Free Republic

With no real issues to promote, Democrats are putting all their eggs into the basket of corruption to restore their political fortunes. They and their friends in the mainstream media are working overtime to connect everyone and everything on the right side of the political spectrum to disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who has pleaded guilty to multiple felonies. One channel that Democrats and liberals are working is tying conservative think tanks to the Abramoff scandal. They know that these think tanks have been one of the most effective forces in Washington over the last 30 years in advancing a...

One of the unstated causes of the unfolding lobbying scandal swirling around Jack Abramoff is the extensive changes to the nature of both the membership and staffing of Congress over the last 30 years and a breakdown of longstanding legislative procedures. These days, most congressional aides -- and even some of the members -- look like they are barely out of college. And although they may be smart and well educated, they have no depth of experience and no commitment to the Congress as an institution. They are simply there to get a line on their resume before going off...

December 13, 2005Sealed White House Needs Outside AdviceBy Bruce Bartlett In its latest issue, Newsweek magazine has a disturbing portrait of George W. Bush as an aloof, out-of-touch president, isolated by his own governing style. Because of his intolerance for dissent, he has effectively surrounded himself with yes-men (and women) fearful of telling the president anything he doesn't want to hear. Written by veteran reporters Evan Thomas and Richard Wolffe, the Newsweek story confirms reports we have heard for the last five years about Bush's disinterest in the policy process or even the day-to-day politicking that ordinarily goes with the...

A few weeks ago, the Internal Revenue Service released data on tax year 2003. They show that the top 1 percent of taxpayers, ranked by adjusted gross income, paid 34.3 percent of all federal income taxes that year. The top 5 percent paid 54.4 percent, the top 10 percent paid 65.8 percent, and the top quarter of taxpayers paid 83.9 percent. Not only are these data interesting on their own, but looking at them over time shows that the share of total income taxes paid by the wealthy has risen even as statutory tax rates have fallen sharply. A growing...

Who pays the taxes Dec 6, 2005 by Bruce Bartlett ( bio | archive | contact ) Email to a friend Print this page Text size: A A A few weeks ago, the Internal Revenue Service released data on tax year 2003. They show that the top 1 percent of taxpayers, ranked by adjusted gross income, paid 34.3 percent of all federal income taxes that year. The top 5 percent paid 54.4 percent, the top 10 percent paid 65.8 percent, and the top quarter of taxpayers paid 83.9 percent. Not only are these data interesting on their own, but looking...

Tax Cuts for the Wealthy: Appearances v. Reality By Bruce Bartlett A few weeks ago, the Internal Revenue Service released data on tax year 2003. They show that the top 1 percent of taxpayers, ranked by adjusted gross income, paid 34.3 percent of all federal income taxes that year. The top 5 percent paid 54.4 percent, the top 10 percent paid 65.8 percent, and the top quarter of taxpayers paid 83.9 percent. Not only are these data interesting on their own, but looking at them over time shows that the share of total income taxes paid by the wealthy has...

One of the most important political developments in America is the creeping corruption of the Republican Party. Increasingly, there is little meaningful difference between Republicans in Congress and the Democrats they replaced a little more than 10 years ago. Unless they clean up their act fast, Republicans will suffer major losses in next year's congressional elections. There is no question Democrats became deeply corrupt in the 40 years after 1954 when they controlled the House of Representatives continuously. Everyone knew it, just as everyone knows the truth of Lord Acton's famous maxim: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts...

http://www.townhall.com/phillysoc/bartlettpaper.htm Conservative Pop Music-- The Top 40 of the Top 40 Bruce Bartlett Full Text of Speech to be given at The Philadelphia Society Regional Meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, September 21, 2002. Pop music is probably one of the last places a conservative would normally look for reinforcement of his worldview. Rock and roll, which has dominated pop music since the 1950s, is inexorably associated with liberalism in the minds of many conservatives. But in fact, there have been a significant number of songs on the pop charts during the rock era that are explicitly conservative. I have compiled a...

The economist Bruce Bartlett is a man of immense intellectual integrity. In an era when many commentators write whatever will affirm the prejudices of their own team, Bartlett follows his conscience and has paid a price. He was fired by his conservative think tank for being critical of President Bush. Along the way, he’s emerged as the most articulate spokesman for the view, which I hear all the time now, that Bush has betrayed conservatism. Bush, the argument goes, has radically increased spending on housing, community development, farm subsidies and a raft of big government programs. He’s federalized the American...

