Yes, we can.

[sleepyjeff]

Originally Posted by Alex

It is a glaring demonstration of how liberal Obama is. Despite clearly seeing the needs of people around him, he is so focused on the idea that government is the source of solutions that even as he advanced into a financially secure, and even extravagant by most standards, income bracket it never even occurred to him to dig into his own bank accounts to give directly to solutions.

Instead, he acts on the assumption that he need do nothing directly but instead rely on the government to take what is necessary and redistribute it, leaving the rest behind for his own use. The excess of money he has is to him not a sign of personal charitable failure but rather a governmental failure to take what is needed. To him, the solution is not for him to give more but for the government to take more.

Learning that he gave so little is not a sign of hypocrisy but rather a demonstration of the core values he holds most dearly. And this is the very reason we should be wary of electing him to office. For he has been exposed as being just the radical tax-and-spend liberal that any decent conservative should fear seeing in the highest office in the land.




How did I do at channeling Rush?

Actually, I think you are channeling George Will:

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/will032708.php3

[Alex]

Wow. I swear I hadn't read that.

Though we're hardly the first people to put in writing that idea.

[SacTown Chronic]

The correlation between givers and religion that Will cites is nothing more than the God-mandated tithe that puts the preacher in a Cadillac bought with tax-free dollars. He knows this but would never mention it.

Originally Posted by scaeagles

Doesn't this correspond to his policy of "dignity", which CP posted a link to regarding? He wants to give tax money charitably to foreign countries yet has not demonstrated that in his own life with his own money. So he wants to take my money and your money and give it charitably when he had far more money then than I do now. I see that as wrong.

Dignity Promotion is a national defense theory. Barrack Obama wants to stop wasting tax dollars on bullets and tanks and wants to start wasting tax dollars on theories of peace through dignity and hope. He wants to take my money and your money and spend it on national defense without killing as many people as we do now. I see that as a righteous aspiration. What I don't see is what this has to do with charitable giving in his private life.

[scaeagles]

Again, that theory is naive when taking into consideration that a large amount of the poverty and hunger and lack of dignity in the world is imposed on the populace by the rulers of the nations experiencing these things as a form of control. Also, most of the leaders of terrorist organizations are idealogues and zealots who are not interested in dignity and hope, they are interested in people living under the partiuclar interpretation of Islam or the extermination of Israel or whatever it may be.

[Prudence]

Someone in Obama's position making his salary is not the same as me, in my position, making that salary. I don't have to maintain a certain image to project an air of success that attracts campaign donors. I don't have to dress a certain way, make sure my family is dressed a certain way, drive a certain car, have a driver take me to work so that I can work in the car, have a certain type of home suitable for persuasive entertaining, or fund that entertaining. I have the time to do my own cooking and cleaning (such as it is.) I don't have to maintain a home in one state and work in DC.

This applies to any of the candidates. And yes, there's a point where if someone's bringing in millions every year and hoarding it I might consider that a moral failing. But 300K a year? For me, in my life, that would be astounding wealth. I'd certainly have enough to spare a good amount for charity. But I also don't have my "employers" examining my personal life with a fine-toothed comb and speculating on my potential for success based on where I live, what brand of suit I wear, and what I served at my last party.

[Kevy Baby]

My father sent me this article by Ben Stein that appeared in the March 2, 2008 New York Times. I kinda liked it.

AS I was sitting at my majestic TV in a majestic suite at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Miami a couple of weeks ago, going over notes for a speech the next morning and waiting for Crockett and Tubbs to speed by, chasing drug kingpins in their Miami Vice" motorboat, I watched Barack Obama speak in Madison, Wis.

As usual, Senator Obama gave a fine oration, with thunderous applause from the audience as his reward. But then I was beguiled by a series of gifts he was going to give the American people (of course, with their own money): universal health care, antipoverty programs, large grants to college students in return for community service (a darned good idea) and other goodies.

Then he talked about the country's energy policy and how he planned to change our dependence on oil. And he took aim at Exxon Mobil, which had almost $12 billion in earnings last quarter, and said that good old Exxon Mobil wouldn't part easily with its profits.

Now, I know it's primary season. I know Democratic candidates have to make obeisance to the populist, anti-business wing of their party, just as the Republican front-runner, Senator John McCain, has to make bows and curtsies to the supply-side part of his (and my) party. But Mr. Obama's comments about Exxon Mobil are, as folks used to say, fightin' words.

Mr. Obama is clearly an intelligent man. So it may not be too early to start a small process of education about Exxon Mobil and other oil companies and why attacking them is not smart. First, Exxon Mobil, like all the other gigantic integrated energy companies in this country, is owned not by a cabal of reactionary businessmen holding clandestine meetings in a lodge in the Texas scrublands (as Oliver Stone so brilliantly illustrated in "Nixon").

