The DaleyGator

Let this serve as the latest example as to why NOTHING IS FREE! Someone always has to pay!

What Obama left out. High taxes, highly union, and too much regulation equals bitter!

In the firestorm touched off by Barack Obama’s comments about those who “cling to” guns and religion out of economic resentment, most analysis missed a crucial point: The “bitterness” felt in the so-called Rust Belt is mainly a product of high-tax, highly unionized states. While there are pockets of prosperity in Pennsylvania, upstate New York, Ohio and Michigan, a good deal of this area is economically depressed. That’s not because of Washington’s policies (or lack thereof). These policies aren’t killing Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Florida. While southern states do have problems, their governments generally don’t smother economic growth by layering on ever-rising taxation, regulation and expenses. They don’t permit workers to be forced to join closed-shop unions. No one in D.C. – Obama, Clinton, McCain or Superman – can fix the Rust Belt’s self-inflicted wounds. Western New York offers a prime example. Despite proximity to major markets, a long international border with a major trading partner, a well-developed transport system, untold natural splendors and a well-educated workforce, the Buffalo area’s population shrinks every year. Why? High taxes, high government costs and forced unionization are major factors. Very good article. Over-regulation, over-taxation, and the state of unions do not help American workers, or the middle class at all. The little slices of Marxism are what is creatin bitterness in these areas, not Conservatives. Obama, of course, would try to alleviate these conditions how exactly? By doing even more of what has created the problem. This is the essence of why Liberalism fails. It’s proponents cannot accept failure or learn from it. Instead they just try the same failed ideas over and again.

He wants to raise capital gains taxes, not to raise revenues, but to be fair. Now he wants to go down the path of redistribution by imposing windfall taxes on evil oil companies. I wonder if his latest desire for fairness would cost the average American at the pump?

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama‘s proposal for a windfall profits tax on oil companies could cost $15 billion a year at last year’s profit levels, a campaign adviser said. The plan would target profit from the biggest oil companies by taxing each barrel of oil costing more than $80, according to a fact sheet on the proposal. The tax would help pay for a $1,000 tax cut for working families, an expansion of the earned- income tax credit and assistance for people who can’t afford their energy bills.

Obama’s tax policies? All about ENVY and GREED! 

Gibson asked Obama: “You have said . . . you would favor an increase in the capital gains tax. . . . Why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?”Obama’s answer: “Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness. We saw an article today which showed that the top 50 hedge fund managers made $29 billion last year — $29 billion for 50 individuals. And part of what has happened is that those who are able to work the stock market and amass huge fortunes on capital gains are paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries. That’s not fair. “

Notice how Obama keeps talking about FAIR, and how too much profit is UNFAIR. Charlie Gibson raises the point that reducing the capital gains rate increases revenue repeatedly, but Obama does not seem to grasp that. Video is at Hot Air

Yep! LIke I have said long ago, Mrs. Messiah is far more in tune with Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, than with Madison, Jefferson, Washington and Franklin

H/T Jawa

And HOW! 

The Clintons have made a $100-million fortune since leaving the White House, but a Politico analysis found that hasn’t kept Bill Clinton from taking full advantage of the publicly funded perks offered to ex-presidents.

In fact, his presidential retirement benefits cost taxpayers almost as much as those of the other two living ex-presidents combined.

The price tag for Clinton’s federal retirement allowance from 2001 through the end of this year will run $8 million, compared to $5.5 million for George H. W. Bush’s and $4 million for Jimmy Carter’s during the same period.

Since 2001, Clinton has received more of almost every benefit available to former presidents — from his pension to his staff’s salaries and benefits to supplies. His $420,000 phone bill and $3.2 million office rent tab both nearly surpassed the totals rung up for those purposes by Bush, Carter and the late former presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan combined. As a group, they spent $484,000 on telephone service and $3.8 million on rent in the same span.

The cost of Clinton! It just keeps rising. 

How big IS Hog Murtha? $2 Billion big!

H/T Hot Air, Instapundit

OK, these “It’s 3 AM” ads are getting old! but these two videos illustrate a key point regarding how thyese two candidates would handle the current mortgage “crisis”

First up? Hillary!

Next, McCain responds!

PORKMANIA!

 Senator Barack Obama on Thursday released a list of $740 million in earmarked spending requests that he had made over the last three years, and his campaign challenged Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to do the same.

The list included $1 million for a hospital where Mr. Obama’s wife works, money for several projects linked to campaign donors and support for more than 200 towns, civic institutions and universities in Illinois.

But as the Senate debated a bill to restrict the controversial method of paying for home-state projects — a measure defeated Thursday evening — Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign also said that only about $220 million worth of his requests had been approved by Congress. And among those that had been killed were his request in 2006 for $1 million for an expansion of the University of Chicago Medical Center, where Mr. Obama’s wife, Michelle, is a vice president.

So, he WANTED to screw the taxpayers out of $740 million, BUT only managed to get $220 million? And DARN! No pork for Michelle Obama’s hospital? Yeah, I know I feel lots better about government waste.

They just cannot get enough pork!

Even the entreaties of the three senators running for president weren’t enough to persuade their colleagues Thursday to curb their appetite for earmarks — the practice of designating federal dollars for pet projects.

Senators soundly rejected a one-year moratorium backed by the presidential hopefuls — Republican John McCain and Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton — even though it put senators from both parties at odds with their presidential contenders.

The vote — 29 in favor of the proposal, 71 opposed — again demonstrated the enduring popularity of earmarks, even though they have figured prominently in recent congressional scandals, including one that landed former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham of Rancho Santa Fe in prison.

Porkers! 

HOT AIR

Thanks to the suddenly resurgent populism of the Democratic Party presidential candidates, we have heard a lot of class-warfare rhetoric the last few months. John Edwards talked endlessly about Two Americas until voters finally put him out of his misery in January. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both insist that the gap between haves and have-nots has grossly widened during the last twenty-five years of economic expansion, and hope to ride a wave of classist discontent into the White House.

They have one big problem: it’s simply not true. As economist Brad Schiller points out in today’s Wall Street Journal, that impression comes from only the most superficial and uneducated reading of Census Bureau statistics, failing to take into account significant changes in demographics — as well as an inability to do simple math:

Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey helps explode the empty rhetoric of the left.

My take is that it will be a blessed day when large segments of America stop WANTING to believe they have it worse than they actually do.

How far leftwards HAS the Democratic Party moved? Read this piece by George McGovern, and compare it to the capaign rhetoric of Obama and Clinton

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120485275086518279.html

Since leaving office I’ve written about public policy from a new perspective: outside looking in. I’ve come to realize that protecting freedom of choice in our everyday lives is essential to maintaining a healthy civil society.

Why do we think we are helping adult consumers by taking away their options? We don’t take away cars because we don’t like some people speeding. We allow state lotteries despite knowing some people are betting their grocery money. Everyone is exposed to economic risks of some kind. But we don’t operate mindlessly in trying to smooth out every theoretical wrinkle in life.

The nature of freedom of choice is that some people will misuse their responsibility and hurt themselves in the process. We should do our best to educate them, but without diminishing choice for everyone else.