A Message to that Lucky 47 Percent

Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can't be bothered.

NEWS FLASH: The Associated Press has apparently just discovered that nearly half of all Americans will pay no federal income tax this year! And that almost 40% will actually get money from the government! And that 73% of all federal income tax collected comes from only 10% of the population! Wow! Who knew?

Well, you did, if you've been following this blog, because we've written about this before. But, now that it's actually being reported by the national press, I'd like to point out a few things that should be intuitively obvious:

• First of all, it's obviously unfair (and if you've been listening to Obama and the rest of the Democrat leadership, you know they care deeply about fairness) that 73% of the tax burden should be paid by only 10% of the people, and that nearly half of the population should pay nothing toward services that benefit everyone.


• Second, this should, once and for all, settle the issue of whether or not the government is advocating the redistribution of income. If a small portion of the population is shouldering a disproportionate share of the tax burden, and a large portion of the population is being given (not refunded) money that they didn't pay into the system, that is redistribution of income. End of story.


• Third, we are getting uncomfortably close to the point where a majority of the electorate has nothing to lose by voting for higher taxes and spending, because (they will think) the tax burden is going to be paid by somebody else (the "rich").

But here's where it all falls down. The federal budget deficit is now so unimaginably huge that you could tax "the rich" at a rate of 100% and still not cover it. Even liberal Democrats are now saying that it is unsustainable and must be brought under control. This, of course, would be laughable if it wasn't so tragic for the nation, since they are largely the ones who created it. And, of course, their solution isn't to bring it under control by reducing federal spending...they want to raise your taxes - hence the recent trial balloon regarding a "value-added tax."

So, just for a moment, let me talk directly to the 47% of my fellow Americans who aren't paying any federal income tax. You should know that federal income taxes account for only about half of the government's revenue. You're paying a big chunk of that other half in ways you never see - like Social Security taxes that are not going into some kind of "trust fund," but in fact are being used to run one of the biggest Ponzi schemes ever perpetrated. Oh, I know you see the portion of Social Security taxes that are taken out of your paycheck, but you never see the matching amount that your employer pays (unless you're self-employed, in which case you get to pay both halves). That's money your employer doesn't have available to give you a raise, or some other kind of benefit, because it's going to the government. You're also impacted by other kinds of taxes levied on businesses, who ultimately pass the costs along to you when you buy their products.

Here's an example everyone should be able to understand: Let's say that a loaf of bread costs $2.00, and you've got $4.00 in your pocket. You can buy two loaves of bread. If the federal government directly levies a $2.00 tax on you, you can now buy only one loaf of bread. That's easy to understand - everybody gets that. But if the federal government, through some other policy decision, causes the price of bread to rise to $4.00 per loaf, that also results in your being able to buy only one loaf of bread. So there is no difference in terms of the effect it has on your life.

There are many ways for this to happen. One is to simply keep up that deficit spending until inflation kicks back in. And, if we stay on the path we're on, it will - with a vengeance. Another is to pass laws that cause the cost of energy to go up - thereby increasing the cost of plowing, planting, and harvesting the wheat, transporting it to market, milling it into flour, baking it into bread, and delivering the bread to your local grocer. In fact anything the government does that increases the cost of doing business is ultimately going to get passed along to you, the consumer, in the form of higher prices. What's the difference between seeing your purchasing power erode because of higher prices, and seeing your purchasing power erode because you're paying more taxes? None. Either way, your standard of living goes down.

It has been said that, while capitalism may be the unequal distribution of wealth, socialism is the equal distribution of misery. We are already on that slope, and it's slippery as hell. We have to elect leaders who will reverse course, before it's too late, or our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will look back and curse us for being so selfish and short-sighted.

Thanks for listening.

You Go, Rob!

Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can't be bothered.

Today, Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna announced that he would be joining a law suit against the Democrat's health care reform bill. Governor Christine Gregoire wasted no time attacking him for that decision. Fortunately, it is his decision to make, not hers. The Attorney General represents the State of Washington and its citizens, not the governor.

In fact, he has a sworn duty to defend the interests of the State of Washington when, in his judgment, its rights have been infringed. And only blind partisanship could claim that they have not been infringed by the health care bill.

We have this annoying document called the Bill of Rights. Some of you may remember it. It consists of the first ten amendments to the Constitution. The tenth amendment states quite clearly that any powers not explicitly granted to the federal government by the Constitution are reserved to the states and to the people.

