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Posts Tagged ‘Democrats’
January 6th, 2010 at 12:02 pm
Democrats Flee Sinking Ship
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This week has been awash in Democratic retirements.  In just two days, senior Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND) have announced that they won’t be facing voters this November.

In addition, Governor Bill Ritter (D-CO) announced his retirement after just one term in Denver.

All three politicians had uphill reelection prospects and polls now show Republicans with a 44% to 35% advantage in the Generic Congressional Ballot.

For taxpayers and free trade advocates, Dorgan’s retirement comes as a welcome surprise.  He was one of the loudest and most obnoxious free trade opponents in the Senate and even authored the book “Take this Job and Ship It,” a screed against free trade and competition.

Thankfully, the book’s Amazon sales rank is a lowly 143,535, so few will miss his writing or his voting record.

November 24th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
The New Stimulus: $150 Billion Tax Increase
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Ah, the world of Democratic fiscal policy.  If you pass three massive stimulus bills that not only fail to stimulate job growth, but partly contribute to 10.2% unemployment, why not go back to the well and push for tax hikes?

According to the Hill, Democrats are seeking a $150 billion tax on the sale and purchase of financial instruments like stocks and derivatives.  The thinking is that since Wall Street is finally recovering and unemployment is still lingering above 10 percent that Wall Street needs to involuntarily fund a “Job Creation Reserve” for the unemployed.  If that’s all it takes to lift a $14 trillion economy out of recession, why didn’t our exalted class of politicos think of this before?

Now that Wall Street is starting to recover, what better way to welcome it back to prosperity than with a massive new tax hike?  This failed line of thinking reminds me of the old Ronald Reagan quote, “If it moves, tax it.  If it keeps moving, regulate it.  And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

For real life illustrations of this quote see: Wall Street bailouts/new taxes, taxing “rich people,” bailing out Detroit, subsidizing Amtrak, subsidizing the postal service, subsidizing agriculture, and the regulation of pretty much every productive economic venture in the U.S.

November 19th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Pelosi-Nomics: Decrease Opportunities, Increase Costs

An opportunity cost is a term used in economics to identify the next-best-option you didn’t choose. For example, if a person has $20 and buys a book instead of a CD, the opportunity cost is the foregone CD. Of course, in order to have an opportunity cost, you need an opportunity to choose. One of the arguments against enhancing an already heavy tax burden on high-end earners is that many of them will move to other, less oppressive countries. If regulations of Wall Street pile up too high, the best and brightest will go to London or Hong Kong. In that scenario, the opportunity cost would be choosing not to live in America.

But where economists see rational behavior enabled by choices, Democrats usually see greed propelled by self-interest. Thus, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is making it clear she intends to increase the costs of financial transactions by eliminating a financier’s opportunities to live and work in less taxed locales. How? By mandating a global tax that would remove any incentive for highly skilled workers to relocate overseas.

Any tax imposed on financial transactions would have to take effect internationally to prevent Wall Street jobs and related business moving overseas, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday.

“It would have to be an international rule, not just a U.S. rule,” Pelosi said at a news conference. “We couldn’t do it alone, we’d have to do it as an international initiative.”

True, bringing all financial transactions under a universal system of regulation would take care of the “problem” of people trying to avoid confiscatory taxation. On the other hand, it also decreases the likelihood that highly motivated people will be able to create wealth through the financial system. Once again, with one notable exception, the modern Democratic Party is about as anti-choice as a collection of policy makers can be.

November 17th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Democrats Have a Problem with Judges
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Republicans spent the last eight years trying to ensure an up-or-down vote for their judicial nominees.  Democrats, for the first time in history, decided to take the extraordinary step of filibustering all of the nominees that they deemed “out of the judicial mainstream.”

The Democratic standard for mainstream: ‘We don’t like them and we’ll do everything possible to keep them off the bench.’

Now, Democrats are having problems with the judicial confirmation process, even though they hold 60 seats in the U.S. Senate.

Today the Senate will hold a cloture vote on the nomination of Judge David Hamilton to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.  Senate Republicans are currently mulling political payback and will likely filibuster Judge Hamilton’s nomination.  If successful, Hamilton’s nomination will wind up just like dozens of blocked judges during the Bush Administration.

It appears that Democrats, too, have a problem with judges.  What goes around comes around in Washington, D.C.