politics

Bill to Cut Abortion Funding Kneecapped by Tone-Deaf Ignorance of Left-Wing Playbook

Calvin Freiburger abortion, abortion funding, big government, Daily Beast, evil, GOP, House of Representatives, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Left, liberalism, Michelle Goldberg, politics, rape, spending, strategy, stupidity
@font-face { font-family: “Cambria”; }@font-face { font-family: “ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W3”; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; font-size: 12pt; font-family: “Times New Roman”; color: windowtext; }p { margin: 0in 0in 10pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 11pt; font-family: “Times New Roman”; color: black; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } @font-face { font-family: “Cambria”; }@font-face { font-family: “ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W3”; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; font-size: 12pt; font-family: “Times New Roman”; color: windowtext; }p { margin: 0in 0in 10pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 11pt; font-family: “Times New Roman”; color: black; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }
Good politicians need firm principles, the courage to stick with them, and the common sense not to kneecap their efforts right out of the gate. You’d think that last part would go without saying…but you’d be wrong.
Case in point: Republican Congressman Chris Smith and Democrat Congressman Daniel Lipinski have introduced H.R.3, which seeks to further restrict federal funding for abortion. Under existing law, public money may be used for abortions sought due to rape or incest, but the new bill would only cover cases of “forcible rape.” LifeNews.com reports that bill is meant to “roll into one permanent law all of the many provisions and riders attached to the various bills funding the federal government that are passed each year,” eliminating the need to re-fight the same battles annually.
This, predictably, has many leftists shrieking that conservatives are trying to define rape down. At the Daily Beast, pro-abortion zealot Michelle Goldberg hysterically condemns the “GOP Abortion Bill” (no mention of its Democrat co-sponsor):

Victims of statutory rape—say, a 13-year-old girl impregnated by a 30-year-old man—would be on their own. So would victims of incest if they’re over 18. And while “forcible rape” isn’t defined in the criminal code, the addition of the adjective seems certain to exclude acts of rape that don’t involve overt violence—say, cases where a woman is drugged or has a limited mental capacity. “It’s basically putting more restrictions on what was defined historically as rape,” says Keenan.
Beyond that, says Keenan, the bill would give states the option of refusing Medicaid coverage for all abortions, even in the most brutal of rape cases, or when a medical complication leaves a woman’s life at risk.
These effects are only horrendous to those who can’t envision people managing to do anything without the government subsidizing it (plus those who ignore the part about dead babies). But the bill manifestly does not bar anyone from getting an abortion for any reason; it simply restricts the circumstances under which you can make your fellow citizens fork over money for that abortion.

