QUESTIONS FROM OCEANIA

Victor Davis Hanson on Obama’s first hundred days.

[W]e are in a race—a race to get the dependent constituents permanently in place and institutionalized before the proverbial (fill in the blanks) hits the fans. If he succeeds, we will end up like a Greece, France, or Belgium— weekly strikes by government workers and unions, rampant cynicism as everyone seeks to land the federal job for base salary and taxes and benefits, and then moonlights to get untaxed cash and barter for necessary goods and services, all coupled with a culture of blame at various foreign and domestic “thems” who make us so unhappy.

I’m afraid he’s right. Read it all.

ABSOLUTELY REPELLENT

Keith Olbermann achieves a new low:



Calling Keith Olbermann and ... uh, whatever that thing he’s conversing with ... “swine” is to insult pigs everywhere.

To quote an old friend, Keith Olbermann is “so low that whale sh*t looks like fleecy white clouds in the sky.”

Disgusting.

THE FIRST 100 DAYS - POLL RESULTS

From a Los Angeles Times poll (unfortunately, no link is available).

Besides the hat, the oath flub, the Cabinet tax problems and cheesy gifts for Britain's leader, how's Barack Obama doing?

7.2% - Really well
1.8% - Good
1.7% - So-so
5.5% - Disappointing
8.2% - Bad
75.7% - Scary bad

2564 total responses

Obama's policies are:

89.4% - Too liberal
2.7% - Insufficiently liberal
6.7% - Just right
1.3% - Too conservative

2549 total responses

Obama's spending plans and deficits:

3.0% - Inspire me
0.5% - Don't matter
4.8% - Are about right
7.2% - Worry me
84.4% - Really scare me

2564 total responses

Slowly withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq for now and sending more to Afghanistan strikes me as:

25.1% - Just the right thing
9.6% - Doesn't matter
20.7% - A betrayal of his anti-war stance
44.6% - Real trouble later

2532 total responses

Talking with Iran and North Korea about their nuclear weapons programs is:

10.1% - Appropriate
10.3% - Naive but necessary
79.7% - Hopeless

2544 total responses

Watching and listening to Obama speak makes me feel:

6.3% - Hopeful
3.3% - Confident
72.2% - Suspicious
18.1% - Sleepy

2548 total responses

What I like most about Obama so far is:

8.3% - His confidence
1.6% - His speeches
0.6% - His spending
0.8% - His Cabinet
5.8% - His family
82.9% - His dog

2479 total responses

What I like least about Obama so far is:

29.8% - His arrogance
2.4% - His speeches
32.3% - His spending
17.4% - His national security plans
18.2% - His other plans like healthcare reform

2477 total responses

As a vice president who was a senator since Obama was in elementary school, Joe Biden has turned out so far to be:

2.1% - An inspiration
3.5% - Better than I expected
5.0% - OK
57.1% - An embarrassment
32.2% - Who cares?

2559 total responses

Overall, so far I'd give the Obama administration an:

3.4% - A+
3.7% - A
2.1% - B
1.8% - C
10.8% - D
15.5% - F
62.8% - Whatever comes beneath F

2567 total responses

An F-minus?

What’s striking about the Los Angeles Times poll is not that it’s so negative; it’s that it’s a LA Times poll. Of course, it’s an unscientific internet poll, so it’s possible that it could have been “hijacked” by anti-Obama voters.

But ...

(CNN) — The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Wednesday, as the Obama administration marks 100 days in office, asked respondents to use a grading scale of A, B, C, D and F, where A is excellent and F is very poor.

Two percent of those questioned gave a grade of A, 15 percent a B, 25 percent a C, 24percent a D and 34 percent an F.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted April 23-26, with 2,019 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's sampling error is plus or minus two percentage points.

Obama gets a “D” ...

In the very same article, CNN wrote “A new national poll suggests that when Americans are asked how well things were going in the country under the administration of President George W. Bush, they respond with a grade of D-plus.”

When I was teaching, a D-plus still beat a D.

PROGRESSIVE TAXATION?

There’s been a great deal of talk from the Obama administration about tax policy, which can be summed up in two sound bites: “Ninety-five percent of American taxpayers will not see an increase in (federal) income taxes” and “Those earning over $250,000 must pay their fair share.”

Here’s some Congressional Budget Office data for the 2006 tax year. The data is for household income, expressed in quintiles (20% of the returns), from lowest to highest. Here are the numbers for each quintile.



This chart is a rough cumulative distribution function of federal income tax paid by each (household) income quintile.



The lowest quintile, households averaging $17,200 in annual income, earned about 3.8%of the total household income. They got back (in refundable credits) something like 4% of the total income taxes paid. The second quintile earned about 8.3% of the total household income and paid a percent or so of the total income taxes paid. The top quintile (the 20% of households averaging $248,400 in annual income) earned about 55.6% of the total household income and paid roughly 75% of the total federal income taxes paid. The top two quintiles (40%) paid almost all of the income taxes collected.

That graph reminds me of the story of Robin Hood, robbing the rich to give to the poor. Our government appears to have “one-upped” poor Robin by eviscerating the rich, giving a pittance to the poor, and keeping the bulk for itself.

But never mind. Here’s what’s important - the bottom 60% of filing households essentially have no investment in America beyond voting themselves ever-increasing handouts. The 40% of taxpayers who fund America have a minority voice in keeping it running.

That’s a prescription for ‘bread & circuses’ – and corruption.

We’re at a tipping point.

EVERYONE SHOULD PAY INCOME TAXES

It's bad for our democracy to exempt half the country.

A very small number of taxpayers -- the 10% of the country that makes more than $92,400 a year -- pay 72.4% of the nation's income taxes.

Given the state of the economy and trillion-dollar deficits projected as far as the eye can see, we need to return to an era of more conservative, fiscal discipline.

Congress should start by refusing to go along with Mr. Obama's promise to cut taxes for 95% of the country. With the government running an almost $2 trillion deficit, no one should have their taxes cut -- no one. Given the size of the deficit, fiscal responsibility demands nothing less.

I agree – taxes should be paid by every citizen. Rates should go up or down, preferably down, for everyone -- no more dividing the country by lowering taxes for some or raising them only for others. A revenue system whose purpose is to pay the government's bills should apply to one and all.

[Update] See the post on Progressive Taxation (above) for why.

REGULATING CO2

Well, now the Environmental “Protection” Agency has decided to regulate carbon dioxide production.

Question: do humans or insects produce more carbon dioxide?

Humans produce, through respiration (breathing) about 2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. If you add the production of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels and other human industry (26 billion metric tons) and the respiration of domesticated animals (6 billion metric tons), the total carbon dioxide production that can be blamed on humans, directly or indirectly, is 34 billion metric tons.

Insects, through respiration, produce 48 billion metric tons.

Hmm. The logical conclusion is that insects must be regulated. I wonder what the environmentalists will have to say.