Is this a Democrat or Republican?

Here's some tidbits on a particular candidate. Compare them to the alleged ideology of the two main political parties and try to decide who the candidate is... or at least which side of the proverbial aisle he/she claims to be on.

• Spending increased by more than 8% per year — three times the rate of inflation.
• Increased the number of government workers increased by 20 percent.
• Increased average citizen's tax burden increased 47 percent.
• Raised gas, sales, income, and cigarette taxes — covering everything from groceries to nursing home beds.
• Calls for a national smoking ban (and we thought California's ban was over the top!).
• Opposes school choice.
• Called for increased federal spending on a variety of programs from infrastructure to health care including more energy subsidies including for ethanol.
• Supports increased agricultural subsidies.
• Opposes President Bush's veto of the proposed expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).
• Is skeptical of most proposals for entitlement reform.
• Rails against high corporate profits and attacks free trade agreements.
• Raised the minimum wage and increased business regulation.
• Says it is "a biblical duty" to pass more regulation to fight global warming.

In case you weren't keeping score, every one of those points above has, historically, been attributed to the Democrat party. The only one that sticks out is the reason for the global warming regulation. No Democrat would have invoked the Bible.

The above actions and beliefs are from none other that the GOP front-runner, Mike Huckabee. But hey, he's anti-gay and anti-abortion - and that's all that matters to the Evangelicals, right? It's OK to sacrifice all the rest of your freedoms as long as those very narrow issues are addressed. Brilliant.

AMT reluctance exposes Congress' real motives

The fact that Congress has been reluctant for years to repeal - or even adjust - the Alternative Minimum Tax exposes something very telling. It is obvious that the fact that the AMT is encroaching on the middle class is a result of a phenomenon that is particularly endemic to governing bodies - the "law of unintended consequences". By not indexing the AMT to inflation when it was instituted back in 1969 - and leaving it that way for the almost 4 decades since - they created one of the most stealth taxes ever seen. In fact, it is almost surreal that it has taken 38 years to boil this frog. After all, how many of the current hoard of zombies that haunt the halls of Washington were around when the AMT was created? (Ted Kennedy being the obvious standard-bearer.) While it is unfair to hold the current class of Congress responsible for the initial installment of the AMT, it is entirely up to them as to what happens to it now... or last year, or next year.

But they won't. They will spend many hours wearing out the rubber-stamp cliches, certainly. Check out some of these quotes:

Jim Manley, a spokesman for the Senate Majority leader, said. "Senator Reid is committed to paying for AMT relief, but the Republicans have made it clear that they are not." If you pick apart the two phrases, the only issue is that Reid wants to keep the tax money - that they never should have been getting - in Washington where as the Republicans realize that they shouldn't be getting this revenue in the first place were it not for a mathematical oversight 40 years ago.

A spokeswoman for Senator Obama of Illinois said only that he "supports a fiscally responsible fix to the problems with the AMT" and would look carefully at legislation the Senate considers. "Fiscally responsible" to whom? It should be intuitively obvious, even to the most casual observer of political regurgitation, that Obama is wanting to be "fiscally responsible" to government - not responsible to the people he purports to represent. He doesn't care if the people come up shorter on their take-home pay this year, as long as government doesn't have to give back their happenstance windfall.

At least Charles Rangel is honest about it. The gravel-voiced chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said he instead would attempt “the mother of all tax reforms”: total repeal of AMT, with lost revenue paid for by massive taxing of the rich. So - again we pause to think a bit between the lines:

• The AMT was supposed to hit the rich who were not paying taxes.
• They goofed and now it is hitting the middle class.
• To pay for the removal of the middle class from the AMT roles, we are going to charge the rich more despite the fact that they are already paying the AMT (and most of the country's tax burden anyway).

So... to encapsulate the general reaction... "We can't do that," they state with pompous certainty. "What will it cost us?"

My response to this line of reasoning is "why can't you?" In truth, it doesn't cost Congress anything at all to remove the AMT. It costs the taxpayers to pay it. Therein lies the problem. Congress believes that our tax revenue is their money. If they cut a tax revenue stream, they truly believe that they have to replace it... or do with less. I don't see a lot of serious consideration about what it will cost the taxpayers... either via the AMT or the other taxes that they want to install to replace the "lost" revenue.