Because of other provisions of H.R. 3, the bill’s restrictions would also affect women who don’t qualify for Medicaid or work for the federal government. During the debate over health-care reform, Bart Stupak and Joseph Pitts put forward an amendment that would have banned health-insurance policies that cover abortion, as 87 percent do, from participating in the proposed health-insurance exchanges. The Stupak-Pitts amendment would have created an overwhelming incentive for private plans to drop abortion coverage in order to be eligible for government subsidies.
It was defeated, but the new bill, H.R. 3, goes far beyond it—NARAL calls it “Stupak on Steroids.” Under the new bill, policies that cover abortion would be ineligible for the tax breaks that individuals and small businesses get when they purchase insurance. It essentially imposes a new tax on the vast majority of health-care plans unless they drop abortion coverage, even for some victims of sexual assault.
Um, Michelle? This is one of the points conservatives were trying to get across to your side during the health care debate: the less you make health care dependent upon government subsidies and beholden to government dictates, the less need there is to argue over what should or shouldn’t be funded—in a truly free market, abortion coverage would be one of many things some companies would insure, others wouldn’t, and consumers could decide accordingly.
Goldberg concludes with a warning that H.R.3 indicates a “startling new extremism in the GOP,” a party “that is willing to go further than most people realize to force women to bear children against their will.” This is pretty pedestrian feminist garbage—right-wingers are going further right all the time, evil men want to control you, and pay no attention to that ultrasound behind the curtain—but what’s unique here is her accusation that the bill “will send a message to all women that certain kinds of sexual assault don’t count as rape at all.” And she’s not the only one.
On the merits, it’s obviously not true—the bill does nothing to change the way rape is investigated, prosecuted, or punished. Alleging that someone doesn’t care about rape is about as vicious and dishonorable as politics can get, yet this brand of defamation is apparently exempt from the new culture of civil discourse demanded of us in the wake of the Tucson shooting.   
The optics, though, are another matter. Targeting remaining tax subsidies for abortion is a worthy goal, but Smith and his colleagues should have expected that going after the rape exception was going to be met with a tough counteroffensive. That doesn’t mean you don’t do it, but it does mean that you either confront the issue head-on or you don’t—trying to split the difference and float new definitions for different kinds of rape, no matter how narrow or valid the legal purpose, was just asking for trouble, and should have been recognized as such right away.
Chris Smith is no rookie; he’s a fifteen-term Republican lawmaker who really has no excuse for not being more familiar with left-wing tactics. Let this be a lesson to the current Congress’s newly-elected Tea Party candidates: don’t be afraid to stick up for your principles, but pay attention to the other side. Learn to identify the openings they exploit. Most of their venom is unavoidable and can’t destroy those with the truth on their side; the true danger to conservative principles comes from self-inflicted wounds.

New on NewsReal – Maybe America Could Use a Muslim Sitcom After All

Calvin Freiburger bigotry, Hollywood, Islam, Islamofascism, Left, NewsReal, political correctness, politics, religion, TV

My latest NewsRealBlog post:

Remember Katie Couric’s insipid suggestion that Americans needed a Muslim version of The Cosby Show to help us get over our seething Islamophobia? It earned derision in the blogosphere for its condescending view of the country as a hive of bigotry and its refusal to give the Islamic world any share of the blame for Islamic image problems, but PopEater reports that the idea is picking up steam among Muslims in the television industry:

“We want to see a typical Arab-American family that is just like every other family in America,” said Arab-American comedian Dean Obeidallah, who has developed a pilot for Comedy Central. “Television has had the ability to demonize Muslims and Arabs, but we realize that it also has the ability to humanize us.”

Couric’s suggestion might not be as radical or as far off as her critics decried. In fact, Muslim-American writers say that broadcast and cable networks are starting to be more receptive to scripts prominently featuring both Arabs and practitioners of Islam. A decade-removed from the September 11th terrorist attacks, television may finally be ready to portray Muslim-Americans as more than terrorists and taxi cab drivers.
“Hollywood would definitely embrace a Muslim ‘Cosby Show’ with one caveat: It would have to be really good. It’s the one factor that has linked shows about minorities like the ‘Cosby Show’ or even ‘Will & Grace.’ Currently, I believe Americans are open to any minority as long as the show speaks to universal human truths and makes them laugh,” said Muslim-American Hollywood television and movie producer Tariq Jalil, the executive producer of the comedy ‘Marmaduke.’ [Emphasis added.]

That’s true—as we discussed on January 3, neither the words nor the deeds of the American people indicate hostility toward American Muslims—and it’s nice to hear Jalil acknowledge what Couric didn’t, but that also undermines the alleged need for more Muslim programming in the first place.

Read the rest on NewsRealBlog.

New on NewsReal – The Left’s Attack On Palin’s Response to the Tucson Tragedy Is All About Appeasement, Not Gun Imagery

Calvin Freiburger dishonesty, extremism, Gabrielle Giffords, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Left, liberalism, NewsReal, personal attacks, politics, rhetoric, Sarah Palin, violence

My latest NewsRealBlog post:

In the wake of this weekend’s shooting in Arizona, the opportunists of the Left barely waited for the bodies to cool or for confirmation of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ fate before pouncing on what simply had to be the atrocity’s root cause: Sarah Palin. Even though indications of culprit Jared Loughner’s true mindset started appearing on the very day of the shooting, agenda-driven vultures proceeded to lecture Palin on everything from what she needed to say to the proper level of remorse she needed to display.

