Larry Hogan for Governor of Maryland

Recently, toward the end of the two-month hiatus in my postings, there was a primary in Maryland. And one consequence of my being a Republican, a distinct minority in this state, is that while the Democrats had many, many contests from Governor down to County Council, I saw one single contest on my ballot: for Governor. For every other partisan position, there were either no candidates at all or exactly as many candidates as positions to fill, so every candidate was running unopposed. (There were contests for Board of Education and one judicial contest, but I never vote in the former and I had no knowledge of the candidates in the latter.)

For Governor, my choice became clear not long after I began investigating my options: first of all, two of the four candidates, Ron George and Charles Lollar, were hardly serious candidates, though I did get one piece of literature from George and none (until one arrived after Primary Day) from Larry Hogan, who was a serious candidate, and in fact the favored one. The real choice was between Hogan and David Craig.

Interestingly, one of the things that convinced me to vote for Hogan was Craig's campaign literature — in fact most of what convinced me to vote for Hogan was what his opponents, Craig and George, and their blogging supporters, said. One piece of Craig's literature began by proclaiming that he had a 100% rating from Right to Life and a high rating from the National Rifle Association — meaning that on both issues he was opposed to my own positions. However, I certainly have no problem voting for pro-gun, “pro-life” Republicans if they don't make these their chief issues, as I understand that I don't agree with any candidate on everything. But in Craig's case, he made these two the cornerstones of his campaign, and immediately lost me.

Other things that Craig, George, or their blogger supporters said turned me off as well, and turned me to a strong Hogan supporter. Hogan was Appointments Secretary in Governor Bob Ehrlich's administration, and he was criticized for daring to put (gasp!) Democrats in some appointed positions. Well, this being a Democratic-majority state, any Republican Governor is going to accomplish nothing if he refuses to accommodate some of the Democrats' wishes. Giving them a role in his administration was a good thing, as long as he generally pushed a Republican program, which he did.

Well, it seems that most Republicans agreed with me (well, not most, but certainly more than there were Craig, George, or Lollar supporters individually), so Larry Hogan is the nominee, and has my support even more strongly for November than in the primary, though in this Democratic state, I realize he is definitely an underdog against Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, the Democratic nominee. Brown won the Democratic primary even more decisively than Hogan did the Republican primary, receiving as many votes as his two significant opponents, Doug Gansler and Heather Mizeur, combined. Of course, Brown has going for him some of the same things that Barack Obama did in getting the Presidency: both are offspring of black fathers and white mothers, raised in white (or at least not black) neighborhoods, who became identified as black when they set up their political bases in black areas. I do have to say, however, that Anthony Brown is better-qualified to be Governor than was Obama to be president in 2008; eight years as Lieutenant Governor probably gave him some ideas of how a Governor can do his job.

My gripe with Brown does not concern his competence, however. He has been Martin O'Malley's Lieutenant Governor, and his entire campaign so far has made it clear that he intends to continue O'Malley's policies, which are in my mind mistaken. For example, one of O'Malley's first moves on becoming Governor was to raise the State sales tax 20%. He has pushed through things like a State version of the DREAM Act; although one of those things he pushed (legalizing gay marriage) I support, most of them are moves in the wrong direction. We need to change, and Hogan is the only candidate who even wants to change things. Thus Larry Hogan is my candidate for Governor.

Another victory for gay marriage

The Treasury Department yesterday ruled that same-sex couples who were married in a state or country where it was legal and subsequently moved to a state that does not recognize that marriage will be considered married for income-tax purposes. They can file as single people until Sept. 12 of this year if they choose to, but afterward will have to file either as married filing separately or as married filing jointly.

It's probably a good thing, but will lead to some interesting complications. Before the Supreme Court ruled DOMA unconstitutional, same-sex couples had to be treated as single individuals under Federal law, so they'd have to file Federal returns as single even if their state permitted them to file jointly. Now, the reverse is true: same-sex couples whose state does not permit them to file jointly can do so on their Federal returns.

Of course, if couples like John Arthur and Jim Obergefell, whose Maryland marriage had not been recognized in Ohio, succeed in their suits (Arthur and Obergefell did get a judge to rule in their favor, though Ohio may appeal), based on Article IV of the Constitution, this anomalous situation where couples can file Federal returns as a married couple, but not state returns, will eventually fall. That is, obviously, the best solution: in states like Virginia they may yet be unable to get married, but by crossing over to another state, they will marry, and their states will have to recognize it. Eventually a Loving v. Virginia sort of ruling will come, even though in 2013 it's too early for that.

The worm has turned

Back at the end of last year, the Republicans found themselves in a bad spot. If they did nothing, the Bush tax cuts would all expire Jan. 1. Even President Obama wanted to preserve many of them, so there was bipartisan agreement that doing nothing was unacceptable. And thus, John Boehner and the House Republican caucus ended up surrendering too much to President Obama. There was no better choice.

