More On The Coup That Never Was

Last week my friend Ed Morrissey asked why the Honduran government did not simply arrest Manuel Zelaya instead of deposing him and kicking him out of the country (thereby leading to the impression that this was a doup de tat). In today's Opinion Journal, Mary Anastasia O'Grady attempts (and I think succeeds) to answer that burning question.

If there is anything debatable about the crisis it is the question of whether the government can defend the expulsion of the president. In fact it had good reasons for that move and they are worth Mrs. Clinton's attention if she is interested in defending democracy.

Besides eagerly trampling the constitution, Mr. Zelaya had demonstrated that he was ready to employ the violent tactics of chavismo to hang onto power. The decision to pack him off immediately was taken in the interest of protecting both constitutional order and human life.

Two incidents earlier this year make the case. The first occurred in January when the country was preparing to name a new 15-seat Supreme Court, as it does every seven years. An independent board made up of members of civil society had nominated 45 candidates. From that list, Congress was to choose the new judges.

Mr. Zelaya had his own nominees in mind, including the wife of a minister, and their names were not on the list. So he set about to pressure the legislature. On the day of the vote he militarized the area around the Congress and press reports say a group of the president's men, including the minister of defense, went to the Congress uninvited to turn up the heat. The head of the legislature had to call security to have the defense minister removed.

In May there was an equally scary threat to peace issued by the Zelaya camp as the president illegally pushed for a plebiscite on rewriting the constitution. Since the executive branch is not permitted to call for such a vote, the attorney general had announced that he intended to enforce the law against Mr. Zelaya

.A week later some 100 agitators, wielding machetes, descended on the attorney general's office. "We have come to defend this country's second founding," the group's leader reportedly said. "If we are denied it, we will resort to national insurrection."...

It was this fondness for intimidation that prompted Mr. Zelaya's exile. Honduras was worried that if he stayed in the country after his arrest his supporters would foment violence to try to bring down the interim government and restore him to power.

South and Central American politics has a history of violent power struggles. The Honduran Supreme Court and Legislature did what they thought would help save lives and prevent yet another violent change of power.

President Obama took a lot of heat for not "meddling" in affairs in Iran and yet here he has no problems meddling in the affairs of Honduras. This is why the US has such poor reputation in Central America. We piously refuse to meddle in some countries while we continue to meddle away in our own backyard. It's not new, but for someone who said that he was going to change things in DC and who was going to "restore America's reputation in the world" he sure has done a bang up job of keeping the status quo in Central America.

Four Little Words

A couple of weeks ago - my friend Gary Gross wrote about the jobs that were created or saved in Minnesota as a result of the ARRA.

It’s a good thing I was sitting down when I read this Strib article. If I hadn’t been sitting down, I might’ve been knocked over by a feather.

Though much of the stimulus plan was sold on the strength of road and highway investments, records released by Congress last week show that only 37 transportation and infrastructure projects were underway in Minnesota as of May 31, creating or sustaining 124 jobs.

Well Gary is not the only one noticing how many jobs were created by ARRA. Utah's very own Jason Chaffetz has noticed it as well.

U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Republican from Utah, is no fan of the federal stimulus package. He thought it was a waste when it was passed in February. And he thinks now that it has produced too few jobs - 150,000, by the latest White House estimate - for the $57 billion that has been spent nationally so far.

When Gov. Rendell appeared before him yesterday at a hearing on Capitol Hill, Chaffetz asked, "How many jobs have been created in Pennsylvania by the stimulus?"

Governor Rendell's answer was almost as overwhelming as the Minnesota figures.

Though he had no precise jobs figure to offer, Rendell guessed that "a couple of thousand" jobs had been created by the $1 billion spent to date in Pennsylvania, and that 5,000 to 10,000 jobs had been saved.

It is this lack of jobs created that has caused the President's approval to plummet in recent days. He can no longer claim that this economy is someone else's fault. He went into DC promising that the faster ARRA was passed the faster people will get back to work and that is just not happening! While jobs is not the only reason when you couple it with the out of control deficit spending and the realization that there is no WAY that the President could keep his promises of not raising taxes on people who make under $250,000 a year...

President Barack Obama promised to fix health care and trim the federal budget deficit, all without raising taxes on anyone but the wealthiest Americans. It's a promise he's already broken and will likely have to break again. Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress have already increased tobacco taxes — which disproportionately hit the poor — to pay for extending health coverage to 4 million children in working low-income families.

Now, lawmakers are looking for more revenues to help pay for providing medical insurance to millions more who lack it at a projected cost of $1 trillion over the next decade.

The floated proposals include increasing taxes on alcohol, which could raise $62 billion over the next decade, and a new tax on sugary drinks such as soda, which could raise $52 billion.

Emphasis mine. As an aside I have to give the AP mad props for pointing out two of the REGRESSIVE taxes that the Democrats are proposing...

The bloom is most assuredly off of the Obama rose. The question is, will the RNC take advantage of the situation and quote the ragin' Cajun James Carvelle and start chanting "IT'S THE ECONOMY STUPID!!!!!"

Constitution? What Constitution?????

That seems to be the thinking of the UN and President Obama when it comes to dealing with the situation in Honduras (HT The Logical Husband)

...when a socialist demagogue was ejected unceremoniously from Honduras on Sunday by his own government for trying to establish a presidency for life, Mr. Obama instantly sprang to his defense.

What happened in Honduras was not a military coup. Honduras has a civilian president, Roberto Micheletti, a member of former President Manuel Zelaya's own Liberal Party, who was elevated to the post after Mr. Zelaya was removed. The army did not seize power, but acted as the elected government's instrument in ousting Mr. Zelaya, who was well on his way to subverting the Honduran constitution and erecting a dictatorship.

Emphasis mine. Let me emphasize again that this was a Constitutional action and not a military coup. The Honduran Supreme Court, in response to unConstitutional actions by Mr. Zelaya, issued an appropriate arrest warrant which the military carried out.

The UN apparently thinks as little of the Honduran Constitution as it does of ours - choosing to side with a potential dictator over the rule of law.

Scrambling to hold on to his presidency, deposed Honduran leader Manuel Zelaya pleaded his case in the United States yesterday, winning a rare unanimous vote of support from the U.N. General Assembly but failing to get an audience with top Obama administration officials.

The President's response to this working of the Honduran Constitution? A move to rescind economic and military development agreements with the country.

However, this is not the only Constitution that our President is willing to ignore in order to advance his agenda (HT Hot Air).

