Conservative Donnybrook

Doughboy sent me an email last night with the subject line “you’ll like this blog.” In it he provided a link to a libertarian blog and noted, “They hate Bush, Lincoln and the war, but love Ron Paul and libertarianism.” The idea that I am libertarian no doubt stems from my admission that I cast my primary vote last election for Ron Paul.

Along the lines of full disclosure, especially in light of the fact that a simple rereading of the archived posts I’ve written on this website, will reveal that I have not always held Dr. Paul in high esteem. Indeed, I may have referred to him as a kook, his followers as the Kool-Aid Brigade, and whose appeal to the fringe element was disturbing.

In fact, my political outlook has fundamentally changed. Twice. If one reads one of my original posts about how I view Traditionalism (the label I would place on myself), one could see that I viewed myself as closer to the paleoconservative camp with reservations about the more isolationist elements that crop up there from time to time. If one reads that post, one could be forgiven for believing that I have maintained an admirable consistency over time. Would that that were so. There was the regrettable interregnum period where I denounced paleoconservatism, paleoconservatives and drifted very close to the neocon camp (mainly out of disgust with the anarchist Lew Rockwell crowd). On election day, I walked into my local polling place fully intending to vote for John McCain because any other vote was “wasted.” I carried my voting slip into the carrel and, as I was poised to darken the circle next to McCain’s name, I hesitated. I decided to fill in the other ovals for all the other races first and come back to it. As I stood there, I took stock of my beliefs and the arguments we had had on this website. I found myself unable to do the very thing I had been urging everyone else to do – to swallow one’s pride and cast my vote for Party if only to defeat the Other. I knew I couldn’t vote for McCain. The question remained, however, whose circle I would color in. There were third party candidates including the Liberatarian candidate. And then there was Dr. Paul. Voting my conscience in favor of freedom and Constitutional order, I darkened the so-called “kook’s” bubble and walked out at peace with myself for the first time in months. I had come full circle.

I voted for Ron Paul, like I said, because I value the framework of limited government set forth in the Constitution. John McCain, who campaigned for cap-and-trade and some form of health care reform did not offer that option. It was clear to me that the Republican Party did not hold dear the constitutional order that had served this country well from its founding to today. Consequently, I decided that day that I was no longer a Republican. Neither, though, was I a libertarian.

I am not a libertarian, contrary to Doughboy’s assumption, mainly for two reasons. First, I agree with almost nothing the libertarians espouse when it comes to their social agenda. Second, libertarians have a tendency to reduce man to homo economicus and view all of society, like the Marxists, in terms of dollars and cents. Man is entitled, as a result of his creation in the likeness and image of God, to more credit than that. That said, there is much to admire about their devotion to limited government and conservatives can find strong, but limited, allies in libertarians.

What is disturbing to me is this notion that anyone who supports Ron Paul a) is a libertarian – Dr. Paul’s own steadfast defense of life in the Congress should put to rest that notion; b) hates Lincoln; or c) hates Bush. I don’t hate anyone. I see Bush and Lincoln for the flawed men they are/were. However, it seems that a person is automatically tarred as a hater if he has the temerity to point out those men’s limitations and the ways in which they positively harmed the nation. Both men, wittingly or not, contributed great good to the country. In the wake of 9/11, George W. Bush’s leadership was exemplary. He held together a nation that had been rocked on its heels through his determination, resolve, and clear-sightedness. Likewise, Lincoln should be lauded for ending slavery, even if that was simply a by-product of his efforts to preserve the Union.

On the other side of the ledger, Bush committed this country to a needless aggressive war against a nation that had not attacked us, posed no threat to the United States, and which had no connection to the attacks on 9/11. Lincoln aggregated power to the federal government in violation of the Constitution that has never been returned to the States. Indeed, it could be argued that Lincoln is the father of the modern centralized federal state that is so inimical to freedom from oppression.

We traditionalists are a nuanced crowd. Simply because we value the perspective espoused by Dr. Paul does not make us haters. We neither hate nor adore our leaders, but attempt to view them fairly in a wider context that takes into account the grand sweep of history and tries to calculate the prospective effects of their actions. To jump to accusations from such a paucity of evidence as the admission that we voted for a candidate that wasn’t fully endorsed by the establishment is simply intellectual laziness.

