RTD tax hike? Clapp no, Sharpe maybe

Nancy Sharpe and Lauri Clapp both bring a fiscally conservative resume to the GOP primary for Arapahoe County commissioner, District 2. But when asked about RTD's upcoming tax-increase proposal at the Republican breakfast club on April 7, Greenwood Village Mayor Sharpe answered vaguely and left the door open, whereas former State Rep. Clapp answered in one word: "No." Sharpe's answer, expressing sympathy with her colleagues among the metro mayors who are counting on FasTracks being built as promised, even it takes higher taxes, reflected a government person's viewpoint. Clapp's reflected a taxpayer viewpoint and could give her an edge in the upcoming summer of fiscal fear and loathing, leading up to the Aug. 10 primary.

These aren't ordinary times. Freedom is near the tipping point. At every level of government, even a frontline service-delivery level such as this big suburban county, we need not just routine competency but fierce determination to force the tax-and-spend-and-borrowing beast back into its cage. As I said in my nominating speech for Lauri Clapp at the county assembly yesterday:

These are dark times for the form of self-government we cherish. We need our best team on the field. That's why I urge your support for my friend, my trusted legislative ally, and my fellow fighting conservative, Lauri Clapp, as our nominee for county commissioner. At this testing time, we need proven conservative leaders who can head off fiscal disaster and defeat progressive socialism. It all starts with local government. This is ground zero. We need a commissioner with the toughness, the principle, and the backbone of Lauri Clapp. She will guard the gate for taxpayers, jobs, and quality of life in this county.

Will Nancy Sharpe guard that gate? I don't know. She might or might not. But I am sure Lauri Clapp will.

We're with you, John

By Tom Graham A Letter to Atty. Gen. John Suthers

Thank you for joining the attorneys general in 12 other states to challenge Obamacare on constitutional grounds. Although I don't officially represent a group as spokesman, I can state that all of my many associates and friends believe that the health care bill is unconstitutional from a number of standpoints, especially the policy purchase requirement. Many of these people are quite knowledgeable regarding insurance, and some are attorneys and legitimate constitutional scholars.

I have been lecturing to as many as I can gather about the motivation for the bill's passage. It isn't about health, but is an opening into the public option. The day after passage, leftists were demanding that the "option" be re-installed when the bill returned to the House. This, of course, would quickly result in the end of private insurance, both profit and non-profit. The figure attributing this industry to approximately 1/6 of the economy is verified. Therefore it is a major element of the plan to turn the nation Socialist.

All of the Obama administration actions have fallen to either the Socialist model or the Communist, as per academic definitions. (See my series about this in previoius posts.) We cannot think of any that don't intentionally kill free markets. This bill must be overturned, without waiting for the return of a responsible congress and administration to power. The takeover (Socialist) or central control (Communist) of the basic industries... energy, automobiles, housing, financial services, health insurance, debt defaults, etc., will descend us to the third world.

We all support your pivotal constitutional contest.

How Easter ended

(Townhall.com, Apr. 2) Dear Grandson: I risk writing you this letter in order to pass along some censored history. Today’s America of 2050, officially atheist by law, is a very different place from the “nation under God” of my boyhood in 2010. When you take your first communion in Denver’s underground church on a spring morning once known as Easter, you need to know how this and other holy days disappeared from the American calendar. Our country at mid-century remains the envy of the world, still fairly prosperous and optimistic, still claiming to be the land of the free and the home of the brave. But I’m sad to tell you that during my lifetime, “brave” and “free” have been redefined so as to disallow any reverence for that power whom our founders called the Creator. Christians and Jews have been made outlaws. So hide my letter with your Bible; both are illegal to possess. It is only because your father and mother honor the civil-disobedience tradition of Martin Luther King and ignore the ban on Judeo-Christian writings that you can read the Scriptures at all.

How tragically does the noisy complacency of my parents back in the Bush and Obama years contrast with the quiet courage of your parents today. Again we see how adversity brings out the best in the people of God, as all history teaches. If believers had been more vigilant for freedom of conscience back in the Teens, judges wouldn’t have dared to rewrite the First Amendment as they did in the Tiernan case.