With the clock running out on a new US-Russian arms treaty before the previous Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, expires on December 5, a senior White House official said Sunday said that the difficulty of the task might mean temporarily bypassing the Senate’s constitutional role in ratifying treaties by enforcing certain aspects of a new deal on an executive levels and a “provisional basis” until the Senate ratifies the treaty.

Emphasis mine. I wonder how President Obama former colleagues in the Senate will take to being bypassed in such a blatent manner.

As my friend Ed Morrissey noted, this is not surprising in the least. There is a reason why Republicans spent so much time "obsessing" on then candidate Obama's relationships. Whether it is Bill Ayers or Jeremiah Wright or any of his other past radical associations, it is a clear window into the political philosophy of man. The political philosophy tells you how a person is going to govern.

The only ones "surprised" by all of this seems to be the journalists that glossed over all of this during the primaries. This is what happens when you buy into a meme without checking out the man behind the meme.

Update: - WELCOME Hot Air readers. Please take a moment to snoop around - open the cabinets and see what else is here.

Google It

Everyone has been buzzing about Helen Thomas and Chip Reid's grilling of Robert Gibbs over the purported staging of President Obama's last health care town hall. If you have not seen the video, I'm sure it is still on the front page of Hot Air or the Huffington Post - whichever you have bookmarked - you can view it there. However, the funniest reaction to the whole thing (I think) came from Dana Perino (former Bush press secretary) writing over at National Review.

A friend emailed this morning to say he couldn’t believe what he heard Mika Brzezinski say on Morning Joe today regarding yesterday’s press briefing where Helen Thomas and Chip Reid asked Robert Gibbs several questions about President Obama’s so-called “Town Hall” on health care yesterday:

The question I would have for her [Helen] is if she felt she could ask that question during the Bush administration and get that aggressive.

Seriously? I almost injured myself when I fell over laughing when I read that comment.

I am no longer a spokesperson, but I feel I can speak for all of Bush’s press secretaries when I say that the question I would like to ask Mika is: Did she miss every press briefing of the Bush administration?

Yesterday was tame by comparison to the grilling we all got — including questions premised on our troops purposely killing innocent people. Those were really fun to field. Not.

The things all press secretaries have in common are going toe-to-toe with Helen Thomas, living through it, and being better communicators for having had the experience.

I wonder if Helen takes offense at the notion she wasn’t aggressive with us.

I don’t think I’ll ask her!

If Mika is looking to broaden her horizons, I'm sure there are plenty of reports of Helen Thomas lobbing "softballs" at Dana or Tony Snow or Scott McClellan or Ari Fleisher. All you have to do is have your research staff "Google It".

Bring In The Stunt Groom

So today was a very busy outside of the house day. Most of our gardening done and the Junior Logician is off visiting his grandmother so the Logical Husband and I spent most of the day at the farmers market and walking the dogs and taking pictures of the capital area and basically just enjoying an absolutely splendid early summer day in Utah. As a result, I didn't get to any of my emails until very late today. One of the daily must reads is my electronic version of the New York Times. They honestly do have some decent stories....unless they are reporting on President Obama and then the love fest starts.

It was a bit like planning the dream wedding only to have a hurricane rip away the chapel roof as you make your way down the aisle. ABC News and the White House probably thought they had scored a coup in arranging “Questions for the President: Prescription for America,” a prime-time opportunity (with a followup session on “Nightline”) for Barack Obama to explain his health care proposal to the voters and for ABC to monopolize an hour-plus with the most famous man in the world. And then came Iran. And Mark Sanford.

Wait - Mark Sanford??? The story broke on Sanford before the President's hour long market re-rollout (because the program has been out for a while now). If he had mentioned the latest trio of celebrity deaths (Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson) I could maybe see making a case for it. But then again how could the "most famous man in the world" be overshadowed by a mere electon or a couple of celebrity deaths.

And, well, there was the fact that it was about health care reform. The result: the 10 p.m. show drew 4.7 million viewers, or nearly 3 million fewer than a competing repeat of CBS’s “CSI: New York” and less than half what the evening’s top draw, NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” attracted in the previous hour. Well, could the president’s plan have got a second-day bump at America’s water coolers? Not likely.

Oh OK - there are the obligatory references to Farrah and MJ...Oh course there is no mention of the real news like the pending vote on Cap and Trade but then again who cares about climate change...RIGHT????

So who did tune in? Certainly more than a few people who are simply curious or worried about the future of their insurance plans, as well as a few us who are paid to pay attention and, of course, bloggers, who are simply masochists for this kind of thing.

Not this blogger - I was engaged in my weekly Wednesday volunteer activity with 4H. However, the Opiniator was gracious enough to provide us with a wrap up of the blogosphere's reaction to the whole thing. After quoting the ABC chief and the Business and Media Institute's reactions to it, the Opinator gets to the meat/light supper/salad of the reactions.....

Scarecrow at FireDogLake’s Oxdown Gazette, however, thinks the network lured the president into a devilish trap:

For its part, ABC insisted on having Charles Gibson and Diane Sawyer, instead of informed, qualified health care experts, guide the conversation. That was a mistake, but not the worst of ABC’s offensive conduct.

Sawyer’s main contribution was to introduce her own uninformed biases/opinions in framing issues and introducing questioners. Gibson’s primary role was to reveal his own misconceptions and then literally read talking points from a Republican letter — an obvious ransom extracted after days of Republican whining about giving the President air time on a critical public issue.

Gibson’s other role was to interrupt the President every few minutes to announce a commercial break. The all too frequent commercial interruptions served as an apt metaphor for how private commercial interests demand our attention and extract their profits while limiting our ability to discuss critical public policy issues.

Emphasis mine...Damn those pesky commercial breaks! Maybe Scarecrow would have been happier if Donald Trump had just purchased this hour instead of "buying" Monday Night Raw - then he could have run it commercial free (as he did last Monday night). Then we could treated to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson starting the hour with the intro "Can you SMELL what Barack is cookin'?" Then all Charlie and Diane would need to worry about doing is bowing in proper deference to the President lest they suffer a three count and be "traded" to MSNBC.

The Baltimore Sun’s David Zurawik thinks the problem wasn’t the message, but the medium:

Let’s make one thing clear right from the start: ABC News did not give President Barack Obama a free pass in its prime-time special Wednesday night to sell his plan for a radical overhaul of the health care system.

