Kerry's Ironic Tax Evasion

As Democrats in Congress scheme to raise taxes on hard-working Americans by letting the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 to quietly expire, it's interesting to note just how the Democrats think of the money they will steal from the workers.

In a recent long-winded editorial explaining how at least the tax cuts on those workers with wages in the top two earning bands should not be extended, Alan Blinder, a former member of Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Destroyers, wrote this:

"Let the upper-income tax cuts expire at year end. That would save the government an estimated $75 million over the next two years."

Save the government?

You see, the tax and tax some more Democrats think all wages (capital gains, dividend income, etc.) are their money. Their paradigm is that all wages are their money and any money the wage earners keep is some kind of gift from the government. Gifts avoided is money saved!

Blinder's little peek into the mindset of liberals is especially funny as his editorial in the Wall Street Journal appeared in the same week Sen. John F. Kerry was exposed for trying to evade Massaschusetts state sales tax and excise tax by registering his new $7 million yacht in Rhode Island. After being exposed for his attempted tax evasion and after the Massachusetts Department of Revenue opened an investigation for tax evasion, Sen. Kerry announced he would remit about $500,000 in applicable taxes to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for the yacht.

Just the Facts and now Sen. James Webb (D, VA) Agrees with Me

I'm laughing pretty hard these days at the liberal extremists who control the media now whining about reading or seeing the full context of a speakers remarks before passing judgement in the wake of (former?) racist Shirley Sherrod's comments at a recent NAACP meeting.

If anyone does not think Ms. Sherrod was describing herself as a racist 24 years ago then you simply do not know the definition of the word.

This week, a special prosecutor decided not to bring any criminal charges in connection with the firing of a United States attorney in 2006. For the last four years, the facts and context of this particular firing and seven others did not stop the liberal extremists and their cheerleaders in the liberal media from grotesquely demagoguing the firings for political gain. I've read no essays on the Sherrod episode that use the attorneys' firings as another example of taking words and actions out of context.

As many of you know, I've posted the key phrases of President George Bush's speech to 6,000 brave members of the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003 on this site many times. One more time I produce the phrases that accurately characterize the tone of that speech.

“. . . We have difficult work to do in Iraq . . . The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time . . . The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror . . . and still goes on . . . Yet we also have dangerous work to complete. Our mission continues . . . The war on terror is not over . . . ."

I'm aware of no essay on the Sherrod matter that uses the liberal extremists' grotesque distortion of Bush's speech as an example of taking words, or even words not spoken in a speech, out of context.

Back on March 4, 2008 I typed what I still think is one of my best posts ever. It's title "Cold Turkey" and I've referenced it several times in the days since when current events warranted. This was an editorial by Sen. James Webb that appeared in the Wall Street Journal on July 22, 2010. Readers will recall that back on January 28, 2010 I predicted that Sen. Webb would be the 2012 Democratic Party Vice Presidential nominee. That prediction was not because I knew then that in July the Senator would publicly affirm my beliefs on race relations. Anyway, his essay:

Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege
America still owes a debt to its black citizens, but government programs to help all 'people of color' are unfair. They should end.
By James Webb

The NAACP believes the tea party is racist. The tea party believes the NAACP is racist. And Pat Buchanan got into trouble recently by pointing out that if Elena Kagan is confirmed to the Supreme Court, there will not be a single Protestant Justice, although Protestants make up half the U.S. population and dominated the court for generations.

Forty years ago, as the United States experienced the civil rights movement, the supposed monolith of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance served as the whipping post for almost every debate about power and status in America. After a full generation of such debate, WASP elites have fallen by the wayside and a plethora of government-enforced diversity policies have marginalized many white workers. The time has come to cease the false arguments and allow every American the benefit of a fair chance at the future.

I have dedicated my political career to bringing fairness to America's economic system and to our work force, regardless of what people look like or where they may worship. Unfortunately, present-day diversity programs work against that notion, having expanded so far beyond their original purpose that they now favor anyone who does not happen to be white.

In an odd historical twist that all Americans see but few can understand, many programs allow recently arrived immigrants to move ahead of similarly situated whites whose families have been in the country for generations. These programs have damaged racial harmony. And the more they have grown, the less they have actually helped African-Americans, the intended beneficiaries of affirmative action as it was originally conceived.

How so?

Lyndon Johnson's initial program for affirmative action was based on the 13th Amendment and on the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which authorized the federal government to take actions in order to eliminate "the badges of slavery." Affirmative action was designed to recognize the uniquely difficult journey of African-Americans. This policy was justifiable and understandable, even to those who came from white cultural groups that had also suffered in socio-economic terms from the Civil War and its aftermath.

The injustices endured by black Americans at the hands of their own government have no parallel in our history, not only during the period of slavery but also in the Jim Crow era that followed. But the extrapolation of this logic to all "people of color"—especially since 1965, when new immigration laws dramatically altered the demographic makeup of the U.S.—moved affirmative action away from remediation and toward discrimination, this time against whites. It has also lessened the focus on assisting African-Americans, who despite a veneer of successful people at the very top still experience high rates of poverty, drug abuse, incarceration and family breakup.

