Why The Dems Do Not Object To Tax Increases

I finally figured out why the Democratic Party is the tax and spend party, often advocating tax increases. Most politicians and most people for that matter don’t like the idea of paying taxes, especially when they think they are going for pork barrel spending and other rip-off expenditures.

But here’s the answer: Of course, they don’t mind. They simply don’t pay their taxes. We can start right at the top, with the new head of the Treasury Department, the man in charge of the IRS, Tim Geithner. He is an admitted tax cheat four years running. But like other leading Democrats he does pay up when he is finally caught either by the IRS or in the process of being vetted for a government job.

Then there is Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., head of the House Ways and Means Committee that writes our tax law. He’s been found to be delinquent on his taxes, and there have been calls for investigation and a resignation. How’s that for openers — the two who write the tax laws and who administer the IRS quite busy cheating on their taxes. How is that for the change we’ve all been waiting for?

And now comes former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., who has run into a problem for not paying $128,000 in income taxes on a car and driver given to him by the man running the company he was working for. He’ll be coming up with new taxes to pay for his universal health care proposals. He knew he owed the taxes, but waited until he was being vetted to pay up.

I guess I’d probably be more likely to favor taxes if I wasn’t paying them as I was supposed to.

Of course, I’d prefer tax cheaters to an attorney general of the United States who has a record of approving the pardoning of a batch of terrorists and a fugitive from justice. I don’t know what you have to do to get shot down. But by the time you read this column, Eric Holder will probably be confirmed.

What ever happened to House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi and her complaints about the culture of corruption? I’d say dear old Nancy could make a good case for her own party best exemplifying the party of the culture of corruption.

Start with the recently impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich who was trying to sell a Senate seat to the highest bidder. As he said, this “I got this thing is it’s f------ golden and I’m not giving it up for f---- nothing.” And that’ s just one corruption count. Although I guess you can expect corruption coming out of the corrupt Cook County Democratic Party machine … from which President Obama emerged. He played ball with the most corrupt political machine in America and never had the courage to lift one finger to reform it … even when asked to do so.

Another star in the constellation of corruption has to be former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer. That great Democratic Party leader at least wasn’t impeached. He resigned before he could even be impeached.

But that’s pretty good for corruption winners — the governors of two of the biggest states in the nation … Democrats all.

Speaking of governors, I almost forget Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson, of New Mexico. He was a candidate for president, served in the cabinet, and was nominated by President Obama for secretary of Commerce. He had to withdraw his name, when it turned up he was under a serious investigation in his home state for corruption.

I might add to the list the recently-resigned mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick, who resigned after he was caught lying to investigators about an affair he was having, and is now in jail. He should have talked to another great Democratic leader, former President Bill Clinton, who is an expert at lying under oath, lying about an affair, and getting away with it.

Here’s another good one involving allegation of bribery. What makes this one so interesting is that it involves the wife of Rep. John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who is trying to launch a witch hunt of former Bush officials such as Karl Rove. His wife, Monica Conyers, is a Detroit city councilwoman who is president of that council, and is caught up in a bribery investigation involving other members of the council. Now Rep. Conyers might be a little more tolerant of sinners after his wife goes through this wringer. But for now he is leading calls to investigate Karl Rove, a counselor to President George W. Bush, and others in the Bush administration. Geraldo Rivera reported that the feds have wire evidence of the bribery so he suspects those involved may be in deep trouble.

These Democratic wrongdoers who have already been impeached or who may be impeached should not worry. There’s a congressman who was once impeached while serving as a federal judge, Rep. Alcee L. Hastings, D-Fla. That impeachment process did not interfere with his ability to get elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

My favorite is the Democratic congressman who was caught with a refrigerator full of money, Rep. William Jefferson, D-La. He lost his last bid for re-election, and now is in the process of moving through the judicial system.

But to say the Democratic Party is the party of tax evasion and tax and spend liberals and is in the forefront of the culture of corruption doesn’t do it justice. It can also be viewed as the party that coddles terrorists, appeases genocidists, and is soft on defense. As promised, President Obama wants to slash the defense budget while stepping up the spending on abortion.