There were people in the town hall setting who asked pointed questions, and if you listened very closely, it was obvious after a while that Obama did not have any very good answers when it came to specifics. Furthermore, anchorman Charles Gibson, who moderated the discussion, asked solid follow-up questions of the president.

But, ultimately none of that mattered much, because the majority of viewers can’t or don’t listen very closely when such vast amounts of information, opinion and statistics are thrown around as they were Wednesday night on ABC. Television does not work like that. In the manner that TV does work, Obama had his way from early morning to latenight on ABC Wednesday to push his agenda for massive social change on healthcare. In short, he owned ABC’s airwaves.

Zurawick is correct in that the media was part of the problem but I don't think he gets the "why". Most people turn on the television to tune out. With few exceptions (like political junkies) people use television to escape their daily lives - that's one reason why the moniker "the idiot box" has been used to describe the media almost from day 1.

The Opinionator then quotes Jake Tapper's and my dear friend Ed Morrissey's posts on the subject as well as a response to Ed from Pete Able at the Moderate Voice (for the record I do think calling that exchange Obama's "Dukakis moment" was a bit of a stretch Ed). He also quoted a rather common sense proposal from Shannon Love at Chicago Boyz....

We should create a legal requirement that political elites have to use the same system they foist on everyone else. They should have to wait for hours in doctors’ offices. They should have to wait weeks or months for tests. They should be fobbed off on emergency rooms if they get sick over the weekend. They should be denied any Hail Mary test, medication or procedure. They should get the entire politically-managed health-care experience.

This standard should extend to all elected officials, political appointees and their immediate families.

Such a law would create a built-in feedback loop that would prevent politicians from ignoring the health of the people.

However, the common sense quote of the piece comes from my BTRadio partner in punditry Jazz Shaw (again at the Moderate Voice).

The President once again trotted out the same quote I’ve heard repeatedly when he’s been asked about competition in the private industry. He wants to be “absolutely clear” that if you have a health plan you like, you can keep it! Of course you can keep it. But will you? If your current plan through your employer costs you a couple hundred dollars per month, like mine does, and suddenly there’s a government run plan available that promises roughly the same level of coverage for one hundred bucks per month, how many of you will stay with your old plan? I don’t see why I would. I’d like to save more than one thousand dollars per year, wouldn’t you? Sounds great, but then what happens to this huge industry and all of its various employees when most of us bail out? Is American health insurance, as an industry, too big to fail?

That is something that Jazz and I discussed on our show last Wednesday because that IS the million dollar question. IF the "public option" is so much cheaper than the private option to the point where Americans dump their private insurance en masse will we then have to bail out the insurance industry the way we bailed out the automobile industry or the financial industry? I understand that not all of those employees of the current insurance industry will probably not lose their jobs, but easily one half will and those that don't lose their jobs will grossly under-employed. What will THAT do to our economy? What kinds of jobs will President Obama "create" to replace the lost insurance industry jobs? More fast food jobs? More road repair jobs? The people that are losing these insurance jobs are not people who can repair roads or dig trenches.....and that is the dirty little secret of government job creation. It is a secret that NO POLITICIAN will tell you - but anyone who has worked in a government job, knows exactly what I am talking about.....

From the Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't Department

President Obama has been taking a ton of heat from his critics for not coming out stronger in his condemnation of the Iranian regime in it's violent reaction to the protesters. Senators Lindsay Graham and John McCain went on the Sunday shows and talked about the "tepid" response to the crisis in Iran. Even some leftward leaning media outlets thought that the President's reponse was less than underwhelming. Some even criticized the President for going about his "normal" business while Iran burned.

I have to respectfully disagree with all of them. Iran is an odd creature and President Obama HAS learned a little bit from our dismal past history with Iran. He made the calculated decision to hold back on comment on the situation, knowing (rightly) that the Mullah's and Iranian state run television would use anything that he said against the US...and he was right.....

The Iranian government, meanwhile, accused the U.S. for the first time of interfering in the postelection dispute. Iran protested to the Swiss ambassador, who represents U.S. affairs in Iran because the two nations have no diplomatic ties. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that President Barack Obama stands by his defense of principles such as the right of people to demonstrate...

So even though he took a cautious prudent approach, the President is getting what he feared, which actually should free him up to do the BOLD thing - to come out and condemn the Iraqi government for the escalation of violence. You've done the politically correct thing, now do the morally correct one! It's that time.....

Why Do We Need Health Care Reform?

The biggest reason that government run health care proponents use as a reason why we need to do this is the "fact" that 45 million Americans don't have health insurance. Larry Elder took a look at that number and found it to be "wanting:.

About 45 million Americans lack health care insurance. Or do they? ...

Nearly half of the 45 million fall in the category of my 26-year-old nephew. He smokes cigarettes, dates, eats out, goes to movies and, like all young people, lives through his cell phone. With a slight change in priorities, he could afford health insurance, the cost of which at his age and health starts at about $100 a month. Take a look at a Reason Foundation video of interviews with a bunch of non-health-insured 20-somethings.

These Gen Xers copped to dropping money on clothes, booze, nightlife, the latest tech gizmos and other things of interest to them. With a change in priorities, these young folks -- far more representative of those without insurance than the forlorn husband and wife sitting on a porch swing -- could both afford and qualify for health insurance. They simply consider it a low priority.

So let's do the math....of the 45 million with "no" health care, some 22 million are eligible for health insurance but choose not to buy it. That is not a valid reason to take over an industry this large.

Millions more can access health care -- through SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program), Medicaid or other government programs. But for whatever reason, 11 million people simply refuse to take advantage of them.

So of the remaining 23 million without health insurance, 11 are eligible for existing government programs! That brings the total number of people "without" insurance down to 12 million - a large number to be sure but as a percentage of the entire US population.....

What about criminals without insurance? More than 2 million Americans -- with access to health care, by the way -- use jail, prison or penitentiary mailing addresses. And for every one behind bars, how many live among us who survive by theft, drug dealing, prostitution or some similar career path? Taxpayer health insurance for them, too?

Actually they already get taxpayer funded health care in the prison infirmary. That brings us down to roughly 10 million or so without health INSURANCE. I stress the word insurance here because as Mr. Elder states, not having insurance does not equate a lack of health CARE.....

Lacking health care insurance is not the same as lacking health care . By law, most emergency rooms must provide health care -- to both legals and illegals. Yes, they stand in line, but no health insurance does not equal no health care.

That is a point I have made on MANY occasions.

Mr. Elder closes asking the same questions that most thinking people are asking today.....