Those who came to this country in recent decades from Asia, Latin America and Africa did not suffer discrimination from our government, and in fact have frequently been the beneficiaries of special government programs. The same cannot be said of many hard-working white Americans, including those whose roots in America go back more than 200 years.

Contrary to assumptions in the law, white America is hardly a monolith. And the journey of white American cultures is so diverse (yes) that one strains to find the logic that could lump them together for the purpose of public policy.

The clearest example of today's misguided policies comes from examining the history of the American South.

The old South was a three-tiered society, with blacks and hard-put whites both dominated by white elites who manipulated racial tensions in order to retain power. At the height of slavery, in 1860, less than 5% of whites in the South owned slaves. The eminent black historian John Hope Franklin wrote that "fully three-fourths of the white people in the South had neither slaves nor an immediate economic interest in the maintenance of slavery."

The Civil War devastated the South, in human and economic terms. And from post-Civil War Reconstruction to the beginning of World War II, the region was a ravaged place, affecting black and white alike.

In 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt created a national commission to study what he termed "the long and ironic history of the despoiling of this truly American section." At that time, most industries in the South were owned by companies outside the region. Of the South's 1.8 million sharecroppers, 1.2 million were white (a mirror of the population, which was 71% white). The illiteracy rate was five times that of the North-Central states and more than twice that of New England and the Middle Atlantic (despite the waves of European immigrants then flowing to those regions). The total endowments of all the colleges and universities in the South were less than the endowments of Harvard and Yale alone. The average schoolchild in the South had $25 a year spent on his or her education, compared to $141 for children in New York.

Generations of such deficiencies do not disappear overnight, and they affect the momentum of a culture. In 1974, a National Opinion Research Center (NORC) study of white ethnic groups showed that white Baptists nationwide averaged only 10.7 years of education, a level almost identical to blacks' average of 10.6 years, and well below that of most other white groups. A recent NORC Social Survey of white adults born after World War II showed that in the years 1980-2000, only 18.4% of white Baptists and 21.8% of Irish Protestants—the principal ethnic group that settled the South—had obtained college degrees, compared to a national average of 30.1%, a Jewish average of 73.3%, and an average among those of Chinese and Indian descent of 61.9%.

Policy makers ignored such disparities within America's white cultures when, in advancing minority diversity programs, they treated whites as a fungible monolith. Also lost on these policy makers were the differences in economic and educational attainment among nonwhite cultures. Thus nonwhite groups received special consideration in a wide variety of areas including business startups, academic admissions, job promotions and lucrative government contracts.

Where should we go from here? Beyond our continuing obligation to assist those African-Americans still in need, government-directed diversity programs should end.

Nondiscrimination laws should be applied equally among all citizens, including those who happen to be white. The need for inclusiveness in our society is undeniable and irreversible, both in our markets and in our communities. Our government should be in the business of enabling opportunity for all, not in picking winners. It can do so by ensuring that artificial distinctions such as race do not determine outcomes.

Memo to my fellow politicians: Drop the Procrustean policies and allow harmony to invade the public mindset. Fairness will happen, and bitterness will fade away.

Mr. Webb, a Democrat, is a U.S. senator from Virginia.

The Year Had Nothing to Do with It After All

My "news"paper, the Boston Globe, ran three related editorials last Wednesday, July 14 (related to my July 13 post as well as each other); it's worth reproducing all three here in order to set-up my sole editorial comment.

1. The edge of darkness
By Nathalie Favre-Gilly and Deborah Collins-Gousby

In 2008, as filming wrapped on Mel Gibson’s “Edge of Darkness’’ in Boston, he made a surprise $25,000 donation to Casa Myrna Vazquez, the city’s largest provider of shelter and supportive services to victims of domestic violence. It was not a random choice: his location scouts had briefly considered one of Casa Myrna’s shelters for some exterior shots in the film. We were grateful to him for supporting our work, and told him so.

Two years later, we’re grateful again — but for a very different reason. He’s making the case for our work, and proving our oft-repeated point that domestic violence crosses all socio-economic, ethnic and cultural divides. Gibson is making headlines for the violent, hate-filled litany of slurs and abuse he spews at girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva, which she recorded on tapes whose authenticity do not seem to be in question. When she references the fact that he hit her, not once but twice and while she was holding their infant daughter, he makes no attempt to deny it. Instead, he tells her that she deserved it.

Can there still be people who think this way, talk this way, behave this way? In a word, yes. Lots of them. Behind closed doors, they generate fear, misery and despair on a daily basis.

They don’t garner national attention like the Mel Gibsons, the Charlie Sheens or the Chris Browns. We’ll never see photos of the bruises they inflict on their victims, or hear audiotapes of their abuse. Their victims won’t be front page news unless they happen to die at the hands of their abusers. And yet the toll these abusers exact on their victims, and our society, is enormous.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, nearly 5.3 million incidents of domestic violence occur each year among U.S. women ages 18 and older. Imagine Mel Gibson’s rant repeated over 5 million times. That’s the reality on the ground. Intimidation. Insults. Physical violence. Death threats. It will happen to one in four women in their lifetimes.

