Mountain Views News          Saturday, December 11, 2010

10

LEFT TURN / RIGHT TURN

 Mountain Views News Saturday, December 11, 2010 


HOWARD Hays

 As I See It

Kill The Tax Deal

GREG Welborn


It might surprise you to learn that I don’t like the 
tax deal that’s being shopped around Congress. The 
fact that this puts me in the same camp as many 
of the Democrats is a little disconcerting to my 
conservative soul.

One thing is for sure, and that is that President 
Obama’s willingness to accept this deal and his 
attempt to “sell” it marks the end of Obamanomics. 
He’s come out and told us that unless this deal is 
passed, unless increases in tax rates are prevented, 
the economy will likely enter a double dip recession 
or worse. This is nothing short of a repudiation 
of the heart and soul of Obamanomics. The only 
reason he’s doing it is because it gives him a shot, but 
only a shot, at a second term. That’s how disastrous 
his economic policies to date have been.

The deal as laid out would maintain the current 
tax level for two more years and slightly reduce 
payroll taxes. The payroll tax reduction is relatively 
minor, so the reality of this deal is that it simply 
allows the current tax structure to continue for two 
more years. If no deal is reached, on the other hand, 
then on January 1st, 2011 President Obama will be 
responsible for one of the largest tax increases ever 
enacted in this country. Without an extension of what 
we have now, income tax rates increase, capital gains 
tax rates increase, dividend tax rates increase, the 
alternative minimum tax (AMT) will affect several 
more million middle class Americans, and estates in 
excess of $1 million (almost every successful farm 
or small business) will be taxed at confiscatory rates. 
But the “rates” are only part of the ugliness. Because 
personal exemptions and deductions will be phased 
out at ridiculously low levels, the real “effective” rate 
that many Americans will pay will increase by more 
than 20%.

President Obama knows this. His acceptance of 
“the deal” acknowledges, not only that his tax and 
spend policies have failed to lift the economy, but 
that tax rates matter to growth, that treating business 
owners as criminals or pirates does real harm 
(who’s going to invest in their business when they 
face that attitude from their own government), and 
that reducing tax rates is much more effective than 
increasing spending. President Obama is finally 
telling the nation, or at least the far lefties in his own 
party, that businesses actually do most of the hiring 
in this country, and they typically don’t hire if they 
don’t make profits after tax. 

President Obama told us originally that spending 
more money in stimulus two, or tarp two, or 
whatever two that was (I’ve lost track) would 
grow the economy and keep unemployment from 
increasing. He never explained how spending 
money in one area increased employment but 
taking it from another area didn’t just as affectively 
decrease employment. That’s always been the reality 
of government spending. Whether you tax someone 
or borrow the money from them, when you take 
money away from business A to buy something 
from business B, you may increase the employment 
at B, but you most assuredly decrease it at A. The 
net effect of government spending has never been an 
increase in economic activity or employment.

Now, the president is finally acknowledging it. 
Obamanomics is dead. What’s left to be seen is 
whether the remnants of the Democratic Party are 
going to die or evolve. Some of them actually are 
fighting the deal because they want to continue on 
with the current failed policies. As if the loss of 68 
seats in the House and employment climbing to 
9.8% wasn’t enough to convince them that their 
theories don’t work in the real world, they actually 
want to let tax rates go up on 
January 1st to see how many 
more businesses shutter their 
doors and fire their employees. 
I’ve never understood liberal 
thought, but I really believed 
I understood political survival 
instincts.

Now with all that said, let me drop the bombshell 
that I don’t support the deal. Of course, I don’t 
support it for a much different reason than the 
typical Democrat. I don’t think it goes far enough 
in assuring us that tax rates won’t rise in the future, 
and passing the deal would violate the Pledge To 
America. 

In the real world, businesses make decisions 
on whether to expand their plants, introduce new 
product lines and ultimately employ more people, 
or give existing ones raises, based on expected 
profits into the future. Given the money required to 
open a new plant or introduce a new product line, 
businesses will not simply look at the next 2 years. 
They look to the next 5, 10, 15 years. The same 
applies to hiring new workers. Most managers 
don’t want to hire someone, only to have to fire or 
lay them off at the end of 2 years. The deal, as it is 
currently constructed, would only assure business 
owners that their taxes won’t go up for the next 2 
years. After that, there’s absolutely no guarantee 
as to what would happen. And the louder the 
Democrats scream about extending the current 
tax rates for just 2 years, the more convinced most 
business owners are that Democrats would seek to 
increase them after 2 years. In short, the deal isn’t 
going to prompt that many business owners to 
invest or hire more people. It’s so temporary a “fix” 
as to be ineffective. Probably worse than ineffective 
because too many people might think that it will 
accomplish something.

