A Second Abolitionist Movement

One of the greatest stories told in American History - and a classic example of my point below regarding the rants of Jeremiah Wright and the inherent progressivism of the USA - is the story of the Abolition of Slavery. I've said before and I'll say again, Slavery as a past institution is not unique to the United States of America. However, I'm hard pressed to find a record of any nation in world history that has come to grips with it in the manner we have. We fought one of the most grizzly wars in the last 300 years over the evil of Slavery.

I know, I know, many people will come forward and claim that the US Civil War was about other things; state's rights, etc. But, at the heart of the matter, was the (justified) moral outrage over the institution of Slavery. It's unavoidable and that's a beautiful thing.

Its a great American Story and its some if its most principal cast members are people like Abolitionist John Brown - a free white man who gave everything to see the institution wiped from the American Landscape.

So, I've decided we need to launch a new Abolitionist movement here in the US - a movement to abolish the Capital Gains Tax.

Donald Luskin, keeper of the blog "The Conspiracy To Keep You Poor & Stupid", I'm sure will be the first to join this courageous new movement. He's said as much last August in an Op-Ed to the Wall Street Journal.

Says Luskin: "The cap-gains tax is a barrier to the investment of capital. Without it, capital will flow to investments that otherwise wouldn't have been made. The cost of eliminating the barrier is foregone revenues from that particular tax. But those revenues are small, usually deferred and non-recurring. In their place, government receives large and recurring revenues from corporate taxes, sales taxes, wage taxes and dividend taxes -- all generated by new economic activity."

Look, folks, its time to free investment from the bondage of Class Warriors. Read Luskin's piece in its entirety above. Its time to get rid of this growth killing tax entirely, once and for all. The Capital Gains Tax is evil. Let's wipe it from our nation's landscape before one more investor has to spend another day in its bondage. Our cause is Just.

The lead editorial today at IBD has an interesting sentence. "Tiny Hong Kong became a global economic powerhouse with its zero capital-gains tax." That same kind of power can be unleashed here if we get the nerve to say "no" to the Class Warriors who cling to this monster.

Let the fight begin here. End the Tyranny. Abolish the Capital Gains Tax. Free investors once and for all.

Keep This Woman Away From Our Economy

The copy and paste below, with bold emphasis belonging to me, is from the Club For Growth (linked to the right). If Hillary Clinton is able to freeze foreclosures, a couple of things will happen. First, and most importantly, Lenders will take less risk. They'll just tighten their requirements for approval of a mortgage. That means fewer people will have access to the money they need to buy homes. Only those with nearly flawless credit will be able to get a mortgage, because the risk won't be worth it for the lender. That'll impact the homebuilding industry. That'll impact the banking industry...... it will have a very damaging rippling effect. But you know what? It rings beautifully with ignorant populists who see lenders as villains. Classic Democrat. Classic Clinton. Second, if people can keep their homes without making mortgage payments, what is going to happen to the solvency of the Lender? They are out of pocket the cost of the mortgage and can't enforce their lien. If (and that's a big IF) Hillary wins the Presidency this year, start selling your stock in Lending institutions. Quick.

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Comrade Clinton Strikes Again

Washington – Hillary Clinton’s plan to deal with the housing crisis is a frightening picture of the kind of damage she could inflict on the economy.

Her four-point plan is a mixture of draconian government controls and taxpayer bailouts. Specifically, her call for freezing foreclosures and interest rates demonstrates a total disregard for contracts and the rule of law. Such a move can only result in a future contraction of credit—exacerbating the problem we’re currently in. Lenders will surely shrink away from lending when they know the terms of their loans can be changed to their detriment at any moment by government whim.

To make matters worse, this plan will likely have a far-reaching effect on the behavior of all consumer lenders, not just mortgage lenders. Auto, credit card, even small business loans will become harder to obtain as lenders react rationally to the increased risk of government-induced loss.

Clinton’s plan is also patently unfair. Ninety-eight percent of all home mortgages are not in foreclosure. The vast majority of Americans chose not to buy a house they couldn’t afford, but Clinton’s plan would force these responsible homeowners to pick up the tab for the 2 percent of irresponsible homeowners. Her plan rewards the imprudent and punishes the prudent.

“Not only will Hillary’s four-point plan fail to solve the current economic crisis, it will likely wreak new havoc on the American economy,” said Club for Growth President Pat Toomey. “Instead of reassuring the market, brazen government controls, like freezing foreclosures and interests rates, will spread fear like a virus throughout the business world. Even those industries not directly affected by the plan will fear they will be next on Hillary’s hit list. Access to credit will shrink precisely when we need it to grow. Borrowers will be rewarded for acting irresponsibly, while taxpayers will be penalized for acting responsibly, setting a bad precedent down the road. Businesses, responsible borrowers, and taxpayers should be very frightened by this plan."

