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How I got by without watching the State of the Union Address “Well, I didn’t watch the State of the Union, but I did fix the dishwasher, and teach a fairly decent class on the non-delegation doctrine, and edit some page proofs of a forthcoming law review article. So it was a pretty good day.”
– Glenn Reynolds
In my case, being a Londoner, yesterday, I attended an excellent Institute of Economic Affairs talk by “Bleeding Heart Libertarian”, got a plumber around to deal with a blocked pipe, picked up a suit from the cleaners, discussed a finance matter with my Dad and typed about 4,000 words at work. I did later skim a few lines from the Obama speech, though. I see he’s taking tax policy advice from Warren Buffett, whom I am increasingly bracketing alongside George Soros as prime James Bond villain material.
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Well, I did watch it (although truthfully I slept through part); you didn’t miss anything. I consider watching the SOTU address as akin to going to the dentist: generally not an overly pleasant experience but one of those things you just have to do from time to time. This was not one of Obama’s better efforts. About half of what he said was wrong and the other half he doesn’t actually believe. He did wrap himself in the flag more than I’ve seen before, praising the military on numerous occasions and actually trying to sound hawkish and resolute vis-a-vis Iran. Not credible, though. Frankly, I liked the Republican response a lot better. Plus it was much shorter.
The reply (by Gov Daniels of Indiana) was worth watching.
Short and to the point – although much too moderate for my taste (although that is to be expected).
As for the State of the Union Address…
I will not discuss the vile thing.
Any more than I would give a detailed account of a Satanic Mass ceremony.
Paul, have you been to a Satanic Mass ceremony? I’d be interested in a detailed account! (I’m sure it would be much more interesting than an Obama SOTU.)
Paul, we want details.
I was busy leveling my Imperial Agent on The Old Republic. Playing a 100% good guy is really tough.
You missed the even better comment by the inestimable Instapundit:
“THE INSTADAUGHTER SAYS OBAMA’S TIE WAS “A TERRIBLE CHOICE — IT TOTALLY CLATCHES WITH THE FLAG BEHIND HIM.” (“Clatches” = clashes but you think it matches). That’s surprising — his suits and ties are usually perfect. That’s my only SOTU liveblog. We’re going to watch Big Bang Theory. It’s a rerun, but so is this speech.”
Myself I channel-surfed in, at about the 10 minute mark. Realized that I did not have the necessary barf-bag handy in about a further 30 seconds and thereupon exited back to the Weather Channel, it being at least an approximation of reality and not a delusional fiction.
I can’t imagine watching this, or any other, speech by this mendacious puppet unless I was get paid to do so.
Also, my respects to Dyspeptic Curmudgeon above for having one of the few screen names I would love to steal.
I watched the Australian Open tennis, and then played a game of Go over the internet against somebody in Japan. Gotta love the internet for enabling me to do the latter. (Unfortunately I lost.)
How is Buffett a villain for simply pointing out that his cleaner paying more taxes than him is an obscenity?
Unless you think it is right that a struggling family in West Virginia pays more taxes than US companies who in many cases get scandalous subsidies and tax breaks courtesy of the prostitutes in congress and senate.
If the rich can evade taxes, then I say whatever the amount of taxes lost through tax evasion by the wealthy should be reduced from the taxes of the poor, working, and middle classes.
So, for example, if $10 billion is lost in tax havens, the government should accordingly reduce the taxes of those on middle and low incomes to achieve a similar loss.
This would be logical and fair and would shrink the size of the government massively.
Allowing foreign drugs into the US market, abolishing Medicare Part D, abolishing all farm and oil subsidies, getting rid of the Federal Reserve, slashing the wasteful Pentagon, all would be good moves.
Mendicant, it would be an “obscenity” if it were true, but as this article by Arthur Laffer (Link)points out, Buffett’s comments on tax rates on investors and employees are grossly misleading, to say the least.
It is also worth noting that the top 10 per cent of US earners pay more than half of all US federal income taxes, and a large chunk of the US population pay no such taxes at all, which means a large number of people have no incentive to curb public spending and the enormous public debt.