Now, on the other hand, it is the President who is in the same pickle that the Republicans were in back then. If nobody does anything, the sequester kicks in — the spending cuts go beyond what the GOP wants, but certainly Obama gets none of the tax increases he wants. So the only compromise possible is for the President to give up on some of the tax increases. We are seeing his allies — Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the House Democrats — making wild statements to try to curry favor with the American people. But they cannot win — and President Obama knows it. Finally, he is talking with the GOP leaders in Congress — something he refused to do last December. My, how the worm has turned!

President Obama, gay rights, and the sequester

Recently, Chad Griffin, the head of the Human Rights Campaign, sent out an email praising President Obama for the administration's filing a brief before the Supreme Court, arguing that that a law denying gay and lesbian couples the ability to marry is unconstitutional. Since HRC is basically a one-issue organization, focusing on gay rights, I suppose that Griffin was justified in sending this email; however, it would have been fairer if he had pointed out that the pro-gay-rights side is also getting support on the other side of the aisle: another brief was filed by a group supported by Clint Eastwood and Jon Huntsman, for example, and one of the two lead lawyers on the pro-gay-rights side is Theodore Olson. Griffin, however, made the email a hearty thank-you to a President whose commitment to gay rights is better to be characterized as more political than heartfelt. This is, after all, a President who could have ended “Don't ask, don't tell” by a stroke of his pen on Jan. 20, 2009; in fact he waited years to do so.

As for me, my attitude is “Sure, Mr. President, you're on the right side here, but you've been such a bad president with regard to other issues that this one act hardly balances it.” From insisting that no solution to the problems arising from the “sequester” is acceptable without raising taxes, to claiming the Senate was in “recess” when it really wasn't, in order to pack the NLRB with pro-union flacks, Pres. Obama has done so much that is bad for this country that he will not get off, in my eyes, just because he's done one thing right for a change.

The "fiscal cliff" compromise

There are a lot of posts I see, from various liberal commentators, complaining that President Obama gave up too much. And there are a lot of posts I see on the other side, saying that the Republicans gave up too much. The fact that we see both of these means it's probably a good sign. There is still a necessary vote in the House of Representatives, of course, so it's not a done deal. But it's quite obvious that neither side can get all it wants. And I think that when both sides start off as far apart as they were, it can only be a good sign that both sides are unhappy.

There were a lot of issues, of course, that were not settled — kicking the can down the road a while. But with less of a time crunch, perhaps some compromise can be attained on these too — but even if not, the worst of the “fiscal cliff” crisis has been averted.

The only way a better solution could have been reached was if Mitt Romney had been elected to the Presidency. So under the circumstances, this was the best that could have been hoped for. And thanks to Vice-President Joseph Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for negotiating it.

Perhaps a compromise is possible

Well, Speaker John Boehner has indicated he is willing to accept a raise in tax rates on people with income over a million dollars. And President Barack Obama has raised his $250,000 figure to $400,000. There is still a gap there, and other aspects that are also going to be problems, but each side has given a little.

Perhaps by Dec. 31, a compromise will be achieved. I hope so. There is still a week and a half to go.

Obama's "revenge tax"

There is a blogger who calls himself "Publius" — because that was the pseudonym adopted by the three authors of the Federalist Papers, I assume — who has finally explained, in terms I can understand, President Obama's insistence on raising tax rates, even though it would hardly make a dent in the deficit. And it is so clearly correct that I would like simply to repeat it here.

I was having trouble understanding why President Obama has been clinging so fiercely to his demands to raise the top marginal tax rate to the Bill Clinton-era 39.6%. By most accounts — especially his own — Obama is a very intelligent man, and surrounds himself with very intelligent people. Surely these intelligentsia must know that raising the marginal tax rate 4.6% on those earning over $250,000 per year will do virtually nothing to erase the national debt or close the deficit, do nothing to ease the plight of the rapidly growing number of poor Americans, and do nothing to help Obama’s miserable economy — in fact it may make his miserable economy even worse.

So the question I was having trouble answering is this: if Obama and his minions know these simple, self-evident truths, why are they so hell bent on such a tax hike?

Obama claims that he has a mandate for the tax increase; it was a campaign pledge, and therefore he must meet it. But as I recall, he also made campaign pledges in 2008 to close Guantanamo Bay, to fix the economy with a huge stimulus, and pledged in 2009 to cut the deficit in half in his first four years — broken pledges all. Since these, and so many of Obama’s other prior pledges have been broken, honoring a campaign pledge cannot be the true reason for clinging to his tax hike. Moreover, pushing legislation forward because it was a campaign pledge merely begs the question: why was it a campaign pledge?

Offered here are some possible reasons why.