It’s as low as ever, and PJM’s Roger Kimball explains (bold by me)

“People keep telling me how wildly popular Obama himself is, even if support for virtually all his major initiatives is eroding. Not true–the first bit, I mean. David Brooks had an interesting piece in our former paper of record today about the “Liberal Suicide March.” I think he’s right about the direction of the march. But why, apart from the sentiments of his colleagues at that fast-sinking newspaper, does he believe that “Most Americans love Barack Obama personally.” Every poll I’ve seen suggests the opposite. Nota bene: Obama did not “win by a landslide,” as the good people from Acorn, MoveOn.org, CNN, and The New York Times like to imply. He won by a margin of about 52-46–respectable these days but not hardly a landslide. And since being elected, Obama has, despite a moment of euphoria among the left, sunk steadily in the public’s estimation. In fact, he ranks 10th out of the 12 post-war presidents at this point in his tenure. Politico reports that “the number of Americans who say they trust the president has fallen from 66 percent to 54 percent. At the same time, the percentage of those who say they do not trust the president has jumped from 31 to 42.” Could it be worse? Sure. And it probably will be soon.

 There is a larger question about Obama. Back when he was campaigning, some commentators assured us that, despite his hard-left associates, pronouncements, and instincts, Obama really was a “pragmatist” who who govern from the center. Any evidence of that yet? I think Bill McGurn is right that, so-far, Obama has been anything but “post-partisan.” But as the rats desert the ship and his poll numbers plummet, one wonders whether Obama will muster the political canniness that saved Bill Clinton.

Wake me up when he fires Rahm Emmanuel and David Axelrod. No, I’m not holding my breath

Shortly after the election, I wrote a post about Basic Truth About Politics #1. As I wrote then, a local radio talk show host blithely answered a caller who expressed his dismay at Obama’s victory asking how such a thing could have happened by saying that it is very simple: they liked him better. I was a little miffed at the simplistic answer, but on reflection I came to see the truth of the assertion. The simple truth is Americans elect presidents for the same reasons they elected Student Council Presidents in high school – they like him better.

Today, that same talk show host has posted the following on his blog (he also spoke about it briefly on the sow today and promised to spend more time on it tomorrow). What is interesting is that it seems he has abandoned the basic insight he once possessed. Now he argues that the Republican Party must adopt the Democrats’ campaign planks in order to retain any relevancy. His prescription? Jettison any principled stand in favor of the dignity of life. Jettison any principled stand in favor of the rule of law. The people, he argues, don’t want any of that. Just look at the past election. In other words, Obama won. Assimilate or die. Resistance is futile.

I would agree with Abdul to a certain extent. There are relatively few people who actually care about the issues. But those people are highly motivated and highly vocal. Look for instance at the Ron Paul phenomenon. Paul commanded a corps of true conservatives and also attracted the Ross Perot/Pat Buchanan black helicopter crowd. The mainstream GOP apologists, adopting a strategy close to Abdul’s reasoning, focused almost exclusively on the fringe element and tarred Ron Paul with his supporters’ excesses. They did the same to Perot and Buchanan. As a result, the GOP has been steadily moving to a more Statist position since the Reagan years as they strive to make the tent larger and larger. Ironically, the GOP’s relative share of the electorate has decreased leading one to question whether moving into the Statist Democratic position is favorable to the party, pace Abdul’s claims.

Ronald Reagan perfectly demonstrates why Abdul is wrong. For years after Watergate the mainstream media was declaring the GOP DOA. There was an existential struggle between the Goldwater/Reagan wing of the party and the Rockefeller Rupublicans. In 1976, the Rockefeller wing won and nominated Gerald Ford, the moderate candidate. Ford, of course, went on to be defeated by Jimmy Carter. Four years later, the conservative wing of the party was able to nominate its candidate and Ronald Reagan won 489 electoral votes to Carter’s 49. The Party moved away from Statism and the people heartily endorsed that move.

The point is not that conservative values win elections. The point is that conservative positions do not lose elections. Ronald Reagan was far more likable than Carter. Reagan won. It is as simple as that. The lesson is that those of us who care about the issues need to develop candidates that the electorate can relate to, that they want to drink beers with. In short, a candidate who is charismatic will win the election even if he is a dyed-in-the-wool Socialist or even if he is a strict constitutionalist. It is the television era for better or worse.

