Talking About RINOs

There has been a lot of to do coming from Republicans following the primary the other day in Delaware with the Christine O’Donnell victory over Mike Castle. 

My favorite news writer and critic, Charles Krauthammer, has a somewhat different view about the matter than I do.   On two occasions he repeated his position that “a bird in hand is worth two in the bush” meaning that Castle was a sure shoo-in to win the seat giving the Republicans a great chance of reaching it  51st Senator in the coming Congress.  

I agree to what the planners and experts on these matters have forcasted, that the GOP does have a very good chance of getting a 51st seat in the Senate…….and Krauthammer is certain O’Donnell will lose in the general election, likely dashing conservative hopes for checking  future Obamacare stuff.

But, from what I have read and not living in Delaware, Mr. Castle was and is a RINO.  After his loss, he has announced he will sit out this election.  Actually, I view most of these politicians as Democrats, not even conservative ones, who run for office as Republicans only because Democrat Leftes already occupy all of the other elected offices.  Most people over the past generation, who covet  public office are on the Left side of center, enjoying  the high that comes from having power over other people.  Conservatives prefer that high to come from  business.

The argument Mr. Krauthammer makes is that in order to put not just a stop to the various Obamacare plosts to ruin the American way, but to reverse them.  That is much more likely to come from certain winners or at least likely winners against these Democrats in the November elections than newbies or worse yet, previous losers in these vital battles, one of which appears to be Ms. O’Donnell.   Well, we kind of agree here.  Except, in the future, how would one ever get rid of Castle, a male version of Olympia Snow, in my opinion, out of office once he is elected……and becomes well entrenched with Lefty support for him to go Left on the really important issues that matter to the American people?

I, nevertheless, would have voted for Castle, for the same reasons Krauthammer has offerered.  Yet, I was glad she won.   She certainly seems charming enough to close the gap between herself and the now heavily favored Democrat, formerly favored to lose. 

I was sorry to see Karl Rove, another favorite of mine, become so animated against the O’Donnell win after the victory was declared.   Primaries are meant for contests.  The  people had decided.  He should have been available to give her a resounding acclamation. 

Republicans should have better leadership from the national committee.  The Party shouldn’t fear competition of ideas and nuances in the primaries.   That is what primaries are for.   The Party should encourage debate between or among the factions within the Party to see who can best defeat the Left, who at this time, has become  a real opponent of the American way.

One might make the argument that the Democrats will become even weaker and more vulnerable to massive defeat taking whatever presidential candidate they place on the 2012 ballot down in disastrous defeat if they narrowly win this November off year election……making it very clear who is to blame  for the nation’s  general social and economic crisis.

The following is a piece written by John Hinderaker at Powerline on the Castle loss:

Personally, I am tired of the term “RINO.” Some on the right are quick to label anyone a RINO who disagrees with them, about anything. And yet there are times when the term really does apply.

Mike Castle says that he won’t endorse Christine O’Donnell in her race against self-described “bearded Marxist” Chris Coons. Rather, Castle will stay neutral:

Still grappling with his shocking primary defeat, Rep. Michael N. Castle of Delaware said Thursday that he will not endorse Republican Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell because he could not tolerate some of the “personal smears” he faced during the campaign.

There were smears enough to go around in the primary campaign, including the false claim that Castle voted to impeach President Bush. (I don’t know whether the O’Donnell campaign was involved in that attack or not.) But, come on–if Castle can’t make up his mind between O’Donnell and the bearded Marxist, isn’t he a Republican in name only?

Real RINOs are those who have little dedication to principle, for whom politics is mostly about ego. Charlie Crist is a great example. He was a Republican governor, but when Marco Rubio left him in the dust in primary polls Crist dropped out of the GOP and is running for the Senate as an independent. When he made the switch, he deleted a number of position statements on issues–the conservative ones–from his web site. They were no longer convenient, now that he was seeking mainly Democratic votes. For Crist, politics is all about him, not about principle.

A true Republican in name only is not a politician with a conservative foundation but also a sprinkling of moderate or liberal views on certain issues. John McCain is a good example of that type. A RINO is a politician for whom politics is not a matter of ideology, and the party is only the means to a self-gratifying end. Mike Castle, it appears, may be in that category.

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Understanding the Bush Tax Cuts

An Argument Against “Soaking the Rich!”

The Bush cuts provided lower taxes on ordinary income, especially for taxpayers at the high end of the income distribution.  These are some of the most energetic and productive people in society; raising tax rates would discourage their effort and entrepreneurship, says Jeffrey A. Miron, lecturer and director of undergraduate studies in economics at Harvard University and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

According to Miron:

• The Bush tax cuts also lowered taxes on dividend and capital gains income; maintaining these lower rates is even more important for economic performance.  
• Capital is mobile: when it is taxed heavily here, it flees somewhere else, meaning lower investment and employment in the United States.  
• And because capital income taxes discourage investment or drive it overseas, they generate little if any tax revenue.