Instead, young Timothy, your generation grows up in a spiritually-neutered culture that has swiftly taken over what was once the most devout nation on earth. Hence this year of 2050 is punctuated by Bunny Day and Kosher Day on what used to be called Easter and Passover – by Turkey Day and Santa Day in place of Thanksgiving and Christmas. To silence all theistic echoes, even the secular holidays of Memorial Day and Independence Day have been renamed as Peace Day and Sparkler Day.

The dominoes began falling with the election of a “Freedom from Religion” activist, Robert Tiernan, to the Colorado House in 2010. Once in office, he played on the Catholic sex scandals, allegations of evangelical homophobia, and the anti-Israel mood to portray the God of the Bible as civilization’s worst enemy. His bill branding the Gospels and the Torah as hate speech became law on Good Friday, 2012.

A Colorado coalition led by broadcaster James Dobson, Archbishop Charles Chaput, and Rabbi Hillel Goldberg filed suit, denouncing the act as “tyranny worthy of Lenin or Nero.” But the U.S. Supreme Court upheld it. The majority opinion by Justice Keith Ellison, the Muslim former congressman newly appointed by President Obama, ruled that “religion” in the First Amendment excludes by definition every thought, word, and action that manifests intolerance toward any species whatsoever, or the planet itself.

Legislation and court rulings piled on rapidly after that, first marginalizing, then stigmatizing, and finally criminalizing the followers of Jesus and Moses. Islam was judicially certified as a “political system,” however, giving it indulgence and then preference – resulting in the Sharia-infected USA of today. Buddhism and earth-worship also remained free, the one as a “philosophy,” the other as “science.”

The times are grim, my boy. Yet the faithful have survived worse. This Easter, albeit in secrecy and danger, you kneel to a God who loved you enough to come here and die so you might live. Your friend Aaron whispers at Passover his gratitude for a divine deliverance from bondage and death. Down the centuries, neither Caesar nor Satan nor all our own sins have been able to halt these ancient devotions. Nor shall they now. Stay strong – Grandfather

Lessons from Reagan: Hear the Podcast

Here's the audio from our latest installment of Freedom University your learning source for liberty. It's a new series of monthly specials on 710 KNUS, taking you behind the headlines and back to the founding principles that have made America the freest nation in history. Freedom will be lost if we don’t constantly educate and motivate ourselves to keep it. The study assignment for this month, aired April 1, is called "Lessons from Reagan." Click here for the podcast.

If you're older, you’ll remember the Gipper's great moments of 1976 in the heat of Kansas City, and of 1980 in the snows of New Hampshire. Younger memories will recall his outwitting Mondale in that 1984 debate and his defiance at the Berlin Wall in 1987.

But on this month's program we dig behind those memories to draw out some of the enduring lessons for political victory and policy success from the most important conservative president of the past hundred years, Ronald Reagan – at a time when conservatives really need perspective after the tough losses in 2006 and 2008, then three recent election victories in blue states, and then the body blow of ObamaCare being jammed into law.

I talked for the full hour with veteran political consultant and author Craig Shirley, a leading historian of the Reagan years. Craig wrote what many consider the definitive book on 1976, entitled “Reagan’s Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign that Started It All.” He followed that up with a terrific book on the 1980 race, entitled “Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America.”

Joining the conversation was Greg Schaller, my colleague at Colorado Christian University in Lakewood, where he teaches political science and American government.

Contact Craig Shirley here. Or contact Greg Schaller here.

The VAT: coming to America

I know I've been on an ObamaCare kick for the past few months, and I wouldn't blame you if you are tired of it by now.  I wish I could abandon it for some other topic -- any other topic, in fact.  But, alas, I cannot.  Why? Because I see this new law as the greatest single threat to our continued prosperity in my lifetime.

Those on the left think that conservatives are exaggerating the potential impact of this law.  Paul Krugman, no doubt the dumbest Nobel Prize winner in history, was on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday and talked of the the health care reform law as "a minor change", and is certain that it will both be cost and care effective in improving the nation's medical system.  Indeed, this is the talking point for the Democrats, who want to focus on all the "good" things in the law and act as if the economic sleight-of-hand implicit in the law's assumptions are trivial.  Of course, it's all trivial when you are saving the lives of women, children and the infirm (well, most children, anyhow -- we won't mention the baby killing public abortion funding in the law -- I know the left doesn't like to talk about that part).