And this “Buffett rule” is not going to change that.
Mendicant, you have touched on the core lie being promulgated, it isn’t the absolute tax but the tax rate (%) they’re talking about. And even then that disregards the fact that to receive dividends taxed at 15%, those dividends have already been taxed at the corporate, so the tax on the actual original income is typically over 40% anyway. Many other countries apply the normal personal rate to dividends, but allow an imputation credit for the tax already paid.
As for cutting the various subsidies to agriculture and other companies, I don’t think you hear a lot of dissent on those points.
Personally, I’d be all for it, but that is not what Buffet is calling for – rather, he is calling for more taxation on the rich.
Ed Snack, excellent point on the imputed dividends issue. This tends to be ignored a lot by those who make the lazy assumptions about the supposed low tax rates of the rich.
I went to the YMCA to work out.
In the fitness room, there are wall-mounted TVs which are normally set to sports events (except one, which during the day shows the stock market channel). The sound on these is muted (or is supposed to be).
The attendant insisted on watching the SotU speech with the sound up.
In other words, he intruded politics into an area which should be politics free.
I went to a different YMCA the next night. This YMCA has TVs in the locker room; the attendant turned on MSNBC’s
“Ed Show”, the vehicle of liberal commentator Ed Schultz.
Damn them both.
It occurs to me that Glenn Reynolds must be an amazingly productive man, to have accomplished all that in the 65 minutes of the speech (OK, 90 minutes if you include the pre- and post- ). Quite impressive.
Warren Buffet is not a villain for simply pointing something out.
Warren Buffet is a villain for the following reasons:
1. Warren Buffet made his secretary a national issue. He talks about how unfair it is that his secretary pays a higher tax rate than he does. So much attention did Warren Buffet draw to his secretary, she got invited to the SOTU speech by the Obamas.
So, having made his secretary a public issue, people noticed her. And discussed her. Now that some people are not saying what Warren Buffet would like them to say, Warren Buffet thinks everyone should shut up about his secretary and respect her privacy.
2. If Warren Buffet doesn’t think it’s fair his secretary pays a higher tax rate then he does, why doesn’t he just compensate her in the same way he compensates himself? Warren Buffet controls how his secretary gets paid. She has to pay a lot of money in income and payroll taxes because he pays her a six figure salary. If he paid her minimum wage and gave her some shares of Berkshire Hathaway so she made most of her money through capital gains like Warren Buffet does, she’d pay the same tax rate as Warren Buffet.
3. Warren Buffet needs to shut up about how much other people need to pay in income taxes. He’s not going to pay that no matter how often the Obamas trot out his secretary and parade her before the public. Warren Buffet doesn’t make his living by earning a salary. While it is true that Barack Obama is proposing increased taxation on investment income, his main goal is to increase taxes on high wage earners. Warren Buffet is running his mouth about taxes he’ll never pay. Barack Obama isn’t proposing to raise the taxes on Warren Buffet’s filthy lucre anywhere close to the level he wants to tax salaries.
4. If we did raise taxes on investment income, we’d just be taxing money that someone already paid taxes on before putting it in that investment vehicle at a new higher rate. How many opportunities should the internal revenue service get to maul the taxpayer. You pay the taxman when you make the money, you pay the taxman when whatever money they let you keep the last time produces interest or dividends, then when you die they’ll frisk your carcass to make sure nobody inherits any money that hasn’t been taxed a third time.
The government calls whatever you make off of money you already made “unearned income.” Like you took a walk in the woods, tripped over a log, and, whoa, money!
Then the large percentage of voters who don’t earn enough of an income to pay taxes themselves get to say how much of that income they believe someone didn’t earn they get to take to pay for their healthcare.
Personally, and I say this as someone who doesn’t have a lot of money like Warren Buffet, I find the whole regime immoral. I could never vote for someone who promised me he’d take more money from someone else so I could get some free stuff. But then, I’m not part of the crowd Obama is pandering to. This is:
Obama Is Going To Pay For My Gas And Mortgage!!!