President Obama is opposed to extending the Bush tax cuts and is instead proposing to allow full write-off of business investment through 2011.  This proposal is reasonable, says Miron, but the impact is likely to be small; this policy merely allows businesses to deduct investment now rather than later as depreciation.  Given currently low interest rates, this shifting of expenditure is not worth much.

Source: Jeffrey A. Miron, “Why the Bush Tax Cuts Worked,” The New York Times, September 10, 2010.

For text:

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/09/08/mixing-economics-with-politics/how-the-bush-tax-cuts-worked

The above article was provided by the National Center for Policy Analysis.

Comment:   According to the deep thinking Left and their conventional bigotry according to St. Marx, the rich are leaches sucking the blood of working society. 

I have never been able to collect an above average paycheck in my entire life.  I was made resentful of “the rich” while in college during the mid 1950s, but that lasted for only a few years.  I never really knew anyone who was rich.  Certainly there never were such people in our extended family.

My first “career” position was a high school teacher in 1960 a  few years after  I had been  an enlistee in the U.S. Army.   I took a pay cut. 

I never thought much about money.   My ex-wife could certainly attest to that.  I was much more “selfish”  than hoarding dollars.   I wanted careers in things I loved to do, and  in this I have been very fortunate.

A little over 20 years ago I again was out of a career.  I have always been afraid of going into any business, because I had no feel for collecting money.   I had to love my career.  Without a job at age 55,  I worked one summer as a grunt for a small grounds maintenance company managed and owned by a fellow only a few years older than I.   He had no interest in the work associated with grounds.  He loved fixing machinery, and had a motor pool of about 25 pieces or more, with a “shop” filled with yesterday’s breakdowns.  He wasn’t very good mechanic and he didn’t know much about plants or how to take care of them.   

Midseason, I quit.  I decided I would try my touch with starting a very modest and personal landscape business.  I had played with plants since I was eight years old.  It had been my passion in life.   I had an opportunity to exercise my landscaping skills for friends  when I was Executive Secretary of the Minnesota State Horticultural Society.  I taught landscaping classes for the University of Minnesota Extension Service for many years.

But, I never came to know rich people.  My life had been served in the great oceans of the American middle class.  And the same can be said for the vast majority of our campany’s clients. 

Our “rich”  is a Twin City family with about  $175,000 to  $300,000 income.  Typically, both husband and wife work.   They are professionals….. a few attorneys, nurses, salesmen, teachers, librarians, managers…..people who enjoy living in a  pleasant environment…..and some, a growing number, folks who are or become “plantaholics”.  These are the core who allow my business to survive.

It’s no secret that in the past two seasons or company has hit a very hard wall.  Business is down 40%.   We have fallen into debt to keep  afloat, and the worst part of it, we have had to cut our skilled labor force from usually more than twelve  to six and a half.   I am the “half”. 

With great frugality and good fortune, we have managed to keep our  core  of so-called “rich” among our clientel.  

I, and all of my colleagues in the company like  our “rich” very much.  We root for them to hang on to their Bush tax cuts.   They are good people, all productive and hard working, and they hire us to be part of their family concerns.  

And my colleagues all have taken pay cuts from a salary that has never been anything but average to help us stay alive and well.

It should be mentioned that almost 45% of the adult American population, these days,  pay no federal taxes whatsoever.    That figure does not include me and especially my colleagues, who are young and have families with newborns.    No one in our crowd is interested in enlarging that percentage of no-pays.   No one is interested in forfeiting their homes, either.

What does a tax break mean for us members of the middle middle class,  if there are no people able financially to hire us as their family landscapers?    Perhaps, if more Lefties would spend less  time stirring up resentments and hate against the “wealthy”, they might have more calm time to think more seriously about the consequences of their wild willy-nilly spending of our taxpaying money to bloat Big Government with Big Labor and Big Business which will at some point become forever dependent upon the government dole.  

They may even think for a moment or two about what policies might be  good for the country and our American democracy instead.   And by the way, the six or seven skilled workers who used to be employed with us, paid taxes, both state and federal.

As Dennis Prager reminds us, “The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen!”

George Will: “Beware of Multiplying Government Mandates!”

Amost all of my college years occured at the height of the western professor class belief that some form of state socialism was not only the ideal system of political and economic rule,  but was inevitable.  The  government “planned” economy would reign supreme. 

Most of the writers who passed on this inevitable were not hacks like Paul Krugman of the New York Times,  were liberals, sincere Americans, and  the cream of the intellectual crop.  Members of this crop, of course, expected to be doing the planning.  That, too, would be inevitable.

But, it really wasn’t…….despite the age of “Here Comes Obama”.   America had escaped the dictatorship of the equal.