Nowhere in the Constitution is the federal government given the power to mandate that the citizens of the United States must purchase a specific product. Yet the health care bill attempts just such a mandate by requiring that everyone must purchase a health insurance policy, or be punished for not doing so.

This is, as we stated back in early November, the first step on a very slippery slope. This is a very dangerous precedent to set. There is no telling where this will end. Why, you might end up being told that you had to buy florescent bulbs for your lights instead of incandescent ones! (Oh, wait - I guess we started down this slippery slope quite some time ago, didn't we?)

The loss of individual freedom has been likened to the "frog in the pot" phenomenon: if you try to drop a frog into boiling water, he'll fight like the dickens to get out of it. But if you put him into cool water and gradually turn up the heat, he'll sit there and die before he realizes that he's in danger.

Maybe people are finally waking up and deciding it's gone too far. I just hope that Rob McKenna and the other state attorneys general can get us out of the pot before it's too late.

Thanks for listening.

Why the Party Is Important

Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can’t be bothered.

If the last several months have taught us anything, it should have taught us about the importance of political parties, and laid to rest the old fallacy that “voting for the candidate, not the party” is somehow a noble or virtuous approach to elections.

My father, God rest his soul, was proud of the fact that he didn’t belong to any political party, and was a firm believer in voting for the person he believed was the best candidate, regardless of party affiliation. Since that’s the way I was raised, that was the philosophy I took with me into the voting booth, starting way back in 1970 when I voted for the first time, and for a long time after that.

No more. I can state unequivocally that there are no circumstances that I can imagine that would ever cause me to vote for a Democrat again. It has become painfully obvious that when it comes down to crunch time, in the majority of cases, politicians vote their party affiliation regardless of whether it’s in the best interests of the American people in general or their constituents in particular. Nowhere has this been more obvious than in the debate over the health insurance legislation, which has now been rammed down the throats of the American people despite the fact that a large majority of the people didn’t want it.

When a particular party holds a majority in either the House or the Senate (and, of course, the Democrats currently hold majorities in both), that means that all of the committees are chaired by that party. It also means that the majority party will compose a majority of the members of each committee (with the sole exception of the Senate Ethics Committee, which was explicitly created as a committee with equal party representation). Since Congressional committees ultimately control what legislation does and does not make it to the floor of the House or Senate for a vote, the majority party pretty much controls the legislative process, if they can hold their members together.

The only real check on this kind of power is the fact that, in most cases, it takes a “supermajority” in the Senate to agree to end debate on a bill and call for an up or down vote. If that supermajority doesn’t exist, then debate can theoretically continue indefinitely, with the bill never coming to a vote. That’s called a filibuster.

For the past two years, we’ve been living with a “perfect storm” that gave the Democrats nearly absolute power: they held a majority in the House, they held a supermajority in the Senate, and they held the White House. We’ve now seen the abuse of power that results when the traditional checks and balances of government aren’t functioning.

Thanks to Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts, the Democrats no longer hold a supermajority in the Senate. That’s why it was crucially important to the party leaders that the Senate version of the legislation should be passed unaltered by the House – because any changes they House made would have to go back to the Senate for approval, and approval could no longer be guaranteed.

Don’t be misled. The “House Reconciliation Bill” that was passed at the same time the House passed the Senate bill is a long ways from being law – and the Representatives that voted for it are well aware that they may never see any actual changes in the Senate bill. The reconciliation bill must now go to the Senate. It’s debatable, by they way, whether it even falls under the Senate’s “reconciliation” rules. The Democrats are going to try to shove it through that way, because it would therefore be exempt from the supermajority requirement. But the Senate’s own rules state that the substance of any provisions in a reconciliation bill must be substantially weighted to the budget, and not to policy.

Violating this rule will set a precedent that is sure to lead to more and greater abuse in the future. Senator Barak Obama was strongly opposed to this sort of thing back when the Republicans were considering it. Funny how things change, isn’t it?

By the way, if the Senate makes any changes to the reconciliation bill, it has to go back to the House again. So we could see a protracted game of ping-pong with this reconciliation bill, while the original bill the Senate passed gets signed into law by President Obama. And you’ve got to ask yourself what motivation exists for the Senate to approve a bunch of changes that the House wants to make to their bill, when at this point all they need to do is to do nothing, and their own version becomes law. But, amazingly, Nancy Pelosi said, “Trust me,” and apparently 218 of her fellow Democrats did. Which brings me back to my original assertion: it’s stupid to vote for the person and not for the party – because when the chips are down, odds are that the person you elected is going to vote for the party and not for you.

