What the (Bleep) Just Happened? (24 page)

In September 2011, Obama proposed that Congress impose the “Buffett Rule,” which he described as “asking the wealthiest Americans to pay more taxes.” Ask? The power of the IRS to toss your buns in prison isn’t the same as a polite request.

Here’s the illogic: if the tax rate were raised by 13 percent on the 237,000 individual filers reporting income over $1 million, as Obama wants, it would generate only another $26 billion or so. And that assumes that the tax increase didn’t kill jobs and suffocate the economy further, which would be likely. In a universe of nearly $4 trillion budgets with trillion-dollar-plus deficits, $26 billion is a drop in the ocean. Obama needs to start the “millionaires and billionaires” clock ticking at the $200,000 mark because that’s where the real dough is. In 2009, those 237,000 filers who reported $1 million or more in income paid $178 billion in taxes. But only 8,274 filers reported income of $10 million or more, and they paid $54 billion in taxes. But lower the bar to $200,000, and you hit the jackpot: 3.92 million people reported income above that level in 2009, and they forked over a whopping $434 billion in taxes. This means that 90 percent of the tax filers who would pay much more under Obama’s “Buffett Rule” wouldn’t be millionaires at all, and 99.99 percent wouldn’t come close to being billionaires. In a world in which various taxes can eat up nearly 50 percent of a salary, $200,000 is hardly a solid measurement of “wealth.” The “Buffett Rule” would hit the middle class disproportionately, despite Obama’s hyper-emphasis on the Big Rich.

There may be some individual millionaires who pay taxes at lower rates than middle-income folks. According to the IRS, in 2009 there were 1,470 households that filed tax returns with incomes above $1 million but paid no federal income tax. But that’s less than 1 percent of the 237,000 returns showing incomes over $1 million.

Our system appropriately has the wealthy paying more than the less fortunate. But they’re not just paying more. They’re paying a lot more. The richest 0.1 percent of taxpayers already pay 16.4 percent of the total tax burden—and the top 1 percent pays 39 percent of all federal income taxes. The wealthiest 10 percent are carrying 70 percent of the federal tax burden already, while nearly half at the bottom pay nothing at all. How’s that for “fair”? When you hit the very bottom of that group, you’ll find the quintessential Obama voters. Picture a dorm room, filled with the haze of pot smoke, crushed beer cans on the floor, empty pizza boxes, and
The Daily Show
playing in the background, while two idiots in Che Guevara T-shirts try to set their flatulence ablaze. Let’s hope they’re too stoned to know when Election Day is.

In fact, the top 5 percent of earners account for 37 percent of all consumer spending, about as much as the entire bottom 80 percent. Those making over $200,000 give 36 percent of all charitable contributions. This is, in essence, the crux of the leftists’ ideological failure: raising taxes on the job creators, who spend, invest, hire, and donate hurts the middle and lower class, not the rich. The leftists believe they are punishing the “rich” but they are actually punishing the middle and working classes, whose livelihoods depend heavily on the fiscal health of the “rich” and the businesses and charities they power. It’s a trickle-down whoopin’.

The real fiscal issue isn’t revenue demands; it’s out-of-control government spending, particularly on entitlements. As the late great economist Milton Friedman pointed out, the true burden on taxpayers is government spending because government borrowing demands future interest payments out of future taxes. The more the government spends, the heavier the burden on the taxpayer. House Budget chairman Paul Ryan put it this way: “Even if tax revenue as a share of the economy were to grow in excess of its historical average, tax increases simply cannot match the spending commitments of the federal government in the years ahead. Based on Congressional Budget Office projections of their likely policy trajectory, government spending is on pace to double within a generation.” When Paul Ryan makes a statement like this, people stare at him like he’s an alien, and there’s a reason for that. You see, as government spending doubles within a generation, the intelligence quotient of big-spending members of Congress divides in half. If Ryan stays in Congress another ten years, the Democrats in his audience may very well be lobotomized vegetables.

