Dear Readers: One of the key components of a proper Tea Baggin’ attitude is appreciating the fact wealth creation is better than wealth distribution. In fact, The Other McCain has a compendium of fabulous videos by Tea Party hunk, Bill Whittle, that go to this very subject:
* What We Believe Part 1: Small Government and Free Enterprise
* What We Believe Part 2: The Problem With Elitism
* What We Believe Part 3: Wealth Creation
Last week, it became apparent that organized labor was pouring tons of money into this election. Let me put it plainly — the union elites rob their members via dues to use that money for their own interests — not the interest of their employees, their employees’ families, and the citizens they are suppose to serve (if they are public employee unions).
In this vein, I wanted to share a piece that Professor Athena prepared. (MUT Note: Professor Athena is a highly placed professional in the banking and financial services industry).
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AMERICA’S WORK
Not since America’s industrial revolution just prior to the turn of the 20th century and the first organization of American worker unions has there been a bigger chasm dividing the employer and employee. Over a hundred years hence, and pitted politically against one another by those in Washington, D.C. seeking to gain advantage by numbers aligned on their side in the voting booth, we have employers frequently characterized as greedy and downright immoral. This is not that surprising given the emphasis to redistribution of wealth by this administration through tax and regulatory policy and in their class-warfare verbiage.
It is consistent with regard to current lack of action on part of Congress in dealing definitively with income taxes and especially capital gains and estate taxes. Long-term tax planning is a joke. Corporations and individuals alike right now are loathe to spend when they have no idea what their taxes are going to be mere months from now, much less years into the future. This single question hanging right now in the balance is a monstrous drain upon economic activity. It is consistent in the money backing the initiative to increase taxes in the state of Washington (I-1098), where labor is literally seeking to elect their own bosses and collect enough additional revenue to perpetuate their own inflated compensation at the expense of taxpayers. If this initiative passes, the governor elected by the citizens of the state will no longer be able to alter the budget in order to balance shortfalls, as recently-elected Governor Chris Christie has done in New Jersey. Unions are in other words seeking to circumvent the will of the majority to cut government overhead and waste. In a nation where more people are now employed in the public sector than in the private sector, even a third-grader can do the math. It will become through time more difficult to balance tax revenues from the private sector to pay the proportionally larger sector of workers on the public side. We can no doubt look forward at some point in our future, should we fail to reduce the size and scope of government, to riots similar to those already taking place in the U.K. and France. When the private sector eventually balks at paying the tab for ineffective teachers, public employees who have six-figure pension compensation and are “double-dipping” through continued employment in the public sector, and a glut of unmotivated and unproductive government bureaucrats whose only purpose is to push paper to satisfy the ever-increasing federal regulatory burden, the real class warfare battle will be joined.
The Washington Examiner reported at the beginning of the 2010 elections that the AFL/CIO and the SEIU were combining their efforts to the tune of some $88 million to elect Democrats. The AFSME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) as of today holds the record for money spent on political campaigns during one fiscal year by a single group at over $87 million. Taken together, the money being spent on part of unions is frightening. While the President stumps about “special interests” attempting to “buy the election”, it is laughable that he does not appear to admit that public employee unions fall into this category of narrow focus by virtue of seeking to elect the very bosses they work for.
It is also interesting from a historical perspective that demands from today’s unions as far as wages and benefits obscure the real value of being employed today by corporations who go public and allow their employees the benefit of employee stock options and other extremely lucrative benefits. Imagine back in the day of the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers how readily company stock ownership would have been shared with employees. Today’s wage earners in the private sector often have equity. In having such, their workers tend to logically reflect a much greater productivity than that of public sector workers. Sadly, with the onerous burdens being placed on the private sector through taxes and benefits, “our jobs” are so expensive that they are no longer our jobs, and are instead flowing to other countries with much lower tax rates and no mandate to provide health care benefits. If only we could figure out a way to outsource most of the government of California’s customer service jobs (as would no doubt happen if it were private sector jobs we were talking about) we would be talking a balanced state budget next year in the Golden State!
