The Three (Ways of Making Us) Stooges

The American Spectator ^ | April 1, 2009 | Jay D. Homnick

[Scanian]

Fans of Barack Obama are impressed with his ability to do two or three things at one time, as am I. Here is a classic twofer: he succeeded in exposing both the intellectual inadequacy and the moral bankruptcy of his worldview in one terse statement. As a bonus he threw in an example of his deceitful manipulativeness.

This came in his recent press conference when he was asked to defend his proposal to reduce the maximum deductibility of charitable donations to 28 percent. Under his proposed regime, someone who pays 39 cents in taxes on each earned dollar would only receive 28 cents off his total tax bill for each dollar contributed to the poor.

Here is the President's explanation:

And what we've said is: Let's go back to the rate that existed under Ronald Reagan. People are still going to be able to make charitable contributions. It just means, if you give $100 and you're in this tax bracket, at a certain point, instead of being able to write off 36 percent or 39 percent, you're writing off 28 percent.

Now, if it's really a charitable contribution, I'm assuming that that shouldn't be the determining factor as to whether you're giving that $100 to the homeless shelter down the street.

And so this provision would affect about 1 percent of the American people. They would still get deductions. It's just that they wouldn't be able to write off 39 percent.

In that sense, what it would do is it would equalize -- when I give $100, I'd get the same amount of deduction as when some -- a bus driver who's making $50,000 a year, or $40,000 a year, gives that same $100. Right now, he gets 28 percent

[dblshot]

A long explanation for a simple proposal, I want more of your money rich guy.

[mentor2k]

I think this paragraph from the article sums it up:

"Take that homeless shelter down the street. It receives some of its dollars from citizens, some from the government. There is no point in the government taking part of your dollar to give to the homeless shelter when you are prepared to give it the entire dollar."

What a sneaky manipulating lying slime-ball our TOTUS is.