Once one penetrates the false rhetoric of the State of the Union Address, it is clear that Barack Obama is now determined to campaign for the 2012 election under his true color – socialist red. Since a majority of Americans do not share this color, the President is gambling on his ability to fool an electoral majority into voting against their long-term interest.
Such events do happen. Adolf Hitler was voted into office through the democratic process in Germany. Hugo Chavez was voted into office, twice, through the democratic process in Venezuela. Juan Peron was voted into office through the democratic process in Argentina.
‘Fool me once, shame on you’ might be a justifiable defense for those who put Obama into the White House in 2008. ‘ Fool me twice, shame on me’ will be the only viable response, if the Red Corner succeeds yet again in 2012.
So how does Obama aim to pull off a second electoral fraud?
Through the use of lies, damned lies and statistics! No more and no less. ‘America should not settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well while a growing number of Americans barely get by.’ (Obama January 24, 2012)
Between 1980 and 2007, free market policies initiated by President Reagan created an environment in which United States gross domestic product grew by more than 3 per cent pert annum and in which 50 million net new jobs were created. This expansion massively increased the size of middle-class and upper-middle class America. Per capita income increased by 65 per cent over that period and household incomes rose substantially across all income categories.
Let us define the middle class as comprising households with incomes between $35,000 and $105,000 per annum (in inflation-adjusted dollars). Over the period 1980-2007, the middle-class so defined surely declined, from 64 per cent to 51 per cent of the total.
It did not decline, however, because a larger percentage of households fell below that range. The percentage of households making less than $35,000 stayed approximately the same, at approximately 25 per cent, despite a rapidly increasing divorce rate that increased the percentage of single-parent households.
The middle class so defined, declined because many households became richer and moved into the upper-middle-class category. The percentage of households making more than $105,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars more than doubled over that period , from 11 to 24 per cent of the total.
So there is lie number 1 on which the Red Corner hopes to stake its claim.
Lie number 2 is advanced to support the so-called Buffet claim that any one earning more than $1 million per annum should pay at least 30 per cent of that income ($336,000) in federal income taxes. This, claims Obama, is the effective federal income tax rate outlayed by middle-class Americans. Obama claims that wealthy taxpayers pay approximately one-half of that rate, because of limits on dividend and capital gains tax rates.
Obama is falsifying the facts with respect to both assertions. Income earned from capital gains and dividends has already been taxed at the rate of 39 percent through the corporate tax. So such wealthy individuals pay an effective rate a little less than 54 per cent (allowing for personal deductions etc).
Middle class households pay average federal income taxes of less than 12 per cent, once brackets, personal exemptions and other tax avoidance is accounted for. Warren Buffet’s secretary most probably paid less than 10 per cent of her income in federal income taxes. I exclude payroll taxes from this calculation because they are supposed to be personal investments into the Social Security Trust Fund.
So there we have it readers. Are Americans, in 2012, so poorly educated that they cannot locate truth from fantasy on issues as basic as this? If so, they they will receive what they deserve, as another four years of Obamamonics destroys the economic freedoms on which prosperity must be grounded.
Tags: damned lies and statistics, economic fairness as socialism, Obama in the red corner, voter gullibility will destroy america
