Boston bombing - Ignoring the obvious

We’ve all be captivated by the events that transpired in Boston since the Marathon bombings took place.  I know it sounds cliché but it was like something out of a movie.  Almost immediately news outlets like MSNBC were leaning toward a right-wing nut theory.  After all, it was tax day and, to be sure, this was the work of some government-hating tea party type.

One commentator even went so far as to publicly wish it would turn out to be a tea partier.  As the week unfolded and the pictures of the two suspects were released speculation began to swirl.  They were young white males.  Could it be the left-wing media’s dream was coming true?

But soon those dreams were dashed with the revelation that the two brothers were Muslim.  I happened to be traveling from Washington, DC to Pennsylvania by car as the dramatic events were breaking.  The only source of news I could find was NPR.  The hosts were constantly reminding us that just because we had learned they were Muslim didn’t mean their religion had anything to do with the bombings.  Of course, common sense told us otherwise.

NPR invited on various experts and reporters who had discovered more and more details about the brothers.  The older one, we learned from his aunt, had become deeply religious over the last four or five years.  We learned they were both Chechen. We learned the older brother had traveled to Russia, specifically Dagestan, which is known as a hot bed of radical Muslims, for six months. 

Then there were the details of his domestic abuse charge for slapping around a girlfriend.  We were told he had posted anti-American and pro-radical Muslim videos to YouTube.  Still the commentators warned us not to jump to any conclusions about his religion.

Had the two brothers been middle-aged white guys from the South and had ever voted for a Republican and even taken a sip of sweet tea they would immediately have been labeled as tea party terrorists yet we were constantly urged not to connect the dots between their religion and the terrorist acts they committed in Boston.

There was plenty of misinformation during the course of the week.  CNN at one point reported that an arrest had been made.  Later, red-faced, they were forced to retract.  NPR was reporting the two held up a 7-Eleven in Cambridge.  That, too, turned out to be false.  The left-wing news outlets had no problem going to air with flimsy intelligence about breaking news – or what their sources were telling them was news – but they could never bring themselves to state the obvious: This was the work of Muslim terrorists.

Even after the younger brother was captured hiding in a boat, CNN continued the search for a motive.  It seems the network, that had desperately tried to regain relevance with a breaking news story that ended up being false, couldn’t even bring itself to report the one piece of news that, by then, was obvious to everyone.

Even as of this writing, some are still feigning an attempt to “understand” why these brothers did what they did.  Even as the FBI was raiding terrorist sleeper cells some news outlets were still begging us to believe the two acted alone and we still don’t know why.

What go unreported are the stories of immigrants – legal and illegal – who have no business in America.  There are people sent here to kill us and still some news outlets are in denial.

The trouble with media bias is not so much what they tell you, it’s what they don’t.

Obama and his tax hypocrisy

I trust you survived tax season.  For many it’s a grueling time.  CNSNews recently figured up how long the tax code is.  If every page of the tax code were put on a standard 8.5x11-inch sheet of paper and laid end to end it would stretch nearly 13 miles.  Imagine that, thirteen miles of tax code.

Most of us spend our time trying to reduce our tax liability.  Can we write this off?  Can we take that deduction?  It’s mind-numbing, tedious and downright frustrating.  If you’ve ever had to fill out even a mortgage deduction worksheet you know what I’m talking about.

President Obama worked a deal with Congress to raise the top marginal tax rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent effective the 2013 tax year.  That means when you file your taxes for next year if you’re making over $400,000 as an individual or $450,000 as a couple your taxes are going up.  The president said it was time for people like him to start paying their fair share.

The problem is when it came time for the president and first lady to pay their fair share this year they decided not to.

The First Family had a gross income of $665,074 which certainly places them in that evil one percent.  They took deductions to get their taxable income down to $335,000, essentially cutting their tax liability in half.  Instead of paying at the 35 percent top marginal tax rate they had an effective tax rate of 18.4 percent.

Now, I’m not suggesting they did anything illegal.  What I am suggesting is that they did something grossly immoral given their adamant stance that people like them should be paying their fair share.  When faced with the choice of not taking the deductions and paying their fair share they chose to get out of paying as much in taxes as was possible under the law.  This is the height of hypocrisy.