On Wednesday, the former governor responded, in a stirring statement that mourns for the victims, defies her persecutors, and affirms the strength of American democracy:

If you don’t like a person’s vision for the country, you’re free to debate that vision. If you don’t like their ideas, you’re free to propose better ideas. But, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.

There are those who claim political rhetoric is to blame for the despicable act of this deranged, apparently apolitical criminal. And they claim political debate has somehow gotten more heated just recently. But when was it less heated? Back in those “calm days” when political figures literally settled their differences with dueling pistols? In an ideal world all discourse would be civil and all disagreements cordial. But our Founding Fathers knew they weren’t designing a system for perfect men and women. If men and women were angels, there would be no need for government. Our Founders’ genius was to design a system that helped settle the inevitable conflicts caused by our imperfect passions in civil ways. So, we must condemn violence if our Republic is to endure.

As I said while campaigning for others last March in Arizona during a very heated primary race, “We know violence isn’t the answer. When we ‘take up our arms’, we’re talking about our vote.” Yes, our debates are full of passion, but we settle our political differences respectfully at the ballot box – as we did just two months ago, and as our Republic enables us to do again in the next election, and the next. That’s who we are as Americans and how we were meant to be. Public discourse and debate isn’t a sign of crisis, but of our enduring strength. It is part of why America is exceptional.

Of course, being Sarah Palin, she’s damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t, and so the Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz (who admits the initial attacks against her were “unfair”) has panned the speech as not presidential enough:

Blood libel, for those who are not familiar, describes a false accusation that minorities—usually Jews—murder children to use their blood in religious rituals, and has been a historical theme in the persecution of the Jewish people.

Had Palin scoured a thesaurus, she could not have come up with a more inflammatory phrase.

Yes, because when you’ve been defamed as an instigator of multiple homicide by people who know better, the important thing to do is ensure you don’t rub anyone the wrong way.

Read the rest at NewsRealBlog.

Liberal Lies About Political Violence – Another Needed Reminder

Calvin Freiburger dishonesty, evil, extremism, hypocrisy, Left, liberalism, lying, personal attacks, politics, violence

Hat tip to Eternity Matters for this post at Verum Serum, which reminds us that the Left’s evil, libelous exploitation of death is nothing new:

  • They couldn’t deny that Joe Stack (who flew his plane into an IRS bldg.) quoted the Communist manifesto favorably and disliked George Bush, but labeled him the “Tea Party terrorist” anyway.
  • They couldn’t deny that Richard Poplawski’s only connection to Glenn Beck was that he was disappointed in Beck’s debunking of a conspiracy theory he believed in. They continue to suggest Poplawski was a fan.
  • They couldn’t deny that Pentagon shooter J. Patrick Bedell was a registered Democrat and a 9/11 Truther who disliked Bush, but they wanted him to be a Tea Partier as well.
  • They couldn’t deny that Clay Duke was a leftist inspired by a left-wing movie produced during the Bush years, so they mostly said nothing at all.

I’m leaving out a bunch more. The census worker’s death who was blamed on the right, but which turned out to be suicide. The “right-wing” shooter at the Holocaust museum who turned out to hate Christianity and Fox News. And now the latest on the Giffords shooting is that Loughner may have been anti-Semitic and targeting her because she is Jewish. Generally speaking which party is more supportive of the Jews and Israel and which one is regularly accused of being beholden to Jewish interests? The group Loughner is believed to have been part of also supports SB1070, but Giffords was known to be tough on border control, so how would shooting her advance that agenda? Once again, we’re not supposed to look that closely or ask if any of it makes sense. We’re just supposed to feel outrage at the right targets.

