A Fox News poll released Thursday found 79% say all Americans should pay something in federal income taxes, even if it's only 1%. The sentiment enjoys broad bi-partisan support: 85% of Republicans, 83% of Independents and 71% of Democrats.
Instapundit links to this September report suggesting Americans have reason to be concerned when nearly half the population has no federal income tax liability:
Aside from the revenue impact of not having 58 million Americans pay
income taxes, economists worry about the social and political effects of
having so many people disconnected from the cost of government—a
phenomenon known as fiscal illusion.[1]The concern is that when people perceive the cost of government to be
cheaper than it really is, they will demand ever more government
benefits because they either don’t feel the cost directly or believe
that others will be paying those costs. Indeed, when one takes into
account those who do not file, about half of all households pay no
federal income tax, making the situation particularly worrisome in a
majority-rule democracy.[2]
The UK Guardian cattily previews several new American books that no one should care about but that are 'sure to be rightwing hits', including: Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama, by Ann Coulter
The story of the left's agenda to patronize blacks and lie to everyone else.
I Know You Are, But What Am I? by Jonah Goldberg
Goldberg challenges conventional wisdom from "Democrats are the party of civil rights" to "Nazi's were rightwing."
PUNK'D!!! Conservative Arguments to Drive Liberals #@!**?@ Crazy!, by S. E. Cupp and Greg Gutfeld
"This book is sure to annoy the 'politically correct' brigade, whose opinions Cupp and Gutfeld certainly don't care about!"
"To hear some politicians speak, you might think that the only way an American company can employ Americans is with help from Washington," writes economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth.
Reasonable but uninformed people might conclude that Apple's enormous success comes from the largess of the federal government: subsidies here, tax breaks there, and winks and promise everywhere. Apple demonstrates otherwise. ... Apple, whose share price of $691 makes it the world's biggest corporation as measured by market value, has been on a tear — without government assistance."
The author contrasts Apple with companies awarded government loan guarantees under the Energy Department's programs, noting that 26 of the 33 (almost 80%) have shown signs of trouble ranging from missed production goals to bankruptcy filings.
Meanwhile, "Apple rolled out its iPhone 5 to the eager anticipation of consumers, some of whom waited up all night for the bragging rights to own it first."
"Amid widespread protests against an amateur movie that denigrates Islam's Prophet Mohammad," reports the Washington Times, at least one Muslim leader — with the backing of the 57 states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation — wants the United Nations to criminalize blasphemy against his religion:
“We call for legislation or a resolution to criminalize contempt of
Islam as a religion and its prophet,” Emad Abdel Ghaffour, who heads the
ultra-orthodox [Egyptian] sect’s Nour political party, told Reuters over the
weekend.
Jonah Goldberg writes about a recent parody, headlined "No One Murdered Because of This Image" in the faux-newspaper Onion, in which 4 "cherished figures from multiple religious faiths were depicted engaging in a lascivious sex act of considerable depravity." Missing was Islam's prophet Mohammed.
The Onion’s point should be obvious. Amidst all of the talk of
religious tolerance and the hand-wringing over free speech in recent
days, one salient fact is often lost or glossed over: What we face are
not broad questions about the limits of free speech or the importance of
religious tolerance, but rather a very specific question about the
limits of Muslim tolerance and the unimportance of free speech to much
of the Muslim world. It’s really quite amazing. In Pakistan, Egypt, and the Palestinian
territories, Christians are being harassed, brutalized, and even
murdered, often with state support, or at least state indulgence. And
let’s not even talk about the warm reception Jews receive in much of the
Muslim world. And yet, it seems you can’t turn on National Public Radio or open a
newspaper or a highbrow magazine without finding some oh-so-thoughtful
meditation on how anti-Islamic speech should be considered the
equivalent of shouting “fire” in a movie theater.
But there is no equivalency, argues Goldberg. Muslims are people, not a force of nature. They have free will. They choose to riot.
There’s nothing wrong with exercising sound judgment, even caution,
when it comes to offending another’s most cherished beliefs. But the
First Amendment isn’t the problem here, the dysfunctions and
inadequacies of the Arab and Muslim world are. James Burnham famously said that when there is no alternative there
is no problem. If free speech in America causes a comparative handful of
zealots to want to murder Americans, the correct response is to protect
Americans from those zealots (something the Obama administration
abjectly failed to do in Libya) and relentlessly seek the punishment of
anyone who succeeds. Because, as far as America is concerned, there is
no alternative to the First Amendment.
If only we had national leadership who would defend Americans' cherished freedoms and beliefs as strongly.