A primary reason for Obama's insistence on raising taxes is this: a bully bullies because he can. Obama and the intelligentsia know that if Obama stands pat on raising tax rates — and Republicans balk — he can simply blame a Republican House for going over the cliff, which is much more proximate and much more plausible than blaming Bush.

And if the Republicans balk, Obama can appear heroic by insisting in January 2013 that the House reduce tax rates on the middle class, while maintaining the higher tax rates then in place for the top bracket. Or, as has recently been proposed, Treasury Secretary Geitner might give the middle class a temporary tax break until new tax legislation is passed; a bit of a gamble if the tax rate that gets passed is higher than the temporary tax rate, as it would stick the middle class with an unwelcome tax bill in April.

Sticking it to Republicans is but a part of a bigger Obama agenda — revenge. In the hours before the 2012 election, Obama urged his followers, saying, “voting is the best revenge.” How unifying. Obama’s revenge includes slapping higher taxes on America’s most productive wage earners. Obama’s tax hike is consistent with his liberal belief that those who have succeeded have not had to play by the same same rules as those as those who have failed, have taken unfair advantage of the disadvantaged, and have gained unearned success at the expense of the unsuccessful. Such perceived unfairness must be avenged, and taxing the rich is, for those who voted for it and the president that urges it, the best revenge. For this reason, I refer to Obama’s fiscal cliff tax hike as the “Revenge Tax.”

Revenge is akin spiking the football, or rubbing salt in the wound, or issuing the middle finger salute. But revenge, like a winning vote, is temporary; it satisfies for a season only. Obama hopes to change America forever. There is thus an even bigger reason for his Revenge Tax than simple revenge.

And raising revenue, at least with his Revenge Tax alone, is not that bigger reason. Speaker Boehner has already offered $800 billion in new revenues by reducing or eliminating tax breaks — i.e., loopholes — for upper-income people. But this is a “non-starter” for Obama. Again, the question must be, why? And the answer must be that the Revenge Tax is not just about raising revenue.

I believe Obama’s refusal to accept revenue by closing tax loopholes as a proxy for the Revenge Tax, and his insistence on that tax is for this reason: closing tax loopholes is a one-time event. Raising taxes, however, can — and often does — beget raising more taxes.

Increasing the marginal rate to 39.6% won’t do any good. Everyone knows this. Thus, we can expect that once Obama gets his 39.6% tax rate, we will soon hear that it wasn’t enough, that to meet the country’s growing needs, we must make the evil rich pay still more. Perhaps $250,000 of income for the top tax bracket will be lowered to $200,000 or $175,000. This is especially more likely as the “soft bigotry of lowered expectations” takes hold. The definition of “rich” will slide down the curve, as Obama’s broken economy makes more and more people poor and fewer and fewer people rich.

Ergo, the real reason Obama clings to raising the tax rates is to set the stage for repeated, increasing, expansive tax increases, until America’s tax rates approach those of Obama’s Utopian society — Europe. Obama yearns for Europe’s unaffordable healthcare, the so-called universal healthcare system, and I believe also yearns for Europe’s lofty tax rates. Here is what America may look like in the years ahead, if Obama gets his Revenge Tax, and in the process opens the door to giving America a Euro-tax makeover:

Top Marginal Tax Rates

France	75<%/td>
Sweden	56.6<%/td>
Denmark	55.4<%/td>
Netherlands	52<%/td>
UK	50<%/td>
Belgium	50<%/td>
Austria	50<%/td>

The question, therefore, isn’t so much whether America will go over the fiscal cliff, but whether by avoiding that cliff, America will open the floodgates to European style taxation.

More on the "fiscal cliff" controversy

I recently had an exchange of e-mails with my brother, who is politically somewhat more conservative than myself, though we are closer to each other in our views than either of us is to those our parents held. Some interesting points were made, which I will make public here. First, after I referred him to my post:

Actually, I read similar ideas to yours recently, soak the really, really rich, but leave the really rich alone. Well said on neither side being willing to compromise, when you wrote it, but there is breaking news. Joe Biden, the Clown Prince of Buffoonery, was quoted yesterday as saying that it doesn't have to be exactly 37 percent for the top bracket, it could be less, it's just the principle that the rich have to pay more.

To which my response was:

I suspect that some compromise like this will be attained in the end. What we really don't know is what is going on behind closed doors in secret negotiations, where Boehner's lieutenants and Obama's can make deals that neither can endorse in public because of the socialistic elements in the Administration and the TEA Party contingent within the House GOP.

He continued:

The Republicans were willing to compromise by expanding revenue, 800 billion worth, but that wasn't enough for the Dems, and is too much for the TEA Party.

What we have here are two opposed sides ON PRINCIPLE. (Old Yiddish saying: "Corrupt officials can be bribed into doing the right thing, but men of principle are much more expensive.")