With every new incident the left launches into a fresh public fury and then when the facts come in they never step back or apologize, they just move on to the next “fake but accurate” story. The meme they are pushing survives by leap-frogging from lie to lie, often stealing unearned outrage from cases that could more easily be called left-wing violence. I appreciate the calm voices on the right that want to avoid politicizing this or any tragedy, but frankly I don’t know how they do it in the face of this sort of endless propaganda effort by the left.

The Tucson Shooting and the True State of American Political Discourse (Updated)

Calvin Freiburger bigotry, blogosphere, conservatism, debate, Democrats, dishonesty, evil, extremism, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, hypocrisy, Left, mainstream media, media bias, politics, responsibility, tone, violence

Bill Clinton. Keith Olbermann. Chris Matthews. Dick Durbin. Scott Feldstein. Jay Bullock. David Frum. Paul Krugman. The New York Times. Jonathan Alter. Bob Kerrey. James Clyburn. Joan Walsh. Robert Brady. Jon Justice, Jane Fonda, Michael Moore, Patton Oswald, Elizabeth Banks, Roger Ebert, John Legend, Josh Groban. Markos Moulitsas. Stuart Shapiro. Patrick Kennedy. Chris Liebenthal. John Kerry. Ed Schultz and Bill Press. Clarence Dupnik. Aaron Mehta.

This is but a partial list of politicians, journalists, bloggers, and celebrities who have chosen to use the horrific shooting in Tucson – which left six people dead, including a little girl, and a Congresswoman fighting for her life – as an opportunity to condemn conservatives and Republicans for allegedly inflammatory rhetoric. Some explicitly claim figures such as Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin are culpable for Jared Loughner’s actions, while others insinuate they are dangerously cultivating the sort of hatred and fear that could trigger similar acts in the future. *

Never mind that the perpetrator’s mentally-disturbed, violent tendencies are unrelated to politics. Never mind that the political indicators in his record, if anything, suggest hostility to God and an affinity for radical leftism.  Never mind that his hatred of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had nothing to do with her or her party’s policies.

Jared Loughner thinks in gibberish, processes what he sees and hears in gibberish, and acts on gibberish. Yet we’re asked to hang our heads in shame about an alleged cause-effect relationship that leads from Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin straight to Loughner’s trigger finger?

Bull. I get the intent behind respectfully critiquing this line of attack as Allahpundit does, but doing so misses the point. The point is: this record has already been played time and time again. It’s broken. The people using this to smear conservatives know better. Some of the more shameless ones, like Frum and Feldstein, admit as much—they acknowledge Loughner’s real motives yet proceed to say we should use the opportunity to bash the Right’s “dangerous, irresponsible rhetoric” anyway.

None of this is sincere. We know because these leftist lies about conservatives are nothing new. When a Communist circulated Obama-as-Hitler posters, conservatives were blamed. MSNBC ran selective footage of a black man with a gun, to characterize him as a potentially trigger-happy white supremacist. Leftists have publicly advocated impersonating Tea Partiers. The media misrepresents polls to defame Tea Partiers. Phony quotes attributed to prominent conservatives are disseminated without hesitation.

We know because we have a decade’s worth of hatred, terrorism, anger, bigotry, dishonesty, and violence-inciting from scores of left-wing activists, celebrities, journalists, and public officials on the record. We have violence committed by leftists against conservatives, and violence committed by radical Islamists, for which leftists have a different standard. The online savagery of leftist commenters is the stuff of legend.

If any of these lying, two-faced, murder-exploiting bastards were even remotely concerned about the “tone” of American politics, they would have piped up when it was their side—their fellow travelers, their elected leaders, their favored media personalities—doing the “coarsening.” But with rare exception, they either ignore it outright, make excuses for it, or tell bald-faced lies about their side’s filth coming from “marginalized, unimportant people whose voices don’t carry too far.”