The Ignorance of Jeremiah Wright

I've wanted to address this for about a week now and am just now finding the time.

The furor surrounding Barack Obama's association with the crazy and divisive Reverend Jeremiah Wright of the Trinity United Church of Christ here in Chicago has been all over the news. Unless, of course, you are a thoroughbred Xbox American, I'm sure you are familiar with the story of the nearly 20 year relationship that Ms. Illinois (Obama) has had with Wright, whom he first came to know as a Community Organizer in 1991.

There are many valid points that several pundits have already made in raising concern about Obama's links to Wright and the kooky and destructive theology of Black Liberation. Obama has tried his Bill Clinton-best to take both sides of the controversy, stating that he cannot disown Wright, but that he vehemently disagrees with Wrights more controversial statements.

For starters, I personally think that's a lie brought on for Political Expedience. Are we really to believe that Obama (as many have already pointed out) would sit and listen to this tripe every Sunday for nearly twenty years, donating thousands of dollars to the church, exposing his young and impressionable children to it, and allow this creep preside over his wedding ceremony had he not found agreement with Wrights sentiments? I'd say that is a very safe assumption and one that is reinforced by subtle Anti-American displays Obama has shown on the campaign, such as refusing to wear an American Flag pin on his lapel, or refusing to properly honor the flag during the National Anthem. To be sure, these acts in and of them self are not positive proof that Obama is in lock step with Wright's Anti-Americanism. But they sure don't bode well for the Senator's claim that he "profoundly disagrees" with it either.

As an orthodox evangelical Christian, I can personally attest to the strong bond between a pastor and his flock. Those who attend Christian Churches for years at a time develop a trust and certain ideological and spiritual vulnerability to those they call "pastor". My hope is that this is a wake up call to those across the political spectrum who support Obama yet love this country and want to entrust its stewardship to those who have its best interest at heart. Buyer beware, folks - look beyond the annoying God-in-the-flesh nonsense surrounding Obama (something that is very painful for me to witness) and see the freight train that we are on a collision course with if this nonsensical support for his candidacy continues.

All of that said, I want to address the sheer Biblical and Historical ignorance of Jeremiah Wright.

A common misperception among rabid Leftists is that those of us Right-of-Center who cherish this nation and want to advance its principals to the entire world, is that we think the United States of America is a "perfect nation". Nothing could be further from the truth.

The entire Christian Bible - when viewed systematically - is clear that sin in the natural state of all mankind (off the top of my head, Galatians 3:22). So to insinuate that any nation, comprised of fallen humanity and governed by fallen man is capable of being sinless is utterly laughable. There has been no nation in recorded humanity that has ever acted in complete justice to all men. I defy anyone to show me an example of any perfect nation in history.

Yet, this is what Jeremiah Wright and his malcontented ilk expect of the United States of America. I have a very hard time grasping the thought of a man sitting in the pulpit for forty years and not understanding the concept of Fallen Humanity and Imperfect Governance. When it is your profession to bring the understanding of Scripture to your congregation, and therefore it is your job to understand it thoroughly - how in the world can you expect perfection this side of eternity, in either a people or its government? Wright is appalled at Jim Crow and Slavery, yet ignores the blood that was shed in the 19th century and the risks that 20th Century citizens undertook rid the nation of these evils. Wright is angry about the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; an act that ended a war brought to us by militarists bent on enslaving everyone under their yoke. Yet he doesn't seem to grasp the generosity of the American occupiers of Japan after 1945; a generosity that has made Japan a peaceful nation and a world economic power. Wright wants God to Damn America because of her "sins" - expecting a perfection that is impossible this on earth. What a Biblically ignorant buffoon this man is.

The United States of America has its sins in history - and has always dealt with them. Simply put, a nation that has a free press, freedom of speech and a culture rich in a religion that extols its adherants toward service to God and fellow man is inherently progressive. The long struggles for social justice - an end to slavery and segregation, universal suffrage, and the like - have been undertaken by our nation during its lifetime..... and more change and battles for what is right are still to come. If Wright is really concerned about the plight of his flock, he should be grateful to live in a nation where he can influence people of power to understand the need for the justice that he seems to feel deprived of. Wright has the freedom to march, organize, and voice his opinion supported with facts and logic to turn the tide of public opinion, and thus government policy. Rather than asking God to Damn America, he should be thanking God that he was born in a nation as progressive as the United States. And, he should be working to change the things that are unjust, rather than spewing hate for the nation that many of his ancestors appreciated and fought for, even when they didn't have the freedoms Wright does.

Lastly, what good comes from filling his flock full of this hostility and resentment? How are their lives going to be improved by believing that it is impossible for them to get ahead due to racism? How has one Black American's life been enriched and their personal well-being benefited by being filled with this kind of poutful papp? People from all walks of life and all races have gone from rags to riches by investing in themselves and taking advantage of the opportunity life in America brings. Why doesn't Wright see this? Because it doesn't fit his molded ideology. And it doesn't empower him.