So what can we do? Not much between now and November other than to give our money to the opponents of the people who voted for this monstrosity. Then, when November rolls around, vote them out of office. Every single one, if possible. And I sincerely hope that the voters in Louisiana’s 2nd Congressional District have a better Republican candidate this fall than Representative Anh Cao, who was the single Republican to vote in favor of this bill.

And what of the 39 Democrats that voted against it? Well, I appreciate their courage in breaking from their leadership. But please go back and re-read the section above where I discuss the implications of a given party holding a majority in the House or the Senate. The fact is that as long as there is a “D” after their names, they affect that balance of power and, in my opinion, must be targeted for defeat.

Thanks for listening.

Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due

Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can't be bothered.

On Wednesday, I was pleased to see an editorial in my morning Everett Herald that brought some much needed honesty and perspective to the coverage of Sen. Jim Bunning. Sen. Bunning, you may recall, was the Senator who was allegedly blocking the $10 Billion package that would extend unemployment benefits, health insurance subsidies for the jobless, highway programs, and Medicare payments to doctors.

Most of the news coverage portrayed Sen. Bunning as the callous, heartless guy who, indifferent to the suffering he was inflicting on countless fellow Americans, was unreasonably standing in the way of a compassionate piece of legislation just because he could. In fact, what he was saying was that, instead of just continuing to give lip service to how concerned we all are about our unsustainable deficit spending, maybe we should tap into the more than $500 Billion in unspent stimulus money to pay for the legislation instead of going another $10 Billion into debt.

That, as the Herald editorial pointed out, hardly seemed unreasonable. But it was rejected by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Moreover, Sen. Reid could have moved the legislation forward at any time by simply holding a "roll call" vote. But, no, Senate Democrats wanted a "voice vote," where the "ayes" and "nays" are said as a group, and the presiding leader gets to decide which was the largest group. One can only conclude that this was because a roll call vote would have involved having each individual Senator go on the record with his or her vote, which might have led to some actual accountability to the public for how they voted. Why risk that - especially when they saw an opportunity to further demonize the evil, obstructionist Republicans with the all-too-willing help of their friends in the media?

So, kudos to the Herald editorial staff for having the courage to break with the accepted media template. And to all the others who collaborated in this charade, including Washington's own Sen. Patty Murray: Shame on you!

Thanks for listening.

Three Important Axioms

Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can't be bothered.

As you think about what you heard in last night's State of the Union Speech - or read about what you didn't hear if you're among those who had more important things to do than listen to another campaign speech - please keep three important things in mind. In fact, we would do well to remember these three things any time we're listening to a politician, and any time we're about to step into a voting booth. (Or sit down at the kitchen table to fill out that mail-in ballot if you're like us Washington voters who don't have voting booths anymore.)

1. The government cannot give anything to anybody without first taking it from somebody else.


2. When someone receives from the government something they did not work for, it means that somebody else worked for it without receiving it.


3. The government cannot create wealth. It can only redistribute it.

If you stop and think about these axioms, you will find that they logically lead to several other conclusions, one of which is: The government cannot create jobs - unless they're government jobs, which then increase the tax burden on the private sector, thus reducing wealth creation and the ability of the private sector to create jobs. The best that the government can do is to try to create an environment in which the private sector can flourish.

Who does create jobs? Well, it's well known that most jobs in this country are created by small businesses - a fact that's at least given lip service by the current administration. Who are the people who start small businesses? They are people who have managed to accumulate enough wealth that they're willing to take a financial risk in order to try to create more. It takes capital to start a small business. It takes more capital to run it for the first few years and (hopefully) nurse it into sustained profitability. That capital typically comes out of the savings of the person who started the business - who typically works extremely long hours for little or no pay in the hope that the business will pay off before the savings run out.

These are the "rich" people that the Democrats want to pile even more of the tax burden on. Problem is, when you take their wealth away, fewer businesses - thus fewer jobs - get created. Plus the incentive to work those long hours is reduced when you know that a bigger chunk of what you're working for is just going to be taken away from you anyway.

So keep those things in mind - particularly when you hear the wild claims about how many jobs were "created or saved" by the stimulus package, and the calls, which will become louder and more numerous as we approach the mid-term election, for a "jobs package" that will spend even more money that we don't have in an attempt to create jobs.

Print out the three axioms above. Tape them to your bathroom mirror. Read them out loud several times a day. If enough people really came to understand the truth in them, we would really start to see some change we could believe in.

Thanks for listening.

How Did We Come to This?

Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can’t be bothered.

