October 30, 2008

Comprehensive Review of the Most Current, Hard-Hitting Arguments Against Obama

With the election next week, let's review the arguments against Obama.

Obama and Taxes.

Obama states that he will have the IRS write checks, called refundable tax credits, to 95% of the public. He will actually be sending them checks from the IRS. But 40% don't pay taxes. So what Obama calls a tax cut is actually a transfer of wealth. Since even Obama doesn't claim that only the top 5% of Americans will be paying taxes, this will be a transfer of wealth from tax-payers like yourself, to non-taxpayers.

From Jack Kemp and Peter Ferrara:

With the bottom 40 percent of income earners in America not paying any federal income taxes, such tax credits would not reduce any tax liability for these workers. Instead, since they're refundable, they would involve new checks from the federal government. These are not tax cuts as Obama is promising. They are new government spending programs buried in the tax code and estimated to cost $1.3 trillion over 10 years.

...Obama argues disingenuously that his tax increases would only affect higher-income workers and "corporate fat cats." But it is precisely these top marginal tax rates that control incentives for savings, investment, entrepreneurship, business expansion, jobs and economic growth. While he wants to tax the rich, the burden will fall on the poor and the middle class.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Additional tax advantages for lower and middle income people will be enacted: a 10% mortgage tax credit that would average about $500 per household per year, a $4,000 tax credit for college tuition, a tax credit covering half of child-care expenses up to $6,000 per year, and even a $7,000 credit for purchase of a clean car.

More important, all but the clean car credit would be "refundable," meaning people will get a check for them if they owe no taxes, which is simply a transfer of income from the government to individuals. In reality this is the beginning of a new series of entitlements for middle-class families, the longer-term effect of which will be to make those families more dependant on (and so more supportive of) larger government. The Tax Policy Center estimates that these refundable tax credits would cost the government $648 billion over 10 years.

If you own stock (and many Americans earning under $250k do), when you sell them, you'll pay more in Capital Gains Tax, which Obama has said he will raise from 15% to 20%. The strange thing is that Obama is bent on raising the Capital Gains Tax despite the fact that doing so will lower, rather than raise, government revenue. (See this Penn & Teller video, including video of Obama stating he will raise the Capital Gains Tax even if this will result in lower revenue to the government.)

From an op-ed piece in yesterday's Washington Post:

So where would the money come from for [Obama's] tax cuts and new spending? Largely from raising other taxes: the ones that have the biggest impact on economic growth. Obama would let key parts of the Bush tax cuts expire, causing the top tax rate on ordinary income to go back to 39.6 percent, up from 35 percent today. The capital gains and dividend tax rates would rise to 20 percent from today's 15 percent. Obama might also impose Social Security tax at a rate of up to 4 percent on wages and self-employment income above $250,000, starting in 2019.

These tax increases are not as bad as some Obama statements during the Democratic primaries suggested they would be, and they fall well short of what some of his conservative critics claim. For example, Obama does not propose to tax dividends at 40 percent or to impose the full 12.4 percent Social Security tax on high earners.

His real proposals, however, would still be plenty damaging. If rewards for America's entrepreneurs and firms are reduced through higher marginal tax rates, their incentives to earn, invest and create jobs will be diminished. Americans will have less incentive to save, and firms will have less incentive to pay dividends. Tax avoidance will become more profitable. A smaller capital stock will mean a less productive economy and lower wages for middle-class and other workers. These disincentive effects also mean that the revenue gain is likely to be smaller than Obama envisions.

In sum, Obama may very well give Joe the Plumber a tax break, but only if Joe does not become too successful. Obama is offering real tax favors for the middle class, but not real benefits for the economy.

So you really have to be careful with Obama's clever rhetoric. He calls tax increases and redistribution of wealth, a tax cut. But it's not a tax cut. It's a transfer of money from your pocket to the pockets of people who don't currently pay taxes. It would make Americans dependent on government, a la Europe. Are you sure you want to elect a President who proposes to do that?

Obama and Redistribution of Wealth

We now know that Obama supports "spreading the wealth around," i.e. taking money from tax-payers to give to non-tax-payers. We know it from Obama's statement to that effect to Joe the Plumber; we also know it from Obama's statement in a 2001 interview on Chicago Public Radio (link to audio). This is Obama in the interview:

The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers and the Constitution, at least as it's been interpreted.

[.....]