The other major problem with the deal is that 
it violates the Pledge To America, which is what 
brought so many independents back into the 
mainstream and to supporting Republicans. The 
essential principals on which Republicans ran 
and the voters clearly elected their representatives 
included 1) PERMANENTLY stopping all tax hikes, 
2) acting IMMEDIATELY to reduce spending, and 
3) reading bills entirely BEFORE they are passed 
into law.

The deal would not permanently stop tax 
increases; it specifically increases government 
spending in the form of increased employment 
benefits; and because of the time that has been 
spent dickering around and adding amendments, 
there is almost no time left for Congressmen to 
actually read the thing.

The bottom line from my perspective is, as 
Obama said almost two years ago, elections have 
consequences. Back then he “won”. Today, it’s the 
conservatives who won, and they did so by making 
explicit promises to the voters. My advice to them 
is to walk away from the deal, let the Democrats 
increases taxes, and take it to the voters again. 
I’m sure many Democrats would hear from their 
constituents over the Christmas holiday, but it may 
take some of them another two years and another 
election defeat to get the message. 

About the author: Gregory J. Welborn is a 
freelance writer and has spoken to several civic 
and religious organizations on cultural and moral 
issues. He lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife 
and 3 children and is active in the community. He 
can be reached at gregwelborn@earthlink.net.

"Let us reason together." 
Powerful words - a slogan used 
by Lyndon Johnson in his 1964 
presidential campaign. They 
provided an effective counterpoint 
to Barry Goldwater's "Extremism 
in the defense of liberty is no vice." 

Americans generally support the concept of 
reasoning together. A new Gallup poll shows 
two-thirds of respondents favoring President 
Obama's compromise with Republicans on tax 
cut and unemployment benefit extensions. A 
Bloomberg poll released the same time, though, 
cites a similar two-thirds as preferring that tax cuts 
for the wealthiest be allowed to expire, while made 
permanent for the middle-class.

Democrats wax nostalgic about the eloquent 
combativeness of Franklin Roosevelt: "These 
economic royalists complain that we seek to 
overthrow the institutions of America. What they 
really complain of is that we seek to take away their 
power. Our allegiance to American institutions 
requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In 
vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the 
Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the 
flag and the Constitution stand for." 

Democrats yearn for the "plain-speaking" of 
Harry Truman: "The Republicans believe that the 
power of government should be used first of all to 
help the rich and the privileged in the country. With 
them, property, wealth, comes first. The Democrats 
believe that the power of government should be 
used to give the common man more protection and 
a chance to make a living. With us the people come 
first. 'A Government as Good As Its People'"

Echoes of that clarity and determination are heard 
today from Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of 
Vermont, who says it is " . . . beyond comprehension 
that the Republicans would hold hostage the entire 
middle class of this country so that millionaires and 
billionaires would receive huge tax breaks. In my 
view, that is not what this country is about and it is 
not what the American people want to see. Our job 
is to save the disappearing middle class, not lower 
taxes for people who are already extraordinarily 
wealthy and increase the national debt that our 
children and grandchildren would have to pay." 

Keith Olbermann on MSNBC began his 
commentary by paraphrasing Winston Churchill; 
"We have sustained defeat without a war". In 
assessing support for the president, he said he told 
an administration official trying to sell him on the 
proposal, "the base has just vanished." 

Republicans, too, have come out against the 
compromise. Continuation of the lowered tax rates, 
they say, is sure to bring investment and job creation, 
notwithstanding the fact the identical claim was 
made nine years ago and proved bogus. Their 
objection is not in assuring the top 1% (averaging 
$1.4 million annual income) can save $83,000 a 
year in taxes, but in sending those $290 weekly 
unemployment checks offering a lifeline to 2 million 
Americans and their families.

Our favorite Tea Party candidate, Christine 
O'Donnell of Delaware, announced formation of 
her new Political Action Committee by citing three 
"tragedies" of the day; commemoration of the Pearl 
Harbor attack, the death of Elizabeth Edwards, and 
the extension of unemployment benefits (she later 
explained she didn't mean what she said). Sen. 
Jim DeMint (R-SC) says "We just can't keep paying 
people to stay at home." (A survey by the San 
Francisco Federal Reserve concludes that those who 
receive benefits stay unemployed an average of 1.6 
weeks longer than those who don't.) 