I suppose I need to insert the obligatory “I’m not a racist” caveat here because Obama is black and I linked to a YouTube video of a black woman gushing about how Obama’s going to help her. She just happens to be black. The same sentiment motivates the lily white Occupy Wall Street crowd which demands someone pay their student loans off.
Speaking of OWS, I don’t belong to whatever “1%” they’re complaining about. But I certainly don’t belong to the “99%” camping out in downtown Washington D.C., hurling smoke bombs at the White House, and threatening not to go away until somebody starts paying for all my stuff now that mommy and daddy kicked me out of the house.
And, yes, it is villainous that Warren Buffet encourages these people by telling them that there are all sorts of people like him who have way more than they need and should be paying for their groceries.
MattP, you forgot to add that Buffet is a villain because he is an obsequious suck-up to Obama. The man is an obnoxious toad. However, he’s not smart enough to be a real Bond villain; he’s only George Soros lite.
Matt, if you don’t object, I’m going to steal your comment and post it on FB.
Alisa, no objections here.
Laird, you’re right; I dropped the ball on that one.
Ed, excellent link. Buffet has been spouting these misleading claims about his taxes for years, at least as far back as 2007 during the run up to the 2008 elections.
He and his bogus claims been soundly refuted for as long as he’s been making them.
Gregory Mankiw is a professor of economics at Harvard. He pointed out in July of 2007, in the pages of the New York Times no less, if the government were to calculate his effective tax rate it would be far higher than the 17.4% he publicly pretends it is. According to the Congressional Budget Office, as the owner of capital (Berkshire Hathaway) he bears the burden of the corporate tax.
One wonders just what you have to do embarrass Obama and Buffet into quitting in trafficking in lies.
It’s been 4 years already. Mankiw’s article wasn’t exactly on the front page, but you’d at least expect the reporters at the Times would read their own paper stop blindly repeating everything Obama and Buffet say about his taxes as if they were true. Actually, a blogger at the Times Economix blog restated Mankiw’s argument this past week due to the fact Obama was going to repeat the lie about Buffet’s low tax rate. It’s interesting to read the response by a spokesman for the left-leaning advocacy group Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. It wasn’t a response. They didn’t even answer the question the blogger asked but instead changed the subject to what they always want to talk about; punishing the rich and achieving “justice” as defined by Karl Marx.
Acknowledging the existence of facts that don’t serve the cause isn’t part of their agenda.
My point was that I had not watched the speech – indeed I deliberatly did not watch it (I kept checking and only turned on Fox News when the speech was over – so I could watch the reply).
As for Satanic stuff.
I have come upon such stuff (decades as a security guard and you see all sorts of odd things – although I was a younger and less unhealthy man in those days).
However, although I have been threatened with death by Satanic stuff – I have never seen any hard evidence that they have any powers (other than fists, knives and so on).
A pity.
As if there was hard evidence that such Dark powers actually existed, it would at least hint that the powers of Good existed also (otherwise what would stop the forces of Darkness doing as they pleased?).
However, as I say – I have seen no evidence whatever of the existance of Dark powers. Just nasty people doing nasty things in conventional ways – till a stop is put to them (also by conventional means).
Again – it is a pity, a great pity. After all the followers of evil can not destroy the soul (not without one’s cooperation), all they even claim to be able to do (with the help of their dark master) is to destroy the physical bodies of their foes. And one’s life can be ended in all sorts of conventional ways anyway.
Therefore their “powers” are to be held in contempt – other than (if they existed) to show that supernatural evil exists. Which (at least to my way of thinking) would at least hint that supernatural good existed also.
But nothing – no evidence at all. Such people tend to run like rats – rather than make manifest their threats.
Alas! But then one should not put God to the test….
Glenn Beck insists that Divine Providence is at work in the world – and will defeat the powers of Evil (if God can defeat Satan, which He can, defeating Comrade Barack and co is not going to be very hard thing for God to do).
However, as I say, I have never seen any evidence of Divine Providence at work in the world.
Glenn would say (and say sadly) that my sight is too undermined. by hate and despair – to see what a believer should be able to see.
Let us hope he is correct.
As I fail to see any nonsupernatural way out of the present situation.