Today we set our sights a little closer to home. We here in the great State of Washington are facing some pretty serious budget shortfalls. We’ve been hearing that budget cuts alone can’t address all of it – there will simply have to be some tax increases. In fact, Governor Christine Gregoire told us in December that she “can’t live” with the level of cuts that would be necessary to deal with a $2.6 billion budget deficit – “…That’s not my values, and I don’t believe it’s the values of the people of the State of Washington,” she told us.

She may be right – after all, the handwriting was already on the wall when the people of the State of Washington re-elected her in 2008. The Seattle Times (not exactly a bastion of conservative thought) reported in July, 2008, that state spending had increased by $8 Billion during her first term of office – a 31% increase in the two-year general-fund budget. At the time the article was written, the Senate Ways and Means Committee was already predicting a $2.7 Billion shortfall when the time came in January 2009 to write a new two-year budget…and at that time, the recession was just beginning to be felt here in Washington.

We managed to skate by for the last year with some creative accounting and Federal "stimulus" money, but we're now halfway through the budget period, and it's becoming clear that we're in serious trouble for 2010.

During the 2008 campaign, things were still going pretty well here in Washington... and Gov. Gregoire was quick to jump on the “blame Bush” bandwagon: if Washington State should happen to sink into recession, she told us, we should blame Bush, not her. ("Pay no attention to those Democrats behind the curtain!") Of course, according to the U.S. Constitution, Congress controls the purse strings of the federal government, and the Democrats have held majorities in both houses of Congress since 2006…but I digress.

Let’s take a closer look look at the math. The Times article cited above only dealt with the General Fund portion of the budget. If we look at all three components of the budget - the General Budget, the Capital Budget, and the Transportation Budget - you'll find that the budget grew from $52.2 Billion in the 2003 - 2005 biennium to $69.2 Billion in the 2007 - 2009 biennium. (The biennium runs from July 1 of an odd-numbered year through June 30 of the next odd numbered year, which is why the dates look a little funny.) That's a $17 Billion increase - almost 33%. Population growth from mid-2003 to mid-2007 was only about 6.5% (from a little over 6.1 million to about 6.5 million). That means that the state budget grew at almost five times the rate of population growth!

By the state’s own figures, since the beginning of the recession, nearly 13% of manufacturing jobs and nearly 27% of all construction jobs in the state have been eliminated. The seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate hit 9.3% in October – up a full 3 percentage points from the year before. Have a similar percentage of State government jobs been eliminated? Um…no. In November, 2008, The Seattle Times reported that there were roughly 66,000 state employees. That was down about 1,200 from early August, 2008, as a result of a hiring freeze, but much of that decrease was in seasonal jobs with parks or the Department of Natural Resources. The State’s 2009 State Workforce Report reported total employment at 65, 290 as of June 30, 2009. That’s a drop of only about 1%.

But that’s the pattern we’ve seen over and over again from Democrat-controlled governments: during good times, government spending increases way out of proportion to any other measure of population or economic growth – then when the bad times hit, gosh, we simply can’t reduce spending by that much! It would require cuts to vital services and too much hardship for people who have become dependent on that government spending. And I will guarantee you that any cuts that are proposed this year will be the most visible and painful that the legislature can find – because maximum visible pain means maximum odds that voters will accept tax increases instead of insisting on budget cuts.

If you want to see where that pattern ultimately leads, just look two states to the south. California’s plight was highlighted by The Guardian in the U.K. last October in an article entitled “Will California become America’s first failed state?” Unfortunately, The Guardian fails to answer its own question of “where did it all go wrong?” other than to highlight the effects of the crash of the housing market.

American Thinker does a better job of identifying the causes of California’s demise: “California is facing economic failure resulting from years of a liberal legislature pursuing a liberal version of utopia.” After years of tax-and-spend policies, the voters finally revolted and insisted on lower taxes. Unfortunately, that same liberal legislature refused to rein in spending, ultimately bringing the state to the crisis it faces today, with unemployment over 12%, its government bonds rated barely above “junk,” and so many people leaving the state that it could lose a Congressman when the 2010 census is tabulated.

Want to end up like California? Then let Gov. Gregoire and the rest of the Democrats in Olympia keep on running things, and I guarantee you that’s where we’ll end up. It’s past time for Washingtonians – and all Americans – to start holding our politicians accountable for their actions. That means insisting on fiscal responsibility from them, and voting out the people who don’t get the message. That also means paying sufficiently close attention to politics that you know who’s fiscally responsible and who isn’t.

Thanks for listening.