In the fall of 2011, Obama announced a new wave of class warfare that tracked perfectly with his previous policy and rhetoric. A big tip-off that it was, in fact, class warfare? Obama pointedly said it wasn’t: “This isn’t class warfare,” he said. “It’s math.” And further: “The money is going to have to come from someplace.” Just not from any of his big-government programs, of course. He proposed $1.5 trillion in real tax hikes along with illusory “savings” such as $1 trillion in war “savings” over ten years from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that we will no longer be fighting. While he distracted people with his right hand by proposing another
temporary
tax cut (the payroll tax holiday), he karate-chopped the rest of us with his left hand by proposing
permanent
tax
hikes
. Sure, Barry. And as soon as we’re done fighting the War of 1812, the Civil War, and Vietnam, we’ll collect even more imaginary savings when we bring home all those invisible troops who aren’t fighting.

Team Obama believed that thanks in large part to the nearly $1 trillion “stimulus,” the economy would have been moving along enough by 2011 that they could proceed with their beloved tax hikes. When that didn’t happen, they proposed temporary tax incentives and cuts such as the payroll tax holiday to get the economy going and get them to their tax hikes faster. Now they believe that the economy will be sailing along sufficiently in 2013 so they’ll finally be able to enjoy their tax hike fiesta. Their goal is to get the economy to
appear
to be getting healthier in order to secure Obama’s reelection, after which the massive tax hikes will kick in and the economic damage will be severe.

In the summer of 2011, riots broke out in London, Athens, and other parts of western Europe. The violence and chaos in Great Britain were particularly shocking. The British enjoy a wealthy society. There is a poor underclass and a rich upper class, but like every Western democracy, Great Britain has a large and prosperous middle class. With the exception of Margaret Thatcher, who liberated the British from the shackles of statism, over the decades British leaders succumbed to the socialist impulse that ran rampant in western Europe. As a result, the nation is teetering, thanks to a huge, unsustainable nanny state: nationalized health care, massive social welfare programs, “free” child care and education.

And yet, despite having essentially cradle-to-grave state security, they riot. They protest. They demand
more
. They
never
have enough. No matter how big the welfare state is, no matter how many programs and giveaways and freebies there are, no matter how many subsidies, no matter how much hand holding by the state—it’s
never
enough.

And no matter how much you tax and confiscate from the wealthy, it’s never enough. It will never
be
enough.

These rioting fools are part of a wider movement to destabilize capitalist societies, but they’re the laziest people in Western civilization. For them, it’s easier to throw rocks at cops than it is to train at the police academy. It’s easier to scream at evil bankers than it is to open a savings account and accumulate interest. And it’s easier to bitch and moan about free education than it is to actually open up a book and discover that the cult leaders of Marxist doctrines are actually an assortment of mass murderers: Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Sung, Castro … pick your commie, pick your poison.

On the heels of the riots in western Europe, a full mobilization began in America of what Vladimir Lenin once supposedly termed “useful idiots,” those blind supporters and apologists for the communist cause. The “useful idiots” served as helpful propaganda and political tools for the Soviet Union in the Western democracies as our enemy chipped away at our system from within.

A new wave of “useful idiots” appeared on the scene in September 2011, as thousands of protesters gathered in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and elsewhere, ostensibly to “occupy Wall Street.” Many of the demonstrators claimed that they were protesting “capitalism” as they munched on Munchkins from Dunkin’ Donuts, sipped lattes from Starbucks, and tweeted revolution from their iPhones. Most of them were either hippies aging badly or aspiring hippies. When asked what they’d like to replace capitalism with, most went deer-in-the-headlights; that is, when they weren’t hurling obscenities at unnamed “fat cats,” defecating on police cars, stealing from and raping their fellow protesters, tripping on all kinds of illegal drugs, committing all manner of violent crimes, getting arrested by the hundreds, and screaming anti-Semitic slurs at “the Jews running the banks and the Fed.”