Do we allow a complete government takeover of the section of health care it doesn't already run, for 10-15 million or so without health insurance on a persistent basis? Again, 255 million Americans already have it. Many millions more could get it if they wanted to. And 89 percent of Americans are satisfied with the care they now receive.

There are plenty of ways to fix the problem without bankrupting the country and rationing care. One solution (from the House GOP Caucus) would give health care tax credits to low income Americans, eliminate wasteful spending (unnecessary tests and the like), allow small business to band together in a buying block in order to get insurance for themselves and their employees and introduces liability reform as ways to bring the high costs of INSURANCE down to an affordable level.

When you look at the FACTS of the situation you see that there is no real need for a complete take over of the health care system by government. The only real "reason" for it, given the facts is is simply that it is a power grab - another way for big government to take yet another piece of your precious freedom away - thanks to President Obama and the House Democrats.

You're Fired

In 2008, on the heels of the US Attorney's firing "scandal", the Democrats on Capital Hill put together legislation to add further protections to the Inspector Generals corps as these federal employees are supposed to be more insulated from the political winds of change than US Attorneys (who serve at the pleasure of the President) are. That Legislation, the Inspector General Reform Act of 2008, was sponsored by Senator Claire McKaskill and one of the 11 co-sponsors was none other than then Senator Barack Obama! The bill (which has not made it out of committee in the House) was designed to:

• Require Congressional notification on the removal of an inspector general;
• Expand the reporting requirements for IG budget requests;
• Require IGs to have their own legal counsel;
• Establish an IG Council;
• Provide IGs with some additional investigative, law enforcement, and personnel
  authorities and require additional reports by IGs and the Government Accountability
  Office (GAO).

Another requirement of the bill was:

(Sec. 3) Requires the President, the heads of designated federal entities, the Librarian of Congress, the Capitol Police Board, and the Public Printer to communicate to Congress in writing the reasons for removing or transferring an IG no later than 30 days before such removal or transfer.

However, since this bill was not passed out of the House, the law that applies to Mr. Walpin's firing is the Inspector General Act of 1978. One of the provisions of that law is that when an IG is removed from office or transferred that the head of the federal entity doing that (in this case that would be the head of the Executive Branch - ie President Obama) must notify both Houses of Congress - something President Obama has not done according to Sen. McKaskill!

“The White House has failed to follow the proper procedure in notifying Congress as to the removal of the Inspector General for the Corporation for National and Community Service,” McCaskill said. “The legislation which was passed last year requires that the president give a reason for the removal.”

McCaskill, a key Obama ally, said that the president’s stated reason for the termination, “Loss of confidence’ is not a sufficient reason.”

Another provision of the existing law is that the President must give the Inspectors General 30 day advance notice of their firing - something else this President did not not considering he gave Mr. Walpin 1 hour to resign or be fired. Only after Walpin refused to resign did this President decide to follow the law and tell Congress of his intent to fire the IG - but by then the die had been cast and it was too late for the President to abide by the intent of the law.

Regardless of whether you are applying the existing law, or the amendments to that law that then Senator Obama co-sponsored, it is clear that PRESIDENT Obama broke the intent of the law in his firing of Gerald Walpin. This is in no way akin to President Bush's wholesale firing of US Attorney's - a faux scandal created by the left-o-sphere to discredit President Bush. This is a real and legit scandal and something that the media and Congress need to bring light to. However, I suspect that will not happen with this President. It will be swept under the rug by a besotted media and a hyper-partisan congress.

So much for the "politics of change" that we were promised.

Parallels

In the course of researching a rebuttal to this Telegraph story, I was absolutely gobsmacked by the parallels between the Steel Industry of the 1970's and the auto industry of today.

During the 1970s and 1980s, the U.S. steel industry came under increasing pressure from foreign competition. Manufacture in Germany and Japan was booming. Foreign mills and factories, built with the latest technology, benefited from lower labor costs and powerful government-corporate partnerships, allowing them to capture increasing market shares of steel and steel products. Separately, demand for steel softened due to recessions, the 1973 oil crisis, and increasing use of other materials.^[9][42] At this critical juncture, free market, anti-union policies, and deregulation, especially under President Ronald Reagan, came into play. Free market pressures exposed the U.S. steel industry's own internal problems, which included a now-outdated manufacturing base that had been over-expanded in the 1950s and 1960s, hostile management and labor relationships, the inflexibility of United Steelworkers regarding wage cuts and work-rule reforms, oligarchic management styles, and poor strategic planning by both union and management. In particular, Pittsburgh faced its own challenges. Local coke and iron ore deposits were depleted, raising material costs. The large mills in the Pittsburgh region also faced competition from newer, more profitable "mini-mills" and non-union mills with lower labor costs.^[42]

Beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the steel industry in Pittsburgh began to implode. Following the 1981–1982 recession, for example, the mills laid off 153,000 workers.^[42] The steel mills began to shut down. These closures caused a ripple effect, as railroads, mines, and other factories across the region lost business and closed. The local economy suffered a depression, marked by high unemployment and underemployment, as laid-off workers took lower-paying, non-union jobs. Pittsburgh suffered as elsewhere in the Rust Belt with a declining population, and like many other U.S. cities, it also saw white flight to the suburbs.^[43]

Emphasis mine. It was a potent cocktail of union, corporate and governmental errors along with free market pressures that the American steel and auto industries were unable to overcome that led, in the end, to the demise of those industries.

Where the parallels diverge comes in how the cities of Flint and Pittsburgh handled the paradigm change. Where the city of Pittsburgh reinvented itself from Steel City to High Tech Haven...

Present-day Pittsburgh, with a diversified economy, a low cost of living, and a rich infrastructure for education and culture, has been ranked as one of the World's Most Livable Cities.^[48]

... the city of Flint is tearing whole neighborhoods down...

The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.

Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.

...and the Obama Administration wants to bring this plan to a neighborhood near you! The reason for this is an obvious one - the cities in question are in decline....

"Places like Flint have hit rock bottom. They're at the point where it's better to start knocking a lot of buildings down," she (Karina Pallagst, director of the Shrinking Cities in a Global Perspective programme at the University of California, Berkeley) said.

Flint, sixty miles north of Detroit, was the original home of General Motors. The car giant once employed 79,000 local people but that figure has shrunk to around 8,000.

Unemployment is now approaching 20 per cent and the total population has almost halved to 110,000.

