- Two pointed questions about income taxes.
- The Convergence “they” fear.
- The Catholics’ Al Sharption.
- Useless no call list.
- Phony-baloney news.
- Crunchy Con Christianity and OWS.
Dean Zarras at Forbes asks “What is the maximum percentage of income that someone should pay in taxes?”
Overall, the column is not up to snuff – I think Zarras was writing on a deadline and felt obliged to make some sort of gesture toward Occupy Wall Street – but I think that’s a thought-provoking question, especially in context of his the claim that some taxpayers, toting up all taxes including Social Security and Medicare, are paying 50%+.
But it’s not the only good question. I’d like to know what is the rate at which nobody can plausibly argue “high taxes are stifling growth”?
Putting aside the ultimate truth – which might be that we’re in economic doldrums because good manufacturing jobs have gone abroad, or that peak oil is starting to pinch, or whatever – let’s just talk superficial, glib plausibility : how low is low enough that calling for lower still is the sort of petulant special pleading of which Zarras accuses others?
As a sort of “conservative,” I see “my team” oftener guilty of the economic voodoo of tax-cutting than of incrementally raising taxes by having no principled limit beforehand.
Occupy Wall Street defends capitalism. But you’d think they were Marxists to read the press.
Liberal Democrats in bed with Wall Street. The Clinton Administration was up to its ears in pushing subprime mortgages. I’ve said all along that this was a bipartisan mess, not a GOP creation.
The Tea Party, of course, was never a threat to Wall Street.
I think I’m seeing a pattern here.
For all the talk of populist foment – the Tea Party on the right and the new Occupy Wall Street movement on the left – business interests remain firmly in control. Forced to choose between their voters and their donors, lawmakers don’t hesitate before choosing the latter.
Can we all ignore the interests who’d like to keep us apart and focus a little bit? The Democrats have Solyndra, but the Republicans have their own forms of crony capitalism.
I’m glad, but not surprised, to see that Peggy Noonan gets it:
OWS is not in itself important—it is obvious at this point that it’s less a political movement than a be-in. It’s unfocused, unserious in its aims. But it is an early expression, an early iteration, of something that is coming, and that is a rising up against current circumstances and arrangements. OWS is an expression of American discontent, and others will follow. The protests will grow as the economy gets worse.
A movement that will go nowhere but could do real damage would be “We hate the rich, let’s stick it to them.” Movements built on hatred are corrosive, and in the end corrode themselves. Ask Robespierre. In any case, the rich would leave. The rich are old, they feel like refugees in the new America anyway. A movement that would be helpful and could actually help bring change would be one that said, “Enough. Wall Street is selfish and dishonest, and Washington is selfish and dishonest. Together their selfishness and dishonesty, their operating as if they are not part of a whole, not part of a nation of relationships and responsibilities, tanked a great nation’s economy. We will reform.”
See item 6, too. It’s interesting to see Labor Unions, Distributists and others trying project their hopes onto (and to give direction to) OWS while others project their fears onto it.
I find a lot of good material at CatholicVoter.org. This isn’t some of the good material:
Rick Perry has a Catholic problem, according to Catholic League President Bill Donohue. The Catholic watchdog group is calling on the Texas governor to “have a full break” from Pastor Robert Jeffries, the Dallas minister who introduced Perry at the Values Voters Summit. (Romney’s campaign criticized Jeffries last week for referring to Mormonism as a “cult.”) Donohue noted that Jeffries has called Catholicism a “fake religion” and likened the Church to Satan. Donohue said, “I think Rick Perry should follow the lead of McCain and say ‘I don’t want this guy Jeffress’ endorsement.” John McCain rejected the endorsement of Pastor John Hagee who got in hot water over his anti-Catholic remarks. Barack Obama refused to denounce his pastor Jeremiah Wright in 2008, saying that he doesn’t share all the views of his pastor. We’ll see if that works for Perry. (It should be noted that Jeffries is not Perry’s pastor.) http://cvote.to/5d
(Emphasis and hyperlinks in original) Bill Donohue’s job is to find anti-Catholic bias. It’s got to be just about the easiest gig in the Country.
But he’s also a caricature. He’s the Catholic grievance-mongering counterpart of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.
