Free Republic

Obama’s Tax Proposals Beg the Question: Is He a Liar, or Just Ignorant? By Matt Carrothers September 24, 2007 Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) recently issued two bizarre proposals to amend the income tax code and Social Security program. These proposals seriously call into question Obama’s intellectual gravitas. To paraphrase Shakespeare – and Michael Stipe – Obama’s plans are but an idiot’s dream, already proven ineffective and disastrous to the U.S. economy, but nonetheless delivered with a sound and fury intended to impress his likely voter base. Obama rolled out his income tax plans last week in a speech...

Liberal Social Security Reform: Evil Is As Evil Does By Matt Carrothers September 17, 2007 House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) penned an opinion column in the September 13 Wall Street Journal outlining his new plan to eventually save Social Security by creating new programs to help Americans save money for their retirement. The lies and hypocrisy throughout Emanuel’s column are richer than Grandma’s chocolate cake. Emanuel begins with the easily refuted but oft-repeated lie that “American families are working harder than they used to and making less.” According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, however, hourly compensation in...

Where Can Democrats Find a Speechwriter Like Osama bin Laden? By Matt Carrothers September 10, 2007 Has anybody here seen my old friend Osama? Can you tell me where he’s gone? Well, it appears from his latest video that Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is still squired away in a Pakistani cave somewhere, albeit a cave replete with enough sophisticated video recording equipment that he can beam talking points, err, a message of love and Allah to Democrats in the U.S. and Islamic terrorists around the world. Judging from his new, darker beard, Bin Laden also appears to have either...

Thank Ronald Reagan for Your Fair Trade Organic Grande Latte By Matt Carrothers September 3, 2007 Where I grew up in rural eastern Iowa, the middle-aged to the elderly gather each morning and drink coffee in diners, feed and grain stores and convenience stores. They don’t necessarily gather for the purpose of drinking coffee, mind you, but they drink a lot of cheap coffee during the weekday mornings while they catch up on all manner of gossip, weather and agricultural commodity prices. This morning I’m sitting in a Buckhead, Atlanta coffee shop operated by the country’s second largest coffee shop...

Alberto Gonzales and the Bush White House ‘Family’ By Llewellyn King August 27, 2007 When Karl Rove spoke about them as the “Bush Family,” he did not mean the president's blood relatives but the band of intimates who have been with him from the beginning, or at least had advised or campaigned with him. They included, of course, outgoing senior political adviser Rove, Alberto Gonzales, first White House counsel and then attorney general, former White House counsel Harriet Miers, former White House spokesman Scott McClellan, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The...

Loopy Save-the-Earth Ideas Need the Al Gore Imprimatur By Matt Carrothers August 27, 2007 So I’m perusing the Popular Science web site last week and just below a story titled “The 15 Best Bond Gadgets of All Time” (number one was the amphibious Lotus Esprit Roger Moore drove in “The Spy Who Loved Me”) was another headline sure to stir the fancy of every red-blooded American male, and even those males who bleed green: "Five Duct Tape Methods to Save the Earth." Could it really be true? Could duct tape really return us to the glorious age prior to January...

Giuliani? Thompson? No President Will Lead a Moral Revival By Dan Calabrese August 20, 2007 A friend recently indicated his strong preference for Fred Thompson over Rudy Giuliani in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. The issue, he said, is morality. Giuliani’s past marital infidelity, fractured relationships with his children and support for abortion rights and gay rights call his moral judgment into question. That, say this friend and many other social conservatives, is not the kind of man we want to elect to lead a moral nation. Any defense of Giuliani on these points can wait for another...

A Tax Break for Driving to Work? The Fair Tax Will Fix This By Herman Cain August 20, 2007 There is a little-known deduction in the tax code that 400,000 people know about, and by which they avoid $150 million dollars in taxes each year. The issue is not that most of us do not know about this little sneak-a-tax, or even the amount that the rest of us are picking up through a higher federal deficit. The issue is that this is another example of how the tax code is used to encourage a desired behavior. The deduction encourages...

Be On Notice, Hillary: Momma Obama Don’t Take No Mess By Matt Carrothers August 20, 2007 The prominent and combative roles Michelle Obama and Elizabeth Edwards play in their respective husbands’ campaigns send an overt message to each other and Team Clinton: Don’t go messing with my man. More pragmatic political considerations lie hidden in the vitriol from these desperate-for-the-White House wives. At a “Women for Obama” rally last week in Chicago, Michelle Obama condemned those who question if Barack is “black enough” to call himself black. Michelle Obama stated, “What are we saying to our children if a man...

Hillary Clinton Corleone, Mortgage Lender By Matt Carrothers August 13, 2007 There is a key sequence of scenes in “The Godfather: Part II” in which a young Vito Corleone exerts his ascending power and influence over New York’s Little Italy neighborhood. A poor widow named Signora Colombo asks Corleone to intervene with her landlord, Roberto, who wants to evict her. Colombo cannot afford to move, and she has no where else to live. Corleone seeks out the landlord Roberto and offers to pay six months of Signora Colombo’s rent in advance, at an increased rate. Roberto refuses, but soon finds...