The exodus – particularly of young people – coupled with the consequent collapse in property prices, has left street after street in sections of the city almost entirely abandoned.

The Telegraph tap dances around many of the reasons for the flight - lack of jobs, high unemployment etc - but they never get to WHY these jobs are leaving.... usually a government climate that makes it next to impossible to attract and maintain businesses (hello Minnesota). I mean a publicly traded company is ultimately responsible to it's shareholders. If the shareholders are not making money then the company has two choices - move to a climate where it is cheaper to do business (off-shoring) or go out of business! It's that simple.

But Mr Kildee, who has lived there nearly all his life, said he had first to overcome a deeply ingrained American cultural mindset that "big is good" and that cities should sprawl – Flint covers 34 square miles.

Look I'm not saying that Flint should be forced into doing something that won't work for them. If shrinking the size of the town works for THEM then by all means, they should do it. Where I do depart with the idea is that this is something that should be forced on other cities due to FEDERAL MANDATE! Pittsburgh re-invented itself without federal involvement - that's fantastic - but how do you Pittsburghers will react to the Federal government coming in and telling them that their jobs and neighborhoods are being torn down because the Federal government thinks their city is "too big"? We should not be using Flint's cookie cutter on everyone else. Let the cities of Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Memphis, Detroit and the 46 other "targeted" cities decide what's best for their citizens. If it is reinvention ala Pittsburgh, reduction ala Flint, a combination of the two or some other outside of the box solution - it has to be up to the city and the county...not the Federal Nanny State.

Well Now.....

Well, well, well.....

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama says he has lost confidence in the inspector general who investigates AmeriCorps and other national service programs and has told Congress he is removing him from the position.

Obama's move follows an investigation by IG Gerald Walpin finding misuse of federal grants by a nonprofit education group led by Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, who is an Obama supporter and former NBA basketball star.

Now half of me is curious as to how the people who called for President Bush's impeachment for doing the same thing are going to react to this, the other half of me realizes that I already know what the response will be.....stone, dead, graveyard silence.

And before you all cry "but wait you defended Bush when HE did it" let me just remind you that there is a little bit of difference between the two situations. These cases no where NEAR identical....when President Bush fired the AG's a few years back he fired a large number of them and NONE of the fired AG's were investigating supporters of the then President. While the larger point that the IG and the AG's before him serve at the pleasure of the President remains, when the President fires an IG or AG when he is in the middle of an investigation that just HAPPENS to center around a support of said President, you know a few eyebrows SHOULD be raised in the media - and you expect it in the blogosphere.

That said, I have no doubts that the left will remain deadly silent on an issue that had them HOWLING with indignation a short two years ago. Which again shows exactly where their priciples (and their priorities) really are...

PayWhat?????

So President Obama announced his PayGo plan. The media reaction has been less than laudatory - almost (dare I say it) critical of a PayGo plan that does NOT Pay as you Go.....

The AP said - “President Barack Obama on Tuesday proposed budget rules that would allow Congress to borrow tens of billions of dollars and put the nation deeper in debt to jump-start the administration’s emerging health care overhaul. The “pay-as-you-go” budget formula plan is significantly weaker than a proposal Obama issued with little fanfare last month. It would carve out about $2.5 trillion worth of exemptions for Obama’s priorities over the next decade. His health care reform plan also would get a green light to run big deficits in its early years. But over a decade, Congress would have to come up with money to cover those early year deficits.”

So he proposes a "pay as you go" plan that OK's billions of dollars in borrowing...how is that paying as you go?

The Washington Post reports that Congressional DEMOCRATS are pointing out the borrowing loopholes -

And while the proposal found favor in the House, it faced serious obstacles in the Senate, where several key senators said they would oppose it.

"I'm not for waiving PAYGO for $3.5 trillion of items, much of which I think ought to be paid for," said Senate Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.). "I don't think at this point we can afford not to pay for those very large expenditures."

Coming one day after Obama vowed to shovel money from the economic stimulus package out the door even more quickly, yesterday's call for fiscal rectitude also drew catcalls from Republicans.

"The president continues to display a frightening ability to say one thing, yet do the exact opposite," said Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.). "It's frankly insulting that a president who is on a path to bankrupting our government would try to play the role of fiscal hawk."

One independent analyst put it more bluntly when she said "This is like quitting drinking, but making an exception for beer and hard liquor," said Maya MacGuineas, president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Meanwhile that ultra conservative rag the New York Times had this to say about the "PayGo" proposal.

During the first four months of his administration, President Obama has committed roughly $1 trillion in federal spending – a $787 billion economic recovery package, and $350 billion in money to bail out the nation’s banks. But on Tuesday, Mr. Obama was talking about saving money, not spending it.

Speaking from the East Room of the White House, the president announced he is sending legislation to Congress to restore the 1990s era “pay as you go’’ law, known as Paygo. The law, in effect from 1990 to 2002, required that any new entitlement spending or tax cuts be offset with by entitlement increases or tax cuts.

“The ‘pay as you go’ principle is very simple,’’ Mr. Obama said. “Congress can only spend a dollar if it saves a dollar elsewhere. This principle guides responsible families managing a budget. And it is no coincidence that this rule was in place when we moved from record deficits to record surpluses in the 1990s - and that when this rule was abandoned, we returned to record deficits that doubled the national debt.’’

But critics of Paygo say it is not simple at all. Brian Riedl, a budget analyst at the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation, said the Paygo law required Congress to make across-the-board cuts in entitlement spending at the end of any year in which the Congressional Budget Office found that Paygo requirements had not been met. He said lawmakers responded each time by passing another bill, waiving the Paygo requirements.

“Paygo is a gimmick,’’ Mr. Riedl said.

Emphasis mine. CBS - a long time cheerleader for the President explains why this PayGo proposal is a gimmick...

But briefing reporters, White House Budget Director Peter Orszag conceded some of PAYGO’s limitations. It doesn’t cover discretionary spending.

“PAYGO only applies to the mandatory side of the budget and to revenue,” said Orszag. That means entitlement programs such as Medicare and revenue programs like taxes. It’ll cover the compulsory health care plan the president wants Congress to pass – but over five or 10 years. In a single year, the plan may exceed PAYGO limits.

In addition, about 40 percent of the federal budget, programs for education, energy, the military, etc., would not be covered by PAYGO, said Orszag. A different set of Senate and House rules apply to those programs, he said.