And that hasn't shifted. And one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think that there was tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing, and activities on the ground, that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power, through which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer from that.

That's the kind of change Obama wants: "redistributive change." He wants to redistribute the wealth. Redistribution of wealth is a key tenet of Marxism:

Marx thought it was only a matter of time before the working classes of the world, realizing their common goals, would unite to overthrow the capitalists and redistribute the wealth. He felt the establishment of communism would be the inevitable outcome of a historical process.

Obama's Lifelong Alliances.

This is something that has many Americans very concerned. Some of the names most people are familiar with by now include:

• Confessed terrorists Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn. Bill Ayers made Obama Chairman of the Board of a committee that gave away $50 million. At the time Obama was fresh out of college. Why did Ayers give such a person such a powerful position? The effect of Ayers' doing so was to give Obama great power and standing in the community, which is inevitable when someone is able to give away so much money. It appears likely that Ayers' goal was to put someone (Obama) with views Ayers' agreed with, in a position to launch a political career.
  
• Reverend Wright, who famously has preached "God damn America!" Obama sat in Wright's church for 20 years; let Wright baptize his children; let Wright officiate at Obama's marriage; and named a book ("The Audacity of Hope") after one of Wright's sermons. To take at face values Obama's statement that he had no notion of Wright's true beliefs is, it appears, impossible.
• Obama's father, the one to whom "Dreams of My Father" is dedicated, was a self-described Communist.
  
• • "Obama Sr. described his own economic plan, his counterproposal, as it were, as 'scientific socialism - inter alia - communism.' Yes, Obama's father was a communist who wanted to put socialist theory into action - by 'force.' "
• Etc.
  

But the one you may be least familiar with, is former Kenyan Presidential candidate, Raila Odinga.

Obama and Raila Odinga

Add to that list the Marxist Raila Odinga, leader of the socialist "Orange Democratic Movement" of Kenya, and former candidate for President of Kenya - on whose behalf Obama personally campaigned in 2006.

This was not Mr. Odinga's first brush with notoriety. Like his father, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, the main opposition leader in the 1960s and 1970s, Raila Odinga is a Marxist. He graduated from East Germany's Magdeburg University in 1970 on a scholarship provided by the East German government. He named his oldest son after Fidel Castro.

Raila Odinga was implicated in the bloody coup attempt in 1982 against then-President Daniel Arap Moi, a close ally of the United States. Kenya has been one of the most stable democracies in Africa since the 1960s. The ethnic cleansing earlier this year was the worst violence in Kenya since that 1982 coup attempt.

Mr. Odinga spent eight years in prison. At the time, he denied guilt but later detailed he was a coup leader in his 2006 biography. Statue of limitations precluded further prosecution when the biography appeared.

Initially, Mr. Odinga was not the favored opposition candidate to stand in the 2007 election against President Mwai Kibaki, who was seeking his second term. However, he received a tremendous boost when Sen. Barack Obama arrived in Kenya in August 2006 to campaign on his behalf. Mr. Obama denies that supporting Mr. Odinga was the intention of his trip, but his actions and local media reports tell otherwise.

Mr. Odinga and Mr. Obama were nearly inseparable throughout Mr. Obama's six-day stay. The two traveled together throughout Kenya and Mr. Obama spoke on behalf of Mr. Odinga at numerous rallies. In contrast, Mr. Obama had only criticism for Kibaki. He lashed out against the Kenyan government shortly after meeting with the president on Aug. 25. "The [Kenyan] people have to suffer over corruption perpetrated by government officials," Mr. Obama announced.

"Kenyans are now yearning for change," he declared.

There it is again: Obama says "change" and he means change to a leader who supports Marxism. Obama supported Odinga, the self-admitted leader of a bloody coup.

By the way, Odinga leads a party that is guilty of mass-murder - just in case you're interested in that little detail of a man Obama supported politically. That's the kind of change Obama supports in Africa. After losing the election, Odinga called for demonstrations. Mass murders followed:

About 50 parishioners were locked into the Assemblies of God church before it was set ablaze. They were mostly women and children. Those who tried to flee were hacked to death by machete-wielding members of a mob numbering 2,000.

The 2008 New Year Day atrocity in the Kenyan village Eldoret, about 185 miles northwest of Nairobi, had all the markings of the Rwanda genocide of a decade earlier.