No “full break” is required. Distancing would be welcome. But I’m not sure Perry can do anything that will get him my vote.
4
What happened to the Indiana “no call list?” Have they exempted every real or pretend charity, and robocalls, to boot?
I got a call during dinner. I’m getting a lot of them again.
Silence for a second, then the noise of a “boiler room” calling operation.
“May I please speak to Mr. or Mrs. …”
“No!”
After an 84 year old woman backed her car into a Payless Supermarket, some are asking if 84 year olds should be driving.
Lead to local news story this week. The only “some” asking that were tacticians at the television station as they planned their newsday. They literally couldn’t even goad anyone into asking the question.
It has become family sport to mock the local news during dinner.
Rod Dreher posted overnight Thursday-Friday some extensive ruminations about Occupy Wall Street in light of his faith:
[O]ne of the most powerful stories I’ve ever heard … was told to me by a friend who worked for many years high up in Wall Street, and I’ll never forget it. His story begins around 2003 or 2004, when the global economy was booming. The investment bank for which he worked brought its top people to a highly exclusive resort for an annual meeting. He said this place was unspeakably luxurious, and all the bankers had the run of the place. People were ordering Cristal Champagne (which costs hundreds of dollars per bottle) virtually by the six-pack, sent up to their rooms. That was the kind of working holiday they were on, and my friend was smack in the middle of it, enjoying himself.
One night he came down to the cocktail hour, and saw before him a spread of opulence that would have made Caesar blush. Rich food, vintage Champagne, rare Scotches, and more of it than anybody could possibly imagine, and all his banking colleagues having the time of their lives. Suddenly my friend had a terrifying epiphany. “I realized that we had lost our minds. All this money had made us crazy,” he later told me. “And that’s when I knew that this was going to end very badly.”
For my friend, that moment was a turning point in his life. It scared him so badly that he returned to the practice of his Jewish faith, which he had discarded. He later left the bank, worked in high finance for a few years longer, and ended up moving all his investments to safe harbor before the crash. What my friend understood in that moment was what all the great religions teach: that you cannot serve both God and Mammon. That great wealth makes you see the world falsely. That it corrupts one’s judgment, and one’s soul.
…
Cards on the table: I am a Christian, and a conservative, in that order. My Christianity is Orthodox, and it is what is often called “conservative.” It is incomparably more important to me to be a faithful and obedient Christian than it is for me to be a good conservative. It happens, though, that I find that my religious convictions more often than not put me in the camp of conservatives in our culture, at this time. It is not always an easy fit. My book “Crunchy Cons” basically emerged out of my beginning to think more deeply about my religious convictions, and integrating them into a more comprehensive worldview, which I found put me off the Republican Party reservation in certain basic ways — usually related to economic issues …
I cannot see how a system that allows so many people who work in finance to grow so spectacularly rich while so many others struggle to get by can be reconciled with Christian truth. But honestly, that is the least of my concerns about Wall Street now (by “Wall Street,” I mean the financial sector in general). What I find far more worrying is the power these men have to control by their actions the fate of the nation. No, I’m not talking about conspiratorial nonsense. I’m talking about the fact that because our political system has given them so much freedom to do what they want to do, our fates are tied to theirs in ways that are incredibly unjust and harmful to the common good. We all know about “too big to fail.” Ever thought about what that means? It means that TBTF institutions cannot be allowed to be responsible for their actions, because if they fail, they take all of us down with them. Wall Street, broadly speaking, has immense power, but no responsibility ….
I don’t know the profile of my average reader. I’m not blogging to build a brand, and I’d probably blog if nobody subscribed at all.
But Dreher’s thoughts this morning should be read in full by any Tea Party Christian, any Christian in the financial sector, and any Christian conservative who isn’t (yet) the least bit “Crunchy.”
* * * * *
Bon appetit!
If it’s “too big to fail,” break it up into harmless little pieces.
“It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.”
(To save time on preparing this blog, which some days consumes way too much time, I’ve asked some guy named @RogerWmBennett to Tweet a lot of links about which I have little or nothing to add. Check the “Latest Tweets” in the upper right pane or follow him on Twitter.)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 