Daily Archives: 26 April 2013

The President’s Powers of Persuasion

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Peter Nicholas and Kristina Peterson have an article on this in The Wall Street Journal.

Democratic strategists, lobbyists and some Capitol Hill aides see last week’s defeat of the gun-bill amendments as a worrisome sign that Mr Obama hasn’t found a way to bridge the partisan divide in Congress….

Except for the part about he hasn’t tried.  Instead, he’s worked hard to exacerbate a natural difference between the two parties.  He routinely insults and denigrates those who disagree with him: those bitter clingers to guns and religion, for instance.  His DHS, at the start of Obama’s administration characterizing returning veterans as right wing extremists.  During his sequester “negotiations” he said

[Republicans] will not collect a ransom in exchange for not crashing the American economy.

That they were not arguing for any such thing is beside the point.  And in response to his gun control legislation being defeated in his Democrat-controlled Senate,

The gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill[.]

Nicholas and Peterson also write, rather naively in my opinion,

While the White House is renewing its outreach to lawmakers, including Republicans, some believe the overtures feel thin—driven by pressing legislative deadlines.

And they quote a carefully unnamed “White House official” as saying that Obama

has used every tool in his toolbox to try to advance his agenda. And that includes meeting with, talking with, dining with and negotiating with lawmakers of both parties[]

while carefully ignoring two things: this “outreach” has only begun in the last few months of his now five-year-old administration.  Up to now—and continuing coincident with this…outreach—he’s only been willing to talk about how evil Republicans are.

The other thing being ignored is Obama’s fundamental dishonesty: on “balanced” spending and tax reform, Obama got from the fiscal cliff negotiations $600 billion in tax increases and $60 billion in spending cuts.  Some balance.  His budget proposal extends this: he demands another trillion in tax increases in the name of “balance.”  The sequester, which he proposed and now denies proposing, would bring economic Armageddon according to the campaign he ran in lieu of actual negotiation—it didn’t.  This is coupled with Republican legislative proposals to give him the authority to spread the cuts according to his priorities and so lessen his predicted pain, but which he threatened to veto.  And there’s that dishonesty of calling those who disagree with him liars.

It’s no wonder his overtures “feel thin.”  They are; they’re for show only.  If Obama has used every tool in his toolbox, it’s because respect for the views of others, a willingness to negotiate or to compromise, are not tools in that box.

Taxes, Again

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The Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution has had time to go over President Barack Obama’s budget “proposal,” and they’ve

found that the budget plan would raise roughly $1.1 trillion over 10 years….

Their graph below illustrates from where those trillion dollars would come.

Notice that.  Those at the bottom of the economic totem pole—a strait contributed to in no small way by Obama’s rather cynical wealth redistribution policies—will see a larger drop in their take home pay from Obama’s tax increase than will his highly touted middle class.

So much for Obama’s promise of not raising taxes on those making less than $250k.  But that promise went by the boards long ago.

Then there’s the sin tax bump on tobacco:

The White House proposes raising the federal tax on a pack of cigarettes to $1.95 from $1.05.  It estimates this would raise $78 billion over 10 years, and it plans to use the proceeds for expanded preschool education.

The White House has defended the proposal by saying it would both discourage smoking and fund an education initiative that low-income families would benefit from the most.

But apparently the sin tax shouldn’t be used to deal with the health-related outcomes of this particular sin.  Never mind that “low-income families would benefit most” from this alternate use.  This is one of the contradictions inherent in Progressive attempts to use our tax code to achieve their social goals.

There’s more; RTWT.

2014 (and 2016) aren’t coming soon enough.

Some Remarks on Terrorism

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Congressman Tom Cotton (R, AR) had some on the House floor earlier this week.

I rise today to express grave doubts about the Obama Administration’s counterterrorism policies and programs.  Counterterrorism is often shrouded in secrecy, as it should be, so let us judge by the results.  In barely four years in office, five jihadists have reached their targets in the United States under Barack Obama: the Boston Marathon bomber, the underwear bomber, the Times Square Bomber, the Fort Hood shooter, and in my own state—the Little Rock recruiting office shooter.  In the over seven years after 9/11 under George W Bush, how many terrorists reached their target in the United States?  Zero!  We need to ask, “Why is the Obama Administration failing in its mission to stop terrorism before it reaches its targets in the United States?”

Indeed.

Now couple this with Obama’s decision on Thursday, through his Attorney General, Eric Holder, to intervene in an FBI terrorist investigation by marching a Federal Magistrate into the surviving Boston Marathon terrorist’s hospital room, mid-questioning by the FBI, to Mirandize that terrorist.  Which terminated the FBI’s questioning of the terrorist.