In fact, by costing the proverbial "average household" extra money, they are in fact asking us to rearrange our spending priorities to accommodate less disposable income. That is, we have to either cut back on certain things we are used to having or not take on new discretionary expenses. Why can't we expect Congress to follow that same logic - i.e. cut back on certain things that they are used to having or not take on new discretionary expenses?

The truth is, they don't want to cut back on their expenses - and really don't think they should have to. That is why they are balking at doing anything about the cash cow that is the burgeoning AMT receipts... at least until they can make it up some other way. They don't care about us being able to buy what we want for ourselves - only about continuing to be able to buy what they want for us (whether we want it or not).

Hillary continues to reap what she sows in Iowa.

(And it isn't corn!)

The latest story about Hillary and Associates planting questions comes from a well-spoken college student by the name of Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff. Really, the details are similar to the rest that I have already covered so I won't rehash the CNN story here.

However, one thing struck me as amusing. This is Hillary's announcement that she was running from about a year ago.

Notice some of her words:

• "I'm beginning conversation." (It would seem like she begins it by telling people what she wants them to ask her.)


• "We all need to be part of the discussion if we are all going to be part of the solution." (So she's just making sure that people get a chance to be part of the discussion, I guess.)


• She then rattles off a list of things that she suggests we talk about. That's what her staffers were doing in Iowa, right?


• "Let's definately talk about..." (or else what?)


• "So let's talk. Let's chat. Let's start a dialog about your ideas and mine..." (And if I don't like yours, my staffers will give you a list of mine.)


• And then she has the - ahem - nads to say "because the conversation in Washington has been a little one-sided lately, don't you think?" How amusing is that?


• She does finish up with this... "So let the conversation begin. I have a feeling it's going to be very interesting."
  

Guess so, Hillary. Guess so. Especially for those of us that are...

... thinking between the lines.

Hillary doesn't have control?

Hillary Clinton, in response to the issue of whether her staffers planted questions in the audience of her appearances, said "Well it was news to me. And neither I nor my campaign approve of that. And it will certainly not be tolerated." (FoxNews.com, NewsMax)

OK... so when various levels of the Bush administration and the military were confronted with issues such as the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, it was not an acceptable answer to say that they did not realize what their subordinates (oft times many levels below their own) were doing. So the (un-planted) question now becomes, are you or are you not responsible for the actions of people in your organization?

And now we hear from Hillary's senior campaign spokesman, Mo Elleithee, that “The senator had no idea.” How believable is this? Is someone perhaps taking the fall for her? I'm sure it wouldn't be the first time.

Mo is a founding partner of Hilltop Public Solutions, a company that specializes in public relations campaigns. According to the site, he is also a "veteran of a half dozen major campaigns of the past eight years." So is this something that happens all the time? If so, wouldn't Mo say so? Or is this something that is specific to Hillary and co.? Wouldn't we like to know! In the mean time, we will have to continue...

... thinking between the lines.

Obama wants more for SS.

Barack Obama stated on Nov. 11th that he would raise the amount of income that would be subjected to the Social Security tax, if he were elected president. On the surface, this doesn't seem to be a bad idea. After all, you eventually get it back, right?

The problem with this idea is twofold. One, the whole point of this is to make sure that there isn't a cut in benefits to existing seniors. Well, if you always get back what you pay in, why isn't there enough money to pay the existing seniors now? That's largely because the money isn't separated out - not only from person A to person B, but Social Security from the rest of government revenues. So if there is a shortfall now because of mismanagement, why won't there be a shortfall in the future despite any increases that happen now? And if the Feds have been raiding the money that is supposedly targeted for Social Security benefits on and off for 30 years in order to pay for some of their "important programs", why can't they simply just lay off the "important programs" so as to begin paying off what they took from the program. Why now take from us to make up for their short-sightedness?

Two, what makes Social Security such a fantastic idea anyway? According to research by the Heritage Foundation, the rate of return on monies paid into the system from a two-income household with children is 1.23%. Compare that to the fact that the historical rate of return on the general stock market over the past 50 years range anywhere from 5-8% depending on who you ask. Even on the low end, it is more than a 3:1 difference in the public markets to what the Federal Government is offering. Worse still, the Heritage Foundation report states that African-American males may actually pay more into the system than when they will get back. Does Mr. Obama know that statistic?

Obama said "some tough decisions will be in order because Social Security is the most important social program in the country." I wonder how often it has occurred to him that maybe the fact that a social program is that important to the country is, in and of itself, an alarming problem?