In the last election Obama derided Mitt Romney for paying a 14 percent effective tax rate.  Romney was taking all the deductions he was entitled to and most of his income came from long-term investments.  Somehow, according to Obama, he wasn’t paying his fair share and Obama was determined to do something about it.

His latest proposal caps deductions at 28 percent and he didn’t even adhere to that principle when he filed his own taxes.

The left continue to demonize the rich yet there are so many rich among them who do the very same thing the Obamas do.  They bellyache about how the tax system favors the rich yet they hire legions of tax experts to help them avoid paying taxes.

To me, it’s a lot like the environmental issue.  Many self-proclaimed greenies preach to the rest of us about lowering our carbon footprint (as if carbon dioxide is somehow bad) yet when it comes to adjusting their own lifestyle they take absolutely no action.  They still own multiple homes, and large ones at that.  They still fly all over the world, oftentimes in private jets.  They still drive large luxury automobiles.  If you really feel that strongly that carbon dioxide is the problem then you don’t wait for laws to force the people into a more austere lifestyle.  You lead by example.

Same goes for getting control of our country’s economic problems.  The problem is the government takes too much of our money and wastes it on frivolous expenditures.  What we should be doing is lowering taxes and stimulating more through the private sector.

At least the Obamas seem to have that part down pat.

Compassion for illegal aliens? Really?

I am dismayed by the sudden about-face by some so-called evangelicals.  They're now supporting amnesty for illegal aliens under the guise of compassion.  Compassion?  

Where's their compassion for the family of little Dimitri Smith?  Little Dimitri lived just one minute after an emergency C-section in an attempt to save his life after his mother was hit by an illegal alien drunk driver.

Where's their compassion for the family of 25-year-old Drew Rosenberg who was hit head-on by an illegal alien, thrown from his motorcycle, then run over by the illegal alien who fled the scene?

Where's their compassion for the family of Vanessa Pham, age 19, who was brutally stabbed to death by an illegal alien in Falls Church, VA?

Where's their compassion for the family of Chief Petty Officer Terrell Horne who was killed when drug smuggling illegal aliens rammed his Coast Guard vessel off the coast of California?

Where's their compassion for the family of 17-year-old Jamiel Shaw who was murdered in what appears to be a ritualistic gang killing in Los Angeles?

According to a study conducted by the office of Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) on average 12 Americans are killed by illegal aliens every day.  That's the equivalent of a 767 jet going down every month!  To illustrate it another way, there are about as many Americans killed by illegal aliens each year as there were combat deaths in the entire 9 years of the Iraq War.

Where's their compassion for millions of lives destroyed by illegal drugs coming from south of the border?  Where's their compassion for the millions who are out of work, their jobs occupied by criminal invaders from Mexico and beyond?  Where's their compassion for overburdened taxpayers whose family budgets are strained by the added taxes imposed on them to pay for extra services for those who chose to break into the country?  Where's their compassion for the skyrocketing cost of medical services driven, in part, by illegal aliens who clog our emergency rooms and never pay?

Compassion, indeed.

Some evangelicals and even some talk show hosts say their position on illegal immigration has 'evolved.'  In reality, they have simply caved.

Forgive them, Margaret, for they know not what they do

No sooner was Margaret Thatcher dead than the vile leftists were out in the street popping champagne and celebrating.  And the further to the left the more vicious they became.  They chanted disgusting slogans and waved pre-printed banners.  They had been waiting – and preparing – for this moment for years.

I even saw an e-mail from some Internet radio station in the UK gleefully soliciting for anti-Thatcher songs to play.  “Rejoice!  Oh Happy Day!  Hallelujah!” read the headline.  “What wonderful news – the most evil woman in the world is roasting in hell tonight!!” the e-mail read.

So, why is the left so thrilled at the passing of the UK’s first female prime minister?  It has little to do with what she did that directly impacted England during her time in office, although they would like you to think as much.  It’s more what she did for the world.

Together with Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II she brought an end to the Soviet Union.  The USSR was the communist world’s shining beacon of hope.  It represented not only a collectivist utopia but a clear and distinct alternative to capitalism.  Leftists, even in the United States, had begun to believe that it would reign for a thousand years.  They believed it was living proof that communism worked.  That competition was evil.  That capitalism’s days were numbered.