As for existing deficits and the National Debt, which today stands at an all-time high of $11.39 trillion, PAYGO has no effect, other than to slow its growth by restraining some government spending. Orszag says the government is already in a deep economic hole and PAYGO is intended to stop further digging.

Except as CBS pointed out it does NOT stop further digging. If it did, it would cover ALL aspects of the federal budget, not just small portions of it.

If President Obama were really sincere about the need for PayGo he would have never proposed all of the billions of dollars in deficit he has proposed, nor would he have signed the pork laden "stimulus" bill or any of the bail out bills. No - President Obama is not serious about PayGo - he is only throwing this out now as a bone to the Tea Party Movement. He is tacking back to the political middle because he understands that many voters are disappointed with the growth of government spending.

He's just another politician who campaigns on what the voters want to hear - only to ignore (or pay lip service to) those voters once he gets into office. I hate to say I told you so but.....

Selling A Pig In A Poke

Joe Puente is obviously no fan of Jason Chaffetz as his latest screed in City Weeky shows(for my MN readers City Weekly is Utah's City Pages).

Well, Jason’s at it again. He has sent out a letter in which he criticizes the stimulus package for being both too big and ineffective. He also claims that “The President projected that his stimulus package would prevent the unemployment rate from exceeding 8%.” (emphasis added)

Oh, did he? Actually, no, he didn’t. At least I haven’t been able to find a direct quote from the President or anyone on his staff to that effect. Just third party hearsay from the blogosphere (by the way, blogs are not usually credible sources of information as they are largely used to express opinion that may or may not be based on actual facts). If any readers can find me a direct quote from a credible and verifiable source, I’d really appreciate it. Now, what did the President say?

I have a copy of the letter in question. It is a letter that Rep. Chaffetz sent out to all constituents on his mailing list. It also included a link to a graph very similar to the one below.


Mr. Puente is being more than a little disingenuous when he claims that the President "never said that" other than third party hearsay in the blogosphere when this report is out there for the Googling. The report was created for and approved BY the then President-elect of the United States in order to garner support for his very ambitious Stimulus package! He then went on the radio two weeks before his inaguaration to tout THIS VERY REPORT and he echoed it's claims of massive numbers of jobs it would create or save and thus keeping unemployment low!!!!!

If there is a real discussion to be had on the effects of the stimulus, we have to get beyond Mr. Puente's hyperbolic partisanship ("Ya know, one of these days all of his lying and political bullshit is going to come back and bite Chaffetz right in his Republican ass and I plan on being there when it happens.") and look at some economic realities (HT to my favorite economic professor King Banaian)

Everyone wants to know when the U.S. economy will start growing. I will focus on a related question: when will the stimulus law begin to have a significant positive effect on U.S. economic growth? And could it have come sooner if the Administration had done something different?

I believe the Administration made an enormous mistake in its legislative implementation of the stimulus. As a result, the boost to GDP will come six to nine months later than it needed to (maybe more). Given the President’s desire to do a large fiscal stimulus, and given his policy preferences, he could have had a different bill that would have been producing significant GDP growth beginning now, rather than in the middle of next year. That’s a huge mistake with real consequences for the U.S. and global economies.

One thing that I told many friends (during the campaign and during the stimulus debate) was that the economy is not something that can be turned on a dime. It is not like a sports car - if fact it is more like a super-tanker! It is just too big for any single piece of legislation to impact in anything less than 24 months, so to expect (or to give the expectation as the Obama graph did) that it can "cap" unemployment within 6 months of this bill being enacted is naive at best. Conversely to declare the stimulus to be a success or a failure at this stage is equally naive. Oh to be sure we can take a look at individual benchmarks - such as the creation of so-called "shovel ready" jobs and get a foreshadowing of the overall success of the plan (these so-called "shovel ready" jobs were jobs that were supposedly immediately available and yet we have not seen any of these jobs to date). Even the Chairman of the Federal Reserve - an early supporter of the President's Stimulus plan - is starting to see the early indications that the plan was not all it was cracked up to be.

To be honest, I can see where Representative Chaffetz is coming from. If you go strictly based on how the stimulus package was "sold" to us (both by the incoming Obama Administration and the media) then you could say that the stimulus packaged did not live up to it's billing. However, it IS too early to tell how much harm or good will be done to the economy as a result of this economic package. We will most likely start seeing that more clearly next summer - just in time for the 2010 mid-term elections. If it is as bad as many economists think it will be, will Mr. Puente renounce his words? Somehow I doubt it.

Submitted Without Comment

Let Gthe Spin Begin

I had to do a double take when I saw this headline on my LATimes daily email the other day.

Reporting from Washington -- In the debate over his top environmental goals, President Obama is backing away from "cap and trade."

Not the policy. It's the phrase itself, deemed confusing by Democratic pollsters, that has all but disappeared from the president's vocabulary of late.

Now to be fair to the President both parties are playing buzzword bait and switch of late. But to see one of the President's most vocal campaign cheerleaders actually admitting that the White House is engaging in verbal jujitsu will take most moderates aback - and throw many conservatives into a dead faint!

Control the language, politicians know, and you stand a better chance of controlling the debate. So the Obama administration, in its push to enact sweeping energy and healthcare policies, has begun refining the phrases it uses in an effort to shape public opinion.

Words that have been vetted in focus groups and polls are seeping into the White House lexicon, while others considered too scary or confounding are falling away.

Today, aides in Obama's Council on Environmental Quality will meet with a research and marketing group that is promoting an alternative to the phrase "global warming," which some pollsters say fails to capture the idea of greenhouse gases threatening the environment.

They are doing this in large part because right now the global warming alarmists are losing the debate. Scientist after scientist is proving that there is no consensus - contrary to what the alarmists will tell you. Many real scientists will even tell you that (gasp) the AGW theory has more holes in it than a block of Swiss cheese!

While both sides are engaging in the verbal jujitsu the Democrats have put their money where their "mouth" is on this - investing almost $90,000 on focus groups so far this year!

Which goes back to one of my long standing political beliefs. Don't ever believe what they SAY - do the research and see what they DO. While the flowery rhetoric plays well on the tube, it is how they vote when the cameras are not on them that tell you all you need to know about an elected officials character. Look at the candidates voting record. It will tell you more about the way the person will govern than any speech will ever do.

Batten Down The Hatches!

There is a storm a brewing......

In an abrupt shift, Senate Democratic leaders said they would not provide the $80 million that President Obama requested to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The move escalates pressure on the president, who on Thursday is scheduled to outline his plans for the 240 terrorism suspects still held there.