‘Imagine Piano’ Celebrates John Lennon’s Absurd Magnum Opus By Matt Carrothers August 6, 2007 Forget ground surges, new military leaders, tapping terrorist’s phone calls, free elections, training Iraqi soldiers to defend their own country and any other tactic that is helping the U.S. defeat Islamic fascists. British pop music singer George Michael and his boyfriend Kenny Goss have a better idea to bring peace to the world – John Lennon’s piano. Michael owns the piano on which Lennon composed the song “Imagine”. Accompanied by white-gloved attendants and a music choreographer, the piano is touring the U.S. as the centerpiece of...

Carl’s Levinomics: Wrong Diagnosis, Wrong Remedy By Matt Carrothres July 30, 2007 The late British economist Ernest Benn once said, “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedy.” Benn’s apt description of machinations in the political arena can be applied today to liberals’ understanding of economics and the correct tax policies necessary to expand the economy. On July 24, the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a hearing to consider President Bush’s nomination of former Iowa congressman and House Budget Committee Chairman...

Abortion Politics and Barack Obama’s Slaughterhouse Jive By Matt Carrothers July 23, 2007 The leading Democratic presidential contenders stumped last week before the Planned Parenthood poobahs, sounding the usual refrains that protection of abortion on demand ensures a woman’s health, that the Supreme Court erred in upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, get your rosary beads off my uterus and all the rest of it. The New York Times even titled its report of the event “Democrats Attack Bush on Women’s Health Issues.” Funny enough, there was no mention in the Times’s story of breast cancer, uterine cancer or any...

The Village Mentality Breeds Fiscal Idiots By Matt Carrothers July 16, 2007 Proponents of high taxes and intrusive government suffered a crushing defeat last week in Iowa. Eighty-five percent of voters in three Iowa counties voted against a ballot initiative to implement a 1 percent local-option sales tax increase. The saga of this proposed tax increase, dubbed the “Destiny Tax” by supporters, demonstrates the sheer ignorance ingrained in many elected officials of the factors necessary to create economic growth. Supporters of the Destiny Tax in the three Iowa counties that include the Des Moines metro area claimed that the estimated...

Cow Farts, Left-Wing Pressure Intimidate Weak-Kneed NASCAR Chief By Matt Carrothers July 9, 2007 Last Saturday, millions of hand-wringing, bed-wetting music fans who worry about their “carbon footprint” watched over 100 hand-wringing, bed-wetting bands perform across the globe in the endless crusade to raise awareness about carbon dioxide emissions, global warming, climate change or whatever name the latest malady that will destroy Mother Earth goes by these days. By one measure they were certainly successful in raising awareness, as Al Gore’s Live Earth concerts produced an estimated 74,500 tons of carbon dioxide. At least they meant well. Also on Saturday...

Democrats Demagogue Race Rather Than Being Honest About People’s Choices by Matt Carrothers July 2, 2007 On Wednesday, June 28, 2007, the confluence of three events in the political arena once again focused the nation’s attention on the still-contentious issues related to race. Reaction to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 et al, the failed U.S. Senate cloture motion on the immigration bill and a Democratic presidential candidates’ debate on racial issues showcased the leftist elite’s desire to shun proven solutions to the issues of education, immigration, poverty and disease....

OK, We’ll Call You ‘Progressives,’ but You’re Still the Same Old Liberals By Matt Carrothers June 25, 2007 Liberal activists – the political left’s extreme political left – ask that everyone stop referring to them as liberals. They now want to be called progressives. According to a June 22 Washington Times article, Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) co-director Roger Hickey says the word progressive “goes beyond the traditional concept of liberalism, which we also subscribe to, and it has an emphasis on empowering people in the political and economic sphere.” To paraphrase Billy Joel, everybody's talkin’ ‘bout the new label....

Illegal Immigration: Amnesty for the Sake of the ‘Common Good’ Is No Good by Matt Carrothers June 18, 2007 Many words have been typed, speeches made and talk radio monologues delivered questioning the reasons behind President Bush’s passionate pleas for awarding amnesty to tens of millions of illegal aliens. In a Washington Post editorial last week, Bush’s former speechwriter Michael Gerson provided compelling clues about the president’s guiding ideology on the issue. Gerson’s lament that Americans would dare criticize Bush for abdicating his constitutional duty to enforce our laws should rightfully offend the millions of conservatives who have supported their...

Repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax? Sure, When Britney Spears Puts On Underwear By Matt Carrothers June 11, 2007 House Democrats last week floated a new scheme to eliminate the alternative minimum tax (AMT), replacing it with a 4.3 percent “surtax” on families with incomes over $500,000. Under this tax “reform” charade, liberals plan to further heap the burden of taxation on the income quintile that already pays the majority of income taxes. The AMT is both an undue financial burden on millions of Americans and a morally repugnant assault on individual liberty. That is why Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA), Chairman...

Fred Thompson: The Man from Rocky Top by Matt Carrothers June 4, 2007 The unwritten rules in the current GOP presidential election cycle have been: Compare yourself often to Ronald Reagan; Avoid staking out too many specific issue positions; and Get in early. The conventional wisdom is apparently that Republican primary voters are merely looking for the next Reagan. The problem is that the candidates themselves do not really know what the voters’ desire for another Reagan means. Thus, given the number of candidates in the race, it will take a long time to buffalo the voters into believing that...