George Rebane
This is a weblog entry to update our ‘progress’ toward a fundamental transformation of America. As has been discussed, we are past the tipping point with two alternative destinations that will redefine the social, economic, and political landscape of the North American landmass. The first is the United Socialist States of America (USSA) that seeks a more draconian version of what has not worked in Europe. The second is the Great Divide, which will fragment the continent into regions containing people sharing a more common culture and socio-political worldview.
I suspect that the GD will require mass migrations (think of the formation of Pakistan in 1947) and may end up with the territory divided into a confederation of mostly autonomous mega-states sharing perhaps a ‘free trade’ zone. But most certainly these mega-states will not share economic systems, language, or political philosophies in the sense of the Bastiat Triangle (q.v.).
2012 is an election of great foreboding and diminishing hope for conservative Americans. That the tipping point has been passed – the lazy, the lame, and the lightly learned populate way more than 50% of the electorate in a widening 'democracy' – will make it very likely that President Obama will serve a second term with, perhaps, an even more compliant Congress like the one he had during his first two years in office.
As our first post-American President, Barack Obama sees his current job as a stepping stone to higher office. Ascribing him as a secular socialist is the ‘model’ that continues to support the most reliable predictions about the social and economic policies that he seeks to impose on us. By any measure, he is the most divisive president that the country has had since Abe Lincoln, and from the conservetarian vantage, the worst one since Lyndon Johnson.
He has assembled around him the most perfidious group of big government careerists with virtually no knowledge or experience of how a society of self-fulfilling people works. Under his Attorney General the subtle paring of freedoms has progressed to the use of a big axe on a chopping block – criminalization of yesterday’s legal conduct is now rampant and institutionalized. The borders are porous, and US citizenship is relegated to being on par with the rights and privileges of America's fugitive residents. The semantics of ‘immigration’ have been redefined to make impossible any serious debate about solving our illegal alien problem.
Sec Treasury Geithner has also advanced the concept stating that it is a government endowed “privilege of being an American”, a privilege to be retained that must be financed at ever greater levels by fewer and fewer Americans. As in most countries whose unions supported massive redistribution of wealth before they became lackeys of autocracy, we are now treading on the same path. To see our future, look at Greece. There the communists are already portraying Germans in Nazi uniforms for setting fiscal prudence as a precondition for German taxpayers paying billions to bail out profligate socialists. Mind you, Germany is the ONLY country that can delay the inevitable collapse of Greece, and the Greeks are vilifying them in return.
Obama’s crew is watching all this carefully and refining their Agenda21 plan under the leadership of Nudgemaster Cas Sunstein. In whose uniforms will we burn the effigies of the Chinese when they start dictating American domestic policy as a condition of further lending? Let me predict that whom our occupiers and their aggregating ilk will then target instead are the remaining wealth and job creators in America. The feds will urge them to riot in frustration and to explain away the fallacy of reduced government revenues in the face of increasing tax rates.
For reasons now best laid to our state-sponsored educational system, collectivists forever believe that federal revenues are directly determined by progressive tax rates. Former Federal Reserve governor Lawrence Lindsey (29feb12 WSJ) would again like to disabuse us of that by presenting some data from the Census Bureau and the IRS about what share the well-to-do already pay –
According to the Census Bureau, the share of income received by the top 5% of American households is now 21.5%, up from 21.4% in the 1990s. Their share of income taxes has risen to 59% under President Obama from 52% under President Clinton. This despite the fact that the top tax rate was five points higher in the Clinton years.
If you go further back to the pre-Reagan days, when the top tax rate was 70%, the story becomes even more dramatic. Under the four presidents of that era, the income share of the top 5% was 16.8% and their share of the income tax was 36%. In other words, the share of income received by the top 5% has risen 28% and their share of income taxes has risen 64%.
Stated differently, based on the data provided by the Census Bureau and the Internal Revenue Service, the relative tax burden of the top 5% of American earners compared with the remaining 95% has grown from roughly three-to-one prior to 1980 to almost six-to-one today.
So evidence to the contrary, the socialist continues to believe that any desired level of government spending (redistribution) can be funded by taxing the few at ever higher rates. This explains why collectivists can never put a limit on the level of participation that government should assume in a growing and productive economy. Our historical level has been about 18%, and under Obama has now risen to about 24%. Greece’s level of government spending exceeds 50% of GDP, and it is one of the least freest countries in the developed world (which it may soon be exiting).
In America, the current administration and leftwing Congress has already demonstrated that it not only “needs to increase” the government’s participation in the economy, but has actually demonstrated how that participation is under way in sectors like healthcare, finance, transportation, and energy. The latter through its disastrous promotion of green industries and green technology. People listening only to the lamestream outlets are totally unaware of how those policies have ravaged our energy industries and continue to do so with each passing month.
Now we hear that America’s biggest solar panel manufacturer and government darling, First Solar, is cutting back on its green jobs and future subsidized profits. Why? Because the market won’t buy its products, they’re too expensive and cheaper/better ones can be imported. No matter to this government, its answer is simple – gasoline is still too cheap, people will accept government mandated green when we do things to make gas even more expensive, then everyone can be nudged to behave in a ‘socially responsible and equitable manner’. (Here is more on the current EU experience with solar.)
I will conclude this little memo-to-file by pointing to two published pieces about the transformation of America. One in a letter to the editor from someone in Tawas City, Michigan that was posted on Light on Nevada County. And the other, an essay – ‘California is Obama’s dream’ – by former San Diego mayor Roger Hedgecock, is more focused on California (the idiots’ delight of these United States).
[4mar12 update] We add to this list the teaching and wisdom of a remarkable lady. Take a look at mid-eastern immigrant Brigitte Gabriel talking about Islam in America. Here she says it all and says it well. Look at more of her speeches and interviews on YouTube.
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