"Conventional wisdom holds that women suffer from discrimination in the workplace that leaves them economically worse off than men," the author writes. "Yet compared to men, women in twenty-first century America live five years longer; face a lower unemployment rate; earn a substantially larger share of high school diplomas, associate's, bachelor's, and master's degrees; and face lower rates of incarceration, alcoholism, and drug abuse. When women and men in the same jobs and with the same experience are compared, the wage gap disappears. In other words, contrary to what AAUW, NOW, and many other women's groups would have Congress believe, women are doing well."
The 140 graphs, charts and tables confirming women's progress will be great visuals for conservative students and activists who battle liberal/feminist women-as-victim myths on campus and in the public policy arena.
Video: Diana discusses the book at the Conservative Women's Network, a monthly event co-hosted by the Luce Institute and The Heritage Foundation:
"Certain feminists, like children discovering that certain words shock
their mommies, like to talk dirty," writes Suzanne Fields. "Or at least naughty. Naomi Wolf
climbs on this bandwagon once more with her eighth book, Vagina: A New
Biography. She joins aging shock jock ('jockette'?) Eve Ensler in
shouting the word in a marketplace crowded with female monologues..." Read the rest.
Liberal "surrogates in the Fourth Estate have infested the political arena with an army of tactical and rhetorical rodentia," writes Michelle Malkin.
Embassy attacks? Quick, find a squirrel! Warnings ignored? Squirrel! American troops killed by long-plotting jihadis exploiting security weaknesses? Squirrel! First Amendment sabotage by White House officials in the name of political correctness? Squirrel! Chronic joblessness, high gas prices, exploding dependency? Squirrel! Squirrel! Squirrel!
Should the U.S. deny visas and immigration to applicants from Muslim nations? The Islamic terrorist threat is obvious to all but a village idiot. Not so obvious is the threat from slow infiltration of Islam’s true believers into Western democracies through immigration and population explosion. The video below is a news story on the growing Muslim influence in the European nation of Belgium.
In it, a native Belgian scholar, who argues that Islam is a fascist ideology, explains that Belgium's major cities are so Muslim-dominated that Belgium is forecast to be a majority-Muslim nation in only 18 years. In it, too, a Muslim cleric tells the reporter, with a calm air of inevitability, “democracy is the opposite of Islam and Sharia,” and “the West needs to prepare itself for a wave of Islam and Sharia Law.”
Sharia Law and Western-style democracy rooted in individual freedom are wholly incompatible, as Mark Steyn, Nonie Darwish, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali articulately argue.
Moreover, it isn't only 'radical' Muslims who find Western-style freedom of speech and religion repulsive, as Hirsi Ali explains in the most recent issue of Newsweek:
The Muslim men and women (and yes, there are plenty of women) who support—whether actively or passively—the idea that blasphemers deserve to suffer punishment are not a fringe group. On the contrary, they represent the mainstream of contemporary Islam.
[M]y experiences in the Islamic world eventually led me to believe that, on the whole, Muslims do not want democracy. When asked, they normally say that they do. Further discussion reveals, however, that what they really want is peace and prosperity. If you talk to them about civil liberties, you’ll find that most of them are pretty adamantly opposed to free speech and [tolerance of another] religion. They don’t think proselytizing should be legal, and most are suspicious of legal protections for Muslims who want to convert to another faith. They are scandalized by the suggestion that blasphemy, for example, would qualify as protected speech.
Lu explores the question of whether the Islamic world can find a different form of government “that was more hierarchical and authoritarian than ours … and that restricted civil liberties more than we would allow.” It’s an interesting thought experiment, but not one that solves the problem of how to deal with Muslim rage against all things Western today.
“The Premodern Middle East and the Postmodern West don’t mix,” writes Victor Davis Hanson, adding "each time we castigate a Rushdie, a Danish cartoonist, a U.S. soldier, or a nut like Terry Jones, we simply play into the hands of the Islamists."
[W]e must examine the ubiquitous Westernized Middle Easterner who appears as pundit, talking head, and the authentic voice of the Arab Street. Quite dangerous are the Mohamed Morsis of the world — men like a Sayyid Qutb or Mohammed Atta, who had spent time in the West, fled here for its protection, enjoyed its affluence, indulged in its sins, and blossomed amid its hot-house universities. These men can often be quite dangerous.
Most are intelligent and understand the self-loathing that is endemic among their postmodern Western hosts. For the Westernized anti-Americanist, being educated, working, and living in California or New York reminds him of the contrast with his own Egypt or the West Bank. That disconnect evokes all sorts of contradictory emotions: why am I so blessed in the land of the infidels and so wretched at home? Or how much penance must I undertake for satisfying over here what would be seen as illicit appetites at home? Or how can these affluent atheists have so much more than my pious brothers in the Middle East?