The party’s approach to Guantanamo and aggressive interrogation shows it is more in the business of coddling terrorists than in fighting them. It apparently wants to give them the legal rights of a U.S. citizen rather than what they deserve correctly classified as enemy combatants. It wants to shut down Guantanamo, and is so anxious to do so, President Obama ordered its closing even before he had figured out what to do with them. He also objects to aggressive interrogation, although we know that such interrogation produces intelligence that has saved the lives of Americans. President Obama’s first executive orders calls for the application of the Army Field Manual when it comes to interrogation. It calls for questioning that doesn’t make the questioned uncomfortable. I don’t think you would want to tell a kindergarten teacher not to ask questions that might make her students uncomfortable. But President Obama is clearly more interested in making terrorists comfortable than in protecting the homeland and the lives of Americans.

He wants to appease genocidists such as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the other leaders of Iran. He should know that the Europeans have been talking with him for many years with no success, and there is no reason to believe any negotiation with Iran will net anything but giving the nation more status in the world and more time to complete its work on nuclear weapons. It wants to negotiate on Iran’s help to terrorists, threats of genocide against Israel and production of nuclear weapons. How will that negotiation go? It is almost comical to contemplate. But this stance should surprise no one. In recent years, the Democrats have demonstrated they represent the part of retreat and defeat, appeasement and surrender. Remember, this is the party that said the war in Iraq was lost and the surge wouldn’t work … even before the surge started. And this is the party ready to cut and run in Iraq. This was a campaign promise. But you can be comforted knowing that President Obama has become very adept at breaking campaign promises.

We’ve already seen what the sweet talk to Iran will produce. The Iranians are now demanding that Mr. Obama apologize to them. The Iranian negotiations follow the old rule — what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine.

There’s more. The Democrats headed by President Obama seem to be in the process of becoming the Socialist Party. President Obama went on the record during the campaign as wanting to spread the wealth around. He is also proposing a massive “stimulus bill,” which is in fact a massive transfer of wealth and power to the government, almost assured of squeezing out a lot of free enterprise and market activity. It is a fraud with a thin layer of stimulus and a fat body of pork. President Obama seems to be in the process of damning capitalism and business at every chance. He even told companies that this is not the time for profit and bonuses. Give me a break. How silly should you get? Should Jeff Bezos, who heads a profitable Amazon.com, apologize for the fact that it is profitable? President Obama would seem to think so. And his vice president comes up with equally ridiculous ideas. He objects to the bonuses being paid some corporate executives and even said, “I’d like to throw these guys in the brig.” Newt Gingrich wondered why he wants to jail businessmen but has no outrage for the congressmen who share equal and perhaps greater responsibility for the financial meltdown. Maybe Vice President Joe Biden should be calling for the jailing of President Obama who was one of the leading recipients of money from the corrupt Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two agencies at the heart of the financial crisis. And what about jail for Sen. Chris Dodd who accepted a sweetheart deal from Countrywide, one of the culprits in the financial meltdown and was the No. 1 recipient of the Fannie and Freddie money.

Incidentally, if you want to understand the so-called stimulus bill, look at how it gives out money to reward special interests, lobbyists, and cronies, rather than to stimulate the economy. For example, there’s money in it for ACORN, the ultra-left-wing group that has been known for voter fraud and thuggery, and that has had close ties with Mr. Obama and his campaign. Investigations are now underway alleging that ACORN falsified thousands of voter registration documents. ACORN was also involved in pushing for the subprime loans that led to the current financial meltdown. The Obama campaign and the Democrats have no shame.

While you’re at it, you might also label President Obama and his Democratic Party as the party of hypocrisy. During the campaign, Mr. Obama said he was against earmarks and pork barrel legislation. Then his very first major legislative proposal is perhaps the biggest piece of pork barrel legislation in the history of the U.S. He calls for a new politics of bipartisanship. But he’s never demonstrated any bipartisan spirit on any significant legislation during his career in the Illinois Senate and the U.S. Senate. And now he talks bipartisanship, but stands by as the Democrats in the House ram a stimulus bill down the throats of the Republicans, giving them no say in the process. So Mr. Obama seems to think it’s enough to talk bipartisanship, but it is unnecessary to listen to the other side and strike compromises. He visited the Republicans in the House, but told Minority Whip Rep. Eric Cantor that he [Mr. Obama] won the election. That’s a euphemism for we’re going to do whatever we please as we control the White House and Congress and we won the election. Some bipartisanship. He doesn’t even seem to be able to talk the talk of bipartisanship and never seems to be able to walk the walk. Then he moralizes on the high ethics of his administration, and during the campaign even says there will be no lobbyists in his administration. He puts out a noble-sounding ethics document forbidding lobbyists. But what he meant was there will be no lobbyists unless we find we want certain lobbyists. He wasn’t even president a week and already brought two lobbyists into his administration at top spots — the number two man in Defense and the chief of staff of the secretary of the Treasury. So the rule comes down to no lobbyists, unless we find we want lobbyists. He wants to make the government work, but all he seems really interested in doing is enlarging an already bloated, wasteful bureaucracy. Ask yourself how many jobs he has eliminated. Or has he decided every employee is essential or worth retaining?