Sure. “Marginalized, unimportant people” like prominent MSNBC commentators Schultz and Olbermann. Like Rep. Alan Grayson, who Obama has showered with praise. Like the current Senate Majority Leader. Like Sen. Dick Durbin. Like Sen. Robert Byrd. Like Rep. Keith Ellison. Like the late Ted Kennedy. Like former DNC chair Terry McAuliffe and numerous other Democrat officeholders. Like former President Jimmy Carter. Like current President Barack Obama. Nah, those “voices don’t carry too far” at all…

You want to know why America’s got problems? Why our political discourse seems so degraded, so futile? Re-read the names comprising the first paragraph, and you’ll have one of the biggest answers. The answer isn’t that we don’t scrupulously follow arbitrary rules of decorum. The answer is that the conduct of bad people in government, in the media, and in the blogosphere has gone unchallenged for far too long. We criticize their misconduct one day, yet we smile at them and act as if it never happened the next. We’re so eager to demonstrate our reasonableness, our maturity that we keep reaching out to the other side, no matter what they do. It never seems to occur to us that they might be giving us a glimpse at their souls.

But these cretins—so consumed by hatred and bias, so devoid of morality, that they’ll exploit murder to hurt their political enemies—bring shame upon their professions and upon our country. Treating these smears like they’re sincere concerns legitimizes them, and guarantees that we’ll see more of this defamation in the future.

Enough. It’s time to stop pretending the participants of this smear campaign are decent people who’re simply misguided. It’s time to stop extending olive branches. To stop pretending it’s respectable to cast votes for them.  To stop giving their blogs and publications our attention and business.

And given the topic, let me be perfectly clear, to preempt anyone who would consider twisting my words against me: this is not a call to violence. The only just response to even evil speech is to exercise your own freedoms of speech and free association. To respond with physical force would be a failure of our human capacity for self-control, a violation of our foes’ God-given, unalienable rights, a betrayal of our respect for the rule of law as citizens in a free society, and a vote of no confidence in our ability to solve our problems through the public discourse and the democratic process.

This much is true: American political discourse is sick. How we react to the murder-exploiters among us will reveal whether or not we’re finally serious about healing it.

* UPDATE: The second paragraph has been modified from its original version to more accurately reflect the caveats made by some of those named. In the comments, Scott Feldstein requests that I remove his name entirely. That’s not going to happen, but his complaint did convince me that this change was in order, because I value truth and accuracy regardless of which political agendas they advance or hinder.

New on NewsReal – In Mocking John Boehner, David Letterman Derails a Valuable Conversation About Statesmanship

Calvin Freiburger Boehner, crying, GOP, leadership, Letterman, media, NewsReal, politics, TV

My latest NewsRealBlog post:

For all of the ways in which contemporary society claims to have broken free of stereotypes, there’s still one sure-fire way for men to raise eyebrows: cry in public. John Boehner, the new Speaker of the House, is learning that the hard way. On 60 Minutes, the GOP leader tearfully confessed that he can’t bear to go to schools and see bright-eyed children running about, because the thought of those youngsters not finding the American Dream is too much to handle.

On Monday night, Late Show host David Letterman had a field day with Boehner’s emotions:

“I started sobbing and I thought, why am I crying in a double cheese…It was the Valium, so it leads me to believe…I’m not suggesting he’s using drugs,” Letterman said. “I’m suggesting, what I’m suggesting, is there has been, there has been trauma in this man’s life that he has struggled with, and that’s why he’s always sobbing.”

Seeming to justify the concept of men crying, Williams referenced the sadness he felt when Tim Russert died and the World Trade Center

was attacked.
“I’m not suggesting that he’s anything less than masculine, I’m suggesting he needs some sort of counseling,” Letterman said. “This guy can’t get in an elevator, he starts to sob.”

