WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2003

GOOD NEWS FOR LT. COL. WEST

Almost every day someone calls the show asking for an update on the fate of Lt. Col. Allen West.  Col. West is the Army officer who fired a gun in order to obtain information from an Iraqi police officer about a planned ambush of American troops.  Imagine that; firing a gun to get information from the enemy in a war situation.

OK .. .here's your update.  An Army hearing officer has recommended administrative punishment instead of a court martial for Col. West.  This would mean that Col. West will go before his Division commander who will decide punishment.  The punishment could be a written reprimand, perhaps some loss of pay or even confinement to quarters.  The upside is that Col. West will not lose the retirement benefits he has been building during his 20-year career in the U.S. Army. 

Sometimes the good guys win. 

ELIMINATE THE SOCIAL SECURITY TAX CEILING?

The Wall Street Journal is running an editorial today entitled "Howard Dean Live.  Yeah, raise taxes, that's the ticket!"  For the past 30 years every single Democratic presidential candidate has supported the idea of raising taxes.  Dean's actual proposal would raise taxes on the average American family by almost $2,000 a year. 

There is one paragraph in this editorial that really got my attention: " ...  Mr. Dean is proposing to raise other taxes too. He's on record this year as saying that the way to "fix" Social Security is to raise the payroll tax. Wage earners currently stop paying Social Security levies at $87,000 in income. But Mr. Dean would eliminate that ceiling--adding one more huge (6.2%) marginal tax rate increase on millions of middle-class earners."

Eliminate the ceiling?  Does this mean that Howard Dean wants to apply the Social Security tax to 100% of a person's income, with no cap?  If we don't get some meaningful Social Security reform sometime soon this idea is going to gain a lot of supporters.  After all, the majority of American's don't reach the earnings cap anyway, so they're hardly going to get their boxers in a bunch over those who do exceed that cap having to pay more taxes.  It wouldn't raise their taxes one penny, so why should they care?  This is a class warfare issue.  Politicians work very hard at nurturing class envy in America.  The lower your earning capacity the more likely it is that you are going to depend heavily on your Social Security retirement benefits when you quit working, and the more you need those benefits the more likely it is that you will support raising taxes -- on someone other than yourself -- to make sure the money is there to pay the tab.

WHAT IS YOUR TRUE SOCIAL SECURITY TAX RATE?

By the way, the Wall Street Journal editorial has one basic fact wrong.   It wouldn't be a 6.2% tax increase, it would be a 12.4% tax increase.  Americans need to understand that this concept of the employer "matching" your "contribution" to Social Security is a complete fraud.  I know that the economic education of the average American is pathetic, at best, but try to understand this basic concept.  When an employer makes a hiring decision, part of that process is to decide how much he can budget for that particular employee.  Let's say that the employer can budget $50,000 for one additional worker.  If that worker costs the employer more than $50,000, the employer loses money.  So ... $50,000, that's the cap. 

Now, does this mean the employer offers the new hire a $50,000 annual salary?  Hardly.  There are costs associated with hiring someone, and those costs must come out of the money that is budget for that hire.  There are obvious expenses to the employer like unemployment insurance and health insurance premiums.  There are other more subtle costs.  That monthly parking pass in the commercial parking garage across the street, for instance, and the cost of the "free" coffee the new hire is going to consume over the course of a year.  What about those two weeks of vacation?  Will the employer have to hire temporary help during those two weeks to fill in?  There's another cost.  And then there's the matching contribution to Social Security ... that 6.2% of the employee's salary.  I'll do the math for you. The employer's so-called "matching contribution" on a $50,000 salary would be $3,100; and you can bet the farm that the employer is going to deduct that from his hiring budget before a salary figure is quoted to the new employee.  What's left?  From my experience when I was hiring people for my law practice, a $50,000 budget for a new hire would translate into something in the neighborhood of a $42,000 annual salary ... depending on the benefits offered.  The money didn't come out of my pocket, it came out of the employee's. 

So ... beware.  The reality is that Howard Dean is talking about a 12.4% tax increase on all Americans earning over $87,000 a year, plus a repeal of all the tax cuts that have been passed during the Bush Administration.  Sounds yummy, doesn't it?

ALL GORE ... CLASSLESS.

Is there actually going to be a political backlash against Al Gore for his classless treatment of Joe Lieberman?  After his endorsement of Howard Dean yesterday much of the chatter centered on Gore's sense of ethics.  