Next week, the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform will issue its report. According to press leaks, its principal recommendation will be to eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax and pay for it by scaling back deductions for mortgage interest, state and local taxes, and health insurance. This is necessary because President Bush mandated that the commission's proposals be revenue-neutral -- neither raising nor lowering aggregate federal revenues. Almost all economists on both the left and the right decry the AMT and welcome its abolition. It is complicated and time-consuming to calculate, and increasingly affects those in the lower and...

The truth is now dawning on many movement conservatives that George W. Bush is not one of them and never has been. George W. Bush has never demonstrated any interest in shrinking the government. And on many occasions, he has increased government significantly. Yet if there is anything that defines conservatism in America, it is hostility to government expansion.

The White House appears to have been truly blindsided by the vehemently negative response from conservative intellectuals to the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. In truth, this is a revolt that has been long in the making. The surprising thing is that it has taken such a long time for it to come out into the open. The truth that is now dawning on many movement conservatives is that George W. Bush is not one of them and never has been. They were allies for a long time, to be sure, and conservatives used Mr. Bush just...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 - In the latest sign of the deepening split among conservatives over how far to go in challenging President Bush, Bruce Bartlett, a Republican commentator who has been increasingly critical of the White House, was dismissed on Monday as a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative research group based in Dallas. In a statement, the organization said the decision was made after Mr. Bartlett supplied its president, John C. Goodman, with the manuscript of his forthcoming book, "The Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy." Mr. Bartlett,...

The White House appears to have been truly blindsided by the vehemently negative response from conservative intellectuals to the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. In truth, this is a revolt that has been long in the making. The surprising thing is that it has taken such a long time for it to come out into the open. The truth that is now dawning on many movement conservatives is that George W. Bush is not one of them and never has been. They were allies for a long time, to be sure, and conservatives used Bush just as...

Though widely viewed as an arch conservative in the major media, Bruce Bartlett increasingly finds himself alienated from the president of his party. Bush's policies, he warns, have been anything but conservative. Bartlett faults Bush for moving away from free trade, adopting Keynesian economic theories, increasing government regulation and doing an extremely poor job of developing and selling conservative initiatives, such as Social Security reform. As such, George W. Bush, he says, has been a disaster for conservatism. Criticism of Bush from the right has largely been confined to fringe elements outside the mainstream of the conservative movement. Bartlett...

Correcting the recordBruce Bartlett May 10, 2005 Lately, I have irked some fellow conservatives by attacking the idea of a national retail sales tax to replace our current federal tax system, while at the same time endorsing a value-added tax as a new tax on top of our current tax system. To many of my friends, it looks as if I have switched sides. For their benefit, I would like to explain myself and assure them that I am still a conservative in good standing. On tax reform, I have been a supporter of the flat tax ever since I...

Last week’s meltdown in the stock market, with major indexes falling three percent, is only the latest indication that the economy is in fragile condition. One is even starting to hear the first whispers of the “R” word (recession). Although I think such expectations are premature, the financial sector of the economy is under growing strain that could burst and spill over into the real economy suddenly and without warning. The basic problem is a simple one: the Federal Reserve is tightening monetary policy. Historically, this has preceded every major economic slowdown or significant market correction. For example, the Fed...

Last week, President Bush announced his nomination of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz as next World Bank president. This is a disappointing decision for those who care about international economic development. At best, it shows a casual disregard for the Bank. At worst, it represents a politicization that could seriously hamper its work. The World Bank was set up after World War II as part of the Bretton Woods Agreement to try to put the world economic system back together after the twin shocks of the Great Depression and the greatest war in history. The International Monetary Fund and the...

Two years ago, I wrote a column about “blogs” (web logs) because they were the most interesting new Internet phenomenon I had come across.  Essentially, they are personal web sites that offer people daily (even hourly) commentary on current events or whatever they feel like writing about.  Last year at this time I wrote another column on this topic, so I guess it has become something of a tradition for me.  This is my latest discussion of the blog phenomenon.  In my first commentary, I noted that journalists like Andrew Sullivan, Mickey Kaus and Matt Drudge, as well as...

The nation obviously has been focused very heavily on terrorism for the last three years. Unfortunately, the overwhelming attention paid to foreign terrorist threats has tended to make people complacent about homegrown, domestic terrorism. Those living in the Washington, DC area got a wake-up call this last week, when an apparent group of environmental terrorists torched a housing development under construction in nearby Charles County, MD. Law enforcement officials have not yet determined who the perpetrators were and it is conceivable that simple vandalism or other motives were at work. But the evidence strongly suggests eco-terrorism. The development has been...