To the Socialists, the high-earners are anathema. They contradict the very foundation of Marxism: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. They get paid more than (the Marxists think that) they need.

To the Republicans, high-earners provide the life-blood and impetus of life's flows, without their spark of energy, the society would fail and wither. Everyone else (and that includes you and me) are hangers on, who should just shut up and follow, unless we want to become entrepreneurs and get some skin in the game. This is best represented by the works of Ayn Rand.

I had to agree with his comment that “[w]hat we have here are two opposed sides ON PRINCIPLE.” But my main point is that:

All that you say is true. BUT, sometimes it is necessary to make some concessions even from one's principles. The socialistic Democrats control the White House and (except for the filibuster rule) the Senate. The Republicans control the House. Nothing can be done at all unless all three can find agreement — the Madisonian principle enshrined in the Constitution. If neither one gives an inch, a result occurs that neither side wants to happen — it's like Prisoner's Dilemma: you have to make what seems to be the worse choice, or the net result is the worst possible alternative.

I'm willing to say as much publicly, and so this post.

The blame is shared

Most of the time, I have been siding with the Republicans in their opposition to President Barack Obama's ideas. And in fact I still think that the President must be faulted in these “fiscal cliff” negotiations for his absolute refusal to make the slightest move toward a compromise. But the Republicans are not doing so well in this exchange either. I don't see much willingness to compromise on their part, and I have to give credit to at least one Democrat, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, for actually putting forth an idea: Accept that some of the highest-income taxpayers will have to see a tax rate increase — that's what any compromise must be between Obama's “raise the rates on all over $250,000” plan and the GOP's “raise no rates on anybody” plan. But set the barrier higher. Sen. Schumer proposed $1,000,000, and perhaps a GOP counterproposal would move towards that point; but setting it still higher, say $2,500,000. But I don't see anyone on the GOP side making proposals like this.

If nobody on either side is willing to move toward the other, we will surely go over the cliff. And except for Sen. Schumer, I see nobody moving an inch.

And he still won't give an inch

It looks as though President Barack Obama is still unable to compromise on the issues involved in the “fiscal cliff” — he has just made a proposal to Congress that says, in effect, “Take it or leave it: my way or the highway.” Of course, the plan won't get out of committee in the House. But he'll try to blame the Republicans — and a lot of the American people will fall for his charges, I'm afraid.

If only John McCain were in the White House.

When will Barack Obama learn what "compromise" means?

For a brief moment, it looked as though President Barack Obama might have achieved a compromise with Speaker of the House John Boehner and the Republicans. He had hinted that he might approve a plan that would increase revenues from the well-to-do, without necessarily raising tax rates. But it is now clear that this will not be. He now says that he has a mandate from this election to raise those rates. And of course this means no compromise is in the works.

It looks as though the “fiscal cliff” is in the offing. Obama has no concept of what a compromise is. To him it means he calls the shots, and everyone else accepts his ideas, no matter how repugnant they may be.

It's going to be a long two years (or four, depending on the 2014 elections).

Who is the liar?

In last week's debate, Mitt Romney called Barack Obama on his lies. He made the pointed remark: “Mr. President, you're entitled as the president to your own airplane and to your own house, but not to your own facts.” But the President keeps maning the same pathetic charges that Romney called him on in that debate. And his people are charging Romney with lying!

A detailed treatment of a couple of those issues was made by Rich Lowry on the New York Post site:

Credit President Obama’s aides with discernment. Even before the first presidential debate was over, they knew they needed to come up with an excuse, and fast. They settled on one they haven’t stopped repeating: Mitt Romney lied his way to victory.

The president would’ve rebutted Romney’s gross deceptions, except he was too focused on answering questions about the country’s future and too taken aback by Romney’s brazenness to answer in real time. Although once he had a day or two and his witty rejoinders were cued up in a teleprompter, he was absolute hell on Romney.

The case that Romney lied so brazenly that it undid the president rests, first, on the idea that the Republican misrepresented his own tax-reform plan. Obama said that Romney proposes to cut taxes by $5 trillion over 10 years. Romney denied it. The president’s team responded, with its customary civility and nuance: “Liar!”

But this isn’t even a close call. Romney wants to cut income-tax rates 20 percent across the board and make up the revenue by closing loopholes and deductions. This isn’t a tax cut; it’s a wash. It’s been Romney’s plan ever since he proposed it during the primaries. It’s such a simple concept that only willful obtuseness keeps the president or his team from understanding it.

If Romney proposed a 1 percent across-the-board cut on rates and the elimination of all loopholes and deductions, surely Obama would accuse him of wanting to raise taxes, because people would be paying more in taxes despite lower rates.

In fact, this is the approach of the president’s own Simpson-Bowles debt commission: It suggested lower rates and fewer deductions such that the federal government would garner more revenue.