As Belgians are realizing, these represent as great a threat to the longer-term security of Western nations as the bomb-strapped terrorist. Until we are better at screening Muslim visitors and immigrants who harbor deeply-held anti-Western bigotry and ill-will, perhaps it would be wise to suspend all visas and legal immigration from predominately Muslim nations.
Former Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali (right) argues in Newsweek magazine that America should quit apologizing and stop treating the Muslim masses as helpless victims, especially now that they freely elect leaders who reject Western-style freedom.
The Muslim men and women (and yes, there are plenty of women) who support—whether actively or passively—the idea that blasphemers deserve to suffer punishment are not a fringe group. On the contrary, they represent the mainstream of contemporary Islam.
Until recently, it was completely justifiable to feel sorry for the
masses in Libya because they suffered under the thumb of a cruel
dictator. But now they are no longer subjects; they are citizens. They
have the opportunity to elect a government and build a society of their
choice.
Will they follow the lead of the Egyptian people and elect a
government that stands for ideals diametrically opposed to those upheld
by the United States? They might. But if they do, we should not consider
them stupid or infantile. We should recognize that they have made a
free choice—a choice to reject freedom as the West understands it.
How should American leaders
respond?... If the U.S. follows the
example of Europe over the last two decades, it will bend over backward
to avoid further offense. And that would be a grave mistake—for the
West no less than for those Muslims struggling to build a brighter
future.
Not surprisingly, American liberals and Muslim media outlets were outraged by the American Enterprise Institute scholar's article.
The most vehement anti-Americans are often precisely those who have lived in the United States and the West, enjoyed its freedoms, indulged in its affluence, and have come to resent the contrast with their own homelands...
In the movie 2016: Obama's America (review here), Danesh D'Souza explains that many in those regions of the world whose ancestors experienced European colonization developed a hatred of colonialism, capitalism, and Christianity. That the United States was never a colonizer — never 'stole' their natural resources or subjugated their ancestors — is irrelevant to those who cling to their ancestors' bigotry. To them, colonialism and Western culture are synonymous and to be despised.
Our public statements on the developments in Libya, Egypt and now Yemen,
have bought wholesale into the false premise that the attacks on our
embassies and assets were in retaliation for an amateur video some
idiots made lampooning Islam.
The tawdry little film is the red herring. As was the Danish cartoon,
and every other rationale Islamic terrorists have given for killing
innocent people (including many Muslims). Even acknowledging the film in
our official statements is giving credence to a lie. Waxing poetic
about free speech and religious tolerance might make us feel like good
and high-minded people, but it does nothing to alter the threat. Islamic
extremists will not be intellectually bullied into sanity or respect
for life. Our imposing strength, our military might and our readiness to
use it is the only response that matters.
The UK Independent reports that the "U.S. State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert ..."
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius violated the Hatch Act by campaigning for a candidate while in her official capacity, an "activity that is illegal and normally results in the offender's termination from government employment," explains the Daily Caller.
The U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) said Wednesday that Sebelius
violated the law when she publicly endorsed President Barack Obama’s
re-election during a taxpayer-funded public event on Feb. 25, 2012.
Special Counsel Carolyn Lerner wrote to Obama that the OSC found
Sebelius “violated the Hatch Act by making extemporaneous political
remarks in a speech delivered in her official capacity” on Feb. 25.
“The Hatch Act prohibits federal employees from using their official
authority or influence to affect the outcome of an election,” Lerner
wrote to the president. “A federal employee is permitted to make
partisan remarks when speaking in their personal capacity, but not when
using an official title or when speaking about agency business.”
Thus far no action has been taken by the White House.
"If you can't keep track of all the Muslim protests erupting across the globe, writes the Atlantic wire, "you're not alone." So they've created an interactive map of the 20-plus locations of Muslim uprisings with links for more details:
"Corporations are not people," Elizabeth Warren said last week. "People have hearts. They have kids. They get jobs. They get sick. They cry. They dance. They live, they love and they die." To liberals, corporations are greedy, heartless institutions.
But if corporations aren't people, neither are these four beloved liberal institutions that are arguably more greedy and heartless than corporations:
Governments. Federal, state, and local governments fuel their greed with countless taxes, fees, and penalties assaults on taxpayers — from fishing licenses to death taxes — and no one can ever accuse the IRS, the EPA, the TSA, or any other government agency of having a heart.
