Seth Leibson 04-13-2012

April 13, 2012

As Broadcast on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America

By Seth Leibsohn



The headline from the Washington Post this morning: “Defiant North Korea fires long-range rocket.”  Now, thank heavens, this rocket failed.  But the question in front of us is what was the US prepared to do if this rocket was successful and, moreover, why did a new leader in North Korea think he could defy our agreement with his country and launch this rocket?  Let me ask this question:  We are going into another round of talks with Iran over their nuclear program this weekend.  Why, this week, did Iran’s President blast the United States as “arrogant” and repeatedly say Iran would not give up its nuclear program?  Why did he think he could do that?  All those sanctions we’ve been told were working against both countries, sanctions matched with offers to talk and negotiate: they’ve led to what?  Fear of us or pushing around of us?



Here is everything you need to know about sanctions against rogue nuclear states and soon-to-be rogue nuclear states: Two quotes from the Washington Post about North Korea:  i) “The country is one of the most heavily sanctioned on earth” and ii) “’We have all the sanction authorities we need under existing U.N. resolutions and executive orders,’” said an Obama administration official, who was not authorized to speak on the record.”



So, the heaviest of sanctions with an admission that we don’t need more stopped North Korea not at all, and puts the fear into the Mullocracy of Iran not at all.  Meanwhile, we get lied to.  Here is Secretary of State Clinton on the upcoming talks with Iran:  “We are receiving signals that (the Iranians) are bringing ideas to the table.”  What signals?  What ideas?  Does she read the speeches of the Iranian President?  And what is Iran beyond its bragging?  It is a nation at war with us.  As Steve Hayes put it in today’s Wall Street Journal:  “Tehran has provided weapons to insurgents directly responsible for killing hundreds of American troops…It has funded, trained and equipped jihadists—Sunnis and Shiites alike—targeting American forces and interests in the Middle East and beyond. And all along the way it has provided safe haven and support to al Qaeda leaders and those closest to them.”  So to this country we talk; we negotiate; and speak about high hopes.



And, if North Korea and Iran were not quite enough for us, let me give you Latin America.  Here’s the latest from Gallup: “U.S. President Barack Obama's job approval rating in Latin America is at a new low ahead of the Sixth Summit of the Americas taking place in Cartagena, Colombia, this week….Many Latin Americans have lost faith in Obama's ability to strengthen ties between Latin America and the U.S.”



Remember when Walter Mondale asked Gary Hart “Where’s the beef?”  One simple question for President Obama on the world stage, on his efforts to reset our foreign relations:  “Where’s the success?”  There is none.  There is failure.  There is weakness.  There is danger.  Remember when Jeane Kirkpatrick said she was tired of the US getting kicked around?  Remember how she and Ronald Reagan changed that?  Well we are getting kicked around again.  And it’s more dangerous now than it was back then.



This is what is happening abroad—and, to us.  Meanwhile, while those fires go on, here is what the President is doing at home—and it is very obviously his campaign theme.  It’s the theme he thinks will take down and take out Mitt Romney.  We cannot let him get away with it.  The President is now going back to arguing for the Buffett rule, the idea that if you earn more than one million dollars a year you need to pay more taxes.  He’s so proud of this point, his speech about it on Wednesday is on the White House Website—and in that speech, not for the first time, he says this:



I’m not the first President to call for this idea that everybody has got to do their fair share.  Some years ago, one of my predecessors traveled across the country pushing for the same concept.  He gave a speech where he talked about a letter he had received from a wealthy executive who paid lower tax rates than his secretary, and wanted to come to Washington and tell Congress why that was wrong.  So this President gave another speech where he said it was “crazy” -- that's a quote -- that certain tax loopholes make it possible for multimillionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary.  That wild-eyed, socialist, tax-hiking class warrior was Ronald Reagan.



President Obama went on to say we might as well call this tax on people earning more than one million dollars the “Reagan rule.”



Now this will have cache in this election if and only if one condition is met: If we are intellectually lazy.  My plea is we not be lazy.  Pericles said the secret of democracy is courage, but I think we need to update that and recognize that the secret of democracy is industry, diligence, and dedication—whatever the opposite of lazy is.