The House had already voted against the funding...Meanwhile a Federal Judge ruled that indefinite detentions were A-OK. All of this is a continuation of Bush regime policies that the Democrats PROMISED they would overturn once they got their guy in the White House. What's even worse is that now the White House is saying that they may have been "hasty" in signing the Executive Order on Day 1! Of course, no Republicans had ever said that it would be hasty to close Gitmo - Noooooooo


I wonder if we will see Code Pink and World Can't Wait attacking this administrations officials and calling them "war criminals"...or is that a privilege that they only give to Republicans?????

Cue The Crickets...

To all of you on the left (and on the right to be fair) who were so bent out of shape about the Patriot Act, I have a question....

What is your thoughts about this? Is there any concern or consternation here??????

Swine Flu 'Pandemic' Martial Law Passes MA Senate

5-4-9

"While Massachusetts residents were sleeping, our Legislature rushed through a bill- in response to the recent "Swine flu" outbreak.

This bill has been on the shelf but (the) state government felt this was the perfect time to slip this bill through.

What is the big deal about the bill- S18? It gives the Governor power to authorize the deployment and use of force to distribute supplies and materials.

It gives local authorities the permission to enter private residences for investigation and to quarantine individuals.

Basically during any "emergency" our state can and will declare martial law; you lose your Constitutional rights.

Emphasis mine.

Now that the "Democrats" are in complete control, we are hearing more and more rumblings about legislation to strip away the rights of the American people. Whether it is the re-emergence of the Fairness Doctrine, revoking the press credentials of media reps that disagree with you, threats of siccing the White House Press Corp on businesses who don't agree with the President's plans, annulling the voting rights of legit voters by engaging in voter fraud or threatening life long government workers with legal action just because they did their job, the "Democratic" Party office holders have done more, in the past 100+ days to remove the civil rights of the American people than the writers of the Patriot Act ever dreamed.....

I'm curious to hear the response, but I won't be at all surprised to hear.....

Making It Up As He Goes Along

I got a chuckle out of one incident during last week's 100 Day Celebration Presser. ABC News Jake Tapper asked the President a question about torture. The President's answer was long, rambling and historically inaccurate.

"I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, 'we don't torture,' when the entire British -- all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat. And then the reason was that Churchill understood, you start taking short-cuts, over time, that corrodes what's -- what's best in a people. It corrodes the character of a country."

Yesterday, Mr. Tapper put together a column that told the real history of Winston Churchill's torture policy.

On the other hand, of President Obama's quoting Churchill saying "We don't torture," Churchill scholar Richard Langworth writes that "While it’s nice to hear the President invoke Sir Winston, the quotation is unattributed and almost certainly incorrect. While Churchill did express such sentiments with regard to prison inmates, he said no such thing about prisoners of war, enemy combatants or terrorists, who were in fact tortured by British interrogators during World War II.

Langworth writes that the word "torture” appears 156 times in his "digital transcript of Churchill’s 15 million published words (books, articles, speeches, papers) and 35 million words about him—but not once in the subject context. Similarly, key phrases like 'character of a country' or 'erodes the character' do not track. Churchill spoke frequently about torture, mostly enemy murders of civilians. His daughter once told me, 'He would have done anything to win the war, and I daresay he had to do some pretty rough things—but they didn’t unman him.' But if Churchill is on record about 'enhanced interrogation,' his words have yet to surface."

More importantly though is that in all the wars that the Brits fought while Churchill was PM, torture was used on enemy prisoners of war.

A November 2005 story in the Guardian details torture by British soldiers between 1940 and 1948, at the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre -- known as the "London Cage" -- run by MI19, responsible for interrogating enemy prisoners of war.

The Guardian concluded that the London Cage "was used partly as a torture centre," where 3,573 German officers and soldiers were brutally interrogated. SS Captain Fritz Knoechlein, taken to the Cage in October 1946, alleged he was starved, beaten and kept awake for four days straight.

The author of the story, Ian Cobain, told NPR last Friday described The Cage as an interrogation center "the British ran during and immediately after the Second World War, which German officers, suspected spies or some civilians would be interrogated. And the methods used there, most people would agree, were torture. We used sleep deprivation. We used beatings. We used exposure to extreme heat and extreme cold. And at the Cage, at least, we used the threat of unnecessary surgery."

But most troubling is that the President seemed to forget (if he even ever knew) about his own personal ties to Sir Winston and torture. As I noted in an earlier post his own grandfather was tortured by the British who thought that Grandpa Obama was part of the Mau Mau Rebellion.

If I could be so bold as to make a suggestion Mr. President. It might not be a half bad idea, if you are going to get your history from a partisan opinion meister like Andrew Sullivan that you to go to a second source to back up what you read there. You should not take what you read in a partisan opinion site (any partisan opinion site) as the gospel. In Latin the phrase is "Caveat Emptor" - let the buyer beware. It is something that we should ALL remember when it comes to dealing with any media sources - alternative or mainstream.

Can't A Guy Eat His Waffles in Peace?

Oh me, oh my.....what are the Code Pinks going to think about this?

The Obama administration is moving toward reviving the military commission system for prosecuting Guantánamo detainees, which was a target of critics during the Bush administration, including Mr. Obama himself.
Officials said the first public moves could come as soon as next week, perhaps in filings to military judges at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, outlining an administration plan to amend the Bush administration’s system to provide more legal protections for terrorism suspects.

This is yet another one of those campaign promises that President Obama has waffled back and forth on in his short 100 days in office.

Continuing the military commissions in any form would probably prompt sharp criticism from human rights groups as well as some of Mr. Obama’s political allies because the troubled system became an emblem of the effort to use Guantánamo to avoid the American legal system.

Damm - this governing thing is harder than it looks. HILLARIEEEEEE - can Bill come help me?

Obama administration officials — and Mr. Obama himself — have said in the past that they were not ruling out prosecutions in the military commission system. But senior officials have emphasized that they prefer to prosecute terrorism suspects in existing American courts. When President Obama suspended Guantánamo cases after his inauguration on Jan. 20, many participants said the military commission system appeared dead.

But in recent days a variety of officials involved in the deliberations say that after administration lawyers examined many of the cases, the mood shifted toward using military commissions to prosecute some detainees, perhaps including those charged with coordinating the Sept. 11 attacks.

What???? You mean President Bush was RIGHT???? Your base is not going to like that at all Mr. President. Neither is Speaker Pelosi. Better watch your back sir.....

