley, Jr. regarding the John Birch Society was apropos:
How can the John Birch Society be an effective political instrument while it is led by a man whose views on current affairs are, at so many critical points . . . so far removed from common sense? That dilemma weighs on conservatives across America. . . . The underlying problem is whether conservatives can continue to acquiesce quietly in a rendition of the causes of the decline of the Republic and the entire Western world which is false, and, besides that, crucially different in practical emphasis from their own.
Replace a few words–”John Birch Society” with “Republican [/tea] Party” and “A man” with “men”– and I think it voices a set of concerns that many rational conservatives would do well to address.
A new political party
I have found a great political party to which I would like to register. Excerpts from their party platform:
Our Government was created by the people for all the people, and it must serve no less a purpose…
We shall ever build anew, that our children and their children, without distinction because of race, creed or color, may know the blessings of our free land…