True, Romney hasn’t specified which deductions he’d cut, leaving that for a future negotiation with Congress. The Obama team takes this as license to accuse Romney of proposing to raise taxes on the middle class, a pure fabrication. When Obama made this charge in Denver, Romney proved — pace David Axelrod — that it’s possible to reply to falsehoods one-on-one during a live debate. Romney firmly said he wouldn’t raise taxes on the middle class and patiently explained why not.

Romney’s other whopping deception allegedly was his contention that his health-care plan covers people with pre-existing conditions. On this, too, he was on solid ground. To simplify, he wants to extend the current legal protection that exists in the employer-based insurance market to the individual market, and make it easier for people to buy insurance in that individual market. Again, this is nothing new, but has been an element in his health-care policy from the start.

When Obama aides say that the real Romney didn’t show up in Denver, what they really mean is that he failed to live down to their rank caricature of him, broadcast far and wide by the Obama campaign.

As he showed during an hour and a half of high-pressure TV, Romney is a capable and intelligent man who is ready to be president and has a substantial reform agenda. The Obama campaign’s response to his debate victory basically was, “Don’t believe your lying eyes — believe our super PAC ads.”

Democrats have convinced themselves that all the president needs to do to come roaring back in the next debate is rebut Romney’s dishonesties, which will expose his indefensible agenda and shallow reinvention. The president’s team evidently underestimated Romney once already. If it believes this “lying liar” interpretation of the debate — rather than pushing it in the media for lack of anything else to say — it will underestimate him yet again.

Mitt Romney bested President Obama on the merits in Denver. Anyone insisting otherwise simply can’t handle the truth.

In fact, there are a few points that I think Lowry should have expanded, though I will stay with one. As Lowry said, “Romney hasn’t specified which deductions he’d cut, leaving that for a future negotiation with Congress.” In fact, this kind of leaving things open to negotiation with Congress is something a President should consider important. A President does not always get his own way in total, nor should he. President Obama had the luxury in most of his first two years of a Congress that was willing to “roll over and play dead.” Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi were willing to be his accomplices in ramming through a health care bill that most Americans opposed, as well as other bills that were contrary to the nation's best interests. After the 2010 elections, with a Republican House and a more balanced Senate, the President found himself facing a Congress that was more eager to exercise its Constitutional prerogatives, and Obama wailed about “Republican obstructionism.” It is the President's duty to work with the Congress. Mitt Romney somehow found it possible, as Governor of Massachusetts, to work with an 87% Democratic legislature. Even in the Democrats' most favorable scenario, Congress will not be so dominated by their party. But I am sure that if Mitt Romney is President, he'll find a way to work with them and produce a tax code that Democrats and Republicans both — at least some of them — in Congress will vote for.

Let's look at the facts

There are Democratic-leaning blogs and sites that are claiming that it was Romney that was lying in Wednesday's debate, and specifically about that “$5 trillion tax cut.” President Obama used that figure on four occasions during that debate. As can be seen here, what is really the case is that Romney's plan cuts taxes by about that (actually a bit less, $4.8 trillion) over a 10-year period, but in addition eliminates a number of deductions and loopholes, which would make up for those cuts. And while Romney has failed to be specific about these, the whole point is that a President has to negotiate with Congress. Mitt Romney, I am certain, understands this, and expects to talk to Mitch McConnell, Harry Reid, John Boehner, and Nancy Pelosi about these details, to find out what can pass Congress. He is not Barack Obama, who figures that Congress will accept whatever he proposes.

And even the Obama campaign concedes that this “$5 trillion tax cut” charge is not true. Yet, I've seen a number of blogs that charge Romney with having chutzpah for his comment: “Mr. President, you're entitled as the president to your own airplane and to your own house, but not to your own facts.” But the facts are there, as I've just stated. So who is lying, and who is displaying chutzpah, there?

Mitt Romney's taxes

So Mitt Romney's tax return was just made public. And he paid a bit over 14% of his income in Federal tax. This is probably a smaller percentage than Warren Buffett's secretary. But one more thing came out: about 30% of his income was paid out to various charities.

Since money paid to charities goes to some of the same things that Government might otherwise need to support, and certainly is not available to Gov. Romney to help himself personally, it is just as if he'd paid nearly half his income in taxes. Only socialists like President Obama believe that Government is the only way we help each other. As John Podhoretz writes in his column,

Mitt Romney is an extraordinarily, remarkably, astonishingly generous man. A good man. Maybe even a great man.

I agree with Podhoretz's comment.

Bob Woodward's new book points out how incompetent President Obama is!

According to Bob Woodward's book, “The Price of Politics,” (reported by ABC News) there was almost an agreement between President Barack Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner that would have established the kind of budget compromise that some moderate blogs have advocated: a mixture of spending cuts and revenue enhancements.

