George Rebane

Mr Igor Birman, Esq is Congressman Tom McClintock’s chief-of-staff and one of the stars on Capitol Hill.  Igor is also our friend and we have spent many long hours discussing the whys and wheretos of the country’s current travails during his Nevada County visits.  Just recently Igor was honored at Hillsdale College by an invitation to speak to a Constitution Week gathering at that institution.  If you’re a subscriber to Hillsdale’s very popular Imprimis, then you know the rarefied company that Mr Birman has now joined.

Igor’s speech recounts the highlights of his immigration to the United States from the USSR, and connects these to America’s founding principles that not only differentiated us from that longstanding tyranny, but remain as the fundamental bulwark of our freedoms.  The pdf of his speech is available here Download Birman@Hillsdale. 

Maybe, just maybe, there is something I can agree with on truthout.com.  Its numero uno progressive maven, William Rivers Pitt, reprises a past welcome to the website’s monthly contributors, that reads in part – “I don’t know what brought you to Truthout – 9/11, the war in Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq, the WMD lies, the fake terror alerts, the exposure of Abu Ghraib and our profligate use of torture, the ongoing domestic surveillance, the elections, the financial crisis, the lies compounded by lies, or the fact that the “mainstream” media is so full of shit you can smell them around the corner – but here you are, and thank you for it.” (emphasis mine)  And here I thought I was the only one harboring that sentiment.

American Jobs Act.  So the Prez has sold us down the river for another $1.5T of tax hikes and dodgy accounting to pay for his latest jobs act and God knows what else.  He promises we’ll pay for it by a $580B cut in Medicare and Medicaid waste (where have we heard that before?) which translates to less money to healthcare providers, which leads them to pull out of the programs, which then leads to rationing.  Another $1T comes from winding down the mid-east wars; wasn’t that already planned and accounted for to pay for other spending programs?

Both of these ‘pay fors’ will really kick in several years from now.  But somehow, somewhere he claims that another $430B will be saved in interest payments on a ballooning national debt that won’t balloon so much because of this fancy legerdemain.  Oh, did I mention that new tax increases are part of this package which is supposed to eventually total to $4T of savings and new revenues.

The new revenues will come from taxing the bejeezus out of the rich, you know, those top 1% earners who already pay 38% of all income taxes.  They don’t have a clue what to do with their money (that’s what got them rich) as far as investments and creating jobs are concerned.  The government will do a much better job with all the money it will get when taxes are raised on couples making more than $250K/year.

By putting in a fixed dollar threshold for the higher tax rates, Obama knows that inflation will sweep up the rest of us into these tax brackets.  The model for that travesty is your favorite Alternative Minimum Tax that so many average Americans now pay.  We also notice that Social Security is off the table, as is raising the benefits age for Medicare.  How all this will really be made up is for the Super Committee to solve.  Since they’re already going to solve the $1.2T debt limit deal shortfall, having them save a few more trillion won’t be a problem because they’ll have already worked up a head of fiscal prudence steam, and saving the rest won’t then be so hard.  Right?

Snowball’s chance in hell are the smart odds of this bull pucky going anywhere in Congress – Obama’s just lining up a few talking points for the campaign.  And they might actually work.

Miracle of miracles.  Before we finish, I got an email from a reader with the latest tidbit on crony socialism.  The story is that Craig Robinson, basketball coach of the Oregon State Beavers, was going to be laid off.  The man makes a hefty bundle, the funds are tight, time to get some more economical talent into that slot.  And then a miracle happened.

Just then Under-secretary of Education, Martha Kanter, arrives in Corvallis with a $17M stimulus check for the university.  And guess what?  Coach Robinson’s job is again secure, and everyone is very happy.

Now how in the world did Sec Kanter time that little trip to Oregon so precisely?  Some conservative cynics are implying that the coach’s little sister Michelle might have had something to do with it.  Not me, I go with the miracle explanation because there are millions of other guys who could have wound up to be the First Lady’s brother.  It was a miracle that Coach Craig Robinson turned out to be the winner in that lottery.  And Oregon State officials deny any tawdry connection to the White House, stating that the check arrived by coincidence.  So, pure and simple, it seems that we have one, possibly two miracles confirmed.  See? stimulus does save jobs.