Tax Cuts for the Rich

      In addition to death and taxes, there is another thing in life that is certain.  When attempting to gain political power or  hold on to it, the Democrats are going to ratchet up their class warfare rhetoric.
      With the looming November elections and facing the prospect of losing control of the House and maybe the Senate also, Obama is crisscrossing the country spouting nonsense about the "rich" not paying their fair share of taxes.  Obama accuses the Republicans of wanting to cut taxes for millionaires, regulations for special interests and basically let Americans fend for themselves.  He then offers the standard Democrat talking points: Raise taxes on the rich, target tax cuts to the middle class ( which never seems to happen) and raise taxes on businesses (which is impossible).
        The question is, are the Democrats on to something?  The fact is that the top 1% of wage earners, those making more than $400,000 pay 40% of all federal income taxes collected and the top 5%, those making more than $160,000, pay 61% of all federal income taxes.  The bottom 50% of wage earners, those making $33,000 or less, pay less than 3% of all federal income taxes collected.  Forty percent of Americans pay no income tax at all.  No wonder there is a constituency that doesn't mind how much the federal government goes into debt.  They have no skin in the game. 
     Bill Freeze of "Real Clear Markets" has crunched the numbers on who pays what in taxes and the results will surprise a lot of people.  It turns out that George Bush did not decrease taxes on the rich, he increased them.  Both Clinton and Bush served eight years in the Presidency, but when Clinton was in office, Federal Revenue from individual income taxes was $5.66 trillion.  When George Bush was in office, Federal Revenue from individual income taxes was $7.45 trillion.  The "rich", the top %1 of taxpayers, not only forked over a trillion dollars more to the Federal Government under Bush, their share of the burden increased from 33% to 38%.  In addition, the rich paid a blended rate of 20.6% under Clinton but paid income tax at a blended rate of 21.3% under Bush.
      What is a "blended rate".   Well, when one pays income tax, say on $500,000, one doesn't pay a flat rate of 35% on the entire amount.  Rounded off, the first $8,000 is taxed at a rate of 15%, from 8001 to $34,000 is taxed at a rate of 15%, from $34,001 to %172,000 is taxed at a rate of 28%, from 172,001 to $374,000 is taxed at a rate of 33% and all over $374,001 is taxed at 35%.  Hence the "rich" paid a "blended average" of 21.3% under Bush.
     How did Bush cut taxes and have the "rich" paying not only more, but a greater effective rate?
     Well, when taxes go down, the "rich" change their behavior.  Those that work, work harder and longer.  They expand their business, creating jobs.  The "idle rich" change their investment behavior and instead of investing in low yield bonds, invest in higher yield taxable vehicles, the kind of investments that finance companies that create jobs.   When marginal tax rate go up, the opposite happens.  The rich cut back on work  and contract instead of expand business and the "idle rich" alter their investments to vehicles that require less taxes.  The "rich" are usually happy to pay more  of a "blended" tax rate as long as they are taking home more after tax dollars.
      If Bush had reigned in spending during his tenure as President, then he would have left Obama a surplus instead of a deficit because revenues to the treasury went up 30% percent under his watch.  Now Obama is dead set on letting the Bush tax cuts expire in the middle of a recession.  Tighten your belts folks, because we are in for some hard times until we get rid of this fellow.
     

Proposition 8

     So U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker struck down California's Proposition 8, passed by over 7 million Californians to protect marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
     Imagine the hubris of an unelected guy in a black robe to overturn the historical and traditional definition of marriage that has been in existence since the dawn of civilization.  Now I know that some will say that different cultures have defined marriage differently and point to those that allowed polygamy.  Well, even in polygamous households, the marriages took place one at a time, not as a group.  Each marriage was still between one man and one woman.
     The arrogance of an unelected judge to overturn the express will of the people of a state is beyond comprehension.  silly me, I thought that under the Constitution we were a government of the people and by the people.  If Judge Walker's ruling is allowed to stand, and there is a 50/50 chance that it will, then the people of California have come under the rule of one man.
     That this issue is a Constitutional issue is absurd.  It is a stretch to say that the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment applies, because no one is being denied their rights on the basis of citizenship.  Homosexuals enjoy the same rights as that of any citizen.  they can choose to marry anyone of the opposite sex that they wish.  No citizen has the constitutional right to enjoy special privileges based on his actions.
     In Judge Walker's ruling is the idea that laws, which have any basis in faith or even commonsense morality, are unconstitutional as he stated that, "The evidence shows conclusively that moral and religious views form the only basis for a belief that same-sex couples are different from opposite sex couples.  Did you get that?:  The idea that morality or a religious basis cannot be a factor in deciding law.
     Now that would be a shock to the late Dr. M.L. King who based his entire civil rights movement on the idea of Biblical morality.  The Black pastors of Birmingham asked Dr. King why he was breaking the law and he replied in his famous "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" that there were two types of laws: just and unjust.  King state that one had a moral and legal responsibility to obey just laws, but one had a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.  the difference was that a just law was a law was in accordance with the moral law of God land an unjust law was a law that was out of harmony with the moral law.  This is straight out of the tradition of Augustine, Aquinas and later, Blackstone, whose "Commentaries" formed the basis of our legal system for the first 150 years of America's existence before we devolved to case law and began relying solely on the opinion of judges.
      Being a homosexual himself, Walker's opinion exudes resentment to the idea that the state can somehow consider heterosexual couples superior to homosexual couples and he doesn't believe that there is any reason from the state's point of view to differentiate between them. Well, he could not be more wrong.  From the state's point of view, heterosexual couples are superior.
      Although for various reasons, not all heterosexual marriages produce children, in the normal course of things, they do.  Homosexual couples are incapable of producing children by themselves.  Marriage then normally leads to a family, and it is the family that is the basic building block of any society.  The only reason that government would have any interest in the institution of marriage at all is that of promoting the welfare of families.  It is in the family that future generations are socialized, taught responsibility, discipline and a host of other virtues that will produce good citizens.  Therefore any wise government will institute policies that will support an institution that produces good citizens.
       Judge Walker, in his arrogance, fails to realize that we don't get to define marriage.  It has already been defined by history, tradition, and yes, by God himself.  All we get to do is to recognize it.