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July 2007 Stats for The Big Picture.
Yesterday Hilary Clinton actually said that Democrats want to raise taxes on behalf of “the common good:”
“Many of you are well enough off that … the tax cuts may have helped you,” Sen. Clinton said. “We’re saying that for America to get back on track, we’re probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.”
However, the result of the Bush tax cuts has been powerfully effective for the common good.
From the National Review Online:
A year after the Bush tax cuts the U.S. economy stands on the front end of an economic boom. Recent government reports on consumer spending, industrial production, corporate investment, and business sales suggest that overall growth in the second quarter could come in around 6 percent at an annual rate. That would put the trailing four-quarter recovery rate at 5.7 percent the fastest pace since 1984.
That year, if you recall, followed the big Reagan tax cuts. This year follows the big Bush tax cuts. A coincidence? No. The incentive power of lower marginal tax rates on economic growth is one of the most underrated facets of mainstream economic thought.
...The Reagan tax cuts two decades ago were focused primarily on personal income, reducing the top marginal rate from 70 percent to 50 percent, and then 28 percent. The Bush tax cuts of 2003 were aimed principally at investment, lowering the governments take by roughly 50 percent. Almost immediately an economy buffeted by recession, stock market collapse, and corporate scandals all inherited from the prior administration and smacked by a brutal terrorist attack and the necessary launching of two wars suddenly came alive.
What’s more, the people know how well the economy is doing:
Consumer Confidence Reaches a 2-Year High
NEW YORK June 29, 2004 Consumer confidence jumped to its highest level in two years in June, buoyed by an improved job outlook, the New York-based Conference Board reported Tuesday.
The Consumer Confidence Index increased nearly 9 points to 101.9, up from a revised reading of 93.1 in May. The latest reading was much better than the 95 that analysts had expected.
Lynn Franco, director of The Conference Board’s Consumer Research Center, said the strong improvement in current business conditions propelled consumer confidence to the highest level since June 2002, when the indicator was 106.3.
...”Looking ahead, consumers expect the economy to continue to grow at a healthy clip and to continue to generate additional jobs,” Franco said.
So raising taxes is not for the common good. It would have the opposite effect.
Update 6-30-04. Welcome, Carnival of the Vanities readers! This article was honored to be included in the latest Carnival of the Vanities, hosted this week by Quasi in Rem.
I heard Bruce Herschensohn speak yesterday. One interesting point he made was that the U.N. is not an association of the people of the world, as it is often billed. Rather, it is an association of the governments of the world.
This is a very different thing, of course, since by Bruce’s count, over 77 of those governments (40%) do not permit freedom to their citizens.
Bruce observed that the U.N. will never support freedom as long as so many of its member nations do not support it for their own people.
From Bruce Tinsley’s Mallard Filmore:
Victor Davis Hanson’s latest itemizes our achievements and the obstacles yet to be overcome in the war on terrorists. The good news he itemizes is worthy of note, in and of itself:
Two-thirds of al Qaeda’s leadership are either dead or in jail. Their sanctuaries, sponsors, and kindred spirits in Afghanistan and Iraq are long gone. Detention is increasingly common for Islamicists in Europe and America. The Hamas intifada has failed.
...Despite Abu Ghraib and whining over the West Bank, most Arabs know privately that the United States gives billions to Egypt and Jordan, does nothing while the Gulf autocracies cut production to jack up oil prices, saves Muslims in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, Kuwait, and Somalia, and is providing billions to Iraq at a level not seen since the Marshall Plan.
...a battle-hardened cadre of American veterans has emerged that is liquidating its opponents every day and thus gradually changing politics on the ground. The media has completely missed the story of just how good our combat battalions have become.
...We are winning the military war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The terrorists are on the run. And slowly, even ineptly, we are achieving our political goals of democratic reform in once-awful places. Thirty years of genocide, vast forced transfers of whole peoples, the desecration of entire landscapes, a ruined infrastructure, and a brutalized and demoralized civilian psyche are being remedied, often under fire.
Here are my candidates for two of the most gigantic stories suppressed so far this year by big media:
#1. Hussein busted up giant WMD factories and shipped them out of Iraq before and during the war.
WASHINGTON – Most of the media continues to report that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
But evidence that Iraq had those weapons, or could have easily manufactured them, is now turning up in junkyards around the world. Most news organizations are ignoring the story.
I tell my friends this and they don’t believe it even happened. So yes, it was printed by the NY Times—buried on page 12:
THE REACH OF WAR: WEAPONS INSPECTIONS; Suspect Items From Iraq Shipped Abroad, U.N. Says
UNITED NATIONS, June 9— Equipment and material that could have been used to produce banned weapons and long-range missiles have been emptied from Iraqi sites since the war started and shipped abroad, the head of the United Nations inspectors office told the Security Council on Wednesday.