The book … shows how close the president and the House speaker were to defying Washington odds and establishing a spending framework that included both new revenues and major changes to long-sacred entitlement programs.

But at a critical juncture, with an agreement tantalizingly close, Obama pressed Boehner for additional taxes as part of a final deal — a miscalculation, in retrospect, given how far the House speaker felt he'd already gone.

President Obama, obviously, had no impression how much pressure Speaker Boehner was under from his own conference — or at least from the “Tea Party” wing — and ended up exerting more pressure than the Speaker could take. He tried to call the Speaker, but Boehner took his time replying.

When Boehner finally did call back, he jettisoned the entire deal. Obama lost his famous cool, according to Woodward, with a “flash of pure fury” coming from the president; one staffer in the room said Obama gripped the phone so tightly he thought he would break it.

“He was spewing coals,” Boehner told Woodward, in what is described as a borderline “presidential tirade.”

“He was pissed…. He wasn't going to get a damn dime more out of me. He knew how far out on a limb I was. But he was hot. It was clear to me that coming to an agreement with him was not going to happen, and that I had to go to Plan B.”

But this may be a result of Obama's unwillingness to even contemplate the possibility that people might think differently from him. The ABC News article notes:

The failure of Obama to connect with Boehner was vaguely reminiscent of another phone call late in the evening of Election Day 2010, after it became clear that the Republicans would take control of the House, making Boehner Speaker of the House.

Nobody in the Obama orbit could even find the soon-to-be-speaker's phone number, Woodward reports. A Democratic Party aide finally secured it through a friend so the president could offer congratulations.

The problem was that Obama was learning on the job how to be President — the problem with having a President with so little experience. Obama simply has not got the kind of understanding of how Washington works to make compromises:

Obama found that he had little history with members of Congress to draw on. His administration's early decision to forego bipartisanship for the sake of speed around the stimulus bill was encapsulated by his then-chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel: “We have the votes. F--- 'em,” he's quoted in the book as saying.

The article continues:

Obama's relationship with Democrats wasn't always much better. Woodward recounts an episode early in his presidency when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid were hammering out final details of the stimulus bill.

Obama phoned in to deliver a “high-minded message,” he writes. Obama went on so long that Pelosi “reached over and pressed the mute button on her phone,” so they could continue to work without the president hearing that they weren't paying attention.

As debt negotiations progressed, Democrats complained of being out of the loop, not knowing where the White House stood on major points. Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, is described as having a “growing feeling of incredulity” as negotiations meandered.

“The administration didn't seem to have a strategy. It was unbelievable. There didn't seem to be any core principles,” Woodward writes in describing Van Hollen's thinking.

Now, Chris Van Hollen (who just happens to be my Congressman) is hardly someone I agree with on many things. But it's clear (although he'd be unlikely to say so now, in this election year, of course) that he thought that Barack Obama was simply clueless. And this passage in the report casts further aspersions on Obama's competence:

Woodward portrays a president who remained a supreme believer in his own powers of persuasion, even as he faltered in efforts to coax congressional leaders in both parties toward compromise. Boehner told Woodward that at one point, when Boehner voiced concern about passing the deal they were working out, the president reached out and touched his forearm.

“John, I've got great confidence in my ability to sway the American people,” Boehner quotes the president as having told him.

But after the breakthrough agreement fell apart, Boehner's “Plan B” would ultimately exclude the president from most of the key negotiations. The president was “voted off the island,” in Woodward's phrase, even by members of his own party, as congressional leaders patched together an eleventh hour framework to avoid default.

The scene shifts

Today, the Democrats will begin their convention in Charlotte. The rhetoric will be very different from what was said in Tampa last week. They will be defending the indefensible, in my opinion, but the incredible facts are that they will, mostly, be believing what they say.

Sometimes I wonder, when I see quotes from Democrats, whether we're on the same planet. Barack Obama may boast of “Obamacare,” but the fact is that the majority of the American people want it replaced by a different plan. He talks of Romney planning to “raise taxes on the middle class” to distribute in “tax cuts for the rich,” but nowhere is that mentioned in any Mitt Romney proposal — cleaning up tax loopholes, which Romney does favor, if anything disproportionally affects the rich. And tax brackets, under Mitt Romney's proposals, would go down for everyone.

Obama does not understand one thing: when you reduce tax rates, sometimes the government gets more revenue. In such cases, letting money remain in the hands of businessmen creates jobs, the newly-employed pay taxes on their income, and revenues go up enough to compensate for those lower rates. And people spend more, so those businessmen take in more and pay taxes on those higher revenues, so even though the tax rate goes down, the total tax paid can increase. This has happened time and again. The converse is also true. When you increase taxes, revenue can actually decrease — while reducing employment.