The financial statistics, also compiled by the CDC, are equally alarming. The costs of domestic violence against women exceed an estimated $5.8 billion every year. That figure includes nearly $4.1 billion in the direct costs of medical and mental health care and another $1.8 billion in the indirect costs of lost productivity. Victims of domestic violence lose a total of nearly 8 million days of paid work - the equivalent of more than 32,000 full-time jobs - and nearly 5.6 million days of household productivity each year as a result of the violence they endure.

Then there’s the moral question. What does it say about us as a society that we continue to view domestic violence as a problem that can’t be fixed? One of the things we’ve learned over the years is that, like so many of society’s deeply ingrained social problems, domestic violence is often an intergenerational problem. If it’s part of your life today, chances are it will be part of your children’s lives tomorrow. That means sons grow up to be abusers, daughters grow up to be victims. And the cycle continues, destroying lives, families and whole communities.

We can do better. Mel Gibson’s tape is a stark reminder that we still have a long way to go in embracing the simple but powerful message that domestic violence is wrong. Always. It’s also a reminder that we need to impart that lesson to our children, both in what we say and in what we do. It needs to be an ongoing conversation, because teaching lifelong lessons about respectful behavior in relationships is not a one-shot deal. Think the kids in your life are too young to be a part of this conversation?

Think again. You’re never too young to learn that there is a right way and a wrong way to behave toward a partner in a relationship. Babies, toddlers, and pre-schoolers learn from adults. If what they’re learning at home is violence and abuse, be prepared: those lessons last a lifetime. Instead of allowing the intergenerational cycle of domestic violence to be perpetuated in our homes and families, we should be teaching our young people that there is no excuse for abuse. Ever. Maybe our celebrities will get the message too.

Nathalie Favre-Gilly and Deborah Collins-Gousby are co-executive directors of Casa Myrna Vazquez. The SafeLink hotline is 877-785-2020.

2. Gibson: Time to step away and get help

Mel Gibson’s is the rare Hollywood flameout that has little to do with wealth, power, or privilege. Gibson’s afflictions — alcoholism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, a violent temper — are distressingly democratic. They don’t require a high income to flourish. But while alcoholism and even a tendency toward violence can be genetic, the rest of the picture — the verbal and allegedly physical abuse of his ex-girlfriend, the anti-Semitic rant against a police officer, the use of a racially offensive term — reflects a cruel and perhaps even depraved character.

Gibson has not denied the chilling audiotape in which a man sounding very much like him threatens the mother of his child in horrific terms. Gibson clearly needs help, and his fans and everyone else should hope that at the end of the process he can become a better man. But there should be no second act for him on the national stage. The best course is for him to untangle his legal and personal problems, and quietly disappear.

3. Polanski: Justice like Swiss cheese

Now that Roman Polanski is free to return to his gilded exile in France, it’s worth remembering what he pleaded guilty to 32 years ago: drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl. That would be a shocking crime if it happened in an ordinary suburb and the perpetrator worked in an office park. The fact that Polanski is a brilliant artist shouldn’t matter at all — nor should the time elapsed or the victim’s purported lack of interest in pursuing the case.

Yet the Swiss justice ministry decided not to extradite the 76-year-old director, who was arrested at the Zurich airport last fall on his way to a film festival. Swiss officials said their decision hinged on US prosecutors’ refusal to hand over secret testimony about his sentencing. They also cited “international public order.’’

Polanski’s 1977-78 sentencing was, indeed, shrouded in controversy; his lawyers argue that the judge acted improperly and reneged on a deal. This could become an argument for granting Polanski a new trial or revising his sentence. But letting him stay free, surrounded by luxury and accolades, sends a disturbing message about how money and celebrity can supersede morality and justice, not just in the United States, but around the world.

If Only It Were 1978!

I'm not kidding, this was the opening sentence in a Washington Post piece that was picked-up by my "news"paper, the Boston Globe, today:

"Swiss authorities freed French director Roman Polanski yesterday, deciding not to extradite him to Los Angeles to face sentencing for having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977."

Again, I'm not kidding.

Yankees in Six (6)

Spain defeats the Netherlands 1 - 1 (4 - 3 penalty kicks) to win the 2010 World Cup.

The New York Yankees will defeat the San Diego Padres in six (6) games to win the 2010 World Series.

Deepwater Obama is still spewing millions and millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Unemployment is still essentially 10% and under-employment is essentially 20%

99 - 0

The General who President Bush picked from obscurity in 2007 to lead the fight in Iraq and who was essentially called a liar by then-Senator Hillary Clinton (now Secretary of State) during subsequent Senate testimony, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate yesterday to be the new Commander in Afghanistan.

Recalling how President Obama's hiding of Gen. Eric "Wildly Off the Mark" Shinseki at Veteran Affairs was some kind of repudiation of Bush, I wonder if the liberal extremists who control the media see President Obama's selection of Gen. Petraeus to lead the fight in Afghanistan as a validation and vindication of President Bush.

The vote for President Bush's general was 99 - 0, all 58 Senate Democrats voting for Petraeus.