And herein lies the problem: the left is touting the benefits, while hiding the costs.  And the costs are a killer -- a path to insolvency for this country.  Why?  Because the numbers just don't add up.  As Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute points out in today's Wall Street Journal, Obama's plan is to tax "the rich" to pay for all this entitlement spending:

President Barack Obama's new health-care legislation aims to raise $210 billion over 10 years to pay for the extensive new entitlements. How? By slapping a 3.8% "Medicare tax" on interest and rental income, dividends and capital gains of couples earning more than $250,000, or singles with more than $200,000.

The president also hopes to raise $364 billion over 10 years from the same taxpayers by raising the top two tax rates to 36%-39.6% from 33%-35%, plus another $105 billion by raising the tax on dividends and capital gains to 20% from 15%, and another $500 billion by capping and phasing out exemptions and deductions.

Add it up and the government is counting on squeezing an extra $1.2 trillion over 10 years from a tiny sliver of taxpayers who already pay more than half of all individual taxes.

It won't work. It never works.

How do we know it won't work?  Because we've tried it before -- in California, in fact.  A burgeoning entitlement and public employee pension system paid for by a tiny percentage of tax payers.  I've written about it before here and here.  California has relied on its top earners to the point where too much of the budget relies on too few tax payers.  And now it has squeezed them to the point that there is no more blood in the rock.  There just isn't any more marginal revenue to gain from raising taxes further, and the "brain drain" to other states has only made the situation worse.

We are now about to embark on a similar experience nationally -- and the numbers won't work any differently there than they have in California.  As Reynolds makes clear, higher marginal tax rates will ultimately lead to LESS revenue, not more.  It's the same lesson that Regan taught us -- that the left refuses to learn: incentives matter:

In short, the belief that higher tax rates on the rich could eventually raise significant sums over the next decade is a dangerous delusion, because it means the already horrific estimates of long-term deficits are seriously understated. The cost of new health-insurance subsidies and Medicaid enrollees are projected to grow by at least 7% a year, which means the cost doubles every decade—to $432 billion a year by 2029, $864 billion by 2039, and more than $1.72 trillion by 2049.

If anyone thinks taxing the rich will cover any significant portion of such expenses, think again.

The federal government has embarked on an unprecedented spending spree, granting new entitlements in the guise of refundable tax credits while drawing false comfort from phantom revenue projections that will never materialize.

At the end of this train comes Nancy Pelosi's big dream: the Value Added Tax (VAT).  The VAT is a tax on goods at every stage of production -- hence the "value added" after each stage (production, assembly, packaging, distribution, etc.)  It's a stealth tax because they don't add it at the cash register -- it's already baked in.  And it's high -- in the UK, for example, that VAT is 17.5%.  And it is in addition to the income, property, capital gains and local sales taxes you pay.

Remember this fact: every nation with a nationalized health care system has at VAT.  It is the only way that the high costs of national health care can be paid for.  Nancy Pelosi is on record as favoring a VAT; she told Charlie Rose in October, 2009:

"Somewhere along the way, a value-added tax plays into this," she said. "Of course, we want to take down the health-care cost, that's one part of it. But in the scheme of things, I think it's fair to look at a value-added tax as well."

The Wall Street Journal has outlined the desires of Pelosi and other Democrats for a VAT on numerous occasions as well:

Mrs. Pelosi is the second prominent Democrat to call for a VAT in recent weeks. John Podesta, an adviser to President Obama and president of the very liberal Center for American Progress, called in September for a "small and more progressive" VAT. Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Podesta argue a new tax is necessary to address the nation's exploding financial liabilities, as if those liabilities exploded on their own. Of course, VATs always start "small" and get bigger. The bills for the Democratic spending blowout are coming due even sooner than advertised, and the middle class will pay, whatever Mr. Obama's campaign promises. 

So, here's the dirty little secret of ObamaCare: the left knows the numbers are wrong and that the program will lead to massive deficits.  They know it will happen and it is by design: the only way to fully re-make America in Europe's vision is to have a VAT that will support the welfare state.

It is a key part of the leftist game plan.

You heard it here first:  The VAT is coming to America, and sooner than you think.