So let’s get to it.  Barack Obama is taking Reagan so far out of context Reagan would not recognize how he’s being quoted.  The speech Reagan gave that Obama is quoting from was at a school in 1985.  And here’s how it went.  First, Reagan spoke of the economic recovery we were then enjoying.  And how did we get there?  Here is what Reagan said in that speech:  “Hope has returned, and America's working again.  Now, you know how all this came about, how we cut tax rates and trimmed Federal spending and got interest rates down. But what's really important is what inspired us to do these things. What's really important is the philosophy that guided us. The whole thing could be boiled down to a few words—freedom, freedom, and more freedom. It's a philosophy that isn't limited to guiding government policy. It's a philosophy you can live by; in fact, I hope you do.”



You simply do not hear Barack Obama talking like that—and you most certainly do not hear him pleading for or celebrating cuts in the tax rates—yes, including cutting the millionaires’ taxes; Reagan cut them 20 percent by the time of his speech 1985 and would cut them again another 22 percent.



So yes, in the summer of 1985 Reagan was pushing his new tax legislation.  But here’s what his legislation called for—the diligent can look it up; I already did.  Yes, closing some tax code loopholes, but if you go back and read what loopholes, they were mostly for entertainment deductions.  Again and again the “three martini lunch” is what the White House said it was talking about and what the press kept talking about.  Entertainment expenses.



How about the rest of Reagan’s tax plan that year?  As I mentioned, he had lowered marginal tax rates from 70 percent to 50 percent and in 1985 he went on a campaign to lower them again, to 35 percent and would ultimately get them to 28 percent.  So when Obama says, as he did this week, that Reagan wanted to raise taxes on millionaires that is not what Reagan was pushing for, Reagan was pushing for lowering them, and in that year he was arguing to lower them to today’s very rate (35 percent) that Obama wants to hike!



Now, let’s look at what else Reagan said in that high school speech.  Let me quote:  “We want the part of your check that shows Federal withholding to have fewer digits on it. And we want the part that shows your salary to have more digits on it. We're trying to take less money from you and less from your parents.”



He also said there “When taxes are lowered, economic growth follows. And economic growth is good for just about everyone, especially the poor.”  That’s what Ronald Reagan’s theme was at that speech.



Reagan’s speech and his plan was about scaling down taxes and scaling down the IRS.  That’s not what Obama’s plan is—it’s the very opposite.  Hold on that thought a moment, because I’m not done with Reagan.  The very day before his speech that Obama quotes, here’s what Reagan said about his tax plan in 1985, quote:  “Some people have labored so long to make government bigger, they've developed a knee-jerk addiction to tax increases," Reagan said. "And every time their knee jerks, we get kicked.”  You don’t hear Obama quote that justification for what Reagan was arguing for in 1985.  And for good reason:  he believes the exact opposite.



So let us disabuse ourselves of this notion that the Buffett rule would receive any warrant, never mind initiation, from Ronald Reagan.  And let us disabuse ourselves from the notion that the Buffett rule means anything substantial beyond crude class electioneering.  If implemented, it would raise revenues by five billion dollars—eight times less than Warren Buffett’s entire net worth.  If Warren Buffett wants to implement his Buffett rule, nobody is stopping him and he could do it for the whole country in one fell swoop if he thinks it such a good idea, and he’d still be worth 35 billion dollars after doing so.



The point is this:  the Gateses and the Zuckerbergs and the Dells, just like the Carnegies and the Mellons and the Vanderbilts before them, have noting to be guilty about:  they make wealth and they create wealth.  They made wealth and they created wealth.



I close with what Abraham Lincoln said about wealth creation:  “Property is the fruit of labor...property is desirable...is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself.”  That is how you talk about fairness.  No, that is how you create fairness.  And wealth.  And prosperity.  And growth.  Not with the political theater of the absurd we’ve been treated to this week and will be treated with for weeks to come.



Let’s get on with this election—and let us do it with one goal in mind: Holding this President accountable.  Accountable for the increased debt; the irresponsible, deficit-laden budgets; increased unemployment; increased weakness on the world stage; increased danger to our own country; but mostly, at the end of the day, mostly let us hold him accountable for treating us as if we were stupid by continuing to offer us theater and absurd theater at that.  Accountability—that’s the other secret of this democracy.