God Bless America, freedom and opportunity abounds for those that take advantage of it and don't waste their lives feeling sorry for themselves or inventing straw men to be obstacles. Are you listening, Jeremiah?

God Bless The Rich Guys

Ben Stein laments here the hard work involved in having wealth. Its a labor of love, though, Ben. We appreciate all your hard work at maintaining your weatlh - in doing so you benefit the economy in more ways than we can count. God Bless you and your efforts.

It Can't Be Said Enough

(h/t to the great Yogi Love of Red Planet Cartoons - go here and here for my take on the subject)

Posted in its entirety - from CNN Money, today.

Who gets rich off $3 gas - who doesn't
The guy running the service station makes just a few cents, while crude oil producers take the biggest chunk.

By Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney.com staff writer
Last Updated: March 14, 2008: 4:32 AM EDT
Just a few cents of every gallon goes to the gas station when you fill up - most goes to those that produce the oil.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Motorists may fume when forking over $3 a gallon at the local service station, but as it turns out, your local filling spot makes chump change from a gallon of gas.

So exactly who is getting rich?

Oil traders: While often blamed for pushing up prices, traders don't necessarily benefit from the high price of crude or gasoline; they profit from how much the price changes. Traders can get rich - as long as they bet correctly on whether prices will rise or fall.

For example, an investment bank that makes a bet that the price of oil will rise makes money when oil prices go from $95 to $100 a barrel - or $100 to $95 if it bet the price will fall - not on the difference between production cost and trading price.

"If you wanna keep your job, you gotta be more right than wrong," said John Kilduff, an energy analyst at the trading firm MF Global in New York, explaining how traders make their money.

Gas stations: A surprisingly small amount goes to the guy who runs the station.
Most service stations are independently owned and operated and take in between 7 and 10 cents for every gallon they sell, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
That 7 to 10 cents going to the gas station isn't even profit. Out of that, station owners still have to pay leases, workers, and other expenses - leaving them with a profit of just a few cents. For the service stations, most profit comes from selling coffee, cigarettes, food and other amenities.
These calculations are based off of EIA's most recent numbers, when gas was $3.04 a gallon. Gasoline hit another record nationwide average of $3.27 a gallon Thursday.

Taxes: The government takes about 40 cents right off the top, with about 18 cents going to the feds. State taxes vary widely, but the national average is about 22 cents a gallon. Most of this money is used to build and maintain roads (right).

Transportation: Getting the gas from refineries to service stations via trucks or pipelines - and the cost of storing it in large tanks - eats up another 23 to 26 cents per gallon.
Refining: About 24 cents a gallon goes to refining companies like Valero (VLO, Fortune 500), Sunoco (SUN, Fortune 500) or Frontier (FTO, Fortune 500) that specialize in turning crude oil into gas. Some companies like ExxonMobil (XOM, Fortune 500), Chevron (CVX, Fortune 500) and ConocoPhillips (COP, Fortune 500) also have refining operations.

Profits for refiners have been squeezed lately because the price they pay for oil has risen so much faster than the price they can sell the gas for. This helps explain why Big Oil companies -like Exxon, which actually buys more crude oil than it produces - haven't seen their profits rise as much as the price of oil.

Crude oil: This is the most expensive part of a gallon of gas. Of every gallon of gas $2.07 from every gallon of gas goes to producers of crude like Chevron (CVX, Fortune 500), BP (BP), and smaller outfits like Anadarko (APC, Fortune 500) and Marathon (MRO, Fortune 500), or national oil companies controlled by countries like Saudi Arabia, Mexico or Venezuela.
Crude currently trades around $110 a barrel, but breaking down the money in that barrel of oil is tough. Exploration and production costs, royalty payments - all a big part of $110 a barrel oil - vary widely country by country and project by project.

"It's difficult to generalize; there's a whole spectrum of costs," said Ron Planting, an economist with the American Petroleum Institute, an industry trade group.

They can range from $1 a barrel to produce crude in Saudi Arabia to over $70 a barrel to find, develop and pump oil in the deep water Gulf of Mexico or off the coast of Algeria, said Ann-Louise Hittle, an oil analyst with the energy consultants Wood Mackenzie.

EIA estimates it costs U.S. oil companies an average of about $24 a barrel to find, develop and produce oil worldwide, but that doesn't include costs like transportation, administration, or income taxes - which can be substantial. While Exxon made $40 billion in 2007, a 60% increase from 2004, it paid $100 billion in taxes and royalties.

Nonetheless, $40 billion - or any of the record profits seen by most oil companies over the last few years - is certainly a lot of money, and it has put Big Oil in lawmaker's cross hairs.
Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., has called the chief executives of the five biggest oil companies to testify on the industry's record profits on April 1st. Markey's office swears it's no April fool's joke.