By mid-February 2008, more than 1,500 Kenyans were killed. Many were slain by machete-armed attackers. More than 500,000 were displaced by the religious strife. Villages lay in ruin. Many of the atrocities were perpetrated by Muslims against Christians.

The violence was led by supporters of Raila Odinga, the opposition leader who lost the Dec. 27, 2007, presidential election by more than 230,000 votes. Odinga supporters began the genocide hours after the final election results were announced Dec. 30. Mr. Odinga was a member of Parliament representing an area in western Kenya, heavily populated by the Luo tribe, and the birthplace of Barack Obama's father.

While this was going on, Odinga said, "I think they are ready to come to the table. Our people will continue to protest." (See this link to a Canada Free Press article with video - see 2:56 in the video).

Odinga "became popular with the country's poor, by pledging to distribute the wealth more evenly." (3.:40 in the video). (That should remind you of Obama.)

"Odinga vowed to end Kenya's cooperation with the United States in the War on Terror." (5:31 in the video). Remember - Obama campaigned for this guy.

Video of Obama campaigning beside Odinga, on behalf of Odinga, starts at 6:38 in the video.

American Liberals: given that Obama campaigned on behalf of Odinga - a Marxist, a murderer as the leader of the bloody coup attempt, and a leader of genocide - is it possible that Obama has the same values that you have; has the same goals for America that you have; is it possible that you can vote for such a man?

Obama's Economic Policies

Obama had previously pledged to cut taxes for families making $250,000 or less. Last night's Obama TV ad dropped that without explanation to $200,000. (5:00 in the video). This may be a red flag to some who had thought he meant $250k when he said it.

Obama promised last night to "eliminate tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas." (5:13 in the video). This is protectionism. From U.S. News and World Report:

...[Obama] is interested in advancing policies that could have serious wealth-destroying effects: higher taxes on high earners, protectionism, government-controlled health insurance, the card check bill abolishing secret ballots in union elections, which could have the effects on much of the private sector that United Auto Worker contracts have had on what used to be called, quaintly, the Big Three U.S. automakers. Will voters in the Philly suburbs, and their equivalents in target and nontarget states, like the consequences? Bill Clinton kept their votes when, after the Republicans won control of Congress in 1994, tax rates were no longer raised and capital gains tax rates were cuts, when local and state officials reversed the disastrous Lindsay policies on crime and welfare. But such a scenario seems unlikely from where we sit now. And while Clinton took office when the economy was in recovery, Obama, if he wins, seems likely to give his inauguration speech (as already drafted by John Podesta, or as later drafted or revised by his own hand) when we are headed down toward the trough of a recession of unknown duration.

The irony here is that voters motivated by anger at the decline in their wealth seem about to elect a president who has promised to embark on wealth-destroying policies.

He proposes tremendous new spending programs, then absurdly claims, "None of this grows government." (5:30).

Obama wants to massively increase government oversight and control of American business, after the socialist pattern of European states.

Obama promised to "freeze foreclosures for 90 days." (5:21 in the video).

He promises to "invest $15 billion a year in energy efficiency and renewable sources of energy, like wind, solar, and biofuels, creating 5 million clean energy jobs over the next decade - jobs that pay well and can never be outsourced." (10:20). That's 5 million more Americans working for the government. (But he won't grow government!) Five million more Americans that are getting paid well - out of your tax dollars - because the government made the decision to hire them. Remember how efficient government is in everything it does? That's who's going to be an employer of 5 million more Americans, using $15 billion a year of taxpayer money, under Obama.

He promises to "help auto companies retool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America." (10:43) American car companies are being hammered precisely because foreign auto workers get paid so much less than American workers, that the American car companies can't compete on price. Forcing American car companies to keep workers here, will do nothing to stop this. But Obama's going to give money to the car companies (to help them "retool") and then give money to Americans to help them buy the cars: "I'll also make it easier for you to afford these new cars with a tax credit, so we can get as many on the road as possible." (10:45) Where's all this money going to come from? Taxes.

This is socialism. It's destroyed many European states. Obama wants to bring it here.

CONCLUSION

If you like a Socialist, someone whose policies are poison to the American economy at a time when that economy is in trouble, a man with no executive experience whatsoever, a man who supported the Marxist, mass-murderer Odinga, then Obama is the guy for you.

But if you want the American economy to recover, and if you love independence from Government interference, and the American economic policies that make America strong and vibrant, a beacon to the whole world, then you must vote for McCain.