Letterman is one of the nastiest left-wingers around—remember his “jokes” about Sarah Palin looking like a “slutty flight attendant,” laughing about “crazy-looking foreigners entering the U.N.,” and “finally” meeting “one of those Jewish people Mel Gibson’s always talking about”; or about her daughter Willow having sex with Alex Rodriguez? So it’s to be expected that he’d use the waterworks to suggest that Boehner might suffer everything from a substance abuse problem to psychological trauma. It’s good to know that this is the level of class and responsibility CBS’s execs and audiences alike are comfortable with.

Read the rest on NewsRealBlog.

Yes, Sarah Palin Is a Social Conservative – And Conservatives4Palin Is Off Its Meds

Calvin Freiburger blogosphere, conservatism, Conservatives4Palin, cult of personality, GOP, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, partisanship, politics, RINOs, Sarah Palin, social conservatism, Tea Party

Hat tip to Lisa Graas for linking to one of the most mind-boggling blog posts I’ve seen in a good long while. It seems Chris Cillizza, in an overview of the 2012 GOP field, hurled an absolutely unfathomable insult at Sarah Palin: he called her a…a…social conservative!

While Palin has spoken forcefully against President Obama’s fiscal policies, her rise to prominence has largely been built on very strong support among social conservatives.

Doug Brady at Conservatives4Palin is very, very upset about this:

This simply makes no sense. Just because the Lamestream Media concocted a phony “Sarah Palin is a religious fanatic who thinks dinosaurs roamed the earth just last week” narrative the moment McCain selected her doesn’t make it so, and Tea Partiers know this (unlike, evidently, Washington Post pundits). Indeed her entire political career has been based on fiscal, not social, conservatism. To be sure, she is personally a social conservative, but that did not figure prominently, if at all, in any of her political decisions.

The issue, then, isn’t that Cillizza insulted Palin, but that he innocuously identified her as something Brady considers contemptible. To normal people, “social conservative” denotes a handful of political views, chief among them opposition to abortion and gay marriage. But when Brady hears it, his mind immediately jumps to “religious fanatic who thinks dinosaurs roamed the earth just last week.”

If you wanna argue Palin’s tenure as Alaska governor was defined by fiscal matters, fine. If you wanna argue she’s devoted the bulk of her commentary since then to small government and economics, fine. But make no mistake, Palin is indeed a social conservative (the “normal people” variety, not the “religious fanatic” one). Palin’s always embraced the pro-life movement, with many of her fans inspired by her choosing life for baby Trig, despite his Down Syndrome. She supports the Federal Marriage Amendment. And she’s freaked out leftists with her discussion of the Founders’ faith in God.

Anecdotally, I have attended several Tea Party events. Everyone I have spoken to has the highest regard for Governor Palin…due to her fiscal conservatism. In fact, none of the Palin supporters I know (and there are many), including myself, could be characterized as social conservatives. Her appeal is to libertarian leaning fiscal conservatives because that is how she has governed.

Wait a minute. Is this guy – a die-hard supporter Sarah Palin – really claiming not to have ever encountered pro-lifers or marriage defenders among her supporters? Really? Under what scenario is this plausible? In what universe is this tool not lying?

This is simply bizarre – Doug Brady opposes Palin on social issues, yet defends her from an imaginary attack as if they’re on the same page. Is he such a diehard Palin fan that he simply can’t accept that his heroine parts ways with him on anything significant?

I like Sarah Palin, but clowns like this don’t do her any favors. Cults of personality aren’t healthy, no matter who they coalesce around.

Around the Web

Calvin Freiburger blogosphere, Bolton, Bradley Manning, China, Cuba, health care, Herman Cain, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Malkin, politics, pro-life, treason

Herman Cain for President: the real deal?

Not all pro-lifers fit the profile you’ve probably been given.

Traitor Bradely Manning has gripes about the room service in the brig. Boo freaking hoo.

Michelle Malkin takes on the ACLU for taking on Catholic hospitals.

John Bolton explains how to deal with China; American Power has the video.

Cuban healthcare’s not so bad…PBS says so!