As far as that goes, I wrote before that it was time to let the GOP go its merry way. But, if the conservative Ron Paul wing of the GOP can find a charismatic candidate (note to Paulites: not Ron Paul), the GOP can be saved. There is no reason the Party cannot turn again from Big Government Statism. There is nothing that locks that position in place. There is nothing to fear from nominating a true conservative as the candidate’s policies have very little to do with whether he will win an election. If image is everything, as appears to be the case, the key is to find a candidate who possesses both the image and who also carries the message.

As a service to the hordes of readers of Conservative Donnybrook, I have read the House version of Obama’s $825 billion economic stimulus package so you don’t have to.

General Attributes of the Plan

As mentioned above the current overall price tag (before amendments and the inevitable earmark add-ons) is $825 billion. That is split into two general categories of spending.

The first category is $275 billion in “economic recovery tax cuts.” Presumably this is the “tax cuts for 95% of Americans” that Obama continuously talked about on the campaign trail. If there are 305 million Americans and they split the tax cut evenly, each would enjoy a lessened tax burden of $949.09 each. I’ll take it gladly; indeed, they owe us more of our own money back. Unfortunately, this will almost certainly be offset by the sun-setting of the Bush tax cuts, which there is little doubt Congress and the President will allow to expire.

The second category is $550 billion in “targeted priority investments.” According to the summary from the Committee on Appropriations, “[t]his package is the crucial first step in a concerted effort to create and save 3 to 4 million jobs, jumpstart our economy, and being the process of transforming it for the 21^st century.” The committee summary goes on to state that, “with the passage of this package, unemployment rates are expected to rise to between eight and nine percent this year. Without this package, we are warned that unemployment could explode to near twelve percent.” As such, assuming these numbers are correct and this package would prevent the unemployment rate from experiencing an additional 3% rise, the package will prevent the loss of 3.93 million jobs* through new unemployment claims. This means that by their own numbers, this package will not create any new jobs, as Obama has been touting, but rather would prevent the anticipated loss of 4 million jobs.

* In case anyone is interested, I came up with this number by looking at the increase in unemployment as reported on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website (http://www.bls.gov/ces/) for the December report. That report said unemployment rose from 6.8% to 7.2% or by +0.4%. That increase corresponded with a decrease in the number of jobs of 524,000. If 0.4% is equivalent to 524,000 jobs, then 4% would equal 3.93 million jobs.

The summary acknowledges that the plan will result in “a large deficit for years to come.” But, justifies its passage by playing on the fears of not passing it: “Without it, those deficits will be devastating [as though the deficits we invite will not be] and we will face the risk of economic chaos.”

Since 2001, as worker productivity went up, 96% of the income growth in this country went to the wealthiest 10% of society [I assume they are not referring to the government]. While they were benefiting from record high worker productivity, the remaining 90% of Americans were struggling to sustain their standard [sic] of living. They sustained it by borrowing…and borrowing…and borrowing, and when they couldn’t borrow anymore, the bottom fell out. This plan will strengthen the middle class, not just Wall Street CEOs and special interests in Washington [who have already received government welfare in the form of bailouts which took priority over taxpayer relief].

Finally, before getting into the specifics of the “targeted priority investments,” it should be noted that “[t]here are no earmarks in this package.” I guess I don’t really know what an earmark, because I thought it was an appropriation that was targeted to a particular project, or “priority investment,” if you prefer. Oh well. Orwell lives.

One last note before we dive into an examination of the specific spending proposals. We should probably keep in mind that, according to most of the economists I’ve heard speak about the crisis, the overriding problem is that credit is unavailable to consumers and businesses. It is probably helpful to hold this in the forefront of one’s thoughts as he approaches each of these broad spending categories. A thoughtful person would probably ask, “Does this spending help to free up credit to consumers and businesses?” Continue Reading »

President-elect Obama has announced his choice to head the CIA.  The nation’s top spy could very well be Leon Panetta!  In his career Panetta created the Monterrey Bay Marine Sanctuary, expanded entitlements, participated in the destruction of the U.S. economy and ensured U.S. dependence on foreign oil by preventing offshore drilling in California, so his subversive tactics make him a natural to lead a spy agency…of a nation hostile to the United States.