They often carried out their vulgar and criminal activities to the musical stylings of their resident bongo drummers, because no leftist protest is complete without sundry drum circles. They yelped about everything from corporate greed to food modification but only slowly and reluctantly mentioned their ultimate goal. I guess they were instructed by the men behind the curtain not to mention socialism early on. Have you ever heard a barista at Starbucks wax poetic about fair-trade coffee? That’s these idiots. Have you ever tripped over a body lying in the aisle floor of a Barnes & Noble? That’s these idiots. Have you ever gone to a concert and been asked by someone with a bone through their nose to purchase them a beer? That’s these idiots. The kids at Occupy Wall Street look like they shop at Urban Outfitters. There, and at Furthur concerts.

It turns out that the Occupy Wall Street protests of useful idiot troops were created and coordinated by Kook Generals with one mission in mind:
to provide the Obama reelection effort with the handy theme of income inequality
. According to Glenn Beck and his team, who’ve done pathbreaking investigative work on the global socialist movement, SEIU was helping to plan Occupy Wall Street months before the protests actually materialized. Beck also unearthed a Craigslist ad posted by the Working Families Party, offering to pay community organizers $350 to $650 per week to attend the protests. I have a strange feeling that that Craigslist posting was actually found under the “missed connections: men seeking men” section. The WFP, which was established in the 1990s by prominent members of the American socialist movement, played a key role in mobilizing and running the demonstrations, as did ACORN and the New Party, which was founded in 1992 as a socialist coalition including members of the Democratic Socialists of America. (Obama attended a New Party event in 1995 and received their political endorsement.) In 1994, a New Party newspaper listed some one hundred activists “who are building the NP,” including known radicals such as Noam Chomsky, Frances Fox Piven, and ACORN’s Wade Rathke.

In addition to SEIU, some of the nation’s biggest unions also helped to create and direct the protests, including the AFL-CIO and the United Federation of Teachers. Financial support came indirectly from the radical leftist billionaire George Soros. When Soros isn’t sleeping in his Transylvanian crypt fighting Van Helsing and dining on the blood of virgins, he’s the world’s biggest Marxist project financier. Furthermore, Reuters reported Soros’s connection to
Adbusters
, the magazine that is reported to have come up with the Occupy Wall Street idea after the Arab “Spring” protests brought down governments in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia.
Adbusters
is funded by the Tides Center, which collects and disseminates a huge number of donations to a slew of leftist groups. Soros’s Open Society Foundations (formerly called Open Society Institute) is a major Tides Center donor, giving the group $3.5 million between 2007 and 2009. Occupy Wall Street was hardly an organic, spontaneous uprising. It was about as carefully planned and executed as a corporate shareholders’ meeting.

Despite their desperate attempts to refer to themselves as “the Left’s Tea Party,” the comparison is about as ludicrous as one protester’s sign:
THE RICH WILL KILL US ALL
. The Tea Party is about basic American principles of constitutionally limited government, fiscal responsibility, and free markets. It’s about
preserving
America by getting back to its original values and driving forces. The Alinskyites of Occupy Wall Street are about
destroying
those very principles and replacing them with the wholly anti-American concept of enforced socialist “equality.” The Tea Party pursues its goals within the system by demonstrating peacefully and respectfully. Those attending Tea Parties sang patriotic songs, helped each other out, and picked up their litter. The Tea Party uses deodorant; Occupy Wall Street doesn’t. The Tea Party helps old ladies cross the street; Occupy Wall Street throws old ladies down the stairs. The Tea Party says, “Don’t tread on me”; Occupy Wall Street says, “Workers of the world unite.” The Tea Party likes watching football; Occupy Wall Street likes watching rape. Nonetheless, the Tea Party got smeared by the Left as a mostly lily-white group of racist bigots who engaged in threatening or aggressive acts, when it was Occupy Wall Street that was, in fact, guilty of those things.

The Occupy Wall Street orgy was about manufacturing a nasty bit of class warfare to keep the redistributionist train rolling. While the Tea Party wants less government confiscation, the Occupy Wall Streeters want what others have and are demanding that the government take it from them by force. But this is what you get when you attempt an economic revolution in which the members of said revolution majored in poetry, women’s studies, or graphic design. You get an army of economic illiterates, mad at the Wall Street day traders to whom they have to serve french fries and chicken nuggets.