New on NewsReal – Yet Another Reason ObamaCare Is Even Worse Than You Think

Calvin Freiburger Barack Obama, big government, bureaucracy, Democrats, health care, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Left, liberalism, NewsReal, politics

My latest NewsRealBlog post:

I don’t think this is quite what outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wanted the American people thinking about when she said we needed to pass ObamaCare to “find out what’s in it,” but a new Daily Beast column by Shikha Dalmia of the Reason Foundation is a perfect example of why that statement rightfully scared people half to death. Dalmia takes a look at aspects of the “reform” that haven’t gotten much attention thus far, but threaten to transform American healthcare into “one big entrapment scheme”:

[I]n an effort to offset [the “doc fix’s”] $20 billion price tag, it has included a little twist to squeeze working families called “exchange recapture subsidy.” Under this provision, the government will go after low-wage families to return any excess subsidies they get under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

When the government hands out subsidies, it will use a household’s income in the previous year as the basis for guessing what the household is qualified to get in the current year. But if the household’s income grows midyear, the subsidy recapture provision will require it to repay anywhere from $600 to $3,500, compared to the $450 that the law originally called for.

This will make it very hazardous for poor working families to get ahead. In the original law, the loss of subsidy with rising income already meant absurdly high effective marginal tax rates—the implicit tax on every additional dollar of income earned. How high? The Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon puts them at 229 percent for families of four who increase their earnings by an amount equal to 5 percent of the federal poverty level or $1,100. In other words, a family that added this amount to an income of $44,700 would actually see its total income fall by $1,419 due to the loss of subsidies.

The subsidy recapture provision—essentially a tax collection scheme—means that low-wage, cash-strapped families will have no escape from these perverse tax rates. Many of them will find themselves owing the government thousands of dollars in back taxes. Since it is unlikely that they will have this kind of money sitting around, they will face a massive incentive to either fudge their returns or work for cash to avoid reporting additional income. Either way, Uncle Sam will come after them, just as it does with recipients of the Earned Income Tax Credit, the negative income tax scheme that is the inspiration behind Obamacare’s subsidies. In 2004, EITC recipients were 1.76 times more likely to be audited than others, no doubt because it is easier for the government to recover unpaid taxes from poor people than “lawyered up” rich people.

Read the rest at NewsRealBlog.

New at NewsReal – Media Matters Grasps at Straws Trying to Pit Hannity Against Bush

Calvin Freiburger blogosphere, Bush, Congress, dishonesty, Hannity, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Media Matters, NewsReal, politics, Senate, taxes

My latest NewsRealBlog post:

Attempting to paint one political opponent as undermining another is an especially tempting line of political attack, sometimes so tempting that a propagandist will settle for the most contorted, threadbare argument to that effect. Such is the case with Media Matters’ latest attack on Sean Hannity. Seizing upon Hannity’s latest interview with GOP Congressman Steve King about Congress’ current tax bickering, Media Matters claims to have caught Hannity admitting that the Bush tax cuts were “madness”:

Speaking with Rep. Steve King about the estate tax, Hannity made the following complaint:

HANNITY: If you died last year it was 45 percent, if you die this year it’s zero percent, if you die next year, it could be 55 percent: Only Washington could think of this madness. 

That’s so true. Only in Washington could such a crazy plan be hatched. Only in the Bush White House, to be specific. Bush, and a Republican led Congress chose to have the Bush tax cuts “sunset” on the last day of 2010, largely because Republicans neglected to propose any way to pay for the hugely expensive cuts, and letting them expire after nine years mitigated the enormous price-tag that accompanied these cuts (because price estimates are calculated over a 10-year period). 

First, our leftist friends apparently hope none of their readers will stop to think about what a sunset provision is. Sunset provisions set a date by which a measure will expire, unless it’s reauthorized. Note well the last part: politicians know when something is going to happen well in advance, and have to act to decide whether or not to do anything about it.

Read the rest at NewsRealBlog.