Panetta will face real opposition from California senator Diane Feinstein, incoming chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.  She has indicated that she may not support Mr. Obama’s pick.  The real concern here is Obama’s judgment.  Panetta utterly lacks the credentials to lead the agency charged with preventing terrorist work.  He is a budget man, a bad one at that, and an educator.  What is Obama thinking?  Well, surely not about the safety of the American citizen or the health of the nation’s intelligence community.

Fox is reporting that the recount of votes in MN is favoring Democratic challenger Al Franken over incumbent Republican Norm Coleman.  The problem, as portrayed by Fox, is in the way some ballots are being re-counted.  It sure looks like Franken is set to steal the election.

Say Franken does win by obviously less than fair play, what should the voters in MN do?  Protest?  Sue?  What is the correct response?  What should the Governor do?  What should the U.S. Senate do?  Should anyone/someone do something? Any thoughts?  Minnesotans, any ideas?

I have, on two separate occasions now, advocated for the formation of a third party. Not surprisingly, my fellow blogger, Bill, has taken me to task for my previous comment that voting for a third party could imperil one’s soul. Therefore, it is properly incumbent upon me to detail why I think voting for a third party in the future is, in any way, different going forward than it was in the late election.

First, the late election was notable for the stark contrast between the candidates’ stances on abortion. On the Democratic side, there was a candidate who favored infanticide for alive-born aborted babies. On the other side was a candidate who professed to be against abortion (although I recognize that his voting record was ambiguous). In light of the differences, the outcome of the election made one’s vote particularly important, given the stakes.

I wrote a post wherein I supported the decision of a local priest to withhold the Eucharist from persons who had voted for Obama. My argument proceeded along the lines that because of the peculiar situation of the United States, where the people are their own rulers, our votes take on special meaning. The basis for this claim, as I alluded to, was St. Paul’s comments in Romans:

1 Let every person be subordinate to the higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been established by God.

2 Therefore, whoever resists authority opposes what God has appointed, and those who oppose it will bring judgment upon themselves.

3 For rulers are not a cause of fear to good conduct, but to evil. Do you wish to have no fear of authority? Then do what is good and you will receive approval from it,

4 for it is a servant of God for your good. But if you do evil, be afraid, for it does not bear the sword without purpose; it is the servant of God to inflict wrath on the evildoer.

5 Therefore, it is necessary to be subject not only because of the wrath but also because of conscience.

6 This is why you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, devoting themselves to this very thing.

7 Pay to all their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due, toll to whom toll is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.

Continue Reading »

After Obama is inaugurated, if a person disagrees with his policies, is he a racist or a heretic?

According to one parish priest in South Carolina, parishioners who voted for Barack Hussein Obama should not present themselves for communion until they have repented, confessed and received absolution for their votes.

According to the Rev. Jay Scott Newman:

Our nation has chosen for its chief executive the most radical pro-abortion politician ever to serve in the United States Senate or to run for president. Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exits constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do so place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ’s Church and under the judgment of divine law. Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation.

Judging by the yard signs in my neighborhood, such a stance at my parish would trim 20 minutes off the mass time. It is good to see one priest stand up against the grave moral evil of our time. If more priests were to take the issue seriously, we may be able to make inroads against this modern holocaust.

Who do you like?

We’ve spent a fair amount of time and effort arguing amongst ourselves and with our legions of readers about the relative virtues of one candidate’s position over another’s. In doing so, I believe, we have been completely missing the point of elections in the United States. I will explain by relating a story.

The morning after the election, as I was driving to work, I tuned into a local political analyst’s radio show. A caller asked the host, “How could all of these people have voted for Obama? Didn’t they realize what he stood for?” The host responded, “They voted for him because they liked him better.” As much as the smugness of the answer irritated me at the time, I think he was absolutely correct in his analysis.

Voters voted for Obama because they liked him better than McCain. Any other arguments for or against a candidate are irrelevant in the face of that simple truth. Indeed, Howard Stern’s man-in-the-Harlem-street interviews proves this point beyond a reasonable doubt. The issues didn’t matter to the voters; they were quite willing to attribute virtually any position to their candidate of choice. It was the person they were voting for – not the policy positions.