Then this president and his Democratic Party who always endorse civil rights in theory and are more interested in the claimed civil rights of terrorists than the safety of Americans pull an even more outlandish stunt. President Obama tells the Republicans they should stop listening to radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh. That you have to agree is rather extreme. Should the president really be in the business of telling the opposition party what to read and what not to read? Will he be coming out with a list of banned books and banned pundits soon? This is even more concerning coming out of the Mr. Obama’s campaign of trying to shut down the free speech rights of their critics. You’ll recall the Obama campaign organized an attempt to keep an Obama critic, Stanley Kurtz, who researched the close alliance between Mr. Obama and the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers off the air at a radio station in Chicago. The Obama campaign also threatened criminal prosecution of anyone in St. Louis who improperly criticized Mr. Obama. This looked like a bald-faced intimidation tactic to silence critics, enlisting the help of some prosecutors in St. Louis to do the job.

When you elect an unvetted, untested, untried political novice to the highest office in the land this is what you should expect. And when you get your information from the mainstream media that did nothing but glorify, deify and sanctify Mr. Obama, painting him as some sort of Messiah, you may be in for a surprise when reality comes crashing through the media façade. When you elect someone that the mainstream media campaign for and censor out any news that gets in the way of the Second Coming, you are about to find out that four years is a long, long time, and that the words “change” and “hope” are frightfully ambiguous. If it makes you feel any better, I expected the worst and got exactly what I expected … but I’m not happy about it either.

President Obama and the Democratic Party are proving again they are the blame-America-first and hate-America Party. The latest outbreak of that disgraceful virus came with President Obama apologizing and condemning his own country in his infamous interview on al-Arabiya, the Arab language network. He had the gall and audacity to say that “to the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward based on mutual interest and mutual respect” and that he wants to “restore” the “same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago.”

The president of the United States should not be in the business of slandering his own country, and what makes that worse, he did that in his first interview for a foreign audience. America doesn’t have anything to apologize for to the Muslims. While Muslim extremists have been blowing us up and killing American soldiers, American leaders continue to proclaim that Islam is a nation of peace and that the great majority of Muslims are peaceful and good Americans. We’ve fought five wars to liberate Muslims, most recently in Afghanistan and Iraq.

We have leaned over backwards to respect and protect Muslims, but get little reciprocation.

In this interview, President Obama demonstrates his total ignorance of history as well as current events. He talks about the “same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago.” That’s during the period when Iran and Muslim were holding U.S. Embassy personnel hostages for 14 months, during the totally incompetent and inept administration of another famous appeaser and America-hater, Jimmy Carter, whose been successfully campaigning ever since for his place as the worst ex-president in history. President Obama thinks that was the golden age of American-Muslim relations.

Charles Krauthammer, the great columnist, put it this way: “But when his self-inflation as redeemer of U.S.-Muslim relations leads him to suggest that pre-Obama America was disrespectful or insensitive or uncaring of Muslims, he is engaging not just in fiction but in gratuitous disparagement of the country he is now privileged to lead.” This all shows that it is dangerous to learn foreign policy and American history and America’s achievements on the job. And we should not be surprised as Obama showed signs of the hate-America syndrome during the campaign when he refused to wear an American flag on his lapel, saying it was only a symbol of false patriotism. Now the phony and hypocrite wears one all the time. He also showed his questionable patriotism by sitting in the pews of Rev. Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright for 20 years without even a low peep of protest. Perhaps that’s where Mr. Obama’s wife got the impression that America is a downright “mean country.”

Yes, now Mr. Obama has even me hoping for change. And that would be change from about everything the Obama administration is doing.

As the president himself might say, he better move in a new direction.

And what we’re getting is exactly what we should have expected, if the mainstream media had been reporting on Mr. Obama rather than campaigning for him.

Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@thebulletin.us.

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