Despite the tsunami of cash from the various public worker unions, the looming election appears poised for a change away from Democrats who ballooned the current federal deficit to over $13 trillion (and that’s not counting Medicare or Social Security). The state of the economy is by far the largest concern on the minds of voters. The question that remains is how much we are all willing to press upon politicians our point that as Americans we deserve fiscal solvency along with a government that does not seek to grow larger and more powerful than the people it represents.
In the capital of Ohio, state home of eight U.S. Presidents, there is chiseled into a downtown building the following quote from Rutherford B. Hayes, 19th President of the United States:
“The whole fabric of society rests upon labor”.
Indeed, this is backwards. The whole fabric of society rests upon those who create the labor, whether it is the farmer in the field with his crop, the small business owner who performs a service, the factory who builds a product, the entrepreneur who designs a new internet application, the capital markets who finance those who seek to expand and grow their capital and invest as opposed to just spend, and even those who educate for tomorrow’s job markets. Without those who create the work, we don’t have the jobs. Or the consumers, or the growth in personal wealth and affluence we have seen in the past century. May such increase in American’s affluence over the past 50 years not become a footnote of what we once were, but instead what we learn from to become an even better economy at inventing, producing, and selling to the world the unique fruits of America’s work.
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Sarah Bond, coordinator of the Southern California Tax Revolt Coalition, writes: So Cal Tax Revolt Coalition, as members of Tea Party Patriots, applied for a Get Out The Vote grant from the now famous Anonymous Donor. We applied for a wide variety of media options for spreading the message of voter participation (including radio, print, on-line and billboard ads) so that the donor could select an option that most appealed to his or her vision of this campaign.
Ultimately our Billboard design and campaign was selected and we are excited to announce that on this coming Monday, October 25th that THIRTY billboards will go up all over San Diego!!
NOTE: This was a ONE TIME $12K dollar donation to our organization to be used ONLY on the Get Out The Vote campaign. These funds cannot be used for our day-to-day operating expenses.
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MUT News and Views
As your resident Tea Party Democrat, I wanted to let you know I have located a Democrat we can rally behind: “He (Obama) can take his endorsement and really shove it”, said Rhode Island Democratic gubernatorial candidate Frank Caprio. “We had one of the worst floods in the history of the United States a few months back and President Obama didn’t even do a fly over of Rhode Island. He ignored us and now he’s coming into Rhode Island and treating us like an ATM machine”.
I think Caprio might chill a bit by watching this wonderful video by W.C. Varones brother — Tea Baggin’ (a musical parody to the tune of Free Falling by Tom Petty).
Michelle Malkin has a timely reminder of Voter Fraud, and how to try and stem illicit vote gathering by Tea Party opponents.
Gateway Pundit has a list of 99 key races to watch on election night.
HillBuzz is publishing outstanding ground reports from around the country, and they had a GREAT MERCIFUL ZEUS alert today involving Tea Party Hero Andrew Breitbart.
Finally, the Anchoress has her own list of essential reading – including to a link on a rare, non-partisan CBS 60 Minutes story about the true level of unemployment. How did that get past the CBS editors?
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SLOB Round-up
Beers with Demo deconstructs the latest inanity involving Maureen Dowd, Marilyn Monroe, and Sarah Palin. Beers with Demo — here is a graphic that you can share, which should really upset Dowd!
The Liberator Today has more on the close vote related to Proposition D (VOTE NO!).
Shane Atwell: Defund NPR
Speaking of election fraud, W.C. Varones covers the Democratic Party support of fake Tea Party Candidates.
I am formally adding a new SLOB: Lorraine Yapps Cohen. She writes – Just like New Jersey, California can redeem itself at the polls on Nov. 2
Finally, Left Coast Rebel publishes his list of the TOP TEN CANDIDATES TO DONATE TO!Please check it out.
Love the graphic.
Thanks for the link!
And LOVE the billboard!
“Long-term tax planning is a joke.” Planning of any kind is a joke. That’s why businesses won’t hire, and therefore why they won’t borrow. Thus there is no demand for capital and the banks won’t pay anything to raise it. Just look at CD rates.
And this corrupt dysfunctional government –both state and federal — continues to lie to us, about everything from the Tea Party to Prop 23. They must go.