Think about the last several elections. Bush defeats Kerry and Gore. In both cases, Bush is easily the more likable, charismatic of the pairings. Clinton defeats…well, really anyone. There probably isn’t anyone who was as charismatic as Bill Clinton. I like to think of it as the “Who’d You Like to Drink Beers With Test.” Clinton beats everyone with the possible exception of Reagan.  And look at who the Republicans threw up against him H.W. and Dole. Those men did not stand a chance. The Democrats should have won in 1988 given the fact that they were running against George I. But, who’d they put up against him? Dukakis? No contest. Look at the elections prior to that and ask which candidate was the more charismatic? Reagan/Mondale – Reagan/Carter – Carter/Ford (this one was particularly bad).

It would appear that the electorate, in general terms, stops developing in high school. Whoever would have won the Student Council election popularity contest is likely to be a good candidate for political office now. In one sentence, my local radio host has summed up Basic Truth About Politics #1 Continue Reading »

Pretty good article over at WSJ with insider accounts of some key moments from the McCain and Obama campaigns. Here’s a good part: 

The next day, while conservative House Republicans maneuvered behind the scenes to block the bailout bill, Sen. McCain sat largely silent at a crisis summit at the White House. Afterward, Sen. Obama called his staff from his car: “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said, according to several aides. “Some of the Republicans are clueless. Bush and I were trying to convince them.”

Ah, so the Transformational, Transcendent Candidate for Change and all that conspired with George W. Bush to rob the American people of $700 billion for the enrichment of wealthy Wall Street bankers. I’ll be darned!

Then there’s this:

Meanwhile, Sen. McCain was meeting with Wall Street supporters such as investor Henry Kravis, J.P. Morgan Chase Vice Chairman James B. Lee Jr. and Merrill Lynch Chief Executive John Thain, who told him the global credit markets could “seize up” without definitive action. Some chided the candidate for attacking all of Wall Street and suggesting financial CEOs shouldn’t make more than the president’s salary of $400,000.

You’ve been a very bad boy, McCain!

But McCain’s blustering about greed and executive salaries in the midst of a McCain-supported, epic, world-historical ripoff benefiting those same greedy Wall Street titans pretty much epitomizes the vacuity and hypocrisy of the McCain campaign.

It must be nice to have the Democratic nominee in one pocket, and the Republican nominee in the other. Good show, Wall Street!

Oh, and let me remind you once again that this was the most important election of our lifetimes.

I have included a summary of each proposition from the Secretary of State in California and then given my commentary and advice on voting.  Here we go!

1A
To provide Californians a safe, convenient, affordable, and reliable alternative to driving and high gas prices; to provide good-paying jobs and improve California’s economy while reducing air pollution, global warming greenhouse gases, and our dependence on foreign oil, shall $9.95 billion in bonds be issued to establish a clean, efficient high-speed train service linking Southern California, the Sacramento/San Joaquin Valley, and the San Francisco Bay Area, with at least 90 percent of bond funds spent for specific projects, with private and public matching funds required, including, but not limited to, federal funds, funds from revenue bonds, and local funds, and all bond funds subject to independent audits? Fiscal Impact: State costs of $19.4 billion, assuming 30 years to pay both principal and interest costs of the bonds. Payments would average about $647 million per year. When constructed, unknown operation and maintenance costs, probably over $1 billion annually; at least partially, and potentially fully, offset by passenger fares.

MY TAKE: $19.4 billion to start, and then at least $1 billion annually!  And who knows when the damn thing would be operational.  Do you have any idea how many tunnels and bridges would be required to build this?  There is a reason why private industry has not done this: It is not expensive or difficult to make this flight on an airplane.  This is a huge waste of taxpayer money.  The state is already in dire financial straits.  This proposition makes things worse.
NO
Continue Reading »

A co-worker of mine receieved this little note from the citizens of Ireland.

An email from Ireland to all of their brethren in the States… a point to ponder despite your political affiliation:

 We, in Ireland , can’t figure out why you people are even bothering to hold an election in the United States.

On one side, you had a pants wearing female lawyer, married to another lawyer who can’t seem to keep his pants on, who just lost a long and heated primary against a lawyer,  who goes to the wrong church, who is married to yet another lawyer, who doesn’t even like the country her husband wants to run!