As the NY Times reports, factories that can produce WMD were busted up and shipped out of Iraq in the form of scrap metal during the Iraq war.
...Mr. Perricos accompanied his briefing with a report showing satellite photos of a fully built-up missile site near Baghdad in May 2003 and the same site denuded in February 2004.
His spokesman, Ewen Buchanan, said that items removed from the site included fermenters, a freeze drier, distillation columns, parts of missiles and a reactor vessel—all tools suitable for making biological or chemical weapons.
This story, which ends the “Bush lied” argument, was hidden on a back page of the NY Times. Big media is doing all they can to keep you from hearing about it.
#2. Per Russian President Putin, Russian intelligence reported that Hussein planned terrorist attacks on the U.S.
How do you ignore a story like this?
Russia looks at al Qaeda through the prism of Chechnya. For all its triangulation it wants America to succeed as President Putin’s amazing but mostly unheralded (buried on page 8 of the New York Times) revelation about Saddam’s terrorist plans suggests.
That’s right, the NY times hid this one on page 8:
MOSCOW, June 18 President Vladimir V. Putin said Friday that Russia gave intelligence reports to the Bush administration suggesting that Saddam Hussein’s government was preparing terrorist attacks in the United States or against American targets overseas.
This is how papers like the NY Times get “plausible deniability”—they print a story like this once, on a back page, so that they can’t be accused of not covering it. Most readers never see it. And after that one article, they ignore it. No follow-up articles are printed. The story is suppressed.
As for TV news—they often ignore such stories altogether.
And the public doesn’t hear about them.
That’s how big media tries to control how you vote.
Next time you hear the Bush tax cut described as a tax cut for the rich, you may want to mention that:
There’s nobody else to cut taxes on except the rich, because the rich already pay all the taxes.
John Weicher, as a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank, wrote in his February 13, 1997 Washington Post Op-Ed, “Most of the rich have earned their wealth… Looking at the Fortune 400, quite a few even of the very richest people came from a standing start, while others inherited a small business and turned it into a giant corporation.” What’s happening here is not that “the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.” The numbers prove it.
These are IRS numbers, quoted by Rush.
In his email newsletter (no link), Dick Morris itemizes all the ways Kerry has used to hide from the public so far:
It’s an interesting list, isn’t it? This may be the only thing Kerry’s good at: hiding. Per Morris:
The lesson for Bush is that he must force Kerry out of the shadows.
...Then, and only then, will Americans look closely at the man who might be their president. And when they do, they won’t like what they see.
How many beheadings do the terrorists have to do before our media recognizes that they are evil?
When poor Paul Johnson was beheaded, the LA TIMES headline read “Radicals Kill American in Saudi Arabia.” Not “terrorists”, or “criminals”, or “Islamofascists”—just “radicals.” If you look up radical in the dictionary, you’ll note that it has favorable connatations:
radical n. One who advocates fundamental or revolutionary changes in current practices, conditions, or institutions: radicals seeking to overthrow the social order.
It has no connations of wrong-doing at all; in fact it sounds like it could be a good thing.
And what’s the TIMES headline today on the terrorists’ latest act of evil? “Iraqi Militants Kill S. Korean Hostage.”
According to the TIMES, they’re not “scum” or “international criminals”, they’re just “militants.” Want to know what the dictionary says a militant is? It’s just somebody who’s in a fight, that’s all:
militant n. A fighting, warring, or aggressive person or party.
What’s the NEW YORK TIMES headline today say? “South Korean Held by Militants in Iraq Is Executed.” What a coincidence—to the NY TIMES they are also just “militants.”
Conclusions:
Big media explicitly does not recognize the actions of the terrorists as being evil.
Big media approaches the line at which they will be seen as taking the side of the terrorists.
I feel certain that most Americans are horrified by the actions of these terrorists, and that most Americans are beginning to be horrified that their own media explicitly does not recognize the evil of these beheadings.
Update 6-28-04: Roger Simon expresses similar views:
By the way, I know I have written this before, but I think the use of the term “insurgents” by the media inaccurate and propagandistic in its essence. As far as I know… and correct me if I’m wrong… there has not been one single of these people being anything but fascists, either of the Baathist or Islamist variety. Calling them “insurgents” then cloaks them in the romantic veneer of “freedom fighters.”
Christopher Hitchens discusses Michael Moore’s film in Slate:
Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of “dissenting” bravery.