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Addendum: Note above that Hargreaves says "$40 billion ....... is certainly a lot of money, and it has put Big Oil in lawmakers' cross hairs." This is an accurate statement, but $40 billion isn't an enormous profit if you consider that it is only 10% (industry standard) of the total revenue coming into to a given oil company. In other words, we need to have someone like Hargreaves reinforce what has been said over and over regarding profit - that its profit MARGIN that truly shows profit. If I sell a product for $100, but the raw materials etc needed to make the product cost me $80, then my profit margin is 20% (100-80 = 20/100 = 20%). I didn't make a hundred dollars, I made 20, a reasonable profit. If Exxon Mobil makes a $40 billion profit, the power whores and ignorant populists pound the table in anger, not realizing that it costs Exxon Mobil $400 billion (if their margin is 10 percent, as we've demonstrated) to generate that profit through procurement, exploration, transit etc.

Don't focus on the $40 billion. Focus on the profit margin.

Worried About America's Image in the World? Then Stand Behind NAFTA and Free Trade Obligations

There was a fantastic piece at IBD Editorials on 2/28 addressing the "chest thumping" of Obama and Hillary Clinton regarding the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). There were a couple, actually, one also on 2/29. Go here and here, I recommend them highly.

I'm not going to allow myself to get sidetracked from my main point by pointing out that it was Hillary's husband in 1994 that was the principal proponent of NAFTA. That hypocrisy and the media's seeming lack of interest in it is for another discussion.

What I am going to talk about is the disconnect that exists with the Democrats' attitude on Free Trade (namely, NAFTA) and their concern with "the US's Image in the World."

They seem to be obsessed with world opinion about the US. Yet, they have no problem pulling the plug on Free Trade agreements that are a boon to foreign, developing economies like Mexico. It really goes hand in hand with my earlier gripe about the Contemporary Left's concern for the starving children of the world, yet if they are given the opportunity to upgrade the quality of life of the starving children of the world - through Free Trade and Capitalism - they harrumph.

Add to that paradox, the vacuous words of the Contemporary American Left regarding NAFTA. As with starving children, if they are really concerned about America's image in the world, they wouldn't be jockeying for an opportunity to be the next President to pull the plug on these critical agreements with foreign Nations.

In sum, stop bitching about world poverty and stop bitching about world opinion if you want to pull the plug on Free Trade agreements, Democrats. You can't have it both ways.

Labels

About a week or so ago, I caught a snippet of the Rush show, when a couple of different callers were discussing the political spectrum. You can read the entirety of the bit here.

Last March, I shared my thoughts here at JG&AH about labels in a post entitled "Progressive? Don't Flatter Yourself." Where Limbaugh and I definitely agree is that Right and Left, Conservative and Liberal - and especially progressive - are often misunderstood and certainly misapplied.

I think we depart at that point. In the discussion linked above, Limbaugh puts forth the idea that the political spectrum is a circle, and that extremes end in totalitarianism, whether on the Right or on the Left. I've also heard Rush in the past use the term "liberal" as a universal term, stating that a "liberal is a liberal" irrespective of nationality (at the time he was addressing comments made by Europeans, critical of US Foreign Policy. I want to address both of those points.

For starters, I prefer the traditional linear concept of a political spectrum. Whether or not either end can end in tyranny is irrelevant to the concept of the spectrum (by the way, he's right, either end can end in tyranny). The spectrum ranges from the far right - Reactionary, or the ardent defender of the status quo, to the Radical, who casts aside the status quo at all costs. Its important to note that Reactionaries can actually be retrogressive, or wishing for an archaic policy of the past.

The important thing to understand about the political spectrum is this; and I think this is where Rush falls a little short. The entire political spectrum is relevant to the culture in which it describes.

I describe myself as right-of-center, politically speaking. However, in the Islamic Republic of Iran I would be considered - rightfully - as a liberal bordering on radical. Ditto Communist China and the Former Soviet Union. This is why terms "liberal" and "conservative" are monikers I like to avoid using. They're not always accurate, and can be misleading. In fact, "Right and Left" on the political spectrum can be misleading as well. When I refer to the Ted Kennedys and Nancy Pelosis of the world, I refer to them as succinctly as I can by calling them "The Contemporary American Left".

In my post from last March (linked above) I grind my biggest ax with labels by pointing out the absurdity for the Kennedys and Pelosis referring to themselves as "Progressives". There is nothing Progressive about the modern Democrat Party in America. What progress can possibly come from clinging to appeasement of tyrants, class envy and Great Society Welfarism? History in the last fifty to sixty years has show us - none. Yet the Democrats cling to these concepts like a Titanic survivor clinging to a life ring.

My point? Lets be careful with Labels.