Exxon Mobil, in fact, is owned mostly by ordinary Americans. Mutual funds, index funds and pension funds (including union pension funds) own about 52 percent of Exxon Mobil's shares. Individual shareholders, about two million or so, own almost all the rest. The pooh-bahs who run Exxon own less than 1 percent of the company. When Exxon Mobil earns almost $12 billion in a quarter, or $41 billion in a year, as it did in 2007, that money does not go into the coffers of a few billionaire executives quaffing Champagne in Texas. It goes into the pension and retirement accounts of ordinary citizens. When Exxon pays a dividend, that money goes to pay for the mortgages and oxygen tanks and in-home care of lots of elderly Americans. So, Mr. Obama, which union pension plans - and which blue-collar workers who benefit from them - will be among the first you would like to deprive of the income that flows from Exxon's rich dividends?

When Mr. Obama or his Democratic rival, my fellow Yale Law School graduate Hillary Rodham Clinton, go after the oil companies and want to take away their profits, they are basically seeking to lower the income of the ordinary American. Why do that? It's just cutting off one end of a blanket and sewing it to the other.

Years ago, there was a comic strip called "Pogo" by Walt Kelly, and the possum who was its hero uttered a deservedly famous line: "We have met the enemy and he is us." this applies to Big Oil. Its profits are our income. Its employees are overwhelmingly not millionaires - and, by the way, it's not illegal or evil to be a millionaire. They are our neighbors and the people who get us the gasoline to run our cars and trucks and the oil to heat our homes. And, after expenses, the money hauled in by Exxon Mobil and other companies like it goes vastly more toward exploration and finding new ways of delivering oil and gas to us slobs in our cars than it does to well-heeled oil executives. It may be a scary fact, but we need the oil companies.

Meanwhile, all over the world, from Russia to Venezuela to Africa to the sands of the Mideast, nations with large oil reserves are making it harder for American energy companies to get their hands on oil and gas. If they succeed and re-cartelize the price, current prices may look cheap. We should not be beating up Exxon Mobil and its brethren and making them cry uncle to Uncle Sam. A better policy might be to keep making sure they have no role in price-fixing, and then to encourage them to go after and lock up as much oil and gas as they can for us to burn up. We would be better off with stronger oil companies that can serve our energy needs for the long haul than with weak and overtaxed oil companies that cannot deliver the needed juice.

Finally, envy is simply not good economics. It has never led anywhere except to trouble, and we have enough divisions in this country already. As I said, Mr. Obama is a smart man. And Senator Clinton is a smart woman. I have worked in politics and with politicians. I know they have to say crowd-pleasing things (just as Republican leaders have to say that cutting taxes raises revenue). But I respectfully suggest that they might want to reconsider their attack on Big Oil. After all, Big Oil is big us. And we need us.

[BarTopDancer]

Originally Posted by Prudence

Someone in Obama's position making his salary is not the same as me, in my position, making that salary. I don't have to maintain a certain image to project an air of success that attracts campaign donors. I don't have to dress a certain way, make sure my family is dressed a certain way, drive a certain car, have a driver take me to work so that I can work in the car, have a certain type of home suitable for persuasive entertaining, or fund that entertaining. I have the time to do my own cooking and cleaning (such as it is.) I don't have to maintain a home in one state and work in DC.

This applies to any of the candidates. And yes, there's a point where if someone's bringing in millions every year and hoarding it I might consider that a moral failing. But 300K a year? For me, in my life, that would be astounding wealth. I'd certainly have enough to spare a good amount for charity. But I also don't have my "employers" examining my personal life with a fine-toothed comb and speculating on my potential for success based on where I live, what brand of suit I wear, and what I served at my last party.

PUBLIC MOJO! Well said!

[Strangler Lewis]

The Ben Stein article is fine as far as it goes, but most people hurt by high gas prices are a long way from retired. I know a number of families that have cut off their balls--i.e., sold their Tahoes, Silverados, etc. and downsized to minivans or bought a smaller used car for errands--because they can't afford to fill up the tank.

The price of food has also gone up, both because of increases in the price of gas and the price of wheat. I suppose the answer would be that most of the processed foods that Americans are killing themselves with are ultimately owned by Phillip Morris and the like who might be part of their 401k.

This assumes that most Americans are contributing sufficiently to 401k, which they are not. Rather, many are living paycheck to paycheck and running up credit cards. Of course, now that MasterCard and Visa have gone public, this is obviously a good thing.

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by Strangler Lewis

The Ben Stein article is fine as far as it goes, but most people hurt by high gas prices are a long way from retired. I know a number of families that have cut off their balls--i.e., sold their Tahoes, Silverados, etc. and downsized to minivans or bought a smaller used car for errands--because they can't afford to fill up the tank.

Who do you think is to blame for the high gas prices? Some believe that Exxon-Mobile et. al. is to blame (because E-M made $12 billion last quarter). It ain't them. Look at the cost for a barrel of oil which is well over $100 ($107 as of Thursday), up from about $50.00 in January 2007.

And for those who think that $12 billion is 'too high', look at it from a percentage perspective (all info from the respective companies' Income Statements on finance.yahoo.com):

Exxon-Mobile: 10%
Disney: 12%
Apple: 16%
Sears: 17%
Microsoft: 29%

[wendybeth]

Anybody else finish that Ben Stein article and think "Bueller.........Beuller......."



Btw, I think he lives up here in Sandpoint, Idaho- or he used to, anyway.