We need new leadership in Washington, but the incredible ideas we will hear coming out of Charlotte will try to convince the American people that we don't, that four more years of the kind of “leadership” that has driven our economy into the ground the past 3½ years is the recipe to cure our problems. There was a form of quack medicine called “homeopathy” based on the idea that “like cures like.” It was nonsense, but Obama's economics are a disease that the Democrats will propose curing by homeopathic means, it seems. Just listen to what they say in Charlotte. Obama has already said, about a month or so ago, “We tried that [meaning Romney's call to cut taxes and spending] and it didn’t work … Just like we’ve tried their plan, we tried our plan — and it worked,” and I say, “What planet are you on,” if you think his plan worked?

Obama's mischaracterization of Romney's tax plan

President Obama has criticized Mitt Romney's proposed tax plan's as “Robin Hood in reverse,” taking from those less well off to give breaks to the wealthy.:

Obama says Romney's tax plan would give tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans while forcing middle-class families to pay up to $2,000 a year in additional taxes.

The president cites a study by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center that says millionaires would receive a tax cut of approximately $250,000 a year if the former Massachusetts governor gets his way.

“He'd ask the middle class to pay more in taxes so that he could give another $250,000 tax cut to people making more than three million dollars a year,” Mr. Obama said.

The only thing is, that's total nonsense. Romney's plan does not raise taxes on anyone: it lowers them on anyone that would see any change at all.

As I read in Diana Furchtgott-Roth's column in the Washington Examiner:

What's the best way of trashing Mitt Romney's tax plan? In these days of class warfare, it's to say his plan would result in tax cuts for high-income earners but tax increases for everyone else.

That's what the Tax Policy Center, a nongovernmental think tank under the auspices of the left-leaning Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, reported last week.

But here's the trick — the TPC did not analyze the Romney proposal. Instead, it analyzed tax proposals not found at the Romney website. It also imposed its own set of conditions on the tax changes, such as requiring that they be “revenue-neutral.”

As a result of this manipulation, the TPC claims Romney's proposal would lead to tax relief for high-income filers and tax increases for everyone else. In fact, Romney's proposal does not call for a single tax increase.

In most of America, such claims would be dismissed as second-rate political mischief. In Washington, the TPC's claims are cited by leading politicians.

President Obama cited the Center's document last week at Rollins College in Florida, a battleground state. He said, “He's asking you to pay more so that people like him can pay less. So that people like me pay less.”

Donald Marron, director of the Center, told me he assumed the proposal was revenue-neutral because of comments made by Romney in the past, even though he admitted that revenue neutrality is not part of the tax proposal.

However, when the Congressional Budget Office or the Joint Tax Committee analyzes the effects of budget and tax legislation, they use written proposals, not sponsors' comments, taken in or out of context.

Had the Tax Policy Center been more meticulous, it would have noticed the simple description of the Romney tax proposal on his website. After describing the damage that high top marginal rates do to small-business hiring, the site states that Romney's plan would:

• Make a permanent, across-the-board 20 percent cut in marginal rates
• Maintain current tax rates on interest, dividends and capital gains
• Eliminate taxes for taxpayers with adjusted gross income below $200,000 on interest, dividends and capital gains
• Eliminate the death tax
• Repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax

Most fifth-graders could read this plan and see that it never once calls for raising taxes on anyone. Nor does the Romney tax plan call for giving tax cuts to high-income Americans before there are tax cuts for middle- and low-income Americans, as alleged by the TPC.

In fact, low-and middle-income earners would get tax cuts that upper-income Americans will not enjoy, such as a zero tax rate on income from dividends and long-term capital gains.

After falsely claiming the tax plan must be “revenue-neutral,” the TPC asserts that lower rates must be funded by getting rid of tax breaks such as “the mortgage interest deduction, the exclusion for employer-provided health insurance, the deduction for charitable contributions, and benefits for low- and middle-income families and children like the [earned income tax credit] and child tax credit.”

These draconian provisions are invented by the TPC to make Romney's tax plan look ridiculous. It is impossible to find them in the Romney plan.

Examiner readers can judge for themselves. Read the plan printed above. Does a 20 percent cut in your income taxes rate, and no taxes on dividends, interest, and capital gains for low- and middle-income earners, sound like a tax hike to you?

President Obama has no business attacking Mitt Romney for making tax proposals he never made. But he's never cared that much for the truth anyway.

A morsel of truth

Of course, when President Obama, in that now-famous campaign speech with the “you didn’t build that” line, said:

The point is, when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

there was a morsel of truth in what he said. There are some things we don’t do on our own. The point is, every dollar the Government takes from us to do these things is a dollar we can't control, and possibly use in a way that benefits us more. So it is important to look at what Government wants to spend our money on (and yes, it's our money, not the Government's) and decide whether we feel it's high enough in priority to justify Government's taking our money to use it on these things.