One last note on what Obama said on the subject. He was paraphrasing his "friend" (I don't know whose term that is), Warren Buffet by saying "and he has said, and I think a lot of us who have been fortunate are willing to pay a little bit more to make sure that a senior citizen who is struggling to deal with rising property taxes or rising heating bills, that they've got the coverage that they need." [emphasis mine] So the "fortunate" should help those that "need"? That sounds strangely familiar. May I quote the noted wellspring of modern communism, Karl Marx?

"From each according to his ability,
to each according to his need."

Since success is not the lottery that liberals such as Obama purport it to be, "fortunate" doesn't seem to work there. Swap "fortunate" out for "working their asses off" and you have a completely different character to the sentence. But not everybody who listens to Obama et al are deft enough in dealing with political lingo to catch that. It really only happens for those of us who are...

... thinking between the lines.

Hillary seeds the audience? No surprise.

According to various articles on the net (FoxNews.com, ABCNews.com, among others... but strangely not on CNN.com), Hillary Clinton has been accused a 2nd time of having her staffers seed the audience of campaign stops with questions. This is hardly a surprise.

Obviously, the point of this would be for her to have issues addressed that she wants to bring up. This is something that all candidates would like to have happen. Anyone who has watched debates or interviews should be able to ascertain that the modus operandi for all political wannabees is to take any given question and, within a few sentences, transition into a pre-prepared talking point. If the question happens to be on one the prepared topics, this process is seamless. However, if the question is out in the middle of nowhere, the process of segueing can look more like a topic-based version of six degrees of separation. This serves to expose the fact that the candidate either hasn't been coached on that particular subject or would rather obfuscate their position on the topic.

Of course, the opposite side of this process is to make sure that you get to use all those delightful pre-prepared orations. But what if people don't ask something that allows you to get to your issue? Well, the way to solve that is to make SURE that they ask the right question. And the way to do that is to send your operatives out amongst the Great Unwashed and, ever so subtly, suggest to them that they should ask a particular question. As we have seen with the case with Mr. Geoffrey Mitchell in this latest Iowa situation, the Great Unwashed actually can manage to think for themselves once in a while and don't appreciate being lead by their proverbial noses.

Hillary has quite a reputation amongst the media on a similar issue to this. She won't let an interviewer ask any questions that are not pre-approved by her staff. That just eliminates the problem entirely, doesn't it? However, while that may work with a single interviewer (who may very well be sympathetic anyway), the odds of pulling that off with a crowd of allegedly random people are fairly thin. Even if the attendees are as stupid as Hillary believes the general public to be, someone is going to say something that you don't want them to. After all, in Hillary's mind, her whole calling is to "save them from themselves".

The irony of all of this is that Hillary (along with other Democrats) alleges to be the "voice of the people," but she is recruiting "the people" to be the voice of Hillary. Maybe, in her eyes, he's claiming to say what The Voice of the people would have said if they were as smart as her.

Too bad that people don't care too much that Hillary and other political candidates only tell us what they want us to hear rather than answer to what we are really concerned with. That makes it awfully tough for most of the "sound-byte voters" to know anything at all about a candidate. To bastardize a forum that is designed to be something led by the people rather than led by the candidates or even the media, is almost criminal. Instead, we are now forced to...

... think between the lines.

A Genesis of Thoughtful Commentary

Welcome.

I'm not sure where this will go - my posts will be driven by my thoughts, which will be driven in part by the media, which (ostensibly) are driven by events of the real world. If it catches my eye or tickles my brain, it will show up here.

Please be aware that I espouse no traditional dogma, support no platform, and by no means endorse a particular party or candidate. I am neither Republican nor Democrat (nor, for what it's worth, a socialist, communist, fascist, anarchist, or any other -ist). If anything, I am a libertarian in the true sense of the word. That is, "as long as I am staying out of other people's business, stay out of mine." Keep that in mind as you read my posts. Don't try to associate me with any movement our cause, political, religious or secular. I'm just me.

That being said, I'm not trying to convince you, the reader, of anything. I merely am saying what I believe and leave it to you, the reader, to add it to your experience of the world around you. Use my opinions and the information I provide as you would any other tidbit. If it makes sense, believe it. If not, discard it. If it makes you question, research it further. By all means, however, feel free to comment on what I say. I may very well learn something from you. All I ask, however, is that you don't regurgitate cliches or "party lines". At the minimum, I ask of you what I ask of myself...

... think between the lines.