In late 2002, almost a year after the al-Qaida assault on American society, I had an onstage debate with Michael Moore at the Telluride Film Festival. In the course of this exchange, he stated his view that Osama Bin Laden should be considered innocent until proven guilty. This was, he said, the American way. The intervention in Afghanistan, he maintained, had been at least to that extent unjustified. SomethingI cannot guess what, since we knew as much then as we do nowhas since apparently persuaded Moore that Osama Bin Laden is as guilty as hell. Indeed, Osama is suddenly so guilty and so all-powerful that any other discussion of any other topic is a dangerous “distraction” from the fight against him. I believe that I understand the convenience of this late conversion.
...Moore has announced that he won’t even appear on TV shows where he might face hostile questioning. I notice from the New York Times of June 20 that he has pompously established a rapid response team, and a fact-checking staff, and some tough lawyers, to bulwark himself against attack. He’ll sue, Moore says, if anyone insults him or his pet. Some right-wing hack groups, I gather, are planning to bring pressure on their local movie theaters to drop the film. How dumb or thuggish do you have to be in order to counter one form of stupidity and cowardice with another? By all means go and see this terrible film, and take your friends, and if the fools in the audience strike up one cry, in favor of surrender or defeat, feel free to join in the conversation.
However, I think we can agree that the film is so flat-out phony that “fact-checking” is beside the point. And as for the scary lawyersget a life, or maybe see me in court. But I offer this, to Moore and to his rapid response rabble. Any time, Michael my boy. Let’s redo Telluride. Any show. Any place. Any platform. Let’s see what you’re made of.
...If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD.
Another person Moore is trying to avoid is Michael Wilson, who is doing to Michael Moore what Moore did to Roger Smith in Moore’s film “Roger and Me.”
Radio network Air America is the only network in America where a host would be fired for expressing political views that differ from those of management.
Their condescending hosts—Al Franken etc.—feel that they are so much smarter than those they criticize. Yet the Air America executives are so out of touch with reality that they didn’t even know what was going on with the finances at their own radio network:
On March 30, the night before Air America went on the air, the liberal radio network threw itself a $70,000 party at Manhattan’s hip Maritime Hotel. More than 1,000 guests, including Yoko Ono and Tim Robbins, drank red, white and blue vodka cocktails as they toasted the network’s bid to challenge the dominance of conservative talk radio.
But behind the scenes, Air America was running out of money.
The WALL STREET JOURNAL reports on Monday: Several employees say they still haven’t been reimbursed for the costs of attending the New York launch.
Many of Air America’s investors and executives say they thought the network had raised more than $30 million, based on assurances from its owners, Guam-based entrepreneurs Evan M. Cohen and Rex Sorensen.
In fact, Air America had raised only $6 million, Mr. Cohen concedes.
Tell us more about how to run the country, Al.
Update: 6-21-04. This is too hilarious. Professor Bainbridge observes that that the owners of Air America—far from being the upstanding people who are worthy to tell us how to run the country—are in fact possibly even dishonest:
Indeed, if the facts turn out to be as the article reports, there is a very high probability that investors will be able to sue Cohen and Sorensen for securities fraud.
Who could make this up? Air America puts Mr. condescending smarty-pants, Al Franken, on the air to tell us how dumb George Bush is, and how they know so much better than others how to run the country. And the whole time there appears to be a possibility that they’ve been defrauding everybody. Is this not the left in a nutshell?
(via Instapundit. )
From the National Review Online:
A year after the Bush tax cuts the U.S. economy stands on the front end of an economic boom. Recent government reports on consumer spending, industrial production, corporate investment, and business sales suggest that overall growth in the second quarter could come in around 6 percent at an annual rate. That would put the trailing four-quarter recovery rate at 5.7 percent the fastest pace since 1984.
That year, if you recall, followed the big Reagan tax cuts. This year follows the big Bush tax cuts. A coincidence? No. The incentive power of lower marginal tax rates on economic growth is one of the most underrated facets of mainstream economic thought.
...The Reagan tax cuts two decades ago were focused primarily on personal income, reducing the top marginal rate from 70 percent to 50 percent, and then 28 percent. The Bush tax cuts of 2003 were aimed principally at investment, lowering the governments take by roughly 50 percent. Almost immediately an economy buffeted by recession, stock market collapse, and corporate scandals all inherited from the prior administration and smacked by a brutal terrorist attack and the necessary launching of two wars suddenly came alive.
New government data show that over the past year consumers are spending at a 9 percent pace at retail, companies are investing at a 9.5 percent rate in new business equipment, and manufacturing industries are producing at a near 6.5 percent clip, all while our high-tech industries are expanding at a 30 percent rate. Overall, business sales are rising at an 11 percent pace.