Then suddenly it ended in a whimper.  The mighty empire that enslaved a generation and, through brute force, subjugated half of Europe into a hypnotic state of mediocrity, brainwashing millions into believing that striving for excellence was sophistry, was gone in the blink of an eye.  The wall that physically and symbolically separated east from west came tumbling down.  The appeasers who thought it wise to humble themselves in the presence of the evil empire rather than stand up to it were made to look like the spineless fools they really were.

Dedicating your life to the “greater good” from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs was believed by the self-anointed enlightened ones to be a noble expenditure of one’s existence.  Rugged individualism, self-reliance and a life spent pursuing happiness were thought to be crass, selfish, even grotesque.  Those who strove to create a world in which everything was fair found themselves ironically clinging to a system of government in which everything was equally unfair and equally miserable.

Tens of millions were killed during the Soviet Union’s reign of terror, far more than the brutal Nazis ever dreamed of killing.  Those so eager to dance on Thatcher’s grave would’ve been shot for such a disrespectful display against any Soviet leader.

Yet there they were, dancing in the streets like some acid-crazed lunatics devoid of even an ounce of decency because nothing in their lives is decent.  At the end of the day these pathetic provocateurs and self-proclaimed protectors of the proletariat are all about one thing: themselves.  The name of the game is getting the government to support them so they don’t have to contribute a thing.  Not that they’re even capable.

And even some who are capable got sucked into the vortex of vulgarity because they fancy themselves as ordinary citizens – as their private jets scuttle them along to their next rock concert or philanthropic cocktail party.

No, life is not fair.  It’s not fair that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher snatched Britain from the jaws of economic depression.  That she saved countless millions from the hard underside of the jack boot of totalitarianism. That she gave hope once again to the hopeless.

That this is the thanks she gets.

Live free . . . or move

There’s an interesting study that was just released by George Mason University.  It’s called Freedom in the 50 States.  It found that people in the United States are migrating from less free states to more free states.  Yeah.  Whether people are even conscious of why they’re doing it they’re moving to states with less government regulation, lower taxes and more freedom.

As it turns out, these are the states that offer the greatest opportunity, not only for finding a job but for increasing your quality of life.  This runs counter to what President Obama, himself, has been claiming.  He said, “They tell us if we just cut more regulations and more taxes – especially for the wealthy – our economy will grow stronger.  Here’s the problem.  It doesn’t work.”

Well, Mr. President, as it turns out, it does work.  One’s income growth potential is greater in states that lower taxes and regulation.  The trouble is, some of these transplants don’t even realize why they left the state they left.  These confused few seem to want to bring those same big government ideas with them.

I’ve watched Nashville, which has now been governed by three consecutive mayors from big government, high-tax states, transformed into the same model that has rotted many of the nation’s large cities from within.

As I’ve often said, there are really only three things that matter in a city: taxes, schools and crime.  Everything else is superfluous.  If that three-legged stool of low taxes, low crime and good schools isn’t solid then little else matters. 

The Office of Revenue Analysis of the Government in Washington released a study on taxes recently that showed a direct correlation between high taxes and high unemployment.  The cities with higher tax burdens tended to be the cities struggling with stubbornly high unemployment.

Trouble is President Obama and the Democrats in Washington want the entire country to look like that.  They truly believe that taxing – especially burdensomely taxing the rich – is the way to prosperity for the country.  They could not be more wrong.

And even though Mr. Obama won re-election, people are voting with their feet – and their moving vans.  People are shaking the oppressive big-government states for the more promising freer states.

And although Washington can’t seem to get the message those who operate the states certainly do.  Louisiana, Nebraska, Kansas and North Carolina are all considering eliminating their state income taxes in order to spur growth.  Even before this most recent study on free states and prosperity was published these states already had a handle on what needs to be done to grow an economy.  You cut taxes.

Now, granted, some of these states aren’t quite in the zone yet since their plans are currently revenue neutral but they’re heading in the right direction.

I grew up in North Carolina and one of the telling signs to me that the state had grown far too government-dependent was a recent radio ratings report that showed the number one station in Raleigh was public radio.  That’s emblematic of a whole host of problems.  First, too many people are getting their news from the liberal-leaning, state-run radio station.  It also indicated the dependence on the government in that state.

Name the top five reasons why you live where you live.  If more than a couple have anything to do with the government then you’re too dependent on the government.

Ever wonder why we spend so much time and money on dependency issues?  It’s because dependence on anything or anybody is not a good thing.  Being free means changing one’s mindset from dependence to independence.