Republicans decry the "massive spending" of the 
proposed extension of unemployment benefits, 
figured at $56 billion over two years - but not the 
$140 billion over the same period for blocking a 
3-point marginal tax increase for those making 
over $200,000 a year ($250,000 for families). Rep. 
Michelle Bachman (R-MN), Sen. Tom Coburn (R-
OK) and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) go on the 
air to describe payroll tax cuts for the middle-class as 
"government spending", while cutting taxes for the 
wealthiest is simply allowing them to "keep their own 
money". Bachman also complains that President 
Obama doesn't use the term "God" enough in his 
speeches. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich 
suggests tax rates be set by "the business leadership 
of the country".

A big question is how this compromise proposal 
will effect President Obama's re-election prospects. 
According to Survey USA as reported in the 
Washington Post, 74% of those who contributed 
to Obama in 2008 oppose the deal allowing for an 
extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest. 
57% of them are less likely to support Democrats in 
2012 who back the compromise, and 51% are less 
likely to support the president's re-election.

The dilemma for President Obama is that he 
serves not just as party leader or campaign strategist, 
but as president of all Americans. In his press 
conference, he alluded to the dangers of refusing 
to compromise: "People will have the satisfaction 
of having a purist position and no victories for the 
American people. And we will be able to feel good 
about ourselves and sanctimonious about how pure 
our intentions are and how tough we are, and in 
the meantime the American people are still seeing 
themselves not able to get health insurance because 
of a preexisting condition. Or not being able to pay 
their bills because their unemployment insurance 
ran out. "

Should this compromise pass, there will be 
the need to remind voters that the deficit is now 
unquestionably the responsibility of Congressional 
Republicans, not of President Obama. We'll need to 
make sure diminished revenue through cuts in the 
payroll tax is never used as an excuse to cut benefits 
from Social Security or Medicare, or turn such 
programs over to the same Wall Street players who 
decimated so many 401(k)'s and thousands of other 
retirement accounts.

There's the need to be open to compromise in 
order to provide those "victories for the American 
people." There's also the need to hear more plain-
speaking from Harry Truman: "Whenever a fellow 
tells me he's bipartisan, I know he's going to vote 
against me."

MARY Carney

 From The Inside Out


New Streets – 
and CARE

It’s so exciting – for the first 
time in at least 28 years, our 
street was repaved this week. 
To drive away in the morning over bleached 
gray, cracked and broken asphalt and come 
back to smooth stretch of brown earth – what a 
transformation. To see the huge trucks with teeth 
underneath used to grind up the old stuff right 
down to the earth. And the next day to glimpse 
the whole process a few streets away as I drove to-
and-fro for work. This morning to experience the 
big roller packing down the earth – not just with 
its weight, but with a deep internal hammering 
that reverberate through the earth up to 200 
feet away, reminding me a bit of an earthquake 
… awesome! When I take the time to really 
look such road building equipment, I’m again 
reminded of the immense creativity we humans 
have, that enables us to imagine, design, build, 
test and use equipment like this. Today – only 
the third day since work started, when I come 
home again our street (and others in town) will 
be completely repaved. 

I lived and worked for CARE (www.care.
org/) in Bangladesh for two years, overseeing 
USAID wheat being distributed as laborer 
wages through their government’s rural civil 
engineering projects. These projects had three 
purposes: 1) Rebuilding or repairing rural roads, 
embankments, canals and water storage facilities 
for better transportation communication during 
the rainy / flood season, 2) creating better water 
storage capability for water access during the 
dry season, and 3) providing employment for 
the landless or near landless living in the rural 
area who had no way to grow food to feed their 
families. Payment for a day’s work – if earth 
moving quota was met - was the receipt of 6 
pounds of USAID donated wheat (grains, not 
flour). Men had to move 150 cubic feet of earth, 
women only had to move 100 cubic feet of earth 
to get paid.

I ask you - would you spend a day in 
backbreaking labor with pick and shovel, 
breaking up dried earth and piling it into woven 
baskets, digging it out of canals to build higher 
embankments in the yearly attempt to better 
control the rainy season flood, or lugging filled 
baskets to pile the roads higher so that they were 
(hopefully) above flood level during the rainy 
season for 6# of (often buggy) wheat grains that 
had to be milled into flour? Would you spend 
every day, crouched on your haunches and 
holding an umbrella over between your shoulder 
and your neck for shelter from either rain or sun in 
one hand, while using one hand to grasp a clump 
of grass and the other hand with the scissors to 
cut it so your lawn looked nice? 

If you had land to grow rice, when you harvested 
your rice, would you spend every day along the 
edges of the asphalt road, carefully shuffling the 
rice with your feet from one hot part of the edge 
to another so it dries properly for storage? And at 
the end of the day carefully sweeping every grain 
off the asphalt because those grains are the food 
that will feed your family during the rainy season?