Making Work Pay?

Remember that much touted tax cut for all working Americans ("Making Work Pay") that the Obama Administration "gave" us last month. The one that Susan Roesgen was beating Chicago Tea Party attendees over the head with? Well here is one thing that Ms. Roesgen and the Obama Administration didn't disclose about that tax cut....that we would be TAXED ON IT.

Millions of Americans enjoying their small windfall from President Barack Obama's "Making Work Pay" tax credit are in for an unpleasant surprise next spring.

The government is going to want some of that money back.

The tax credit is supposed to provide up to $400 to individuals and $800 to married couples as part of the massive economic recovery package enacted in February. Most workers started receiving the credit through small increases in their paychecks in the past month.

But new tax withholding tables issued by the IRS could cause millions of taxpayers to get hundreds of dollars more than they are entitled to under the credit, money that will have to be repaid at tax time.

At-risk taxpayers include a broad swath of the public: married couples in which both spouses work; workers with more than one job; retirees who have federal income taxes withheld from their pension payments and Social Security recipients with jobs that provide taxable income.

Oh to be sure, the AP lays the blame for this at the door of the IRS, but anyone who has ever had to PAY taxes at the end of the year knows that ANY ADDITIONAL INCOME is going to be taxed! That is what our government does!

The article then goes on to explain some of the complexities in the tax code that the Administration did not take into account when they implimented this scheme.

The tax credit was designed to help boost the economy by getting more money to consumers in their regular paychecks. Employers were required to start using the new withholding tables by April 1.

The tables, however, don't take into account several common categories of taxpayers, experts said.

For example:

_A single worker with two jobs making $20,000 a year at each job will get a $400 boost in take-home pay at each of them, for a total of $800. That worker, however, is eligible for a maximum credit of $400, so the remaining $400 will have to be paid back at tax time — either through a smaller refund or a payment to the IRS.

The IRS recognized there could be a similar problem for married couples if both spouses work, so it adjusted the withholding tables. The fix, however, was imperfect.

• A married couple with a combined income of $50,000 is eligible for an $800 credit. However, if both spouses work and make more than $13,000, the new withholding tables give them each a $600 boost — for a total of $1,200.

There were 33 million married couples in 2008 in which both spouses worked. That's 55 percent of all married couples, according to the Census Bureau.

• A single college student with a part-time job making $10,000 would get a $400 boost in pay. However, if that student is claimed as a dependent on a parent's tax return, she doesn't qualify for the credit and would have to repay it when she files next year.

Some retirees face even bigger headaches.

Which is why across the board tax cuts work better. If you reduce the rate that each tax bracket has to pay by 1% or 2% you cover ALL of the contingencies without punishing the TAXPAYER for your mistakes!

It falls in line with the KISS theory - Keep It Simple Sir! If you keep it simple, it will work better for everyone - when you try to jury rig the results, you end up with complications like this.

Putting It Into Perspective

Today's Yahoo Finance has a column up that finally discusses some things that my radio partner Jazz Shaw and I have discussed multiple times....

Ellen Parnell and her husband, Donald Parnell Jr., seem like the kind of well-off couple President Barack Obama has in mind when he suggests raising taxes on families earning more than $250,000 a year. A surgeon at Fort Sanders Sevier Medical Center in Sevierville, Tenn., he drives an Infiniti. They vacation at a beach resort every year.
Yet, right now he is working seven days a week. The car is more than a decade old, the vacation home in Sandestin, Fla., comes at a moderate weekly rate because members of Ms. Parnell's extended family own it. Her family of five would like more room than they have in their 2,500-square-foot home, yet they can't afford anything larger. The downturn has them skittish about paying for renovations.

Now many folks would say "Oh I would LOVE to have their problems instead of mine" and I can sympathize. Heaven knows I would not mind having a slightly larger home but then again, I certainly would not want to have many of the minuses that come with being a surgeon. For example, there is malpractice insurance, there are lingering medical school loans to pay back and THEN there is the mortgage, car payment, monthly utilities, college, taxes etc to think of.

However, the point that Jazz and I have made when we have had this discussion boils down to a simple real estate marketing phrase....location, location, location. A person making $250,000 would be able to live quite well here in Utah, but in New York City or California....

Changes to the tax code don't generally make adjustments for high costs of living in particular areas of the country.

San Jose, Calif., Mayor Chuck Reed calls a family living in Silicon Valley earning $250,000 "upper working class." That is about what two engineers working at a technology firm can expect to make, but "a family earning $250,000 a year can't buy a home in Silicon Valley," he said.

That is something that a simple statistical figure can not take into account! As the column points out, $250,000 IS in that top bracket of income earners. But those statistics don't take into account that most folks making that kind of money live in cities where the cost of living is much higher which eats up a larger portion of that income than it does elsewhere.

The reasons for the insecurity are that net worth is declining at the same time that expenses like education and health care, two of the biggest concerns cited by members of that income group, are going up faster than wages and income, says Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. "Those are the biggies. They are huge parts of the set of middle-class aspirations, and the prices of those have increased way faster than income." The bursting of the housing bubble makes that more stark.

These concerns, tied to a falling economy, are having a political impact for many people.

James Duran owns a human-resources company in Silicon Valley and is president of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in California. He supported Mr. Obama, but is worried about the tax proposals. He has laid off some employees in recent months and has been wondering how he can fund an extension of those workers' health-care benefits.

Mr. Duran said he and his wife earn about $400,000 annually, but "I'm barely getting by." They have high property and state taxes, as well as college tuition and savings to cover. "I'm an Obama man, but this side of him is a difficult pill for me," he said.

Congress is already backpedaling because of it...

Already, many members of Congress are seeking to scale back some of the proposed tax increases, which call for raising the top federal tax rates to 36% from 33% on households earning $250,000 or above.

...because they know that they have to face the voters long before President Obama does!

Meanwhile, many small business owners are cutting back their business in order to cut back their income in order to get in just under the cap.

Now to be fair, the Parnell's don't want pity....

"I'm not after sympathy. We are blessed. What I want is a reality check on what rich means," Ms. Parnell says. "I can pay my mortgage and I can buy some clothes. I'm not going without, but I'm not living a life of luxury."

While I happen to agree with Mrs. Parnell, I know that the Obama's and the rest of the class envy crowd don't. The Parnell's are the epitome of the "evil rich" that need to be punished. They won the "lottery" of life and therefore they have all the means to pay more. Isn't that the way the progressive theory goes?