Here is where Pres. Obama gets it wrong. He decides what he thinks Government needs to spend, and then decides to raise taxes enough so that Government will have enough to spend on these programs. What ought to be the process is that a President decides what he would like Government to do, and then would weigh it against what the American people would be giving up if taxes were raised enough to enable these programs, and decide whether the American people would be better served by not having all these programs and instead using their money in ways that we all, individually, would view as more beneficial. And the people must all, individually, do a comparable weighing of alternatives. I might want Government to do something (like build a transit line) that benefits me and that I cannot, by myself, accomplish. Others do not see the benefits of the transit line. It is competition between these different assessments of benefits that leads to decisions as to what programs get to be initiated. But whatever they are, we must keep in sight the fact that other things — which might have been accomplished with the same money in private hands — will not get done if the money is taxed away.

And in this economy, one of those big “other things” that will not get done if Pres. Obama raises taxes on those he deems to be “too rich” is hiring of people by the businesses that many of these people own. And this means Pres. Obama's plans work against bringing our unemployment rates down.

And this is why Obama needs to be retired in November.

Perhaps he didn't mean it?

Some of President Barack Obama's supporters seem to be implying that when he said

If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

he didn't really mean what those words seem to imply. The “that” that Obama said “you didn’t build” means (they say) the roads and bridges that he had mentioned in an earlier sentence in that speech. Well, the Christian Science Monitor points out:

In fact, the most conservative attack on Mr. Obama’s clumsy phrasing leaves the words just as they are.

Here’s a fuller reading of Obama’s statement:

“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

“The point is, when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.”

As Representative Labrador pointed out on Thursday, taking the president at his word — that he meant not that government built American businesses but instead that government built and/or fostered the roads, Internet, and public safety necessary for business to flourish — is still ripe for conservative attack.

“It’s not the government’s money!” Labrador said. “It was business people who gave the government money so we could have roads and buildings and infrastructure. That is what is fundamentally deficient in this administration… He completely and fundamentally misunderstands what creates business, what creates a thriving economy.”

Referring to his colleague, Rep. Jeff Duncan (R) of South Carolina, who noted on the House floor that he drove some 60,000 miles building his business, Labrador noted that Representative Duncan “was paying for the roads that he was driving.”

“I want to know what government entity created a business that paid for those roads,” he said. “Not a single one!"

In other words, the money the government used to build the roads and develop the Internet came from somewhere. That somewhere was private enterprise — and some say that Obama’s inability to recognize that is his fatal flaw, economically speaking.

The socialist mindset of President Obama fails to see that the Government does not create wealth — it simply takes money from all of us and redistributes it to where it feels it can best be used.

And yet there is still another question. Suppose Pres. Obama didn't mean “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” to mean what those words manifestly mean. Isn't that a sign that Pres. Obama is not the great orator everyone says he is? He mangles his meaning so badly that you can't understand what he's trying to say. It is not the first time Obama has shown himself to have feet of clay. Earlier on, he said it would be “unprecedented” for the Supreme Court to rule that an act of Congress was unconstitutional — which it has been doing regularly since 1803. And way back in 2008, he said he had been to “fifty-seven states” — I wonder when all these new states joined the Union; I remember when Hawaii came in as the fiftieth, but I don't recall a single new state being admitted since then!

The President's knowledge of economics, of Constitutional law (a subject he [shudder!] taught), of United States geography, all have been shown to be flawed. And his conduct of the Presidency has brought the economy to a standstill. I just wonder why there are still people who support this manifestly unqualified man.

Warren Buffett's taxes

President Obama thinks he has been given a boost by a remark that Warren Buffett made about the tax laws allowing him to get away with paying a smaller effective tax rate than his secretary. The President now speaks of the "Buffett Rule" which would make everyone whose income was over a certain threshold pay at least as much of a percentage of their income as Buffett's secretary.

Of course, let us analyze this. First of all, even if the Buffett Rule were to go into effect, the additional revenue would not be more than a drop in the bucket as compared to the Federal deficit. All it would do is certify President Obama as a modern-day Robin Hood, stealing from the rich to give to the poor, and since there are more poor people than rich ones, he figures he gains votes by this scheme. Second of all, it gives Warren Buffett a good reputation — here he is, volunteering to pay more taxes! But, of course, he could do that more quietly and anonymously — simply by refusing to take all the deductions rhat tax law allows — the tax laws permit him to take these deductions; they do not require him to do so. So Buffett is simply doing this to give himself the image of generosity. Truly generous people are willing to do it without the fanfare.

I would say to Mr. Buffett: If you want to be generous, be generous with your own money — leave the other millionaires alone. It would be better to find ways of reducing the Government's need for funds, so that Mr. Buffett's secretary's tax bill could be reduced. After all, every dollar that the government takes from a citizen is $1 less that the citizen can control what it is spent on.