Now… On the other side, you have a nice old war hero whose name starts with the appropriate ‘Mc’ terminology, married to a good looking younger woman who owns a beer distributorship!!

What in God’s name are ya lads thinkin over in the colonies!  This is a no brainer!

Man, they make me almost wanna support McCain!

I wonder if this will push any paleos towards voting for McCain.

Responding to my previous post, Karl asks, “Should [the Republicans'] time-out occur for the next ten to twenty years? Because that’s what ceding 2-3 seats on the Supreme Court to Obama will accomplish.”

Well, for one thing, I was responding to the argument that Obama represents some kind of uniquely menacing threat to the American way of life, which seems to me silly, at least the “uniquely” part, and to the idea that Obama is any more of a socialist than McCain, who pays lip service to capitalism while supporting every imaginable government intervention in the economy, including the in-progress partial nationalization of the banking industry.

But to address Karl’s point, the issue of judges, I concede that this is the strongest (or only) possible argument in favor of electing McCain. But is he really all that likely to appoint textualists, originalists, strict constructionists, or what have you? Even if he is, will a heavily Democratic Senate really approve the vote to overturn Roe? And it seems that McCain, who delights in knifing conservatives in the back and famously despises those “agents of intolerance,” Christian conservatives, is far more interested in removing limits to executive power than rolling back the judiciary. This is especially so considering his legislative legacy, the unconstitutional McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill. McCain appointing another Clarence Thomas would be a big surprise. McCain appointing a Sandra Day O’Connor and basking in the praise of the New York Times for his moderation and bipartisanship would not be surprising at all.

It just seems to me that for a conservative searching for a reason to support McCain, the judges issue is an awfully thin reed on which to base a vote for this awful candidate, especially when some time in the wilderness could be a real benefit for the Republican party, which could hardly get any worse. Against the slight possibility of McCain appointing “good” judges, weigh the fact that McCain is much more likely to get an amnesty for illegal immigrants through Congress than is Obama, and thus will push the accelerator to the floor with regard to mass immigration from developing nations, which will further gut the middle class and create (or augment) a vast, servile underclass in the United States and contribute to the fracturing our common culture.

See also the fact that McCain is somewhat more likely to start an unnecessary ideological war with nuclear-armed Russia, but I do realize that some around here regard that as a plus.

In sum, after tallying the “pro” and “con” columns, I have concluded that the two major candidates are roughly equally likely to destroy the world.

Both candidates supported a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to wealthy financial elites in the form of the Wall Street bailout — pardon me, the “rescue plan.” McCain also wants to fix prices in the housing market via a massive mortgage buyout plan. Under this scheme, too, it seems that the banks will make out pretty well. I imagine Obama would do something similar.

All this tells us that both candidates support socialism for capitalists. Or you could call it crony capitalism. How is that different from what we’ve got now?

Obama isn’t any more likely to “destroy the country” than Clinton was.  And the Republican party could use a time-out in the corner to think about what they’ve done.

Charles Krauthammer has been on point during this whole election and with articles like this, he is quickly becoming one of my favorites to read.

Somewhat along the lines of Krauthammer’s article, I would like to submit a statement or two for our readers to ponder and comment on. True conservatives will vote for McCain, not because they like him or even like Palin (although I like her politics), they will hold their nose because an Obama victory will destroy the country. An Obama victory will shake the very foundations of this country to the ground, i.e. capitalism, and it will be almost impossible to rebuild them in a truly American way. McCain must be elected to stop this, after which we can resume fighting amongst ourselves for the control of the Republican Party and conservatism.

First read this outstanding article about media bias.

Then look at the card carrying democrat who wrote it.

I never thought one of their own would get it so right.

As if we needed another reason to vote for John McCain, there is this…

This is the strongest argument yet that Barack Obama is dangerous for America.

I believe that this is the video from the debate that Karl referenced dealing with Obama’s plans to “spread the wealth.”  It seems that his tax plan is to take money from profitable businesses and give it to people who make under $250,000 a year. Nevermind that the average small business makes far more than $250, isn’t Obama’s plan a textbook definition of socialism?  Tax cuts should be generated by cutting the size and spending of government not by redistributing private wealth.