...Heres another 20-year parallel. Mondale wanted to raise taxes. So does Kerry. This is no way to win a presidential election. Until the Democrats recognize the economic-growth incentive power of tax cuts, theyll never be competitive.
...just as in 1984, the current tax-cut-sponsored recovery has very strong legs. Prosperity numbers will keep rolling in. Optimism will continue to mount. Bushs election-year bet on the incentive power of lower tax rates on economic growth will pay off handsomely in 2004, just as Reagans bet did two decades ago.
Bush has delivered powerful achievements overseas against terrorists, and at home on the economic front.
Big media will try to suppress the news so that we vote the way they want in the election; but the public will know what’s in their bank accounts.
(Hat tip: Joe Reinkemeyer)
If anyone thinks there’s a possibility that Kerry’s political ambitions can survive the Presidential debates, I’d be interested in hearing about it.
Kerry’s campaign strategy for the past month or two has been to stay hidden. This is because he frequently makes a bad impression on people when they actually see him.
I mean let’s face it—if bishops are starting to bar you from taking Communion, that’s not a good sign:
...four Catholic bishops either barred Mr. Kerry by name from taking Communion in their dioceses or said pro-choice Catholics should be denied the sacrament.
When does that ever happen? When does anyone actually get barred from taking Communion? Don’t you have to be pretty far out of line for that to happen?
Kerry is a charisma-free zone. No one can even understand what he’s saying. You can’t tell what he’s talking about. Even his supporters don’t know what his positions are.
So how’s he not going to blow it in the Presidential debates?
The UN documented the Iraqi WMD in the mid and late 1990’s:
Saddam had [WMD] and used it in the late 1980s (Halabja and Iran) and early 1990s (southern Iraq after the aborted Shi’ite uprising). It was there in the mid-1990s; UN inspectors found it. It was there in the late 1990s; UN inspectors said so.
Yet the left claimed they no longer existed at the time the Iraq war started, and made that the centerpiece of their argument against the war.
The left never tried to explain what happened to the Iraqi WMD that the UN had found and documented, but instead irresponsibly jumped to the conclusion that those WMD had not been hidden; that they had not been given away; but that they had been destroyed by Hussein in compliance with UN resolutions.
That assertion was not only groundless; it is now denied by the UN itself.
On June 9, Demetrius Perricos announced that before, during and after the war in Iraq, Saddam Hussein shipped weapons of mass destruction and medium-range ballistic missiles to countries in Europe and the Middle East. Entire factories were dismantled and shipped as scrap metal to Jordan, the Netherlands and Turkey, among others, at the rate of about 1,000 tons of metal a month. As an example of speed by which these facilities were dismantled, Perricos displayed two photographs of a ballistic missile site near Baghdad, one taken in May 2003 with an active facility, the other in February 2004 that showed it had simply disappeared.
What passed for scrap metal and has since been discovered as otherwise is amazing. Inspectors have found Iraqi SA-2 surface-to-air missiles in Rotterdam—complete with U.N. inspection tags—and 20 SA-2 engines in Jordan, along with components for solid-fuel for missiles. Short-range Al Samoud surface-to-surface missiles were shipped abroad by agents of the regime. That missing ballistic missile site contained missile components, a reactor vessel and fermenters—the latter used for the production of chemical and biological warheads.
...Perricos isn’t an American shill defending the Bush administration, but rather the acting executive chairman of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and his report was made to the Security Council.
...The implications of the United Nations’ discovery of how Hussein’s regime got rid of many of its banned weapons programs is staggering, especially considering that it happened partly under the watch of U.N. weapons inspectors.
No Iraqi WMD? Be serious.
(Hat tip: Andrew Breitbart)
If you made this up people wouldn’t believe it.
In Massachusetts Republicans are calling for Kerry to resign from the Senate because he’s not fulfilling the requirements of the job:
Of the 112 Senate votes this year, Kerry has voted just 14 times, according to an Associated Press tally.
Kerry’s response? He’s missing all these Senate votes because he wants responsible leadership.
Asked about the GOP calls, Kerry dismissed the suggestions, telling reporters as his plane landed in Kentucky, “I’m running for president because we have to put this country back into a place of responsible leadership. And I believe that I’m serving the citizens of Massachusetts and the country in the proposals that I’ve laid out.”
This guy just loves to say things that contradict each other. He skips out on his current job because he wants to be responsible in some other job we haven’t given him yet.
In 2000, Joe Lieberman ran simultaneously for the Senate and as the Democratic VP candidate. But I never heard that he had missed over 85% of the Senate votes at that time.
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