Billions of people around the world spend 
their days working physically very hard simply 
to survive. Digging poor soil to grow crops, 
carrying water to wash and cook with – maybe 
with only the earth for a floor in your house. 
Because there are so many people living near you, 
you may need to gather and use cow dung for 
fuel - although, if there is some left over, mixing 
cow dung with various colors of earth makes 
both a strong, actually cleanable floor, as well as 
interior / exterior wall plaster for rondaavals (yes, 
I also worked 2.5 years in Lesotho, [Le soo too], 
totally surrounded by South Africa, with all the 
interesting political and racial undercurrents you 
can imagine).

Thank you, City of Sierra Madre City Council 
and Staff, for reminding me of the earth under 
my street and under our house. Thank you for 
reminding me that it’s a whole lot easier to keep 
both streets and houses clean because we are 
“above” the earth, dust, mud, insects and bugs. 
Thank you for caring enough to plan ahead to 
ensure we have adequate and safe water in the 
years to come. Thank you for putting up with our 
individual - and not always gracefully - expressed 
opinions. Thank you, dear heart, for inviting me 
to live with you here in Sierra Madre – for being 
able to come up the hill to home – out and away 
from the frenetic energies of the big city “down 
below”, into the quiet, with trees, clean air and the 
mountains. I am (we all are) are so blessed ….

By Susan Henderson

Newly elected Assembly Member Tim Donnelly, 
has, as promised in his campaign, gone to 
“Sacramento To Start The War”. Since his 
swearing in earlier this month, he has introduced 
two extremely divisive and controversial bills, the 
latest of which is cloaked in the guise of “helping 
members of the armed forces and their families.”

 That Bill, AB63, was introduced last week and 
does have a provision that will assist service 
persons and their family members that are 
transferred to military installations in California 
with the cost of tuition while attending school 
here. The bill would allow those service persons 
and their families to waive the residency 
requirement and receive a reduced tuition rate. 
They would be eligible to pay the ‘in state’ rate, 
which is considerably lower than the rate charged 
to ‘out of state’ students, people who have been in 
California for less than three years.

 However, the bill also will “remove people who 
are in the country illegally from eligibility for in-
state tuition for the California State University 
and California Community College systems.

According to a staetment from his office, “..existing 
law allows people who have attended a California 
high school for three years to pay in-state tuition 
fees, regardless of immigration status.”

 “The current situation is both costly and unfair, 
giving discounted tuition to illegal aliens and 
treating our armed forces, stationed in California, 
as less deserving than people who are unlawfully 
present in the State,” said Donnelly. “AB 63 will 
correct this wrong and give those who risk their 
lives in service to our country, and their families, 
a chance to receive higher education.”

If passed in its present form, the bill would 
penalize children who have attended California 
Schools, but who may be in the country illegally 
through no fault of their own. Opponents of 
efforts such as Donnelly’s plan in AB63, note 
that a minor child has no jurisdiction over his 
immigration status and that it is fundamentally 
unfair to punish a child for the actions of their 
parents. 

 “These children are being targeted for political 
purposes”, said one angry parent. “These kids 
have been classmates and friends of our kids and 
deserve the same treatment. It is good to provide 
for our soldiers, but we shouldn’t use it as an 
excuse to push the anti-immigration agenda. We 
will fight this!”

 This is the second bill that Donnelly has 
introduced that has people up in arms. The first 
calls for California to adopt a law similar to the 
Arizona immigration law. 

 Assembly Member Donnelly represents the 59th 
Assembly District, which includes portions of the 
cities of Arcadia and Monrovia, and the entire 
city of Sierra Madre.

 Donnelly, a Tea Party Republican, founded the 
largest Minuteman chapter in California

ASSEMBLY MEMBER DONNELLY INTRODUCES 
SECOND PIECE OF CONTROVERSIAL LEGISLATION

Dreier: Rules Committee Chair for 112th Congress

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman David Dreier (R-CA), Rules Committee Ranking 
Republican, issued the following statement today 
regarding his selection as House Rules Committee 
Chairman for the 112th Congress:

"Under a new Majority, the 112th Congress will be 
managed differently than any Congress before it 
and I am honored to be a part of Speaker-designate 
Boehner’s leadership team. The Rules Committee 
will be responsible for implementing and maintaining 
a commitment to the reforms that the new 
Republican Majority has pledged to put in place. 
We need to make the House more transparent and 
accountable to the American people. We also need 
to reform the rules and operations of the House to 
ensure that they encourage spending reductions 
and economic growth. Tremendous challenges lie 
ahead. An impressive and dedicated group of new 
members will help us achieve these goals.”


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