Most of the top notch critics, thinkers-writers  of today, are those who critique the status quo and offer core concepts and defend these meticulously and still believe in constitutional democracies. 

Name one sincerely American, deeply intellectual critic, thinker-writer of today, who is an Obama Lefty…..someone who will present his core ideas and defend them; one who believes in an authentic constitutional government.

George Will, a top notch, writes the following in the Washington Post today:  “Today The crime scene at 138 Griffith St. has changed in 76 years. Today it is a barber shop. In 1934, it was a tailoring and cleaning establishment owned and run by Jacob Maged, 49.

With his responsibilities as a father of four, Maged should have shunned a life of crime. Instead, he advertised his criminal activity with a placard in his shop window, promising to press men’s suits for 35 cents. This he did, even though President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Dealers, who knew an amazing number of things — his economic aides were not called a “Brains Trust” for nothing — knew that the proper price for pressing a man’s suit was 40 cents.

The National Recovery Administration was an administrative mechanism for the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, which envisioned regulating the economy back to health by using, among other things, codes of fair competition. The theory was that by promoting the cartelization of labor by encouraging unions, and the cartelization of industries by codes that would inhibit competition, prices would be propped up and prosperity would return.

Soon there were more than 500 NRA codes covering the manufacture of products from lightning rods to dog leashes to women’s corsets. Amity Shlaes, in “The Forgotten Man,” her history of the New Deal, reports that the NRA “generated more paper than the entire legislative output of the federal government since 1789.” Businesses were asked to display the Blue Eagle, an emblem signifying participation in the NRA. Gen. Hugh “Iron Pants” Johnson, an admirer of Mussolini who headed the NRA, declared, “May God have mercy on the man or group of men who attempt to trifle with this bird.”

Maged trifled by his 5-cent violation of New Jersey’s “tailors’ code,” written in conjunction with the NRA. On April 20, 1934, he was fined $100 — serious money when the average family income was about $1,500 — and sentenced to 30 days in jail. The New York Times reported that Maged “was only vaguely aware of the existence of a code.” Not that such ignorance was forgivable. It is every citizen’s duty to stay up late at night, if necessary, reading the fine print about the government’s multiplying mandates.

“In court yesterday,” the Times reported, “he stood as if in a trance when sentence was pronounced. He hoped that it was a joke.” Maged was an immigrant from Poland, which in the Cold War would become familiar with the concept of “economic crimes” and the use of criminal law for the “re-education” of deviationists.

Actually, his sentence was a judicial jest. After Maged spent three days in jail, the judge canceled the rest of his sentence, remitted the fine and, according to the Times, “gave him a little lecture on the importance of cooperation as opposed to individualism.” The judge emphasized that people “should uphold the president . . . and General Johnson” in their struggle against — among other miscreants — “price cutters.” Then, like a feudal lord granting a dispensation to a serf, the judge promised to have Maged “measure me for a new suit.”

Maged, suitably broken to the saddle of government, removed from his shop window the placard advertising 35-cent pressings and replaced it with a Blue Eagle. “Maged,” reported the Times, “if not quite so ruggedly individualistic as formerly, was a free man once more.” So that is freedom — embracing, under coercion, a government propaganda symbol.

Today, as 76 years ago, economic recovery is much on the mind of the government, which is busy as a beaver — sending another $26 billion to public employees, proposing an additional $50 billion for “infrastructure” — as it orchestrates Recovery Summer to an appropriate climax. But at least today’s government is agnostic about the proper price for cleaning a suit.

In 1937, FDR asked in his second inaugural address for “unimagined power” to enforce “proper subordination” of private interests to public authority. The biggest industrial collapse in American history occurred eight years after the stock market crash of 1929, and nearly five years into the New Deal, in . . . 1937.

Maged died here of cancer on March 31, 1939. He was 54. He remains a cautionary example of the wages of sin, understood by the progressives of his day as insubordination toward government that knows everything. The NRA lives on, sort of, in this Milton Friedman observation: Pick at random any three letters from the alphabet, put them in any order, and you will have an acronym designating a federal agency we can do without.”

Comment:  I do not know where George Will picked up this piece, but relating this strory tells much about Mr. Will, his values and sensibilities.  Think of all of the anecdotes President Reagan filled the American mind with about this wonderful country.   No one could ever claim  Mr. Reagan was a robot, or that he feigned his affection and warmth for the place he called home, pretending to be someone he wasn’t.

I worry that Mr. Obama has no such stories to tell, for he has told none except his story that middle America huddles around God and guns.   Other  efforts appear wooden, contrived and trite, and told without feeling. 

Mr. Obama apparently has had no friends.  No one from his past has a cheery or meaningful tale to tell about some kindness or humor or warmth involving anything Obama.  This is a cold man who seems to have had a lone monastic life.   He knows little about neighbors and people down the block.   He is cold and humorless.