Three years ago telephoned Lieberman to tell him that he was going to run for the presidency again.  Gore reportedly told Lieberman that if he didn't run,  he wanted Lieberman to make a go at it.  At the beginning of the current campaign Lieberman made a point of delaying any announcement of his candidacy until Gore made up his mind what he was going to do. It was only after Gore made the decision not to run that Lieberman entered the race. 

Now this.  Gore makes his surprise endorsement of Howard Dean without so much as one phone call to Lieberman.  This may cement the nomination for Dean, but it also shows just what a classless ass Al Gore is.  This is a man who couldn't even carry his home county in the last presidential election.  I guess those people just knew him a lot better than most Americans.

LET'S HEAR FROM SOME OTHER HOWARD DEAN SUPPORTERS

The New York Post tells us about a Dean event in New York ... a fundraiser.  The attraction for this particular fundraiser, other than Howard Dean himself, were comedians Judy Gold and Janeane Garofalo, the lady who fancies herself as a potential liberal talk radio host.

The lovely Judy Gold cited the reason she is supporting Howard Dean:  "We have to get this piece of living, breathing sh_ _ out of the office."  Isn't that just unbelievable?  This actually makes you want to listen to the Ditzy Twits again.  At least Natalie didn't call the president a "living, breathing sh _ _."  Just imagine the smiles on the faces of those who hate America, those who would like to kill as many Americans as possible.  How could the enemies of America not take comfort in an award-winning entertainer referring to the president in that manner.

Janeane Garofalo was mild by comparison.  She merely chimed in with her own title for the prescription drub benefit Bush signed this week, calling it the "you can go fu _ k yourself Grandma bill.  Nice talk, Janeane ... do you kiss your mother with that mouth?

James Taranto has the perfect name for these Dean supporters ... one I fully intend to utilize.  "Deanie babies."  You couldn't describe them better.  No Democrat, by the way, would ever refer to those expressions as "hate speech."  Only Republicans can engage in hate speech.  It's a law.

READING ASSIGNMENTS

If you're only going to accept one reading assignment today, make it this one.  Walter Williams gives us a lesson from The Federalist Papers.  He wonders if our founding fathers were just plain stupid or ignorant?

About a week ago I suggested that Libertarians should consider taking the issue of eminent domain abuse to the American public.  Lord knows the Republicans or  Democrats don't seem to be interested.  Here's one prominent libertarian who has taken up the challenge.  Edward J. Williamson says that the Libertarians first need to capture a following ...

Justin Raimondo doesn't particularly like me.  He doesn't like me because I approve of our actions in Iraq.  Fair enough.  Do you know who else doesn't like our Iraqi actions?  Well, communists, for one.  The chairman of those anti-war protests in London is the leader of the British communist party.  So ... is it a bit odd that Raimondo's rants against me show up in a Pravda chat room?

Do you think that Bush is pretty much a shoo-in to beat Dean next November?  Yeah, and people thought Oklahoma was going to take care of Kansas pretty easily too.  Bill Kristol explains just how Dean could walk away with the presidency.

Have we been telling you that Weasley Clark is the Clinton's hand-picked candidate?  Now Clark is talking about Hillary as his Vice Presidential candidate.  Hey ...it's a great fit.  A general who was kicked out of the army because of "integrity and character issues" selecting a woman of bad character and with no integrity as his running mate!

I found this one in the Drudge Report .. a story about the effect that Americans are having on Iraqis behind the scenes ... out of range of the the television news cameras.

The left made a stab at getting one of their talk radio shows going in Minneapolis.  It lasted all of two days.  I just can't wait for the Democrats  "Central Air" to get going.  That's going to be quite a show.

Tuesday's CyberAlert from the Media Research Center.  If you think that the mainstream media isn't in the hands of the left, this should change your mind.

Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, looks back at Hitlary's sleigh ride through the Sunday morning news shows.  Hard hitting .. don't miss this one.

Thomas Sowell on "The Wright Stuff."  Sowell thinks that the Wright Brothers may be largely ignored because they are white males.  After all, celebrating the Wright Brothers does nothing for diversity!

Ever since last fall's sniper killings in the Beltway area, Islamic organizations have insisted that those attacks had nothing to do with terrorism.  Michelle Malkin points out that Lee Malvo's own attorneys have shown just the opposite to be true. Lee Malvo is an Islamic terrorist.

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