Plame, Wilson, Rove
With every major news organization filing briefs claiming that no crime was committed, I'm having a hard time seeing what all of the fuss is about. As far as I can tell, Plame was not an undercover operative, there's no information on who told Novak that she was a CIA employee (kind of important since Novak is the only one who published the story), and the memo that has the liberals salivating isn't that revealing. It sounds like Rove was discussing something that everybody knew, not disclosing national security information. Considering that Plame had done a photo shoot dressed as a spy makes it hard for me to think that nobody knew.
Then again, I can understand why liberals are so eager to get Rove. After all, he's done more to make them look like drooling mouthbreathers than anybody since Jimmy Carter, and that was a record that I thought would stand forever.
The Economy
Remember a year ago when John Kerry and the rest of the liberals went on and on about how the "Bush tax cut" wold ruin the country, plunging us into irrecoverable deficits and bankrupt our future, taking money from the poor and giving it to the rich like some kind of reverse RObin Hood. Unemployment was out of control and would only get worse and our only choice was to repeal most of the Bush tax cuts.
Remember all that gloom and doom?
Well, according to the New York Times (I use them since then maybe liberals will believe it. Except for the far fringe who believe that the Times is another Rove tool. They're beyond hope.) tax receipts are up 15%. That includes both personal income and business taxes. How can this be? If you cut the marginal tax rate, how can receipts go up?
Well, people shouldn't be so surprised since it's happened every time it's been tried. Cutting the tax rate always, always, always stimulates the economy. Every time it's been tried. And when you stimulate the economy, everybody mkes more money, and then pays more taxes. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, cutting the marginal rate increases total collections. Here's the even cooler part. At a time when record numbers of Americans are paying no income taxes at all, collections from the wealthiest Americans increased, accounting for most of the increase in revenue.
Ain't that a kick in the butt? President Bush gets read down the road by liberal Democrats for cutting the taxes on the wealthy, and the wealthy somehow end up paying more.
And they're happy about it!
And since unemployment is down below 5%, which means basically that everybody who want's a job has a job, and inflation, despite the high gas prices, is holding steady, and the trade deficit is down, and GDP is up, you kinda have to admit that the Democrats were wrong in every single prediction they made pre-electio!
Are they really that out of touch with reality, or were they lying to try and win? You make the call.
By the way, I really admire the way liberals want to change things and make them better; that's a major strength for them. Conservatives by nature usually prefer the status quo; they're slow to embrace change, even when it's a change for the better. The problem is that in order to make changes for the better, it usually helps to have some clue about how the real world works, and that's where many liberals come up short. They have a tendancy to look at things as how they want them to be instead of how they really are. How can you expect to make good changes if you really don't know what needs changing?
What we need are people with a conservative's grounding in the real world, and with a liberal's ability to effect and embrace change.
I'm not asking for much am I?
And by the way, yes, I know the above is filled with generalizations and that individually, there are flexible conservatives and realistic liberals out there. But as a group, the cliches hold true.
Posted by Rich at July 14, 2005 8:50 PM | TrackBackWell, according to the New York Times (I use them since then maybe liberals will believe it. Except for the far fringe who believe that the Times is another Rove tool. They're beyond hope.) tax receipts are up 15%. That includes both personal income and business taxes. How can this be? If you cut the marginal tax rate, how can receipts go up?
Easy. Much of the rise in revenue can be attributed two things: an immense (40%) increase in corporate profits, and the expiration of some of the temporary tax breaks enacted in 2004. Sorry, if I am supposed to get excited because we have a temporary blip from a $400+bil to a $300+bil tax-cut-induced deficit, I for one am not enthused.
And since unemployment is down below 5%, which means basically that everybody who want's a job has a job
I said this over at Les Jones' and I'll say it here, too: this is a pretty infuriating comment to make. Regardless of what you might think of the unemployment numbers (personally, what I've read leads me to believe that the drop is simply reflected in the number of people leaving the labor force), to say that "everyone who wants a job has a job" is very insulting to the many people out there who .. don't have jobs.
To pretend they don't exist is to truly stick your head in the sand.
Posted by: Chris Wage on July 15, 2005 3:01 AMtax breaks enacted in 2002, rather
Posted by: Chris Wage on July 15, 2005 3:03 AMAre you denying that the 15% increase in revenue from personal taxes is coming almost entirely from the wealthy?
Are you denying that a higher percentage of the American people are paying no income taxes at all?
Are you denying that the reason corporate tax receipts are up is that the economy has expanded strongly?
Since these were the main points of my post, and you chose to ignore them, I guess you aren't denying them, just trying to confuse the issue with irrelevancies.
The facts are clear; the tax cut has resulted in a growth economy, resulting in an increase in tax receipts both from the corporate side and the personal side, with the majority of the increase in the personal side coming from the wealthiest taxpayers. (Incidentally Chris, the expiration of a temporary measure does not yield a temporary blip, but a permanent change. The "temporary blip" was the exemptions that reduced revenues in the first place. Now that they have expired, the increase in revenue will remain, unless a new exemption is passed.)
As for unemployment, the 5% threshold has always been used as the standard for full employment. Yes, there are individuals who are out of work that want to work. But according to the BLS, median unemployment duration peaked in Jun 2003 at 11.4 weeks and has since dropped rapidly to 9.1 weeks, meaning fully half of those unemployed find work in about 2 months. Also according to the BLS, 3.3 million folks have entered the workforce since January, 2003 while the employment to population ratio rose from 62.5% to 62.7% meaning that those who have a job represent a larger portion of the total population, therefore people are actually re-entering the work force not leaving it.
Again, the facts are clear. Your belief is wrong.
Finally, Im not pretending that there are no unemployed people in this country, nor am I burying my head in the sand. Instead, I'm looking at all of the facts, and determining what I believe our priorities should be. This is a prime example of what I was talking about at the end of this post. Chris, you're a smart guy who really wants to make a difference and do what is right for the country. And your compassion for those who are unemployed is commendable. But if you don't know the facts about the unemployment situation, how can you hope to fashion an effective solution? Even more importantly, how can you establish clear priorities in order to get the best use out of limited resources if you don't have an accurate, balanced picture of what's going on?
Posted by: rich on July 15, 2005 6:57 PM