Unions. The Chicago Teachers Union is a timely case in point. Although the average teacher salary is $71,000 (well above the $47,714 average salary of the college-educated tax-paying Chicagoan), the union just rejected a $400 million package that included a 16% pay raise.That's greed.
Universities. The overall inflation rate since 1986 is 115.06%, yet college tuition increased 498.31% during the same period. Universities hold billions of dollars in endowments — University of Virginia topped the list in 2011 at $4.8 billion — while their students accumulate millions in student loan debt. That's heartless.
Public Schools. American public schools spend an average $91,700 per student between the ages of 6 and 15 (not all the way to 18), the second highest per pupil spending behind Switzerland among the world's industrialized nations. Yet public schools continue to demand more money each year from local governments (property taxes), state governments (income taxes), and federal governments (income taxes). At the same time, public schools lobby vigorously against allowing even a small portion of a child's tax-appropriated dollars to follow him or her to a charter school, a private school, or a parochial school of choice. All greed and no heart for the kids trapped in really bad public schools.
At least corporations seek to please their customers. These liberal darlings don't need to bother.
"Over the weekend," writes Emily Esfahani Smith at ricochet.com, "Kanye West took to Twitter to have a philosophical
conversation about whether it is ever acceptable to use the B or N words in music or conversation."
It seems like West is having second thoughts about the type of
language that he uses in his songs–maybe he’s even worried about the
messages that his music–and that of his hip hop peers–sends out. Another
thing to worry about is the type of behavior such extreme language
could encourage in listeners (mostly young men) who would otherwise
suppress their more violent impulses. I can’t help but think here of
hip-hop singer Chris Brown and Rihanna, whose relationship ended after
Brown beat up Rihanna so badly that she ended up in the hospital.
Toward
the end of his trail of tweets, West has two pretty insightful points.
The first is a litmus test about how we know if it’s ok to use these
vulgar words:
Here’s the age old question, would we refer to our mothers as
[expletive]? Would’ we call our fathers [expletive] or better yet
[expletive]?
The answer is obviously no. He goes on to ask:
If [expletive] is such a positive word, why do we feel so uncomfortable for white people to say it, even with a hall pass?
The implicit answer is that it’s not such a positive
word. Though he then asks whether the United States should allow
profanity on the radio, he concludes by appealing to a higher standard
of both music and manner–the great Stevie Wonder.
“Stevie Wonder,” West writes, “never had to use the word [expletive] to get his point across.”
CNN reports that student semester health insurance premiums jumped by more than 50% this fall at colleges and universities in North Carolina, in part due to the ObamaCare law, according to university officials.
In April, Tom Ross, the president of the University of North Carolina
system, sent a letter to the university's board of governors announcing
that students should brace for a hike in the cost of
university-provided insurance plans.
Ross explained that at least 64,000 North Carolina college students -
roughly a third of those enrolled in the state's 17 public universities
- should expect to see "substantial" increases in health coverage costs
for the 2012-2013 academic year.
"Based on more than three semesters of actual claims experience, as
well as the new provisions of the Affordable Care Act, we are facing
large increases in premiums for our students," Ross wrote in the letter.
In North Carolina, college students are required to have proof of
health insurance, either through their university, their parents or a
private provider.
Students who purchase insurance plans from North Carolina public
universities this fall will be shelling out $709 per semester. That's up
significantly from a cost of $460 per semester last year.
As Ed Morrissey at hotair.com explains, the low-cost student health plans available to students last year were eliminated under ObamaCare, so students are forced to buy high-cost comprehensive plans instead.
If students wanted a comprehensive-policy option, they could have
gotten it without ObamaCare, and now students no longer have the more
sensible low-cost option thanks to ObamaCare’s mandate. ...college students haven’t realized so far just how badly ObamaCare exploits them to lower costs for the more politically reliable 40-54 YO demographic, who really benefit most by forcing younger people to pay higher premiums. They may begin to understand it, though, as those health-insurance bills get delivered this month.
"It’s the year of the woman — or at least the year of the painful
political pander to women," writes Karol Markowicz. "Both political parties are bending over
backward to cater to this underrepresented minority group, which made up
just 54 percent of voters in 2008."
...why, exactly, are women being treated as some sort of mass unit?
All this catering to “women’s issues” assumes that all women feel the
same way about all issues — and that those issues are almost all tied to
sex or reproduction. That women may worry about taxation, terrorism,
government spending, jobs or other “men’s” issues is apparently
inconceivable.
It’s not a step forward for women that we are the focus of all this; it’s condescension, pure and simple.
If
the goal is still equality between the sexes, then the pats on the head
women have been receiving from politicians in the last year show we’re
just not there yet.
