Any Criticism of Obama Assumed to Be Racist?; Other Videos

In Jim Geraghty’s daily e-mail (you can subscribe for free in the top-right corner of the National Review Online main page), I was very interested to read about a new Republican TV ad:

Liberty Defined, Briefly

A reader recently asked how I would define liberty.  Great question!

I claim no special expertise, but here is how I would outline the topic:  By “liberty” in a broad sense, I mean to comprehend at least three main categories: life, liberty in a narrower sense, and property.  (These three categories are probably not exhaustive, but that may depend on how narrowly you construe them.  They may also not be perfectly separable—if you think about them enough, they may inevitably blur into each other.  I think they are nevertheless useful categories.)

(See also rights to life, liberty, and property in our state constitutions.)

Rich Pay Even More Disproportionate Share of Income Taxes than Previously Reported

Via Wintery Knight, Professor Mark J. Perry gives us another graph of how skewed our tax system is against the rich (contrary to a certain liberal narrative):

‘You Didn’t Build That’

As you’ve no doubt heard, President Obama said recently, “If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen.”  (Previously linked on this blog, John Kass and Mark Steyn comment.)

It’s turning into a whole big thing.  Via Disrupt the Narrative, I give you a site that was too funny not to pass on:  Didn’t build that .com.

Via that site, an opinion piece at Townhall.com has a good line:

Well, two can play at that game. If you’re one of the millions of Americans counted as part of the eight percent unemployed, you didn’t get there on your own. Somebody else made that happen. And he’s running for reelection.

“He certainly carries it forward from one dam speech to another.”

Mark Steyn, as usual, is must-read material:

So, in his “you didn’t build that” speech, he invoked, yet again, the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge.  “When we invested in the Hoover Dam or the Golden Gate Bridge, or the Internet, sending a man to the moon — all those things benefited everybody. And so that’s the vision that I want to carry forward.”

Recommended

A few interesting readings I’ve run across recently:

1.

Via Rush Limbaugh, John Kass responds to President Obama’s recent comments with a tribute to his hard-working father, and the rest of his family, who ran a small business.

(President Obama said last Friday, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.”  That’s not taken out of context; on the contrary, in context, it sounds even worse.  Don’t take my word for it; read as much of the context as you’d like.)

2.

Project Veritas, run by James O’Keefe, appears to have caught union bosses on video agreeing to help get government money (that’s your money) to pay people to dig holes and fill them back in:

Obama’s Speechwriters Asleep on the Job Again

President Obama today:  “The last thing we need right now is more top-down economics.”

What does he think his centralized-government command economy is?

‘Want lower unemployment? Get a GOP Governor.’

I certainly don’t want to lean too heavily on this—confounding variables and all that—but I know that at least one reader of this blog finds this kind of evidence very persuasive.  (I’m sure he’ll convert to conservatism immediately upon seeing this…)

Via Haemet and Breitbart.com, Examiner.com reports that Republican governors are correlated with falling unemployment rates recently.  (Eternity Matters also mentioned this, whence the pithy title.)

According to Examiner.com, 17 new Republican governors (elected in the 2010 Tea Party tsunami) first took office in January 2011; 8 new Democrat governors were also elected and took office at the same time.

Rich Already Pay More than “Fair Share”

Via Hot Air and the Washington Times, a new report from the government’s own Congressional Budget Office shows that (as of 2008 and 2009) the top 20% of the population earn 50.8% of the income in the country, but pay 67.9% of the taxes.

Amazon Health Care or BMV Health Care?

No doubt he’s not the first to make such comparisons, but they bear repeating:  Wintery Knight asks, Do you want your health care to be more like using Amazon.com, or like the Bureau of Motor Vehicles?

Oh, and apparently the latest “best estimate” from the government’s own Congressional Budget Office is that Obamacare will make 11 million people lose their employer-provided health insurance, or possibly up to 20 million.

Recall that President Obama, in trying to sell Obamacare, explicitly promised (July 28th, 2009, AARP “tele-town hall”),

More on Obamacare

Happy Independence Day!  What better way to celebrate than with another depressing Mark Steyn column about our increasing dependence and the slow death of liberty?

Josh Mandel Takes BBA Pledge

It’s a small but important victory:  Ohio current state treasurer and Senate candidate Josh Mandel has just become the most prominent politician to date to take the People’s Balanced Budget Amendment pledge.

A month and a half ago, I discussed and recommended We Demand a Balanced Budget .com, which encourages people to take one of two pledges:

• Candidates pledge to work to pass a balanced-budget amendment to the U. S. Constitution if elected.

• Citizens pledge not to donate money toward, or otherwise support, any candidate who has not taken that pledge.  (Obviously citizens are still free to, and should, cast their vote for the more conservative candidate every time, regardless of whether he has taken the pledge.)